Olivia Fox Cabane (on the science of charisma)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. Today's guest is Olivia Fox Caban. She is one of the world's leading authorities on the science of charisma. This was fascinating. Absolutely. And a bestselling author. Her book, The Charisma Myth, is like globally enormous. It's such a huge book. She's worked with some people. Selena Gomez. Ever heard of her? I have. And seen her. Yeah, charisma. There's a science to it. Everyone can have more of it. You can. You can learn it. Yeah. Please enjoy Olivia Fox Caban. We get support from Quince. So we've been talking about Quince a lot lately. And as we head into fall, it's the perfect time to reset your wardrobe with their amazing pieces. I think it's so fun to do when the seasons turn over to just spruce up your wardrobe with a couple specials. And Quince is. The place. Totally. We're talking organic cotton, Mongolian cashmere, tailored chinos from just $60. 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Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash DAX. This episode is supported by Helix. So I've had my Helix mattress for a few years now, and I still love it just as much as the first night. That says a lot because a good night's sleep is very, very important to me. Sleep is everything. And what's great about Helix is that it's not a guessing game with finding the right mattress because they have over 20 models, so you can find the one that actually fits how you sleep. And with that summer heat upon us, Helix has cooling upgrades that can get you the best rest, even on hot nights. I have a Helix Midnight Luxe mattress. I really like the level of firmness it has, but that might not be right for you. They have so many options. And you just go take the quiz, and it is perfectly matched for your needs, which is incredible. I also highly, highly recommend the cooling upgrade, especially in the summer. It makes your sleep so much better. If you're still tossing and turning on a mattress that's not working for you, just trust us on this one. Go to helixsleep.com slash armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com slash armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. three hallmarks to that. that or four or five? Yes. It is true that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. They happen in under two seconds. So if you want to ace your first impression, the best work actually happens before you walk in the door. Oh, tell me more. The vast majority of your first impression is going to be nonverbal, which means that getting your body language right is the critical thing. However, body language is unfakeable. The reason for that is that there's so much body language emitted. Were you aware of your eyelids fluttering in front of your eyes until I mentioned it just now? Right. How about the weight of your tongue in your mouth? How about the position of your toes? Have you forgotten your eyelids again? Yeah. Right. So there's so much body language that if you try to control it consciously, it's impossible. Ten other things will. Yeah. And then it's going to be incongruent. You're going to come across as fake. It's terrible. So instead, the best thing is before you walk in the door, one of the best techniques is to imagine that you're going to be meeting one of your best friends, because that will get you into the right body language before you walk in the door. Yeah. Then you walk through the door and just be whoever you're going to be. But just by getting this boost of positive body language, that makes the first impression go better. So that's working inside out. Yes. And we can also work outside in on certain things. On certain things, yes. But the body language thing should be inside out. You're always going to be at your most natural. Charisma really can't be faked, but you can gamify your way into it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay, then definitely. Sorry. Now, yeah, let's get a definition of charisma. That's going to be a challenge because everyone has their own. So the way I look at charisma is people are always like, is it like charm? No. Charm gets people to like you. You can be incredibly charismatic and be a total asshole, right? So charisma is more what gets people to trust you, to want to follow you, what gets you to inspire people, the impact you have on others. It is a feeling of inspiration. It is a feeling of attraction and almost of magnetism. Interesting. Would we include confidence? Can you have charisma without at least the veil of confidence? Thank you for asking that. No, you can't. Confidence is one of the key components, but here's the really important thing. And I hope we get the chance to talk about this. Self-compassion turns out to be more important than self-confidence. Elaborate. Just quickly. Yeah. If we're talking about leadership positions or follow my vision or trust my vision, we have to have confidence. If that person is not confident about their own vision, there's no way we're getting on board. Yeah. You need to project confidence, but how do you get to confidence? Because telling someone, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, telling someone just be more confident, that's not going to help. No. For me, it's always the now what? How? And for so many people in our current environment, it turns out that the one thing that is the most reductive of confidence is actually self-criticism. So ironically, self-compassion, learning how to forgive yourself, learning how to accept, embrace, and eventually celebrate yourself, that is the path to self-confidence, which becomes really hilarious when I end up working with these big alpha dudes who want to project power. Yeah. And the path for them is going to be through the tenderness of self-compassion. Yeah. That's got to be a tough sell for them. If they've been like bootstraps, paradigm, ignore pain. Science helps because logic and science, I can show, have you ever been in a conversation and you say something and all of a sudden your brain goes, oh, that was stupid? Sure. Right? What happens to your face when you're thinking that? It tenses up and cringes. Keep in mind, the other person was looking at you and it was self-directed judgment, but they don't know that. All they know is that while you were looking at them, listening to them, presumably thinking about them, they accurately read coldness, criticism, and judgment on your face. So naturally, they're going to assume that that was about them. So two conclusions from that. One, when you see someone have that facial expression, I spend my time in other people's heads. 80% of the time, it's about them, not you. Yeah. And two, this is why self-compassion and self-forgiveness are so bloody important, is because self-criticism fucks up your body language. Yeah. Interesting. So the logic is, if you want to stop messing up your body language, learn how to forgive yourself. That will unblock the self-confidence. That will then give you the power. That will then give you the charisma. Then you can rule the world and blah, blah, blah. Okay. So for starters, we should talk about what the downriver effects of having charisma are. It's a very powerful tool. Too much so in a sense. I wasn't when I first wrote the book. At this point, I am genuinely concerned that these days in this attention economy, charisma matters more than intelligence, integrity, competence. It's a problem. It's a problem. It's a problem. It's a problem. A problem. Well, yes. In an attention economy, charisma gets attention. It does. Yeah. More than boring, well-thought-out game plans. One of the reasons I'm so desperate to democratize charisma is precisely to level the playing field. I like that. Right? So that it stops having this outsized impact. So in terms of what it does, so charismatic people have better quality of life, have less stress. They get paid more, but even physicians who are charismatic, their patients like them better, follow the treatment plan better. Oh, interesting. You're more effective. It's stunning. Charismatic teachers, like you see the downstream effect everywhere. More romantic options. Obviously. The less stress thing is like, who wouldn't want that? Interesting, right? Yeah. But that's because a topic that you have both explored, charisma is tied to status. Definitely. And high status equals less stress. Yeah. Yeah. More resources. Yeah. Okay. What are the pitfalls of charisma? So the obvious ones are with charisma, you can do bad things, right? There's been books and books written about this. Hitler, incredibly charismatic. Need I give a worse example? Dynamic speaker. I mean, Trump is charismatic. Yes. Yes. Incredibly charismatic. So those pitfalls are obvious. The less obvious ones are the pitfalls of being charismatic to the charismatic person. Such as, you can convince people even when you're wrong, which can have some seriously bad effects. You can shut down brainstorming. Now this is going to start sounding a bit unbelievable, but I'm always like, no, please believe me, this really happens. If you forget to turn the charisma off, people can get addicted to it. You see it in Silicon Valley all the time that the VCs fund the most charismatic founders. Yeah. Oh, I'm sure. Can you tell immediately when someone walks in if they're charismatic or not? Yes, but so can you. Interesting. Yeah. You know when someone walks in, you're in Hollywood, both of you, right? Right. That's true. Nearly everyone we talk to is pretty charismatic. We're spoiled. Yeah, I guess so. Because they're professors, they're authors, they're leaders of some kind in some way, I think. Back to the liability of it. It's a unique test for people who are super duper charismatic, who genuinely everyone likes, and a lot of people are attracted to. That's just a different way to go through life. Are you going to have the ethics to not give in to the temptation? Yeah. Yeah, you kind of mean outsized ethics. It's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of people are not using their powers for good. Is there anything when presented with abundance that people generally don't indulge in? It's like if you're at an all-you-can-eat bar, you eat more than you normally do. We're kind of context creatures. Well, not everyone does, but some people do. Some people do monitor that, even if they have the ability. Yeah. I just think, like, if you check into a hotel and they go, like, "Hey, by the way, unlimited massages," versus, "You have to pay for a massage," my guess is you're going to get one massage that week that you're at the hotel if you pay for it, and then if it's unlimited, you're probably going to get 10. But that's not a bad thing. Right. I'm trying to point out that when you give people abundance, they generally indulge in the abundance, most humans. It comes with risks. Let me put it this way. Yeah, it comes with risks. Okay, so let's demystify charisma. The myth of attractiveness versus extroversion. There's, like, all these myths, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you. So the halo effect of beauty, right? Are physically attractive people at an advantage in terms of being charismatic? Sure. However, you can be incredibly charismatic and profoundly ugly. Hello, Winston Churchill. Oh. And, in fact, being more charismatic will make you appear more attractive and, for men, taller. Interesting. I can't remember if it was one or two inches, but it's a couple of inches taller that you are rated as if you are charismatic. Since charisma is purely behavioral -- and when I say purely behavioral, researchers in controlled laboratory experiments were able to raise and lower people's level of charisma as if they were turning a dial, literally. Wow. It's that behavioral. Yeah, we'll find out. We got to know exactly what that behavior is that they were able to get results that quick and acute. First one is, is it attractiveness? Attractiveness helps, but is not necessary. Second, is it extroversion? Extroversion helps for certain forms of charisma, but is absolutely not necessary. And, in fact, because one of the components of charisma is presence, the ability to be entirely focused on the other person, introverts are at a huge advantage, especially for certain forms of charisma, because they are genuinely able to focus on the other person and don't need to be in the spotlight all the time. Yeah. Now, this goes back to -- so, obviously, too, charisma's got to be cultural. It's got to be fluid, right? Because even when you say, like, the VC people are betting on the founders who are most charismatic, well, what I immediately go is, like, I've met a lot of these founders. They are not your and I's traditional definition of charismatic. Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you. So, is charisma cultural? Yes. What you've just defined perfectly, thank you, is cultural is not just, is charisma different in the U.S., in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia? Yes, but also subcultural. The South New York City. Or the Silicon Valley, charisma has a certain amount of cocky arrogance to it that VCs love. For example, there's some fascinating stuff like glasses. How do glasses impact the perception of someone? We know that you get an intelligence rating bump in Europe, in the U.S., in Japan, but not in India. Why? We don't know. Wow, Monica, tell us. That's wild, right? The shape of your glasses, if they're rounder, you will be rated as friendlier, warmer. If they're more square, it'll be more competent, intelligent. So, there's fascinating things, and I do a fair amount of work in the Middle East and handshakes, which I spend a lot of time on, especially with students, because no one teaches kids these days how to shake hands properly. So, there's fascinating things, and I do a fair amount of work in the Middle East, because no one teaches kids these days how to shake hands properly. But I'm in Dubai. I have to say, everything I say is North American specific, so please take this with not just a grain of salt, but the whole shaker. But I'm in Dubai. There are certain circumstances where you just won't shake hands. Eye contact, completely different in Asia and in the U.S. So charisma, absolutely completely cultural and subcultural. This is where adaptability is so important. There's very few tools that are always good and always bad per se. It's always what is best for you, your personality, your neurotype, the situation you're in and the goal. Yeah, you have to, I imagine, fortify your strengths. You're not going to ask an introvert to become an extrovert. Play to your strengths, manage around your weaknesses. Yes. Okay, what are the characteristics of charisma? Presence, power and warmth. Walk me through. Yeah, so the charisma equation, if you think about it, it's called different things in different studies, but the components of power, which is sometimes called dominance or assertiveness or status or competence, but essentially it's the ability to affect the world around you. And if you think of it, it's can you move mountains for me? If you think of it from an evolutionary perspective, what we're asking when we're meeting someone for the first time is essentially fight or flight, friend or foe. Yeah. And fight or flight is the power question. Friend or foe is the warmth question. Can you move mountains for me? Do you want to move mountains for me? Because from an evolutionary perspective, if you meet someone who can move the mountains, but has no interest in doing so, it doesn't change your life. If you meet someone who would love to move the mountains for you, but doesn't have the power, it doesn't change your life. You need both. If you meet someone who has both of those, but is completely distracted and unaware of which mountains