Speaker 1: Pushkin. There are lots of things that are pretty awesome
Speaker 1: about being a professor at Yale and a happiness expert,
Speaker 1: But the thing about my job that makes me most
Speaker 1: grateful is the fact that I get to interact with
Speaker 1: such fantastic students. My undergrads have gone on to be
Speaker 1: scientists and lawyers, doctors and novelist startup founders and craftbier brewers.
Speaker 1: But I somehow never expected that one of my star
Speaker 1: psychology students, Maya Shunker, would grow up to become a
Speaker 1: podcast host just like me, and that she'd have an
Speaker 1: amazing new podcast on the science of behavior change. It's
Speaker 1: called a slight change of plans in retrospect, though I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't have been surprised, and that's because she experienced
Speaker 1: her own devastating, not so slight change of career plans
Speaker 1: when she was still only a teenager. If you had
Speaker 1: asked Maya back in the day what she wanted to
Speaker 1: be when she grew up, she would have given you
Speaker 1: a pretty quick answer. One hund violinist. That was the
Speaker 1: thing I was super into. I started playing when I
Speaker 1: was six. My mom had my grandma's violin in the
Speaker 1: attic from India. She had brought it all the way
Speaker 1: with her, and she asked my three older siblings if
Speaker 1: they wanted to play, and they were like like this,
Speaker 1: this isn't cool. And apparently I wasn't that cool. So
Speaker 1: I was like, this sounds great. And I fell in
Speaker 1: love with it really quickly, Like practicing didn't feel painful
Speaker 1: for me. And I also just loved the idea that
Speaker 1: like I could work hard at something and then I
Speaker 1: could see myself get better. So you're getting better and better,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, when you're fifteen, everything changed. Yes,
Speaker 1: it coincided, I think when I was at my peak
Speaker 1: as a violinist. So at this point I had been
Speaker 1: studying at Juilliard for about six years. It's a Perlman
Speaker 1: had asked me to be his private violin student. Even
Speaker 1: my parents, who had always been like we would really
Speaker 1: like it if you went to like a liberal arts college,
Speaker 1: not do this music thing, We're like, oh, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe MAYA can do the violin thing. So like we're
Speaker 1: all getting behind this, this idea of me becoming or
Speaker 1: trying to go pro. It's obviously very very tough industry.
Speaker 1: And then I was just playing a really challenging piece,
Speaker 1: and I overstretched my finger and I tore tendons in
Speaker 1: my hand. It was a very serious injury. And then
Speaker 1: finally doctor said, sorry, kid, but you're out of luck.
Speaker 1: This career is over. So what's that Like, You're in
Speaker 1: high school, you thought you had this career all mapped out,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden it just totally went away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very disorienting as a kid. You're you just
Speaker 1: don't engage in a ton of introspection, right like who
Speaker 1: am I? You don't ask yourself any of those questions.
Speaker 1: But then suddenly at fifteen, when the violin was taken
Speaker 1: away from me, I was forced to am in this
Speaker 1: question of who I was. And I realized, like this
Speaker 1: whole time, I have felt like a violinist first and foremost,
Speaker 1: Like even before I was Maya, I felt like I
Speaker 1: was a violinist. My right shoulder to this day is
Speaker 1: a little higher than my left one because my bow
Speaker 1: arm spent so many hours practicing, like my body like
Speaker 1: grew in a way that aligned with the way the violins,
Speaker 1: like ergonomics were So it's only at that moment you
Speaker 1: realize that, wow, this thing was a huge part of
Speaker 1: my identity, and now that I don't have it anymore,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what comes next. And I was
Speaker 1: really scared. I was like, I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm ever going to love something as much. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm good at anything else, Like I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know if I'm passionate about anything else.
