Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, it's me Maya. I recently had the pleasure
Speaker 2: of launching my new book, The Other Side of Change
Speaker 2: with literary royalty Michael Lewis. Michael, it seems, knows only
Speaker 2: how to write bestsellers that also tend to get turned
Speaker 2: into big budget movies like Moneyball, The Big Short, and
Speaker 2: The blind Side. He's a star through and through, Needless
Speaker 2: to say, I was honored that he wanted to host
Speaker 2: this conversation. I've known Michael for over a decade, and
Speaker 2: so when we took our seats in front of a
Speaker 2: live audience in San Francisco, we immediately defaulted to our
Speaker 2: normal state when hanging out, ribbing another, joking and also
Speaker 2: going deep. The conversation you're about to hear is one
Speaker 2: of my favorites from my book tour. We talked about
Speaker 2: my experience writing The Other Side of Change, starting this podcast,
Speaker 2: and how we think about navigating life's hardest moments. I
Speaker 2: hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 3: So I have here to my right, Maya Schucker, who
Speaker 3: is a friend from We Go Back. I was working
Speaker 3: on the Undoing project story of Danny Kannoman and I
Speaker 3: met you at the Kennedy School.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I asked, if you want to do my friend.
Speaker 3: Yes, she did, That's exactly right, send.
Speaker 1: You to email.
Speaker 3: I wanted to listen to her presentation she was giving.
Speaker 3: She was working in the White House at that point,
Speaker 3: you're working, you were a behavioral like what was your title?
Speaker 1: Yeah, behavioral scientist.
Speaker 3: All right, So I've watched I've watched iterations of Maya.
Speaker 3: You know, that was my White House Maya, Public Policy Maya.
Speaker 3: And now then she became Google Maya, and then she
Speaker 3: became podcast Maya, and now she's author Maya, and she
Speaker 3: you know, eventually you be Nobel Prize winning Maya. Now
Speaker 3: and I got to talk for forty five minutes, and
Speaker 3: then we're going to open it up to questions, and
Speaker 3: the conversation is going is we're going to talk about
Speaker 3: the book. But before we talk about the book, I
Speaker 3: want to talk about you. We're going to start with you,
Speaker 3: and I want you. I want to start with because
Speaker 3: the book grows out of your podcast Slight Shade, your Plans,
Speaker 3: and I was present at the birth of your podcast.
Speaker 3: We share a podcast company, Pushkin, and they're here there.
Speaker 3: I think they're recording it for the podcast. So I
Speaker 3: want let's just start by how you got interested in
Speaker 3: the subject of change in people's lives and and let's
Speaker 3: talk a little bitut the podcast, how you got into
Speaker 3: this in the first place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, thank you all
Speaker 2: of you so much for coming. It's so much fun
Speaker 2: to do this in San Francisco because it does feel
Speaker 2: like a celebration with friends and family and some new faces.
Speaker 2: But I am very humbled that all of you took
Speaker 2: some time out of your evening to spend it with me,
Speaker 2: and like mostly Michael, stop it so we know who
Speaker 2: pulled the weight on this invitation. It's okay, okay, So
Speaker 2: how did I get interested in the topic of change?
Speaker 2: So twenty twenty, the beginning was was a little tough
Speaker 2: for me personally because after years of trying to start
Speaker 2: a family with my husband Jimmy, we found out I
Speaker 2: think it was early March that our surrogate in Arkansas
Speaker 2: had miscarried, and so this big dream that I had
Speaker 2: of becoming a mom was just in a moment shattered.
Speaker 2: And I had had a lot of formative experiences with
Speaker 2: change as a kid, you know, losing the violin.
Speaker 3: With those dream don't just glass over there talk about
Speaker 3: that for a minute.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's start.
Speaker 2: So from the time I was a little kid, violin
Speaker 2: was the center of my life, and when I was nine,
Speaker 2: I started studying at Juilliard. When I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: it's off Pearlman invited me to be his private violin student.
Speaker 2: That was sort of the vote of confidence I needed
Speaker 2: to think, Hey, maybe I have what it could take
Speaker 2: to become a professional. And it was the first time
Speaker 2: I remember talking with my siblings and my parents like
Speaker 2: maybe conservatory is a real option versus, you know, the
Speaker 2: standard liberal arts college. And then everything was going according
Speaker 2: to plan until I had my slight change of plans
Speaker 2: and a hand injury that I sustained while playing the violin,
Speaker 2: and did my dreams kind of in a moment, you know,
Speaker 2: doctors told me that I could no longer play the violin.
Speaker 3: How were you fifteen, okay, and what was your response
Speaker 3: to that? How'd you feel?
Speaker 2: I was surprised by how hard I took it. But
Speaker 2: then I think about the fact that when you're fifteen
Speaker 2: and you've played the violin since you were six, that's
Speaker 2: a sizeable fraction of your life, and so the loss
Speaker 2: feels pretty big, and it's hard to understate my devotion
Speaker 2: to the craft. My sister would say he was in
Speaker 2: the front row that when I was not home, she
Speaker 2: would actually hear phantom sounds of the violin playing. It
Speaker 2: was like her worst nightmare. It was so horrible. I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry, Mirah. And also my life was oriented around
Speaker 2: the violin. So every Saturday I would wake up at
Speaker 2: four thirty in the morning to train to New York
Speaker 2: with my mom. I would spend ten hours there and
Speaker 2: taking classes, come home at ten thirty at night. And
Speaker 2: there were just a lot of sacrifices involved, and you know,
Speaker 2: it was just a huge part of my identity. And
Speaker 2: so I think what was interesting to me when I
Speaker 2: lost it is that I felt like I was grieving
Speaker 2: the loss of the instrument, sure, but more importantly the
Speaker 2: loss of myself in this more fundamental way.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was the thing that.
Speaker 2: Made me feel like I was special and I was
Speaker 2: good at something, and that I belonged. You know, I
Speaker 2: was bullied in school, and violin and that whole community
Speaker 2: was a refuge for me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it just was really entangled with my self worth.
Speaker 3: I mean, you flash forward many years and you're telling
Speaker 3: stories of other people's adaptive strategies. Did you have a strategy?
Speaker 3: What did you do?
Speaker 1: I doubled down on watching MTV. All right, I was
Speaker 1: super MOPy.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any good strategies or coping mechanisms as
Speaker 2: a fifteen year old, I was just like, this sucks.
Speaker 2: I was also very, very stubborn, so I kept playing
Speaker 2: through the pain. I had hand surgery. I took an
Speaker 2: absurd amount of anti inflammatories. Eventually doctors were like, kid,
Speaker 2: you got to do what You've got to stop. This
Speaker 2: is clearly not going to resolve itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at that moment, where did all that energy go?
Speaker 1: So my dad gave me good advice.
Speaker 2: So was the summer before college, and I was having
Speaker 2: serious imposter syndrome because I thought, well, Violen's the only
Speaker 2: reason I even got into college in the first place,
Speaker 2: and I don't even have that thing. So now what
Speaker 2: do I do? And he said, you've effectively been wearing
Speaker 2: blinders for the last ten years. Your job this summer
Speaker 2: is to basically be an explorer. I want you to
Speaker 2: read as much as you can possibly read, when to
Speaker 2: talk to as many people as you possibly can. I
Speaker 2: just want you to feed your curiosity and to do
Speaker 2: it in a way that doesn't have a goal attached
Speaker 2: to it, because if you're if you're exploring the world
Speaker 2: hoping that you're going to figure out what your college
Speaker 2: major is going to be, it's going to be limiting
Speaker 2: in a way.
Speaker 3: And he knows that he knew his daughter you were
Speaker 3: so goal.
Speaker 2: Orient Yes, And I really like clarity and I really
Speaker 2: like certainty, so I was going to latch onto anything.
Speaker 2: It was like, Okay, can I pull off being a
Speaker 2: history major? Okay, I'll go with that. And I'm really
Speaker 2: glad that I didn't do this with a concrete goal
Speaker 2: in mind, because I didn't even know that cognitive science
Speaker 2: was a thing. And it just so happens that I
Speaker 2: read Stephen Pinker's book, The Language Instinct. It was in
Speaker 2: the basement of my parents. My sister had read it
Speaker 2: in college.
Speaker 3: Which you wouldn't have read if your father.
Speaker 1: Didn't absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would probably have just skiinned the course catalog
Speaker 2: and been like, which is the one where I feel
Speaker 2: like I could actually do okay in it?
Speaker 1: That would probably have been my strategy, and it was.
