The Megyn Kelly Show - Adam Grant on How To Win Arguments, "Safe Spaces" on College Campuses, and Imposter Thoughts | Ep. 97

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Adam Grant, bestselling author of Think Again and Organizational Psychologist at Wharton, to talk about how to win arguments (and how to lose graciously), how to have productive arguments with those we love, on values over politics and refusing to put on a political team jersey, the qualities we want in a leader, why we seem to always get flawed political candidates, the rise of "imposter thoughts" in our culture today, the state of college campuses today, "safe spaces" vs. "psychology safety," and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program, Adam Grant. He is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's an organizational psychologist, an organizational psychologist, and a bestselling author. And his most recent book is called Think Again, which you'll love. And I highly recommend you read. He also wrote originals. He's just a very thoughtful guy who will help you be a thoughtful person. And we just wrapped, I guess, a 90-minute interview, I guess. That was like, oh, so good in so many different ways.

We laughed and we got into it and we talked about science versus politics and personality and how to argue and how not to argue, how to win, how not to win arguments. We talked about what's happening in college classrooms now and the parameters for debate about difficult issues like diversity. And then he asked me a question. What have you changed your thinking on in the past couple of years? And we had a really good discussion on race and systemic racism. We don't come at it from the same point. But it was respectful and it was good. And he gave me a lot to think about. And I think I gave him a lot to think about. And I loved the whole thing. And I think you're going to enjoy listening to this. And I think you'll learn. You may learn to think again the way he's encouraged

everyone to do. So you'll love him. He's a great guy. He's a nonpartisan guy. I think, well, I'll just let you listen to how it unfolded, but a fair broker and someone whose voice should be amplified, I think, as much as possible. So enjoy Adam Grant in one second, but first this. Adam, how are you? Hi, Megyn Kelly. How are you? I'm so excited to talk to you. The excitement is not yet earned, so we'll have to see about that. Au contraire. I have listened to enough of your podcasts, your interviews, and read enough of your books, and by the way, listened to your TED Talks too, to know my excitement is well-founded. So there.

Well, I'm honored. I've obviously been watching you for a long time, so thank you for your engagement. I had no idea that you were listening and reading and watching. And you're here anyway. Thank you for that. So I didn't know you at first, but I came to know your name through a mutual friend, Sheryl Sandberg, who started sending me your book saying, you have to read this. And now you have to read this one. And you're going to read this. And then you co-wrote a book with Sher Cheryl. And I thought anybody good enough to be this important to her and about whom she is this excited is worth my time. And then I just started being a student of yours and just learning all the fascinating things you have to say. And one of the things I really love about you is, I was saying this to Doug, my husband, last night. I said, he seems to me, he's not political, but he's a happy warrior. He's a happy warrior for information. Do you think that's true? What does that mean? I don't know. What does it mean? Tell me more.

It means you love information and you love to discuss it and you love to engage in ideas with other people, even if they disagree with your ideas, because your war, for lack of a better term, is information exchange and figuring out how we think about things and how we can think about things better. And you don't feel off put by people who disagree with you. You're happy to engage in the debate, whether they agree or disagree. I think that's completely true. And in fact, sometimes I'm disappointed when people don't challenge my ideas because that's when I learn the most. And, you And obviously, I don't want to feed the trolls. If people are engaging in bad faith arguments, I choose not to jump in. But if I think people are genuinely trying to get to the truth and they have different data or a

different perspective, I'm excited to duke it out a little bit and see if we can both open our minds. But how do you stay? I know you say you hate politics. So how is that possible? How do you stay? I don't know. Would you describe yourself as apolitical, which is not exactly the same thing as hating politics? I don't know. I don't know if it's possible to be completely apolitical. Every time I try, I get accused of having bias by both sides. Of course. Just can't win here. You know this. I'm an organizational psychologist. So my job is to bring the best evidence to the table about effective leadership and collaboration. And I've tried to evaluate multiple presidents on the basis of the same competencies that I teach to our

MBA students at Wharton. And people seem incapable of processing the idea that I could have those criteria in mind separate from whatever I might think of their policy positions. And I don't know. I think it's possible. But I think, I don't know. I think I definitely have clear and strong values, but I hope I'm flexible and open-minded about the best policies to advance those values. And that means that sometimes I might sound like a liberal and other times I might sound like a conservative. And much of the time I probably confuse both sides.

And I think more of us should be a little bit confused that way. Do you agree or disagree? Yeah, 100% agree. And one of the things that you talk about that my listeners here know I believe as well Do you agree or disagree? taking a position or even when you go to the voting box and pick a candidate, you don't have to put on their jersey in order to support anybody. So if you go and vote for Trump, it doesn't mean you support everything Trump is and says and that you're a Republican or a conservative. And same is true on the Joe Biden side. You have to figure out like the first step is sort of figuring out what what are your values? What is important to you

as opposed to like, what team am I on and what's their platform? And so I can learn all the right positions I'm supposed to be taking. I wish more people heard that message. I think it would do a tremendous amount of good, obviously in America around political polarization, but it's true around all kinds of identities, right? Where people carry around particular opinions, sometimes their political opinions, sometimes their religious opinions, sometimes their opinions that are popular in their profession. And they say, that's who I am. And I look at that and think, you know, you would make fun of people who did that half a century ago, right? Half a century ago or a century ago, there were doctors who saw themselves as professional lobotomists.

That's a really scary thing. I want to be treated by the doctor who says, I am here to learn from the best science about how to care for my patients, not who's invested in wearing a jersey of a particular procedure. And I think that very few of us are taught to even recognize the jersey that we're wearing, let alone remove it. Well, how much of that is born of the need to have a team, to feel like you're not alone, there are others who've got your back, and if your side can be bigger and have the winner, somehow you're bigger and are a winner. I think that's a big part of it. You know, obviously, there's a there's a strong evolutionary psychology of tribalism that says, you know, you you actually it's it's not an advantage to be a part of a selfish group, right? Even Darwin wrote that a tribe of altruists would outlast a tribe of selfish people because

the selfish people would be doing all this infighting and the altruistic people would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the group and then the group could pass on its genes. I think, though, that there's not necessarily a good evolutionary mechanism for caring about other groups or being open to people who might disagree with you. And I think, you know, in our ancient history, that was probably a threat to survival. And so it's easy to see how, you know, how we picked up some very primitive software, as Tim Urban of Wait But Why would call it, that pushes us towards saying, okay, when somebody threatens my view or my group, I've got to stand up and defend that.

And I think we live in a world now where that's no longer a threat to actual survival. But most of us haven't quite processed the reality that it feels like a threat to our emotional survival, that if somebody decimates our beliefs, they're actually neuroscientists who have shown that it activates a physiological pain response. If you have a core belief attacked, it's like you've been punched in the mind. And I think that reaction stands in the way of a lot of good discourse and progress. I feel like I'm, I don't know what this makes me, but I'm more of a like, I run to the place of I dislike both sides. I don't like anybody. I would never put on a Democrat jersey or a Republican jersey. In some states, you have to label yourself in order to vote. They won't let you vote unless you choose one. I remember that being the case when I lived in Virginia for a little while. But so that was annoying. But I, I just feel like, why would I let you let you use me as an advertisement? Why would I do that? You know, it's the same way like when you we bought a like a Chevy Suburban and we were about to drive off the lot with it. Dave Ramsey would be very mad at me. And they wanted to put like the name of the place we bought it on the bumper sticker.

I'm like, are you going to pay me money for that? Like, why? Why would I be a driving advertisement for you? And that's how I feel about these parties. Like, why? I don't care. I understand people have associations. Right.

I was at Fox for many years. They assume I was a Republican. I wasn't. I'm not. I've been at registered Dem or I've been a registered Republican. I've been a registered independent for as many years as I can count now. But anyway, I don't know. What does that make me? A contrarian or smart? Well, I think at minimum, it makes you motivated to be an independent thinker. And I think that that's probably a good place for

a lot of us to start. I think that one of the things that I always get tripped up on here is when people start conversations about, well, if you have a pattern of voting for a particular candidate, doesn't that mean that you support in general that party because you favor their policies and you tend to like their politicians? And whenever I hear that, I think, well, not necessarily. I actually start by asking, is this leader competent and does this leader meet my standard of character? And then there are deal breakers in both of those boxes. And if I have serious questions about their capability to lead, which to me means making thoughtful decisions that are based on the best evidence and information available, which means trying to resolve conflicts instead of starting them, which means surrounding

yourself with people who actually help you see your blind spots, as opposed to sort of getting yourself trapped in a room of yes, men and yes, women. You know, if I have questions about character, especially from the standpoint of integrity or generosity or humility, I don't care what your policy positions are. I will not vote for you. So let's can we talk about that? So let's talk about that. Because that of course, we're talking about Trump. Are we? Wait, I think in my mind, Trump's a narcissist. And I just I've never tried to defend did on paper to what I'm already seeing in the Biden years. And I am somebody who's voted for many Democrats in the past. I am not anti-dem even now. I'm more right-leaning, but I would vote for the right-dem. So it's hard because

