Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Dan Ariely (on behavioral economics)

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Dan Ariely is a social scientist, professor, and author. Dan joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why people often want to regulate other’s behavior, what factors can affect workplace employees’ motivations, and how people live in different realities from each other. Dan and Dax talk about the funnel of misbelief, what happens when people are excluded from a group, and how to engage people with differing opinions from your own. Dan explains how people proclaim their identities to others, what responsibility there is to verify data used in research, and the true societal role of a social scientist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Ariely, and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. I always say Dan Shepard, and our guest is Dan Ariely. Yeah. So it just felt right to do it immediately. Dan is a social scientist, bestselling author, and professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. Behavioral Economics at Duke University. He's written a ton of wonderful books, Predictably Irrational, The Upside of Irrationality,

Dollars and Cents, Payoff, and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. He has a new book called Misbelief, What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things. So we get into the nitty gritty on conspiracy theories, which is really fun. It was. And the funnel of misbelief. He really breaks that down, which is really interesting. Yes. And important, I think. Really enjoyed this interview so much.

Me too. Yeah. Also, we're sick. Not in the interview. No, we weren't in the interview, but we are in the intro. And in the fact check. But don't worry, we weren't in the interview, but we are in the intro. And in the fact check. But don't worry, we weren't on the day.

We're not contagious to you. Yeah, you can't catch it right now. But we're all dying inside this attic, but that's okay. Please enjoy Dan Ariely. Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on a beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia. Made to travel.

He's an object expert. He's an object expert. He's an object expert. Dan, welcome. How are you doing? I'm very well. Oh, we have a visitor. Somebody's coming. How exciting. Oh, I thought you were going to interview me. Thank you, buddy. You got this for me? No, I didn't.

Oh my God, thank you. Good luck. I'll come see you right after, okay? That's my best friend. So she had to... I met her when they came earlier. Oh, you did, yes. She's a special one. Okay, where were we?

Pleasantries. Pleasantries. I'm going to ask a really embarrassing question, but what state is Duke in? You don't know? No. North Carolina. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There you go. North Carolina. Oh, that sounds completely right now that I've heard it and I'm embarrassed. Well, that's fascinating then because you went to undergrad at Chapel Hill? No. So first of all, you asked me, how am I doing? Yes.

How are you doing? Let's go on order. Okay. So let's start with that because yesterday was an unbelievable day for me. During COVID, I helped a little bit to write a drama series loosely based on my life about the university professor who also helps the FBI solve problems using social science and yesterday the first episode aired oh get out of here oh wow so did you go to like um yeah yeah viewing party or we had a party and all the writers and some of the actors and all the people working behind the scene. Oh my gosh, how fun.

It was very exciting. And to see, you know, it's not me, of course, it's a made up character, but to see somebody playing a version of me on stage with some of my sentences and some of my preferences and so on was delightful. Is that your first taste with show business? Yeah. I participate in a couple of documentaries. This is like real, real show business. Where does it air? It's NBC. Oh, okay. So one of the three big networks. And the show is called The Irrational. The Irrational. Oh, fun. Okay. So now back to, of course, undergrad is at University of Tel Aviv. My first X years, I go to graduate degree at UNC Chapel Hill. Then I also start studying at Duke.

Then I graduate from UNC. Then I graduate from Duke. I go for about a decade to MIT. 98 to 2008. A decade. A decade, yes. Yeah. And then I moved back to Duke, and I've been there since.

Okay. Now, let's go back to first PhD is in psychology. Yeah. Second one is in business at the urging of Daniel K in psychology. Yeah. Second one is in business at the urging of Daniel Kahneman. Yes. Okay, we had him on. How on earth does Daniel Kahneman

encourage you to go learn about business? So it's not so much learning about business, but we are dealing with decision-making. And decision-making, I think is a really important field, but the theory is not really very deep. We're more interested in changing human behavior than understanding why people behave. If you look at the world around

and you say, you know, we have poverty and we have procrastination and we have violence and we have all kinds of terrible things, my main objective is to change behavior, to see what's wrong and what can we fix. And psychology is much more interested in the underlying processes. Sometimes it's important and sometimes there's a diversion. And at the time, Danny thought that my interest, and I think some of other people in the field as well, would be better served in an applied discipline where we could tackle the problem. You know, if you think about this applied field of behavioral science, behavioral economics, behavior change, I'm happy to borrow theories from everywhere. Psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, bring it on. If the goal is to change behavior, you're not

married to one discipline. So from that perspective, I think he gave me very solid advice. I'm not sure it's true for everybody, but for me, I look at social science as a tool to understand and to fix something. But I'm not happy with just understanding. You know, I had the same frustration at the conclusion of my anthropology degree, which is I loved it. I loved learning it. And then I thought, well, what do we do with this? And in 2000, when I graduated, there weren't even really any anthropologists working for companies, even advising. That's increased,

I guess. But I remember thinking, well, great, now we have this great understanding of everything. Can we advise anything based on that? And really, no, was the answer. And I was frustrated by that. And, you know, for a long time, I think academics had this view that we write a paper and we have the conclusion. And sometimes we say possible applications. And then we said, oh, somebody would read this paper, somebody would look at the possible application, and they would say, oh, let's do that. Someone else would try it, not the actual scientist. But I think that over the years, we've realized that there's a big gap between the possible application and actually being able to use it. And the question is, who is responsible for fixing that gap? Or even agreeing on what direction we should be, to use your term, nudging all, who is responsible for fixing that gap? Or even agreeing on what

direction we should be, to use your term, nudging all this behavior. Who's to say? Yeah. Before we talk about the moral issue of who's to say, once you finish a paper, there's still a big gap until it becomes applicable. Should academics worry about this gap or should practitioner worry about that gap? And I think more and more that there's a place for some academics to worry about that gap? And I think more and more that there's a place for some academics to worry about that gap and to try and make our findings more easily applicable for the people who want to actually go and do something. Yeah.

Who would you think would ultimately be using what was discovered? Business? Would it be governmental? Everywhere. So every time people behave the right way, we leave them alone. And every time people behave the right way, we leave them alone. And every time people misbehave, now we want to change something.

And it's true for government. Think about something like texting and driving. If we try to do something about it without a lot of understanding about human nature, we might miss the mark. So for the example, there was some data showing that states that created laws against texting and driving and fines actually had higher rate of accident and mortality because of texting and driving. Interesting. Yeah. Why? Because people, instead of texting over the wheel, they started texting under the wheel.

Of course. Yeah. So the issue is that governments set up regulations to basically get us to behave in a better way. And if they don't understand the mechanisms or what's caused us to behave, they might miss the mark. Right. The same thing is true for civic organizations. So I was just in Brazil the week before last, and I went to visit an organization that is trying to help people get out of poverty in their favelas. So favelas are these very poor, illegal living quarters where they build these structures between a road and a factory.

And there's a wonderful organization that is asking the question of how do we help these people get out of poverty? When you look at the conditions, there's just a lot to improve. get out of poverty. When you look at the conditions, there's just a lot to improve. There's violence, there's domestic violence, there's poverty, there's low education, there's running sewage. They do have electricity, but outside of that, they're missing everything. And without an infinite amount of money, you say, what is the first step? What should we do? To get the biggest impact. That's right. If you have, let's say, $1,000 per family, where would the impact be? Not a simple question.

You probably need a set of different people you give $1,000 in many different ways to and monitor the outcome. That's right. You don't want to do it randomly. You want to have some initial thoughts about what would be helpful. And then you want to try different things and see which approaches seems to have the biggest delta and which one depends more on each other. So we said, you know, the government needs to think about it. Civic organizations also need to think about it because there's lots of things to fix and it's not clear

where we need to fix things. And the same is also true for businesses. Well, some of our best psychological data sets come from like IBM trying to figure out what their employees do and motivates them across the world, right? I see this referenced all the time. I actually have a lot to say about that topic if you want to. Oh, you do? Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's do it. Let's go tangential.

Because so much is based on that. The high disagreeability chart, right? That stuff comes from the IBM data. Let me just say one more thing before that, and then we'll come back to this. But just to think about businesses. So one of my startups, and I love startups because it's a way to take ideas and implement them, we're trying to figure out how to improve the last chapter of people's lives.

So think about the chapter between people get a terminal illness diagnosis until the end of life. On average, it's slightly longer than five years. And now you say, how good are these five years and what's the potential? The reality is that we as a society are really missing the opportunity. When people get a terminal illness diagnosis, they often become patients. They stop being people. Right.

Stop pursuing goals. Stop setting appointments. And we did some research with 30-some death doulas. Doulas help usher kids in life. Death doulas help usher kids in life. Death doulas help usher people out. And we asked them basically, what's a good end of life? So not the five years, but the real end. The summary of what they said is no pain, no loss in the dignity of the body, feeling surrounded by love and having a legacy. Kind of achievable. And I'll say, okay,

so if you told that somebody has five years. You're reverse engineering. You need a network of people that'll surround you with love. That's a quick timeline to get a network of people who will love you. Well, I've moved to a new city and had friends by the end of the year. Let's say the following. It's certainly longer than discovering in the last six weeks and trying to fix it. Yeah, that is true. But when I talk to palliative care experts, they say that they think that for the majority of the people, if done correctly, the last chapter of their life could be the best one.

Like imagine this impossible thought experiment. Somebody gets a terminal diagnosis. You do everything you can for them for the next five years. They die. You wake them up. That's the impossible part. And then you say, pick one chapter of your life to repeat. How many of them would, under the right circumstances, repeat that last chapter?

And they think the majority could, under the right circumstances. And the reason is that we often live an unexamined life. We pursue all kinds of goals and so on. unexamined life. We pursue all kinds of goals and so on. And the conditions of a terminal diagnosis actually can, in principle, get people to re-evaluate where they're going, fix relationship, think about legacy, do all kinds of things that are actually very, very good for them. I often say this is the gift of cancer as opposed to heart disease. My father died of cancer. We knew it was coming. All kinds of time to repair and dedicate that section of time to that. Had he gone out in a heart attack, we'd be like, well,

that would have just happened. So in a bizarre way, there is some silver lining to that. It's complex, but the question is, could we do it without it? Imagine everybody who became 60 would say, okay, let me- Yeah, do our five-year end of life plan. That's right. But we don't. You've read Atul Gawande's book. Of course. Yeah, yeah. It's an amazing book. Beautiful, similar exploration.

Yeah. So anyway, that was a detour. But now should we talk about human motivation? Yeah, IBM, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm not going to talk directly about IBM, but I have been researching human motivation for a while. I had a chapter of my life where I would do lab experiments, bring people to the lab, do different things,

and study motivation. Then I started working with companies one at a time. I would go to a company, I would change incentives, do all kinds of things. And then in this last chapter, about seven years ago, one of my friends came to me and he says, is it possible that some companies understand human capital, understand human motivation better than others. So absolutely. And he said, is it possible that the companies who understand it better will have higher returns in the stock market?

Uh-huh, right. Absolutely. So we went on a search for data about how companies treat their employees and how the employees feel. Because you only need to put in an incentive for the company to have growth in the stock market to get them to implement some good culture strategies, maybe. That's right. So that's kind of the objective of that. We basically had this observation that every CEO goes on a stage

and said, the quality of my people is the best thing I have and so on. But then do they actually act accordingly? But we said, if we find the connection between human motivation and stock market performance, maybe they will not just say it, they will start caring to a high degree. So we went on a long search for data. And we got data from some proprietary sources like this employee engagement surveys and some public sources like Glassdoor. And we had data going back to 2006. And we started thinking about what is it about the data from 2006 that could predict the stock market of 2007 returns, and from 2007, 2008, and so on. And the results were wonderful. We could see what kind of things in terms of employee human capital. Can I ask what the metrics are for the companies that would report? For example,

we find that salary doesn't matter, but fairness in salary matters a lot. That makes sense. This is broken ladder. Yeah. Yeah. We find that feeling appreciated is one of the biggest predictors. We find that psychological safety is a big predictor. We find that bureaucracy kills motivation. Meaning you can't implement an idea because there's so many hurdles. Bureaucracy does a few things. First of all, it says to the employees, we don't trust you. You want to go to lunch, that's fine, but we need 16 receipts and a video of the whole thing. Yeah, yeah.

