Angela Duckworth #3 (on bringing out your best)

Oh, my Lord, top 10 favorite guest, returning. I love when she's here. She's so fun to talk to. You can hit her with any topic, and she has data on it. Angela Duckworth.

Angela is a psychologist, a MacArthur Fellow, and a best-selling author of of course, "Grit." She is the Rosalie and Eggbird Chang Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her new book, which is a fun counterpiece to grit.

- Yes. - I love this book so much. It's called "Cituated", "Fine the People" in places that bring out your best. Please enjoy our friend, Angela Duckworth. ♪ He's in our chance for him ♪

♪ He's in our chance for him ♪ ♪ He's in our chance for him ♪ ♪ He's in our chance for him ♪ ♪ He's in our chance for him ♪ - I'm getting comfortable. - I'm going to check

if we're doing care. - We're doing care, actually. - I think it's a really long one. - I think it's a really long one. - How tall are you?

- I have five feet and a half inch. - I am five one, my God. - I'm taller than me. - You're taller than me. - Now, really quickly, since you're both barefoot,

once you achieve that goal, I want you guys to come back to back because I do think it's interesting what they think their height is.

“And I have found that I think when you get your license.”

- Yeah. - Whatever you eat, the tallest you ever were when you got your license, you just kind of cemented that you're forever. - Yeah. - And then you no longer be.

- No longer be, the slaship might have not been a very accurate, right? I mean, you guys all the time that are like, I'm this height, and I'm like, well, either I'm completely wrong or you're wrong.

- Because men really want to be tall. So I think they do a little piece of a gender difference. - You don't think the five footer, like if you're four, eleven and a half, you're saying five, I think girls do it too.

- I think that's true. - Not as bad, not as bad, I agree. - I think it's as much of an epidemic. - Yeah. - But also, I've measured myself many times

because I also, she has a huge breath, exactly. - Yeah. - It's a brag because my wingspan is also exactly five feet and a half inch. It's probably like a Leonardo Da Vinci. - I am.

I can't remember the name of that drawing. It's in my book. - Yeah, the souviest man. - Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. - Yeah, maybe the souviest woman.

- Yeah. - But you don't have scoliosis, so I just want you to know, I'm a five four person in a five one body. - Oh, ow.

- Yeah. - But I just want you to know that I am a five four person. - Okay. - You can interview me as a five four person.

“- I think I'm a six foot person and a five foot.”

- Okay. - But not because of scoliosis. - That's just the way I'm saying it. - Just spiritually. - Do you know who has savage scoliosis?

- Oh. - You seem bold. - Did you ever have you seem bold on? - No, I love it. - Do any interviews, does he?

- And I've never heard of him.

- Maybe if we went to Jamaica, I think he's in Jamaica. - You'd be a great interview. - Of course. - Yeah.

- I would love it even mean in talk. I would just stare at him. - Yeah. - I never really got the whole skinny on what it was like to have Brad Pitt,

but he was like, but then he was Brad Pitt. And I never got the answer to, okay, you see, as dropped dead gorgeous in person. - Yeah, he's beautiful. - That's what Monica Valhalla is.

- He's beautiful. He's sweet, like he's very nice, he's engaging. - playful. - Yeah, I love him. - He's very present.

- Very present. - And I love him too. - Oh, wow. - To be human is to love him.

“That's how we will eventually test AI for their human is.”

He's like, "Pit test?" - Yeah, like, when Brad Pitt gets-- - How would you, like, what would you do against the same room as Brad Pitt? - They'll never get it. - You know, this is self-ish, probably,

but I do judge a lot, especially men, on how much they interact with me. Like, they're looking at me, just to him? - Just, yeah, just straight on to him and not really engaging with me at all.

- But not 'cause you're a female, just 'cause you're the other person. - 'Cause I'm the other person, exactly.

- But women almost always engage with me.

- Oh, so for me, I'm always pissed off. - It's like, where's the gender thing coming? Go on, go on, go on. - That's great. This is so fun to talk about,

because I rarely get judgmental of the man. Part of me is just like, "I at least see the history," right? It's just like, "Oh, yeah, you're a dude. You don't know either of us, but I'm a man. I'm talking, and I'm tall, I'm gonna, you know."

- Yeah. - He's identified me as having status and there were, what do I wear shits going on? - I would say, "Let's say that too." - Yeah, that's true. - I am a little judgey.

Occasionally, we get women in who never look at Monica. - And those, I'm more curious about those people. - And you're like, minus seven, but are they experts? - I just found out that this is an expert interview. Obviously, I'm not a celebrity, but I didn't know the rhythm.

I didn't know that there were, like, but now I do see, yeah. - I'm a little hurt by that, to be honest with you. How could you not have been known when I guess? - Wait, do you listen to podcasts?

- Yeah, Malcolm Gladwell's a revisionist history. - You do? - Oh, my God, I love it more than anything. - Minus one for not listening to podcasts. - I don't know any podcasts.

- That's fine, that's fair, that's fair. - If you start, just it needs to be. I'm gonna start here, yeah.

- But here's the grass is always greener.

So Ed Norton, Edward Norton's big complaint. I don't know how many times you've had a mom, maybe three or four times. - Three. - And more friends, and he's constantly like,

I wanna be, what color do we do? Green? - Oh, he wants me to act like that.

'cause the celebrities are y'all are. When's it, it's just to keep it in the timeline. - He wants me to be green. - He's like dying to be green. He was green, he was green, he was green.

- Can he be green on acting? - Yeah. Last time he was here, we had him green, just 'cause we also had Olivia Wilde on, and it was the week of that movie.

So she got yellow. - He was yellow, but he wanted yellow. - And then the experts are mad, they're not yellow, you know, certain. - He is green though. He has so much knowledge on everything, not just acting.

He's like very, very knowledgeable. So I understand why he wants to be seen as. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's the polymath square. - Yeah. - If you ever met him or talk to him?

- Never met him. I have watched him. I'm sure he would love to meet. - I like him. - Yes.

- And like his work as they say. - I bet he knows your work. - You think? What's the interest in him? He's interested in human behavior.

- Everything. - Are you asking him? - I'm gonna ask him. - Yeah. - Now if he's gonna be like, you need to know.

- I'm not asking him. - I'll be back. - I'll be back. - But yeah. - Do you know who Angela Duckworth is?

- Yeah, this is like some kind of psychological logic. - It is. - For me, it's a psychological test for me. - By the way, we're in an experiment right now. Did we not design weird?

- Yeah, I decided to set this forward. - By the way, can I just thank you for reading my book? Thank you for reading my books. - Of course. - Of course.

- Anyway, thank you for reading my book. - I put a blurb in your fucking book, of course I do it.

“And I think on the second one that you've done, right?”

- In general, let me tell you 'cause this will be fun for you.

I think I've been asked many times and they always ask you to do a blurb for their book

and you haven't read it, right? They ask you before you've read it. And I think it's a very awkward thing to be asked because it's like, "Well, I haven't read it, I don't know if I want to endorse this." Then what I would have to do, ethically, is say, "Well, maybe let me read the book.

"I don't want to endorse something I don't like." - I see what you're saying, you're like, "Lease and by the way, here I've written it for you." And you haven't even read the book. - Exactly. And then even worse, I go, "Well, I would need to read it so that I really believe the thing."

And then they give it to me and I don't like it. And then I have to call them and so, you know, I don't like it. So I don't want to give a quote. - Right. - This is a testament to how confident I was in you that I was like, yeah, I probably will.

Let me read it. - Normally, I don't want to deal with that situation where if I read it, I don't like it. - Here's a story, a young woman author who shall remain nameless, sent me an email. Maybe 15 years ago that said, "I wrote this book and I'd like you to endorse it." And I've written the endorsement for you, which you can edit, or not, right?

And it did have an attachment, which was the book. So it wasn't like, I'll never show you the book. But I was on that day in that moment, in my life, deeply offended. I wrote back, I didn't swear or anything, but I was like, you know, who are you? I was in Dignant, I expressed it.

- Oh, wow, did you know who this person was? - She was like, and acquaintance. - Okay. - She was like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. But I will tell you, it has haunted me for all those years.

And like a year ago, I was reading this novel called The Correspondent. - Stop, love it, love it, did it crush you? - Like, no, everyone's obsessed with it. - Did you wait it? - No, I have it.

- Okay, that is in your future. - Yeah, you have to see it. - It's all told in letters. So it's all episodes. Like, there's no narrative.

There's just letters that you read, like "The Correspondent." - It's correspondence. And it's mostly the correspondence of the narrator. It's a novel. So it's fiction.

Anyway, in the novel, there is this kind of like reckoning with your sins. And so that episode, where perhaps that young author was like out of step. Because like, who asked somebody to like, oh, here's the book, right? But you know who was more out of step? I was out of step.

Because I was so mean. I was like, oh, she was devastated. So I reached out to her. Like, I found her. - Oh, no.

- Oh, no. - Oh, no. - Oh, no. - Oh, no. - Oh, no.

- She's there and I found her.

“And I said, do you remember all these many years ago when you reached out for an endorsement?”

And I was deeply offended.

I was like, here's what I want to say.

Who might be deeply offended? Somebody told you that you should do this. And I'm really sorry. - Well, that's great. - She wrote me back in about six milliseconds.

She was like, oh, my god, thank you. And is this the author of "Courseponence"? - It is not the author. - Oh, but just the fact that-- - Wouldn't that be a great closure?

- That was one I thought. - Yeah, yeah. - It's Virginia Evans. - I wish it were, actually, I don't think she would have done this. And also the "Courseponence" was, I think, her first book.

- So she couldn't have done this because like, for years ago, so I'd be a four-year-old book. And I can't remember the exact narrative detail. But it's like a little bit of redemption story. And I remember in the narrative, and maybe I'm sorry, that there was like a letter of

kind of confession. And so this was like my letter of confession to this stranger. By the way, she's lovely, and I'm not going to tell you who she is, but she's great. - Has she found success? - She's been successful.

- Oh, great. - She's got another book. - Oh, great. - She did not ask me to do it. - Yeah.

- But wonder why.

If she writes a third book, she could ask me and I'd be like, yeah.

- Before I read that. - Yeah, I saw anything. - It's funny that you were offended. Would you not be offended?

“- The part that offended you, right, is that she pre-wrote your blurb, right?”

Is that what I was offended? - I was offended that she pre-wrote it. - Yeah. - But as I said, I was wrong to be that offended. I should have been like offended like one out of ten, I was like, so how like offended, nine out of ten.

- She might have thought I'll take the load off. - Yeah, she thought she was doing you a long period.

- I was the total jerk who was like, yeah, yeah.

“That's why it haunted me for so many years.”

I can't believe it did me 15 years. - Well, I know. - We'll go straight to her. - And now I'll public about it. - I'm not the same.

- And now I'll public apology. She was like, I think it's good for you. What if we pat her on the show? - That'd be cool. - I'm not going to tell you.

'Cause that would be D and on a month. (laughs) - So, it's been 10 years between roughly Yagrit and situated. - Exactly 10.

- Exactly 10. - Exactly 10. - That's all suspicious. - It's around number. - I think what's most fun is how you come to write this book.

And I'm referencing the graduate student that reached out to you. Could you tell us that story? - I got a critique by a graduate student named Nindia. He was not my student.

He was a student at NYU. And he was pursuing sociology. I'm a psychologist. He was a budding sociologist. I was looking at the person.

He was looking at the situation. As a budding sociologist, Nindia said, "You're blaming effectively "people for not being successful "because they don't have grit,

"because they're not trying hard. "And you're ignoring the situations they're in." Whatever defensive reaction that I had, I did say, "I'm curious. "Tell me more." And then you told him more.

And I don't know very much about sociology,

“but I think what he was saying is correct,”

which is that when you don't think about a person in their situation as sort of two parts of a hole, then you lay blame at their feet undeservedly. And he was studying essentially people moving from lower socioeconomic status to higher socioeconomic status.

I think he was absolutely correct to point that out. I have an email from him like yesterday asking, he's like, "I got tenure, "but I still might need a letter of recommendation. "If that is true, ever is the answer, yes."

And I said, "If that is true, ever the answer is old, yes."

So we ended up collaborating, and I don't know if it's collaboration, just staying in touch, James Flynn, who's a psychologist, was a psychologist, said that every great psychologist eventually

becomes a sociologist. Because eventually you figure out that you can't understand human behavior unless you think about the situation. - Well again, it's a very alluring and tempting endeavor

to parse out everything into tiny little compartment, and we'll study these things in silos. And it's easier to manage, but what you really lose sight of is that nothing is unrelated to the other thing.

- Yeah, it's an enormous soup. So the notion that you could even say one piece of it is what percentage of the person, or nature versus other binary boxes are for our convenience, they're not real.

- Right, and we had these little brains, honestly, and we're question-blood, so we have limits, but it's like so deep and so profound. You know, your camera has portrait mode, and everyone looks great in portrait mode.

They look better, right? 'Cause you come in and it's like high definition, and then in portrait mode, the background is suppressed, gently blurred, and it turns out like, that is how the human brain works.

You always focus on the person, you know,

you wanna talk about Michael Selbs, you don't think like, where did he live? How close was the pool, who was on the team, tell me more about these things coach, who are his parents, like, what did they do?

I mean, you might eventually get there. - Bill Gates, he goes to the only private school in America that has its own mainframe. In a time where people are paying exorbitant amounts to be on a computer for a half hour,

he had unlimited access. - Right, he's built gates, but also he needs that. - And by the way, a great headmaster, I think I know that school. Is it California or Indian Washington?

