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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.
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I m Dan Rather, and I m joined by Monista Mouse.
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Hi there.
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Hello there.
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Returning guest today, one of my favorites.
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It s not a coincidence she and Steven Dubner work together because they both have just the most explosive conversation style that makes it so easy for us.
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So fun.
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SPEAKER_03
You re right.
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They re obviously so similar in that way.
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Yeah.
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You just need to say hi.
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And then everything explodes off of that.
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True.
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Angela Duckworth.
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Angela is an academic, a psychologist, a MacArthur Genius Grant winner, and a bestselling author.
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Her very famous book, Grit, of course, everyone knows that book.
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And she has a podcast called No Stupid Questions that is everything you d expect from her.
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It s so good.
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She s so fascinating.
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And she s also Adam Grantian that you can start any conversation and she has some study dub reference.
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Yes.
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Oh, I love her.
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We love that.
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Please enjoy Angela Duckworth.
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Do I go right and left?
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Does it matter?
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It doesn t.
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It doesn t.
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But I like it when it s me too.
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I like it the other way so the chord s not draped across your body.
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And why do they put the R and L there though, just to fuck with you?
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Well, if you re like mixing something and you need to know, but we re coming through both sides, right?
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Yeah, that s like for DJs and stuff.
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What do you wear on your podcast?
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I wear the headphones, but I just put the L on the left and I put the R on the right.
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And is the chord ever on your person?
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It is not on my person, but I think it s because it s in a recording studio.
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Okay, and they ve already thought this through.
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It s kind of set up ergonomically, yes.
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Because is it a part of some bigger network where they have a big space?
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For economics, we do not generally record in person.
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We tried it once, and then Stephen was like, it s kind of not so great.
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Really?
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Too intimate?
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I don t know.
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He got distracted with the visual input.
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Is he like Michael Pence?
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Is he not allowed to be with women in a room unless his wife is present?
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I didn t even know that.
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You know that.
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You can t ask me anything about, wait, I have a Michael Pence story.
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You can t ask me about anything political.
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I have a Michael Pence story.
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Make up your mind, Angela.
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But they go together and here s how.
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So I m looking at the newspaper over my husband s shoulder and I was like, oh, that s such a funny picture.
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You know, it s kind of like an avatar.
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And then I was like, oh, do you know what the uncanny valley is?
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It s when there s a picture and it s so realistic that it jumps the shark and it s like too realistic.
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So I go off on this riff and he was like, oh, that s Michael Pence.
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And then I say.
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Who s Michael Pence?
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What year was this?
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So the reason why you can t ask me about politics is I just don t know anything.
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He was vice president.
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I kind of had to ask more and then... You learned he was our current vice president.
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Yeah, at the time.
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And is that a strategic decision to stay?
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Because I m not watching CNN and stuff or MSNBC or Fox News.
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Oh, it s not like a protective coping mechanism.
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Okay, because it d be hard to have not known about Mike Pence.
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It s really hard.
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And yet.
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In particular, this story I m referencing to you.
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Yeah.
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Was one of the biggest.
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When did this happen?
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Like recently?
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No, it was like maybe first year of his vice presidency.
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And he didn t want to meet with someone from the Senate or Congress, whatever it was, because he doesn t like to be in a room with a woman if his wife isn t also present.
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Interesting.
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And this is a man who s, he s in government.
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Very religious.
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Did you know that?
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Oh, is that the origin of it?
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I thought his wife doesn t trust him.
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No, not quite that.
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Well, I m sure it s all twisty.
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See, isn t it great?
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I don t know anything.
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It s like- It s fun, right?
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It s like everything s the first no.
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Did you know that Trump said, grab him by the pussy?
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No.
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Are you kidding?
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No, no, no, no.
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No, now you re lying.
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Okay, you know how there was this settlement that just happened?
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Yes.
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It was all news to me.
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I was like, wait, what?
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Oh my God.
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So it was all new.
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Okay.
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But I m very happy about it.
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Grab him by the pussy was the biggest
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That s the biggest sentence ever said in politics.
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Well, can you give me just the wiki?
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What s the wiki?
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Yeah, I prefer Monica does because obvious reasons.
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So this was during the 2016 election.
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A video came out of him on Billy Bush s show.
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Access Hollywood.
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Access Hollywood.
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They had been recording a segment.
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They were still miked.
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They were on a bus.
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There s not actual video footage of this conversation.
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You can just hear them in the bus.
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Okay, right, because the audio s on and they don t know.
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It s already a good story.
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Exactly.
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Privileged information.
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And he says, like, locker room talk.
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He says, this is locked.
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Or no, that was after.
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He says, like, when I come out of here, I might have to kiss that girl.
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Like, there s someone there.
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There s a female there.
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Yeah.
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And this is Michael Pence talking?
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No, Trump.
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Oh, this is Trump.
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This is Donald J. Trump.
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Already not a great topic for us in this show, but at any rate, this is relevant.
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This is just me learning about the world.
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It progresses like this.
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If I see that girl out there, I don t know, I might just kiss her.
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Women love stars and power.
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I just go up to them, grab them by the pussy.
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Okay, I vaguely remember this coming up during the election.
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It was during the election, yes, yes, yes, yes.
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And the Democrats thought, well, this ends this.
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This is the end, right, yeah, yeah.
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No, I vaguely remember that too, thinking, oh, it s over, and then it so wasn t.
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And then it was the first thing of 700 worst things.
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Well, and he also said something like, I came up on her like a bitch.
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There was some gal that somehow resisted his advances.
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Yeah, I mean, he did just have to pay.
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Yeah, I was gonna say a different person.
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But I m with you on the settlement.
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I don t really know any of the details.
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Yeah, I just don t read the newspaper.
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But, you know, when you asked if it was willful or intentional, I do think it makes a lot of space in my brain for other things.
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Well, I m there now, but it s intentional.
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So, like, I was on the ride.
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It was great TV.
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I did it for four years.
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And then I was just completely fatigued and I can t stand hearing about it.
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And I just was really like, I m so fucking bored of this topic.
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You re owning it.
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I think that s great.
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You re just like, I just don t know it and I don t care.
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I m actually okay with that.
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Largely okay.
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I know it s a threat to democracy.
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But you vote, right?
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I do vote.
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And I have trusted friends and one husband and I get a printout before I go into the polls.
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It s all you need, right?
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You re proving the point I m constantly making, which is people have this illusion that they re participating more by thinking about it and talking about it.
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My observation is 99% of people that are wound up, they do one thing every four years.
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And they re not doing anything else because they could be doing other things.
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Yes, sure.
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But maybe most of them are not.
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But all we do is vote once every four years.
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And I m not even shaming anyone from that.
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All I m saying is when you tell me it s socially irresponsible or a threat to the democracy that I m not following all the twists and turns, I m kind of like, let s compare records.
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As long as I went and voted, I did the exact same amount of actionable things as you did.
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So shut the fuck up.
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I think I m going to use that maybe without the profanity, but I can use that as my own explanation if I get assaulted in this way.
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Shirley, in your long career, have you come across any kind of work about obscenities?
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Yes.
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I assume so.
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So are you comfortable?
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You know what I m going to do?
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I m going to take my shoes off.
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Take them off.
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I don t think my feet, they kind of touch the ground.
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They don t have to touch.
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But like, I m going to do this.
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Yeah.
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I can tell the way your hand was.
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Yeah, that s really good.
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Have you ever heard of Y Combinator?
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No.
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Wait, you ve never heard of Y Combinator?
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What if you start talking about it perhaps at a later date?
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Okay, I know we are switching.
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Because it turned out you did hear Grabbed by the Pussy, so maybe the same thing will happen.
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No, well, I have heard about Wygot.
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I don t think it falls into the same category.
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You have heard of Wygot.
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You ve heard of Airbnb and Stripe.
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It s the most successful accelerator in Silicon Valley, meaning you know what venture capital is.
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Yes.
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Correct.
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So venture capital has been around for a while.
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But what has not been around for a while is this idea of what they call the accelerator.
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In 2005 or so, there was one venture capitalist or actually he was not yet a venture capitalist.
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His name was Paul Graham and Y stands for Yahoo.
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So I think he was at Yahoo.
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He was giving a talk at Harvard to these students about what he thought as somebody who had been successful in startups and tech.
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He was like, you know, this is the way startups should be.
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This is what founders need.
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They need mentors.
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They need to be together to talk to each other because you need ambitious people to be with other ambitious people or they just get diluted and then they get less ambitious.
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So then he decided to try to do this.
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So even in the first batch, it created Airbnb.
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I think they have something like close to 100 businesses that are over a billion dollars in revenue.
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And so that s what Y Combinator is, it s an accelerator.
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Quite literally, it s a group of people that come together and it s a social network and they encourage each other and pressure test each other.
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Yes, but it s kind of like Summer Camp and Venture Capital had a baby because I think it s like a three-month program, but you also get half a million dollars.
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So you get invested in.
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Then also, by the way, they now own 7% of your company.
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Of course.
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How much?
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I think it s 7%.
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Oh, seven.
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I thought you said 70.
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I was like, that s a... So it s an off-camera shark tank in a way.
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Yes.
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So why did I bring that up?
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Because you noticed my body language.
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I don t remember what the question was before that, but you will notice my body language.
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So I don t know these Y Combinator founders, but there s two or three men and there s one woman.
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And the woman says that she goes into these interviews because you have to get into Y Combinator.
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They don t just take anybody who signs up.
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And so they re all being asked questions about their model and the likely market cap.
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And then this woman whose name I can t remember in full, but I think the first name is Jennifer.
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She says that what she does is she says nothing and she just watches.
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And in 10 minutes, she says she can tell you what their character is.
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Yeah.
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And I was thinking maybe you d be good at this.
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I love that you guys had this moment, but I do want to return to the question of the power of obscenities.
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There s a little bit of research on this, but I m not an expert.
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I do swear a lot.
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I also work with children.
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I m trying not to, it s offensive to some parents when you swear a lot, especially the F word.
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You re calling students at Penn children?
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No, I think I would be called a developmental psychologist.
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I was a high school teacher and then I studied teenagers and many parents would be offended by profanity.
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So I had a little peripheral vision for this research and it turns out some people think that people who swear are, I think, more honest.
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You should trust them more because they re just going to say whatever the
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And I m not going to say it, but you can say it.
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Whatever the fuck we want.
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Exactly.
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And you can say it, Monica, because I don t think you re a developmentalist.
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Yeah, exactly.
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It s all good stuff about swearing.
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I think one is if you stub your toe and you say, fuck, shit, it s an emotion regulation.
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It s a tool.
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Yeah.
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OK, I don t know enough.
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I should stop talking because I don t really know.
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This was already great.
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I one time was having a debate with my mother-in-law, which happens frequently, and she hates swearing just across the board.
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She would be like one of those parents, maybe a little more traditional.
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Her explanation to me was it s lazy and it kind of flags stupidity.
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And my single pushback to it was, I m going to make you watch this Chris Rock standup special.
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Anyone or just a particular one?
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Well, sure.
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Anyone would work.
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He is a master of using profanity, as was so many comedians.
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George Carlin?
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Sure.
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Richard Pryor to me is like the prime example.
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I was like, minimally, I need you to watch this person and tell me you conclude that they re not hyper-intelligent and using this very intentionally and with great effect.
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And just like we have come to recognize AAVE, African American Vernacular English, U of M, I think they did all the work on that.
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What they sought out to prove is this isn t a degrading of the normative language.
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This is actually more complicated.
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It evolves more quickly.
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They re communicating more complex things.
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Like if you just study it as a straight up language, it s in ways superior.
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So minimally you can t be superior to AAVE.
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It could be an evolution.
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And it is.
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And there s a lot of historical reasons why they would need their own language so that they could not be broadcasting their plans to their captors.
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There s a number of reasons, but I happen to think swearing can be used very effectively and properly.
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Like an accent.
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Punctuation.
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It can break tension.
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You know, it s just very useful and some people are really great at it and some people, yes, are using it like um.
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Right, like it s just a filler.
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Exactly.
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Did your mother-in-law move at all on this issue?
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She acknowledged that Chris Rock was pretty smart.
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That s all I got out of her.
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She told me this.
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She had seen my movie Chips.
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She didn t say one thing about it.
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She clearly didn t like it.
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Then she saw it on an airplane three years later and she landed and she goes, oh my God, Dax, I saw your movie Chips on the airplane and all the swears were bleeped out.
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And I thought, wow, this is actually a good movie under all that.
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So she needed it removed to even enjoy it.
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She needed it removed to be able to focus on that.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t relate, but fine.
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She s also religious, and I do think there s something about it s the devil s talk.
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It connects to naughty, like bad behavior.
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SPEAKER_02
Well, like taking the Lord s name in vain.
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Okay, well, I am not a linguist, but I was on a project with a linguist for like a long time.
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Didn t really go as far as we wanted, but here s the thing he taught me.
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So I was saying, literally,
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kind of literally bothers me.
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I mean, literally it bothers me, but the way people are using literally bothers me.
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So I gave an example.
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I was like, my daughter, Amanda, the other day said, I literally jumped out of my skin and jumped back into it again.
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And I told this linguist that it bothered me.
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And he said, what s very interesting is what you re picking up on as an old person is how a young person talks.
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And so
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it bothers you that she doesn t say actually or very.
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Think about what those words mean.
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Actual, very comes from truth, right?
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He s like, that used to be literally, now it s acceptable to you.
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And here s what he said.
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When language evolves, you can tell where it s going by listening to young people.
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Because the way they talk, like me and my friend went to the mall, was wrong, but it s not going to be wrong.
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Yes, did this person write a book then called Like Literally Dude?
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No, that s a woman.
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No, Mark Lieberman.
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Our favorite guest of the last year was a linguist, and she wrote a book called Like Literally Dude, and it s making an argument for how precise and accurate those are, and then gave us 30 words we use that are absolutely opposite of their original meaning 200 years ago.
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We now accept them, right?
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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Because we re like, oh.
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Valerie Friedland.
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Ooh, I love this.
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Yeah.
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Okay, I m sure they re friends.
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It s pretty much the same thing, she said.
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SPEAKER_00
Did you love talking to him?
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SPEAKER_00
Because we were having so much fun.
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SPEAKER_00
Like we re trying to talk about one thing, but then you just kept hearing the etymology.
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One thing leads to another and he s like, oh, it s an intensifier.
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And I m like, what s an intensifier?
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It s like so fun.
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I mean, it didn t make me want to be a linguist, but I was like, this is amazing.
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And I m glad you did this.
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SPEAKER_00
The geekiness of the pursuit is really infectious.
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SPEAKER_02
I don t know what that fourth hour is like, but the first three hours you re like, this is great.
1
SPEAKER_02
Here s another thing.
1
SPEAKER_02
This is what we were working on.
1
SPEAKER_02
Sentences are getting shorter and reading levels going down.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you look at the inaugural addresses from the presidents going, well, I don t know about certain presidents, but starting from like Washington all the way forward, you know, it s pretty easy to tell reading level because how uncommon are the words?
1
SPEAKER_02
Could a fourth grader read this?
1
SPEAKER_02
And reading level has been going down in written text over the last century or so.
1
SPEAKER_00
I immediately would be a little bit suspicious of causality versus correlation.
1
SPEAKER_00
So one thing we could say about Abraham Lincoln is that he was only addressing other highly educated people that were in front of him and in government.
1
SPEAKER_00
They were not watching on TV.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if we were to track just how widely viewed and accessible.
1
SPEAKER_02
How do you know that we re not just more, I don t know, democratic?
1
SPEAKER_00
they have access to more and more people, and that maybe their reading and writing is superior to language, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_02
Okay, that is a fair point, Slash.
1
SPEAKER_02
We did look, and I told you this project went a lot slower than we thought.
1
SPEAKER_02
We tried to look at all published text, it was hard to do, but we were looking also like New York Times bestselling novels.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s a little complicated, but we do see a rise in informality.
1
SPEAKER_02
The way I wanted to say it, but I think it s probably too simplistic, is the written word is becoming like the spoken word.
1
SPEAKER_02
So people don t speak in really long sentences with semicolons in them.
1
SPEAKER_02
You just say things and they re quite simple.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think even outside of presidential dresses, because that s a very good point, I think language is getting more informal and sentences are getting shorter.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like, for example, contractions are going up.
1
SPEAKER_02
So it used to be, she is going to the house.
1
SPEAKER_02
Now it s she s going to the house more often.
1
SPEAKER_02
So
1
SPEAKER_02
I think language is evolving and maybe it s evolving in the direction of kids and also women, by the way.
1
SPEAKER_02
So apparently how women speak in a society tends to be like most efficient.
1
SPEAKER_02
Well, better.
1
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_02
But the way women and children are speaking, I m told by Mark, is the way that the rest of us will be speaking soon.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re like the California of speaking.
1
SPEAKER_02
Is California the California of California?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes, like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, what happens here will happen.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like the Harbinger.
1
SPEAKER_02
There s a word for this, but I can t remember.
1
SPEAKER_01
But also, I m gonna say this is because of email.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because we re all communicating so quickly all the time over text and email, and it s quick.
1
SPEAKER_01
No one s taking the time.
1
SPEAKER_01
You d look ridiculous.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, but we went back.
1
SPEAKER_02
to the beginning of the 20th century and you still find this trend.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I don t want to overplay it because it s not like every sentence is getting shorter, but I think people are writing more like Hemingway than they are like Faulkner.
1
SPEAKER_02
By the way, I think it s good.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think like coffee and pizza are getting better and maybe writing is getting better.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have another take.
1
SPEAKER_00
You also have to think about what life was like in 1930.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the only shared language that you even had access to was this paper that would arrive if you happened to somehow get your hands on a newspaper.
1
SPEAKER_00
Again, you cannot turn on the television and see how people are talking in New York or in St.
1
SPEAKER_00
Louis, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
So you have this very unified, very formal.
1
SPEAKER_02
Written by a certain class of people too, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
As opposed to email.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think we must be writing more than we used to, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh, so much.
1
SPEAKER_00
1000% and then you re getting more and more now the radio comes out now all of a sudden across the airwaves I m hearing people from Kansas City and now we have icons pop up.