Then it basically communicates to the employee, we don't care about your time. The last thing is what you mentioned, which is to say, we really don't want you to do anything different. We figured it out. We put it in writing. Here's the book, read it. Everything that you try to deviate will be really, really difficult and complex to do. So we've proven that sentiment. And the people from JP Morgan, JP Morgan, they have a very good group that does quant research. We shared with them our data and they verified our results. But they said not only that, but it's a separate factor. So, you know, in investment, there's all these factors.

Oh, right. Momentum and large assets, all kinds of things like that. And they basically said, this is not captured by these other things. Understanding human capital is a separate thing and you need to think about it differently. And I'll just tell you two more fun anecdotes about this. One is, what do you think happened during COVID to the role that human capital plays in stock market return? Did it go up, down, stay the same? And the answer is it became more important. Think about a kid in seventh grade. If the kid is in the classroom, the teacher can have some control. Sit straight, don't talk to Johnny, put your phone down. When the kid is at home, the power dynamic changes. The kid can turn off the

teacher. The same thing is true for adults. When the cat's away, the mice will play. So how many of us during COVID have said in a meeting, oh, my internet connection is not that good. I'm turning off my video. So the workplace has a lot of implicit ways to try and get us to be excited and motivated. And at home, people need to have more intrinsic motivation when they work at home. If you think that the struggle is between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic, COVID made the intrinsic motivation stronger.

And there's another interesting anecdote that came from this. There's an index called the SHE Index. And that index basically says, let's take the companies with the highest proportion of women on the board and on the executive suite. And let's invest only in those companies. And now the question is, how does that index financially? Is this a good approach for investment or not?

So what do you think? I don't think you'd be bringing it up if it wasn't positive. It better be, yeah. I can't imagine you and me out here saying that you shouldn't invest. Those stocks collapsed. Bye. So that measurement is not a good investment strategy. Oh, it's not?

Oh, you are saying that. Okay. So I was wrong. That's not a good investment strategy. The real question is why? So I looked at my data. And in my data, it's not based on counting women. It's based on how people feel.

Is promotion fair? And is salary fair? And all of those things. And when I do a delta for each company, how well do the men feel in this company versus how do the women feel? That difference is a good predictor of stock market return. By the way, it doesn't matter so much if everybody's happy or unhappy.

It's the equality that matters. That makes sense. Now, why is their data not indicative of good stock market performance and mine is? And the reason, and that's the important thing, is that sometimes we measure silly things instead of the important things. And sometimes we measure silly things

just because it's easy. So let's think about counting the number of women. Yeah, this is the important things. And sometimes we measure silly things just because it's easy. So let's think about counting the number of women. Yeah, this is the easiest metric. Like, are they happy and satisfied out of 10? What the fuck does that mean? It's so arbitrary. Are they male or females? Generally pretty easy.

That's right. If you say, let's count the numbers, it's easy to count and it gives us a feeling that it's objective. But we can have professions where it's mostly women, like teaching, nursing, and we treat all professions where it's mostly women, like teaching, nursing, and we treat all of them badly. It's not as if as the proportion of women increases, all of a sudden we treat them better. These are two separate issues. Proportion is not the same as treating well. And the second thing, of course, is that treating women at the top of the organization

well doesn't mean that we treat all women well. So my data shows that treating women well is incredibly important. Treating everybody fairly is incredibly important. And the problem is that measuring something that is not capturing that can backfire. And my concern is that a lot of times we just do measurements that sound good. I didn't give you five minutes to think about this measure. If you thought about it for five minutes, you would recognize the shortcomings, but initial thoughts are, hey,

sounds reasonable. Let's do it. But too many of our measurements are like that. And they don't actually go a little bit deeper and try to make sure that you tap the psychology of what would actually drive improvement. So women have to feel that they are being treated fairly if we want them to be motivated. Numbers are not fairly. I would also argue you have to be inherently suspicious of any very simple approach to understanding a very complex system. The outcome of a stock market is one of the more complex issues to look at. There are millions of variables. There are supply chain issues. You know, you can go through the list. So the notion that we would quite simply boil it down to that, you should

just innately kind of go, that feels a little too simple. Let's think about something that we find like feeling appreciated. If you say, I take this conclusion that feeling appreciated matters, and I can draw for you a mechanism of how feeling appreciated get people to produce much more at the workplace. And statistically, it would yield better results. Not for every company, not always, not immediately. But statistically, it's the right approach. Being treated fairly. Absolutely.

So the real question is, what's the mechanism? How is this actually coming to play in this situation? Yeah. How do you implement that? Do you have the mechanism? How is this actually coming to play in this situation? Yeah, how do you implement that? Do you have the answer? How to implement? Yeah. I actually don't want to give an answer for that. And I'll tell you why.

I think that every company should find its own answer, for example, to how to get people to feel appreciated. Let's say we came up with a recipe that says, oh, twice a week, say thank you to somebody. First of all, it would not feel genuine. But in the same way that every couple is going to find their way to express romantic love and gratitude and so on,

and you don't want a recipe for that, I think that we have this tendency to want to standardize everything and to have a checklist. And here's the legal requirement to how to get people to feel appreciated. I don't think it's the right approach. If it's obligatory, it's innately. It becomes an obligation. It makes it feel non-genuine and companies should figure out what's right for their culture. I would imagine too, in the soul searching, they're putting skin

in the game. Taking the exploration may make you land on a principle or a value that you had maybe missed. And then the other thing is you would hope that companies will keep exploring it and will not stop. The moment you have a checklist, we've arrived. We've said twice a week, thank you. No more need to do anything else. Buckle up for this stock market surge, everybody. Go airplane shopping. It's also personal. Each individual person feels appreciated differently. Oh, totally. Also, if you think about this approach in general, it means that we need less command and control.

So imagine a big company, and then you have direct managers with five people. You want to give each one of those direct managers freedom and autonomy and do the things that rise for them and for their particular employees. But of course, we are running against a very, very strong, I think, societal pressure to try and standardize everything. There's some legal reasons to do it. For sure. We complied. We gave the sexual harassment video. So we did everything. We can't be blamed. We have legal, we have bureaucracy, like it's more convenient and everybody has the same, but we're actually having a cost for that.

So if you think about the company, just for simplicity, you have a hundred people managing each of them, five people. If you give a standard procedure for all of them, it's very unlikely to be the right one for any of them. You might hit some average. Yeah, this is the myth of average. Yeah. But if you give freedom and flexibility and so on, you basically unleash human creativity and motivation and so on, but at the cost for bureaucracy and maybe legal compliance. It's funny, we definitely accept, at least in the Western world, that that was the flaw of

communism is you can't have a centralized decision-making to address all the concerns of a market over the span of a country. Yet we don't think that applies to an organization. Yeah. Okay. So your new book, Misbelief, What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things is of great interest to me because we, I don't think to the degree you have, although I don't know, we have some protesters occasionally. Conspiracy theories, which we do a sideshow debunking or exploring conspiracy theories, we're greatly interested in. We've also had guests on over the years that bring out all the conspiracy theorists. Prime example, Bill Gates, when he was on the comment section was tens of thousands of people accusing him of having children in his basement. To get a firsthand experience with it, it's one of the more,

for me, demoralizing feelings. It's actually, for someone who's not terribly fearful, the notion that the people around me might not be living in the same reality as me is deeply concerning and threatening. And above all other things, I'm actually more comfortable with the psychopaths on the street than I am this other thing. And so you begin this book with a personal experience, which is fucking unbelievable. And I can't wait to have you roll it out, but it starts in COVID.

Yeah, in July, 2020. So I think I'll comfort you a little bit and I'll worry you a little bit. Okay, great, great. So COVID starts and I feel I'm at the highlight of my academic career because people are calling me from everywhere.

Governments, companies, what to do? You know, it's obviously a question of a virus, but there's also a lot of social science. What do we do with distant education? What do we do with paying people on furlough? What do we do with domestic violence? How do we motivate people to comply with these? The task. Everything, right? And I feel amazing. I'm with two phones and my computer. Social science,

I've said for a long time, is unbelievably important. And now it's your time to shine. It's amazing. And I feel useful. So we have a few months of this when I feel at the height of my career. And can I quickly ask, because I feel like I was following this closely, were you out in front of cameras and stuff? No, I'm just answering questions as fast as I can and talking to everybody in the world who wants to talk to me. And then at some point in July, I get an email from somebody I once helped. And she says, Dan, how have you changed? How you become this person? I answered quickly, what do you mean? And I get a list of links and I'll describe just one of them. In that link, it has a beautiful video starting with me in hospital. When you're 17? Yeah, I was badly burned, 70% of my body, three years in hospital. Three years? Almost

three years, yeah. Unreal. Burns are really, really tough, very tough. Yeah, you're so what, susceptible to infection? First of all, the body can heal itself better when there's good blood supply. But when you get burned and there's no good blood supply and it's such an extensive part, it takes forever. And by the way, this happened many years ago. This happened when I was 17 and a half. I'm 56 now. I still, of course, have pain and difficulty and so on, but I still had surgery a few years ago. It's a tough issue. But anyway, this 90 second video shows pictures of me in hospital, tough pictures. And then it described how because of that,

I started hating healthy people. I joined the cabal, Bill Gates and the Illuminati in an effort to kill as many healthy people as possible. And that's why COVID is there. There was another one that they thought I was the consciousness architect of the COVID plandemic. Oh, they called it a plandemic? Yeah.

Oh, wonderful. They really gave me a good role, right? I was like the- Yeah, mastermind. Mastermind. Forgetting you're not a biologist. Yes. And then I tried to argue and I tried to explain myself.

Can I ask quickly, how ubiquitous was this? If we had to put it on a scale, QAnon, we'll say it was a 10, that reached a 10. What is this conspiracy? How many people are engaged in thinking you were this? I know Fauci, I put him at a six, right? Or a seven. Yeah. Very hard for me to tell. Yeah. Because you're inside of it. When all this is happening, I'm saying to myself, these people are clearly wrong. And if they only knew, they will change their opinions. Probably the illusion that you could correct them. That's right. And to my benefit, I would say I did call some experts to ask them and they all

said, don't engage. I engaged. I couldn't. I couldn't. It was too hard. I was wrong to engage. I engaged for about a month. I called people. I invited a couple of people to my house. I I called people I invited a couple people to my house I talked to many online it was terrible I'm a slow learner took me a long time to figure out it was a bad strategy

but then what I did is I said okay this is a terrible terrible terrible situation something very strange is happening here I don't understand this and you know it's one thing to say people believe in X but when they believe in X about me and I can provide them with evidence and nothing changes, that was a very intense realization of the complexity of the situation. So for the next two years, I spend in some of the darkest corners of the Internet and I talk to about 20 misbelievers regularly and I try to understand the psychology.

You know, what was very clear from the beginning was that these people should not be discounted. It's not that they are different or less something or another. No, it's just people that somehow became like this. And that was the mystery of what got them in. Let's say you said, oh, they're less X or less Y. That's a cheap answer, and it doesn't help us. It doesn't respect the complexity of it. Also, it denies that we ourselves are also in this. Exactly. When we can't fix it.

