Good Life Project - Roundtable: Gabra Zackman & Daniel Lerner

Episode Date: April 20, 2016

Today's Good Life Project Roundtable™ features guests-in-residence Daniel Lerner and Gabra Zackman. This is session 1 in their three-week residency.Dan Lerner is a leading expert on elite performance, excellence and the realization of unique potential, working with musicians, athletes, and numerous Fortune 500 companies and executives. He's on the faculty at both New York University (where he teaches the always waitlisted “The Science of Happiness”) and the University of Pennsylvania, where he works with the graduate program in Applied Positive Psychology. He is currently writing a book about the process and mindset that leads to healthy, uniquely individual excellence.Gabra Zackman is an actress, writer and voice over artist, frequent traveler and lover of adventure. She works regularly in theater, has a parallel and sustaining career in audiobook narration, having recorded over 300 audiobooks to date, and has had great success with her first writing contract,the humorous, romantic, spy-centered BOD SQUAD series. Her life philosophy is 'Say yes...and rock what you got'. They'll be our guests-in-residence for the next three weeks, so buckle up.Our three topics in this episode:Is there a double-standard for male Romance book models?Who are the musicians creating real social commentary today?How is technology interacting with conversation soft signals?It's fast-paced, fun, utterly unscripted and at times a bit raw, but always good-natured and very real. Enjoy! And let us know if you like this format, over on social media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, this is Jonathan Fields from Good Life Project. I am here for Good Life Project Roundtable with two awesome human beings, my guests in residence for the next three weeks, including today. I have one of our regular guests, Gabra Zachman, who is a legendary voice artist, romance author, actor, all around human being, and I'm pretty sure taller than me. On my right, I have Mr. Daniel Lerner, who is an expert in expertise and expert performance, a positive psychology madman, a soon to be author. What else am I missing here that's really fancy? I don't even know where to begin. Wears a sweater vest really well.

Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. And it's probably a similar height as me, in case you're wondering. Yeah. Which means I'm also less tall than Gabbert Zachman. Oh, my God. But not shorter than that. But we're both okay with that.

Yes, we are. We have discussed previously, I think that the listening audience should know, that romance novel covers were discussed previously. So you can only imagine what we're sitting here in. You can only imagine what we're dressed in right now. My hair is so long right now, it's ridiculous. It's not a Republic conversation. Someone put the javelin on the – We're on the high seas.

Put the spear aside for the moment. Before we get massively sidetracked, which is about to happen in about 30 seconds, if you want to find Gabra, you can find her at GabraZachman.com. And if you want to find Dan, you can find him at DanielLerner.com. Any silent letters in any of those that we need to know about? Yeah, no, but boring but functional, right? Our names as websites. We may mix up the URLs in week two and three of the residency. Yes, totally.

Stay tuned. By the way, if you do recognize Gabra's voice, and it's not from these podcasts, we know where you recognize them from. It's probably because she's read a romance novel that you've, you know, just happened to enjoy in some way. Let's, so if you're not familiar with this format, we go around the table, each one of us throws out a topic and we just jam on it until it is unjammed. So why don't we start out with Gabra Zachman? Ah, fantastic.

Oh, well, you know what? This is great. I had thought that it would be really fun because I'm a great lover of romance to bring something connected to the romance world. You know, Jonathan and I were talking earlier about what an extraordinary market the romance novel world is. Hugely, hugely selling market. And one of my friends in the industry, in the audiobook industry, sent me this amazing article about the men who pose for the covers of romance novels and how it was a spotlight on this one guy who had done, you know, 400 covers of novels that we've all, that we all know about, very popular stuff, but that he's actually still working his day job.

He just doesn't really make all that much money. And he's like, it's awesome. And they showed like a piece of the industry of like, you know, a couple different choices of him on different covers and how they might have reworked it and this and that. Seems like a sweetheart. But anyway, I just wanted to kind of throw forth this idea of so here we are right women's romance becomes this huge market hugely lucrative the half-naked dude on the cover actually not being paid very well for his work. Discussed. Objectified for his text. Well, that's my question. That's right. Are we so objectified? Used well?

