Speaker 1: Whatever your area is. You know, whether you're studying suicidality,
Speaker 1: whether you're studying for catamine as a treatment for PTSD,
Speaker 1: or whether you're talking about how to help you know,
Speaker 1: civilian veterans re enter society is start taking some risks
Speaker 1: and figure out some better ways to reduce the problems
Speaker 1: that are happening. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I talk to esteemed psychologists Todd Kashton
Speaker 1: about the art of insubordination. As creatures of habit, humans
Speaker 1: seek familiarity in thoughts, behaviors, and interactions. But Todd cas
Speaker 1: shand argues that deviating from norms isn't always a bad thing,
Speaker 1: especially if it's in pursuit of positive change. To enact
Speaker 1: principal dissent effectively, Todd teaches us how to persuade the
Speaker 1: majority and how to embrace unconventional solutions. We also touch
Speaker 1: on the topics of conformity, intimacy, influence, victimhood, and curiosity.
Speaker 1: So I now bring you Todd Kashton. Odd, how you doing, buddy,
Speaker 1: So good to see you, So good to see you too.
Speaker 1: Welcome back in the Psychology Podcast, and congrats on your
Speaker 1: new book. Yeah, thank you. Very nice bookshelf behind you,
Speaker 1: by the way, thank you, thank you. Likewise, I see
Speaker 1: the art of insubordination there behind you, multiple copies of it.
Speaker 1: You feeling very insubordinate today, Todd. That's my status quoe default.
Speaker 1: So there's nothing for you want to say? Can you?
Speaker 1: Can I get you to the formal appropriate mode? That's
Speaker 1: the better question. When I hear the term insubordinate, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna set me straight on this, but when I
Speaker 1: hear the word, I conjure up an image of like
Speaker 1: Dennis the Menace, or like like some naughty little boy,
Speaker 1: you know that like goes to detention. You know. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know what's cool is you ask everyone about this question.
Speaker 1: Everyone has a different answer. I mean, the first thing,
Speaker 1: when I think the modern world, the first person that
Speaker 1: comes to mind is a lexey Albame. Okay, but then again,
Speaker 1: I haven't watched Dennis the Medicine since I was since
Speaker 1: I was seven years old. Fair enough, So we'll set
Speaker 1: the record stra because you really are arguing against a
Speaker 1: very specific thing. You're arguing for a very specific thing
Speaker 1: called principled in subordination. Could you define what principled in subordination?
Speaker 1: Is yes. So there's four elements, and I think it's
Speaker 1: really useful of following Nietzsche, which is language dictates consciousness.
Speaker 1: So you get these formulas and then you can figure
Speaker 1: out where can I intervene to kind of increase a
Speaker 1: good thing or decrease a bad thing. So at the
Speaker 1: top elements of this you have the key element is deviance,
Speaker 1: is that you have some non normative belief or non
Speaker 1: normative behavior that's in your arsenal. So if you know,
Speaker 1: when COVID started, we had this decision to make of
Speaker 1: like how do you greet people that are your strangers
Speaker 1: or your friends. Do you hug them? Do you fist
Speaker 1: bump them? Do you just touch hands like et with
Speaker 1: your fingers And you're still trying to figure out this
Speaker 1: norm now. So in some ways you're going to find
Speaker 1: characters who, almost as a natural oppositional response, will go
Speaker 1: French or Spanish and will kiss each person on the
Speaker 1: side of the cheeks as opposed to hugging or fist
Speaker 1: bumping or whatever. That is. So the deviance parts in
Speaker 1: the equation, but that's not the interesting part. The interesting
Speaker 1: part is there's also authenticity, which is your Maslovian idea
Speaker 1: of can you reduce phonius to zero zero? Can you
Speaker 1: act in ways that are congruent with your values? And
Speaker 1: if you deviate from that, you're really moving away from
Speaker 1: the principled part. The third part of the numerator of
Speaker 1: this equation is contribution, and that's are you trying to
Speaker 1: construct something, Are you trying to reach your human potential,
Speaker 1: you're trying to help other people reach their potential? Are
Speaker 1: you trying to detract from people's well being? Because as
Speaker 1: soon as you move towards that, you're now moving away
Speaker 1: from the equation of principled. It's just regular, ordinary, reckless,
Speaker 1: problematic in subordination. So all those things in the numerator
Speaker 1: are things. The more you enhance them authenticity or deviance
Speaker 1: or contribution, you're going to increase the propensity that someone's
Speaker 1: going to be principled. And the denominator is the thing
Speaker 1: you want to keep at a low level, and that's
Speaker 1: the social pressure we have. And one of the challenging
Speaker 1: things about questioning the status quo is what pops into
Speaker 1: your head automatically is why am I having this idea
Speaker 1: and no one else is thinking like me? And unless
Speaker 1: you're extremely confident or your research area really high on narcissism.
