Something You Should Know - “Dirty Jobs” Host Mike Rowe Offers a Different View of Success & The Awesome Power of Empathy

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

People cry when they are sad – so why do they also cry when they are happy? This episode begins with the explanation for why two opposite emotions can have the same symptom. And what happy occasion actually causes people to cry the most "tears of joy.” (And it’s not weddings). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141111124047.htm You probably know who Mike Rowe is. For years he hosted the TV show Dirty Jobs on the Discover Channel. He has become a champion for the blue collar workers in America and has his foundation that supports that cause called mikeroweWORKS. (www.mikeroweworks.com) . He is also the host of a podcast (https://mikerowe.com/podcast/) and author of a book – both called The Way I Heard It (https://amzn.to/34Dikog). Mike joins me with his interesting and often contrarian view on a lot of what we have come to believe about success including education, persistence efficiency and more.  Kids skip. You probably skipped when you were a kid. So why don’t adults skip? Listen as I explain that it actually might do us all a world of good to do a little more skipping – even if you look foolish. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3895968/Why-adults-stop-skipping-s-hard-Activity-uses-quarter-energy-running-speed.html As a culture we are becoming less empathetic towards our fellow humans. Yet empathy is one of those things that is good for everyone concerned. When you show empathy towards others it can ease their pain and it is beneficial to you as well. Jamil Zaki is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of the book The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World (https://amzn.to/2qtq4dX). He joins me to explain exactly what empathy is, how it works and why having it is so good for you. This Week’s Sponsors -Proven Skincare. Go to www.PROVENSKINCARE.COM/SOMETHING and use promo code SOMETHING to get your exclusive 10%. –Airbnb. To learn more about being an Airbnb host visit www.Airbnb.com/host -Simplisafe. For free shipping and a 60-day free trial go to www.Simplisafe.com/something -How to Be Awesome at Your Job podcast. https://awesomeatyourjob.com/podcast/ -The Undercovers podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-undercovers/id1479344440 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, people cry when they're sad. So why do we also cry when we're happy? Then Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe takes a different view on success, career, persistence, effectiveness, and efficiency. There's a real difference between the ideas of effectiveness and efficiency. There's a real difference between the ideas of effectiveness and efficiency. Huxley said

that the greatest threat to total freedom was total anarchy, but the second greatest threat was total efficiency. Then, when was the last time you saw a grown-up skipping? And empathy. Just the right amount of empathy can change the world and do wonders for you. And that's part of why I think of empathy as a sort of human superpower, because it guides us to the very types of behaviors that connect us more deeply with other people and also improve our well-being along the way. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious

about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent

examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker, John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared

wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hey, welcome to Something You Should Know. Have you ever been so happy that you cried tears of joy?

I suspect everybody has, but the whole idea of tears of joy never made sense to one Yale psychologist because, after all, you're supposed to cry when you're sad, not when you're happy. So she decided to look into this, and what she found was really interesting. It seems that people who cry when they're happy are so overwhelmed by the positive emotions that they're feeling, the crying helps to regulate those overpowering emotions. It helps people recover and come back to normal from those strong emotions. And in her research, she found that people are more likely to cry tears of joy at their child's graduation than any other occasion. And that is something you should know.

Did you ever watch the Discovery Channel TV show, Dirty Jobs? It was fascinating to watch people do jobs that are dirty, gross, disgusting. And they even had people doing jobs you never even knew were jobs. It's just that somebody's got to do them. One of the things that show did was make its host, Mike Rowe, a pretty popular guy. In addition to Dirty Jobs, Mike also hosted the show Somebody's Gotta Do It on CNN, and he has been a commercial spokesperson for Ford and other companies, because he has a great set of pipes.

He also has the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, which he started. That foundation champions blue-collar jobs and the people who perform them. Mike is also the host of a podcast and author of a book, both titled The Way I Heard It. And he has some very sound insight and advice from the trenches for anybody who wants to work and get ahead in life. And that advice is a lot different than what you've probably heard before. Hi, Mike. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Mike, thanks for having me.

