Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Angela Duckworth Returns

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance) is a psychologist and author. Angela returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss why she doesn’t like to swear, how language has evolved, and the maturity principle. Angela and Dax talk about the multiple selves problem, how most people never change their stance on topics, and how we can trigger our best modes that are most useful for a given situation. Angela explains psychological distance, why uncertainty can cause anxiety, and the protective wall of human community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Monastam Mouse. Hi there. Hello there. Returning guests today, one of my favorites. It's not a coincidence she and Steve and Dubner work together because they both have just the most

explosive conversation style that makes it so easy for us. So fun. You're right. They're obviously so similar in that way. Yeah, you just need to say hi. And then everything explodes off of that. True. Angela Duckworth.

Angela is an academic, a psychologist, a MacArthur Genius grant winner, and a best-selling author. Her very famous book, Grit, of course, everyone knows that book. And she has a podcast called No Stupid Questions that is everything you'd expect from her. It's so good. She's so fascinating. And she's also, Adam Grantian, that you can start any

conversation and she has some study dub reference. Yes. Oh, I love her. We love that. Please enjoy Angela Duckworth. Order up for Damien. Hey, how did your doctor's appointment go, by the way? Did you ask about Rebelsys? Actually, I'm seeing my doctor later today. Did you say Rebelsys? My dad's been talking about Rebelsys. Rebelsys? Really?

Yeah, he says it's a pill that's That's right. Did you know it's also covered by most private insurance plans? Well, I'll definitely be asking my doctor if Rebelsys is right for me. Rebelsys, ask your doctor or visit Rebelsys.ca. Order up for Rebelsys!

Try Tim's new sweet chili chicken loaded wraps and bowls today. Take your taste buds on an exciting new adventure for lunch or dinner with our delicious new sweet chili sauce. It's time for sweet chili chicken. It's time for Tim's at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time Do I go right and left doesn't matter doesn't it doesn't But I like it I it's me too. I like it the other way so the cord's not draped across your body.

And why do they put the R and L there though? Just to fuck with you. Fuck with you. Well, if you're like mixing something and you need to know, but we're coming through both sides, right? Oh, oh, yeah. That's like for DJs and stuff. What do you wear on your podcast?

I wear the headphones, but I just put the L on the left and I put the R on the right. It is the cord ever on your podcast? I wear the headphones, but I just put the L on the left and I put the R on the right. It is the cord ever on your person? It is not on my person, but I think it's because it's in a recording studio. Okay, and they already thought this was the room. So like, it's kind of set up ergonomically, yes. Because is it a part of some bigger network

where they have a big space? Freakin'omics, we do not generally record in person. We tried it once, and then Stephen was like, it's kind of not so great. Really? Really? Too intimate? I don't know.

He got distracted with the visual input. Is he like Michael Pence? Is he not allowed to be with women in a room unless his wife is present? I didn't even know that. You know that. You can't ask me anything about, wait, I have a Michael Pence story.

You can't ask me about anything political. I have a Michael Pence story. Make up your mind me about anything political. I have a Michael Pence story. Make up your mind, Angela. But they go together and here's how. So I'm looking at the newspaper over my husband's shoulder and I was like, oh, that's such a funny picture. You know, it's kind of like an avatar. And then I was like, oh, do you know what the uncanny valley

is? It's when there's a picture and it's so realistic that it jumps the shark and it's like too realistic. So I go off on this riff and he was like, oh, that's Michael Pence. And then I say, who's Michael Pence? What year was this? So the reason why you can't ask me about politics

is I just don't know anything. He was vice president. Why? Because I had to ask more and then. You learned he was our current vice president. At the time. And is that a strategic decision to stay, because I'm not watching CNN and stuff or MSNBC

or Fox News. It's sounds like a protective coping mechanism. Okay, because it'd be hard to have not known about Mike Pence. It's really hard. And yet... In particular, the story I'm referencing to you was one of the biggest... When did this happen? Like, recently? No, it was like maybe first year of his vice presidency and he didn't want to meet with someone from the Senate or the Congress, whatever it was, because he doesn't like to be in a room with a woman

if his wife isn't also present. Interesting. And this is a man who's in government with a... Very religious, did you know that? Oh, is that the origin of it? I thought his wife doesn't trust him. No, not quite that. Sure, it's all twisty.

See, isn't it great? I don't know anything. It's like everything's the first no. Did you know that Trump said grab him by the... No Oh, are you kidding? No. No. No. No. No. Okay, you know how there was this settlement that just happened? Yes. It was all news to me. I was like, wait, what? Oh my god. Cause it was all new. Okay. But I'm very happy about it. But I'm very happy about it. The pussy was the biggest thing that's ever said in politics.

Well, can you give me just the wiki? What's the wiki? Yeah, I prefer Monica does, because obvious reasons. So this was during the 2016 election. A video came out of him on Billy Bush's show. Access Hollywood. Access Hollywood.

They had been recording a segment. They were still mic'd. They were on a bus. There's not actual video footage of this conversation. You can just hear them in the bus talking. Oh, okay, right, because the audio's on. And they don't know. It's already a video footage of this conversation. You can just hear them in the bus. Okay, right, because the audio's on. And they don't know. It's already a good story.

Exactly. Exactly, privileged information. And he says like locker room, tall, he says this is locked, or no, that was after. He says like, when I come out of here, I might have to kiss that girl. Like there's someone there. There's a female there.

Yeah. And this is Michael Pence talking? No, Trump. Oh, this is Trump talking. This is Donald J. Trump. Okay. Already not a great topic for us in the show, but at any rate, this is relevant. Yeah, he's just me learning about the world. So it progresses like this. If I see that girl out there, I don't know, I might just kiss her. Women love stars and power. You know,

I just go up to him, grab him by the pussy. Okay, I vaguely remember this coming out during the election. Exactly. In the Democrats thought, well, this is it. This is the end. Right, yeah, yeah. No, I vaguely remember that too, thinking, oh, it's over. And then it so wasn't. And then it was the first thing of 700 worst things. Well, and he also said something like I came up on her like a bitch.

There was some gal that somehow resisted his advances. Yeah, I mean, he did just have to pay. Yeah, I was going to say a different person. But I'm with you on the settlement. I don't really know any of the details. Yeah, I mean, he did just have to pay. Yeah, I was gonna say a different person. But I'm with you on the settlement. I don't really know any of the details. Yeah, I just don't read the newspaper. But you know, when you asked if it was willful or intentional. I do think it makes a lot of space in my brain

for other things. Well, I'm there now, but it's intentional. So like I was on the ride, it was great TV. I did it for four years. Okay, so you were watching all the time. And then I was just completely fatigued and I can't stand hearing about it. And I just was really like, I'm so fucking bored of this topic. You're owning it. I think that's great. I just don't know it. And I don't

care. I'm actually okay with that. Largely. Okay, I know it's a threat to democracy. But you vote, right? I do vote. And I have trusted friends and one husband. And I get a printout before I go into the polls. It's all you need, right? You're voting, I do vote. I do vote. And I have trusted friends and one husband and I get a printout before I go into the polls. It's all you need, right? You're proving the point I'm constantly making, which is people have this illusion that they're participating more by thinking about it and talking about it. My observation is 99% of people that are wound up, they do one thing every four years.

And they're not doing anything else because they could be doing other things. Yes, sure. But maybe most of them are not. But all we do is vote once every four years and I'm not not doing anything else because they could be doing other things. Yes, sure. But maybe most of them are not. But all we do is vote once every four years and I'm not even shaming anyone from that. All I'm saying is when you tell me it's socially irresponsible or a threat to the democracy that I'm not following all the twists and turns,

I'm kind of like, let's compare records. As long as I went and voted, I did the exact same amount of actionable things as you did. So shut the fuck up. I think I'm gonna use that, maybe without the profanity, but I can use that as my own explanation if I get assaulted in this way. Surely in your long career,

have you come across any kind of work about obscenities? Yes. I assume so. So are you comfortable? You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna take my shoes off. My aches come off. I don't think my feet, they kind of touch the ground. They don't have to touch.

But like, I'm gonna do this. Yes. I can tell the way your hand was. I can tell the way your hand was. Yeah, that's really good. Have you ever heard of Y Combinator? No. Well, you've never heard of Y Combinator?

Maybe now we're switching. Okay, I know we are switching. Because it turned out you did here, grabbing by the pussy, so maybe the same thing will happen. Well, I have heard about Y Combinator. I don't think it falls into the same category. You have heard of Y Combinator. You've heard of Airbnb and Stripe.

It's the most successful accelerator in Silicon Valley, meaning you know what venture capital is, correct? Yes. So venture capital has been around for a while. But what has not been around for a while is this idea of what they call an accelerator. In 2005 or so, there was one venture capitalist, or actually he was not yet a venture capitalist. His name was Paul Graham. And Y stands for Yahoo. So I think he was at Yahoo. He was giving a talk at Harvard to these

students about what he thought as somebody who had been successful in startups and tech. He was like, you know, this is the way startups should be. This is what founders need. They need mentors. They need to be together to talk to each other because you need ambitious people to be with other ambitious people or they just get diluted and then they get less ambitious. So then you decided to try to do this. So even in the first batch, it created Airbnb. I think they have something like close to 100 businesses that are over a billion dollars in revenue. And so that's what Y Combinator is, it's an accelerator.

Quite literally, it's a group of people that come together and it's a social network, and they encourage each other and pressure test each other. Yes, but it's kind of like summer camp and venture capital had a baby, because I think it's like a three month program, but you also get half a million dollars. So you get invested in. Then also by the way, they now own 7% of your company. Right. Of course. How much?

I think it's 7%. Oh, 7. I thought you said 70. I was like, that's a... No. So it's like an off-camera shark tank in a way. Yes. So why did I bring that up? Because you noticed my body language. I don't remember what the question was before that. But you will notice my body language.

So I don't know these Y Combinator founders, but there's two or three men and there's one woman. And the woman says that she goes into these interviews because you have to get into Y Combinator. They don't just take anybody who signs up. And so they're all being asked questions about their model and the likely market cap. And then this woman whose name I can't remember in full, but I think the first name is Jennifer.

She says that what she does is she says nothing and she just watches. And in 10 minutes, she says she can tell you what their character is. Yeah! And I was thinking maybe you'd be good at this. I love that you guys had this moment, but I do wanna return to the question of the

power of obscenities. There's a little bit of research on this, but I'm not an expert. I do swear a lot. I also work with children. I'm trying not to... It's offensive to some parents when you swear a lot, especially the F word. You're calling students at Penn children? No.

I think I would be called a developmental psychologist. I was a high school teacher, and then I studied teenagers. And many parents would be offended by profanity. So I had a little peripheral vision for this research. And it turns out some people think that people who swear are, I think, more honest. You should trust them more because they're just gonna say whatever the fuck they want. And I'm not gonna say it, but you can say it.

Whatever the fuck we want. Exactly, and you can say it, Maddy, because you don't think you're a developmentalist. Like, exactly. It's all good stuff about swearing. I think the one is if you stub your toe and you say, Fuck. It's an immersion regulation.

It's a tool. Yeah. Okay, I don't know enough. I should stop talking, because I don't really know a lot. This was already great. Yeah. I one time was having a debate with my mother-in-law, which happens frequently.

And she hates swearing just across the board. She would be like one of those parents. Yes. Maybe a little more traditional. Her explanation to me was it's lazy and it kind of flags stupidity. And my single pushback to it was, I'm going to make you watch this Chris Rock stand up special. Anyone or just a particular?

Well, sure. Anyone would work. He is a master of using profanity as was so many communities. George Carlin? Sure. Richard Pryor to me is like the prime example. I was like, minimally I need you to watch this person and tell me you conclude that they're not hyper intelligent

and using this very intentionally. And with great effect. And just like we have come to recognize AAVE African American vernacular English, you have them, I think they did all the work on that. What they sought out to prove is this isn't a degrading of the normative language. This is actually more complicated.

It evolves more quickly. They're communicating more complex things. Like if you just study it as a straight up language, it's in ways superior. So minimally you can't be superior to AAVE. It could be an evolution. And it is. And there's a lot of historical reasons why they would need their own language

so that they could not be broadcasting their plans to their captors. There's a number of reasons. But I happen to think swearing can be used very effectively and properly. Like an accent, it's a key thing to emotion. It can break tension. You know, it's just very useful. And some people are really great at it. And some people, yes, are using it like um.

Right. Like it's just a filler. Exactly. Did your mother-in-law move at all on this issue? She acknowledged that Chris Rock was pretty smart. That's all I got out of her. She told me this. She had seen my movie Chips. She didn't say one thing about it.

She clearly didn't like it. Then she saw it on an airplane three years later and she landed and she goes, oh my God, Dax, I saw your movie Chips on the airplane and all the swears were bleeped out. And I thought, wow, this is actually a good movie under all that. So she needed it removed to even enjoy it. She needed it removed to be able to focus on that. I don't relate, but fine. She's also religious and I do think there's something about it's the devil's talk.

It connects to naughty, but bad. Well, like taking the Lord's name in vain. Okay, well, I am not a linguist, but I was on a project with a linguist for like It connects to naughty. Well, like taking the Lord's name in vain. Okay, well, I am not a linguist, but I was on a project with a linguist for like a long time. Didn't really go as far as we wanted, but here's the thing he taught me. So I was saying, literally, kind of literally bothers me. I mean, literally bothers me, but the way people are using literally bothers me. So I gave him an example.

I was like, my daughter, Amanda, the other day said, I literally jumped out of my skin and jumped back into it again. And I told this linguist that it bothered me. And he said, what's very interesting is what you're picking up on as an old person is how a young person talks. And so it bothers you that she doesn't say actually or very.

Think about what those words mean. Actual very comes from truth, right? He's like, that used to be literally, now it's acceptable to you. And here what those words mean. Actual, very comes from truth. Right? He's like, that used to be literally. Now it's acceptable to you. And here's what he said. When language evolves, you can tell where it's going by listening to young people. Because the way they talk, like me and my friend went to the mall,

was wrong, but it's not going to be wrong. Yes. Did this person write a book then called like literally dude? Because we interviewed. No, that's a woman. No, Mark Lieberman. Our favorite guest of the last year was a linguist and she wrote a book called like literally dude. And it's making an argument for how precise and accurate those are.

And then gave us 30 words we use that are absolutely opposite of their original meaning 200 years ago. We now accept them, right? Cause we're like, oh. Valerie Friedland. Ooh, I love this. Okay, I'm sure they're friends. It's pretty much the same thing she said. 200 years ago. We now accept them, right? Yes. Because we're like, oh. Valerie Friedland.

Valerie Friedland. Okay, I'm sure they're friends. It's pretty much the same thing, she said. Did you love talking to him? Because we were having so much fun. We're trying to talk about one thing, but then you just kept hearing the etymology. One thing leads to another, and he's like, oh, it's an intensifier. And I'm like, what's an intensifier?