I'll give you another piece to this. I read the excerpts on Hunter Biden, who I think is a very troubled man. And then I read the notes that Joe Biden was sending Hunter Biden. And I think, oh, he's a sweet dad. Like everything his son was going through, his response was what a normal father's response would be, which is, I love you, buddy. You know, I'm still here for you. He never got angry in any of the stuff that's been released either inadvertently or advertently. I don't know. I'm sure Trump would be that way with his child too. But my point is simply, there's plenty of evidence that Joe Biden is a kind man and somebody whose character I might be able to defend. But so far, the way he's governing, I think it's been very divisive,

right? So it's like you try to reconcile those pieces. And I think in the end, it does come back to what are your values. That's interesting. It's interesting that your reservation about Joe Biden is that he's been divisive because I've heard the same critique a lot of times of Donald Trump. And one of the things that drives... Oh, definitely. Of course. I don't deny that either. So I never know what to do with that. So. So I think that what what what really frustrates me as a social scientist watching, you know, watching people defend whoever their preferred candidate is and attack, list in advance of the qualities we want in a leader and the qualities that are deal breakers that we would reject. The same way you probably had that list when you were dating. Here are the must haves. Here are the non starters. think if we set those standards up up front, we'd still have lots of people twisting the facts and

favoring, you know, getting trapped in confirmation bias and seeing reasons why their candidate is good and the other one is bad. But at least we could find some common ground about things that are completely unacceptable. And I think it would be helpful as a conversation to have to say, look, we don't ever select leaders in any other realm of life where we don't do that. I cannot imagine of all the companies that I've advised and studied, I cannot imagine any of them choosing a CEO by the vote of their employees, first of all, right? But that aside, we do live in a democracy, last time I checked. So everybody gets a vote. But I can't imagine not having a model of what a good leader looks like before we make

those decisions, regardless of what's the vision the leader has for the company and what the strategy is that they're going to pursue. I really don't know how to solve it. I do know that most of the people that you hold up as heroes are more flawed than you'd like to admit. And most of the people you see as villains are a little bit less bad than you'd like to admit. And I think if we were all more aware of those nuances, that complexity, those shades of gray, we might have a chance at at least agreeing on some of the problems, if not the solution. Good point. Well, and it's like, and my feeling having, you know, been in media for as long as I have now is don't hold up any

politician as a hero. There's very few people to hold up as a hero in modern day politics, just given the nature of the game right now. And back to my point of do better America, there's a reason you get candidates who are as flawed as the ones we get now. It's like the system set up to invite people who are a little off and to discourage people who are amazing and whole and well. The well ones tend to take a look at that industry and say, hell no. Why would I ever do that? Yeah. Oprah, who I love. I spent most of my life loving. I don't really love her as much anymore, to be honest, for all sorts of reasons.

But I wasn't surprised at all when she was like, I'm not doing that. She's too well. Of course, she sees what a toxic, disgusting industry it is and how anybody who really immerses themselves in it, it's like, why don't you go drink a glass of plutonium every day? That'll work out well. You know, it reminds me of an observation that Plato made that the people who are most reluctant to govern were generally the best candidates for the job because they weren't in it for the power. They weren't in it for the ego. And if you didn't have a little bit of hesitation about the responsibility, you might not be the right person to entrust with a role that involves

a lot of authority and influence. And then Douglas Adams actually made the same point. And I think any time that one of the great British sci-fi writers agrees with one of the great ancient Greek philosophers, we're probably onto something. And I ended up having a former student, Danielle Tussing, who's now a SUNY Buffalo professor, who studied this idea that reluctance to lead could actually be associated with more effective leadership. And she found in a couple of studies that people who had no qualms were less effective in part because they were overconfident. They tended to basically do things the way that they thought was right, as opposed to consulting with others and occasionally empowering others and admitting they were wrong. And I cannot imagine the right mechanism for ever

getting somebody who's a little bit reluctant to lead to even put their hat in the ring. But there is an interesting example from ancient Athens. They picked, in some cases, they picked leaders the same way that we select jurors. Just pick a random person from the population and let them lead. And I don't know that that would be worse than a number of the outcomes in recent history. Coming up next, we're going to talk about imposter syndrome. Do you have it? And is it holding you back or advancing your career? And we're going to talk about EQ and IQ and how the hell you know when you are actually good at something or whether you're deluding yourself. I'm so confused

and I'm going to confuse you too. Next. This brings me back to my friend Janice Dean. She's a meteorologist at Fox and she's been very critical of Governor Cuomo because her, both of her in-laws died in New York City nursing homes after his order that COVID positive patients be they had they had to take them into the nursing homes. And, you know, she's she's not an activist. She's I don't even know. To this day, she's my closest friend. I don't even know if she's a Democrat or a Republican. We don't talk about that stuff when we're together.

But she's been she's gotten politically active on this one issue. And now most people know about this issue because she's been jumping up and down and, you know, letting her hair on fire, trying to talk about this with people and has drawn attention to it. And now we've had a whole attorney general investigation that has found Janice was right and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So my point is, I've said, JD, you got to run. You should run. You should run for governor. She's like, I can't run for governor. She's like, I'm the meteorologist. I'm not going to run for mom. What am I like? I'm living in, I'm a mom. She's like, I'm not going to run for governor. My mom, a meteorologist. And I don't see myself as a politician. I'm like, that's exactly why you had to do it.

Right. And I do think she's got like some of the traits that, you know, you would, you would admire, but I think she's also got, you know, one of the sort of that, I don't know, I don't know if it's imposter syndrome or what it is, but I do think she has that thing where she doesn't believe she's got the leadership skills to do that job. And I wanted to read your book so she can understand. A lot of women feel that way. Women tend to have this thing more than men do. And yet they might make amazing leaders. And you just sort of have to recognize that this may be a flaw in your thinking. Yeah. This is one of my favorite things that I guess I'd been thinking about, but I didn't really crystallize my understanding of it until I got to write about it and think

again, which is we had another former student, Basima Tufek, now an MIT professor, who was interested in this idea that all of us have imposter thoughts. And we do, especially women and people of color, a disservice by turning it into a syndrome. Like, yes, there are people who walk around with a chronic belief that they are not worthy, that they're a fraud, that everybody's going to find out that I don't belong in this position. But that disorder is pretty rare. What's much more common is the everyday doubts that we have. I wonder if I'm up to this challenge. I wonder if I'm fully qualified for this role. And Basima studied how frequently people have those doubts

and found that there were no consistent costs and sometimes there were benefits. That investment professionals who had more frequent imposter thoughts actually made better decisions. That medical professionals who had more frequent imposter thoughts showed more compassion to patients and listened to them more carefully. And I think the beauty of sort of wondering, okay, am I really up to this task, is that you work harder to prove it, you work smarter to keep learning, and you actually soak up knowledge from the people around you. And obviously, this is easier for me to say as a white man, because people tend to take for granted that I'm competent, right? Whereas I'm sure, Megan, as a woman, you've had to work a lot harder to prove your competence. But I do think

there's something really powerful here in saying, you know, next time I have an imposter thought, instead of taking it as a debilitating syndrome, I can say, all right, this is fuel. This is going to motivate me to, you know, to work harder and smarter and to rethink things that everyone else is taking for granted. Okay, but how do you know the difference between I have imposter syndrome where that's just that voice in my head giving me bad information that I can't do this thing, whereas I can do the thing. I can do the thing. How do you know the difference between that and, MK, you cannot do the thing. You're not good at this. Don't try to do the thing. Stop trusting yourself, I think is the first thing I would say. Do not trust your own judgment. You're biased, right? For or against? And other times we're underconfident. And I see this all the time with people who claim to have imposter syndrome. Like, you know, other people think I'm capable, but I know I'm not. Like, you know, if you really doubted yourself, why are you so convinced of your own judgment of your abilities? You should doubt that too. You should trust other people who have a more neutral view of you, don't you think? It's mind numbing. It hurts my head. It's like

up is down and down is up. Like this is how I felt after reading your book is like, I don't know anything anymore. I used to think I was somebody with a high EQ and a mediocre IQ. This is truly how I thought of. I'm like, I'm smart enough. I can get by. If I study hard enough, I can get by. But my EQ, my ability to read people, it's very strong. Then I read your book and I find out

most people who think they have an IQ don't. And that they're the ones to actually hold on the strongest to that belief when you tell them, actually,

you scored terribly. You have a very low EQ. They're like, you're wrong. I'm going to be rigidly holding on to that belief. And now as I you're wrong. I'm going to be rigidly holding onto that belief. And now as I've gotten older, I'm starting to think like, I might be smarter than I thought I was. I'm like starting to accept that I might actually not be just mediocre on intelligence.