So despite the image I think a lot of people have of you, you didn't really grow up as a blue-collar guy working in these blue-collar jobs. That's not who you are. You kind of made your way into that world through your television show, but that's not how you got into the business. So explain your story. Well, the micro version of the micro story goes like this.

I was born in Baltimore, surrounded by tradesmen. Growing up, persuaded and convinced I would follow in their footsteps, but realizing later in my teenage years, the handy gene was recessive. Got into entertainment, made a living for a few decades. In my early 40s, I decided that I'd like to try something different. So I hosted an episode of Evening Magazine from a sewer with a sewer inspector. Was essentially baptized in a most unfortunate fluid that was prevented from doing my typical hosting job by roaches and rats and everything else you would expect to find down there. Dirty Jobs was born out of that segment. Ever since, I've been impersonating not a host,

but a guest. That's where my career, such as it is, changed and took off. So for the last 15 years or so, I've been tapping the country on the shoulder and saying, hey, you should get a load of this guy, or you should meet her. Four or five different shows, all with different titles, all basically do the same thing. So in your travels and all of the people that you've met and who have done all these different kinds of jobs that you've portrayed on your TV show, what's the big takeaway that you get that you think people could really appreciate? Well, the single biggest thing that happens when you stop impersonating an expert is you become humble in ways that you didn't even know you weren't.

And I guess maybe the big lesson to come out of Dirty Jobs was a continual debunking of platitudes and bromides. So much of what passes for good advice these days winds up on photographs and pictures that get framed and hung on the walls in conference rooms where we get to read about the importance of things like persistence and teamwork and passion and all of those things. On Dirty Jobs, I learned there was a corollary or a dirty truth, if you will, to just about every existing bromide that was out there. And the big one was follow your passion. You know, we spend a lot of time today telling kids in particular, the key to job satisfaction is to identify the thing they're passionate about and then do whatever it takes to get that job. On Dirty Jobs, it was a very different philosophy. I met people who were passionate about their work but weren't led by their passion. People who looked around, identified an opportunity, maybe a septic tank cleaner,

for instance, and then worked hard to become good at what they did and then expanded and then worked hard to become good at what they did, and then expanded, and then found a way to be passionate about it. So just one example. There are thousands of others, but in a very general way, Dirty Jobs gave me a chance to question and maybe reconsider a lot of what passes these days for conventional wisdom. Well, I think that's so true, because the advice of follow your passion implies that, A, you have one, and B, it could be turned into a career, which chances are not true, and that people who are very successful, septic tank cleaners or brake shop owners or dry cleaners, probably don't lie in bed at night talking and dreaming about dry cleaning and septic cleaning, and yet they're successful at it. They're not passionate about it. They don't

live it and breathe it and sleep it, but they're good at it. Right. Oftentimes what happens when I suggest you shouldn't follow your passion, but rather bring it with you, is all people really hear is, well, you just want me to embrace some version of drudgery, or you don't want me to follow my dreams. And it's not really that binary. You know, the funny thing about Dirty Jobs was if you looked at the people we featured over 10 years of shooting as a group, you would find a very passionate collection of people. You also find 40 or 50 millionaires, unlikely looking millionaires, but nevertheless, you know, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the show. And the big reason for it, I think,

is because they valued passion so much that they didn't allow passion to lead them. They simply put it in their pocket and said, look, I can be passionate about anything, but if I want to make a living, the first thing I have to do is figure out where the opportunities are and then become competent and then become highly skilled and then figure out a way to love it. So it's not a question of living one way or the other. It's really just a question of, are you going to take the well-worn path, the road less traveled, or the reverse commute? Let's talk about efficiency, because we do seem to be in a love affair with efficiency,

that we not only get things done, we want to get more things done, and then we want to get those things done faster so we can do even more things. And we want to be more and more efficient. What's your take? We look at technology as a kind of panacea. And I certainly think that technology is going to shape the future. There's no doubt about it. But the question becomes, is technology a symptom of an efficient society or an effective one? And I'm not an expert on this, but I do believe