That we're somehow different. And it doesn't help us fix it. So this book has three components. It has a little bit of my story. Most of the book is about this funnel of misbelief. It's about the way I characterize this machine that takes people and change them. And as an analogy, if you think about the way I characterize this machine that takes people and change them. And as an analogy, if you think about the food machinery in the US, there's too much

salt, too much sugar, too much fat. And you say, how is it changing us? In the same way, the funnel of misbelief is the machinery that comes from lots of different directions that attacks our psychology in a way that gets people to change their beliefs in fundamental ways. And then the last chapter, I talk about trust and what it means in a way that gets people to change their beliefs in fundamental ways. And then the last chapter, I talk about trust and what it means in a broader way. So if you say, we all have these people in our lives that five years ago, you said, we're the same. Yeah.

We believe in the same thing. We think in the same way and so on. And now you look at them and you say, are we both human? How can it be that we both look at the world and come up to such different conclusions? So you are both human. They just went through the funnel of misbelief. And it's important to understand what they went through. And the thing is, it's not just respecting the people. It's realizing that these misbeliefs that people adopt fulfill a real function in their lives. It's not that somebody wakes up one day and says, oh, I really want to believe that Bill Gates is real.

Yeah, I need a new hobby. I'm going to go shopping for a conspiracy theory. Yeah. It's worse than that because it's a trivial observation, but took me a while to get to it, is that people who believe in God, believe the world is basically a good place with a little bit of devil from time to time. But the people who believe in conspiracies or misbeliefs, their lives is actually quite difficult. So misbelief is not just about believing in something wrong. It's about adopting a worldview that the world is out there to get us in some important ways. If you wake up in the morning and you feel that there's an initiative to put G5 into your kids, name whatever, that's a terrible way to live.

G5 into your kids, name whatever, that's a terrible way to live. I was on some radio show the day before yesterday, and somebody after that wrote to me about some salmonella poisoning. You and I hear salmonella poisoning. We said, somebody made a mistake. Where did this process work out? What needs to be improved? That person read it as a signal of intentional poisoning. Well, they're looking for proof of evil all around them, and they're finding it.

That's right. Just think about how tough it is to live like this. It's not a choice. Well, if you look at some of the definitions of depression, one of them is having a pessimistic view of the future as opposed to an optimistic, which most people have, and they're stuck in a very pessimistic. Worse than pessimistic. It's an evil intention everywhere and powerful in ways we don't see. And nobody else sees it either.

It's a very tough thing. And I think they need a lot of empathy. Yes. When you think about it, it's very tough to give it to them. It is. They are the people that need it the most, and they make it the most difficult to embrace them. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner, he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan. And they both spent the week in the water.

You were made to follow your whims. We were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool and a waterfall and a soaking tub and, of course, a great shower. Expedia. Made to travel. So you break it down, falling into the funnel, into kind of four categories. We have the emotional, the cognitive, the social, and the personality. So let's start with the emotional. And I want to give you one fun anecdote that I saw on 60 Minutes maybe 14 years ago.

Presumably, it was in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. It was a story on the sovereign citizens. Have you ever heard of the sovereign citizens? No. They're a group of people who deny the role of the government. They won't carry license. They've been in tons of shootouts with law enforcement. They sue representatives. They have these frivolous lawsuits. They have a whole game plan. There's a lot of them. And as they investigated them, what they found that was almost universal among them, which was crazy, is that almost every member had lost a job in the last two years. And not just a job, a career. And I think that plays beautifully into what we're about to talk about.

I don't want to use the word beautifully, sadly. Okay, sadly and conveniently. Yes, that's right. But that principle, I've witnessed it in friends when they've at least minimally felt disenfranchised or excluded. Now, if there's a system that you're excluded from and everyone else seems to be included, of course that system has to be broken. How could it be just? That's exactly the starting point. So the starting point is stress.

We're not talking about stress. Oh, I'm so busy. I don't know how I'll manage to do this. We're talking about stress where you say, I don't understand the world and I'm not getting my share. Something is very broken and I'm suffering because of that. And now you need a story. And even cognitively, when we deal with uncertainty,

we want a story. There's a need to explain things. But not only do you want a story, but you want a story with the villain. Of course. That will be somebody else's fault. You don't want the story where it's your fault. You want a story with somebody else's fault. And the final component, which took me a while to figure out, is that you want a complex story. Now, usually we think that people like simple stories. Why do you want a complex story? Because that gives you a sense of control. So usually the people

who are in that situation feel like underdogs. Other people are more successful and so on. Now you say, it's not me. I want a story. It needs to be somebody else. And I want a story that would make me feel superior. I understand something that you don't. I'm not the inferior one here. I'm actually the only one that knows the truth. I'm the only one. And they use words like I'm the sighted and you're the sheep and it's an interesting thing to think about. Okay, so we have this need for a complex story

with the villain that would give us relief. Now, here's the interesting thing. So you have this state of stress. You have an urge to find a story with a villain that is complex. You find that story

and it's the moment you feel a relief. You deflected blame, the world is more understandable, you feel in control, but that relief is not long lived. Because now you've basically said the world is a worse place, there's evil people out there, they're a little bit like a mosquito bite. You itch it, you get initial relief, but it makes the problem worse. Drug addiction.

Yeah, and then it gets worse and worse and worse and worse. So that's the initial process. By the way, if you see people at that stage, that's a good place to try and stop it. Because if you wait too long, it'll be very, very tough. Yes. I did just want to say that part breaks my heart. Someone, anyone would be feeling that everyone thinks they're stupid and that the notion of, no, I'm actually smart is so appealing. That part is very heartbreaking to me. The whole thing is heartbreaking, right? The fact that we are creating the stressful environment that is creating the breeding ground for those beliefs. Yeah. When we leave people behind, this is what happens. And some of it was done in COVID without paying attention. We didn't say enough, look, we don't really know, but here is what happens. And some of it was done in COVID without paying attention.

We didn't say enough. Look, we don't really know, but here is what we think right now. Right. Think about what it means to come up. One day you say, oh, surfaces are infected. One day you say you don't. It was a fertile ground.

And we were all stressed, even if you had the best situation. And then the best inoculation against stress is resilience. And mostly we get our resilience from social support. We get it from people who love us. And again, COVID made it very, very tough to get any kind of deep social support. So we created these conditions. And if you go and look at some of the TV show and the programs that talk to people who are becoming misbelievers, you can see how they're trying to both create stress and then capitalize on that. I make the analogy to obsessive compulsive

disorder. Let's say I worry about how I look before I go out. I don't know, but I used to, and I wash my hands. It doesn't solve the problem, but it gives me a sense of control, some activities, and that reinforces itself. and we have obsessive-compulsive disorder. In the way in which people are looking at videos, let's say, of a villain, it's slightly similar. It's the same activity every time, but it's also different. And it's different because at some point I'll stop washing my hands, but with watching videos, there's no end. They lead to one another. I also don't watch the

same video every time. The way that it works is that my cognitive framework for understanding the evilness of the world is expanding and expanding and expanding, and therefore it becomes much worse. And there's even algorithms to assist in that. You're getting more and more fundamentalist with each recommendation. That's right. So now we understand the starting point, and we have to admit that we as a society contribute to it and that sometimes we as individuals. Yes. And so a normal person is listening to that

and they're thinking, well, this couldn't happen to me because I am more logical than that. Yes. Right? Well, we haven't touched logic. We've just touched emotion right now. Yes, yes, just emotion. But I think a lot of people might go like,

oh, I respond to those feelings or I can imagine having those feelings. I've had them in a different way, maybe. I think I have the type of brain that would inoculate me from this. Yes. So first of all, if you're that kind of person,

I hope you'll never find out. Right, the hard way. There's a concept called scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset is usually thought about with poverty. When you say people who are very poor and worry about where the next dollar would come from, show as if they have a diminished cognitive capacity, as if they lose IQ. And it's because part of their mind is always occupied. Will I be able to pay my bills and will I be able to pay for dinner and what can I do? And during that initial period when I was

attacked, I got death threats almost daily for the first two years. And the last one I got three days ago. But still, I admire their stick-to-it-ness. I didn't do a test to see how many IQ points I lost, but during the day I would basically manage to work, but part of my mind was occupied the whole time. Well, we know from neurology, your amygdala was probably far more online than your prefrontal cortex is normally. So you're having some actual biometric physiological changes upstairs as a result. Every ping, there's a little bit worry. Maybe it's the next death threat. It's there all the time.

And some people experience when they worry for a loved one or health or finances. But it felt I lost a big component of my intellectual capacity. Stress changes us. And now comes the cognitive component. And broadly speaking, and there's lots of examples, the cognitive component is broken into confirmation bias, which is basically say there's a huge amount of range of information out there. And we choose to look at the one that conforms to our hypothesis. Anyone who's in a relationship, just take two seconds and think about the story you have about your partner.

They're messy and how all you see is the drawers opened up or the fridge left open or the container on the ground. But certainly the partner also put away about a thousand things and you just don't pay attention to those things because it goes against your story that they're messy. By the way, you could, in principle, change that in the relationship. Yeah, you tell a different story. You could basically say, I'm only looking at the positive. Yeah. My partner's conscientious and you'll start seeing examples of conscientiousness. And to say the things that they don't do are charming. Right, right, right. Anyway, but we have confirmation bias, which is

the world of information has a huge range and we look at a small part of it. But the second component, which is more worrisome, is that even when we look at information that we disagree with, we have a way to bend it to our will. I would imagine when you were responding, this is what was happening immediately. That's right. They were exposed to information they didn't want, and they were just able to either discount it or ignore it. Build a new thing off of it.

You almost give them fuel. Exactly. And then there's a third component, the relationship between our confidence and our knowledge. This is a Dunning-Kruger effect? That's part of it, exactly. There's another frame of it called the illusion of explanatory depth. Oh, remember when we had the woman on and it was like illusions of competency? Oh. Remember that? We talked about it a lot. Vaguely. Okay. So I'll give you an example of how I illustrated it. So imagine we ask people about the flush toilet.

And we say, do you understand how a flush toilet works? Right? Yeah. And people say, of course I do. It's a flush toilet. I pull the handle, the poop goes away. The example she gave too is a helicopter. You ask people how a helicopter works.

And then I said to people, okay, wonderful that you understand how it works. Luckily, I have all the pieces here. Could you please assemble a flash toilet? And nobody in my sample could assemble a flash toilet. And you go back to them and you say, so how much do you understand the flash toilet? And they say, not so much. Yes. What's interesting about this, and it's true for helicopters and locks and zippers and you name it. It's true for things that have moving parts like locks and also even more true for things that are invisible like viruses or how democracy works or voting. And the interesting thing about this approach is that we don't tell people anything. I don't give you any new information. I basically say,

explain to me what you think you know already. And all of a sudden, just by the need to provide a detailed explanation, people say, now I admit I don't understand it as well. As people get ready to Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas and New Year's Eve, we're going to meet people that have very different opinions than us. One approach to have a discussion is not to attack them because the moment you attack somebody, they basically defend themselves. And in fact, they defend themselves so well that they don't hear your argument and they just on the defense.