1
SPEAKER_00
We have Elvis Presley now We know how he talks we ve been being informed by this newspaper now We re being informed by this person and then that s just again shot all the way up where every human being has a device in their hand and they re broadcasting their pop culture and
1
SPEAKER_00
So I also think we re embracing what the shared culture is, but back then the shared culture was that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think there s always this knee-jerk reaction to go like, we re devolving.
1
SPEAKER_02
Like a T-BASS.
1
SPEAKER_02
Have you heard that acronym?
1
SPEAKER_02
No.
1
SPEAKER_02
Is this not a thing?
1
SPEAKER_02
Maybe it was just my father-in-law.
1
SPEAKER_02
Total Breakdown of American Society.
1
SPEAKER_02
Maybe he made that up.
1
SPEAKER_02
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
I hear that term.
1
SPEAKER_02
Every generation does say this.
1
SPEAKER_02
And actually, I will tell you as a psychologist that every generation, you know, people are always asking about the millennials and now I guess they re asking, what s the generation after millennials?
1
SPEAKER_02
Gen Z is before X. Gen Z. And I think there s one that s after them.
1
SPEAKER_02
Every generation thinks that there s like a seismic change in human nature because they look at the next gen and they re like, oh my God, total breakdown of American society or total breakdown of fill in the blank society.
1
SPEAKER_02
And really,
1
SPEAKER_02
A lot of it is they re just a different generation.
1
SPEAKER_02
They re also younger.
1
SPEAKER_02
So people s personalities change over the lifespan.
1
SPEAKER_02
And basically, there s this thing called the maturity principle.
1
SPEAKER_02
It is the following fact.
1
SPEAKER_02
People, on average, get better over time.
1
SPEAKER_02
In adulthood, you get more conscientious, more dependable and trustworthy, more emotionally stable, actually, about a lot.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, not everything goes up, but wisdom, judgment.
1
SPEAKER_02
So basically, the old people are just looking at the young people and being like, oh my gosh, they re so callous and impulsive and they don t work hard enough, but they don t realize they re just young.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right, they re hanging it on the observable things that they re witnessing.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re attributing it to their generation, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes, yes.
1
SPEAKER_02
And they re also annoyed about things like they re not talking like I am.
1
SPEAKER_02
They say me and my friend went to the house.
1
SPEAKER_00
A friend of mine pointed out something I just thought was so astute the other day.
1
SPEAKER_00
We were talking on the phone, we were talking about all the different uproars over trans issues.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he said, you know, it did cross my mind, the level of uproar right
2
SPEAKER_02
now is identical to my parents  uproar that Boy George was wearing a kind of loose cottony dress.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes, which I remember.
2
SPEAKER_01
I am old enough to remember that.
2
SPEAKER_02
People were like, you cannot listen to Boy George.
2
SPEAKER_02
This guy is going to t-bast, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, right, right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he s going to take down society.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
And so for us, that s really comical because we lived through it and we were young watching like, no, this guy s a great singer.
2
SPEAKER_02
And who gives a flying fuck?
2
SPEAKER_01
So what s your forecast then of where we ll be in, I don t know, 50 years?
2
SPEAKER_02
I have different fears and I listened to a couple of your episodes.
2
SPEAKER_02
You did have no stupid questions, which is so good.
2
SPEAKER_02
But one of them was is GPS changing your brain, which was a really fun episode.
2
SPEAKER_01
Answer.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_02
And measurably.
2
SPEAKER_02
And maybe let s just lay that out because then I can maybe build on that.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then let me back up before you get into that.
2
SPEAKER_02
I was screaming the whole time I was listening to the episode.
2
SPEAKER_02
Have you read weirdest people on earth?
2
SPEAKER_01
No, I have not.
2
SPEAKER_02
It is the greatest book I ve read in the last five years.
2
SPEAKER_02
Joseph Henrik and it s Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I know the academic research.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just didn t read the book.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t really read those kinds of books that I also write.
2
SPEAKER_01
Of course not.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t like to watch comedy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like a busman s holiday.
2
SPEAKER_02
So he makes this incredible observation about how dramatically, well, for starters, it erases the line between nature and nurture or culture and genetics, which I love.
2
SPEAKER_02
As an anthro major, this is what we ve been screaming, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
But he gives these incredible cases of how we have massively changed the structure of our brain simply through learning to read.
2
SPEAKER_02
It talks about the process of learning to read in the 1600s and Martin Luther King getting the literacy rate up in the 80s in all these different countries.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, because it wasn t that long ago where we were almost all totally illiterate.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it occupies such a significant area of your brain, and that is an area that otherwise would have been dedicated to social recognition.
2
SPEAKER_02
So being able to read body language much better, social cues.
2
SPEAKER_01
Does he think we re worse at those other things?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, it s now dedicated to this task and it changes the physical structure observable of the brain and talks about, like, when you re sitting around thinking about why the people in Japan and China are different from you and you re being told, oh, a collective society versus an individual, and that s fine.
2
SPEAKER_02
But beyond that, there s structural differences of our brains, which is incredible.
2
SPEAKER_02
The history of rice production and the math required to do it change the structure of their brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think it is?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m curious, both of you.
2
SPEAKER_01
When people are like, it changes you.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, it changes your brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, what?
2
SPEAKER_01
And you sit up and you re like, wait, my brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it s really interesting that I also sit up and I m like, oh, your brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
Did you say your brain?
2
SPEAKER_01
What is that that makes that so compelling?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it is compelling, but I don t know why.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s more compelling that it s the brain.
2
SPEAKER_02
Because I think it pushes against this notion that we are one thing.
2
SPEAKER_02
We re kind of immalleable.
2
SPEAKER_02
We ve been designed.
2
SPEAKER_02
We have a genetic code.
2
SPEAKER_02
It can only change through mutation.
2
SPEAKER_02
It kind of threatens everything we have been taught about evolution.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s like, well, hold on.
2
SPEAKER_02
Culture can fuck my genetics.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, this opens up a Pandora s box.
2
SPEAKER_02
Are we the thing we think we are?
2
SPEAKER_01
Kind of like a mind-body thing, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Where you re like, hold on, now everything is in question.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, because we like to think of those things as separate.
2
SPEAKER_01
Did you have Sapolsky on the show?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, I was about to say, I think it s a free will thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think if we think something s structurally changed in our brain, then we no longer have any control over it.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s just the way we are.
2
SPEAKER_00
We can t make any decisions to change or
2
SPEAKER_01
And I think this is why, when you say, this person committed this crime, they had a brain problem, and you re like, oh, their guilt goes down, or perceived guilt goes down.
2
SPEAKER_01
Although, you could argue that that s not super logical, but I would also be saying the guilt would go down.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying that I wouldn t answer the survey just like everyone else.
2
SPEAKER_01
By the way, there s a great book that I m reading.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think his name is Bennett?
2
SPEAKER_01
Jennifer?
2
SPEAKER_01
Max Bennett?
2
SPEAKER_01
No, not Jennifer.
2
SPEAKER_00
Jennifer Y Combinator.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, I was like, oh gosh, I totally forgot.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was like really fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, I don t remember that part of the conversation at all.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s called A Brief History of Intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know you very well, but I know you enough that you guys would love him.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s like sapiens for intelligence.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the reason I bring this all up is that it ll make you understand how we can maybe try to think about the future.
2
SPEAKER_01
We can even have conversations about free will, which is kind of amazing.
2
SPEAKER_01
He basically begins with primordial sludge and then he takes you all the way through.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a very fast moving book because, you know, there s a lot of territory to cover.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it just makes you, I think, humble too.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re like, OK, we are from fish.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the fish were from nematodes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the nematodes were from single-celled organisms.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know whether there s free will or not.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it s fun to debate.
2
SPEAKER_01
There was a hot minute where I was a philosophy.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was taking this and I was just like, I m just not going to figure this out.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I will say that I m okay not knowing, but not caring that much.
2
SPEAKER_01
I have the exact same standpoint.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t think we know.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I certainly don t think we know enough for him to write a book that says definitively it is deterministic.
2
SPEAKER_01
He was very confident and very well-written, but wow, he is like, I figured this out.
2
SPEAKER_02
And I think if he had a different childhood, he would have it pulled towards a different conclusion.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think we re that subjective.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, interesting.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think he could employ that enormous brain on any topic and he d be able to convince me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s also true.
2
SPEAKER_02
We all only prove our hunches, like I think ultimately, and I believe this in every expert we interview.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nobody ever changes their mind.
2
SPEAKER_02
They don t.
2
SPEAKER_02
And they have something in childhood they ve been trying to answer.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is like Freudian.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, not Freudian.
2
SPEAKER_02
We reject him.
2
SPEAKER_01
Lowercase f, Freudian.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think it s driven by emotional... I think that s like Adler.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, Freud had the next generation.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think he believed that if you really want to understand someone, there s something in their childhood that
2
SPEAKER_01
is giving them like an inferiority complex, some hole that they spend their whole life trying to fill.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m 80% sure it was Adler, but that s kind of what you re talking about, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
There s something in his childhood that s driving him to believe in determinism, for example.
2
SPEAKER_02
I think that people who are drawn to no free will and determinism are people who have a general high fear of the planet.
2
SPEAKER_02
And it would feel safer to know that we could know about it, predict it, and prepare for it.
2
SPEAKER_02
The concept is appealing because if we knew where everything was going, we would never be caught off guard.
2
SPEAKER_02
We could be prepared.
2
SPEAKER_02
They don t want to think about the unknowable cosmos.
2
SPEAKER_02
Or they might even like that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_02
But I always think of Sam Harris and I have great respect for him and he s much smarter than I am.
2
SPEAKER_02
So I m not claiming to have anything over him.
2
SPEAKER_02
I just know he has a bunch of security.
2
SPEAKER_02
He trains for jujitsu.
2
SPEAKER_02
There s a lot of other things.
2
SPEAKER_02
And then guess what?
2
SPEAKER_02
He also believes in determinism.
2
SPEAKER_02
I don t think they re unrelated.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that is so interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
For me, I would have said 100% free will until sort of recently.
2
SPEAKER_00
You were like team free will until recently?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, because all of us who think we re so smart and that we earned all this stuff, we didn t.
2
SPEAKER_00
It really just made me feel like no one s better than anyone else.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we re fooling ourselves.
2
SPEAKER_00
No one worked harder than anyone else.
2
SPEAKER_00
So much is just handed to you genetically, culturally, so much.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so I have another person that you should, I have two people.
2
SPEAKER_01
One is Robert Frank, who wrote this book on how, especially if we are leading decent lives, we re successful.
2
SPEAKER_02
We own our bus.
2
SPEAKER_01
You have an incredible number of vehicles outside.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was a bit horrified to know that they were all yours.
2
SPEAKER_01
Say you have your own bus.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can create a narrative, which is you re a hard worker.
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe you even have the humility to say it wasn t talent, it was grit.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you don t usually say, it was so random.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m just this molecule.
2
SPEAKER_01
It could have been this other molecule.
2
100%.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So Robert Frank, I don t know what he is, but he s at Cornell, so he s a professor, and he believes that this is one of the problems of elites.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s also Sapolsky s take, which is like, you shouldn t be judgmental of people, and you also shouldn t be proud of yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you won a lottery.
2
SPEAKER_02
That I accept.
2
SPEAKER_02
But by the way, not to get too stinky, but people do work harder.
2
SPEAKER_00
They do, but we could have the ability that s innate that we didn t pick.
2
SPEAKER_02
They work harder, but it s also easier for them to work harder.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, they have some kind of biological motivation.
2
SPEAKER_01
I actually don t believe in free will.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just don t believe that I know very much.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I agree.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ask the question about anything, you re like, well, why do they work hard?
2
SPEAKER_01
Someone modeled that for them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Someone modeled that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, when you work hard, it pays off.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
They got validation for it early.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just want to give you this other idea, except for he doesn t do podcasts, but he would so agree with you.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know who said exactly what you said a moment ago, more or less, that people don t really change their minds about anything that really matters?
2
SPEAKER_01
Danny Kahneman.
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve had Danny Kahneman.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s not doing them anymore though.
2
SPEAKER_02
Ours was a couple of years ago, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
You may have gotten one of the last Danny Kahneman interviews.
2
SPEAKER_02
You love Kahneman, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Everyone loves Danny.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Did he come here?
2
SPEAKER_01
He did not come here.
2
SPEAKER_01
Was it good?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it was.
2
SPEAKER_02
His concept of the narrative self versus the experiential self is probably my very favorite concept I ve ever heard and became how I frame so many of my analysis of whether things are going my way.
2
SPEAKER_02
It s like, well, a way for which self?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, like it was actually practically useful?
2
SPEAKER_01
All the time it is.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, so interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s very convinced that nothing he does is actually useful.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was like, oh, you wrote this book, Thinking Fast and Slow.
2
SPEAKER_01
You must have written it to change people for the better.
2
SPEAKER_01
He said, I could have written a poem.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was an act of self-expression.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, I don t think it changes anyone.
2
SPEAKER_01
But it changed you.
2
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_02
And the concept was introduced to me by Sapiens, weirdly.
2
SPEAKER_02
He said, you could be wearing a device in the future, and you re going to walk into a meeting, and the device may blink and say, do not pitch a new idea in this meeting.
2
SPEAKER_02
Your blood sugar is this.
2
SPEAKER_02
The last time your cortisol levels were this.
2
SPEAKER_02
You said something you regretted.
2
SPEAKER_02
Keep your mouth shut in this meeting.
2
SPEAKER_02
It ll get that nuanced and incredible.
2
SPEAKER_02
And he said, you re going to be setting goals for the device to keep you on track, but you have to ask yourself goals for which self.
3
SPEAKER_01
So another self might have conflicting and contrary goals that you re also servicing.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, how do I want to spend my real life just achieving accolades?
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s the experiential self.
3
SPEAKER_01
You might enjoy flipping through Instagram for two hours.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then at night, the narrative self says, well, that wasn t a great use of our day and the life we re trying to write about.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this I have thought about a lot because I would say that more than grit, I study self-control.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think I ve published 15 articles on self-control for every article I ve published on grit.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think all of self-control comes down to the multiple selves reality.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there is an Angela who wants to be here.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe there s an Angela who s a little jet-lagged and wants to take a nap right here on the couch.
3
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever seen the night guy, morning guy routine that Seinfeld does?
3
SPEAKER_00
Night guy wants to go out and party and have fun.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, wakes up and he s like morning guy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Morning guy s hungover.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s tired.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s cranky.
3
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t want to go to work.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the idea is we are those selves.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, one of them might come out at night.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of them may come out in the morning.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the problem with self-control is these multiple selves are
3
SPEAKER_00
not in agreement about what to do, when to go to bed, or what to eat, or what to say.
3
SPEAKER_00
The way philosophy has solved this, philosophy is really good at thinking about things.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t think philosophy has a lot of practical advice, but I think the answer is supposed to be what you prefer upon reflection.
3
SPEAKER_00
So which dax is the dax that when you have a moment to consider all the daxes or all the monikas, which one do you prefer?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think some philosophical thinkers would say what Harry Frankfurt at Princeton would say, the higher level self is what you want to want.
3
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The lower level self or the lower order desires are what you merely want.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think a lot of self-control is doing what you want to want upon reflection and not just what you want.
3
SPEAKER_01
And again, it goes back to Freud, this is superego-ed.
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SPEAKER_01
Who are you servicing?
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Superego-ed.
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SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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I think the same exact intuitions.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that s why measuring happiness, which is the original Kahneman task.
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Day reconstruction method.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like ask someone at any given moment in the day to write down how their day is going, but then ask them later that night how the day went.
3
SPEAKER_00
In little episodes, right?
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So it s like you break down your whole day.
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SPEAKER_01
And you might get a 7, then a 6, then a 5.
3
SPEAKER_01
But then at the end of the day, you ll come up with a number for the overall day.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s weirdly what gets cemented in your mind and what is constructing your identity.
3
SPEAKER_00
But not the experience itself.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then we do also, some would argue, like irrational things.
3
SPEAKER_00
So one of the early and famous day reconstruction method studies that Kahneman did, he found that people are really unhappy commuting.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what do they do?
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They buy houses in the middle of nowhere and they drive an hour and a half each way.
3
SPEAKER_00
You also have this kind of like, which self bought that house, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because the self who s like in the car for an hour and a half each way is like really unhappy.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think the multiple selves problem is perennial.
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SPEAKER_00
One could argue, and it s been argued recently, that ultra processed fast food and Instagram and TikTok, we live in an environment which is really preying on our first order desires because it s easy to sell to our first order desires.
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SPEAKER_01
I m calling it experiential self, but you would call those first order desires.
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SPEAKER_00
I m agreeing with you on like multiple selves in general.
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SPEAKER_00
I also think there s different selves we have with different people.
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SPEAKER_00
When I m in my house, like under my roof with the door closed, I m actually very quiet.
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SPEAKER_00
In my family, I think I say the least.
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SPEAKER_01
Really?
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SPEAKER_00
Right?
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SPEAKER_01
Because I imagine you and I under the same roof and the fucking doors would blow off.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
You re like, you need sound insulation.
3
SPEAKER_00
But only when I m like in public.
3
SPEAKER_00
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
3
SPEAKER_01
Can I drill into your psychology a little bit, because you gave me two really good clues.
3
SPEAKER_01
So is it that you do feel true and unconditional love in your house, and that there s some part of you that when out and about, that when you re out and about, there is still some child fear that you will not either be taken seriously or seen as smart?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think our multiple selves are often all genuine of a kind.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m not implying the one s fraudulent when you re out of the house, but I am implying in a Sapolsky way that there s probably a causality to it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so now I m going to reference another psychologist.
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Did you ever have Tim Beck on?
3
SPEAKER_00
No.
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SPEAKER_00
But you ve heard of cognitive therapy.
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SPEAKER_00
I feel like we ve been shit on now that we re talking about Angela.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve got some homework to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re scoring pretty, I mean, actually like half the people we named.
3
SPEAKER_00
Did you ever have Mike Pence on?
3
SPEAKER_00
That s how we know him.
3
SPEAKER_00
Not yet.