Speaker 1: Like all these questions you know came to mind, but
Speaker 1: being good at something, being passionatest something that all came
Speaker 1: pretty quickly in a new field, like my field, the
Speaker 1: field of psychology, right well, thanks to you. So basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: the summer four college, I'm dealing with the fact that
Speaker 1: this thing that I thought even got me into college
Speaker 1: and in the first place, violin is no longer a thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, I don't know what it is that
Speaker 1: I want to study. And then I read an interesting
Speaker 1: cognitive science book over the summer and my brain lit
Speaker 1: up and I was like, oh my gosh, the study
Speaker 1: of the mind is fascinating. Like I just never thought
Speaker 1: about this stuff before. I never fully appreciated like how
Speaker 1: bad ass our minds are, right, Like we're always we're
Speaker 1: always like criticizing ourselves, are annoyed some personality trait we have,
Speaker 1: and you just like you read these books and you're like,
Speaker 1: we are all crushing it basically each and every day,
Speaker 1: just by virtue of living. So I just felt like
Speaker 1: I was in awe of the mind. But then I
Speaker 1: was like, well, what do I do with this? And
Speaker 1: so I was looking through the Yale course catalog and
Speaker 1: I see that there's this major called cognitive science and
Speaker 1: you are one of the leaders of the program, right,
Speaker 1: And I remember reading in the course book that it
Speaker 1: was like an admissions only major. So oh no, I
Speaker 1: first of all, don't feel like I even deserve to
Speaker 1: be here anymore. And I now want to do a
Speaker 1: major that's like applicant only. Like, I just felt totally overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: And so the way you dealt with feel like totally
Speaker 1: overwhelmed is that you chose to reach out to a
Speaker 1: young you professor in this field of cognitive science. Me. Yes, luckily,
Speaker 1: Ari Santos. Luckily, I have found your first email to
Speaker 1: me that you sent me way back in the day.
Speaker 1: Here's what you wrote. You wrote it is it's a
Speaker 1: torture for me too, because I was young back then.
Speaker 1: It was much It's like here's what you wrote. You wrote,
Speaker 1: dear Professor Santos, I am a freshman this year in
Speaker 1: Calhoun College. I am heavily interested in cognitive science, and
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you had any openings, and so
Speaker 1: I kindly wrote back to you as like a keener
Speaker 1: freshman and told you about my lab. And what was
Speaker 1: funny is that you wrote back to me and your
Speaker 1: enthusiasm was so rich and incredible. You say, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for your reply exclamation point. I was extremely excited.
Speaker 1: I remember. So I went to the first day of
Speaker 1: your class, right, and I show up the lowly freshman,
Speaker 1: and the room is packed all these upper classmen, people
Speaker 1: who want to write their senior thesis. Right, They're all
Speaker 1: in this room, and there's a limited number of spots, okay,
Speaker 1: And so you're like, I won't You'll accept all of
Speaker 1: you guys, but here's an application process. And I felt
Speaker 1: like I sold my soul on this application process. I
Speaker 1: was like, Laurie, you can have my unborn children, you
Speaker 1: can have anything you want. And it was just so
Speaker 1: amazing of you to give me that chance because I
Speaker 1: was the only freshman that you were willing to let
Speaker 1: in that year. It changed my life, right. It allowed
Speaker 1: me to see that I did actually love something, like
Speaker 1: I loved the violin, and I just don't take it
Speaker 1: for granted that you like stepped in at a really
Speaker 1: crucial moment in my life. And of course it was
Speaker 1: a game changer for me. It was a game changer
Speaker 1: for me to Maya would go on to become one
Speaker 1: of my most accomplished students. But the longer my estate
Speaker 1: in the academic ivory tower, the more she realized how
Speaker 1: much real world behavior she was missing out on. I
Speaker 1: was at Stanford studying decision making, and I was in
Speaker 1: the basement of this Fremri lab and I was like
Speaker 1: scanning this dude's brain. I'd been this like dark, windowless
Speaker 1: room for like five hours at this point. Here into
Speaker 1: this person's brain who I haven't had a conversation with.
Speaker 1: I don't know what his middle name is, I don't
Speaker 1: know what his favorite ice cream flavors. There's lots of
Speaker 1: fundamental things I don't know about this person. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, I feel like I want to engage with people.
Speaker 1: I want to be on teams, I want to have
Speaker 1: like a hyper social dynamic. And the scanning part of
Speaker 1: this job the apportmise scanning is just not for me.