Again, a different part of their brain is now working. Completely not paying attention to this, just thinking about what's my defense strategy. Now, if I don't attack you, I say, I'm with you. Just help me understand how does this exactly work? Give me the details. By the way, one nice other strategy is to say, what would it take to change your mind? That's a very lovely phrase that people use. You would know about these people. So I interviewed Robert Sapolsky,

very intimidating man to interview. If you have a differing opinion, I certainly don't know what he knows. And I asked another smart friend, Adam Grant. I'm like, I don't really know what to do in this situation. I know intuitively I disagree with him, but I don't know what he knows. And I asked another smart friend, Adam Grant. I'm like, I don't really know what to do in this situation. I know intuitively I disagree with him, but I don't want to get in a battle. And he said, why don't you ask him if there's any evidence that might change your mind? It's a frightening thing to ask ourselves. Oh, big time. So that's the cognitive component.

And then the other component is basically personality. And some people are more likely to go down the funnel of misbelief and some people are less. But just because somebody doesn't have the personality traits we'll talk about doesn't make them immune. It just makes it slightly more difficult to go down that path. So if you're creative, doesn't mean you'll get there.

And just because you're not creative doesn't mean you're immune. But those things do make a difference. Let's think about the process of adopting a misbelief. So the first component is basically trusting our intuition to a very high degree. This is any belief, right? Not just a misbelief. Any belief. Yeah. There's a very beautiful question called the bat and the ball that I'm sure you've heard about. No, you should explain it. Yeah. Okay. So the bat and the ball. So here's a simple math problem. I'll say it, but don't answer.

Okay. A bat and a ball cost together $1.10. The bat cost $1 more than the ball. And now we ask people, how much is the ball? And there are basically two approaches. Most people, the first answer that comes to their mind is $0.10. Type number two checks the answer. They say, well, it sounds like $0 10 cents, but let me check it out.

If it was 10 cents, the ball will be 10 cents and the bat will be a dollar more. That's a dollar 10. Together they're a dollar 20. Oh, but he said together they're a dollar 10. It has to be 10 cents less. Each of them is 5 cents less. Maybe it's 5 cents and a dollar 5. Oh yeah, that works. Now we're not talking high math. Anybody could do this math. The question is whether people check themselves or not. And there's some people who just 10 cents sounds good. Let's go with it. Yeah. Impulse. And some people say, let me check myself. When it turns out that the people who trust their intuition and follow it are more likely to go to the funnel of misbelief than the people who question themselves. And you can imagine how it would work. You see a video describing X, Y, or Z.

It sounds right. People who say, sounds right, and I'm adopting that answer are different than the people who say, let me hold that belief for a while. Wait, we got to close that loop. What would the price of the ball be? Five cents and a dollar five.

Okay, thank you. It's a dollar difference. Right, perfect. And then it's together a dollar ten. Okay, whew. I was really struggling there. You got it. No, no you. It's a dollar difference and then it's together a dollar ten. Okay, whew. Yeah. You got it. No, no.

He explained it. I explained it a little fast. I was the 10 cent person. My first thought was that and then I was like, no, that's 120. And then I started going backwards into 90 cents.

I'm like, well, hold on a second. Well, I was like, oh, it's 10 cents, but we're being tricked. So I know it's not 10 cents, but I don't know what it is. So 10 cents? That's right.

That's great. And you know, this is not the right condition to be asked math problems. But the second attribute comes from a really interesting research. So do you know that some people believe that they were abducted by aliens?

I love this example. This is my favorite story about misbelief. It turns out like many misbeliefs, that there's some grain of truth in it. And in the issue with people who feel like they're abducted by aliens, it turns out that when we have REM sleep, our mind transmits instructions to the body, save the princess, jump over the thing, slay the dragon, all kinds of things, but we don't move because the mind also paralyzes the body. The brain thinks it's sending instructions, but they don't get to fruition. This is called sleep paralysis. Sometimes some people wake up before...

It's happened to me. It's happened to you? You're one of the 8%. That's scary. Do you want to describe how it feels to you? Yeah. I mean, your brain is awake. You're cognizant of what's going on. Well, this was my experience. Cognizant of what's going around around you,

but you can't move. And you think you've become paralyzed somehow, I'd imagine, right? Yeah, you're stuck. And you're scared. In your body, and you can't say anything. You can't wake your body up. But you know, like I was in college,

and so my roommate was at her computer, and I knew she was at the computer, but I couldn't say, hey, help her do something. Yeah, it was scary. Yeah. So let's say it happens to about 8% of the people. Not all of them say, oh, I was abducted by aliens.

That's the reason. What separates the people who, like you, say something really strange happened to my body from the people who say, oh, I was abducted by aliens? I've just been returned. I wish I had thought of that. Thought of that. Yeah. It's way cooler.

It is cooler. I know. been returned. I wish I had thought of that. It's way cooler. It is cooler. No. And one of the differences is that they connect the dots in ways that are not supported by the evidence. So imagine, for example, I read to you a list of 10 types of fruit, and then I say, hey, let me read to you another list of fruit and tell me if they were in the first list or not. If you confuse new fruit with old fruit. Your example is if you said apples, bananas, oranges, and then in 10 minutes you said, hey, was apricots on that list? There is some group of people that would insert apricots. Oh, interesting.

That's right. Do we know a percentage of people that think that way or does everyone do that? Everybody does it a little bit, but the more you do it, so if you have sleep paralysis, you might become an alien abductee. Right. Right. Because what happened is there is a question of interpretation. So you wake up, you're paralyzed. What do you remember? How do you connect the dots? Are you adding things that were not there in the picture, but to make the picture more complete? Well, you're looking for causality. So you'd likely start with, or me, I think of myself as highly rational. I would go

like, did I eat something different last night? Right? Like first thing would be like, what anomaly occurred in my life that has resulted in this? You know, it's funny. That's your own experience because you. Have autoimmune. Yeah. And you understand that your body's really sensitive to food.

So that's where your brain goes. Everyone's brain just goes by their own history. Other people are more susceptible to alien abduction. I wouldn't have thought that. Well, also if you are into sci-fi, I mean, I wouldn't have even thought about alien abduction. By the way, we didn't go into details of your description, but many people describe lights.

I mean, there's other things that happened as the system changes from REM sleep to awakening. And if it happens in the middle of a dream, life is much more confusing. So anyway, this ability to tell a story, thinking that more things happened, they really did, but to complete the story, by the way, could be a really good attribute for an artist.

Creative, seeing dots. Oh, we should have said it much earlier when we were talking about stress. But will you just tell Monica about when people are under high stress and you show them a completely unpatterned, random assortment of dots, what happens? Because I think that's really relevant at this moment.

Yeah. So we talked about what stress does. Our system wants to have an answer. So one way to do it is to show people what we call white noise. So white noise is sometimes noise like shh. But we can also have a picture of white noise. Think about a page full of black, white, and gray dots, just randomly scattered. And the question is, do you see patterns? And it turns out that the more stressed

people are, the more they see patterns, including people who go skydiving and they get extra stressed and they see more patterns just before jumping. And there are other things like that. Like if you think about what kind of superstitions people adopt, there was a study of some tribes Oh, wow. more chaotic and so on. We need a sense of control to overcome it. So we said stress is the breeding ground. The cognitive component helps a lot. Personality component, some people are more and less able to do it. Oh, one other personality trait that surprised me a lot is narcissism. It turns out that narcissists are more likely to go down the funnel of misbelief. And we're not talking about extreme people. Just think about your friends and think about the top 20% of them

who are slightly more narcissists. Narcissists love to get positive reinforcement from the world. And when they don't, they feel deprived. Now think about what happened in a period like COVID or when something bad is happening. They say, what's wrong? If we think about stress,

narcissism basically amplifies stress. You are more expecting good things from the world than other people. So when it's not happening, you're much more likely to look for the villain. By the way, one other random point is that there's a beautiful study that looked at many, many countries and looked at the percentage of people who believed in conspiracy theories around COVID. And they found that it's highly correlated with violence in that country. Again, why? What does violence create? Stress. And it's not as if we can separate stress. It's not as if we can say, oh, this is stress for my kids and this is stress from work. No, we get this overall stress. It could come from violence in the country.

It could come from all kinds of things. There's a cortisol dump. It doesn't really matter why it dumped. The more stress you have now, the more your system needs a story. By the way, if you look at the correlation between violence and stress, the US is kind of above the line in the sense that there's more conspiracy theories than would be explained by the amount of violence in the country. Oh, I have an armchair theory on that, which is I also think our individualistic capitalist society

prizes those individual achievements more than other countries. So when you're not achieving and accomplishing the dream, it is more painful than it is in, say, a collectivist society. We can speculate, but I'll give you two other possibilities. Okay. Well, you got to vote on that one. Does that sound okay to you? Yeah, yeah. One is that as a country gets a higher rate of inequality,

resilience goes down. So if you think that resilience is an antidote to stress, even at the level of a neighborhood, as inequality goes up, people are less likely to go to the neighbor and ask for help. So something about resilience changes. Do you read The Broken Ladder? It's a great book about income inequality. Yeah, and it talks about just the perception of being poor, as opposed to being quantifiably poor, has more disastrous outcomes on educational achievement, health, everything. Yeah.

And then the second explanation could be is that the U.S. has a lot of violence that is not physical. So think about our partisan system and the aggression that we have on the left and right that wouldn't be quantified as violence, but could have related effects. So we said stress, cognitive personality, and then the thing that kind of seals the deal is the social element. And there's kind of three subcomponents in the social element. And the first one is ostracism. The first guy that started research on ostracism have this beautiful story. He says he goes to the park with his dog and all of a sudden he sees two people playing Frisbee. One of them by mistake throw the Frisbee and it falls next to his feet. Picks it up, throws to one of them and to his surprise they throw it back. And for a few minutes the three of them play and he feels quite happy playing with them.

And then they stop throwing the Frisbee to him. And he says, he described how he felt rejected. And then he goes and he says, let me recreate that experience. So let's invite people to the experiment. And then let's have two collaborators, two people who look like participants, but they're not. And let's ask everybody to wait and have two conditions. Condition one, the three people, the participant and the two collaborators wait outside. They have a ball and they start tossing it around between the three of them. And they play for 10 minutes and then they bring them in and do the experiment. In the second condition, they start playing the three of them. But after five minutes, they do what they did to him in the park. They stop tossing it to

the participant. They just, the two collaborators play between themselves. So now we have a control condition. Three people played. An ostr a control condition. Three people played. An ostracism condition. Three people played for five minutes and one person, they stopped throwing it to him. How does that person feel? And the results are amazing. I mean, amazingly bad. Yeah, yeah.

It affects well-being. It affects optimism. It affects willingness to help other people. It affects dishonesty. It affects donation to charity. It really changes people. And we'reesty. It affects donation to charity. It really changes people. And we're talking five minutes of being ostracism. Now, this is a part where, as I realized that, I have to say that I have unintentionally ostracized some people. When we

are exposed to somebody that's just starting to be a misbeliever, I think the tendency is to crush their misbeliefs. But of course, when we try to take this approach, we ostracize them. We think, oh, this is just a small comment and I'm saying it's partially joking and so on. They view it as a real big comment. And if we think about how do we help our friends and family? So we said, you know, we want to give the feeling of resilience, but we want to stop ostracizing. We've all done it and it's very tempting to do, but we need to hold back on that. I would say from the anthropological lens, what you're immediately doing for that person is creating us and them. And once you are them,

we all know we're all capable of all manner of atrocities against them, and we have no compassion for them. It's one of the strongest things. And then ostracizing for 280,000 years we were here meant literal death. And we know it. We need a tribe. If we don't have a tribe, we're not eating, we have no water, we have nothing. We know in ourselves that this is life or death. Very, very strong. And now it leads to the next component. So imagine somebody who's ostracized, and exactly what you said, what would they do now? They would go and look for a group that gives them the social support that they need.

