Good Life Project - Too Smart to Be Conned? Think Again!

Episode Date: January 18, 2016

Imagine yourself as a child uprooted from your home, and bouncing from nation to nation as a paperless refugee…Envision the fear of being unexpectedly foreign in lands when the customs are as alien as the language being spoken…What would you do? Would you follow your dreams and thrive, or merely play it safe and survive?These were the questions facing Maria Konnikova, an author and psychologist who landed in the suburbs of Boston by way of Moscow, Vienna, and Rome at the tender age of four.Despite not knowing a word of English upon her arrival in the United States, Maria worked furiously in pursuit of her passion—writing—eventually graduating with a bachelors from Harvard (magna cum laude, by the way) and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.Maria’s first book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, was a New York Times bestseller, and her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, California Sunday, Pacific Standard, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, The Boston Globe, The Observer, Scientific American and WIRED. She also writes a regular column focusing on psychology and culture for The New Yorker.In today's conversation, we explore her powerful journey and the family dynamic that gave her the space to create a living and life she truly loves. We also discuss why committing to something you're passionate about is so important.Then, we dive into Maria’s latest book, The Confidence Game, a riveting exploration into the minds of con artists and the people who fall prey to them. You'll discover a world you've very likely fallen under the spell of, without even knowing it. You'll learn how even the smartest people get taken, and sometimes that's a great thing.You'll also see the deeper psychology of persuasion and how it unfolds in nearly every "transaction and conversation" all day long, from the coffee you buy in the morning to the things you eat, buy or try, the conversations you have in the office and outcomes you create in the world.In the end, we come to an unsettling truth. The only real difference between devastating cons, entrepreneurship, marketing and self-help is...well...you'll have to listen to find out!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna 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 gonna die.

Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has

everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. 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 8 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 are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I think the best con artists are ourselves at the end of the day. We are so good at just crafting reality to be the way that we think it should be. So imagine telling your parents, hey, listen, I know what it is that I want to do for a living. I want to write. I feel it in my bones. This is what I want to do. And then literally saying to them, but you know, most people can't make a living doing that and I'm really concerned and maybe I should just go and do something else.

And then your parents turning around after you literally just graduated near the top of your class in Harvard and have amazing opportunities to do almost anything and saying, no, you're smart, figure it out, write. That is an incredible conversation and it's one that we rarely ever hear about. In fact, most of the time we hear the exact opposite conversation, but that's the conversation today's guest, author, journalist, SAS Maria Konnikova had with her parents that led to an astonishing career as a writer, a columnist, and now on her second book, The Confidence Game, which we're going to dive into, which also explores the psychology of the long con, of con men. And it's somewhat horrifying.

And part of what's so horrifying is that a lot of the same things that the greatest grifters who've ever lived have leveraged are the exact same things that so many people leverage to build companies, to market, and to also do extraordinary good in the world. And we talk about that really gray area. Really excited to share this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. I'm really excited to explore, I mean, two things. One is the book that you just wrote. It blew my mind on multiple levels and horrified me on multiple levels too. I'll tell you a couple of those levels too. But also just kind of explore your story,

your journey. I think it's really fascinating. You immigrated here from Russia. I think it was Moscow, right? Yeah. And was this a part of, I know, especially in the Northeast, a lot of people came as when the gates were lifted and a lot of Jews were actually allowed. Yeah, it absolutely was. So this was still the Soviet Union. So the only people that were really allowed out of the country were Jews, because Israel said that, you know, right of return, Jews can come back. And so what a lot of people, including my family, would do is say that they were going to go to Israel. And what happened is your passport was ripped up at the border. So you became kind of a refugee, you had to leave, no right of return, basically. And the idea was that you would then go to Israel. But what a lot of people did was there was this whole kind of organization that was devoted to getting Jews to the United States as well. And so we went to Austria, to Vienna, and then we went to Rome and we spent,

I don't want to lie, but I think something like between six months and a year in Rome, and then we applied for political asylum to the U.S. and were granted it and came to the Boston suburbs, as many, many Jews did at the time. Very typical. You were really young when this happened. I was four. Do you have any memories of going through this? I do, and it's fascinating because when I started studying psychology, I was fascinated by memory. And I think I understand why some of my recollections from

that time are so vivid. It's because it was quite traumatic and a lot happened. And so I think I have more memories from H4, H3, four, than I would have under normal circumstances because they're just very clearly demarcated points in time where you can kind of say, okay, I know this memory is from before when I was four because it's from our Moscow apartment. Wow. Things like that.

That's incredible. It's funny. I had a first couple of years in my life, actually, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. My dad was in graduate school in Columbia, and similar to you. Who was his advisor? It's funny. He actually just retired two years ago. He had one job his whole life, and ran a lab in research human cognition. And he's that guy who just decided upon what he wanted to do and did it the entire time. Anyway, back to you.

What I was going to say is it's so interesting because for years, I had this memory of guys running around in a dark hall. And then somebody knocking on my neighbor's door and asking for a gun and my neighbor handing him a gun. And I've kind of forgot about it. And years later, there was a TV show. It was one of the original cop shows in New York. And I was sitting and watching it. And I see this scene. I was like, Oh, my God, this is actually the scene that was filmed the first time it clicked that they were actually filming when I was a kid, when I was like three years old. And it was the scene. And there it was, you know, just on TV, and it's kind of mind blowing. But it shows you even at a young age, I guess,

there's this heightened state of emotion. Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. And obviously, you know, the immigration experience for a little kid, you don't know anything. I didn't speak the language. I remember my first day of kindergarten so well. I cried for most of the day because I was in the wrong classroom and I couldn't speak English. And the way I knew I was in the wrong classroom is there was my name tag wasn't there. The only thing I knew was how to write my name in English. So they ended up having to call my sister, who's six years older, to come and kind of calm me down and help me out a little bit. But I just, I was mortified that I couldn't speak. I can't even imagine that.