Speaker 1: So I called you and I was like, Hi, So
Speaker 1: I've been doing this like academic thing for like ten
Speaker 1: years now, but I actually don't think that I want
Speaker 1: to do it anymore. I had no idea what came next,
Speaker 1: and you shared with me that there was some amazing
Speaker 1: work happening in the White House. At the time, it
Speaker 1: had never crossed my mind that a cognitive scientist could
Speaker 1: go work in the government. You and I had talked
Speaker 1: for so many years at this point about the potential
Speaker 1: of behavioral science. Oh, when do you use injunctive norms
Speaker 1: versus descriptive norms? Like what's the power of the growth mindset? Right?
Speaker 1: Like when you talk about all these things? And then
Speaker 1: I remember in this interview I had at the senior
Speaker 1: Obama White House official, I'm talking about these ideas in
Speaker 1: the abstract and his responses. You know, I know, first
Speaker 1: Lady Michelle Obama like we can absolutely integrate that into
Speaker 1: her Let's move initiative, And I was like, what is
Speaker 1: happening in my life? This is totally insane, Like we
Speaker 1: can actually make this stuff happen. In the end, she
Speaker 1: not only got hired but was offered a chance to
Speaker 1: start her own social and behavioral sciences team to make
Speaker 1: real changes. She helped military service members enroll in a
Speaker 1: new retirement savings program. She worked to ensure that eligible
Speaker 1: children had access to reduce school lunches. She helped family
Speaker 1: farmers more easily understand the steps needed to get a
Speaker 1: micro loan. But the biggest thing her new role taught
Speaker 1: her was the importance of finding out about people's lived experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it helped me see the power of stories and the
Speaker 1: fact that when it comes to changing a person's life
Speaker 1: or helping to inspire change in their lives, maybe the
Speaker 1: first place we should go is to hear people's stories.
Speaker 1: And then next, you know, we look at the science.
Speaker 1: And so that's one of the big inspirations behind your
Speaker 1: new podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. So what is
Speaker 1: this podcast? Yeah, it is a podcast that's all about change.
Speaker 1: It features really intimate, raw conversations with people who have
Speaker 1: experienced extraordinary changes of all kinds. And I've learned so
Speaker 1: much from doing this podcast about all the contours of
Speaker 1: change that exist and the kind of impact that change
Speaker 1: can have on a person's life. And like, you know,
Speaker 1: we dig in, like, what is that process? Like? I've
Speaker 1: heard this come out in so many of the interviews,
Speaker 1: people saying they felt so much trepidation or fear in
Speaker 1: advance of a big change. But then what you find
Speaker 1: in virtually every case is that they are grateful that
Speaker 1: they went through the change. Even if the change didn't
Speaker 1: end in exactly the place they had wanted it to end,
Speaker 1: even if it taught them something wildly different than what
Speaker 1: they thought they were going to be taught, they do
Speaker 1: feel like they've grown from that change. There is a
Speaker 1: tension between change and happiness in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: which is like changing ourselves, changing our minds. It's a
Speaker 1: deeply uncomfortable process, right, it is so much easier to
Speaker 1: live our life not questioning the values we have, the
Speaker 1: ideas we have, the opinions that we have. But we
Speaker 1: know it's worth it in the end, right, we know
Speaker 1: that that tradeoff is worth it. And so I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts on how we can try
Speaker 1: to incentivize people to want to change even though we
Speaker 1: know they might take a short term hit and happiness.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you know. One thing we know
Speaker 1: from the science is that people are awful at predicting
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that are going to make them happy.
Speaker 1: You know, that's one of the constant themes on this
Speaker 1: podcast is that we're really bad at what's called affective forecasting, right,
Speaker 1: predicting how things are going to go in the end.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things you're seeing in
Speaker 1: so many of your episodes is like, you know, if
Speaker 1: you can get through the friction, if you can get
Speaker 1: through the fear that comes with the prediction in the end,
Speaker 1: things are going to wind up being much better. People
Speaker 1: are usually much happier after that change. I think that's
Speaker 1: completely right, and I feel like that's especially emboldening when
Speaker 1: people on the are on the receiving end of a
Speaker 1: change that they really don't desire. So, for example, I
Speaker 1: spoke to this young man, Scott, who is in his
Speaker 1: early thirties. He's a cancer researcher and a self proclaimed
Speaker 1: health nut and control freak. So he has spent the
Speaker 1: last decade of his life totally optimizing for his health.
