Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, I'm Maya Shunker, host of the new podcast
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans from Pushkin Industries. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing season lined up for you, where I talk
Speaker 1: with folks who've navigated remarkable changes in their lives. To
Speaker 1: help kick things off, I called up my good friend
Speaker 1: and fellow podcast host, Michael Lewis. We talk about the
Speaker 1: inspiration for my show and you'll get a little sneak
Speaker 1: peek of what's to come this season. I am recording,
Speaker 1: and Michael, before we started talking about the podcast, I
Speaker 1: did want to share. I went on memory lane a
Speaker 1: little bit around our friendship because we've been friends for like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, five six years. So I went back
Speaker 1: into the Gmail chambers and I found something very fun
Speaker 1: from twenty fifteen. This is after my husband Jimmy and
Speaker 1: I hung out with you at Dick Taylor's birthday party. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we spent like a few days together. So I
Speaker 1: sent you the following email. Dearest Michael, Jimmy, Lee and
Speaker 1: I would like to sign up to be your friend.
Speaker 1: I'll work with your agent to complete the relevant paperwork.
Speaker 1: Best May and Jimmy. So, first of all, clearly I
Speaker 1: don't know how to play hard to get. But thankfully
Speaker 1: you didn't really enjoy the chase, because you wrote back
Speaker 1: right away, Dear Maya, your application has been reviewed by
Speaker 1: our committee. All boxes seem to be checked. We are
Speaker 1: pleased to inform you of your acceptance. Michael, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that probably again, I have a feeling we share these
Speaker 1: character traits. I have a feeling we both assume that
Speaker 1: other people would want to be friends with us, and
Speaker 1: so we don't actually aren't very shy about it. When
Speaker 1: I met you there, you had no media ambition. You
Speaker 1: were an advisor to Obama. How did you even get
Speaker 1: interested in being a podcaster? So during quarantine, I was
Speaker 1: feeling really overwhelmed by all the changes that were happening
Speaker 1: around me. I think everybody was feeling really overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: the change happening around them. And I think I realized
Speaker 1: because I'm a cognitive scientist, so I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this from the perspective of psychology, right, which is like,
Speaker 1: how do we interact with this change thing that just
Speaker 1: happens in our lives whether we like it or not.
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe the specifics of what twenty twenty
Speaker 1: through our way is unprecedented but our human ability to
Speaker 1: navigate change is not. And so maybe if we heard
Speaker 1: stories from people who have experienced extraordinary changes in their lives,
Speaker 1: we could learn something interesting. Right, there's no manual out
Speaker 1: there on how to navigate big life changes. We don't
Speaker 1: know what that process is supposed to look like. There's
Speaker 1: no science textbook on this. And so I was like,
Speaker 1: let's dig up the most fascinating change stories, changes of
Speaker 1: all kinds, right, and then let's see what we can learn.
Speaker 1: Let's let's see we can change our own minds about change.
Speaker 1: So you started with the subject rather than the ambition.
Speaker 1: You didn't think, Oh, I want to be a podcaster
Speaker 1: unless what should I do it about? Definitely not. That's
Speaker 1: just not the directionality that works for my brain. I
Speaker 1: need to have a really fascinating thing to say that
Speaker 1: feels interesting to me. It can't be the reverse. Like,
Speaker 1: I really I love podcasts, so I love the audio medium.
Speaker 1: It's super immersive for me, way more immersive than TV.
Speaker 1: So I'm a huge fan of podcasts, but I just
Speaker 1: never imagine myself having a show of my own. What
Speaker 1: were your favorite podcasts? Well, I'm a big Bachelor fan,
Speaker 1: as you know. Ye, So I absolutely subscribe to all
Speaker 1: the main Bachelor fan podcasts YEP. I like interview shows.
Speaker 1: I listen of course to like Laurie's Santos Is Happiness Lab. Actually,
Speaker 1: let me just pull up my podcast feed right now
Speaker 1: and tell you what's on there. Yeah, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got the classic ones, so like The Daily Got against
Speaker 1: the Rules, but that seems shameless right now. Revisionist history
Speaker 1: still processing Hidden Brain. How Oh I love How I
Speaker 1: Built This. I actually part of me when I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this podcast was like, oh, How I built
Speaker 1: this talks about these elaborate journeys of humans who have
Speaker 1: built incredible things, and I was like, I kind of
Speaker 1: want a version of like How I built this life,
Speaker 1: And so that was part of the inspiration, which was
Speaker 1: people are going through all these changes, and how do
Speaker 1: they maneuver and how do they find creative solutions along
Speaker 1: the way, and how do they navigate? Have you always
Speaker 1: been interested in change? This is kind of come up?