3
SPEAKER_01
He won t because he s afraid I ll leave the room.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then he ll be in the room with him and by himself.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you can t have Tim back on because he has passed away.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he is credited with basically being the inventor of modern therapy.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was also trained as a Freudian.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he lived to 100 and he only recently passed away.
3
SPEAKER_00
But when he was a young psychiatrist, like everyone, he was Freudian because they all were.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he s trying to treat these patients who are depressed or anxious and
3
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It s not working.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, he s talking about their childhoods and their dreams.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was also very scientific, which like not a lot of psychoanalysts of the time were super science-y.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll get in a lot of trouble for saying that, but I think it s roughly true.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he goes back and he thinks to himself, why are people depressed?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why are they anxious?
3
SPEAKER_00
Talking about their childhoods is not helping a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what he determined was that your feelings are driven by your thoughts.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s actually the basis of therapy, is that how you feel, I m sad, I don t want to get out of bed, I m scared, I don t want to go into that interview.
3
SPEAKER_00
It feels like a feeling, and it is a feeling, but before that there s a thought.
3
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, that is the basis of modern psychotherapy.
3
SPEAKER_00
He created CBT.
3
SPEAKER_00
So Tim Peck, towards the end of his life, was writing his magnum opus, which he never got to finish.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t know if it ll ever be published, he didn t finish it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he lived down the street from me, just by chance, literally in these condo buildings that were four blocks away.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I was not his best friend and I wasn t a student, but he lived so close and he was into grit.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s very gritty, loved achievement.
3
SPEAKER_00
So anyway, here s what he would say about these multiple selves.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cause he talked about them as modes.
3
SPEAKER_00
He was like, what mode are you in?
3
SPEAKER_00
He thought we have all these modes in large part, because if you did not have modes, you would be the same person, every situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that would not be good.
3
SPEAKER_00
You d be equally talkative, equally dominant, and that s not good.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we have to have modes.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I asked him about multiple personality disorder, which he reminded me is not called that anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s called dissociative identity.
3
SPEAKER_00
But anyway, I was asking about that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m like, you know, the thing that was formerly known.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, you know, in that case, you re fully separated from those other selves.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like one self literally doesn t know, literally, but literally, literally.
3
SPEAKER_00
literally doesn t know that the other self even exists.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they re like, who made coffee?
3
SPEAKER_00
Where did these workout clothes come from?
3
SPEAKER_01
They re kind of waking up in time and space a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And instead, quiet Dax, insecure Dax, confident Dax, you do know about those other selves.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that s the difference.
3
SPEAKER_00
But he was like, but here s what we all have in common.
3
SPEAKER_00
We all have multiple selves.
3
SPEAKER_00
And maybe a lot of therapy should be about figuring out the thoughts that lead to your feelings.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think in the last 10 years of his life, he was like, maybe a lot of living a better life and not being depressed and not being dysfunctional is figuring out
3
SPEAKER_00
the ways in which we can be the best selves that we have.
3
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In any given mode.
3
SPEAKER_00
How can we trigger our best modes?
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
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Access the ones that are most useful in that situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that is helpful.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then it says, I don t even have to fundamentally change everything about myself.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can just audit myself.
3
SPEAKER_00
When do I like myself the most?
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you just navigate into those situations.
3
SPEAKER_01
The reason I like to frame things that way is my instinct or natural pattern is that the narrative self will never be happy about anything the experiential self did.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re always at odds, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And so I have body goals.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that banana split didn t meet, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what I try to remind myself is they re both valuable.
3
SPEAKER_01
They both deserve to be serviced.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I need the narrative self to shut the fuck up and just go, no, there s a time for the experiential self.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they re both worthy of.
3
SPEAKER_01
Servicing.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you re only a narrative self, then you re an achievement junkie and you have a hollow life.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re laying on a deathbed with a bunch of fucking awards and accolades.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t want that.
3
SPEAKER_01
The experiential self, you re dying at 42 of heart disease.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was going to say, you have diabetes.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
What I m aiming for is whatever clever balance for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you feel like there s a lot of tension there or do you feel like you re mostly in alignment?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I do think that happiness is when yourselves are a happy little community.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think there s endless tension there.
3
SPEAKER_01
And as I ve gotten older, when you talk about getting better for me, what I would say has gotten better is that I have gotten closer and closer to the ratio that works best for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Give me an example of a conflict.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s an addict.
3
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I forgot about that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So true.
3
SPEAKER_00
Totally forgot about that.
3
SPEAKER_01
How dare you have forgotten about that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, I have not Google stalked you enough.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if I have a lot of like actually conflicting selves, but maybe I do and I don t know about it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Let s just take Instagram.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t think I m terribly plagued by it, but sometimes I ll do it for an hour and it ll be at an hour generally that we ve had three guests that day and I m fried.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m against spending an hour on this mindless device, but then I go, stop being so judgmental of the experiential shelf because it s here to help too.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it matters because the narrative self comes last.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s looking back on your life, looking back on your day.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then projecting.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when I wake up in the morning, I m like, oh, today I make sure I spend two hours on Instagram between six and eight.
3
SPEAKER_01
I would never plan for that either.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
How much time do you feel like you experience the emotion of regret or like that psychic tension of I want to do this, but I should do this?
3
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes people who study self-control call it like the want should conflict.
3
SPEAKER_00
How much of your day is experiencing that kind of tension in percentage terms?
3
SPEAKER_01
The tension is always at an eight.
3
SPEAKER_01
The regret is at like a one.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wait, the tension is at an eight?
3
SPEAKER_01
Always.
3
SPEAKER_01
My first thought for almost any situation is always something ultimately I don t want to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
Someone cuts me off.
3
SPEAKER_01
I want to fist fight at the light.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s me.
3
SPEAKER_01
My kid does this.
3
SPEAKER_00
I want to
4
SPEAKER_00
go, how many fucking times are we going to learn this?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like I have to step over a bad idea and a bad impulse in route to almost everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
But at 49 and through AA and therapy and all this stuff, I step over it for the most part.
4
SPEAKER_00
But my initial thought is generally self-destructive.
4
SPEAKER_01
So what was the one?
4
SPEAKER_01
The one is you don t do the things.
4
SPEAKER_00
I generally don t do the things that I have a great pull to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve been hip deep in studying AA for the last week.
4
SPEAKER_00
No kidding.
4
SPEAKER_00
So fascinating.
4
SPEAKER_00
How have you not called me?
4
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
But also, isn t it supposed to be that you re not supposed to say?
4
SPEAKER_00
In the original traditions, yeah, we re supposed to remain silent at the level of press and radio.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like one of the traditions.
4
SPEAKER_01
Contentious, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because some would argue that then you keep the stigma.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
I get very frustrated when people are reading the Constitution like it was written in 2024.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s maddening to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I hate the notion of no evolution.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I hate you have a book that s 3,000 years old and you re not gonna fucking bring in any information to test it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re like, I m not a fundamentalist.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, in 1930 when that was written, if you were to say out loud, I m a recovering alcoholic, and this even says it somewhere in the literature, you d have alcohol showing up at your door.
4
SPEAKER_00
No one knew what to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
Two, you d get fired back then.
4
SPEAKER_00
You d be shamed by your society.
4
SPEAKER_00
We do not live in that time.
4
SPEAKER_00
So the context is completely fucking different.
4
SPEAKER_00
There are people in AA that are very mad at me that I do it, but I ve personally talked to 50 plus people who ve gotten sober because they ve heard me talk about it on here.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I m going to weigh pissing off 25 old timers versus the 50 people perhaps didn t die because of my honesty.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s so easy for me.
4
SPEAKER_00
What I do try my hardest to always remind people, because this is the other great fear.
4
SPEAKER_00
The other great fear is a legitimate one, which is if I become the face of AA and I fail, then people on the outside will say, AA doesn t work.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I have failed in sobriety.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m very quick to tell you, I stopped working all of the steps the way it is suggested.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I personally am responsible for my relapses, not that program.
4
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the fear is you to get someone out there bragging about AA and it changed my life.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then we d see them publicly all fucked up and go, well, that doesn t work.
4
SPEAKER_01
The reason I ve been studying it is that A.A., you put yourself into a certain social situation.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot more than that.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you must be doing this for your book you re writing.
4
SPEAKER_01
I am.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m convinced that so much of life, and this is also why I was talking to Tim Beck about modes, because I was like, how much of life is putting yourself in the right situation?
4
SPEAKER_01
How do I put myself in the right mode?
4
SPEAKER_00
Your book that you re writing that s going to come out is called easier.
4
SPEAKER_00
Making your situation.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s not even written.
4
SPEAKER_00
But let s just talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You are broaching this right now, which is making your situation work for you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
4
SPEAKER_01
Possibly.
4
SPEAKER_01
Unless I find a better title.
4
SPEAKER_01
Go on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
But currently currently working title, I cut you off.
4
SPEAKER_00
Finish what you re saying then.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think this is exactly right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And by the way, I m going to write this book because I don t quit things that I care about, but if it s not good, I m not going to publish it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But anyway, I am writing the book.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so the reason I was interested in AA, and I went back and I read the things that you already know, like the origin story of AA and Bill W. meeting Dr. Bob, which is totally insane.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s one of the most bonker stories ever.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they lifted it off of this weird church sect that was in Ohio.
4
SPEAKER_01
The Oxford group?
4
SPEAKER_01
Totally bizarre.
4
SPEAKER_01
Bizarre.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what Sapolsky would say about it, but it s like, wow, what a random path dependent set of events.
4
SPEAKER_01
And as you probably know, it is, I think, not only arguably the most popular, but the most effective approach to addiction.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, you can t do a cost benefit analysis because it doesn t cost anything.
4
SPEAKER_00
How on earth has this organization existed for 90 years with great success, without any leaders, without any money, without any bank account, without any elders?
4
SPEAKER_01
And by design, without those things, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because they said, like, we re not going to have professionals.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re not going to have a hierarchy.
4
SPEAKER_01
They don t take donations over $5,000, I think.
4
SPEAKER_00
They refuse to have a position on anything political.
4
SPEAKER_01
They have the no policy policy, which is kind of brilliant.
4
SPEAKER_00
Really, there s parts of it that I can t believe haven t been graphed onto other organizations.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think Bill W. and also maybe Dr. Bob, the co-founders, they were geniuses.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a little bit like the Constitution.
4
SPEAKER_01
As a psychologist, I read the 12 steps and I read the 12 traditions.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m not an organizational psychologist, but I do teach at Wharton.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, holy shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you did it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Students are dropping out.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, left and right.
4
SPEAKER_01
Parents are fainting.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were so genius.
4
SPEAKER_01
How many universities wish they had a no policy policy?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s genius.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, if all these places had been run like AA, they wouldn t be in any hot water.
4
SPEAKER_00
Plus they would have less overhead.
4
SPEAKER_00
They go to Congress and they go, I don t have a position on this.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re like, I m sorry.
4
SPEAKER_00
End of conversation.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t have that at school.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s going to be hierarchy at school.
4
SPEAKER_01
There are limits, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it s kind of amazing what s been happening.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re not going full libertarian on this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s back up.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would say almost any organization we looked at,
4
SPEAKER_00
in its premises and inherently wrong.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there are the Nazi Party, but mostly what you see go wrong in every organization is the leadership.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, you mean the individuals?
4
SPEAKER_00
The individuals in charge of institutions and ideas.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re almost always what s broken about the thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not like the Catholic Church in and of itself is in any way nefarious or bad, but we have seen popes in the 13th century letting people buy their way into heaven by bestowing sins onto poor people.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, what?
4
SPEAKER_00
That s leadership.
4
SPEAKER_01
But maybe, and I know the Founding Fathers were not perfect, but there is a lot of genius.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I would say the same thing about Alcoholics Anonymous.
4
SPEAKER_01
And maybe, even though you could argue that what you said was exactly right, they anticipated screw-up people.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were like, how do we create an institution, whether it be the United States or Alcoholics Anonymous, which is going to be, I don t want to say people-proof, but the Founding Fathers were great psychologists.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think Bill W. and Dr. Bob were brilliant psychologists.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t know if they fell into it or they were that master.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
Why do you think it works?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because this is a matter of great debate among scholars.
4
SPEAKER_00
I can tell you why it worked for me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think what is insurmountable for a lot of people is to sit down and have a conversation where someone s going to tell them what s wrong with them.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that the mechanics of the program are you go
4
SPEAKER_00
You re hearing about your problem, but not from your mouth.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not about you.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not individual.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not aimed at you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Your self-defense is your sense of identity.
4
SPEAKER_00
None of it s going up.
4
SPEAKER_00
You are privy to hearing all of your exact problems come out of the mouse of other people, and you re able to objectively think about their problems and the solutions they ve employed, and you re not all wound up in it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So like we know what spatial distance is.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re sitting across the room and if you were like twice as far away.
4
SPEAKER_01
So this is psychological distance.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the catchphrase is not me, not here, not real, not now.
4
SPEAKER_01
And those are four ways that you can put psychological distance.
4
SPEAKER_01
So like not me, somebody else is standing up.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s their bad day, time.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you think about things like pretend, and I think Jeff Bezos famously does this.
4
SPEAKER_01
When he s trying to make a decision, he thinks about what it will be like to think back when he s 80 or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have wondered why therapy works and I told you that I m writing this book and I m telling you that I m gritty and I m going to finish it.
4
SPEAKER_01
The reason is that I had a sabbatical and I was supposed to write the book and I didn t.
4
SPEAKER_01
And my confidence actually plummeted to minus three on a scale from zero to 10.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have that in writing and also on record.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was thinking about what went wrong, and I think it was the lack of psychological distance.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was just so immersed and I couldn t get that perspective.
4
SPEAKER_01
Had I gone to some meeting where some other struggling author stood up, talked about their problems, and it was both me and not me at the same time, you have that clarity.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think psychological distance and wisdom and even maturity are almost all the same thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you have to be able to live your life and have some remove.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you think also that
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For better or worse, your greatest success is this concept grit, and it has now been so infused in your identity that now to be experiencing writer s block or a challenge is no longer a threat to a timeline as much as now it s a threat to an identity.
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That s a really good question.
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I won t pretend to know, but I think when I experienced failure, basically this was my year.
4
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So I had a whole year off.
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I had ideal circumstances, so no one to blame.
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So I didn t have to teach.
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I live in a really beautiful house.
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In Pennsylvania?
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Yeah, in Philadelphia.
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I had no excuses.
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I couldn t blame anybody or anything.
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And I would wake up, you know, dawn, sometimes earlier, and I would just work my ass off.
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I read hundreds of articles.
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I had multiple Google Docs.
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I would go to bed at midnight and I would wake up and do it again, seven days a week.
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And after several months of this, and you know, false starts and wrong turns.
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But then I realized it was a cluster.
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I was like, this is terrible.
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I don t know whether it s more identity-threatening because I m known for studying grit, but I will say that I told my husband I was gonna retire.
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I was like, I think I should not be a professional anymore of any kind.
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I know this feeling well.
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Isn t it so interesting?
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The reward s not worth the risk.
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Well, I felt like I couldn t do it.
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There was nothing to offer, you didn t have anything else to offer.
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Yeah, I felt like I didn t have anything to offer.
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You didn t have the fuel in the tank that once drove you to do that thing.
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No, and it s not even just that I felt burnt out.
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I was just like, I don t feel like I can do anything that s useful.
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So my tricky thing has been like, I m so driven by success and so driven by all the measures of that, that once that was accomplished, I m quite fearful that there ll be no motivation left.
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what happened in real life?
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How did it go?
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Well, what happened in real life is we had a particular interview that was incredibly emotional and connected and very, very special.
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And I went, oh, no, that s the goal.
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I don t think it s possible.
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But the fact that I did it once makes me want to do that with every single person I talk to.
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Like, that is now the goal.
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So you never have to worry about, oh, what will happen if I m done?
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Because you ll never be done.
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I was measuring, like, OK, this, we were both doing it.
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This show would be a success if it generated this amount of money.
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OK, if we got Obama.
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But we didn t start like that.
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If we got Letterman.
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It s almost just getting back to the original thoughts, which is like, ah, this is just so fun, and it s so nice to connect.
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Like, I want to have a moment.
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Exactly.
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Just want a moment.
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Then it became about success.
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Because it was happening.
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Exactly.
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So then it became about chasing more.
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And probably a lot of other people cared about that.
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Yeah.
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And then once you have it, you can t lose it, right?
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The lost bias.
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Do you think this protects you?
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Does that help you not have a minus three because it s so intrinsic?
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It has helped, it has certainly not solved.
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So the fact that there are two of you, you have built in psychological distance, right?
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Did that make it possible for you not to get completely consumed because you had another person?
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What do you think, Monica?
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The thing is, we re going through the exact same experience at the exact same time.
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Matt Damon s kissing her on the forehead.
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Well, that s a crazy thing.
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Really?
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Oh my God.
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Is he tall?
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Enough for her.
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Perfectly.
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He s like 5 11 .
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Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Just wanted to know.
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So, there s so many things at play.
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We had someone on who said there s only 100% of a feeling in a dynamic.
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If somebody s so anxious and they re taking up basically 75% of the anxiety, you can only have 25% anxiety.
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Between two people.
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For the record, I don t agree with this, but go ahead.
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It s like a cake.
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I didn t mean to offend you.
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I just want to... I m using it as an example to say what my thought is.
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I do think that s real.
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I notice it in so many dynamics.
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I notice it with my parents.
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If I m with my parents and they re freaking out, I m so calm because there s no space for me to add extra.
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Maybe you re compensating in a way.
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I got to balance this out.
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It could just be personality too.
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But my personality is doing that.
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And so if I recognize that he is so worried or freaking out.
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So then you will get zen?
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Yes.
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I m like, it s fine.
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Let s just remember what this is all about.
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But then if I don t experience that from him, I m that.
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Then you do.
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Oh, interesting.
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Only then do I realize how I really feel.
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Only in the process of that.
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So you clearly have a perspective on this whole childhood thing.
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If you really want to understand somebody s motives, and maybe even what s intrinsically motivating to them, you have to go back.
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You said it, not me.
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That there s something in, for example, Sapolsky s background that would make him want to believe.