Speaker 2: The book was all about our brain's extraordinary capacity for language,
Speaker 2: and I had always taken my language abilities for granted.
Speaker 2: I just didn't really think about them. And this book
Speaker 2: detailed the sophisticated cognitive machinery that's operating behind the scenes
Speaker 2: that gives rise to language, and I was totally enraptured.
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, this is totally crazy.
Speaker 2: And it would share things like think about how a
Speaker 2: little kid learns language, right, They just hear a continuous
Speaker 2: stream of sound. There's no parsing between words. Kids just
Speaker 2: figure out when one word stops and the next word begins.
Speaker 2: And it's like, WHOA, that's crazy, Like you never really
Speaker 2: teach them grammar, and they like, somehow learn grammar and
Speaker 2: grammar anyone who has learned English as a second language
Speaker 2: knows English is not an easy language. It doesn't make
Speaker 2: any sense grammatically, like what is going on? And so
Speaker 2: I just remember having this moment of awe, like wow,
Speaker 2: I feel genuinely interested in this topic. I'm very curious
Speaker 2: about it. I want to know more than just language.
Speaker 2: And then I looked in the course catalog and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, there's a cognitive science major. It's it
Speaker 2: combines philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, biology, neurobiology, and you.
Speaker 2: You ask a question about the brain from multiple perspectives.
Speaker 3: So this trauma in your life that comes from.
Speaker 2: Me, little little t trauma No no, no concert violinists herself.
Speaker 4: You can't study at Juilliard anymore, like kind of slightly.
Speaker 4: You motored through it pretty well. You motored through pretty well.
Speaker 4: I just want to pay respect to true trauma because
Speaker 4: we're gonna get to that. We're gonna get there's an
Speaker 4: awful lot of it in this book. Let's come close
Speaker 4: to the present. You are, your surrogate has lost the child.
Speaker 4: How does that lead to a podcast?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: So one thing that was surprising to me is despite
Speaker 2: having gone through this violin shift and learning whatever I
Speaker 2: subconsciously learned from it, I wasn't consciously being like, what
Speaker 2: lessons should I draw from this experience?
Speaker 1: And I sorry, I was just.
Speaker 2: Waving to Jimmy who came in to my husband ill
Speaker 2: and sorry to embarrass you.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to get to I.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I I had had these formative experiences, and
Speaker 2: I wasn't, you know, consciously drawing lessons. But I felt like, okay,
Speaker 2: I built some thicker skin, and I found myself reeling.
Speaker 1: After the miscarriage.
Speaker 2: I remember, yes, and I as someone who's quite social,
Speaker 2: I also felt like it was very, very hard for
Speaker 2: me to communicate with people. I remember I texted my
Speaker 2: family and was like, this happened. I can't talk to anyone.
Speaker 2: Please don't call me. I don't want to talk to
Speaker 2: anyone for like many days, and I finally mustered up
Speaker 2: the courage and I called my brother aj because it
Speaker 2: just felt like I had to reach out to someone,
Speaker 2: and he was wonderful, but I was just really struggling.
Speaker 2: I think the biggest reason I was struggling with that
Speaker 2: was I love being in control and I'm very used
Speaker 2: to hustling my way to solutions. So if I face
Speaker 2: an obstacle there's a barrier in my life, I will
Speaker 2: just work harder.
Speaker 1: I'll just figure out a way.
Speaker 2: I'm very creative and very resourceful when it comes to
Speaker 2: finding a way to the finish line, and relentless right
Speaker 2: but much to my mom's chagrin, And so for that reason,
Speaker 2: I felt this sense of powerlessness that was so discomfiting
Speaker 2: for me, because I was like, oh, wow, in the
Speaker 2: world of fertility and whether pregnancies work or not work,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as hustling or hard work. The
Speaker 2: universe is totally indifferent towards the depth of my desire
Speaker 2: for this outcome. Doesn't really care how hard I'm working
Speaker 2: at their fertility, at the egg retrievals.
Speaker 1: None of that matters.
Speaker 2: And I really struggled with this feeling of contending with
Speaker 2: the true limits of my control. That was very hard
Speaker 2: for me psychologically, and that's what introduced me to this
Speaker 2: whole world of change.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: And then I was at a party of a person
Speaker 2: who's here, Adele, and I was talking with my friend Christine.
Speaker 2: We were talking about the idea of a podcast. Oh
Speaker 2: you're sitting right next to each other, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Guys in this room. You don't know.
Speaker 2: It makes me look bad. My goal of is all
Speaker 2: just my friends and family. I would say thirty percent,
Speaker 2: I know, okay, all right, seventy percent are true strangers
Speaker 2: and we're just so captivated by the title of the book.
Speaker 2: So I was brainstorming with my friend Christine, and then
Speaker 2: we came up with the idea of, oh, wouldn't it
Speaker 2: be amazing if there was a podcast about change? And
Speaker 2: I wasn't quite sure what that looked like yet. In fact,
Speaker 2: at first, I thought maybe you'd be career change. And
Speaker 2: my friend Max's in the podcasting business. He told me, Maya,
Speaker 2: don't wait until there's a proper proposal, right, just record something.
Speaker 2: And I was like, okay, he's just get into the
Speaker 2: deep ense. So I got my android phone, I hit
Speaker 2: record it. I interviewed Jimmy, my husband, about his career shifts,
Speaker 2: and I sent it to one of my best friends, Aggie,
Speaker 2: who's sitting in the back of the room, and she said, girl,
Speaker 2: I really love you and Jimmy, and this is so boring.
Speaker 2: This is a terrible podcast. And you had a competitive
Speaker 2: edge with me because I actually like you guys.
Speaker 3: So Jimmy's very entertaining with the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I brought it down.
Speaker 3: I can guess what the problem was.
Speaker 1: What do you think it was?
Speaker 3: The stakes were so low?
Speaker 1: I mean, the stakes are too low.
Speaker 3: What is like, who cares about people's career changes?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, the stakes aren't high enough exactly the
Speaker 2: reasons I described. Yeah, then it just became a podcast
Speaker 2: about people's unbelievable changes in their personal lives. And the
Speaker 2: first person that I interviewed was Darryl Davis, This black
Speaker 2: jazz musician who convinced dozens of people to leave the
Speaker 2: Ku Klux Klan because of his incredible persuasive powers and
Speaker 2: his ability to understand what it means to empathize with
Speaker 2: people who even have vile views, right, and how to
Speaker 2: actually get them to change their minds. And I remember
Speaker 2: I'd put him as one of my dream guests on
Speaker 2: my podcast proposal, and then I was able to get him,
Speaker 2: and that was just the best day. Turns out there's
Speaker 2: three Darryl Davis's in the world, and one of them
Speaker 2: also agree to be on the podcast. He's actually a
Speaker 2: speaking coach, which is not ideal.
Speaker 3: All right. So now we're gonna move to the book.
Speaker 3: So they are what six seven different profiles. You're one
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: Yes, Unexpectedly, I didn't think that the last chapter would
Speaker 2: be narrative.
Speaker 3: I picked three that I want to talk about. Sure,
Speaker 3: we're going to do case studies, and we're going to
Speaker 3: figure out what did you tell these stories? And you're
Speaker 3: gonna explain to us what we can learn from each
Speaker 3: of these stories. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: I I mean that's what you've kind of done here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, sorry, that's fair, and that's fair.
Speaker 2: I want to push back a little bit, and I'm
Speaker 2: so glad that we coordinated in advance when.
Speaker 3: We talk about but no one even told me what
Speaker 3: time I come here.
Speaker 2: Mike. Michael on the way in was like, I did
Speaker 2: extremely little prep for this conversation. I just want you
Speaker 2: guys to know. And I was like, perfect, that sounds great.
Speaker 2: That's actually the best version of Michael.
Speaker 1: So this is great. But here's what I want to
Speaker 1: push back on.
Speaker 2: I want to give our readers the joy of the
Speaker 2: story unfolding in the long form version of this.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to give away endings.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I can talk generally about some of the
Speaker 2: stories or some of the lessons learned, but I want
Speaker 2: people to really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Their words are always going to beat my words, right, So, well.
Speaker 3: Back way for just one second before getting too that
Speaker 3: why did I write a book? No?
Speaker 1: No, no, you well all right, yeah, we talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why did you write a book?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: And there's are there plenty of books out there? Who
Speaker 3: needs another?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And in fact, I.
Speaker 3: Asked myself that question every time before I write a book,
Speaker 3: like this, is the world need another?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: And often the answer is no.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Richard Taylor had told me so many times like, don't
Speaker 2: write a book, don't write a book, don't write a book,
Speaker 2: and I started to taking it personally. I was like, okay, dude,
Speaker 2: you have to even see my writing yet, like why
Speaker 2: do you feel why do you feel so strongly about this?
