Adam Grant #4 (on the secrets of strong connections)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hello. Our guest today is here for the fourth time. He's almost in that five timers. Can we have our own five timers? You know SNL has that. Yeah. He's biting on the heels of. Let's do six timers. Six timers. Do we have any six timers? Is Sedaris? Kristen has to be a six timer. Has to be. She has to be. Yeah, yeah. There's no way she's not. Okay, she's the only one. Yeah, that's cool. You guys have something to look for. Sedaris has done six. Oh, six for Sedaris. Six for Sedaris. We are so lucky. I can't even imagine. To get to talk to Sedaris six times, to get to talk to Adam Grant four times. Anyways, we're so lucky. Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and a bestselling author. His books are Hidden Potential, Think Again, Originals, and his new book out on October 13th, Vibe, The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World. This was so fun. You guys, we got to dance, dance, dance with Adam Grant. Though we waltzed all night. Oh, we did. We did. We enjoy him so much. Please enjoy Adam Grant. We get support from Quince. I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait. I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers. Give me the boots. Give me a reason to wear something other than a t-shirt. And I'm like, I'm going to wear a t-shirt. Honestly, that's why I love Quince. Because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at $60. $60. $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. 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And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This message is brought to you by AppleCard. Ah, fall. That cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scarves. But before we go, let's talk about the fall. Before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set, there's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use AppleCard with ApplePay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your AppleCard in the Wallet app on your iPhone, and start using it right away with ApplePay. Subject to credit approval, AppleCard is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com. What do you think of this weather, Adam Grant? I don't know what country I just arrived in. Yeah, I feel like the only time I've ever experienced heat like this was I was on a cruise with my family in, I don't know, 98. And we got off the cruise ship onto a tender to go to Bali. And when we got on that boat, I was like, oh no. I don't think my body can handle this level of heat and humidity all at once. So painful. It feels like our oldest was born in North Carolina in June. And they let us out of the hospital at midnight. It was 100 degrees. Yeah. And you couldn't even breathe. In where, North Carolina? In Chapel Hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are the complaints about Pennsylvania? You don't have fires. Some tornadoes occasionally, no? Rare. Not like we had in Michigan. The kids don't even know where to hide in a bathroom. Okay. Do you remember those drills with your head down? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how is Pennsylvania? When you imagine retiring, if you even imagine that, do you stay? I will definitely never retire. You'll never retire? No. Don't even try it. Funny enough, just before you, I'm going to try it. When you arrived, we had Jared Diamond on, who set the record at UCLA, I just found out. He taught there for 56 years. Wow. Isn't that crazy? That's a lot of teaching. Yeah. How long have you been teaching at Morton? We're coming up, I think this is 18 years, maybe. Okay. And how long do you think you could do? I hope to always do it. You hope to die at the pulpit there in a classroom. Ideally not. That would be traumatic for all involved. Okay. Do I have the number right? Are you now on seven years consecutive? Are you now consecutive of getting top-rated professor at the school? No. No. Because after the seventh year, they retired the award. Okay. Tell me more about that. They were probably sick of giving it to you. They're like, we can't keep giving it to him, but it's not ethical to not give it to him if he earned it. I hope if they bring it back, they call it the Adam Grant top-rated professor award goes to. No. No one ever said anything to you about why they were canceling that? No, but this is not fair for two reasons. Number one, I don't know. I don't teach accounting, right? It's so much easier to teach leadership and teamwork and psychology. And number two, they base it on teaching ratings. And so the award goes to the professors who are the most liked, which is not always the best teacher. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, if you give me an A, you're going up really high right away. And if your class is fun, which as you said, yours leans more fun than like a tax class. It's not fair. So I think it's good that they got rid of it. Was there any fallout? Did you feel any resentment from other professors? Like, huh? Oh, God. He goes, well, Mr. Likeable's here. Like, were you feeling any of that? I don't know. I never encountered it directly. You might have been oblivious to it if it did occur? Probably. Okay. And so it's student-generated data, right? They hand out a thing at the end of the year? You fill out a course evaluation. And did they give a second place? No, but when they abandoned it, now there's an excellence in teaching award that just goes to, I don't know, 20 or 30 faculty a year. Have you gotten one of those? I have not failed to get it. Oh. Okay. Okay, okay, great, great, great, great. I hate this line of questioning. Tell me why. It's forcing me to admit to things that I would normally not describe. But they're true. They're factual. Yeah, they're true. So I can't weasel my way out of them. And I have an even worse question that'll make your skin crawl. So you've hit two of them. One is you're teaching a pretty fun curriculum. And then what do you think goes into it? How do you explain it? I mean, yeah, I'm the worst person to ask that question. You should talk to the students. Ask Sophia. Okay, I guess we could do that. We don't, yeah. I think the Sophia of it all is part of one of my guesses, which is like, I received a long email from you saying I have this incredible graduate student. She made this really heartfelt thing. I think it'd be worth five minutes of your time to meet her. I don't imagine that's something every professor's doing, like taking time to connect a student with a potential job. That's gotta be one of the criteria. I don't think it hurts. I think that good teachers care about their students. Oh. That matters. Yeah, okay. There are little things that probably go a long way. When I teach the MBA students, it's the first class they take at Wharton, and I memorize a couple of details about each of their backgrounds coming in. And so, Monica, you raise your hand, and I say, "Okay, Monica, tell me about your observations of effective leadership during your time as a nanny for Dax and Kristen." Or in Duluth, Georgia. Sure. Go deep. We could go to Georgia if you want. Yeah. If you want, we can. At first, they think that I've just called out the one background I happen to know, but then I go through the whole classroom of 70 or 80 students, and there's a little, I guess, performance art to it. They feel seen. Well, I guess that would be another way for me to ask the question, which is, if you were asked by the university to teach incoming professors, you'd be forced to outline some bullet point of things that you think are relevant. I would. So, what are a couple of them? What are a couple that you would -- I think getting to know students personally is a huge factor. Yes. That would be number one. Is that challenging? I mean, you have a lot of students. You have a finite amount of time. Yeah. Part of the reason that I started doing this memorizing thing is I was teaching three sections of, I don't know, 75 students each for only a week. And I felt like there was no way to build a connection with the students. Right. And I had to do something to both show that I cared about getting to know them and also draw out their experiences, which would have been much easier in a semester. And I thought, "Okay. If I come in knowing them, I'm going to be able to connect with them." So, when I'm talking a little bit about their background, when I teach culture, I can call in the military person. And when we start to talk about effective teamwork, I'm going to bring in the person who is a professional athlete. That actually allowed for some choreography that was really great. Are you looking on, like, Instagram or Facebook? How are you getting this information? If I were stalking them, it would be LinkedIn. What's that comedian's father's name whose father is a really rich private investigator? Nick Kroll? Yeah, through Kroll Institute to do background check on everyone. Not creepy at all. - Okay, so those would be some of the criteria. Now, you start the book, Vibe, with a pretty candid, detailed journey of your life from grade school to college in pursuit of making friends. A, is that hard for you to write? And then B, please tell us about that journey. I mean, it would be ironic to come into this studio and not embrace vulnerability, wouldn't it? Okay, well, you did it supremely in your book. Thank you. So, yeah, what was your experience trying to meet people and befriend people? I don't know that I noticed how hard it was at the time. I went through elementary school with a friend group. We traded baseball cards and collected comic books and played sports. And as far as I knew, everything was fine. And then in middle school, I started to notice that I was sometimes not invited to group get-togethers. And one day, my basketball disappeared. This one really broke my heart. Yeah, this is sad already. Yeah. And it would be hard for me to write. Even though you're a victim, you feel shame sometimes in these situations. It was amazing to me looking back how vivid that memory was of going to play basketball with the group of my closest friends. Brand new basketball. Yeah, I'd saved babysitting money to buy the NBA basketball. And the game's over. I'm getting ready to leave, and my ball is gone. Somebody must have been shooting it. It bounced into the stands or out the door. I couldn't find it. Eventually, everyone just left. And then the person I knew least in the whole group, it was a friend of a friend, said, Oh, yeah. One of your friends stole your basketball and was bragging about it and thinks it's hilarious. One of your friends. Yeah. That's really hurtful. The friend I'd introduced to the rest of the group. My oldest friend. The trip. And, yeah, I found myself, like, I couldn't resist writing a little footnote in the book. I still want my ball back. That's hard. That's painful. Okay, so that's junior high. When do you start getting conscious of the fact, like, I'm having a hard time. I'm looking around, and this seems to be going easier for other people. I don't remember thinking a lot about it because I had two close friends then who were not part of that group. And I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back, one of the major things that brought us together was we didn't really have other friends. Sure, sure. It was kind of we gravitated toward each other. We had a lot of common interests, too. But there was real common ground that nobody had anywhere else to go. And I really didn't realize it until right before I sat down to start writing Vibe. I was with my diving coach. And he said, I think diving taught you a lot of social skills. Because you were standing around 95% of practice just having to talk in line. And your teammates did not like you freshman year. And by the time you graduated, you were voted team captain. And I watched that transformation. Yeah. And I said, it can't have been that bad. And he said, you had one friend. You arrived in high school with one friend. And you didn't seem bothered by it. And I said, well, no, I had two. You just didn't know the other one. Sure, sure, sure. But apparently I was just kind of focused on my goals and a little oblivious to it. But it clearly stung. I'm delighted to hear it wasn't driving you crazy. It would break my heart if I thought you were really, like, pining for that. I was, though. You were? Yes, I was. So because the, I guess, getting dropped by my friend group was gradual, it was a little bit of a death by a thousand cuts experience where if someone's stealing your basketball, it's not a tragedy, right? But it's the most salient thing that kind of said to me, I'm no longer one of them. None of the ones who I thought were my friends even bothered to have my back here. My two friends that I was close with, we were so close that I think that it sort of filled the void. I really wanted to be liked. That was important to me. But I went from being bullied to just being excluded. And so the fact that I wasn't being bullied anymore made it seem like things were actually fine. I lost a bunch of friends. They obviously weren't good friends anyway. But at least nobody is making my life a living hell. Yes, yes. There was some improvement happening. What were the, if you don't mind, what were the bullying, like, what were they saying? Were they saying specific things to you? Most of it was being made fun of for being a nerd. Okay, nerd. Okay, got it. Even my friends called me Mr. Facts. Classic bullying, a nerd. I mean, that was a thing back then, maybe still, but like a dork or a nerd. What if I was just like throwing up? Yeah, just fire on, Monica. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know. Let's role play here. So I'm one of the guys, okay. What breadcrumbs do you start accumulating? I know by the time you get to college, some things start clicking. So what? What things do you pick up along the way? The first thing I learned was people wanted to be around me if I was good at something that helped the team. This was really easy. Springboard diving. Getting good at diving. Junior Olympics. All of a sudden, the swimmers didn't hate every diver because I was scoring points for the team. Yes. That gave me a simple way to be valued. And then I think when I got to college, you haven't met Brian Little yet, have you? No. I hope not. I'm so bad with this. You haven't. You haven't. You would remember. If you met him, he's just a dazzlingly brilliant and funny personality psychologist who I had the pleasure of meeting halfway through college. And I noticed that suddenly the people that I wasn't clicking with, when I interacted with them in Brian's class, suddenly we had a vibe. And I didn't know why. And I thought it was just the magic of Brian. But over time, I saw that Brian was doing things that actually were facilitating. He was helping us connect. And he would drop these little nuggets that then just stimulated conversation that was missing in a class. And so he would say things like, hey, did you know if you're an introvert, if we sprinkle lemon juice on your tongue in the morning, you will salivate more than extroverts do. What? Could that possibly be true? There's evidence for it. And I had the same reaction. Weird. And I immediately came home and told my roommates who tuned me out every time I talked about psychology. Right. Until then. Yeah. It was kind of a water cooler moment. But he was also teaching me to elicit curiosity and to start conversations in ways that I just thought everything I was learning was interesting. You started discerning what might be appealing to a mass audience than just. Yeah. I mean, this is the problem with every academic, right? One of the ways you succeed as a social scientist is being fascinated by things other people think are boring. Yes. Yes. It's a good need. Would I be right to guess that if I were you. And I was back in West Bloomfield and I'd gotten into Harvard, my fantasy would be like, yeah, this didn't work for me. But boy, I'm about to be with everyone that's just like me. And it's going to be hunky dory. Did you have expectations that you were going to just land figuring it out? I thought that nerds might be cool at Harvard. What I didn't anticipate was the imposter syndrome part of that. Everyone arriving and either thinking they were sort of God's gift to humanity. Or feeling like I'm the mistake. I did not belong here. Sure. I wonder what percentage that is. I wonder if there's been any mega polling to find out what percentage of the kids feel like it was a mistake they got in. I bet it's high. I would imagine it's really high. Even Bill Gates, you know, he was the number one in math in Washington by like this insane deviation, right? And then he got to Harvard. And all of a sudden he's like, oh, shit, I'm like the third best at math in here. Like, I didn't think this was going to work. I'm going to go. I got to drop out. I got to pivot. Yeah. You have to go start Microsoft because you couldn't. Yeah. But just even if Bill Gates gets somewhere, it's like, fuck, I'm not really as smart as he is. That's crazy. Sometimes I think that about people who went to Harvard. I'm like, you went there? Okay, in the other direction. So, look, there is some reason to have some imposter syndrome there because you do. Everyone has this idea of it. And then now as an adult, when I meet people from there, I'm sometimes like, okay. Underwhelmed. It wasn't this thing I put at like this unreachable, untouchable school. They're not all will hunting. They're almost never mad at you. They're not like genius. Yeah. Which I know is a great disappointment to you. Yeah, exactly. Once in a generation genius. Yeah. But, Monica, I can't tell you how glad I am I'm not in my 20s anymore because at that point in my life, I was defined by being a Harvard student and a Harvard graduate. Literally every dumb thing I did. Yeah. Good one, Harvard. You went to Harvard and it's just never ending. Yes. That's hard. Yeah. People are very, very envious of people who went to Harvard. But they also, that's what I'm saying. It's envious, but I think there's also, there is this. Mystique. Yeah. I guess mystique around it that if you didn't go, you're like, oh yeah, those are geniuses. Yeah. And they're really just people. Smart people. I know I've already told you this story on one of the 80 times we've interviewed you, but a good friend of mine, Christine, went to Harvard Law. Opposite of you, she went U of M, then Harvard Law. I've been with her so many times when people were like, well, where'd you go to law school? And she says Harvard. And the lashing she has to endear. The H-bomb. I'm like, fuck this, dude. I mean, you just learned not to drop the H-bomb. Yeah. And then you went to school in Boston. And that's, that's more antagonistic in some weird way. How do you define vibe? Let's get a definition out of you for vibe. All right. I think about a vibe as the quality of connection between two people. Okay, great. Which is different, I think, from the way that a lot of people talk about it, which is I hear all the time, this place has a vibe or I love her vibe. And I have come to believe from the science that a vibe is less something you give off and more something that you create in your interactions with other people. Right. I think a popular opinion would be that a vibe is intrinsic, like the space intrinsically has a vibe or this person has a vibe. What happens psychologically and even physiologically when people are in a vibe? Okay. Is it measurable? The neuroscience on this is amazing. So if you take a moment when you feel like, wow, I was really vibing with that person, whether it's a first date or a great brainstorming meeting, you can see a