It's so fun. I mean, it didn't make me want to be a linguist. But I was like, this is amazing. And I'm glad he did this. The gigginess of the pursuit is really infectious. I don't know what the fourth hour is like, but the first three hours you're like, this is great. Here's another thing. This is what we were working on. Sentences are getting shorter and reading level is going down. If you look at the inaugural dresses from the

presidents going, well, I don't know about certain presidents, but starting from like Washington all the way forward, you know, it's pretty easy to tell reading level because how uncommon are the words could have fourth grade or read this. And reading level has been going down in written text over the last century or so. I immediately would be a little bit suspicious of causality versus correlation. So one thing we could say about Abraham Lincoln is that he was only addressing other highly educated people that were in front of him and in government. Social scientists thought this.

They were not watching on TV. If we were to track just how widely viewed and accessible. How do you know that we're not just more, I don't know, democratic? They have access to more and more people and that maybe their reading and writing is superior to labels. I don't know. Okay. That is a fair point.

Slash, we did look and I told you this project went a lot slower than we thought. We tried to look at all published texts. It was hard to do. But we were like, you know, like New York Times bestselling novels. It's a little complicated, but we do see a rise in informality. The way I wanted to say it, but I think it's probably too simplistic, is the written word is becoming like the spoken word. So people don't speak in really long sentences with semicolons in them. You just say things and they're quite simple. I think even outside of presidential

dresses, because that's a very good point, I think language is getting more informal and sentences are getting shorter. Like for example, contractions are going up. So it used to be she is going to the house and now it's she's going to the house more often. So I think language is evolving and maybe it's evolving in the direction of kids and also women by the way. So apparently how women speak in a society tends to be like most efficient. Well, better. I don't know, but the way women and children are speaking. I'm told by Mark is the way that the rest of us will be speaking They're like the California of speaking Is California the California of speaking. Yes. Is California the California of California?

Yes. Like that. Well, what happens here will happen. Like the harbinger, what's, there's a word for this. But I can't remember. But also, I'm going to say this is because of email. Because we're all communicating. And texting.

So quickly, all the time over text and email. And it's quick. No one's taking the time. You'd look ridiculous. Okay, but we went back to the beginning of the 20th century and you still find this trend. I mean, I'll overplay it because it's not like every sentence is getting shorter. But I think people are writing more like Hemingway than they are like Faulkner. By the way, I think it's good.

I think like coffee and pizza are getting better and maybe writing is getting better. I have another take. You also have to think about what life was like in 1930. So the only shared language that you even had access to was this paper that would arrive if you happened to somehow get your hands on a newspaper. Again, you cannot turn on the television and see how people are talking in New York or in St. Louis, right? So you have this very unified, very formal. Written by a certain class of people too, right? As opposed to email. I think we must

be writing more than we used to, right? Oh, so much. A thousand percent. And then you're getting more and more. Now the radio comes out. Now all of a sudden across the airwaves, I'm hearing people from Kansas City. And now we have icons pop up. We have Elvis Presley.

Now we know how he talks. We've been being informed by this newspaper. Now we're being informed by this person. And then that's just again, shot all the way up where every human being has a device in their hand and they're broadcasting their pop culture. So I also think we're embracing what the shared culture is, but back then the shared culture was that. I think there's always this knee-jerk reaction to go like we're devolving. Like a T-bass, have you heard that acronym? No. No. Is this an odd thing? Maybe it was just my

father-in-law, total breakdown of American society. Oh, okay. Maybe he made that up. Wow. But I hear that term. Every generation does say this. And actually, I will tell you as a psychologist, that every generation, you know, people are always asking about the millennials, and now I guess they're asking, what's the generation of the millennials? Gen Z is before Gen Z. And I think there's one that's after them.

Every generation thinks that there's like a seismic change in human nature because they look at the next generation and they're like, oh my God, total breakdown of American society or total breakdown of film in the blank society. And really a lot of it is they're just a different generation. They're also younger. So people's personalities change over the lifespan. And basically there's this thing called the maturity principle.

It is the following fact. People on average get better over time. In adulthood, you get more conscientious, more dependable and trustworthy, more emotionally stable actually, but a lot. I mean, not everything goes up, but wisdom, judgment. So basically, the old people are just looking at the young people and being like, oh my gosh,

they're so callous and impulsive, they don't work hard enough, but they don't realize they're just young. Right, they're hanging it on the observable things that they're witnessing. They're attributing it to their generation. Yes, yes, yes. And they're also annoyed about things like they're not talking like I attributing it to their generation. Yes, yes, yes. And they're also annoyed about things

like they're not talking like I am. They say me and my friend went to the house. A friend of mine pointed out something I just thought was so astute. The other day we were talking on the phone, we were talking about all the different uproars over trans issues. And he said, you know, it did cross my mind.

The level of uproar right now is identical to my parents' uproar that boy George was wearing a kind of loose, cottony dress. Yes, which I remember. I am old enough to remember that. People are like, you cannot listen to Boy George. This guy is going to T-Bass, right? Right, right, right, and he's gonna take down society.

Yes, and so for us, that's really comical because we lived through it, and we were young watching, like, no, this guy's a great singer, and who gives a flying point for this? So what's your forecast then of where we'll be in, I don't know, 50 years? I have different fears and I listened to a couple of your episodes.

You did, oh my God. Of no stupid questions, which is so good. But one of them was, is GPS changing your brain? Which was a really fun episode. Answer yes. Inmeasurably. And maybe let's just lay that out because then I can maybe build on that.

And then let me back up before you get into that. I was screaming the whole time I was listening to the episode. Have you read Weirdest People on Earth? No, I have not. It is the greatest book I've read in the last five years. Oh. Joseph Henrich and it's Western educated industrial rich democratic. I mean I know the academic research, I just didn't read the book.

I don't really read those kind of books that I also write of course not I don't like to watch comedy exactly It's like a busman's holiday. So he makes this incredible observation about how Dramatically well for starters it erases the line between nature and nurture or culture and genetics, which I love There's an anthra major. This is what we've been screaming, right? But he gives these incredible cases of how we have massively changed the structure of our brain simply through learning to read. Oh, interesting. Talks about the process of learning to read in the 1600s and Martin Luther King getting the literacy rate up in the 80s in all these different countries. Right, because it

wasn't that long ago where we were almost all totally illiterate. And it occupies such a significant area of your brain, and that is an area that otherwise would have been dedicated to social recognition. So being able to read body language much better, social cues. Does he think we're worse at those other things? Yes, it's now dedicated to this task,

and it changes the physical structure observable of the brain and talks about like, when you're sitting around thinking about why the people in Japan and China are different from you And you're being told all collective society versus an individual and that's fine But beyond that there's structural differences of our brains Which is incredible the history of rice production in the math required to do it change the structure of their brain Why do you think it is? I'm curious, both of you, when people are like,

it changes you, and they're like, yeah. And you're like, it changes your brain. And you're like, what? And you sit up and you're like, wait, my brain. I think it's really interesting that I also sit up and I'm like, oh, your brain, did you say your brain? What is that that makes that so compelling? I mean, it is compelling, but I don't know why.

It's more compelling that it's the brain. Because I think it pushes against this notion that we are one thing. We're kind of immeasurable. We've been designed. We have a genetic code. It can only change through mutation. It kind of threatens everything we have been taught about evolution. It's like, whoa, hold on, culture can fuck my genetics.

Well, this opens up a Pandora's box. Are we the thing we think we are? Kind of like a mind-body thing, right? Where you're like, hold on, now everything is in question. Yeah, because we like to think of those things as separate. Did you have Sapolsky on the show? Yes. Well, I was going to say, I think it's a free will thing.

I think if we think something structurally changed in our brain, then we no longer have any control over it. That's just the way we are. We can't make any decisions to change or to change it. And I think this is why when you say this person committed this crime They had a brain problem. Yeah, and they're like, oh, their guilt goes down exactly perceived guilt goes down 100% although you could argue that that's not super logical, but I would also be saying the guilt would go down I'm not saying that I wouldn't answer this or just like everyone else

By the way, there's a great book that I'm reading. I think his name is Bennett Max Bennett. No, not Jennifer. Jennifer, why combinator? Oh, yeah, I was like, oh gosh, I totally forgot. That was like really funny. I'm like, I don't remember that part of the conversation at all. It's called a brief history of intelligence, but I don't know you very well, but I know you enough that you guys love him, and it's like sapiens or intelligence. So the reason I bring this all up is that it'll make you understand how we can maybe try to think about the future. We can even have conversations

about free will, which is kind of amazing. He basically begins with primordial sludge and then he takes you all the way through. It's a very fast moving book because you know there's a lot of territory to cover and it just makes you I think humble too. You're like, okay, we are from fish. And the fish were from nematodes. And the nematodes were from single-celled organisms. I don't know whether there's free will or not. I think it's fun to debate. There was a hot minute where I was a philosophy.

I was taking this look, and I was just like, I'm just not going to figure this out. And I will say that I'm okay not knowing, but not caring that much. I have the exact same standpoint. It's okay not to know. I don't think we know, and I certainly don't think we know enough for him

to write a book that says definitively it is deterministic. It was very confident and very well written. Yes. But wow, he is like, I figure this out. And I think if he had a different childhood, he would have it pulled towards a different conclusion. I think we're that subjective. Oh, interesting.

I think he could employ that enormous brain on any topic and he'd be able to convince me. Well, that's also true. We all only prove our hunches. Like I think ultimately, and I believe this in every expert we interview. Nobody ever changes their mind. They don't.

And they have something in childhood they've been trying to answer. This is like Freudian. They have, well, not Freudian. Not Freudian, Freudian. We reject him. Lowercase F, Freudian. I think it's driven by emotional.

I think that's like Adler. You know, if Freud had the next generation, I think he believed that if you really want to understand someone, there's something in their childhood that is giving them like an inferiority complex, some whole that they spend their whole life trying to fill, and I'm 80% sure it was Adler, but that's kind of what you're talking about, right? There's something in his childhood that's driving him to believe in determinism, for example. I think that people who are drawn to no free will and determinism are people who have a general high fear of the planet, and it would feel safer to know that we could know about it, predict it, and prepare for it.

The concept is appealing, because if we knew where everything was going, we would never be caught off guard, We could be prepared. They don't want to think about the unknowable cosmos. Or they might even like that stuff. But I always think of Sam Harris and I have great respect for him and he's much smarter than I am. So I'm not claiming to have anything over him. I just know he has a bunch of security. He trains for Jiu Jitsu. There's a lot of other things. And then guess what? He also believes in determinism. I don't think they're unrelated. Oh that is so interesting. For me I would have said 100% free will until sort of recently.

You were like team free will until recently? Yeah because all of us who think we're so smart and that we earned all this stuff we didn't. It really just made me feel like no one's better than anyone else. And we're fooling ourselves. No one works harder than anyone else. So much is just handed to you genetically culturally so much. Okay, so I have another person that you should... I have two people. One is Robert Frank, who wrote this book on how, especially if we are leading decent lives, we're successful. We own a bus. You have an incredible number of vehicles outside. That's right. That's right. I was a bit horr You have an incredible number of vehicles outside. That's right.

I was a bit horrified to know that they were all yours. Say you have your own bus. You can create a narrative, which is you're a hard worker. Maybe you even have the humility to say it wasn't talent, it was grit. But you don't usually say, it was so random, I'm just this molecule. It could have been this other molecule. 100%. Right?

So Robert Frank, I don't know what he is, but he's at Cornell. So he's a professor and he believes that this is one of the problems of elites That's also Sepolski's take which is like you shouldn't be judgmental people and you also shouldn't be proud of yourself Yeah, you won a lottery that I accept but by the way not to get too sticky, but people do work harder But they do but we could have the ability that's exactly that we didn't pick they work harder But it's also easier for them to work. Yes, they have some kind of biological motivation. I actually don't believe in free will. I just don't believe that I know very much, and I agree.

You ask the question about anything. You're like, well, why do they work hard? Parents think they have them. Someone modeled that for them. Exactly. Like, when they work hard, it pays off. Exactly. Right?

They got validation for it early. I just want to give you this other idea, except for he doesn't do podcasts, but he would so agree with you. You know who said exactly what you said a moment ago, more or less, that people don't really change their minds about anything that really matters? Danny Kahneman.

We've had Danny Kahneman. He's not doing him anymore though. I was just a couple of years ago, all right? You may have gotten one of the last Danny Kahneman interviews. You love Kahneman, right? Everyone loves Danny. Yeah. Did he come here?

He did not come here. Was it good? Yeah, it was. His concept of the narrative self versus the Experiential self. Yeah, probably my very favorite concept I've ever heard in and became how I frame so many of my analysis of whether things are going my way It's like well a way for which self. Oh like it was actually practically useful all the time It is. Oh, so interesting. He's very convinced that nothing he does is actually useful

I was like, oh you wrote this book thinking fast and slow All the time it is. Oh, so interesting. He's very convinced that nothing he does is actually useful. I was like, oh, you wrote this book, Thinking Fast and Slow. You must have written it to change people for the better. He said, I could have written a poem. It was an act of self-expression. And he was like, I don't think it changes anyone, but it changed you. Absolutely. And the concept was introduced to me by sapiens weirdly.

He said, you could be wearing a device in the future and you're going to walk into a meeting. And the device may blink and say, do not pitch a new idea in this meeting. Your blood sugar is this. The last time your cortisol levels were this, you said something you regretted, keep your mouth shut in this meeting.

It'll get that nuance to be incredible. And he said, you're going to be setting goals for the device to keep you on track, but you have to ask yourself goals for which self. Another self might have conflicting and contrary goals that you're also servicing. So it's like, how do I want to spend my real life just achieving accolades? So there's the experiential self. You might enjoy flipping through Instagram for two hours.

And then at night, the narrative self says, well, that wasn't a great use of our day and the life we're trying to write about. So this I have thought about a lot because I would say that more than grit I study self-control. I think I've published 15 articles on self-control for every article I've published on grit. And I think all of self-control comes down to the multiple selves reality. So there is an Angela who wants to be here. Maybe there's an Angela who's a little jet lagged and wants to take a nap right here on the couch. Have you ever

seen the night guy morning guy routine that Seinfeld does? Night guy wants to go out and party and have fun. You know, wakes up and he's like morning guy, morning guy's hungover, he's tired, he's cranky, he doesn't want to go to work. And the idea is we are those selves. Now one of them might come out at night, one of them may came out in the morning. And the problem with self-control is these multiple selves are not in agreement about what to do, when to go to bed, or what to eat, or what to say.

The way philosophy has solved this, philosophy is really good at thinking about things. I don't think philosophy has a lot of practical advice, but I think the answer is supposed to be what you prefer upon reflection. So which DAX is the DAX that when you have a moment to consider all the DAXs or all the Monarchs, which one do you prefer? And I think some philosophical thinkers would say what Harry Frankfurt at Princeton would

say the higher level self is what you want to want. The lower level self or the lower order desires are what you merely want. And I think a lot of self control is doing what you want to want upon reflection and not just what you want. And again, it goes back to Freud. This is super ego-eating. Who are you servicing? Super ego or ego?

