Good Life Project - Redefining Intelligence and Human Potential | Scott Barry Kaufman

Episode Date: February 19, 2019

Scott Barry Kaufman (http://scottbarrykaufman.com/) has a Ph.D. from Yale, and an M. Phil from Cambridge and now teaches at Barnard. Not bad for a kid who was labeled as lesser-than, put into special-education and told he didn't have the intelligence to achieve anything significant.It took a single moment in 9th-grade, where a teacher took note of his innate curiosity and abilities and prompted him to reclaim control over his education and life, for everything to change.Now an acclaimed psychologist, researcher and professor, Scott embraces a humanistic, integrative approach that takes into account a wide range of human variation– from learning disabilities to intellectual and creative giftedness to introversion to narcissism to twice exceptionality– to help all kinds of minds live a creative, fulfilling, and meaningful life.Scott writes the weekly Beautiful Minds column for Scientific American, hosts The Psychology Podcast (https://scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/), and his books (https://scottbarrykaufman.com/books/) include Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind and, as editor, Twice Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties and The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence.And, lately, he’s been taking a seriously deep dive into self-actualization and transcendence, getting rare access to Maslow published and private writing that fueled his own research on the key elements what it takes to step more fully into the experience of life.We explore all of this in today’s wide-ranging conversation.--------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So my guest today, Scott Barry Kaufman, has a PhD from Yale, an MPhil from Cambridge, and now teaches at Barnard. That's not too shabby for a kid who is labeled as lesser than, put into special education, and told he didn't have the intelligence to really achieve anything meaningful in school or life. And all it took was a single moment in ninth grade where a teacher of his took note of his kind of innate curiosity and abilities and prompted him to reclaim control over his education and eventually life. In that moment, everything changed. Now he is an acclaimed psychologist, researcher, professor. He embraces a kind of a humanistic integrative approach that really takes into account a wide range of human variation from learning disabilities to intellectual

and creative giftedness to introversion, narcissism, and something he calls twice exceptionality, all in the name of helping all kinds of minds live a more creative, more fulfilling, more meaningful life. Scott also writes the Weekly Beautiful Minds column for Scientific American. He hosts the Psychology Podcast, which is awesome. You should check it out. He writes, his books include Ungifted and Wired to Create, two awesome reads. And lately, he's been taking a serious deep dive into self-actualization and transcendence, getting rare access to Maslow's published and private writing that has fueled his own research

and identified the key elements of what it takes to really step more fully into the experience of life. Super excited to share this wide-ranging and eye-opening conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable

on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. Incredibly accomplished. By all possible ways people might describe you from the outside in, the word intelligent is going to creep into the conversation. Yet, if we take a big step back in time, when you were a little kid, your experience of the way that people sort of treated you

was very different. Yeah. It's very surreal to me when people say that like, you're brilliant. I'm not saying like everyone says that, but I'm saying whenever someone says you're smart or whatever, it's very, very surreal to me to hear that because it definitely was not part of my self schema growing up. So kind of like, it was hard for me to transition to adulthood where that was like an additive, like people were actually seeing, perceiving that. And I didn't have to like work hard for people to perceive it that way, if that makes sense. Like I spent a lot of my early childhood trying to kind of prove myself, trying to feel like I had to prove it because I had a label of a learning disability called

central auditory processing disorder. What is that? How did that manifest? What it did is it made it like a little bit slower for me to process auditory input. So what I would do, and I don't know what it's like to be a normal human being, but for me, like growing up as a child, like I would hear a stream of input and then I would replay it in my head. And then I would kind of like download it and then process it later. You know, it's like I didn't have this kind of real time, real time processing of auditory input. And that was the result.

You know, I was, well, you probably don't know, but I was essentially deaf the first couple of years of my life with ear infections. So they say like when you're blind and they do an operation for you not to be blind anymore, you don't see all of a sudden, you have to learn how to see. So when they did the operation, they put in tubes, everything at age three or I think it was or four, it's not like I automatically could hear or know what I was, how to process input. So that was the result of that. So yeah, to this day, it's like fascinating to me when, if, if people perceive me as, as intelligent, I'm like, wow, I don't even have to like work hard to prove that anymore. I can just, can I calm down of, of finally, you know? I mean, it was so interesting because so many, so much of that type of identity gets, it gets like, we step into it at such a young age and no matter what happens,

no matter how much we accomplish in the world, it follows us for so long. It really does. So you're, as a young kid, you're experiencing things as, I mean, it's so interesting the way you described it too, which is you would hear it, but you wouldn't really process or integrate it. But it was almost like it was downloaded into your brain and you could work through it later. Did you find that, I don't know if you can answer this, when you would sort of revisit and say, okay, so let me actually digest this. Were you playing it at a slower speed? Do you have any sense for how you were actually doing that? Well, you know, I think that I did have a certain intelligence that gave me a compensatory

advantage, as we say in the field, you know. So I think intelligence can be a protective factor for some learning disabilities. And now looking back on my life, and especially now I study what are called twice exceptional children, and we can talk about that because that's a big part of my research interest these days. I think that I was twice exceptional by that definition in the sense that I had this working memory capacity where I could hold that auditory input in my head and then really, really quickly process it. So eventually I got to the point, and even to today, I don't know what it's like to be a normal human being.

So I don't know. Maybe I've just, even today, maybe I'm not really in real time hearing you. Like maybe I'm playing the tape in my head really quickly, but it's almost imperceptible now. Like you wouldn't, like, would you talk to me and say, well, boy, he really has a central artery processing disorder. You do. It would just be nice. Yeah.

So it's interesting. So it's almost like it's still there, but your experience of it is the gap between the time where it goes in and you're sort of processing it has narrowed dramatically. It compensates so quickly and efficiently after so many years of this. I think this is just something that we underestimate in anyone who has suffering or going uphill battle in a certain area in which they need to be resilient. I mean, we can learn all sorts of strategies that really can take us to the same eventual outcome. Yeah. So when you're a little kid and you're grappling with this, how did that show up in the way that you have to go to school, obviously, as you're in this learning environment, which is very traditional and very sort of it is the way it is. So how does that show up in your life in the context of your early education, you as a young kid? Well, it showed up in the sense that I retreated into an inner world of fantasy and imagination.