So you landed in Boston. I guess that's where you grew up. Yeah, yeah, in the suburbs about 40 minutes outside of Boston. And then at some point, it seems like you latched onto the creative side, the writing side pretty young. I did. It's funny. We actually recently had a conversation at a family dinner. And I asked my parents because a lot of the kids in my family kind of had passions early on.

So one of my sisters loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian, and now she's a veterinarian. Another one of my siblings, my brother, loved to take things apart and really was fascinated by computers, and he's a computer programmer. My sister was always, my oldest sister was always kind of the really, really nurturing one, and now she's a neonatologist. And I said, you know, I wonder when I was really, really young, did I always, you know, what did I want to do? And in unison, my parents said, be a writer.

So apparently when I was five years old, I announced my intention. I mean, especially when you think about the fact that if you ask any random person on the street right now, you know, like, you know, even now, today, do you know what you want to do? The vast majority of people are going to answer no. Yeah. And so to have four kids in one household, dial it in at, you know, such a young age, it's kind of extraordinary. I think it's a testament to my parents. Tell me more about that. To the fact that, you know, my mom is a remarkably strong woman. She's, you know, I think my role model in a lot of ways. And she said, you know, we did not come to this country so that you became a doctor or a lawyer or, you know, one of the things that all Jewish parents want your kids to be.

My sister ended up becoming a doctor, so they've got that covered. But we came here so that you could do whatever you want to do and so that you can just kind of explore and have all the options open to you. Because as Jews in the Soviet Union, there were no options open to them. They couldn't do anything. They had no choices. They could follow a very specific path. And even then, there were quotas for Jews, so they weren't sure if you could make it to university, if you could make it into the program you wanted. And so I think that that was really, really important because I never felt like I had to do anything. It was very intrinsically motivated.

We were never rewarded for doing well. We were never punished for not doing well. We were always just encouraged. And I think all of us became very self-driven. are saying, we sacrificed everything to come here. You are going to be a professional, a doctor, a lawyer, because that's what you do. You're going to study fiercely. And there are three paths that are allowed. And that's part of the mindset that comes with a lot of people. So it's kind of remarkable that your parents almost did the exact opposite. They did. And I'm so incredibly grateful to them. They said, we came here so that you could be happy. I mean, that's the most important thing. Whenever our family gets together,

and now I'm the only one who's not in the Boston area, but whenever we all get together, our first toast is always, it's in Russian, but may everyone be healthy. That's always the first toast. And as the saying goes, you know, if you have your health, everything else is okay. And so those were always the priorities.

Be healthy, be happy. And if you have those two things, then you can do whatever you want. And that sounds so cliche, you know, the American dream, you can be whoever you want. But it was never like a soft and cuddly type of thing. It was always more of a kind of, you have the opportunity to do anything, so take that opportunity. Don't lie on the couch. You know, my mom could be a huge taskmaster. You know, my sister did not study a lot when she was,

it took her a while to discover her passion for medicine. And she would yell at her, you know, she would make sure that she did her work. So it wasn't quite laissez-faire, but it was more, you know, you can, it's really important to find something that you love and to find something that makes you happy in life. Yeah. I mean, that's such a beautiful gift to come up in a family culture that not only allows it, but exalts it. Absolutely. And it's just so, I think it's so rare these days. I think we're so driven by fear and the need for certainty and security. And as a parent, I know, the first thing I want for my daughter is safety.

Absolutely. The second thing I want after that is health and happiness. I want her to be happy and fulfilled. But first, and I think- Of course, safety comes first. Yeah. But we sometimes, you know, like that becomes an overbearing burden that basically says, but if you do something that may light you up, but there's risk associated with it, you know, you're kind of like, well, that takes me out of the safe zone, even though it may be the keys to an extraordinary life, you know, a much more engaged presence. Absolutely. And the funny thing is, I was always the one who was more risk averse.

When I told my mom I want to be a writer, she said, that's amazing. Go for it. I said, but I don't know if I can make a living. She said, that's okay. If this is what you want to do, you'll figure it out. You can make a living. I believe in you. And I said, oh, but everyone's becoming a consultant or an investment banker or going to law school or doing all these things. This

was already in college. And how in the world am I going to be a writer? That's so amorphous. There's no real career path. There's no safety net. There's very little to fall back on. It's not like you can grow up in an organization. Right, yeah. And she was the one who said, so, you know, is this what you actually want to do? And I was the one who actually applied for positions to consulting firms and investment banks. Luckily, I did not go in that direction. But I applied. So when was this? Was this pre-college? Was this right after college?

This was senior year when a lot of people get caught up in the frenzy of what am I going to do after college? Especially where you went. I mean, you graduated Harvard. Yeah. Right. You studied psychology undergrad, right? Yeah. And creative writing fiction. Right. Okay. can become a consultant. I had no math background. I mean, I don't know what I was thinking.