Speaker 1: You know? I study change, right, So I study how
Speaker 1: and why people change. I study how and why people
Speaker 1: make decisions, how they developed their attitudes and beliefs about
Speaker 1: the world. But I never elevated change to an important concept.
Speaker 1: Until I was thinking about this podcast. It felt in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty like a really big deal to think about,
Speaker 1: and I think against the backdrop of such a broken
Speaker 1: political society, it felt especially important to figure out how
Speaker 1: and why we change in potentially good ways because we
Speaker 1: are seeing so many fractures. But yeah, your your observation
Speaker 1: that this is a moment to investigate the phenomenon because
Speaker 1: of COVID is a really good one, and it's to me,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because you can see what's happen. You can
Speaker 1: see now as as we start to come out of
Speaker 1: it by fits and starts. But that a lot of
Speaker 1: people they had to change, and it's hard for them
Speaker 1: all over again because they have to change that they've got.
Speaker 1: They've adapted to some new kind of way of going
Speaker 1: through the world, and they feel a kind of hesitancy
Speaker 1: about going back to the old ways. So people have
Speaker 1: very different attitudes towards it. It's not just one thing
Speaker 1: for everybody that's exactly right, and it's not one thing
Speaker 1: for everyone over the course of their lives, right right.
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing we're finding out is, you know,
Speaker 1: huge childhood trauma with change doesn't necessarily mean that you
Speaker 1: have an aversion to it later on, right, And we
Speaker 1: see some of that unfold in some of the stories. Right.
Speaker 1: So give me an example of that. Give me an
Speaker 1: example of someone whose attitude towards change has changed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one person I interviewed was Tiffany Hattish. She is
Speaker 1: an incredible comedian. She just won Best Comedy Album at
Speaker 1: the Grammys this year, making her the first black woman
Speaker 1: to win this award since the early eighties when Whoopie
Speaker 1: Goldberg won it. And she had a deeply traumatic childhood.
Speaker 1: When she was eight, her mom had a really terrible
Speaker 1: car accident that left her with severe brain damage and
Speaker 1: made her extremely violent and very verbally abusive. And Tiffany's
Speaker 1: having to navigate this new world where this person that
Speaker 1: she loved most in the world is now actively tormenting her.
Speaker 1: And so it's a profound change in her life. And
Speaker 1: so what's fascinating about Tiffany's story is that she recognized
Speaker 1: early on as a kid that she had this talent
Speaker 1: and that was to make people laugh. But rather than
Speaker 1: treating it as this recreational hobby, right, the thing that
Speaker 1: she just did, you know, with her friends and whatnot,
Speaker 1: she repurposed it into a survival tool, and so she
Speaker 1: uses this over the course of her life. When she's
Speaker 1: a kid, she tries to make her mom laugh, even
Speaker 1: just for a moment, to distract her from getting hit.
Speaker 1: Does it work and it's working. Yes. She goes to school,
Speaker 1: doesn't know how to read. She charms her classmates into
Speaker 1: letting her copy their homework by making them laugh and
Speaker 1: being the class clown. And so she's so traumatized by
Speaker 1: change early in her life, but then slowly realizes that
Speaker 1: she's identified that she has this superpower along the way,
Speaker 1: and so now there's an element of her that embraces
Speaker 1: change because she realizes that she's got this amazing weapon
Speaker 1: that she can use at every turn. It's actually it's
Speaker 1: just a great way to get at people's lives, I
Speaker 1: mean getting in your life. You. So you start your
Speaker 1: podcast right by telling you everybody that you once were
Speaker 1: going to be a musician and that didn't work out
Speaker 1: because you had this horrible injury. But back then, you
Speaker 1: weren't were you thinking about You weren't thinking about change
Speaker 1: at that age as an as a cons as an
Speaker 1: abstract concept. You just had to go to about your
Speaker 1: life and do something different. Yeah. I don't think any
Speaker 1: kid is like, oh, and now I'm confronting change. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe the philosophers among us were doing that, but
Speaker 1: I certainly wasn't. I was like, this sucks. That's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking. If I met the musician you way
Speaker 1: back when, when you're a kid, now I was, I
Speaker 1: was interviewing you, would you be recognizable to me? You
Speaker 1: were you basically the same character, but just with a
Speaker 1: violin in your hands. I think I was really the same.