Speaker 1: He is a vegan, he does intermittent fasting, he does
Speaker 1: high intensity interval training, He pours turmeric on all of
Speaker 1: his food, and then at thirty two he gets a
Speaker 1: stage four cancer diagnosis. This is his worst nightmare realized.
Speaker 1: And what was so fascinating about this conversation is that
Speaker 1: post chemotherapy treatment, multiple surgeries, a leg amputation. He's sitting
Speaker 1: outside in his backyard drinking a cup of coffee, saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I actually feel as happy now as I
Speaker 1: did six months ago before I even got the diagnosis.
Speaker 1: I loved hearing him say that because I was so
Speaker 1: familiar with the research right, and I just always wanted
Speaker 1: to call bullshit on that. For myself, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody else is that way, but I'm not
Speaker 1: that way. I'm not that resilience. But I felt like
Speaker 1: Scott and I we connected on these levels that allowed
Speaker 1: me to see like, oh, we're more similar. And I
Speaker 1: remember he said at the end of the interview, if
Speaker 1: I had known that I would end up in this
Speaker 1: place happiness wise, that this profound change in my life
Speaker 1: would actually have made me a better person, I would
Speaker 1: never have feared it as much as I did in
Speaker 1: the first place. And I just, yeah, I just found that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's stirring to even say that, Like, it
Speaker 1: was so powerful for me to hear that a huge
Speaker 1: thanks to Maya for talking with me about her new podcast,
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans, and now I'm excited to
Speaker 1: share with you a short clip of her first episode.
Speaker 1: It's an interview with Darryl Davis, a black jazz musician
Speaker 1: who convinced KKK members to leave the clan. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to A Slight Change of Plans wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab. Okay, here's your quick taster of
Speaker 1: what's in the show. So I was riding in my car.
Speaker 1: I'm driving and this klansman was sitting in my passenger
Speaker 1: seat and we got on the topic of a crime,
Speaker 1: and he made the mention that black people are born
Speaker 1: with a gene that makes them violent. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm as black as anybody you've ever seen. I have
Speaker 1: never done a drive by or a car jacking. How
Speaker 1: do you explain that this man did not hesitate one second?
Speaker 1: He answered me instantly, he said, your gene is latent.
Speaker 1: It hasn't come out yet. That's Terryll Davis, a blues musician.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you heard him right. He's driving in his
Speaker 1: car with a member of the Ku Klux Klan. You know,
Speaker 1: I was speechless. I was dumbfounded. And he's sitting next
Speaker 1: to me with all smug and securely. Huh. You see,
Speaker 1: you know you have nothing to say. And I thought
Speaker 1: about it for a moment rather than attack him. You
Speaker 1: say it's not true. It's not true. I said to him.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, white people have a gene within
Speaker 1: them that make them serial killers. And he said, why
Speaker 1: would you say that. I said, well, face it, name
Speaker 1: me three black serial killers. He thought about it. He
Speaker 1: couldn't name anybody. He couldn't do it. I rattled off
Speaker 1: Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dalmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy,
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy, David Burklewitz, son of Sam Albert de Salvo,
Speaker 1: the Boston strangler. And I said, son, you are a
Speaker 1: serial killer. And he said, Darrell, I've never killed anybody.
Speaker 1: I said, you're Gena's legent hasn't come out yet. He said, well,
Speaker 1: that's stupid, and I said, well, dug, it is stupid.
Speaker 1: And he got very very quiet, and I could tell
Speaker 1: that the gears in his head were spinning super fast,
Speaker 1: probably you know, burning a hole in there. And then
Speaker 1: he a moment later he changed the subject, but within
Speaker 1: five months, this guy quit the Ku Klux Klan. Since
Speaker 1: that car ride thirty years ago, Darryl Davis has gone
Speaker 1: on to convince dozens of people to leave the Ku
Speaker 1: Klux Klan. Convincing someone else to change their minds their
Speaker 1: view of reality is one of the most elusive, coveted
Speaker 1: types of change, which is why Darryl's story feels so improbable.