Exactly, I think of the same exact intuitions. And that's why measuring happiness, which is the original Kahneman task. Day reconstruction method, yeah. Yeah, like ask someone at any given moment in the day to write down how their day's going, but then ask them later that night how the day went. In little episodes, right? So it's like you break down your whole day. And, but then ask them later that night how the day went. In little episodes, right?

Yeah. So it's like you break down your whole day. And you might give seven, then a six, and five. But then at the end of the day, you'll come up with a number for the overall day. And that's weirdly what gets cemented in your mind and what is constructing your identity. And then we do also somewhat argue like a rational thing. So one of the early and famous day reconstruction method studies that Kahneman did, he found that people are really unhappy commuting.

But what do they do? They buy houses in the middle of nowhere and they drive an hour and a half each way. You also have this kind of like, which self bought that house, right? Because the self who's like in the car for an hour and a half each way is like really unhappy. I think the multiple selves problem is perennial. One could argue, and it's been argued recently, that ultra-processed fast food and Instagram and TikTok, we live in an environment which is really preying on our first order desires because it's easy to sell to our first order desires. I'm calling it experiential self, but you would call those first order desires. I'm agreeing with you on multiple selves in general. I also think there's different

selves we have with different people. When I'm in my house, like under my roof with the door closed, I'm actually very quiet. In my family, I think I say the least. Really? Right? But not when we're together. Because I imagine you and I under the same roof and the fucking doors would blow off. And there's, exactly, you're like, you need sound insulation. There's two. But only when I'm like in public.

Stay tuned for more Armchair expert if you dare. Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner, he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan, and they both spent the week in the water. plan, and they both spent the week in the water. You were made to follow your whims. We were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool and a waterfall and a soaking tub, and of course, a great shower. Expedia, made to travel.

Can I drill into your psychology a little bit? Cause you gave me two really good clues. So is it that you do feel true and unconditional love in your house and that there's some part of you that when you're out and about, there is still some child fear that you will not either be taken seriously or seen as smart. I think our multiple selves are often all genuine of a kind. I'm not implying the ones fraudulent when you're out of the house.

But I am implying in a Sepulski way that there's probably a causality to it. OK, so now I'm going to reference another psychologist. Did you ever have Tim Becon? No. But you've heard of cognitive therapy. I know. I'm like, no, no, no, no. You're scorned for, I mean mean, actually like half the people we named. Did you ever have Mike Pence on?

That's how we know him. Not yet. He won't because he's afraid I'll leave the room. Exactly, and then he'll be in the room with him and by himself. So you can't have Tim back on because he is passed away, but he is credited with basically being the inventor of modern therapy. He was also trained as a Freudian, so he lived to 100, and he only recently passed away. But when he was a young psychiatrist,

like everyone, he was Freudian, because they all were. So he's trying to treat these patients who are depressed or anxious, and it's not working. You know, he's talking about their childhoods and their dreams. He was also very scientific, which like, not a lot of psychoanalysts at the time were super science-y. I'll get in a lot of psychoanalysts at the time were super science-y.

I'll get in a lot of trouble for saying that, but I think it's roughly true. So he goes back and he thinks to himself, why are people depressed? Why are they anxious? Talking about their childhood is not helping a lot. And what he determined was that your feelings are driven by your thoughts. That's actually the basis of therapy, is that how you feel. I'm sad. I don't want to get out, is that how you feel, I'm sad, I don't wanna get out of bed, I'm scared,

I don't wanna go into that interview. It feels like a feeling and it is a feeling, but before that there's a thought. Anyway, that is the basis of modern psychotherapy. He created CBT. So Tim Beck towards the end of his life was writing his Magnum Opus, which he never got to finish.

I know, right? And I don't know if it'll ever be public, so he didn't finish it. So he lived down the street from me, just by chance, literally in these condo buildings that were four blocks away. And so I was not his best friend and I wasn't a student, but he lived so close and he was into grit. He's very gritty, loved achievement. So anyway, here's what he would say about these multiple selves because he talked about them as modes. He was like, what mode are you in? He

thought, we have all these modes in large part because if you did not have modes, you would be the same person in every situation and that would not be good. You'd be equally talkative, equally dominant, and that's not good. So we have to have modes. So I asked him about multiple personality disorder, which he reminded me is not called that anymore. It's called dissociative identity. But anyway, I was asking about that. I'm like, you know, the thing that was formally known as, yeah. It's like, you know what I'm talking about. And he was like, you know, in that case, you're fully separated from those other selves. Like oneself literally doesn't know, literally, but literally, literally, literally doesn't

know that the other self even exists. And they're like, who made coffee? Where did these workout clothes come from? They're kind of waking up in time and space a lot. And instead, quiet daks, insecure daks, confident daks, you do know about those other selves. So that's the difference. But he was like, but here's what we all have in common.

We all have multiple selves. And maybe a lot of therapy should be about figuring out the thoughts that lead to your feelings. I think in the last 10 years of his life, he was like, maybe a lot of living a better life and not being depressed and not being dysfunctional is figuring out the ways in which we can be the best selves that we have.

In any given mode. How can we trigger our best modes? Right. Access the ones that are most useful in that situation. And I think that is helpful. Then it says, I don't even have to fundamentally change everything about myself. I can just audit myself. When do I like myself the most?

And then you just navigate into those situations. The reason I like to frame things that way is my instinct or natural pattern is that the narrative self will never be happy about anything the experiential self did. They're always at odds, right? And so I have body goals. Well, that banana split didn't meet the, you know.

So what I try to remind myself is they're both valuable. They both deserve to be serviced. And I need the narrative self to shut the fuck up and just go, no, there's a time for the experiential self. And they're both worthy of servicing. If you're only a narrative self, then you're an achievement junkie and you have a hollow life. You're laying on a death bed with a bunch of fucking awards

and accolades. I don't want that. The experiential self, you're dying at 42 of heart disease. You have diabetes. Right. What I'm you're dying at 42 of heart disease. You have diabetes. Right. What I'm aiming for is whatever clever balance for me. Do you feel like there's a lot of tension there or do you feel like you're mostly in alignment?

Cause I do think that happiness is when yourselves are a happy little community. I think there's endless tension there. And as I've gotten older, when you talk about getting better for me, what I would say has gotten better is that I have gotten closer and closer to the ratio that works best for me. Give me an example of a conflict. But he's an addict. So that

inherently has been. So true. Totally forgot about that. How dare you have forgotten about that? Well, I am not Google stalked you enough. I don't know if I have a lot of like actually conflicting selves, but maybe I do and I don't know about it. Let's just take Instagram. I don't think I'm terribly plagued by it, but sometimes I'll do it for an hour and it'll be at an hour generally that we've had three guests that day and I'm fried. I'm against spending an hour on this mindless device

but then I go, stop being so judgmental of the experience on the shelf because it's here to help too. And it matters, because the narrative self comes last. It's looking back on your life, working back on your day. And then projecting, right? So when I wake up in the morning, I'm like,

oh, today I make sure I spend two hours on Instagram between six and eight. I would never plan for that either. Right. How much time do you feel like you experienced the emotion of regret or like that psychic tension of, I want to do this, but I should do this. Sometimes people who study self-control call it like the want should conflict. How much of your day is experiencing that kind of tension?

In percentage terms. The tension is always at an eight. The regret is at like a one. Wait, the tension is at an eight? Always. Oh, wow. My first thought for almost any situation is always something ultimately I don't want to do.

Someone cuts me off. Holy smokes. I want to fist fight at the light. That's me. Wow. My kid does this, I want to go, How many fucking times are we going to learn this? Like, I have to step fight at the light. That's me. My kid does this. I want to go, how many fucking times are we going to learn this? Like I have to step over a bad idea

and a bad impulse in route to almost everything. But at 49 and through A and therapy and all this stuff, I step over it for the most part. But my initial thought is generally self-destructive. So what was the one, the one is, you don't do the things. I generally don't do the things that I have a great pull to do. I've been hip deep in studying AA for the last week. No kidding. I didn't know but also isn't it supposed to be that you're not supposed to shave? In the original traditions

yeah we're supposed to remain silent at the level of press and radio. It's like one of the traditions. Contious, right? Because some would argue that then you keep the stigma. Yeah, exactly. I get very frustrated when people are reading the Constitution like it was written in 2024. That's maddening to me. I hate the notion of no evolution.

So I hate you have a book that's 3,000 years old and you're not gonna fucking bring in any information and test it. You're like, I'm not a fundamentalist. No, in 1931 that was written. If you were to say out loud, I'm a recovering alcoholic, and this even says it somewhere in the literature, you'd have alcohol showing up at your door.

No one knew what to do. Two, you'd get fired back then. You'd be shamed by your society. We do not live in that time. So the context is completely fucking different. There are people in a hay that are very mad at me that I do it, but I've personally talked to 50 plus people

who've gotten sober because they've heard me talk about it on here. And so I'm gonna weigh pissing off 25 old timers versus the 50 people perhaps didn't die because of my honesty. That's so easy for me. What I do try my hardest to always remind people because this is the other great fear.

The other great fear is a legitimate one, which is if I become the face of AA and I fail, then people on the outside will say, AA doesn't work. So I have failed in sobriety and I'm very quick to tell you, I stopped working all of the steps, the way it is suggested. And I personally am responsible for my relapses, not that program.

Interesting. So that's the fear is you to get someone out there bragging about AA and it changed my life. And then we'd see them publicly all fucked up and go, well, that doesn't work. The reason I've been studying it is that AA, you put yourself into a certain social situation. There's a lot more than that. Oh, you must be doing this for your book you're writing. I am.

I'm convinced that so much of life, and this is also why I was talking to Tim Beck about modes, because I was like, how much of life is putting yourself in the right situation? How do I put myself in the right mode? Your book that you're writing that's gonna come out is called Easier Making Your Situation. Well that isn't even written yet. That's not even written. I don't know.

But let's just talk about it. You are broaching this right now, which is making your situation work for you. Correct. Possibly unless I find a better title. Go on. Okay, but currently. Currently, working title.

I cut you off, finish what you were saying then. No, no, no. I think this is the perfect time. And by the way, I'm going to write this book because I don't quit things that I care about. But if it's not good, I'm not going to publish it. But anyway, I am writing the book. And so the reason I was interested in AA, and I went back and I read the things that you already know, like the origin story of AA and Bill W. meeting Dr. Bob. Which is insane, by the way.

Which is totally insane. It's one of the most bonker stories ever. And they lifted it off of this weird church sect that was in Ohio. The Oxford group? Yes. Totally bizarre. Bizarre. I don't know what Sapolsky would say about it, but it's like, wow, what a random, path-dependent

set of events. And as you probably know, it is, I think, not only arguably the most popular, but the most effective approach to addiction. You can't do a cost-benefit analysis because it doesn't cost anything. How on earth has this organization existed for 90 years with great success without any leaders, without any money, without any bank account, without any elders?

And by design without those things, right? Because they said like, we're not gonna have professionals, we're not gonna have a hierarchy. They don't take donations over $5,000, I think. They refuse to have a position on anything political. They have the no policy policy. As a model. It's kind of brilliant.

Really, there's parts of it that I can't believe haven't been grafted onto other organizations. I think Bill W. and also a baby Dr. Bob, the co-founders, they were geniuses. It's a little bit like the Constitution. As a psychologist, I read the 12 Steps, and I read the 12 Traditions, and I'm not an organizational psychologist,

but I do teach at Whartonon and I'm like, holy shit. See? The wisdom. Yeah, you did it. I've got to say other things too. Students are dropping out by this. Yeah, left and right, parents are fainting. They were so genius.

How many universities wish they had a no policy policy? It's genius. Yeah, all these places had been run like AA. Yeah. They wouldn't be in any college. Plus they would have less overhead. They go to Congress and they go, I don't have a position on this.

They're like, I'm sorry. Listen, end the conversation. You can't have that at school. There's going to be hierarchy at school. There are limits, right? Yeah. But it's kind of amusing what's been happening. You're not going full libertarian on this. Let's back up.

I would say almost any organization we looked at, and its premise isn't inherently wrong. I mean, there are the Nazi party. But mostly what you see go wrong in every organization is the leadership. Oh, you mean the individuals, right? The individuals in charge of institutions and ideas, they're almost always what's broken about the thing. It's not like the Catholic church in and of itself

is in any way nefarious or bad, but we have seen popes in the 13th century letting people buy their way into heaven by bestowing sins onto poor people. Like what? That's leadership. Okay, but maybe, and I know the founding fathers were not perfect, but there is a lot of genius.

And I would say the same thing about alcoholics and anonymous. And maybe even though you could argue that what you said was exactly right, they anticipated, screw up people. They were like, how do we create an institution, whether it be the United States or Alcox Anonymous, which is going to be almost a people proof, but the founding fathers were great psychologists. And I think Bill W. and Dr. Bob were brilliant psychologists.

Yeah, I don't know if they fell into it or they were that master. I don't know. Why do you think it works? Because this is a matter of great debate among scholars. I can tell you why it worked for me. I think what is insurmountable for a lot of people is to sit down and have a conversation

where someone's gonna tell them what's wrong with them. And I think that the mechanics of the program are, you go, you're hearing about your problem, but not from your mouth. It's not about you. It's not individual. It's not aimed at you. Your self defenses, your sense of identity,

none of it's going up. You are privy to hearing all of your exact problems come out of the mouth of other people and you're able to objectively think about their problems and the solutions they've employed and you're not all wound up in it. So like we know what spatial distance is. You're sitting across the room

and if you are like twice as far away. So this is psychological distance. So the catch phrase is not me, not here, not real, not now. And those are four ways that you can put psychological distance. So like not me, somebody else is standing up. It's their bad day, time. If you think about things like pretend, and I think Jeff Bezos famously does this, when he's trying to make a decision, he thinks about what it will be like to think back when

he's 80 or something like that. I have wondered why therapy works. I told you that I'm writing this book and I'm telling you that I'm gritty and I'm going to finish it. The reason is that I had a sabbatical and I was supposed to write the book and he didn't. My confidence actually plummeted to minus three on a scale from zero to 10. I have that in writing and also on record. And I was thinking about what went wrong.

And I think it was the lack of psychological distance. I was just so immersed and I couldn't get that perspective. Had I gone to some meeting where some other struggling author stood up, talked about their problems, and it was both me and not me at the same time, you have that clarity. So I think psychological distance and wisdom and even maturity are almost all the same thing

and you have to be able to live your life and have some remove. Do you think also that for better or worse, your greatest success is this concept grit and it has now been so infused in your identity that now to be experiencing writer's block or a challenge is no longer a threat to a timeline as much as now it's a threat to an identity. That's a really good question. I won't pretend to know, but I think when I experienced failure, basically this was my year. So I had a whole year off.

I had ideal circumstances, so no one to blame. So I didn't have to teach. I live in a really beautiful house. In Pennsylvania? Yeah, in Philadelphia. I had no excuses. I couldn't blame anybody or anything. And I would wake up, you know, dawn, sometimes earlier, and I would just work my ass off. I read

hundreds of articles. I had multiple Google Docs. I would go to bed at midnight and I would wake up and do it again seven days a week. And after several months of this, and you know, false starts and wrong turns, but then I realized it was a cluster. I was like, this is terrible. I don't know whether it's like more identity threatening because I'm known for studying grit, but I will say that I told my husband I was gonna retire. I was like, I think I should not be a professional of any kind.