I really detached from the regular classroom. And, you know, the one word that I have all these things saved, like all these like teacher reports when I was a kid, and they all would say, he's really, really creative. And there was always a but after that, you know, it was always like, it wasn't like, you know, wow, he's really creative, period. It was like, every single one was like, wow, he's really creative, period. It was like every single one was like, yeah, he's really, really imaginative, but he needs to learn how to behave. Like he needs to learn how to like, yeah, he came in the other day when I was trying to read to the classroom and he ran around in a Superman cape. Okay. Yeah, I understand that's not normal child behavior,

but can you build off that at all? I mean, I was really bored as well. Just the traditional sort of model of education of like, you know, just sit in your seat and pay attention. That was just never for me. But it was always viewed as a very negative thing. Like whenever I tried to, I wrote stories, really elaborate,

I was really into creative writing. So to answer your question, one concrete way it manifests itself was through a lot of creative writing. My mom has it all, has it saved. But that was viewed as like bad behavior pretty much. So, I mean, it's sort of like you're trying to fit into the box of what is education, traditional school, and it's just not working. Yeah. So how did they deal with it? I mean, how did the teachers deal with you? They put me in special education. Yeah. And gave me

even more remedial classes. You know, that's like, that was my punishment for not behaving and being anxious as well. So another issue is that I had a lot of anxiety. Mostly I started to develop the, this is a pretty, it's rocket science, right? I developed the anxiety once they put me in special education and told me that I was not capable of the regular course load. So that gave me anxiety. And then they said, well, we need to like give him double remediation because he's anxious. So it's like, you know, this stuff really creates a cycle for a lot of these kids. And I saw that firsthand, but I also, as a kid was like, wow, I really want to change this someday. Yeah.

I mean, and also on the level of identity, it's, it, it creates a label. Yeah. It's like something that you step into where, and, and especially at that age, you know, it's, it's not necessarily seen as something where, well, this is just, this is their label. This is the way that they need to sort of put me in the box they need to put me in, but this is not necessarily me. And it's not necessarily, and also just the way I they need to sort of put me in the box they need to put me in. But this is not necessarily me. And it's not necessarily and also just the way I'm experiencing things is not for life. Like this is a moment in time. So how do things start to change?

Well, there was a teacher in ninth grade. I was kept in special ed until ninth grade. But there was a special ed teacher who was covering for the regular teacher. And I was sitting there one day taking an untimed history test. You are removed from the regular classroom and you go to the special resource room to take an untimed test. And I remember being really bored with this test and thinking if it's untimed, I can just have the rest of my life to finish it. So what's the point? And she was looking at me very curiously and she took me aside after class and she's like, you know, why are you still here? Like, I don't really do this with a lot of students, but it just seems like you really don't belong here. And I realized she's the first Like, yeah, why am I here? It quickly turned into, why am I here?

I got started to get fired up, you know, and I told my parents, you know, I'm going to take myself out of special ed. I'm going to see what I'm capable of. Like, she really empowered me just by even asking me that question. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and even because the question implies a sense of agency. Like you actually, part of the reason you're here is is up to you yeah yeah it was like no one's ever broken out of special ed before at my school district so call me brian tried but i did go he did go to the school at the same time as me but

so what do your parents say when you go home and you're like because your parents were your parents just assuming like well okay like they know best. This is the track that's best supporting him in his education. They supported me for sure. I think they always were very well-meaning and trying to do what was best for my mom. Always want to do what's best for me. She also was a very overprotective mother, Jewish mother, you know, like very overprotective and just erred too much on the side of caution, you know? And sometimes with kids, you gotta like let them fail them fail you know let them see what they're

capable of so i was excited to see what i was capable of and they were they were supportive of that decision yeah so then what do you do with that i mean you're nine years old this teacher has just challenged ninth grade and actually literally high school yeah i was especially until high school i wasn't college bound you know like that wasn't the trajectory that i was on at all so somewhere in the middle there too because i mean so by ninth grade i'm trying to remember with with my kid like there are at some point they also like a lot of schools make this split you know like the quote gifted and talented track right and the then you have this sort of like in the middle track and then and then probably on the other spectrum at at least the way they would put it, is learning challenged or special ed.

So there's also like the opposite end here, which is the quote gifted and talented are the ones who are labeled gifted and talented. And very often that's based on a single test. Yeah, the thing that was frustrating for me is that they ask you like what courses you want to take once you get in high school. They don't do that in middle school, but in high school they ask you. And I remember saying, I would really like to, I really like biology. I would like to take a gifted biology class. And they said, no, you definitely can't do that. You're not capable of that. But the torture was that the resource room where I had to go to take all the on-time tests was right across the hall from the advanced biology freshman class. So it was like torture for me because like that's, and that's really where I wanted to be. And I

think that special ed teacher really picked up on that, you know, God bless her. Yeah. So where is, so it's ninth grade. You've got this new challenge there for you. You've got the rest of high school to do something different. So what do you do? I really made a change. Like I, they took – I signed up for summer classes. The first – so right after freshman year, that summer, taking all sorts of classes to try to catch up. During that history summer class, I overheard a young lady talk about how the school orchestra – she was like a violinist in the school orchestra. And she was talking about how awesome it is, how they travel the world and they do all sorts of things and a light bulb went off in my head and and literally right after that that class i walked right to this the orchestra conductor's room

he was the orchestra room he was alone in there tuning a violin i just went right in there i was like hey my name's scott and i'd like to sign up for the school orchestra in the in the in the in you know in the fall. I don't know what it was called in high school. I don't know if it was fall. But when school starts up again, he's like, hello. Let you in. And he's like, what do you play?

And I was like, yeah, I don't play anything yet. But I'll play cello by the start. And he's like, people have been playing since elementary school. He's like, who's your teacher? You know, I said, I said, Harry Gordetzer. And he said, okay, sign up. Harry Gordetzer happened to be my grandfather and was a famous cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. And I knew that I was determined to learn from him. And I actually signed up for the orchestra with him before I even asked my granddad if he would teach me.

But I knew that my granddad would love it. He was retired at that point. And my grandmom had always been like, please, you know, have him teach you cello. So I went after school to my granddad. I was like, hey, will you teach me how to play cello this summer? I want to join the school orchestra. And he was delighted. And I must have practiced eight hours a day and then eight, nine hours.

And then in school, that first semester that I was out of special ed and I was in the orchestra was the most exhilarating feeling to be in the orchestra. And when they were all tuning that A string, I remember, my gosh, this is the first time I've ever been in a room. It dawned on me. It was the first time I've ever been in a room where there were high expectations for everyone in that room. And I didn't know what that felt like to have high expectations because I was so used to having this label and, you know, and, and being remediated and everything is all, everything was always about like, oh, well let's make sure Scott can handle it. I'm done with the coddling. Like the next person that calls me, I'm going to punch him.