Speaker 1: But what he was trying to say is so many
Speaker 1: authors get into.
Speaker 2: The business for the wrong reasons and kind of like
Speaker 2: the Bachelor, right, you got to be here for the
Speaker 2: right reasons for it to work. But the reason that
Speaker 2: I wrote it is because one, I love learning new skills.
Speaker 2: So I at the time, I was lucky enough that
Speaker 2: I had talent representation and my agents at CAAA had
Speaker 2: been asking me for a really long time will you
Speaker 2: write a book?
Speaker 1: We write a book?
Speaker 2: And by the way, initially, I mean I said no
Speaker 2: for about a year and a half because I was like,
Speaker 2: it was never on my bucket list to write a book.
Speaker 2: I was happy to go to my grave not being
Speaker 2: a published author only. I also only want to take
Speaker 2: on endeavors if I think I can make something exceptional,
Speaker 2: which really sets a high bar for you now that
Speaker 2: you're about to read this book. No, but I want
Speaker 2: I want to feel it's great. So I really don't
Speaker 2: like phoning things in. I didn't want to write a
Speaker 2: mediocre book that was going to be very unsatisfying for me,
Speaker 2: and so I kept saying no. And so one was, oh,
Speaker 2: I would love to build a new skill in adulthood.
Speaker 2: How much fun would that be? And then the second
Speaker 2: thing was I had to ask myself, will a book
Speaker 2: give me something that the podcast can't give me? That
Speaker 2: would be the only reason to do it. I love
Speaker 2: the podcast. I love audio. Also, people listen to podcasts
Speaker 2: more than they read books, as evidence by how hard
Speaker 2: it's been to sell this damn book despite so much hustling.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you guys, thank you so much, Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for being doing this for two days.
Speaker 1: So okay, yes, you.
Speaker 2: Literally do an excerpt from the phone book and it
Speaker 2: would be a number one Neuror Times bestseller. So you
Speaker 2: really don't have a lot of credibility here. So annoying
Speaker 2: how easily you sell books. It's so annoying. Yeah, people
Speaker 2: were like, hey, when I was asking for advice, I
Speaker 2: was like, dude, these pre order numbers are paltry, Like
Speaker 2: what's going on? And then they were like, well, you
Speaker 2: know authors like why do you talk to Michael Lewis
Speaker 2: about his experience selling books? And I was like, yes,
Speaker 2: I will learn zero lessons that are applicable to my
Speaker 2: life as an author.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Anyway, I digress.
Speaker 2: I realized that as I was recording all these podcast
Speaker 2: episodes about people's incredible lives, so it was like stories
Speaker 2: of illness, stories of a dream loss, stories of a
Speaker 2: job lost, and stories of just unexpected wile and will
Speaker 2: drop from the sky style changes. I noticed there are
Speaker 2: some really interesting connections. In fact, sorry, she also mentioned
Speaker 2: your daughter, who I interviewed quinn Is for the podcast.
Speaker 2: She was a guest of mine. I noticed that there
Speaker 2: were really interesting connections across stories. So we are often
Speaker 2: told when something crappy happens to us going through a divorce,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh my god, my friend's going through a divorce.
Speaker 1: You should talk to them.
Speaker 2: Oh I lost a loved one. Oh go to the
Speaker 2: brief section of the bookstore. Oh I'm going through a
Speaker 2: job thing. Oh yeah, there's a community support group for
Speaker 2: people losing jobs. And I think that's misguided. What matters
Speaker 2: is a shared psychology in the face of change. So
Speaker 2: what I've noticed is that people going through wildly different
Speaker 2: changes on their surface have so much more in common
Speaker 2: when it comes to both the problem statement and the
Speaker 2: solution set. So to make this concrete, I interviewed a
Speaker 2: cancer patient and I interviewed a woman who had been
Speaker 2: betrayed by her husband. She found out he had had
Speaker 2: a decade long affair. They were both grappling with a
Speaker 2: deep feeling of betrayal. So they were both struggling with
Speaker 2: this thing, and they had much more in common than
Speaker 2: the person with cancer did with someone else who had
Speaker 2: an illness or disease. And for me, there was just
Speaker 2: this light bulb moment of Okay, there are these universal things,
Speaker 2: like this stuff of change that's worth sharing with people.
Speaker 2: Right we're bristling at the world's unfairness. We are anxious
Speaker 2: about all the uncertainty that lies ahead. We're grieving an
Speaker 2: identity that we've lost or a pass that was so recent,
Speaker 2: like we can feel it. We can feel yet yesterday.
Speaker 2: It's so intoxicating to go. I'm quoting the Beatles by accident.
Speaker 2: We can feel two days ago. Does that know that
Speaker 2: still clouds to plagiarism? Okay, yesterday, you just want it
Speaker 2: it's elusive. But it's like, if I could just get
Speaker 2: my life back, that would be so amazing. Or we're
Speaker 2: catastrophizing the future, playing out every worst case scenario. Right,
Speaker 2: That is the stuff of change. And so my view was, okay,
Speaker 2: it was a bunch of common problems. Then any story
Speaker 2: will resonate with anyone who's going through any kind of change.
Speaker 2: And then the solution set, the set of recommendations that
Speaker 2: I make, either based in cognitive science or just in
Speaker 2: people's wisdom, will also resonate.
Speaker 3: But if they're all the same, why he needs seven
Speaker 3: different ones?
Speaker 2: No, sorry, different lessons emerge from different story. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: good thing, you weren't my editor? Not exactly, not exactly. Motivation,
Speaker 2: He's like, couldn't this have been an Atlantic article?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question to ask oneself before one
Speaker 3: sits down to write a book.
Speaker 2: And that's also a good thing about operators should ask
Speaker 2: one's author before one sits down, and one's author.
Speaker 3: But your point wasn't that all these people have the
Speaker 3: same thing in common. Your point is that sometimes the
Speaker 3: cancer patient hards something in common with a person who's
Speaker 3: has been cheated on her.
Speaker 2: Bet I'm making is that when people read this book,
Speaker 2: which I hope they do, they will find resonance in
Speaker 2: an unexpected story.
Speaker 1: Okay, because of the lesson that emerges from it.
Speaker 3: Before we again, before we get into this specific story,
Speaker 3: since you're not going to tell them all the way, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we have a little more time. Yes, is in your
Speaker 3: mind you when you started the podcast? Yeah, well you
Speaker 3: think change is always bad change? Is it always loss
Speaker 3: that you do? How about gain?
Speaker 2: So it's a great question. Yeah, I was thinking about
Speaker 2: bad change because who wants to hear No one's interested
Speaker 2: in reading about good change. Okay, I'm here to brag
Speaker 2: about how wonderful my latest promotion was. It's true that
Speaker 2: there's a flip side to good change, because of course
Speaker 2: we're about it affecting forecasting, and we get things wrong
Speaker 2: and it turns out lottery winners are miserable. Blah blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Okay, fine, that's all true, But I
Speaker 2: don't really think that's the population that needs to be
Speaker 2: served right now. Okay, So I want to help the
Speaker 2: people who are like literally struggling.
Speaker 3: It's lost, you're really yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And to that point, there was a moment about
Speaker 2: a year into making a slight change of plans that
Speaker 2: I was on a walk and it occurred to me,
Speaker 2: I thought this show was about change, but it's actually
Speaker 2: a show about identity, because every story actually is about
Speaker 2: how people felt that their fundamental sense of self, their
Speaker 2: identity was threatened as a result of the change they
Speaker 2: went through.
Speaker 3: All right, this is an excellent segue to the first story.
Speaker 3: Great and why don't we take them in this order?
Speaker 3: Were the three people I want to talk about? Or Olivia,
Speaker 3: Dwayne and Ingrid. Yeah, so let's start with Olivia.
Speaker 2: Olivia was incredible, and I want you to know, by
Speaker 2: the way, the reason this book took me three and
Speaker 2: a half years to write is one because I have
Speaker 2: a full time job, but two because it was extremely
Speaker 2: hard for me to find people that I wanted to
Speaker 2: feature in this book. Great stories are so so so
Speaker 2: hard to find.
Speaker 3: Now, these people were in your podcast, correct.