I know this feeling well. Isn't it so interesting? The reward's not worth the risk. Well, I felt like I couldn't do it. There's nothing to offer. You didn't have anything else to offer. Yeah, I felt like I couldn't do it. There's nothing to offer. You didn't have anything else to offer. Yeah, I felt like I didn't have anything to offer. You didn't have the fuel in the tank that once drove you to do that thing.

No, and it's not even just that I felt burnt out. I was just like, I don't feel like I can do anything that's useful. So my tricky thing has been like, I'm so driven by success and so driven by all the measures of that, that once that was accomplished, I'm quite fearful that success and so driven by all the measures of that that once that was accomplished I'm quite fearful that there'll be no motivation left. What happened in real life. How did it go? Well, what happened in real life is we had a particular interview that was Incredibly emotional and connected and very very special and I went oh, no, that's the goal I don't think it's possible. But the fact that I did it once makes me want to do that

with every single person I talk to. Like that is now the goal. So you never have to worry about, oh, what will happen if I'm done because you'll never be done. I was measuring like, okay, this, we were both doing it. This show would be a success if it generated this amount of money. Okay, if we got Obama.

Well, we didn't start like that. If we got Letterman. It's almost just getting back to the original thoughts Exactly just want a moment then it became a success because it was happening exactly Once you have it you can't lose it right You think this protects you does that help you not have a minus three because it's so intrinsic It has helped it has certainly not solved so the fact that there are two of you you have built in psychological distance Right did that make it possible for you not to get completely consumed because you had another person?

What do you think Monica the thing is we're going through the exact same experience at the exact same time Matt Damon's kissing her on the Forehead well, that's a crazy at the exact same time. Matt Damon's kissing her on the forehead. Well, that's a crazy thing. Really? Yes, this is the best I know. Oh my God, is he tall? Enough for her.

He's like 5'11". Okay, yeah, yeah. Just wanted to know. So there's so many things at play. We had someone on who said there's only a hundred percent of a feeling in a dynamic. If somebody's so anxious and they're taking up basically 75% of the anxiety,

you can only have 25% anxiety between two people. For the record, I don't agree with this, but go ahead. So he doesn't agree. It's like a cake. I didn't mean to offend you, I just wanted... I know, I'm just, I'm using it as an example to say what my thought is. I do think that's real. I notice it in so many dynamics.

I notice with my parents, if I'm with my parents and they're freaking out, I'm so calm because there's no space for me to add extra. Maybe you're compensating in a way. I gotta balance this out. It could just be personality too. But in my personality is doing that. And so if I recognize that he is so worried or freaking out. So then you will get zen?

Yes, I'm like, it's fine. Let's just remember what this is all about. But then if I don't experience how from him I'm that. Then you do, oh interesting. Only then do I realize how I really feel. Only in the process of that. So you clearly have a perspective on this whole childhood thing. If you really want to understand somebody's motives

and maybe even what's intrinsically motivating to them, you have to go back, you said it, not me. That there's something in, for example, Sipolsky's background that would make him want to believe. Why that would be more soothing for him? I'm sure you've covered this territory, but have you figured out your own? What is it for you then? Oh, so much.

Yeah, yeah. That's all we talk about. That's all we talk about. Oh, you're like, ah. Well, just give me the one liner then. For me, approval from white people. From white people? Did you go up in like an all-white suburb?

Suburb. Suburb. but very white. And I needed to be them to be safe. I couldn't be them. So it was just assimilating to the nth degree. This is perfect for you. You can get a profile from the white man. That's the best you can do.

Yeah, yeah, you've reached the app. OK, wait, and then what's the one line or few? What's the whole you're trying to fill then? It's not dissimilar. It's rooted in a feeling of no safety. So divorce, mom, a bunch of step dads, a lot of violence, men dominating me all the time. So I need to get in a position where I cannot be outfoxed.

And intellectually, I cannot be outfoxed. Financially, I cannot be outfoxed physically. I got to be the toughest, smartest motherfucker in the room, or I'm going gonna get dominated. Someone will smell that, and they'll immediately exploit that. So in every avenue of maleness I can pursue, I did an insatiable drive to let everyone know

I cannot be taken advantage of. You know, this whole view is not super popular right now in like therapy. I know, and I wanted to talk about this because the one philosophical thing that I wanted to say overarching, and I care more about it than determinism versus self-will. That was my other big pushback against him. I think my biggest complaint about all intellectual endeavors is the false dichotomies and the binary positioning. So you're either determinist or you're free will.

Or nature or nurture. And then now I'm bringing it back to your book. So also I listened to a great episode about can we learn to debate in an effective way. The actual title of the episode is, can we disagree better? And in this, you tell this great story of having written grit and having a grad student basically write an op ed saying that grit is full of shit. This

student pointed out a lot of great stuff and I think you came to feel that way as well, which is you were looking only at the individual, what the individual's doing. The sociologist is going, are you fucking nuts? Where did they grow up? What are the parents? What's the socio-connuit? What's the system they're in? Opportunity, race. Yes. And so again, there's another false dichotomy and like the more and more we're entrenched in these dichotomies, that's my main complaint. So is CBT more effective than talk, psych, bullshit? Right. There's a place for this, there's a place for CBT.

And why is it either or? Why can't you understand yourself and your child to then use some CBT to enact a strategy? Either or, fuck that. By the way, here's the epilogue. That graduate student's sociology, who was at NYU, in India, Kundu, he got his PhD. I was on his dissertation committee. He asked her to be an advisor.

And now he's a professor. Wow. And he's doing great, and he's continuing to challenge, oh, it's all about the person, it's not about society. But here's a deeper question. Why are human beings so either or? It is annoying. Why aren't we both and?

Why do you think it is? And I have a pet theory and it has no data behind it. Let's hear your pet theory because I'm sure people have already heard mine. If you think about what human beings have to do, we have to act. And you have to thin slice. And honestly, it's like what you were saying about the election or about voting. You know, you could talk for four years, but then you're going to make one choice and you're going to go left or right.

And you could argue that that years, but then you're going to make one choice and you're going to go left or right. And you could argue that that's just true of everything. Like you know when you go to the doctor and there's either a star next to your test result or not. That's pretty crude because it's a continuum obviously. You know your blood pressure is what it is. But there has to be a kind of, are we going to talk about your blood pressure? Is it a problem or not?

So I guess I want to say that all human beings and animals have to choose. Are you going to approach something or are you going to move away from it? Is it an enemy or is it a friend? Are you going to eat it or you're not going to eat it? All action is binary. There isn't kind of like I'm 40% going to eat this and then I'm 60% not going to eat this. You're going to eat it or you're not going to eat it.

Then you're half pregnant. Exactly. So maybe either or thinking is a vestige or a byproduct of the fact that we think a lot but our survival depends on our actions and actions are binary and maybe that is why people are either or it's like very deep. Because all animals you know there's approach motivation and avoidance motivation and of course something can be neutral. So I said Timbeck and I don't want to pretend that I'm either clinically trained or that I am a protege of Timbeck but when people have these thoughts that lead to

anxiety or depression or I want to have a drink, these thoughts are always valenced as they were. So you know how Sapolsky wants us to be non-judgmental? That's wonderful and mindfulness is a great aspiration. But I think human beings are instinctively judgmental. You know when you get an email, you're always like, is this good or bad? Right? That's why I always put happy faces in my emails.

I'm like, just to signal this is a good email. So everything is good or bad, approach or avoid. That's either or. Anyway, that's my completely made up, no data intuition because I've asked a lot of psychologists why are human beings obviously oversimplifying the universe and nobody that I've talked to knows. So my take is uncertainty is uncomfortable. And you're right, we've been rewarded evolutionarily by inactions.

Generally the worst action, which of course also isn't true. So inaction is often the best flight. Flight or free sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Submit posture, flight, flight. There's four categories and we are most often. Oh, fun. Oh, I'd be good at that one.

You probably use it. Oh, fun. Oh, I'd be good at that one. You'd probably use it. I'd probably do. Yeah, but it turns out that like 90% of conflicts in the animal kingdom are actually resolved with submit. But uncertainty gives us a lot of anxiety. And so anytime you're saying, well, there'll be one time where this approach works

and then a different time, now we have to delineate which approach should we use. Nuance is uncertain. I actually buy your argument, full stop, that uncertainty for almost all of us creates anxiety. Yes. But then the question is why?

Unless you're in the bedroom or something. But why? Well, yeah. Yeah. Or like if you're unwrapping a gift. But then that's novelty. Well, yeah. It's uncertainty, but it's been uncertainty.

But why do you think uncertainty is so uncomfortable? Back to now, your point, this is where ours worked beautifully, is that in uncertainty will become inaction, because we don't know which way to run, or we don't know if we should run or submit. Oh, so you think we have a survival instinct for certainty? The worst thing would be to not make any decision,

whether it's posture, submit, run, fight, flight, fawn. Do you think that human brains and civilization will evolve such that 20 years from now, everyone's hanging out with all these like nuance distinctions and semicolons in their sentences? Do you think that we'll stop being like? It's exhausting. I mean, I can't.

A little bit of it is exhausting. And I see the appeal of a black and white world and I see why some politicians who make it very simple, it's comforting whether it's right or wrong. Like I don't even know that some people think it's right as much as like it's just comforting that it's been solved, it's settled, it's comforting whether it's right or wrong. Like I don't even know that some people think it's right as much as like it's just comforting that it's been solved, it's settled, let's go. I think it's community based.

We're social animals, so we have to be in a community. So we can't just be like nebulous, it's 25% this and 25% this and I see everyone's point, no you have to pick or else you get kicked out of that tribe. I think it's about belonging to a group. So do you believe that's what's going on politically in this country? Yes, 100%.

That like everyone's like, you gotta pick sides and now when the sides go farther apart. You're stuck. We're all along for the right and I think concreasingly you're hearing, I wanna get off this ride, this isn't the ride I got on. Because they're going farther. Yes, they just forced to be moving in opposite directions.

I feel like I'm a left of center moderate. I'm a centrist and I think a lot of people are, and there's no voice for it. Could we make a third party? That doesn't usually happen, right, in a two-party system. It's the majority. I know.

Do you think the majority is moderate? 100%. I think there's a lot of statistics. Is that, like, probably known, right? Yes. I was gonna say, there's probably statistics. These are just fringe, but they're loud. They're the only voices you hear.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. Okay, but back to your book. Grit is very, very self-centric. And then this is about situations and how you can, in fact, maybe have more control or sway over the situation you put yourself in than you do your own internal guiding mechanisms. I think you're synthesizing sociology and psychology. I am. And you know, there was a great psychologist, actually, he wasn't a psychologist, but he

talked a lot about psychology. So we call him a psychologist. His name was James Flynn. And he said that what psychologists lack is a sociological imagination. I think he was quoting someone else. He wasn't making up that term. So yes, I'm trying to be a psychologist with a sociological imagination. I actually came into psychology as an outsider. I was a high school teacher teaching math and I was a manager because anyway, like I parachuted into psychology was 32 on the first day of graduate school and I hadn't really studied psychology, so I'm kind of new to it. Liberated maybe by that. It was probably helpful, but when I got there, I was like, so what's the difference between

anthropology and sociology and psychology? I didn't understand. I was like, isn't it economics? Isn't it all human behavior? And what someone said to me, they're like, oh, psychologist study, what's in your head? Who is an individual? Even if it's like you and a marriage, but it's still the individual. Sociologists, it's like a figure ground reversal. They're interested in the ground, not the figure, right?

They're like society, structures, class and so forth. But I think a psychologist with a sociological imagination would be like, all right, I get it. My job is to understand how somebody feels, how motivated they are, who works harder, but it has to have something to do with where you are, the people you're around. Yeah, you go like, oh, individual is an incentive driven creature. Correct. What are the incentives in that society?

So if you can break out a little bit of either or, a lot of times people say, grit is a book about the triumph of the individual over their situation. But that itself is either or. It's like, well, it's either the individual or their situation, but that itself is either or. It's like, well, it's either the individual or their situation. Every person that I've ever studied who's successful defies either or because you talk to anybody who's successful and you get like one inch deep

and they tell you who their mentors were, like who saved their life. They tell you about the day they lost all confidence and the person who scooped them up off the floor and put them back together again, right? You ask them even trivial things, like how they arrange their lives, the physical things around them, what they choose not to have in their house, they get them in trouble, and the things that they do have. So I feel like this dichotomy of, so is it 70, 30? Does it even matter? And why do we

do it? But here's what I do think matters. I think that especially now, human beings who want to be happy and successful, they had to think, if I persist in this false dichotomy, then I'm going to miss a lot of opportunities to actually change my situation. I think choosing who your friends are and choosing what country you're going to live in is a way of agentically taking the steering wheel of the situation and saying, look, I don't believe in this false choice. I believe that agency and the situation

are not a polar ends of some continuum. I think a lot of agency is changing my situation. So that's the practical thing I'm concerned with. I immediately think of David Sideris and I will not do it justice how he said it, but I was saying how I imagine this one story he had written about a young gay boy who was in love with him in France.

How helpful that would have been to a young. And I was expecting him maybe to meet me and get emotional about the notion of that poor gay boy in the small town suffering. And he was just so, he goes, well, they should fucking move like I did. Go to the place where you're at. He was just so black and white, like, fuck trying to get that town to catch up with him. I don't even feel bad for him. Tell him to get the fuck out of there and go to New York. That's what I did. And I'm like, well, that's kind of refreshing.

And he moved, right? And doesn't he live in like the United Kingdom or something like that? He lives all over the place. He's got a place in Normandy. He's got a place in England and in New York City. But you know what? Thinking like an immigrant, which are your parents immigrants, Monica? Okay, right.

My mom sailed across the, I guess, Pacific Ocean. I already learned your bad geography from the GPS. It's a challenge for me. I know. She just moved. I mean, she moved here and didn't know anybody. And like she moved here for a reason, right? Wasn't accidental.

People habituate to their circumstances. It is where you are. You get comfortable. But more than comfortable, I think you get oblivious. And I think one of the things that I'm increasingly exercised about is if people want to change their lives, they're like, I need to change my attitude. I need to fix those thoughts. I need to have more willpower.

What if you did the master move? What if you just changed your situation and then your situation would change your thoughts? There's another saying that we love. You have much better chance of acting your way into thinking different than thinking your way into acting different. Oh, that's good. I think all the things inside our head which are very important and that's what I've been trained to study. I figured that out. I was like, oh, psychology is all the stuff in my head. It's really hard to change that just with your own

volition. Back on the psychology and why the observation that that student made is great is a psychologist, if we were the type of animal that was a tiger would make a lot of sense. Why? Tigers are on their own. They are not social. Lions are social. They're in a pride. So any social animal will have a social hierarchy.