They need so bad community at this point. So there was one post, the misbelievers in COVID thought one day there will be Nirenberg 2.0 trials for the crimes against humanity during COVID. And this guy wrote a very long post about my specific crimes against humanity. And he ended the post questioning whether I should get life in prison or public hanging. Those are two options on the table. And there were about a thousand people who responded.

Oh, wow. If you just read the tone of the responses, it would look like these are people that are gathered together to solve poverty Oh, wow. it was amazing. Now, if you look at whatever discussion group of academics, there's no love and nobody ever deserves to win anything. In those groups, once a day, somebody deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. People get all kinds of accolades. And again, it's not for nothing. They need that, right? You see a behavior. You don't want to say it's for nothing. You say, was it fulfilling? And it's fulfilling a deep need to feel connected and loved and appreciated and so on. And these groups are presenting it in a very extreme way. So the social element starts with some exploration of misbelief, then ostracism.

Then people go to these groups, they get support. But now it goes a step further. Now you want to basically display your loyalty. You want to be above the fold. You want to show that you're serious. So what do you do? You want to express a more extreme opinion. The word we use for this is shibboleth. The story is a story from the Bible. There were two tribes that had a serious fight. And at the end of the fight, one settled on one side of the river, one on the other. But there were still people roaming around after the fight and when they were trying to figure out who was who,

they asked them how they pronounced the word of this plant because one tribe said it shibolet and one tribe said sibolet. So now I show you the plant. I said, how do you say this? If you say it the right way, my way, I say, welcome home. If you say it the wrong way, I maybe try to chase you or kill you or do something else.

When you think about this term, the term is not about that I care about what is this plant called. I care about your identity. So we use the term Shibboleth now to indicate that a person is basically identifying their identity. They are proclaiming their identity. With the shared knowledge. And it's not about the truth. Am I tribe A or tribe B? Am I on your team?

That's right. And now, think a little bit about this in our current political discourse. Sometimes people say crazy things. And when they say crazy thing, you say, do they really mean that? Or is this shibboleth? Oh, this is the great question of the last 10 years. Are they in on it or not? Especially in the beginning,

because later on, I think something changed. But let's think about the first time somebody says something. Are they talking about the truth here? And I'm telling you a piece of information or they're saying, you think it's about a piece of information, but I'm saying something ridiculous on purpose.

Because if I say something standard, no issue. I need to say something extreme in order to- Proclaim my identity. Look how serious I am. By the way, it's not political in the sense that only Democrats do it or only Republicans do it. It's really across the aisle where we say things that are proclaiming our identity. And of course, once people say it once, and maybe they have to defend themselves, and then they say it again,

and all of a sudden it could become the accepted truth, even though it was never meant to be that way, and now we can go more and more and more. So another very important part of the social process is cognitive dissonance. The original story from Festinger is that there was this woman who many years ago proclaimed that the earth will be destroyed. Only she and her followers will be saved because aliens will come and we take only them and that's it. And Festinger was very curious to see her followers, how they would feel the day after when...

The proclamation didn't come true. That was his assumption. Yeah, yeah. Very arrogant. Yeah. And pre-Festinger, you would say the diehard believers, the one who gave their homes and sold their properties and gave everything to charity and said goodbye to everybody, they would be the most disappointed.

And the next day when they wake up and the earth is still there and no alien came, they would just say, I am leaving. And the people that were on the fence, you would say, they would just say, I am leaving. And the people that were on the fence, you would say they never believed it so much. They wouldn't be too disappointed. Maybe they would even stay. But Festinger said the thing will happen would be the opposite. He said the diehard ones, the one that was supposedly the more disappointed, they are the one that gave up too much. And because they gave up too much, too much. And because they gave up too much, they can't confront this dissonance. They can't say,

I gave up so much for a fake guru. Yeah, too painful. Yeah, and I was wrong. And he said that they would actually strengthen their belief in her. And that's what he saw. He saw that the people who are on the fence, not a true guru will go home. But the diehard believers actually went out to recruit more people after that. Now, if you think about what it means psychologically, it's basically that our actions drive our beliefs. We usually think that our beliefs drive our action. I'm a vegetarian, here is what I do. But the reality is that it goes both ways. And sometimes our actions drive our preferences. One of our favorite sayings is, it's easier to act your way into thinking different

than think your way into acting different. Yeah, that's the essence of cognitive dissonance, and the bigger the action is, the more it influences. The more powerful it is. So now think about what it means in terms of our story about misbelievers. It means that once people have invested in the social media and demonstrations, whatever it is, how can they go back? And indeed, that's what we see. We see now COVID is basically over.

But what we see is that the action is not diminishing. It's moving to questions about the environment. It's moving to questions about central currency. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. So there's the New York Times Rabbit Hole podcast series. I don't know if you've listened to it, but it's fantastic. You see how many people that were QAnon believers started as Occupy Wall Street. And then when that ends, they have to land somewhere. And so the great question now is like, where'd all the QAnon people land? Because

they didn't, quote, come to their senses after the collapse of that. They're just somewhere else and likely probably more extreme. Yeah. I've looked very hard to find people who came back. I found very, very few. I'm hoping that we'll be able to understand it better one day. But statistically, when you look at the numbers of people who say, oh, turns out we were wrong. Yeah. Let's go back. It's a very, very hard journey.

So they adopt all kinds of things. And the last part of this whole thing is about trust. Really, that's the right perspective to view it, the whole thing. Because when you say, oh, let's say somebody believes the earth is flat, you could say, oh, I don't care so much. Let's say you dated somebody who believes there's no COVID and you invited them to meet your parents. Maybe there's some risk there. If somebody believes the earth is flat, they're not going to change the shape of the earth. But of course, it's not just about that belief. It's the belief that there's something that's being hidden, that NASA is in on it, that every school is in on it. The story is deeper than just the earth

is flat versus not. And once people adopt the perspective of misbelief and start looking at everything in a negative way and as a confirmation to the fact that they think that the world is an evil place out to get them, it doesn't go away. It expands. And that's how you can move from one misbelief to another misbelief, why they expand to be more and more. And we're just starting a new election season. Last election season was not so good in terms of misbelief. And the one that we're starting now, we're not starting from zero. We're starting from whatever we left last time, maybe even worse. Well, let me ask you this. This is what I sometimes ruminate on, and I guess it's the only optimism I have. Let's take the phenomena that you just laid out, that you have to get

more and more extreme. It's almost like entropy, right? It's going to enter a phase where there's nowhere else to go. So kill everybody. Everyone sucks. But we get to whatever the nth degree of this is. Hang you in public. There's not much more to say after that. We're going to run out of extreme, right? So is there any hope in the notion that people also fatigue? When I look at the polarization that has existed over the last 15 years, I guess the only thing that makes me optimistic is I think people are fatiguing of it. Just like every other thing that's cyclical and we're passionate about and then it dissipates. My only hope is that we do fatigue out of these things.

I don't see us fatiguing out of this because I think the cognitive emotional shortcut is not to get out of it, but to stay in it. Let's say, if you look at the percentage of Americans who are okay with their kids marrying somebody from the other side of the political spectrum, these numbers are changing and not for better. Do you remember a ballpark of what they are? How many people are opposed to that? I think it's slightly less than 50%, but close to 50%. Now, if you think about that and you say somebody gets fatigued, I think they would just stay with their opinion rather than be open to adopt it.

So I don't think fatigue is a good mechanism to bring change. I'll tell you what I do think. So we started with whether this conversation is going to be optimistic or pessimistic. So I hope it gave you some optimism in the sense that when you look now at some of your friends or other people, you say they're not different. They just had a very unfortunate set of events and I understand now better how they got there. I think the problem is bigger and more complex and more painful than what I thought

when I started the book. The book proposal had a chapter on solutions. I don't have that chapter. I have this thing called hopefully helpful throughout the book, but I don't have a solution. I think there's lots of things we need to do, but there's lots of them and there's not that much time. Minimally, I would say we would have to agree that upriver is the solution,

which is as we track, let's say, meth addiction, your odds of recovery if you're snorting meth is X percent. If you're smoking it, if you're shooting it, you're done. It's like a 5 percent. You know, it's so're shooting it you're done it's like a five percent you know it's so low that you can't really spend your energy trying to intervene with someone that's shooting it you got to start with someone who's snorting it and i think that has to be the case here is like figuring out how to identify when people feel ostracized having some kind of system in place yeah and that's why for me the metaphor of the funnel is very good because you say okay

catch people early and figure out what we need to do. So there are things we could do as individuals, social support, what would it take to change your mind, the illusion of explanatory depth, not ostracize. There are things we have to do on the social networks side. The fact is that I don't know about you, but when social networks started, I thought this was an amazing innovation that would propel humanity forward. I think I was deeply wrong. And maybe there were some turns in the middle that could have been different, but we're in a very different world.

We need to fix it. So I look at this and I say, the optimistic side is if we recognize the size and the complexity and the urgency, we can act. We just need to decide that this is a priority. And I think it is because if you look at every problem in society, I think every one of them is worse because of misbelief. Imagine there was COVID-23 that started the day after tomorrow. How well are we set to deal with it together as a country?

Worse. Yeah, worse for sure. Exactly. When COVID started, I called some people that I know in pharmaceutical industry, and I said, why don't you start showing the scientists who are working day and night? Why don't you start documenting this? I said, I hope at some point, this will be kind of the shining moment where the pharmaceutical

industry could save the world. Could be a complete rebranding of big pharma. And of course, everybody was too busy to do anything and the priorities were different and so on. But I think it's a very missed opportunity. I think if people had the live camera in many of the labs and they would see the way that people were working tirelessly to try and come up with things and fail. And I mean, it's just a heroic story, but it's not the story that is being told. The story that is eventually being told has none of the tears and sweat and effort and ingenuity. And eventually the story has been taken from them and played out in a very different way.

Yeah. In a very, very political way. Well, it's incredible. Now I need your help. I have an inherent problem. I love your book. I think you're brilliant. Anyone who listens who happens to know the history is going to ask why I would believe your book. Because obviously you've had some controversy and some past work. And it is my goal to acknowledge that and try to alleviate and or justify why we would take this book serious. I can't not bring that up. I we would take this book serious. Yeah. I can't not bring that up.

I am happy to talk about anything. Okay. So you did a bunch of work on nudging. I wouldn't call it nudging, but I did a bunch of work on changing behavior. Okay. One of them being that if we switch the line you sign at the end of a questionnaire, I promise these were all truthful. If you move that to the top of the questionnaire, you'll see that people are more truthful.

And then a lot of stuff was built on the back of that. That's right. And so one of the three experiments in particular, and correct me as I go, I'm just learning of this. I was bummed to learn this. That's not what I want to learn. Was this data that came from a health provider. It came from a car insurance company. And the thought was they have to report their odometer readings at some point. And so this is a great opportunity. There's going

to be 13,000 people asked to do this with half of them will tell them to be truthful at the top and at the other half will be truthful at the bottom. It was reported that it was very effective. Yep. And the insurance provider has come out since and said, that wasn't our data. We only turned over 3,700 examples, not 13,000. The paper was since removed. A lot of critics came out. So I think, A, I'm not a shame monster. I'm a big addict who's relapsed in public and came out and said it. So I'm not interested in shame at all. I am interested in what the experience is of losing credibility. And I'm also curious if you think even understanding a lot of these psychological principles that we both understand inoculates you

from not doing them as well. So first of all, let me set the record straight in some important ways. Okay. There was a paper that I got the data in somewhere around 2007, 2008, that we found out later was falsified. We actually found out about it two years ago. I acted all along in a very trusting way with the data. I shared it with people. I noted possible mistakes that happened with it. I shared it publicly. I did everything a scientist would do,

believing that the data was real data. And it turns out it wasn't. Just to be clear, I have never thought, imagined, or acted in any way that is dishonest. Just not my interest in any of this. But a big, terrible mistake happened. I certainly think that I have some responsibility. Very sad that it happened, but it happened.