Speaker 1: So when we look back at like childhood videos, a
Speaker 1: little bit unnerving how similar I was back then. I
Speaker 1: think some of the traits I preserved, or like getting
Speaker 1: incredibly excited about things, very passionate about things. I was
Speaker 1: telling my production team that I have had to do
Speaker 1: months of voice therapy over the past few years because
Speaker 1: my doctor diagnosed me is getting so excited when I talk,
Speaker 1: I forget to breathe. This is apparently a medical diagnosis,
Speaker 1: but I've now had to retrain myself to remember to breathe.
Speaker 1: So I think that like exuberance was certainly there when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I think I was maybe
Speaker 1: the one thing that I had in childhood that I
Speaker 1: have not retained. Is just an absolute, singular focus on
Speaker 1: a goal. I mean I was so dedicated. Like when
Speaker 1: I think back to being nine, ten eleven, going into
Speaker 1: a room and practicing for five hours, I just can't.
Speaker 1: My brain can't comprehend today having that kind of discipline.
Speaker 1: I don't. I lost it. I stopped cultivating that skill.
Speaker 1: If you could go back and learning what you've learned
Speaker 1: so far, or you know, just taking what you've learned
Speaker 1: as a grown up, including all your behavioral science stuff,
Speaker 1: if you had to go back and consult the young
Speaker 1: you after you get you're told that you're never going
Speaker 1: to play the violin again. Yeah, is there anything you
Speaker 1: would have told the young you? Yeah? I would have said,
Speaker 1: stop making long term plans. Hmm. I was an absolute
Speaker 1: I still am. I'm a type A or whatever that means, right.
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with plan making. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what my life is going to be in two years,
Speaker 1: in four years, in ten years. That persisted through college
Speaker 1: and grad school, and at every point I'm like, I
Speaker 1: just I just need to know what comes next so
Speaker 1: that that traits survive that trauma. It's amazing, it's amazing, Like, well,
Speaker 1: I lost this one but like, surely I can control
Speaker 1: everything else. You know, you don't always. You don't learn
Speaker 1: the valuable lesson that your controls and illusion until I
Speaker 1: think you had a few more experiences with change. You know.
Speaker 1: The next season my podcast is about experts, and we're
Speaker 1: still figuring it out, but there's a fair chance that
Speaker 1: there'll be a show about experts whose expertise is no
Speaker 1: longer of use or valued in anyway. That they go
Speaker 1: from being you know, prized or at least used to
Speaker 1: being completely pointless. What do we tell them? Now you're
Speaker 1: a budding expert on how to endure these sort of changes,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Yeah, it's a good question. I
Speaker 1: mean when you first brought up expertise, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's super relevant in my life because I had this
Speaker 1: expertise I had been building for over ten years, and
Speaker 1: then overnight it became useless. Didn't matter at all that
Speaker 1: I had this dexterity and I could play all these pieces.
Speaker 1: I suddenly couldn't play the violin anymore. I mean, one
Speaker 1: thing I'm learning, Actually, I had this really interesting interview
Speaker 1: with a young guy around my age. He's a cancer researcher.
Speaker 1: His name is Scott. He's a cancer research but he's
Speaker 1: also total health nuts. So we're like, the last ten
Speaker 1: years he's been a vegan and he's been obsessively trying
Speaker 1: to optimize his life span. Okay, intermittent fasting, high intensity,
Speaker 1: interval training, you name it, he's done it. Okay, pours
Speaker 1: turmeric on his food. Okay, turmics should not be poured
Speaker 1: on food. And I'm Indian, so turmeric is like one
Speaker 1: of my spices. That's not how you engage with turmeric.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he said that his worst nightmare was eventually
Speaker 1: becoming deeply ill, and last year, in the middle of coronavirus,
Speaker 1: he gets a stage four cancer diagnosis that overnight leads
Speaker 1: him to have to amputate his right leg. He's had
Speaker 1: three or four surgery since then, including removing vertebrae, having
Speaker 1: to do six rounds of chemotherapy, moving to MD Anderson
Speaker 1: for treatments. I mean, it's a gut wrenching story, and
Speaker 1: it's it's particularly gut wrenching that's against the backdrop of
Speaker 1: someone who spent his entire life trying to avoid this outcome. Right,
Speaker 1: this guy's worst fear comes true and what he was
Speaker 1: marveling about is the fact that today, the day that
Speaker 1: I was doing the Inner You, he more or less
Speaker 1: felt as happy as he had before the diagnosis, really,
Speaker 1: which was stunning to me, because the happiness research does
Speaker 1: show that we are massively resilient in the face of
Speaker 1: adversity and set back, and then when really good things happen,
Speaker 1: we don't stay super happy for a long time at all.
