Why Toughness and Kindness Need Each Other | The Curiosity Shop

Hi everyone. In today's episode of the Curiosity Shop Adam and I are there's really very little that we're not talking about in this episode. I'm wearing my spurs hat today and it's celebrating and I think he's wearing a pistons jersey because he looks cute in it but who knows. But I will say that we are talking about everything from the incredible culture that this spurs have built. We're talking about what happens when shame seeps into cultures, sports cultures, but also home, work, faith communities. We are talking about hard stuff. We're talking about gun reform. We're talking about grief related to everything from miscarriage, death by suicide, what grief looks like, why we need community, what it means to build families and cultures that are made equally of strength and kindness and how that's really missing from a lot of what we need today to deal with both the joyful things in our lives and the really hard things in our lives. We're glad you're here. Welcome to the Curiosity Shop. A show from the Fox Media podcast network. Hi, Adam. Hey, Verne. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. We were just doing this funny thing. I'm going to bring it into the podcast. Okay, you have to choose Lego or Duplo Lego or creativity Lego or Lincoln logs. I think I think when I was three, it was definitely Lincoln logs, but since then it's been Lego's here. I'm going to say Duplo over Lego Duplo over Lincoln logs and then tinker toys. Do you remember tinker toys? No. Tinker toys were like long color coated sticks. It almost looked like really skinny wooden straws and then the joining the joining piece was a circle, a one circle that was one colored that had circles all around, holes all around it in a hole on the top. I remember those favorite. Yeah, and they used to come at a big can similar similar. I think to Lincoln logs came in a can, right? They did. Wait, why Duplo's? I'm a rounded corner person because I see things in shapes and I think rounded corners convey more emotional intelligence and regulation than square corners. And less pain when you step on them and less pain. Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, I grew up with very Legoy kids. So I know the real pain of the and it's not just the mound of them. It's the stray Lego that'll kill you when you step on it because you're not expecting it. It's the worst. Did you see the Lego slippers that got released a few years ago? No, what? It's an extra padded pair of Lego branded slippers so that if you walk around a roomful of Legos, it doesn't cause you severe pain. Okay, two inventions that I think I wish I had with my kids. One, the Lego slipper for sure. Two, now they have these mats where you do your Legos on mats and then you just pick up the mat. The four corners of the mat tie up into a Lego, like a Lego basket ball, like basket thing. How long did it take us to think of this? I know. This is as obvious as a rolling suitcase. Oh, my God. I love it. You mean, whichever. It did take forever. I accidentally said basket ball. I just would like some commentary on my hat today. Goes spurs. So exciting. Can you stand it? I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not, I don't have a personal attachment to the spurs, but I've, I've always admired the culture of humility that they've built from the Admiral David Robinson to Tim Duncan now into the Wembee era. I think it's a great team. Can we just say pop, pop of it just, just amazing, legend, even, even as a native Pistons fan, I can admire all of that. Yeah. And you know, it's so funny because when you watch the sidelines, he's, he's there now, but when you watch the sidelines, even he was, he was coaching, he was so loved by players from other teams too. It was just, God, I mean, talking about the whole idea that love wins such a pop of which ethos excuses are easy. An epic movie night. 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One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. Hey friends, Olivia from Oli. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science back solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with multis made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut supporting probiotics and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. StockuponOli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, prevent any disease. Okay, I do want to talk about the spurs today because I want to talk about a couple of things that I've seen all over social media. I definitely want to talk about that. Can we talk more about pop of itch too? Oh God, I can I will I will always talk about pop of itch. Yeah. One of the things are you a Wimbee fan? Define fan. Do you just cry when you see his picture on Instagram? No. Do you? Yes, oh yeah. Yeah, I just think he's yeah, I really love the entire I love the entire team. But one of the things that I have been really interested in there is a clip from a press conference where it shows David Robinson and Tim Duncan sitting together in the audience. And the reporter at the conference at the press conference said asked Wimbee, when you look up and you see those legends and you also see pop there too. Does it feel heavy? And Wimbee who's so thoughtful, you know, just paused for a second and said, no, it feels safe. It feels like if I were to fall, there are people there to pick me up. Wow. And yeah, and I just want to talk about in hyper, you know, you and I both work with athletes and sports teams in hyper competitive environments to build that level of safety is one so intentional and two, I believe, so related to performance thoughts. I I think it's it's it's surprising to me how rare it is given how important it is. What do you make of that? I think it's I mean, it's anti in some ways it cuts against the current of masculinity culture and the idea that like athletes are supposed to be tough. But are we have we arrived at the place where tough and love were kindness and winning were, you know, Harkin back to the podcast are a lot, you know, the last podcast on paradox. Like are we at this place where tough and love can't coexist were kindness and performance can't co-exist. Yeah, I hope we we get to a place where that's not even a paradox anymore. I mean, that's a skill set deficit. Big time. Right. Yeah, so this I mean, this is this is so connected to your work on armor. I want to hear you talk about this. Yeah, no, yeah, because one of the other things that I thought was interesting and this is me putting two things together. There was also when the Spurs beat Oklahoma, there was some footage of Wimby's like sheer emotion, just sobbing, hugging people. And now there's been this real flooding of social media around this meme of non-chalant is over. Caring is in. And to me, his ability to be emotional and to care out loud is inextricably connected to the safety he talks about in that team culture. