Angela Duckworth Returns

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Monista Mouse. Hi there. Hello there. Returning guest today, one of my favorites.

So fun. You're right. They're obviously so similar in that way.

Yeah, you just need to say hi, and then everything explodes off of that. Angela Duckworth. Angela is an academic, a psychologist, a MacArthur Genius Grant winner, and a best-selling author. Her very famous book, Grit, of course, everyone knows that book. And she has a podcast called No Stupid Questions.

Yes.

Oh, I love her.

We love that.

Please enjoy Angela Duckworth. He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

Do I go right and left? Does it matter?

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't.

But I like it when it's me too. I like it the other way, so the chord's not draped across your body.

And why do they put the R and L there, though, just to fuck with you?

Well, if you're like mixing something and you need to know, but we're coming through both sides, right?

Yeah, that's like for DJs and stuff.

What do you wear on your podcast?

I wear the headphones, but I just put the L on the left and I put the R on the right.

And is the chord ever on your person?

It is not on my person, but I think it's because it's in a recording studio.

Okay, and they've already thought this through.

It's kind of set up ergonomically, yes.

Because is it a part of some bigger network where they have a big space?

For economics, we do not generally record in person. We tried it once and then Steven was like, it's kind of not so great. Really?

Too intimate?

I don't know. He got distracted with the visual input.

Is he like Michael Pence? It was really confusing. Is he not allowed to be with women in a room unless his wife is present?

I didn't even know that.

You know that.

You can't ask me anything about.

You can't ask me about anything political. I have a Michael Pence story. Make up your mind, Angela.

But they go together and here's how. So I'm looking at the newspaper over my husband's shoulder. And I was like, oh, that's such a funny picture. You know, it's kind of like an avatar. And then I was like, oh, do you know what the uncanny valley is?

What year was this?

So the reason why you can't ask me about politics is I just don't know anything. He was vice president. Wow. So I kind of had to ask more and then...

You learned. he was our current vice president.

Yeah, at the time.

And is that a strategic decision to stay? Because I'm not watching CNN and stuff or MSNBC or Fox News.

Oh, it's not like a protective coping mechanism.

Okay, because it'd be hard to have not known about Mike Pence. It's really hard.

And yet.

In particular, this story I'm referencing to you.

When did this happen? Like recently?

No, it was like maybe first year of his vice presidency. 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. Interesting. And this is a man who's... He's in government with a...

Did you know that?

Oh. Is that the origin of it? I thought his wife doesn't trust him.

No, I'm sure it's all twisty. See?

Isn't it great? I don't know anything. It's like...

It's fun, right?

It's like everything's the first no.

Did you know that Trump said grab him by the.

Pussy?

No. Are you kidding? No, no, no, no, no. No, now you're lying.

Okay, you know how there was this settlement that just happened?

Yes.

It was all news to me. I was like, wait, what? Oh my God. Because it was all new.

Okay.

But I'm very happy about it.

The grab him by the pussy was the biggest thing that's happened in the last 10 years.

That's the biggest sentence ever said in politics.

Well, can you give me just the wiki?

Yeah, I prefer Monica Does, because obvious reasons.

Okay, so this was during the 2016 election. A video came out of him on Billy Bush's show.

Access Hollywood.

Access Hollywood.

They had been recording a segment. They were still mic'd. They were on a bus. There's not actual video footage of this conversation. You can just hear them in the bus talking.

Okay, right. Because the audio's on and they don't know. Yes. It's already a good story.

Exactly.

Privileged information.

And he says, like, locker room talk. He says, this is lock...

Or no, that was after. He says, like, when I come out of here, I might have to kiss that girl. Like, there's someone there.

There's a female there.

Yeah. And this is Michael Pence talking?

No, Trump.

Oh, this is Trump.

This is Donald J. Trump.

Okay.

Already not a great topic for us in this show. But at any rate, this is relevant.

Yeah.

This is just me learning about the world.

It progresses like this. If I see that girl out there, I don't know, I might just kiss her. Women love stars and power. I just go up to him, grab him by the pussy.

Okay, I vaguely remember this coming out during the election.