It's like a elite private school. - Yeah, but very special, like the right ethos, I think. - Yeah, right, and if I'm recalling the right conversation, the headmaster of the school that Bill Gates went to said that the job of adults is to watch

with hawk-like concentration, but with childlike curiosity, what a young person is doing to see a little girl like trolling around being like, how about gymnastics? So he was in a situation, I think the profundity of that, that we go through life, and we don't wanna know

who Dach Shepherd is, when people Google you, they want to know about you, but the Googling is usually not like, tell me about everyone and everything around him. That thing that he did on Tuesday, I wanna know why he did it because of what was going on.

Usually they wanna know why you did what you did on Tuesday because of you. It is because of you, but it's both. - But nothing's really because of you. - Not only because of you, nothing's only because of you.

- So we have this proclivity, I've been very aware of it lately, which is any character defect we have, any shittingness we have. We have an explanation that will originate in our childhood. - Yes.

- Well, my father went bankrupt. - Yeah, I was traumatized when I was five.

“- Yes, and that's why I'm hyper-vigilant”

and I overreacted this. - Yeah. - Now, everything great about me, I figured out how to do it. - Right.

- You never hear someone blaming any of their positives

to on their context or their parents or any of them, but all the bad shit has a really clear explanation. - So that's what you're gonna know. - The whole thing is, all equal. - What I would say is everything is both.

And yeah, we can edit out the situational details for our victories, but we shouldn't. The profundity, it's almost philosophical. It's like, oh yeah, and so therefore, if I want to succeed, I need to be in places and with people who make me successful.

Okay, sure, but I do think it's deeper than that

and you understand them as everything they do, say, feel, it is a function of who that person is, if they're character, they're mindset, but it's also a function of like, literally every trivial detail of their situation.

It's like a figure ground shift. And if you can keep it, because again, I think our brain goes into portrait mode and it's like, okay, wait, back to DAX and his story. You know, if you can keep the back story, somehow and focus,

then it is a more human and complete way to understand people. You know, in some ways, like these two books, right, 10 years apart, they are a set. I mean, one is about the inside game of how to, not necessarily be only oneself,

'cause I, as you know, don't believe in oneself, but I do believe that there are some selves we like more than others and there is an inside game of like, how to think and the Buddhist actually have a lot to say about like, how to think about the world,

how to think about your goals. And there is an outside game,

and the second book is about that outside game.

It's like, okay, now I'm gonna look around to me. I'm not gonna look inner, I'm gonna look outer. I'm gonna audit. - Situational agency, which is this great concept. - You can't be a trilogy because that's inside an outside.

There's like nothing well, that's kind of it. - How am I gonna come up with another? - Yeah, it's hard. - As much as I have enjoyed your previous work, I enjoy them for the way you construct them.

I enjoy them for the antidotes that are included, but you may or may not remember. My criticism of you is constantly been, in the common narrative self versus experiential self, I think you're way too heavy-handed with the narrative self.

“And I don't think you should be giving people tools,”

necessarily, to try to achieve all this greatness. - Why? - Because I don't think there's anything there when you reach it. I think it's a completely different one. It's a fool there.

- I can get you there faster, but you'll get to know where. - Guess what, yeah, as soon as you become the CEO, guess what, you're gonna be fucking miserable. Let me just break it down for you. But I'm at them all, they're miserable.

- Okay, I know all the people have even been. - But I have a theory of happiness, and I don't think you're gonna disagree, but maybe you will, actually, right?

So here's the thing about happiness.

I wanna say that you're right, that when you arrive at the destination of CEO, or you arrive at the destination of like tenured professor, or you arrive at the destination of like famous celebrity or author, whatever, right?

Like it's hard to say it loud enough. This is not happiness. You don't get there and feel happy, but here's why I think that is, as a psychologist. We have emotions.

The emotions are positive when we are approaching our goal, not when we have arrived, and not when we arrive five minutes ago or five years ago, right, we're almost there. We're getting there.

That's happiness. So then you could say, well, what's the prescriptive recommendation then? So if upon arrival, you're disappointed, I don't know any other way to live.

Look, why are you doing this? - Although I agree with you that that sweet spot is like, where it's, oh my God, I'm gonna touch it. - Yeah, exactly, right?

- You could live there, that would be delightful.

I don't think one can live there. - No. - I think the other way to happiness is to actually enjoy the process. - Correct.

- And that is my life mission. - That is what I wanna say, but you know what? The process includes having a goal. So that's where I think we can only agree, right?

- No, I don't agree. - You don't think the process has to have a goal? How will you do it if we don't have a goal? - I happen to live with an example. No, I'm not that way at all.

I'm goal alone. - You don't have me, okay, okay. - I'm very goal earned. - It really gives like a counter-example to you.

“- The one anomaly in that goal oriented life is this show.”

We had no fucking goal other than we wanted to chat with people because we enjoyed the goal. - It's a goal. - That's a goal. That's the process.

I enjoy the activity. - We didn't think it would make any money. We didn't think it would be huge. We enjoyed talking to people. - So we started talking to people.

- So we started talking to people. - Do you have any goals? - Yes. - It changed so much. It started like that.

But with success, came a lot of other stuff, came a lot of other goals. - Destractions, I would say. I think we've had to keep finding our way back. - But you know what, I think, I think this is a goal.

I just took some... - Mm, yeah. - And if you feel best right before I hit your lips, the Delphamine was released. - Yeah, now I've already had this.

Okay, you know what a goal is? A goal is a desired state of the world. If you want to tell me that for this podcast, it could be anything and you'd still love it. Then I would concede some real state here.

But there are episodes that you like more than others and you have goals. You have a desired state of armchair expert. And therefore to me, that's a goal. That's ambition.

It's not like a certain number of listeners. It's not necessarily an external validation. - Already we're structuring as binary and that's already where we're fucked up. So it's not like you do have a goal or you don't have a goal.

It's the spectrum of how goal driven you are and how process driven you are. And you're trying to slide this thing to where you have peace, right? And from me, peace is when I'm far further

on the spectrum, that's about process. You cannot be devoid of goal. That's what I'm suggesting.

“- Right, that's the only thing I wanted to say”

like because the process is the journey is the destination but without a destination, there's no journey.

Maybe it's trivial to say that. - Again, I think we should reject that. It's one or the other.

“I think it's just like this long spectrum.”

Even my criticism of your stuff sometimes has been like it's too heavily on the side of the spectrum of like get the four point out, get into the school. - Right, like maybe the one point. - Cause guess what?

You're writing about all the examples you have in your book. They're so fond, they're great. They're the people who reach their goals. And they've left out the 99% of competitors. They did all that stuff and they didn't get to those goals.

So is that trash? - Okay, let me process this because I think a good response is like not a great response. Let me say back what you're saying and make sure I understand it.

You're like, love the work and slash butt. - This isn't new, I said this to you last time. - I have a terrible memory. - That's okay, I got a good one. - Oh, I'm reminded me.

So what you're saying is in your own experience too, right? As somebody who has achieved some things and maybe you should probably whatever. You're not saying that human beings ought not have goals, but you're saying that

when you spend all of your energy and when you put all of your chips on the goal mark and then you're not putting any of your attention,

“your energy, hang your hopes on the process, right?”

How do you feel? Like, did you have fun today? How was that for you? That's a mistake. That's what you're saying, right?

And when you like annoyed the Michael Phelpses and you say like 28 Olympic medals. - Yeah, there's no inspiring. - Yeah, but you're like,

maybe you missed the most important part of the story

which is the process. - If you are suffering to get to the goal and then guess what the goal upon achievement doesn't feel like it should? I say that's a bad fucking strategy of life.

- You know, I'm trying to curse less. - Oh, okay. - Not helping 'cause you're in my situation right now. Wow, I'm gonna drop the F bomb. - Yeah, yeah, you're invited to.

- Probably you're okay to drop the F bomb with. - Yeah, no, I'm trying to be more like PG. - Why? - No. - For what goal?

- I don't wanna offend. - Nobody that listens to the show is offended by it, where it works, it could've never gotten as far. - Yeah, that's true. They're not listening.

- All right, I don't know Michael Phelps by the way. I wrote about Michael Phelps because I interviewed his coach and I studied his mom because I wanted to study his situation, right? I knew Michael Phelps was gritty. There's no better poster boy for grit than somebody who swims

365 days a year for 20 years. But I wanted to write about a situation. I wanna use Michael Phelps and what little I know about his journey, which has not been on linear trajectory necessarily, like yes, all the metals, but as you know.

- Massive depression by depression, following at all. - Substance used, right, mental health issues. - Yeah, mental health issues. - Yes, I told you, I didn't interview him. So I only have public knowledge.

He retired as you probably know and then he unretired. And he unretired before his last Olympics. And this I know from just talking to Bob Bowman, right? So again, studying the situations of successful people.

So Bob is his second father, right?

So Bob gets his text messages or whatever, Michael wants to go out to dinner, he's like, okay. So I'm Thanksgiving because Michael had retired, right? So Bob was coaching, swimming, but he wasn't coaching Michael Phelps. In that conversation where Michael told him

that he wanted to unretire, Bob's account is that he had come to a reckoning of why he wanted to swim and he had come to a different understanding of the goals. By the way, still want to win gold. - If you can do it, he wants to be the fastest in the water.

- I guess to your point, it was a shift in the motivation. And I do think I can't put words in his mouth. I can't say like he had a shift to the process, versus the goal itself, that would be to lead because I'm not Michael Phelps, and I can't guess.

But I know what you mean. As somebody who's had some success in her own field, too, I know what you mean about, you know, you get to Zanado and there's no paradise.

“And the reason I think goals are important”

and you're right to like sing a lot of Michael Phelps, then it's a sort of at least imply that the reason why this person is nowhere these because they got the goal and not because the process. - We're not warning for process.

I don't say corny by the way, that's on my list of approved words. (laughing) So this is Professor named Doshan Wang at Northwestern and he got really obsessed with fourth place finisher's at the Olympics.

And he had this hypothesis that when you're in fourth place he gives you a lot of like motivational kick. And like if you place fourth, you get nothing. If you place third, you're on the podium. The third place was like, oh my God, I'm on the podium.

- Almost didn't get here. - The silver medalist or like God, I was like so close to gold. But his question was not about the third place bro. And he was like, what happens when you place fourth? And so he was really obsessed with it.

And basically, I'll tell you it's finding, but that's not the point. The finding is that the fourth place finisher is actually do better than the third place finisher's as like future unfolds.

But the thing that I want to say is he couldn't find the footage. - Who was four? - I mean he had to do a lot of work. So if you're not gonna study Michael Phelps as a case study of someone who had a lot of grip,

but also had a great situation. And say you want to study the fourth place finisher and the 400 I am in the 2024 Olympics. You can hunt him down. You can like research them.

I think you're right that if you only focus on the goal, you're chasing the morning dew 'cause when you get there, it will be gone.

But also I think human beings will always chase goals.

When I said like, I think this is a goal. I have a desired future state. That is to like raise this to my lips. That's a goal. Maybe it's so deep in my DNA that I can't get it out.

Is that I think people are ambitious, even though you know that when you get to a certain wrong in the ladder, it's not like anything changes,

but we're always on a ladder.

It's just the nature of human nature to be on a ladder. - I don't think enjoying the process can happen unless you've achieved the goal.

“You have to have done the closing in the first.”

This is like chronological, right? Like first you get the goal, then you realize, oh, it didn't really do the thing, then you go back and then you're like, okay, exactly the Michael Phelps thing you're saying is he did it, he got it, and then after he's like,

oh, I don't think it's the sure way, but you're sort of like, he had to go through that one right of passage. - Yes. - Okay, I started it and I didn't finish it. So I admitted that I am very goal oriented.

I'm like you, and if I wasn't forced to live with someone who happens to be an example, I don't think I would believe it existed. I am a lucky product of this unique situation where I was in which is she never tried to get famous.

She never tried to make a lot of money. She started singing and she has an obsession

that she knows she thinks she can make this noise

and she worked at it endlessly and then she got it and she's a mimic and then the place she could go do that was in the singing musical theater thing and she loved being around all the people and she's just really good at it

and she really just ended up in all these places without ever setting out to be in them and it was through loving the process of the things she does. And so I've witnessed it and I know it exists and I think if I didn't live with her,

I would reject that it exists. - You'd be like, I don't believe you. - I don't believe you. - I don't believe you. I don't believe you.

- I would believe you. - Also, there's nothing worse than having no goals. I think you would agree. - Yes, like a state of apathy. - A state of apathy is just like existential angst.

Like on we, I don't know where I'm going. Having a port of destination is a hell of a lot better than being like, I have no idea. - A drift is a pleasure. - A drift?

- Yeah, a drift? - Like, yeah, a drift. - A drift or a drift or a negative, right? - No, it says a positive point. - I agree with that, whatever level of commitment or,

however tightly you want to hang on to like this goal, this particular, or even if you say, I'm really all about process, right? I love how singing makes me feel. So I'm gonna do it and I'm not even quote unquote,

gonna see what happens. I'm literally just gonna like do it. - Yeah, I'm gonna keep doing it. - I still contend that the situation you're in is important because I don't know that everybody

who is process-oriented is equally happy, right? So regardless of where you fall on this as you say continuum, right? Of how gold erected MI versus how process-directed I am. I think to me, the reason why I nearly killed myself

to write another book and the reason I say to you like, I don't think there's another is this is the missing piece. And you know what, Dax, I wouldn't have written this book if somebody else had written it. I was hoping somebody else had or a general audience

because you don't like the process of writing a book. - It was not the fun of thing to do. - Yeah, it was harrowing and I don't think I'm gonna live as long because of the years I shaved off my life. But you know the reason why I don't think there's a book

about this is that the inside game, like, oh, you know your mindset, I think it's more accessible. This is exactly what we don't think about. We are not aware of the water we're swimming in. We're just only aware of how hard we're swimming.