couple of things happen. One is that your brain waves synchronize. people yeah the two people interacting or the group for that matter not your own exactly and then also your heartbeats will start to share a rhythm together that's so right that's crazy and i just love the idea that this is not just something that we feel or imagine in our minds but you can actually trace it in your brain and in your heart wow chemistry i mean literally chemistry yeah yeah yeah yeah but you must also reject that even the way you just phrase that as like it's not just something you feel it's measurable here i think that distinction's outdated and ridiculous right there's no division between that yeah that's probably overly cartesian yeah right exactly yeah like this fake separation dualism yeah yeah yeah but there are things that we imagine that are really hard to pick up a physiological trace of i like the fact that the signature of a vibe is so clear that you can detect it the thrust of this book is you don't have or not have the capacity to vibe with people you're not intrinsically incapable of it or or capable of it that in fact it very much is something that is manufactured and created between two people and that there are many different situations that are going to up the chances of that happening and that we can gain this that's a great summary of the premise okay i don't like the gaming part oh tell me why well i think it makes it sound like a trick and i think it's manipulative you think it sounds manipulative yeah gaming sounds i don't want to use other people yeah a little bit okay i start to think also about i don't think there are shortcuts i don't think that a vibe is something you hack i think that it's a skill you build to get better at connecting with more of the people more of the time i am still dumbfounded by the fact that i can meet a complete stranger and instantly with no effort we have just hit it off yes and i can sometimes interact with somebody that i know really well and like and respect and i can meet them and i can meet we just are like oil and water those are heartbreaking aren't they devastating yeah name your number one i got my number one oh god who are you like most excited to meet that you admired and then you met and you're like that was a big miss okay so this is easier to answer if the person's not alive right right i don't think this is mean to the other person this is like oh you for whatever reason you two don't have that mine was james hatfield like i fucking love metallica this is a recovering addict he's super masculine he likes hot rods and but he now talks feelings yeah he does now he's in chapter six oh i know so it didn't no like i'm hanging with lars so then then i get to meet him instead of dinner i'm so excited and i've been waiting since i was 11 to do this and then yeah there was just like zero sparks right if he were a girl i'd be like okay we're definitely on to the next wow yeah and i was like oh bummer i really thought we would vibe out did you tell him no i mean all we had is that exchange and then i left and then that's been my experience with him it's not like i know him now and we can reminisce on the time we didn't click okay so if you were to rewind knowing what you know now what do you think went wrong in the interaction and how would you approach it differently i wouldn't i don't think anything went wrong i was my genuine self and i think he was his genuine self and i think that didn't click and i'm not gonna click with everybody yeah do you think everyone's supposed to vibe with everyone yeah no but i but i think there are conditions we can create that increase the probability and you know i start to think about if we take james as an example i'm not gonna click with everybody i'm not gonna click with james as an example i think okay there are multiple wavelengths you could interact with him on so yeah you showed up you felt like you were authentic but which version of dax showed up is there another one that would have elicited a different version of him there's no question that i could have many different outcomes with many different approaches yeah also it's totally fine if he's like an introvert he's not in the business of wanting to make a new pal while he's eating dinner i accept all that that's fine i think that's fair and actually this is something that i think we all need to get better at is we walk away from those situations often either thinking there's something wrong with them and they're not who i thought they were or there's something wrong with me and i screwed this up that's where the shame comes in and i think just accepting hey like for whatever reason in that moment let me be painfully clear i have no judgment of james hatfield i don't think he did one thing wrong i think just if we were a boy and a girl we wouldn't have gone dancing that night i don't know if i trust someone who gets perfectly along with everyone oh you think they're fake yeah they're very surface or something i'm like who are you for real if you get along with absolutely everyone are you being honest or truthful about your opinions or yourself interesting i think it's really relevant where we all come from though you're an academic we just heard your history you are with other students who really prioritize studying and overachieving and performing and this is really really essential information for them and the star of the cheerleading team she has a different version and i i get to have a different version you know it's not to say it applies for a long time i had a i need to get along with everyone i need everyone to like me so i don't get thrown out of the group but now i don't feel that now i'm like skeptical of like little me who was like doing what she needed to do but now i'm like yeah that person wasn't always being honest mm-hmm or truthful okay so if somebody vibes with too many people you think that's a clue that they might be it's a little bit of a red flag a red flag of what though of people pleasing yeah approval seeking yes i think the insecurity it can trigger in people if they observe that it's like oh then that interaction with me wasn't sincere what's the ideal how many people should someone vibe with that you green light them you know i don't think we can say across the board whether it should be this number i think some people would crave more connections and more vibes and some people probably have enough okay so i think that's right so it's interesting though i don't disagree that you have a skill when it comes to just connecting with people i don't know if monica if you would agree with that too with the dax does dax does yeah yeah i mean i think that's part of why this podcast has been such a hit i think it's part of why you have made it to where you are yeah but i think that it's really easy to look at that and say yeah that's just intrinsic to you as opposed to there are deliberate things you do that elicit that yes yes i'm curious to hear what they are because i think yeah no i just i mean because i think you connect with people definitely i think i connect well with people i think we do it in much different ways so i'm curious what the let's compare and then i'll tell you who is better i love the fact that i can look at both of you now yeah first time in the new studio this is amazing oh yeah it's your first time on video yeah i love it oh not near that i want to first lay out the architecture of it and we'll go through it kind of systematically but basically the book is organized into three challenges right so there's sparking connection that's one thing with a lot of tips then there's sustaining connection and then there's scaling connection so we shall start though with first let's go through the four types of relationships you lay out in the book we'll try not to debate those too much the archetypes so we can get through the book i mean i came in expecting a little bit of a fight on that's why we like having you but i'm ready to go ready i've got some ammo you ate your wheaties today i definitely came prepared with extra data one of the things that's bothered me for a long time is friend is a meaningless term we have all kinds of people that we call friends and that call us friends and it doesn't really give me any useful information about how important is this relationship to us and are we investing in it in the same way and it doesn't tell us what ultimately is the goal of the connection and that bothers me because i know we all have colleagues some of them become friends and others don't we have some people who are friends that feel like family and everybody has at least one family member that they would prefer not to be related to and so this idea of sorting people into categories in terms of just what part of our life they fit into are they work are they home are they you know a friend in between i've just found that increasingly unhelpful what i've wanted to do is find a better way to talk about the different ways that people vibe and i've always wanted to find a better way to talk about the different ways that people vibe and i've always wanted to talk about the different ways that people after analyzing data from lots and lots of studies around the world i found that there are four types of connections that exist pretty much everywhere so i've come to call them associates allies pals and companions so associates are basically people who have compatible needs with yours it could be you know a neighbor who does a carpool with your kids that you help each other out that way it could be your painter at your house like they have a service to offer you pay for it these people are usually reliable and trustworthy but you don't have usually a strong sense of meaningful connection with them i think meaningful connections are usually allies pals or companions so allies are people who share your goals pals are people who share your interests and hobbies and companions are people who share your values and there can be some crossover within those i assume i think life would be a lot similar if everybody fell into only one category well and i think a lot of the tension in relationships is that someone wants i think someone to be all four and maybe observes that there's another person in that friend's life that seems to occupy all four why don't i but the pal i think is the easiest one to explain to point out like a pal by your definition is someone you're specifically looking to have fun with yeah you don't need them to be deep you don't need them to be reliable you don't need them to help you achieve anything you don't need the values it's like who do i want to go off and have a fucking riot with and i'm probably not going to trust them to take my kids to the doctor and i'm probably not going to trust them to take my kids to the doctor if i'm not around exactly but there are certainly pals in your life that are like why aren't i why don't you call me when you have some big emotional thing going on going on. I do think there becomes jealousy among these categories that people observe if they've not articulated a name for it, but they know them. Yeah, this is like the Esther Perel, like you can't fill all the boxes. As a partner, yeah. Yeah. It is, in general, people have closer relationships when they do cover all the different wavelengths, but it also can create a lot of complications. It's really simple to have somebody who's just a pal in your life. Yeah. And you say, okay, we're going to go to a concert together. We're going to catch a movie. We might go on vacation. But that gets really problematic if you thought that person was a close enough pal that you also wanted some companionship from them, and they weren't there for you when you needed them. Or you made the mistake of thinking, you know what? I really like this person. Let's start a company together. And you discover you do not like working with them, and they're a bad ally for you. You know, it's interesting. You kind of have given language to something that I had to figure out in my 20s. Which was there was a particular friend that I loved. I was regularly disappointed with their dependability or them showing up for me in a way that I hoped. And although I didn't go like, okay, right, they're just a pal. But I went, oh, yeah, I have to have different expectations for different people in my life. And if I hold everyone to some standard that I have, I'm going to be miserable. Like I have to take people for as they are. And interestingly, I guess now reading this architecture, it's like, yeah, I basically just slid them into pal category without knowing that's what I did. Yeah, that's exactly how I found it useful. Everybody has been let down by a pal at some point. And you either try to then change the relationship and say, here's the allyship I expect of you, or here's the companionship I demand of you. I want a level of intimacy with you. Yeah. That you're incapable of. Yeah, I have a lot of those, right? Where it's like, we're friendly. I see you all the time. Why aren't we intimate? That drives me nuts sometimes. Yeah. It's super frustrating. And so rather than sort of fight that uphill battle, you decide, you know what, we are going to be pals and I'm okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. It's very helpful. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking if your alarm is actually set before you go to bed. You could have sworn you set it. Even remember looking at your phone. But looking at it and pressing the button are two different things because now you're waking up to sunlight and panic. Yeah. Checking first always makes sense. So check Allstate first for an auto quote. It could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. 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They get age-appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Sleep mode is genius. Right? And here's the thing. For anyone under 16, a parent has to go to sleep mode. And if you're under 16, you don't have to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on, and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens. I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com slash teen accounts. We get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight loss, we're here to help. We're here to help. We're here to help. We're here to help. We're here to help. 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Serious side effects may include inflamed pancreas and gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills, and before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. Taking Foundeo with an insulin or sulfonylurea may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and may cause kidney problems. Once daily, Foundeo is available by prescription only in 0.8 milligram, 2.5 milligram, 5.5 milligram, 9 milligram, 14.5 milligram, and 17.2 milligram tablets. Learn more at foundeo.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX. Now is perfect to talk to your doctor about Foundeo. Okay, so let's talk about sparking connection and let's talk about, I guess the framing of this would be how much proximity matters, in friendships, right? And there's some pretty great data about this. I think it would shock people, but generally, how do people become friends? I thought it was similarity. I thought we click with people who have the same personalities as us. Yeah, or love the same bands or whatever. I mean, that can be true, right? Similar interests can bring you together. That's an easy way to find a pal. But what's so funny is, whether you look at kids in elementary school or police officers going through a police academy, they generally become close friends with the people who are friends with the people who have the same letter or last name that they do. What? Because they're seated next to each other and roll call. Oh my God, that's crazy. Whoever happened to be near you. Dude, Aaron, like think about Aaron Weakley, my lifelong soulmate, love of my life. Best friend, Aaron. Best friend, Aaron Weakley. Is that next to you? Well, I had a best friend at my previous junior high, Kevin Gwynn, and he goes, "Hey, when you get to Muir Junior High, say hi to Aaron Weakley." He was my best friend at elementary. Can't wait. I love Kevin. I've got an endorsement. I finally find Aaron. You know the story, Monica. I find him in the bathroom in the sixth grade hallway. Smoking. I'm like, "Are you Aaron Weakley?" And he's like, "He thinks I'm there to kick his ass." Oh. And he's like, "Yeah?" And he's terrified. And I'm like, "This is Kevin's best friend." This guy's like so nervous. And where's his personality? Whatever. So that was that. I like tried. He wouldn't even really talk back to me. And then start of seventh grade, we're seated next to each other in Mr. Nelson's class. We start drawing pictures of ball sack cowboys. That I know. And that's literally just because we got seated next to each other. That's crazy. It's hilarious. It kind of points out one of the problems inherent in the internet, which is you are connecting on similarities. Solely. There's no real proximity. It's counterintuitive. We would think that's what makes a good friendship, but no. I looked at this research and said, "Wait, so the two friends that I brought into high school with me, Con and Jeremy, we were in the same middle school program. It was an experimental program, and there were 30 kids in a class, and one of them lived a bike ride away." There you go. Yeah. And we just spent enough time together that we could develop compatible interests. Yeah. It's almost dangerous to pursue it the other way. It's like, "No, this is kind of like how it's supposed to be." We can't talk about this without talking about dating because the data on matchmaking algorithms, we could put an entire industry out of business immediately. And Monica, this may be more relevant to you than to Dax. Yeah. I love these studies that Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel and their colleagues have done, where they have you go in before. The best ones are before a speed dating event. And you fill out a questionnaire with everything you could think of about you, everything you could think of that you're looking for in another person. And then they have a bunch of machine learning algorithms that use AI to try to figure out who's going to match. And there is zero predictive utility from anything that you say about yourself, either being similar to or complementary to anybody else you've met. And also, what you claim you want in other people has no bearing on whether you click with them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's all bullshit. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there is this big industry saying, OK, we are going to find you your soulmate. No, we should be getting people to spend a little bit of time together and seeing if they can develop some compatibility rather than trying to match compatibility. Yes. And if you have this device where you can just swipe through and select the people that you've decided you're good matches with, when we already know you are not good at picking who you're a good match with, now we've empowered you to only be with people that you're certain you'd be good with. Recipe for disaster. Problematic. Well, I think a great example to talk about this proximity is to talk about Katie Coleman and Paolo Nespoli. Oh, Katie Coleman and Paolo Nespoli. OK, tell me about these two. My favorite astronauts. They are supposed to go to fly an international space station mission together. And they are incompatible. Are they from the same country? Let's start there. No. I mean, Katie's an American Ph.D. chemist. Paolo is an Italian parachute jumper engineer. And she's very deliberate and patient. And thorough and perfectionistic. And Paolo is kind of -- Fly by the seat of your pants. -- very much a ready -- Well, literally. Yeah, aim. Ready, fire, aim. I mean, he does. That's great. Oh, yeah. I should probably have aimed. They're supposed to operate a robotic arm of the space station together. And in training, they are so incompatible that the NASA team says, this is not going to work. We cannot send these two into space together. And they're ready to re-engineer the mission. And by the end of their time in space together, Katie calls Paolo her space brother and says, first, they became really great allies, and they're willing to put each other's lives in their hands. Then they become pals, discovering a shared love of music, and ultimately companions. Katie kind of being a shoulder for Paolo to cry on when his mother passes away while he's in space and helping to plan a flyover Italy moment where they can look at the boot during the memorial. You could have done all of the analysis on paper and said, it's just not worth the risk. And you would have lost. And I think one of the greatest relationships either of them has had in their life. There's so many examples like this. And we think about our own lives. And how many people are you close to now that you met and said, nope, not for me? Well, and also these two perform this impossible task, Monica, which is they have this arm, and then there is this module that has been deployed, right? And you're orbiting the planet at 17,500 miles an hour. And they've got to catch this device hurtling through space with the arm. They get into. They get into the exercise and it's already not going as it has gone so many times in the simulation, which they've done together. And it's because they've never had Earth in the background as this very distractive force and a perspective fucking force. And what ends up happening is they get into this dicey situation where they're kind of off script and they both make maneuvers that complement each other without even communicating. Not only did they get along, but they became synchronistic. Yeah. Yeah. And at the end, at the end of this six months together, she said, I would love to do another six months in space, which is crazy. Yeah, that's so cool. It's amazing. So there were mechanisms at play that got these two to have a vibe. Well, one of the things that I think is brilliant at NASA is they used to put people through training and essentially be like, okay, you meet a new colleague, you go to lunch together, then you see them again in a few weeks or a few months. And the problem with that is you can stay at the surface. When you have those sporadic interactions, NASA figured out you got to do a deep dive really fast. And so what they do is they take astronauts and cosmonauts and they get them lost in the wilderness, usually in Utah with an outdoor leadership guide. And they have to fend for themselves. You cannot put on a mask for 11 days when you're lost in the wilderness. The real you is going to come out. Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that happened on their crew that really helped them bond was this incredible trainer, John Canningator, who sat them down and said, tell me your origin. Tell me your origin story. And they all told the story of the moment as children that they first knew they wanted to go to space. And I think what that does for them is it creates a sense of what psychologists call optimal distinctiveness, which is the feeling of fitting in and standing out at the same time. Not all similarities actually connect people once you develop or discover them. It's only similarities that are rare that have that power. I remember the first time I went to Europe, I met somebody from Michigan. Instant best friend. I cannot believe I ran into somebody who can do this and point to the hometown. If I met that person in Michigan, meaningless. Right. Right? They're also the beneficiaries of this observation, which is emotional intensity accelerates connections. So shared arousal, excitement, fear, physical exertion, vulnerability. This like speeds up bonding, which is why like summer camp is what it does. Film sets, military service, college dorms. Yes. Now talking about accelerated connections, do you tell us about Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis? It feels like you made it up. It's too convenient. Mind-boggling story, but carefully reported in research. So Ann Atwater and C.P. Ellis, they tried to kill each other in the late 60s, early 70s in Durham, North Carolina. C.P. Ellis was the local leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He had a crazy title. Do you remember it? It was a spooky title. Exalted. Exalted Cyclops. Yeah, Cyclops. I'm trying to remember. Yeah. You're like, what is this, Dungeons and Dragons or a hate group? They all have those crazy names. I know, they're all like fantasy nerds, sorry. Crazy. Exalted Cyclops. I mean, Grand Dragon. Yeah. He's a white supremacist. And Ann is a local civil rights leader. She's black. She is tough. She's not afraid of a fight. She's an imposing figure. And they've been at odds a few times. Coming into this strange situation in Durham where there's federally enforced desegregation in schools, finally. And there's essentially a town hall where a conflict mediator or social worker is brought in and Ann and C.P. starts swearing at each other during it. And this mediator, Bill Riddick, has this wild idea. And he says, what if I make them work together? What if I get them appointed the co-chairs of the committee to desegregate Durham schools? It does not go well at first. C.P. refuses to talk to her. He brings a gun to a meeting and shows it to her. And then she brings out her Bible. Oh, wow. It's intense. She's already lunged at him with a knife going into this. He's already had a plan to try to shoot her or somebody from one of her rallies. I mean, just the whole thing is a mess. And I think if we looked at them today, if we pause right there, we would write them off. But over the course of this intense experience, they suddenly discover that they actually have some shared goals. They both come from poverty. Both of their kids are really suffering. And they're just kind of exhausted working morning to night. They break down into tears. And as they described it later, they start to melt. And you can see, if you follow the arc of their story, you can see how being sort of put in this position of having to do an intense task in a bubble where you're not interacting with other people. You're just kind of all in on this. So Anne is away from the civil rights activists who say, you may not ever talk to a white supremacist, which is an understandable position. She is away from his crowd that will say. There's no way they were supportive of him talking to a black female. Not a chance. And in that bubble that they're in, the intense emotions of the experience, they bring out vulnerability in them. They start to become associates and uneasy allies. And then there's some music built in. They have these kind of nice pal interactions. And ultimately, they break down into tears and become companions. And they become so close as friends that Anne's granddaughter grows up calling him Uncle CP. Oh, my God. He quits, obviously. He leaves the KKK. Yeah, yeah. He had to say goodbye to that fun title Cyclops. Well, maybe they still call him that for him. Yeah, hopefully he got the. I hope not. Reformed Cyclops. Or Uncle Cyclops. Maybe she's called him Uncle Cyclops or Grandpa Cyclops or whatever. I look at that and I think, okay, this is not something you could engineer in most situations where there's that level of hatred. But there are principles we can take away from it. One of which is, Dex, as you were saying earlier, emotional intensity does accept. Accelerate connection. I love the haunted house data on this. So if you go with a friend to a haunted house, you will end up becoming closer afterward. Your bond accelerates. Good first date, then? Haunted house? Potentially. Seems like it. That's really fast. That's too fast. You're moving too fast. Maybe like third or fourth date. Okay. Depends how easily you scare. Because you have to physically grab each other. Yeah, what if Brad Pitt asks you to go to a haunted house this Halloween? But it only works if you have a little debrief about it afterward. Oh. So that there's some shared experience of processing it, not just the jump scare during it. Oh, interesting. Which I thought was kind of cool. And so you can say, okay, that's a version of, we need our hearts racing, but we need our hearts racing together. It's not just you go into a haunted house, I go into a haunted house, we come out, now we're best friends. This has to be something that only we understood. Yeah. And we had a unique conversation about. But Bill Riddick did marionette a little bit of it, right? What were some of the tasks he gave to help facilitate this? With NNCP? Yeah. One of the things that he did that I thought was ingenious was as co-chairs of this committee, he had them write a report on how to make sure that desegregating the schools was not a disaster. And CP said, well, I got to protect the white kids from these black kids who are coming in. And Ann said, I need to protect the vulnerable black kids from the white kids who are coming in. Yeah, yeah. And so all of a sudden they realized. We're both scared on behalf of our folks. And we need to write a peace plan, essentially, together to protect our own children. Yeah. And it's a common goal, but it also sort of created a common enemy, which is either side wanting violence is now a threat to their interests. Yeah, we agree on what would be bad. Yeah. You confront a fallacy, and this is great because I think a lot of people operate under this belief that first impressions tell us who people really are. And of course, you have the incredible example of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, which I didn't know this. I don't know if you've read the story, which is pretty fascinating. But first of all, why is that wrong? I'm guilty of this. I'm like, yeah, I'm just, I think I'm really great at assessing someone's prima facie. And my story is given my background, right? So I have this whole story that I'm pretty good at sniffing out. This goes kind of against Malcolm. This is like thin slicing a little bit. Oh, okay. Does it? I mean, a little, right? Yeah, all the science on intuition. But anyways, tell us. No, I think what's actually interesting, if you were to juxtapose this against Blink, I think what Blink told us is, is you can infer particular things about people from thin slices. The classic Nalini Ambati study was you look at a 30-second video of a professor giving their first lecture, silent, and then you can predict their teaching ratings at the end of the semester. You have these nonverbal cues that signal enthusiasm and excitement and passion and care, some of the things we were talking about earlier. How much do you really know the person and what they're going to be like to interact with outside of that setting? Not a lot. You have gotten a snapshot of a professor, not of a human. Yeah. Yeah, I think the huge error we make constantly is we assume people are consistent in different contexts. Yes. This was a great point that Orna made. Do you know Orna, the psychologist? I've heard you guys talk about her. She's the love therapist, right? Yeah, she's the couple therapy. Yeah. What I admire about her is that every time the show starts, you meet these five couples. I'm always like, fuck this. They all need to run away from each other, right? They're completely triggering each other. This is a bad match. And particularly, I asked her, like, you know the criteria for narcissism. I'm watching, and I know this guy's a narcissist. How are you staying optimistic about this? And she said, well, what's really interesting is that people are narcissists. It's still contextually dependent. They can show great narcissism in some areas and then not in others. And she's like, I personally don't subscribe to the all-day, all-in personality type. No one should. That's very powerful and very challenging to most of us because it's inconvenient. It is inconvenient. It would be a lot easier if people were consistent. I mean, if we could just put people in boxes, astrology would be legitimate. Sorry, Monica. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. We'll put a pin in that. Yeah, put a pin on that. Your call, whether you want to go there or not. But I think that a lot of people hear a description of a personality, and they think that means you're like that all the time. No, personality is not your destiny. It's your tendency. And your personality traits really just describe what your default instincts are. And so if I were to say, let's take an example. Let's do agreeableness. Monica, I think you're a little more agreeable than Dax on average. Thank you. Oh, wow. I don't know if you're right about that. I do. I agree with you. But I'm proving your point by disagreeing. Guilty as charged right here. He can't even make it a sentence without fighting on it. But I think that all that says is if we followed you for your whole life, you will end up on the agreeable side of the spectrum a little more often than Dax. And maybe you'll go further to the kind of cooperative extreme than he does. But you fluctuate all the time. And there are situations where you will be really antagonistic. Definitely. And there are situations, Dax, where you're going to be really probably even accommodating of other people. If you had video of me at night in my household with my children and my wife versus video of what we do have with Monica and I in here, this is completely two different people. Yeah. And I think what we overlook is this has completely changed the way I think about personality. We all have what psychologists call if-then. We all have what psychologists call if-then signatures, which are like our thens are, okay, there's an agreeable side of you. There's a disagreeable side of you. There's an extroverted side of you. There's an introverted side of you. The ifs are what are the triggers that bring out each version of you. And I think the problem with snap judgments is we are seeing a then and we're missing the if. That makes sense. I mean, we even talked about this yesterday on a fact check. Dax was telling a story about his kids and family getting in and out of the car. They're supposed to leave at a certain time and they weren't. He was telling this story. And he's just like not saying anything. And I was like, look, I normally disagree with you on most things, but you're right in this case to be mad. And like, I would be very disagreeable in that situation. I'd be like, everyone needs to get in the car right now. We're not negotiating when the plane leaves. It's set time. But you were agreeable there because you didn't want to cause a fight. It's not worth it. Yeah. Yeah. But I would not be able to be agreeable in that situation. That's a great example of the better you get to know someone, the more you see them in 3D. And you realize if you pay close attention, I can understand how to elicit different versions of them, which, you know, I think goes right back to our Metallica buddy, James. Okay. So you saw a particular then in a certain if. I can't help but wonder in those situations. What if you met in a different context? Would a different version of him have shown up? This never occurred to me. But as you're now saying this, this just crossed my mind, which I think is probably true, which is I have been a fan of James Hatfield since I was 11. I have expectations that we will get along great. He, like me, has incredible spidey senses when someone approaches with really big expectations. I know what that feels like. You can sense it. So let's just start there. Probably. He's like, oh, fuck. You know, this is a task now. I've got like, here's the fanboy. He has expectations. And I'd rather just not meet them. I can't deliver, dude. I got I'm going to do a show in an hour. It's not the time for me to expend energy making your dream come true. It's all legitimate. But if you came up after. After the show. Or when he's on vacation and we're at the same hotel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You never know. You're right. I should hold out. Maybe we'll still go boar hunting in Russia together. Even though I don't want to hunt. I mean, if you're that much of a fan. But I do like the idea of saying, OK, we see this all the time. I was floored by watching Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova become close because they had such a heated rivalry as players. OK, this is the person who's standing in the way of you achieving your. Life goal. Of course, you're not going to immediately hit it off. But all of a sudden, you're not rivals on the tennis court anymore. And you're able to develop a lot of reasons to have a close connection. It's the only other person on the planet that knows what she's been through. Yeah, the only. And I just wonder how many of those connections we miss because we write the person off after the first interaction didn't go well. Right. So I didn't know this, but C.S. Lewis and Tolkien both were professors at the same time in the 30s at Cambridge. They were at Oxford. Oh, Oxford. They started in the late 80s. Late 20s. And they had a terrible first interaction. They fucking hated each other. Really? They hated different authors. They were both literature professors. They hated different ones. One was a Christian. One was an atheist. They couldn't stand each other. And then C.S. Lewis sees that Tolkien is going to host this reading of Norse mythology. Mm-hmm. Like, it's just an extracurricular fun thing to do. And he decides to attend. Neither of them yet feel liberated to be indulging writing fantasy. Oh, wow. They hadn't yet. They hadn't yet, right? No. I mean, at that point, they're just riffing about Thor. But they discover, oh, on this topic, I like that version of the other person. And now maybe there's something here. And that becomes the gateway to, had they not been willing to just let go of their first impressions of each other, we might have no Narnia and no Lord of the Rings. That's crazy. Isn't that wild? And also probably them substantiating each other's dreams in some weird way. It seems like it was obviously never met them. But it seems like it was valid. Yeah. To have another kind of wonky academic who actually wanted to tell great fantasy stories. Yeah. Huh. What do you mean by people are shapeshifters? I think about shapeshifting as the process of kind of fluctuating on your then when you have a different if. So asking me if my son is courageous or timid. And I'll say it depends on whether you see him on the ski slopes with his friends or the amusement park with his sisters. The latter, he'll be a little bit more cautious. Because he knows that they're older and they're willing to try rides that are scary. And that was a little hard for him. On the ski slopes, he will be the first one flying down the mountain wanting to egg on his peers a little bit. Yeah. And so who is he? Is he brave? Is he cautious? Yes. Right, right. He's a shapeshifter. Yeah. I want to hear, Dax, you said you recognize things you do to bond with people. Mm-hmm. I want to hear this thing that comes so easily to you. How do you do it? I have one observation, which is the first time we met. I guess it was. It was up here. Monica, I don't know if you remember this. I don't know if you were in the room yet. Maybe it was before I walked in. I think it was before you came in. I remember, Dax, I guess we can check the audio, right? I