So, I mean, it was, right. I mean, it's interesting. Like that was the moment for you where you, like there was an awakening, like, okay. It was awakening. Like you can't imagine. I mean, I can't even prior to ninth grade, I can't even remember who I was. Like I was nothing. I was, you know, I had no identity.

I had no ambition. Like it's incredible. And that's not entirely true. There are some things I don't admit. I did dabble with computer hacking. That was my way of acting out in middle school. Got it. Do you ever wonder what would

have happened had that one teacher in ninth grade never pulled you aside and said anything? Yeah, I probably would still be in special ed today. I think it's quite likely that the trajectory I was on would continue for quite a while where I, you know, I definitely, I just was not college bound. And not only that, but I probably wouldn't even discover that I had a musical talent. So there were other coincidences things. So once I started to do orchestra, I also overheard the choir singing. Regina Gordon, the choir conductor there, started talking to her and we got along really well. And she's like, you know what, why don't you join the, you know, the chamber singers? We meet after school. And I just started going chamber singers, then realized I had a voice, like I could sing. And that was actually

my ticket to higher education. Because in senior year of high school, I applied to Carnegie Mellon University for the psychology major. And I wrote a personal essay, which I still have saved about the first question is, what is achievement? You know, what is what is intelligence? You know, what is intelligence? You know, this is a 17-year-old Scott, you know, saying like we need a new way of thinking about this stuff. And I got rejected from the psychology department. You know, basically my SAT scores were too low to redefine intelligence. I thought that was the most ironic thing in the world.

You know, they're like, your personal essay is great and we love your spirit of redefining intelligence, but your SAT scores aren't high enough. Right. But this one test is telling us you're not actually smart enough to redefine it. I thought that was really ironic. So strange. So I rolled up to Carnegie Mellon to their opera program because the same school, same university, but it's a music conservatory. They didn't look at SAT scores as highly as the psychology department.

And I went in and I sang my heart out and they offered me a partial scholarship to Carnegie Mellon. For opera? But their music conservatory, they didn't look at SAT scores as highly as the psychology department. And I went in and I sang my heart out. And they offered me a partial scholarship to Carnegie Mellon. For opera. For opera. So that's how I got in, through the back door. Was your intention the whole time? Like, that was your— No, that actually wasn't—I wanted to be a psychology major.

And I did want to sing opera, for sure. In fact, I wanted a double major. I think, in my heart of hearts, I really wanted to be a double major. Yeah, the psychology program checked me. So I was full on opera major at Coney Mound for about a year, year and a half until my heart pounding in my dance tights because I had just come from dance class. Went to the psychology department and my heart was literally beating. And the secretary was there and she was on lunch break or whatever, eating a bologna

sandwich or something. And I was like, hey, do you think maybe I could be a minor in psychology here? I just took a course in psych and it was so good. And it's called from the door technique. You start small, thought like a minor would be. And it wouldn't be a big deal. And she's like, yeah, whatever. It's no problem. Just sign this piece of paper. And I just couldn't believe it. Like, I remember just like skipping in my tights to back with this paper in my hand. Like, holy cow. Like, I just cheated the system. Like, like, here I am.

Like, like, if you just show up, if you find a way to show up to a place of high expectations, people stop questioning things, you know, like people give you more opportunities if you just show up. And I think that's why to this day, I'm super sensitive to and want to fight for the underdog or fight for people that we have labeled the totality of their being, you know? Yeah. It's almost like in a way you took all your experience and also probably a little bit of your hacking lens. Oh, that's a good point. I never made that connection before. It's like you hacked the system. Okay. You're like, I want to get a CMU, but I want to study psychology, but I can't't get in that system so let me do some social hacking to actually i did social hacking you're right yeah you're the first person to make that connection

yeah yeah and it's interesting too that that was always your intention but yeah what's interesting to me also is that you were willing to play a long game. I was, yeah, yeah. I was really determined to, particularly once I took a course in cognitive psychology my sophomore year, and we had a textbook, and there was a chapter on intelligence. And once I discovered the science of intelligence, there was no turning back. I mean, that was it for me.

Like, I had a vague idea that I wanted to do psychology, but I didn't know there was a whole field. It was almost like in my head, I created this field that already existed, you know, like and I didn't even know it existed. And then when I learned it, first of all, when I learned it existed, I remember thinking myself, damn it. You know, like I wanted to be the one to read Divine Intelligence. It's funny.

I remember thinking like, wow, this exists. But then I was like, this is the guy I need to study with. So I looked at the front cover of the book. The textbook said it was written by Robert Sternberg, Yale University. And I remember thinking – He's kind of a legendary guy. Legendary psychologist. And I was like, well, that's who I'm going to study with in grad school.

And I went to the professor of cognitive psychology that I was studying with, Anne Fay. She became a very important mentor of mine. I told her my intention. I said, I would love to go to grad school. She said, great, let's figure out a plan, a very detailed plan to make that happen. So we did independent readings on intelligence. We had a whole semester where we, yeah,

we read every week. We would meet and discuss research on intelligence. I was in the library all the time. I think I read every book in the intelligence section of the library. I was obsessed. I studied with Herb Simon, who was a Nobel Prize laureate, took his graduate level class. And then I spent a whole summer as an unpaid intern in Robert Sternberg's lab at Yale.

And he got me in despite my, again, not stellar GRE scores. So, I mean, as you're doing all this, you're, I mean, clearly you're deepening your academic knowledge of the field or redefining the way you look at it. But how, as you're sort of moving through this and building your wisdom and your knowledge and your chops, how's it changing you as a person in the way that you saw yourself and experienced the world? Really significantly. Like, I didn't realize how much I loved learning till I was given the opportunity to do so. I really did not realize it. It was something that really struck something deep within me, how much I just enjoyed. I remember I had just stacks upon stacks of binders with papers, scientific papers, especially the semester in independent reading.

Anne Faye couldn't keep up with me. Like she wrote that in her letter of recommendation for me for the Gates scholarship because she let me read her letter of recommendation for me for the Gates scholarship because she let me read her letter of recommendation. She's like, literally, I could not keep up with Scott because he would like – he was too excited to learn this stuff. And he would come to me and he would have read two binders worth of stuff on human intelligence. And I was just ravenously curious about this field and about – I wanted to learn everything. I felt like – I almost felt like I had to catch up, you know, and I didn't realize that. So it really changed my my view of myself because I didn't realize that I loved learning

and also that I could learn, you know. So maybe those two went together. Like once I realized I could learn also that excited me that I wanted to learn more. I don't know. Maybe it was an interesting cycle. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him.