So whether your process-oriented primarily or go-oriented primarily or however you wanna think about that, I think you arrived to the same conclusion

“at least I do and you should be aware of where you are.”

I mean, you are married to somebody, you probably came in and imagine what it's like not to be. But it's like a great fucking situation, right? - The only way I would have learned some of the things I've learned is being forced to witness someone live that way.

- Just to know that like, there is another Dax, like, you know, Dax has many selves, but this Dax that you are in this relationship sounds to, I mean, I was so silly. You'd be talking to you about your many selves

'cause you're here and you can speak to yourselves. - I can speak to myself, like Angela Duckworth in this situation. I often have said that the universe rolls out its carpet for me. I'm extremely fortunate, but if you say, "Oh, you've had some success," which I'm fine,

I don't have to be falsely humble, but I can tell you some of it was because I am an incredibly hard worker. - Yeah. - And a lot of it is that I have been mentored more

than anybody I know. I get to work with really honestly the very best people in my business. - Yeah, you're like a writer at the New Yorker. - Yes, exactly. You go down the hall to bounce an idea of somebody

and then you see a writing product and then there's a buy line. All I want to say is that when people sign the buy lines of their life narratives and there's one line and then you write your name on the cover of the book and you put your name on your CV,

it's really you and your situation. Some of us have better situations,

so I've had an incredible situation,

“but I think if you don't pause and say like,”

everything that Dax is is partly because he's married to Chris, it's he's working with Monica, he has this producer,

When I was little, not that little, but teenage little, I would draw apples. Like I had this obsession with painting apples

and I would always paint the apple on the white background.

Partly 'cause I never got to understand how to paint background, which is its own skill. But I have now dozens of these old watercolor paintings of apples and the apples are great, but here's what I would say about this

if I could go back to my like 18 year old self. It's fine to only paint apples on a white background, many paintings are like that, but if you see life and you see cutouts of people and you're not factoring in the situation,

I just think you misunderstand. Like why is that person doing this? Tell me more about this person and tell me more about everyone and everything around them. That's the only question I would want to get asked.

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company, and affiliates, North Brook, Illinois. (upbeat music) I want to go through part by part now. - Okay. - Great, had a very psychological point of view.

- Yes. - Psychology. - It's a very interior point of view. - Human centric, right? And then through this conversation, you start broadening your field, you're willing to consider that, yes, sociologists.

- I'm like opening the aperture. I'm like listening to the sociologist. - That's great. - And we start the book with a story about you and your mom. - Yeah. - Weeen tells us that story.

“I think there's a reason you started it with that.”

- So five, or so years ago, I'm in the Atlantic Ocean with my mom. Why is that? We're snorkeling. Who takes their 86-year-old mother snorkeling

in the Atlantic in retrospect. And the moment I hit the water, I realized that was really the worst decision I had ever made. So I put my mom in a losing situation, which is like, we were in the Atlantic Ocean.

We are not off the shore a little bit. We had taken a 45-minute boat ride. - You run an island originally? - We were in Miami, and then we left Miami, and then we went into the Atlantic for 45 minutes.

So we could see land, but 45-minute flight boat is like, you are not swimming to shore. The winds are whipping that day. The current is heaving. The reason I knew that this was a tragic situation

is that I could barely keep up.

Basically, if you don't fight the current,

you're getting swept behind the boat in the wrong direction of where you're supposed to be snorkeling. So my mom basically aspirates, so she's in health water, I think, in water, whatever panic. So both lungs, and you know, the thing is,

you just rapidly lose consciousness. - That's comforting, actually. - It's actually quite peaceful. Like, you know, in her memory, she was like, and then I just don't remember anything,

but she doesn't remember struggling. So I swim to her side. I realize that she's unconscious, and I do what I've done my whole life, which is I just try as hard as I can to swim her to safety.

“Why start your book with a harrowing story about your mom?”

To me, the metaphor of the ocean, it is your situation. It is everything around you, and you know what? You can fight all you want. You can use willpower and grit, but if you are in a losing situation,

your situation just like swallows your efforts whole. That is the reason I started. And, you know, happy ending, the situation changed. I don't think I would have started it with those. - Yeah, I'd like to do it.

- I would have been able to do it. - You had been able to do it. - You had been able to do it. - That would have been a lot of problems that would have been sued. - So, I stopped trying harder.

I mean, my whole life, I got everywhere by trying harder. - It was the trick you depended on. - The problem with having one trick, the problem with people who are really gritty, is that that is the only trick they learn.

They're like, you know what, I'm gonna wake up earlier. - Because it would be shameful. - Because we are humiliated, and it's like the one pillar of your self-esteem gets kicked out. So, in that moment, maybe out of desperation,

and maybe when your physical circumstances are like that, you don't have shame, 'cause you're just like, oh wait, this isn't working. - So, I stopped trying harder, and I started trading water,

and I just tried to change the situation. So, I signal for help. The snorkeling instructor of a nearby boat, why our own snorkeling instructor did not notice us, that is a whole thing.

- I don't know. - No, it's not a whole other story, it's just a mystery. But they came to our aid and then CPR ambulance. - Longness, about right of your life back to shore. - Right back, you know, my mom's like oozing blood,

like out of all for work. - Oh my God. - It's a miracle. - It was around Christmas, it was like Christmas miracle. She lived.

“The happy ending, I think, has a lesson,”

and the lesson is that trying harder is not the only trick you can have. Grit is great, but grit is not enough. - It's sometimes the solution. - It is sometimes the solution.

- Yeah. - But who among us would not benefit from saying, before I like kick as hard as I can

Who among us wouldn't benefit from like, who's the best mentor I can have to like coach me on this like, what's the best therapist? Who should I be collaborating with?

How do I get a team around me? I guess that's for me personally,

“why the revelation of the power of the situation”

was so fundamental because I had gotten so far on the inside game. I was ignoring all the things that do make a difference. And maybe also because I was lucky, but you know, there comes the time and life,

at least for me, where luck and grit were not enough. - Well, grit is also an illusion of control. - Same more, what do you mean by that? - Having grit makes you feel like I'm in control of this situation.

With my grit, with my work ethic, I will eventually get what I want because I have this thing.

- That's not always true.

- Yes, but it gets you so far. It gets you so far that you have all of this mileage where you're like, it worked today. - You have the evidence. - Right.

- But at some point in your in a situation, you're like, oh, I know my limit. - Like, broadly true. When people have something that works for them, they do it more.

And like, it does become the way that you survive, the way you manage things. - Yes. - And as my physical therapist said, what happens to people's bodies

is that they have some compensation, right? Like, you know, they're like, kind of favoring their left hip because their right hip is weak. And then that works and works and works

until it doesn't.

“And I think trying harder, it worked until it didn't.”

And I think only by life, and that wasn't the incident, that was more of a true parable. But professionally and personally, I think I found myself not getting personally

or professionally where I wanted to be through just trying harder. So it was like, the ocean currents

just like finally slapped me in the face.

- Yeah. - But I think because it worked for so long, I was like, doing it. - Yes. - Let's talk about Leon Marshand.

Is that how I see his name in Bob Bowman? - So Leon Marshand, I think is a great example of what I want to cause situational agency. It's not that he didn't have a great situation, but he had the agency.

The sense that he could improve his situation by his own choice, right? Because I think situations can be coded as like, that would you cannot control. Leon Marshand was swimming.

He is the son of two Olympic swimmers. He was in to lose France. He had a very good coach, but it was the local organization. He knew that his situation could be improved,

because he knew that people like Michael Phelps were training on teams where everyone was trying to make the Olympics.

Where there was not a small team,

but a large team of trainers and equipment managers, and of course a coach like Bob Bowman. So he writes Bob Bowman in email, and he says in so many words, I'd like to come to Arizona State University,

moving from to lose France to Tempe Arizona, changing a culture, changing a team, changing his direct mentorship, and also, by the way, and I know it sounds trivial, but changing his physical situation,

so Arizona State University has a great setup for swimming. Like three outdoor pools, it rains 15 days at an entire year. - Are they the number one college in swimming? - Now I think it's UT Austin,

because that's where Bob Bowman's now-- - Oh, okay, okay. - And I think that's not a coincidence. So Bob says yes, and Leon says yes, because I think even after writing in that email,

there was some ambivalence, and he sat down with his parents, and they said, don't overthink this go. So he moves, and within two years, he shaves like nearly nine seconds,

off of his best time in his best event, which was the 400 individual mentally, right? So a hundred meters of each of the four major strokes in swimming. - Within two years, he shaves off that time, and he shatters Michael Phelps's last standing world record,

and I'm not saying that because goals are important or that everybody needs to win an Olympic medal, but I am saying that because I think if you try as hard as you can in a given situation, it may not be the progress that you can see

when you try as hard as you can in a better situation, and you can use Leon as an example, because it's the same person, right? The same person, the same grit, the same talent, but he's changed his circumstances.

- Yeah, it's the old adage like to get better,

“you have to play people better than yourself.”

If he is the best swimmer in France, try harder, what? - How? - Yeah, I'm winning. - Apparently in swimming, and in many sports, your Pacers, who's in the lane with you, like who's behind you, the epilogue of the Leon Marchand study,

is not only did he break that road record, the next Olympics, which is to say, the next Olympics under which he had been coached by among others Bob Bowman, he won four gold medals, and was the most individually decorated Olympian

of the Paris Olympics, and he has said that it was his situation. He says when you see a person swimming in the lane, there couldn't be anything more solitary, but what you don't see are all the people who are metaphorically in the lane with them.

- Yeah. - And all I want to say to people is, A, that is true, and B, you don't have to consider those as given, that's the simple message. - Break down the three box parable, because I think this is fascinating,

the order of events is different than the actual order of events. So how do we even come to this, whose concept is it and how did he prove that? - This idea is very important.

“I think you can understand all of you in behavior,”

we were talking about addiction, you talk about winning gold medals, you can talk about painting, any behavior, you want to understand, you can understand by reverse engineering it using three boxes.

And what I want to say is, the third box is the behavior itself.

You're like, why is that person doing what they're doing, saying what they're saying, feeling what they're feeling? Why are they like such a pain in the about, or why are they showing up early staying late and trying so hard?

So behavior, you can put in box three. What's in box two? Behavior comes from your thoughts. This to me is the cognitive revolution. This to me is like modern psychotherapy.

When someone is depressed, when they're eating too much, when they're eating too little, when they're trying hard, when they're not trying hard, there are thoughts that precede those actions and feelings. They may not be entirely conscious,

but they are what drive us. And when you try to understand someone's behavior, including your own, you cannot understand it and sometimes this requires therapy without tracing them back to the thoughts

that made that behavior rational. Okay, so that's two boxes. Why is it called the three boxes model? The first box is the situation.

“You should ask yourself, okay, I had that thought,”

where was I? Who was I with?

What were my circumstances?

Because if you don't get that right, then you only start working at box two, or use willpower at box three, like I'm just not gonna be angry. I'm just not gonna drink.

I'm just not gonna procrastinate. I would say, put yourself in a situation where you're gonna have the thoughts you want, then you're gonna act the way you want. Because sometimes people are like,

I'm gonna substitute this behavior with another behavior, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take a walk instead of eating the afternoon. That's not a bad idea, but I would say, what would be a situation where you would want to take a walk?

Like put your sneakers by the door, set a calendar reminder, make it appointment with the friends at the situation, go to a location where you like the view. Yeah, exactly, like make it pleasant.

But the revolution is not mine. You asked me where this model came from. It's not my model. So about halfway through my career,

I met this psychologist named James Gross.

He's at Stanford and he studies emotions. And for a very long time, James said, people do a lot of things to regulate their anger, their sadness, their anxiety. It's just like a laundry list.

And he said, you know what, if you understand how emotions are generated, then you can understand how they can be regulated. You are in a certain situation. That situation gives you certain thoughts.

Those thoughts give you certain emotions. That gives you a blueprint or a roadmap for how you can regulate those emotions, 'cause you can change your situation or you can change your thoughts,

or you can just directly change your emotions. And his conclusion was before meeting me, if you're gonna try to regulate that air, if you don't wanna smash a jar against the wall, if you don't like that box three,

then you wanna go all the way to the beginning. Begin to the beginning, right? Begin to the mouth of the stream. When I met him and he was explaining this to a large audience, well, a small audience at Yale,

like it was an academic meaning. It was a cold day in November. The year was 2011, I think. And he just put up on a PowerPoint slide, this like extremely simple model.

He was talking about emotion. And I just saw all of human behavior. I was like, wait, this explains everything. Why is this person late to work? What were they thinking?

“Okay, and what was the situation that initiated those thoughts?”

So the whole idea is to reverse engineer everything you do back to its beginnings, back to the situation. And then, to go forward again and say like, well, where do I wanna be? And then start the mouth of the river.