Hold on though. I just got to push back a little bit. A mistake is I accidentally read that wrong. I was given this and I should have. Claiming you had 13,000 bits of data when there was only 3,000, that doesn't feel like a mistake. My mistake was that I trusted this data. But are you claiming you trusted the data that came from the insurance provider or from your team who was analyzing the data? This is a very strange story and it's a story about a very long time ago.

And it's very hard for me. I've been trying for two years to understand what happened. Yeah. But somewhere along the way, by the time I had confidence in this data, some very bad things happened to the data. We would agree someone manipulated it. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm saying it was falsified. Yes. Okay, great. The data was falsified. There's no question about it. There's also, in my mind, no question that I didn't do it. Right.

But it did happen. In retrospect, I can say, oh, you know, I could have been thoughtful here. I could have run this analysis there and so on. But the reality is I trust lots of people. I work with lots of people. Also, because of my injury, I can't type. There's all kinds of things that's very hard for me to do. There's lots of things I don't do myself.

That you outsource. Something very bad happened under my watch. I take responsibility. So the data was falsified. The finding about signature up front and signature in the bottom holds. Since then, for example, we re-ran all kinds of experiments.

Anyway, so that's about the finding. Something very bad happened. I deeply regret it. I go back and forth of what could I have done differently. The one thing I could do is replicate the study. Which I read was not achievable. No, no, no, very much achievable. I can say-

There's the example of this scientist that worked with you guys went to Guatemala to help with the taxes. Yes. So I don't know how much you want to go into this, but that study in Guatemala used a very different approach and a very different method. And it's true, it didn't find it. But there's lots of nuances about this. But if you look at what the British government did,

if you look at what the US government did, there's lots of other things. And I've also replicated it. The results do work. It's more nuanced as a story, but signing on the top does change honesty. Right. You asked me also, how do I feel about this?

Yeah, yeah. Like, let's just say that, again, I've done this. I've erred enormously and come out and dealt with it. And that's a very specific experience. It's also a specific experience to, and this happens a lot, I think, for people at the top, the boss, right? You are expected to sometimes remove yourself from the job, to take full responsibility. I don't know all the details, but this happens a lot where you have to leave because of something that happened underneath you because it's expected. Like the admiral of a ship, you're saying.

Yeah, and that is ultimately tricky. That one doesn't interest me, if I'm being honest, because then you're not culpable. My hunch is you're culpable in some way, and I want to know what it's like to publicly confront being culpable in something. And if you think in retrospect, oh, I think I know what I came to. I understand how the mind works. I've been studying it forever. What did I do that mirrors what I know? I had the experience of being accused by the misbelievers for a while before this happened. So I had some kind of both extra sensitivity and some inoculations.

Because death threats are a different category. Than angry professors. Yeah. But of course, one of them is my reference group, the people that I feel belong to. And so I would say when I found out about the data falsification before it became public, I was distraught. It was terrible to know that something like this could happen under my watch. I tried as much as I could to understand how it happened, and I basically did not sleep.

But my expectation in that period, and I called many of my friends at the time, and I said, look, when you get data from postdocs or PhD students or other people that you work with, how often do you run tests on it? How often do you check that the data was falsified? You know, we run all kinds of tests on the data, but assuming that it was falsified requires very different tests. And everybody said, you know, we actually don't do it very much. The level of trust is incredible. Like if you think about how much trust is running society, it's everywhere.

Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And I actually, in my naivete, thought that when this would become public, the field would take a deep look inside and say, this is something we all do. There's a level of trust that we have. And what are some of the mechanisms that we should do? And I prepared for that because I talked with my lab, I talked with some people,

and I started creating algorithms that would help us do it in a standardized way. Not everybody has to invent the wheels, but we say, okay, if we're now going to basically run some algorithmic checks, let's do it together. But when it came out, that was not the response. The response was very personal and very, very different.

I realized that academics are people. Do you think the reaction would have been softer if you hadn't been so celebrated as a behavioral scientist? Of course. I think I saw that last year there were about 2,000 papers that got retracted. It's not that it never happens and it shouldn't happen. I mean, we should work very hard to do it, but there are also lots of car accidents. Bad things happened, but the personal attacks were very hurtful. I don't know if you realize, but most academics are on the left side of the map. And there's something very cancel culture-like that the left celebrates. Eating our own. We love to eat our own.

But then in the same way that when I look at the misbelievers, I don't try to blame them. I look at the system and I look at human nature. I still try to look at it in the same approach. And I say, here's the world they live in. Yeah. I guess it would be really tempting for you because in many ways you've been ostracized in that moment. And we know what happens to people that are ostracized. So how do you combat that? You can think about that this book is my attempt to find the villain.

Oh, lovely. Took me a long time to get to that. But here I was, villainized, stress, scarcity mindset, death threats. And like everybody else, I need a story. Yeah. And I need a villain. This book is really my attempt to find the villain.

And the villain I found is a combination of human nature and media and some other things in society. The villain's vestigial evolution, I think, at all times. It's like designed to live in a way we don't live anymore. So this book really is my complex story about what is happening in the world and why I got to be where I was. And when I look at whatever academics and so on, I look at it in the same way. I basically distant myself a little bit and I try to understand how this process is working. So it's not that I don't take things personally, but most of the time I look from the side with kind of an amazement and interest. Do you worry?

Because when we talked at the very beginning about the end of life and the things that you... Legacy was the fifth thing. That's what I was about to say, that that has had an impact on your legacy. No, I'm not worried. And I'll tell you why. I think that it's very easy to make very loud accusations in the short term, but I still believe that in the long term, the right things would come out. So if I was going to end my life in the next week, I would say, okay, maybe things are not balanced the way I want. But if you say I

have at least five more years, things have a way to crystallize over the long term. And I feel good about myself because as much as I look back and I try to find out, do I have any memory of ever doing something that I think was ill intention? I have zero memories of things like that. I feel very confident as a positive, contributing human being.

I wake up every day with a desire to help. I don't doubt myself. And there is this thing that is happening, but I think it has a cycle, it has social media, it has some other things, but I'm quite confident and reality would eventually win. Oh, this has been lovely. I don't know if you would enjoy this,

but when I was going through that, a saying I heard that gave me great comfort was, I did the thing they said I did. I'm not the thing they say I am. I really liked that. I have a weird, though. Okay. So we have, I don't want to make this equivalency, and I don't even know if we're allowed to talk about this, but we know someone who's just recently, quote, in trouble. A comedian who, it's like come out that part of his special

i was thinking about this is made up like the stories are made up but the truths that he's getting at are real and there's a question of is it okay for him to have fabricated some stories or pieced together stories in order for a real truth to be exposed? I think there are people on both sides of that argument, especially in comedy, obviously everything's exaggerated. So it's a weirdly specific niche, but I am curious. I think about my role, I'm kind of a strange social scientist. I publish paper. I do everything that other people do, but I've set my own path. I think part of it is because of my injury and my limitation. I can't do what other people do sometimes. So I do what's easier for me. For example, I have a lot of pain in my hands and when I travel, I type less. So it's easier for me

to go and give lectures than to type. I re-engineer my life in a way that works for me. And it's different than what works for other people. So I've created my own map of what I think I can do in this world in a way that works for me. It's a new path. I don't have examples of other people who've done it. And maybe I've made some choices that I haven't thought about in our mistakes. What is the role of a social scientist? How much of it is to be an activist and how much is to publish papers?

And are general audience books like Misbelief part of what we do or not? What about all the people who write me and ask me for personal advice? Should I answer them all and say, look, this is not my field. I don't know what to do. Or do I have a responsibility? For me, academics, what exactly do we get paid for? What exactly is our profession? I think our profession is not limited to teaching in class and is not limited to writing papers. I think, for example, I feel an obligation. Somebody wrote to me today and asked me a question about their father and hearing aids. Not my area. I know something about it. I thought you were a cochlear implant expert.

Not my area, but I did read a couple of papers on this topic a few years ago. Do I ignore this email? Do I respond? Where do I stand? And I feel that we have some kind of social obligation. We have some kind of social contract with society. I think academia is a very, very special place. And we get this incredibly interesting job with a lot of freedom and tenure and all kinds of things. But I don't think it's one-sided. I think we owe something to society. So I say yes to every government that wants me to talk.

Because I'm Jewish and Israeli, I say yes to every Muslim country with the exception of Iran. But I say yes as much as I can to hospitals because of my history. And I answer people. I don't know what are the rules of engagement. What's the boundary? Nobody's giving me examples and I try to make it up as I go. And among those are things that annoy other people, but it's okay. Yeah, it's okay. Well, Dr. Ariely, this has been so fun. I hope everyone gets misbelief, what makes rational people believe irrational things. And then I want to close with this. Sometimes it takes me the whole two hours to figure it out, but I just got it. Oh, wow. You ready? I'm going to tell you what celebrity you look like. Okay. I'm hoping it's been said to you before. No, nobody has ever said I look like a celebrity. Paul McCartney.

Wow. Oh, I could see it. Your fucking eyes are identical. I can see it. That's a good one. It was driving me nuts for two hours. You know what? When I was very young, somebody said it to me. Okay.

You did it. Impressive. Okay, that's a big victory here. That's the high point of this. Dan, this was really a pleasure. And I thank you for also adjusting your time. I was touring to school with my daughter and I knew I wouldn't be back in time. No problem at all. All right, so thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you very much. Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong you're wearing another burberry piece for the audience the second one i got that's very nice and it's very autumnal yeah very autumnal we're both sick yeah i finally got my mom's cold i got your mom's cold too yeah somehow I got your mom's cold or I got what the girls had while I was out of town and there was some residual. Yeah. I could have also got that. So last night, whiskey, you know, he's so needy whiskey or three legged dog. Yeah. Yeah. He just, I think he just wants to pass. Like, I think he wants to be lying next to me and then just gently pass.

No. You do? I do. He's so young. Well, he is young and I don't want him to pass. I'm going to be very clear that that's not my agenda for him. Well, let's just say this. He's got the worst depression of any creature I've ever seen. He spends the entire day in bed. And then at night

after, he's got to get his TV time with me. Like, laying in bed next to me while we watch TV. And then I take him out to go pee-pee. Then I put him in his house downstairs in the first floor. Yeah. So did all that last night. But I hadn't been home very long, and he didn't like that. So I took him out to pee, put him in his house.

And then he started barking in his crate. He didn't get enough TV time. He did not get enough, nor did I even turn it on. Okay. He didn't get any TV time. None of the cues were there nor did I even turn it on. Okay. He didn't get any TV time. None of the cues were there. So anyways, I let him sleep in my bed last night. He was sleeping on my neck, on my face, on my shoulder.

But you let him sleep in the bed? Yes. That's what I ended up doing. Because I was exhausted. Who are you? I was cold. Not cold. I have a cold.

I wasn't chilly. And he was all over the place. But all that was manageable. And then at 5 a.m., he decided to give himself a full bath. I just wake up to him licking his arms and every part of his body. He's just cleaning, soup to nuts, nose to tail. He's cleaning himself. And it wakes me up.

And I can't. There's no way to get him to stop. Yeah. So I take him finally at 5 a.m. down to his house, put him in there, go back upstairs, try to go back to sleep. It's not going to happen. I decide and go hiking. So I went hiking at 645. And I had to really boogie so that I'd be back in time to take the kids to school.