Hey, buddy, you had it coming? You know, usually we would see the opposite. I just loved the idea of that. Can I ask another question related to this? Yes, of course. I'm happy to dive into your answer. I know Dan already has the answer because he has the answer to everything. But what pops into my head is

if the same dude is on the cover of 400 different books, and I'm assuming that the books are written about different male characters each time, does it kind of take away from the fact that the readers are seeing the identical person being put, or is the face obscured on most covers or something? Well, right. What a wonderful, wonderful question. I had the same thought. You know, frankly, I mean, all joking, both aside or not aside, I feel like between obscuring the face, like it might just be a pecs shot a lot of the time. But also it might be like he's wigged in long hair, right?

He's on the front of a Viking ship suddenly with like long hair and a helmet on, which doesn't look like the same dude who's got crazy buzzed cut with a military you know with dog tags so i don't i don't know that it looks that we know it's the same guy or just nobody who's reading these books really cares but that's the point also so once again like best objectification of all times i mean i just i was fascinated by the fact that this dude that this dude is not making a whole heck of a lot of money and he's not i mean i think some of the numbers were cited he's really not making a whole lot of money doing this he can't live on it have you met him by the way have you have you seen him no no this is i mean i've seen him many many times on covers of various no this is just an article that i've

that i was reading i'm just curious he's nothing. Maybe he's just not that good looking and he's just stoked to be objectified. Well, let me tell you what. In print, he's extremely good looking. I mean, he's a terrific – the point is that he's a terrific looking male model. I have a face for radio, right? But in print, I'm extremely good looking, too. And we all know that's a big fat lie. Photoshop, man.

Yeah, good question. All great questions. I mean, I just wonder, it just seems like an interesting role reversal when you typically have male-dominated fields where the men are making all of the money, but women who are modeling might be objectified, but usually making, I mean, female models make a fortune, right? So then here's this like weird moment in which it's generally women writers who are making a fortune writing these books now, if they're lucky, and the guy on the cover is actually not making a lot of money. I loved it. This is interesting to me on another level, too, because I was just at, I kind of was an interloper and an outsider in a small, intensive sort of book insider type of gathering where the room is populated with a number of top romance writers. Awesome. And one of them was sharing how she likes to actually

hire her own models for the book cover shoots and pays them, I think it's a couple thousand dollars. Oh, now that's awesome. Yeah. Well, that's enterprising and that's really cool because she wants it to look a certain way. Is that what it's about? She wants it to look like a vision in her head? Exactly. She's like, this is exactly what, like, I know the person, I know the body, I know the

way I want the whole thing to look and I'm willing to actually pay to make that happen. But it sounds like that's very much the outlier. I would have assumed that it was a lot of just stock photo too, but. Well, it might be. It might very well be. And I wonder if that's actually what's going on. I wonder if this particular guy has, you know, has posed and he's got like, you know, 500 stock photos out there. And what's happening is that he's actually just making a small percentage every time they're licensed for a different book,

but nobody actually brings him in to pose. Yeah. That's well said. That might, yeah. I wonder if that's what's going on there. It could be. In which case, because there's, I mean, there are massive, you know, like online stock photo places where you can get stuff, then it, you know, then does that actually change the whole equation?

Because now you're saying, well, it's not that he's showing up for 400 gigs and getting paid nothing. It's that he showed up for five gigs, cranked out a whole bunch of images, and now he just goes about his life. And those are throwing off like a nice side income without him purely leveraging his, quote, intellectual property. That's right. No, that's a great question. I do think based on the article, I think it was the first one. I do think he actually does do a whole bunch of shoots.

They were actually showing some of the shoots, which makes me think that it was in the present. Did they say how much he was actually paid per shoot? No, I don't know that they cited that, but I think they said that he does it regularly as a job, but that maybe total income is like $20,000. Got it. Right, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but certainly nothing to live on. Right, divided by 400. That's right.

I don't know. Responses, Dan? You know, the romance novel thing, and to take a slight tangent here, but the romance novel thing fascinates me. Yeah, me too. I could imagine it must, which is great, seeing as you're writing them. And, you know, one of the things that comes to mind is the opening of one of my favorite books, The Gift, we've discussed. I don't know if you're familiar with it by Lewis Hyde. Yes.

And he opens the book by saying every Harlequin's romance novel is X amount of pages. Every three months, five come out. I'm making the numbers up. Right. It's X amount of pages. No one kisses until page 70-something. There's no other physical interaction until page 90-something. And then all these things that happen consistently throughout.