It was during the election.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And the Democrats thought, well, this is this. Right, yeah, yeah.

No, I vaguely remember that, too, thinking, oh, it's over. And then it so wasn't.

And then it was the first thing of 700 worst things.

Well, and he also said something like, I came up on her like a bitch. There was some gal that somehow resisted his advances.

Yeah, I mean, he did just have to pay.

Yeah, I was going to say a different person.

But I'm with you on the settlement. I don't really know any of the details.

Yeah, I just don't read the newspaper. But, you know, when you asked if it was willful or.

Yeah, intentional.

I do think it makes a lot of space in my brain for other things.

Well, I'm there now, but it's intentional. So, like I was on the ride. It was great TV. You were watching all the time. And then I was just completely fatigued and I can't stand hearing about it.

You're owning it.

I think that's great.

You're just like, I just don't know it and I don't care.

I'm actually OK with that. Largely OK. I know it's a threat to democracy.

But you vote, right? I do vote.

And I have trusted friends and one husband. And I get a printout before I go into the polls. It's all you need, right?

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. My observation is 99% of people that are wound up, they do one thing every four years.

And they're not doing anything else because they could be doing other things. Yes, sure. But maybe most of them are not.

But all we do is vote once every four years. And I'm not even shaming anyone from that. 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. As long as I went and voted, I did the exact same amount of actionable things as you did. So shut the fuck up.

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.

Surely in your long career, have you come across any kind of work about obscenities? Yes. I assume so.

So are you comfortable?

You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take my shoes off. Take them off. I don't think my feet, they kind of touch the ground. They don't have to touch.

Yeah.

I can tell the way your hand was. It wasn't. That's really good. Have you ever heard of Y Combinator? No.

Because it turned out. you did hear Grabbed by the Pussy, so maybe the same thing will.

Well, I have heard about Y Combinator. I don't think it falls into the same category. You have heard of Y Combinator. You've heard of Airbnb and Stripe. It's the most successful accelerator in Silicon Valley, meaning, you know what venture capital is, correct?

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.

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. Wow. So you get invested in. Then also, by the way, they now own 7% of your company.

Of course. How much?

I think it's 7%.

Oh, 7.

Yes. So why did I bring that up? Because you noticed my body language. Yeah. I don't remember what the question was before that.

I love that you guys had this moment, but I do want to return to the question of the power of obscenities.

There's a little bit of research on this, but I'm not an expert. I do swear a lot. I also work with children. I'm trying not to. It's offensive to some parents when you swear a lot, especially the F word.

You're calling students at Penn children?

No, I think I would be called a developmental psychologist. I was a high school teacher and then I studied teenagers and many parents would be offended by profanity. 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. You should trust them more, because they're just going to say whatever the fuck they want.

Whatever the fuck we want.

Exactly. And you can say it, Monica, because don't think you're a developmental. It's all good stuff about swearing. I think one is if you stub your toe and you say, fuck, it's an emotion regulation.

It's a tool. Yeah.

Okay, I don't know enough. I should stop talking because I don't really know a lot. This was already great.

I, one time, was having a debate with my mother-in-law, which happens frequently, and she hates swearing just across the board.

She would be like one of those parents. Yes. Maybe a little more traditional.

Her explanation to me was it's lazy and it kind of flags stupidity. And my single pushback to it was, I'm going to make you watch this Chris Rock stand-up special.

Anyone or just a particular one?

Well, sure, anyone would work. He is a master of using profanity, as was so many comedians.

George Carlin?

Sure. Richard Pryor, to me, is like the prime example.

It could be an evolution. And it is.

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. There's a number of reasons. But I happen to think swearing can be used very effectively and properly.

Like an accent. Punctuation.

It can break tension. You know, it's just very useful. And some people are really great at it. And some people, yes, are using it like um.

Move it all on this issue.

She acknowledged that Chris Rock was pretty smart. That's all I got out of her. She told me this. She had seen my movie, Chips. She didn't say one thing about it.

She needed her move to be able to focus on that.

I don't relate, but fine.

She's also religious.

Well, like taking the Lord's name in vain. OK, well, I am not a linguist, but I was on a project with a linguist for like a long time. Didn't really go as far as we wanted. But here's the thing he taught me. So I was saying literally kind of literally bothers me.