We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I mean, at the same time, it's like you're capable of performing at an exceptionally high level. But I mean, you just threw something else out, which is that here you are, you're in Carnegie Mellon and you're like a top university. You're in a psychology program studying with incredible people you're setting yourself up to study with this brilliant person

at Yale and achieving at the highest possible levels and then one of the one of the things to get into a program like Yale a grad school like Yale where you eventually do your PhD as you shared is you got to take the GRE you know so then in the middle of this whole thing drops this one sort of like again old school experience of like here's a standardized test and you go and take it and don't perform on by that Yale standards not Yale standards I didn't actually didn't I didn't do that bad on the GREs to be honest it's not like that's not wasn't as bad as my SATs but for Yale standards oh I probably, that might be a Guinness world record there. I mean, did, did that rattle you at all? Or by that point where you just like, okay, I get what's happening now and I can file it where it needs to be filed.

That's exactly right. I got to the point where I, I realized that by that point, wow, I can actually, I guess, continue to hack things. Yeah. Come to think of it. Now I'm framing this in terms of hacking, which I never had before. But I'm like, wow. I think I was like, wow, I can, you know, I'm good at this hacking thing. You know, like I got into the psychology department.

Maybe I could figure out an alternative. Instead of the hacking framing, I had thought of it as like, you know, there's multiple paths. There's multiple routes to get to where you want to go. And, you know. So you end up showing up at the hell and you study, you do your PhD. And again, you're deepening into this whole time, the exploration of, it goes back to that original goal. I want to redefine intelligence or the way we sort of like look at intelligence. It's a bunch of years back. We actually had Sir Ken Robinson on and, and he threw out

a line, which has always stayed with me is, you know, most people ask the question, you know, like, are you intelligent? He's like, that's not the right question. The question isn't, are you intelligent, but how are you intelligent? Yeah. What do you think of that frame? Interesting. Well, I will say it is totally surreal to, to headline creativity events with Robinson now. I never thought that day would come. And I listened to him talk at these events. And I think that, oh, this is going to, like Howard Gardner, who has the theory of

multiple intelligences, really, really inspired me in grad school to want to be in this field, and Robert Sternberg, who's a multiple intelligence guy. But once I started studying intelligence formally, and I knew that if I was going to change the system, I'd have to learn the traditional route. So actually, I took a year off of Yale and went to University of Cambridge on a Gates Cambridge scholarship, where I studied with a leading British psychometrician, Nicholas McIntosh, studying traditional IQ. And what I learned from that is that there is such a thing as general intelligence. There's such a thing like IQ, the total score is not meaningless. It does predict lots of things on average in the general population.

The nerdy side of me is like, you know, like there was this like personal side of me that like really, like if I heard that Sir Ken Robinson quote back in college, again, it would have fired me up. And it's a very firing up statement. But I think that it's also probably not completely scientifically accurate because I think that while there are lots of different ways to be intelligent, people on average do tend to actually be good at lots of these things, you know, at the same time, you know, like it's not like a complete, you know, ability sort of split, you know, there are people who are really quick learners across the board,

you know? So, you know, like the nerdy side of me, like once I started studying traditional intelligence realized there are both multiple intelligences and a general intelligence, you know. But, you know, you really have to ask what is the purpose of school, you know. And I think that is that Sirker Robinson has done a lot of really important work in kind of framing it that way as not even intelligence. Maybe we can even just go beyond the intelligence framing, you know. Why does everything have to be constantly about the word intelligence you know yeah there are different abilities right and it's also i mean intelligence is a loaded word to a certain extent right totally loaded because everybody it's like i don't ever want to be labeled anything but you know and there's a lot

of things that are in life that are that are more important than intelligence yeah i'm i mean it's and there's so much more research around that now also. But even so, I would remember, if I flashback to my law school days, and I was always the back row person in school. And I was kind of close. But in law school, I was like, I'm doubling down. I want to do the best that I can possibly do. And I worked nonstop. And very often because I worked on the assumption that I am a hundred percent, not the smartest person in the room, whatever blend of nature and nurture got me into this room, you know, I probably shouldn't be here because my grades aren't very, weren't very good in college.

In fact, they were pretty bad. And, but here's my chance to prove myself, to prove what I'm actually capable of. Still, I was the back row person because I kind of, you know, that was my MO. And I also remember having one friend who basically would blow off the entire semester. He would like kind of touch down every once in a while for a class and sleep through most of it. And then at the end of class, he would end up getting the high score. And the way he did it was that he would, you know, he would beg, borrow, and whatever. He was a lovely guy. So he'd be like, hey, can I take a look at your outline?

Or he would be trading up for different people's outlines and stuff like that. And then he had what was labeled. I don't know if this is a real phenomenon or not, but what he said was a photographic memory. And he would scan a 100-page document, essentially be able to just recall the entire thing. And he would show up at the room. Good friend to have. And he would just nail the whole thing. Yes.

On the one hand, good friend to have. The other hand, I'm like, son of a bitch, you know, I'm like, why couldn't I have gotten that brain? Like, and I associated that with this innate intelligence that I didn't and never would have. Yeah. I mean, isn't there, aren't there lots of, it's so funny. I bet if we interviewed him,

he would like spontaneously say like, you know, I had this friend, John, I feel just love the way he was just like, like everyone loved him. Like he was, I don't know about that. He was someone loved this guy.

No, no. But that you have certain social skills, you have certain other cognitive tricks up your sleeve that he doesn't have. I mean, it's, it's funny how we always think like, you know, the grass is greener just because someone's more different than us.