So one of the things that fascinates me is that not only is – clearly they're not all formulaic. This is just a Harlequin thing. But that the formula of people who buy that kind of romance novel consistently, they really enjoy a consistent pace and plot and an outcome. And apparently they enjoy a consistent image too on the cover. Oh, I see. Yes. I mean, now clearly that would be an argument to bump his fee up. But at the same time, it's really interesting to hear that they want that image so consistently. They're willing to go back to the well to do it repeatedly.

Maybe one week it's dog tags and the next week it's Captain Hook gear. But either way, think about Fabio. That's right. And they talked a lot about Fabio in this article actually

for that exact reason. You're right. Was he really well paid? You know, that's actually a great question. He had certainly more fame but apparently was maybe just a notch above sort of the amount of work Really well paid? You know, that's actually a great question. He had certainly more fame. Right.

But apparently was maybe just a notch above sort of the amount of work that this guy does. Right. You know, so I'm not, I don't know. I really don't. You also parlayed it into something. Fabio, I mean, we knew Fabio post or at least not only as the cover of, but as Fabio. Yeah. I mean, I've never read a romance romance novel yet i certainly know who he is and what he looks like you've taken a vested interest in him gorgeous flowing mane about what i would

do for that hair yeah i want the hair on my chest so for it anywhere just about how are we feeling about this topic great i think that's i think that that's it i just wanted to chat about it a little bit. Yeah. Because, of course, I think you guys expect me, I hope you expect me to bring in something a little bit sensual and a little bit romance-oriented. I hope you expect that. That's right.

That's why I'm here. I'd actually be disappointed if it didn't, and there it was, or is. Yeah. I just wanted, so we've started it out. Awesome. We've started it. The gates are open. Sweet.

Yeah. Mr. Lerner, what's on your mind today? Oh, boy. There's so much stuff happening in my mind right now. But seeing as we are right in the middle of a crazy, weird, frightening, gripping election cycle, let's not talk about that right now. Instead of that, because I have no idea. Could that go on forever? So Merle Haggard died yesterday.

I heard that. And I would not necessarily been something that caught my eye, but I found myself at the Museum of American History last weekend in DC. And we were going through the transportation exhibit. And there was an exhibit about the Dust Bowl years when people were traveling from Oklahoma oklahoma and those locations to the west and they take you through one family's journey

and then you get to the end and it turns out that these people are myrtle haggard's parents oh so i thought this is really interesting i want to get to know a bit more about Merle Haggard. And I did about two days before he passed away. What caught my brain and what I'm curious to discuss a little bit is I thought about what it is that he had done, which is really comment on the times, on socially and politically and the left and the right and otherwise, was something that we have seen throughout the years. We've seen it with Dylan and we've seen it with Guthrie. We've seen it with lots of different people. But who's doing it now? That's what I'm curious about. I'm curious about who are the – whether it's musicians or creatives.

And I know there are definitely some authors out there. I guess really, who are the musicians who are commenting, using that medium to comment on modern times? Not that I have a doubt about it. I'm just curious to know who comes to mind for you right now. So musicians who are commenting, creating like real social commentary. I find it aggravating that Dan brought in something so thought-provoking. Aggravating. Are you going to punch me i was gonna talk about if i were closer to you i would and like sitting you know two inches too far to punch you you see he's a smart one i know that's well i know you're smart too but no between me and him i've always said he's the smart one that's

interesting i think he is the smart one you said's interesting. I think he is the smart one. You didn't say smart. You said short one. Was that what I was saying? That's what you were saying, yeah. Oh, never mind. Well, as long as I can be the cute one. Of course. All right. And smart.

You know, the first thing that came to mind, I'm going to not answer the question. I'm going to instead say, for whatever reason and why I think it's an excellent, excellent question is because no musicians come to mind. What comes to mind for me are comedians, particularly Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And that kind of those like incisive, incisive, you know, funny commentators. That's who I think is doing that now but musicians what do you think so two things um come to mind and maybe the two extremes also so one my all-time favorite band which is you too oh still rocking it out still creating amazing music so i'm in concert last the end of last year and they blew my mind and their whole last album was was again like very deep and and direct there was a lot of political and social commentary in and they've always been that way you know since the early days with you know Sunday Blade Sunday and YouTube war and they've they've consistently like over like 30 years now you know so they're part of the old guard but they're still in my mind as good and as relevant as they've consistently, over like 30 years now, so they're part of the old guard,

but they're still, in my mind, as good and as relevant as they've ever been, and they've got, their profile has built, and their gravitas as human beings, and their relationships and their involvement in world affairs has built to a place where I listen to them more from a place of teens expressing an angsty, horrible, or local political situation and more from people who are sort of world-worn and gone and seen and done and participated and are just deeply devoted to sustained change and to shining lights.