I'm not sure, but I might be. And I actually have seen some evidence that my EQ is not as high as I once thought. Well, that's an interesting reversal. I think, you know, obviously it's not my place to judge, but I think that, you know, it's obviously worth recognizing that there are different kinds of intelligence, right? So even IQ, we have to break it down into verbal and quantitative, which we all know lots of people who are much higher on one than the other. And yeah, I do think in general that the, well, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in a nutshell, that the people who are the most incompetent or the least knowledgeable are the most likely to overestimate their competence and knowledge. And it's not just ego. Sometimes when you lack knowledge or skill,

you also lack an idea of what knowledge or skill looks like. And we see this all the time. Megan, my favorite example of this was a friend of mine in high school accused me of not having a sense of humor. And I said, why? And she said, well, you don't laugh at every joke I tell. It's like, okay, I'll leave it to you to judge who doesn't have the sense of humor, but she didn't have the best grasp, I think if you asked all the people who knew her,

of what most people found funny. And so she couldn't judge what a funny person sounded like. And I think it's easy to laugh at those people, right? The problem is we are those people in various parts of our lives. We all have opinions and knowledge and so-called expertise that's wrong, and we don't know it's wrong. And we walk around thinking that we're better than other people because of it. I'm more interested in how do we know when we're right? You know, like you, you, you're talking about Dunning-Kruger, the Dunning-Kruger effect is basically those who, who can't don't know they can't. And, and, and you say it's, it's when we lack competence that we're most likely to be brimming with overconfidence, you know, like it, it goes back to the way I always said it, say is the seven foot center doesn't have to tell you how tall he is. You know, like, we know. We got it.

You're good. Bill Gates doesn't run around telling everybody how smart he is. So, but then I got scared because I read in your book, people who scored the lowest on tests of, and these are the things that you picked, logical reasoning, grammar, and sense of humor had the most inflated opinions of those skills. Those are literally the things I think I'm really good at. I'm terrified now. I will beat up on myself all day long. I can bore you to tears with all of the things I'm not good at. But those are things I think I actually have. And now I'm reading the book. I'm like, oh, shit. And you go on to say, on average, they believed they did better than 62% of their peers. But in reality, they outperformed only 12% of their peers. So Adam,

how do I know what's what? Just to keep asking others? Well, I think it's a good sign that you're asking those questions, right? Because someone who is truly overconfident to the point of arrogance wouldn't even wonder. There wouldn't even be a sliver of doubt, right? Like, no, that's not me. I'm one of the people who actually is a genius. And so that's the first thing is I think we should all occasionally question ourselves. I think the second thing is it really depends on whether the knowledge or skill that you're talking about is objective or subjective, right? The good news about traditional intelligence is you can take a test, right? They're not perfect, but we can do a decent job gauging somebody's logical reasoning skills,

their verbal abilities, their math prowess. Is this the SAT? No, because the SAT relies too much on knowledge. I think, you know, that probably the most popular intelligence test is the wonder lick. It's the one that NFL quarterbacks sometimes are given, where you get 50 questions, 10 minutes, and then you get a score afterward. Oh, and, you know, of course, some people process information faster than others. But it turns out, turns out that's one of the building blocks of intelligence is mitochondrial functioning. There's a whole science on this that says,

essentially, one of the signals of being a smart person is you process information faster. There's a reason that Jeopardy has people press the button most quickly. The test is like, oh, can I be the first one to know the answer, not just the one who knows the answer? Because that actually captures their intelligence, their processing speed, not just how much information they can hold in their head. And so you could do that with objective qualities. I think the problem is that a lot of what we're trying to judge ourselves on has a lot of subjectivity in it. So, you know, am I a good writer is something that I wondered for a long time. At some point, I realized that that was a silly question and I should just ask, how do I become a better writer? But if you want

to find out if you're a good writer, it's not that hard, right? Go and send your work to your most thoughtful critics and have them tear it apart and see what they challenge. And it's easy to dismiss one person's criticism. If you have a bunch of independent critics who all point out the same flaws, you've now learned something about a systematic distortion in your writing ability, and then you can try to correct it. It's so much harder to do in my line of work because your line of work is not totally polarized. This is what I think. You tell me. I just feel like everything in politics, and I'm not in politics, but I cover political news. I cover news, which tends to be dominated by politics, is colored by what team jersey people

think you have on or just what you get associated with. And that used to be the case only for those of us at Fox. I mean, I lived this personally, but now we've gotten to the place where every journalist is tarred with a certain ideological, assumed ideological bias based on where they work. And so it's almost like a lot of us have gotten a place of like, do not listen to your critics. Do not, you know, because they're not honest brokers. Yeah. I think that's a real challenge in your world. And it's one of the many reasons I'm not in your world. I always wanted the standards to be clear, right? So in, you know, in any,

well, let me back up and say the ideals of science involve people agreeing on the standards of proof and then doing independent blind review. And then when they're wrong, admitting it and correcting it. And I don't think it's an efficient market, but it is, I think, the most it's the most effective self-correcting institution that I've ever seen. Like in general, scientific knowledge has increased in accuracy over time. The life expectancy has doubled in the past century because we have scientists doing evidence-based medicine. And I wish that other worlds adopted some of those standards. I think one of the best examples that I've seen is in the UK. Megan, one of my favorite moments of, at least in recent memory, was when Ben Shapiro was debating

Andrew Neill. You remember that moment probably more vividly than I do. Andrew Neill is a very well-respected journalist in Great Britain who was at the BBC for a number of years. Now he's joining a new organization over there. But he's like the god of BBC, of British journalism. And Ben walked into it, the blades of a rotary fan without understanding exactly who he was talking to. And even he has said, I regret how that went. It's bad because I like both of them. So I was like, oh no, oh, I hate everything about this. Well, I'll tell you what I loved about it. What I loved about it was two things. Number one, that Andrew Neal self-identifies as a conservative and said, my job is to challenge arguments regardless of the positions that I hold and made a very, I thought, reasonable critique from an imagined liberal perspective of some of Ben's arguments. And I wasn't coming in expecting to evaluate the substance of either of their points. I wanted to watch how they disagreed.

And I thought, wow, if we had a culture, if we had more journalists in the US who operated like Andrew Neil does, we would have a lot more intellectual integrity in our conversations. And then the second thing I loved about that was Ben saying, I lost. I was decimated in that conversation. I think we need more people doing that, right? Saying, you know what, I did not represent my ideas effectively in that argument. I lost that debate. And here's what I learned from it. Yeah, I love that.

And when you were saying it, it reminded me of something that I experienced. So I'm going to tell a story about Sarah Jessica Parker. And I had dinner with her one time and I showed up late. And so she was there before me. And it was very confusing because I was like, do I say Sarah Jessica? Or did she just go by Sarah? Like when you see her in person? How does it? I don't know how it works. I think you just called her Carrie is the answer. It's like to this moment, I'm unsure. I've had a whole dinner and still don't know. Anyway, she kind of reached out to me after the Trump debate. Okay, the now famous or infamous, depending on your point of view, Trump debate where I asked him that question about the women. And she was like, very sweet. And she said, I want to apologize to you. She said, I assumed that somebody in a role like yours at Fox News would never ask a question like that, would never, you know, sort of come at him from an unexpected side that, you know, my side of the aisle she's a progressive would would like would cheer for and that was wrong of me um and i really love that

you did that and i'm like oh thanks you know and fine anyway we had a very short-lived friendship it didn't it's not because anybody broke up with anybody just didn't really go anywhere and um then you know like when i sort of continued on with views that were more center right, right? Like I I'll hit anybody. I'll hit a Republican. I'll hit a liberal. Really don't care. I'm there in service of the audience and the truth. But I went I moved to NBC and I said things like what they're doing to Brett Kavanaugh is not fact based. And let's actually walk through what the accusations are and so on. And people like Sarah Jessica totally abandoned me, right? It was like, screw you. Right. So she loved me when she thought like, Oh, she's secretly on my side or

like, she'll be fair to my side. But when you're not like really on their side and they see that over time, it's, you know, given the way we are right now, it is tribal and it's abandonment. And, you know, we've seen that with some of the Trump people, too. Some of the Trump people who thought like I was 100 percent Republican abandoned me for the opposite reasons. Right. Anyway, the whole thing is just it's an unsteady ground. And so I as a political analyst and reporter, I live my life on quicksand and therefore

I put no stock on what's beneath those feet. All my stock is elsewhere with people, with family, with friends, with things that matter. Wow. That's a symptom to me of... I'm sorry you've had to go through that, first of all. Secondly, it's a symptom to me that there's something very wrong with the way that people evaluate our journalists. I think a journalist's job very wrong with the way that people evaluate our journalists. I think a journalist's job is to surface the truth.

And in that way, journalists and scientists are supposed to have a lot in common. The difference is nobody rejects a scientist, except now in our politicized world of scientists trying to communicate the best data to the public. But in general, right, in the scientific community, people don't accuse scientists of, you know, failing to live up to their allegiances. Like loyalty is to their principles, not to their party. It's to the pursuit of truth, not to the ideas they've been defending in the past. And I don't know how to close the gap between there and here, but it sure seems like a gap worth closing. Yeah, me neither. I don't know that it's closable.