remember, maybe it wasn't even recorded. You said, I want to bond with you. It was the first thing you said to me. Oh, wow. No memory of that. You don't remember it at all? It doesn't sound unlike me. No, it doesn't. I just remember being really surprised by it. I was coming to spar about ideas and share data and learn. I'm like, why does Dax want to bond with me? What is this? What is that about? It's weird. Did I want to bond with you about, I can guess which things. The village. Yep. Restaurant. Village place. Yeah. Village palace now. The potential of getting your ass kicked at the 7-Eleven next door to the village. He's like, who else am I going to run into in this job where it's like, we know the highs and lows of both going into the village and then trying to go into that 7-Eleven. The Kiga Harbor Dairy Queen. Yes, yes, yes. But now looking back at that interaction through the lens of the different wavelengths I thought, okay, this is a really interesting way. We do this in romantic relationships all the time, right? The DTR, define the relationship. Oh, I don't know that term. Or woo-woo, what's up with us? My students told me about that one. Oh, that must be new. I don't know that. That's a cul-de-sac of a question, I got to say. That's not a good question. I would not recommend anyone ask that ever. But there's something useful about it, right? You at some point declare, yes, this is a relationship or yes, this is an exclusive relationship. At some point you do have to do that unless it's obvious. You don't say. What's the deal with this? You be vulnerable and you go, I would love to be able to call you my girlfriend. How do you feel about that? Let's just go right there. So this is how I'm feeling. The fucking dance, the wordiness, like, oh shit, is he breaking up with me? Is he wanting to marry me? Well, now you just have to say woo-woo, I guess. It's kind of cool. It's cutesy-wootsy. Oh, but yes, I'm aware of a few things, which is like, I am not uncomfortable at all with vulnerable stuff. Nope. I'm not uncomfortable with trauma. I'm not uncomfortable with addiction. This is like, I'm not very flappable. And in fact, I most enjoy knowing those things. things about people because I think I much better understand who they are I think I have my own not great origin of the motivation which is like I'm very in a hurry to find out are you friend or foe and if you're foe I need to have my guard up so I think I developed really quick ways like hey can we be intimate and cool or do we need to fight one of those things has to happen because I'll be so uncomfortable waiting to find out which one it is so I think that's maybe how it started but I think that's one of the things I mean I told this on the other podcast that hasn't aired yet but I will say I've come to find out there's also a responsibility behind that that I did not acknowledge I didn't have the awareness that that was a unique quality of mine and I definitely think there were many girls I had very casual relationships with that for them I came with a level of intimacy that was very misleading and I didn't know that I thought because I was quite honest about my intentions or I didn't know that I thought because I was quite honest about my intentions or I never told someone I loved them that I didn't you know I thought my side of the street was clean but now that I'm older and I look back I do realize that level of intimacy was probably pretty unique for a lot of people and it was probably a bit misleading and I feel quite bad about it I think that makes sense I also think this is where people often confuse the rituals with the type of relationship you have I would say what you were doing in those conversations is you're doing a companion ritual right which is you're expressing a level of emotional intimacy that you only would do to somebody normally that you have very strong feelings about most people would normally only do but I'm quite comfortable with right and they don't know that yeah it's how could they and so they think that means this is a really serious companion yeah look one of the most heartbreaking experiences I had and it wasn't too long ago I made an amends to an ex-girlfriend and what I had come to make an amends for she was like oh yeah whatever and then she said something that broke my heart which was like yeah you know it never really got better wow and I was not prepared for that and that I felt really terrible better for her yeah like she never did connect with someone so deeply again and I horrible are they that breaks my heart they're not married and look we had she is one of my more serious girlfriends but at the same time that's when it kind of clicked like oh yeah I guess a lot of the boys in my town weren't offering that level of like yeah let's get into your emotions and mine yeah and so that was kind of my light bulb moment of like oh I wish I had better awareness but if she was a serious girlfriend you then were in a relationship you gave your all in a relationship you can't like regret that I don't regret just being me but I feel sorrow that like I mean it's sad I assumed walking away oh she'll have that with everyone she dates for x amount of time you did not know you would be the one who got away and I don't even know that she feels like I'm the one that got away but just like whatever weird yeah level of intimacy we had that was easy for me to have and was unique to her and that feels very unfair to have introduced that to somebody and then just gone on with your life well she got to have it yeah yeah that's a nice thank you I felt I felt really it really you know caused me to go through the whole book again and go like oh yeah yeah that's misleading doesn't really matter what you tell people doesn't matter if I go like hey man I got a girlfriend we're in an open relationship if you want to have fun tonight I'm up for that if you don't of course whatever and then we have fun for the night I don't think I necessarily was accurate about what that experience might have been or how misleading or confusing that might have been for people I think this is one of the fundamental challenges in all kinds of relationships is actually getting on the same page about what the expectation is and I found myself thinking you know what like a lot of the conflict I have with people is we're just we're just on different wavelengths this person really wants to be a pal and I'm like nah ally do we tell each other that yeah uh-huh yeah I don't know yeah yeah that's hard that's it well that's seriously impossible I just want to be pals it's almost like a breakup if they don't know the vernacular they're gonna be like we are pals yeah me too that's what I'm trying to be yes but I don't want you in this other role stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare we get support from our presenting sponsor youtube premium now you already know I'm a big youtube person uh it's incredible on its own but premium makes the whole experience feel enhanced like you don't realize how much better it can get until you try it the biggest game changer for me 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site wide helix sleep.com slash armchair with the spark cash plus card from capital one you are an unlimited two percent cash back on every purchase and you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more my oldest had a really funny observation somebody was texting me like wanting to get together for lunch and she said oh it's a palvator this person is an associate i don't know them well but they're kind of trying to barge into a certain kind of relationship that you would only have with somebody that you enjoy and i didn't want that how do you say that there's no script i think you respond according to how you want to respond and it's on them to figure out oh that's what they're giving i can't be responsible for your ability you give with boundaries what you hope they'll read but if they're giving too much you have to pull back i think i think that is the responsibility piece that you're sort of talking about with these relationships yeah if you're giving a ton they're gonna think you're very close this is a problem this is a problem as somebody who likes to help people i think a lot of people are going to think you're very close to them and they're people mistake my attempt to be a good ally for wanting to be a pal or a companion well again because you got to acknowledge that those people have probably not had a lot of people go out of their way to help them this is my version of you being seen as a companion what are we what are the two of us yeah i'm just curious oh i gotta look at your list okay well there's some level of pal for sure because you guys hang out sometimes and you have similar hobbies which are learning learning and thinking although that could be seen as as also allyship if we both have goals of learning but we lifted weights together in montana true okay yeah anytime adam's on he stays and has dinner i mean that's a friendship that's i wouldn't say they're pals with some remind me about ally the depth of allyship i think the ally thing is implicit which is we have a shared goal he wants to best represent his book i want to best represent his book i want to best represent his book i want to best represent his book i want to best represent his book and make it interesting and what was the first one again associates i think we've passed no that's you're not i'm not paying you to maintain my sprinkler system okay yeah i think it's so we have an ally ship we have a pal ship and then by the way like we've also had intimate exchanges like there was a moment where we talked about having your wife on the podcast and we had to have very vulnerable and revealing conversations that i think is beyond what a lot of pals have but okay so this is again this is back to so like you need to be careful because i think you've had intimate interactions doesn't mean you're companions that the level of intimacy is always at a 10 or that you're always the one you go to or you know what i mean we probably just dipped our toe in companionship but no i'm not gonna call you if i'm struggling with a relationship issue with kristen i'm not gonna call you yeah i wouldn't call me for that either you have other relationships yeah yeah there's a list of dudes i would probably call your pals and allies now we are all the things you're the center of the venn diagram okay and that's why he calls you his soulmate all the time yes but do you think we're pals of course oh well i mean more like because we don't have any hobbies the fact check is is pure paldom it's just play yeah there's no point to it whatsoever that's that's why i sometimes tune out at that part no yeah it's just play it's the best part okay but i guess when you are going to like race cars or something i'm not like oh your hobbies don't overlap 100 i wish i could go do that no but we love spades we love that's true we i mean dude the fact check is us being pals you enjoy each other's company too much to not yeah i'm genuinely amused by all of your stories that go nowhere they go not one of them is relevant of telling yet i'm endlessly amused by all of them so i think that's paleship i think i used to be a better ally to both of you because i used to help recruit guests and that is no longer relevant you're a great ally if you ever think of people for us and you always send that over sophia yeah you're thinking about us we're not very good allies to you what have we done i think i do a really good job of learning his stuff well you do i mean you're i'm like you've covered i assess the other interviews if they knew your book as well as i did well we'll see what the answer is we'll see what the answer is we'll see put that in the fact check monica but let's talk about sustaining connection because i think there's also some counterintuitive assumptions we all have which is like people think frequency is is the metric they should be using and you've got wonderful cases where that's not true so much pressure on especially relationships that are supposed to account for something to interact on a regular basis if we don't have a weekly meal with our former college roommates or some parents to adult children insist on nightly phone calls and i think they're mistaking the frequency of interaction for the closeness of connection and those two things are not the same and i think the evidence is very strong on this but i think it's a very strong evidence that we're not the same and i think it's a very strong evidence that we're not the same and i think it's a very strong evidence that we're not everyone knows somebody who they could go a decade without seeing and they would pick up like they didn't miss a beat it's aaron and i we had decades where he was still a raging addict and i wasn't we did our best to be around each other but it was quite limited and then saying i'd sober it's like we were in seventh grade all over again nothing changed i think we should recognize the virtues of catching up less often i think we have too many relationships that are treated they become high maintenance because there's this guild if you're not always seeing each other or talking to each other or if you're not always seeing each other or talking to each other or if you're not always seeing each other or texting back and forth and to me that's actually a sign of a fragile relationship if the relationship cannot withstand time it might not be a strong connection to begin with kristen will love that part yeah yeah she sure would no this does not apply to your spouse let's just be clear no but how long can you go because yeah you're right like if you have like people living in other states and stuff i have that with a bunch of friends from home like yeah i don't catch up with them as much i guess as maybe i should but i don't feel like the relationship is suffering but i do feel with my friends here if i haven't seen them in three weeks or a month or something i'm like we got to see each other we got to connect i think it changes things i think that's true too so i think sustaining a connection is different from continuing to strengthen one and spending more time together obviously can continue to strengthen it but if you want to maintain it at its current level and you don't want to lose it frequency just becomes kind of a background variable yeah that makes sense and i think part of that depends on what wavelength you're on so allies are really easy think about all of the people in hollywood who could go decades without collaborating and the chemistry is right back when they find a project that's of mutual interest i think with pals too as long as you have some hobbies or activities that you both enjoy you can go water skiing with your high school friends and probably will feel pretty similar to high school i think with companions it's much harder because there is an assumption that you're not going to be able to do what you want to do and you're not going to be able to do what you want to do and so i think it's important that you in order to be emotionally connected and supportive of each other that you really know what's going on in each other's lives that it requires a lot of maintenance yeah or more and so i think we have fewer companions in general i think there's more pressure on the companion connection to to have those touch points but i also think all it takes is a little bit of interaction to signal that you care about each other what do penguins do so penguins some penguins not all penguins i love this so much when i read about it i first came across it when a nurse posted about it on twitter x whatever we call it now that some penguins have these courting rituals where they will collect and present these smooth shiny stones to show their suitability as a mate and it's kind of a gesture saying i am a good partner for you so i think the digital equivalent of pebbling is sharing memes reels articles you come across something on the internet that reminded you of something and you're like oh and you send a quick text over to them and all of a sudden they say oh wow monica thought of me i didn't expect that this is not spamming people with random junk from the internet this is not kind of a mass blast it's a personal hey i read this article dax and it's on the effects of testosterone on male connections and that reminded me of you and you're like wow i know you remember he really hates that i'm on testosterone yeah it doesn't bother me at all but you know the more specific it is to the person every pebble you send is a gesture of care and the research on this shows that if you send little pebbles it's kind of a memory flex because you're signaling to the person hey this this relationship matters enough to me that i paid attention to what you care about and i noticed something that would resonate with you and i think relationships can be kept up over distances and decades through those little pebbles back and forth they used to be letters that people wrote to each other that's true and now i'm like oh my god i don't know what to do with this i don't know what to do with this obviously it's a lot easier to do but i think it makes it more important than to choose really thoughtful pebbles kristin is a great pebbler she loves she sends me the best content every time i get a text or dm from her with a link to something usually on instagram like how do i get your feed what shows up in your feed is what i want in my feed yeah wouldn't be great if you could map your algorithm onto other people like yes give me your algorithm i want to try that for a week how do i should be a feature adam moseri make your algorithm transferable coming for you adam we have an algorithm upgrade what i never know we should ask kristin this i don't know if she's doing it deliberately because she knows that it's a low effort way to show high care or whether she's just excited to share something that will land with somebody else the latter that's what i assumed yeah i think the latter but i do think it's her personality like i don't think she's drawn to just like texting and checking in like that's not her nature right so this is more her nature she sees something and she's like something she thinks it reminds her of you yeah and so so much of that is personality because i actually like really don't like sending memes unless it's perfect like i sent dax when the other day of like someone pooping all over los angeles or something like that like and he was on the run yeah on the run and i think i said the greatest one of all time to you which was the woman who just pulled her shorts aside and pooped in a grocery store yeah and what was so obvious by the footage was oh this is not her first time it was crazy expert level at which she could just pull her pants aside do a goose turd and then keep it moving i'm like not this chick she knew where to go she like walked right to the area she had like a spot yeah she had a this is peak armchair you have to find her now and interview her about it i have a hunch that our worlds don't overlap at all yeah based on when i saw it that piggly wiggly all right now messy connections are also worth maintaining and again i think we live in an era and just me getting old but i feel like people are just like if this person's not perfect um out if he's not perfect get out of there she's not perfect dumper you know like i think man we are fucking quick to keep it moving so let's talk about how we do navigate messy connections most people assume what you want around you are your friends and you want to avoid your enemies and psychologists have now shown for the past quarter century that there's actually a world that is worse than an enemy