To be perfectly honest. But I convinced myself that this might be a good idea. You know what I even did? I took a pre-law, an LSAT prep class. My mom looked at me and she said, do you have any intention of being a lawyer? And I said, absolutely not. It sounds absolutely terrible. But law school seems kind of interesting. She said, but do you know, you know, debts, lots of stuff.

Are you sure you want this? And I said, well, it's something. A lot of humanities people end up going to law school. Maybe I should take a prep course. And she said, I'm not paying for a prep course. So and we had no money growing up at all. And so I worked to get $2,000 to take this class. I never took the LSATs, obviously. But I needed to feel like I had safety options. Interesting, which is also they're like, I mean, you're like telegraphing here to a certain extent, you know, like the future journalist in you, which is just like a voracious need

to go down every avenue and research fiercely, because that's what your writing has evolved into is just this immense, immense, like, there's no stone that's unturned. Well, that's, I never actually thought of that connection. But yeah, I think you're right. And by the way, you're talking to somebody who went to law school. Ah, sorry. That's okay. But I had the same, a really similar thing. And a lot of people who know me cannot fathom why I did.

But I was in political science undergrad, which means who knows what I actually did in undergrad. But I went to law school largely because I thought it would be really – I never really intended to practice. I thought it would be really interesting. It would teach me analytical skills, reason how to research, how to argue, how to write, some of which it did. And I was very fortunate. I did well, so I had opportunities. So I practiced for a number of years afterwards.

But, yeah, as soon as I realized it wasn't right, it was kind of like moving along. So you saved yourself a lot of years. What was your first gig out of Harvard then? So I went through my first year out of Harvard. I went through, I don't know how many jobs, I think six jobs in very quick succession. My first kind of real job was at an ad agency at Young and Rubicam. I was a copywriter. And I lasted for, I don't know how long, about eight months, maybe. And then I didn't want to give up because I felt like, you know, I hadn't really given it a shot. And so I went to Saatchi and Saatchi

because I decided maybe I just don't like Young and Rubicam. And then I realized, no, actually, I hate copywriting. So then I quit. And I was a cliche for a while. I worked as a bartender and tried to write. But that doesn't work because I was always exhausted because last call in New York is at four in the morning.

Right. It's not like Boston where everybody shuts down at midnight or something like that. Exactly. So by the time I woke up, it would be time to start getting ready to go open the bar with the other bartenders.

And so that did not last long because I was always too tired to write. But it was interesting material. And then I went to work at Thrillist, which is still around. It was their first

female employee. And I think after that they didn't hire women for a while because I quit shortly after starting. And then the job that stuck, I became a producer for Charlie Rose. And I stayed there for a number of years. What was it about that that stuck for you? about journalism, actually. There's always stuff to research, and you're always telling stories and finding the most interesting stories to tell

and the most interesting ways of telling them. Now, I miss doing my own writing, which is ultimately why I left, but you learn to really, to storytell in a very different way because you're writing for the ear, first of all, rather than for the page, and you also are thinking in terms of visual elements.

Oh, video would go really nicely here. And you're thinking in terms of, so I produced the Charlie Rose Science Series, which was all a series of panels. And those were really hard to do because you have four people in addition to Charlie. And you need to start thinking about things like not just expertise, but how does it all go together? How do their voices go together? How do their personalities go together? Are they telegenic? And every single day, you're producing new segments, you're learning new things. I did things in theater. I produced this big show on Harold Pinter and one on David Mamet. I did science stuff.

I got to, you know, meet some incredible people. How much of what happens in that set, I've always been curious about this, how much of that is actually scripted? Well, what happens is, the answer is none in the sense that… It's not a verbatim. Right. Charlie does not actually read from a script. It's all his own questions in the moment. But you produce a packet ahead of time where you include something that is called the arc of the story.

So you say, you know, this is kind of the arc of the interview. This is who this person is. These are the types of things that I think you should ask. Here's how I think it would be interesting to make this go. Here are some questions. And on some topics like politics, he doesn't need that because he's so incredibly well versed in it that he just goes off cuff completely. On other things, like some of the science things, I actually had a lot of input on the way the show would go because it was something where I could lend some degree of expertise. And by the way, I had no background in science.

I did psychology, which is, it is a science, but it's kind of a social, it's a little bit different. I was not a hard science person. So I got to learn a lot. Yeah, which is interesting also because some people might look at that position and when sort of like moving into it and say, well, I'm not the science person. I'm not going to take it. I'm not the person.

But your mindset seems to be, and it seems to be sort of like a universally applied mindset. Rather than I don't know, I'm not qualified, it's like, you know what? I'm pretty smart. I know how to work really hard. Let me take a risk. I'll figure it out. That's always been my approach. And that's one of the reasons I actually didn't go into academia when I went to get my graduate degree in psychology, because I didn't want to specialize. Because I love having the flexibility to explore different things, to fall into rabbit holes and learn about different areas that I had no idea existed.

And I love being a novice. There's something really wonderful about just drinking in knowledge in an area where you just knew nothing. And then all of a sudden you find all of these just remarkable things. I so agree. But we are so terrified as a culture of saying the words, I don't know. Absolutely. I mean, it's like. Absolutely.