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, it does, because he doesn't have to worry about being judged for for what he's expressing, whether it's on a unapologetic ambition or like the joy of victory or the disappointment of defeat. I mean that that's exactly it. It's interesting because we joke about Shalant, Non Shalant in our organization all the time because they're always you know and I had to look it up. It's the definition is coolness and difference and unconcern from 16 the 1670s from French, Non Shalant, meaning careless and it's like my team has told me on a number of occasions. You try very hard to be non Shalant about things and you are Shalant AF for neck. You are as Shalant as it gets. So yeah so I have come into my own or my ownership of being Shalanty. But I think it's interesting because you know both of my kids played sports and it mattered to my kids a lot. And I remember and they had to try out for teams and they had to go up for captain and they had to you know you know Charlie really had he Charlie had some college offers to play and he had to do a lot of hard thinking but I often told them letting the people around you that you trust know how much you want something is courage. That is brave to say I want this and it's important to me when you can't control the outcome to me is one of the best indicators of the relationship between vulnerability and courage. Wow that's fascinating okay I've never thought about this so once you put your goals out there you're taking a risk because then if you fall short everyone is going to know that not not only did you did you fail but now you're going to feel something that you might not have been comfortable revealing. People will know you're hurting. Yeah yeah I've never thought about that as courage to put it out there. Oh yeah I mean it wasn't it was like for me where my kids applied to college or tried out for a team or you know Ellen ran for president of the student council like whatever it was you know it I had to pull them aside and interject the pause that I talk about all the time and just say I know you're caught up in this moment and you're grinding to achieve something but I want to pause you here and talk about how brave it is not only to put yourself out there but to let people around you know something's important to you you know and it didn't always go their way for either one of my kids you know and so then to do it another time it's just it doesn't go it doesn't go our way every time for any of us and I think I think Wimby let the world know and I think I'm probably you know I talk a lot about the relationship between vulnerability and boundaries and I don't think you have to let the world know but letting the people who are real marble jar people the people with whom you've built a lot of trust letting those folks know what matters I think it's real it's just I find it very admirable and very courageous this is this is such a such a it's such a new way of thinking about sharing your goals for me and it's actually helping me resolve actually a puzzle that's that's bothered me for a long time so there's I'm sure you've seen decades of research on the power of making your goals public that when you tell the people around you what you're trying to accomplish you get a great combination of support and accountability you have people encouraging you you also have people checking in with you to make sure that you're you know you're not you're not falling off the path that you're trying to take and yet despite that so often people are reluctant to put their goals out there and they end up kind of dreaming in private and I've never understood why that is until now like I never thought about the risk of having to say yeah like I I wanted to go to that school and I didn't get in I wanted that job and I got rejected for it I wanted to to win and I lost that's a hard thing to put yourself out there for oh my god it it it is it is and I've I've I've been on every side of it that I can think of I have expressed something that I really wanted and you know it was interesting like I I go back to when daring greatly came out I told Steve I might cry I don't know I'm gonna see if I can work through it but I told Steve how much I how much I wanted the real New York book tour experience and so he got a fancy hotel room for me and surprised me for launch day in New York and I got there and I got a new outfit and I went and I remember waking up on pub day and Murdoch calling and saying everyone turned down the opportunity to interview you there's nothing yeah there's and I in that moment I said in my hotel room for two days and not a single media interview oh no and yeah and I remember oh I cried and cried and I remember like having so many moments have regret about telling you know in my fancy hotel room that Steve surprised me with like telling how much I regretted telling him and my kids and Murdoch how much I wanted that but then at the same time they were the ones that were like fuck everybody it's a great book you know and they're probably including my children but then it then it you know caught on later but in that moment it was it was so tough and I remember kind of the shame of would this have been easier had I acted like it was no big deal because I was raised in a family where you never ever act like anything's a big deal so that if you lose you can say you didn't care wow hard that is really hard I one I'm I'm sorry that happened that's just I mean the image of you sitting alone in a hotel room so sad in a fancy hotel room too and then I was like I don't think we can afford this and I definitely can't afford the room service oh yeah it's it's painful it's yeah it's a little a little bit easier to to stomach knowing ultimately what happened obviously you've you've done the New York book tour more than once yeah and are probably over it by now but I never take it for granted anymore yeah clearly I mean the right that's the that must be burned into your brain yeah yeah that sensation but it is it is it's a it's a bit of a paradox because at some level you're right if you hadn't told them you wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with but on the other hand if you hadn't told them you would have missed out on their understanding and empathy and compassion I mean it's true and I remember the for I remember getting pregnant with Ellen and calling my sisters and my mom I told them like it we went to go eat Mexican food in Houston and I gave them the little James Avery charms as a surprise and I said it's really early and I'm scared to tell you and I wanted to wait to tell you until you know we got further along through the first trimester but I figured if it if if something happens to the pregnancy I'm gonna need you to know because you're the ones I'm gonna need to call so here's a charm and don't get it soldered on that the very historic James Avery charm bracelet here's the charm but don't get it soldered on until I get to like 16 weeks but I want you to know now and celebrate now because if things go wrong you'll be the people I call and and and then you know my mom was very you know so should we tip our responses because this was the first grade baby I said no no let's celebrate but just know that this ride will go both ways if if it and for if it does this is this is such a this is such a challenge around pregnancy because yeah so you know I I never thought about it through this lens but Allison comes from a healthcare background and so when we were expecting like her first thought was don't tell anyone in case something is wrong because then you don't have control over who you share your news with right you're you're then forced to tell everybody yeah we lost the baby so what happens you wait but in our case Allison ended up having a miscarriage and then no one knew like no one knew that she was pregnant to begin with and then it was this extra burden to have to say yeah we kept this from you and like now we're grieving this law that you didn't even know we had. - God. - It's hard. - It was definitely, it was painful at multiple levels and I think once we finally started sharing it with a few people, we discovered tons of people we knew had gone through miscarriages and never told anyone. And this was, it was a topic that there's so much silence around, I'm like, okay, there will come a day when we are grateful this happened because we will have a child that we wouldn't have had if not for this. But until that day comes, this is gonna hurt and nobody talks about it, like, everyone is grieving in silence. - I think first, I'm sorry that you and Allison went through that. I think it is one of the most complicated griefs that we don't talk about, so I'm really sorry. - Thank you. - That's, it's hard. I have to tell you that miscarriage and infertility was the hardest shame research that I did in my career, potentially combined with living through death by suicide as a family member. But I mean, that level of grief, shame, silence, judgment, the cognitive and emotional, who do we tell, who do we not tell you, right? It's just, and I don't, I don't know why, that's why I do, I think we have to think about it in a more granular way, maybe, like concentric circles. Like, here's the core group of people that we wanna celebrate with, and that we will also grieve with. Here's the next group that we maybe don't, and we think about the roles that people play in our lives, I don't know. - Oh, okay, so a couple of things that jump to mind on this, the first is, I'm thinking about the, the kveching circle, do you know this? - Yeah, yes, yes, like the Giddish word kveching. - Yeah, there's a circle that a therapist draws where you look at the person who's closest to the pain, and then you draw the concentric circles around it. And the principle that I loved was, you comfort in and you dump out. And I'm like, oh, people need to be taught this, because, like, so often-- - Walk us through it, walk us through it, though, before, 'cause I'd heard of it, but I had only heard the in part. - Okay, walk me through the circles. - Well, I mean, I think it's, like if we take the example of miscarriage, like, Allison's at the center of that circle. And so my job as, you know, as her husband, is to comfort the person who's closer to it and make it clear to her that I am there to support her, and then not lean on her to support me, because she's suffering more intensely than I am, what I'm supposed to do is dump out, find people who are in outer rings of the circle, to tell them what I'm going through. And I think people really struggle with this, because, like, in a relationship, like, we're supposed to be grieving together. And so, you know, my, I guess, my impulse in that kind of situation would be to say, like, hey, here's, you know, here's how I'm struggling, but she's already caring a lot. And so I don't want to burden her with having to take care of my emotions at the same time that she's managing hers. And so I, I think this, I mean, I think about this all the time whenever somebody goes through something hard. Like, okay, like, yes, I think we all know to comfort the person who's closer, but let's dump outside the circle, the inner circle so that that person is not stuck in a position where they're having to, to care as well as be cared for. That, that seems like it gets missed a lot. - I think, yeah, I have to, it's going to take me a long time to process this, because I think in some of my hardest moments, it was interesting 'cause I go to when my sisters and I were caregiving from my mom through her dementia. And how it was so, we really, I think, 'cause we've been in a lot of therapy together and we work together. So we've learned how to talk about hard things together, how we said to each other, there were all in our own grief, which makes taking care of each other in this situation almost impossible, that we can be empathetic with each other and we can share stories, but none of us are in the position to care for each other because we're each, like, I'm having a hard time putting you on my back and carrying you because my grief is about 50 cinder box tied around my shoulders right now. And so I think, I mean, I think it's lucky that we all do therapy and we, I can say that because we've talked about it on the podcast before so it's not like I'm outing my sisters, that, I mean, one of my sisters is a therapist, so, but I think, I think it also explains the rates of divorce after the death of a child that I think how do you care for someone else when you're, you know, which is miscarriage too. I mean, you know, which is, I think about the definition we use of grief in our