We have the sense of being sentient beings and being like, gold-directed, right? Like, I walk through the store. I want to get my notes, I'm logical, and I'm intentional. But so much of human behavior is not top down,

like, intention, but bottom-up reaction. You know, we eat and drink when it's just there. Like, so much is sort of like, why are you thinking that? In fact, one of the people that I talk to and like, some are as very briefly,

like, a lifetime research. He is studied addiction. His name is Chef Siegel. And he says, the realtors will say like, location location location.

And if you're dealing with addiction, relocation relocation relocation. And the reason is, is that we're so stimulus-driven. Like, I know we don't like the idea that we are responding in automatic ways to the triggers in our environment.

But that's just the way it is. And it's not for a certain class of people. It is for everyone. And maybe the triggers are different. But if you recognize, and if you are humble enough

to recognize that around certain people, you start talking certain ways. Like, I'm in LA. It's been 24 hours. In now you're on a GOP one.

I don't know how to scale. I'm like, not kidding. Like, in this hotel, there are scales everywhere. I'm like, wait, do people in LA constantly weigh them? That's why.

I'm going to be on a GOP one before I get on the plane back to Philadelphia. I walk by this clothing. And like, me, who shouldn't care because I'm a professor. They can't fire me for not having a fashion sense.

And now all of a sudden, I want to wear Prada. This situation is changing me. I know. I know. So thrilled.

I just had this kind of really fun and unique example of this

ago in Nashville with one of my very best friends

that lived in LA, we hung out for maybe 15 years and then he moved back to Michigan. So for the last 16 years, he's been in Michigan. I see him occasionally. But anyways, he came down in Nashville.

So he's been now back in Michigan for 16 years. And he was saying, oh my, my, my fattest point. And I was like, aha, and I'm like, listen to this. And we're so close. And we love each other so much.

Like, there's no way I could offend him or make him feel insecure.

“But I said, what's wild about you saying this right now to me?”

Is it points out? It illustrates so clearly how much we're products of our environment, because you're upset that you're overweight. And to me, let me ask you, do you know a lot of people

on GOP ones? He goes, no, no, what are those? I'm like, you know, you've seen the question, "Majerno, Zampec?" He's like, I guess I see this, what what is it?

And I'm like, explain what it is, who am I going to go, but what's even more interesting to me, Scott. He's like, how do you not left LA? I wouldn't be telling you what a GOP one is. And if what you want is to lose weight, like, do they did it?

Like, you can get this fucking job. And he's like, oh my god, really? He starts writing, I don't remember her to this. I'm like, no, I mean, not really like, he's a salesman, he's out with other people.

He's not in the box one, he's in a different box one. He's not in the same context as me. And he's a very smart person who is very up to speed on everything in his culture. And I don't know something about some volunteers.

He's a different person from a different box one situation. It's like, he was back from here in LA. In the same culture, and we just have all the same shared knowledge. And I was like, oh, this is a really fun illustration of you having gone back for 16 years.

And by the end of the trip, he's like, okay, so I did. GOP, what else would you know? It was a perfect example. OK, I fell down this little rabbit hole studying this psychologist. Nobody's ever heard of.

And I had never heard Roger Barker.

He's this psychologist who coined the term behavior settings. He started out by thinking that people were goal-directed and so forth. And he would actually follow individuals around for their entire day, trying to understand why Monica is different from Dax.

And what is inside Monica that is different from Dax. But what he came to was a conclusion that he didn't expect, which is like Monica behaves because of the behavior setting in which she is. Like she's responding to this, yes, Monica is Monica.

She's an individual. But when you're in a drugstore, you behave drugstore. When you're in a church, you behave church, right? And when you're in Montana, you behave Montana. And when you're in Wisconsin, you behave Wisconsin.

He tells a story, not entirely different, I think, from your friend, which is he was like, for example, I don't like pork.

“But I moved to this part of the country where it's just the only thing”

that everyone eats. Pork in every form, ham, bacon, pork chops, sausage. And now that's what I eat, not only just physically, because that's the only thing around, although that's part of it. So if you visit LA, and you spend a few days here,

and you want to be this way, move to LA, because you will. And if you don't like it, don't move to LA, because when you get here, you're going to change. Yeah, that's fair. So the idea of the like your environment shapes you,

I think it's deeply uncomfortable for people. It seems to threaten agency in autonomy. Exactly, and you know this guy, Roger Barker, that I got obsessed with. I mean, I went around.

I would ask my colleagues, have you taught Roger Barker, who? I went to intro psych books. I like went to the index. Skinner's there, Freud's there, Danny Connamon's there. But Roger Barker is nowhere.

And I was like, wait, this guy at the height of his fame and the height of his influence, he was the cat's pajamas. Why did he fall? Maybe not from grace, but fall from view. So what happened was the world was within.

There was like, oh, behavior settings, this is revolutionary.

“If you want to be a certain way, change your setting.”

And then the world got kind of disenchanted. Now this is decades ago in the history that nobody's reading. So the idea that the situation has power over you, I think actually was at odds with our core notion of agency. They rejected it.

They were like, I don't like this story that when you go to the drugstore, you behave drugstore and you go to the church, you behave church. But the last words that Roger Barker wrote were that when you recognize the powers of the church,

when you recognize the power of the environment to shape you, now you really have power because you just changed the environment first before it does that. You're still responsible for it, which is what you want. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

He was like, you know, you have more contact. See, not less agency, but he was not successful. And that is why nobody gets taught Roger Barker. Yeah, let's talk about GLP ones because they're in the book. Yeah, you're like a huge fan.

Yeah, well, every doctor is-- But not everyone is, I think. No, no, no, and it hits the core. I'll be talking, I'm not going to name names. I know in older couple, the husband's done it.

The wife isn't going to do it. And what you point out is this thing about Willpower is that it signals we believe people's character. Right. OK, so if you lose 20 pounds, how'd you do it?

You know, the old fashioned way was really hard work. I, you know, changed my diet. Make rice cakes for two years. Yeah, it was really hard, by the way.

And the more you hate it, the more points you get, right? Yeah. Then people want to give you like a 10 out of 10 on character on like moral fiber, right, strength of Will.

“If you say, how'd you lose a 20 pounds, like, oh, GLP ones?”

I don't know now in culture. It's moving quickly, thank God. I think now the things are changing. But at the beginning, we're right at the forefront of what we're talking about it.

And yeah, at the beginning, I was always going like,

why would anyone be mad? No, I was at the beginning. It was like, no. It's insane. At the beginning, I was mad.

You were on the side of what? I was like, this is bad. GLP ones are bad. People shouldn't be taking them. I had all these reasons.

But by the way, I am on one now. You were on one. Yes, so were you heavier? No, but I started taking it for cholesterol. You are seriously on them.

Yeah, okay. I'm on a micro dose. And it started because of cholesterol. But we kept having all these people on these doctors that I do respect.

It sounds like a group days. Like this is the biggest miracle. Well, Eric Topel was the main one for me. I agree with him on pretty much everything. And he was like, I think eventually,

this is going to be over the counter.

“I think this is something that everyone is going to be on.”

It does all this stuff for dementia. Antibionics, vaccines, and this thing. So it's like the three miracles. It was like the three miracles. Yeah, yeah.

So I was like, okay, I will try it. I absolutely love it. And we have a doctor. We are in a study in the doctor of strongly, or to sure, because our cholesterol is so fucked up.

So you also get a doctor urging you to do it. Yeah, it does a lot for brain markers. And so I got on it. And then my numbers are amazing now. Right.

So you don't have a cholesterol problem. Has it changed anything else? Well, it changed my view on having staunch views. [LAUGHTER] Here's our joke, you want it?

Yeah, it's mine. We don't have a lot of views of any kind. Yeah, it's not having any moral high ground. Because that's how it started. It's not just joke, you'll be one.

So there's a research that shows that when people take, for example, antidepressant medication, right? Like, you know, and there's this kind of like, oh, well, you know, you could have done it the hard way. And that would be the honorable way.

That you're cheating somehow. You're cheating. It's lesser than, right? That one, especially the antidepressant one, makes me so mad because there are so many people

who are like trying to white knuckle it. And guess what, they're failing. They're depressed. And they're not getting underpressed by doing all these things. And it's like, you can take this.

It's chemical. I have the same thing with people who white knuckles sobriety with a AM like congrats. You're doing it. But you're fucking going to see now about it.

And about it. You know, alcoholism without AA and white knuckling obesity without GLP ones and white knuckling depression. Exactly. Without over-the-counting, gingers chemical.

So I met this physician named Aaron Carroll, who rings GLP ones in antidepressants into one story and it's his story. So he was very successful. Across the board, right?

You know, a decorated author physician, by the way. The person who is telling other people, like you know, you might want to consider medication. His self felt so much shame. He was overweight.

His father was overweight.

And he said, you know, I never stopped

actually secretly blaming my father for his weakness of will. And so GLP ones, and of course prior to GLP ones, antidepressants come out. And he was very late to taking either of them,

even though he needed both of them. He went on vacation and he had like a panic attack and the panic attack led to a fall down a mountain. He had rock bottom. And he had a sort of like--

No, no, no. Well, maybe not figured a little bit around. Like, they didn't have to airlift him. So maybe he was rock bottom. There was a mountain involved.

It's rare someone's rock bottom, it actually includes a round. Oh, you're like, you know, like, look at the universe is really, like, can you hear the answer? And you're like a memo. But I think this resistant.

“So I wrote about GLP ones because I think getting GLP ones”

if you are the kind of person who needs them is getting situated, right? And the shame of why couldn't change myself so I changed my situation is a mistake. I think if we could honor--

I mean, we should rate poems to the people who change our situation. Like, why don't we valorize the people who had the courage or the common sense? Why not?

You know, when he went on antidepressant medication, and he's not speaking for everyone, but he did talk very openly and right openly about this. He's like, I'm more engaging. I'm more engaged.

I'm more optimistic. I like myself. Yes. I don't think that's entirely changed, by the way. I don't think our society has gotten to the point

where you're like, oh, you need an injection. You need a pill. Great. You're getting situated. I don't think we're there yet.

It's also a cycle, though, because I think people who are depressed, often people who are obese. There's already shame in there. There's shame, which is part of the depression. There's shame, which is part of it.

That's like leading them to these triggers where they're trying to manage an emotion. Yes, it's hard to parse it all out, right? Because that shame is also stopping the behavior of changing. They're all feeding each other.

Yeah, and it's like, just try.

I'm always like, just try it.

You can stop.

What's your theory? And then I will tell you what's fine to think or what's some kind of thing.

“I think it appears to be the ultimate admission that it be you.”

So you're already-- let's say you've been trying to lose weight for 20 years. And you have the shame of not succeeding at that. If you are to finally, throw up your hand and say, "Fine, I need a GOP one." You are reading that as well.

Now I've permanently admitted I could never do it.

It's the end of the thing I'm a failure and stop. That will signal that this thing I fear is now confirmed. I'm a complete failure. I can't do it. I might own a half to have this thing.

It's admitting in full capacity my fear that I'm weak will, and I'm all these things. By doing this, it's an admission that that is true and permanent. You can sort of live in the sort of like, but maybe that's true. This whole, yes, you're living with hope that you'll get out

despite all evidence says, probably not. I'm probably not going to be able to quit drinking that somehow. But also maybe there's a sadder thing, which is, OK, well, if I do it, and it doesn't work, then I'm fundamentally really like a kind of self-hending

capping thing. Maybe like, if I want to do it, try because then if it doesn't work, then I broke and I might as well. They're going to be layer of that. What's your rights?

Yeah, you know, I was going to bring up status quo bias.

“But I think that's actually for a different.”

So status quo bias is like clinging to the familiar. Imagine that you had the financial resources to move, moving economists say, from one's that could do another, from one city block to another, is probably the single, most highly leveraged thing you can do

to change the trajectory of your life. Because when you move, you change your entire situation. You change all the people around you change the billboards, the food, the vibe. So the reason why economists like to say this loudly

is because people aren't listening, right? Because some people obviously can move places that other people can't. But the status quo bias is that people who should move and can move don't move. So for example, when you have these moving to opportunities,

like when you get vouchers and you actually give financial resources to people and then you tell them how much better their lives will be, many of them just don't. And that I think is status quo bias. I think that's actually not as relevant to like,

why are you not taking JLP ones like clinging to the familiar? I don't know that we have a full explanation of status quo bias itself. I think you're probably right. It's true. We are primates and we are driven by many different drives, including status and a steam.

And I do think the sort of like, I lost, right? I mean, many, I can't do this on my own. I lost. I guess what nothing is more liberating. And then surrendering ironically.

It's so counterintuitive. If you can get someone to try it, right? Like if you can get someone to try that. But until you get them to try it, there's nothing more terrifying.

Yes. You bring up Oprah as an example. I think I bring up Oprah several times. I was like, fell down and Oprah. But that's her weight or her weight.

Yeah, her use of JLP ones.

“I think Oprah broadcasts this special like shame, blame,”

and the weight loss revolution, some title like that. And I watched it live. You know, classic Oprah, Oprah is a pro. So she had not only in her like interviews, but this choreographed documentary, JLP ones,

which at the time, were fairly new.

And I think she was one of the very first celebrities

who came out in a very public way and said, I'm taking them. Here's how it's changed my life. And here's why I'm going to continue to take them. Yeah, thank God.

The titles, like sort of says it all. So the most famous Yoyo Dieter in history, who's been shamed and blamed for her weight. I think a lot of people are like, tis, tis, tis.