You know, the grass is not greener just because someone has something that you don't have. No, I totally agree. So you got to a point where you're actually, okay, let me put my flag in the ground in this world of intelligence. And here's my theory, you know, so share a bit. That took a while to actually,

because I actually spent many, many years dutifully studying traditional intelligence So share a bit about that. new theory of intelligence called the dual process theory of intelligence. But leading up to that, that was the culmination of everything. But there was a good, you know, seven, eight years where I just put my head down and didn't tell anyone that I was working with my story because I didn't want them to think of me any differently. I didn't, you know, when I'm studying traditional, and I heard a lot of discriminatory things from intelligence researchers as I was doing this research that I had to bite my lower lip, know like we would print out data and there would be a scatter plot and there would be like some points some people whose IQ was about the same level as mine was you know when I was tested with a learning deficit when I was seven years old and they would make comments like oh look at those

dum-dums on that side of the curve or and I'm like I just wanted to be like mother you know like really so i just kept my mouth shut uh kept my head down and yeah it wasn't till my phd dissertation that i decided to redefine intelligence uh and i call it the dual process theory yeah is there i know this was your entire dissertation and it was years worth of two volumes is there a simple way that you could sort of share like this is a central idea behind your lens on what on intelligence for sure i can make it very simple so what dawned on me is that what had been missing from traditional theories of intelligence was about 50 percent of human cognition and that's was our that's our our smart unconscious so much of these iq tests put you on the spot and make you cognitively reason things

out. But there's a very smart, intuitive system within us that evolved, that was shared with other animals, that other animals don't have a consciousness like they do, but they can learn things really quickly, especially probabilistic patterns. So I adapted a whole bunch of tasks that were in the cognitive science literature for the purpose of just experimentally studying our unconscious ability to learn patterns and things. And I adapted them for intelligence research and published one of the first papers showing that individual differences in our intuitive capacities, you know, how people differ from each other was completely uncorrelated or very weakly correlated with differences in IQ. And that was very exciting to me because it suggested to me, wow, there's a whole other

world of intelligence within us that we haven't really measured. So I came up with this dual process theory of intelligence where I defined, now I'm trying to remember how I defined intelligence in 2009. I think I defined it as the ability to flexibly switch between different modes of thought depending on the task demands. That's how I define intelligence. And I didn't limit it to the conscious mode of thought. I definitely, there's different modes of thought. I also studied something called openness to experience in my dissertation, which led to my research in creativity. But I also suspected that there was some forms of cognition that artists have and stuff that wasn't being tapped into as well.

So that was another major argument in my dissertation is like, what about artistic cognition? You know, what about, so I studied something called late inhibition, which is a form of unconscious processing that artists have a very weak late inhibition, but that had been treated in the literature as only schizophrenics have that, you know, only like crazy people have that. And I was like, well, but a lot of creative people in this literature seem to have it too, right? So isn't there more to this story? So that was another big component of my dissertation as well. So you said that was how you define these things in 2009. Nine.

That was 10 years ago, as we sit here and record this. Yeah. How has that changed? I built on the dual process when I was working on Gifted, Intelligence Redefined, which came out in 2013. So by 2013, I was defining intelligence

as the dynamic interplay of ability and engagement in the pursuit of personal goals. It's a mouthful of a definition, but we can unpack it. Yeah, so let's do that. Tell me more. Yeah.

So intelligence seemed like we couldn't really think of intelligence or the intellectual capacity or potential of a human without taking into account two things in addition to their ability. One is how engaged are they in the task or what we're assessing and how enthusiastic or relevant is it to their life? And then how much is it associated with their personal goals in life? So I call it the theory of personal intelligence. So I have the theory of dual process theory of intelligence and I have the theory of personal intelligence. So those are two theories that I have.

These days, I'm much more into the theory of personal intelligence because I think it's more practical for helping to assess. We shouldn't just be about obsessively assessing all the time. It should be about bringing it out in lots of kids. To do so, we need to really ask them, not just stick them in a room and give them a completely abstract reasoning task that's divorced from their own life. I feel like we need to engage them in the relevance of the tasks we're

asking them to do and actually ask them, what are your dreams? What are your aspirations in life? Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting, though, to bring that into the conversation about intelligence because that starts to bring in factors that are external to the person. Well, I mean, it's some internal, but also external. But at least it brings in a lot more sort of environmental effect and other people.

It's like, it's this bigger ecosystem where so much of the classic understanding of intelligence is not like, this is you from the inside out. Like this is, this is your brain and it's literally fixed to like, it is what it is. And you can kind of make up for it to a certain extent by like, but, but kind of more or less is what it is. But the idea of bringing in how engaged are you in the thing that you're doing and how connected to a sense of personal purpose or, you know, like, like I really want to strive to, to understand or make this happen. Those are not two things that I think most people would associate with intelligence. Yeah. Called intelligence. And I've gotten that Chris, trust me. Like I, that's not something I have heard

that a lot. And I think that it's fair enough. But like, I never, in my book, Ungifted, I never disregarded the value of IQ testing. See, I've never been an anti-IQ person. A lot of people put me in that slot because they think I should be. But I'm like, I'm constantly surprising people what I actually think about things. This is kind of a story of my life as well. You know, people assume, oh, you must think this or that. And it's like, no, actually, I have a, I think two, I hold in mind two things that may seem contradictory, and I think they're both true. So I think we can differentiate general intelligence from personal intelligence. And I

do that in my book. I think there's people with high general intelligence, but very low personal intelligence, and vice versa. You know, there are people who high general intelligence, but very low personal intelligence and vice versa. There are people who are very quick learners and they learn things their whole life, but none of the things they learn matter to them or light them up. You can be a good processing machine and be as depressed as all heck in your life, you know, vice versa. You can not be like super quick to soak up information, but be deeply thoughtful and inspired, realize a vision. You can be a great, you can absolutely be a great leader still, you know, and realize a personal mission. Yeah.

So it's almost like it would be fair to say that personal intelligence is more connected to flourishing. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you see what I'm saying there, that we can still call it personal intelligence and not invalidate that general intelligence exists. Right, it's like two things.

Yeah. Both can be present. One can be present, the other can be present. Exactly. That's why I kind of, when you gave me that Sir Ken Robinson thing, it's like I feel like some of this stuff is pitted too much.

It's like, it's not this, it's this. And I feel like some of this stuff is pitted too much. It's like it's not this. It's this. And I feel like a lot of people sell books by saying things like that. I think what we need more of in our society is more of end thinking, what they would call improv, yes, end. But I think we need more of that in the public discourse. And you see this in politics. You're either a liberal or you're a Republican. And then I constantly shock people you know because i say

no i think that was a good point that that republican made no i think that was a bad point that democrat made and then sometimes i'll say the opposite because i like taking things on a case-by-case basis no no it's hard to get political there for a second no not at all i mean and and it's interesting that the idea of these sort of like two different types of intelligences and they're both playing a role and sort of like weaving together and having different outputs into the way that you experience life is really interesting also. And that, you know, if you just automatically say, well, that's not the valid one and I'm going to focus on this, you may get the benefit of this, but it's the sort of compound interest of both that leads