Any animal that is a social animal will be obsessed with status. Right. Status equals access to food and reproduction and everything we would want. We are the fucking most social animal to ever exist. So to think that we will somehow not have all of the other characteristics that a true book of baboons and chimps have is insane. So we are first social, then a primate. Because that is our revolutionary heritage.

And that's why I would say that sociologists has a pretty good argument, which is, way before we're in your head, the thing around you put all that in your head. Okay, but I also think sociologists should have a psychological imagination. And I was raised by immigrant parents who absolutely taught me just be better. There was not a day in our entire

childhood lives that they talked about racism. So this is probably a conclusion that I want to leap to, which is, yeah, but what can we do about it? So I feel like the conclusion I always want to get to is something agentic. I kind of don't want to land on societies unjust and here are all the structures. It's not comfortable. It's a victim-y position. It's not society.

It's not the way I was raised. So humans do. So it's all connected. So once you learn that society is like this, then let's have agency as humans to change the structures. Yeah, and I think if you have a little success in changing your own little life in even a little way, honestly, I think that will make people more motivated to feel like collectively we have some agency. Again, that could be Pollyanna.

That's probably what I wanna believe. I want all of this to be just and I want everyone to have complete equal access to all the measures of power and all the attainment of status. But what I get frustrated with when I'm watching Instagram and there's people getting mad that someone's main character energy. Anytime we try to map on Marxism, main character, any kind of Marxist thing, I'm like, let me just say, this is the biggest waste of time in the world, that everyone will have equal status.

Because you're like, we are priming. Yeah, we will always have status. Now, let's all put our minds together and think, what are the status markers we all feel good about? But the notion that everyone's going to be equal and have equal status is preposterous. How do you feel about meritocracy? Well, we just had the meritocracy delusion offer on. Oh, a Sandel? Meritocracy trap.

Meritocracy trap. Is that Michael Sandel? There's several books on the meritocracy fallacy, the myth. How do you guys feel about it? I'm kind of pro-merit, I have to say. You know, excellence is what I study and kind of like it, but I guess it's got problems. So it was almost tied with determinism. It's just a concept I don't even want to entertain

because my story about myself is I come from a dirt road with poor people in dyslexia and addiction. And I made it. And I graduated from UCLA and I made it. So I don't want to hear that Maritah. Right? It doesn't work with what I'm proud of myself about. But when the statistics are put in front of you,

that this elite college graduates have children who are elite college graduates and they achieve elite jobs that they work 75 hours a week, and that collectively, even the high status people are suffering more. When you look at all that, you go, yeah, it has not worked out the way we intended. Again, that's not to say that I think we shouldn't have a merit-based society.

Maybe, maybe I'm like, but when you talk to people who are authors of such books, are they against merit? They're not against merit. I think they're just like, how are we measuring that? What is it? Well, merit is skill. His exact point of view was merit isn't actually equally accessible. Which I would agree with.

And so the outcomes. Oh, the unintended consequences of a society that meets out rewards and punishments. It's the monopoly game. It's like it took off, it was pure and in a concept. You mean when you land on boardwalk first. Exactly. Or Marvin Gardens.

That was another good one. Do you remember that? No, but you so much of it is, you're like, oh, this person's just good at it, a sport, right? It's just so black and white. They're good at it. They're not good at it. Like it's pure.

It feels pure. It's not pure because so much of it is how much money did your family have to get you into lessons at this age? I completely agree that I hope we can have that conversation and not look. I had two daughters. They went to the Philadelphia public schools. Immediately my husband and I were like, so with all this privilege that we have, we are going to have to supplement what they're getting.

Let's take French class, for example. I am not fluent in French, but I spoke well enough to know that they were not learning to speak French very well. So I was like, how about if they have a tutor who comes over on Saturday and speaks French with them for 45 minutes each? And by the way, that early advantage, it was like the Matthew effect, the rich get richer. I was like, oh, okay, so suddenly my daughters, for no reason of giftedness,

they're winning like the French prize. Of course. Now really quick, is that truly a meritocracy? Exactly, so that's a problem. That's not fair. That's what he's pointing out. And I think that's very fair. And I would agree with that.

I mean, this is what I hope doesn't get thrown out with the bathwater. I just think that excellence is a thing. I think we just have to reckon with some people who are to be better at tennis. How'd they get there? But can we at least say that some people are better at tennis? Because there's no power.

I'm going to go beyond that. You can say whatever you want. We can agree to whatever we want. We will always be attracted to excellence. What about your daughters? So they're younger than mine, because they're younger than 22 and 20. Mine and 10.

I'm not saying this because I'm all up in arms. But is it all like everybody gets a participant trophy? Like do they understand hierarchy of skill and so forth they do I know that whole thing of participant, but whatever not on a high horse When my brother's kids were they're probably your his it was like he was appalled that they were getting participation trophies And eighth place ribbon moral panic past Oh, I didn't know that. Okay, good.

And I say this not feeling higher or more evolved than anyone else. I'm not playing that game. I don't give a fuck if they're top of their class. Interesting. I don't care if they're really good at it. It's a charter school with half halves and half have nots. They go to charter school.

Yeah, and it's predominantly first generation Asian kids. You think my white kids are gonna fucking compete with these first-generation Asian? That's the fantasy. I'm not gonna deny her life, good luck. Yeah, no, I'm not even gonna try that. What I care about is that when my daughter wanted to climb this pole in her backyard,

she did it for an hour and a half until she could touch the ceiling. That's all I give a fuck about. I don't care about whether they learn French or get into this school. I care that when there is something they actually want, they pursue it until they're exhausted. That has been established and I don't have any fears. I think that's amazing and I wish every single parent could do that, but they can't. Your

kids are privileged. Not just genetics. They're going to be financially fine for the rest of their life if they need. They're okay. If you grow up in a family with two middle-class parents, they might be like, you better fucking get straight A's and you gotta go to a college and you'll get hired for something. I can't take care of you for the rest of your life. These are just realities. That's the reality on planet Earth. I totally agree, but I will argue that's also bullshit. So I didn't get good grades in high school. I barely graduated. I won all the prizes.

So I also disagree that that route. Is the only route. Yeah, in fact, everyone I work with is also a piece of shit that figured it out. Is there a pattern, by the way? In Hollywood, probably. Interesting. But it's like-

The Hollywood is.001% of the, I mean, it's so tiny. All of these- It's true. Half of these tech billionaires, they dropped out. We have enough evidence now. Well, first I got in before they dropped out, just saying. That's so true.

Dropping out of Stanford, but by the way, now that we've both had kids in school for a while, it's not like they learned that much. I'll get in a lot of trouble for saying that. It was not like they learned that much, right? To me, I was like, I didn't learn until I was dying to learn it. I barely graduated high school.

I was never gonna go to college. I was gonna live in my car and be in on the road for the rest of my life. I then all of a sudden got in satia bolt back to the thing. I was getting bested in arguments with dudes I didn't think were smarter than me and I was embarrassed. And I'm like, I gotta learn how this world works. Is that before you went to UCLA?

How'd you get into UCLA? Yes, I went to Santa Monica Community College. I went to West LA Community College, so I could pass Spanish. I cobbled together this associates and then I got into UCLA, cause I did do very well in community college, and then I went there.

And that's because I decided I wanted to do that. And then when you decided you did it. And I remember more than all the fucking kids whose parents forced them to get into that school with me. I actually cherished that education I got cause I was there, cause I wanted to, not cause someone said, you gotta do this or you're dead or you're going to be penniless.

I personally think that striving and whatever narrative we tell, I hope it doesn't, I guess you're saying it'll never go out of fashion because excellence will never go out of fashion. I can tell them anything. They're going to look around. If they're a boy, they're going to go, who are the girls dating?

And everyone's going to be driven by mating. You're not going to deprogram people. So maybe it's just, maybe there's just a very vocal minority. Maybe the people also who are being vocal about not liking meritocracy are not saying they don't like merit or excellence. by mating, you're not gonna deprogram people. Maybe there's just a very vocal minority. Maybe the people also who are being vocal about not liking meritocracy are not saying they don't like merit or excellence. They're obviously talking about society and we could not agree with them more, but I do just hope they don't eradicate

striving, pursuing. No, I don't think they're doing that. I think they're saying we just got to even the playing field so that the striving works. If you look at the starting class at Harvard, can we say that was merit? You just gave a great example. You had a tutor come over and teach your kids French. But I think there's a difference between skill and potential.

I think that when your kid does really well on a French test, you can say they are skilled at French. That's different from, oh, they had some potential or they were neatly, it's like, no, but their test score in French is what it is. So I would say of the entering class at Harvard, wow, they have mastered some stuff. Whether that's due to some innate potential or advantages. How much help did they get? Right. So it can't be merit if it's all been bought.

I just think that people should distinguish between talent and skill, which, you know, Will Smith, I don't know Will Smith, but well, kind of. Anyway, I'm not best friends with Will Smith. I'm not best friends with Will Smith, I'll just say. And I'm not, kind of. Anyway, I'm not best friends with Will Smith. I'm not best friends with Will Smith, I'll just say. And I'm not saying that because I don't want to be best friends with Will Smith. But he has this line, you know, most people mistake the skill and talent divide. They don't think that they're two different things. He was like, talent, you're born with skill you get from hours and hours of beating on your craft.

But I guess I want to say that when you talk about merit, maybe if you can distinguish between merit as in on this day, what can you do versus did you deserve it? Was it innately about you? It's just two different things. You can admit a class to Harvard and say, we're admitting a highly skilled class that they're capable. So all that's being suggested. And by the way, it's another false that either you are physically talented

so you become Michael Jordan or you work as hard as Michael Jordan. He's a physical f9 plus he worked harder than everyone. Plus he had so many advantages like who is that famous coat Phil Jackson right? Yeah Phil Jackson. Yeah. Would Michael Jordan be Michael Jordan without Phil Jackson? No because you can see actually he's the common denominator. But both and.

Right. So are the kids that got there did they get their merit base or not? Both. Exactly. They had probably tremendous opportunity that most kids don't have and they worked really hard and rose to that occasion. Correct. And so we're violently agreeing, but when I hear these arguments, I both violently agree that playing fields couldn't be more unequal. And you could argue they're getting more unequal. Probably I'm contributing to that just by getting my kids tutored, but I hear a lot of the whole idea of people having different levels of skill even is like a sign that something is wrong.

No, you're right. There does seem to be some notion that we should all pretend we're all physically equal. Yeah, Tommy Larossa or whatever the Latin phrase is for while equal. And the only thing I'll add to that is what's your other suggestion? I think a model that a lot of people would say is a raffle.

Yes, this is a Malcolm Gladwell thing. And also, I was talking to a young progressive thinker, likely to major in sociology, and was like, we should take all the assets of the United States and divide them up equally. I don't know if that's exactly communism, but it sounds like that. My parents are from China, and I was like, let me tell you, that particular, yeah, it wasn't

such a great end game. But yeah, I don't have a better, well, I think it distracts either way, by the way, from the lack of, like we should be thinking about preschool. And so I don't know, I feel like it's a distraction sometimes. I want to go back to one thing that popped up and then I forgot to say it out loud. And this may sound critical, but I think it ties beautifully into the conversation we had an hour ago about the experiential self and the narrative self.

The reason I have this position with my children is that I do not want to rob them of the narrative self I was able to write for myself. So if I get them a French tutor and I take them to this after school class and I take them to their auditions and I tell them how to do this and they wake up at Harvard or they wake up in success. Who gives a fuck? I did all that for them. I created a context in a situation

around them by which there's nothing for them to write. So I actually want them to flounder, figure out the thing they are good at. It's not the thing I want them to be good at. Go get it so that they can write the story about themselves. I don't have a goal of Harvard or a goal of this amount of money. Yes, that's a luxury. I can support them if they're starving. The thing for them I'm wanting is that they're able to write a story about themselves that they're enormously proud of. That's it. And I don't want to give them any of that. Do you care if they become excellent at whatever it is that they choose to do? Say they want to have a dog grooming store. Just one. Not even a chain. And have five stars on yelp. I want them to have a dog grooming store, just one, not even a chain.

And have five stars on yelp. I want them to try to be the greatest at the thing they care about. But that's a judgment, right? Cause like, what if they don't want to be the greatest? They just want to have a three stars. Happy, normal. I'm trapped in my own perspective.

I can't imagine writing the story where I'm the hero of it and I came in last place. I can't really comprehend that for myself personally. Maybe they'll be capable of that. And maybe I'll be able to observe that they're very happy in last place and that their grooming business went out of business in three months. Maybe they'll be that way and if they seem very happy about that, awesome. Maybe the thing they're actually pursuing with Great Vigor is happiness and maybe they've achieved that. And as long as they're getting five stars on their

happiness, then that's okay. My dad and my brother's graduation after everyone made their speeches, we left and he was like, all of this, shoot for the stars. What about just trying to be mediocre? Did he mean that? Was he like that? He really meant it. He's so smart. He's very excellent at a lot of things.

I was gonna guess that could be making assumptions. And he wasn't saying that so much when I was young. He was a little bit though. He was like, just get a job that you'll be safe in. But in that job that you're safe in, I'll speak for myself. I don't know what I wish, but when I look at my kids, I'm like, you're going to be a baker. Be a great baker.

So I don't know whether that's a lack of open-mindedness, but it's different from saying don't have such a stressful job. But just like the job you have, it's very hard for me to utter the words out loud that it would be okay to be three stars. But I would argue if we're realistic and we recognize there's only one best. 99.9% of the people will not be the CEO. They won't be the captain of the team. So are you setting your kid off on an endeavor where they have a point two percent chance of

Succeeding as we've defined. That's its own. Okay. Well, then you just go to John Wooden I've been reading about a a and John would a great UCLA basketball. Yeah, I know very little about him What the pyramid of success Ted Lasso? We're just starting what We're just starting. What? I know, everyone's mad. Oh my god. But I'm so happy for you.

Outrage. No, I'm like, jealous. You're jealous. I could start over. Okay, so John Wooden, he has this TED Talk, which he gave maybe in the last 10 years of his life. And I also thought this needs an editor because he said the definition of success is something like this.

It's the peace of mind of knowing that you gave your very best effort. But it's a lot of words and I'm like, you cut out this phrase. But I think what he was getting at, and he thought about it his whole life as a coach and then all the writing he did, I think it was some version of everybody can win because it's not that you're the CEO

and it's not even that you're the best CEO. It's just that when you go to bed, you're like, I did the very best I could do. And I think we can all do that. Yes, I agree. We could do this for literally 100 hours. It's no wonder that you have an incredible podcast, no stupid questions, and that you write such great books.

You're so fascinating. We want you to join the team and talk to us endlessly. But alas, I have to rush to a work deal. You do. That's why my alarm went off. I think I heard your alarm go off. The reason is my fault. No, is because we prioritize our work.

Over money. Because I'm a five star person and that's all you need to know. Yeah, the stakes of where I need to be are the highest for us possible. And I did just go 15 minutes over because I enjoyed talking to you so much. Oh my God, seriously, that's terrible. I did prioritize. No, it's not. It's fine.

It's the best side of us. Yeah. This is like really fun. Okay, Angela, I love when you're here. You're like Adam and that. I know if you're coming, I don't have to. Or even better, Steven. You guys are just explosively interesting.