You can have a trainer and you could have a chat. You could have a chat. How little more protein? Because the reasons they've told themselves, the things that are standing in their way and their excuse,

she doesn't have on the table. Exactly. The example of Oprah, first of all, taking JLP ones and saying like for the first time in her life, she doesn't have food noise as a low level sort of distraction

from all the other thoughts you could have. While you're thinking about food, you are perhaps also conducting a meeting or an interview, but just to have that food noise dial down, right? One of the most reliable effects of JLP ones

for people who it's working. So the example though is like so much more profound than like Oprah took JLP ones. Now she's a healthier. I think the example goes so deep because I don't have food noise

and I've never been attracted to substance use.

I don't know what that's like. The idea that you have complete control over what's in you. To me, I want to say you have some control over the situation, you might not think of it that way. I also want to say maybe we need something calling

'cause it is another thought, but I do think it's connected. If we underestimate the power of the situation and the power that we have to control the situation, I think we often overestimate our power to control what's inside us.

If you have a genetic disposition towards drinking or thinking about food all the time, I cannot understand that and also I think we are wrong to blame people for not changing. There is this assumption that Oprah wouldn't

we should be able to change what's in her head completely.

- Right, does that be changing or high?

- Exactly. - Yeah, it can't change or high. - It could be literally, right? Exactly.

“So this revelation that when we blame people for being overweight”

or we blame them for whatever behavior it is where you're like if they tried harder, the subtext there is the things that are inside you, you should have complete control over. And I just want to say that's not true.

- No, it's this various distinction between mind and body which doesn't exist. - Right. Stay tuned for more armchair experts. If you dare.

(upbeat music) - I am really sympathetic and I think I'm most interested currently in the people who have been very vocal about body positivity and embracing your plus-sizedness

and some people are even the face of that. I look at them with the most sympathy because I'm like, oh no, now they probably feel like they're betraying their identity if they choose this GOP one

or that they would be somehow contradicting everything they can. - And I think some people are stuck because they're like, oh, but I said all that stuff. Now it will be a hypocrite.

And now they're gonna punish themselves. - Now they're gonna be like excommunicated from the last group where like to having already been excommunicated from the main group. - But then they found their tribe

and they were helpful to people and they helped people love themselves and now they're in this really tricky situation. So sometimes when I'm seeing like really famous people that have the means to be on it,

do you think that's in the mix? - I mean look, we are not in a good situation in the sort of macro sense. The default settings of the modern world are not with us. You're like one of the only people that I could be like,

oh, and this is evolutionary biologist at Harvard and you're like, oh my god, I can't wait to see what she says next to it. (laughing) Then you come in.

The evolutionary biologist at Harvard, he's like very famous for this like barefoot running, kind of thing we evolved to like be long distance runners,

“basically I think the idea is like we could outrun our prey,”

yes, a deer is faster than us, but we just keep going. So like this is a guy who spend his whole life like studying the evolutionary origins of human nature and what he would say about obesity is when we blame people either for being obese

or procrastinating or being lazy's like, what we have here is an evolutionary mismatch. The modern world is at odds with our DNA. Our DNA are like, like, do this, like immediate gratification.

We can like test the people who fail to delay gratification, but homo sapiens evolved for immediate gratification, not delayed gratification. So this idea that there should be any shame in taking a drug that is a corrective for a food environment

that is a mismatch for every impulse we have. Of course we need GLP ones. It's like the anti-aircraft's battery that we have because we're being assaulted. I had for a long time a chapter in the book,

which I will just summarize because it kind of got cut, it was caught our ultra-processed world. You know, like, yeah, there's ultra-processed food, which by the way, in addition to putting sugar and fat

together for the first time, home I got,

it also is metabolized super fast. It's dissolved to essentially melt in your mouth for the reward system, the speed at which we get reward is a big part of the intensity of the reward. So not only am I feeling good, oh my God,

it's a 10 on a scale from one to five, but it's so fast, right? So the dopamine signals very sensitive to time. So you've got this ultra-processed food, but so much of the world is ultra-processed.

And some of it's not bad. Like you go watch a movie like the Odyssey and you're like, oh my God, I'm experiencing a spectacle with emotion and color and music, gun monsters, my ancestors

didn't know anything about, but there's nothing really harmful about watching a three hour bilin film.

“I think the challenge is that in many dimensions,”

much of social media is ultra-processed, right? It's like, I ain't gonna give this to you, faster, more colorful, edited, just the highlight real, more motion, more drama, and by the way, this guy's hot, too. - And I think the most of the various part of this,

when I learned I can't remember what Doc was in, maybe we had the guy on to talk about, but the fact that there was a period

where when it reloaded, it spun, it took a second.

And that was intentional. They're like, it doesn't need to reload. It could happen instantaneously. - Oh, they've built a reward system is better if you have that little tiny bit of anticipation.

And also the anticipation has to vary. That means release on unpredictability. That's what it does. - Right, right. - Yeah, you gotta anticipate it, but then the anticipation's got a very nonstop

where you're don't mean what it's like, it's that fucking deep. The thing could just be streamless? Whoa, danger. - You start to feel like you're in a conspiracy.

But the reason why this is also relevant is if you're gonna just basically accept the default settings of the modern world, you're not gonna be a happy, healthy person. You know what the default settings are?

They are eat alone. In fact, do almost everything alone. That's another-- - Don't give me start. - Trend, right? You know, that goes back about 20 years.

That's apparently pre-pandemic. That the time that people spend out of their house, for example,

And it's not only that we work alone in our homes, we're like exercising a lot. So I do think that the default situation, the macro situation, does not set us up for progress or goals.

- And the most important part of what you just said

is we are a social primate. We are the most social primate, yeah. - And a lion can never be happy by themselves. A leopard can, a tiger is, a chimpanzee would kill itself alone. Out of misery, we have to be with other people.

What's your explanation for why over the last 20 years or so? People are spending more and more time by themselves if it is contrary to our DNA, if it's contrary to our evolutionary heritage. And just like in the moment experience, do you either of you have a lay theory of why people are doing?

Exactly the opposite of what's good for them? - Because I think it's actually related to the more money you have. The more money you have, the bigger home you have, or people can be in different places. - You can have a private jet, where you don't have to fly

with other people. It's like convenience and money is kind of counterintuitive. - But by the way, poor people are spending time alone too. - So you got to-- - Are they? - I mean, if you live in a house with your grandma and your aunt.

- And it's okay.

- You're not gonna have to fact-check this,

but I believe that at every socioeconomic status, people are spending more time by themselves, then they were previously. - Well, social media also is a huge part of that, I think.

“- That's what a lot of social scientists think.”

- Well, again, like all things, they're gonna try to say it's one thing, and it's not, it's probably 45 things. - Yeah. - But yes, you have entertainment now that doesn't require you to go out of the house. If you want to see a movie, you have to go to a movie theater.

We don't have to do that now, it's been streaming on your television, or you could mail for the DVDs. - They help for the DVDs, yeah. - Right. - 20 years ago. - To say, yeah, yeah.

- So you didn't have to go out to get the thing you wanted. Delivery food services became more and more commonplace. Now with postmates, you don't need to go to the grocery store, you don't need to go to the grocery store. You don't even need to greet the delivery guy.

- No, yeah, leave it at the door. I deliver food on one of our podcasts. I'm a real Uber driver, and I deliver food around LA. And I was so excited to meet people. I'm like, oh, it'd be really fun if someone opens a door

and it's me. No one opens a door. - Everyone is leaving a door. - I'll get pictures of it. - Okay, that's what I'm gonna tell you.

- I'm gonna leave my plan without the window.

“But this one's dice here, but I think it is really, really relevant.”

I think once women went into the workforce in the neighbors, which I agree with, I have $2, I want them to not be dependent on a man. But I think once that economic structure changed, and women no longer needed men, you see the marriage rates in Manhattan.

You can track that. It's like a fucking hockey stick down. - Right, right. - The numbers now are like a fifth of what they were in 1980. So, no one's married in New York anymore.

Well, that's not true. A lot of people are not married anymore. They do not need to be. You used to have to be married. - This is a similar explanation as Monica's,

who's basically you're saying what made us social

is maybe that we are these social species, but also necessity. - Yeah, you need other women. - Women were dependent on men, which is not great. I'm not saying that's good, but they were dependent on men.

In marriages were financial arrangements. - So when we're separated from the financial necessity of being like in the, whatever, like in the home, - You don't have to do it? - Yeah, but you still need friendship.

I mean, I guess I buck up against that a little bit at some of not married who has a ton of people around.

“Do you want to be married or are you planning on it?”

- I mean, depends on the person. - Yeah. - The right person, yes. - I'm not a poet, not a poet, but I'm also not doing it unless it's someone additive.

I don't know that that speaks for not having friendships around. - You add the marriage or the relationship. They come with a group of people. You come with a group of people. You build out this combined thing.

It is a fast pass to more people. - It is a fast pass to more people. By the way, including their families. But I think what I hear is a thesis that necessity. So I'm complaining a bit about the default settings

of the modern world. And I think we don't want to romanticize like the plague. And when women do only do one thing, which is sort of their husbands. But I do think there is something that is lost in this change

from an environment where necessity brought you to other, well, I was going to say to you, remember, I don't remember. But apparently in history books, the communal oven. Not only could you not watch a movie, but like if you go back far enough,

you couldn't bake your bread except for the one oven. That the whole village had to like pull resources and bring to a certain temperature for like a few hours in the day. But what happens around a bread oven

is that you see other people maybe the curse of wealth and the curse of technology is that we can do things that are not good for us. - Yes, anyone can be their own unit, their own business in their own home.

I think that's the driver of it. It's like we don't need clothing. - So we don't lack of necessity. necessity may be the mother invention, but it may be possibly the mother of connection.

- And it's led us to solitary lives and we are social animals and that's not gonna work. And you see the results of it everywhere you look.

which I actually, if I could go back, which apparently I'm not allowed to, I would retitles. I was like, I have a better, there's this chapter about peers.

That's the chapter I write about A, A, A, A because I'm like, there is no wiser organization than this. And if you want an example of how you cannot solve your problems alone, A, A, I chose as the example. Tell the story of Dr. Bob and Bill W, it's a good one.

- So I'll give you my new title 'cause I can't forget 'cause I told you I have a terrible memory. It's like join a group. The subject had to be like, in other words,

don't try to do this on your own. And that is actually related to Dr. Bob and Bill W's. So deliberately these first name founders of A, A, co-founders of A, A, A. Because A, A, the big book was written by Bill W,

the anonymity thing is a whole other conversation,

but he would never have created alcohol synonymous

if it weren't for Dr. Bob. So these two alcoholics, both in active struggle, unsuccessfully it seems with their addictions. - Again, one of Dr. W and a stock broker. These are not fucking losers.

- No. - And they were very successful. The idea that these are weak willed people. - It got you medical school. - It's simply at, and by the way,

to like actually manage a very successful medical career despite like drinking until six in the morning, these two drugs as they put it, meet each other.

“And the reason is, I think it was in Akron, Ohio,”

which is where Dr. Bob was practicing, and Bill W was there on a business trip that was going sell. - Bill had had a little bit of a spiritual awakening in a hospital that he had been in numerous times. - Prior to this meeting.

- From his addiction, he was a spiritual kind of awakening. And he's now committed to sobriety. He goes to Akron, Ohio, right on a business trip. And he's starting to get really antsy. He's seen people at the bar.

- And the business trip is going south. He's in the hotel lobby and just across the lobby. I mean, he can hear the ice cubes like in the glasses, and you know, the laughter, and he's drawn. And yes, he has had this spiritual awakening,

but I think that to me, the epiphany was not in the hospital where he was like, oh, and to me, the epiphany was that he needed another alcoholic. 'Cause he called to like find an alcohol that he could talk to, and yes, through a series of connections

was led to Dr. Bob. I think Dr. Bob's family gave him like something like 15. They were very skeptical. They were a stranger from another state who apparently also as a shrinking problem

could be any kind of good for Dr. Bob and his shrinking problem. The idea of putting like two alcohols together and getting anything other than a disaster. - Yeah, yeah.

- It's a fair thought. - Yeah. - Common sense is like, it's just not. So they give him like 15 minutes and ends up being something like all night, right?

So these two men finally have in each other. Somebody who really understands. - Yeah. - As you point out, the 12 steps are great. That's not the magic of AA.

If they handed that book out on corners

and there was never any meaning.

- Which they practically do, right? It's practically free. You can get it, but that's not the magic. - That's not the magic. - The magic is.

- My father died 28 years sober. He never read that book. But he went to a meeting seven days a week. He's a whole friendship group with AA. - You know what?

I followed the thread of the research on AA. It's very hard to study because it's very hard to be like in the treatment group. You go to AA and in the control group you don't. 'Cause you can't make the control group not go to AA

and you can't force the people in the treatment group to keep going to AA. So it's very hard to study.

“But there is, I think he's like the first endowed chair”

at Harvard for addiction named John Kelly. And when I followed the breadcrum trail of the research that was done on AA because even if you don't have a random assignment treatment control, there are still ways of studying it.

It takes more statistics essentially with all the complications of studying AA, right? I asked him why he studied it. I was like, you could've studied many things. He was like, here's why I studied it.

This is the most enduring approach. I don't know if anyone knows this. Like AA is by far the most enduring and effective treatment. Compared to any including pharmacological treatments, right? Weirdly GLP ones might start getting in the same area.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. GLP ones and I don't know, but I will put money on the possibly because when I started studying AA, wasn't because I had a particular interest in addiction, I have not found a structure and invention,

a situation that is better for people.