Did this person write a book, then called like literally dude?

No, that's a woman.

No, Mark Lieberman.

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.

We now accept them, right? Because we're like, oh, I love this. I'm sure they're friends.

It's pretty much the same thing, she said.

Did you love talking to him? Because we were having so much fun. Like we're trying to talk about one thing, but then you just kept hearing the etymology.

One thing leads to another and he's like, oh, it's an intensifier. And I'm like, what's an intensifier? It's like so fun. I mean, it didn't make me want to be a linguist. But I was like, this is amazing.

And I'm glad you did this. The geekiness of the pursuit is really infectious.

I don't know what the fourth hour is like, but the first three hours you're like, this is great. Here's another thing. This is what we were working on. Sentences are getting shorter and reading levels going down.

I immediately would be a little bit suspicious of causality versus correlation. 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. That's social scientist thought. They were not watching on TV. If they were to track just how widely viewed and accessible.

How do you know that we're not just more, I don't know, democratic.

They have access to more and more people and that maybe their reading and writing is superior to Lincoln's, I don't know.

That is a fair point. We did look, and I told you this project went a lot slower than we thought. We tried to look at all published text. It was hard to do. But we were looking also like New York Times bestselling novels.

Most efficient?

Well, better. I don't know, 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.

They're like the California of speaking.

Yes.

Is California the California of California? Yes.

What happens here will happen.

There's a word for this.

Yeah.

But also, I'm going to say this is because of email. Because we're all communicating so quickly all the time, over text and email. And it's quick. No one's taking the time. You'd look ridiculous.

But we went back to the beginning of the 20th century and you still find this trend. 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. By the way, I think it's good. Less pretentious.

I have another take. You also have to think about what life was like in 1930.. 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. Again, you cannot turn on the television and see how people are talking in New York or in St. Louis.

Written by a certain class of people, too. Right. As opposed to email. I think we must be writing more than we used to.

Oh, so much. A thousand percent. 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.

Like T-BASS. Have you heard that acronym?

No.

Is this not a thing? Maybe it was just my father-in-law. Total Breakdown of American Society. Maybe he made that up.

I hear that term.

Every generation does say this. 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?

Gen Z is before.

Gen Z. Yeah. And I think there's one that's after them. 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. And really, a lot of it is.

They're hanging it on the observable things that they're witnessing.

They're attributing it to their generation. And they're also annoyed about things like they're not talking like I am. They say me and my friend went to the house.

A friend of mine pointed out something I just thought was so astute. the other day. We were talking on the phone. We were talking about all the different uproars over trans issues. And he said, you know, it did cross my mind.

Yes, which I remember. I am old enough to remember that.

People were like, you cannot listen to Boy George. This guy is going to t-bast, right?

Right, right, right. And he's going to take down society.

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. And who gives a flying fuck?

So what's your forecast then of where we'll be in, I don't know, 50 years?

I have different fears. And I listened to a couple of your episodes.

You did? Oh, my God.

Of No Stupid Questions, which is so good. But one of them was, Is GPS Changing Your Brain? Which is a really fun episode.

Answer yes.

Immeasurably. And maybe let's just lay that out, because then I can maybe build on that. And then let me back up before you get into that. I was screaming the whole time I was listening to the episode. Have you read Weirdest People on Earth?

No, I have not.

It is the greatest book I've read in the last five years. What? Oh. Joseph Henrich in its western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic.

I mean, I know the academic research. I just didn't read the book. I don't really read those kinds of books that I also write.

Of course not. I don't like to watch comedy.

Exactly. It's like a busman's holiday.

So he makes this incredible observation about how dramatically, well, for starters, it erases the line between nature and nurture and culture and genetics, which I love. It was an anthro major. This is what we've been screaming, right? But he gives these incredible cases of how we have massively changed the structure of our brain simply through learning to read. Oh, interesting.

Right, because it wasn't that long ago where we were almost all totally illiterate.

And it occupies such a significant area of your brain, and that is an area that otherwise would have been dedicated to social recognition. So being able to read body language much better, social cues.