you need moved, same thing. So the way I like to look at it, this is purely a personal metaphor, is you know the way that we overreact to sugar, fat and salt? I'd like you to think of power, presence and warmth the same way. Each one of these is attractive on its own, but you put all three together, you get junk food. Interesting. Can we drill in on the status thing a little bit? Because that's my great fascination as someone who is obsessed with anthro and just statuses, the most, you know, adaptive, functional thing of a multi-member group. Who decides what, who gets what resources, all this stuff. I happen to think we're so, so aware of it at all times in a way that we don't realize. So your hunch about charisma is I can benefit from this, right? You have to assess that. This is beneficial to me. They're friendly. They have some powers and I'm going to benefit somehow. And I just wonder how much of it is simply like, there is some bizarre comfort in knowing what the hierarchy is. Just for the sake of knowing, because when you don't know the hierarchy and you piss off an alpha or a high status person, there's hell to pay in a tribe. Which is a problem for autistics often, because they don't see the hierarchy. Yes. Right. And so I'm just curious, like what percentage we think is just also just this like desire for, okay, where's everyone at? Okay. It's comforting to know that person is clearly the leader. The high status. Yeah. It's a big part, but without the warmth, it can read just as threatening. If it doesn't have the other two elements. What you get is someone impressive, but not necessarily charismatic. So here's a fun piece on status. So these days I mask very little in autistic terms, especially since the diagnostic I've been like, fuck it. I'm just going to be me. Which means that I have a lot of autistic ticks that I would otherwise have suppressed when I was trying to be just pure charisma and a lot of the behaviors that are autistic stimming are also forms of low status signaling. So self-soothing behaviors, what people who feel they are low status do when they are faced with someone who's a higher status is going to be a lot of self soothing, touching their clothing, their hair. And this is, am I okay? Am I right? And that is some pretty self soothing behavior, which guess what? Is autism 101. Right. But might read to others as low status. Correct. It does read to others as low status. And so if you're optimizing purely for charisma. And you're willing to pay the price of masking if you're autistic, then yeah, you should optimize for stillness and poise, but masking comes at a cost. Yeah, let's get into this. That sounds miserable. I think you handle it perfectly in the book, which is like, here is an option for you. You don't have to pursue it, but if you desire this, yes, some masking is getting required. Now we got to get into the nuance of what is destructive masking or is harmful. What is fine. Yeah. So for people who don't have any experience with that, yeah. Just talk a little bit about masking and how it can be destructive and how sometimes it's fine. So with the caveat that I'm not an autism expert, I only know the lived experience. Masking is the autistic code switching to pass as normal. And so one of the challenges I had to the book is that a lot of people were saying, isn't the book just masking 101 for autistics? And the answer is yes, absolutely. For neurotypicals, it'll make you charismatic. For autistics, if you do everything in there, it may lead you to appear as neurotypical. Should we have to mask? Clearly not, of course. Yeah, in a dream world, no. In a dream world, no. But this is the world we have. And so if you have to mask, which you do in certain cases, here are the least harmful ways I know, the most healthy ways I know all things considered to mask. And that's why we flag them in the book. And I had an autistic psychiatrist review the book to flag anything that could be constituting as masking. So what are the risks of masking? It can be pretty heavy. If you mask for too long without any breaks and with certain kinds of unhealthy masks, especially for autistic women, it can lead to burnout, depression, suicidal ideation. The stats are dire. Because it's energy consumptive. It's energy consumptive, but it's also, and this is where I don't know the science very well, but masking is doing violence to the autistic nervous system. The autistic nervous system is wired differently than the neurotypical nervous system. That's one of the key definitions. And so masking is suppressing all the self-regulation tools that you'd be using otherwise. Exactly. You're building up instead of soothing. You're actively not soothing. And then what happens if you don't soothe? It builds up. Meltdown. During the evaluation, I confidently told the doctor, no, no, but I don't stim at all. It's just not me. And then I see a video of me in front of a class and I'm rocking, but it wasn't back and forth, which is why it was side to side. Totally different. You're like, that's not it. That's totally it. That's not stimming. That's a C-sitting. That's it. It's my own fun way of sitting. Yeah. We one time interviewed a clinical sociopath and she was explaining her mask, which was fascinating. We encourage her like, go. Get your fucking mask off. Like, what would this conversation be like? Mask off. And she's like, okay, what'd you get arrested for? Like, she just went directly into how she would prefer to communicate in real life, which is like, let's get to it. I want to ask the gnarliest question about you and I want to really dig in on that. And I thought, oh yeah, that's exhaustive to be living a version of yourself that just really isn't you. Yeah. One of the reasons that I'm more comfortable here than I would be in a corporate interview is because I've listened to a few of your podcasts. You guys do real. And so I knew that it would be okay if I didn't mask. Yes. Whereas I'm going on some other interviews later in the week and they've given me the guidelines and I've been like, this is going to be. You're going to be buttoned up. Oh boy. Yeah. Oh, I'm so much more interested in someone stimming or doing whatever thing they're doing. Yeah, someone's real behavior. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of love it. See, that's what's so funny because I'm like, that is charismatic to me. Like, I think that's confident being very real. What you are unapologetically. Yeah. Yeah. You see me in literally two different modes of charisma. You can see me on stage in recordings when I was in my 20s and I was like code switched a hundred percent. So I am fully polished on stage, perfect New Yorker. And these days it's a different kind of charisma where I'm like, fuck it. I don't have anything to prove anymore. So I'm going to walk around in my pink fleece onesie. But it's a different kind of charisma. And what's really interesting for me is if you look at generationally, the charisma that boomers respond to versus the charisma that millennials and Gen Z. Gen Z wants it raw. They want authentic charisma, warts and all. Yeah, yeah. And if you're too polished, actually for them, that's a problem. Cultural charisma, generational charisma. It's been fascinating. Yeah. Okay. What are the obstacles to presence, power and warmth? And maybe we could go through some like hard examples of how someone presents power, how they present warmth. Yeah. So let me start with presence because that's always the one that people overlook. And in essence, it's kind of the foundation, the way I see it, the reason I always work from the inside out. Is that I could give you all the surface tools for charisma, but that's like building pretty balconies and turrets on a house with faulty foundations, right? At the first earthquake, everything falls apart. So presence is really the ground of charisma. And it is simply the ability to be present moment by moment. Certain studies call it attentiveness, but others receptivity. But essentially, it is the ability to give the other person your full attention. In today's world, that is increasingly. Difficult. Here's the good news. Even a tiny increase in your ability to be present is going to have outsized effects because everyone else is so distracted. That makes me think of people thought George Washington was so smart because he was the only person in the Continental Congress that didn't talk. Everyone else was constantly monologuing to try to jockey for who was the smartest in this room of very smart people. And people were just enamored with his ability to be quiet and they projected onto him a Oh, he's so confident and self-assured. He doesn't even need to get in the fray. Two things about that. A professional negotiator told me he could predict the outcome of any negotiation just by looking at the relative level of comfort of the participants with silence. Whoever is the least comfortable with silence loses. That's one thing. Second thing. Have you ever been in a conversation when only half your brain is present? The other half is busy doing something else. Totally. 95% of my conversations, yeah. Did you think the other person notices? I guess I think they don't, but they probably do. Don't. What actually happens is that your eyes slightly glaze over a tiny bit. There's a split second delay in your facial reactions. I'm like so in my head right now. So we can read each other's faces in under 17 milliseconds. Oh my God. We are so good at detecting anything that is incongruent. And so the problem is that if you're not fully attentive in the conversation, that lag is going to give the impression of incongruence and it can make you appear inauthentic just because you were still writing emails or on Slack in your head. So yeah, the ability to be fully present is really the ground for all charisma. And what's a practice someone can get into that would help? There are lots of bigger tools, but if you want the two second tool, if you're in a conversation, you feel that your brain is somewhere else, focus on your toes, the physical sensation in your toes. Because what this does is it forces your brain to scan your whole body from head to, of course, toe, and it gets you very present in the moment. You only do that for a moment. Then you get back to the conversation, obviously. But yeah, your toes is one of the best tools for instant presence. I love that. How about before you enter the situation where you're liable to have a wandering mind is like breathing helpful? Breathing is really good. If you're in a situation where you feel safe doing this, and if you're in a headspace where you feel safe doing this, a whole check-in with your emotions, where's my head at? Where's my heart at? That can be a very grounding experience if it's appropriate for you. I mean, it's bloody. Uncomfortable, but meditation is one of the best training grounds for charisma. It's a gym for the mind. 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 what the warning light means before pulling out of your driveway. You absolutely convinced yourself it was probably just a sensor thing right up until you were standing on the side of the road waiting for a turn. Oh, yeah. 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It's very soft and it still looks and fits. The same after months of washing, which is very hard to do, I feel, with t-shirts. I've been wearing the black cotton jersey t-shirt with basically everything all summer long. It goes great with any patterned skirt or shorts or pants. I mean, anything truly. I believe that's probably my favorite piece from the cotton collection, but they also have great lightweight cotton thongs that are so comfortable and they're cute. That is a very, very hard mix to achieve. Especially with undergarments. I feel if you can find some that are cute, but also comfortable and do the job, that is a win. And Skims has really, really figured that out with the lightweight cotton collection. Shop Skims cotton and all of my favorite pieces at Skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcast in the survey and be sure to select armchair expert in the dropdown menu that follows. 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And what happens really is that what they're looking for, because they don't have the time as in anything else in First Impressions, they don't have the time to figure out how much power you genuinely have. This is the rule. In general, people will accept whatever you project. So if you seem confident, people will assume that you have something to be confident about. And this is where we get into the questions of do you understand the difference between self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-compassion? You should tell us. Okay. So self-confidence is your belief in your ability to do something or to learn how to do it. Self-esteem is how much you like yourself. Interesting. Both of these are positively correlated with narcissism, which is not a good thing. Self-compassion, on the other hand, that's how you handle yourself when shit goes wrong. And that is the one that is the biggest predictor of health. So if you ever want to have an expert on self-compassion, Kristen Neff is the grande dame in that field. What word did you just use? Grand dame. Grand dame. Oh, the grand dame. I love it. I love it. With French, it's like renaissance. I can't say it the American way. It's just wrong. So the big person in this field. The science is fascinating on the impact of self-compassion on people who have higher self-compassion tolerate mistakes better. They can admit them better. They have fewer sick days. It's just a predictor of so many things that honestly corporations should be testing for self-compassion when they hire people. I would imagine it makes you less judgmental towards others as well. Yes, it does. You've turned on the dial. You've turned the dial on yourself. It's easier to extend that to others. It's incredible. So if you look at self-compassion, if you look at what really lowers confidence, you've got really two big beasts. You've got the imposter syndrome, which a lot of people hear about, and the inner critic. And I see them kind of differently because the imposter syndrome attacks what you're doing. You know, you don't know what you're doing. It's only a matter of time before you're found out and exposed as a fraud. The inner critic is worse in a way because it attacks who you are. The way I look at it is that the imposter syndrome, you've got a good chance of learning how to dismantle it. The inner critic will be with you for life. It's like your shadow. You'll never get rid of your shadow. I think we have a lot of people that think they're suffering from imposter syndrome, but it's really the self-critic. And they're different. And they have different remedies. The imposter syndrome is so common with people we interview because they're in extraordinary situations, which no one's really certain if they're really ready to be in or capable of handling. But I think sometimes you see that window has closed for. Then you should feel that way. And I think there's another force at play that's more. Because you actually can do it and you know you can do it now. So what else is going on? Yeah. So on the inner critic, the best book I ever found is called Embracing the Inner Critic. It's a pretty old book. Small book. Really useful. The framework I love is that just like you'll never get rid of your shadow, but you can learn to handle your inner critic with compassion. You can learn to handle it even with humor and realize that it actually comes from a place of love. The inner critic is desperately trying to keep you safe. And keep you lovable. And keep you safe. Keep you lovable. But so if you learn how to handle the inner critic, the imposter syndrome, if you learn self-compassion, those are some of the best ways to increase your self-confidence. Now, if your question is, what's the quick fix? That's different. There's two ways I look at it. First, for a lot of people and almost all women, I would beg you to learn martial arts. Specifically Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah. Because there's a kind of grounded confidence that comes from knowing you could take the other guy down, whoever it is. Right. That nothing else I've found ever gives you. We are all hairless monkeys barely descended from the trees in terms of how much time. So knowing that you could take care of yourself in a fight, that really changes things. I bet. It's reducing a sense of vulnerability. It does, but it also means that you move differently. Yeah. And so the full contact grappling sports are wonderful, especially because women are taught to be small. We're taught to not take up too much space. And what we're communicating is, please like me. Yeah. I'm harmless. Exactly. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about me. And I'd like you to communicate the opposite, to learn how to take up space. My daughter and wife train with Cecily Gracie from the Gracie family. Lovely. And what's so rad about that, and she teaches four girls, and the stuff that is taught is so intuitive. It's how do you shake a man's hand? If you don't want someone to put their arm around you in a picture, how are you holding your body? There's all these subtle ways to present your body to the world. That's not a fight, but is incredibly, incredibly empowering and effective for making sure your body is moving through the world as you'd like it to. It's not just fighting. Yeah. It's learning how to own the space around you. Yeah. It's moving like you're the predator. That's one. Two is improv. Improv is a fabulous training for confidence. It's wonderful. But in the moment, if you need a, I need confidence in the next two seconds. So if you can close your eyes for a second, just a second right now. Okay. Don't steal my wallet. I'm trusting you. So imagine cutting the line. lemon in half and feeling the lemon juice on your tongue. And now imagine dragging your fingernails across chalkboard. Right, open your eyes. That was horrible. There was no lemon, there was no chalkboard. But your body produced very real physical reactions. I got a shiver. To a completely imaginary event, right? And so what this is, this is the placebo effect. It's the reason why you get scared watching a scary movie, even though you know those are just well-paid actors up there who are delighted to look that they're getting their head chopped off in exchange for a couple million bucks, hopefully. And you're on a couch, you're safe. But to simplify it, our brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. The placebo effect is free, has no calories, has lots of beneficial effects, that's why it's called the placebo effect. We don't use it half enough. So using visualization, there's a reason why more than 80% of Olympic athletes use it. Imagining a previous triumph, a time when you felt incredibly confident on top of the world and getting all five senses involved, that's one of the ways to get an instant confidence boost. When I read this, I was like, what would be my thing? What moment can I play? What moment can I point to? I'm dying to know what yours would be. Oh, mine? Did something come? Yeah. Did it state championship? Yeah. Isn't it crazy these little things you do in your life? They might be trivial, but it's like, no. No, they are lasting. They make you. Either that, but all of it would have been cheerleading, like landing my first back tuck. Those things where it's like, you don't forget the feeling. Like, oh my God, I actually did that. Yes. I couldn't believe it. I didn't think I could. I tried so hard, and I did. I think that's the key. I didn't think I could, and I did. Yes. Yeah. Or like, I did this thing that a lot of people can't do. Those feelings, they do. They make you feel confident. What do you think of? Because I started martial arts fairly early, that was just always a part of my life. It wasn't like a pivotal moment. No, I think it was probably the first time I realized I was good at public speaking, so I was about 18. So yeah, it would have been the same kind of early memories. Yeah, it's huge. It makes sense, because it's like the first kiss. You remember your firsts, right? Yeah. So probably that. And confidence for me is easier to get into than warmth. I live in my head. The confidence piece for me is rarely the struggle. And would I be wrong to guess that the autism is one of the added challenges with the warmth aspect? So one of the misunderstandings that people have is that when I disclosed my diagnosis, some friends were like, you didn't know? Especially the friends in the Valley. They were like, oh, I thought you knew and just didn't talk about it. I was like, well, thanks. But other friends, especially those with who might be masking, said, but you can't be autistic. You have emotions. Right, right, right. The misconception, and in fact, autistic people feel emotions very, very, very deeply. It's just not on the same triggers. It's not necessarily at the same time. It's not necessarily with humans. The conversation that the two of you were having over, when you have a conversation with your wife and she just wants you to listen to her and you're like, let me give you a solution. I'm you. And so my poor husband who just wants me to listen to him. And I'm like, but I've got three solutions. Well, you can fix it. My solutions are good. Yes, I can fix this for you. Now, ironically, the opposite issue that we have is then when I go to my husband and he thinks I want to hear, oh, I'm so sorry for your husband. Yeah. And I'm like, no, but I'm calling for a solution. Yeah, what am I missing here? It's very kind of you to say you're sorry, but what does that fix? Yeah, give me the lever I pull to get a different outcome. I don't need you to listen to me. Just help me fix this thing. But that's good. That means you're not hypocritical. I'm a bit hypocritical. You are a little. I am, Monica. Thank you for acknowledging that. You don't like to hear other people give you solutions. No, I hate other people's solutions. Interesting. That's where it's like, okay, well, you can't really give me any if you won't take any. Well, appreciate the self-awareness. Yes, oh yes. Yes, we do appreciate it. So, yeah, the warmth piece is particularly challenging because warmth, even more than confidence, cannot be faked. So warmth really gets read in the eyes and the voice. And have you ever heard about a duquesne smile, a real smile versus a social smile? No. So in a duquesne smile, it actually affects the inner corners of your eyes. For example, they go down a little bit. Paul Ekman, who's the great grandmaster of, was the great grandmaster of facial expressions. We know this. He had a partner and they were documenting every single facial. Across the world. Across the world. And they were realizing the emotions were hitting them. It was working inside and out and outside. Mirror neurons, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. One of the things that was fascinating, for example, was realizing that unilateral expressions are learned. Symmetrical ones are the ones that are instinctive. In any event, you can learn as an actor to get yourself into the mindset that will emote the warmth. But if you try to just control your eyes deliberately, it will not work. The same way that, and this is important for people to know, if you are feeling angry or stressed and you try to just suppress that, not only will it not work but you will create an increased stress activation in the other person's brain. Here's my favorite piece of data on this, was when the MIT Media Lab in 2008, they were able to model with more than 80% accuracy the outcome of sales calls, negotiations, and business plan pitches without listening to a single word of content. Oh, baby. What were they looking at? It was like John Gottman's shit. Kind of. The ratio of speaking to listening and most importantly, the excitement and the confidence, which were the two key pieces. But what's fascinating is then, when I was working with startup founders, I had to explain to them, you're spending three hours on your PowerPoint. That's great. It's a lovely PowerPoint. It's beautiful. But your body language is more than 80% of the outcome and you're spending zero time on that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is one of the cases where you really are going to have to get into a genuine state of warmth, but the placebo effect can be your friend too. And especially when you're dealing with difficult people, I don't care what you have to imagine. Go nuclear if you have to. But imagine that their dog just got killed in a hit and run accident, their spouse asked them for a divorce, they lost both of their parents that morning. Whatever you have to imagine to get in that moment, you're not going to sustain it through the whole conversation, but just get yourself into a mental space. And also, difficult people are usually difficult for a reason. Usually they didn't have a life filled with happiness and love. So try to imagine them in their awkward teenage years and what horrible life they have now. If you can get yourself in a place of genuine empathy, that will pour forth in all your body language, your energy signature, and that will get you charisma. People think that charisma is how you make people feel about you. It's actually a lot more how you make them feel about themselves. Don't try to impress people. Let them impress you and they will love you for it. There's another one of these counterintuitive things. It's like, I remember in my 20s, I talk about them all the time. I had a friend, Scott Johnson, everywhere we went, every girl was in love with him, every guy liked him. I was like, "Oh my God, Scotty asked people so many questions." - Make them feel interesting. - Yes. And it's like so easy and it's genuine. There's nothing wrong with it. And just the outcome I could not not observe. Like, oh my God, people love him because he's interested in them. - There's this famous story about two men who were running for the post of prime minister at the time, British empire. And one young lady went to dinner with both men on consecutive evening. It is alleged that that young woman would go on to, by the way, become the mother of Winston Churchill. But the press asked her the next day, what impressions the two men had made upon her. And she said, "After dining with Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. After dining with Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England." - And this latter won. - Disraeli won the election, yeah. - It makes sense though. - If the other person starts saying, "Am I talking too much?" You know, you've got the ratio right. - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think of, so when we edit this show, not anymore 'cause it's video, but it used to just be like these audio files, right? And I like always have this image 'cause you see the two and I'm like, how much is their audio file going before our audio files go? It needs to be ours is this much and theirs is this much. Like I'm always aware of that. And that's how I think conversation, like you should attempt conversation to be. - Ideally, yeah. - More the other person's audio file than yours. - And one of the key pieces there is as much as possible, realizing that charisma does not depend on how much time you have available, but on how present you are during that time. So the ability to be fully present during the interaction, rather than worrying about the next thing you're gonna say or the thing you've just said, you wanna fast pass to charisma, that's it. - How do we overcome these obstacles? We're getting into it, but these are some techniques. The one for warmth, what's the technique to lock you into that? - The warmth is find a way to really like the other person. A lot of the book, honestly, is just using the brain's deficiencies to your advantage. So the placebo effect, you can use that in many ways. Here's another one. Have you ever had the experience of a day where all the little things go wrong is harder to handle than a day when one big thing goes wrong? And that's because our brain is crap at understanding scale. You can use that to your advantage. If you can find three small things in the other person that you like, I don't care if it's like their shoes are shined, nice belt, they were on time, or at least they showed up. - Right. - No crust in their eyes. - Whatever it is, if you can pile up the little things, that sends your brain down a certain path, and that's often enough to get enough of the liking in your brain and in your body language. It always has to be genuine. You can't try to convince yourself of something you profoundly don't believe. - It just points out how hackable the brain is, right? - Totally. - And I think it should help to depersonalize our failings, which is like brains work a certain way. We have this guy on about violence being motivated out of a sense of justice, and he made us do this practice, which is like a forgiveness practice, whether you really genuinely wanna forgive the person or not, physically transfers where your brain is thinking currently into another region, it has to. It's the only part of your brain that can formulate the forgiveness thing. And just the act of doing it pulls your brain into the right place you want it to be. And it's just nuts that it's that hackable. - Our brain is not designed for this environment. You know, it's amazing that we're getting this much done, considering how ill adapted we are to an environment. But on the positive side, all of these deficiencies or hacks can be used to your advantage, you might as well. Yeah, it's dumb enough to go astray and then it's dumb enough to be set back on the right path. What are some different charismatic styles? There's an infinity of flavors of charisma. So I just pulled out a few of those that I thought might be the most useful, the most easy to get into, but understand that there's an infinity of variations and some can't really be taught. But the understanding that no one form of charisma is always good or is bad per se. So authority charisma, for example, which is the one that is of the three components, you always need power, presence, and warmth. You need a certain amount to get to charisma. Like in chemistry, you need a certain amount of each element to get to activation energy. But above that, what changes is the kind of charisma you get depending on which of each component, how much of them is present. So authority charisma is highest on power, second on presence, third on warmth. This is potent. Unfortunately, yes. But is it charismatic? Yes. Incredibly so. Tragically so. He exudes strength. That's true, yeah. Mussolini, a lot of the dictators. Putin exudes a stoicism that is attractive. He does, right. Like he's just completely unwavering at all times. And here's the thing to remember is that the warmth doesn't have to be towards your audience. Steve Jobs didn't love his audience. The warmth came from his love of the product. The product, yeah. But the warmth was there. Authority charisma, really good if you need to get people out of a burning building. Yeah. Right? If you need someone to follow orders. Authority charisma, fabulous. Not so good at a funeral. Or if you're firing someone. There you want more like the kindness charisma that like the Dalai Lama has, which is highest on warmth, second on presence, and lowest on power. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. You can switch between them. So you were talking about Bill Gates, typical focused charisma guy. Leads with presence. Elon Musk, interestingly enough, originally was more of a focused charisma guy. He would drink in your words. You could see him like a sponge absorbing every word. Yeah. You lead with presence, second is on power, lowest is on warmth. So you really get different kinds of charisma. And I know the book is used in seduction circles. That is not what I wrote it for. It is not a field I understand. Everything will be weaponized. Just rest assured. Right? Yeah, yeah. So there's certain kinds of sexual charisma, which I can't tell you about because I didn't study them at all. But there's an infinity of flavors. The important thing, if there's one thing I want you to remember is this. You don't have to change your personality to be charismatic. You're not betraying yourself. You are not. All it is is finding the different kinds of charisma that work best for you in this situation or that situation. I see it as kind of getting credit for what you already are. And one of the reasons why spending time at MIT, for example, is important to me because I really deeply care about helping science survive. And I feel that we are in a moment, a crisis of legitimacy for science. And so the reason why I think it would be really important, is really important to be teaching charisma to scientists is because it doesn't matter how brilliant you are and how good your science is if you can't present it in a way that people can find it interesting. I mean, we have a lot of political examples of this. Of course, John Kerry is a very famous example for us, like qualified to the nth degree, not charismatic. And there's a difference between one-on-one charisma, in-person charisma, and on stage, on screen, and especially now online charisma. Oh, yeah. Right? It's a different beast. Yes. Which we're going to get to. I think that's my question, yeah, 10 for you. I just realized that you may or may not have picked it up, but there was a moment when, ironically, when I wanted to make the point that you have to be really fully present in the moment and not thinking about the next thing you're about to say. I didn't let you finish the last word. Sorry. Oh, you're fine. And I don't even remember. She lives with me. I mean, she's so used to being interrupted. Yeah. No worries. And it was probably not important. I have beat her into complying. There's no such thing as finishing a sentence here. Okay. Go ahead. You were saying. I'm just kidding. I'm trying to get better. I don't know if I'm getting better. You're getting better. I don't know. Work in progress. Yes, that's right. Aren't we all? It's a charismatic style of listening. So that's in the focused charisma. If you're an introvert, being able to be really fully present and deeply listening is the fastest way to focus charisma. The fascinating thing is that of all the styles of charisma. That's the one that I see as, in a sense, the most valuable these days, especially for the younger generations. When we live in a state of continuous partial attention, when being fully present for 10 seconds is a miracle for a lot of people these days. Yeah. And so the ability to truly deeply listen is one of the most powerful tools of charisma you have at your disposal. There are a lot of personality traits that people first assume to be a detriment to charisma that are actually an advantage. But I was just thinking. The honest answer, if you want a one surefire path to charisma, is find a cause you are passionate about. Because that will get you the presence. Because you are fully focused on this one thing. It'll get you the power. Because you are confident that this one thing is the right thing to do. And it'll get you the warmth because you care about this one thing. That's one of the reasons why you so often get the charismatic activists, the charismatic movement leaders. Because it hits power, presence, and warmth in one. Do you want charisma? Find your cause. Don't get laid. That's great advice. Body language, we kind of talked about that. Yes. Only to reiterate that you can't fake your body language. Do the pre-step stuff. Yeah, but you can train it. So what you're getting from me right now is a lot of things that I would have normally suppressed. I'm nodding a lot. I am doing a lot of autistic stimming. But that is something that I would have trained myself out of 10 or 20 years ago. So if you absolutely must train yourself into specific body language. You can, but it will come at a cost, so make bloody sure it's worth it. Yeah, save your moments for that. Okay, so increasingly younger people's lives are online. Yeah. I don't know how one is charismatic online or digitally. It's totally different. So for this, I actually got the guy who was the scientific editor on the new edition is the guy on vocal and digital charisma. The chapter on online charisma is him. He wrote it. Because this is 14 years old when you first wrote it. There's no way you could have anticipated. No idea. Yeah. And by the way, post replication crisis in psychology, one of the reasons I was so keen to get the science of the book redone is because all the science had to be re-evaluated. Power posing, for example. Oh, yeah. Like me. One of the biggest replication crises in psychology was when Amy Cuddy originally came out with these power poses and she said it's going to change the way you feel and it's going to change the neurotransmitters, the chemicals in your body. And then replication crisis happens. And hers was one of the studies that couldn't be replicated. Fast forward 2018, her and her team come back and say, yes, we can replicate part of it. Not the chemicals, but yes, the change in the internal state. So this is the autistic piece, I guess. It was physically painful for me knowing people were out there reading a book with outdated science. Yeah. So I was like, please let me fix this. With online charisma, I'm going to put a lot of caveats because the science is so new that some of the studies that are in the book were just published or even pre-publication. Oh, wow. Yeah. This is new, new, new, new, new stuff. But Oliver's research showed that one of the fascinating things is vocal fluctuation, which was one of the things that the MIT study had found was critical. So there's two things. The end of your sentences. So it's the difference. So I'd like you to pay attention to just your emotions when I say the following sentence. The real problem with a lot of people's lives is absolutely the color of their toilet paper. And if only they changed from pink to blue, everything would change. Now, of course, your brain eventually cuts in and says, hang on, this is absolute bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Sounded very convincing. But for a while. Now, imagine if I say the problem in this country is immigrants. And if only we got rid of the immigrants, right? So I can say anything with this tone of voice. That was very Hitler-esque. The blue-eyed people are the issue. And you, Dax, I can see, are the source of all the problems in my country. So what you're looking at here is the speed and the depth. The depth at which the end of my sentences and even sentence breaks, descends. So it's the difference between the sky is blue, that uptalk that unfortunately so many American teenagers have. Like, you know, when they're saying things like a question, even when it's not a question, the opposite being and pink elephants took over from the blue rhinoceri and that ended the war. And that can make pretty much anything sound credible. Yeah, the conviction in your voice. But what sounds as conviction competence? That comes from that dip. That rhythmic. Yes. Yeah. And what's interesting is one of the myths that was dispelled that I believed in is that I thought that lower voices were more charismatic. And Oliver Niebuhr's research shows that no, no, no, if you look at Steve Jobs' voice, his voice was actually so high it occasionally went to the female register, but he had that fluctuation. So it's more fluctuation better, to simplify it. So like you say, eat your carrots for grandma. So it's that, right? The opposite of what they call the engineer voice. The engineer voice trap, which is the monotone, and then we have this really exciting thing that is happening, and you can't believe how exciting it is, right? It's the pattern more than the tone. It is. So high fluctuation and fast and deep drops at sentence breaks and at the end of the sentences is what will make you sound the most impressive, confident, competent, trustworthy, et cetera, et cetera. It's as if you're saying full stop after every sentence you say. Pretty much. But even in the middle of sentence breaks, because if you listen to Obama, so one of the other things that's really interesting that alpha humans tend to do is that, you know, they tend to take up space, like they'll put their arm on one chair, their feet on another chair, and in a sense, they do. the same with your sentences. Taking up space. You're communicating that you are so damn confident in either who you are or what you're saying that you know the other person will not dare interrupt. Yeah. He has a calm, slow, confident delivery of everything. But you also don't get the sense he's searching for words. That's why you don't want to interrupt him because it's not like you're doing him any favors by interrupting. You're like, yeah, what is the rest of this? What is he going to say? He knows what it is. Like, you don't feel worried. That's a lot of why other people interrupt. I think it's like to finish, to help. It could. It could also be excitement. Excitement can be a real double-edged sword where like the autistic love language is info dumping. If you like someone, you want to tell them all the things you know about this thing, right? And the more excited I get about a topic, the faster I speak, which is a real problem. The ability to have a alternating tempo. So there's so many fascinating things. But back to online charisma, a change of semitone will get you, if you're an established influencer, 50,000 more subscribers on average. It's fascinating. Wait, what does that mean? Sorry. Isn't it text or no? When they're talking to camera? When you're on camera, a change of even one semitone in range and pitch will get you on average 50,000. It's fascinating. So there's that. There's also the fascinating stuff like audio compression can lead to emotional confusion where, especially for women, emotions like excitement will be read as anger and impatience. And so one of the quick fixes is if ever you know that you've got a bandwidth problem, turn off your camera because the emotions are so important that it's more important to get your voice across well than to get your face across. The other things that were really interesting was the placement of the camera. Sure, we all know that you should have it slightly above, never below. But just by taping the image of someone you really like above the camera, that can really help you get into the emotion of speaking to someone you like and your voice is going to change. Wow. I think charisma is fascinating. Yeah. That is so interesting. It is. I'm glad that Chapter 15 exists because everything in life is trade-offs. I think if you're on the outside of charisma, you're like, yeah, who wouldn't want it? Sounds great. No big deal. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the downsides of charisma. So the downsides that we talked about, you can convince people even when you're wrong. There starts being a certain amount of expectation that people can really become addicted to your presence, addicted to the high of being around the charisma, and that can be exhausting. So there's a lot of the double edges where you can start drinking your own Kool-Aid faster if you're charismatic. And you can run straight into a brick wall with that. I've known founders who were too charismatic for their own good. They were so good at raising money with bad ideas because no one felt confident enough to tell them they were wrong because the charisma was overpowering. This is so anecdotal. There's no studies on this, but I have noticed for guys trying to get sober, the more charisma you have, the harder it's going to be. Interesting. Being too charismatic means that fewer people will hold you accountable. And one of the best things you can have in your life is someone who doesn't fall for your charisma. Who's not charmed by you? That's me. If she and your wife don't fall for your charisma, they're blessings. But envy. I want to talk about envy. That's the thing that I was like, how does one bring this up? It sounds so indulgent. It's a real, real, real problem. So the higher up you go in the ladder of status, success, whatever it is, money, beauty, you name it, and charisma is a compounding factor, you will have to deal with an increasing amount of envy. How do you deal with that? So the very, very best tool here, the story comes from Ben Franklin. Science comes from Robert Cialdini. Robert Cialdini on influence. If you can ever get the guy, he's the master on influence. I think I heard you talk in a previous podcast about the four waltz technique with Adam Grant. That was from Cialdini. Cialdini is the man. So Benjamin Franklin had this adversary that he was trying to get on board for a certain thing. And so he went and he asked the guy to lend him a book. He told him that he had heard this guy had the book. Could he please borrow it? The guy said yes. And a week later, he returns the book with many thanks. It changed the world. It changed their relationship completely. The guy started talking to him better. They became good friends. He was on board for the thing. Like everything changed. Here's the reason. Humans have an internal drive for consistency. So the guy who lends Franklin the book has two ways of thinking about this. A, I agreed to lend a book to a guy I hate. What an idiot am I? Or I lent a book to someone. It must be because I like him. Now you had a saying, Dax, which was it's easier to change the way you. Act your way into thinking different than think your way into acting different. Thank you. We don't realize how much we are constantly constructing our self-image. So now you're going to hack other people's brains. So asking someone for a favor is the hardest. Advice is less hard, but an opinion is the easiest of all. Because with advice, they still have to tailor it to your situation's responsibility. With an opinion, it's just something that they can give. Ask someone for an opinion and then come back to them, show them how the opinion has to be genuine, impacted the way you think, change what you think. This is what you did. This is how well it resulted. Give people responsibility for your success. It's saying you had an impact on me. Yeah, yeah. And the criterion of impact is change. So it is your job to show how they have changed you. Because then if they feel that they had a hand in making you, then you must succeed. Yeah, they're now connected to the charisma and they're linked. And to the success. And then your success becomes their success. This is the reason why expressing appreciation and gratitude has so many benefits. And I think that's the key. There's so many good reasons for it. But one of them is you want to diffuse envy. Expressing appreciation and gratitude is a way to show people the good things they have already done for you. It's a real trade-off. It's not the only one, right? There's the envy. You're held to higher standards. The Superman effect means that people start expecting you to be able to fix anything, to be magic. And that is a real problem, especially at work. If you stumble, then you fall much further. When they discover you have feet of