there's a real difference between the ideas of effectiveness and efficiency. Huxley said, for instance, that the greatest threat to total freedom was total anarchy, but the second greatest threat was total efficiency. And if you look at the conversation happening today around artificial intelligence, you know, and then the robots are coming. It's easy to understand why efficiency can overreach. And if we're completely focused on being as efficient as possible, we sometimes get over our skis. I think on Dirty Jobs, you met people who understood that there's really no extra credit. You're either effective or you're not. And if you're effective, if the thing you're doing is accomplishing your goals, you don't get the extra credit really for going much beyond that. So it's a bit controversial. A lot of people have

written a lot of books that take a different approach, but I'm still fascinated by history, the Luddite rebellion, which showed us, I think, in just about every way, shape, and form that every time we panic over an existential threat like robots coming or like some new technology coming, we're always wrong. We're always wrong. And as long as we can focus more on the upside of remaining effective than efficient, then I think it's likely we'll be less anxious about a whole list of things we're not going to be able to control anyway. And that is so right that we're always wrong. And we're always wrong in the wrong way. Everything's going to be worse than it turns out to be.

It's never like people never say it's going to be great and then it turns out to be worse. People always say it's going to be worse and it turns out to be not so bad. That's right. You know, the bad news is we're almost always wrong. The good news is that's how you advance. On a personal level, the reason Dirty Jobs worked so well for me was because it was the first thing I ever did professionally where I wasn't evaluated on my ability to be correct. I was evaluated on my willingness to try. So as a lab rat or a human guinea pig, I was able to manage expectations on television in a way that's very different than, say, David Attenborough or Jane Goodall or Jacques Cousteau or any of the other myriad of experts who hang their entire reputations

on the business of being correct. I hung mine on the business of failing good-naturedly and then learning in the wake of whatever humiliation I was asked to endure, learning about how to do it better. And when you show the viewer that process, when they see you try and fail, it's not nearly as bad as we're brought up to imagine. In fact, what is trying and failing but for Don Quixote and Sisyphus and a long list of literary figures who remind us that it's the journey, not the destination. Well, it's very reassuring to know that failure isn't fatal. Mike Rowe is my guest. He was the host of the TV show Dirty Jobs, and he now has a book and a podcast, both called The Way I Heard It. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine,

erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. who recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back,

and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Mike, as we're discussing, failure may not be fatal, but a lot of times people think it is. And if you screw up on your job, you could lose your job, or you could get demoted. And people go to great lengths to avoid failure, when sometimes failure could be the best thing to ever happen to you. If you're in the business of telling stories, especially, I mean, life, of course, I agree with everything you just said, but in the business of telling stories, if you eliminate

failure from the narrative, then you don't have a tale. You don't even have a fable. You have nothing. It's just another story of how I did it. And the shelves are littered with people who are anxious to tell you how they did it. But if you dig into their stories, even their success stories are defined by their failures. So I'm certainly not the first guy to come along and say, don't be afraid of failing. What I'm trying to say is you have no hope of succeeding without it. I know some of what you talk about, a lot of what you talk about, runs contrary to what we've been led to believe. A lot of the platitudes, as you say, on office walls about teamwork and passion and perseverance and all this, that there is a different view, and you take that different

view. And so let's talk about that. Well, if you think about all of what passes for good advice, you can really just give me a topic and I can give you the dirty jobs corollary to it. Teamwork, for instance. I mean, we spend a lot of time talking about the importance of working as a team. And obviously, there are tons of examples where that makes perfect sense to understand and embrace, but it's so easy to go too far. And that's typically what we do. When we take a gem or a kernel of good advice, we become slavish to it. And our current obsession with teamwork, I think, is another good example. If you take a close look at everybody on the team, you won't find any two people getting paid the same salary. You won't find any two

people with the same basic talents. You'll find individuals. And those individuals, to a man, will have come from other teams. And most of them will wind up on still other teams. And there's something about, there's something about the mercenary that, uh, that I love. There's something about the freelancer and the jobber that I think is so uniquely American and something we were able to really plumb on dirty jobs. And I hate to lose that. I hate to see people become so assimilated with the squad or the platoon or the regiment or the team that they lose that sense of eating what they kill and understanding, for instance, that the mastery of a skill or a trade, something I talk about a lot, has benefits that go way beyond the paycheck.