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Why that would be more soothing for him.
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I m sure you ve covered this territory, but have you figured out your own?
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What is it for you then?
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That s all we talk about.
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Well, just give me the one-liner then.
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For me, approval from white people.
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From white people.
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Did you grow up in like an all-white?
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Georgia.
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A suburb of Atlanta, but very white.
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And I needed to be them to be safe.
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I couldn t be them.
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So it was just assimilating to the nth degree.
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This is perfect for you.
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You can get approval.
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I ve gotten approval from the tall white man.
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That s the best you can do.
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Yeah, yeah, you ve reached the apogee.
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Okay, wait, and then what s the one-liner for you?
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What s the hole you re trying to fill then?
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It s not dissimilar.
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It s rooted in a feeling of no safety.
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So, divorced mom, a bunch of stepdads, a lot of violence, men dominating me all the time.
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So, I need to get in a position where I cannot be outfoxed intellectually, I cannot be outfoxed financially, I cannot be outfoxed physically.
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I got to be the toughest, smartest motherfucker in the room or I m gonna get dominated.
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Someone will smell that and they ll immediately exploit that.
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So in every avenue of maleness I can pursue, I did.
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An insatiable drive to let everyone know I cannot be taken advantage of.
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You know, this whole view is not super popular right now in therapy.
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I know, and I wanted to talk about this because the one philosophical thing that I wanted to say overarching, and I care more about it than determinism versus self-will,
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That was my other big pushback against him.
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I think my biggest complaint about all intellectual endeavors is the false dichotomies and the binary positioning.
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So you re either determinists or you re free will.
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Nature or nurture.
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And then now I m bringing it back to your book.
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Also, I listened to a great episode about can we learn to debate in an effective way?
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The actual title of the episode is Can We Disagree Better?
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And in this, you tell this great story of having written grit and having a grad student basically write an op-ed saying that grit is full of shit.
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This student pointed out a lot of great stuff.
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And I think you came to feel that way as well, which is you were looking only at the individual and what the individual is doing.
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The sociologist is going, are you fucking nuts?
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Where did they grow up?
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the parents, what s the socioeconomic, what s the system they re in?
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Opportunity.
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Yes.
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And so again, there s another false dichotomy.
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And like the more and more we re entrenched in these dichotomies, that s my main complaint.
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So is CBT more effective than talk cycle?
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Bullshit.
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There s a place for this.
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There s a place for CBT.
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And why is it either or?
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Why can t you understand yourself and your childhood, then use some CBT to enact a strategy?
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Either or, fuck that.
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By the way, here s the epilogue.
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That graduate student in sociology who was at NYU in India Kundu, he got his PhD.
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I was on his dissertation committee.
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He asked her to be an advisor.
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And now he s a professor.
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Wow.
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And he s doing great.
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And he s continuing to challenge, oh, it s all about the person.
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It s not about society.
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But here s a deeper question.
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Why are human beings so either or?
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It is annoying.
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Why aren t we both and?
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Why do you think it is?
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And I have a pet theory.
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It has no data behind it.
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Let s hear your pet theory, because I m sure people have already heard mine.
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you think about what human beings have to do, we have to act.
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And you ve got a thin slice.
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And honestly, it s like what you were saying about the election or about voting.
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You know, you could talk for four years, but then you re going to make one choice and you re going to go left or right.
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And you could argue that that s just true of everything.
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Like, you know, when you go to the doctor and there s either a star next to your test result or not.
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That s pretty crude because it s a continuum, obviously.
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You know, your blood pressure is what it is, but there has to be a kind of, are we going to talk about your blood pressure?
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Is it a problem or not?
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So I guess I want to say that all human beings and animals have to choose.
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Are you going to approach something or are you going to move away from it?
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Is it an enemy or is it a friend?
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You re going to eat it or you re not going to eat it, right?
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All action is binary.
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There isn t kind of like, I m 40% going to eat this and then I m 60% not going to eat this.
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You re going to eat it or you re not going to eat it.
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Half pregnant.
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Exactly.
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So maybe either or thinking is a vestige or a byproduct of the fact that we think a lot, but our survival depends on our actions and actions are binary.
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And maybe that is why people are either or.
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It s like very deep.
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Because all animals, you know, there s approach motivation and avoidance motivation.
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And of course, something can be neutral.
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So I said Tim Beck, and I don t want to pretend that I m either clinically trained or that I am a protege of Tim Beck.
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But when people have these thoughts that lead to anxiety or depression or I want to have a drink,
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These thoughts are always valenced, as they were, so you know how Sapolsky wants us to be non-judgmental?
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That s wonderful, and mindfulness is a great aspiration, but I think human beings are instinctively judgmental.
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You know when you get an email, you re always like, is this good or bad?
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That s why I always put happy faces in my emails.
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I m like, just to signal this is a good email.
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And so everything is good or bad, approach or avoid.
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And that s either or.
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Anyway, that s my completely made up, no data intuition, because I ve asked a lot of psychologists, why are human beings obviously oversimplifying the universe?
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And nobody that I ve talked to knows.
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So my take is uncertainty is uncomfortable.
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And you re right, we ve been rewarded evolutionarily by inactions generally the worst action, which of course also isn t true.
5
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So inaction is often the best.
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There s a fight, flight, or freeze.
5
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Sometimes.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5
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Submit, posture, flight, flight.
5
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There s four categories and we are most often.
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Fawn, Fawn is in there too.
5
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Oh, Fawn.
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Oh, I d be good at that one.
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You d probably use it.
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I d probably do.
5
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Yeah, but it turns out that like 90% of conflicts in the animal kingdom are actually resolved with submit.
5
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But uncertainty gives us a lot of anxiety.
5
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And so anytime you re saying, well, there ll be one time where this approach works and then a different time, now we have to delineate which approach should we use.
5
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Nuance is uncertain.
5
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I actually buy your argument full stop that uncertainty for almost all of us creates anxiety.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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But then the question is why?
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Unless you re in the bedroom or something.
5
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But why?
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Well, yeah.
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Yeah.
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Or like if you re unwrapping a gift.
5
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But then that s novelty.
5
SPEAKER_02
Well, yeah.
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It s uncertainty.
5
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And dopamine.
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But it s uncertainty.
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But why do you think uncertainty is so
5
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uncomfortable.
5
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Back to now, your point, this is where ours work beautifully, is that in uncertainty will become inaction because we don t know which way to run or we don t know if we should run or submit.
5
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Oh, so you think we have a survival instinct for certainty.
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The worst thing would be to not make any decision, whether it s posture, submit, run, fight, flight, fawn.
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Do you think that human brains and civilization will evolve such that 20 years from now, everyone s hanging out with all these, like, nuanced distinctions and semicolons in their sentences?
5
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Do you think that we ll stop being like- It s exhausting.
5
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I mean- A little bit of it is exhausting.
5
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And I see the appeal of a black and white world.
5
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And I see why some politicians who make it very simple, it s comforting whether it s right or wrong.
5
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Like, I don t even know that some people think it s right as much as like, it s just comforting that it s been solved.
5
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It s settled.
5
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Let s go.
5
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I think it s community based.
5
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We re social animals.
5
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So we have to be in a community.
5
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So we can t just be like nebulous.
5
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It s 25% this and 25% this.
5
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And I see everyone s point.
5
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No, you have to pick or else you get kicked out of that tribe.
5
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I think it s about belonging to a group.
5
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So do you believe that s what s going on politically in this country?
5
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That like everyone s like, you got to pick sides.
5
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And now when the sides go farther apart, you re stuck.
5
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We re all along for the ride.
5
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And I think increasingly you re hearing, I want to get off this ride.
5
SPEAKER_00
This isn t the ride I got on.
5
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Because they re going
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, they re just forced to be moving in opposite directions.
6
SPEAKER_02
I feel like I m a left-of-center moderate.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m a centrist, and I think a lot of people are, and there s no voice for it.
6
SPEAKER_02
Could we make a third party?
6
SPEAKER_02
That doesn t usually happen, right, in a two-party system.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s the majority.
6
SPEAKER_02
It is.
6
SPEAKER_01
Do you think the majority is moderate?
6
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A hundred percent.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think there s a lot of statistics.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was going to say, there s probably statistics.
6
SPEAKER_01
These are just fringe, but they re loud.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re the only voices you hear.
6
SPEAKER_00
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay, but back to your book.
6
SPEAKER_00
Grit is very, very self-centric.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then this is about situations and how you can, in fact, maybe have more control or sway over the situation you put yourself in than you do your own internal guiding mechanisms.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re synthesizing sociology and psychology.
6
SPEAKER_02
I am, and you know, there was a great psychologist, actually he wasn t a psychologist, but he talked a lot about psychology, so we call him a psychologist.
6
SPEAKER_02
His name was James Flynn, and he said that what psychologists lack is a sociological imagination.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think he was quoting someone else, he wasn t making up that term.
6
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So yes, I m trying to be a psychologist with a sociological imagination.
6
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I actually came into psychology as an outsider.
6
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I was a high school teacher teaching math, and then I was a manager.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because anyway, I parachuted into psychology.
6
SPEAKER_02
I was 32 on the first day of graduate school, and I hadn t really studied psychology.
6
SPEAKER_02
So I m kind of new to it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Liberated maybe by that.
6
SPEAKER_02
It was probably helpful.
6
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But when I got there, I was like, so what s the difference between anthropology and sociology and psychology?
6
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I didn t understand.
6
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I was like, isn t it economics?
6
SPEAKER_02
Isn t it all human behavior?
6
SPEAKER_02
And what someone said to me, they were like, oh, psychologists study what s in your head.
6
SPEAKER_02
Who is an individual?
6
SPEAKER_02
Even if it s like you in a marriage, but it s still the individual.
6
SPEAKER_02
Sociologists, it s like a figure ground reversal.
6
SPEAKER_02
They re interested in the ground, not the figure, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
They re like society, structures, class, and so forth.
6
SPEAKER_02
But I think a psychologist with a sociological imagination would be like, all right, I get it.
6
SPEAKER_02
My job is to understand how somebody feels, how motivated they are, who works harder.
6
SPEAKER_02
But it has to have something to do with where you are, the people you re around.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you go like, oh, individual is an incentive-driven creature.
6
SPEAKER_02
Correct.
6
SPEAKER_00
What are the incentives in that society?
6
SPEAKER_02
So if you can break out a little bit of either or, a lot of times people say, Grit is a book about the triumph of the individual over their situation.
6
SPEAKER_02
But that itself is either or.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s like, well, it s either the individual or their situation.
6
SPEAKER_02
Every person that I ve ever studied who s successful defies either or.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because you talk to anybody who s successful and you get like one inch deep and they tell you who their mentors were, like who saved their life.
6
SPEAKER_02
They tell you about the day they lost all confidence and the person who scooped them up off the floor and put them back together again, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
You ask them even trivial things like how they arrange their lives, the physical things around them, what they choose not to have in their house that gets them in trouble and the things that they do have.
6
SPEAKER_02
So I feel like this dichotomy of so is it 70, 30?
6
SPEAKER_02
Does it even matter?
6
SPEAKER_02
And why do we do it?
6
SPEAKER_02
But here s what I do think matters.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think that, especially now, human beings who want to be happy and successful, they have to think, if I persist in this false dichotomy, then I m going to miss a lot of opportunities to actually change my situation.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think choosing who your friends are and choosing what country you re going to live in
6
SPEAKER_02
is a way of agentically taking the steering wheel of the situation and saying, look, I don t believe in this false choice.
6
SPEAKER_02
I believe that agency and the situation are not polar ends of some continuum.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think a lot of agency is changing my situation.
6
SPEAKER_02
So that s the practical thing I m concerned with.
6
SPEAKER_00
I immediately think of David Sedaris and I will not do it justice how he said it, but I was saying how I imagined this one story he had written about a young gay boy who was in love with him in France, how helpful that would have been to a young.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was expecting him maybe to meet me and get emotional about the notion of that poor gay boy in the small town suffering.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he was just so, he goes, well, they should fucking move like I did.
6
SPEAKER_00
Go to the place where you re at.
6
SPEAKER_00
He was just so black and white, like, fuck trying to get that town to catch up with him.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t even feel bad for him.
6
SPEAKER_00
Tell him to get the fuck out of there and go to New York.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s what I did.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, well, that s kind of refreshing.
6
SPEAKER_02
And he moved, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
And doesn t he live in like the United Kingdom or something like that?
6
SPEAKER_00
He s got a place in Normandy.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s got a place in England and New York City.
6
SPEAKER_02
But you know what, thinking like an immigrant, which, are your parents immigrants, Monica?
6
SPEAKER_02
Okay, right.
6
SPEAKER_02
My mom sailed across the, I guess, Pacific Ocean.
6
SPEAKER_00
I already learned you re bad at geography from the GPS.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a challenge for me, I know.
6
SPEAKER_02
She just moved.
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, she moved here and didn t know anybody.
6
SPEAKER_02
And like, she moved here for a reason, right?
6
SPEAKER_02
It wasn t accidental.
6
SPEAKER_02
People habituate to their circumstances.
6
SPEAKER_02
It is where you are, you get comfortable.
6
SPEAKER_02
But more than comfortable, I think you get oblivious.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I think one of the things that I m increasingly exercised about is if people want to change their lives, they re like, I need to change my attitude.
6
SPEAKER_02
I need to fix those thoughts.
6
SPEAKER_02
I need to have more willpower.
6
SPEAKER_02
What if you did the master move?
6
SPEAKER_02
What if you just changed your situation and then your situation would change your thoughts?
6
SPEAKER_00
There s another saying that we love.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have much better chance of acting your way into thinking different than thinking your way into acting different.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, that s good.
6
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I think all the things inside our head, which are very important, and that s what I ve been trained to study.
6
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I figured that out.
6
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I was like, oh, psychology is all the stuff in my head.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s really hard to change that just with your own volition.
6
SPEAKER_00
Back on the psychology and why the observation that that student made is great is a psychologist, if we were the type of animal that was a tiger, would make a lot of sense.
6
SPEAKER_00
Tigers are on their own.
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They are not social.
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Lions are social.
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They re in a pride.
6
SPEAKER_00
So any social animal will have a social hierarchy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Any animal that is a social animal will be obsessed with status.
6
SPEAKER_00
Status equals access to food and reproduction and everything we would want.
6
SPEAKER_00
We are the fucking most social animal to ever exist, so to think that we will somehow not have all of the other characteristics that a troop of baboons and chimps have is insane.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we are first social, then a primate.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because that is our revolutionary heritage.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s why I would say that sociologists has a pretty good argument, which is way before we re in your head, the thing around you put all that in your head.
6
SPEAKER_02
Okay, but I also think sociologists should have a psychological imagination.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I was raised by immigrant parents who absolutely taught me, just be better.
6
SPEAKER_02
There was not a day in our entire childhood lives that they talked about racism.
6
SPEAKER_02
So this is probably a conclusion that I want to leap to, which is, yeah, but what can we do about it?
6
SPEAKER_02
So I feel like the conclusion I always want to get to is something agentic.
6
SPEAKER_02
I kind of don t want to land on society s unjust and here are all the structures.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s not comfortable.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a victim-y position.
6
SPEAKER_01
We run society.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s not the way I was raised.
6
SPEAKER_01
Humans do.
6
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So it s all connected.
6
SPEAKER_01
So once you learn that society is like this, then let s have agency as humans to change the structures.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and I think if you have a little success in changing your own little life in even a little way, honestly, I think that will make people more motivated to feel like collectively we have some agency.
6
SPEAKER_02
Again, that could be Pollyanna.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s probably what I want to believe.
6
SPEAKER_00
I want all of this to be just, and I want everyone to have complete equal access to all the measures of power and all the attainment of status.
6
SPEAKER_00
But what I get frustrated with when I m watching Instagram and there s people getting mad that someone s main character energy, anytime we try to map on Marxism.
6
SPEAKER_02
Is that a thing, main character energy?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Any kind of Marxist thing, I m like, let me just say, this is the biggest waste of time in the world, that everyone will have equal status.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because you re like, we are primates.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we will always have status.
6
SPEAKER_00
There will always be some kind of inequality in a sense, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Now let s all put our minds together and think, what are the status markers we all feel good about?
6
SPEAKER_00
But the notion that everyone s going to be equal and have equal status is preposterous.
6
SPEAKER_00
How do you feel about meritocracy?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, we just had the meritocracy delusion author on.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, Sandell?
6
SPEAKER_02
Meritocracy trap.
6
SPEAKER_00
Meritocracy trap.
6
SPEAKER_02
Is that Michael Sandell?
6
SPEAKER_02
There s several books on the meritocracy fallacy, the myth.
6
SPEAKER_02
How do you guys feel about it?
6
SPEAKER_02
I m kind of
6
SPEAKER_02
Pro merit, I have to say.
6
SPEAKER_02
You know, excellence is what I study and kind of like it, but I guess it s got problems.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it was almost tied with determinism.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just a concept I don t even want to entertain because my story about myself is I come from a dirt road with poor people and dyslexia and addiction.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I graduated from UCLA and I made it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I don t want to hear that meritocracy, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t work with what I m proud of myself.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
But when the statistics are put in front of you,
6
SPEAKER_00
that this elite college graduates have children who are elite college graduates, and they achieve elite jobs, that they work 75 hours a week, and that collectively, even the high-status people are suffering more.
6
SPEAKER_00
When you look at all that, you go, yeah, it has not worked out the way we intended.
6
SPEAKER_00
Again, that s not to say that I think we shouldn t have a merit-based society.
6
SPEAKER_02
Maybe I m like, but when you talk to people who are authors of such books, are they against
6
SPEAKER_02
merit.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re not against merit.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think they re just like, how are we measuring that?
6
SPEAKER_01
What is it?
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, merit is skill.
6
SPEAKER_00
his exact point of view was merit isn t actually equally accessible.
6
SPEAKER_02
Which I would agree with.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so the outcomes.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, the unintended consequences of a society that meets out rewards and punishments.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s the Monopoly game.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s like it took off.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was pure in a concept.
6
SPEAKER_02
You mean when you land on Boardwalk first.