Yeah, I always say I'm so happy I'm an addict.

Right, because I want to go there. Go, because we can't really go to AA and sit on a folding chair. My thing is, where would you see men be vulnerable in a circle anywhere but this place? And by the way, the part where you're like of service,

I actually, after I started studying AA and I like read all this research. And the point I wanted to make actually about five minutes ago

“was what I think John Kelly's research shows is that,”

yes, there are many things that go into AA. But one of the final common paths is the change in your social network that the four closest friends that you have are now not drinking. And when you have these emotional connections with people,

so I just wanted to affirm that. But after discovering the magic of AA, I thought to myself, okay, this organization's, what is it like 90 years old? I don't even think it's 100 years old.

- It's not 100 years old. - It's like 90s, 30s, the book, maybe, or something. - Yeah, so I think it's like, see, 90s. Like I was like, well, that's been a long time.

and said, oh, we can do it for the rest of us, right? - Well, they took the model into over eating, they took it into gambling, and they took it into sex addiction. - But what about just like, people who aren't struggling

with it? - So here's, I think, I can't agree, Martin, because you get hung up on the alcohol piece or the drug piece. But let me tell you, every human being is using something to regulate that is easy and quick.

That's probably not beneficial to them. We're all trying to regulate. And so yeah, I happen to regulate with that. Someone happens to regulate with gambling, someone regulates with sex.

- Well, whenever it's shop, whatever it is, right, dude. - And it's like, guys, we all. - Right, it's a hard life, it's a hard life. - You know, there's no other than a bad one category. - My chosen method of regulations more destructive.

I have more positive, I still have addictions, and I'm still regulating. But the outcome has less record, right? I work out a lot. - I was gonna say, like, you can be like,

oh, I'm a distance runner, but I'm dealing with my emotions this way. If I were gonna write another book, and I swear to God. - 10 years? - Mark, that's right down in blood.

- I don't think I will, but if I were, I think there's a very important, so you're like, I'll think of something else, other than the inside game and outside game, but I do think there's something deeply true

about human nature that does help us understand why we do things that aren't great. I do think that we are built for immediate gratification. Here's a trivial example. When my daughters were growing up,

and there were these two cups in the bathroom, and one just by chance would be like, a little, I had two cups. I thought, two daughters, two cups, whatever. They were from IKEA, they were like a dollar each.

It didn't matter. I could have had one cup, you know why? Because only the cup, that was a millimeter closer, got used. Whenever you go into a bathroom,

oftentimes the architects build a paper towel dispenser on your way out. - In between the trash can and the sink. - Yes, and one that's farther away.

And you know what, they never have to change the paper towels

and the other one, because everyone takes immediate gratification. We take the shorter path. And then we just keep doing what has been feeling good. And I think if there is a lesson in situated,

“it is that, okay, one thing you have to do,”

especially now in this modern world, because the default settings aren't great for you, is say, how do I set this up so that doing the immediately gratifying thing, for doing the obvious thing, for being reactive?

- Admitting misses who you are. - Right, but put yourself in the situation. So if the situation is gonna basically shape you, I mean, shape at first, that is the simple lesson. - Yes. - So you said, what do we do with people

who aren't addicts, right? So I have a group of girlfriends, we do girls' dinners. It is so hard to schedule these girls' dinners. I mean, it's nearly impossible. - Same group of girls, right?

- Yeah. - We give a five six girls. - On the last group text, when I was like, what about this day, this day, this day, and then someone said something like,

well, what if we pick, like, second Wednesday of the month,

or something like that? And I was like, yes, and people were like, oh, yeah, I don't know, because I don't know. I was like, if we don't commit to that. Like, we have to treat this like it's AA.

Did you say that? - I did, I said, if we're committed to this, you'll schedule around it. - Yeah. - Yeah, we'll make it work. - Yeah, I can't do it on the day, it's in my account.

- Exactly. - That's the first day of the year. - But you have to read it. The reason why you're dying on the sales is like, it is, when did that, did you start this group? We've been doing girls' dinners for years,

but this conversation happened like three years ago.

“- But how did it get started, tell me about this group?”

- Well, it's a group of friends from our pod, that we had in COVID. - Oh, it not podcast pod. - No, COVID pod. - COVID pod, and raw best friends,

so we have all busy lives and people of kids and everyone has jobs and whatnot, it's hard. But I was like, we decide to be committed or we don't. And it has to be treated on the same level as AA is treated with DAX and some of our other friends,

which is like, if he doesn't, go, he might die. (laughing) - Okay, get to me. So this needs to be like that. Okay, so tell me what is this group for you?

Community and we go and we share, we gossip. - The wife's bitch about the husbands. - Everyone didn't. - Not bad. - Not bad.

- Yeah, I bet you're about. - Kristen's husband. (laughing) - Yeah, yeah. - Everyone's going through so much

and sometimes we just laugh the whole time, but often we don't, often someone's crying. It's community in this chapter that I could have renamed like the in a group, don't be alone or like join the team. It was like, but chose to call pick your peers.

So I was almost done writing it. And I met a surgeon and this group of other surgeons that decided to start this little group. Much like yours, except for they were all male surgeons. So it's not a girl's group, it's a guy's group.

- They're all arrogant, continue. - Well, they are all with the few surgeons.

“So if you want to do stereotypes, then you can apply them.”

But I will say the ones that I met were very nice, but it's a group of I think like five or six of them. And they started when you know one of the things about these groups, are you roughly the same age like with like a decade or so?

This group of surgeons is very similar to yours. And by the way, if you ask these surgeons and they're not your age, they're at the end of their group. They're 60, 60, 60, 60, 60, 60.

- They were like, this may have been the most important thing

And yes, they have a group text thread.

And yes, they re-range schedules to have dinners. So when I learned about them, I thought to myself,

“I don't sleep with myself when next to my bed, check, right?”

I don't have like a lot of junk food in the house, check. So okay, great, my physical situation is good. I really honestly, I have mentors out the wazoo, a lot of the people that you admire, I'm like, yeah, I'm the psychologist, I am,

'cause I'm okay, check, but on peers. So when I interviewed these surgeons and I was like, holy shit, this is the one thing that you want to tell me that other than making the romantic choice you made, this is the one thing that you think made your life go well.

I looked around and I realized, I don't have what you have Monica. I texted, let's see, Wendy Copp, who runs teacher America, Shalini Sharma, who runs a big non-profit cousin, Mary Egan,

she used to be at Starbucks as like head of strategy. Like, I am attracted to women who are very similar. - Who are dancers? - Like, yeah, they're like, you know what, they're like, and it took us like 45, yeah, to find one dinner.

But you know what, you've inspired me, so like, we're due. And it does take effort, but I do think a little effort goes a long way when you use it to change your situation. Now your situation includes these girlfriends. - Yeah.

- And my situation does not yet include these like high power women who we're due for our second dinner,

“but I think you've just inspired me to like push through,”

because that effort will pay off, I think it does. It does buck the trend, because you know what, maybe one other reason why in the modern world, everyone's doing things asynchronously and alone, is that it's too complicated to synchronize and to coordinate.

- Right? - Like, if it's this hard to get a bunch of young women together. - Well, by the way, especially your friends are all busy, the professionals, yours are too. - Yeah.

- Look, when I was a deadbeat in Michigan, one hard to get a hang on at all, no one's doing a fucking thing at anyone. Hit anyone, like, you like, come over here, as they do. - Yeah, okay, whatever you think until next week.

- Okay, so her busy person was like a lot going on. - Yeah.

- And those are your peers that have never gone to that face,

but your peers are gonna be high-achieving, so they're gonna maybe have to work late, but again, you just treat it as if you'll die without it. - I like it as a doggy, like, you're willing, where's the doggy?

- You will? - 'Cause where's the doggy? - Yes, research says.

“- So look, I think this is a great act of situational agency.”

I would just say, like, I would not give myself full credit on that, but you've shown me the way. - Do it, I'm gonna do it. - The reason I love your writing is, the anecdotes are every four pages we get a new story.

It's one of, the amount of examples you have in research, they're coming so fast, and if you have an instantly gratifying brain, like my own, - Like a fun thing. - It's so tasty to read.

It's a very, very, very, very fun read. You're getting to learn about all these little things in little, perfectly segmented, tasty, morsel bites, and they're just kind of endless. That's what I'm blown away.

The amount of different fun anecdotes and stories that you've woven into this overall cohesive theory of yours, I think, is so well done. And I really, really hope people check out situated. Find the people and places that bring out your best.

- Love it. - Thank you, Dax. - I adore you. - You don't even come back to it. - Just come anyways, you can give a book.

- Okay. (upbeat music) - He is at our care, expert, buddy. He makes a mistake, solve a time, think God might have good tea here. He's got a little help, the facts.

- How are you Monica Padman? - I'm good. I discovered something. - Oh, my gosh, I discovered something bad. - Oh, okay, not like a scientific discovery.

- We'll see. - We'll see. - Okay, you'll let you be the judge. - Yeah, what's science, really? - Yeah, everything, I think.

- Okay, so I am in the middle of reading a book that I love. - Okay, what's it called? - We'll call God of the woods. - Okay, what's it about?

- Gary, it's a scary book. So it's set in the 70s. - Okay, you're a decade of my birth. - Yeah, and a summer camp and a girl goes missing. - Ooh, okay, yeah, 70s.

Perfect setting for a missing girl at a summer camp. - Yes, and her brother went missing some years before. - Oh, and they still sent their other kid away to-- - He didn't go missing at the camp. - Okay.

- Okay, the family also owns this camp. Anyway, I'm giving away a little bit of a-- - Okay, okay. - Point is, I'm really into this book. And I am so into it that even when I'm like,

on walks and stuff, I want to listen. So I then also downloaded the audio book. - Oh, you're doing both, you're bouncing back up. - Yeah, so I can consume it as fast as I want.

But the problem is, first of all,

I don't generally like audio books. They're very hard for me to focus on. - Okay, you can get distracted. - And then after a rewind, rewind and I hate that. And then I tried to do something extra interesting

where I was listening to the audio book was playing in my kitchen and then I picked up the physical book and I was reading and listening at the same time. - How did that go? - Bad, because you know what?

- What?

- Wait, what? - Yes.

“So I'm a reading book. - The audiobooks may be a bridge.”

On a bridge, do you want to have that problem?

- You got a bridge, let me look. - Well, if it's not verbatim out of the text, then it is by definition a bridge. - But what they'll say is they generally make the distinction on a bridge.

They won't tell you that it was a bridge. You got to look to make sure that it's unabridged. And you will often see the two of the same titles, one of them's a bridge, one of them's unabridged. - All right, yeah, it's not saying.

- But my guess is there's not more vocal audio, there's more text. - That's what I mean. - Yeah, that's what I mean. They cut some stuff out.

- That's right, yeah. - But I'm gonna look to see if there's unabridged. - It's a tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. - That was just the one.

- Yeah, so maybe they don't have an unabridged version of it. - Well, I'll tell you, if it's unabrid,

I think they just skipped some parts,

and they skipped some sentences, because it's still really long on here. - Okay, how many hours? - 14 hours, 35 minutes. - This is confusing, that feels unabridged.

- Exactly. - That's the kind of runtime we've seen in an unabridged.

“- I think it was a mistake, and I caught it,”

and it just happened. It was so sim, I happened to be on that exact page. - I'm similarly having a trippy experience where I have gotten an advanced copy of an audio book. It's not been edited.

So I'm hearing repeats. So I'm hearing the author of the book's also reading it. So it's like, I'm going along, I'm lost in it, and then I'll repeat the same sentence two or three times. I don't know what's going on.

I'm just like, oh yeah, this isn't finished. - Oh, oh. - Also hasn't been mixed, so it's like, it sounds much different.

- That's kind of hard to listen to, right?

- I mean, that's just a version that's hard to listen to. - It's a different experience. Okay, so you love the book. - I love it. - You're bummed out that the audio versions

skipping some stuff. - Oh, I've re-framed that I love that that happened. I caught it, and-- - You busted it out. - No, it was more just the same.

It was like a glitch. Like I happened to be on that one page. They made a mistake. - Yeah. - When I was listening on and reading, that's strange.

- That does remind me of watching physical 100 and being very suspicious that the Korean translations into English were not actually what they were saying because they were just so conveniently on story. I mean, is that really what they were?

- There's no way for us to know.

“- That's why I watched with subtitles instead.”

Of that show specifically. - Yeah, well, there was that. There's the voiceover, you know, that dubbing. - The dubbing, but even the text was suspicious. - You were weird.

- I need someone that speaks Korean with me to tell me if that's really what was just said. - Yeah. - 'Cause it's very convenient in this moment. And sometimes things don't translate,

like there are phrases and things we don't have here. - That's right. - You know, Ana has a really good phrase in Spanish. I don't remember what it is. But it translates to egg with no salt,

which I love, I'm talking about a boring person. - Yeah, yeah. - But, you know, joy has a similar one. Under season. - I love that.

- Yeah, yeah. - Egg with no salt, sounds better though in Spanish, obviously. And this actually is not a good example because it does translate. But there are others and she'll say them.

And I'm like, what does it mean? She's like, it doesn't really-- - It's not gonna work. - Exactly. - And then jealous.

- So, just wanted to let you know that's where I'm at. Yes, when it was just his birthday. - You tell me, you guys went out, where'd you go? What happened? - He turned 50, we played spades.