Speaker 2: All the people profiled are not in the podcast. And
Speaker 2: I was very interested not just in the external beats
Speaker 2: of a person's story, but from my vantage point, their
Speaker 2: interior life. Right, So what was shifting within them as
Speaker 2: they went through their change? That was the novel lens
Speaker 2: I was going to bring to the table, which is
Speaker 2: I want to understand maybe the thing that they find
Speaker 2: the hardest isn't the thing that I found would find
Speaker 2: the hardest. It's so easy for us to impose our
Speaker 2: mental frames on other people when they're going through change.
Speaker 2: But my greatest delight as an interviewer is when my
Speaker 2: subjects would prove me wrong and I'd be like, no,
Speaker 2: that wasn't what I was struggling with at all, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, WHOA, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about that.
Speaker 2: I want to know, because I read one article about
Speaker 2: you and I never would have gotten that insight. So Olivia,
Speaker 2: actually she came to me via Instagram. She sent me
Speaker 2: a DM and she said she slid into my DMS
Speaker 2: and she said, hey, I've listened to your podcast.
Speaker 1: A slight change of plans. I have my own story.
Speaker 2: I had a severe brainstem stroke when I was in
Speaker 2: my early twenties and it left me with locked in syndrome. Now,
Speaker 2: for those of you who don't know locked in syndrome
Speaker 2: diving bell and the butterfly that if it brings any bells,
Speaker 2: it basically means that so all of your cognition is preserved.
Speaker 2: But importantly, you cannot voluntarily control any of the muscles
Speaker 2: in your body except for the muscles that move your eyes.
Speaker 2: So your only portal for communicating with the outside world
Speaker 2: is through your blinks. So caregivers will have the letters
Speaker 2: of an alphabet on a board and they will slide
Speaker 2: their finger across those letters, and then a person with
Speaker 2: locked in will have to blink when they get to
Speaker 2: the correct letter, and that's how they painstakingly spell outwards.
Speaker 2: And so Olivia tells me that she's going through this
Speaker 2: when she's twenty one years old, twenty two years old?
Speaker 3: Oh is she before this happens too?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll get to that, Michael. I'm trying to do
Speaker 2: a you know, a story of a tension Denu mal
Speaker 2: you know, so.
Speaker 3: Would you like I could just.
Speaker 1: You told me I had to tell the story?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Good.
Speaker 2: So, so first I want to say that she she
Speaker 2: texted me and she was like, I just want to
Speaker 2: share the story with you. And I was in the
Speaker 2: throes of writing this book and I texted her. I
Speaker 2: was like, you know, she was hoping maybe to hear
Speaker 2: back from me. At some point I was like her,
Speaker 2: are you free in like one minute to talk on
Speaker 2: the phone.
Speaker 1: And I get on the phone with her, and.
Speaker 2: I was like, so, instead of doing a one time
Speaker 2: podcast episode, would you instead like to spend the next
Speaker 2: three and a half years with me talking deeply about
Speaker 2: your story.
Speaker 1: I probably freaked her out, but she was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess. And so she was. She was one of
Speaker 1: those people that made this book the book.
Speaker 2: It gave me the confidence that I did not, in
Speaker 2: fact need to return my advance.
Speaker 3: We've already told us something. Yeah, that the person who
Speaker 3: you she's got this syndrome where she can only communicate
Speaker 3: by blinking her eyes. Yeah, she's on the phone with you. Yeah, okay, So.
Speaker 2: She was sending me a text on the phone, Michael,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. I just you didn't have to make that
Speaker 1: so explicit.
Speaker 3: Oh, one day I will improve to the point where
Speaker 3: you're you're satisfied with my interviewers. But but, but but
Speaker 3: let's talk about you interview Okay, I'm trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: so this person gets a touch who wants to tell
Speaker 3: her story? Yes?
Speaker 2: And so I started interviewing her. And here's who Olivia
Speaker 2: was before the stroke. She was a fairly happy, but
Speaker 2: very insecure high school student slash college student. So that's
Speaker 2: most people, right, and so she has this catastrophic brainstem stroke,
Speaker 2: she ends up in the hospital. What's so fascinating. This
Speaker 2: is what I mean by that twist, the angle that
Speaker 2: I didn't see coming, because when I first saw her
Speaker 2: message on Instagram, I thought, Okay, this is going to
Speaker 2: be a story about adversity in the face of hardship
Speaker 2: and the laborious you know, recovery and physical therapy and
Speaker 2: beating the odds. You know, like that's what I thought
Speaker 2: it was going to be. And then Olivia is like
Speaker 2: the gravity of my situation did not sink in until
Speaker 2: my boyfriend's family came to visit about twelve days later.
Speaker 2: And I had never been able to gain these people's approval.
Speaker 2: And when I realized, in the moment they came into
Speaker 2: the hospital room that I could not curate an image
Speaker 2: of myself, that I could not be the person that
Speaker 2: I knew they needed me to be in order to
Speaker 2: like me back, that is when I fully appreciated that
Speaker 2: I was locked in, and I thought, how incredible.
Speaker 1: For two reasons.
Speaker 2: One, I think we naively believe that when we get us,
Speaker 2: when we get such catastrophic news, like we're locked in
Speaker 2: all of our old preferences and values and ways and
Speaker 2: thinking about the world. Are immediately right size and we
Speaker 2: don't care about that stuff anymore, and we are immediately
Speaker 2: enlightened and we have perspective, and it's like, who cares
Speaker 2: what other people think. I'm just concerned about being able
Speaker 2: to talk again, right, Obviously that's not true. So actually,
Speaker 2: one of the people that I interviewed for the podcast, Scott,
Speaker 2: who had cancer, he was like, on any given day,
Speaker 2: I'm more worried about losing my six pack than I
Speaker 2: am about dying. That's the reality of human psychology. We
Speaker 2: still have We are still the same person we were
Speaker 2: actually two minutes ago, with this new information that we're
Speaker 2: actively processing. So I found that fascinating that she would
Speaker 2: still care so much. But her chapter is actually about
Speaker 2: what it means to reckon with the fact that you
Speaker 2: can no longer you almost by brute force. You must
Speaker 2: relinquish your people pleasing tendencies. Oh and I'm a people pleaser.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't know that by the way I'm engaging with
Speaker 2: Michael tonight. I've lost one friend, but I am a
Speaker 2: people pleaser with most people, and I so loved that
Speaker 2: there was this this theme, Like my goal with the
Speaker 2: book was exceptional story, very relatable, universal lesson, and so
Speaker 2: I just love that this magnificent story of Locked in
Speaker 2: Syndrome was actually about a young woman's desire to be
Speaker 2: liked and loved by people, and how she had to
Speaker 2: become comfortable with the rawest, most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Version of herself.
Speaker 3: About Ingrid, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Ingrid is someone who, from the time she's very little,
Speaker 2: growing up in Columbia, is told that she should never
Speaker 2: tell people about her family's indigenous background. So her mom
Speaker 2: cautions her from a young age. She says, all these
Speaker 2: family stories about your grandpa's magical abilities and our spiritual traditions,
Speaker 2: they're going to be harshly judged by others and you
Speaker 2: might face violence or discrimination.
Speaker 1: Don't talk about these with anyone.
Speaker 3: Can you can I think your talk? Can you pause
Speaker 3: just a liver there and tell them? Can you tell
Speaker 3: them one of the kind of stories that she was
Speaker 3: told as the great stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that her grandfather could move clouds and help farmers
Speaker 2: with their crops. It's a little Ingrid would hear these
Speaker 2: stories with such delight, but she quickly learned like, oh wow, no,
Speaker 2: these are shameful stories, right, I shouldn't talk about them
Speaker 2: with anyone else.
Speaker 1: And then when she so she.
Speaker 2: Continues this when she moves to Chicago eventually and has
Speaker 2: a bustling community around her, her friends notice she's very
Speaker 2: guarded about her upbringing and her cultural heritage and just
Speaker 2: her life in Columbia in general. And you know, her
Speaker 2: boyfriend even would tell her like, Ingrid, you never open
Speaker 2: up to me about your life life back in your homeland.
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 2: And so he said being inscrutable was kind of her
Speaker 2: defining quality. And then one day she gets into a
Speaker 2: biking accident and she develops amnesia, retrograde amnesia. So what
Speaker 2: that means is you lose a lot of memories from
Speaker 2: the past, but you can still form new memories.
Speaker 3: But she didn't develop it. She comes out of this
Speaker 3: crash and she doesn't remember who she is.
Speaker 1: Yes, so in a moment, it's like no.
Speaker 3: Idea who she is correct and has to kind of
Speaker 3: uncover who she like it becomes a detective guy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so she so she does nothing about herself. Yes, that's
Speaker 3: just an amazing thing, waking up and knowing nothing about
Speaker 3: who you are.