Does he think we're worse at those other things?

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. But beyond that, there's structural differences of our brains, which is incredible. The history of rice production and the math required to do it changed the structure of their brain.

Why do you think it is? I'm curious, both of you. When people are like, it changes you. And they're like, yeah, and you're like, it changes your brain. And you're like, what?

Because I think it pushes against this notion that we are one thing or kind of immalleable. We've been designed. We have a genetic code. It can only change through mutation. It kind of threatens everything we have been taught about evolution.

Kind of like a mind-body thing, right? Where you're like, hold on. Now everything is in question.

Because we like to think of those things as separate.

Did you have Sapolsky on the show? Yes.

How was that? I think it's a free will thing. I think if we think something's structurally changed in our brain, then we no longer have any control over it. That's just the way we are. We can't make any decisions to change it.

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. Although you could argue that that's not super logical. But I would also be saying the guilt would go down.

Jennifer Y Combinator.

Oh yeah, I was like, oh gosh. I totally forgot.

That was like really fun. I'm like, I don't remember that part of the conversation at all. It's called A Brief History of Intelligence. And I don't know you very well, but I know you enough that you guys would love him. And it's like sapiens for intelligence.

I have the exact same standpoint. It's okay not to know. I don't think we know, and I certainly don't think we know enough for him to write a book that says definitively it is deterministic.

Well, it's very confident and very well-written. Like, wow, he is like, I figured this out.

And I think if he had a different childhood, he would have it pulled towards a different conclusion. I think we're that subjective. Oh, interesting. I think he could employ that enormous brain on any topic and he'd be able to convince me.

Nobody ever changes their mind.

They don't. And they have something in childhood. they've been trying to answer.

This is like Freudian.

Well, not Freudian.

Lowercase f, Freudian.

I think it's driven by emotional.

I think that's like Adler. You know, Freud had the next generation. I think he believed that if you really want to understand someone, there's something in their childhood.

I think that people who are drawn to no free will and determinism are people who have a general high fear of the planet. And it would feel safer to know that. we could know about it, predict it, and prepare for it. The concept is appealing because if we knew where everything was going, we would never be caught off guard. We could be prepared.

Oh, that is so interesting.

For me, I would have said 100% free will until sort of recently.

You were like team free will until recently?

Yeah, because all of us who think we're so smart and that we earned.

And we're fooling ourselves.

No one worked harder than anyone else. So much is just handed to you, genetically, culturally.

Okay, so I have another person that you should, I have two people. One is Robert Frank, who wrote this book on how, especially if we are leading decent lives, we're successful.

We own a bus.

You have an incredible number of vehicles outside. That's right. I was a bit horrified to know that they were all yours. So you have your own bus. You can create a narrative, which is you're a hard worker.

That's also Sapolsky's take,

They do, but we could have the ability that we didn't pick.

They work harder, but it's also easier for them to work harder. Yes, they have some kind of biological motivation.

I actually don't believe in free will, I just don't believe that. I know very much and I agree. You ask that question about anything, you're like, well, why do they work hard?

Someone modeled that for them.

Exactly.

Their ninth generation. Validation.

Exactly. They got validation for it early.

I just want to give you this other idea, except for he doesn't do podcasts, but he would so agree with you. 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? Danny Kahneman. We've had Danny Kahneman.

He's not doing them anymore, though. Ours was a couple years ago, right?

You may have gotten one of the last Danny Kahneman interviews.

You love Kahneman, right?

Everyone loves Danny. Did he come here? He did not come here. Was it good?

Yeah, it was. His concept of the narrative self versus the experiential self is probably my very favorite concept I've ever heard and became how I framed so many of my analysis of whether things are going my way. It's like, well, a way for which self?

Oh, like it was actually practically useful?

All the time it is.

Oh, so interesting. He's very convinced that nothing he does is actually useful. I was like, oh, you wrote this book Thinking Fast and Slow. You must have written it to change people for the better. He said, I could have written a poem.

Absolutely. And the concept was introduced to me by Sapiens, weirdly. 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 to me in this meeting. Your blood sugar is this. The last time your cortisol levels were this.