And those are some of the most valuable words in the English language. Yeah. The moment you admit you don't know, so much opens up. It's fascinating. I used to, when I was just starting out as a journalist, I made a lot of rookie errors. One of them was trying to cover up when I didn't know something because you don't want to appear like you didn't do your homework. And I learned that that's really not the right way to do it

because everyone's happy to explain if you don't pretend like you know something that you don't know. And I also learned very early on, and I think working for Charlie Rose helped me learn this, but it's also something that's developed over the years, that I'm always kind of the least interesting person in the room and that everyone else is much more fascinating. And so I love just listening and asking questions and letting other people talk

because you learn so much, you absorb so much. I totally get the hat that you wear when you position yourself that way, but I have to tell you, that's not entirely true. I mean, what you've written, what you've researched, your life, just having this conversation, you're a fascinating human being. But I get what you're saying, which is if you wear the hat of being the least interesting person in the room, it allows you to let go of having to know everything and just, you know, like you said, be the novice. And you get such fascinating stories. I mean, recently I had a driver to the airport who,

you know, I got to talking with him and it ends up that he'd escaped from prison in Tibet. Oh my God. Yeah. And had crossed the border into India. And India had arrested him because they thought he was a spy for China. And he had to convince. So he had this just crazy story. And it was the most fascinating ride to JFK that I've had in a very long time. And those things happen all the time if you just ask people to tell you about them.

So is that sort of like your general, are you somebody who kind of walks through life generally curious about everything and everyone? I try to be. I try to be. Not always in the sense that, like all people, I get tired and sometimes I'm just, I don't have the energy to be curious, but then I always regret it. And so if I can muster enough energy to do it, then I always love to just always have that antenna moving around and seeing what there is to see

because the way I look at it is there's, once again, this sounds terribly cliche, but there's only one life, right? You only have kind of one go at learning all of this stuff. And if you waste it not being curious, then there's just so much missed opportunity. Yeah, so great. So Charlie Rose for a couple of years, and then you get the Jones to do more formal education. Yeah. What's behind that?

You know, I felt like there was no environment quite as intellectually stimulating as being in school. And I never, to be perfectly honest, I never wanted to be in academia. So I did go for a PhD, kind of the same way I was looking at law school. I want to learn more about this. I want that sort of stimulation, that camaraderie, that kind of intellectual caliber around me that I will get in graduate school, but only for kind of for the sake of knowledge. And so I went so that I would have the time to think. Because one of the things about working for Charlie Rose was that even though it was constantly fascinating and just really engaging, it was also constantly turned on.

You know, there was no time for quiet contemplation. Right. It was a 24-7 job. TV production is not known for being like laid back. No, no. So, you know, we had live shows at 11. I worked weekends. I always had to be on call.

I traveled with him a lot, where you're just literally on call 24-7. And I was exhausted. I just, I wanted, and I missed writing. You know, it's something that really feeds a very deep emotional need in me. And when I don't do it, even for a day, I feel a little bit strange and empty and not very good about myself. And so even though I was doing a lot of other really interesting stuff, it was time to go somewhere where contemplation and kind of deep thought was valued, and that was academia. And it was perfect timing.

I mean, this was the fall of 2008. So right after I left, there were lots of cuts on the staff yeah across the board in every form of media that was an interesting time and I ended up studying the crash as as part of my dissertation oh no kidding yeah huh so when you were at Columbia then you did so you ended up with a PhD in psychology was because you tend to have a I'm noticing a pattern of like in psychology? Mm-hmm. Because you tend to have a... I'm noticing a pattern of, like, in psychology and this and... Well, I did get a master's in political science while I was there as well.

Okay, just along the way, too. Yeah. I'm really interested in international relations and national security types of issues. I did my senior thesis when I was an undergrad, actually, in Georgia, in the country. So I did some psych research with some of the leaders there. Yeah, which also ties back to, you know, in a related way to where you came from.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But no, I studied self-control. So I did specialize, but I had a phenomenal advisor who is now 84, 85, 85, I guess, and who was in his late 70s. I was his last grad student. And he would sit and talk to me for hours and just share his wisdom. And he also paints and does all these wonderful things. Who was that? Walter Mischel. Wow. So he did the marshmallow studies in the sixth grade.

Yeah, yeah, of course, legendary. And he knew I didn't want to go into academia. He said, good for you. It would kill your creativity. And so he and I had a really wonderful rapport where I learned a lot, even though I was studying one very specific thing. And he encouraged me to really read widely and deeply. Why self-regulation?

Why not? No, I... Can we also, just because the term is a little bit of a term of art, can we sort of broaden that as willpower? Do you consider it the same thing or different? Sort of. I think self-control is a little bit broader. Willpower is kind of your ability to kind of control your will, right, to say no.

Right. You know, I'm not going to eat this marshmallow. In that particular study, yeah, that's the same thing. Because you have to kind of exert willpower. But to me, that willpower seems like brute force, like power of the will. Right. It's like me against the stimulus. Exactly. Self-control is a much broader thing about how do you regulate your emotions and how do you regulate yourself? And some of it might be sheer willpower some of it might be you're very good at you know visualization and you are able to turn this

marshmallow into a cloud and pretend that it's a puffy cloud and you create a story about a puffy cloud or a sheep or something like that and you're not craving the marshmallow some of it about is about the ability to self-distract. So you see kids telling stories and dancing and fidgeting and doing all sorts of cute things so that they don't eat. It's like anything not to touch the marshmallow. Exactly, exactly. And so it's a much wider toolkit of just strategies

to basically cool down your hot emotions whenever you feel like you must do something how do you learn to deal with that and yes some of it is willpower but a lot of it is just more of a psychological ability to understand the things that are hot buttons for you so the marshmallow would not be one for me i hate hate marshmallows. So you could put 50 in front of me and I wouldn't need a single one.