It's basic competency. So to sum up, teamwork is great, but not at the expense of individuality. Efficiency is fine, but not at the expense of effectiveness. And passion is worth embracing, but not if you're going to follow it around and let it take you down a rabbit hole to the point where you wind up being one of those contestants on the early episodes of American Idol who learned at 22 years of age, not just that they couldn't sing, but learned that lesson on national television. And that always fascinated me, that they would get so angry as if they really didn't know that they couldn't sing, that they really believed that they could, that now given this chance, they were going to become stars, when objectively, as a viewer, you could tell the person couldn't sing.

As a viewer, yes. But as the individual, no. Look, Mike, remember, we're the clouds from which the snowflakes fell. And if you tell somebody, for the entirety of their youth, that the key to getting what you want is to simply want it real bad. And that if you're serious about becoming an American idol and you never quit, but put your head down and just follow that passion, well then, yeah, that's going to lead to a young man or woman standing there in front of three judges and an audience of millions demonstrating for everyone that they simply don't have the necessary talent and they're never going to get it.

Can they get better? Sure. Are they going to be an American idol? No. They'd be better off focusing, probably, on being an American icon. Well, now, one thing you said about teamwork that I want to comment on and get you to comment back is this idea of teamwork that really seems to be everywhere now, that everybody's part of a team, to me has always been kind of counter-human nature, that there is something in us that we have the need

to accomplish something that's ours, not be part of something, but to be something. I think that that's exactly it. The trick is the balance. You you go too far toward the individualistic side of it, then you'll never assimilate, and you'll never be a part of anything larger than yourself, and you'll be viewed by and large as a loner or an eccentric or just a selfish dude. And so it's bad to go too far that way. If you go too far in the other direction, then I think you're going to wind up like a lot of people today, because what's the logical extension of a team that becomes too much of a team? I think we call them tribes, right? Right, right. Exactly.

And once you're in a tribe, well, you've got your own colors and you've got your own theme song and you've got your own customs. And so you're either, are you a friendly tribe or not? And what do you do with somebody who's not in your tribe? Do you welcome other mothers? You know, it gets, if you go too far in either direction, then it starts to break down. So I think, I think companies and businesses and families and relationships and, and, and, and sports franchises, I think we all in some way, shape or form have to come to terms with where we are in that whole team individual thing. And I think it changes. And I think that change is okay. It's fungible. Cal Ripken played for the same team for 20 years, and it served him well. And he became a Baltimore icon. And a lot of other successful players did the exact opposite thing. So as much as we love the idea that there's a playbook for all of this stuff,

I think part of what we have to do to stay sane is remind ourselves that there isn't. There is no playbook but for this giant compendium of evolving advice that applies in different degrees to different people. So you said something earlier that struck me. You used the expression cookie cutter. That really and truly is the enemy, I think, of everything you try and do on your podcast. And it's also the enemy of so much of what's happening today when it comes to education, for instance, telling an entire generation that the best path for the most people is a four-year degree. That's a cookie-cutter approach to education. And that approach has left us with about $1.5 trillion of student loans on one side, and on the other side, over 7 million jobs that don't require a four-year degree that employers are struggling to fill. So much of what happens comes from this

idea that good advice is good for everybody in the same way. That's why the shelves are full of advice books, and that's why those platitudes and bromides wind up hanging on office walls and conference room walls. And that's why we're so enamored of them. I just saw one the other day that said persistence, exclamation point. And it was a picture of a bunch of people in a rowing shell, working hard as a team, being persistent. And I'm like, what is inherently good about staying the course or being persistent? It only makes sense if you're going in the right direction. So be wary of advice. Be wary of taking it. Be wary of giving it. And understand who might be listening. Well, you certainly have a different and unique perspective that, well, it literally comes from being in the trenches

with all those people doing all those dirty jobs all those years. And I appreciate you sharing it. Mike Rowe has been my guest. Mike was the host of the TV show Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel, and Somebody's Got to Do It on CNN. He is the founder of the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, and he has a book and podcast out, and both of them are titled The Way I Heard It.