to sort of optimal human experience. I love the way you talk. That was so well put. You know, the subtitle of ungifted, which is one of your books, by the way, for those books, part of the subtitle was the many paths to greatness. Right. Yeah. So I really feel like I'd been building up to that. Yeah. Subtitle. Interesting also that your first sort of big thing, you know, the first thing you put out there or a lot of your research or early research is based around redefining intelligence. But as you mentioned, sort of along the way, you're existing largely in an academic world, which is a completely surreal universe that has its own rules, its own culture. And I still feel uncomfortable among academics. Right. But you're also, you're writing things where you're saying, okay, so I'm deep into academic theory. I'm deep into science. I'm deep into validation. And at the same time, you, because, and I wonder if this is because you have lived this as your own experience, you're also fiercely devoted to, but how does this influence the way that people live on a day-to-day life? Absolutely. What drives me the most these days

is my love of teaching. I feel like that is my problem. No, that is my number one sort of purpose these days, you know, is what lights me up is I get really enthusiastic. I consider myself a teacher in life. Maybe, but maybe it's not just through my college teaching, but like my blog at Scientific American, for instance, I view that as a form of teaching, you know, what I really like to do is I get enthusiastic about things. And then I want to impart that to people so that they can live a better life. You know, I mean, this is, does that sound familiar? But, but, you know, I created this course Columbia that I start teaching on Wednesday called the science of living well. And I'm really excited to think through with the students for what does the

science mean for their own individual life? I love it when I get asked the question, I'm on the radio, sometimes they ask me, well, what's the definition of living well? And it's like, give me a break. Like the definition for you is some only you can figure that out yeah it's so interesting because i i because you know the last question i always ask everyone here is like like if i offer the phrase to live a good life what does that mean to you and so many people have asked me like you know like well what is it like what is the and what is the universal answer to that 42 yeah. Yeah. And, and what I've realized now having like access to hundreds of people across every domain, every level of performance and achievement is that in fact, yes, there are some universal

themes, but each person's like experience of that is going to be very unique to them. And they language it different and they experience it different and they focus on something different. And, and I've had guests that have come back a couple of years later and because they're in a different part, they're not who they were, you know, like four years before. And there are different moments in their life, you know, like their answer changes. So it's like, it's a dynamic thing as well. I love that. It's so true. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

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We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. I'm endlessly fascinated with how people have chosen to spend their short lifespan on this earth. I'm more curious of it than – I'm like not judgmental. Maybe I should be more judgmental sometimes. But I just – people are like, but that person was an asshole. And it's like, no, I'm just fascinated with that.

Like that's how that person chose to spend their life is maybe arguing with people on Twitter all day, you know, but that's their choice. Sometimes I think we need to have more respect and honor the sacredness of a life, you know, of an existence. I really think there needs to be more sacredness about that and a recognition that you have chosen your life this way, but this other person has chosen to live their life their way. And it's okay if it's completely different than your own thing, but we need to have love and compassion for that root that they did. Because, you know, we were all endowed with the same basic structure of the brain. You know, what differs is there's very subtle differences, but that explains all the variation. You know, there's like, we share like 98% of the same DNA with chimpanzees, right? It's like the very small part that is unique, you know, to humans, like causes all the variation we see among humans.

And it's that very small variation that somehow causes us to be so different in how we choose to live our lives, but doesn't make one life a better life necessarily than another life. It's just interesting to think, oh, huh. Like I will look at a lot of examples of things with less of a judgmental lens where everyone else will judge, you know, be like, oh, you know, that person, you know, and just think like, wow, that, you know, what are the factors that really cause that person to be content living that life? It's just, I find it endlessly fascinating, you know? Yeah. It's almost like everybody is a case study. Everyone. But I mean, and I think we tend to overly, like I'm raising my hand because I'm human, just like everyone else. And I'm probably much less, I'm more closed than you are. I think I'd like to think I'm open,

but the truth is I look at people, I'm like, how could you want to live your days? So angry, so frustrated. And I find myself getting frustrated because I'll look at somebody's life and I'll be like, you have privilege, you have resources, you have relationships, you have status. And yet these are the choices that you're making when there are so many people that don't have the benefit of those things. And I think a to sort of live in a very negative place and contribute from a very negative place and contribute energy that is negative or destructive rather than constructive and additive. And my sense is that's what frustrates a lot of people, me included. And I wish I didn't feel that way. Curious just sort of what your lens on that is. I mean, that's how they chose to live their life. You know, in some ways, you know, we can have, I, I, I, on my podcast,

I had a great chat with Sharon Salzberg, who I love about this, this exact conversation we had. And, you know, we, we can, we can have a loving kindness practice where we recognize that person probably is suffering. Like, you know, if we wish less suffering in the world, you know, we should wish less suffering for that person as well, because it's only going to lead that person to live a better life. And there's a very strong correlation

between living a good life and contributing to the world in a positive way. There is a correlation there. I mean, like, there's a science of that. That's not a judgment value call. I'm saying there's a correlation. that. That's not a judgment value call. I'm saying there's a correlation. So the more that we can really help people live a good life, the more we will benefit the world. But you know, with some people you really see so clearly they're

suffering. They're, they're taking out what they're doing is they're projecting their traumas on the world and they're not owning up to it within themselves. And you can see that all over the place these days, all over, you know, like anyone who tries to control someone else's life, someone else's living well, you know, in such a tight way to conform to their own rigid or selfish needs, you know, they're clearly that that's a form of suffering on their own part, you know? Yeah. And I agree. And that's been the lens that I try and take, you know, is what must they have gone through, like, that's led them to this place in their life to be this way in the world. And it's a good question. And sometimes it's easier to find compassion.

That's true. Sometimes it's not. But I agree that that as a practice is, I think, is a healthy aspiration for all of us. I don't know. I think I should get angry more than I do. And that's something I'm trying to deal with. I'm not necessarily saying that's a strength of mine. I'm not bragging about it. I'm saying sometimes maybe I should get more angry than I am.

But my gut reaction when I see just horrible people is I feel pain for them. Maybe I shouldn't, like maybe I should be like, you mother, but I feel like there's so much more to the potential of their happiness, of their meaning in life. They don't realize. But I wonder if that's a factor of the way that your brain works,

where you see them as a puzzle. Maybe. And like, you love to deconstruct and figure out what's really, I do like deconstructing unless there are, there are exam, there, unless there are exceptions. So I'm much more compassionate about those who have internalizing disorders than externalizing disorders.

So I am less, you know, I'm not perfect in that sense. You know, like I'll see, like if people have externalizing disorders where they really are almost totally deflecting their inner pain to make other people suffer i see do see less of a puzzle more of like that person needs like to be stopped from that you know so yeah so right so and internalizing meaning more it's it's manifesting their own suffering versus externalizing yeah i think i feel more of that automatic feeling when i see so i see someone with like a borderline, my heart goes out to them,

you know, like, because you can clearly, clearly see, and that's a great case. Borderline is a case I, because I've studied that it pretty in depth in the general population. We just call it vulnerable narcissism.