clay. One of the ways that you can diffuse that, the Superman problem, is by expressing vulnerability. It is one of the most humanizing things you can do. It is not something that will necessarily lower your charisma, but it is a really good way to remind people that you are human and fallible. So someone, as they're taking on this goal of becoming more charismatic and more influential and more effective in life, they need to also probably be thinking about also downsides are coming your way. Mitigating the downsides. And having a game plan for that. And it can get pretty surreal. I only had one experience of this. Back when I was writing the book, everything that's in the book, I was practicing at that time. So I was probably code switched 100% to neurotypical, but I was doing all the charisma things. And I come out of the gym, go order a sandwich at the bar place. And the girl says, I want to know how you became as wonderful as you are. And all I had said was, hello, can I have this sandwich? And this for me is not a normal experience. So this was one of the experiences where I was like, holy shit, this fucking works. It really works. But then learning that you really have to be able to do it. And I was like, I'm going to do it. And I'm going to do it. And I'm going to have to turn the switch off after that. Because otherwise, you'll have the glowy radiance thingy, which can be great. But then everything else that comes with it. And it's hard to get addicted to the glowy radiance. That's a big question. It really is hard not to get addicted. In my case, it's easier because when I do the full on normal charisma, it's exhausting. Yeah. Like you want to turn it off. Yeah. Whereas for others who are perhaps more neurotypical, I understand why it's really hard. You know what? It is chemicals. You can get addicted to that like to any other chemicals. And that high is really hard. It's real for you as well. Oh, here's the other one that's really important. Both of you may have had this experience. If you've got it on full blast, people start spilling their guts. Oh, yeah. And then the backlash comes the next morning as their ego wakes up and said, oh, my God, what have you said? And then they hate you for the rest of their lives, right? Yeah. You said it can be a very intoxicating experience to be with someone with a ton of charisma. And you can end up sharing in a way that you'll have a hangover for. You absolutely can. In a sense, it's like you're both drunk on it. And it's a bit like you're putting them under a hypnosis spell. They feel a little betrayed. Like you can use like put a spell on them or something. It really can create this cocoon of safety around you in which time and space stop and they just spill everything. So that is a real risk. Yeah. This happens on dates. Yes. Where I do often feel sort of guilty after a first date because they've said a lot of very personal, intimate, revealing things. And I don't I mean, I do back, but it doesn't phase me the same way because I'm used to doing it. And so then they feel a lot closer than I feel. And then it feels like, oh, fuck, I have done something wrong. So that is exactly what you get to, which is the asymmetry. Yes. Of how important the moment was for them and for you, because for them, it's a I've never had this experience of self-revealing with anyone before. And for you, it's Tuesday. Exactly. I love this. We had a guest that was talking about a co-star who she was very charmed by and fell in love with. And then she noticed he had that effect on everyone and she felt very betrayed by that. And I remember bringing this up and I said, I'm going to attempt to offer from his point of view, which is like, he's just him. And you're upset that he has that effect on everybody. But if he had it on you, yeah, that's what effect he has on people. You can't really get that mad about it. It's not just you that's going to experience that. True. But at the same time, you, you have to learn the good strategies for giving them an off ramp. Yeah. So that they realize in the moment how much they're sharing and give them a way out of it in case they want to. It is really, in a sense, your responsibility if you're going to. put them under this charismatic spell. It's your responsibility not to take them too close close to their own demons if they're not equipped to handle them, because not everyone is, and not to reveal too much of themselves that they may not be ready to reveal. They just feel incredibly safe in that moment. Yeah, I do think it's the responsibility of the person to know what you're doing to the other person and if you think it's fair or right or not. Which takes a while, I think, to come to the realization. It does, but it's superpower responsibility. When I first start having these conversations with people, everyone says, that's a good problem to have. I want to have that problem of people become addicted and all that, and I'm like, you're right. It sounds great. I actually once fired a client whom I will not name, but I fired him because of the swath of destruction that he was leading through his personal life. He was not using his powers responsibly. That's tricky because they're filling their own voids as well, and if it's approval, that's hard to turn off. Can charisma, though, does it have an end point where if it goes too far, people are like, oh yeah, yuck. I don't want to do that. I don't like that anymore. That's a really good question. I've personally never seen it. I'm sure it exists. What I've seen is only when people try to fake it, then there absolutely can be a yuck. People feel it. Yeah, but that's not because there was too much charisma. It's because the charisma, in fact, wasn't there because people tried to fake it. Yeah, inauthentic. No, I've seen people self-destruct because of too much charisma, which lead them to all sorts of bad decisions and lack of accountability for so long until it becomes really terrible. So fascinating. It's fascinating. I love that it's been studied and that there's great science behind what you now understand about it. An increasing amount, especially now with the online work, but most of it is U.S., E.U., and a little bit in Asia. We don't have enough on Middle East, Africa. It's a very Western-centric, mainly science at the moment. Yeah. Do you think maybe these other places don't put up as much of a premium on it? I don't know. I think it's more of a point of collectivist society as opposed to an individualistic society. That's what I was going to say. I don't think charisma is a good signal. Yeah, because status, of course, exists in all humans, but it's not as important in some societies or it's measured differently. It's measured differently. Yeah. It's not like possessions and achievement. It's how good of a son you are. The West, the relationships. Exactly. Yeah. So I'd be curious. Good question. Don't know. Yeah. Well, it's all very fascinating. Olivia, you're wonderful. I'm so glad that you didn't mask at all. Thank you. I enjoyed every second of it. The Charisma Myth, How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism. And it's been reissued, and we have some updated science. And you have a really fun component, which is people who have read the book years ago have written in over the years, and you often are putting in some of the reader's own experience and anecdotes with the chapters. Oh, that's cool. I like that. Was there a part that gave you great pride, and was there a part that you went, oh, uh-oh? Yeah, both. The first thing was that no one expected this book to go this big, right? It's in like 23 languages or something. We're crazy. We're about to sell a million copies. That's amazing. Like, who thought, right? Yeah, yeah. It's in Mongolian, for example. So especially because it is mainly Western science, I really didn't expect it to go that international. But hearing from all over the place, and there are some areas that were totally normal, like, hey, I use this. It worked great in my dental practice job interview, fill in the blank, right? And then I get emails like, I didn't share his name in the medical student who used it in Turkey during the earthquake to keep the population calm, get everyone working together, get different crews. How do you answer an email like that? Yeah. So there were really some really humbling moments. It's hard for me to take them in. So that says something about my own psyche. But there were some times when I'd get these emails and I could only read one sentence at a time because it was too much for me to take in. And I'd literally have to read one sentence, go walk around and then come back and read another sentence. The variety of applications, we've heard from people in like Nigeria, all over the place. And then I didn't expect the high schoolers to really take this to heart, because I really wrote it for adults. But it makes sense for job interviews, for everything online. I think most adults by late 20s, they've accepted whatever charisma level they think they have. Whereas in high school, you're still hopeful. You are. In a sense, for me, that's the tragic part. Because the reason I got into this is because. I couldn't figure out. I mean, I was like, I'm smart. I should be able to interact with these other humans. And I can't. So clearly. What are they doing? What's the thing that I'm missing, right? And so it turns out there's science about it. One of the tragedies for me is the reason I desperately want this to be taught alongside reading, writing and arithmetic is one, democratize charisma, so it has less of an impact. But two, so much of these are just ways to get people to more easily to connect with one another. That's it. All right. Well, thank you so much. Everybody, check out The Charisma Myth. This was wonderful. Thank you so much. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at. Okay, let's. I want to tell the listener that I'm fresh off of falling in love. Oh, we had a great guest just now. We had a male guest on. I just want to specify that I didn't fall in love with a woman. That's fair. Yeah. I fell in love with a male guest. He was awesome. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Can't wait for people to hear it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really wonderful. I saw something. What did you see? I want to talk about it. I saw the movie One Night Only. It's a rom-com. I don't know who's in it or anything about it. Please tell me. Okay, Callum Turner, Monica Barbaro or Barbaro. I don't know how to pronounce it. Okay. It's a rom-com and I love rom-coms. You know I do. You and Mindy. Yeah, Mindy and I. Love them. I saw the movie theater. It was fun. You and Jess, I presume? Yes, Jess and I saw it. Totally fun. You know, it's a rom-com. There are things that can be better. There are things that can be worse, but it was enjoyable. But it did make me laugh because the very, very end, the two characters are doing, I won't give it away, but they're like, and it's a rom-com. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. They're like up on this tower thing and you hear someone from the bottom of, you know, someone on the ground say like, hey, you're in the shot. And there's, they're filming a commercial and these guys are in the shot. And he said, you're established. And everyone in the theater. Oh, in LA. We're in an LA theater and everyone laughs out loud at that. Obviously, it's a hilarious joke. But I do think. I was like, oh, no one is going to laugh at that in Atlanta. Anywhere but LA. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I was listening to this other podcast, pop culture podcast that was talking about this movie and they were in New York, New York watching it. And they had a very similar observation about. A different joke that you didn't get? Or that, yeah, didn't resonate with me at all that like the whole theater laughed at. And I was like, oh my God. Yeah. Movies are tricky. They're dependent. On yourself. It's a shared vernacular. Exactly. So hopefully you just like get them all throughout. Well, let's tell people in case they see it. So in a wide shot, every time you're watching. Well, generally, when you're watching something, it starts with a very wide shot. So you can see the whole ballroom everyone's in and then everyone in the ballroom. So now if someone was in that ballroom and we go to a close up three hours later, we need the person we saw in the background. For continuity. And if you're a clever actor like I am, you really make sure that you're always in a far corner in an association. So you can get out of all those other shots. Yeah. But that just shows your that shows your privilege as a very good, very, very like. Thanks for saying good. You could have just said lucky, you know. No, you're very good. And you're in a lot of really good projects and you worked a lot as an actor. But the opposite happens when you're trying to be an actor. Oh, for sure. You are dying to get in an established. If you're an extra, you are really trying to get yourself as close to the action as possible. Yeah. So that you will be in all the scenes. Yeah. Because you don't have a trailer to go back to. Yeah. But also, no, you just want your face out there. But also, if you're not in the scene, you're sitting in a fucking lawn chair outside of the soundstage. Yeah. But you just want to be in it and you want someone. You want to see your face on screen. You want to see your face. You want mainly you want somebody else to see your face and be like, who is that? And ideally someone that wouldn't date you. No. No. How did you become this? No. Someone sees, hopefully it's David Fincher, right? Yeah, yeah. And then he's like, oh my, who is that person? I'm going to call the casting director for this commercial and find out who it is. I'm going to track them down and they're going to lead my next film. Remember when Brad Pitt gave himself a line, he said? Yeah. It's like, did you enjoy your meal or something after he poured the wine? God, it's so. It's sweet. I mean, it can only happen at the beginning. It's very sweet. It's very sweet. Yeah. It's cringy and it's sweet. And we, I can only say that because I did it. You know, we did, we did a good job the first two fact checks back of going chronologically. Oh. Mm-hmm. You want to move on? No. I mean, I just want to have, I just don't, we doesn't even, you know, but yeah, tell whatever you want to tell. Well, just a lot of, a lot of exciting things happened this summer and I feel like some of them are worth mentioning. Yeah. - Yes. - One of them. Well, so everyone heard about my poison ivy. debacle but what i didn't get to and and oh i know why i want to say this is because our very first fact check back i was saying it was a bit different this summer right and and one of the elements on the table was there were many many house issues which we did not have last year because it was brand spanking new yeah i also became very very aware of how hard that environment is on houses versus la uh-huh and same with michigan where i grew up yeah everywhere really la doesn't have any weather and there's no humidity and there's no insects we have fires my dad pointed out when i told him this yeah so either your house gets completely fucking evaporated or it pretty much doesn't need much yeah you know um there it's like after just one year it's like the amount of stuff coming off the lake stuck to the house and the amount of insects and cobwebs and fucking i'm finding mice everywhere i open up anything i'm finding dead mice you know they get into every place i'm not that's not an la sit oh well famously i did have that rat you did but i'm in the i'm in a dozen now maybe in just oh seven weeks there so we go out to dinner one night oh shout out and if we're if you're in