And then I really was out of time to choose this outfit. That was a long-winded way to tell you that I think I probably have a pair of pants that matches better than this. So stay tuned for this piece to get a little more amplified. Do you have black jeans? I just ordered black. Wow. Because of Beckham. Black denim. Well, it would go good with that piece. Oh, I can't wait to pair black. Wow. Because of Beckham. Black denim.

Well, it would go good with that piece. Oh, I can't wait to pair it. Yeah. Great tip. Thanks for the pro tip. You're welcome. So that story is one of those stories. Do I have any bugs on my face?

No bugs. Okay. Yeah. If you had a grasshopper on your cheek, that'd be great luck. When I walked here, a bug flew in my face. Oh, really? And it was on my face. So sometimes you don't know when there are bugs on your face.

That's true. That's true. I just had to check. Now I feel like it's covered in bugs. No bugs. The story you told about whiskey. Yeah. Is one of those stories that I just find so nice, but I find it unsettling.

So nice, but what? Are you going to go nude? No, that was an accident. My piece is too hot. As much as I want to wear my piece, it's too hot with the cold. Okay, you were saying the story about whiskey. Yeah, it's really sweet. It's such a sweet story.

Uh-huh. But I hate it. Yeah, because it's unsettling because I feel like I don't know you. Oh, really? When I do something out of character like that? Yeah. It's not terribly out of character, though. You know that when Kristen was out of town, I would be very nice to all the dogs.

If someone's around being nice. I would not sleep in your bed. You never do that. No, I don't. But he's. Well, he's like negotiating with a terrorist because he'll bark. He'll just sit down there and bark. If I had all night to play that game, but I want to go to bed.

I was very, very tired from my cold. Sure. And too busy of a weekend. It was out of my own laziness, I think. Okay, so you're still you, I guess. Oh, yeah. I don't know. That sucks too, that I'm still me?

No, I want you to be you. I'm still very much me. I do have an issue with people making changes. You do? It scares you because you'll think that you won't be a part of whatever new version of it. I guess so. Yeah, you will be. Even if I start sleeping with dogs and stuff, we'll still whatever new version. I guess so. Yeah, you will be. Even if I start sleeping with dogs and stuff, we'll still be best friends.

Are you sure? Yeah, positive. Okay. Think how much changing I've done since I left Michigan and Erin and I are still best friends. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I got sober. That was a big oopsies.

That was a big divergent from the path. But that did cause a bit of a rift for a little bit. Well, it really, well, it did and it didn't. When I went home, I still hung out with him every time I went home. It was harder for him to hang out with me because he had to keep his shit semi under control while I was there. And that was challenging for him. But I wasn't really privy to that. I would see him, we'd go out to lunch, and it was lovely. Now, had he been sober, he would have wanted to come visit more. And so, sure, it drove a wedge in that way.

Yeah. But I don't know if I wouldn't blame it on that. I don't think anyone had much time with Aaron. When I was walking here, I was listening to— Your favorite podcast? No. No. New song. New old song. Well, Taylor's 1989 came out. Taylor's version. And there's a re-record of Bad Blood with Kendrick Lamar. No way. Yes. I love that he did that for her. Yeah. So cool. Yeah. Yeah. And also shows how much respect she has. Uh-huh. For sure. In the music industry. Yeah. It's very cool. And I love him so

much. Me too. And so when we were walking, I mean, when I was walking, when me and the Bugs were walking. You, Taylor, and the Bugs? I was listening to Bad Blood and it reminded me that I just learned my blood type. Oh, wonderful. What is it? O positive. Ooh. How does that work? You can receive O negative.

Uh-huh. And O positive. That's it, too. That's it. Now, if you're AB positive, is it universal acceptor? One of them is. One of the ABs is a universal acceptor. I bet it's AB positive.

Is that what you are? I don't know what I am. Oh, that's what I wanted to know. Do you have any depression attached with the cold? Because I do. I mean, it's low energy. Everything's just a bit low energy. Is that what you mean?

Well, tipping into depression. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Because you can't like, well, you hiked. I did. I forced myself. I'll keep doing stuff. Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. Do you think it's because you like lay a lot? You know, when you're sick, you have to lay. No, I'm pretty exhausted. And I don't seem to be able to catch up on my sleep all that well. Yeah. And then, I don't know, just a bit of depression. I'm sorry.

But you're not having that with your cold. I'm just wondering if the cold, the symptoms are well. Yeah. And then I don't know, just a bit of depression. I'm sorry. But you're not having that with your cold. I'm just wondering if the cold, the symptoms are depression. No, I don't think so. I don't have depression. I just have exhaustion, but that doesn't mean depression for me. Right. What are your other symptoms? This is very private.

Oh. Remember when I was saying, I've now told the story 25 times, but it was definitely on the episode with Jada Pinkett Smith, which is the time I got in a huge fight with somebody and then hung up the phone. It was very horny. Oh. Remember that story? I remember that story. Yeah. Yeah, everyone does.

You've told it a lot, actually. I know. I admitted to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least three or four. Everyone will be familiar with that story right so i think when i'm so uncomfortable and depressed i have had a lot of horniness associated it's like a swirling with grumpiness and agitatedness and then oh my god what can anyone relate to that rob do you get horny when you're sick no not really okay yeah my

brain is just like you need relief i also thought i mean, I resist saying this because I don't want people to be scared. But I also even thought like, oh, I need opiates to get through this, you know. Which, of course, I'm not in search of nor. But it crossed my mind, like, I need relief. Wow. Yeah. So the horniness, I think, is just one of these other techniques my brain uses to get me out of the discomfort. If I'm going to go to the doctor and I'm going to say, I think I have a cold, and they'll say, what's your symptoms?

I'll say, depressed and horny. And he'll probably or she'll probably say, that doesn't sound like a cold. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, definitely doesn't. I was going to say a cold. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it definitely doesn't. I was going to say something important. Oh, no. Yeah, it looks like you got. Yeah.

Matthew Perry. Exactly. Oh, because I said opiates. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really sad. It is. It is.

It just feels like this mortal life is too hard for some people. And that's so heartbreaking. It is, yeah. I think if people have sober people in their life, they'll have some experience with this. I think us folks in recovery can seem a little crass during these moments. Insensitive. Insensitive. Insensitive. There's something that I know from all of my sober friends,

the news carrying through that circle, and then my other non-sober friends. And on the surface, it's really ironic because we have been the recipients of great compassion and forgiveness, and you would think we would be that much more poised. But there is something weird that happens when you're trying your hardest not to do something. And then when someone goes and does the thing we're not supposed to do and they die, in some bizarre way, it recommits you. And so you immediately use it to fuel your own recovery and so i just noticed we seem to have a different reaction well of course and i would i guess i would i would just i would really parallel it with like the dudes that are in afghanistan like they have a certain

reaction to their fellows getting killed in that situation. And there's, it's not the same reaction that people that are. Yeah. Because it happens all the time, you know. It happens all the time. And it's, it is such a bummer. But you know what it is? For the civilian, it goes straight to just heartbreak, which is super appropriate. It is heartbreaking.

But I think for us, just because this is how we got to talk to ourselves, like you got to fucking show up and you got to do the shit or that's what happens to you. You know, it's, I don't know. But it's still heartbreaking that not everyone's in that position. Not everyone is struggling minute by minute to not do something. Right.

Oh, no, I agree. And so it's so sad that some people are afflicted in that way. I think what's interesting is having sober people in my life, you and others, has done the opposite. It's given me so much more compassion and so much more understanding that that wasn't a choice. Let me ask you this. This might be, I'm also curious about this. When you saw him out and about promoting the book recently, what feelings did you have during that? Because my feelings were he's in very bad shape and he's not going to make it. Well, my feelings were he's in bad shape. Uh-huh.

And I really hope he can get it together. Yeah. Yeah, as I, too, really desperately wanted that for him. I knew him on his sober times. That's the other thing that's pretty maddening. It's all anger at yourself if you're an addict. It's like, I knew him in his sober periods and he was a happy person. He was like a thriving, happy person with lots of friends and it worked. So, right, he worked big time. So, yeah, I think when that happens,

worked sobriety worked big time so yeah i think when that happens there's like this maybe just this projection of anger like reverse projection like fuck yeah god damn it what the fuck like i don't know it's very curious but this isn't the first time i've noticed it it probably makes me feel safer to think i know that it was heading in that direction yeah yeah yeah you know well yeah protects yourself from when it happens. It's like, oh, yeah, yep, I knew that was coming. And I'm not in that position, so it won't happen to me. Look, in AA, we say, you know, regularly, but for the grace of God, there go I.

So, like, in these situations, I think there's a lot of but for the grace of God, there go I moments. So, it's like, for us, it's a tragedy, yet it's also met with like gratitude that- It's not you. But for the grace of God, there go I. Yeah, I feel that. Who was saying, someone was saying this about war. Oh, this is so weird.

I can't even believe I remembered it. Paul Scheer on the episode he did about Platoon, he interviewed the guy who trains all the actors for war. And he himself had been many times in war. And he does this kind of workshop at the beginning. And he says, what do you assume your feeling is when the guy next to you gets shot? And everyone had a guess and blah, blah, blah. And he said, well, what I felt and what many other soldiers I'm friends with have felt is immediate gratitude. Like, oh, my God.

Oh, my God. That wasn't me. Like elation. Holy fuck. That could have been me. Yeah. I feel guilty admitting all this, but this is kind of. It's good to say it.

Yeah. It's always a weird thing. It's like I'm very sad and also wasn't me. That could be me. That's so selfish to say, but. Well, no. I mean, I think it's good if you have reminders. You're seeing the reality of the danger. I agree. I mean, a lot, which this was very cute. I got so many texts, right? Because of my connection. I don't know him for real.

Right, yeah. But for me, the first reaction I had, we were all together. We were at a party. Yeah, we were at a pumpkin carving party. We were at a pumpkin carving. Yeah, and it just like all of a sudden people were like, oh my God, oh my God, Matthew Perry died. Yeah, and it just like all of a sudden people were like, oh my God, oh my God, Matthew Perry died. Yeah.

My first thought was also some sort of mixture of first just like shock. It's just crazy when you hear someone has died. A young, successful person. Exactly, a 54-year-old person. Followed very quickly with just so much fear around addiction. The disease, yeah. Yes. Also relief. Like you and another The disease, yeah. Yes. Also relief. Like you and another sober friend was there.

Yeah. And it's a constant, you guys are a constant. Bummer. Yeah. You make me scared a lot. That's my work. But still. Is it making you mad at me for a second

no okay it just it makes me so scared right but that could happen like for me losing you yeah yeah yeah it could be it could be at any minute uh-huh one of these people who i love yeah um one of these people who I love. Yeah. I just hate it. Yeah. I remember one time you said, this was a long time ago,

really long time ago. We were at the old house. I forget what happens. Maybe I said something like, don't relapse, like as a joke. Yeah, yeah. And you were like, I will. Uh-huh.

And I was like, what? And you're like, no, I will. i will in life yeah and i hated that i was like no you won't so where people listen you'll go that's why you relax no or maybe they would but it's also an acknowledgement that it's not just like i'm making this decision today and now it's over for good yeah it's not. Right. And I didn't believe you. But then when it happened, it was like, oh, God. Well, it might have been foreshadowing, yeah. Yeah, I think, look, I think I've had a similar opinion about sobriety that I had when Bree and I fell in love at 20 and 19 years old and we met cheating on our partners. I thought the odds of us getting

long-term through all this with never cheating again seems low to me. I want to be realistic about that. And so I think some part of me is like, I don't know, like, let's get realistic about that. This isn't it, that you can't fix it. And you, and I'm going to work at it all the time, but also life's long. And I don't know, you're like, I don't know life's long and i don't know you're like i don't know i just uh i don't know that's probably cut i'm really worried i'm triggering a bunch of sober people who are you're pretty much not allowed to think like that that would be like where the group think would be would be mad at me yeah oh well first of all i shouldn't even be evaluated whether i'm going to do it for the rest of my life. I am only supposed to be evaluating today.