So to me, that's sort of the old guard. The bigger challenge I have, maybe it's just because I'm not as dialed in to sort of who's newer on the scene, that's really adding strong, telling exposition on this is the reality today. There was a window of time where we watched the documentary

Straight Outta Compton a couple of weeks ago, and it was like NWA, and that whole window where they were, everyone who came out of that scene was kind of attached for their lyrics and stuff like that. And they're like, and their defense was consistently, look, we're just telling you about the lives we're living. Like you may not like it, but we walk out the door in the morning and this is what we're running from. And this is how we're, this is how we see like these different people. This is how we interact with them. This is our lives. And we're telling you the truth of our realities and deal with it.

So flash forward to today, the loudest voices, I don't know if those are the voices that are actually making that level of commentary or shining the light. Obviously, one of the loudest out there today is Kanye West. I don't understand what he's trying, the points he's trying. And maybe, again, I'm the old dude in the room. So maybe I just don't get sort of where he's coming from. It's interesting when I think about like who's newer on the scene where I think there's really sort of a strong contemplative side that's releasing itself through the music. I'm sure it's out there

but um i gotta think a little bit more i know i i love i love the question i really really love the question because i think at at uh at one time in the world it was what everyone was doing we think about the 60s yeah that's what everyone was doing now you know i always think through a lens of i've been having these conversations about the theater which similarly at one time was all politicized and that now it's just not our voices don't rise in the same way it's what it was originally created for in certain countries the theater is highly highly highly political and it it's not so it's not so in the same way but i think i'm not up on the my music loves are generally of an older time they're jazz and blues and 90s music frankly

yeah i mean i feel like also that there's so much of the pursuit of fame for fame's sake that music and i don't know theater maybe theater and maybe even writing or just maybe even form that some forms that have been known traditionally as as artistic expression also become known as vehicles to accelerate your path to fame. And that that becomes the primary pursuit rather than there's something inside me that has to get out or there's some commentary that I want to make with what I'm creating. What do you offer the questions? What do you think? You know, I hear both sides, and it's really a challenge because as older people in the room, how in touch are we with

the music that's coming out? I was just curious to hear your answers, to be honest. When I think about it, I think the idea of the hip-hop movement of the 90s was huge, you know, because I think on Merle Haggard, I think about Guthrie and Dylan, all they had was a guitar, right? That's all they had. They couldn't afford anything else.

They came out of these really challenging places. And it's not so dissimilar when it comes to hip-hop in the 90s. And I would imagine that some of that is still coming out, although the idea of it being a vehicle for fame certainly has to play in. Ooh, someone just popped into my mind. What's that? Macklemore. Okay. Oh, that's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had, what was the name of the song? It was all about equality. Oh, yeah. Like on Yeah, yeah, yeah. He had, what was the name of the song? It was all about equality. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like on the name of the song. But he's actually somebody who seems like he kind of came out of nowhere. He's massively popular. And then, yeah, there's some real social commentary in his work.

You know, I don't know if you saw his performance at the Grammys, but this is how out of touch I am with these things. But when Kendrick Lamar stepped up on stage, did you see that by any chance? I did, I did. Blew me away. Blew me away also. I was like, that's the best thing I've ever seen in the Grammys. That was amazing. And it was all about social commentary.

You know, the interesting thing is it's so far removed from our lives in many ways that when I think back about the Haggards and the Dylans and those folks, they're talking about – they were talking about big scope political issues. And what a lot of these guys seem to be talking about are no less important, but I should say men and women are talking about are no less important, but they are more niche kind of things. I'm like, I can't relate to that at all. You know, as opposed to the other folks who are talking about this is what's happening to the left and the right right now. And we are in the middle of this crazy, wacky political place where left and right is like totally ripe to be commented on, which comedians do all the time, as you pointed out. Some of the best – some of my favorite, I should say, political commentary happens every Saturday night.