People who are such a, so sensitive to rejection that they avoid the world and, and they avoid any criticism. They're, They're just too delicately sensitive about it because they, inside, at a deep fundamental level, they think they're not worthy of love. They think, but it sometimes manifests itself in terms of grandiose delusions, like I'm actually the best. It's a very paradoxical thing, very paradoxical, but my heart goes out to them big time. We have a little bit of that, all that in all of us, by the way. So it's just a continuum, you know? So,

but my heart goes out because they're not really hurting, you know, they may hurt others, but they really are mostly like limiting them, their own selves from living a full life. Yeah. Which kind of sets us up for something else I really want to explore to you. And that's your most recent work, which is this idea of, you'll give me your language for it, but stepping into your potential, understanding, stepping into 10, whether you call it flourishing, whether you call it self-actualization, it's the top of Maslow's hierarchy. And I know you've gone deep into what's publicly been seen as Maslow's hierarchy and discovered that there's actually a lot more to that.

There is. There are a lot of misconceptions about the hierarchy of needs, things that Maslow's hierarchy and discover that there's actually a lot more to that. There is. There are a lot of misconceptions about the hierarchy of needs, things that Maslow didn't actually say, or he never depicted it as a pyramid. Oh, no kidding. No, no kidding. He did say there was a prepotency of needs, but he never said it was like a level like a video game where you get one and when you get to the next level, you never go back to the other level. He explicitly said

that we're constantly regressing, you know, and he never drew it. Like I said, that was in his business textbooks. He started to do that to depict his theory after he passed away or maybe even the last couple of years of his life, they started doing that. I would have, I wish I could have had a conversation with him to see what, what do you think of that? What do you think of what they're doing there? But there's a lot of other misconceptions. A really quite big misconception is that he thought self-actualization was the pinnacle. He actually didn't. The last couple of years of his life, he really got very much more spiritual and started to view transcendence as more important than self-actualization.

Tell me, how do you distinguish those two things? Well, you could kind of see self-actualization as bridge to transcendence. So you can see it as, you know, realizing your highest potential, your own, you know, idiosyncratic individual greatest strength. And then it's in the service of making the largest positive impact in the world. That would be the transcendent part. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't always have to be about impact. So much of it is just about being. So when we reach certain states of consciousness where we are really no longer focused on ourself, you know, we're really, you know, like the flow. I think that when we enter the flow state, we've entered a state of transcendence of a sort, you know, and self-actualization is an important bridge to that because we're more likely to enter flow if we really are operating at a great match between our highest

potentialities and a task that is in front of us. It's so interesting that you, that you keyed in on the word impact as sort of publicly, you know, when you, when you say you make your highest contribution, people immediately translate to impact on others. And it's funny because I feel, you know, you have the research background behind it and you've gone so deep into it. I know Maslow's work and I haven't, but my intuitive sense for a long time now, and this is sort of the way I've been modeling things in my head, is that, you know, we can reach sort of that state in one of two ways. One is, and it's partly is certainly that what's, what's driving us on a deeper level. You know, there are, some of

us are driven by some kind of source code that manifests its highest contribution in a way that leads naturally to an outward impact on other people. Whereas other people get to that same place, but it manifests itself in a way where you feel like that thing inside of you is being as fully expressed as it could possibly be expressed. And you are, there is no gap between you and the world. And yeah. Correct. That's what Maslow called a peak experience. That's interesting. And you being that person very often has tremendous impact simply because of what radiates from you. That's right. And artists is doing like they're in that place where they're in creating magical things that other people interact with it.

That's not why you're doing it. It just happens to be like a beautiful side effect. That's transcendence. Just by you being who you are in the world is making the world a better place. It's about being, not doing. But I think it's interesting because my sense is that there's a morality play here where the thing where it's like you do the thing where there is a clearly delineated path to external impact and people like, yeah, that is valid valid contribution that is you doing the best work that is you in the transcendent zone but you do the thing where like you're just an artist and

you're doing your absolute best work you know where it rises to the level where you lose yourself in the thing and the wall drops between you the thing in the world and you know that that's not as valid somehow that that's more self-oriented that's unfortunate that's really unfortunate that's a big misrepresentation of what malow thought about self-actualization as this selfish, individualistic pursuit, despite the impact on others. That's not how he viewed it. Yeah. So you have, I mean, this has also become an area of research for you, recent research. It has, yes.

Tell me a bit about what you've been up to with that. In multiple areas, some which will be revealed hopefully someday if I ever publish this book I'm working on. I hope I will. Can I knock on wood? Another area of research I can talk about right now is that I did go through Maslow's writings and his characteristics of self-actualizing people, and I created scales to, after some pilot testing, I wanted to see which ones held. He posited 17 in his research. And I found that- 17 pieces of the self-actualizing characteristics. Okay.

And he wrote this paper called Self-Actualizing People, which was not based on very good science. It was based on his informal studies of science, his Brooklyn College students, like famous people that he thought were self-actualized, you know, just basically reading their biography and stuff. So it wasn't systematic. I found about, I found 10 characteristics. You know, I eliminated some redundancies and then some others couldn't come up with coherent scales to measure them. But I found a list of 10 that I could reliably measure and that all held together. Yeah.

You know, all fed into a hierarch, higher order. Just like there's general intelligence, I found a general self-actualization. So essentially, you did research that identified 10 key characteristics of self-actualization. Yeah. Can you run through those quickly? I know it's like putting you on the spot. Do you remember all 10? You know, people should certainly go to selfactualizationtest.com and take the test and show them where they are on the various

characteristics. But there's things that range from equanimity to acceptance to authenticity to peak experiences. Creative spirit would be another one, humanitarianism. But it's not really humanitarianism in the sense, and I'm thinking about renaming that actually it's more like there are two which i'm thinking of rename relabeling so it's more about like it's just social interest isn't we're not saying that it's like you have to like have this dream of of being a gandhi but it's just like are you completely devoid of all implications of your work for you know like do you care about humanity at all you know invested in some way in other in some yeah yeah so i mean it's interesting so these would be essentially 10 characteristics truth-seeking is another one yeah oh that's interesting too so 10 characteristics that are correlated in some way individually each one has its own

correlation with in some way shape or form self-actualization with self-actualization right and self-actualization just like iq tell me like a not just like a common language word or phrase for self-actualization for anyone who's not kind of familiar with this or like what is the experience of self-actualization how does that actually show up in your life if you're self-actualized what a great question well it is a very nebulous term. And I mean, there isn't like, I don't have a precise definition. You know, I, like I said earlier, it's like, what is, what is your own, like, what, what makes you the best you in the whole world? You know, like there is something within you that you can literally be the best of in the whole world because you're the

only one that has those characters. You're the only one in the world that can develop those potentialities no one else can you know because of your unique constellation of traits so what is that thing that is deep within you potential that you want to actualize that will make you the most idiosyncratic personally significant realization it doesn't necessarily I said, then we can get the transcendence part in there as well. But just the self-actualization part is just having to do with like the individual thing because Maslow's in his hierarchy, he had all these other basic needs. Those are things though that evolutionarily we all share with each other.