Yeah. So it's like rule number one violated. Yeah. And then rule number two would just be they would say, well, you were pre-planning a relapse if you were talking like that, which maybe they would be right. I don't know. you have people in your life who are sober or in recovery, that it's also really important for you to remember that that's not a one and done thing. And to be cognizant of that when you're moving through life. And I don't know. I think it was my attempt to admit like I'm always vulnerable to it yeah but I didn't believe you you had been sober for a long time yeah as someone who doesn't have that to me it was like that was

old yeah you know the one that did break my heart the one that pierced that kind of recovery bubble Every bubble was AM, DJ AM. Because that one felt like kind of not his fault. And that one really stung. Was it anyone's fault? It's not. It's not. I know. But what I'm saying is, here's a dude who loved the program, sponsored so many people.

It was such a huge, wonderful part of his life. He was such an example. And then he gets in this fiery plane accident. That just, circumstance set him on a course. And I hate that. It's so tenuous. That's what's sad. It's such a tenuous grasp. The whole thing is. Whoever relapses or dies from this, it's always something like that. Maybe it's not as profound as a fiery plane crash, or it's not as dramatic as that, but something

small, normally, I think it's almost sadder when it's something small. That shows how fragile. Yeah, I just feel like some people are just too sensitive for this world. Yeah, I very much felt that way about Heath.

There's been a few people I felt that way about. This really is really sad and scary. You're not ready for anything remotely funny about it, are you? Probably not. This isn't really funny. It's just. The game lesson? Yeah, so Rob and I were at the football game last night.

And Charlie and Ryan and Damar. Some lawyer's commercial came on mid-game. It's a personal injury attorney. And clearly this had been planned a year ago and he had licensed the Friends theme song and it was blasting in this arena with 75,000

people we were like oh my god this is the worst possible timing for this song to be played because this song is so happy and you could feel the wave like 75 000 people all realizing like oh this is this and it was there's something about the juxtaposition of the happiness of that song versus the tragedy that just happened yeah and almost like confronting

reality like yeah that song doesn't really exist i know and that you know it's like it's like it bursts the bubble of the whole thing yeah oh also that lawyer that i mean it's such a good idea people should have been like uh yeah it just somehow slipped through like the programming couldn't god are they they underestimated the reaction in the... I wonder if that was on the... No, no, that wouldn't have been on the telecast. There would have been a commercial for that. Yeah.

It was just a collective grimace as it was happening. Sucks. Yeah. Anyway. I feel like I want to apologize on his behalf. It was an addict present. I'm sorry. That's not how that works.

I'm sorry we put everyone through all this. It's not your fault. It's no one... That's the how that works. I'm sorry we put everyone through all this. It's not your fault. That's the saddest part. Not my fault, but my responsibility. Yeah. I will say the theme of this show is extremely highlighted with him, that money and fame do not do it. No, no.

He had friends' money. There's really no beating it. No, no. He had friends' money. There's really no beating that. No. Yeah. Hmm. Okie doke. Well, this is for Dan Ariely. Okay, so the woman we had on who talked about illusions of competency.

Yes. That was Woo Kyung Ahn. Ah. Remember was Wu Qiong An. Ah. Remember how much we loved her? We loved her. And I love, I don't know why, I love finding out ways that we don't think logically because we think we're so logical.

Yes. I really like that. Wu Qiong An, she is a professor at Yale. Oh, very trusted. Let's go back and listen to that episode if you haven't listened. How many sovereign citizens are there? I have two.

Different reports? Yeah. In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated approximately 100,000 Americans were, quote, hardcore sovereign believers, with another 200,000 just starting out by testing sovereign techniques for resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges. And then the other one is from the dallasnews.com, Dallas Morning News. Okay. And that number is all speculative, of course. Well, think about it.

They're sovereign citizens. They're not filing out a survey. They won't even carry a license. I know. At first, I really couldn't find anything, and I was getting annoyed. But then I found these. Okay, estimates put their numbers at between 300,000 and 500,000. But the movement has no leadership hierarchy or organizational structure.

So, okay. Percentage of people who are okay with kids marrying on the other side of the political spectrum in 2014 it said most americans are comfortable but this is early days most americans are comfortable with political diversity in their households just nine percent of the public say they would be unhappy if an immediate family member were to marry a republican and about the same percentage eight would be unhappy about the prospect of a democrat marrying into their Okay, now another site. I'm doing multiple sites now. Yeah, I like this. I like this approach.

I'm doing multiple sites now. Yeah, I like this. I like this approach. Trends going back to earlier years are not available, but other sources indicate that we have become less tolerant toward interpolitical marriages. When Gallup asked in 1958, if you had a daughter of marriageable age, would you prefer she marry a Democrat or Republican? All other things being equal. The results, 18% of Americans said they would prefer their daughter to marry a Democrat, 10% preferred a Republican, and the majority didn't care. However, in 2016, 28% of respondents said they prefer their child to marry a Democrat,

and 27% a Republican, and the share who didn't care has shrunk significantly, according to Lynn Vavreck, a political scientist at UCLA. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah, that went from 72% approval to 40-something percent. Which is what he said. Yeah. I was just thinking about this lying in bed last night, weirdly.

I was thinking that for many people I know, to say they're a Republican is an insult. It's like saying they're an asshole. Yeah. He's a Republican. Yeah. It's tricky. Yeah. I can't speak for the right. I don't know what they're saying, but the left in general Republican, it means you don't like, like you immediately don't like them. If you're on the right, being a liberal is an insult too. Sure. Yeah. So it's the same. It's just what you're not. I'm just not over there. I don't like them if you're on the right but being a liberal is an insult too sure yeah so it's the same it's just i'm just not over there i don't i'm curious like when they say he's yeah i guess crackpot he's a liberal yeah i mean you he i've heard it a lot right i mean certainly when you add those things like libtard they like to call us snowflake and and stuff. It's very clear. But I wonder if they're just saying she's a Democrat.

Does that mean an asshole? It means has crazy socialist ideas. I also just, again, not to be paint with like such a wide brush, but we're mostly not going to be using names. We're mostly not going to be using names. Like, we're just saying the thing and we don't like it, but we're not going to make it like some sort of play on words. You know what I mean? Like, libtard. Yeah.

I'm trying to think if we have any that we say. I mean, the deplorables thing was the thing that like imploded. Yeah, that backfired. Yeah. Backfired greatly. So, we don't really do that we learned our lesson yeah yeah but when i was laying in bed i was thinking you know for so many people just say republican that's there'd be a pass they're out and then i was just thinking of ted olson i was thinking this like legendary republican lawyer who proved doma was unconstitutional. So then there's that.

I mean, when I hear it about people, I need more information. Okay. I'm not like, oh, that's great. Yeah. Because to me, that comes with a lot of problematic stuff. Yeah. But I want to know more. Okay, so did they vote for Trump?

Are they fiscally conservative? I want more information. Yeah. And I think that's where the benefit of the doubt has disappeared. So I think if you're on the right and you're a Democrat, you go to they're a socialist. Well, certainly there are socialists in the Democratic Party, but it's got to be under 10 percent. Yeah. I don't know any Democrats that are actually socialists.

Yeah, agreed. And then likewise, you know, are they into putting kids in cages and anti-abortion? Well, the national data would say they're not anti-abortion in majority. They're not. So I think there used to be a benefit of the doubt where you would just go, oh, they're, they're fiscally conservative. I get that. They don't, they want a small government that doesn't spend a lot of money. And then the other side would say like, they think the government can solve everything. Very benefit of the dowdy.

You're not going to fight over that. Yeah. And I think that's what's eroded. And I don't know that it's all our fault just because the knuckleheads are the ones getting all the goddamn attention. Yeah, exactly. I mean, especially in the Republican Party. The Tea Party movement fucked that party in such a major way, creating a crazy extreme that now some people are aligning themselves with. And then in order to get that base, they have to do things like say they're against abortion, even though even a lot of the policymakers aren't. But they have to say in order to get those votes.

Like, it's crazy over there. Yeah. aren't, but they have to say in order to get those votes. Like, it's crazy over there. Yeah. But I think on our side, the equivalent of that is, is every one of our debates centers around generally the lowest percentage numbers of people in the country. Sort of. Like, I mean, a lot of what Biden's done and talks about is jobs and infrastructure and

things like that. Like, that affects most people. But what we will see in, well, there won't be any democratic debates, but in the next cycle, it'll be, well, at least it was last time. These are the issues on the left that somehow take up the most of it as opposed to policy on jobs or foreign policy. And I think the people on the right watch that and they're like, they're not really concerned about the country per se. They're

concerned about these handful of groups of people. That's what all of their energy and resources. But I don't think that's true about Democrats. I think Democrats, they seem very unpragmatic. That's what it is. And I do think Democrats are ultimately very pragmatic. And I think it's a very small percentage of the Democratic Party that is completely not pragmatic. You know, like no cops, let's get rid of cops. Like it is insanity. Yeah. And I think that takes up a lot of space in the debate. Conversation. But part of that, when I was home, like we were watching fox news my parents watch all of it they try to hear all of the stuff and a lot of it is republicans are

watching not all republicans but definitely the base is watching a program that is feeding that and saying this is all they care about this is is what they're doing. They want every city to be full of homeless people. Yeah. And it was funny because my dad was saying, so one of the Republicans running is this Indian man, Vivek Ramaswamy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's an idiot. He's a full-blown idiot. He's not even liked in the Republican Party, right?

No, he's like third right now. Oh, he is? Yeah. Okay. And that's Republican Party, right? No, he's like third right now. Oh, he is? Yeah. Okay. And that's a problem, right? Because then also there's this like, yeah, we do like minorities, but because he's in white face. I can say that as someone who tried to live like that for a long time. That's a new expression.

I like that. I made it up. White face. But yeah, so he was on Bill Maher, I guess, or on his podcast or something, something my dad was listening to. My dad said that it was crazy because he straight up lied about nuclear energy. And he was saying, we haven't had any nuclear advancements or buildings or anything since the 80s. And my dad was like, that's literally not true because his company just-

Bill One? Yes. And Bill Maher's like, oh yeah. Like people just believe it. And my dad was saying- This is the model minority because we think Indians are so smart. Or like, yeah, whatever he said must be the truth.

Exactly. And my dad made a good point. He was like, he just says it with such confidence that if you don't know, you just assume he's right. I just happen to know this one thing. Right. But then he makes you realize, oh, probably everything he's saying is just that exact same thing. Right. With this confidence, but it's all just made up.

Right. And we can only get glimpses if we have the truth and the facts, what barely any of us do. Anyway, but it was a good reminder that we just listen and like nod along because we don't really know for ourselves. Yeah. Okay, back to this. Oh, IBM.

You mentioned the disagreeability chart comes from IBM. They have done like a lot of personality insights and stuff. Uh-huh. So there is a lot on that. But I just also remember we had the woman who wrote Culture Map. Yes. Erin Meyer. And that was a great episode.

Really good. I love all those cross-cultural comparisons. They're so fascinating. Yeah, that is it. I don't those cross-cultural comparisons. They're so fascinating. Yeah, that is it. I don't like that it's it. I know. Just do this all day. It is fun.

It is fun. I hope it got you out of your cold depression. It did. Good. All right. Okay. I love you. Love you. Редактор субтитров А.Семкин Корректор А.Егорова