You go to SNL and they're going to say something about it. I miss Jon Stewart terribly because he'd be having a field day. The only reason why I won't even say the candidate's name, the only reason why should that candidate be elected would be amazing is because Jon Stewart could skewer them for the next four years. But I won't go there. But that's an interesting one. I'm waiting for someone to comment on what's happening on the big picture, umbrella picture that we see in politics. But there are amazing people out there, no doubt.

No doubt. And I also, I do wonder too, and riff just for a second, is I've always been fascinated by artists' first three albums, sometimes four and rarely, and sometimes five. Because I wonder if they lose touch. You mean the more successful they get? Yes, exactly. The farther away they get from the roots that made them who they are.

So if we talk about the early NWA, if we talk about the early Bruce Springsteen, if we talk about the early U2, which was really Sunday Bloody Sunday, your full-time reality, then the moment you succeed, there's a really strong likelihood that you're going to leverage whatever success and now resources that you have to move out of that really hard scenario as quickly as humanly possible and to a much better place, you know, and that, but then if you turn around, you're like, it's the further you drift from the day to day, you know, like trauma of the thing that, you know, eventually gave you like all that stuff to write about or talk about or sing about or paint about, you know, does that, that's got to make it, you know, if you've, you have to redefine your experience of every day and, and choose, you know, as I drift further and further away from that source of pain, and it becomes less and less felt, less and less embodied every day that I'm further from it, and I feel it less and less, you're like, are you either going to put yourself back into that place in the name of, you know, like being able to feel it enough to write in a

really powerful way? Or are you going to somehow try and figure out how to refocus the lens on other things? So I think that's kind of what you two did in my mind. They started out with a very local situation, like this is brutal pain that we're feeling in our town. And as they gained the ability to withdraw themselves from that, and also as a lot of that circumstance changed politically over the years you know they shifted their spotlights and turned them into floodlights and they they flooded other parts of the world where there was still equal pain and said we may be out of the place that brought us here but we still have a social obligation to we we still have the yearning to make music and to comment and we still have a

sense of obligation to leverage whatever reach we've developed to like flood you know turn the floodlights on the other places of the world that still are mired in this deep deep sorrow um and do something about it i wonder if that sense of civic responsibility is really diminishing in a major way as people move into a place of fame these days that's such a smart thing i'm kidding totally kidding such a that's such a smart smart way of putting that because yeah think about the the i think what one needs to create the best art is the personal the more personal it is the more deeply felt it is the better the art is always. And you're right. As one leverages to a different place in life, there's an extraordinary amount of selflessness that would go into shining a

spotlight on people who are where you were before you dragged yourself out of whatever that is. That could even just be heartbreak. You know, a lot of people write songs about heartbreak. Then suddenly when you're feeling better, you're going to write a song for everybody else's heartbreak. That's extraordinarily selfless. Beautiful, but selfless. But maybe that's part of what's going on. If you began your career because you really cared about the topic itself rather than just the fame, as Jonathan indicated before. And if you started off for the fame, then it's not like you have the same kind of feeling for what it is that's happening with somebody else.

Yeah. And I mean, and I think there's a third option too, which is that your form of expression was largely a form of personal therapy. Yeah, absolutely. To excise, to either excise or survive, you know, like and find a way to flourish in the face of an extreme circumstance. And when that circumstance resolves or goes away, you find a way to process your way through it. The primary motivation, which was, you know, to be a source of therapy, to sustain you through really brutal times, goes away. And then you have to redefine who you are and why you're doing this thing

and whether you continue when that thing no longer exists. And I think it's how people choose to redefine what they express in that next wave that my guess is really defines them, not just as artists, but as human beings. That's awesome. Or I could just be making that all up. But we're pretty much making this all up. It worked. Yeah, I would say fields for the win on that one.

It's quite beautiful. It's not a zero-zone game. Turning from a spotlight to... Oh, I'm sorry. I thought that's what it was. That's why I'm here, actually. No, we're supposed to vote after we stop recording. Nobody's supposed to know about it, okay?

It's just between us. Oh, right. I still say spotlight to floodlight is the stickiest of the day. Hashtag. Hashtag. All right. So circling around to... I'll throw out the last topic here. Great. Yeah. Hashtag. All right. So circling around to, I'll throw out the last topic here.