nashville when you're in nashville next time we must take you to this restaurant called rose cafe it was on a michelin list this year i don't think i got a star but it's like a it's a very it's a it's nashville it's a cafe rose cafe rose r-o-z-e yeah and um so we go out one night and then lincoln wasn't in the mood to go so she stayed back at the house while we're out there's a pretty tremendous lightning storm and so we get back to the house and lincoln is like um well i think lightning hit the house oh and you know you're trying to imagine like okay she was all by herself it was a very intense lightning storm did it really hit the house you know or did it get close or you know you're just not sure for yourself she's not sure she's not sure she's not sure totally sure next night i go uh let's uh let's watch a movie in bed it doesn't work and i'm like what's going on i like really started investigating i'm like it was really weird not the power light's not even coming on right which is very rare and that's weird but i go oh i shipped this this is an old one i shipped it from the la house maybe it just ran its course great next night i'm like we all want to watch a movie go on to the movie room that projector's cooked fuck okay let's go on the normal tv go to turn that on it's cooked okay go now i'm like what oh my god this has to be the lightning so this in totality took out my irrigation system my pool equipment every audio video thing in the house and it's still emerging it's like i go to try something and i've never really experienced anything like this we're just it's smoked everything scary now on a plus side did you see a picture of my orange boat yeah on instagram or you showed me but is it also on it's on instagram yeah yeah yes and i showed you yeah yeah yeah and um i gotta tell you that i really really enjoyed i'm having that boat and i want you to know that um your brother and i my brother neil aaron weakly oh sure um we did a hit 108 okay on the boat you know that's what it's capable of okay okay that's what it's capable of okay and i must say and i am a daredevil yeah i know um i don't know that i'll go above 108 please can you can we like make it some sort of declaration like you won't i know you won't make the declaration because then you will feel bad if you do it and then just don't um it was a dream i mean the boat is like at that point it's like an eagle it's just hovering on a little bed and it's like it's out of air it's as smooth as the boat rides is that one away it's an incredible piece of machinery but you know the lake i'm on is a river and at that speed you're running out of river quickly you're like oh turns are coming up and you got to stay inside the channel and you know it's you run out of real estate very quickly yeah but we did have our little thrill aaron and i and it was very very exciting and um yeah i just want to tell you about that that's great yeah that's it so happy on a on a the opposite end of flying soaring like an eagle yeah i had i we put a pin in this last time okay um the lettuce parasite we think i had we so cyclospora cyclospora cyclospora um i have good reason to believe because i had it for 10 days honest yeah you were saying water balloons yeah yeah water balloons because it's not right it's it's like it was different you know i'm not a stranger to honest it's not like i never get it i get it but this was different it felt different it came with a lot of cramping it was i think i had a fever yeah i think i had a fever one night um so it was bad um and then i i ended up taking the anti-parasite medication and it went away yes i either had that or something a different parasite that this parasite thing killed exactly but what was always sort of you know a good thing about being ill is you don't you can't really do anything but like lay in bed and watch tv and go to the poopoo pot yeah it's kind of a nice excuse it's an excuse guilt-free yes so like a sick day when it's when you're a little kid and you could stay home watch green acres yeah can i just pause that for one second what age do you think you start feeling guilty about tv because when i just said that i was like that actually isn't a good analogy because i never felt guilty watching tv i was like oh my god thank god i get to if i was at my dad's he had cable i'd watch i would watch the entire weekend where his house i never stopped watching tv i never felt guilty i still don't feel guilty unless i have something i'm supposed to be doing okay but if you have three days off and you spend it all watch staring at your tv you don't feel guilty um i don't feel guilty no i feel sometimes i'm like oh you feel like shit yeah i'm like i gotta like get out i gotta see when my kids do that they are different human beings but it's also part of life like part of life is just watching a whole show in one day you know so i did that for two shows i watched i watched one show in a day and then the next day i watched another show in a day and it was great it was great i loved it now the first show ding ding ding was blackbird with oh you're on a tear this is before a tear it was it wasn't before it was after no no we did him before summer after yeah but it was before we just talked about it yeah but it i don't know what that has to do i thought you were saying what i'm saying is you google searched him and now you watch his show anyway so he so yeah okay yeah yeah i wanted to consume because that's what this show does right you learn about people and you're like i like them like i want i like them i want to support their work i'm gonna go back in time i'm gonna find it plus i was really in the mood for a thriller okay so i i looked online at what are the best thrillers i had seen so many hours yeah and i saw a blackbird was on there and i was like oh that's taryn's show i'm gonna watch it yeah yeah watch the whole thing in a day and the show is so good it's based on a true story do you know about this show yeah did you watch it uh i haven't but uh yeah it's a guy that starts working inside of a prison to to reveal some other crime right yeah there's a guy in prison who's a serial killer and he has these bodies buried places and it is up to this guy to find out where the bodies are yeah and it's based on a true story and um it's so good and he is great but the serial killer is what's his name you know paul walter hauser paul walter hauser oh i know him yeah he's great and everything he is so good and everything but in a movie with him though uh-huh queen pins um he is so good in this and so scary and so creepy but you also kind of feel bad i mean it's such a good performance and i don't think that blackbird got it to do cred yeah you know what i realized when i'm traveling when i'm not in either new york or la it occurs to me that not a lot of people watch apple tv shows outside of here because like people of course i'm in nashville or wherever i've been are you are you acting and i'm like i haven't for a long time but actually i did just do this thing bad monkey never heard of it that's something i've never seen ted lasso and i'm like that's crazy yeah i think a lot of people don't have apple tv maybe but i would recommend getting it and i'd recommend watching blackbird and then the next day i watched paradise season two i had been holding off for no reason whatsoever i loved paradise season one are you sure you didn't start that before we wrapped for the summer i promise okay i've never seen it okay i want it i was like oh i should i should why why am i not yeah i had a weird Mental block Yeah this happens Thank god for cyclospora Because I watched that entire season in one day. Mm-hmm. I can't believe how good that show is. It was great. It is such a good show for so many reasons. Acting, plot, it's hooky. Uh-huh. The dialogue is great. I love the first episode where you're meeting. Shailene Wrigley's character. Yeah, yeah. She's unreal in this. Yeah, she's great. In this show. Yeah, she's really great. Like, she needs to win the Emmy, and I think she's nominated. Okay. Okay, I'm just saying that. Okay, good. You're casting your vote. Yeah, it's so good, and it's poignant. And then on Instagram, I tried to play one of the scenes, but it didn't let me because there's a really good monologue from our friend, friend of the pod, James Marsden. I'm so glad he was in season two. I was so afraid he wouldn't because he's dead in season one. That's the premise. Yeah, exactly. And I love his character in it. Yeah. Don't forget, yeah, that showrunner's big thing is flashbacks. This Is Us was all flashbacks, right? Well, I've never watched it, and guess what? Did you start it? I'm gonna. You should. Yeah, I'm gonna. Yeah, I still can't because of Parenthood, but tell me if it's good. Well, it's got to be great. It was an enormous hit by a great showrunner, so. I know, and Sterling's so good. Yeah. The acting's so good. It is top-notch. Now, I'll say one thing that got in the way of our full enjoyment of it Okay. We would have never known this, but you know the guy, okay, Shailene Woodley's baby daddy. Yeah. He's so hot, right? Yeah, he's hot as fuck. Well, Lincoln is like, it took her an episode. She's like, he was in Descendants. He's this in Descendants. Oh. He, I can't remember what she's saying. He sang, and he, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know, I don't to this day really know what was going on, but she couldn't get over that. We watched it as a fan. We watched it as a family, but any time that guy was on, it was never satiated, like, conveying, so then it became a bit in our family. Okay. It's like, soon as he'd have a scene, I'd be like, "Wait, wait, where do I know him from?" And then with the same initial enthusiasm, "No, no, he was a bad, he's bad." You know, this Descendants thing. Yeah. So, almost every-- So, you were kind of taken out of it. I was a little bit taken out by this, and I would go, "Yes, I understand, he is in Descendants," and you never know, how in on bits are they, you know, because they're very clever. I'm like, "Is she fucking with me, or she really just can't get over the fact that this guy was in Descendants?" I don't know. She's old enough now that I don't know, because I loved fucking with my parents. Oh, I didn't. You didn't? No, but I just think she probably was really excited about it. It never really, it never abated. Did you do that? I don't know that every scene, I think once I connect the dots. I'm not copy-pasting, but I'm saying when you are excited, about something, you're so excited, and then you are excited for like a week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she and I share that. Yeah, you share that. We're two peas in a pod, man. Oh, ding, ding, ding. I've been starting to get curious, even though I said I don't care. I started getting really curious, like, when will Bad Monkey come out, right? Like, I was in the last episode in February. Just yesterday, I'm cruising through Instagram, and I see an announcement that it's coming back. And then there's a still of Vince and I. Oh, fun. Mano y mano, and I got really excited. That's so funny. So, you look like such a shithead in that. And so, it turned out Ryan had auditioned for that role, right? Your character, yes. And we were on a hike, and I learned this. Yeah. And I said, "Oh, what was the, like, what's the guy like? What's the audition?" And he's like, "Well, yeah, it's like, he uses nunchucks." And I was like, "Oh, fuck, this guy uses nunchucks. I gotta get nunchucks." Oh. And I bought practice nunchucks. You know, they're padded instead of, like, hard wood, in case you bonk yourself. And when I was a kid, I was obsessed with nunchucks. Of course, no one would buy them for me. So, I went to the hardware store, and I bought a thick dowel, and I cut it. A doll? Dowel. That's what you call a long, round piece of lumber. A dowel? Yeah. Okay. You can think of little dowels that you stick in to fill the holes. Yeah, I know about dowels. But they come in different diameters and gauges. So, I got a thick dowel. Okay. I cut it in half, and then I bought, you know, the screws you put in your ceiling to hang a plant from. Yeah. Like an eye hook. I screwed those into the ends, and then I got chain, and then I made my own nunchucks. So, when I was a kid, I had my own nunchucks. Okay. And I would spin them around and practice. And occasionally, the threads would come loose, and the piece of the dowel would shoot off and go through a piece of drywall. Like, you know, because I didn't have the real one, and then I'd go get a bigger eyelet, re-screw it in there. Anyways. Okay. So, I bought these nunchucks. Practice ones to practice in case my character used them. It turns out, I don't know where Ryan got that. It was never brought up to me, anything about nunchucks. Okay. But all to say, I have these nunchucks laying around, and Lincoln saw those, and it was like a moth to a flame. Really? She couldn't wait to start swinging those things around, and she did exactly what I did to my mom endlessly, which was like, "Mom! Mom, look at this! I can do the figure-eight and the thing," and I go through my-- I needed my mom to be watching how good I was at nunchucks, and so I have watched Lincoln do nunchucks, I don't know, cumulatively, several hours now. And I'm looking at her, and I'm like, "Look at me." Yeah, look at me. Look at this female version of me. Well, I'm glad that's the end of the story, because I was about to interrupt and say, "God, boys, boys and their nunchucks, they're obsessed with nunchucks." Yes. It's a universal boy thing that they love nunchucks. We want throwing stars, we want a switchblade, and we want nunchucks. Oh, it's so irritating, but I love that this was a twist, and your sweet daughter is also obsessed with nunchucks. And then the one time that it really did benefit me is she, you know, occasionally she's certain someone's under her bed, and like, I'm brushing my teeth on the other side of the house, and she comes, she's like, "Dad, you gotta come into my bedroom. I'm pretty sure someone's under my bed." I go, "I'm not." I'm not stopping my brushing my teeth. There's nobody under your bed. The doors are locked, I would've heard something. You know, I go through logically how that would be impossible. And she's like, "No, you need to come." And I go, and then I go, "Just fuck, grab your nunchucks." And she goes, "Yeah, okay." Went and grabbed her nunchucks. And she was willing to go see if anyone was under her bed because she had her nunchucks. I was like, "Well, this is great." Now she thinks she can take on anyone with her nunchucks. Which again, I thought I could do too. You still do. She also wants a switchblade. Okay. Listen, I always thought it was nunchucks for the longest time. Yeah, and I think colloquially, that's what they're referred to. But they are nunchucks. I know, I just looked it up. Kind of like yin and yang is really yin and yang. It's yin, most people say yin yang. Oh, that's wrong, yeah. It's wrong, but colloquially, that's what they say. I don't, I'm not on board with saying it wrong. But you're familiar with people saying, "Yeah, it's the yin and yang," you know? I think I always thought they were saying yin. It's just when you say it fast, yin and yang. Yeah, yin and yang, I always say yin and yang. Wow, I haven't heard yin and yang in a long time. It's gone by the wayside. Let's bring it back. What do you think it's been replaced with? Because it means both, right? It means both, so what are people saying now? Or it's like that tension between-- Yeah, yin and yang to me is more like opposites. Opposites in tension, but they're together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're yin and-- They're stuck together. Like they're us. Opposites attract, opposites attract. Do you know? I guess you'd say their opposites attract. We circle back to opposites attract. I don't like cigarettes. And I like to smoke. Right. Favorite line of the song. Only in the '80s would you have someone screaming from the bottom of their heart how much they like to smoke, and it's like a good lyric. If you heard that today, you'd be like, "What did that person--" Well, actually, now. No, now. But five years ago, if you heard someone singing a ballad about how much they love to smoke, you'd be like, "What is this song?" Stay tuned for more "Armchair Expert" if you dare. I have another dinner party tonight. You do? Yeah. Second of the week. I know. Ambish shows. And I don't know what I'm making, and it's coming up, you know, so I'm a little-- I'm a little stressed about that. I have-- I am in a-- I mean, I feel good right now, I feel good right now, but I have been in a little bit of a funk. You used a new adjective this week. I can't remember what you said. I said I'm-- Gloomy? Gloomy, yeah. Yeah, you said you're gloomy. I think I say that a lot. I like gloomy. It feels more playful. Oh. You know? I know. It feels like there's some hope. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, because gloomy-- Like, if you're really devastated, you're like, "I feel like fucking shit," or whatever you say, right? Of course. But gloomy's a little bit like Halloween's also gloomy. A chance of meatballs. Chance of meatballs. There's always a chance of meatballs. The weather's gloomy. Well, I hate that the most. Yeah, I love it. I know, but, like, gloomy means there will be sun again. Yes, it's temporary. It's temporary. You acknowledge the temporariness of it. Yeah, I knew this was temporary, but I was like, what is going on? Because it felt hormonal, which is not the right timing for that. Right, because last weekend you concluded your flies, as you told me. Yeah, I finished my flies. - Yeah, actually this week, should have been really really not gloomy right it's like the only week you get and and unfortunately it was gloomy um and and also like my stomach is hurt all week like physically i don't feel like all that good and and i and my birthday's coming up and i'm like who is it like my birthday am i feeling like upset that i'm aging yeah um i do well are you let's go through these i don't know one at a time see i do think there's a a confluence of things that are causing the gloom um speaking of birthdays happy birthday carly i love you so much she hates her birthday but i love it we love it yeah so i have this birthday coming up i've done zero plan and i don't really like want to do any planning um but i also don't want to be gloomy so i do want to have things to do so maybe i just feel a little overwhelmed by that but also i don't normally feel anxious about age but i think i am feeling a little anxious about this age is it fertility related well okay so that's another element at play um because you and my my brother's sweet fizzy's here he's so cute oh my god is he cute they sent me the sweetest picture yesterday of him in a little dodgers outfit oh my god why isn't he in a braves outfit i know but but they came to visit when they came to visit we went to a dodgers game oh you did a little one oh fun yeah but he um oh also just it's quick side note my parents are well it's actually not a side note it's related but my parents are um you know just so who are they you know it's like who are these people i don't know them anymore in a great way they're so thrilled and happy and they have new life in their world i know new love yeah they did their their bucket just got wider yes and this this baby um there's a video my brother sent us a and my brother is like pushing a little ball towards him and then emily is like you know maneuvering his feet moving his feet to like for him yeah yeah holding his foot and moving it to like kick the ball back you know and um he sends us this and my brother said a star in the making you know cute and my mom was like oh my god he's handling the ball so well that's what she said he's handling the ball so well i was laughing so hard because she means it yeah like she really means it and then my dad was like save this video for when he becomes a star and then we can show and i'm like who they're just like they have this new baby star and we all do i do too i'm obsessed with him i'm gonna i was like we need to facetime this weekend i need to see him which this is i think all part of the gloom right okay so i'm home and i'm seeing my parents so so so happy yeah and i do think it instigated a little bit of like i didn't give them that i didn't give them that um quickly just to remind you they also weren't retired then they just retired i know but it's still i don't know it just is like oh god like yeah that's this phrase is not the right phrase it's like there's no competing with that but there is like not that my brother and i are in any competition but it is just like oh yeah there's no that's the ultimate bringing someone new into the world that is them that's an extension of them yeah and so i think i did feel like it's the only head you have against this tragedy that you die it's literally yeah the only thing that could possibly comfort this tragedy we're all gonna experience which is we die and the only thing that can comfort that is like oh but i'm still alive you know like i'm still alive yeah we are still alive yeah you don't like that i don't know yeah i could see on your face you didn't like yeah i don't know i don't like it because i don't have it so obviously like i i don't anytime it's like it's the only thing that's hard you know like that's anyway so i think it started there a little bit and it was a great trip home actually like it was such a fun trip i had so much fun with um my parents like we had a bunch of just us dinners everything was great but i think i did leave feeling like like i wish i had given them that not instead but like to also um and it feels kind of weird to be so far away when all this is happening and even for me i'm like oh my god i'm not gonna see him again until december and he's gonna look different and i'm missing out on like why don't you go on thanksgiving grow i have i because i also have a life i mean this is all part of this is part of the tension like i like my life too and it's not yeah i don't know anyway anyway so there's just like things to think about not really to think about there's just things for the gloom there's emotions and maybe they're not perfectly identified yet yeah probably not i don't know if they'll ever be identified no you can identify them no i don't but i i don't know i mean yes i'm not saying that you can by knowing everything avoid these unavoidable yeah i'm gonna feel it but understanding specifically what's going on helps you i think helps you process it all and put it in the right boxes yeah for me it doesn't go like oh right that's that thing i know that and i've had this experience you know in that box where i'm putting that thing there's a bunch of other things from my past and i go yeah i don't know i find that comforting it's like yeah that's that's that old thing i know that thing and that's this thing and like yeah yeah i mean i think part of it is like i have lived this life obviously for me but also for them like to make them proud to have the things that to relieve them to create safety like these things that i did do and i'm happy about that i'm proud of that but i think there might be a piece now that i'm like that doesn't matter like maybe that didn't matter or that doesn't matter anymore and so i think i don't know i think sometimes when we have the hmm i think sometimes when we have these conversations it's easy for me to sound like everyone should have a baby right because i've had such a great time like i can only share my experience with it and it is what it is and i'm i like to be honest about what it is yeah um but i also think it's quite okay to for both things to be true to go like yeah that's not for me i don't want it that's not what i want to do also i'm honest about the fact that there will be some complex processing of that decision it's not just because you go i don't want it then end a story i know you'll have these moments where it's like oh yeah i'm gonna die and i won't no that's a real moment and and it's okay to work through that and process that and doesn't mean your decision's wrong it just means like it is the reality of it yeah and i think it's fine to feel those ways and it doesn't mean you should regret anything it just means like yeah that's part of this kind and then But on the flip side, you shoot off to London and you do whatever and you float around and it's like, I can't do that. Right. And there are times where I'm like, oh, I could really be letting it rip if I wasn't all day long responsible for people. So then that's the thing that I then deal with. Of course, you know, there are plenty of things. There are plenty of moments. These decisions come with a lot of predictable, you know, outcomes. Yeah. Either in either direction. Yes. I think I have plenty of moments that I'm so grateful that I don't have children. And and then, yes, there are these times, but also but it's interesting to two things. One, I I don't know that I don't want it. That's it. That's like it's if I was very steadfast in that, maybe it would be easier. Maybe it wouldn't. I don't know. But I think it's just like weird living. Limbo we thing that is hard, very hard. Yeah. If if I were female and I was in your exact shoes, I think my fear would be like, I don't know if I'm going to regret this. That's the anxiety. It's like currently I don't think I'm going to, but also I'm smart enough to go like I might. And that's a very scary feeling. Yeah. Right. I think that's where the action is. Is like, am I just fearful that I'm going to go, fuck, why didn't I do that? That which doesn't even speak to whether or not you actually want to do that or not. I know. Well, none of it. even know of you you might not regret it at all and none of it does because even these feelings are not really about me okay they're i mean like with the feelings around my family are not really about me they're about my parents they're about that so it's still not answering anything for me it's not like oh oh like i want this that's not happening it is like oh my god like when you're with other babies you like them you think they're cute you like to play with them you don't leave and go like oh my ovaries hurt i mean so a little okay okay i mean that's what i'm saying like no i there's no like oh i'm i'm doing this yeah right there's no like you don't leave going fuck i'll just be like mindy and i'm gonna handle this right there's not that yeah and then there's not like oh but i'm happy to give them back right all right so it really is this very nebulous area for me yeah yeah if i had a husband that i was in love with yeah i would want a kid yeah that i do know so then there is this like yeah but you don't really want a husband i do i do want a husband that i'm in love with i'm sorry i'm not saying i'm i feel like i'm going off of what you've been saying a lot lately which is like i'm very happy single i'm not trying to i am okay i am i have a very happy full life that i'm grateful for and i don't really quote want for anything right but it would be my preference to be madly in love with a husband yes yeah yeah that would be my preference sure it feels impossible it feels like well what i definitely know is i'd much rather be single and happy as i am than with a husband i'm not in love with and let's even by the way you could be madly in love with a husband and then the shit will hit the fan of course right like it it also not unlike parenthood it's like it's no i'm not living in a fantasy land that marriage is like i mean i mean real partnership and i don't mean madly in love in a fantasy way i mean like really in love yes in in a partnership where you're a team yeah and you have each other's backs and you you'd fight and you recover like you're in therapy yes you're in therapy and you do the thing but you're committed i that's my preference yeah but i will only do that for some not i'm not just doing that for any old person so yeah anyway so you think that might be part of the gloom because the weather's nice yeah all the other things you nothing to do with you would know to to look at at the uh the usual suspects are not present so you're led to believe perhaps it's about that i think it's i think that's in the stew i think weirdly like me just like not feeling very well like i've been like sick all year and that is unsettling um makes you feel vulnerable yeah i don't know i just i'm in a little bit of a gloom and my birthday's coming up and maybe it is a magic year because it's three times three equals nine okay you know yeah there's some magic there i like that well we can find the magic there's nothing to do with three and eight that adds up to 41 no because no it doesn't add up to 11 and 11's lucky why did i just say 41 why that makes sense in my head anyhow 11 is lucky 38 plus four three is 41 yeah yeah yeah what's lucky 11 11 yeah here's your favorite everything's lucky you know you can find you can find it if you look for it yeah the vulnerability thing is funny uh because for me it's not objective so like yeah last year i was sick from november to january 8th and i was starting to go like do i have a terminal disease right like i started and because i can't see it i don't know what's going on it starts to eat at me yeah but then emotional i'm covered head to toe this summer in in boys and ivy and everywhere i go people are like i can't believe you're at the beach or i can't believe you're doing this or on the boat or do whatever yeah and i'm like oh this doesn't even register like in my mind for whatever reason that's like i don't even register that like that doesn't make me vulnerable you know what it is i mean i'm clearly vulnerable i'm vulnerable to this oil that got all over my body but i don't it doesn't trigger the thing for me yeah but i think don't you isn't don't you think part of it is because you know what it is you're like oh yeah this sucks but it's poison worst case it's four weeks yeah yeah maybe that's part of it that's part of it i think also just seeing versus not seeing yeah and then also like feeling um run down like what is that yeah it's just a bad it's just it kind of makes you sad yeah gloomy yeah and i am of the age where i have you know i have more than one friend that are in trouble health-wise i know and so are you going to the doctor enough um i'm not sure oh i'm gonna do this i'll tell you what hit the fan this year uh this summer we got a bed big enough for all of us to sleep in in nashville we're the who's right we all last summer we all slept in the same bed all summer this summer that was not happening lincoln's older she's in her room that makes total sense and then slowly over the course of the summer i'm getting kicked like delta sleeps next to me and i'm just like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna just getting kicked in the middle and i'm like what is going to get dead shut up oh oh because so apparently i've begun snoring i know man some of this aging stuff is a man it's like two things how can i be simultaneously losing my hair and growing hair everywhere i did what is what kind of fucked up trajectory is that like i'm working out the other day and i happen to have my shirt off and i look in the mirror and the sun which you know went across yeah and i look at my back jesus christ i gotta shave my back like what's going on with my back right just here everywhere i look now there's hair i think it's going up to my eyes i now gotta shave like above my beard and i'm like why am i