There's a link to both of them in the show notes. Thanks for being on Something You Should Know, Mike. Sure thing. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Thanks for being on Something You Should Know, Mike. Sure thing. that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture.

Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle.

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I've always been fascinated by empathy. The ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Seems like that should be a good thing. But can you have too much empathy? And it certainly seems possible to have too little empathy. You see that a lot. Are we getting more empathetic as a culture

or less? And which is better? And how do you put empathy to work for you? Jamil Zaki is somebody who knows a lot about this and why it's so important. Jamil is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. He's written for many different publications and he is author of the book, The War for Kindness, Building Empathy in a Fractured World. Hi, Jamil. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Oh, thanks for having me. So what is empathy? I think people have a sense of it, but is there like a definition in the world of psychology of how we define that term? Any conversation about empathy should start with definitions, so thanks for starting us there. Empathy is actually an umbrella term that we use to describe multiple ways that people respond to each other's emotions. So one example that I use is imagine that you were with a friend having lunch and he gets a phone call. You don't know who's on the other side of the line or what they're saying, but you can tell it's not good because your friend starts to cry. Well, as you see your friend cry, a bunch of things might happen in you. You might feel bad yourself and even start to cry. That's what we'd call emotional empathy or vicariously taking on or catching other people's feelings. You might try to figure out what your friend is feeling and why,

and that's what we call cognitive empathy. And then if you're a good friend, at least you probably care about what your friend is going through and wish for him to feel better. And that's what psychologists tend to call empathic concern or compassion. And these pieces of empathy together fit together to allow us to connect with other people and inspire us to help them. And so it's those things, those three things you just described that collectively comprise empathy. And do you think empathy is human nature? Are we programmed to be empathetic?

And then sometimes it's programmed out of us? Or is empathy something we learn as we go? I think both, you know, so there's lots of evidence that empathy is part of our DNA, so to speak, right? I mean, we often think of evolution as meaning that people are always in eternal competition with one another, but really, animals, people included, survive and thrive by working together. And empathy is an instinct that allows us to work together more effectively because it makes caring for one another feel natural. On the other hand, empathy is also something that we can learn and our experiences and habits and practices change

how much we empathize and the way that we do it. Are we more empathetic as a people, less empathetic in this country? Are we getting better at this or worse at this? And, well, let's start there. Yeah, the news here is not great. So recently, about five or six years ago, psychologists aggregated or put together data on how empathic people at least said they were from the 1970s through to about 2010. And what they found was that the average American in 2009 was less empathic than 75% of Americans just 30 years before. So it seems as though empathy, even though it's this precious sort of psychological resource that helps us work together and connect with each other and thrive, it seems to be eroding

over time. Can you be too empathetic? I mean, is too much empathy not a good thing? Absolutely. You know, I mean, I think one of the things that I want to be clear on is that empathy is good in certain ways and to a point. I don't think that we should strive to turn our empathy up to 11 all the time. In fact, doing so would be really dangerous and painful and not that useful. I mean, imagine feeling everybody's pain as you walk down one block of downtown Manhattan, right, you'd fall apart. And likewise, you might not be good at helping other people. You know, I don't want my therapist crying when I cry and saying, wow, your life really is that bad, right?

I want him to be there for me. One of the things that I talk a lot about with physicians and nurses and social workers is the idea that it's not just about how much you empathize, but what piece of empathy you lean into. So as we mentioned earlier, there are different parts of empathy. One of them, emotional empathy, is catching other people's emotions. That can be a really powerful force for good, but if you're chronically surrounded by other people who are in crisis, that can debilitate you. By contrast, compassion or feeling for someone without taking on all of their pain can be a more sustainable and useful way to help people, especially if you're in a kind of high-impact setting like that. It would certainly seem that empathy is a good thing, the ability to feel how other people feel or how they look at a situation.