work 'cause I was trying to figure out the best definition in the literature and then when I did the qualitative analysis, it was like three things, kind of longing lost. Like, there was this like very deep sense of, I don't have a mooring, I've lost, like, I'm untethered from what I would define as my ordinary life, which I thought was ordinary 'til now, and now I'm desperate to get back to it and this kind of unmet longing for something. It's really hard to be grounding for someone when you don't have footing. - Yes, say that again. - It's really hard to provide a source of grounding and tethering for someone when you are completely not grounded or tethered to your own life. Like, how do you, this just not the way gravity works? So gravity, neither gravity nor grief work that way. - No, and I think this is one of the reasons why, I feel like I know a lot of couples who basically are each others, primary and sometimes only source of all emotional support. And you need other people that you can both rely on, not just to complain about each other, but also because there will be times when you're both hurting and one of you is not in a position to care for the other or in both directions for that matter. - Yeah, I think the whole, I think finding, that's why, and again, I think it's such an access issue, but finding good therapists, good coaches, if I could wave a healthcare wand, it'd be in my top three things that I would want to provide for everybody, just access to, to be able to sit across from someone who, when you're untethered and you can't find the ground, can provide an opportunity to talk through how to get back there, you know, that's not directly connected to your own grief. You know, our fear, anxiety, whatever it is, I think it's, that should not be privileged. - No. - And we've lost community, we've lost community, and we've lost multi-generational living, and we've lost a lot of the things that provided it before it became professionalized. So I do think it's part of the loneliness. - Yeah, I think so too. And I think one of the things that that community used to do is give you an outlet for the longing that you're describing. Like a lot of, I've noticed that when people go through loss, whether it's the death of a loved one, or even in some cases, just a relationship that ends, and it's more ambiguous loss, no one asks you about it. And it's strange because they think that they're being polite and maybe even respectful to not remind you. And the reality is that then you never had to have a chance to share it. You never have a chance to talk about those memories to reminisce about the person. And I'm just thinking about the great psychologist Andrew Garfield, Spider-Man. - Spider-Man. - I thought had the most beautiful reframe of grief that I've ever heard when I remember seeing him on Colbert actually, I think, when he lost his mother. And he said that for him, grief was unexpressed love. Like he was overwhelmed with all of the feelings of love that he was never gonna be able to show to her. Which, yeah, at one, heartbreaking, but two, People need to express that love, right? I'm sure. He would want to be asked about her, so he could talk about why she was so special to him. And I'm just thinking, you know, you're calming about the loss of community. If you're not around people who also knew the person you lost, then when are you gonna talk about them? When are you gonna express the love that you didn't get to share directly? Support for this show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder? 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Hi, friends. Olivia from Oli. Start your mornings off right with multis-made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Check up on Oli.com today. This takes me to, this takes me to two really wildly different experiences that happen in a short kind of concentration amount of time for me that made me understand this. One was we started doing research. We were doing dare to lead, and we started basically a five-year research project asking leaders. What do the people who report to you do to gain trust? And number one didn't surprise me at all. It surprises people all the time, but it didn't surprise me. One is ask for help. I trust somebody who asked for help. The wildest thing that held over five years of asking this every time we went to an organization to work with the cohort of C-suite and the drug reports of the C-suite. Do you not number two was? No, but I want to. Attend, attend funerals. Really? If you can geographically, to attend the funerals that matter to the people with whom you work. Wow. And I just remember doing a dare to lead intervention at a big tech company, and hearing a story about, I think, I don't know if this matters, but to me for some reason, obviously it mattered because she was the only woman on a software engineering team. And her sister died by suicide. And very few people showed up at the funeral, which is not unusual in a death by suicide. And I don't, I think sometimes we can say it's because people think they're being respectful or not wanting to bring it up, but sometimes it's people being comfortable in their own. People privileging their comfort over other people's grief and needs. And she said when she walked in, her entire team was there, including two people who had flown in. Is it? Then when she, oh yeah, she said, she said it was one of the most important moments of her life. Then she said, on her first day back to work, she was so stressed out about how to bring it up. But her team leader said, we want to let you know that we are excited that you're back. We've all talked, and we are ready to talk about this. And we are ready to not talk about it. But we are comfortable talking about it, and we are comfortable not talking about it, and we will follow your lead. Like that's a masterclass in emotional intelligence right there. Oh, yeah, it's just, it's incredible. The second experience I had was maybe in the top, maybe, yeah, maybe the most difficult professional experience I've had in my life, which was being invited to spend some time with the parents at Sandy Hook. And I have very strong feelings about gun reform. As someone who was basically raised in a hunting blind, like I am not anti-gun ownership, I shot skeet growing up, thought for a while I'd go to college on a shooting scholarship, like I was raised in a gun family, a hunting family, a skeet and trap family. But I have always been a huge believer in gun reform as a result of that, actually, not despite