But you happen to have a bakery just down the street from where we're taping this right now that if you put one of those cookies, it's called Levant Bakery. Oh my God.

If you put one of those cookies in front of me, my self-control is going to go out the window. By the way, when it comes to that bakery, I'm 100% with you. I'll walk a block around it, so I just don't even smell it going by. It's a terrible, terrible place.

Yeah, evil in a good way. What's interesting, too, is that you touch on this to a certain extent in your latest book, which I want to circle around to, but not quite yet. But I think it bears sort of like talking about right now, because you actually bring up a study that I was familiar with, Baba Shiv, about, you know, it's, and this is why I'm keying in on it, it's the difference between willpower and self-regulation. There are all sorts of other things that happen in your brain that you have no idea are happening that profoundly alter your ability to say yes or no. Would you share what that working memory seven numbers versus two and what that did to? have a lot of things that prevent us from really exercising our full mind and our full logic and our full rational reasoning when we're making a decision. And the decision can be something like, do I eat a marshmallow? Do I eat a piece of cake? Or it can be something like, which car should I buy? Or should I go out on a date with this person? It can really be anything.

And one of the ways that we can really mimic this kind of usual state of being very kind of emotionally hot in a lab is through cognitive load. And cognitive load basically means we're going to give you stuff to think about so that you're busy and you don't have all of the resources that you need to fully engage in this decision. So I can say, I'm going to give you a two-digit number, so 27, and I need you to remember this number while you do all these other things. No problem, right? 27, pretty easy to remember. Now let me give you a three, four, five, six, seven-digit number. All of a sudden, your decision-making ability just goes out the window.

And you don't even notice things. And you don't notice what you don't notice. You just completely lose the ability to think rationally. And most people say, yeah, but I'm not walking around trying to remember a seven-digit number. But it's probably much worse than that. But it's probably much worse. You know, you have so many other things going on. But it's probably much be much easier. And the ability, I mean, I remember in the research, they were then offered, I think it was chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit.

Yeah, and the ones with the seven-digit number would eat the cake. Right, so talk about an impact on self-regulation, too. Absolutely, absolutely. And this has been really well replicated. You do see that when people have to exert themselves mentally, not physically, mind you, they start eating a lot of junk. Yeah. And I think we've all experienced that in some level.

Yeah. Whether it's food or whether it's just we do stuff that we know is not good for us. Absolutely. Absolutely. And you even, you know, I've had these moments, I don't know if you have, where I just say, you know, I know I should, I actually, I say, I know I should not eat this. And I'm not even hungry. And I don't even want it that much. But you know what?

I'm still going to do it. And I'm going to eat it right now. And I eat it. And I have this dialogue with myself. And I studied self-control. Everyone listening is like, well, if she can't resist, we're all just completely busted. Do not keep LeVon Bakery cookies in the house. You have to tie your hands, right?

Right. And if you do, make sure that everything that you're thinking about gets written down on a piece of paper before you offer it. Well, that is such a good strategy and one that I often employ. Whenever you just need to write things down. And for me, I actually have a planner, like one of those old-fashioned planners where I have a page for every single day. And I write down what I need to do because the physical act of putting it on that piece of paper makes it not floating in my mind. And so in the back of my head, I don't have to remember I I have this deadline and this deadline, and I also have to get milk. Yeah. I'm the exact same way.

I mean, as long as I know it's somewhere where I know I can go back to it, I'm able to kind of let it go, and I just feel that. It's almost like you can really feel the cognitive load lift. Yes, absolutely. It's a weird thing to say that, but I think at least that's my sensation. Absolutely. And for some reason, when I put it into Google Calendar, it's not the same thing. I put events into Google Calendar, like this interview goes on Google Calendar. But when I have to do something, like when I have a deadline, when I have to know that I have to write,

you know, 3,500 words, I actually need to write it down. Yeah, that's so interesting. I wonder what's happening in the brain if there's actually a difference in the lightening of the load if you actually physically write it versus just type it into something. Well, there's no research that I know of that addresses lightening of the load. But I have written about memory and writing. And it ends up that writing things by hand enhances your memory versus typing on the computer, that you maintain a much greater grasp of the material. These were studies done with university students

who either took notes by hand or on laptops. And the ones who did it by hand not only had a better memory for kind of discrete facts, but had synthesized the material better. Somehow the themes emerged more. And the thinking goes that you can't write mostly as quickly as you can type. And so you actually have to think as you're writing.

Yeah, that makes sense. You think through the material, and so you're already getting some of the gist out of it, rather than just mindlessly writing down what people say. And I've noticed that because when I do interviews over the phone, I type, because I record always, but it's always better if you have notes as well. And I've had it happen when I am just writing down what the person's saying, and then I go back and I say, oh, this is fascinating. I just didn't absorb it at all. It's funny. I was talking to Sherry Turkle, who her last book was Reclaiming Conversation, but she really became known before that for three decades of work

around how people interact with technology. And she was saying something really similar. She said, you know, a lot of times she interviewed all of these students. And what she realized was that when they allowed computers into the classroom, students stopped taking notes and they started taking transcription. And their recall and their understanding of what was happening cratered. So a lot of the professors who started, you know, in the beginning, they're like, I'm not a neophyte, of course, it's just the next evolution. A couple years in are now saying, no, computers add up the classroom.