But empathy in and of itself, if you don't do anything with the empathy, if all you do is feel bad or feel good about what someone else, if you don't do something with it, what good is it? It's a really great point. And sometimes empathy can drive us towards inaction rather than action. There's this quote that you might have heard that's sometimes attributed to Stalin where he says, one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. And it turns out that research bears that out. People feel more empathy for single individuals whose pain they can see than they do for so-called statistical victims, groups of faceless, voiceless people, for instance, affected by a disaster or civil war thousands of miles away. And as a result, we tend to do more sort of in terms of donating to

charities when we are shown a picture of one person versus when we're told about a thousand people who need our help, which of course is backwards because a thousand people need our help a thousand times more than any one of them, right? This is partially because empathizing with that many people can paralyze us. It can make us feel like there's nothing that we can do. And again, here, I think it's important to not just think we want to empathize as much as possible, but think about the ways that we want to empathize and what's most useful. Well, the homeless situation in this country is a good example because there are so many homeless people in many cities around the United States

that it's overwhelming. You can walk down the street in several major cities and see so many homeless people. It's paralyzing. I mean, you can't help them all. So there's a tendency to dismiss them all because it's just, it's too much. It's an interesting point. I myself live in San Francisco, and so this is quite real to me. I think that empathy in terms of sort of feeling and understanding and caring for the emotions of people can be tiring. It can feel like it's not actionable, but it also feeds into our sense of what's morally right and wrong. And so what I would counsel people to do is not just as they walk by homeless individuals feel

as though the only thing that they can do with their emotions, with the pain they feel, with the sorrow they feel for those people is to buy everybody dinner, because obviously that's not feasible. But rather think about, well, what policies should we have in place? If there's an initiative on the ballot for affordable housing, maybe take those empathic experiences that you had in that moment and think about how it can affect what you think we as a culture should do. On the other hand, there are people who would say, when it comes to empathy for a lot of things,

that, look, you can't save the world. And you need to, yes, maybe pick your causes and whatnot, but you can't bleed the world. And, you know, you need to, yes, maybe pick your causes and whatnot, but you can't bleed for everybody. Of course not. No one person can fix the world. No two people can even agree on what fixing the world means these days. But I do think that there's a couple of points here, right? One is that although we can't bleed for everybody, the experience of understanding people's perspective, especially people who haven't had a voice in our culture, has made enormous change in the past. have been propelled in part by our ability to understand where those folks are coming from and the importance of their humanity, right? So I think that we can't bleed for everybody, but some emotional concerns, some sense of connection to the real struggles of people around us can move the needle on how we build society and move it forward.

Do you have to do something with your empathy to basically complete the circuit? Or can you just feel empathetic and, gee, I feel horrible for that person? And that's the beginning and end of it. I love that question. And here again, let me return to the different pieces of empathy, right? So emotional empathy is, again, where you see someone in pain and you start to feel their pain. It turns out that the cycle of that can end in a number of different ways. You basically start to seek out a way to reduce your own suffering. And one way to do that is to help the other person so that you no longer are catching their pain. But another way to do that is to help the other person so that you no longer are catching their pain. But another way to do it is to avoid them, right? So, I mean, I think

to go back to the example of homeless individuals, a lot of us or a lot of people, instead of focusing on their pain or empathizing at all, just cross the street to avoid them. Emotional empathy can end like that with avoidance rather than helping. By contrast, empathic concern or compassion is, again, this motivation to improve other people's well-being. And evidence from psychology suggests that when people feel that type of empathy, they must help in order to end the cycle, right? It's sort of like an itch that can only be scratched by acting kindly. And that's why that type of empathy is so powerful. Because it seems, and we've talked about it on this podcast, that helping people, that acting to make their lives better

or to comfort them or to eliminate their suffering is such a payoff to the giver that it does tremendous things. Oh, absolutely. I love that point. And, you know, I mean, oftentimes people view empathy and kindness as gifts that we give to other people, maybe at a cost to ourselves. I lose money or time or energy so that you can have more of it. In fact, the research suggests that happiness is not zero sum. Well-being is not zero sum. It's something that we gain by sharing it. And that's part of why I think of empathy as a sort of human superpower, because it guides us to the very types of behaviors that connect us more deeply with other people and also improve our well-being along the way.