that. And so when Sandy Hook happened, they were first graders who were killed, and my son was in first grade. And so when I got invited to go, I was in a car going to Sandy Hook from New York, and I had kind of one of my first professional full-blown panic attacks. And I called Steve, and I was like, I can't do this. I can't, it's too close. I can't do it. I'm scared. I can't do it. What am I going to say? No. And one of the things that really struck me is he's like, you know exactly how to do this. It's just, you know how to do this, like this is who you are. And I was like, I don't know if this is helpful, but I'm going to just, I'm going to believe it anyway. So when I got there, they had pictures of their kids who had been killed. And I fumbled in my bag and pulled out my phone and showed them a picture of my kids. And just intuitively and responsibly, irresponsibly, with where I'm looking intuitively and reflexively, like in her, just there was a reflex because we were sharing pictures of children. And two of the parents started crying, and I said, I'm so sorry, because you know my children are still alive, right? And I thought I've done something and they said, you're the first person. But we've showed pictures of our kids too, who looked at us in this very normal human way and said, let me show you pictures of my kids. And we want to see pictures of your kids, because it helps us understand that you know what it means to show the picture of our kids who have been killed. And it was just this moment where like, I remember one of the parents saying to me, if I go to a restaurant and I'm crying, everyone looks at me with pity. And if I go and I'm laughing, they look at me like, don't you care about what happened? And so it's like this loss of normalcy where we participate by not saying things like, well, I had a really big memory of so-and-so today and how he used to run down the soccer field. Like as if if we say that, they'll be, oh, I forgot completely that I had this happen. So it's what you're saying about community and a way, it's like what we tried to mimic with in social work, with wraparound services, you know, it's like we tried to mimic community with wraparound services where community is the ultimate wraparound service, right? That's right. I can't believe you went. Just imagining going into that room, I mean, I think about the empathic distress of sitting with people who have faced the most unimaginable, horrific thing. And then also feeling like, well, how do I help? What could I possibly offer here? What did you do? Listened, cried, laughed, told stories, listened to stories, and talked about how one of the things we don't talk about with grief a lot is the loss of ordinary, the loss of normal, the thing that we diminish the whole time when everything's going okay, how we're resentful of our small lives and the rituals that make up our small lives until the moment those things are gone, and then all we really want is the ordinary part of our lives back. And so, I don't. The only thing I'm sure of, the only thing I'm 100% sure of about that work, and I went several times, is it changed me more than I could ever change them. And look, if we're not willing to consider gun reform after Sandy Hook, then I'm clear, don't talk about our love for children as a nation, like don't waste your bullshit on me, take it somewhere else because there's a way to think about gun ownership as a responsibility, not a right, and as someone who's raised again in a family where you couldn't shoot anything, you couldn't take a part and put back together again, and you couldn't kill anything that you didn't feel, dress and eat. There's probably a big collection of us that grew up like that that are probably the biggest supporters of gun reform, especially in a country where the overwhelming majority of both Republicans and Democrats favor simple interventions like universal background checks. I mean, that's, yeah, like, yeah. We're well above 80%. Right. That should not be a hard, no, that's just, yeah. So I think it was a very meaningful experience for me. I still am in touch with several of them, and I think about it all the time, and I think about what a privilege to be invited, really, just, yeah, but it was, it was scary because this is the whole thing about empathy and love and community is when we choose our own comfort over being there for someone else, things break, just things break, big things, hard things. Shannon Hanna, who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room. Or Tiffany, who's running late as usual, and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way, or Sam, who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Share your ride in real time with Share My Trip on Uber. Hey friends, Olivia from Oli, between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-back solutions that work with your life. Head back to class with the #1 gummy supplement brand. Right now, when you buy more carpet at the Home Depot, you save more. During our Buymore Save More event going on now, upgrade your carpeting with the top brands and save up to 15% off-installed carpet projects. Installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot. Select from a wide assortment of carpet to fit your room, lifestyle, and budget during the Buymore Save More event at the Home Depot. Offer valid August 27th through September 13th, 2026. These price for standard installations only excludes traffic master and stock carpet for licenses. See Home Depot.com/license-numbers. What a wild ride. This has been from the Spurs. Spurs? Yeah. I'll tell you what though. I actually have a fridge back to that, which is I walk over it with you, Adam Greenert. Here we go. Ready? Yeah. I was actually thinking that one of the ways that you know whether teammates really trust each other is whether they show up for each other when something hard happens personally. I think that's true. And here's the other thing. You can also evaluate the leadership of a team by how willing they are to excavate the grief that's in the locker room, and not just about losing, but I mean like I think about, you know, I'm a big Liverpool fan, Arnie Slott was just let go by Liverpool. And I think about the work that needs to be done with that team, not on the pitch, but off the pitch about the death of one of the closest brothers on that team and his younger brother that were killed, you know, and how much of that work did they surface and do. And this is everything we're talking about right here. If you'll allow