Speaker 1: So how does he do it? I'm Maya Shunker. As
Speaker 1: a cognitive scientist, I've always been fascinated by how we
Speaker 1: change our minds and why we change our minds. On
Speaker 1: this show, I'll have intimate conversations with people who've navigated
Speaker 1: extraordinary change, and hopefully their stories will get us to
Speaker 1: think differently about change in our own lives. This is
Speaker 1: a slight change of plans, our constituions arcs. Daryl didn't
Speaker 1: set out to change anyone's mind He was mostly just
Speaker 1: focused on his music, but one night his life took
Speaker 1: an unexpected turn when he was playing a show at
Speaker 1: a bar called the Silver Dollar Lounge. The silver Dollar
Speaker 1: Lounge at the time was an all white lounge, and
Speaker 1: I say that not meaning that black people could not
Speaker 1: go in, but meaning that they did not go in
Speaker 1: by their own choice because they were not welcome there.
Speaker 1: And when you go somewhere where you're not welcome and
Speaker 1: alcohol is being served, sometimes it does not make for
Speaker 1: a good combination, especially when you're outnumbered. So we took
Speaker 1: a break after the first set and I was walking
Speaker 1: across the dance floor to go sit you with the
Speaker 1: bandmates when somebody approached me from behind and put their
Speaker 1: arm around my shoulder. I don't know anybody in this place,
Speaker 1: so I'm turning around to see who's touching me, and
Speaker 1: it was this gentleman, maybe fifteen eighteen years older than me,
Speaker 1: and he's all excited. He says, man, I sure like
Speaker 1: your piano playing. This is the first time I ever
Speaker 1: heard of black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis.
Speaker 1: And I told him, I said, well, Jerry Lee got
Speaker 1: it from the same place I did, from black blues
Speaker 1: and boogie woogie piano players. Oh no, no, no no no,
Speaker 1: I never heard no black name play like that. For you,
Speaker 1: Jerry Lee invented that style. I said, look, I know
Speaker 1: Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a good friend of mine. He's
Speaker 1: told me himself where he had learned how to play.
Speaker 1: The guy didn't buy that either, but he was so
Speaker 1: fascinated with me that he wanted me to come back
Speaker 1: to his table. He's going to buy me a drink,
Speaker 1: so I don't drink, but I agreed to have a
Speaker 1: cranberry juice. He bought it, paid the waitress, and then
Speaker 1: he took his glass and he clinked my glass and
Speaker 1: cheered me, and then he announces, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the first time I ever sat down with a black
Speaker 1: man and had a drink. So innocently I asked him why,
Speaker 1: and he didn't answer me at first. I asked him again,
Speaker 1: and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and
Speaker 1: said tell him, tell him, And the guy looked at
Speaker 1: me and said, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1: Well I burst out laughing at him because now I
Speaker 1: do not believe him. I thought he was putting the
Speaker 1: joke on me. I'm laughing. He goes inside his pocket,
Speaker 1: pulls out his wallet, flips through it, and hands me
Speaker 1: his clan membership card. I recognized the plan insignia, which
Speaker 1: is a red circle with a white cross and a
Speaker 1: red blood drop in the center of the cross. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking to myself Oh, my goodness, you know this
Speaker 1: is for real. So I stopped laughing. But he was,
Speaker 1: you know, very friendly and very appreciative of my music
Speaker 1: and all excited. He gave me his phone number to
Speaker 1: you know, to call him whenever I was to return
Speaker 1: to this bar with this band, and so I called
Speaker 1: him every six weeks and say, hey, man, you know
Speaker 1: I'm down there at the Silver Dollar this weekend, come
Speaker 1: on out. You say, it's so nonchalantly like, so I
Speaker 1: called the guy. It is remarkable that you called this person.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't think I'm alone in struggling
Speaker 1: to understand you know, what was going through through your
Speaker 1: mind at this moment. If someone told me that they
Speaker 1: were in the freaking clan, I would certainly not call
Speaker 1: them back. In fact, I'd probably just flee the scene.