Speaker 2: She gets it from the bike, and she knows, she
Speaker 2: knows how to use the bike. So it's interesting because
Speaker 2: with retrograde amnesia, all your skills are still intact. So
Speaker 2: you can still read, and you can still write, and
Speaker 2: you can still pick up a phone and call someone,
Speaker 2: but you don't have an understanding of who you are.
Speaker 2: And so she stares at her reflection at one point
Speaker 2: and thinks she's observing someone else until she finally puts
Speaker 2: it together and is like, oh my god, that's me.
Speaker 2: And there's something very curious about the way that her
Speaker 2: memories come back to her.
Speaker 1: So sorry.
Speaker 2: One thing that I should note is, unlike most people
Speaker 2: who would be totally freaked out of their mind if
Speaker 2: this were to happen, Ingrid experiences unbridled joy and euphoria.
Speaker 3: She knows she doesn't know who she is, and.
Speaker 1: She's thrilled about it, and she's to the point.
Speaker 3: Where she doesn't even want to look in the mirror.
Speaker 3: She doesn't want to remember anything. Yeah, that is especially weird,
Speaker 3: because don't you think if you felt that way, you
Speaker 3: would ask yourself, why do I feel this way? And
Speaker 3: maybe like what I was whereas a serial killer.
Speaker 2: Or something absolutely Ingrid and I could not have more
Speaker 2: different cognitions. That was one of the other delights. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't relate to this person at all.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, yeah, You'd be scrambled to get back to
Speaker 3: Maya's fast.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, what is her Amazon ranking? What is
Speaker 1: this person?
Speaker 2: I don't know if she's written a book, but I
Speaker 2: need to know her Amazon ranking. And so Ingrid has
Speaker 2: this euphoria, and she describes it as a feeling of lightness.
Speaker 2: She feels unburded in some way, but she can't understand
Speaker 2: quite why. And as Michael said, is she's going through
Speaker 2: these next few weeks trying to hold her recovery. She
Speaker 2: covers up every mirror in her house with blankets because
Speaker 2: she doesn't want to be reminded. She doesn't read any
Speaker 2: of the journals on her bookshelf. She wants to preserve
Speaker 2: this feeling of lightness. And what happens is as her
Speaker 2: memories slowly come back, they come back a little bit
Speaker 2: out of order, and in a way that actually changes
Speaker 2: her relationship with her family's history. So the first set
Speaker 2: of things that come back are her family's stories. It
Speaker 2: just comes back to her in a rush. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: my grandpa could move clouds. My mom would bless water.
Speaker 2: Both of them were corndera. I can't roll my arms.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna try. They were spiritual healers. And she
Speaker 2: is so enchanted by these stories. She thinks her so beautiful,
Speaker 2: and she starts sharing them liberally with everyone. Tells her
Speaker 2: boyfriend that night, oh my god, if I told you,
Speaker 2: I have this incredible pass, tells her friends at dinner parties.
Speaker 2: So she just she's like a ball of energy for
Speaker 2: two weeks, just delighted to tell everyone she can meet
Speaker 2: about these stories.
Speaker 3: It has no idea. What she's doing is transgressingly exactly nothing.
Speaker 2: Until one night she has to flash in her mind
Speaker 2: of her mom staring at her sternly, and she rushes
Speaker 2: to the bathroom, and that's when she remembers, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm ashamed of these stories. These are a source of
Speaker 2: shame for me. I'm not supposed to even talk about them.
Speaker 2: But it's too late. She has already arrived at a
Speaker 2: renewed relationship with her beautiful family, heritage. And the reason
Speaker 2: I love this story, why I call the chapter the
Speaker 2: blank Slate, is that it is a reminder to all
Speaker 2: of us that we should not hold our beliefs as
Speaker 2: these sacred, immutable truths that are not worthy of revision
Speaker 2: and change, can serve as a beautiful moment of revelation
Speaker 2: where it reveals to us, oh my gosh, I've been
Speaker 2: laboring under this view.
Speaker 1: It might be problematic? Is it outdated?
Speaker 3: For Ingrid?
Speaker 2: She realized she overinterpreted her mom's message, so her mom
Speaker 2: only cautioned her to not share this because she was
Speaker 2: worried about ingrid safety. She was deep her mom was
Speaker 2: deeply proud of these stories. But we so often have
Speaker 2: this happen. Right, ninety percent of our beliefs. I just
Speaker 2: made that number up, But let's just assume I'm just
Speaker 2: your classic social scientists. No, I'm just kidding, and ninety
Speaker 2: percent of you believe me just now.
Speaker 3: Now, I'm just.
Speaker 1: Kidding, just kidding.
Speaker 2: Many of our beliefs, I don't know what the numbers are,
Speaker 2: are actually sitting on very flimsy ground. We learned those
Speaker 2: ways of thinking and seeing the world based on subconscious
Speaker 2: messaging when we were kids, from parents, from teachers, from
Speaker 2: popular culture, from TV shows we watched, from culture and
Speaker 2: our upbring, whatever it was. And yet it's not like
Speaker 2: every day we wake up thinking what belief should I
Speaker 2: interrogate for its credibility today?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And so what change can do like it did for Ingrid,
Speaker 2: is wipe the slate clean and give you a chance
Speaker 2: to ask yourself, is this a belief that I should carry?
Speaker 3: And do we need trauma for that? No?
Speaker 2: So one of the things, so I don't want anyone
Speaker 2: to have to go through a change to benefit from
Speaker 2: this book. So the thing that I was very intent
Speaker 2: on is this book is for anyone who is not
Speaker 2: just in the throes of change, but someone who's looking
Speaker 2: to change the relationship with a past experience that they
Speaker 2: have a very troubled relationship with, or someone who simply
Speaker 2: wants to get ahead of a big change that's forthcoming
Speaker 2: and it's going to come for all of us spoiler alert.
Speaker 2: Like I was telling you, you know, behind the scenes,
Speaker 2: like the last month of my life was horrible and
Speaker 2: I dealt with lots of unexpected change, and I was like,
Speaker 2: damn it. I wrote the book. I thought it was done.
Speaker 2: I thought I'd wipe my hands clean of change. Now
Speaker 2: I'm going through and it's awful, but I wanted it.
Speaker 2: I wanted to give people strategies to almost build armor
Speaker 2: around themselves so that when they get thrown that next change,
Speaker 2: they think, Okay, I've got a little bit of a
Speaker 2: survival kid. Here, I know what to do about it.
Speaker 3: Was your social science background at all useful to you
Speaker 3: in doing the book? I know why, how? And why?
Speaker 3: Because these are stories and you can sort of draw
Speaker 3: conclusions from the stories, but explain how social science background
Speaker 3: sort of finds its way into them.
Speaker 2: So I think first of all, giving names to concepts
Speaker 2: is very helpful for readers, right they want to know
Speaker 2: that there's a thing like identity foreclosure or epic label
Speaker 2: or whatever the concept is. But also because when it
Speaker 2: came to prescribing recommendations, that's where the social science is
Speaker 2: very helpful. So we can identify from Ingrid's story that
Speaker 2: she had these faulty beliefs that were problematic in X
Speaker 2: or y ways. But how do each of us tap
Speaker 2: into our own mental flexibility and challenge our own self beliefs.
Speaker 2: This is where all the research on changing minds and
Speaker 2: canvassing and whatnot is very very helpful, and where I
Speaker 2: was able to say, Okay, here are eight or nine
Speaker 2: strategies you can use to test your own convictions to
Speaker 2: pressure test them and make sure that they would hold
Speaker 2: up to scrutiny.
Speaker 3: So we only got a couple mins for let them
Speaker 3: start asking you questions. There are a couple of we'll
Speaker 3: skip doing because I wanted to ask you a couple
Speaker 3: of other things. Did anybody you approached try to write
Speaker 3: about not want to be written about?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Of course, so you got turned down? Yeah, who turns
Speaker 3: it down?
Speaker 1: Let me tell you one example.
Speaker 2: So there was a woman why I want to protect
Speaker 2: her privacy because she didn't want to be written about.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, saw disguiser I wrote about. I was
Speaker 2: interviewing a woman whose story I found absolutely fascinating. And
Speaker 2: at the end, she said, at the end of our interviews,
Speaker 2: which only lasted a couple of weeks, she said, I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm kind of writing my own eulogy when
Speaker 2: we have these interviews. And I was like, WHOA, that's
Speaker 2: really intense. I don't want you to feel like that.