me just a one minute silky here. This mythology that if I don't mention the miscarriage, it won't hurt, wrong. The idea that if I say something to you when you come back from leave about I'm really sorry to hear about your dad, that that's being, you know, generous. And then the idea that if we don't talk to the players about the grief they're drowning in about the loss of a teammate, that it's better for performance, like this is mythologies of comfort. These are not, this is not how we work as humans. Not even close. And you know, it's, I mean, this, this actually takes us back to Greg Popovich as a coach. One of my favorite things that he did was when looking at who he wanted on his team, you know, obviously taking talent into account, he said he looked for players who enjoyed other people's success, who were sitting on the bench, cheering when their teammates scored. And in psychology, that's called empathetic joy. And the idea that you could be as excited for somebody else's success as you were for your own is just a core signal that you are interested in being a good teammate. And I think you could pay just as much attention to do you hurt when other people are hurting? I mean, I, I, and, and, and let me ask you this, because this is an important distinction. I want to, I want us to dig in here. Do you hurt when other people are hurting? And is that different than do you show up for other people when they're hurting? Is it a difference between cognitive and affective empathy? Yes. Say more. Because do, do you have to hurt when other people are hurting or do you have to hold space for other people who are hurting and be with them in their hurt? I, I think we're both all in on the ladder. You, you do not have to feel other people's feelings to care about their feelings. And sometimes it's easiest to show care for their feelings when you don't feel it personally. Because then you're not carrying the center blocks that you were talking about earlier. Right. Right. And if you are, because you're affected by it, then you have to acknowledge the center block. So I think, I think this is a really strong point on what happens if you have, you know, so affective empathy and cognitive empathy, just the quick differentiator. Cognitive empathy is understanding, you know, intellectually what you're going through and being with you in that affective empathy is taking on what you're feeling. And that can lead to burnout and really heart, in heart things. And so, and I think it's really interesting, empathetic joy is such a pop of itch move, the other pop of itch move that I think goes along with that. There are so many we could be here all day on, on, on great things he does. He also scouted for diversity in playing styles in, did you have you only played in US college or did you come from international play, Becky Hammond, first woman to be an assistant coach in the NBA brought her on. He also, and he, and his coaching staff, he hired intentionally people who disagreed with him. He did not want people who just out of reverence agreed with everything he said. I want to talk about something that's on, it's like 30 feet long and 20 feet high in the Spurs locker room. And it's been there for three decades. And it's, it's a quote that pop of itch had made into a wall. It's from Jacob Reese, who was an early 20th century Danish American photographer, reformist. And here, here's what the quote says, I think you'll love this. Do you know it? No, tell me. Adam, you know, okay, when nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet, at the hundredth and first blow, it will split into, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. Oh God. So good. It's so good around, I think kindness and love. wins when coupled with discipline and commitment. And the thing, you know, as you know, I'm a San Antonio. My parents were from San Antonio. I was born in San Antonio. I think as long as I can think back on the spurs and pop of itch, the three words that come to mind are discipline, commitment, not compliance, but commitment and love. And every team I've worked with that worked from that ethos has had incredible winning experiences, not every season and not every all the time because it doesn't work like that. But to me, we started this conversation interestingly about the paradox of toughness and kindness. You know, I think that's when you're sitting with someone in grief or you're the spurs. It takes toughness to sit with someone in grief and it takes deep kindness. Yeah, it does. And I think so many people still see kindness as a sign of weakness when they don't recognize what they should realize is it's a source of strength. But to your point, that strength doesn't always show up right away. It's something that, it's like an investment in building, it's an investment in building a cohesive team and culture in the long run. But you can't expect an immediate payoff. I was kind to you today and therefore you played better tonight, maybe, maybe not. Do you have a better season knowing that there's somebody on your team who has your back? Probably. Oh God, yes. But that is actually, that is not, I don't think that's a probably, that is the 3C model, closeness commitment and complementary skills. That is, that's research. And I think you just hit on research. Well, I'm just thinking also the absence of kindness is in some ways, I'm thinking about the well-documented pattern that bad is stronger than good. Having an abusive or toxic coach or teammate may do more harm even than the upsides you get of, you know, of somebody being unusually kind and caring. I'm thinking about, have we talked about the research on NBA players who had abusive coaches? You and I have offline, but we should talk about it here. It's important. Julian Barling and his colleagues published this study where they looked at coaches who were consistently berating and belittling their players and compared them with coaches who didn't. And so you have a, every coach gets a score on how abusive they are. And then you track what happens to players' careers if they happen to have a coach who is higher on the abusive end of the spectrum. And it turns out those players go on to perform worse for the rest of their careers even when they're not under that coach's thumb anymore. Yes. And one of the key mechanisms there seems to be that they have more emotional outbursts. They are more dysregulated. They commit more technical fouls. They end up struggling more to coordinate with their teammates. And like in the paper, the researchers talk about it as like these players are a little scarred for life. Like that. Like they never fully healed the wounds of feeling like if I don't perform today, it means there might be something wrong with me. And I never thought about it through a shame lens until you brought shame into this conversation. But I think part of that scar is those abusive coaches are leaving these players with a lasting sense of shame that interferes with their ability to concentrate on performing their best. I mean, 100%. 