6
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
6
SPEAKER_02
Or Marvin Gardens.
6
SPEAKER_02
That was another good one.
6
SPEAKER_02
Do you remember that?
6
SPEAKER_01
No, but so much of it is you re like, oh, this person s just good at a sport, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
It s just so
7
SPEAKER_00
black and white.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re good at it, they re not good at it.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right, like it s pure.
7
SPEAKER_00
Feels pure.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s not pure because so much of it is how much money did your family have to get you into lessons at this age?
7
SPEAKER_01
I completely agree with that.
7
SPEAKER_01
I hope we can have that conversation and not... Look, I had two daughters.
7
SPEAKER_01
They went to the Philadelphia Public Schools.
7
SPEAKER_01
Immediately, my husband and I were like, so with all this privilege that we have, we are going to have to supplement
7
SPEAKER_01
what they re getting.
7
SPEAKER_01
Let s take French class.
7
SPEAKER_01
For example, I am not fluent in French, but I spoke well enough to know that they were not learning to speak French very well.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I was like, how about if they have a tutor who comes over on Saturday and speaks French with them for 45 minutes each.
7
SPEAKER_01
And by the way, that early advantage, it was like the Matthew effect, the rich get richer.
7
SPEAKER_01
I was like, Oh, okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
So suddenly my daughters for no reason of giftedness, they re winning like the French prize.
7
SPEAKER_02
Now really quick.
7
SPEAKER_02
Is that truly a meritocracy?
7
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that s a problem.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s not fair.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I would agree with that.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, this is what I hope doesn t get thrown out with the bathwater.
7
SPEAKER_01
I just think that excellence is a thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think we just have to reckon with some people are going to be better at tennis, how they get there.
7
SPEAKER_01
But can we at least say that some people are better at tennis?
7
SPEAKER_02
Because I m going to go beyond that.
7
SPEAKER_02
You can say whatever you want.
7
SPEAKER_02
We can agree to whatever we want.
7
SPEAKER_02
We will always be attracted to excellence.
7
SPEAKER_01
What about your daughters?
7
SPEAKER_01
So they re younger than mine because they re younger than 22 and 20.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying this because I m all up in arms, but is it all like everybody gets a participant trophy?
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, do they understand hierarchy of skill and so forth?
7
SPEAKER_02
They do.
7
SPEAKER_02
I know that whole thing of participating, but whatever.
7
SPEAKER_01
Not on a high horse about it.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, no.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s not even really a thing anymore.
7
SPEAKER_02
When my brother s kids were there, probably his, it was like he was appalled that they were getting participation trophies.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, an eighth place ribbon.
7
SPEAKER_02
That moral panic passed.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it has.
7
SPEAKER_02
We re just not in that particular moral panic.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I didn t know that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Okay, good.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I say this not feeling higher or more evolved than anyone else.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m not playing that game.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t give a fuck if they re top of their class.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t care if they re really good at it.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s a charter school of half-haves and half-have-nots.
7
SPEAKER_01
They go to charter school.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and it s predominantly first-generation Asian kids.
7
SPEAKER_02
You think my white kids are gonna fucking compete with these first-generation Asians?
7
SPEAKER_02
That s a fantasy.
7
SPEAKER_01
Good luck.
7
SPEAKER_01
Monique and I are like, good luck.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, I m not even gonna try that.
7
SPEAKER_02
What I care about is that when my daughter wanted to climb this pole in her backyard, she did it for an hour and a half until she could touch the ceiling.
7
SPEAKER_02
That s all I give a fuck about.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t care about whether they learn French or get into this school.
7
SPEAKER_02
I care that when there is something they actually want, they pursue it until they re exhausted.
7
SPEAKER_02
That has been established and I don t have any fears.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think that s amazing.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I wish every single parent could do that, but they can t.
7
SPEAKER_00
Your kids are privileged, not just genetics.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re going to be financially fine for the rest of their life if they need.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you grow up in a family with two middle-class parents, they might be like, you better fucking get straight A s and you got to go to a college where you ll get hired for something because I can t take care of you for the rest of your life.
7
SPEAKER_00
These are just realities.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s the reality on planet earth.
7
SPEAKER_02
I totally agree, but I will argue that s also bullshit.
7
SPEAKER_02
So I didn t get good grades in high school.
7
SPEAKER_02
I barely graduated.
7
SPEAKER_02
I won all the prizes.
7
SPEAKER_02
So I also disagree that that route.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is the only route.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
In fact, everyone I work with is also a piece of shit that figured it out.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is there a pattern, by the way?
7
SPEAKER_02
In Hollywood, probably.
7
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
Hollywood is .001% of the, I mean, it s so tiny.
7
SPEAKER_00
We have to acknowledge that.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s true.
7
SPEAKER_02
Half of these tech billionaires, they dropped out.
7
SPEAKER_02
We have enough evidence now.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, first they got in before they dropped out.
7
SPEAKER_01
Just saying.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s so true.
7
SPEAKER_01
Dropping out of Stanford.
7
SPEAKER_01
But by the way,
7
SPEAKER_01
Now that we ve both had kids in school for a while, it s not like they learn that much.
7
SPEAKER_01
I ll get in a lot of trouble for saying that.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s not like they learn that much, right, in school?
7
SPEAKER_02
To me, I was like, I didn t learn until I was dying to learn it.
7
SPEAKER_02
I barely graduated high school.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was never going to go to college.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was going to live in my car and be in on the road for the rest of my life.
7
SPEAKER_02
I then all of a sudden got insatiable back to the thing.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was getting bested in arguments with dudes I didn t think were smarter than me.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I was embarrassed.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m like, I got to learn how this world works.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is that before you went to UCLA?
7
SPEAKER_01
How d you get into UCLA?
7
SPEAKER_02
I went to Santa Monica Community College.
7
SPEAKER_02
I went to West L.A.
7
SPEAKER_02
Community College so I could pass Spanish.
7
SPEAKER_02
I cobbled together this Associates, and then I got into UCLA because I did do very well in community college.
7
SPEAKER_02
And then I went there.
7
SPEAKER_02
And that s because I decided I wanted to do that.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then when you decided you did it.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I remember more than all the fucking kids whose parents forced them to get into that school with me.
7
SPEAKER_02
I actually cherish that education I got because I was there because I wanted to, not because someone said, you got to do this or you re dead or you re going to be penniless.
7
SPEAKER_01
I personally think that striving and whatever narrative we tell, I hope it doesn t, I guess you re saying it ll never go out of fashion because excellence will never go out of fashion.
7
SPEAKER_02
You can tell them anything.
7
SPEAKER_02
They re going to look around.
7
SPEAKER_02
If they re a boy, they re going to go, who are the girls dating?
7
SPEAKER_02
and everyone s going to be driven by mating.
7
SPEAKER_02
You re not going to deprogram people.
7
SPEAKER_01
Maybe there s just a very vocal minority.
7
SPEAKER_01
Maybe the people also who are being vocal about not liking meritocracy are not saying they don t like merit or excellence.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re obviously talking about society and we could not agree with them more.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I do just hope they don t eradicate striving, pursuing.
7
SPEAKER_00
No, I don t think they re doing that.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t think so either.
7
SPEAKER_00
We just got to even the playing field so that the striving works.
7
SPEAKER_02
If you look at the starting class at Harvard, can we say that was merit?
7
SPEAKER_02
You just gave a great example.
7
SPEAKER_02
You had a tutor come over and teach your kids French.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I think there s a difference between skill and potential.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think that when your kid does really well on a French test, you can say, they are skilled at French.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s different from, oh, they had some potential or they were neatly.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, no, but their test score in French is what it is.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I would say of the entering class at Harvard, wow, they have mastered some stuff, whether that s due to some innate potential or advantages.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s just how much help did they get?
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it can t be merit if it s all been bought.
7
SPEAKER_01
people should distinguish between talent and skill, which, you know, Will Smith, I don t know Will Smith, but well, I kind of know, but anyway, I m not best friends with Will Smith.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m not best friends with Will Smith, I ll just say, and I m not saying that because I don t want to be best friends with Will Smith, but he has this line, you know, most people mistake the skill and talent divide.
7
SPEAKER_01
They don t think that they re two different things.
7
SPEAKER_01
He was like, talent, you re born with, skill, you get from hours and hours of beating on your craft.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I guess I want to say that when you talk about merit, maybe if you can distinguish between merit as in on this day, what can you do versus did you deserve it?
7
SPEAKER_01
Was it innately about you?
7
SPEAKER_01
It s just two different things.
7
SPEAKER_01
You can admit a class to Harvard and say we are admitting a highly skilled class, that they re capable.
7
SPEAKER_02
So all that s being suggested, and by the way, it s another false, that either you are physically talented, so you become Michael Jordan, or you work as hard as Michael Jordan.
7
SPEAKER_02
He s a physical fenime, plus he worked harder than everyone.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes, plus he had so many advantages, like who was that famous coach?
7
SPEAKER_01
Phil Jackson, right?
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, Phil Jackson.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, would Michael Jordan be Michael Jordan without Phil Jackson?
7
SPEAKER_02
No, because you can see, actually, he s the common denominator.
7
SPEAKER_02
But both and.
7
SPEAKER_02
Right, so are the kids that got their, did they get their merit base or not?
7
SPEAKER_02
Both.
7
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_02
They had probably tremendous opportunity that most kids don t have.
7
SPEAKER_02
And they worked really hard and rose to that occasion.
7
SPEAKER_01
Correct.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so we re violently agreeing.
7
SPEAKER_01
But when I hear these arguments, I both violently agree that the playing field couldn t be more unequal.
7
SPEAKER_01
And you could argue they re getting more unequal.
7
SPEAKER_01
Probably I m contributing to that just by getting my kids tutored.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I hear a lot of the whole idea of people having different levels of skill even is like a sign that something is wrong.
7
SPEAKER_02
No, you re right.
7
SPEAKER_02
There does seem to be some notion that we should all pretend we re all physically equal and we re all mentally equal.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, tabula rasa or whatever the Latin phrase is for we re all equal.
7
SPEAKER_02
And the only thing I ll add to that is what s your other suggestion?
7
SPEAKER_01
I think a model that a lot of people would say is a raffle.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yes, this is a Malcolm Gladwell thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And also I was talking to a young progressive thinker likely to major in sociology and was like, we should take all the assets of the United States and divide them up equally.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if that s exactly communism, but it sounds like that.
7
SPEAKER_01
My parents are from China and I was like, let me tell you.
7
SPEAKER_01
That particular, yeah, it wasn t such a great end game, but yeah, I don t have a better, well, I think it distracts either way, by the way, from the lack of, like, we should be thinking about preschool.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so, I don t know, I feel like it s a distraction sometimes.
7
SPEAKER_02
I want to go back to one thing that popped up and then I forgot to say it out loud, and this may sound critical.
7
SPEAKER_02
But I think it ties beautifully into the conversation we had an hour ago about the experiential self and the narrative self.
7
SPEAKER_02
The reason I have this position with my children is that I do not want to rob them of the narrative self I was able to write for myself.
7
SPEAKER_02
So if I give them a French tutor and I take them to this after school class and I take them to auditions and I tell them how to do this and they wake up at Harvard or they wake up in success, who gives a fuck?
7
SPEAKER_02
I did all that for them.
7
SPEAKER_02
I created a context and a situation around them by which there s nothing for them to write.
7
SPEAKER_02
So I actually want them to flounder, figure out the thing they are good at.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s not the thing I want them to be good at.
7
SPEAKER_02
Go get it so that they can write the story about themselves.
7
SPEAKER_02
I don t have a goal of Harvard or a goal of this amount of money.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yes, that s a luxury.
7
SPEAKER_02
I can support them if they re starving.
7
SPEAKER_02
The thing for them I m wanting is that they re able to write a story about themselves that they re enormously proud of.
7
SPEAKER_02
That s it.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I don t want to give them any of that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Do you care if they become excellent at whatever it is that they choose to do?
7
SPEAKER_01
Say they want to have a dog grooming store, just one, not even a chain.
7
SPEAKER_02
And have five stars on Yelp.
7
SPEAKER_02
I want them to try to be the greatest at the thing they care about.
7
SPEAKER_01
But that s a judgment, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Because like, what if they don t want to be the greatest?
7
SPEAKER_01
They just want to have a three stars.
7
SPEAKER_01
Just want to be happy, normal.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m trapped in my own perspective.
7
SPEAKER_02
I can t imagine writing the story where I m the hero of it and I came in last place.
7
SPEAKER_02
I can t really comprehend that for myself personally.
7
SPEAKER_02
Maybe they ll be capable of that and maybe I ll be able to observe that they re very happy in last place and that their grooming business went out of business in three months.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
that way, and if they seem very happy about that, awesome.
8
SPEAKER_00
Maybe the thing they re actually pursuing with great vigor is happiness, and maybe they ve achieved that.
8
SPEAKER_01
And as long as they re getting five stars on their happiness, then that s okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
My dad, at my brother s graduation, after everyone, you know, made their speeches, we left and he was like,
8
SPEAKER_02
All of this shoot for the stars.
8
SPEAKER_02
What about just trying to be mediocre?
8
SPEAKER_02
Did he mean that?
8
SPEAKER_01
Was he like that?
8
SPEAKER_02
He really meant it.
8
SPEAKER_02
He s so smart.
8
SPEAKER_02
He s very excellent at a lot of things.
8
SPEAKER_02
I was going to guess.
8
SPEAKER_02
That could be making assumptions.
8
SPEAKER_02
And he wasn t saying that so much when I was young.
8
SPEAKER_02
He was a little bit, though.
8
SPEAKER_02
He was like, just get a job that you ll be safe in.
8
SPEAKER_01
But in that job that you re safe in, I ll speak for myself.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what I wish, but when I look at my kids, I m like, you re going to be a baker.
8
SPEAKER_01
Be a great baker.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I don t know whether that s a lack of open-mindedness, but it s different from saying, don t have such a stressful job.
8
SPEAKER_01
But just like the job you have, it s very hard for me to utter the words out loud that it would be OK to be three stars.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I would argue if we re realistic and we recognize there s only one best 99.9% of the people will not be the CEO.
8
SPEAKER_00
They won t be the captain of the team.
8
SPEAKER_00
So are you setting your kid off on an endeavor where they have a 0.2% chance of succeeding as we ve defined?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s its own.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well then you just go to John Wooden.
8
SPEAKER_01
I ve been reading about AA.
8
SPEAKER_00
and John Wooden.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, great UCLA basketball coach?
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know very little about him.
8
SPEAKER_01
What?
8
SPEAKER_01
The Pyramid of Success?
8
SPEAKER_01
Ted Lasso?
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re just starting.
8
SPEAKER_01
What?
8
SPEAKER_01
I know, everyone s mad.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I m so happy for you.
8
SPEAKER_00
People are like, outraged.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, I m like- You re jealous.
8
SPEAKER_01
I could start over.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_01
So John Wooden, he has this TED talk, which he gave maybe in the last 10 years of his life.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I always thought this needs an editor because he said the definition of success is something like this.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s the peace of mind of knowing that you gave your very best effort.
8
SPEAKER_01
But it s a lot of words and I m like, you could cut out this phrase.
8
SPEAKER_01
But I think what he was getting at, and he thought about it his whole life as a coach and then all the writing he did.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think it was some version of everybody can win because it s not that you re the CEO and it s not even that you re the best CEO.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s just that when you go to bed, you re like, I did the very best I could do.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I think we can all do that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I agree.
8
SPEAKER_00
We could do this for literally 100 hours.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s no wonder that you have an incredible podcast, no stupid questions, and that you write such great books.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re so fascinating.
8
SPEAKER_00
We want you to join the team and talk to us endlessly.
8
SPEAKER_00
But alas, I have to rush to a work deal.
8
SPEAKER_00
You do.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s why my alarm went off.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think I heard your alarm go off.
8
SPEAKER_02
The reason is my fault.
8
SPEAKER_02
No, it s because we prioritize our work.
8
SPEAKER_01
Because I m a five-star person and that s all you need to know.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the stakes of where I need to be are the highest for us possible.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I did just go 15 minutes over because I enjoy talking to you so much.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, seriously?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s terrible.
8
SPEAKER_00
I did prioritize.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, it s not.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s the best side of us.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
8
SPEAKER_01
This was like really fun.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, Angela, I love when you re here.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re like Adam in that I know if you re coming, I don t have to, or even better, Steven.
8
SPEAKER_00
You guys are just explosively interesting.
8
SPEAKER_00
So everyone, listen to No Stupid Questions, and when your book comes out, titled TBD, but maybe easier, making your situation work for you, buy that and read that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Angela s a genius.
8
SPEAKER_00
Good luck with everything.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Dax.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Monica.
8
SPEAKER_00
Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, you re debating?
8
SPEAKER_02
Big debate.
8
SPEAKER_00
Big debate raging right now.
8
SPEAKER_00
Do I get a coffee or not?
8
SPEAKER_00
I thought better of it.
8
SPEAKER_02
You did?
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m going to work out after this and then I m going to have a pre-workout in that.
8
SPEAKER_00
So that s a lot of caffeine.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s too much.
8
SPEAKER_02
When we were in India, you were addicted to French press.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
Out of necessity.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that was the closest I could get to a drip coffee.
8
SPEAKER_02
But it was just funny because you kept ordering French press.
8
SPEAKER_00
I know.
8
SPEAKER_00
And it felt lofty, but I didn t know what else to do.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s not bad.
8
SPEAKER_00
The funny thing was, is one of the places, I ordered a French press in the morning.
8
SPEAKER_00
I woke up so early to make sure I had coffee and was alert by the time we went on our festivities and ordered a French press.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then 45 minutes later, they called and they said, we do not have French press.
8
SPEAKER_00
Would you like something else?
8
SPEAKER_00
How could it have taken 45 minutes to figure out?
8
SPEAKER_00
They didn t have French press.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like when I ordered it from the get go, it should have been like, yeah, well, we don t have that, but you know, abroad, this is not India.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is Europe as well.
8
SPEAKER_00
You get end up getting an Americano.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like no one drinks coffee.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like the Americans do like a.
8
SPEAKER_00
like six pounds of grounds in a filtered drip machine.