I mean, we read the comments to our show all the time on Apple and they're always so thoughtful. And that is one of the number one things I hear. I mean, one of the top things I hear, which is thank you so much for being just a voice of reason and for challenging both sides and for not being afraid to go to the dicey things that we're no longer allowed to talk about. debate. Let's challenge each other respectfully. It's fine. We can get into it. We don't have to get personal or get pejorative, but we can debate. We can get fiery. And you talk about everything from the Wright brothers and how they used to argue all the time about ideas nonstop

and would be disappointed when somebody wouldn't argue with them because they learned. To, I don't know, more modern examples where people fight it out at Pixar over whether the Incredibles can be made or whether that's an impossible task. And I think we're losing that. Right now, certain subjects are off limits and too offensive and people are told it's unsafe or it's too uncomfortable. Or if you don't have the quote, the right viewpoints, you should be silenced because words can be violence. It's just, you know, we're going a very different way, Adam. Yeah, I think so too. I think argument literacy is a huge problem, or I should say argument illiteracy is a huge problem, right? I think so many, it starts in families, it continues in schools and then in universities, it spills over into workplaces. And then we're taught growing up that it's not civil

to argue about or even discuss politics at the dinner table. How in the world then are we supposed to do it with faceless people on social media when we can't even have a thoughtful disagreement with someone we love in our own family? I think that's a massive problem. I think the first thing that I've been trying to do to change that in my own life is there's always a point when I'm disagreeing with someone where they will say before I ever think to, well, let's just agree to disagree. I don't believe in that. I think it disrespects our ability to have a thoughtful discussion and respect each other's right to hold different views. It also prevents us from figuring out what went wrong and trying to fix it next time. So whenever somebody says, let's agree to disagree,

I treat that as a signal that it's time for me to stop arguing to win and start asking questions to learn. I just did this the other day with a friend who's very strongly opposed to vaccines of all kinds in most situations. And he said, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. And I said, actually, no. Tell me where this conversation went off the rails for you. And I want to understand how I can be more persuasive next time. Also, how I can be less stubborn next time. And not just with you, but with other people that I might disagree with, too. And I think that that's it's a small example, but it's the kind of skill that we ought to be teaching. Coming up after this break,

we're going to talk about conservative students at Wharton and what it is like for them in these progressive classrooms. And Adam gets very you know, very open about this. I think this is a really interesting answer and exchange that we just had. Plus, we'll talk about how to argue with someone you love. How do you win? Dr. Phil says, how can you win when the person you love most is losing? And I agree with that. But we'll get into some funny stories there.

Before we get to that, however, I want to bring you a feature we have here at the MK show called Asked and Answered, where we try to address some of our listeners' questions. And today, Steve, I think we've got something from a Jim Swenson. Jim Swenson. Steve Krakauer's got his question. That's right, Megan. Yes, this came to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com, where anyone can also send in their questions and maybe get them answered on the show. Jim wants to know, do you think the Democrats will succeed in packing the Supreme Court? Jim, thank you for playing. No. And that has been brought to you by our sponsor.

No, no, no, no. This is like, I don't know. Have you ever seen the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? You know, I've got young kids. It's a great movie. he gets them, it's not a life of candy. He has to go into like kid prison little lollipops dangling them in front of disaffected Democrats who are pissed off about the Trump years and they don't think he's been, you know, hard left enough. I don't know who they are because even AOC is praising how left he's been. But I guess he just thinks this is a way of ginning up support on the Dem side. Maybe, hopefully he's going to drop some moderation bomb at some point, and he's going to use this chip in the bank. I looked into it. I looked, I had a commission to get himself out of it. Hope springs eternal. But he's like that candy man. He's dangling little

lollipops, little candies in front of his children, his far left children in the Democratic Party, like, look what I might do for you if you just get into this little van and support me. You might be able to have one of these creepy lollipops. He's not going to do it because it would be, I don't want to be too hyperbolic, but it really could be the end of our republic. I mean, it would be a great step to take if you wanted to end America as we know it. It would be the end of the Supreme Court and it would effectively destroy the third branch of government. That's how big it is. It cannot happen. It cannot be allowed to happen. And I do believe 100% that people like Joe Manchin will never let it happen, that there's too much sanity left in the Senate, right? The saucer in which the hot tea kettle is supposed

to cool is not going to let that happen. And Joe Biden's not going to let it. He doesn't want it. I don't believe he wants it. Just the creepy guy offering the candy. So it's not going to happen, Jim. Rest easy. We can't let it happen because our judiciary needs to have credibility, needs to not be a totally partisan body. I realize that there's a lot of criticism you could levy at its way. Too many judicial decisions are predictable because of ideology. Though I think the Roberts court is getting better at things like that. And I think it's just an angry reaction to Trump's decision to put Justice Barrett on there and it's going to settle. So it's going to go away. And I think D.C. statehood is going to go away. Reparations, I, that one, keep an eye on that.

But no, no PAC Supreme Court. And if I've never marched like in the streets since I've become an anchor, I don't go out there. I don't do the women's march and so on. If they want to PAC the Supreme Court, I might have to consider it. That can't happen. I will not think again on that one.

All right, Jim, thank you for your questions. And how do they reach us, Steve? Questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. Okay. Back to Adam Grant in one second. First this. You can't be shut down just because somebody says, I feel uncomfortable or, you know, your words are violent. It's like we have to be able to talk and express opinions thoughtfully. And like just getting into the arena has to be there. You're right. There has to be like if we're both going to get into the Coliseum of ideas, then we both have to understand we're in the Coliseum. What one does here is exchange in very full throttle ways. And it's like, if your position is, I'm right, and everyone else is wrong, then don't, you're right, you shouldn't even be discussing this with me at all, I guess. Like, we shouldn't even be conversing, right? Because it's like, what's the point? Yeah, I, gosh, I've, this has been such a challenge in the classroom lately. So I teach at, you know, an institution that's very liberal, right?

It's an Ivy League school, you know, but historically Wharton is probably less liberal as a, as a business school than most other parts of the, of the university. And I used to hear a variety of views on a whole bunch of issues. And now I've heard consistently from conservative students that they worry not only that their voices are being silenced, but that it could be a career-limiting move to ask what might be a reasonable but uncomfortable question. I'll give you a concrete example that I saw happen a few months ago. We were talking about diversity and inclusion in workplaces. And I had a student come up afterward and say, you know, I really didn't feel comfortable even asking a question about some of the assumptions that were being made by my classmates.

And I thought, okay, well, I have tenure. I don't have anything to lose. What is the point of tenure if I can't, point of tenure if I can't speak freely, but more importantly, encourage others to speak freely? And I came into class, the next class, and I said, I'm not sure I agree with the business case for diversity. There was an audible gasp in the room, audible gasp. And I said, but let's be clear. My responsibility is to bring you the best evidence and then be open to you challenging that. And I didn't come to saying diversity inherently makes companies better because I'm some kind of social justice warrior.

What I've done is I've tried to look at the most systematic data, which in my world is a meta-analysis, a study of studies, adjusting for the biases in different studies and trying to rigorously evaluate what do we really know? And what the data tells us, excuse me, what the data show very clearly and consistently is that you can't just bring in a bunch of women to a male-dominated organization or a bunch of people of color to a mostly white organization and magically expect that the organization is going to become more successful. There are all sorts of steps that actually need to be taken to leverage the diversity of thought that people from underrepresented backgrounds bring. And also, the evidence shows us that saying diversity is good is less effective than saying diversity can be good, but it isn't always easy and it isn't always valued. And that nuance changed the conversation. I think, you know, afterward, there were there were a whole bunch of, you know, of people with more conservative perspectives who said, oh, OK, so we can actually talk about some of the challenges we run into.

He created a space for this conversation. For me, it's a big part of the difference between safe spaces and psychological safety. I think of psychological safety as being able to take a risk without being punished. And if you can't do that in a university where you're supposed to be working on your critical thinking skills, where you're supposed to be learning to reason with people who disagree with you, how in the world are you going to be able to do that in any other walk of life. Well, one of the things you talk about in your book about a skill that can be developed over time, as you mentioned, was controlling one's emotions. And how do you do that? Because when do you want to control your emotions? Normally it's when there's tears, it's anger, fury. It's not usually, I mean, it could be love. I don't want to just run over and start kissing that guy. That's tears. It's anger. Fury. You know, it's not usually I want. I mean, it could be love. Like, I don't want to just run over and start kissing that guy. That's weird. But you generally you're in a business setting, professional setting or another setting where you're your full expression of your emotion would feel inappropriate. So you need to hedge it a bit. You got to practice that. You got to practice. That's one of the reasons why I have said before,

I don't mind when my kids have to not that I want them to get bullied, but when somebody's mean to them in school, I kind of like it a little because I'm here. I'm home. They're living with me. They can come home and we can discuss it, my husband and I with them in what actually is a safe space and talk about tools for dealing with that kind of thing the next time, it's an opportunity, right, for growth. If it never happens because no one may be allowed, no one may be mean ever, no one may ever express a thought that is not, quote, the right thought or a challenging thought

or one that makes somebody feel unsafe, you'll never develop coping mechanisms, ever. Wait a minute. Megan, does this mean that you and Van Jones are agreeing when he says, I don't want kids to be safe. I want them to be strong. Van Jones and I are a very unlikely friendship, I think, in probably the eyes of a lot of people, but we love each other. I love that guy. We talk on the phone, we text, we talk about things we can do together to make the world

a better place. I love him and I've loved him for a long time. It's not that I agree with all of his political ideas, nor he with mine, but I respect him as a man, as a person it to me either. And I think more of the world is like you and Van and me than we know, right? Because maybe we don't have the biggest microphones. Are you suggesting that there's a jersey for these people who reject jerseys? It's ironic. It just says reason. That's all it says. That's all my version. My Jersey says reason. But I, I mean, I could, I could, I could put that Jersey on, but then we'd have to, we'd have to argue about what reason looks like and, you know, and how to, how to know when, you know, when somebody is, is, is trusting the best evidence, which is like porn. It's like porn. You know, when you see it, when I hear it, I know it. And I don't care if it's left or right. I just like something

linear that makes my brain relax. But Megan, isn't that part of the problem? Isn't part of the problem that people just say, well, I know it when I see it. And therefore, I'm entitled to my own facts as well as my own opinions, as opposed to saying, no, let's analyze. It's a problem when somebody else says it, but when I say it, I'm right. When you say it, it's all good. No, but in all seriousness, there's a really interesting question here. I got accused recently of having an anti-ideology ideology.