100%. Shame impairs performance. I am actively working with teams right now who we're talking about this a lot. And it's interesting because there is so much data on it and there's some top reasons. Increasing fear of failure promotes negative team atmosphere, inhibits creativity and innovation, increases burnout, reduces autonomy. But one of the things that I think I wanted to bring into this conversation because I really was so excited about these findings. One of the most operationally significant, I think findings from this shame research around, shame in coaching, is shame drives concealment. They stop asking questions, they stop taking risk, they stop disclosing struggles, they stop seeking feedback. Shame drives hiding. Because when and this is the parenting truth, this is one of the places where I do more work than I do with athletes is in hospital settings and with physicians. And one of the core issues around shame based medical school and residency programs is concealment. Because when something goes wrong, physicians can grapple more with shame from their peers than how it impacts patients or patient families. So what ends up happening is concealment and hiding mistakes. And so, but this is also true in every milieu, in a classroom, in a locker room, in our living rooms with our kids, when I connect your value and your love ability and your worthiness for belonging to your performance, I am driving batshit levels of scarring. You can come through it and change the trajectory of your athletic performance or your human performance or your personhood, but it will require deliberate repair. You have to deliberately go through work, hard trauma work. Shame is trauma. Shame is being told, this makes you unlovable and unworthy of connection and belonging. It's so serious. Why don't people get how serious it is, Adam? I don't know. I've never understood why anybody thinks this is an effective philosophy of leadership, of parenting, of teaching, like pick your environment. I think one of the reasons that people screw this up is shame is powerful and they see a short-term response. I just shamed my team and all of a sudden they trained harder. I just shamed my kid and they stopped misbehaving. I am learning that this works and they don't see the wound. They don't see the long-term detrimental effect it has. All they see is the immediate action. I think it's the same reason why leaders think fear is an effective strategy and a lot of parents operate from position of fear. You get reinforcement for the behavior that elicits an immediate response. It seems like it's being rewarded because that's what's visible in the short-term. The long-term cost is much more difficult to connect the long-term cost to what I did as a leader or a parent. It's your exactly right. I remember one of the things I used to say all the time early in the shame research when I was talking and speaking about it publicly is you can change a child's behavior with shame on a dime. But you are forever changing who they are. Wow. You don't see the ladder and you see the former. Or you don't see the ladder until it's too late. This could take me into a really terrible place with things I love like college sports. Where are we treating players? Are some are shame-based coaches treating players as talent assets and commodities versus as people? I remember being at the end of my freshman year of college. I was a diver and one of the swim coaches came in and said all right according to NCAA rules. I can't obligate anybody to be here more than I think it was 15 hours a week. Oh yeah. And he said I can't tell anybody to be here more than 15 hours a week. But I can tell you this, if you're not here at least 30 hours a week, I will assume you're not on the team next year. Okay, first of all, I mean minimum the athletes who prioritize school in the off season are getting shamed more likely they're getting cut. Yeah, this is, this is, you know, I have a question that I don't even know is answerable. But I do, I do. But if anyone could answer, it's probably you. Or maybe we could call a phone a friend, maybe David Eagleman. I don't know who we would call, but here's my question. [BLANK_AUDIO] shame served a biological, an evolutionary biological function, right? You bring danger to the community, we shun and stigmatize you because you're bringing threats to the community, and now we're going to get rid of you. Over time, as we've developed as humans, shame has become far too blunt of an instrument to use because the detrimental effects of it are so, it's so positively correlated with violence, addiction, aggression, suicidal ideation, these things that don't, you know, are really horrible markers for humans. Is it possible today that there is an old school coaching, parenting, leading philosophy that has become increasingly excruciating neurobiologically because we have developed a megaloise. Do you understand what I'm asking? Yeah. If you think about the adaptive origins of shame or the reasons why it existed in the first place, is it increasingly maladaptive given the way that we operate in the modern world? No, I know. I think it's increasingly maladaptive for sure. I guess what I'm asking is there, would there be brain changes? The reason why I'm asking this is kids today, college students today, in my experience, are like, nah, we're not doing that. I'm not, there's some interesting intergenerational but not super great studies on, you know, our grandparents use more shame than our parents. But is there over time a real physical and neurobiological cognitive response to maladaptive behavior? I am not qualified to answer that question. We should definitely phone a friend. But is it an interesting question? It's such an interesting question. I'm pretty skeptical. Are you? I'm skeptical. I just, I think that if you take one conclusion from social cognitive neuroscience as an outsider who just reads casually in this literature, neuroplasticity is my big takeaway. And I think that our brains evolve to be highly adaptable. And