8
SPEAKER_00
So you re generally getting an Americano.
8
SPEAKER_02
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
Instead of like drip coffee.
8
SPEAKER_02
Right, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know if a drip coffee machine exists outside of the USA.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s a good question.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s a really good question.
8
SPEAKER_02
How are you doing?
8
SPEAKER_00
I m lovely.
8
SPEAKER_00
We wanted to address Monday s fact check, and as we tell the stories about India on this fact check, we just wanted to make it abundantly clear that we were not guests of the Gates Foundation.
8
SPEAKER_00
They did not pay for our trip.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
Bill himself, out of his own pocket, paid for the trip, lest anyone think that there was a misappropriation.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, we definitely wanna be hyper clear about that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_02
The foundation did not pay for us.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
I don t think they can do that.
8
SPEAKER_00
They can t and shan t.
8
SPEAKER_00
And didn t.
8
SPEAKER_00
But Bill can.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he did.
8
SPEAKER_00
And he did.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, are you scattywampus?
8
SPEAKER_00
I m a little scattywampus.
8
SPEAKER_00
This whole, just to reiterate, the time change is 13 and a half hours.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
8
SPEAKER_00
Which boy, we found an interesting explanation for that along the way.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we did good on the flight home.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, I ll speak for me.
8
SPEAKER_00
I did good in that I went to bed on the flight and woke up at 5 a.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
L.A.
8
SPEAKER_00
time.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was like, OK, we re straight.
8
SPEAKER_02
Right.
8
SPEAKER_00
But then staying awake from 5 a.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
till 9 p.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
that day was really, really hard.
8
SPEAKER_00
That was Saturday.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then slept really good Saturday night.
8
SPEAKER_00
Sunday, yesterday I woke up and I go, okay, I m back.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m on the schedule.
8
SPEAKER_00
You had a rough night.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I did.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I m like, oh, everything s great.
8
SPEAKER_00
Cut to, I take Delta cruising yesterday at like two in the afternoon.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I m just dead, because it s 3.30 in the morning.
8
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
So it s real.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s upside down.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s upside down.
8
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I do feel really good right now, but I also have a little bit of anxiety that it s going to collapse at like 12 p.m., as it has been doing.
8
SPEAKER_02
That makes sense.
8
SPEAKER_00
How did you sleep last night?
8
SPEAKER_02
I slept pretty good last night.
8
SPEAKER_02
Saturday, yeah, we got in.
8
SPEAKER_02
I messed up on the plane.
8
SPEAKER_02
I didn t care.
8
SPEAKER_02
I was like, I m gonna sleep.
8
SPEAKER_02
I slept a long time on the plane.
8
SPEAKER_00
How many hours do you think?
8
SPEAKER_02
I don t know.
8
SPEAKER_02
12 or 13?
8
SPEAKER_02
No, no, not 13, because I didn t go to bed.
8
SPEAKER_00
I kept peeking.
8
SPEAKER_00
Every time I d go to the bathroom, I d peek to see if you were awake, and you were asleep every time.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
But I went to bed kind of late.
8
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh.
8
SPEAKER_02
And so, anyway, whatever.
8
SPEAKER_02
We got to our houses around three-ish.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
3.30.
8
SPEAKER_02
I decided to walk to a bookstore.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
And I felt so weird that day.
8
SPEAKER_02
So I walked to the bookstore, I bought a book, and then I decided to have a little caffeine.
8
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh, this is Saturday.
8
SPEAKER_02
Mm-hmm, so this is around 5.15.
8
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
So I went to Alcove.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
With my book.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, interesting.
8
SPEAKER_02
Uh-huh, and I got a matcha, and I read my book, and I drank a little bit of the matcha.
8
SPEAKER_02
And then I got home, and I was so tired, but I was like, I have to stay up till nine, like I have to.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
And then I did, and I slept immediately at nine, but then I woke up at 12.30.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yep.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yep.
8
SPEAKER_02
And then I was able to go back to sleep till 1.30.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
And then I was up till 4.30.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, what d you do in that two and a half hours?
8
SPEAKER_02
I just kept my eyes closed just in case.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was hoping maybe.
8
SPEAKER_00
Just preparing for a return somewhere.
8
SPEAKER_00
Okay, now I want to rewind even further, which is I think really funny.
8
SPEAKER_00
So when we were originally looking at ways to get home, basically we had a choice to make that we could either take like a 4 a.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
flight or a 7 a.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
flight.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we decided, okay,
8
SPEAKER_00
We take a 7 a.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
flight.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re going to have to wake up at 3 anyways to go to the airport.
8
SPEAKER_00
Seems smarter to just stay awake till the 4 a.m.
8
SPEAKER_00
flight and then that ll help adjust us on the backside.
8
SPEAKER_00
It ll get the ball rolling.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I was very optimistic about that decision.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
cut to our last day in Delhi, which was a free day, which we took this incredible tour.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
More on that to come.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then we thought, okay, well, let s eat really late.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
That ll push the whole schedule down.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then we ate at like 9.30, I think.
8
SPEAKER_02
Line of shit.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and by 10, we were both at the restaurant.
8
SPEAKER_00
and we were starting to collapse.
8
SPEAKER_02
So tired.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we were like, I was like, oh my God, we have three hours until our pickup.
8
SPEAKER_02
I know.
8
SPEAKER_00
Then there s three hours more from that point on.
8
SPEAKER_00
So we were, by the time we went to get our car ride to the airport, we were both exhausted.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then three hours at the airport, and I got so zany at one point, all of a sudden this popped into my head.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, you re in, oh.
8
SPEAKER_00
The tum tum tugger is a serious cat.
8
SPEAKER_02
Well, you said curious.
8
SPEAKER_00
I did, because I didn t have the, well, no, I said terrible.
8
SPEAKER_00
It is, it is.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s curious, actually.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s, the rum-tum-tugger is a curious cat.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I was saying, the rum-tum-tugger is a terrible cat.
9
SPEAKER_01
Which later in the song, it says the rum-tum-tugger is a terrible boar.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I could not stop singing that song, and it was driving you insane.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it was driving me insane, too.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I kept...
9
SPEAKER_01
just hearing myself sing it.
9
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t making a decision to sing it.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was just like, I was sitting there and all of a sudden, da, da, da, da, da.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and now you re doing it again.
9
SPEAKER_01
I know, and I don t like that musical.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know, and you keep doing this horrible, horrible song.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
9
SPEAKER_01
I think it was like emblematic of how I was feeling internally.
9
SPEAKER_01
I was just like beyond slap happy.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
And got into the Tum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_00
Rum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_01
Rum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, that song was the bane of my existence the whole time Lincoln was doing the play, the musical, The Cats.
9
SPEAKER_01
I was like, oh my God, that song s gonna drive me absolutely mad.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then it just popped out, it was like a pop out from an alley.
9
SPEAKER_01
All of a sudden it was stuck in my head.
9
SPEAKER_01
You had to share it.
9
SPEAKER_01
I didn t have a choice, it was just coming out.
9
SPEAKER_00
I guess that s the power of it, it s why that,
9
SPEAKER_01
That s why it was such a successful.
9
SPEAKER_00
Play is very successful.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, the Tum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_01
He s a curious cat.
9
SPEAKER_00
The Rum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_01
The Tum Tum Tugger is a serious.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, if you re gonna do it, at least do it correctly, my God.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and yeah, and that s by Jason Derulo.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, he did redo it for the movie.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, that was his song.
9
SPEAKER_01
I think he was the Rum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_01
The Rum Tum Tugger?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s Rum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
All right, so he played the Rum Tum Tugger.
9
SPEAKER_00
And he s a friend of the pot.
9
SPEAKER_01
And a curious cat.
9
SPEAKER_00
And a serious.
9
SPEAKER_01
And a terrible boar.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, he s not a terrible boar.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, but the tum-tum-tugger is.
9
SPEAKER_01
Rum-tum-tugger is.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, those are sincere.
9
SPEAKER_00
Anywho, so yeah, a little upsy-daisies, but I like when I go abroad, because when I come back, I have like a grand plan of my new life.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, and what is it currently?
9
SPEAKER_00
My new life is I m asleep at nine.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, sure.
9
SPEAKER_00
I wake up at six.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s a good life.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then I have so much time in the morning to relax and have my tea and work and it s not rushed.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it s a wonderful feeling.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and from like 8.15 or 8.20 to nine before I read my book.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I did that last night.
9
SPEAKER_01
You went to bed at nine.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I read my book, and then I went to bed at nine.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, between 8.15 and nine at night, not in the morning.
9
SPEAKER_01
Before bed.
9
SPEAKER_01
I got you, I thought you were saying part of your morning routine.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, part of my wind down is reading, and then I m sleepy, and I put it away, and then I sleep at nine and wake up at six.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then at six, my alarm went off, and I changed it to seven.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so we slid an hour and tomorrow I ll probably be eight and then... No, I want it.
9
SPEAKER_00
I really want this to be my new life.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so what do we want to talk about?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, where would we start?
9
SPEAKER_00
We have so much to say.
9
SPEAKER_01
I guess people heard us on like hour three of being there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
With the birds chirping.
9
SPEAKER_01
And we were there in Hyderabad for, I guess, three days?
9
SPEAKER_01
That day we recorded, then the next day, and then a full, yeah, day of activities.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re right.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then fly to the next place.
9
SPEAKER_01
We loved that night.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_01
And the first two days were so fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because those were our acclimating days.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_00
So we were relaxing.
9
SPEAKER_01
Some light meetings about the schedule to come.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we had four meetings.
9
SPEAKER_01
Just trying to make it sound like.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, of course we had to have those days or else how would we have, we would never have been able to handle.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, we barely handled what came at us eventually with the adjustment day.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you need that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Mind you, one of the days was we had gotten off the plane at three, four in the morning.
9
SPEAKER_01
So then we slept really the first acclimation day.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, we got off the plane at three and then we stayed up all day.
9
SPEAKER_01
We did?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes, we stayed up all day.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then we went to bed at like seven.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, right, trying to make it till eight or nine.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but we couldn t.
9
SPEAKER_01
Couldn t do it, couldn t do it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, okay, right, right, that s right.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then the following night we were able to five 30, six, four.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then, so the first active day we met early in the lobby, we went immediately outside to a Chaiwala guy who makes chai tea at a little cart.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_00
They flew him in.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was his first time on an airplane.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was his first time on the airplane.
9
SPEAKER_01
He looked very much like Elvis Presley.
9
SPEAKER_01
He had enormous yellow glasses and very cool lapels.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, and he was Instagram influencer in India.
9
SPEAKER_01
So he had a whole look.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then he was up high in the air, very theatrical, pouring everything.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was great.
9
SPEAKER_01
Now, and here starts a really funny pattern that we observed.
9
SPEAKER_01
So you and I were on high alert.
9
SPEAKER_01
We were told by our travel doctors to start our malaria pills two days before we left.
9
SPEAKER_01
Take the malaria pills.
9
SPEAKER_01
Do not eat any lettuce.
9
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter how nice the hotel is, like no vegetables.
9
SPEAKER_00
Vegetables.
9
SPEAKER_01
The only fruit you can eat is if you ve peeled it yourself, which I did, I had a couple bananas along the way.
9
SPEAKER_01
Don t ever drink out of anything that you didn t take the cap off of, basically.
9
SPEAKER_01
Right.
9
SPEAKER_01
And so those are the rules.
9
SPEAKER_00
They really made it really scary.
9
SPEAKER_01
And let s add someone from the team had already gone down before the show started.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like someone had a dicey salad and was out for- It wasn t a salad.
9
SPEAKER_01
What was it?
9
SPEAKER_00
Pizza.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
9
SPEAKER_00
Which we had pizza, but- Yeah, that s interesting.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
She said, she was like, I don t know if it could possibly have been that because it was just pizza.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, so we are watching the Chaiwala cook and he s got pans and water that s coming out of jugs and basically every violation that there could be is on display in front of us while the chai tea is being made.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Smartly, some other chai tea had been made with bottled water, but everything went so fast.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then all of a sudden, we were just handed these three chai teas.
9
SPEAKER_00
And Bill- They were replacing the tea with the bottled water tea, but it was, yes, happening fast.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was happening so fast, I certainly wasn t sure that that change had happened.
9
SPEAKER_01
But when Bill got that chai tea, he just- Immediately.
9
SPEAKER_01
Down the hatch.
9
SPEAKER_01
And we, you and I, both looked at each other.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, as soon as he put it to his lips, I said, no.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you blurted no.
9
SPEAKER_00
And he got like a little jump.
9
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then they were like, no, it s fine.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I do think it s important, I feel him push back already, but I think it s important to make the distinction that there s no way he, it s not like Bill himself had seen the change up either.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t think so, I don t know.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, the point I m trying to make stands, which is you hand Bill something to drink and he s just down the hatch.
9
SPEAKER_00
He was fine.
9
SPEAKER_01
He was totally fine.
9
SPEAKER_01
And when this was a pattern that starts right out of the gates, um, drinking the chai that continued on where he just drank and ate whatever the fuck he wanted without any concern.
9
SPEAKER_01
And he never, nothing ever happened.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think most of the time nothing happens, right?
9
SPEAKER_00
Like that s the whole thing.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s just Russian roulette.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think they make it scary for you.
9
SPEAKER_00
And so you re like on hot, we are on extra high alert, but most people, like I was thinking about it when my family went in 92, like everyone s eating everything.
9
SPEAKER_01
I thought you said you had really bad.
9
SPEAKER_00
I had a bladder infection, I was four.
9
SPEAKER_00
But my parents are eating everything.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re eating vegetables, they re eating all kinds of stuff.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re eating mangoes off the tree.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think mostly it s totally fine.
9
SPEAKER_00
They just want us to be extra careful.
9
SPEAKER_01
But even last night Molly told a story that when she went with her friend who s from there to their home, immediately they re staying at her parents  house and they had made something, but they had made it out of tap water from the sink.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then so Molly was down for two days.
9
SPEAKER_01
The water for, and by the way, it s not to suggest that anything s dirty or cleaner.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like Mexican people don t get sick from Mexico water.
9
SPEAKER_01
People come to America and get sick from our water.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s just different bacteria in everyone s regional water and you re used to it.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I m not, I m not.
9
SPEAKER_01
disparaging anybody s water.
9
SPEAKER_01
But Bill, he didn t care at all.
9
SPEAKER_01
We went to this breakfast at one point at someone s house, and there were just glasses of water out that come from the sink.
9
SPEAKER_01
As soon as we sat down, he drank like eight ounces of water.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, I didn t yell no, but I wanted to yell no.
9
SPEAKER_01
Or has he just been there enough that he s acquired it all?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s also possible.
9
SPEAKER_01
Could be.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so we did so many fun things.
9
SPEAKER_00
The breakfast, the tour was so fun.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, day one in Hyderabad was to go to the 25th anniversary of Microsoft s development office that had been opened there.
9
SPEAKER_01
That is now huge and just a sprawling campus.
9
SPEAKER_01
It looked like the set of Silicon Valley.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was so cool.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was so cool.
9
SPEAKER_01
There were so many neat, cool things we saw.
9
SPEAKER_01
There was just a machine outside that s just pulling water out of the air.
9
SPEAKER_01
Perfectly purified water.
9
SPEAKER_01
500 liters a day this machine makes.
10
SPEAKER_01
that machine somewhere.
10
SPEAKER_00
It was awesome.
10
SPEAKER_01
Used to be in the desert pulling water out of the air and got 500 liters is a lot of water.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
You take a bath.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
He did like a talk and all these Microsoft employees were there and it was so exciting for them.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Fireside chat.
10
SPEAKER_01
They said there was 800 people.
10
SPEAKER_01
They re all gathered around these catwalks and different floors looking down over this atrium.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then everyone was zooming in.
10
SPEAKER_00
There was like so many people.
10
SPEAKER_01
And there s 25,000 employees in India for Microsoft.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s so weird to be there with him and know his brain is the reason all of this is here.
10
SPEAKER_01
Right, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
This crazy infrastructure, the 25,000 people, it s because of one person, well, two people, but yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
It reminds me of when you were watching Taylor.
10
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s exactly that.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s cool.
10
SPEAKER_01
A really funny thing happened at this Microsoft tour.
10
SPEAKER_01
We got to go to a room and see, like, all the latest technology in A.I.
10
SPEAKER_01
They were showing us all these different things that could happen.
10
SPEAKER_01
And there was probably, you know, 12 people in this meeting.
10
SPEAKER_01
And there was one guy at the end, the youngest guy there, and he was visibly quite giddy.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then the older kind of senior man said,
10
SPEAKER_01
oh, he s very excited you re here to me.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I looked at him and I said, oh, you re excited?
10
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he was smiling really big.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then I was like, what movie do you like that I was in?
10
SPEAKER_01
Or something like that.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he had the most confused look on his face when I asked what movie he liked.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then he said, no, you re Kristen Bell s husband.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he was- He was excited.
10
SPEAKER_01
He was giddy at just the notion that I was married to Kristen.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
To his knowledge, I wasn t an actor or anything like that at all.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, was that funny.
10
SPEAKER_00
I feel like you probably get that a lot.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh God, yeah, everywhere.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
But it was so funny, the giddiness of the guy, just because her husband was there.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s really funny.
10
SPEAKER_00
But what s the difference between that and when it happens otherwise, just because he was so smiley?
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, let s just say I like- You think mostly they know you.
10
SPEAKER_01
No, I like Waylon Jennings.
10
SPEAKER_01
And if I found out Waylon Jennings  wife was gonna be in a meeting, I wouldn t be excited at all.
10
SPEAKER_01
I like Waylon Jennings.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s what s funny, is like the excitement on his face did look like he was a fan of, like he had seen me in a bunch of movies and stuff.
10
SPEAKER_00
Totally, totally.
10
SPEAKER_01
No, that wasn t it at all.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was just that I was- That s true.
10
SPEAKER_00
I get, but I don t, doesn t it happen?
10
SPEAKER_00
I feel like this happens sort, or like you say it happens often.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, what s happening is they know who I am.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so you think- Because if you don t know who I am, you can t in public go, oh, that s Kristen Bell s husband.