Do you think, because you could have two people walk down the street and one of them looks at the homeless people or whatever the tragedy is, but the homeless is a good example, and feel sorry for them and want to help, and other people looking at those same people would say they brought this on themselves, this is not my problem, that these people need to get a job. And what is that? What is that difference? Is it more of a self-survival thing, that if I take on the world's pain, it's going to be hard for me to live, so I just, you know, I assign blame elsewhere, and then I can not feel responsible and get on with my life. I think you're right. I mean, one of the things that I try to drive home for people is that empathy can feel like a reflex, but it's really more like a choice.

And whether we know it or not, we're making choices about whether to empathize all the time. I think the example you offer is a good one. Another one that I see a lot, again, is in medical contexts. When they start out on their first day of class, medical students are more empathic than the average person in other professions. By the end of year three of medical school, they're less empathic than the average person. Why? I think that it's because at some point in their training, they've made the decision that this just costs too much. And the only way that I'll survive medical school is by shutting off my

empathy, not necessarily as in your example, by blaming other people, but maybe by not paying as much attention to their humanity. As you said, that can be a mistake because in fact, when physicians are empathic, they find their work more fulfilling and they're less likely to burn out. But they might have the wrong theory about how this works and therefore be making the wrong choices about when and whether to connect with their patients. Right. But if they didn't do that, if they didn't become less empathic, it might just crush them and then they leave the profession.

And what good is that? Yeah, I know. This is, again, one of the concepts that people have. They think that physicians who are high in empathy would burn out more quickly. It turns out that basically the opposite is true. So yes, if you're taking on other people's pain, that can be unsustainable. But the amount of compassion that physicians have actually predicts that they won't burn out, right? So physicians who are able to connect in a deep and meaningful way with their patients find their work more fulfilling and are more resilient to difficult moments than those who try to disconnect, right? So physicians and other people, not just physicians, all of us really

can have the theory that empathy will be too much for us and therefore shut it off. And we might be making a mistake when we do that. Do you think people have, or is there research that indicates that people have kind of a baseline level of empathy that sets it when they're a child and that that's pretty much all they've got and maybe they can up it if they need to? Or is it not that at all? It's neither, right? So, yes and no, I suppose. There is definitely strong evidence that empathy is partially genetic, right? Not everybody, no matter what they do, is going to become Mother Teresa, and not everybody is going to turn into Hannibal Lecter, right? I mean, we have a starting point that is determined by our genes. But just like so many parts of ourselves, our starting point doesn't have to be our end point. One of the big messages that I try to

bring across from my work is that empathy is not just a trait, it's also a skill. Our experiences change how much and in what way we empathize. And crucially, that means that we can make choices to cultivate empathy. So there are all sorts of practices that we can develop and habits that we can work into that allow us to empathize in broader and stronger ways. I almost think of it like going to an empathy gym to improve at our ability to connect with and understand other people. It seems as though if you become more empathetic, if you turn it up to a point where you start really understanding and feeling other people's pain in whatever way you do, that it's hard to channel it, like, just to these people and not to these people. That you've got to open it up to everybody, that it's hard to be just empathetic to children, but not the homeless.

You know what I mean? It's like you either are or you aren't. It's on or it's off. That's a really compelling point, and it does seem as though, hey, you know, if I'm practicing sort of connecting with and understanding that other people are people with a real deep lived experience, and I should care about their experience, that should bleed out to other groups of people as well. And you know what, to me, that wouldn't be a bad thing. I mean, we, you know, we tend to split the world into us and them, we do that easily. And that's really damaging in a lot of ways. And, you know, I think that if empathizing with one group can then sort of widen our circle of who we consider to be like us, beyond sort of political party or race or age, and to people as a whole, that would