it's hard for me to imagine that there's a generational shift in, you know, the, I guess to me, it seems more like a learned psychological response than, you know, an underlying neuro, an underlying neurological response. But I'm outside of my, my expertise on that one. So your, your guesses. Good as mine. I think it's probably, I think it's probably psychosocial cultural. Yeah. That's, that's where I would mean. Yeah. Yeah. And not biological. And I think the resistance, you know, as a very solid, gin, exer, everybody that I know myself included was, was raised with a pretty healthy dose of shame at home in the classroom as athletes. I think the, I think today, the kids rejection of that where they can and power is a hard thing there is more psychosocial cultural than it is biological. I'm just wondering if there's, you know, yeah. It's interesting. I think it's interesting. I think so too. And I, I think that it's, I guess, I look at that question and I think it's surprising to me that anyone believed that it worked even, you know, in the medium term, even in the short term in some cases, because you're right, shame does change behavior. But, you know, I'm thinking about, there's a Barry style at all study on angry halftime speeches by college basketball coaches. Do you know this one? Oh my god. I don't. I'm so excited I could die. It's such a cool study. So you look at what happens to a team after the coach goes in and gives the angry halftime speech or not when they're behind. And it turns out that the team is more likely to win if, if the angry halftime speech happens, but only under two conditions, only under two conditions. The first condition is the coach has to be only moderately angry, not too angry. So they're not braiding you to the point of shaming you. They're kind of firing you up by saying we got to do better. Like this was not good enough. Yeah. And secondly, and I think this is the real kicker. They have to be not normally angry. So they're not. Oh my god. I love this. They're not typically out of control. Yeah. This is a this is a situationally appropriate response from somebody for whom this is out of character. And so wow, we must be really blowing it that our level headed calm coach is now a little bit worked up. And we need to rise to this occasion. And I mean, to me that that research just decimates the Bobby Knight style of, you know, of coaching a leadership and says you actually want the person who to the point you were making earlier. You want the coach who makes the team feel safe and sets high standards of discipline and performance. That's it. Oh my god. I love this. I love this. One of the best angry half time speeches that I've ever heard in like real times I was there. Working with this team was a coach who rarely if ever raised his voice. And he said, and he had tears in his eyes. And he said, I'm so effing angry. You're letting yourselves down. You're disappointing yourselves. I don't want this for you. You have trained for this. And I was like, I am suiting up. Let's go. Renee Brown is playing center. I could take you from here. She will be blocking all the shots. Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. You will. You will want me out there. Yeah. So I that's just incredible. This has been this has been a roller coaster of emotion. Seriously. What are you doing to me, Renee? I don't know. But I like it. We're both like hands up. I like it. I will say that I'm not using any roller coaster metaphors right now because they're roller coaster in Galveston that my kids I have this over the water got stuck. Did you see this in the news? No, I don't know. Yeah. It got stuck 100 feet up. 105 feet up. And I know it was 105 with people backward for four hours. And the firefighter ladder was 100 feet exactly. No. And they were stuck 105. And they got them out. So it's like, and I'm a roller coaster rider, but I don't do like, but I don't do the ocean. So yeah, I got to pick you got to pick two scary as hell things. Are you a roller coaster rider will end with this question? I was afraid of heights as a kid. And I tried to cure myself by going on every ride at Cedar Point, my senior year of high school. And it partially worked. It was your therapy. It was it was exposure therapy 101. And I it worked in the sense that I've told our kids, I will ride any ride with you that you want to ride. And I do it, but the fear has never gone away. It's so interesting that you that Steve does not love a roller coaster. Steve hates a roller coaster, but has told my kids, I'll ride anything with you that you want me to ride. Is that is that dad school? Where do you get that? This is dad bravado. I don't want my kids to be scared like I was. So I'm going to put on a tough front. Yeah, I guess what I before we had kids, I said, why this with me? He's like, I'll hold your purse. But with the kids, he's like, he just looks at me and he's like, God, do you know? All right. That sounds fun. Here we go. Yeah. I like that. Okay. This was a good conversation. I have had all the feels. Have you had all the feels? I've had more feels in this conversation than I have in a typical week. You're welcome. Thank you. I think. Oh, you love it. All right. See you next time. To the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. One note, Curiosity Shop website has launched. It's going to be where you'll find all the show notes. We're also, we did a poll on LinkedIn to see if conversation questions would be helpful on the work-based stuff so you can do a lunch and learn with your teams. We'll be adding those there. And for this episode, in particular, we'll be adding some resources and places where you can find some of our favorite books on grief, hotline numbers. So check out the curiosityshop.com. "Hey, what's your pin?" "Mm-hmm. Two, five, three, eight." That way, you know you're in the right car taking the right trip and your driver knows you're the right passenger. Make sure your ride is your ride, with pin verification from Uber. Labor Day Savings are happening now at the Home Depot with Select Appliances starting at $399. Plus, save up to an extra $1000 and get free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. Get a whirlpool laundry tower featuring industry-first UV clean technology designed to reduce bacteria in the wash without fading fabrics. Plus, with great prices at the Home Depot, you can save on Select Appliances designed to make laundry day easier. Shop Labor Day Savings at the Home Depot today. 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