Speaker 1: And I think this is for pretty good reasons. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I was questioning myself for a second, like
Speaker 1: what the heck am I doing sitting here with a klansmen.
Speaker 1: But the guy was friendly. He disputed the things that
Speaker 1: I had in mind of the image over typical klansmen,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to share my music with some of
Speaker 1: his fellow clansmen and clanswomen, and they would, you know,
Speaker 1: get on the Dancelore and Dancelore I music. You know,
Speaker 1: they didn't come in robes and hoods, right, you know,
Speaker 1: they came in you know, regular street clothes. This goes
Speaker 1: on for a year, an entire year. Darryl would play
Speaker 1: a gig at this bar, and he would invite clan
Speaker 1: members to watch him play. This is one of those
Speaker 1: things that makes Darryll's so unusual. I mean, for me,
Speaker 1: a huge part of what makes someone who they are
Speaker 1: is their belief system. And so if we share the
Speaker 1: same taste in music, that's fine, that's great. But if
Speaker 1: I then find out they're a flagrant racist, that's going
Speaker 1: to fully eclipse everything else about them. So how does
Speaker 1: Darrell look past that? He says, it's not like that.
Speaker 1: He wasn't looking past it. He wanted to learn from it. See,
Speaker 1: Darrell had spent his early childhood overseas in a school
Speaker 1: he describes as a United Nations for little kids. Race
Speaker 1: was always in the background, But when he moved back
Speaker 1: to the States when he was ten, he couldn't escape racism.
Speaker 1: And ever since then he's been interested in why people hate.
Speaker 1: I had had an experience at the age of ten,
Speaker 1: where some racist people threw rocks and bottles at me
Speaker 1: during a parade in which I was the only black participant,
Speaker 1: and never having had this happened to me before, I
Speaker 1: was perplexed as to why people were doing this, and
Speaker 1: when later my parents explained that it was racism, my
Speaker 1: ten year old brain could not process the idea that
Speaker 1: someone who had never seen me before, who had never
Speaker 1: spoken with me, and knew nothing about me, would want
Speaker 1: to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than
Speaker 1: the color of my skin. You know, that just did
Speaker 1: not compete with me. Well later, when I realized this
Speaker 1: was true there are people like that, I formed a
Speaker 1: question in my mind, which was, how can you hate
Speaker 1: me when you don't even know me? And some people
Speaker 1: would just say, well, Daryl, you know that's just the
Speaker 1: way it is. Well, no, it's not just the way
Speaker 1: it is. There has to be a reason behind it.
Speaker 1: Well it's always been that way. That was not good
Speaker 1: enough for me. I want to get to the nucleus
Speaker 1: of it. So Darrell dedicates himself to answering this question.
Speaker 1: He devours books about race and racism. He reads nearly
Speaker 1: every book that exists on the clan, but he's still unsatisfied,
Speaker 1: so he decides he wants to write his own book
Speaker 1: about the clan. All the books written on the clan
Speaker 1: except for mine, have been written by white authors. You know,
Speaker 1: white authors obviously have an easier time getting in contact
Speaker 1: with the clan and sitting down and not fearing any
Speaker 1: ramifications or whatever, or they might even join the clan undercover.
Speaker 1: A clansman would have a different perspective sitting there talking
Speaker 1: to a black person than he would a white person.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel that perspective would have been
Speaker 1: different because he's sitting there telling the person that he
Speaker 1: hates why he hates him. So now he's having to
Speaker 1: face me and face those same questions you know that
Speaker 1: somebody would ask, or even different questions that a white
Speaker 1: interviewer journalist would not ask because they don't think of him,
Speaker 1: because they don't feel the things the same things that
Speaker 1: I feel. As Darrell starts researching for his book, it
Speaker 1: suddenly dawns on him he already knows someone in the clan,
Speaker 1: that guy from the Silver Dollar Lounge, So he goes
Speaker 1: on a mission to track him down. It takes a while,
Speaker 1: but eventually he finds the guy's address, and I knocked
Speaker 1: on the door, you know, unannounced, and he opens the
Speaker 1: door and sees me, goes, Darrell, you know, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here? And look looked up and down the
Speaker 1: hallway to see if I brought anybody with me. So
Speaker 1: it was more of him that who was intimidated than me.