it's a frenemy so they're called ambivalent relationships and they're people that you have both positive and negative feelings toward i see this all the time when people talk to me about their in-laws i don't know why they're talking to me about their in-laws but it's like oh i love the fact that they're great grandparents to my kids and i hate the way they belittle my partner that is a textbook ambivalent relationship i gotta hit you with this jared diamond who is just here his book is on leadership and uh there's all this incredible lose a spouse, there's a predictable drop in profits the next year or two. With a child, obviously. With a sibling and parent, yes. And then if an in-law, a mother-in-law or father-in-law dies, there is a, not statistically significant, but an increase in profits. Isn't that upsetting? Oh, I do not want to know what boards are going to do with that information. Exactly. But what's shocking to a lot of people is you can even see physical health effects, that your blood pressure spikes more if you're interacting with a frenemy than an enemy, you are more likely to suffer cardiovascular disease. If you have a lot of ambivalent relationships in your life, you are more vulnerable to heart attacks and to cardiovascular disease. And what happens is one thing that's nice about enemies is at least they're consistent and predictable. And so you minimize your contact or you put your guard up and you're done. With ambivalent relationships, you don't know. Are we going in for a hug? Do we need to brace ourselves for a brawl? Are they going to be nice to your face and then stab you in the back? And we waste tremendous amounts of emotional energy trying to anticipate how it's going to go and then manage it in the moment. And then we ruminate about it afterward and it takes a toll. And we can't just cut them out because they do have virtues, but their vices are really bad. And so for me, this raises the question of what do we do about maintaining those? What do we do? What do we do? Because also as a Virgo, which I know you respect. I do not. I've. I feel like I'm aware and Capricorns are also pretty aware of this, that we all have good things and bad things. So by this definition, every single one of my relationships is ambivalent because I know the good things about them and the bad things. But that doesn't mean. It just means we all have bad things. Yes. Don't you think some of the things are hurtful and some are not? Yeah. Right? Like I can recognize someone's bad with money, so I'm not going to start a business with them. But if they are like positive, positive, something really negative and judgmental about you, and you're like, oh God, that kind of hurt. You know, I just think whether their bad side impacts you or not is probably relevant. I drew a two by two in Vibe to try to capture this where if somebody has virtues that are great and vices that are totally tolerable, they're immediately going to be a natural ally, pal, or companion. If somebody has horrible vices and kind of virtues that you don't value, then that's an adversary, enemy person. The tricky in ambivalent relationships is the virtues are important to you. You value those positives, but the vices are also problematic for you. And so that wouldn't be all of your ties because a lot of the ambivalence is just, yeah, I don't like that thing about them, but I can get over the fact that they leave their fingernail clippings on the sink. I think a really clean example would be like an addict in your life. Yes. You might like totally love the addict, but if you're linked and dependent on them in some way, then you're not going to be a good addict. You're not going to be a good addict. You're not. You're not going to be a good psychologist. You're not going to be a good psychiatrist. You're not going to be a good if somebody has made dinner for us and it's going to be getting cold. And I was like, oh, I can show up on time in those situations. I've just seen so many relationships fall apart when people are kind of at each other's throats about, I want you to change who you are. Like, no, no, accept the tendency, contain when it appears. Yeah. Okay, scaling connection. Plan serendipity. Tell us about Jeff Zaslow. Let me start here. During my middle school days of losing friends on the basketball court, he moved in diagonal from us across the street. Oh, really? Yes. And he was the first adult who came over at a neighborhood barbecue when I was shooting baskets on my driveway alone and said, hey, do you want to play horse? How much older was he than you? He was in his 30s. I was 12. He had young kids. He just moved with his wife. He saw a middle schooler shooting hoops. I don't know if he was bored by the barbecue conversation, or he was such a giver. He was like, oh, I can help. I'll go play a game with that kid who's alone. And it turns out he's a journalist, and he took over the Ann Landers advice column. And so he's getting all these reader requests, and a lot of them have to do with love. And he decides that he's not content to just answer their questions. He wants to help them fall in love. So he dreams up a Zaz Bash where he invites his single readers to show up. They host it in Chicago. People come from multiple states. And a bunch of couples fall in love and get married. And it grows and grows. And eventually, he tracks it over the course of 15 years, 78 marriages at Zaz Bash, organized by a journalist. And so what I envisioned as a kid hearing him tell these stories was, okay, he's got a profile on each of the people, and he's trying to find them their match. But no, he anticipated what we were talking about earlier with matchmaking algorithms being bogus. And he said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to choreograph interactions that bring out a better version of me. I'm going to do a better version of each person. And a lot of the interactions were just, he had these great pal rituals. It was the heyday of Seinfeld. And so he had people show up and do a Kramer dance. Oh, my God, sounds miserable. Ooh, yeah. I mean, that would not be my cup of tea either. But a lot of people, to the point about showing a little vulnerability, they were a little bit sillier. They had more fun together. And I think it greased the wheels of connection. And I think that it's something I've really become a passionate believer in, that we think that great connections are important. I think that connections in gatherings are spontaneous. And they are not. They are choreographed in that if you design the right ways for people to connect, they are more likely to find allies, pals, companions, and hit it off. And we can make a whole list of them. Well, here's some fun ones I wrote down. No phones is a rule. That's good. At a mixer. Don't talk to anyone you know. Ooh. This is my favorite. No advising, fixing, or solving. That would be a challenge. That's a hard one for me. You would not be able to go. Yeah. But I could Seinfeld dance. I'm not going for that. But yeah, you say instead of hosting something, kind of design something. Yeah. You should have a vision in mind, whether it's a dinner party or a boring work meeting. Ideally, you come in with a vision of what kind of bond am I trying to create. If you want people to be allies, have them come in with a problem. Have the group try to solve it. I love those exercises. If you want people to be pals, have them do something silly. I would say let's play Telestrations. It's my favorite bonding game. Yeah. And then if you want people to be companions, you skip the small talk and go right to deep talk and start a conversation. It could be in pairs. It could be in a small group about what is your biggest regret. Tell me about your relationship with your mother. Exactly. Not everybody's coming to you. We've all got a lot to say about our relationships with our mothers, right? Sure. Or fathers. Okay. I'm saving this chunk of time for this because this is where we could have a fun debate and it'll be two on one. Oh, good. Yeah. I hope I'm the one. It'll be you two against me. Okay. That's going to be too easy. Because I know your position on this. Okay. So you have a little section on AI and your fear around AI, and if I could summarize, it's. Become accustomed to frictionless artificial companions. Ordinary humans with all their irritating needs, disagreements, and imperfections will begin to seem intolerable. Great relationships are not effortless. Real relationships contain friction, obligation, uncertainty, rejection, compromise, and mutual need. Go ahead and voice your fears of AI. That's pretty much it, right? That's spot on how I feel, too. The evidence is accumulating. Tell me about the evidence. Maybe I don't know about the evidence. Well, an alarming number of young people say they have an AI companion. Okay. And a sizable minority of those would rather interact with their AI companion than an actual person, even a friend. What is sizable minority? Let's put some numbers to this. It might be a third, a quarter to a third of the young people who say they have an AI companion. And what percentage of young people say they have a companion? Do you know? Seems to vary by survey, by location. The numbers are climbing, though, and actually elderly people now increasingly have them. And it turns out empirically that the most. lonely elderly people end up lonelier after interacting with AI companions. Because you cannot have. Yeah, it's not real. A relationship is a two-way exchange. Yeah. And you could receive from an AI. It can communicate to you in a way that helps you achieve your goals and kind of seem like an ally. It can simulate companionship by expressing sympathy. It can certainly, I guess, have a conversation with you about your interests that feels pal-like. You can't give anything back to the AI. The AI does not need your help. It does not need your emotional support. It does not need to have any fun with you. It can't be happy at your accomplishments. No, it can't have any experiences. It can't be disappointed in you and share that when they observe bad behavior. Well, it could. It's not going to feel the disappointment, but it could be communicated. But I think we overlook the fact that our most meaningful relationships live in the contributions we make, not just the support we receive. And a relationship in which you have nothing to offer to an AI is not a relationship. At first, I would say yes. I think it is yet another tool, another technology that is driving us away from being a social primate into a solitary tiger. I think it's one more thing. Bingo. And I'm very vocal about the many things that facilitate that. I rest my case, Your Honor. Monica, do you have anything to add? We're done here. I mean, yeah, you're very nervous about isolation and the lack of, like, relationships. And things like that. I am. So, I want to concede that. I'm trying to make a steel man argument for both of you, right? I like it. Additionally, another very loud voice in my head is screaming, "This is yet another moral panic." And I definitely think it's another moral panic. I'd like to see the data. I think people are still friends. I have kids. I'm watching other kids. I think everyone's completely freaked out that we have a generation of kids sitting in their rooms talking to their computer. I personally don't see it. Just A. And B, I definitely think it fails to acknowledge that, yes, it is not as good as a real relationship. And it can't give you many of the things we'd want someone to get out of a real relationship. Also, there is a sizable chunk of this country of ours that aren't going to have any companionship whatsoever. For all these other instruments that already exist, they can be self-sufficient and have a job that's online. And they don't need any companionship to shoulder the rent. They don't need to go to the restaurant to eat the food that gets delivered. They don't need to go to the movie. There's a lot of technologies driving people in this direction. And I think you have to acknowledge that, although it is a shitty relationship, for a certain segment of our population, it'll be that or nothing. And I definitely think you need to evaluate whether it's additive to someone who's completely alone. And I think we have such a specific. way of evaluating it, and even the way we would design a social experiment around it, is no one's going to set out to prove the theory. It actually, for some small percentage, it is better than having no connection whatsoever. Oh, there are lots of researchers trying to test that. And that's, I think, why the data on it exacerbating loneliness for elderly, lonely people are so important, right? Because that's the group that would be the right test of your hypothesis. I think you and I have different levels of confidence in social science experiments, too. I certainly think that's true. I think the more knowledgeable person has the right level of confidence. Okay, great. You really believe in these social experiments. And I think a lot of them are completely subjective and so easily manipulated and so subjective that I don't think we're getting concrete answers the way you think we are. I think you vastly underestimate the rigor and complexity of designing a study that makes it through peer-reviewed journal, especially now with our standards of transparency and replication. I can point out, like, 80 of them. factors cause-wise, but in terms of how do we begin to solve the problem, we can make a dent. It's not going to hurt. Yeah, I don't think it's a waste of time, but I do think it is comparable to blaming SUVs for the carbon issue when we know cement and steel production are 35x that. Like, I just think it's not where the attention is most helpful. It may be one of the most controllable influences, though, right? If you look at the Australia. Yeah, you can take it away or not. We don't need kids under 16 on social media. It's just not necessary, right? So if we can run that experiment and it helps, I'd say by all means do it, which is, I think, one of the things that is important about the way that John brought the data together is to say, look, whether you think he's over-claiming or a little bit one-sided or not, I think the reforms that he recommended are all net positives for society, and I think the evidence is clear on that. But let's go to the AI one. I actually think this is an easy argument for Team Monica to win. Because I think that the question is not, is AI potentially going to help some population more than it hurts? The question is, what is the value of AI compared to the alternative activities we could recommend? So in England, there's social prescribing, where physicians will actually write you a prescription. Yeah, to go to the gym. You could go to the gym. You could join a group or a club. You could sit on a friendship bench, right? There's a whole series of recommendations there. I don't know that's the right intervention for a lot of people. I would say, let's go to one of our previous moral panics, video games. Social gaming is one of the best interventions we have. For AI use? No, for reducing loneliness, for helping people make friends. And we also know that playing video games has all sorts of cognitive benefits for kids and adults. And so I would say, look, if you're worried about a group of people who's lonely, and I think disproportionately that is young people, and it's old people, I would so much rather have those people playing social video games than talking to an AI companion. In an order of descending preferences, yes, I would agree with that. And so we already have those tools, right? Let's not. Let AI become a crutch. I'm not in a panic about that. What I'm saying is, we have better options already available that will both help with your cognitive functioning and help you build real connections with human beings. Let's focus on that instead of this tool that might interfere. I also disagree with you, or maybe we have a disagreement on the percentage of people who would never be able to have a friend. Yes. I agree with you on that. I think that's actually so tiny. What if little Adam got his basketball stolen and then he just made a friend, he would be like, oh my God, and just made a friend with an AI, and then he never joins the dive. It can really change the trajectory. I mean, I can think of that scenario. That's plausible. I just don't know that it's reached the epidemic level that society is responding to. I agree with that. No, I agree. I think there's a big moral point. I agree with that, but I think we underreacted to social media. It's probably not a bad thing to exercise an abundance of caution with the most powerful technology in human history. That will ever happen. Okay, here was another one. Here was one. Here was one that I read. I'm like, where did Adam get this fucking statistic? So in the wake of those two people that got caught cheating in the player's box or whatever at the football game. The Coldplay one? The Coldplay. That's what it was. I don't even have the right venue. Yeah, at the Coldplay concert. You immediately had this post that people that cheat are less trustworthy at work. Tell me the exact things. I don't want to misrepresent. The econometrics on this are really strong. Okay, so hit me with the- I don't want to misrepresent. The researchers capitalize on the Ashley Madison leak. So you can see in a number of professions who is using an adult affair website. They did this with CEOs, with financial advisors, with police officers. You look at their rates of misconduct in their job. And if you look at the Ashley Madison sample compared to match pairs of, you know, otherwise similar CEOs, financial advisors, and police officers, the people who cheated on their spouses were two to three times more likely to be guilty of misconduct in their jobs. Okay. So there's so much flawed with this. Let me just hit you with it immediately. Try. What a terrible sample set. Of the mass amount of affairs that happened, the estimates are in the 40 to 50 percent range that people have affairs. So of that group of, we'll call it 100 million Americans, the amount of people that use Ashley Madison are such a very specific sect of this. This is people that went out in public, already trusted, were so risk embracing that they entered a public website that could be leaked and was leaked versus two people on the space station who fall in love, were both married. These aren't even comparable groups. So the fact that we're going to graph on to anyone's ethics, what cheating means, because the people in that video were not on Ashley Madison. No. So you're, you're, you're, I wasn't attempting to equate that at all. I was right in the wake of it. So there was no way someone couldn't connect those two things. Fair. Okay. So I agree with actually everything you just said. Okay. So here's where I come down based on the evidence. There was a lot of debate in the wake of the kiss cam, which of course, as almost always happens, ended up much more hurting the woman than the man. Yeah. And I felt like it was like Monica Lewinsky all over again. The narrative that came out was very different, right? I think they were both separated and it was maybe their first date. All of the vilification of them. Yeah. They got mobbed. They got mobbed. And it's happening again. There's like people, there's some park bench situation happening also right now. Similar thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I didn't want to pass judgment on them or their situation at all. But if you release this statistic that says that people that cheat are three times as likely to cheat at work, what are you doing? Okay. So what I was doing was responding. I'll tell you