So everyone listen to No Stupid Questions and when your book comes out, title TBD, but maybe easier. Maybe. Making your situation work for you. Buy that and read that. Angela's a genius. Good luck with everything. Thank you, Doc.

Thank you, Monica. Stay tuned for the facts, Docs, so you can hear all the facts that were wrong. Oh, you're debating. Big debate. Big debate, Raging, right now. Do I get a coffee or not? I thought better of it.

You did? Well, I'm gonna work out after this and then I'm gonna have a pre-workout on that. So that's a lot of caffeine. That's too much. When we were in India, you were addicted to French press. Well, yes. Out of necessity.

And that was the closest I could get to a drip coffee. But it was just funny because you kept ordering French press. I know. And it felt lofty, but I didn't know what else to do. It's not bad. The funny thing was, is one of the places I ordered a French press in the morning. I woke up so early to make sure I had coffee and was alert by the time we went on our festivities, and ordered a French press. And then 45 minutes later, they called and they said,

we do not have French press press Would you like something else? How could it have taken 45 minutes to figure out they didn't have French press like when I ordered it from the get-go? Yeah, they should have been like yeah, well, we don't have that but you know abroad. This is not India This is Europe as well You get end up getting an American like no one drinks coffee like the Americans do. Like a, like six pounds of grounds in a filtered drip machine. So you're generally getting an Americano. Right.

Instead of like drip coffee. Right, exactly. Yeah. I don't even know if a drip coffee machine exists outside of the USA. That's a good question. That's a really good question. How are you doing?

I'm lovely. We wanted to address Monday's fact check and as we tell the stories about India on this fact check, we just wanted to make it abundantly clear that we were not guests of the Gates Foundation. They did not pay for our trip. Yes. Bill himself out of his own pocket paid for the trip. Lest anyone think out of his own pocket. Pocket.

Paid for the trip. Yeah. Lest anyone think that there was a misappropriation. Yeah, we definitely wanna be hyper clear about that. Yes. The foundation did not pay for us. Yeah. I don't think they can do that.

They can't enchant the Bill can. They did it. And he did. You know, are you scaredy-wampus? I'm a little scaredy-wampus. This whole, just to reiterate the time chain, just 13 and a half hours, which boy, we found an interesting explanation for that

along the way. And we did good on the flight home. Well, I'll speak for me. I did good in that I went to bed on the flight and woke up at 5 AM LA time. I was like, okay, we're straight. But then staying awake from 5 AM to 9 PM that day was really, really hard. I was like, okay, we're straight. Right. But then staying awake from five a.m. to nine p.m. that day was really, really hard.

That was Saturday. And then slept really good Saturday night. Sunday, yesterday I woke up and I go, okay, I'm back. I'm on the schedule. You had a rough night. Yeah, I did. We'll get into it. But I'm like, oh, everything's great.

Cut to, I take Delta Cruising yesterday at like two in the afternoon. And I'm just dead. Cause it's three in the morning, three 30 in the afternoon. And I'm just dead. Cause it's three in the morning, three 30 in the morning. Exactly. So it's real. It's upside down.

It's upside down. So yeah, I do feel really good right now, but I also have a little bit of anxiety that that's all the skin of collapse at like 12 PM as it has been doing. That makes sense. How'd you sleep last night? I slept pretty good last night.

Saturday, we got, yeah, we got in. I messed up on the plane. I didn't care. I was like, I'm gonna sleep. I slept a long time on the plane. How many hours do you think? I don't know. 12 or 13?

No, no, not 13, because I didn't go to bed. I kept peeking. Every time I go to the bathroom, I peek to see if you were awake and you were asleep every time. Yeah. But I went to bed. I kept peeking. Every time I go to the bathroom, I peek to see if you were awake and you were asleep every time. Yeah. But I went to bed kind of late. Uh-huh.

And so, anyway, whatever. We got to our houses around three-ish. Yeah. 330. I decided to walk to a bookstore. Yeah. And I felt so weird that day. So I walked to the bookstore, I bought a book

and then I decided to have a little caffeine. Uh-huh, this is Saturday. So this is around 5.15. So I went to Alcove with my book. Oh, interesting. And I got a matcha, and I read my book and I drank a little bit of the matcha. And then I got home and I was so tired,

but I was like, I have to stay up till nine, like I have to. Then I did and I slept immediately at nine, but then I woke up at 1230. Yep, yep. And then I was able to go back to sleep till 130. Okay. And then I was up till 430. What'd you do in that two and a half hours? I just kept my eyes closed just in case.

Okay. I was hoping maybe. I was just preparing for a return somewhere. Okay. Now I want to remind even further, which is I think really funny. So when we were originally looking at ways to get home, basically we had a choice to make that we could either take like a four a.m. flight or a seven a.m. flight. And we decided, okay, we take a four a.m. flight or a seven a.m. flight. And we decided, okay, we take a seven a.m. flight, we're gonna have to wake up at three anyways to go to the airport. Seems smarter to just stay awake to the four a.m. flight

and then that'll help adjust us on the backside. It'll get the ball rolling. So I was very optimistic about that decision. Cut to our last day in Delhi, which was a free day, which we took into this incredible tour, more on that to come. And then we thought, okay, well, let's eat really late. That'll push the whole schedule down.

And then we ate at like 9.30, I think. Yeah. And by 10, we were both in the restaurant. We were starting to collapse. So tired. And we were like, I was like, oh my God, we have three hours until our pickup. I know.

Then there's three hours more from that point on. So we were, by the time we went to get our car ride to the airport, we were both exhausted. And then three hours at the airport, and I got so zany at one point, all of a sudden this popped into my head. Oh, you're gonna, ugh. The tum tum tugger is a serious cat.

Well, you said curious. I did, because I didn't have the, well, no, I said terrible. It is curious, actually. It's the rum tum tugger is a curious cat. But I was saying, the rum tum tugger is a curious cat. But I was saying the rum tum tugger is a terrible cat. Which later in the song, it says the rum tum tugger is a terrible bore. Right.

But I could not stop singing that song and it was driving you insane. And it was driving me insane too. But I kept just hearing myself singing it. I wasn't making a decision to sing it. It was just like, I was sitting there and all those, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da It was just like beyond slap happy. Right. And got into the tum tum tugger. Blum tum tugger. The rum tum tugger.

Oh my God, that song was the bane of my existence the whole time Lincoln was doing the play, the music called the cats. I was like, oh my God, that song's gonna drive me absolutely mad. And then it just popped out, it was like a pop out from an alley. All of a sudden it was stuck in my head.

You had to share it. I didn't have a choice, it was just coming out. I guess that's the power of it, it was like a pop out from an alley. All of a sudden it was stuck in my head. You had to share it. I didn't have a choice, it was just coming out. I guess that's the power of it, it's why that- It's why it was such a successful- Play is very successful. Yes, the Tum Tum Tugger. He's a curious cat. The Rum Tum Tugger.

The Tum Rum Tugger. Oh, if you're gonna do it, at least do it correctly. My God. Oh, and yeah, and that's by Jason Derulo. Well, he did redo it for the movie. Right. Yes, that was his song. I think he was the Rum Tum Tugger. The Rum Tum Tugger?

Yes. It's Rum Tum Tugger. Yeah. All right, so he played the Rum Tum Tugger. And he's a friend of the pot. And a curious cat. And a serious. And a terrible boar.

No, he's not a terrible boar. No, but the Rum Tum Tugger No, but the tum tum tugger is. Rum tum tugger is. Oh my God, those are sincere. Anywho. So yeah, a little upsy-daisies, but I like when I go abroad, because when I come back,

I have like a grand plan of my new life. Oh, and what is it currently? My new life is I'm asleep at nine. Oh, sure. I wake up at six. Yeah, that's a good life. And then I have so much time in the morning to relax and have my tea and work and it's not rushed.

Yes, it's a wonderful feeling. Oh, and from like 8.15 or 8.20 to 9. before I read my book. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I did that last night. You went to bed at nine? Yeah, I read my book. Uh-huh.

And then I went to bed at nine. And... Oh, between 8.15 and nine at night, not in the morning. Before bed. I got you, I thought you were saying part of your morning. No, part of my wind and 9 at night, not in the morning. Before bed. I got you, I thought you were saying part of your morning. No, part of my wind down.

All right, right. Is reading and then I'm sleepy and I put it away and then I sleep at nine and wake up at six. And then at six, my alarm went off and I changed it to seven. Okay, so we already fucked it up. We slid an hour. And tomorrow I'll probably be eight and then.

No, I want to. I really want this to be my new life. Okay, so what do we want to talk about? Yeah, where would we start? We have so much to say. I guess people heard us on like hour three of being there with the birds chirping. And we were there in Hyderabad for, I guess, three days.

That day we recorded, then the next day, and then a full day of activities, and then fly to the next place. Yes. And the first two days were so fun. Because those were our acclimating days. Yes. So we were relaxing.

Some light meetings about the schedule to come. But we were very... Yeah, we had one. Just trying to make it sound like we were relaxing. Some light meetings about the schedule to come. Yeah, we had one. But we were very... Yeah, just trying to make it sound like we could. No, of course we had to have those days or else how would we have... We would never have been able to handle. No, we barely handled what came at us eventually with the adjustment day. With the acclimation.

Yeah, you need that. Mind you, one of the days was we had gotten off the plane at 3 4 in the morning So then we slept really the first acclimation day. No, we got off the plane at 3 and then we stayed up all day We did yes, we stayed up all day Okay, and then we went to bed at like seven. Oh right trying to make it till eight or nine Yeah, we couldn't do it. Couldn't do it. Yeah. Okay, right, trying to make it till eight or nine. Yeah, but we couldn't do it. Couldn't do it, couldn't do it. Yeah, okay, right, right, that's right. And then we look up like 536.

Yeah, four. And then so the first active day we met early in the lobby, we went immediately outside to a Chiwala, guy who makes Chi tea at a little cart. Yes, they flew him in. It was his first time on an airplane. It was his first time on the airplane. He looked very much like Elvis Presley.

He had enormous yellow glasses and very cool lapels. Well, and he was Instagram influencer in India. Right. So he had a whole look. Mm-hmm. And he was up high in the air, very theatrical pouring everything. It was great. Yeah.

Now, in here starts a really funny pattern that we observed. So you and I were on high alert. We were told by our travel doctors to start on malaria pills two days before we left. Take them on the malaria pills, do not eat any lettuce. It doesn't matter how nice the hotel is, like no vegetables. The only fruit you can eat is if you've peeled it yourself, which I did, I had a couple of bananas along the way.

Don't ever drink out of anything that you didn't take the cap off of basically. Right. And so those are the rules. They really made it really scary. And let's add someone from the team had already gone down before the show started. Like someone had a dicey salad and was out for, what was it? Pizza. Oh.

Which we had pizza, but. Yeah. That was it? Pizza. Oh. Which we had pizza. But yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. She said she was like, I don't know if it could possibly have been that because it was just pizza. Oh, OK. Well, so we are watching the Chihuahua cook and he's got pans and water that's coming out of jugs. And basically every violation that there could be is on display in front of us while the chai tea's being made.

Smartly some other chai tea had been made with bottled water, but everything went so fast. And then all of a sudden we were just handed these three chai teas. And Bill- They were replacing the tea with the bottled water tea, but it was, yes, happening fast. It was happening so fast.

I certainly wasn't sure that that change had happened, but when Bill got that tea, he just- Immediately. Down the hatch. And we, you and I both looked at each other. No, as soon as he put it to his lips, I said, no. Yeah, you blurted no. No. And he got likeurted no. No.

He got like a little jump. And then they were like, no, it's fine. But I do think it's important, I feel like pushback already, but I think it's important to make the distinction that there's no way he, it's not like Bill himself had seen the change of either. No, the point I'm trying to make stands,

which is you hand Bill something to drink and he's just down the hatch. He was fine. He was totally fine. And when this was a pattern that starts right out of the gates drinking the chai, they continued on where he just drank and ate whatever the fuck he wanted without any concern and he never, nothing ever happened. Yeah. I mean, I think most of the time nothing happens, right? Like that's the whole thing. It's just-

It's just Russian roulette. Yeah, I mean, I think they make it scary for you. And so you're like, we are on extra high alert. But most people, like I was thinking about it when my family went in 92, like everyone's eating everything. I thought you said you had really bad. I had a bladder infection, I was four. But like my parents are eating everything.

They're eating vegetables, they're eating all kinds of stuff. They're eating mangoes off the tree. Like I think mostly it's totally fine. They just want us to be extra careful. But even like last night, Molly told a story that when she went with her friend who's from there to their home

The immediately they're staying at her parents house and they had made Something but they had made it out of tap water from the sink and then so Molly was down for two days The water for and by the way, it's not to suggest that Anything's dirty or cleaner like Mexican people don't get sick from Mexico water. People come to America and get sick from our water. There's just different bacteria in everyone's regional water and you're used to it. So I'm not I'm not disparaging anybody's water. But you know, but Bill was he was he he didn't care at all. We went to this breakfast at one point at someone's house and there were just glasses of water out.

Did that come from the sink? As soon as we sat down, he drank like eight ounces of water, right? And I was like, I didn't yell no, but I wanted to yell no. Or has he just been there enough that he's acquired it all? Yeah, that's also possible. Could be.

Yeah, so we did so many fun things. The breakfast, the tour was so fun. Yeah, day one in Hyderabad was to go to the 25th anniversary of Microsoft's development office that had been opened there. That is now huge and just a sprawling campus. It looked like the set of Silicon Valley. It was so cool.

It was so cool. There were so many neat, cool things we saw. There was just a machine outside that's just pulling water out of the air, perfectly purified water. 500 liters a day this machine makes. I mean, I want that machine somewhere. That is awesome. You used to be of the air, perfectly purified water. 500 liters a day this machine makes. I mean, I want that machine somewhere. It is awesome.

You used to be in the desert, pulling water out of the air, and got 500 liters is a lot of water. Yeah. You'd take a bath. Yeah, he did like a talk and all these Microsoft employees were there and it was so exciting for them.

Yeah, fireside chat. They said there was 800 people, they're all gathered around these catwalks and different floors looking down over this atrium. And then everyone was zooming in. There was like so many people. And there's 25,000 employees in India for Microsoft. It's so weird to be there with him and know

his brain is the reason all of this is here. Right. Yeah. Like this crazy infrastructure, the 25,000 people. brain is the reason all of this is here. Right. Yeah. This crazy infrastructure, the 25,000 people, it's because of one person, well, two people, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. It reminds me of when you were watching Taylor.

Exactly, it's exactly that. It's cool. A really funny thing happened at this Microsoft tour, we got to go to a room and see like all the latest technology in AI. They were showing us all these different things that could happen. And there was probably 12 people in this meeting. And there was one guy at the end, the youngest guy there.