And not just because they're on Facebook and being distracted, but because they don't want the transcription thing happening. They want people to actually pay attention and then just, you know, like condense and digest and take real notes that they have to process instead of just being machines. Absolutely. And that's the first objection that people have to this work. They say, oh, well, it's not that there's anything different.

It's that they're on Facebook. But everyone controls for this when they do these types of studies. And there's no internet available. And it's not distraction. It's actually the fact that you start being mindless. Yeah no internet available and it's not distraction. It's actually the fact that you start being mindless. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. So you move from Columbia and you start to really build an extraordinary writing career, writing amazing pieces, a lot of it around psychology and science for some of the biggest publications out there.

And then your first book, Mastermind, was this astonishing sort of exploration of Holmes and Watson, and not just their stories, but also like the actual, the mindset and almost like the two different machines and psychologies and how they interact. And that was, I mean, really fascinating conversation. And that, it seems like that almost became the launchpad for your latest book, The Confidence Game, because it seems like that almost became the launchpad for your latest book, The Confidence Game. Because it seems like that, tell me if I'm wrong, but it kind of seems like some of the questions that you started to raise, there are questions that really led to you exploring the dynamic of confidence and psychology and persuasion. I think that there definitely is a natural evolution. The first book, well, obviously there's the superficial connection that I'm just fascinated with criminals, whether it's the people who are solving the crimes like Sherlock Holmes

or the people committing them like con artists. But the first book on a deeper level was about mindfulness and kind of this, what we get when we really, really pay attention. And by the end of it, so the last chapter of the book explores how Conan Doyle just went off the deep end when it comes to spiritualism and how he believed these two little girls

who created these fairies, the Conningley fairies, and he believed them. And he wrote this big book, The Coming of the Fairies. And you think, oh, my God, how could this science rational person, creator of Sherlock Holmes, how could he do this? And I was really drawn to some of the questions that that raised for me about the nature of belief and how it can trump sometimes any rationality when we really need to believe. And I think that that's what I really started to explore in The Confidence Game. I think that was the germ of the book was this deep, deep need and desire for meaning, for belief, for a world that makes sense, which

prevents us, by the way, from thinking like Sherlock Holmes. It makes us fall for all of these things, like Holmes' creator Conan Doyle ultimately did. Yeah. I mean, it's so funny how these things weave together. And also, it's funny how this, your latest, also ties back to your short stint at Young and Ruben camp as a copywriter.

I mean, so this is really, is really interesting for me. So, you know, we'll get into it a little bit, but that, you know,

that the book is a, basically it's about the psychology of the long con and yeah, I'm a lifelong entrepreneur. Also spent years studying persuasion, copyright and market. So as I'm reading this, and you're sort of laying out the stages of the con, on the one hand, I'm fascinated and I'm seeing so much of the research that I know and so much of the stuff validated. But I'm thinking to myself, I've seen it validated in a totally different world. And I'm feeling like I'm really

conflicted, because I know everything that you're saying to be true. But I haven't experienced it, actually, well, I haven't experienced it as the grifter in the use of a con. I have been conned. I've been conned on the street in New York. I've actually been conned twice on this show. And had there are two episodes that we haven't aired and will never air. Wow. Because we found out shortly before that stories were told that weren't true. And I have to imagine, based on what you're saying. How did you find out?

One of them, there were inklings of a story that started to break on social media, actually. And there was enough to raise my eyebrow. So we were literally about to air like two days later. And we pulled it. And I just said, let me just see how this unfolds first. The next one was big in public. So one broke really big in the media. Literally, like, both of them happened a day or two

before we were about to air the episode. Wow. Well, talk about good intuition on your part. So see, you did absorb some of the persuasion and some of those tactics. Yeah. But what's so interesting to me is I've been on the other side of it. And I like to think, I've also been conned by a business partner. And I like to think, and this is where it gets really frustrating for so many people. I like to think I'm a reasonably intelligent guy. I like to think that I'm reasonably good at sort of sussing out people. And so there was like this moment in diving deeper into your work where I'm hoping this is deliberate or maybe just came through where you're kind of telling the reader, forgive yourself, nobody is immune.

Oh, absolutely. No, it's definitely deliberate. And I think you have to forgive yourself because on one level or another, I think everyone will get conned at some point in their lives. And it won't always be this huge, you know, I've lost all my money, I've lost my life, I've lost a lot. It might be something relatively minor that you buy a beauty product for $100. Is that a con?

If it doesn't work and it doesn't do anything? I don't know. I mean, there's a thin line. And I think ultimately, in terms of answering that question, I think it comes down to intention. It could be a con or not. If the person doing it really kind of

was trying to do something good and was trying to develop good beauty products, making people feel good about themselves, kind of had good aims, honorable aims. That's one thing. If it's someone who said, oh, ha, ha, ha, this is basically snake oil. Let me sell you some snake oil. Then that's a con. So I think that the exact same thing, depending on where it's coming from,

could be the same snake oil. But one person legitimately believes. Right. And which again, they're like layers of slippery slopes here. Because, and it's funny, I've had this conversation just around the idea of persuasion. Because when you really start to study

the psychology of persuasion, and you reference so much of the really powerful research, and a lot of the really early stuff is based on like Cialdini, you know, like six big things. He's great. I love Chaldean. Yeah. And it's, it's an, it's amazing. And, but it, yeah, it really is. It's like, and it gets into when,

when I started to absorb this stuff and I've taught this to people over the years and people start to come to me and they're like, this is manipulation. I'm like, but is it? Well, yes, it is. I think there's no way, you know, like you're manipulating somebody, or you're creating a scenario where you want to create a pathway to a certain action that somebody takes. You know, but like you said, I think the difference between whether that's manipulation, whether it's a con, whether it's salvation, lies largely in the intention of the person who's sort of like wielding the techniques and the strategies. Yeah, the intention and the transparency.