what I was doing. I think it might've been four days later. Okay. Okay. But what I was responding to was a bunch of people saying it is irrelevant. How you behave in your personal life to whether we can trust you on your job. And I said, not so fast because in the extreme case of the worst cheaters, which is the Ashley Madison case. Yeah. It's a very convenient piece of data. It's, it doesn't, it's not representative at all of cheaters. No, no, of course not. But this is how social science gets cherry picked shamelessly and misleadingly. I agree with that. When I read your thing, I was like, okay, great, Adam, let's get rid of Martin Luther King. Let's get rid of John F. Kennedy. No. Let's get rid of literally everyone. That probably you would point to as having made the country better. We got to throw them out of there because they cheated. No. Because Ashley Madison is not, it's something so much more than cheating. No, on the rung of addiction. It's so, it's addiction. Yeah. You're in the, I go to bath houses level of sex addiction. There are a number of possible explanations for it. Yeah. The point I wanted to make is there is such a thing as, as character, right? As much shape shifting as people do as many, if then signatures as we have. The person who would never cheat on their spouse is less likely to cheat on their job and vice versa. Yeah. Because they're probably the least. They're the most risk averse. Yeah, exactly. That doesn't mean they're good employees either. Except if you care about their honesty. That may matter to you. It matters to me. Depending on the job, I guess. But listen, but Adam, I don't think it's a fair statement to say someone who would never. I think there's a circumstance. Maybe you don't know if. There's no way to know that anyone would never. I think there are a lot of people you think, oh, they would never do something like that. And there's a circumstance in which they would. You don't think you know anyone who would never do it under any circumstances? I think I do. I really don't. Wow. My grandpa probably didn't cheat. My grandpa went to Wonder Bread Bakery 12 hours a day and worked with other men. We can't say because he died and having not cheated and my dad died cheating that those are comparable situations. It doesn't say anything about humanity. It says a lot about context. Sure. Yeah. I think it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. to compartmentalize. self oh i disagree martin luther king how are you going to account for martin luther king he had orgies his role in his job had nothing to do with his having orgies he couldn't have been more effective in the civil rights i'm just i'm just speaking probabilistically yeah but you really gotta ignore most of the people that you and i admire i sure hope not i could go through a list and i know you would admire these people you admire martin luther king don't you yeah but i also know do you admire john f kennedy less than mlk well of course but do you admire jfk yeah look i think it's possible for people to have such this goes back to the ambivalent relationships discussion yeah it's possible for someone to have such extraordinary virtues that you're less concerned about their vices or that you're willing to tolerate their vices because of the impact they could have on the world yeah yeah i'm only pointing out that you're saying there is no compartmentalizing and that if you are this way in your private life you're this way in your public or your work life and i'm giving you a chance to talk about that in a little bit but i'm not giving you examples of people that that's not true at all yeah of course it also depends on the job maybe yeah i mean i don't have any evidence on did mlk ever commit tax fraud right so if you actually line up the type of integrity maybe there's actually he was guilty of plagiarism on his job okay he had a bunch of refrains that he did not source properly i actually think his dissertation was partially plagiarized if i remember what i read correctly oh okay and so now i'm like okay there is a pattern of cheating professionally and personally now does that mean i don't want him as civil rights leader no right he was an extraordinary civil rights leader and he was extraordinarily selfless but being selfless and being honest are two different virtues yeah sure that's just so interesting yeah but yeah i'm just saying look if somebody is a serial philanderer and you're a board of directors choosing a ceo you might want to take that into account yeah if they're on ashley madison probably not a great yeah i mean i don't think they probably are caught up in an addiction if they're on ashley madison yeah i definitely think we need to draw distinctions between someone who drinks on the weekends and an alcoholic or someone who had an affair in a space station and someone who's on a website fucking five days a week fully agree and what i probably am guilty of here is putting the nuance in the caption of the post yeah right when i described the study but pushing back against the oversimplified argument on the other side which is the doesn't matter at all it's irrelevant how people act in their personal life i'm like no you don't check your values you don't know how to act in your personal life you don't know how to act in your values at the office door i don't care at all when i'm working with somebody whether or not they're in an open relationship or a closed relationship yeah but that's conceptual right that's a little different yeah or if they've had affairs or not had affairs that doesn't to me have anything to do with me i think that has to do with their partner maybe on the job some jobs don't require honesty wow that's a scary thought that's true it might be more important in some jobs than others yeah for sure yeah i mean i'm trying to think like yeah if you're a lawyer that's a probably a problem if you're dishonest you know or an asset actually they all are lying so i mean i don't know but they're great at creating a version if you're a doctor i mean there yes there are things but dishonesty is always a trust problem at the end of the day right and if you have a job where you're collaborating with other people okay you could say an actor is a consensual liar professionally yeah yeah but you certainly don't want to hire the actor who's going to renege on your contract the moment they get something better of course this is kind of my issue is that you want it to bleed over into a lot of things that i don't think it does so my doctor i don't know if my doctor's cheating on his wife i don't care oh my doctor's not incentivized to lie to me could your doctor be incentivized to give you a bunch of unnecessary tests and profit from them that is possible yeah but you're just not that worried about that yeah i'm not worried about that i don't care if my doctor's cheating on his wife i don't care if my lawyer's cheating on his wife i don't care if my lawyer's cheating on her husband i'd have to force that into wow my relationship with them because i'm not the i'm not gonna i'm not gonna interview them on it but i would prefer not to let somebody who is violating integrity knowingly into my life if i can avoid it yeah you have a really moralistic bar you and gladwell often argue about this and i i agree i think you it's so you have a very i don't know to me it feels a tiny bit unrealistic i think really what you're evaluating you're business relationship with is is it reciprocal and beneficial to me that's what you're really doing you can say integrity is a prerequisite but i don't think i believe that's how we assess our incentives i think is it mutually beneficial or not by the way i mostly agree with that i've tried to get more disciplined about assessing integrity before i collaborate with someone have you been burned a lot i've had a few collaborations where i've walked away saying if i knew then what i know now i never would have done anything with that person yeah and so that Courses, more caution. Yeah. And I don't think I know with high confidence, but I think I can make better probabilistic judgments now than I could have 15 years ago. Do you think colleagues at Wharton should be fired if they have an affair? Ooh, really good question, Monica. No, because you should be fired for either underperforming in your job or violating the values of your institution, and that is not one of our— That's not one of the tenets. Right. It's not in your job description. It's not in the values. Yeah. But should you be fired for sexual harassment? Absolutely. Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a clear— Trying to date students? Yeah, we got to get you out of there. Absolutely unacceptable. Yes, yes, yes. Get out of that. This reminds me of something that we have to talk about. Oh, great. Which is another fight we haven't had yet. Uh-oh. Okay, great. Monica, I don't know if you are aware of this. So you read Allison's book, Dax, and very kindly recommended it. It's really, really great. Thank you. I love her new one even more. Oh, she's already written another? It's, like, out now. Oh, wow. What's the name of it? It's called Lump. Lump, a memoir in Ineloquent Reflections. Ooh, great. And it's poetry and prose about her experience with breast cancer. Oh, wow. Uh-huh, okay. Blew me away as did the first one. And, Dax, I remember you being surprised that I could judge that Allison was a beautiful writer. And you thought that I would be biased and couldn't accurately assess her work because I love her. I don't remember this, but I'll go along with it. And I wanted to fight with you about that. Oh. That doesn't sound like something I believe. Oh, interesting. I think when your partner writes something or does anything that will be public-facing, you have a very quick and natural, oh, boy, this reflects on both of us. You, the general you. Yes, like— Not you. Yeah. So you think your guard goes up because you're trying to protect— Well, I think you acknowledge there is a certain level of shared embarrassment that's a potential. And so— I think it's natural to read or consume the thing with a tingle of fear. I think that's kind of natural. Like, oh, is this going to be embarrassing for her and I? The stakes are different because you're a known intellectual that's on TV. And you have a wife, and now she's going to put something out into the public-facing thing. And I think it would be very natural for it to cross your mind that this will be a reflection on us as a unit. You don't have a distance. You don't have a distance from it. It's not like when a student turns in a paper, you go, oh, no, this will reflect on me as a professor. You have a very healthy distance. So I do think it's murky when you're in a relationship that's public-facing. I'm aware of it. Some of my decisions are, I don't want to embarrass her. There's things I'd say on here that wouldn't embarrass me, but I won't do because I don't want to embarrass her. So I think there is different criteria and different pressures when a loved one is putting out a work of art in your known— Well, luckily, Kristen is relatively insensitive to embarrassment because you have a pretty long leash, I think. I have a long leash, but mine would be even longer, as you might guess. I can see that. So we agree on this, but for different reasons. Tell me. I thought where you were was you're just too biased and, you know, you're going to see the good in the person no matter what, which is not where you came down. No. I think you can see the people you love most accurately for a different reason. I think yours is right in some cases, but I think the other thing is when you really care about someone, you want what's best for them. Of course, yes. Of course. So the last thing you want to do, whether it reflects on you or not, is let them embarrass themselves. Yes. And you want to help them put something out there that's great. It's like this is what every good mentor does. They protect you from the worst version of yourself, and that's what a good partner should do, too. Yeah. Yeah. But, again, another added layer that's in the mix is if your wife writes something about her personal story, I have no option other than to take that at face value. I'm going to assume that that's what it was. Now, you know her extremely well, and you now are evaluating whether she got her real voice out or not. I don't know what her real voice is. So, again, I have so much distance that none of that's going to get complicated for me. That tracks. Maybe then you were surprised about something else, which is that I would have married someone who could write. What did you say? I'm confused at what he said. I think it was on the podcast because I remember hearing it and being surprised. Oh. You said something like, I didn't expect this to be good. Oh. Well. Well, maybe it's just surprising that two people who are connected are both really good at the same thing. That's abnormal in low percentage. Also, when a friend reaches out and says, read my significant other's thing, you're preparing for the worst. It's 50%. Because it didn't come to me through the other channels, which is like, oh, this book's getting a lot of attention. You should check it out. This is, in essence, a favor. It's a favor. it's a favor so when you're doing a favor favor your expectations are low you're like this is a favor I'm gonna probably get through this book right so then and then lo and behold I loved the book yeah so I just think that's very honest like generally when a friend asks you to read their thing or their loved one's thing or their child's thing I think you have a realistic expectation this might not be at the level it could it should be okay that resonates completely with one small exception okay which is from an integrity standpoint I would never ask you to read something as a favor and for you to question my judgment and taste to think I might have given you something that wasn't good or worth your time I was like oh all right but we're gonna have we're gonna have to do that one out that's the blinder the love blind potentially of course you could of course you would send him something your wife wrote and that you might think is beautiful because it came from your wife buddy this is where our priorities are so different I would like to read something as a favor I would never ask you to read something as a favor about you if your wife wrote a piece of shit and you knew it was a big pile of shit you said fuck it I'm still gonna try to help I would admire that I would hate it I would know how hard it'd be to send that email and I go this person did something that was very uncomfortable for them because they love their wife so much and I would look at that person and think oh where is your taste and judgment and you could be a better partner yeah but I would really the shittier the more I would respect you wow okay well I really missed the boat on that one all right two other things we have to talk about okay one is embarrassment just came up oh okay I can't remember where this was on one of your episodes Monica you kind of pointed out that Dax likes being embarrassed oh he loves it and he admitted it yeah I want to know why as a psychologist this is endlessly interesting to me because normally embarrassment is something people are supposed to avoid it's one of the self-conscious emotions that's supposed to protect us and it's supposed to protect us from repeating whatever mistake we made socially yeah and for you to seek that out is the opposite of what should be your primate reaction above all things I'm a novelty junkie and so it is such a unique feeling to be embarrassed I mean it is like your whole body starts vibrating there's a physiological component that is like unmissable you know Monica starts crying immediately she walks into walls and stuff it's like it's so okay but you could have easily walked into a second wall right now because you were disoriented from the embarrassment so embarrassing and so I immediately go to two things one is it's so novel and I just love novelty it's why I was a drug addict it's like how else can we feel I'll do anything to feel differently so this is thrill seeking for you in a way yeah it's just like it's novelty it's like oh my god this is crazy and I feel like the world's staring at me and all of it is just like I can't help but notice how bizarre the feeling is and I can't help but notice how I kind of like it and then secondly is anytime I'm embarrassed I immediately know oh I've got a story and my trade in life is stories so it's what I like this is like a stand-up looking for material yes it's like it's happening and I can already hear myself telling the chain of events that led to me on my back in the movie theater with the popcorn in the air okay I had that one it's good material I did not have the just the sensation the thrill yeah yeah yeah yeah the other two that I was thinking about one is I think there's a gendered component into this sure which is women being embarrassed is much more difficult than men that is against the common saying which I agree with as a woman's greatest fear she'll be murdered by a man and a man's greatest fear is that he'll be embarrassed in public and I think that's true I think men because of the way evolutionarily our status was dependent on this this is precarious manhood yeah yeah so I actually disagree I think I think being embarrassed for men is like dangerous that's what that's why men have this crazy have you ever witnessed it's like a guy he's taking you for a ride in his new car and he fucking loses control or whatever there's numerous ways men can fuck up in front of you and men all immediately instinctually act like it did not happen it wasn't embarrassing they get angry if it's a threat if they get really embarrassed and they get angry now we're all in danger yeah right so we know instinctually to like pretend that when a man makes a mistake it didn't happen and I don't think women have that with each other or we have a with women if the threat is to your competence or your strength and it makes you look weak or incapable now you've got to display immediately to regain your status but not if you seem insensitive which is something that the woman would get punished for more the reason I was thinking about this as gendered is because most embarrassment happens because you violate a social norm I think and women get penalized much more for doing that than men do because they're expected to be socially and emotionally skilled yeah and so I was wondering if that was part of it that you just don't expect to be socially and emotionally skilled and so I was wondering if that was part of it that you just don't experience the cost of certain kinds of embarrassment because you can get away with it and your strength is is demonstrated it's built in I have so many privileges like I'm a fucking 6'2 white dude and I weirdly have taken it to a place where it's actually a display of great bravery and confidence yes right if I can marinate in my humility boom I think other men are like fuck that's gangster I actually think it's like a counterintuitive reaction okay this goes to my favorite hunch which is I think it's a way of getting attention without being a narcissist I disagree with that because that would imply that I initiated it fair I can promise if I initiated it it's not embarrassment because that's me doing Frito in idiocracy I'm doing lots of embarrassing things but I've chosen to do it right yeah so I'm not experiencing any of the fun stuff when I watch it I get very embarrassed but not while I was doing it but if something happens that embarrasses you right a narcissist would want positive attention you then being able to tell the story or