And he was visibly quite giddy. And then the older kind of senior man said, oh, he's very excited, you're here to me. And I looked at him and I said, oh, he's very excited you're here to me. And I looked at him and I said, oh, you're excited? And he was like, yeah. And he was smiling really big. And then I was like, what movie do you like

that I was in or something like that? And he had the most confused look on his face when I asked what movie he liked. And then he said, no, Kristen Bell, your Kristen Bell's husband. And he was, he was giddy. Just the notion that I was married to Kristen. To his knowledge, I wasn't an actor

or anything like that at all. Yeah. Oh my God, was that funny? I feel like you probably get that a lot. Oh God, yeah, everywhere. Yeah. But it was so funny, the giddiness of the guy, just cause her husband was there. Yeah. But it was so funny the giddiness of the guy, just because her husband was there.

Yeah. That's really funny. But what's the difference between that and when it happens otherwise, just because he was so smiley? Well, let's just say I like- You think mostly they know you. No, I like Whalen Jennings.

And if I found out Whalen Jennings wife was gonna be in a meeting, I wouldn't be excited at all. I like Whalen Jennings. And if I found out Whalen Jennings wife was gonna be in a meeting, I wouldn't be excited at all. I like Whalen Jennings. Right. That's what's funny is like the excitement on his face did look like he was a fan of, like he had seen me in a bunch of movies and stuff. Totally, totally. No, that wasn't it at all.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. I get, but I don't, doesn't it happen? I feel like this happens, or like you say it happens often. Well, what's happening is they know who I am. Okay, so you think it's other- Because if you don't know who I am,

you can't in public go, oh, that's Kristen Bell's husband. You have to know who I am. They know who I am, but they don't care. That's what's the most common. It's just like, oh my God, I love your wife. Oh I am, but they don't care. That's what's most common is just like, oh my God, I love your wife. Oh my God, you're my, they're excited.

They're more excited about her than me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's standard. That happens all the time. They still know you. They know who I am. Yeah, they might not be a fan of my movies or have seen anything, but they know I'm an actor as well.

Yeah. This guy was, I was just a straight husband, which was comical, because why would I be on this trip? Right. What capacity was I there in? I don't know. What the, I don't know. But then we did a thing with co-pilot,

which is like chat GPT. It uses chat GPT for. Yes. And it, and so we like asked it about you and then it, and we asked about your tattoos and it brought all, it was so accurate. I don't know if you even noticed that. It had the types of tattoos you have.

Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. It's really crazy. It really is. It made me wonder why on earth I would be using a normal search engine. Right. It was so much better. I know. It made me want to start using it. Yeah, it was good. engine. Right. It was so much better. I know.

Made me wanna start using it. Yeah, it was good. It was effective. It was an effective tour and now I wanna use co-pilot. Yeah, and then, and then we left. Okay, so should we talk about the first sim moment that happened, because this is very funny. Yes, we should.

And then we also have to say that coming into the country, I had a hard time. Which we talked about on Goldies. Okay, great. So that's already known. Yeah. So I had some anxiety about going back to the airport. Also the team was like,

you just gotta stick really close to Bill. Right. To get through the airport. We're like, okay. So we get out and we have luggage and we're like trying to keep up. And then Bill's own security. So there's a lot of people for us

to be getting close to him so that we can move in this little pod in the pocket. Ding, ding, ding, call back to not quarterback pocket right in the pocket. Right. Yeah. So we had to stay in the pocket. And you noticed it. We were all running. And he is walking so leisurely, slow. He's walking slowly. He was walking completely normal and slow. And we are running to keep up and we can barely keep up. Everyone around him's running. And he's in the middle walking very slowly. Yeah.

And Monica was like, how are we all going the same speed? We're running and he's walking. I was like, oh my God. Like a horror movie. Yes. Well, no, it was Sim. It was like a glitch. It was a glitch and it was Sim.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we were so panicked because we had to get through security. And we were so nervous if we got out of the pocket. Well, also we were told many times, like if you aren't there, when it's time to get in the cars, you're not coming.

Right, no one's ever gonna wait for us. Exactly. Yes, the schedule was insane. Because by the way, we left Microsoft and then we went to a agricultural command center. Then we went to, you know, there was seven stops before we got to the airport. His schedule is unreal. You know, we're saying, oh, how could we possibly have done it without any acclimation? He didn't have any. No. He came in the night before. He started all of this. He's unbelievable. He keeps 10 speeches. The stamina. Yes. It's unreal.

It's really, it's awesome. Oh, I know what we did afterwards. Okay. It's worth mentioning. After we were at Microsoft, we went, we got to go and sit down with eight of the very smartest people in all of tech in India. And they pitched everything that's coming up.

And Bill understood every single one of the things and had incredible, insightful pushback in foreseeing potential problems four steps away. And the person that was hosting it is saying, this is why this meeting is so important because Bill will immediately see what's wrong with everything and he can challenge all of my experts and he knows as much as all of

the experts do. To see the breadth of knowledge on display was like the one of the first moments we had where I was like, I knew he was smart but I guess I didn't really, I didn't know the heights of it or I didn't even know that was really possible. Yeah, it's another level. So we end up on a golf cart which is really funny. We'll post a picture of this it's another level. So we end up on a golf cart, which is really funny. We'll post a picture of this. Oh, yeah, yeah. We end up on a golf cart with Bill and some of the key staff members,

and we're right in this golf cart. And again, you and I so often, I think, our regular theme, you and I was like, what are we doing here? What we have, we provide nothing to anybody. Yeah, it was so confusing so often. We're like, how do we land here? We're confused I think everyone else is confused. Yeah, what are we supposed to be doing?

So they feel like they didn't this wasn't a waste of their time Yeah, no one's gonna get fired over inviting us, but we were on this golf cart And of course, he's reading a book like in this he's studying. Yes He's he's reading a book that he'll then recite verbatim the next day And we're just horsing around on the golf cart, which was so funny. Yeah. Then we flew to Buba Neshwar. And I immediately loved it when we landed.

It was much more like my fantasy of what India looked like, like very tropical, very orange and brown. It's more rural. Yes. It's not as urban as Hyderabad or Delhi. Super, super colorful cows on the street everywhere. Oh, I got to go back to one thing as Hyderabad or Delhi. Super, super colorful cows on the street everywhere. Oh, I gotta go back to one thing in Hyderabad. So the first couple of days we were there,

what I didn't anticipate, I think of India being Hindu and then Pakistan being Muslim. I didn't realize how many Muslims are living there. So in Hyderabad, it's 30% are Muslim. So we were hearing the call to prayer, the five calls to prayer every day. There's speakers all over the city. You can't miss it. The first couple of days, I was just thinking and asking out loud to people that live there, like,

if you're not Muslim and you hear this for 20 minutes, are you annoyed by that? Like, it's not your religion and you're so out, it's so out loud and in public. And so people were like, um, no it's been this way for 600 years, whatever. Clearly it's part of just standard life. On the last day there, I wanted to meditate before dinner by crazy coincidence. I went out and found us a little patch of grass

behind the hotel and I got into my position. And right as I started doing my mantra, the call to prayer started, you can hear it not just through the many, many loud speakers of the guys praying out loud, but you can hear the million people praying out loud. You can hear like this crazy murmur of prayer clearly coming from like a million people. It's the craziest thing I'd ever heard. And I was sitting there and it started right as I started meditating. I was like, oh, oh, fuck yeah.

Like it told, like I fully connected with this weird wave of everybody doing the same thing at the same time. Like clearly we have different intentions or to different people, but the activity of a million people all doing that same thing at once was one of the craziest feelings of my life. It was awesome.

I was so happy I happened to accidentally time it to be doing it at the same time. Yeah. it was electric We also learned that cities with the ending B. A. D. Are Islamic and ones that end in poor P. U. R. Are Hindu, which I never knew and the word before the poor or the

And the word before the poor or the bod is the name of the king. Often, yeah. We learned a lot, a lot. Oh, an insane amount, mostly when we were in Delhi into the tour. Yes, we had the best tour, the very best tour. We had an amazing tour guide, Poonam. She needs her own show. She's awesome. And she's like tour guide to the stars.

She wasn't name dropping. It happened to come up multiple times. Well, the comedy was she doesn't know anyone, which I totally believe. It wasn't like a foe. Like she's over it or above it. It's just simply she's like, I don't know any of the people. And then she calls her son on all these tours

and says who she's with. And then her son will tell her if it's somebody. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And she was incredible. And she did teach us so much. And we had the best time that day. Yes, yes. But back to Bhumaneshwar.

We went to a slum, which we say in the interview with Bill, but it's still called slum there. It's not a pepsoid there. That's what it's called, a slum. It is, yeah. Yeah, called a rehabilitated slum. And went on a tour there. Yeah.

That was incredible. Incredible. Yeah, everyone had toilets and they had meters and they had electricity and they had all this stuff. They were given land rights, which made a huge difference in the sense of ownership of their community, which is so, it's so fascinating

what happens psychologically when you have ownership. Yes. Fascinating. For sure. And up until that point, most of the stuff we were seeing was more like on the government level, the tech level. It was all like very high level, big, big programs. So to go and walk around and see people

like really prideful of their place. Yeah. And seeing real people. That was really unique and wonderful. It was. And we saw a little daycare. Yes, we saw a daycare. But all these cute kids.

There's all these cute little girls and they were all like Monica. They were all bosses. They all look like they were 35 and running the place. It was so funny. Oh my God, we have to tell them about all the babies. Okay, that was, yeah, that was. That was in Hyderabad.

We had lunch. We had lunch. There was the most beautiful baby at this table next to us. She walked in with her parents. She looks, she looks. She looked a lot like the baby from the photo. She did. From baby Monica.

And she looked forish. Uh-huh. She walked in with her parents. They sat down to eat. She was sitting like upright in this tall chair. With her back to us. Yeah. Like. She was sitting upright in this tall chair. Yeah, like a little grown up. We were just staring at her because she was so cute.

Yes, she turned around to look at us and we were waving and she said, hi Dax. And then. 100%, she turned around and said, hi Dax. And we were like, all three of us at the table were like, did she just say hi Dax? And then she didn't speak any English. So she turned around and she continued to talk to her parents.

But we don't know what word sounds like hi Dax, but there's a word that sounds just like hi Dax. And she looked directly at me and said hi Dax. No, it was, she was saying hi, Dax. And I know what happened is it was another glitch in the time continuum, the fabric of time. And she's actually me. She was you.

In another time and sort of another universe. 32 years ago. With different parents. And the version where you didn't leave India. Right. Yes. And then she came to say hi to you. Yes. Hi, Dax. We're gonna have a job together in 34 years, 32 years.

She did look like, she really did look like. She looked identical to the baby in the grass. She was so cute. She has such big eyes. Hi, the grass. She was so cute. She has such big eyes and. Hi Dax. That goes hair ever. Hi Dax.

Then turned back around and carried on. Oh it was so startling. It was almost like a horror movie but really a cute horror movie. More than Twilight Zone we decided. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what it was. There was a lot of Twilight Zone and Sim going on. Anyway.

Anyway. Okay so we went to the Revital slum and then, yeah, some meetings. We just like fly on the wall in these meetings. We went to a cool ceremony where he was being awarded a, like, you know. He helps fund this school. 80,000 students. It was so trippy.

We're in like a banquet room in a hotel and there's cameras pointed at us, but there's also this huge screen and it looks impossible. The first shot looked impossible. There's a room full of kids all sitting Chris Krause, Applesauce in a perfectly straight line in row after row after row. And in the shot alone,

there had to be a thousand kids inside that one. Then they cut to another shot outdoors and there's like 20, 30,000 kids at this academy. And they're all watching what's happening in the banquet room. We found it all in, there's 80,000 students at this school. And if you go there, it's free. And you get room and board and meals and an education.

And it's like one of the things that he's helped find. For tribal children. They gave them a bunch of different plaques and everything. We started becoming a little concerned with like where are all these things going? Cause we were only on day two of the trip with him and he'd already received like 150 plaques and trophies. Yeah, he needs his own house just for those things.

And we got into every conceivable thing. And here's where the next stage of recognizing how smart he is. I think I asked him about what of the three prominent technologies that are on the table to stop aging, which one does he think is most promising? And so that was the goal of the question. And he starts to answer, but then he goes, well, the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life comes very quickly thereafter. 4.2 billion years. We have two distinct cells living in two different spots of the ocean. Without cell membranes, of course, the salinity content of the ocean is identical

to these cells. And he starts talking about the two original cells on planet Earth, and then he takes us through every single step of evolution. Both what was going on geologically on the planet, what was going on to the chemical content in the air and in the water, how these two cells came together in one engulfed another and created this multi-cell thing. And then he took us up through every single stage until he got to fucking humans. It was extremely comprehensive. That's not his field. He's not a biologist. He's not a geologist. He's not an evolutionary

biologist. And he, I had just watched the Spielberg, like five part history of planet Earth. And his answer was way more dense than that whole five hour show was. And more scientific. It was nuts. And that was just one of a hundred things he could do. It was, I was like, it was like watching Jordan do what he does impossibly or something.

It was, I was thrilled. He's so unique. Yeah. And playful, we were laughing and joking. I know it's fun. He has brain. His brain is something else. Okay, Deli.

Then we went to Deli. And then the next morning we had the breakfast super early with a bunch of tech, young tech billionaires, all these people who control, and then Monica and I. I concluded about Midway through that breakfast that the only explanation for my presence, cause I sat one over from Bill, and I was in a suit and tie,

is that they had to have thought I was his security. And I preferred that, as opposed to like, I have no reason to be there. We did have no reason to be there. We didn't. Yeah, there was no reason for us to be taking up two seats at that table. At one point, the host was saying that, you know, everyone was sort of presenting their stuff to Bill and he said.

Bringing him up to speed on what's going on in the country. And he was like, everyone's going to go around and explain themselves. And I had such a panic that we were gonna have to explain ourselves. And I was like, what are we gonna say? What the fuck? I didn't have any fear of that. I knew there was no way they were gonna take any time

to hear what we were up to. Well, I was very scared that we were gonna get included of that and I had no idea what we could possibly say. But I love the idea that I was his security and that I was gonna jump on him at any point, and I had already done that in the slum inadvertently, because I was standing pretty close to him a lot of the time, and I noticed,

man, there's so many balconies around us, and I became completely obsessed with scanning the balconies to make sure no one was coming out with a weapon, and I just kept going in a cycle over and over again to make sure there was. So I kind of, I appointed myself his security. Well, on our way to the airport, you, you were in a fantasy about protecting him from a tiger. There's 3,100 tigers in India, which is like 20 acts anywhere else.

Yeah. So yes, I had thought like, God, what if a tiger? I also watched that thing that misled me. There's, there was a planet earth I also watched that thing that misled me. There was a planet Earth like nighttime version with all this heat imaging cameras. And there are tigers moving through the city in parks, in many different populous cities in India. They're mixing, they're there.

So I was like, okay, if a tiger attacks Bill, I have a great game plan for a mountain lion, but they're 120 pounds. Right. Tigers 400 pounds. I was like, I'd have to find a spear very quickly. Like I have to find a flagpole or a pole or something. And then my blow to the tiger would have to be directly to the heart of the brain, which is hard.