- At least, spades. I miss it 'cause I don't play it and nearly as much as I do. - I was afraid you were about to say, you don't like it. - No, I love it.

- Okay, yeah, 'cause it's the queen's game. - But, but, but, it is just a contentious game. - Is it? - Okay, so I wasn't contentious. - Yeah.

- It also was just his birthday, he's on my team. And I said it was like, no fight, we're not fight. No one's fighting today. - Okay. - That's the commitment.

- Mm-hmm. - And then, you know, he's like, I don't fight. - I don't think so. - Okay, great. - And then, so we all, you know, we play and then,

and then just gets mad at Brian. - 'Cause why? 'Cause the thing, I'm trying to think of things you can get mad at is people say too much, like they're giving their partner info that you probably shouldn't be allowed to say.

So, that's one area that can get contentious. What other area though? - Well, yeah, so that is kind of happening, but not really, like Brian, who-- - Talk just the game.

- Exactly, he has been playing since he was little. Like he's the king, he is the king of spirits. He's the king of spirits. Oh my God, that was really cool.

That's really cool, which will happen.

Anyway, so, he just said something, I don't even remember what it was. - Okay. - I really don't know if it's so innocuous.

“- I think maybe he said they have theirs,”

which could be bad, right? Like he was saying to his partner. - You guys have already made your way. - We got ours, us. - Yeah.

- So, someone might be mad about that, 'cause it's like, well, if he wasn't paying attention then maybe whatever, but didn't matter because Brian had the rest of the hands. So, nothing was changed.

- Man, steak, yeah, yeah. - And just got so mad. Birthday, birthday, man. - He had birthday, too. - He had a birthday.

- Bradiness. - Yeah. - And he was like, no, you know, you know what you did. - Oh, wow.

- And we were like, he didn't do anything. And then Brian, Brian's just as best friend. Brian is the nicest guy on her. - He's so, so nice and good. And he's just like, okay, I know what I,

he is, and then-- - He acquiesced. - Yeah, and you know, I'm not-- - Now you're in Guillaume, I'm like, I'm not letting you treat Brian this way. I don't care if it's your birthday.

And so, what, I was like-- - And you and Jesuit partners? - Yeah. - Okay, great. - And we were losing, like, so he was getting stressed.

- Yeah. - He went, whatever. Anyway, so then he's doing it again. He's continuing, and I just looked at him. And I'm now, stop.

- Uh-huh, no, I know that. - You've seen that, yeah, yeah. - But I have to, I have to mow it. - Okay. - And so he really gets it, like--

- Yeah, stop. - You're in trouble, yeah, you're in trouble. - You aren't. - No, I'm not. - Yes, you are, you're in trouble.

- So then he stopped, because he's scared of his wife, mom. - Yeah. - And mother wife. - And then he goes to the bathroom and then he comes back and he's like, oh, you know what?

We're just gonna be done. - Oh, wow, he pulled the plug on me. - And we weren't gonna finish, so to be fair, we weren't gonna, but because one of the Andrews other friend had to leave.

So we're not gonna be able to finish, but still, we had time to keep playing. - Yeah.

“- And he was like, I just, I think we should just”

play something else, and we were all like, no, what? (laughing) He was like, we're not gonna finish, and then we did end up playing one round. I mean, then I was just like,

God, this game really gets people. - Yeah, I have to say, so we play, of course, with the Richardson hours and hours and hours. These family vacations we take are just excuses to play spades in a different setting.

- Yeah. - We'll go with the most spectacular place in the world, we won't see one museum, we'll just play spades in the cafe. We don't fight.

- Almost ever. If it happens, it'll be funny enough. It'll be me getting mad at Eric for how he's treating Molly, like I'll say, yeah, so we're very similar. I'll be like, hey, come on now, that's, yeah.

And then occasionally, there'll be the like, you've said too much, you know? - Right, I am a big, I don't like when people say too much. I really don't like that. - I don't like it, but it doesn't get me angry.

It's like, you know, you're always riding the line,

and sometimes people step over it, but it's kind of fine. - Obviously so much of whether you fight or not in games is who you're playing with, and the exact specific dynamic of the group. So it's not even like, you know, I can play with jazz.

It's not like, every time I play with jazz, it's just like the specific dynamics of all the individual people make, make the environment. - Yeah, yeah, interesting. - Yeah.

- So it's funny. - You know, like, I would get sheriff-y, sellers are good team pretty often, and I had to recuse myself from the game, right? I was just like, I don't like, these don't end well.

It's a worth playing now. - We used to fight a lot of times. - Oh, but everyone involved. - Yeah, we did. - But, and it, like, got personal.

Like, a tan would get personal. Because sometimes you like, would help people out. - Yes, again, up on people, it was the gang up

that always set me off, I'm like, this is bullshit.

- Or like, you're not gonna build your road to help someone,

“but it's like, well, you should just build it there.”

That's the smart thing, but so you're helping. - Yes, somebody else. - All too fuck with me if I'm in the lead or fuck with you. Yeah, that's why to me to get a little, like, oh, like, DAX is always helping Kristen

because he's her wife, she's being his wife, and like, that's unfair, I don't have a husband here. - Okay, okay. - So that was before Justin, I got married. - Okay.

- All right. Anyway, and we tend to fight also sometimes in space.

I think it games, but we haven't played together

in a long time, so, but it's just so funny. - It is. - It is. (laughs)

“- How is your shoe falling off while you're seated?”

- No, it's just got untied. - And then even how to get untied while you're seated. - It's not that good of a tie, you know, it's like one of these materials that doesn't stay tied. - Okay, okay.

- Oh, I know you do, I saw you did, like, triple knot. - I'm doing it. - And now you're doing a double knot with the bows. - Yeah. - You go 12 or so now that's done.

- It'll be out by the time this is over. - Oh wow. - So anyways, did you guys, you played some things that didn't work out, did you? Then you couldn't eat and have a good meal.

- Yeah, we did. Then we went to dinner went to smoke house, Burbank classic. - Wow, very classic, yeah. - And it was really fun.

- Yeah, great. You know, I went to a wedding last weekend. - Yes, do share. - Well, it was the most fun time. - Yeah, it was a great.

- Sometimes they're great, sometimes they're fine. - Okay. - This one was particularly fun for me. - Okay. - Because I don't know anyone

that the bride and groom are friends with. I'm not in their circle at all. - Right. - And also, they're way younger than us. So it's mostly younger people.

And I did, I was like, I was getting very aware of all the anthropological things that go on at a wedding and why they exist. Like, you could see the mechanics of it. And it's like, you get seated.

You know, I was seated at the rehearsal dinner between two people I don't know. - Yeah. - But those two people can see the blue love, the same people I love.

“And I was like, oh, that's why these are so powerful”

about aligning families. - Yeah, sure. - You know, it's like, it does something magical to your own defenses and your own protections. And you're just like kind of come in trusting everyone there.

And in you get closer to people in this really quick fashion in just a weekend. - Yeah. - Which is really, really fun. - Yeah.

- And I had an incredible experience

where I was seated between someone that was raised in Communist Poland and someone who cut their teeth in the business working for Aaron Spaling. - Right. - So the code switching I was doing back and forth

between two different conversations I was having was among the most dramatic I've ever had. Other than that time we interviewed a sex expert followed by someone that was in a ghoulog. - Yeah.

- Yeah. - It was that level of like, yeah, my laughing about really naughty, naughty, naughty stuff on the left and then I'm turning and I'm talking about trading parallelie vise for a car, you know.

So that was really, really fun. And then the dance, the dance for. - Oh boy yeah. - Monica, I went full throttle. I bet I danced for three plus hours.

- You love dancing sometimes.

“- I had my shirt off 'cause I was soaking wet dancing.”

- Oh, see, you were dancing. - Talked seat or pants, at some point, it became toxic, pants and no shirt. - Okay. - Not even like wife.

- No, no shirt. - But my shirt was so disgustingly soaked. - Did anyone else have their shirts off? - No. - Okay.

- But an incredible moment happened where one of the guests kept making fun of me. Why is your shirt off? - Yeah, fair. - And then I then grabbed my shirt

and I said to her, you are ruining this wedding. I'm gonna put my shirt back on. I was teasing her. Everyone's gonna leave. You're ruining the wedding.

I'm gonna put my shirt back on. And as I was putting it on, someone ran across the dance floor guy because stop what are you doing? Do not put your shirt on.

The timing of it. If we were filming it,

he would have never entered

at a more perfect time to make everything hysterical. - Okay. - And then I got an actual specific compliment on Monday from the groom saying, I have so much gratitude for anyone

that comes in tears of the dance floor for three hours that are wedding. - And I was the only one. - So the sky there that wasn't a family member. - Sure.

- I mean, it was dramatically older than everyone. - Not dramatically. - Oh, 24 years. It's like I could have been the fact that I could have been the parents of most of the people.

- Oh, yeah. - Oh, yeah. - I thought just real quick, not to, but I just thought that the story was gonna be that you went to prom your shirt

and then someone slipped on the sweat. - Oh, that would have been funny, but they would have gotten hurt probably. - Oh, like an easy, just quick fall, but they popped right back.

But it's like a-- - But the enthusiasm which this guy was screaming, please don't put your shirt back out at the moment. I was watching the joke that it was gonna ruin the wedding. It was just, I just wanted to leave at that moment.

- Well, that's not gonna get any more perfect than that in the situation that happened.

- Oh, I did, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was not coming back on. - Wow. - I had fans at one point, like those Asian fans,

“you know, like a little, what do you call them folding ones?”

- Yeah. - And I was doing a very elaborate dances with the fans that were really where I felt like Lincoln. Like Lincoln discovers something, like she can skip this rope,

and she thinks she's a pro at a regular way. And I'm the same exact way when I'm watching them like, oh yeah, you know. So yeah, I had this whole fan routine going. I mean, it was an exploratory and expansive three hours

of dancing, and I don't think I've done cardio on that level. - Oh, yeah, yeah. And so I woke up the next morning, I was like, I was down like five pounds from all of the exertures. - Well, and sweat.

- Sweat. - Sweating on the dance floor. - I was also a vegetarian meal. - Wedding. - Oh, the whole, oh, the legs.

- So I was eating, like, you know, way less. (laughs) So it was great, I really, I came back. - Knocked off a few pounds. - Well, yeah, just my, my, my, my percentages drop.

- Wow. - In a pleasing way. But it was a blast. - Right. - I love being around young people.

- Oh, wow.

- I hope I get to always have a rock,

'cause it is youth is infectious. You, you, it's contagious. - Interesting.

“- I felt like I was 28, that whole weekend.”

Oh, wow, that's great. - Oh, yeah, I timed travel. This is exactly how I behaved when I was 28. Shored off to dancing for three hours. That's not gonna happen in our friendship group.

Like, that's not-- - No, I don't, I'm not gonna happen. - I, that's so interesting. Also, you will be around young people. You have two young daughters, but--

- But I won't be able to behave like that, 'cause they'll be so embarrassed. - Oh, yeah. - Yeah. (upbeat music)

Stay tuned for more armchair experts, if you dare. (upbeat music)

- I totally filled the opposite.

Like, the older I get, the more I'm just like, wow, I'm so glad I'm not in my 20s. Like, I'm just so happy or the older I get and more content and more. - Yeah.

- Even like, how do I say this? We did something where we were talking to a young person. They were really like earnest and so sweet, and it was like lovely. - Yeah.

- And then, but you said after, you were like, oh, like, to be that age and have, like, everything is important and the other way-- - Well, you're writing your life story, and, you know, kind of a inflated sense of your story book.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Something to take from. - Yeah. - Yeah, I don't want that again. - My conclusion, leaving it,

I was like trying to figure out what I was feeling, and the way I think I framed it is, when you're younger, you prioritize your experiential self, all the time. - You know, care if you stay up to six in the morning,

you're probably doing drugs, you're drinking too much, you're smoking cigarettes with your friends, like, all of you're just like, you're prioritizing the experiential self at the expense of your narrative self.

You know, the person that two days later at work is gonna be dragging ass. - Right. - And so, I think as you get older, you keep sliding more down the spectrum

of towards your narrative self and being responsible and setting yourself up for next week and for, you know, it seems to be the natural evolution. - Yeah.

- So, there's something beautiful about prioritizing your experiential self,

“and I think that gets harder to do as you get older.”

You're just more responsible, your friends are more responsible. Nobody's gonna just throw tomorrow to the win for today. - I, maybe, again, maybe this is just so specific to me. I feel like I'm on the other trajectory.

Like, if you're like, I started out so burdened with, like, what's my life gonna be responsibility? And like, even being, even with friends, like, is everyone okay? Am I okay?

Are we all drinking? Like, you had a lot more anxiety? - Yes. I was like riddled with anxiety and it was about the future.

It was about my narrative self. Like, do I wanna be a person that's doing this? Like, and now I feel like I'm dropping a lot of that. Like, I'm just like, oh, I'm here. I'm doing what I want right now.

- Yeah, you're more comfortable and have less anxiety and you're enjoying the experiences you're having. You're more present for them. - Yeah, I think.

- I'm more talking specifically about stealing from tomorrow for today. I generally do not do that in my adult. - Yeah, well, you had to learn otherwise. - Yeah, like, I just, I just generally don't do it.