Speaker 1: We immediately go back down to our original set points.
Speaker 1: So I was familiar with this research, but I always
Speaker 1: called bullshit on it. I was like, and I told
Speaker 1: Scott this, I was like, I'm so familiar with this research,
Speaker 1: but I was always like, Okay, I get all of
Speaker 1: you will respond in that way, but I assure you
Speaker 1: that if I went there's experience, no way in hell
Speaker 1: I'm rebounding. But to hear someone who could say to me, Maya,
Speaker 1: I was in your shoes, I'm exactly the same way
Speaker 1: was really heartening. And he said, if I had known
Speaker 1: the way that I would psycholologically respond to this event,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have spent so much time being so fearful
Speaker 1: of it in the first place. And I think there
Speaker 1: is a lesson there for for that episode you're about
Speaker 1: to do, which is like, there are always unexpected almost
Speaker 1: I would call like side effects that happen with change, right,
Speaker 1: things that we can't predict. So, having decided to do
Speaker 1: the podcast on the subject, yeah, are you finding the
Speaker 1: subject exhausting itself? Or do you think that it's kind
Speaker 1: of endless? How long can this go on for? Do
Speaker 1: you think how many permutations on this theme are there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was definitely worried when I was conceiving the idea,
Speaker 1: like is this just a season? You know? And my
Speaker 1: guests have proven me wrong, which I think is the
Speaker 1: best way to discover that there's more potential in something.
Speaker 1: It's not from doing your own research, it's not for
Speaker 1: having thoughts in the middle the night. It's from your
Speaker 1: interview subjects teaching you that there are all these facets
Speaker 1: of change that you wouldn't even predict. So my favorite
Speaker 1: kind of interview is when I go in thinking I
Speaker 1: know what a person's change story is, what moment really
Speaker 1: changed them and the reaction they had, and they completely
Speaker 1: proved me wrong and show me that there was this
Speaker 1: other element of the change that was actually superformative. So
Speaker 1: this happened actually just on Friday, So I was interviewing
Speaker 1: Tommy Caldwell, who you might know he is. He's an
Speaker 1: extremely skilled climber. He's considered one of the greatest big
Speaker 1: wall climbers in the world. And he scaled the down Wall,
Speaker 1: which was deemed impossible by just about everyone, and he
Speaker 1: did it with nine freaking fingers because he cut off
Speaker 1: one of his fingers during a wood shopping accident in
Speaker 1: his garage. Okay, so the change story I was most
Speaker 1: interested in and had actually well proceeded losing the finger.
Speaker 1: It happened when he was climbing in Kyrgyzstan, and he
Speaker 1: was held hostage by these captors and for six days
Speaker 1: was under their watch and was basically in a state
Speaker 1: of severe starvation, extremely cold temperatures. They thought they were
Speaker 1: going to die of hypothermia. And they can't converse with
Speaker 1: their captors, right they speak too totally different lang and
Speaker 1: they're trying to plot an escape route. And in the
Speaker 1: end Tommy ends up pushing one of his captors off
Speaker 1: of a cliff and he I think you surprised himself
Speaker 1: because like he's a very kind of like soft timid
Speaker 1: type and he doesn't believe that one should kill and
Speaker 1: so he has to reckon with this event for so
Speaker 1: many years, And so I was probing into that part
Speaker 1: of the story, right, which is like, it seemed like
Speaker 1: you proved yourself, you know, where your actual limits were, right,
Speaker 1: Like you were able to endure this really intense experience.
Speaker 1: But the part that was so interesting to me that
Speaker 1: I didn't even think for a second about until I
Speaker 1: got to the interview, is that the true motivation for him,
Speaker 1: the reason why he's been able to engage in incredible
Speaker 1: feats since Kyrgyzstan, is actually because he's been chasing a
Speaker 1: mental state that he had only experienced once when he
Speaker 1: was in Kyrgyzstan. So it was about four days into
Speaker 1: his captivity where his body I think totally turned went
Speaker 1: from starving an apathetic to survival mode. And he said
Speaker 1: that he felt profound mental clarity and focus in that moment.
Speaker 1: He was in the ultimate flow state. Everything in the
Speaker 1: world was sharp and clear, and he knew exactly what
Speaker 1: he needed to do and how to do it. And
Speaker 1: he said it was so intoxicating that since that day
Speaker 1: he's been chasing that high and has only reached it once.