Yep. I know what you mean. It's what we're talking about. I'm like, what's your point? I'm like, yes, yes. I do not let my ideas become my identity. Period. What's wrong with that?

Right. And yet I feel like we could spend a lot of time on the other side of what is wrong with declaring that you are a thing. And by the way, it's beyond political because I'll tell you something. I always get suspicious when somebody says, I'm the type of person who, because nine times out of 10, whatever follows next is not true of the person. Have you ever noticed that? I'm the type of person who never picks fights with friends because I just don't think that that's where I want to devote my energy. Meanwhile, you've had a fight with this person like 50 times in the past two years. To me, it's a tell. It's a tell in the same way where people say, to tell you the truth, and the odds are much greater that they're about to tell a lie. Slapping labels on yourself, I think, is done for a truth, and the odds are much greater that they're about to tell a lie, right? Slapping labels on yourself, I think is done for a reason. And I don't think it's the reason the person saying the label thinks it is. I think you're right. I think there's

some projection bias there, that people are often sort of trying to disclaim the very things they don't like in themselves and being turned off about those qualities in others. There's also, there's some evidence, this is kind of a necessary disclaimer. It's going to become meta very quickly, but there's some evidence that those kinds of disclaimers backfire. That when people say, you know, to tell the truth or not to be rude, but they raise the audience's expectation that you're about to do something rude or you're about to lie. And then they're more likely to be perceived that way if there's even any ambiguity. So I think we should probably drop those disclaimers altogether.

You should never say not to be rude, but it's always rude. What follows is always rude. It's always offensive. Just steer clear unless you actually do want to be rude. Fine. Sometimes you do want to be rude, I guess, because you don't like the person. But don't put that disclaimer on the front because you're right. It just draws negative attention. It's like people who take pride in being brutally honest. What's the saying that they're often more interested in being brutal than being honest? Yes. Oh, there's a line from Jerry Maguire where Kelly Preston's

character says to Tom Cruise, what was our deal from the very beginning? Brutal honesty. And he says, I think you added the brutal. But I think, you know, the way you talk about arguing, you know, debate and so on, I think it was very interesting to read from like a scientific or corporate perspective. I will say from my own perspective in the land of media, it was less helpful because my job as a journalist, you know, let me take my time in the Kelly file on Fox News. It wasn't really to convince, you know,

Dick Cheney that he was wrong to blame the Iraq war on Barack Obama. That happened. That was a thing. It was to hit him over the head with the stupidity of his statement and point out to the audience, this man is making insane claims that appeared in the Wall Street Journal this morning, and now I'm going to have to club him. And like part of its theater, but also part of it is just accountability and sort of, you know, setting the record straight. Cause there is truth. There is a record. Not everything is up for debate and persuasion. Some things are just, that is not true. And I am going to be the one who points it out. So tell me why my book was unhelpful with that. Uh, keeping in mind that I did not write it to help you. Right, right, right. Not everything's

about you. I didn't even know you were going to read it. No, I mean, I wrote it to try to encourage people to be more open to thinking again. Because a lot of us are resistant to that, and I think it's a skill we need to cultivate. So, you know, the idea that there would be a natural bridge from let's look at the science and practice of, you know, why thinking too much like a politician or a preacher or a prosecutor could stand in the way of changing your mind. bridge to. Here's how to be a more effective journalist who constantly steps on landmines that many of us didn't even know existed until you had the courage to step on them. Or I guess you just said sometimes the stupidity to step on them, depending on the situation, right? That would have been a very tall order for a book, I think. What made you expect that I could possibly help you? Well, I think that's just your imposter syndrome talking. And you can do it, Adam.

Next time around, you're thinking about people like me. No, it's not that it personally meant nothing to me, because I like the encouragement to think again and to challenge one's beliefs. And I liked some of the stuff about when you're wrong, some of the smartest people in the world are like, yes, now that I've realized I was wrong, it's amazing because I am going to be wrong for a shorter period of time. I love looking at it like that, right? Like my period of being wrong about that is now over.

Yay. But I just thought like when it came to prosecutor and preacher and what was the other one? Prosecutor, preacher, politician. In my line of work, prosecutor works really well sometimes because sometimes the job, most of the times the job in a three minute interview on television, at least podcasting has been different, is to get up and down on a story quickly so that the viewer at home understands it. And if somebody has said something stupid, which is nine out of times the reason they're on the television,

you got to punch them in the face, point out the fallacy in their logic and move on. And just to put a point on it, because I know you love to bring personal stories to your greater philosophical points, which is helpful. This is how I met Cheryl. I was anchoring midday Fox News and Lou Dobbs was on along with Eric Erickson, two conservative guys. And they were trying to make a point, which they had made prior to getting on my show, which is the reason they were on, that when a woman works outside of the home, it's damaging for children. And cited some study that proves it's bad for your kids. And like, let's be honest, you know, let's be

honest. Like what we need is women to stay at home and not all progress has been good. And this is one area in which it has been good, right? Like kids are suffering without their moms. And you knew that was bogus. So I was like, deep breaths, deep breaths. And I invited them on and to their credit, they came on. Right. Like they didn't they didn't hide. And we went at it. And I was like, here's my list of studies.

Right. Here's my list of studies saying your facts are wrong and your science is wrong. And, you know, here's what the data actually show, which is like a loving parent at home is important. Often doesn't have to be full time, but, you know, you have to have at least one loving parent at home is important often. It doesn't have to be full time, but you know, you have to have at least one loving parent in the child's life. And so, and I had all my data there. So we did battle and I was not really looking to change their minds at all. I don't give two shits whether it's what Lou Dobbs thinks to this day, by the way. I was looking to set the record straight because they'd been all over the news

saying stupid shit. So, you know, they came on and I clubbed them. And you know what happened? Here's something remarkable. In the way, like if you just let the valedictorian say something stupid in their speech rather than cleanse it the way we're doing now at these high schools, the community has a way of correcting him or her, right? Like the community will stand up and say like, that was not cool. The community stood up and said to those guys, you're wrong. What you said is not true. And we'd know it anecdotally if we don't, if we haven't read all the studies. And to his credit, Eric Erickson publicly came out and said, she was right and I'm wrong. And I thought about it a lot. And he and I have been tight ever since because I thought it was a remarkable thing.

And here's another story related. I was walking by Lou Dobbs, who had been on my show regularly prior to that point. And it wasn't like a nasty exchange. It was just sort of feisty. And I said to him, Lou, we good? And he said, no. And I said, really? I was shocked. I said, really?

And he said, really? And we've never spoken again. Wow. Well, that's revealing. Right. But my point is, I wasn't trying to like search to change their minds. It was more about like reaching an audience. Yeah, well, that's I think that's part of where your job is different from most people's when they get into an argument, right? That you do have the audience. Most people are directly trying to replace the wrong thoughts in somebody else's head with right ones. And I think that, yeah, my approach and my analysis is definitely

less relevant in that situation. Although I would say, I think you're right that your responsibility as a journalist in that situation is to prosecute this bad set of arguments. And I say bad, not just from a moral standpoint, but also from an empirical standpoint, right? I mean, you had the data. It's overwhelmingly the case in the data that what they're arguing is just false. So I think that that makes sense. And it also makes good TB.

I think though that- Yeah, well, that's true. I do think that there's, there's an opportunity to, I think it's a travesty that you didn't succeed in changing Lou Dobbs's mind on that, right? Because you were clearly right. And he was clearly wrong. And I would still wonder whether some of the principles I've studied would be relevant there, for example, in, you know, instead of, okay, so he's preaching something that's absurd, you're prosecuting him and bringing the facts to the table. What if, and this might be really boring

television, but what if you started by saying, let's discuss what the most rigorous possible study would look like on this. Let's just take a minute to agree on what evidence we would consider trustworthy. And if you aligned on that, it would be much harder for him to object to the data that you bring to the table because he would be defining his own standards of evidence and finding that he was wrong based on those standards. As opposed to you arguing with him and then him looking for weaker data and probably falsified evidence to support his claim. Why is it so much more satisfying to effectively be like, you're a dumbass and everything you said was wrong? Because a takedown is a victory. You get the win. You don't get a win if he admits his own mistake.