be a really beautiful, beautiful thing, even if it feels far away right now. You said at the beginning that we as a group, as a culture, are less empathetic than we were a couple of decades ago. And I'm wondering if maybe part of the reason for that is because over the last couple of decades, we have been told that we don't care enough, that we don't give enough, we don't pay enough in taxes to solve some of these social problems. And so we, as a group, have stepped up and paid more taxes and given more money. And in some ways, it doesn't seem like much has changed, that the world is still full of problems and all this giving hasn't really paid off. And so maybe we don't need to be so empathetic

because it isn't effective. It's really interesting. I mean, sort of accompanying a rise in digital media is the idea that we now have access to information about so much more suffering than we did before. I mean, you scroll through Twitter and it just seems like the world is on fire, doesn't it? And that sense of hopelessness could, in and of itself, be a barrier to empathizing, because it makes us feel, as you say, like what we're doing is useless. One of the important things, though, is that, you know, I think whether and how much we empathize depends on how much we think other people around us

are empathizing, right? We're a pretty conformist species and we do what other people do. In my own work, I found that people will act more callously or more empathic if you convince them that other people around them are doing the same. A problem is that sometimes the loudest voices in our culture are not the kindest ones. You think of a schoolyard bully or an extreme pundit on cable news or social media. These people might not represent the majority, but they take up so much airspace that we decide they do, and we start to fall in line. So one of the things that I think is an antidote to this kind of hopelessness that you're rightly describing is to make empathy and kindness loud, to feature it in our culture,

and to sort of make sure that we recognize the many acts of kindness that are occurring around us. Because you're right that we've done a lot, and some things don't feel like they're changing, some things feel like they're getting worse, but enormous progress is being made as well, and that's in part due to our work together. Something I heard a long time ago, that someone attributed this quote to Mother Teresa, although I have looked and I have never found the quote attributed to her anywhere other than when this person told me, and I don't remember who. And that is, if everybody would just take care of their little corner of the world, the world would be an amazing place. And meant by that that, you know, you define what your little corner of the world is. It could be your family, your neighborhood, your school, whatever it is.

But if everybody did that, wouldn't the world be a better place? If that's where you could put your empathy, wherever you define it, imagine. And I've always, I've tried to live that, and I've just, I love that idea. It's beautiful. It's sort of like, think global, empathize local, huh? Exactly. In a way, yeah. I think that that's a great sort of organizing principle. You know, one thing that I'll say is that as a parent of two small children, I think it's enormously important to model empathy

for them. And the unit of the family is one where empathy can be taught really effectively, right? There's all sorts of evidence that when parents act kindly towards others, their kids take that on. I will say that, you know, our corner of the world is getting bigger by the year, isn't it? I mean, it does seem as though, although we can focus on the people who are around us, we are affecting and being affected by more people than at any time in human history. And in a way, our corner of the quote is, whether Mother Teresa said it or not, is that because it is so overwhelming to look at the world and all of its problems, if you can take care of whatever you decide you can take care of, your little corner of the world is defined by you. And maybe it's your household, maybe it's other people in your neighborhood or school

or whatever, but it's something you define, that if everybody could do that, that's something you can kind of wrap your head around and imagine what if everybody did that. I think that one challenge and opportunity that we have is to stretch our empathic imagination towards what we think we should be doing to make the world a better place. Well, you've certainly put in a lot of thought and a lot of research into this topic, and I really appreciate you sharing it. Jamil Zaki has been my guest. He is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, and the book is called The War for Kindness, Building Empathy in a Fractured World. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Jamil.

Thanks, Mike. That was a lot of fun. You remember skipping. You skipped when you were a kid. Kids skip all the time. But grown-ups don't. The assumption is that adults don't skip because they don't want to look childish. But scientists have another theory. Skipping just takes too much energy.

In fact, skipping uses 24% more power than running the same distance. Still, there is something about skipping, because not only do children do it, but so do lizards and birds and other creatures. And if you want to burn more calories and you don't care what people think, you really should skip. And that is something you should know. And now that the show is over, grab your device and push whatever you need to push

and leave a rating and review for this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. Thanks for listening today to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership

to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a

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