So this I have thought about a lot because I would say that more than grit, I study self-control. I think I've published 15 articles on self-control for every article I've published on grit. And I think all of self-control comes down to the multiple selves, reality. So there is an Angela who wants to be here. Maybe there's an Angela who's a little jet-lagged and wants to take a nap right here on the couch.

And again, it goes back to Freud, this is super ego. Who are you servicing? Exactly.

I think the same exact intuitions.

And that's why measuring happiness, which is the original Kahneman task.

Day reconstruction method. Yeah.

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.

In little episodes, right? So it's like you break down your whole day.

And you might get a seven, then a six and five, but then, at the end of the day, you'll come up with a number for the overall day. And that's weirdly what gets cemented in your mind and what is constructing your identity.

And then we do also, some would argue, like irrational things. So one of the early and famous day reconstruction method studies that Kahneman did, he found that people are really unhappy commuting. But what do they do? They buy houses in the middle of nowhere and they drive an hour and a half each way. You also have this kind of like, which self bought that house, right?

I'm calling it experiential self, but you would call those first order desires?

I'm agreeing with you on like multiple selves in general. I also think there's different selves we have with different people. When I'm in my house, like under my roof with the door closed, I'm actually very quiet. In my family, I think I say the least. Really?

Because I imagine you and I under the same roof and the fucking.

doors would blow up. You're like, you need sound insulation. But only when I'm like in public.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

I think our multiple selves are often all genuine of a kind.

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.

Okay, so now I'm going to reference another psychologist. Did you ever have Tim Beck on? No. But you've heard of cognitive therapy. I feel like we've been shit on now that we're talking to Angela.

No, no, no, no.

We've got some homework to do. You're scoring pretty, I mean.

actually like half the people we named. Did you ever have Mike Pence on?

That's how we know him.

Not yet. He won't, because he's afraid I'll leave the room. Yeah, exactly.

And then he'll be in the room.

with him and by himself. So you can't have Tim Beck on because he has passed away. But he is credited with basically being the inventor of modern therapy. He was also trained as a Freudian, so he lived to 100 and he only recently passed away. But when he was a young psychiatrist, like everyone, he was Freudian because they all were.

your thoughts.

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. It feels like a feeling and it is a feeling, but before that there's a thought. Anyway, that is the basis of modern psychotherapy. He created CBT.

They're kind of waking up in time and space a lot.

And instead, quiet Dax, insecure Dax, confident Dax, you do know about those other selves. So that's the difference. But he was like, but here's what we all have in common. We all have multiple selves. And maybe a lot of therapy should be about figuring out the thoughts that lead to your feelings.

In any given mode.

How can we trigger our best modes?

Right. Access the ones that are most useful in that situation.

And I think that is helpful that it says I don't even have to fundamentally change everything about myself. I can just audit myself. When do I like myself the most? And then you just navigate into those situations.

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. They're always at odds. Right. And so I have body goals.

You have diabetes. Right.

What I'm aiming for is whatever clever balance for me.

Do you feel like there's a lot of tension there, or do you feel like you're mostly in alignment? Because I do think that happiness is when yourselves are a happy little community.

I think there's endless tension there. 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.

Give me an example of a conflict.

But he's an addict.

So that inherently has that. So true.

Totally forgot about that.

How dare you have forgotten about that? Well, I have not Google stalked you enough.

I don't know if I have a lot of actually conflicting selves, but maybe I do and I don't know about it.

Let's just take Instagram. 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. And you're fried. I'm against spending an hour on this mindless device, but then I go, stop being so judgmental of the experiential self, because it's here to help too.

And it matters, because the narrative self comes last. It's looking back on your life, looking back on your day.

And then projecting. Right. 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. I would never plan for that either. Right.

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. Sometimes people who study self-control call it like the want should conflict. How much of your day is experiencing that kind of tension in percentage terms?

The tension is always at an eight. The regret is at like a one.

Wait, the tension is at an eight?

Always. Oh, wow. My first thought for almost any situation is always something ultimately I don't want to do. Someone cuts me off. I want a fistfight at the light.

So what was the one? The one is you don't do the things.

I generally don't do the things that I have a great pull to do.