Speaker 2: And it's because they were facing an illness that would
Speaker 2: be terminal and it was very very hard for her
Speaker 2: to and also I think for her to surrender that
Speaker 2: kind of power over to me if she was going
Speaker 2: to talk about her odds or likelihood of surviving or not.
Speaker 2: She wanted to be the author of that narrative, and
Speaker 2: I totally understood, and I was like, yes, that should
Speaker 2: be Yeah, that's her material.
Speaker 3: How the subject of the book responded to this so
Speaker 3: really really well, nobody's angry.
Speaker 1: Nobody's angry. I know that. So unlike you I mentioned,
Speaker 1: I was a people pleaser.
Speaker 2: So Michael has Michael has pissed off so many subjects.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's right. There's a rule they get. Did
Speaker 3: they get to read the book when you get to
Speaker 3: read the book?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: First of all, so you have the thickest skin. I mean,
Speaker 2: not collagen wise. I'm just saying you have the thickest
Speaker 2: skin of anyone that I know, because you just let
Speaker 2: criticism like, I don't even know if it hits your skin.
Speaker 2: It's like you have a chemical repellent that doesn't even
Speaker 2: let it touch you. And he's like, Daniel Connoman, h yeah,
Speaker 2: he was really pissed off about the way that I
Speaker 2: wrote about the whatever project. I'm like, Nobel Prize winner
Speaker 2: Daniel Connoman. He's like, yeah, he'll get over it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's just like you're so chill about everything. How are
Speaker 1: you so chill?
Speaker 3: Well, it's it's so in the case of Danny is different,
Speaker 3: a little different. Danny was the most terrifying subject I
Speaker 3: ever had, because his mind could just run circles around
Speaker 3: my mind. Yeah, mostly my subjects sort of see plus
Speaker 3: students and you know, they're athletes and Wall Street traders
Speaker 3: and they're not that smart and uh, and so that
Speaker 3: I'm not that worried about what they might say that
Speaker 3: or they might or that they might think something that
Speaker 3: my brain hasn't already thought. Yeah, but Danny, you just
Speaker 3: know he's going to think of eighteen different things. But
Speaker 3: his he had a very specific problem, and it was
Speaker 3: that he didn't he looked he was about this love
Speaker 3: affair with Amos Tversky, basically this platonic love affair, this collaboration.
Speaker 3: He didn't like the way he was positioned in a
Speaker 3: way we're in relation to Amos, which was the way
Speaker 3: everybody saw him. He didn't see himself. Okay, so that
Speaker 3: and he just said, you didn't do any favors there.
Speaker 3: But he wasn't that angry. I mean, we would go
Speaker 3: out and whenever we were here to together, we'd go
Speaker 3: out to shape andice, and you'd say you could make
Speaker 3: it up to me by buying me the tart for deserse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was not you know, I really really
Speaker 2: deeply hate upsetting people.
Speaker 3: Okay, well I don't, and so I trying to upset them. No,
Speaker 3: that's not the point, not to upset them. I understand
Speaker 3: deliver what I think is true. Yah the page. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: So my policy for the book was I would not
Speaker 2: allow any editorial input on anything that I've written. I
Speaker 2: did allow for a fact check, but I did not
Speaker 2: let anyone interfere with the writing.
Speaker 3: And nobody came back and said, you got me slightly wrong.
Speaker 1: I think No, I don't know if everyone has read
Speaker 1: their chapter.
Speaker 2: All right, Okay, Dwayne read his chapter and said it
Speaker 2: was really healing for him.
Speaker 3: So, I mean, by the way she said, who Ingrid is?
Speaker 3: I mean a sudden these people are not Once in.
Speaker 2: San Francisco, she wrote, Man, he could do clouds. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she's a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this all turned into this turned actually this is
Speaker 3: a story of gain. That's the one story of gain. Yes,
Speaker 3: so last thing, I'm just cart curious.
Speaker 2: Well, in Ingrid, for example, she she did say she
Speaker 2: loves that her story was interpreted through a very fresh
Speaker 2: lens because it was one she had not had not
Speaker 2: explored in the book that she wrote, so it was
Speaker 2: really fun for her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she left a lot of material on the floor.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just couldn't believe that was amazing. It
Speaker 3: was a bit when I saw it. I know who
Speaker 3: she was. I thought, why didn't she write this?
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally don't tell her that.
Speaker 3: So did you enjoy doing this?
Speaker 1: I actually loved it.
Speaker 3: Did you like it more than the podcast?
Speaker 2: It was very different. Writing is solitary.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: My husband Jimmy spent so much time helping me on
Speaker 2: this book, and I was so grateful for his partnership.
Speaker 2: We just kind of like coop them in the living
Speaker 2: room and just like go go at it. I it's
Speaker 2: a yeah, it's a very different experience. What I loved
Speaker 2: about writing the book, which by the way, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: saying I love it, but it was also absolutely the
Speaker 2: hardest intellectual thing I've ever done. It's also the thing
Speaker 2: I'm proudest of, which is wonderful because as the daughter
Speaker 2: of two Indian immigrants, pride is not something I feel often.
Speaker 2: Given the criticism received in my upbringing.
Speaker 3: Was that knowing laughter from the front row. I think
Speaker 3: it was knowing laughter from the front row. Let's kick
Speaker 3: it to the audience.
Speaker 2: Oh, by the way, had to go like ten minutes.
Speaker 2: Are people open to going? Like ten minutes over? So
Speaker 2: don't you just finish this?
Speaker 3: Okay? We run light?
Speaker 1: Are you running late? Okay?
Speaker 2: Go ahead, finish with Oh sorry, I was going to say.
Speaker 2: With the book, what was so nice is you have
Speaker 2: the luxury of time and space to breathe because you're
Speaker 2: doing dozens of hours of interviews with people over many,
Speaker 2: many years, and so I could explore kind of every
Speaker 2: nook and cranny, and there were stakes were low, and
Speaker 2: it didn't go anywhere, It didn't go anywhere. But with
Speaker 2: incrid it was like there were moments in this book
Speaker 2: turning points where if I hadn't gone down that little
Speaker 2: small alley, like I would never have discovered this incredible thing.
Speaker 3: So that was really fine. You never would have found
Speaker 3: it in a podcast ever.
Speaker 1: Never, So that was the part that was most joyful
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 3: Right, you're able to make connections that you wouldn't otherwise, Yes, right, yes,
Speaker 3: all right, So let's open it up. Is there a
Speaker 3: mic or people just gonna stay on in the shower.
Speaker 3: There we go.
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Sonny. I'm a huge fan of your podcast.
Speaker 5: The question for both are witch podcast. Do you say
Speaker 5: a Michael Lewis has written so much.
Speaker 3: I'm just I have a.
Speaker 5: The question for both of you. You can decide who
Speaker 5: when to answer first or better answer. So I have
Speaker 5: a college going daughter, she's doing cognitive science, and I'm
Speaker 5: just curious. It's our kids are going to go through
Speaker 5: the massive change, and they are going through the massive
Speaker 5: change right now as we speak, in the AI era.
Speaker 5: And what does so much of what you're talking about
Speaker 5: I think is just happening to us without even the
Speaker 5: face of big change. The change is happening so slowly,
Speaker 5: but it's happening a lot. What is your advice for
Speaker 5: parents and kids and the students, what how can they
Speaker 5: build that muscle in a way that it's progressive and
Speaker 5: they're growing and you know, taking us to the next place.
Speaker 1: Michael, you should answer.
Speaker 3: Change person.
Speaker 1: Never tried about Sam. Thanks, you're intell.
Speaker 3: No, it is I mean, this is different. This is
Speaker 3: an interesting for this this this is a distinction here
Speaker 3: between external change like technical rapid technological change that changes
Speaker 3: the environment, all right.
Speaker 1: Find just to get used to stop, I'll just answer it.
Speaker 3: Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2: So I'll start by saying I don't know the answer
Speaker 2: to the question. And one thing that I have tended
Speaker 2: to do over the course of my life is to overplan.