Speaker 1: And when he stepped out of his apartment, I stepped in.
Speaker 1: So he turns around, comes back in. So now we're
Speaker 1: standing inside his apartment and he says, you know what's
Speaker 1: going on? Are you still playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm still playing. But listen, I need to talk to
Speaker 1: you about the clan. He says, the clan. I said, yeah.
Speaker 1: He goes, well I quit. I quit a while back.
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, where's all your clan stuff?
Speaker 1: He says, well, they came and got it. And I said,
Speaker 1: what do you mean they came and got your robin hood?
Speaker 1: You know, don't you own it? And he explained to me,
Speaker 1: when you join the clan, if you have the money
Speaker 1: to pay for it, you can purchase your robin hood
Speaker 1: and it's yours to keep forever. If you cannot afford
Speaker 1: it at the time, you can still take it home
Speaker 1: with you, but you put a little extra money in
Speaker 1: every time you pay your dues until you pay it off,
Speaker 1: sort like layaway kind of thing. A bizarre financial lead
Speaker 1: system within the clan. Love it, Yes, exactly, equal opportunity
Speaker 1: for everyone who's that's right, okay, absolutely so. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: said that, uh, they came and got it, but when
Speaker 1: they came to get it, he could not find the mask,
Speaker 1: and um, he has since found it and he needed
Speaker 1: to return it. I said, what can I see it?
Speaker 1: So he goes down the hallway, comes back and hands
Speaker 1: me the mask. And I said to him, I said,
Speaker 1: do you know Roger Kelly? He goes, yeah, Roger was
Speaker 1: my grand Dragon. I know him. And I said, well, listen,
Speaker 1: I need you to hook me up with mister Kelly.
Speaker 1: I want you to interview him. I'm going to write
Speaker 1: a book on the clan. Now, let me explain how
Speaker 1: the hierarchy of the plan works. You understand these terms.
Speaker 1: We would call a state leader a governor. They call
Speaker 1: that the Grand Dragon a mayor. That person is known
Speaker 1: as the exalted Cyclops. Anybody on the great level is yeah,
Speaker 1: very the self importance of these names, truly, we see
Speaker 1: that's yeah. But see that's also what attracts people because
Speaker 1: you know, they get titles, they feel important. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: a sense of self importance, you know, because they're getting
Speaker 1: that from the society in which they live. So, you know,
Speaker 1: this brotherhood, this gang, if you will, gives him those things.
Speaker 1: So at the time, Roger Kelly was the Grand Dragon
Speaker 1: state leader from Maryland. So I said, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what you need to return this mask, right He said yeah.
Speaker 1: I said, give me Roger Kelly's phone number and his
Speaker 1: address and I'll go and return it for you. And
Speaker 1: he snapped that thing right out of my hand and said,
Speaker 1: in no way. And so I begged and pleaded with him. Well,
Speaker 1: he finally gave it to me on the condition that
Speaker 1: I not revealed him, mister Kelly where I got it.
Speaker 1: And he warned me, he said, Darrel, do not go
Speaker 1: to Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, that's that's the whole reason why I
Speaker 1: need to talk to mister Kelly. I know, why would
Speaker 1: he kill me? What is going on in his mind
Speaker 1: when he sees me. I have to understand this. You
Speaker 1: did realize that you might not get the answer to
Speaker 1: the question if in fact the dangerous part happened first? Right, true,
Speaker 1: this is true? But but I but I was he
Speaker 1: know that I would prevail. I'm the eternal optimist. If
Speaker 1: you will, I hope you enjoyed hearing this teaser of
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans. If you want to check
Speaker 1: out more of Maya's transformative life stories and learn more
Speaker 1: about the science that goes along with them, and subscribe
Speaker 1: to A Slight Change of Plans today, you can download
Speaker 1: it wherever you get The Happiness Lab and all your
Speaker 1: other podcasts. And not to worry, The Happiness Lab will
Speaker 1: be back with season three, which will launch later this summer.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay happy,