I've never tried to stab a tiger. I don't know how good I'd be the first time. And so, yes, I was really preoccupied with having to save him from a tiger at some point. Which luckily didn't happen. It didn't happen. Didn't come out of fruition. I was semi-prepared.

Yeah. You know? You were mentally half-prepared. I had already considered it all. Now having been there, I didn't see many poles. Well, the whole time I was looking at the balconies, I was like, where are the poles? There aren't many poles there.

I didn't see many. He would have been fucked. Would you kill yourself for him? Would you jump in front of the tiger? Boy, that's a great moral question because I want, this is a very important point to make When he started working in India with the foundation in 2008 Till now the amount of children who died before five years old has fallen by two-thirds

So you're talking about literally I think it was five million year the first year you're talking about So you're talking about literally, I think it was five million year the first year, you're talking about tens of millions of kids. He's actually literally saved, not like in theory, like tens of millions of kids are alive because of him. So from a utilitarian point of view, I would have to do that. That's how I feel.

Like I even thought at one point he was speaking and I had a full panic just listening to it. I was like, he's gonna die someday. Like Bill's gonna die. He's 68. And that's gonna be horrible for the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know and I couldn't help but getting more and more

infuriated the whole trip about these fucking bozos who just blanketly hate him because he's a billionaire. It's so maddening. It's like not one of these people who hates him because he's a billionaire has saved a single human life. Exactly. And this motherfucker has saved tens of millions of people and they're in a moral high ground to be judgmental of him.

I know, I agree. It really was pissing me off. Like I was looking at how much of this guy's day is spent trying to fucking save people. He could be playing tennis and getting massages. Like everything the people are mad at them would be doing with a billion dollars. He's not.

At one of the talks, the moderator had gone to Stanford when he gave a commencement speech. She was from India and had transferred from my IT to Stanford. Yes, and she said during the speech, he had said something that really resonated with her. He said, if you don't innovate with empathy, you're just solving puzzles. Right.

Which is incredible. And he lives his life like that. Like he really, he's using innovation to help people. Right. He's looking at a problem and asking himself, is there any way that no one has thought of yet? Yeah, I mean, he really is incredible. He is. So I agree.

For all these people who just blanketly hate him because he is a billionaire, like you have no idea. Yeah, and also what have you done? Why are you on the fucking pedestal? Yeah. But okay, so then, Deli. Fast forward is great. We went to a bunch of more things we shouldn't have been at.

We just kept getting more and more insecure that we were adding no value to anything. But I will say, we were entertaining the shit out of him. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and we had a really, really fun dinner with him. And there was like just six of us and we had a blast of a dinner having so much fun. It was so fun.

And then we recorded an episode for the podcast, so stay tuned. And I was nervous because again, these days were so long and the interview was scheduled for nine o'clock at night for an hour. On our last day together. On the day we started at 7 a.m. And then we had already had dinner.

And I was like, this is gonna be the worst interview of all time. We didn't have had phones, blah, blah, blah. But it ended up being fantastic. Yeah, it was really, really is gonna be the worst interview of all time. We didn't have headphones, blah, blah, blah. But it ended up being fantastic. Yeah, it was really, really great and a perfect end. So then you and I immediately shot to a high, which is like we had done everything we were supposed to do. It all worked out.

And then the following day was ours to just see finally, non-bureaucratic, you know. And yes, we had this incredible guide in the amount of history we learned about India was mind blowing. It was so cool. And we went to the predecessor to the Taj Mahal. We went to Old Delhi, which was-

It's like the largest marketplace in the world, 25 square miles, there's the spice market, there's the bridal shower market that's like two miles long of thousands and thousands of. And we were in a rickshaw going through again, Sim. Like how, how were we all fitting in there? It made no sense.

Oh man, it was fun. We saw the little station where guys on the sidewalk were getting their ears cleaned by other men. Yes. Ears gassed. That's a whole like industry. Yes, getting their ear wax and they're pulling it out and looking at it together.

Oh, it's so, it was so energized. That area, I loved it. And I want to tell, there were two different moments where I got really teary eyed. And it was the two different times that you just were overwhelmed with the fact. And you looked at me and you go, I'm so proud to be Indian. Yeah.

I felt it. I really did feel it. I did for the first time ever. Yeah. So it was a really a big gift. Yeah. Yeah. And what a history, man.

I know. All these different kingdoms that existed. Also, I was really confused when we were at the school that has 80,000 people. It's labeled a tribal school for indigenous people. When we were on the tour, I asked her, I'm like, how would anyone describe themselves as indigenous? Isn't everyone from India from India?

And no. There's so many of them from the Ottoman Empire, from the Turkish Empire, from the different Moorish, Islamic groups that came down. Yeah, there's a kind of a strong Portuguese crossover in a certain area of India as well. Kerala's super Christian.

Yep, but they're still Indian, they just got converted. Yeah, Christianized. Yeah, which we got the history of why. That's so interesting. I will say this, the one which we got the history of why. That's so interesting. I will say this, the one bummer of the trip and why I need to go back is like, no matter where we went, we were told we're in the wrong spot basically. Like every time we landed in a new place,

they're like, have you gone to Carolina? And we're like, no, have you gone to... There was some Northern places that had tigers and snow lepers that we wanna go to. Yeah, we just made, it was like, I felt like we were tuning America Northern places that had tigers and snow lepers that we want to go to. Yeah. We just made it was like, I felt like we were tuning America and like, we had never been to America when we were in Detroit. And they were like, you guys going to go to LA or you're going to go to New York City? But Deli, no, like that's like a big, big city to knock.

Yeah. Mumbai. Like we just. They wanted us to go to Mumbai really bad. Yeah. I'm really, it makes me so excited to go with my family. Oh my God, yeah. Which is a trip my parents wanna do it when my dad retires. Right, in 2050?

Yeah, exactly. When he's 99. And then we had a dicey situation leaving Dubai, dicey by my account. Which was like, we're about to take off and then all of a sudden we're not taking off and then a full hour and a half goes by where we're just sitting there.

And then it turns out they took a passenger off the plane. But they had to find the passengers one bag out of a thousand, which took forever. I never ever think I'm gonna be an airplane crash ever. But I was like, man, we are leaving Dubai at the height of some Western hatred. We're going to Los Angeles. We're going to Los Angeles.

Like there's like all these reasons where I was like, ugh, I'm a lid, and they just took someone off the plane and had to remove their bag. I had a little bit of anxiety like, oh, I give this a 1% chance. Well, not one. In my mind, that's how much weight it was. Yeah, I think it's funny because you come across so chill.

But I think you're more anxious than you let on. Oh, really? Yeah, not in a bad way. Oh, yeah. But I do think so. Tell me some. Sure. Well, I'm always looking for escapes.

I'm looking for who's going to try to fight it what I'm afraid of is humans So I'm not afraid of airplanes and weather and all the mechanical stuff like that stuff doesn't scare me I feel like I understand it and I don't have that fear humans. I'm afraid of big time, right? I feel like Timing like maybe you were a little anxious. We were on a little bit of a close call in Dubai at the airport. Oh, right. Our layover was, we ended up only being an hour and a half.

Yeah, we just had barely any time. We had barely any extra time. And we were at terminal one. And by the way, I'm really grateful this ended up happening because we ended up taking a bus to the other terminal. Holy fuck the airport in Dubai. The terminal we were at is the biggest terminal I've ever seen in my life.

It's like three McNamara's in Detroit. And that was one of four. We were driving on a bus for 25 minutes at speed to get to the other. And you could, all you could see is terminals as far as the eye could see. I've never seen anything like it. So we had landed in one terminal

and we needed to go to like the third or fourth terminal. Yes. So we ate up a ton of time. Yeah, and then I was like, are our bags gonna get there? Cause we went as fast as possible. That's right. That's what it was.

You said that you mentioned something about the bags. Yeah. And it made me think like, oh, he's a little more anxious than he lets on. Ah. But I'm the same on, like, okay, when we were coming back from Hawaii last year for spring break, we were like on our descent.

Yeah. And all of a sudden we went back up and started like circling or, and, or I didn't know about circling at the time, but we were like back up. Yeah. And I panicked. I was like, oh, this this pilot has gone rogue. Oh, OK. And I wanted to rub till Ryan like, should you go look into this?

Oh, wow, that much. Yeah, I was scared. Uh-huh. That it was fine. I bet it worked out. It was all fine. Anyway, it was it was really cool. Yeah.

It was a trip of a special. Trip of a lifetime. Trip of a lifetime. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure things will keep coming up for ever, probably about this. And we'll keep talking about it. But that's sort of the rundown of what we did with Mr. Bill Gates. Yeah.

And then you have an episode coming at you about it a little more with him. A Thursday. This is for Angela Duckworth. Oh, so funny Angela. She's so fun. There's a couple of facts. Y Combinator, they do take 7%. Y Combinator is a standard deal

for every company that's accepted to Y Combinator. We invest $500,000 and our investment gives Y Combinator 7% of your company, plus an incremental equity amount that will be fixed when you raise money from other investors. That's not terrible, 7%. I feel like when I want Sharkake, they want like 50%. I know, I know.

Okay, she said TBOAS, Total Breakdown of American Society. And then she said, that might be something my dad just made up. Oh yeah, I don't see that. Oh, okay, her dad just like said make acronym on his own. Like Ricky. Like Ricky, yeah. Okay, multiple personality disorder

is currently called disassociative identity disorder. Okay. And there's a Seinfeld night guy, morning guy routine she was talking about. Have it here. Let's see if it. I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night because I'm night guy.

Night guy wants to stay up late. What about getting up after five hours of sleep? Oh, that's morning guys bro. That's not my problem. I'm night guy. I stay up as late as I want. So you get up in the morning, you're long, you're exhausted, gloomy, oh you hate that night guy.

See, night guy is not a problem. I'm night guy. I stay up as late as I want. So you get up in the morning, you're long, you're exhausted, gloomy, oh you hate that night guy. See, night guy is not a problem. I'm Night Guy. I say all these ladies I want. So you get up in the morning, you're all on here, exhausted, gloddy, all you hate that Night Guy. The Night Guy always screws Morning Guy.

There's nothing Morning Guy can do. The only Morning Guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that Day Guy loses his job, and Night Guy has no money to go out anymore. You think that routine would work today? You think it's too clean? Well, I always wondered too, like as Seinfeld went into like season nine

and they had to do these little interstitials at the top. Yeah. I wonder if they just were like clutching at straws for some episodes. Like there's really no hits to pull from the thing. I mean, every episode, yeah, you have to come up with a lot of stuff. And they have to probably reverse engineer.

It started originally where that's the seed that ends up playing out in the episode, but clearly they were cracking episodes and then reverse engineering what a stand-up should be. Yes. Okay, Adler is a psychologist we talked about. Founder of the School of Individual Psychology, his emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, relationships within the family, and birth order set him apart from Freud and others in the common circle. There's also an Adler acting.

Yeah, Stella Adler. Stella Adler. I wonder if she's any relation to this Adler. Let's see. Normally on Wikipedia, it has like prominent siblings or family. Doesn't say great-grandfather or family. Yeah. And... Doesn't say great grandfather or Stella Adler. No, no, unfortunately. There's probably more than one Adler line. Probably, it seems kind of common. We found out about another Padman.

Oh yeah. There's an Indian man who had a breakthrough in technology for maxi pads. Yeah. And became really wealthy. And then he became known as the Padman. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a movie about it, Padman. I just, it's two hours and 20 minutes.

Oh, that's a good length. Oh my God, it's a biographical comedy drama. Oh, well that's all the genres. Well, if it was a biographical comedy drama, who'd done it? Oh my God, I would love that. To be clear, the Padman, his name isn't Padman. No, but it should be. Sadly.

We saw my dad's name all over India. Yes. Ashoka's everywhere. Spelled differently though. Does he have an E at the end of his name? No. No. I saw a lot of Ashok's with the E.

There's a lot with an A because that's a God's name, Ashoka. Ashoka? Uh-huh. That's one of the Gods, but he's regular Ashoka. Yeah. Well, if he's the architect of the Sim, kind of a God. Wow. Yeah.

I wonder, well, clearly it was. Just curious to think about that part of your dead Sim was for us to go to India. I don't even think so. Yeah, because I guess in some weird way, I feel like he's plugged into a machine in India. Oh, you think it's happening there? Yeah. But there's no reason to think that. Other than-

I don't. I think it's- Why would he come back in his Sim as a different ethnicity? Well, I think he's Indian, but I think he's plugged in on like Mars. Oh, okay. Okay. Or like some other world. Yeah. But because he's Indian,

I imagine he's Indian where he's plugged in. It'd be weird that they would give him- I think it's him in his face. If I did a simulation and I was having a dream world, I wouldn't wake up black, that would be confusing. Well, then I'm no longer in a sim of me. Unless you picked that. Oh, right, right, right. It would have changed my identity. Yeah. then I'm no longer in a sim of me. Oh, right.

I would have changed my identity. That's what you want to play yourself in the sim. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, so we agree he's Indian. Yes. Wherever he's plugged in.

He is him. He's he's my dad. Yes. So he's Indian. Yeah, he's Indian. Yeah. And he's plugged in somewhere, whether that's Mars or India or wherever. Here.

Yeah. So the fact that in his sim we went to India is an interesting twist. Yeah, I guess. I mean, it makes sense. It makes logical sense that his daughter would go back there. Return to the homeland. Yeah, and feel proud.

I mean, it's all like, it's easy. That was a long arc. I know. A 36 year long arc. I mean, it's all like, it's easy. That was a long arc. I know. A 36 year long arc. It really, it's such a- It took a minute. I know, we talked about it on Sinked a little bit. Liz asked if I had gone back earlier

when I have that sense. Yeah. And I think no. I think I had to feel confident enough and feel good enough in my own skin, matching up with that trip for that to happen, for me to really be able to embrace it and see it and understand my connection to it.

For sure. And then I'll add in the version you just had was also extremely privileged in that you, and you mentioned this, like to sit in a room that was predominantly brown, there's only a few white people, and I just was a predominantly brown, it was, they were the power holders. So that too is an experience you might not have had if you gone at 28. Yeah, exactly. So you're like meeting all these other geniuses that exist over there. Yeah, but also just seeing like all the little like the kids walking to school together and the little girl like picking at her grandma.

All these little, I could see a lot of the different versions of what my life could have been. Like that's a mind fuck a little bit. It was a lot to process and a lot to adjust to, but it wasn't like, and I'm so glad it didn't go that way. Right. Which is new. Uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think most of the time I walk around this life

with like, thank God my grandpa left and my dad left and all that happened. And I have so much gratitude for this life, but it was an interesting look into like, I just, it would have been a different one, but not necessarily better, who's to say. Yeah, and I think the stop we made, if I were you, that would have been most impactful

is going to the actual Gates Foundation in Delhi, which was all women. They were so cool. They were all so smart. They had been professors in different countries at times. They knew so much. They were getting so much done. They were so empowered that I imagine

that would have been like, yeah, that version of your life is incredible as well. It's like these people are awesome. So anyway. All right, are awesome. So anyway. All right. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.

Love you. Love you. Love you. Love you.