So there's one of my favorite chapters to work on was the last chapter in the book, which deals with the work of David Sullivan, who's a professional cult infiltrator who's just a fascinating human being. I'm so sad I never got a chance to meet him because he died shortly before I started working on this book. But he was very big on the fact that there, even though he infiltrated cults and he was really anti all of these spiritual and religious gurus, that there was legitimate religious movement out there, too. And it was all in the transparency. The legitimate ones didn't fool you into anything. They said, this is a, you know, yeah, this is a Buddhist temple. This is what we believe.

You are free to come and go. And he experimented with Buddhism ultimately. He discovered that a lot of it was actually also cultish and con-like. So he left it. But he was very open to that exploration. And I think that's a very important distinction, that a lot of that nefariousness versus transparency of purpose. Yeah.

But even there, though, I think it gets really great because, and this is a really interesting thing. You talk about deprogramming or trying to get somebody out of a cult. Yeah, yeah. If you know how to wield all of these strategies and tools of persuasion, you know, and you have a family member who's fallen under the spell of a cult, right? And you're pretty confident that if you actually lay this out the way that you know how to take them through the persuasion process, you'll be able to get them out. But if you're transparent about the fact that this is what you're doing, they'll run from you. You can't. Yeah. And it's, I mean, from you. You can't. Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's all shades of gray.

There's no black and white. And that's, I think, ultimately what we have to be comfortable with and what we're not comfortable with. It kind of goes to what you were saying earlier in our conversation, the kind of the lack of comfort we have in society with experimentation and with not having safety nets and kind of with basically letting safety go a little bit. And a lot of the meanings of the word, not just physical safety, but just emotional safety, monetary safety, just certainty, the safety that comes from certainty,

that we really don't want to let it go, but we have to because it's all gray there's no black and white here it's not like these are the bad guys these are the bad techniques and these are the good guys right these are the good techniques and david sullivan would always joke that he if he had a second career he could be a cult leader because he could he could create a because it's's fairly formulaic how to do it. It's all the same tools, just wielded differently. Yep, absolutely.

Yeah, it's really, and as somebody who wants to teach somebody, other people how to live a more engaged life or how to build businesses or practices or careers that are in service of themselves and others. You know, if some of these ideas, and you know, like, take an example, the first phase that you lay out in the con, I think you call it the put up? Well, it's not me. It's David Moore.

So I want to give credit where credit's due. I borrowed his terms because I think his book, The Big Con, is just out of this world wonderful. And I encourage everyone to read it. Right. So you take that and immediately, so that's, you know, like everything that happens in that phase in the con,

like when I look at, okay, entrepreneurship, you know, it's like market segmentation, research, avatar identification, you know, like, and it's like, and we, research, avatar identification. And we have fancy names for them that make us sound like this is academic research. This is what you have to do before you start a company so you can understand how to message them, how to serve, how to solve their problems. But it's the identical thing. Know your mark.

Right, exactly. It's like whether it's a mark or a customer or a client or, you know, like a member. Uh-huh. It's, yeah, I mean, it's really made me think. And I've thought about this stuff a lot over a lot of years. This really took me back into that exploration. Yeah, yeah. This really took me back into that exploration because you like to think that if you learn these things, that if you're a good person and you're helping other people do good things, that it's okay. But you zoom the lens out and take the classic Buddhist concept of emptiness.

Whether it's good or bad is completely a matter of perspective. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's very uncomfortable to is completely a matter of perspective. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's very uncomfortable to acknowledge that. It is. You know, after I finished this book, I really went through a phase of having lost all my faith in humanity. And realizing, you know, just the world sucks. And everyone sucks. And everyone sucks.

And everyone, you know. You're like, we're all doing this to each other all day, every day. We're all doing, yeah, exactly. We're all just evil, bad people. Exactly. We're all terrible human beings. And I'm slowly coming out of that. Because I think, yeah, because it does go on all day, every day. But I think also there's a certain amount of service in letting people in on the psychology and the sequence and the process.

Because then you can also kind of understand, even if somebody's not being transparent about what's happening, you can start to recognize what's actually happening. Yeah, I hope so. But then the big question is, even if you do, like you laid out a lot of the marks and cons, the question for me was always, even if they knew exactly what was coming next, if it's done so artfully, you just might not care. Absolutely. Well, one of my favorite stories in this book is Oscar Hartzell, who sold the Drake fortune for millions and millions of dollars. So just a bit of a backstory, Francis Drake, the pirate, there's a tall tale that he left this huge treasure, basically, and that it's been caught up in red tape because his heir was Queen Elizabeth's son. Yeah, this one gets kind of dirty. And none of this is true, by the way. Francis Drake did not leave a fortune.