10
SPEAKER_01
You have to know who I am.
10
SPEAKER_01
They know who I am, but they don t care.
10
SPEAKER_00
I see, I see.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s what s most common is just like, oh my God, I love your wife.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, you re my, they re excited.
10
SPEAKER_01
They re more excited about her than me.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s standard.
10
SPEAKER_00
That happens all the time.
10
SPEAKER_00
But they still know you, you re saying.
10
SPEAKER_01
They know who I am.
10
SPEAKER_00
Got it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they might not be a fan of my movies or have seen anything, but they know I m an actor as well.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but it was.
10
SPEAKER_01
This guy was, I was just a straight husband, which was comical, because why would I be on this trip?
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_01
What capacity was I there in?
10
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what the, I don t know.
10
SPEAKER_00
But then we did a thing with co-pilot, which is like chat GPT.
10
SPEAKER_01
It uses chat GPT for.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
And it, and so we like asked it about you and then it, and we asked about your tattoos and it brought all, it was so accurate.
10
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you even noticed that it had the types of tattoos you have.
10
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh, yeah, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s really crazy.
10
SPEAKER_01
It really is.
10
SPEAKER_01
It made me wonder why on earth I would be using a normal search engine.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was so much better.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know.
10
SPEAKER_01
It made me want to start using it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was good.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was effective.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was an effective tour in that now I want to use Copilot.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then we left.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so should we talk about the first sim moment that happened?
10
SPEAKER_01
Because this is very funny.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes, we should.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then we also have to say that coming into the country, I had a hard time.
10
SPEAKER_00
Which we talked about on Goldies.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay, great.
10
SPEAKER_01
So that s already known.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I had some anxiety about going back to the airport.
10
SPEAKER_01
Also, the team was like, you just got to stick really close to Bill.
10
SPEAKER_00
Right.
10
SPEAKER_01
To get through the airport.
10
SPEAKER_01
We re like, okay, so we get out and we have luggage and we re like trying to keep up and then Bill s own security.
10
SPEAKER_01
So there s a lot of people for us to be getting close to him so that we can move in this little pod in the pocket.
10
SPEAKER_01
Ding, ding, ding call back to quarterback pocket, right in the pocket.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
So we had to stay in the pocket and you noticed it.
10
SPEAKER_01
We were all running.
10
SPEAKER_00
And he is walking so leisurely slow.
10
SPEAKER_00
He s walking slowly.
10
SPEAKER_01
He was walking completely normal and slow.
10
SPEAKER_00
And we are running to keep up and we can barely keep up.
10
SPEAKER_01
Everyone around him is running.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he s in the middle walking very slowly.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
And Monica was like, how are we all going the same speed?
10
SPEAKER_01
We re running and he s walking.
10
SPEAKER_01
I was like, oh my God.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s like a horror movie.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, no, it was Sim.
10
SPEAKER_00
It was like a glitch.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was a glitch and it was Sim.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then we were so panicked because we had to get through security.
10
SPEAKER_01
And we were so nervous if we got out of the pocket.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, also, we were told many times, like, if you aren t there when it s time to get in the cars, you re not coming.
10
SPEAKER_01
Right, no one s ever gonna wait for us.
10
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes, the schedule was insane.
10
SPEAKER_01
By the way, we left Microsoft and then we went to a agricultural command center.
10
SPEAKER_01
Then we went to, you know, there was seven stops before we got to the airport.
10
SPEAKER_00
His schedule is unreal.
10
SPEAKER_00
You know, we re saying, oh, how could we possibly have done it without any acclimation?
10
SPEAKER_00
He didn t have any.
10
SPEAKER_00
No.
10
SPEAKER_00
He came in the night before.
10
SPEAKER_00
He started all of this.
10
SPEAKER_00
He s unbelievable.
10
SPEAKER_01
He gave 10 speeches.
10
SPEAKER_00
His stamina.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s unreal.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s really, it s awesome.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I know what we did afterwards.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s worth mentioning.
10
SPEAKER_01
After we were at Microsoft, we got to go and sit down with eight of the very smartest people in all of tech in India, and they pitched everything that s coming up.
10
SPEAKER_01
And Bill understood every single one of the things and had incredible, insightful pushback in foreseeing potential problems four steps away.
10
SPEAKER_01
And the person that was hosting it is saying, this is why this meeting was so important, because Bill will immediately see what s wrong with everything, and he can challenge all of my experts.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he knows as much as all of the experts do.
10
SPEAKER_01
To see the breadth of knowledge on display was like one of the first moments we had where I was like, I knew he was smart, but I guess I didn t really, I didn t know the heights of it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Or I didn t even know that was really possible.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s another level.
10
SPEAKER_01
So we end up on a golf cart, which is really funny.
10
SPEAKER_01
We ll post a picture of this.
10
SPEAKER_01
We end up on a golf cart with, with bill and some of the key staff members and we re right in this golf cart.
10
SPEAKER_01
And again, you and I so often, I think our regular theme, you and I was like, what are we doing here?
10
SPEAKER_01
What we have, we provide nothing to anybody.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was so confusing.
10
SPEAKER_00
So often we re like, how do we land here?
10
SPEAKER_00
We re confused.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think everyone else is confused.
10
SPEAKER_01
What are we supposed to be doing?
10
SPEAKER_01
So they feel like they didn t, this wasn t a waste of their time yet.
10
SPEAKER_01
And no one s going to get fired over inviting us, but we were on this golf cart.
10
SPEAKER_01
And of course he s reading a book like in this minute.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
He s, he s reading a book that he ll then recite verbatim the next day.
10
SPEAKER_01
And we re just horsing around on the golf cart, which was so funny.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Then we flew to Bhubaneswar, and I immediately loved it when we landed.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was much more like my fantasy of what India looked like, like very tropical, very orange and brown dirt.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s more rural.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s not as urban as Hyderabad or Delhi.
10
SPEAKER_01
Super, super colorful.
10
SPEAKER_01
Cows on the street everywhere.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I got to go back to one thing in Hyderabad.
10
SPEAKER_01
So the first couple of days we were there, what I didn t anticipate
10
SPEAKER_01
I think of India being Hindu and then Pakistan being Muslim.
10
SPEAKER_01
I didn t realize how many Muslims are living there.
10
SPEAKER_01
So in Hyderabad, it s 30% are Muslim.
10
SPEAKER_01
So we were hearing the call to prayer, the five calls to prayer every day.
10
SPEAKER_01
There s speakers all over the city.
10
SPEAKER_01
You can t miss it.
10
SPEAKER_01
The first couple days, I was just thinking and asking out loud to people that live there, like,
10
SPEAKER_01
If you re not Muslim and you hear this for 20 minutes, are you annoyed by that?
10
SPEAKER_01
It s not your religion and it s so out loud and in public.
10
SPEAKER_01
And so people are like, no, it s been this way for 600 years, whatever.
10
SPEAKER_01
Clearly, it s part of just standard life.
10
SPEAKER_01
On the last day there, I wanted to meditate before dinner.
10
SPEAKER_01
By crazy coincidence, I went out and found us a little patch of grass behind the hotel.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I got into my position and right as I started doing my mantra, the call to prayer started.
10
SPEAKER_01
You can hear it not just through the many, many loudspeakers of the guys praying out loud, but you can hear the million people praying out loud.
10
SPEAKER_01
You can hear like this crazy murmur of prayer clearly coming from like a million people.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s the craziest thing I d ever heard.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I was sitting there and it started right as I started meditating.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was like, Oh, fuck.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like it told like, I fully connected with this weird wave of everybody doing the same thing at the same time.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like clearly we have different intentions or two different people, but the activity of a million people, all doing that same thing at once was one of the craziest feelings in my life.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was awesome.
11
SPEAKER_00
I was so happy.
11
SPEAKER_00
I happened to accidentally time it.
11
SPEAKER_00
to be doing it at the same time.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, it was electric.
11
SPEAKER_01
We also learned that cities with the ending B-A-D are Islamic, and ones that end in pur, P-U-R, are Hindu, which I never knew.
11
SPEAKER_00
And the word before the poor or the bod is the name of the king.
11
SPEAKER_01
Often, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
We learned a lot, a lot.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, an insane amount, mostly when we were in Delhi and took our tour.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yes, we had the best tour, the very best tour.
11
SPEAKER_01
We had an amazing tour guide, Poonam.
11
SPEAKER_00
She needs her own show.
11
SPEAKER_01
She s awesome, and she s like tour guide to the stars.
11
SPEAKER_01
She wasn t name dropping.
11
SPEAKER_01
It happened to come up multiple times.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, the comedy was she doesn t know anyone, which I totally believe.
11
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t like a faux, like she s over it or above it.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s just simply she s like, I don t know any of the people.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then she calls her son on all these tours and says who she s with, and then her son will tell her if it s somebody.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
11
SPEAKER_01
And she was incredible, and she did teach us so much, and we had the best,
11
SPEAKER_01
time that day.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes.
11
SPEAKER_00
But back to Bhumaneswar, we went to a slum, which we say in the interview with Bill, but it s still called slum there.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s not a pejorative there.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s what it s called, a slum.
11
SPEAKER_01
It is, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
called a rehabilitated slum and went on a tour there.
11
SPEAKER_00
That was incredible.
11
SPEAKER_00
Everyone had toilets and they had meters and they had electricity and they had all this stuff.
11
SPEAKER_01
They were given land rights, which made a huge difference in a sense of ownership of their community, which is so, it s so fascinating what happens psychologically when you have ownership.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_01
Fascinating.
11
SPEAKER_00
For sure.
11
SPEAKER_00
And up until that point, most of the stuff we were seeing was more like on the government level, the tech level.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was all like very high level, big, big programs.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
So to go and walk around and see people like really prideful of their place.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
And seeing real people, that was really unique and wonderful.
11
SPEAKER_01
It was.
11
SPEAKER_01
And we saw a little daycare.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yes, we saw a daycare.
11
SPEAKER_01
With all these cute kids.
11
SPEAKER_00
There was all these cute little girls and they were all like Monica.
11
SPEAKER_00
They were all bosses.
11
SPEAKER_00
They all looked like they were 35 and running the place.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was so funny.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, we have to tell them about.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, the baby?
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Okay, that was, yeah, that was.
11
SPEAKER_01
That was in Hyderabad.
11
SPEAKER_01
We had lunch.
11
SPEAKER_00
We had lunch.
11
SPEAKER_00
There was the most beautiful baby at this table next to us.
11
SPEAKER_01
She walked in with her parents.
11
SPEAKER_01
She looks, she looks.
11
SPEAKER_00
She looked a lot like the baby from the photo.
11
SPEAKER_01
She did.
11
SPEAKER_00
Baby Monica.
11
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Four-ish.
11
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh.
11
SPEAKER_01
She walked in with her parents.
11
SPEAKER_01
They sat down to eat.
11
SPEAKER_01
She was sitting upright in this tall chair.
11
SPEAKER_01
With her back to us.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like a little grown-up.
11
SPEAKER_00
We were just staring at her, because she was so cute.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_01
She turned around to look at us, and we were kind of waving, and she said, hi, Dax.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then.
11
100%.
11
SPEAKER_00
She turned around and said, hi, Dax.
11
SPEAKER_00
And we were like.
11
SPEAKER_00
that all three of us at the table were like, did she just say Hydax?
11
SPEAKER_00
And then she didn t speak any English.
11
SPEAKER_00
So she turned around and she continued to talk to her parents.
11
SPEAKER_00
But we don t know what word sounds like Hydax, but there s a word that sounds just like Hydax.
11
SPEAKER_00
And she looked directly at me and said, Hydax.
11
SPEAKER_01
It was, she was saying, hi Dax.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I know what happened is it was another glitch in the time continuum, the fabric of time.
11
SPEAKER_01
And she s actually me.
11
SPEAKER_00
She was you.
11
SPEAKER_01
In another time in sort of another universe.
11
SPEAKER_01
32 years ago.
11
SPEAKER_01
With different parents.
11
SPEAKER_00
The version where you didn t leave India.
11
SPEAKER_01
Right.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then she came to say hi to you.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_00
Hi Dax.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re going to have a job together in 34 years, 32 years.
11
SPEAKER_01
She did look like, she really did look like.
11
SPEAKER_00
She looked identical to the baby in the grass.
11
SPEAKER_01
She was so cute.
11
SPEAKER_01
She had such big eyes.
11
SPEAKER_01
Hi Dax.
11
SPEAKER_00
Thickest hair ever.
11
SPEAKER_00
Hi Dax.
11
SPEAKER_00
Then turned back around and carried on.
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it was so startling.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was almost like a horror movie, but really a cute horror movie.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, cute.
11
SPEAKER_00
More Twilight Zone, we decided.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s what it was.
11
SPEAKER_00
There was a lot of Twilight Zone and Sim going on.
11
SPEAKER_00
Anyway.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so we went to the revitalized slum and then, yeah, some meetings.
11
SPEAKER_01
We just like fly on the wall in these meetings.
11
SPEAKER_01
We went to cool,
11
SPEAKER_01
ceremony where he was being awarded a like, you know, he helps fund this school.
11
SPEAKER_00
80,000 students.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was so trippy.
11
SPEAKER_00
We re in like a banquet room in a hotel and there s cameras pointed at us, but there s also this huge screen.
11
SPEAKER_00
And it looks impossible.
11
SPEAKER_00
The first shot looked impossible.
11
SPEAKER_00
There s a room full of kids all sitting crisscross applesauce in a perfectly straight line in row after row after row.
11
SPEAKER_00
In the shot alone, there had to be 1,000 kids inside that one.
11
SPEAKER_00
Then they cut to another shot outdoors, and there s like 20, 30,000 kids at this academy, and they re all watching what s happening in the banquet room.
11
SPEAKER_00
We found it all in, there s 80,000 students at this school.
11
SPEAKER_00
And if you go there, it s free, and you get room and board and meals and an education, and it s like one of the things that he s helped fund.
11
SPEAKER_01
For tribal children.
11
SPEAKER_00
They gave him a bunch of different plaques and everything.
11
SPEAKER_00
We started becoming a little concerned with like, where are all these things going?
11
SPEAKER_00
Because we were only on day two of the trip with him, and he d already received like 150 plaques and trophies and memorabilia.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he needs his own house just for those things.
11
SPEAKER_00
And we got into every conceivable thing.
11
SPEAKER_00
And here s where the next stage of recognizing how smart he is.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think I asked him about what of the three prominent technologies that are on the table to stop aging, which one does he think is most promising?
11
SPEAKER_00
And so that was the goal of the question.
11
SPEAKER_00
And he starts to answer, but then he goes, well, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.
11
SPEAKER_00
Life comes very quickly thereafter.
11
SPEAKER_00
4.2 billion years.
11
SPEAKER_00
We have two distinct cells living in two different spots of the ocean.
11
SPEAKER_00
Without cell membranes, of course, the salinity content of the ocean is identical to these cells.
11
SPEAKER_00
And he starts talking about the two original cells on planet earth.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then he, he, he takes us through every single step of evolution, both what was going on geologically on the planet, what was going on to the chemical content in the air and in the water, how these two cells came together and one engulfed another and created this multi-cell thing.
11
SPEAKER_00
And he took us up through every single stage until he got to fucking humans.
11
SPEAKER_01
It was extremely comprehensive.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s not his field.
11
SPEAKER_00
He s not a biologist.
11
SPEAKER_00
He s not a geologist.
11
SPEAKER_00
He s not an evolutionary biologist.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I had just watched the Spielberg five-part history of planet Earth, and his answer was way more dense than that whole five-hour show was and more scientific.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was nuts.
11
SPEAKER_00
And that was just one of a hundred things he could do that.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was, I was like, it was like watching Jordan do what he does impossibly or something.
11
SPEAKER_00
It was, I was thrilled.
11
SPEAKER_01
He s so unique.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
And playful.
11
SPEAKER_00
We were laughing and joking.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know it was fun.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
His brain, his brain is something else.
11
SPEAKER_00
Okay, Delhi.
11
SPEAKER_01
Then we went to Delhi.
11
SPEAKER_00
Then we went to Delhi.
11
SPEAKER_00
And then the next morning we had the breakfast super early with a bunch of tech, young tech billionaires, all these people who control, and then Monica and I. I concluded about midway through that breakfast that the only explanation for my presence, because I sat one over from Bill and I was in a suit and tie, is that they had to have thought I was his security.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I preferred that as opposed to like, I have no reason to be there.
11
SPEAKER_00
We did have no reason to be there.
11
SPEAKER_00
We didn t.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there was no reason for us to be taking up two seats at that table.
11
SPEAKER_01
At one point, the host was saying that, you know, everyone was sort of presenting their stuff to Bill, and he said- Bringing him up to speed on what s going on in the country.
11
SPEAKER_01
And he was like, everyone s gonna go around and sort of explain themselves.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I had such a panic that we were gonna have to explain ourselves.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, what are we gonna say?
11
SPEAKER_01
What the fuck?
11
SPEAKER_00
I knew I didn t have any fear of that.
11
SPEAKER_00
I knew there was no way they were going to take any time to hear what we were up to.
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, I was very scared that we were going to get included in that.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I had no idea what we could possibly say.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I love the idea that I was his security and that I was going to jump on him at any point.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I had already done that in the slum inadvertently because I was standing pretty close to him a lot of the time.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I noticed, man, there s so many balconies around us.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I became completely obsessed with scanning
12
SPEAKER_00
the balconies, make sure no one was coming out with a weapon.
12
SPEAKER_00
And I just kept going in a cycle over and over again to make sure there was.
12
SPEAKER_00
So I kind of I appointed myself his security.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, on our way to the airport, you you were in a fantasy about protecting him from a tiger.
12
SPEAKER_00
There s 3,100 tigers in India, which is like 20x anywhere else.
12
SPEAKER_00
So yes, I had thought like, God, what if a tiger?
12
SPEAKER_00
I also watched that thing that misled me.
12
SPEAKER_00
There was a planet Earth like nighttime version with all this heat imaging cameras.
12
SPEAKER_00
And there are tigers moving through the city in parks, in many different populous cities in India.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like they re mixing, they re there.