have everyone laugh at you you're not going to be able to tell the story you're not going to be able to keep people's eyes on you which is part of the the joy of being an extrovert and being in the spotlight but not in a way that's elevating you above other people and that feels okay right like if I bench pressed a bunch in front of other people versus I fell down and laughed at myself yes it's humble attention for sure exactly okay yeah good okay we are on to something here this is so fascinating I actually want to get a group of doctoral students to study this embarrassment yeah and the pleasure you get out of it yeah I wonder how unique or not unique it is but what was so fun is so my 13 year old she thinks the most embarrassing thing someone can do is run with a backpack on I don't you know I don't know why that is but for her that's really huge such a funny image found herself in a situation where it's like the crosswalk was she thought she could make it a lot of kids were there watching she ran with her backpack on then I think she tripped with her backpack on she goes oh my god dad it was so embarrassing I could just tell by her delivery it seemed like maybe she enjoyed it and I go did you like it I think it was so embarrassing I think it was so embarrassing I think it was so embarrassing at all and she goes yeah I love it it feels so weird and I'm like yeah that's my thing too it just feels so weird it can be funny in retrospect in the moment it's embarrassing but later when you visualize the backpack and the tripping it's funny so maybe with some time you're like that's this is the comedy equals tragedy plus time right yeah exactly I just think there's a lot of things that boys don't know that are very counterintuitive that are actually huge displays of strength saying to another boy I'm scared I don't want to do that is immediately admirable and as red as bravery if you do it with confidence yeah yeah you have to show a degree of security when you do that yeah and I think most boys if they're scared what comes across is like I am timid and I am weak and you do it in a way that says yeah I don't care what you know another one little one someone said something shitty at school and I said you wouldn't believe this but the fucking most gangster thing you could say is like oh wow that hurt my feelings because every other little girl's gonna be like well that's what I want to say but I don't have the courage to say that it would shock you and then that other person's there's no wiggle room no there's no way to play that off like you just hurt my feelings you deal with that now it's not a retort it's not a burn back it's just like let me tell you what just happened that hurt my feelings that's such a victory and counterintuitive but I think there's a lot of little things tropes of masculinity that actually the opposite is the thing that everyone will think you're so brave for if you know how to balance on the tightrope telling your yeah partner your female partner the things you're insecure about we think oh god she won't be attracted to me now she'll go fuck I've been with a million men they were all too cowardly to tell me this this dude's a fucking stud that's the hack it is it's so counterintuitive I am all in for that yeah Adam I love you it's always so fun I like you yeah I'm not I'm not at love yet we're not we're not companions yeah but you're what I really just want is for you to love the book I don't care if you love me that's a terrible fuck Adam that just opened up another hour debate no you should want me to love you for you because you're intrinsically lovable regardless of your accomplishments or your output no no no I think I take for granted that we have a level of I think from the day we met we respected each other and I think that's a really good thing to do yeah yeah absolutely and have built a bond around that as you profess you wanted to do and so if I have uncertainty or insecurity it's okay now I'm putting something out in the world that I spent a couple years on yeah and I'm at the beginning of sharing it and here's somebody who has engaged with it really thoroughly yes I want to make sure that he thinks it was a worthwhile project yes I loved it I love everything you write you're a very very good writer you're a very entertaining writer you're not pedantic it's not a slog to get educated by you it's a it's a it's a it's a pleasure fun class seven years yeah seven years running and now you know among those 30 they get some participation awards over at Wharton. But the book is called Vibe, The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World. Adam, such a delight. I can't wait for you to come back. Thanks. Always so fun to be here. I learned a lot. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let him have the facts. How did it go? Good. It took a little while. Did you do other things? I just pee. Are you sure? Yes! You didn't touch up your. A little. Okay. Just 30 seconds. You're talking about gaslighting. You're on high alert for gaslighting and you just looked directly at me and said all you did was pee. Stop. Stop it. I forgot about that part. Okay. It wasn't on purpose that I left that out. Okay. I forgot that I did go upstairs and reapply my lipstick. Yeah, sure. A little powder? No. No powder. Foundation. There we go. Just a little extra. Sure. Because my period's coming and my face looks bad. If it doesn't come now, we are in trouble. Do you like having your feet on the edge there or do you want them fully on top? I like it on the edge. I live on the edge. Sure. It's what everyone says about you. Monica loves living on the edge. Hey. You're safety-minded and you know that. I am, but I've also done a lot of things that some would constitute living on the edge. I found out today, ran from the couch. I ran from the couch. and cam exactly check out that armchair anonymous study abroad if you want to hear about that that update you know it's this looks disgusting i'm taking that off don't look at it i saw it was that from the fluid inside or your your lips that dirty who's to say who could know hopefully the liquid inside what were you telling me earlier and i told you to shut up save it for you asked where i was going in the wrong direction yes yeah we got very confused because we we finished recording yesterday yep you told me you were going to cara we had a long talk about the mosquitoes yep and if you were to go to car you would have headed down western yes you'd have gone south yes and then independently of that i came inside probably also probably on foot yeah i come inside i pitch to the lincoln and and kb hey does anyone want to go get some water yeah they're up for it so we hop in the car pretty quickly after we finish recording and we're driving now there which would be east yep and we see in traffic next to us directly next to us you sitting in your car you're already coming somehow you've already gone east now you're returning west right and it's very confusing for us and we're honking and you are god knows where you were at mentally lincoln's screaming your name what yes oh my god and then we were off where was it like was it like just before vermont i had just turned right then i just turned right to redirect so okay this is what happened so i went it's a sad story actually okay i have tissue so don't worry i can handle it i was gonna go to cara yeah as i planned but then i thought no i was just there yesterday i already got mosquito bitten i already saw leslie bibb yeah i want to mix it up today yeah see what else you can see and i was starving you know when you're starving like what do i what do i put in my body what do i want what do i need i need food fast okay really quick that's already interested in different about us when i'm starving i know exactly what i want it's when i'm not very starvy that i'm like what would be good but when i'm starving like i know what i want oh and it was all time as it turned out i okay well so i decided i'm not gonna go to cara i'm gonna go somewhere else but i didn't know where and so i just got in my car and i started driving aimlessly and hungry low blood sugar not thinking yeah not all that clear what not doing your best thinking oh yeah i thought you said something about stinky no i'm sure that's post meal so then yeah so then i'm i go up north and then east okay and i think maybe i'll go to all time i didn't know that was your plan so i'm really glad i didn't go that'd be so embarrassing you have to sit with us and have lunch no i'd be like at my table by myself and then you guys over there and i'll just be like that's not what that's not what would have happened hey guys buddha said money's here sit down it's nice to see you again 10 minutes later so yeah anyway i started driving to all time but then i realized you know what no i want in and out that's what i want and i want it now and i want to go to sunset tower after and that's where i want to work this is my plan okay unfortunately i'm heading in the wrong direction for that plan that's right additionally and this is the sad part oh there was a big car accident and it was a why are you laughing i'm not this is the sad part of the story in your head i'm already sad it was a three car pile up okay that's the difference between a pile up and a pile up is when one car has stopped and then another one collides into it and then a third car collides into that i know but it's hard for me to know what happened it's just three cars were involved i didn't see the collision but i want to call it a pile was it in the middle of an intersection no but it was it was where one of the tributary arterial roads let like someone was literally pulling out and then a whole mess happened and it looked bad okay so i felt sad um but i'll and i and you know it's one of those things where i was like what why is there so much traffic you know i was getting mad sure well you were you were in low blood sugar i was really hungry yeah yeah and i was going the wrong way and i'm in traffic i was like this is horrible i'm just sitting here but then i saw that and i was just like what am i yeah i was like what an idiot you know it does immediately make me think i don't know how it was for you growing up but when where i lived in michigan when we would drive to say where i worked in troy michigan it was like a 30 minute drive down the highway and my mom when she come home from work i swear once a week she'd be like ah i saw you know they were putting someone in a body bag or the jaws of life were out like you saw people are going through windshields like people used to get so mangled in car accidents the the safety of cars has improved so dramatically it's very rare you're seeing someone super injured we have airbags seatbelts are mandatory there's analog brakes there's anti you know there's traction control there's stability track like things have changed like that little thing you saw don't say in 86 in my town in milford probably someone's through a windshield well i don't know what happened okay okay my hunch is they were all outside okay no they weren't they weren't i saw one guy and he was on his phone that's good anyway so i'm trying so then i'm like oh i'm that's so like who am i i'm like i need to get to enna now and these people are having the worst day yeah ever so then i finally am able to turn right i was like it was the closest turn right was vermont so i did that and then i turned right yeah i guess you saw me and i didn't see you or hear you or anything you were out to sea this is no this is part of the problem okay with honkers because you know i i hate honkers but this is probably what okay you you're gonna put it on a silver platter and i'm not gonna take a bite what are you talking about okay so be more careful with your language okay so i i hate people who honk there we go and part of it is this because now you just hear people honking all the time you file it as white noise it is white noise and then that's annoying because i could have then noticed my friends that's it finally a negative you know you were talking about we use black you know black so he's generally associated with negative stuff that's a good that's a white one that's no white noise is not always bad white noise is an asset like i guess now people falling asleep yeah okay whatever moving on it's it's both um anyway so that is what happened did you make it in and out i guess i did and it's a fun time to go to in and out because you would have been getting there around 2 30 or 3 and all the high schoolers are in there where there are a ton of i don't go inside okay you go through the drive-through okay and i was able to turn in and out in that nice car clearly yes dax i know it's fine i'm allowed it's your car yeah you can set it on fire and talk in there i do since you've gotten in it you eat a bunch of hamburgers and of it so you know it's not it's not your car i would never do that in your car okay well i appreciate that but well i actually i can't say never if there's if i have to tonka then tonka you will yeah yeah but um i wouldn't eat in your car because i'd be scared it just smells so much it is burgers and fries it's like you might as well throw broccoli under the seat especially because in and out like i get the grilled chopped onions animal style and i get the grilled chopped onions animal style and it's so stinky but it is so good and you have a nice buttery leather interior that's just like absorbing that smell holding i'm not putting the burger on the tape i bet you got some sauce i didn't it's in a little box okay um i did the other day though leave your burger in there overnight kind of yeah not a burger but i got some groceries oh yeah oh you're kidding you hate your car no listen it wasn't raw fish two things happened i got some groceries and i ate half a tuna sandwich and then the other fuck dude leaving a tuna sandwich in a hot car oh dude i want to smell your car raspberries i bet your fucking car smells like the trash can behind a grocery store it smells great just a bunch of rotten food i did panic when i realized i left that do you compost in the back seat yeah i think it smells fine but there really is no way for me to know that's right i recognize that what if you went on a date and you picked the guy up and he was like you work at in and out or something oh i'd be like i wish free burgers sweet and terrible story about the man i hired to relocate the skunks in my yard remember no and and it was at the old house and he basically rang i'm at the gate so i go outside to open the gate but before i open the gate i can smell skunk oh because from his car because he put skunks in there yes he relocates them into the angela's forest but he just puts them in his trunk oh my god and i was like this does this man have a second car for dates i hope because i could smell skunk on the other side of the gate like 300 feet away so unfair i know he was a very nice boy he was young he was uh seemingly in his 20s i mean i was two i was probably 30 okay yeah i was in my 20s too i was 30 okay yeah i'm asking because of would he be dating yes for sure he was i mean again immediately he stepped out of the car and i was just like fuck this guy's big time pu skunk i mean the worst of the worst smells like burning rubber yeah see so i could have a skunk in my car and you should go on a date with that guy and be like whose car should we take does it doesn't matter it's gonna fucking stink no matter what listen listen what if you got what if you drove your car to in and out and then you got out and walked up to the counter and they go back again so soon because you reeked like in and out just from being in that hot box of yours you already smelled like you're already coming from there i smell good do you smell me now i don't smell you now no and i haven't washed my hair so the in and out didn't get like i'm saying am i am i no you would smell it i didn't bury my nose in your long locks and your mermaid locks hair collects smell a lot yeah so like that nice leather if my hair doesn't smell like it that my car definitely doesn't smell like it okay no yeah the tuna sandwich was tough even for me and then but it actually but surprisingly how long was it in there like a while um not not a while but like like 24 hours and it's hot in la people don't know what's happening here um but mid 90s all week i know and then there were raspberries in there too in my in the grocery that's okay i mean they probably got wilted but well i threw them away of course yeah but it probably didn't smell like if your car smells like raspberries congratulations but i got nervous about flies because of the rad like fruit flies or something don't worry they you've got like a green you've turned your car into a greenhouse yeah i'm doing i'm doing good i'm doing the good good for the world listen i'm sorry this is how you don't need to be sorry you don't need to be sorry it is hysterical but you don't need to be sorry i i'm not saying i'm i'm actually i'm not apologizing yeah good and if you got in it and drove it directly off a cliff that's your right yeah well you would jump and roll out oh okay right before the cliff by the way are your underwear still on backwards throughout all of this you think i haven't changed my underwear since that was the same day that was yesterday is my underwear no on the whole trip yeah it was all on backwards and then sunset tower turns out wow doesn't matter it does those that pair it doesn't matter okay i told you it's not a g-string same diff i wasn't flossing my vagina okay good okay although what and maybe it's good hygiene to floss i don't know no i would highly not recommend that please don't do that please don't do that um that might be a winning product feminine hygiene floss think about it you're you're not even thinking about it you're already you're disgusted i am definitely thinking about it okay that all that's going to do is irritate the whole system what if there was like a gentle um spring water on it and some other organic why would you need to be doing this this is a freshen up no you can just spray a water but it needs to be regular water okay so maybe they the floss just has a high quality uh water flossing is gonna irritate okay god um moving on part of why i was all kerfuffled i was hungry also something else bad was happening what i got a text yesterday and i'm gonna i'm gonna read it out loud put her on blast slash shout her out i got a text from allison roman uh-huh chef extraordinaire exactly who i love deeply if you missed that episode check it out it's in the archives we're keeping it in the archives she said she texted me and she said and i am embarrassed but sadly i do enjoy money and i was like oh is she responding to something i said on the fact check or something like maybe i said something i don't know or is it part two of a bigger text that's sent to someone else and now she's sending you the back half yeah to the wrong person so i said what question mark then i said again i said ha ha ha ha and why why are you saying ha ha ha do you think that's funny i did think it was funny if it was if she was like i like money i don't know like frito says well now see now i'm gonna look really bad because i said ha ha ha ha where did this come from and also duh same and then she responded again and i am embarrassed but sadly i do enjoy money so then i'm like oh my god yes someone's getting hacked yes i was like something horrible is happening same exact text as a response yes so then i screen grab it and i dm her and i say something is instagram yeah and i say something's going on yeah and then i get a message from her that says in solidarity i have to tell you that seems normal yes yeah and then i said what is happening