Speaker 1: He even tried to starve himself once, like on a
Speaker 1: climb to see if he could get back there. Okay,
Speaker 1: he reached it when he was scaling the down wall.
Speaker 1: And I remember telling him, Tommy, if an alien descended
Speaker 1: on this planet and knew that you would had this
Speaker 1: deeply harrowing experience, and that you were then trying to
Speaker 1: recreate those circumstances in normal life because it was a
Speaker 1: change that you had actually desired, like was something you
Speaker 1: were striving for it. They would think you were insane.
Speaker 1: But that's been the secret sauce to his experience. And again,
Speaker 1: I just love it when a guest teaches me, you know,
Speaker 1: about their story and makes me think about change in
Speaker 1: a totally different way. You know, It's funny because you're
Speaker 1: naturally a performer, right, you were going to be a performer.
Speaker 1: You're going to play the violin, You're gonna be on
Speaker 1: a stage. You've got you've now built a stage, and
Speaker 1: you're on it again, and you're very naturally there. I
Speaker 1: remember when I first met you, when you were giving
Speaker 1: that talk to those people at the Harvard Business School.
Speaker 1: You were so obviously a performer, you were so obviously
Speaker 1: just made to be in front of people talking. And
Speaker 1: so now you're now you're doing it. How is being
Speaker 1: a podcaster changing you? So? I think it is making
Speaker 1: me a much better listener. And I actually don't see
Speaker 1: myself as the performer. I try to approach every interview
Speaker 1: as though I'm giving the guests the stage, right, because
Speaker 1: that's the person whose story I'm trying to shine the
Speaker 1: light on, right, And so my only role is to
Speaker 1: figure out the right questions to ask such that they
Speaker 1: reveal really fascinating things about themselves. I think it's actually
Speaker 1: just wonderful to be on this end of the mic. Right.
Speaker 1: I've done tons of interviews, I've given tons of talks,
Speaker 1: perform so many times as a violinist, right, And in
Speaker 1: many ways, I'm now an audience member. But I'm like
Speaker 1: an audience member who's almost like a music critic a
Speaker 1: little bit, because like she's trying to probe deep and
Speaker 1: try to figure out where some of the cracks are
Speaker 1: and like and dig in there. Right, So you're telling
Speaker 1: me that five years now, when you come over to
Speaker 1: my house for dinner, you're going to be kind of quiet, recessive, shy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you won't even be able to get a word out
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah, you'll just be there, you're very painful dinner,
Speaker 1: I'll be that. You'll leave these You'll leave awkward silences
Speaker 1: that I have to fill. Yeah, that's so, that's where
Speaker 1: you're going, I'm gonna cut the show off. Yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the other thing it's teaching me
Speaker 1: is like, I don't I don't tend to get like
Speaker 1: any sort of stage fright or anxiety going into an
Speaker 1: interview or a conversation. I think maybe the reason for
Speaker 1: that is that when you're a little kid and you're
Speaker 1: forced to go on stage and play these deeply technical passages,
Speaker 1: when you're then told later in life you simply have
Speaker 1: to talk like speak words, You're like, oh wow, I'll
Speaker 1: sign up for that. That seems a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot easier. And I'm hoping that the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: not approaching the conversations with anxiety is putting my guests
Speaker 1: at peace too, right, letting them feel open and like
Speaker 1: we're really just having a conversation, which is what I'm
Speaker 1: hoping will be the vibe of the show. It's really
Speaker 1: meant to be not superformal. I can be quite a
Speaker 1: reverend at times. That is my actual personality. As you know, right,
Speaker 1: and so I'm hoping at least part of that comes through.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, I'm gonna let you go. Great
Speaker 1: to see you, and let's have dinner again soon. Yeah
Speaker 1: sounds great, Okay. Bye. A Slight Change of Plans is
Speaker 1: created an executive produce by me Maya Shunker. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our producer Mola Board,
Speaker 1: associate producers David Jaw and Julia Goodman, executive producers Mia
Speaker 1: Lavelle and Justine Lange, senior editor Jan Guera, and sound
Speaker 1: design and mixed engineers Ben Taliday and Jason Gambrel. Thanks
Speaker 1: also to Luis Gara who wrote our theme song, and
Speaker 1: Ginger Smith who helped arrange the vocals, incidental music from
Speaker 1: Epidemic Sound, and of course a very special thanks to
Speaker 1: Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 1: on Instagram at doctor Maya Shanker