12
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, okay, if a tiger attacks Bill, I have a great game plan for a mountain lion, but they re 120 pounds.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
Tiger s 400 pounds.
12
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I d have to find a spear very quickly.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like I d have to find a flagpole or a pole or something.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then my blow to the tiger would have to be directly to the heart of the brain, which is hard.
12
SPEAKER_00
I ve never tried to stab a tiger.
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how good I d be the first time.
12
SPEAKER_00
And so, yes, I was really preoccupied with having to save him from a tiger at some point.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, which luckily didn t happen.
12
SPEAKER_00
It didn t happen.
12
SPEAKER_00
Didn t come to fruition.
12
SPEAKER_00
But I was semi-prepared.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
You were mentally half-prepared.
12
SPEAKER_00
I had already considered it all.
12
SPEAKER_01
Now having been there, I didn t see many poles.
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, the whole time I was looking at the balconies, I was like, where are the poles?
12
SPEAKER_01
There aren t many poles there.
12
SPEAKER_01
I didn t see many.
12
SPEAKER_00
You would have been fucked.
12
SPEAKER_01
Would you kill yourself for him?
12
SPEAKER_01
Would you jump in front of the tiger?
12
SPEAKER_00
Boy, that s a great moral question because this is a very important point to make.
12
SPEAKER_00
When he started working in India with the foundation in 2008, till now, the amount of children who die before five years old has fallen by two-thirds.
12
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
12
SPEAKER_00
So you re talking about literally, I think it was five million a year the first year, you re talking about
12
SPEAKER_00
Tens of millions of kids, he s actually literally saved.
12
SPEAKER_00
Not like in theory, like tens of millions of kids are alive because of him.
12
SPEAKER_00
So from a utilitarian point of view, I would have to do that.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s how I feel.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like, I even thought at one point he was speaking and I had like a full panic just listening to it.
12
SPEAKER_01
I was like, he s gonna die someday.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like Bill s gonna die.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right, he s 68.
12
SPEAKER_01
And that s gonna be horrible for the world.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
I know, and I couldn t help but just getting more and more infuriated the whole trip about these fucking bozos who just blankedly hate him.
12
SPEAKER_00
Hate him.
12
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Because he s a billionaire.
12
SPEAKER_00
I know.
12
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It s so maddening.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s like not one of these people who hates him because he s a billionaire has saved a single human life.
12
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
12
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And this motherfucker has saved tens of millions of people and they re in a moral high ground to be judgmental of him.
12
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I know.
12
SPEAKER_01
I agree.
12
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It really was pissing me off.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like I was looking at how much of this guy s day is spent trying to fucking save people.
12
SPEAKER_00
He could be playing tennis and getting massages.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like everything that people are mad at them would be doing with a billion dollars.
12
SPEAKER_00
He s not.
12
SPEAKER_01
At one of the talks, the moderator had gone to Stanford when he gave a commencement speech.
12
SPEAKER_00
She was from India and had transferred from IIT to Stanford.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
And she said during the speech, he had said something that really resonated with her.
12
SPEAKER_01
He said, if you don t innovate with empathy, you re just solving puzzles.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
Which is incredible.
12
SPEAKER_01
And he lives his life like that.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like he really he s using innovation to help people.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right.
12
SPEAKER_00
He s looking at a problem and asking himself, is there any way that no one has thought of yet?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
I mean, he really is incredible.
12
SPEAKER_01
He is.
12
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So I agree for all these people who just blanketly hate him because he is a billionaire.
12
SPEAKER_01
Like you have no idea.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I was like, what have you done?
12
SPEAKER_00
Why are you on the fucking pedestal?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
But okay, so then Delhi.
12
SPEAKER_00
Fast forward, it was great.
12
SPEAKER_00
We went to a bunch of more things we shouldn t have been at.
12
SPEAKER_00
We did.
12
SPEAKER_00
We just kept getting more and more insecure that we were adding no value to anything.
12
SPEAKER_00
But I will say, we were entertaining the shit out of him.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think so.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and we had a really, really fun dinner with him, and there was like just six of us, and we had a blast of a dinner, having so much fun.
12
SPEAKER_01
It was so fun.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then we recorded an episode for the podcast, so stay tuned.
12
SPEAKER_00
And I was nervous because again, these days were so long and the fucking, the interview was scheduled for nine o clock at night for an hour on the day we started at 7 a.m.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then we had already had dinner and I was like, this is going to be the worst interview of all time.
12
SPEAKER_00
We didn t have headphones, blah, blah, blah.
12
SPEAKER_00
But it ended up being fantastic.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was really, really great and a perfect end.
12
SPEAKER_00
So then you and I immediately shot to a high, which is like, we had done everything we were supposed to do.
12
SPEAKER_00
It all worked out.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then the following day was ours to just.
12
SPEAKER_00
C, finally, non-bureaucratic.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_00
And yes, we had this incredible guide, and the amount of history we learned about India was mind-blowing.
12
SPEAKER_01
It was so cool.
12
SPEAKER_01
And we went to the predecessor to the Taj Mahal.
12
SPEAKER_00
We went to Old Delhi, which was- It s like the largest marketplace in the world, 25 square miles.
12
SPEAKER_00
There s the spice market, there s the bridal shower market that s like two miles long of thousands and thousands of- We were in a rickshaw going through, again, Sim, like how are we all fitting in there?
12
SPEAKER_00
No.
12
SPEAKER_01
It made no sense.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh man, it was fun.
12
SPEAKER_00
We saw the little station where guys on the sidewalk were getting their ears cleaned by other men.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_00
Eargasms.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s a whole like industry.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_00
Getting their earwax and they re pulling it out and looking at it together.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it s so, it was so energized.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
12
SPEAKER_01
That area.
12
SPEAKER_01
I loved it.
12
SPEAKER_00
And I want to tell, um, there were two different moments where I got really teary eyed.
12
SPEAKER_00
And it was the two different times that you just were overwhelmed with the fact.
12
SPEAKER_00
And you looked at me and you go, I m so proud to be Indian.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
I really did feel it.
12
SPEAKER_01
I did for the first time ever.
12
SPEAKER_00
So is it really a big gift?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
And what a history, man.
12
SPEAKER_01
I know.
12
SPEAKER_00
All these different kingdoms that existed.
12
SPEAKER_00
Also, I was really confused when we were at the school that has 80,000 people.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s labeled a tribal school for indigenous people.
12
SPEAKER_00
When we were on the tour, I asked her, I m like, how would anyone describe themselves as indigenous?
12
SPEAKER_00
Isn t everyone from India from India?
12
SPEAKER_00
No, there s so many of them from the Ottoman Empire, from the Turkish Empire, from the different Moorish Islamic groups that came down.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s a kind of a strong Portuguese crossover in a certain area of India as well.
12
SPEAKER_00
Kerala, super Christian.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yep, but they re still Indian, they just got converted.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Christianized.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, which we got the history of why, it s so interesting.
12
SPEAKER_00
I will say this, the one bummer of the trip and why I need to go back is like, no matter where we went, we were told we were in the wrong spot, basically.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like every time we landed in a new place, they re like, have you gone to Carolina?
12
SPEAKER_00
And we re like, no, have you gone to?
12
SPEAKER_01
There was some Northern places that had tigers and snow leopards that we want to go to.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
We just, it was like, I felt like we were tuning America and like we had never been to America and we were in Detroit and they were like, you guys are going to go to LA or New York City.
12
SPEAKER_01
No, like that s like a big, big city to knock.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Mumbai.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like they wanted us to go to Mumbai really bad.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m really, it makes me so excited to go with my family.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Which is a trip my parents want to do when my dad retires.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right, in 2050?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
12
SPEAKER_00
When he s 99.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then we had a dicey situation leaving Dubai.
12
SPEAKER_00
Dicey by my account, which was like, we re about to take off and then all of a sudden we re not taking off.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then a full hour and a half goes by where we re just sitting there.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then it turns out they took a passenger off the plane.
12
SPEAKER_00
But they had to find the passengers one bag out of a thousand, which took forever.
12
SPEAKER_00
I never, ever think I m going to be in an airplane crash ever.
12
SPEAKER_00
But I was like, man, we are leaving Dubai at the height of some Western hatred.
12
SPEAKER_01
We re going to Los Angeles.
12
SPEAKER_00
We re going to Los Angeles.
12
SPEAKER_00
All these reasons where I was like, oh, I m a little, and they just took someone off the plane and had to remove their bag.
12
SPEAKER_00
I had a little bit of anxiety of like, oh, I give this a 1% chance.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, not one person.
12
SPEAKER_00
In my mind, that s how much weight it was.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think it s funny because you come across so chill, but I think you re more anxious than you let on.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, really?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, not in a bad way.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I do think so.
12
SPEAKER_00
Tell me some, sure.
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m always looking for escapes.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m looking for who s gonna try to fight it.
12
SPEAKER_00
What I m afraid of is humans.
12
SPEAKER_00
So I m not afraid of airplanes and weather and all the mechanical stuff.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like that stuff doesn t scare me.
12
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I understand it and I don t have that fear.
12
SPEAKER_00
Humans I m afraid of big time.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
I feel like timing, like maybe you were a little anxious.
12
SPEAKER_01
We were on a little bit of a close call in Dubai.
13
SPEAKER_02
at the airport.
13
SPEAKER_01
Oh, right.
13
SPEAKER_01
Our layover was ended up only being an hour and a half.
13
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_02
We just had barely any time.
13
SPEAKER_01
We had barely any extra time and we were at terminal one.
13
SPEAKER_01
And by the way, I m really grateful this ended up happening because we ended up taking a bus to the other terminal.
13
SPEAKER_01
Holy fuck.
13
SPEAKER_01
The airport in Dubai, the terminal we were at is the biggest terminal I ve ever seen in my life.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s like three McNamara s in Detroit.
13
SPEAKER_01
And that was one of four.
13
SPEAKER_01
We were driving on a bus for 25 minutes at speed to get to the other, and all you could see is terminals as far as the eye could see.
13
SPEAKER_01
I ve never seen anything like it.
13
SPEAKER_01
It was crazy.
13
SPEAKER_01
So we had landed in one terminal and we needed to go to like the third or fourth terminal.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
13
SPEAKER_01
So we ate up a ton of time.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and then I was like, are our bags gonna get there?
13
SPEAKER_01
Right, exactly.
13
SPEAKER_01
Because we went as fast as possible.
13
SPEAKER_02
That s right, that s what it was.
13
SPEAKER_02
You mentioned something about the bags.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_02
And it made me think like, oh, he s a little more anxious than he lets on.
13
SPEAKER_02
But I m the same on, okay, when we were coming back from Hawaii last year for spring break, we were like on our descent.
13
SPEAKER_02
And all of a sudden we went back up and started like circling, or I didn t know about circling at the time, but we were like back up.
13
SPEAKER_02
And I,
13
SPEAKER_02
I was like, oh, this pilot has gone rogue.
13
SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay.
13
SPEAKER_02
And I wanted to rub, tell Ryan like, should you go look into this?
13
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow, that much.
13
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I was scared.
13
SPEAKER_02
But it was fine.
13
SPEAKER_01
I bet it worked out.
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It was all fine.
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Anyway, it was really cool.
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Yeah.
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It was really special.
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Trip of a lifetime.
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Trip of a lifetime.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I m sure things will keep coming up forever, probably, about this, and we ll keep talking about it, but that s sort of the rundown of what we did with Mr. Bill Gates.
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And then you have an episode coming at you about it a little more with him.
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A Thursday.
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This is for Angela Duckworth.
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Oh, so fun.
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She s so fun.
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Just a couple of facts.
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Y Combinator.
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They do take 7% Y Combinator standard deal for every company that s accepted to Y Combinator.
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We invest $500,000 and our investment gives Y Combinator 7% of your company plus an incremental equity amount that will be fixed when you raise money from other investors.
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SPEAKER_01
That s not terrible, 7%.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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I feel like when I watch Shark Tank, they want like 50%.
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I know, I know.
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Okay, she said T-B-O-A-S, total breakdown of American society.
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And then she said, that might be something my dad just made up.
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Yeah, I don t see that.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay, her dad just likes to make acronyms on his own.
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Like Ricky.
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Like Ricky, yeah.
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Okay, multiple personality disorder is currently called disassociative identity disorder.
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Okay.
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And there s a Seinfeld night guy, morning guy routine she was talking about.
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Have it here.
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Let s see if it.
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I never get enough sleep.
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I stay up late at night because I m night guy.
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SPEAKER_00
Night guy wants to stay up late.
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SPEAKER_00
What about getting up after five hours of sleep?
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s morning guy s problem.
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SPEAKER_00
That s not my problem.
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I m night guy.
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I stay up as late as I want.
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So you get up in the morning, you re warm, you re exhausted, globby.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, I hate that night guy.
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See, night guy always screws morning guy.
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There s nothing morning guy can do.
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The only morning guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that day guy loses his job, and night guy has no money to go out anymore.
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You think that routine would work today?
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You think it s too clean?
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Well, I always wondered too, as Seinfeld went into season nine, and they had to do these little interstitials at the top,
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I wonder if they just were like clutching at straws for some episodes.
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Like there s really not no hits to pull from the thing.
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I mean, every episode.
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Yeah.
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You have to come up with a lot and they have to probably reverse engineer.
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It started originally where that s the seed that ends up playing out in the episode, but clearly they were cracking episodes and then reverse engineering what his standup should be.
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Yes.
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Okay, Adler is a psychologist we talked about.
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Founder of the School of Individual Psychology, his emphasis on the importance of feelings, of belonging, relationships within the family, and birth order set him apart from Freud and others in the common circle.
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There s also an Adler acting.
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Yeah, Stella Adler.
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Stella Adler.
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I wonder if she s any relation to this Adler.
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Let s see, normally on Wikipedia it has like prominent siblings or family.
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Doesn t say great-grandfather or Stella Adler.
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No, unfortunately.
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There s probably more than one Adler line.
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Probably, it seems kind of common.
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We found out about another Padman.
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There s an Indian man who had a breakthrough in technology for maxi pads.
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Yeah.
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And became really wealthy, and then he became known as the Padman.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And there s a movie about it, Padman.
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It s two hours and 20 minutes.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s a good length.
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SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, it s a biographical comedy drama.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, well that s all the genres.
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Well, if it was a biographical comedy drama, whodunit.
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Oh my God, I would love that.
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To be clear, the Padman, his name isn t Padman.
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SPEAKER_01
No, but it should be.
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Sadly.
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We saw my dad s name all over India.
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Yes.
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Ashok is everywhere.
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Spelled differently though.
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Does he have an E at the end of his name?
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SPEAKER_02
No.
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No.
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I saw a lot of Ashok s with the E. There s a lot with an A because that s a god s name, Ashoka.
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Ashoka.
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That s one of the gods, but he s regular Ashok.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, if he s the architect of the Sim, kind of a god.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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I wonder, well clearly it was, just curious to think about that part of your dad s Sim was for us to go to India.
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Don t you think so?
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Yeah, because I guess in some weird way I feel like he s plugged into a machine in India.
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SPEAKER_02
Oh, you think it s happening there?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but there s no reason to think that.
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Other than- I don t, I think it s only- Why would he come back in his sim as a different ethnicity?
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SPEAKER_02
Well, I think he s Indian, but I think he s plugged in on like Mars.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, okay.
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Or like some other world.
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Yeah, but because he s Indian, I imagine he s Indian where he s plugged in.
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It d be weird if they would give him- I think it s him, his face.
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If I did a simulation and I was having a dream world, I wouldn t wake up black, that would be confusing.
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Unless you picked that.
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Then I m no longer in a sim of me.
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It would ve changed my identity.
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You wanted to play yourself in the sim.
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Yeah, I think it s him.
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SPEAKER_01
Right, right, okay, so we agree he s Indian wherever he s plugged in.
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SPEAKER_02
He s him, he s my dad.
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SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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So he s Indian.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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He s Indian.
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Yeah.
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And he s plugged in somewhere, whether that s Mars or India or wherever.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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So the fact that in his sim, we went to India is an interesting twist.
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Yeah, I guess.
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I mean, it makes sense.
13
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It makes logical sense that his daughter would go back there.
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Return to the homeland.
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Yeah, and feel proud.
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I mean, it s all like, it s easy.
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That was a long arc.
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I know.
13
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A 36 year long arc.
13
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Really?
13
SPEAKER_01
It s like a minute.
13
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I know we talked about it on synced a little bit.
13
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Liz asked if I had gone back earlier, would I have that sense?
13
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Yeah.
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And I think no, I think I had to feel confident enough and, and, you know, feel good enough in my own skin matching up with that trip for, for that to happen for me to really be able to embrace it and see it and understand my connection to it.
13
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For sure.
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And then I ll add in the version you just had was also extremely privileged in that you, and you mentioned this, like to sit in a room that was predominantly Brown, there s only a few white people.
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And I just was a predominantly Brown.
13
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It was, they were the power holders.
13
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So that too is an experience you might not have had if you d gone at 28.
13
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly.
13
SPEAKER_01
So you re like meeting all these other geniuses that exist over there.
13
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but also just seeing like all the little, like the kids walking to school together and the little girl like picking at her grandma.
13
SPEAKER_02
Just all these little, I could see a lot of the different versions of what my life could have been.
13
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Like that s a mind fuck a little bit.
13
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It was a lot to process and a lot to adjust to, but it wasn t like, and I m so glad it didn t go that way.
13
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Right.
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Which is new.
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Uh-huh.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I think most of the time I walk around this life with like, thank God my grandpa left and my dad left and all that happened and I have, I mean, I have so much gratitude for this life, but it was an interesting look into like, oh, it would have been a different one, but not necessarily better, who s to say?
13
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Yeah.
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And I think the stop we made, if I were you, that would have been most impactful is going to the actual Gates foundation in Delhi, which was all women.
13
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They were so cool.
13
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They were all so smart.
13
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They had been professors in different countries at times.
13
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Um, they knew so much, they were getting so much done.
13
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They were so,
14
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empowered that I imagine that would have been like, yeah, that version of your life is incredible as well.
14
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Yeah, I was like, these people are awesome.
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So anyway.
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All right, love you.
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Love you.