with our phones help me because then she responded in the in my dms a screen grab of her saying that in solidarity i have to tell you in a response from me that said and i am embarrassed but sadly i do enjoy money so this is horrible right i'm so confused how did i don't know how what's happening i don't know what's happening and she because she said oh my god and so clearly some hacking or some scam or scheminess but i'm nervous we both participate like i don't know but what is it gonna do it didn't like get my information i don't know i know isn't that scary and weird yeah i wouldn't like that i hate it and yeah so i said what's happening with our phones is it gone has it stopped she hasn't responded why don't you call why wouldn't you then i left a voice note oh a voice note i just don't not call her i just no i don't want to call her because you know like phone no i that feels scary like i don't do that so i i left a voice no i just learned that's what they're called um and i said hey i i'm doing it this way sorry to leave you voice no people not everyone likes those but i just want to make sure who doesn't like a lot of people it's very controversial i love them i know i like them too i've i would just need to hear someone's explanation why they wouldn't want to hear someone no people say that they were going to text they like they don't want to take the time to listen they also feel like oh i can't really listen right now okay rob i don't love them yep because that's no most people are like that you also wear underwear and massage though um well the texts are for reading okay josh hartnett doesn't like them either okay i i mean i also don't get mad when people send them i love them i would way prefer to get one though i understand if some people are very inefficient about them so yes even five minute ones that's cumbersome well it depends on the to me it depends on who and it depends on the relationship like sally and i send voice memos what are they what are they called voice voice notes okay um a lot and it's fun it's like we are just kind of catching we are kind of talking on the phone yeah just not talking on the phone yeah i when i particularly like um the one that's coming to mind is we had guillermo del toro on so i sent josh brolin a voice memo because i know he worked with him on this movie that was really challenging and so i was like oh i want to hear his perspective yeah so then he sends me a long one back but it's it's so riddled with um he can't remember this actress name and he can't remember where he was at and is this the thing and so i then respond immediately send that above voice memo to your neurologist that's right oh my god and then so and i'm laughing through it exactly yeah i'm laughing really hard send this to your neurologist and he sends one back laughing you know you can have that kind of a i just exchange where you can hear someone respond i just wrote something in defense of voice memo or voice notes i call them i called them audio text because i think that's technically what they're called okay and then i got made fun of for doing that but i wrote something about this and i said that you get true context of the spirit yes i was like you can't misread tone and jokes can be delivered as properly and less incriminating in a court transcript too you like you imagine some of your texts being read by someone with a very uh monotone voice how they would sound versus if you hear me saying the offensive thing okay i think it would go down a lot smoother well even just saying you need to send this to your neurologist oh sure it could be that could like you could infer that i was serious about that or that i'm really accusing him of you know whatever stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare anywho all it is should i call her now sure okay oh yeah and she see she's gonna be like why'd you call me she might be so like you don't like talking on the phone but you're willing to do it on the air lol you're on air just fyi why because also monica doesn't want to talk on the phone but you're willing to do it on the air she's willing to on the air which is so confusing wow well i like somebody if somebody calls me i'm like somebody died or it's like such a novel thing that i always pick up okay well i knew this which is why i don't like to call because i know it just scares everybody yeah but i did want to i i'm talking about what's going on with our phones oh my god i i do have to unfortunately tell you that it was only you i know oh my god and that like i was i was tech because i was on the subway when i originally texted you i was like okay well it's obviously a subway issue but then i got out of the subway and it was still obviously an issue but other people i had texted at the same in the same time frame no issues but had you ever typed in the thing about i like money too had that been typed by you ever that was a original text obviously specifically for the occasion i know i made it made no sense like also that would have it's giving like there's a scam or like i've been kidnapped or i would be worried if i if i were you and you weren't kidnapped are you currently kidnapped oh my god do you want to give us a secret word tell us the secret word pineapple um i i'm like trying to we were at a party once and i ruined a rug oh yeah it's you it's hers oh it's all right okay okay i will have to text you again and we'll figure it out but i'm glad that you can at least make a phone call to me well thanks for picking up i hope our phones aren't like um ruined you know because mine came that was a text from you or on its own like spontaneous it made no right so i don't but you saw you saw the context like i screenshotted it to you there was a previous text that like i know it gave the second text context so that's all that happened i like money i got it guys there's no there's no mystery the first didn't go through and the second one did yeah yeah oh i thought when i screenshotted that to you that was established oh my god okay i'm about to start my period yeah she's falling down her underwear's on backwards i'm so sorry i thought we were getting hacked oh this is so simple guys uh we regret the phone call sorry for taking up your time no it's okay honestly case closed i think this is another another job for the girl detective i'm gonna put my monocle back in its case i love when mysteries are solved oh it's giving murder she wrote i love it this is a happy ending okay well this was great love love you love you bye bye bye oh so she was joking yes the first text makes sense and then the second one makes a lot of sense but you got the second one first which made no sense because there was no context is not and then i thought this wasn't a big i thought it came from my phone to her though don't reconfuse yourself it's like so simple what happened i think it's your screen your colors are swapped if she's screenshotting her phone so you thought it was okay thank you that does answer something that's not that's not so you didn't say that well but you know that on her phone hers no are on the left side and they're both on the same side but when she's blue on her screenshot you're blue on yours it's okay it's it's really hard to figure out and anyone would have made this mistake okay even the smartest person in the world would have made this it looks like and would still be struggling to figure out what what happened the problem is both of these were not delivered do you see that i do yeah so then how did one then come through later it did you know i just just an ordering issue well wow that was a great caper solved that was great caper solved um okay okey dokey real quick have you heard of the trader joe's halloween bags no it's a whole thing apparently they have um limited a dish halloween bags and people are freaking out and like standing in line and they're running out what's in this bag candy no no it's just like your tote bag oh my god but it's halloween colors what was it that i just was saying people have so much more time than i do no i think it's fun you know it's like it's something to look forward to it's eventized it's like oh my god it's the time for the halloween bags ah okay yeah yeah i want i mean if people are that pumped about like pumpkin spice latte and stuff then i'm not shocked that they need a bag i just can't relate that's all i can't i can't i cannot imagine someone going did you hear there's bags and i go fucking gotta get down there like that notion is very foreign to me i know i think you're missing out it's a really fun you know me you know me this is an there's an age-old tale the second i hear everyone has something that's the last thing i want i'm like oh so i can be like everybody else i think that's so silly i'm probably denying myself a lot of fun you are carrying the bag winking at everyone yeah does everyone wave at each other if they have probably i don't know i don't have one okay but i'd love one i think it's a great product and i'd love to have trader joe's as a sponsor so me too yeah me trader joe not joe's is it pretty joe's joe's that is joe's yeah trader joe's yeah uh trader joe well fuck now right is it got an apostrophe you say trader joe's but now i'm like you're from michigan it's apostrophe yes okay oh i thought we might have been michigan in it yeah me too uh all right yeah let's do some facts adam okay so when we started this episode you brought up how he keeps winning you know he kept winning that award of like favorite teacher or whatever yeah until they had to stop doing it because it was so embarrassing they had to stop and then they made a new thing and he's also winning that yeah um and you asked him why do you think that is and he said you'd have to ask my students so i asked sophia great okay oh yeah why he wins so much was that what we're resolving exactly um she said number one and she used like bolds and stuff wow she said number one demonstrating which it did this she also works with adam yeah she's gotta disclose her financial interests that's true number one demonstrating interest in students which he owned up to that she said colon what stands out most is how genuinely invested he in is in his students during our two-week mba simulation he fully commits even staying in a hotel to minimize professional and personal distractions do you think he's one of the bowery he's he has my spot fuck and uh and give us the best experience possible he also memorizes the backgrounds of 75 plus students across three classes and brings their experiences into discussions example john you spent the past five years leading strategy for your family's consumer goods business in brazil so i'm curious to hear your perspective here right he mentioned that as well so this is good i've never had another professor demonstrate so clearly that everyone in the room matters wow that's nice that's really nice okay number two relatable materialism colon his organizational behavior material feels essentially relevant because he connects it to real companies research and workplace situations many of us have experienced ourselves okay okay number three this is the last one supporting students through action colon beyond the classroom he genuinely wants to help students connect with the right people and achieve their goals he's incredibly generous with his time and network i'm exhibit a yeah that's true and then she said it really comes down to his sincere interest and understanding of the world and his community and supporting his students hope this helps that's incredible yeah i never had that i didn't have that experience with any professor i had ones i loved but i certainly didn't have that experience no one ever knew what i was where i what i was up to mind you it wasn't in a computer age that's true but also a different kind of classes maybe like all my professors did know in like the theater program everyone knew everything about each other they knew you were from duluth oh yeah but they had to ask that he comes in already knowing all this yeah yeah which it was not possible in 99 it's true yeah okay all right um do we know brian little no i double checked we have not had him on so we're not like bad for forgetting okay great okay oh we brought up what we thought but we wondered what the percentage was of the harvard student body who who has imposter syndrome oh yeah okay now obviously there's no way to know that but i did my own study okay i asked three harvard students i know okay this is the data yep and i just simply asked okay two two of these people are married okay so it was one stop shopping for you it was easy yeah is it doing a fact check and the question came up what is the percentage of people at harvard who have imposter syndrome um since there's no answer to this i'm conducting my own research by asking just the two of you i ended up asking someone else too she said wow good question i mean i think most people have some degree of imposter syndrome but at harvard definitely a lower percentage than the normal population she said because it's full of psychopaths oh wow so even people who went to harvard hate people who went to harvard she said the thing is some people don't have it who should have it and then she said i want to wait for my husband's answer though but she's pointing out something good to consider which is there are so many objective hurdles one has to clear to get in there that it should trend lower on imposter syndrome yeah but she's saying like i'm in there with people that are like you why do you think you're in there with people that are like you why do you think you're in there with you're so hot shit you're not yeah and then her husband replied i really try not to do too much introspection it's just better that way okay um very male answer yep so then we had a whole thing about this but she just wanted to really put a point on the fact that there are psychopaths there and they asked me to swing i'll skip this part she said plenty of people at harvard think they were born to attend okay now some were by the way yeah then i asked another friend female friend um she said this is such a wild guess but i'd have to say definitely over half the class 50 to 60 percent for sure but there's another funny dynamic which that in some ways i think that serves those people i'm including myself i had major imposter syndrome he said because the other group are people who are very much used to being the smartest person in the room it's their total identity and then it's really hard to be in a room full of people just as smart destabilizing identity crisis inducing purpose shaking so i do think some people who start with the fear of being less smart than everyone end up having a unique advantage because once they prove to themselves that they can hang it builds a lot of confidence that can also build real momentum over time right that makes sense this is a good research study really good research i hope adam cites it going forward so there is this study uh 2026 i believe there was a study by uh monica padman um what was cp ellis's kkk title um cp ellis held the kkk title of exalted cyclops i mean guys it just goes to show like how goofy how how ridiculous the whole thing is well look i think i think it attracts losers like obvious exactly i mean truly like people who just that yeah yeah it does that's the truth and they need to feel superior to somebody because they're fucking losers but who wants to be a cyclops like even that is not they think that's something else to aspire to what was it called exalted exalted cyclops there's one there's one listener in the clan right now he's like you don't understand the cyclops he's like screaming at his radio right now because we don't understand the prestige behind the title i'm happy to lose him i don't i won't know i would want more than anything if you're in the clan to be listening to this show because it could be a pathway out yeah but if he's still thinking that but now maybe now but now when he hears us poking fun at it maybe he does go it is kind of weird that's not really how it works when people are made fun of you're right i gotta be friends like she became friends with the cyclops and earned the trust yeah well she didn't want to remember that documentary we watched yeah i was thinking about him the whole time yeah special man i wonder if he was him i wonder if that was also the white guy in the doc yeah oh what if his whole thing was he just knew people love converting people out of the clan and he just kept acting like he was the white guy in the doc exactly um okay oh he said that the first interview we did with him you said he was like i don't remember if it was before we recorded or what but that you said you wanted to bond with him so i went back to the first interview i listened to the very beginning and you say for first you say welcome adam grant to armchair expert which we don't do that anymore which is that was interesting yeah and then you say first and foremost let's geek out for one second that we're both on the same page and we're both on the same page and we're both on the same page and from michigan yeah yeah okay i looked up rashid wallace uh there's a great doc on him untold did it rashid wallace doc it's really great he's so fucking cool he's really really cool well he okay he is the most volatile player strong claim is the most technically volatile player in nba history that's what i was looking at because that's what we were saying yeah holding the single season record with 41 technical fouls and 21 career ejections and i gotta say if you watch the doc of those 41 i bet he he deserved about 20 of them because once he became people were waiting for it looking for it and they found it yeah so he also was treated unfairly you said 40 to 50 percent it's in the 40 to 50 range that people have affairs so okay now to be very clear these are reported yeah so that is already we're only counting so many okay physical infidelity roughly 20 to 25 percent of marriages experience physical infidelity at some point emotional infidelity when including emotional affairs the numbers rise to about 45 percent of men and 35 percent of women dating versus marriage rates are higher in dating or non-marital relationships with research with research estimating up to 70 percent of dating couples experience some form of cheating so yeah it's a lot it's a lot of people it's it's half the people how are you going to say that it's half the people it's half the people it's half the people any any one thing that's true about half the people yeah it's a lot yeah um okay the cold cold play thing they claim they were separated from their spouses or going through separations at the time yeah um that's it okay that's great that's it for adam that was great yeah oh i love having adam on it's so fun to debate him to dance yeah he's the ultimate dancer he taught us that phrase yes kept it up we love it i can't wait for him to come back and for us to have another dust up so much good faith love you love you we are supported by allstate checking allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance not checking that you're keys are actually in your hand before you close the car door have you ever stood in a parking lot full of sun staring at your keys sitting right there on the seat four inches away and completely useless to you it's a very specific kind of humbling yeah checking first is a good idea so check allstate first for an auto quote it could save you hundreds and for fast reliable help when you need it add an allstate roadside plan today you're in good hands with allstate potential savings vary insurance and roadside assistance plans are subject to terms conditions and 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