Great. And the topic is soft signals. Soft signals. And so what do I mean by that? I mean, I'm really curious about the way that we communicate in subtle ways and nuanced ways

and non-verbal ways and how technology is interacting with that. So we've all heard various stats thrown out, and I think one of the things that's thrown around all the time is that 75% of communication is actually nonverbal. I've done a little bit of research on that, and it turns out that actually a lot of that original,

if you guys only knew what just happened here. Yes, the nonverbal communication that's happening around this too. Yes, a certain nonverbal gesture was just offered in my direction. Sorry. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Won't say who did it. Dan did keep his clothes on in case anyone's concerned.

Hold on, I'm flushing. Anyway, so we've been told like 75, 80% of communication is nonverbal. It turns out when you really do the research that that data was completely misconstrued. That's really not the truth of it. But still, there is a very substantial part of communication that's nuanced, that's nonverbal, that's micro expressions, that's tonality, rhythm, pace, Gabby, you know this of anyone, because you make a living with your voice from people who can't see you. And the way that micro-expressions, that's tonality, rhythm, pace. Gabby, you know this of anyone because you make a living with your voice from people who can't see you and the way that you use it is everything. And when I think about the way that soft signals are critically important to

our understanding of each other as human beings and our cultivation of empathy as a society, I wonder what technology is doing with soft signals. And on the one hand, I think to myself, well, I think soft signals, there are a lot of them that probably just, you know, vanish because they, you just can't perceive them, you know, and we try and make up for it with emoticons. Oh, yes. And, but then on the other hand, if we accept the fact that soft signals are important, and we accept the fact that technology is here to stay, is there a way to create a new language of soft signals through technology? So what I would love for you guys to respond to is if you just give me the answers, the absolute definitive answers to these questions, then I will be whole and I can sleep well tonight.

Well, I think I'd like to turn this over to Dan because I believe that Dan- Because he's the king of the jester? No, no. It's because I think Dan was introduced as an expert in expertise, right? Which tends to make me think that he must be an expert in this. He's actually- What am I not an expert in these days? He's an expert in expertise, which means he's...

He's actually a comic strip artist. I just like the alliteration of expert and expertise. Or did you mean expertise as in striptease? Either one. No, I have thoughts on this, but I would actually... All joking aside, I would love to hear Dan's thoughts. Daniel, you are the positive psychology person in the room, meaning you know everything about human behavior. That's true.

Because basically you know everything about everything. That's true, too. That's true, too. And let me just go through my mental files here and figure out. You know, so I think what comes to mind for me first is, and I hate to say this is not going to be an answer. It's going to be more of a wondering aloud, amusing, if you will, is how many tens of thousands of years it's taken for us to develop the soft signal language, to be comfortable with understanding the minutia of a frown or of a smile or of fear or of any of the emotions that we show people facially. I mean, when we look at studies, I don't want to overblow this, but there's basically one way to indicate that you're happy and there are multiple ways to indicate that you're something else,

right? Scared, anxious, depressed, so on and so forth. And one of the arguments is because we've needed those kind of negatively oriented facial signals to survive, right? We need to show people that we're scared. They need to see that we're angry, bare our teeth, so on and so forth. So they understand what's going on and that we don't attack each other. We know to run away or what we're going to do. But more recently, because the world's become an increasingly safer place, and the argument now is that it's as safe a place as it's ever been, according to Steve Pinker, author of Better Angels of Our Nature, we are allowing ourselves to explore more positively oriented emotions more consistently, and also that we are developing

the ability to show people that we are happy, that it is safe, so on and so forth. But these have developed over tens and literally hundreds of thousands of years. One of the big – one of my fascinations and also what I'm challenged by and troubled by is how quickly over the past – and increasing speed over the past 500 and 100 and really the last 25 and now 10 years has been how quickly things have changed technologically and socially. And you know what? The three pound meatloaf between our ears, as Dan Gilbert calls it, is still the same

three pound meatloaf it was 500 years ago and 2000 years ago. And that meatloaf is looking for soft signals because that's what it does. And so I am, I would be concerned about our, our lack or the rapid diminishment of our ability to share those soft signals because we're built to have those as, as essential aspects of our ability to communicate with each other. Here's a curiosity. If our three pound meatloaf is, I'm pretty sure yours is three and a half too, by the way, which is just definitely.