He did have an heir who got everything, and it wasn't a lot of money. But Hartzell managed to convince so many people that this was true. And he was ingenious because he said, you can't tell anyone because we'll cut you out of the fortune, if you tell. And to the last day, even when he was already in jail and the police had already just told everything, people would still say, no, no, no, I did not get conned. I will still get my money. And these are people who hadn't seen a dime in returns. And they paid for his legal defense. His legal defenses were completely paid for by his

victims. And this happens over and over and over, that you tell people exactly what has happened. And yet, I think the best con artists are ourselves at the end of the day. We are so good at just crafting reality to be the way that we think it should be. Yeah. And I wonder sometimes we don't want to own it because if we do, it makes us question all of humanity. Absolutely. It makes us question ourselves because all of a sudden we're like, and I think this is, to me, when you talk about the harm done with fraud and cons and stuff like that, well, you lost money, you lost business. To me, that's not the big harm. The big harm is the utter gutting of faith in your own ability to actually tell what's real and right and the complete loss of trust in everyone around you. Absolutely.

I mean, it's devastating. And some of the things that didn't make, a lot of material did not make it into the book. There was a lot more than I could use. And I also had to make some deliberate choices about what kind of book it was going to be. And a lot of what didn't make it in were these really heartbreaking conversations

with a lot of victims, some of whom would break down crying, others who told me stories of how they either contemplated suicide or actually tried to commit suicide after this happened because they just had completely lost the will to live because they just lost their faith in the world and the way the world should work. And the fact that people are good and kind of these beliefs that had kept them going, that had just all been. And these were people who ended up rebuilding their lives. And so it's not like they, you know,

it was either commit suicide or basically die right away because you have no money and nothing. But that impulse is really strong. I didn't put that into the book because it would have become a very, very different book. Yeah, no, totally. But it was something that really, this was really a lot of fun to research,

but it was also really sad. Yeah. I mean, I mentioned that I had been conned on the street years ago in New York City, and it was a really minor moment. But it affected me in a big way. And this was, you know, like decades ago. I was, you know, it was early one morning. I was rolling out of a friend's apartment. I was just walking down the street and, you know, nicely dressed, you know, like middle-class couple comes walking up to me and tells me a story about how they were in the city from out of town. And, you know, they were out

with friends and they left their wallet in the car and the car was towed to the lot on the other side of town. They just, is there any chance that I could loan them like $7? I literally remember the amount, you know, like 25 years later. So they could literally just grab a cab over. They gave me like all their information. They got it back to me as soon as possible. And all I had was a 20, so I gave him a 20. And I got back to my place and like talked to my roommate. And he's like, you're such a sucker.

And I'm like, no, no, no, this was legit. Like they were nice. They were cool. And he's like, you're such a sucker. He's like, call the number. I said, call the number. Of course it's fake. Of course. Everything is completely fake. But the damage done was not the 20 bucks. No. It was the fact that for probably

a couple of years after that, almost any time anybody walked up to me on the street wanting anything, I was like, I'm not going to be a sucker again. So I probably could have done a lot of good in the world. You know, even if it was just me, like, helping somebody or giving a dollar to someone. And I shut that off. Like, I shut off the compassion. I shut off my ability to connect with people.

Absolutely. And with good reason. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the ultimate harm. Yeah. And that's what the con does. Because it is based on belief.

Yeah. And zooming the lens out again, for me, in the context of being in business and marketing, it kind of reconnects, I think, anybody who's out there creating something where persuasion is part of the process. And that's everything that I think you have a responsibility. Absolutely. You know, to actually to do right by people. It's like Ogilvy's, what was his famous quote? It's like, the customer is not a moron. The customer is your mother or your wife or whatever it was.

I know what you're talking about. I don't remember the quote. Yeah, you know, and that you have a responsibility to be ethical, or at least as ethical as you understand ethics to be. Absolutely. Absolutely. So when the book comes out, how are you going to market it? The million dollar question, right?

Because that is a huge persuasive process. It is. It is. And I have to convince myself that I'm doing it for the good. And I actually do, I don't need to convince myself. I think that it could be valuable. I think my, I hope that people come away from this book being a little bit more knowledgeable about themselves and a little bit better able, as you said, to forgive themselves so that ultimately they don't lose faith in humanity, but they learn how all of this works so that they can see it, they can prepare themselves. They won't fall for kind of big scams. Maybe they will. You know, there's no, I think one of the takeaway points is that there's really no way to make sure that it never happens, but that you also kind of understand why. And understanding why that you will not be

silent, that you'll come forward if it does happen, whereas most victims now don't, to prevent these people from doing it again. And that you'll learn to realize that you need to believe in a certain version of the world, and that's okay. That's totally fine. That is actually what makes us human. Yeah. Is that your greatest hope for the book? That is my greatest hope for the book. Love that. So in the name of this is a good life project, if I offer that term out to you, to live a good life, what comes up? What does it mean to you? I think to live a life that makes you happy and that makes you fulfilled in your own way that doesn't try to live up to some abstract ideal of this is what it means to be a good person because I think that that can mean

different things for different people but where you learn enough about yourself and about who you are that you can really make yourself the best possible person you can be. Because I think when you do that, other people around you become happy too. And if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, if you're not motivated internally, if you're doing it because you're trying to check some boxes, like this is the good person checklist, then you end up being unhappy. And if you're unhappy, the people around you become miserable, and it doesn't end up working anyway. And I think that self-knowledge, gaining that self-knowledge is among the toughest things that you can do, but I think among the most important. And I'm certainly not there. I

think it's a lifelong quest, but I try to get closer. Yeah. I think the moment you acknowledge you're there is the moment you've lost. Absolutely. Not you, but just all of us in general. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This has been a really fascinating conversation.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend. Maybe you want to share it around social media or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest.

And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to 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. 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-nest 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 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, 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.