I would still consider that a win. It's a less decisive win, though, right? It's not a smackdown. You don't put him in his place. There's no justice served in the same way. That's a good point. It was after this that Sheryl Sandberg first contacted me and said, I love you. Let's be friends. And we became friends and have been. Because of course, she's a working mom too and one of the most successful ones in the world. And, you know, you just know there are people at home who appreciate you pushing back in certain narratives. But that's one that the left would like. Right. Like that's one that somebody like a Cheryl would like without getting into her politics. I think they're complicated. But, you know, when I do it to somebody from the opposite angle, like don't rip on don't rip on stay at home moms.

Right. Like don't don't judge them for making a choice that you say is going to be that's going to have a poor impact on their children, which somebody online who writes she's the she's the gender columnist for The New York Times, Jill Filipovic, I think is how you say it, wrote this whole thing about how stay-at-home moms are problematic and are sending unhealthy messages to their daughters in particular. I'm like, so she was my new Lou Dobbs. I would love to have her on this program and have that debate, Adam. And I will. I'll start with the studies and we'll go from there. Let's branch it out, though, into relationships, because that is so much more complicated. You know, arguing with someone you love or care about or who's a friend. And how do you how do you do that? How do you you slip out of prosecutor mode? You go to scientist mode, which is where the place you say is the best place to like have a productive argument, debate, whatever. It's so much more challenging when there's love and all the other feelings that come with a relationship in it. I think it's more challenging and it's also less challenging.

I think the less challenging part is that you don't worry as much about hurting the other person's feelings or jeopardizing the relationship. And that can make it a little bit easier to speak your mind, which is why we often have the worst arguments with the people that we're closest to. Because we're a little bit more thoughtful in what we say when we feel like there's a risk. I think the single most important thing that I have failed to do,

and I'm trying to learn to do, is actually to explain to people before I get into an argument that if I take the time to argue with you, it means I respect your opinion, not that I disrespect it. I don't agree with what you said, right? That's why I'm going to challenge it. But if your opinion didn't matter to me, I wouldn't waste the time. I would go and do something else. And so the fact that I have taken the time and invested the energy in challenging you means I really care about what you think. And so you should take that as a sign of endearment. And that has completely changed a whole bunch of arguments I've had with people who are close to me because once I've made that clear, instead of saying, hey, why am I being attacked right now?

They say, oh, I just made it into Adam's group of people that he thinks are worthy of having an argument with. Woo. It's funny. I care more about hurting the feelings of Doug if we're going to have an argument than I do some stranger who I'm trying to persuade on a policy issue. Like I'm I try to be my most respectful when I'm arguing against him. That's interesting. I maybe there's a nuance there that I missed, which is I think you're less you should be less worried that, you know, a particular point is going to be misinterpreted or that,

you know, he's going to be wounded in some way because you didn't agree with what he said. Yes. And you know, there's always going to be a recovery, you know, I mean, that's unless you're in some terrible marriage where you say terrible things, but we, we do follow the general motto of keeping the sex dirty and the fights clean and that tends to work well. It's truly like, if you strike those blows below the belt when you're arguing, it's tough to take that back. In a marriage, in particular, you don't want to create wounds that fester, last, or God forbid, are unrecoverable. No, that's right. And I think this is why all the research I've read on arguing says that

parents arguing more often is not bad for kids. It's about how constructively you argue, not how frequently you argue. And I think the same is true in marriage, right? You see that divorce is not predicted by how often couples fight. It's by whether their fights are nasty or whether they're able to stay constructive and respectful. And in the moments where they're not, they actually work it through. And I guess that goes back in some ways to the point about argument literacy, that we actually have to practice these skills. They're like muscles. If you don't use them, they atrophy. And if you always avoid conflict and you're afraid of having a disagreement, you don't figure out how to handle the ones that inevitably come up when you lose your cool.

And that's when you're probably in the worst position to have them. Yeah, no, I will say my husband and I don't argue that often. But if something starts in front of the children, we have it in front of the children because we do want to sort of see them. A couple of reasons for me. I don't know if there's any science behind it, but number one, we want them to see how we argue, right? Like it's not, it isn't mean it can be charged for sure. It's not like, I love you, but I happen to have this one little disagreement with, you know, we go at it,

we have different points of view. I also want them to see how we make up. I think that's important too. How do we land the fight ultimately? How does it resolve? And number three, I want them to know that fighting is not a deal breaker. Arguments in relationship, in life, conflict in life is not an end. It's just part of the process. And you don't have to feel so unstable in your relationship in particular that you can't express what's bothering you, your own real feelings, because you think it's going to end if that happens.

I think that's such an important set of messages to role model. And it means a lot more for kids to see you do it than to just hear you say it. It reminds me a little bit of some classic research showing that highly creative adults, architects, for example, were more likely to grow up in families with what was called a wobble, which is not a knockdown, drag out fight every day, but some tension where people were having these kinds of feisty debates. And I think that did exactly what you're describing. You see your parents do that. And all of a sudden you realize, you know what? The adults in my world are not always the authority. Sometimes I have to think for myself. I have to learn to reason through this. These people are lunatics.

Yeah. You know what? Who's in charge around here? Clearly, I need to figure things out. And I think that really nurtures independent thinking, which is what we want to teach our kids to do last time I checked. Yeah. Well, I don't think it's any accident. out. And I think that really nurtures independent thinking, which is what we want to teach our kids to do last time I checked. Yeah. Well, I don't think it's any accident. I sort of grew up to argue for a living between the law and journalism and lived in a family where my parents were madly in love. They really were madly in love with one another. Unfortunately, my dad died at a very young age at 45. But prior to that, he worked very hard. He was gone a lot. But when they were together, they were fun and feisty. He was like the meat and potatoes Irishman and she was the feisty Italian.

And there was one there was one incident where they had this big argument. She was my mom was pissed off at my dad a lot because he was never around. He was always writing a new book or traveling the world trying to he taught PhD students in education and helped revamp education systems across the world. And, um, so he'd be, you know, in Iran for like a year. So he, he, he'd come home and they'd argue because she was doing everything and she's raising us and blah, blah, blah. And my dad was sort of a gentle giant. He never really spoke up that much. He wasn't, he wasn't feisty. She was the feisty one. And he sat there, they were sitting in front of the fireplace in Syracuse, New York, New York, where we lived when I was little. And she was like, blah, blah, blah, and you this and you that, blah, blah. And my dad sat there, very calm, methodical, professorial.

Made his points, but not in the way she did. And finally, like he could take no more, apparently, he got up quietly without saying anything and dumped his Manhattan over my mother's head. And I can still remember the maraschino cherry like falling down the side of her face. Wow. And she laughed and he laughed and like we laughed. We saw it was okay. You know, it's just you knew they loved each other and that there was a foundation. And I don't know, to this day, that stayed with me. It's just like there's something endearing about it. It reminds me of John Gottman's research on

marriages that survive and the ones that don't. And one of the hallmarks of couples who fight well is that they can joke even while they're angry. And it says, all right, like right now we might not be exactly okay, but in the larger sense, we're okay. Yes, that is so true. That honestly, like Doug and I, the way a lot of our arguments end is usually he'll, usually he'll be the first to come over and say something like, I accept your apology. Which it sounds like he does not intend as a joke. Unclear, which is where we should leave it. Yeah, it's probably better that way.

You laugh. It does make me laugh, right? It's like, if you can make a laugh at yourself. And I know you talk about that too, like the importance of laughing at yourself like i love to laugh at other people i do enjoy mocking the mockable it's very fun but i would put myself at the top of the list there's so many stupid things about myself that i can make fun of we could spend all day but it's if you don't if you don't want to do that how can you work on that right because it Cause it's like, not everybody does have that ability. And a lot of people feel they go to being insulted too soon. Yeah. I actually think that the easiest way to overcome that, that discomfort is to take ownership over laughing at yourself and criticizing yourself out loud, because you get to pick the things that you're

comfortable making fun of yourself for, and you get to set the terms. And it's a lot less risky than when somebody else is making fun of you, which is completely out of your hands, right? So I actually think one of the things I've worked with leaders to do for the last couple of years is to read negative feedback that they get out loud and laugh at themselves. And I actually learned to do this when I was first starting to teach. I'm an introvert. I grew up pretty shy. I was terrified of public speaking. And I remember after my first lectures, I gave out feedback forms because I knew I needed to learn from the students. And one of the forums said, you're so nervous, you're causing us to physically shake in our seats. Only much later did it occur to me, cool, I have telekinesis. I can transfer my

emotions across a whole room. This is power. And it was sort of devastating. So what did I do? I read it out loud to the students. You know what? They could see that I was nervous anyway. What did I have to lose by calling out the elephant in the room? In fact, I looked like an idiot because I was acting like no one knew that I was freaking out and panicking. And once I named it, I could begin to manage it and say, you know what? I am really nervous. I'm nervous because I don't have a lot of experience doing this. I'm also nervous because I really care that you learn something and that you enjoy this experience. And I'm not sure how it's going to go yet. And then these poor students were like, oh, we need to coach him. We need to help him figure out how to teach. And over time, of course, it built my knowledge and my competence.