I'm gonna go to bed on time 'cause I wanna meditate and do all my bullshit

So whatever, I just, but to have a few moments in your year

where you totally steal from tomorrow and maybe the next day, for just this incredibly heightened experience, isn't important. Like, I'll remember this night of dancing to allow our all hours of the night.

I might have, you know, like, it'll be a very memorable experience and it caused me feeling a little tired the next few years. - Sure. - But I'm really grateful to have had it. - That's good.

Yeah, I don't know. I kind of feel like I live like, I live like that now. - Yeah, maybe you could go to bed at a reasonable time. - Yeah, it depends, like if I decide tonight, I wanna stay up till three, I will.

- Okay. - And, yeah, if I'm like--

“- I'm all, right, yes, that's what I'm saying.”

So I-- - You're already getting plenty of service. - I'm getting-- - Come on, you're experiential self. - I think so. So I'm glad you got that.

- Yeah. - Sometimes it's worth it to be tired. - Yeah. Okay, so I'm thinking you'd happen earlier. I have this mug.

It's a really cute mug. It's from the Ritz Paris. - Mm. - And I love mugs, you know? - Yeah. - And this mug collector.

- Yeah, this has, for the listener, like, scones on it. And, like, pastry's a kutrama and some bugs on it. And then on the inside of the cup, there's a Ladybug print, just one. And I have my tea and it was sitting out

and Dax got so concerned that there was a bug in my tea. - I went to get it out for you. - Yeah. - And then I was humiliated. - Did you feel tricked?

- No, I just, like, I would drink a tea that there had been a bug in. - Right.

“- Just get rid of the bug and it wouldn't bother me.”

And so weirdly, like, what was going on so fast? It's like, I was like, oh, I got that out there before she sees it. And then I was like, oh, is that trickery? - Yeah, she's gonna be, like, she would she not wanna drink it. But I just, I know if she doesn't see it

and I get rid of it, it's probably no thing. But if she sees it, that thing's dead. She's gonna have to throw the whole thing out. So there was just, it was very layered other than just the trickery of, it wasn't really a bug.

- Yeah, and then you felt really annoyed.

- Probably no. - I never got upset, I thought it was.

- I would be kind of upset if I got, like, oh, you know, worked up and then, (laughs) - I was just like, oh, oh, that's a trick. - Yeah. - That's a funny trick.

- You were excited 'cause it is the-- - If there was a, I didn't, I just thought it was not, no, I was like, oh, it's nice. He wanted to get that bug. He was worried about this, he and my, in this bug.

And then, oh, he got tricked and he doesn't like getting tricked. - Well, I, by an inanimate object, I don't-- - I'm not going to take it advantage. - By an inanimate object, I don't mind. I don't like deception in humans.

“- Yeah, but a human made this, you know.”

- But I don't, I don't know, no, no. - Now, to be-- - He's surprised it was a Frenchman. - Yeah, exactly. To be clear, if a bug of this size, which is like,

pretty big, wasn't here, yeah, I would throw it away. - Yeah. - Yeah. - So you are right. - I don't mind a bug, if there are a lizard in my drink, I wouldn't have that.

- Yeah, salmonella. - Ew! - Ew, yeah. - Well, if it's a teeny, tiny bug or like a fruit. - And that's fine.

- Yeah, I'll get that out. - Okay, right, good. - But a huge lady bug? - But only the top was showing. It didn't look like a lady bug.

It looked like some kind of small, Nat type stitch. - Yeah, a fruit fly, don't bother me. (laughs) - All right, should we do some facts?

- Let's do some facts. - Quick fun fact. - Oh, what? - So Angela had to use the bathroom after the shhh, episode, and so she came in, and she got to meet Kristen

and the kids, and she hung out for 20 minutes and used the bathroom, and then she was about to Uber to her friend's house. Then I said, "I'll try video for themselves." And she said, "Oh, thank you."

And I said, "You want to take a car or motorcycle?"

And she's like, "She goes, "I've never been on a motorcycle."

- Yes. - And I go, "Well, let's go." - Oh, come on. And I wanna publicly applaud her. It's not like her first motorcycle ride was on a country road.

It was rush hour traffic, LA, me going to Hancock park, lanes, splitting, like crazy, going around to turn left, you know. And she just was chatting the whole time. We were just chatting up a storm, and we were,

I mean, it was about as intense of a first motorcycle or at least you could probably have, and she was a champ, and it was so fun. And that is now the second guest we've had, that I gave their first motorcycle ride to.

- That's lucky. - And I hope it becomes a pattern. So any future guest, if like, that's a desire of yours that's a service we provide. - Wow.

- That's great. She did pull me aside, and she was like,

And she was like, "Yeah, I have, that's like, it's fun."

And she was like, "Is it dangerous?" And I was like, "Yeah, I was like, "You know what I was like, "you know what I was like, "You know what I was doing? "That's fine."

“He's still here, that's why I feel like he's always still here.”

You know, we used to work with a guy Monica. When we delivered cars, and we delivered them, very long distances from Detroit. We drive to Florida to adopt cars off. New York almost every other weekend.

And we worked with this guy, Don, who did the most amount of deliveries. And he didn't sleep, and he drank Coca-Cola in the car, all day long and brushed his teeth with the coat. There was so much stuff going on,

and he would be sometimes driving, and he'd be like, "God, dare I go to sleep "on the right home from New York?" And it was kind of scary, I don't think, 'cause I sight was that great either.

And then he just had to go, like, "I don't know somehow he keeps getting home." (laughing) - That's kind of how we kept. - Yeah.

- Yeah.

- You didn't argue with the results.

- Yeah, who am I? - And not possibly, Bally's driving. (laughing) He's all over the road and stuff. - Man, I keep doing it.

- Wow. - Okay, does you say in Bolt? Yes, he's done interviews before. - But we have. - Yeah.

- He's even been on the OB-1 podcast in the high performance podcast. - Oh, okay. - So that's good for us, maybe he'll come on. - Hopefully he can come in on the robot

that just broke his speed record. - And then crash into a bunch of electrical equipment. Do you see the end of that? - Oh, I watched endless footage of these robots. - I love it so much.

- I was with legs, like people were there. - They're real great in a straight line. - Yeah. - Oh, here you go, I'm gonna go.

- Like, if I'm a him, I'm pissed.

- Well, why? I didn't even mean anything. - Yeah, cause my car is faster than him too. (laughing) - He's not gonna be at a bar next to that robot.

You're not trying to. - People are gonna come out to him like, oh, do you hear your record go ahead? - Yeah, he's like, he'd be like me. (laughing)

I'll meet him outside before the end of him. (laughing) - Okay, okay. - Question, did Ed respond at Norton? - He did, and he did not know who she was,

and then but he promised to promptly learn about her. - Okay, great. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - I just wanna pat myself on the back. - Let's do it.

- She brought up the book, the correspondent, very popular book right now, I have not read it yet, but I pulled out the name of the author. - You're really good at the names, Monty. - And I don't even read it.

- You say that's a lot. - I thought, I mean, I've just seen it, I own the book, I haven't read it. But I own it, so I think it's like, entered my eyes in a way, it was shocking.

I just said, oh Virginia Evans, and then later I was like, there's no way, that's the right author and it is. - It is. - I have to say, I have a pretty deep knowledge of what would you call them.

Classics and popular books over the last two centuries. I know the author and the title, and I know what the books about, but I haven't read it. Like, it is interesting that you can, like books become common knowledge,

even if you haven't read them, right? - Sure. - Like someone can be talking about, say, what's the thing and I'll go like, oh, it's that book, but I haven't read that book.

You know what I'm saying? - Yeah. - Even updance and clarar, I said, - The jungle. - Yeah, and I haven't read that, and I haven't read any updance and clarar,

other than some passages, but I know what his books were about and I expose, they have the meat packing industry, and, you know, well, you probably learned about it in school.

“- I think it is here people talking about it,”

'cause if you're generally, if you learned it in school, you are assigned that book, and then you would talk about it. - Yeah, but not everyone reads them. - I certainly didn't. - No. - Oh, I had to read Old Man in the sea.

- Oh, yeah, that's rough. - That was torture. - I mean, weighs for guys. - It's, it's so for guys. - I hated it.

- Yeah. - I've loved some Hemingway books. It's all about pursuits of masculinity, and. - It was so boring.

(laughing) - You're just sitting there, like, - What's a man battling a creature? - Oh, yeah. - It was horrible.

So you know, I'm gonna go on a podcast where I get to talk about a book that changed my life, which book is that? - And I don't know. Yeah, what I'm gonna do.

- Oh. - Oh. - What are your top three? I can think of some. - Well, yeah, I'm not gonna pick any of the heres.

- I think you should. - No, because I bet other people have done it.

“Like, I think it's like a real deep dive into whatever book”

I pick, and I think if somebody else has done that, I don't wanna do that. - But listen, it's very personal. - It is. - It's very personal.

- Well, yeah. Well, you mean, just 'cause I love it so much? - No, like we had a podcast. - Yeah, like I don't feel like I belong

That's a very specific story to you.

“And we had a guest on recently that's coming out.”

- Great, guest. - Yeah, a mega star, and she too. - And I brought it up. - And it goes against my stereotype, right? And then I go, oh no, that makes perfect sense.

I think for many, many people, yeah, what they connected to is like, "Boy, I am special, I'm just not in the right place." Definitely, yes, but I just, too many people have read it. And it's a lot of books do that.

A lot of books, the reason you resonate is 'cause you're like, oh yeah, I like know this person and that's me. - Someone's loving them, you know, when they feel unlovable. - Yeah.

- I really wanna do tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That's, I only read that a couple of years ago. I love that book so much, but I do think probably someone's already done that. - So you really wanna pick a book out there?

- A book I haven't read. - Like, I would be, I would be sure, sure. - Yeah, I would do catch her in the ride. - Yeah, great book. - Or crime and punishment.

And certainly people would pick those books, it would be pedestrian, but it would be the truth.

It's like the first time I was reading something

where I was like, oh my lord, I'm not the only person on earth that thinks this way. And is experiencing this phenomenal logical thing that is life, oh wow, I'm not alone. - Yeah, I mean, have you ever read lords of discipline?

- No. - That's a Pat Conroy book that was my favorite book for like, well, very, very, very long time, but I think I would need to reread it. It's like, I don't really remember what I loved so much about it.

- Yeah, yeah. But it takes place at West Point, talk about for boys, but I really connect it with you. - Well you love the stories at school. - Yeah.

“- That's what my crux of the interview will be.”

- Yeah. - Anyway, is the correspondent Virginia Evans first book, yes? Okay, the school, I looked up the headmaster of the school that Bill Gates went to, Lakeside School. Okay, Lakeside School is the school.

Dan, I wrote a vault, a Y-R-A-U-L-T, is the headmaster. Oh, served as the headmaster from 69 to 1990. - Well, I would have included Bill. - Yeah, cool.

- What did he, he turns up and he like, I, he might be after, after 90? - No, no, after 60, he, Bill might be before 69. So, Bill turns 70 last year, 1955, it was born. - 55, so when he was 12, it would have been 67, 14, 69.

So, the dude might have just arrived. Maybe he just arrived. And maybe he wanted to double down on computer science. - So they crossed. - But that's, that's right at the wire.

- Oh, yeah, sorry, it says right here. Graduated in 1973.

“- Okay, so right when he arrived this guy arrived.”

- You arrived in 69, so yeah, they, they were there at the same time. That's nice. - Yeah. - I love teaching.

- What a group of boys that guy over saw. - Okay, Angela says that every socio-economic status people are spending more time alone. People across different socio-economic statuses have actually increased overall.

With the sharpest rises concentrated among lower income and less educated individuals, lower socio-economic status. Increases in alone time and home-based leisure are significantly more pronounced for individuals

from lower income. - There he goes. - So it's kind of opposite to intuitively things. - In those without a college education, higher socio-economic status,

while higher income individuals also experience shifts in time use, partially influenced by remote and work flexibilities. The long-term structural climate daily isolation has grown faster among lower resource groups.

Yeah, across nearly all demographics, multi-year trends since the 2000s accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic up to 2022, points towards more time spent living and doing leisure activities at home and by oneself rather than less.

Okay, yeah, so everyone. - Not great. - Not great. - Not a great at all. - Okay, Michael Phelps.

He retired after the 2012 London Olympics, returned to competition in April 2014, and then retired permanently after 2016 Rio Olympics. He has some substance issues around alcohol.

He first experienced post-limpic depression

after the 2004 Athens Games. It returned after later Olympics and was at its worst after the 2012 games when he contemplated suicide. - Mm, that's bad.

- Oh, what is currently the number when U.S. school for swimming?

- It's a direct bill bill ballman

to move there from ASU. - Run her up, Florida. I hate all these schools. (laughing) Third is Indiana.

I don't hate them as much.

- Oh, 'cause they weren't as much of a threat. - Yeah. - In football? - Yeah. - Big 10.

- Who broke Michael Phelps men's 400 meter individual

“medley world record and by how much think they're doing?”

- Oh, Roba. - I know. French swimmer Leon Marchant broke the record at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships. Beaded by 1.34 seconds.

- That's in it. - That's in it. - Me too. That's why I don't have any. 'Cause I just don't want him to beat me.

- He just knows. - Yeah. - And it's so heartbreaking. - Get your two booties to care about such things. - No, I definitely care about winning records.

- I don't care.

“- But remember you were booties last year”

when White Lotus was out? - Yeah. - I come in, I dip in an out. - Eat up in an out. Okay, okay.

- All right, love you. - Love you. (upbeat music)