I've been hip deep in studying AA for the last week.

No kidding.

How have you not called?

me? I didn't know.

But also, isn't it supposed to be that you're not supposed to say?

In the original traditions, yeah, we're supposed to remain silent at the level of press and radio. It's like one of the.

traditions. Contentious, right? Because some would argue that then you keep the stigma.

Yeah, exactly.

I get very frustrated when people are reading the Constitution like it was written in twenty twenty four. That's maddening to me. I hate the notion of no evolution. So I hate. you have a book that's three thousand years old and you're not going to fucking bring in any.

information and test it. You're like, I'm not a fundamentalist. No.

In nineteen thirty, 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. No one knew what to do. Two, you'd get fired back then. You'd be shamed by your society. We do not live in that time.

Which is very AA in spirit, right?

That's so easy for me. What I do? try my hardest to always remind people, because this is the other great fear. 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. So I have failed in sobriety, and I'm very quick to tell you I stopped working all of the steps the way it is suggested.

The reason I've been studying it is that, AA, you put yourself into a certain social situation. There's a lot more than that.

Oh, you must be doing this for your book. you're writing. I am.

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? How do I put myself in the right mode?

Your book that you're writing, that's going to come out, is called Easier Making Your Situation.

Correct. Possibly, unless I find a better title. Go on.

Okay, but currently Currently?

Working title.

I cut you off. Finish what you're saying, then. No, no.

I think this is exactly right. 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. But anyway, I'm writing the book. 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.

insane. It's one of the most bonker stories ever. And they lifted it off of this weird church sect that was in Ohio.

The Oxford group?

Yes.

Totally bizarre. Bizarre. I don't know what Sapolsky would say about it, but it's like, wow, what a random, path-dependent set of events. And, as you probably know, it is, I think, not only arguably the most popular, but the most effective approach to addiction. You can't do a cost-benefit analysis because it doesn't cost anything.

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?

And by design, without those things, right? Because they said, we're not going to have professionals, we're not going to have a hierarchy. They don't take donations over $5,000, I think.

They refuse to have a position on anything political.

They have the no policy policy, which is kind of brilliant.

Really, there's parts of it that I can't believe haven't been graphed onto other organizations.

I think Bill W.

Yeah, all these places had been run like AA. Yeah. Plus, they would.

have less overhead.

They go to Congress, and they go, I don't have a position on this. Yeah, they're like,

I'm sorry.

End of conversation.

You can't have that at school. There's going to be hierarchy at school.

There are limits, right? Yeah. But it's kind of amazing I'm not going full.

libertarian on this. Let's back up. I would say, almost any organization we looked at, in its premise, isn't inherently wrong. I mean, there are, the Nazi party. But mostly, what you see go wrong in every organization is the leadership.

Oh, you mean the individuals, right? Like the people.

The individuals in charge of institutions and ideas, they're almost always what's broken about the thing. 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. Like, what? That's leadership.

Okay, but maybe, and I know the Founding Fathers were not perfect, but there is a lot of genius. And I would say the same thing about Alcoholics Anonymous, and maybe, even though you could argue that what you said was exactly right, they anticipated, screw up people. 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 and I think Bill W. and Dr. Bob were brilliant psychologists.

Yeah, I don't know if they fell into it or they were that master, I don't know. Why do you think it works?

Because this is a matter of great debate among scholars.

I can tell you why it worked for me. 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. And I think that the mechanics of the program are you go, you're hearing about your problem, but not from your mouth. It's not about you. It's not individual.

So, like, we know what spatial distance is. You're sitting across the room and, if you are, like, twice as far away, so this is psychological distance. So the catchphrase is not me, not here, not real, not now. And those are four ways that you can put psychological distance. So, like, not me.

Do you think also that, 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?

That's a really good question. I won't pretend to know, but I think when I experience failure, basically this was my year. So I had a whole year off. I had ideal circumstances, so no one to blame. So I didn't have to teach.

In Pennsylvania?

Yeah, in Philadelphia. I had no excuses. I couldn't blame anybody or anything, and I would wake up you know, dawn sometimes earlier and I would just work my ass off. I read hundreds of articles, I had multiple Google Docs, I would go to bed at midnight and I would wake up and do it again seven days a week and after several months of this, and you know false starts and wrong turns. but then I realized it was a cluster.