But I continue to do it this day. Every fall, I read the toughest comments out loud and I try to make fun of myself. And the goal is to signal, you know what? I'm not here to prove myself. I am here to improve myself. Oh, I like that. Oh, I like that. We got to write that down. Abby, write that down.

That was a good one. I'm not here to prove myself. I'm here to improve myself. That is, that really rings a bell. Like it rings a chord. That's how I feel about this show. Like, I just feel like my audience and I are learning together. I don't need them to think I'm an expert on anything, nor do I purport to be. I, although I do think I have a greater knowledge of the media than most, I will say like that is an area in which I feel well qualified to offer

informed opinions. But for the most part, I'm seeking. I'm a seeker and I love being a seeker. And I feel like that's what you are. You're a seeker, but you don't deny expertise exists in the world. brilliant, accomplished individuals we can name continue seeking, re-evaluating, checking their beliefs, making sure they're still valid. It's an ongoing process. There's never a spike the ball moment in the end zone. It's always running down the field again. I love the way you just captured that. And it makes me wonder, Megan, what have you rethought in the past few years?

Well, I mean, this is one I think we're going to disagree on, Adam, but I will tell you the whole race thing, the debate that we're having right now in the country, I think I've rethought it in a different way than you have, because I've read your book and I know where you stand and I saw you list a couple of examples that made you think, rethink, you know, the race relations in America kind of reaction. People didn't really. What I said was it used to be OK, which was not a good phrase because it sort of was an endorsement. It was perceived as. And the point. But if you watch the segment, I think any fair minded person would see the point I was trying to make was this didn't used to be nearly as toxic as it is now. And how do we get to the point where it's this fireable offense? Anyway, coming out of that, I was so shamed and so attacked that, and when I apologized for it, it was a sincere apology. You know, I was definitely

being leaned on, but I also was like, oh my God, I really stepped on a landmine. And I heard a lot of people and I said something that everyone has known is wrong, is wrong, but me, like when it was happening in the seventies and eighties and so on. Everyone knew that was totally wrong and racist, but me, I guess I just didn't know. Then as time went on, I came to realize that wasn't true. That wasn't true. What I had said, again, with the qualifier on the word OK, was correct. It didn't. It wasn't as big a deal. There's a reason Jimmy, I mean, Billy Crystal opened the Oscars on ABC News primetime in blackface one year, right? Like not everybody knew how offensive that was. And not even every black person felt offense in seeing it.

I'm speaking now of forget minstrel show blackface. That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about coloring your skin to try to look like a character. OK, so this is the debate I was trying to have. And as I sort of started paying attention more, I realized this, in this case, race, I felt was weaponized against me, that it was weaponized by a number of people who shall go nameless. And so it sort of gave me extra antenna to like investigate when that's happening, right? Like this is becoming a thing where race is being used to hurt certain people. It's not to say there's no racism. I try always to remind people there is racism. There's,

there are bad people in the world and they, a lot of them are in powerful positions and we have to be open-minded to that. And we have to be open-minded to judging claim by claim, but it's made me look a lot harder at things. Like I used to say, um, definitely, you know, there's white privilege and, um, systemic racism. I used to say all that. And now I've taken a very hard look into some of those things. And I don't necessarily buy all of that. White privilege is something we can debate. But the narrative, the sweeping narrative right now that we have about the police, for example, systemic racism in the country, I have real questions about that because I've

rethought, because I spent the entire summer after George Floyd. And even prior to that, I've been looking for real numbers, for real data, for in particular, I would look for black progressives who were not ideological, who took hard looks at it. And what did they think? Right? Like, what did they think? Because that to me seems like an honest broker, somebody, somebody like the Coleman Hughes, who's a progressive guy right out of academia, young, young guy, 24, 25 now. What does he say? Look at like John McWhorter. Right. He's a Columbia. He's a black man. He's in academia. He's liberal. What does he think? You got Glenn Lowry. He's a black man. He's in academia, but he's a conservative.

So I cared what Glenn thought for sure. But I just, you know, conservatives tend to lean a certain way. Anyway, as I gathered more data and read more sources, I landed in a different place. And I took a hard look at cases like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor to see, is there evidence that any of these awful acts that are, that we're all disturbed to watch are race-based? Is there evidence that police just generally shoot or kill Black people more than they would a white person in similar circumstances? And I will tell you, after all that, sorry for the very long-winded answer, I do not believe the evidence is there that they do. And I don't discount Black people have a more unpleasant time with police when they're stopped, when they're pulled over,

when they get roughed up more. I believe all of that. But I don't believe the narrative pushed by people like LeBron James that they're being hunted, that they're being shot at a level that is certainly disproportionate to the crime rate, or that there is evidence from a case like Breonna Taylor of systemic racism in the justice system. Wow. Oh, my gosh. There is so much to discuss few things. The first thing is, I think there is a lot of complexity and nuance lost in the way that the what Van would call the woke supremacy is, you know, is dealing with with questions of race. systemic racism against black people doesn't mean that race is never weaponized against white people or that there's never such a thing as reverse discrimination, right? I can hold those two possibilities in my mind existing at the same time. And I think you do too. Yeah. So the next thing I would say is it's interesting to me. I know John McWhorter. I think he's a very thoughtful scholar and I respect his integrity. I don't always agree with his

conclusions, but I respect the integrity of his thought process. And he's one of the people that I would be curious about his perspective on anything complex like this. That being said, it's interesting to me that you went to people as opposed to data, because I would say- No, I went to data too. I also went to data. By the way, John McWhorter is coming on next week, just shameless plug. No, but I went to data on cops and we can get into that too. But in any event, keep going. Well, what I was going to say is I think that instead of trusting a particular person to synthesize the evidence, right? What I'd want to do first and foremost is to look at the evidence that's out there and see what, you know, what judgments I make of it. And when you were just talking, I was thinking about a few data points that I'd be very

curious to hear your reactions on. And we can postpone that until you have a chance to take a look. I guess there are two bodies of research that have really shifted my thinking about this. The first one is Keith Payne and his colleagues on weapon bias. Have you seen this work? So what Keith and his colleagues have shown is that they do a whole series of experiments where you're essentially shown a black or white criminal. And the average person is more likely to see a weapon where it isn't there or where something looks like a weapon, but it's not if the person being depicted is black than not. And that's a scary effect to me. I don't think it necessarily explains every instance of police brutality against black people, right? But you

start to add up those kinds of biases and you could start to wonder, is that part of the picture? And then the other is Jennifer Eberhardt's book, Biased. Have you read that one? No. It is full of evidence trying to really answer this question of what happens when the criminal justice system confronts people who have committed identical crimes, but are black versus white. Okay. But now you're talking about in court, in the justice system. And I don't necessarily question that. And I think people like Glenn Lowry have done a lot of really good work on that. And I buy that, that once sentencing comes down, there's a problem in disparate standards.

But- Wait, but it's not just in sentencing. So let me throw out another example, and I don't want to go into prosecutor mode. I'm like, this is the science that I think is interesting and thought-provoking and important. Jennifer has also co-authored a paper, I think it was 2017, looking at body cam footage, showing that if you just look at the words that are used, officers speak with more respect toward white people that they stop than black people that they stop. And again, I don't want to over extrapolate from single data points, but you can start to see the cycle of escalation beginning with treating someone with disrespect rather than respect and then eliciting a more aggressive response. And I think about data points like this and say, okay, how many of those would we have to see before we start to worry about racism being systemic as opposed to just individual prejudice or hate. And I think the data are overwhelming in suggesting that there is a systemic problem here. And part of the reason I also think

that is there's some Brian Lowry research with Miguel Nzweta and Roz Chow and others showing that when white people are shown evidence of systemic racism, they tend to feel threatened by it. And they basically want to say, I'm not racist. And they're more comfortable seeing it as an individual phenomenon because it can distance that way. And when I see that, I think, you know what, as a white person, I wonder if I have that tendency. And I've got to be really careful about that. I understand all of that. I have definitely considered that. Trust me, I've been immersed in the New York City school systems, which have been asking me and everybody in them to look at our bias long before the latest craze in the past year

and talk about how there's a tendency to hold on to your beliefs and how you don't want to let go of them because it may threaten a lot around you. But what I'm saying is what I've seen, because I know you like data. You know, there were studies done that have been published by people like, well, cited by people like Heather MacDonald, right? There was one, it was, I'm trying to remember who did it. I think the name of it was like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences studied it or published it. And it was about how white officers are no more likely than black officers to shoot suspects. And as soon as the George Floyd thing happened, I a narrative was emerging that police officers are in the street hunting black men and they pulled it. And the sort of the recoiling on studies or science that isn't helpful to the progressive side and their sort of POV makes me distrust them more, right? So it's like, OK, I'm going to put an asterisk now on the fact that they pulled it because I don't know for what reason they pulled it.