Speaker 2: I've been making five and ten year plans from the
Speaker 2: time I was five years old. Okay, super fun hang
Speaker 2: really really cool kid. And for that reason or sorry,
Speaker 2: for that reason, I have really I've really struggled with
Speaker 2: change because I would over prescribe the future. And we
Speaker 2: know from decades of research, legitimate social science research, that
Speaker 2: we are really bad affective forecasters. We're very bad at
Speaker 2: predicting how we will feel and think about the big
Speaker 2: changes that happen in our lives. And one lesson that
Speaker 2: I learned from writing The Other Side of Change was
Speaker 2: that we often forget at the outset of a big
Speaker 2: change that it's not just the world around us that's
Speaker 2: going to change. We are going to be changing. We
Speaker 2: are not static entities. We fall prey to what psychologists
Speaker 2: call the end of history illusion. We think we're done changing,
Speaker 2: so we fully acknowledge we've changed in the past. But
Speaker 2: if you were to ask me how much I expect
Speaker 2: to change in the future, I'll be like, nope, wait,
Speaker 2: see what you get finished product. And so actually, Dan
Speaker 2: Gilberts colleagues they call this illusion a watershed moment, in
Speaker 2: which we falsely believe we've become the person will be forever.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: What's really important about this is that when big changes
Speaker 2: happen to us, they also lead to lasting change within us.
Speaker 2: We develop new perspectives and abilities and vantage points. And
Speaker 2: that's the same thing as perspectives and values and beliefs
Speaker 2: and ideas about the world and ways are just seeing
Speaker 2: us and and everything. And I say that because I
Speaker 2: think having humility about all of it, not trying to
Speaker 2: get ahead of how your kid when your kid's anxious
Speaker 2: about it or you're anxious about it, you don't want
Speaker 2: to get too far ahead because you truly don't know
Speaker 2: how you First of all, you don't know how you respond,
Speaker 2: because we just know that we're bad at that prediction.
Speaker 2: And then we definitely don't know how we're going to
Speaker 2: respond because we will be different people at that moment
Speaker 2: in time in ways that are really hard to predict.
Speaker 2: And so I think something that can calm the nervous
Speaker 2: system is to try not to excessively anticipate just how
Speaker 2: catastrophic it will feel or just how you know what
Speaker 2: psychologically whatever it will feel, because at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, and like my brother Aga always says this
Speaker 2: to me, is like, you know, humans are just incredibly
Speaker 2: psychologically resilient and adaptive.
Speaker 1: It's just true.
Speaker 2: Everyone will figure it out to some degree, right, They're
Speaker 2: just going to have to. Yeah, those are my thought.
Speaker 2: Any other then, Michael us.
Speaker 3: They're a weird little piece of advice. Just tin little thing.
Speaker 3: It's a title little thing. It isn't a lecture, it's
Speaker 3: a it's a no, that's a that's a speech. You
Speaker 3: a speech. You have a speech in you on this subject.
Speaker 3: I don't this is not my subject. But but but
Speaker 3: have your son enroll in an improv comedy class. Build
Speaker 3: build that muscle, like that muscle and understand what that
Speaker 3: muscle feels.
Speaker 1: Talking to an.
Speaker 2: Indian person, they're gonna enroll their kid that they're they're
Speaker 2: in Kuman now.
Speaker 3: If they think if they think it's gonna absolutely so.
Speaker 3: But it's it's uh that there's a in fact, if
Speaker 3: you want to give him a great present. Second second,
Speaker 3: second city daughter sorry's second city in Chicago? Has it?
Speaker 3: You read the book? Well, they also you can send
Speaker 3: your your daughter there for four days and and just
Speaker 3: drop her in an immersion class. And I did it. Uh,
Speaker 3: I brought a child with me to do it, and
Speaker 3: it was an amazing experience. And you'll never forget She'll
Speaker 3: never forget it, and she'll really I feel that muscle.
Speaker 3: Once you realize what that muscle is, you can apply
Speaker 3: it to lots of other things.
Speaker 1: That's a great that's a great answer. Genuinely, mm hmm. Genuinely,
Speaker 1: there's a great answer.
Speaker 3: It beat My answer, if you're lucky is a secure
Speaker 3: persons because I would just be out of here. I've
Speaker 3: been out here a half an hour ago. All right,
Speaker 3: so we have any we're gonna we got a little
Speaker 3: bit more time. We got time for one or two more.
Speaker 1: No one, everyone else is here. You seem to be
Speaker 1: the one who's in a big rush. Where do you
Speaker 1: have to go with me?
Speaker 2: So it's me either way here with me rather than
Speaker 2: there this in and out and an hour okay, answer questions, yeah, okay, Hi.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for sharing your stories and about
Speaker 6: the book and all that. I'm Brian Wade a little
Speaker 6: bit of a back and forth on Instagram actually speaking
Speaker 6: of anyways something were you a subject? Oh no, no,
Speaker 6: So something you said sort of got me thinking about
Speaker 6: it being okay to change your beliefs and you don't
Speaker 6: have to have say the same answer to like what
Speaker 6: fuels like your core beliefs, and sort of what I
Speaker 6: think a lot of us are taught is that to
Speaker 6: be a good person, you have guiding principles sort of
Speaker 6: like immutable, and that guides everything you do, and that's,
Speaker 6: you know, unshakeable foundation of what you think. And then
Speaker 6: something like this happens and you start to doubt those things.
Speaker 6: And sort of how I'm interpreting that part of the
Speaker 6: conversation tonight is that that's okay. So I'm hoping that you
Speaker 6: can dive into that.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I absolutely love that question, Brian, and
Speaker 2: thanks for reaching out to me over Instagram. The penultimate
Speaker 2: chapter of the book is actually about a woman who
Speaker 2: really believes the world is just That's a big part
Speaker 2: of her upbringing. So her parents kind of tell her, look,
Speaker 2: if you do good, good things will happen to you.
Speaker 2: My trador Matt and I talk about this all the time. Right,
Speaker 2: he believes in like karma and like good things having
Speaker 2: to good people. And I'm always like Matt, my heart
Speaker 2: rate's already up. Don't get me started. I can't have
Speaker 2: this conversation today, Okay, with all your spiritual woo woo nonsense.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Anyway, So she really believes that if she does good,
Speaker 2: good things will happen, and that is actually like per
Speaker 2: tradictory for most of her life, right, she works hard
Speaker 2: in school, she gets good grades, she's nice to people,
Speaker 2: people are nice to her back right, input output model clean.
Speaker 1: And then when she is in her twenties, she gets
Speaker 1: really dark really quickly.
Speaker 3: Guys.
Speaker 2: She's just driving on the road and a little boy
Speaker 2: who's eight years old runs out onto the street because
Speaker 2: he didn't look in both directions, and she hits him
Speaker 2: and she kills him. And because Marianne's view in a
Speaker 2: just world is so robust, she ends up engaging in
Speaker 2: all these mental gymnastics to help to justify what has happened.
Speaker 2: She could have just said in that moment, Wow, the
Speaker 2: world is like the universe is callous, it's indifferent, it's
Speaker 2: indiscriminately cruel, or it's just done prett or it's unpredictable,
Speaker 2: but so much of her sense of security and meaning
Speaker 2: and value in the world came from the belief that
Speaker 2: good things happen to good people and bad things happen
Speaker 2: to bad people. That was a foundational view that she
Speaker 2: carried such that she could not allow this accident to
Speaker 2: threaten that view. So what does she do instead? She
Speaker 2: wrote a narrative in her mind that she was bad,
Speaker 2: that she was dangerous, that she carried a dangerous essence,
Speaker 2: and that her mandate was to actually spend her life
Speaker 2: hiding from other people to protect them from her wrath.
Speaker 2: Basically right, like, if she came to she wouldn't allow
Speaker 2: herself to be in your children anymore, She wouldn't allow
Speaker 2: herself to drive on freeways, she wouldn't leave knives when
Speaker 2: her cleaners came to clean the kitchen, she would put
Speaker 2: them away because she was so afraid of causing another accident.
Speaker 2: And it ruined her life to think this. And I
Speaker 2: won't share how the story ends, but needless to say,
Speaker 2: Marianne has to revisit her relationship with a just world.
Speaker 2: And that was one of those things that she grew
Speaker 2: up with and it was really hardened, and it took
Speaker 2: a lot to kind of help her loosen her grip
Speaker 2: on that way of thinking. So that is to say,
Speaker 2: I think even views that are very, very cemented and
Speaker 2: that we think make us good, I think that view
Speaker 2: is kind of Agnosticly, I don't think it makes you
Speaker 2: a good person or a bad person to view life
Speaker 2: in that way. But one of my favorite thought experiments
Speaker 2: that I read about in Think Again, which is an
Speaker 2: Adam Grant book, was imagine that you were born in
Speaker 2: a different time period. Imagine you were born into a
Speaker 2: different family. Imagine you were born into a different culture
Speaker 2: or religious environment, Like, how would your values be different?
Speaker 2: And that is just a reminder of the fragility of
Speaker 2: our belief systems. Let's do one more, all right, on
Speaker 2: the topic of change, Just any belief systems that were
Speaker 2: changed from right now in this book?