The reward's not worth the risk.

Well, I felt like I couldn't do it.

There was nothing to offer.

you didn't have anything else to offer.

There was no fuel in the tank that once drove you to do that thing. No.

And it's not even just that. I felt burnt out. I was just like. I don't feel like I can do anything that's useful.

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.

What happened in real life? How did it go?

Well, what happened in real life is we had a particular interview that was incredibly emotional and connected and very, very special, and I went oh! No, that's the goal. I don't think it's possible, but the fact that I did it once makes me want to do that with every single person I talk to. Like. that is now the goal.

So you never have to worry about oh, what will happen if I'm done, because you'll never be done.

I was measuring like okay, this, we were both doing it. this show would be a success if it generated this amount of money. Okay, if we got Obama, if we got Letterman.

It's almost just getting back to the original thoughts.

which is like this, is just so fun and it's so nice Like I want to have a moment.

Exactly. I just want a moment. Then it became about success.

Because it was happening.

Exactly. And probably a lot of

other people cared about that.

Yeah, and then, once you have it, you can't lose it, right?

The lost bias. Do you think?

this protects you? Does that help you not have a minus three because it's so intrinsic?

It has helped. it has certainly not solved.

So the fact that there are two of you, you have built in psychological distance right? Did that make it possible for you not to get completely consumed because you had another person?

What do you think, Monica? The thing is, we're going through the exact same experience at the exact same time. Matt Damon's kissing her on the forehead. Well, that's a crazy thing.

Oh, my god. Is he tall?

Enough for her.

He's like 5'11". Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just wanted to know.

So there's so many things at play. We had someone on who said there's only a hundred percent of a feeling in a dynamic. If somebody's so anxious and they're taking up basically 75% of the anxiety, you can only have 25% anxiety. Between two people.

For the record, I don't agree with this, but go ahead.

It's like a cake.

I didn't mean to offend you. I just wanted to.

I'm using it as an example to say what my thought is. I do think that's real. I notice it in so many dynamics. I notice it with my parents. 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.

Maybe you're compensating in a way.

I gotta balance this out. It could just be personality too. But in my personality he's doing that. And so if I recognize that he is so worried or freaking out,

So then you will get zen?

Yes. I'm like, it's fine. Let's just remember what this is all about. But then, if I don't experience that from him, I'm that.

Oh, interesting.

Only then do I realize how I really feel.

Only in the process of that. Yeah. So you clearly have a perspective on this whole childhood thing. If you really want to understand somebody's motives, and maybe even what's intrinsically motivating to them, you have to go back. you said it, not me, that there's something in, for example, Sapolsky's background that would make him want to believe.

Why that would be more soothing for him.

I'm sure you've covered this territory, but have you figured out your own? What is it for you then? Oh, so much.

That's all we talk about.

Oh, you're like, well, just give me the one-liner then.

For me, approval from white people. From white people?

Did you grow up in like an all-white?

Georgia?

A suburb of Atlanta.

but very white, and I needed to be them to be safe. I couldn't be them, so it was just assimilating to the nth degree.

This is perfect for you. You can get approval. I've gotten approval from the tall white man.

That's the best you can do.

Yeah, yeah. You've reached the apogee. Okay, wait, and then what's the one-liner for you? What's the hole you're trying to fill then?

It's not dissimilar. It's rooted in a feeling of no safety. So divorce, mom, a bunch of stepdads, a lot of violence, men dominating me all the time. so I need to get in a position where I cannot be outfoxed. Intellectually, I cannot be outfoxed.

You know, I feel this whole view is not super popular right now in like therapy.

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, that was my other big pushback against him. I think my biggest complaint about all intellectual endeavors is the false dichotomies and the binary positioning. So you're either determinist or you're.

free will. Or nature, or nurture.

And then now I'm bringing it back to your book. So also I listened to a great episode about can we learn to debate in an effective way. The actual title of the episode is Can We Disagree Better? 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. This student pointed out a lot of great stuff, 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.