I don't trust them. We've seen it just as an aside on the trans world and what's happening right now with medications that are given, you know, puberty blockers and so on, and this affirm, affirm, affirm standard that's been imposed on the scientific community at great risk to kids who aren't really trans but are going through a phase and should definitely not be having double mastectomies until they've done a lot of therapy to figure out what their actual problem is, right? So it's like science, which I know you love, is not always trustworthy. It's not always the answer. Now, sadly, even that's been corrupted by the woke mob. And so I would ask you to put an asterisk on your data and your studies, especially

more recent ones, because of that. But I'm not saying that there isn't systemic racism anywhere. I haven't looked into it enough to know. I just I've seen enough to have doubts about the sweeping claims that are handed down on us and the claims I are handed down on us. And the claims I see by people on TV, we talked about this the other day, about, you know, there was a man on TV saying 17 black men have already been killed this year by police. Okay, that may be true.

But we need to know more. Because on average, police make 10 million arrests a year, between 10 and 11 million arrests a year. And according to the Washington Post in the last year, 14 of those have been, those killed have been unarmed black men, 14 out of a thousand who are generally killed per year. Okay. So 10 to 11 million arrests, 1000 people killed by cops a year on average for several years in a row now. And on average, out of those, 14 of them will be black men who are unarmed. That is not what the media is telling us. That isn't, it isn't true that they are out there in epidemic proportions, killing black men on the streets. It is true that we have a massive problem with black on black homicides in the inner cities. We do.

And nobody will pay any attention to it. And even bringing it up gets, you know, people call you a racist. And so I just have such a healthy distrust of the media and their embrace of narratives that are virtue signaling narratives that I am loathe to buy into these sweeping condemnations without seeing more. I think we can agree on the media overgeneralizing from individual cases. I mean, I would say that one case is too many. I think you would probably agree with that. Sure, but you can never get it to zero, given the nature of what police do.

That's like saying no doctor should ever commit malpractice on a patient on the operating table. Good luck. No, I agree. No, I just mean that we should be outraged at however many of these cases happen, because we should be working. We should always have an aim of zero. I you know, there's a there's a whole that PNAS paper prompted a whole. What did you say? Series. Sorry. Oh, it's PNAS-A-S. It's called sometimes P-NAS. Sorry.

Sorry. Abby and I are secretly 12-year-old boys. That is hilarious. I never even noticed that until you pointed it out. Thank you. That P-N-A-S paper. How could you not notice? It's got both of the words in it. Both of those are dollar words in my house that I'd charge my kids for. You know what? I don't know if I've ever said it out loud. I've published there. I've just, I've always thought it in my head is, yeah, anyway, long story short, I know there was a whole series of peer-reviewed scientific analyses of those data. And I think the conclusion from the analysis was that the original paper actually didn't show anything about the likelihood of shooting by race because there was no accounting for how many people of each race were approached.

So it was actually impossible to calculate the proportions. And my understanding was that that was a correction that the authors agreed with. But I don't know what happened behind the scenes. Well, what about the woman who studied the trans craze amongst girls and found that there is a social contagion? She's at Brown University, that there is a social contagion. And people were so outraged

that she didn't reach the right conclusion, which is there's just a lot more trans people in the world now than we knew, that they made her resubmit it for another peer review. It had already been reviewed. And ultimately they made her she stuck with their same conclusions, but they made her put a bunch of asterisks on it. They did that because of political pressure. Right. And honestly, this is what Heather McDonald testified before Congress saying that I cited the study and then they they revoked it. Then they pulled it.

There's like for you, you must acknowledge that there's enormous pressure on people who push back against this narrative right now to tow the, quote, acceptable line. Like you, you can't really believe you tell me that somebody would feel comfortable publishing a study right now that that said black people are not more likely to get shot by police than white people. Do you think there would be an academic who, if they got results like that, would feel comfortable publishing that or a publisher who would be comfortable putting it out there? That's a great question. I think that

it's a sad statement about the politicization of science if what you suspect is true. I know there, I can certainly think of a lot of people who would be terrified to do that. I also know some people who I think would have the integrity to do it. I think the larger question I would ask though is, what is the purpose of science? I think the purpose of science, of course, is to reach the truth. But I think when we do applied science, we want to reach the truth in service of problem solving. And I think that people who get mired in this debate are missing the point, which is we still live in a world that has many instances of both personal and systemic racism. And just as we would be outraged if white people were attacked because of their race,

we should be outraged at the centuries of injustice and prejudice and discrimination that Black people have faced, that Asian Americans have faced. And we should not tolerate racism in any way, shape or form. But we are. And I think that's where the conversation ought to be going is we ought to be using science to try to figure out how to stop systemic and individual racism. I like what you said. And I don't disagree with any of that last statement. But what we've seen now, which is totally and utterly unhelpful to this discussion, to having an honest conversation,

let's talk about, for example, an honest conversation. Let's talk about, for example, housing. Okay, let's talk about it, right? Because I've heard the arguments on both sides when it comes to black people. Obviously, we had redlining and they weren't allowed to live in certain neighborhoods. And that's all fact. But I've heard very smart people, people of color, take a hard look at this and say, all right, but let's actually look at the banking in the past 10, 15, 20 years and why they make the mortgage decisions they make and whether it's based on likelihood of repayment and what the histories are there. So I know you can do this, but I'm open-minded. My point is not, it's not there. My point is, let me learn more. I want to be a learn-it-all.

That's really my goal. All for learning more. I'm a huge fan of that. I also think that I worry that we live in a time right now where people are using that as an excuse to not take action, to say, well, I've got to look more into this. And I'm not really sure if there's bias as opposed to saying, really? Really? Is this that hard? Do you really believe that we live in a perfectly meritocratic world? I don't. I want to do something about that. That's not a realistic goal. That doesn't mean we shouldn't shoot for it. Sure. But a lot of people are disadvantaged for a lot of reasons, right? And like we are super focused on race right now. And I don't mind taking a hard look at that and saying, where can we do better? But there are so many, like we've talked about like J.D. Vance, for example, in his book, Totally Demonized. Why? Because he wrote about the plight of the white working class in Appalachia. Well, you're not allowed to feel sympathy for them. Why? Because they have white skin. To your point earlier, we shouldn't be allowing discrimination based on skin color either way. And yet we've got kids who are going to school and being told that they're white

supremacists. Why? Because they happen to be born with a certain pigmentation. That is fine. And discrimination based on skin, I know, but it is right now. The racism right now, both ways, sweeping condemnations of whites just because of their pigmentation is alarming. And I think it's really led to a backlash amongst many white people. who might have valuable stuff to show us, but we're already being told you fucking suck. So listen to how much more you could suck and how much worse you need to live to pay for the sins of your fathers. For me, the value judger of all time. And people are like, and no, right?

It's like a very pedestrian way of summing it up. If there is one thing we could be clear on that I can say as a psychologist is that shaming and demonizing people is not an effective way to motivate them to change. And I think that's that I would just, Megan, I guess the hard question that I would ask you is, is it possible that you might feel differently about all this if your ancestors had been enslaved? And if you came from a family that had been disadvantaged to a degree that is unfathomable for generations, is it possible you would have a different stance? I mean, I guess so. But I also feel like, look, everyone's got something. Everyone's got something, Adam.

You know, I could absolutely play the woman card and tell you all the many challenges that I've had in my life that a black man probably hasn't had because of my lady parts and assumptions that have been made about me. This leads into a whole discussion we don't have time for now about what does one do about actual victimhood? What does one do about actual systemic problems that are there that could hold you back? You know, my audience knows I have views on that too, that we can get into another time. I just don't think it's helpful to lean into the victim mentality that the way we have been lately. And I don't think

the answer to victimhood is more victimhood of others, right? The answer to racism isn't more racism. The answer to sexism isn't to demonize all men and so on. And that seems to be where we're going as a society. Let me leave it at this. I love the Frasier Crane cartoon in your book. It's a little cartoon box. No, actually, it's just a quote, this one. And it says, I have a degree from Harvard. Whenever I'm wrong, the world makes a little less sense. And the person you're quoting is Frasier Crane, played by Kelsey Grammer. And I do think we all would benefit from remembering that, right? Like, no matter your degree, no matter your certainty, no matter your confidence, no matter your accomplishments, your money, you know, your tribe, your political success,

you could be wrong. And the world might make a little less sense. And that's okay because it's better to be less wrong today than you were yesterday. I'll give you the last word. It's even a good thing. The faster you are to recognize when you're wrong, the faster you can move toward being right. And that's where we all want to be. You're awesome, Adam Grant. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Megyn Kelly. This was fascinating. I look't know that I'm going to start reading mean reviews, so don't feel inspired to do that, but I am still reading all of them and they do. They make me laugh. They make my heart swell. They make me feel very connected to all of you. So that is what I love most about them. And don't miss our next show because guess what's happening on Wednesday? Senator Josh Hawley is coming. I'll be honest, we've been asking him for a while and he's kind

of been stiff arming us, but he's going to come on. And you know, he's a controversial figure. But as you also know, on this show, I try to have respectful, fun, earnest, good faith exchanges with people, controversial or not. And he's been pilloried by the left, as you know, right? Anybody who is a diehard Trump supporter has been. So how much of that is fair? And who is he really? What kind of guy is he? I can't wait to get to know him better. Reading his book right now. And we'll we'll have that exchange on Wednesday. So don't miss it. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.