fight i am putting drops on my head all day long to keep this hair but why right so that's one thing and then this snoring thing i don't nothing happened to me no this is age it does happen to everyone women too so now i'm complete no one will sleep with me right by the end of summer no one's sleeping everyone's sleeping no one will sleep with me okay and no right and so also funny enough i almost posted this like i come in this is like mid-summer before everyone bailed i i look at my pillow and there's like um two boxes of those breathe right street strips you put on your nose at night so you don't snore so i start putting those on okay didn't do shit for me i think it helps other people but sure so anyways am i going to the doctor i'm going to an ent oh uh yeah mid-september wow to see if they can't bore out get in there and drill out whatever's going on in there you know make it wider or something they're gonna you're gonna get a nose job no i mean might be the time no you know i probably but i have a deviated septum i've had my nose broken in a fight and i did cocaine for years i'm sure it's a mess up there and so i'm gonna have why don't you use that thing you used to use that's what those breeze strips do i know what you used to have an actual like i know yeah it's called intake breathe they're really cool my friend dave castro's company yeah yeah yeah i just stopped you know sure kind of like um our guest this week i asked her about her nighttime routine which was extensive the last time we interviewed her she's like oh no now i don't do anything i'm kind of like that it's like oh yeah i don't know why yeah but anyways i'm going now that's a tricky thing if they got to really get in there and do some procedure yeah are you gonna do i mean and they go like do you want to make this a little less bulbous oh my god after everything okay i'm just being honest i know but i'm not gonna i'm just doing you you know i'll tell you what i'm not gonna do it because i think it would be embarrassing for me to have clearly a new nose i would just be embarrassed i don't think that's embarrassing for other people for me i would feel embarrassed um i love nose jobs they're beautiful we're very pro now all truth be told jesus materializes in the operating room and he goes i can reduce the size of your nose by 11.1 you won't be able to tell and you'll be able to tell i think so then you're a hypocrite because you're always telling everyone else that you're a hypocrite and you're not telling everyone else that you're a like having character is what's like attractive yeah i would say i just don't believe you i would say to myself i would say if i knew me i would go what are you doing look at your ex-girlfriends they're all beautiful they're all intelligent and had great personalities they all liked you what's to fix you're on television people don't complain i know the argument but if i could have it 11.1 smaller for me when i look in the mirror and no one ever said anything i would like that yeah that's what everyone wants when they do these things do they because sometimes i'm like well there's no way you thought anyone's not gonna know yes everyone thinks that everyone thinks like yeah we're just gonna do a little bit here and then like i'll like it and you'll have a button nose and no one will notice yeah not a button but like yeah i'm getting one well like let's put it this way i'm getting one my nose is crooked my nose is crooked In a fight, it got broken to the left, I believe, right? It is crooked. If when I go see the person, he's like, part of the big reason is that your fucking nose is crooked. I need to break it and set it straight. What's that? What is that? What is that? Is that a nose job? Yes. Okay. And, but it's literally returning it to how it was before the guy hit me. Yeah. Cause now this is your nose. Your nose nose. That's what they say. Your nose is your nose. Your nose nose. And who knows why any of our noses are big and small and whatever. So. My voice could change, right? I got this huge echo chamber on the, on the front of my face. It might have something to do with how my voice sounds. Like what if I came on here and I was like, people are saying I got a new nose job and I did not. I didn't do it. I had a deviated septum. It's not helping with the gloom for some reason. The nose. You didn't like me talking about my deviated septum? I want a nose job. You do? Have you considered it? Yeah. We've talked about. No, I don't. I think we've all, I think you and I have both said we would prefer different noses on ourselves, but I've not heard you say, I've been thinking about getting a nose job. I haven't heard that. I've been wanted one. I wanted one my whole life. I've been wanting one my whole life. I have. And I, but I have told you this because I told you the reason I won't do it is because my dad is very against it in case I die. Oh. He thinks if you go under the, like for him, it's like. For elective surgeries. Yeah. He, and something happens. If something happens to me. Yeah. Then he'll, he'll. He'll be mad at you. Well, yeah. He'll, he said, he said it very sweetly because he doesn't say nice. He doesn't, he's not very vulnerable. Tactful? Oh. No, he's tactful. Oh, okay. I didn't. He's just not very vulnerable. So one time I said like, I'm getting a nose job. What age? High school probably. Okay. Maybe college. And, and he was like, no, you're not doing that. Again, for like, don't choosing to go under the knife, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, well, if I don't do it, then I'm going to hate myself. The rest. No, no, no. I said, if I don't do this, I'm going to be miserable for the rest of my life. And he said. Turned out to not be true, but continue. He said, if you do it and something happens, I'll be miserable for the rest of my life. Well, that's true. And it was true and fair. And I am not willing to put him at risk for that. Rob, can you look up how many people die from rhinoplasty? A year in the U.S.? People get infections from plastic surgery. Let's find out. Don't do rhinoplasty. Just do nose, do nose job. That's what we're talking about. Nose job, right? I know, but. The mortality rate for elective plastic surgery is about one death per 100,000 procedures. Okay. And we didn't give nose jobs specifically. I did. It doesn't like that. It doesn't track that. So plastic surgery, by the way, that includes like people who have their face taken off and then reassembled, you know, there's like, there's very extensive plastic surgery. I'm not saying it's common. There's people that get these butt injections in a fucking questionable country and they get an infection, you know? Yeah. I'm not saying it's common, but he's right. It could happen. Ask what the death rate is per. It's not the point. Don't be mad at me. I just want to know this. Okay. What's the death rate per 100,000 for the common cold? Virtually zero. Okay. That's better. So if you're choosing between a nose job and a common cold. Also, you aren't choosing a common cold. That's the whole point. That is literally the whole point. Anyway, I just, so I decided I wasn't doing it because of him, but yes, I want one. I hate my face. What do you mean? We all know this. This is not like new information and it totally discounts the veneers. It kind of is new information because I know that you hate your face. Welcome to the club. But I, I did not know that you were a value, you know, considering a nose job. Since I was two. Okay. Two. Since I came out the womb. Okay. Let's do some facts. Okay. Okay. So Olivia, this is for Magnet Charisma. Very cool. Yeah. Very cool episode. I think people are going to want to read it and implement. Of course. And I hope if you do, you use your power for good. Yeah. There really are like very few facts. She was incredibly knowledgeable. Yes. She said in chemistry, you need a certain amount of each element to get to activation energy. And so then I looked up how much and it said, there's no set number for activation energy. It changes for every chemical reaction. Some reactions need very little energy and happen fast. Other reactions need a lot of energy and happen very slow. I was not very good at chemistry. I mean, I did okay, but I struggled. It's hard. It's hard. It is hard. I can't remember. Was it Neil Thies? But he was saying virtually we learn in the wrong order. Oh. As children here, you really start with animals and biology and then you work your way to. Physics. Is it physics then chemistry? No, no. It's biology, chemistry, physics. Right. And he said it's more intuitive to learn physics, which create chemistry, which creates biology. Oh, interesting. Yeah, one is leading to the other, but we start, we go top, top down, I guess. I mean, I think it makes sense. But it would be so. It would be so hard to start with physics. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. But it does make more sense if you've got all those rules and you go, right, now that you understand that's how these elements come together. This is why they, yeah. Yeah, I mean. This is why they come to be living. Yeah. It makes sense, but I don't think a ninth grader's brain. Or second grader, because you're learning about animals and biology in like elementary school. That's true. But I mean in high school, that's the order in high school. Yeah. Ninth, tenth grade. Ninth, eleventh. For me, for my school. And I was so. Oh, physics was so hard for me. Still is. I'm reading When We Cease to Understand the World, a book about physics. And man, is it just. Did you ask Chat yet what parts are fictional? No, I haven't asked. Because I had no idea some of that book is fictional. I haven't asked which parts. That really scares me. It does. I took it all as. I didn't even know that part. How did you learn that? People talking? It wasn't in the cover. I think. I think it's on the back. Really? I'm audiobook, so I don't. Oh. Yeah. I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Let's double check. I hope you're wrong. Blunt's Fact and Fiction. To explore how major scientific and mathematical breakthroughs such as quantum mechanics and chemical synthesis border on madness and bring destructive moral consequences. Well, geez, I hope that the Heisenberg thing isn't completely. The historical. The baseline is real, but the inner turmoil and epiphanies are fictionalized. That's kind of the fun part. That he just invents dramatic dreamlike internal states, such as Heisenberg feeling his brain split into two while discovering matrix mechanics to capture the psychological toll of grasping complex science. Oh, wow. That's the one I like the most. The Heisenberg. We just don't like it. Yeah, it's like the idea of, like, touching madness and you come out of it with these matrix that make. It makes sense, but you don't know why. I know. That's like. It makes me believe in God. Right. I know. But anyway, physics is wild. Oh, it is. And I can't wrap my head around it. And I'm okay with that. That's the other thing. Yeah, this. I just read an article yesterday. It was like, the Hubble has exposed that our understanding of the universe is completely wrong in a lot of areas. There's a bunch of different stars that were supposed to have expanded slower towards us that we've now observed through Hubble. So there's. Right now, there's this. There's this kind of crisis, I think, in physics where it's like, wait, how are we explaining all this shit that Hubble just observed? Because that's not our current understanding of what's happening. Ugh. Oh. Her book has been translated into 36 languages. The Charisma Myth has how anyone can master the art and science of personal magnetism. And what's crazy is there's only 32 languages. Should I ask? Isn't there like a thousand dialects in India or something crazy? How many languages are there in the world? Oh, wow. Approximately 7,170 known living languages. 90% of which are in India. I mean, definitely at least a thousand they have. I was talking about that when I was with my parents. It was weird because we were discussing how Indian last names, you can tell you where they're from. Mm-hmm. They're geographical. Yeah. And it's just interesting that we don't have that. No. We had a lot of occupational names. Yeah. Shepard, Smith. Right. But that's outdated. I guess it's all outdated sort of. But you're stuck with them. Yeah, I'm stuck with them. But yeah. Like my last name is a declaration of our, at one point, our livelihood. I just think that's interesting. Like if you hear someone's Indian last name, you know if they're from the North or the South. Like it's wild. Yeah, but that's getting all fucked up here for sure. Right? Because you have the Patels. Yeah. They've taken over America. No, no. It's not like, no. You don't, sorry. You don't know whether they're from the North or the South in America. No, no. I know. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just saying it's here. Here's different. But that's what I'm saying. Here in general, you can't know anything about that. But if you know someone's last name is Patel, you know where the region that Patels are from. Originate. Yeah. Yeah. Rob, ask what the most common last name in India is. In India. Proper. Not. Entire. - Well, it's gonna be hard, they're so-- Debbie. What did he say? Debbie. D-E-V-I. Debbie. I thought he said Debbie. Debbie, yeah. I was like, not ladies. There's no way that's the most popular first name. That's a first name, though, isn't it? Most frequent surname. Oh, listen, also names in India are very confusing. Like, people take the last name that's someone's first name. Like, it gets very complicated. Skadiwampus. Yeah, it's different. And then sometimes they're passed maternally, and sometimes the wife takes the husband's first name as the last name. So there's a lot going on. Nermi Ashok. It's got a ring to it. It would be Nirmala Ashok. Yeah, yeah. But she didn't do that. Okay. I like that, though. No. They got Singh, Kumar, Devi, Sharma, Patel, and Gupta. Gupta. We know some Guptas. Sanjay. That's it. We know a Gupta. Nambiar is popular. That's my mom's maiden name. What is it? Nambiar. Nambiar. That's beautiful. N-A-M-B-I-A-R. Anyhow, so I just thought that was interesting. We can't do that here. You can't hear someone's name and know a thing about them. Regions in India change a lot of things. It changes the language. It changes often. Not always, but, like, skin coloring, background. Like, it's interesting. You know a lot immediately. Do you think in year 3086, people will be like Debbie Uber and Glenn Uber because that was a popular occupation? No. Okay. I don't. Okay, yeah. They're not inventing new last names. I was trying to think of very modern occupations that might. No, be a Monica podcaster. Doug computer programmer. Podcast isn't that different from Padman. No, it's really close. Yeah. We're from the South. You want to hear something embarrassing? No, please. Always. You know, when I had fantasies? Yeah. When? No, I have a lot less. It's a little more boring life, I'll say. Okay. Anyway, so I used to, when I was trying to be other people and stuff, and when I was young and, like, writing stories a lot and giving people names, I really liked Shepard as a last name. You did? I did. And I wanted that as a last name. Did you know, was there a Shepard at school? That's, I don't know. I don't know how I knew. I must have known someone or heard it. Then when Derek Shepard on Grey's Anatomy reiterated that. Okay. Yeah. That was the character's name, not the actor's name. Yeah, correct. Patrick Dempsey's character. Okay. So, just letting you know. Okay. That seems serendipitous. I know. Yeah. Yeah. God, Sam. Sam is lazy. So lazy. All right. All right. Love you. Love you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.