Call me fat. Fat brain. Fat brain. Oh, come on. If it's, if it is, if it is in fact in a state of sort of constant seeking for a soft signals,

and it's not getting the volume that it's, it's been trained to get to act effectively anymore. Does it start to create its own? What does it do? Does it just start to put together whatever data set it can to try and create its own or does it just sit there and yeah just not have what it needs to be to actually act any ideas i can i can only speculate that it's do you want to take a shot of this well i think that something i'm fascinated by which is right along these lines is i am fascinated by the misinterpretation we all have and suffer of texts and emails because you can't there are no soft signals and there's no tone you know there's so i actually think the brain will strive to construe the soft signal

where there is none so therefore it seems like it would have to fill it in somehow i think that it does so it happens all the time and we we've all had them. Increasingly, it's becoming common that, you know, I have a friend who texts me something that's like, you know, well, I wasn't really interested anyway. And I think, wow, you sound angry. I construe the anger. passive aggressive right except then i connect back to say hey you're doing okay did i say something to piss you off and the response is oh no no no i was just joking i was responding to what you meant about the blah blah blah blah right because we can't tell tone and we can't tell and so sometimes sure an emoticon helps i mean i tend to use the i tend to use emoticons like the emoticon smiley face all the time so that people know that i'm joking because i have a very dry sense of humor it can be read as really obnoxious and really mean and really angry but if there's an emoticon smile next but yeah how much of a substitute is that for you know the 14 different

ways i could possibly smile laugh wink whatever but i do think i think the mind will construe the soft signal regardless and that's why there's so much misinterpretation with you know technological yeah i my sense is the same thing too my sense is we we either get it but if we don't get it because i think my sense is that we we crave it like we're used to having it that we just create it we assume something we assume a soft signal into existence yeah that may or may i mean we're so many of us are actually not good at even like noticing and construing the real soft signals when we're face to face right when you remove that you know and there's just literally nothing it's just there's

just a void you know then i think the possibilities for us just creating either doomsday scenarios or fantasy scenarios because that allows us to, you know, like justify or rationalize whatever scenario we want to scenario to do that, the opportunity for that skyrocket. So the question, and, but I'm not like a defeatist about this.

And I'm also not, because to me, it's fascinating. And Dan, I think your point was really interesting in that it's taken us, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of years for brains to evolve to a point where it's soft signals are so critical.

And technology, the pace of technological removal of soft signals is a matter of years, not even decades at this point. So then the question is, if we realize how important these things are, step one intervention was emojis and emoticons. But will technology develop other ways that are actually more nuanced and more regular and easier to actually start to convey these soft signals? And I think it could be kind of interesting. Maybe there are ways to do it that we're just not even thinking about right now. But I actually remain hopeful that somehow

technology will evolve to a point to reintroduce some type of soft signals to the conversation. I honestly think the greatest reintroduction is stuff like FaceTime and Skype. Yeah, where you can actually see the soft signals. I actually think that's what, and that's a huge, that just enabled me, I was marveling about this. This has enabled me to have a meeting with a Colorado producer on Skype yesterday with someone who I'd like to partner with, conversation, largely just because we just want to – I want somebody on the screen for 15 minutes, even if what they say isn't really – I'm just observing.

I want to just get a feel all, which is hologram. And instead of FaceTime, you sit in a boardroom, part of which, some of which, all of which, is outfitted to be able to produce a hologram of someone somewhere else in the world. So you think about, for example, the investment bankers that fly around the world for 24 hours to get a deal done because they really want to do it in person. They want to be able to sit and see with the other person. And this technology apparently is getting better and better and better. So it feels like you are literally sitting in the room with a person who is halfway around the world who feels like they are sitting in a room with you. That's awesome. And that's why I wonder if that's what ends up happening yeah

that might that might be and you have to imagine like that technology is probably driven in part for entertainment basis but also it's probably driven in part because we do have this deep yearning and seeking for those the presence the deeper set of signals that our brain just wants to have. Interesting. Always fun hanging out with you guys. Oh my gosh. This has been week one in guest in residence round table with my guests, Gabra Zachman at gabrazachman.com and Daniel Lerner, who can be found at daniellerner.com. Thank you so much, guys.

I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real, unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast.

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