Speaker 3: Ah, there we go. That's the how have you checked?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: If I give a lecture, Yeah, we give a lecture, Okay.
Speaker 2: I started off saying that as I was writing this book,
Speaker 2: my husband Jimmy, and I were going through a tough
Speaker 2: period with heartbreaks and obstacles and disappointments. When it came
Speaker 2: to starting a family, and when I the genesis for
Speaker 2: the podcast was an emptiness and a void that I
Speaker 2: felt in my life that I wanted to fill with
Speaker 2: something after the first miscarriage, and then about a year
Speaker 2: and a half later, we found out that our surgut
Speaker 2: was pregnant with identical twins at identical twin girls, and
Speaker 2: we were just over the moon and so delighted. And
Speaker 2: then our surroget miscarried again, and I just want to
Speaker 2: share two things about that in terms of lessons and
Speaker 2: values that I've learned. So the first thing is that
Speaker 2: on the night of the second miscarriage, it was it
Speaker 2: was particularly challenging because we had just seen healthy beating
Speaker 2: hearts a couple hours earlier, so it was just a
Speaker 2: total roller coaster of a day where we were like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is amazing news and it's finally
Speaker 2: happening for us, and then oh, my gosh, no it's not.
Speaker 2: And I was just I was laying in bed and
Speaker 2: my husband, Jimmy, comes over and he's like, hey, my
Speaker 2: my is his pet name for me. He's like, my,
Speaker 2: let's just say a few things that were grateful for
Speaker 2: and I was like, bro, hell Na Okay, you take
Speaker 2: your Instagram bs, you go over to that corner with
Speaker 2: your toxic positivity, you do the gratitude exercise, you have
Speaker 2: a beer with Mitch McConnell. I'm not doing that. Okay,
Speaker 2: It's so jarring and I feel like crap, and so
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna stay under of the covers. But he
Speaker 2: was very cute and earnest about it, and I was like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: and leg, I'll just get him off my back and
Speaker 2: I do this, And so I started my list started
Speaker 2: to flow out of me. I said, I'm really grateful
Speaker 2: to be an aunt to my six nieces and nephews.
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful for my Zoom workouts with my trainer, Matt,
Speaker 2: who I have philosophical discussions with and then we talk
Speaker 2: about The Bachelor. I am so grateful that I've worked
Speaker 2: with the same people for like fifteen years. How lucky
Speaker 2: am I that I get to work with my best friends.
Speaker 2: I'm grateful for the California rays, how strong the sun
Speaker 2: is when you wake up in the morning. Like there
Speaker 2: was so much to be grateful for in my life.
Speaker 2: And I remember saying, also, I'm so grateful for a
Speaker 2: slight change of plans. I literally get to go into
Speaker 2: my apartment closet and connect with someone from around the
Speaker 2: world about this incredible story of change and what happened
Speaker 2: in engaging this exercise, which is called a self affirmation exercise.
Speaker 2: My husband's a softignngy or he did this unknowingly, but basically,
Speaker 2: what you do is you identify all the things that
Speaker 2: bring your life meeting and purpose that are not threatened
Speaker 2: by the change you're going through. So if you're in
Speaker 2: a tough spot in your relationship, you might focus on
Speaker 2: your spiritual life or you or if you are having
Speaker 2: a tough spot in your relationship, you focus on how
Speaker 2: much value you get from work. And what that did
Speaker 2: for me in that moment is it made me realize
Speaker 2: that I had been so laser focused on my dream
Speaker 2: of becoming a mom that I had developed tunnel vision.
Speaker 2: I had completely lost sight of how otherwise rich and
Speaker 2: dimensional and full of meaning and joy my life was.
Speaker 2: And it was so valuable for me to take that
Speaker 2: camera lens that was so zoomed in it was blurry
Speaker 2: at this point, you couldn't see anything and just like
Speaker 2: zoom out a lot and say, oh my god, your
Speaker 2: whole identity has not been threatened by this loss. You
Speaker 2: are still very much Maya, with so much joy to
Speaker 2: live for. And did I go to bed like happy
Speaker 2: that night, Of course not. But I went to bed
Speaker 2: feeling a bit more whole. And I think that was
Speaker 2: a very valuable lesson about identity. And then the final
Speaker 2: the second thing I wanted to say in the two
Speaker 2: part lecture series is that one thing I discovered so
Speaker 2: I talk about change as revelation in this book, So
Speaker 2: when a really negative thing happens to us, it can
Speaker 2: feel like an apocalypse. And there's something interesting about the
Speaker 2: meaning of the word apocalypse, which is that it comes
Speaker 2: from the Greek word apocalypsis, which actually means revelation, so
Speaker 2: that anomology is instructive. Change can abend us, yes, but
Speaker 2: it can also reveal things to us, and losing. What
Speaker 2: the pregnancy losses revealed to me was I had played
Speaker 2: so much of my self worth in becoming a mom,
Speaker 2: and I think cultural forces played a really big role.
Speaker 2: But it really felt like if I did not achieve
Speaker 2: this goal that society told me was identity defining, I
Speaker 2: could never live a fulfilling, happy, meaningful life. There's this
Speaker 2: Sheila Heady quote that's like, if you don't have children,
Speaker 2: people wonder what your meaning is and wonder if you
Speaker 2: have any meaning at all. And there's a particular stigma
Speaker 2: reserve for child free women. I am a child free,
Speaker 2: cat free woman. Jd Vance Okay, And so I just
Speaker 2: remember that if you had asked me in the moment
Speaker 2: when I'm under the covers, when Jimmy's asking me this
Speaker 2: incredibly annoying question about being grateful, and you had asked
Speaker 2: me in that moment like, maya, will anything good ever
Speaker 2: come from this? I would have been like, no, Will
Speaker 2: you ever feel truly fulfilled in life if you don't
Speaker 2: have children? I would have said no. And yet here
Speaker 2: I am, like three or so years later, I am
Speaker 2: child free, and I am the happiest, calmest, most peaceful,
Speaker 2: joyful version of myself. And I never saw that coming.
Speaker 2: It was a transformation that was occurring kind of subconsciously.
Speaker 2: And I credit the people that I interviewed for the
Speaker 2: book for giving me the kind of wisdom that I
Speaker 2: needed to get there to book. T LL first of all,
Speaker 2: recognize that I had this unhealthy identity attachment to motherhood
Speaker 2: and to challenge to understand where did it come from,
Speaker 2: why do I believe this?
Speaker 1: Why is it problematic?
Speaker 2: But then also to learn so many other valuable lessons
Speaker 2: about what it means to live a rich life even
Speaker 2: when life doesn't go according to plan. And so I
Speaker 2: am so grateful for the personal evolution that I experienced.
Speaker 2: It was such an unexpected part of the journey. I
Speaker 2: do write it back out it in the final chapter,
Speaker 2: but the gains have continued far beyond when I had
Speaker 2: to submit this for publication, Like I continue to derive
Speaker 2: so much meaning and value from those stories. And so yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a It was a wonderful belief to have
Speaker 2: challenged Maya Shucker.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys so much. Thank you Michael.
Speaker 2: Hey, I hope you enjoyed this special live episode of
Speaker 2: A slight Change of Plans. You can find my book
Speaker 2: The Other Side of Change in the episode notes or
Speaker 2: at changewithmya dot com slash book and exciting news. We
Speaker 2: recently learned that the Other Side of Change is an
Speaker 2: instant New York Times bestseller. If this is your first
Speaker 2: time listening to the show, welcome, We are so happy
Speaker 2: you're here. If you want to get caught up, check
Speaker 2: out the special link in our show notes for what
Speaker 2: I'm calling the Slight Change of Plans Starter Pack. It's
Speaker 2: a list of some of my favorite episodes that we've
Speaker 2: aired and features a great mix of incredible stories and practical,
Speaker 2: cutting edge science that I think you're going to love.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a week with another episode of
Speaker 2: A Slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 1: See you then.
Speaker 2: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive
Speaker 2: produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes
Speaker 2: our showrunner Alexandra Garritan, our lead producer Megan Lubn, our
Speaker 2: associate producer Sonya Gerwitt, and our sound engineer Erica Hwang.
Speaker 2: Louis Gara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith
Speaker 2: helped arrange the vocals. Special thanks to Daphne Chen for
Speaker 2: her editorial support of this episode. A Slight Change of
Speaker 2: Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks
Speaker 2: to everyone there, and of course, a very special thanks
Speaker 2: to Jimmy Wait