So self-actualization is that need to realize that thing that we don't share with everyone else. Self-actualization is that need, though. We're never fully happy or feel fully fulfilled if we just get our stomach fed, if we just get our esteem needs fed. You constantly hear about people who reach the height of publicly recognized achievement and say, wow, I still feel so deeply unsatisfied. We're always striving for higher ceilings on human nature.

And that's what I really loved about Maslow's work and why I think we need to bring it back. Yeah. And it's so interesting. And also as you lay this out, what's interesting to me is, so I'm certainly not a scholar, but I've done some work and some research and some reading and some studying in Eastern philosophy and spiritual traditions like Buddhism and yoga, you know, the eight limb path yoga, especially Ashtanga yoga with certain moral constraints and offerings and teachings. And what's interesting is like there's an eight limb path to Ashtanga yoga, you know,

and it starts out with very mundane practices designed largely just to take care of your basic functionality needs. And it moves up to these, really, it moves up to these more esoteric mindset-based things. And the ultimate goal, the final number eight in that path is the Sanskrit word is samadhi, which translates to bliss, which also could be called transcendence. So it's interesting to see the overlay between what you're saying and these traditions. Huge overlay. And I've tried to, a project that I'm currently working on, I map all these different words. I have a chart of like, they're all saying the same thing, like sati.

We're all talking about the same thing at the highest sort of stage of human consciousness. And yeah. So let me ask you this, and maybe this is kind of like a good come full circle question also. You know, you're, you have gone massively down the academic, you know, rabbit hole down the research. Is that a good thing? No, it is. You know, like, you know, like you, you're, you're deeply steeped in the world of science, of validation, of, you know,

like peer reviewed, of publication, of having other people vet and defending your work. And you've sort of come around increasingly. And you're also deeply steeped in the world of positive psychology, which is, I would almost argue, more outwardly focused on the human condition. It's a bit more applied, I think, than some other fields. And now you're kind of coming to this place where your work is connected to these things where now you're actually mapping and seeing all these overlays with thousands of your old spiritual traditions and paths that don't have any of this scientific validation or anything like this. But it seems like it's all pointing back to a lot of the same stuff.

Right. It's almost like, why do we need any of this? Right. Just listen to the, cause it's funny. Cause I I've often looked at positive psychology and, and said, well, well, huh, this is interesting. It's always felt like the scientific validation of Buddhism to me. Everything seems to be the scientific validation. These days, yes. Every sort of new form of therapy these days includes mindfulness, you the ACT approach, like the DBT. It's all like that needs to be a component of it or else it's somehow not considered a valid form of therapy. No, it's a very good point. I mean I've talked to – I have other friends who are writers who write about do self-help stuff and they just see they they see

like no value in in systematic scientific research you know like it's just like there's like this is but i will say it i not with you very much not with you but with some of these other people who who do have this kind of attitude is i see an awful lot of hubris in them in that they think they have all the answers though what i like about science is that it it offers us a lot of hubris in them in that they think they have all the answers though. What I like about science is that it offers us a lot of humility. It kind of allows me to recognize that I don't know if what I think is true is really true. And it allows me to really look into the evidence and see what does the totality of the evidence suggest. It offers, there's intellectual humility, a mindset of being a scientist, not saying all scientists

have intellectual humility, but there's a certain way of thinking when you're a scientist that I quite like. And I do see a lot of people in this self-help development space spouting a lot of nonsense, you know, like maybe they didn't, maybe they should just listen to Buddha more. Maybe that's a good point that you could make is that, well, maybe it's not, they need to learn science for me. They just need to like, stop being so hubristic and actually listen to people who got it right, you know, back in the day. But I see a lot of hubris. Yeah. And I think, like you said, I think my sense is,

there's a lot of good process out there, but we all, you know, when we start to want to attach our name to it as being something unique and new and, and like, this is my thing. I think it's, that's where we get tripped up. And like you know, when we start to want to attach our name to it as being something unique and new and like this is my thing, I think it's that's where we get tripped up. And like you said, that happens in the world of science all the time. Also, you know, it's we're seeing we're seeing so much of that psychology. A lot of that is really being challenged these days. But I agree. I think fundamentally, you know, there's the scientific process exists.

It starts with a question. And like and in theory, the ultimate goal is just the truth. It's not proving yourself right. But I think we all get caught up, whether it's in the world of academia and science, whether it's the world of pop psychology or self-help. And even in the world of those spiritual traditions, where people want to create their own special sauce modern overlay, they're like, well, how can I carve out my piece of this where i can put my name on the theory like i said i'm human too so i'm raising my hand like they're but i think that is always maybe like that to me is the quest like how

can we keep how can we keep getting back to like what is true and then and and and what is like my things are what is true and what is useful. Yeah. You know, it always comes back to that to me. Well, that's wonderful. It's also wonderful that you're not dismissing the, like the truth is part of your value system. Cause I don't think that's the part and it's not necessarily everyone's value system. Yeah. But hopefully it'll be more so. And like I said, I'm a human being, so I'm not always in that place. That's my aspiration. Of course. There are massively ego-driven trips that I go on like everybody else.

Oh, my gosh. I'll be the first one to join you right there with that. Yeah. Of course. So there's so many other things that we could talk about. Maybe at some point down the road we'll have more conversations, especially once the next evolution of your work is out there. I was going to say, when i publish this book it will happen it will happen definitely a year or so because there's a lot more that i know you're

sort of sitting on right now that once it's out there we'll circle back on yeah i'm so glad we made this happen so i want to come full circle with that question that i shared i i ask everybody at the end which is if i offer out the phrase to live a good life to you in this moment, what does that mean? Yeah, I really thought the Greeks got it right when they talked about eudaimonia, living life in accord with your most authentically felt values and your highest, greatest strengths. To me, that would be a fair definition of living a life well lived. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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