Speaker 1: You tend to have this doubt and uncertainty of I
Speaker 1: must be wrong because all these smart, wise people around
Speaker 1: me are thinking something differently or acting differently than me.
Speaker 1: And the other one is I don't want to be persecuted.
Speaker 1: I want to have friends. I want to fit in
Speaker 1: with groups that I care about. So there social pressure
Speaker 1: that's there. It sort of is a barrier to becoming
Speaker 1: a principle in subordinate. Yeah, I want to This is
Speaker 1: great and I want to double click on this. Need
Speaker 1: to be liked is something I've been fascinated with for
Speaker 1: a very long time. Why is conform me so darn alluring?
Speaker 1: Why did we were we hardwired that way through evolutionary principles? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a great paper buy under pronounces name wrong, Jordan Thibolt,
Speaker 1: and it's in the Laws of Nature Physics, some journal
Speaker 1: that none of us would ever read in our free time,
Speaker 1: and he talks about another framework for thinking about conformity,
Speaker 1: where the reason that we have these three pound brains
Speaker 1: is that we're looking for prediction and we're looking for
Speaker 1: a reduction of uncertainty in our world. And so when
Speaker 1: we enter a social interaction and you text me, which
Speaker 1: you normally do, and you'll say, hey, how are things going.
Speaker 1: It's this really predictable question, and it always stymies me
Speaker 1: because my head goes in a million different directions. For you,
Speaker 1: it's predictable. For me, it's predictable, but my brain wants
Speaker 1: to do something unpredictable to get the conversation steamrolling into
Speaker 1: a really intimate, close connected direction as fast as possible.
Speaker 1: Now here's what Jordan says in this work of his
Speaker 1: is that by me acting in an unpredictable way, and
Speaker 1: I'm deviating from social norms. So I might jump right
Speaker 1: in and say, hey, I'm just learning how to surf
Speaker 1: and I'm going to Puerto Rico to try it. It's
Speaker 1: not the thing you were thinking about when you asked,
Speaker 1: how are you doing, but it's where my brain happens
Speaker 1: to be. And when I do that. The reason that
Speaker 1: it's problematic is I made our conversation high maintenance. Your
Speaker 1: brain has to catch up. You have to use a
Speaker 1: lot of metabolic energy, and then for the two of
Speaker 1: us to get into synchronicity, it's going to take a
Speaker 1: little bit longer than if I just said, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: working on this really cool paper, which sets up a
Speaker 1: softball question for you. What are you excited about and
Speaker 1: working on these days? Yeah? Yeah? Are there certain personality
Speaker 1: traits that are more predictive of this kind of personality?
Speaker 1: Like I feel like there's something within you that makes
Speaker 1: you want to take some take it to the more,
Speaker 1: to the deeper level, or or to shake things up
Speaker 1: a little bit. What is that? As openness to experience
Speaker 1: the disagreeableness? What is it? I mean, I'm high. I'm
Speaker 1: probably high on both of those, there's no question about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, my you know, for a personally child trait
Speaker 1: that's really I think we'll hit back to a little
Speaker 1: bit later. Is I'm really high on need for cognition,
Speaker 1: and so are you. It's why we get along so well.
Speaker 1: Like we like effortful cognitive processing. I like Christopher Nolan films.
Speaker 1: I love sitting there with my kids and watching Inception
Speaker 1: or Memento and trying to explain like what's going on
Speaker 1: and then realizing I don't even understand this enough to
Speaker 1: explain this to my nine year old or my fifteen
Speaker 1: year old sitting next to me. And that's so pleasurable
Speaker 1: that we're trying to unearth what the hell he's thinking
Speaker 1: of when he has a sequence of a dream within
Speaker 1: a dream within a dream, and each dream level has
Speaker 1: a different time span of what one minute is worth.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those it's a complicated thing to
Speaker 1: get your head around. And for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: that kind of movie is it's not the relaxing, tranquil
Speaker 1: entertainment they're looking for. But for me, I want stimulation
Speaker 1: when I'm off the grid and no longer working, and
Speaker 1: that same mentality is when I'm socializing. I love to see,
Speaker 1: like what are the inner workings of someone's brain, Like
Speaker 1: what are their deep fundamental motives, Like what makes them tick?
Speaker 1: You know, what are their dreams, their aspirations and their fears.
Speaker 1: And and then there's a question of how many questions
Speaker 1: and conversation topics does it take to get there or
Speaker 1: can you skip the rungs of intimacy and just jump
Speaker 1: in there and see what happens? Yeah, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: a really good point. You argue that principled rebels are
Speaker 1: more relevant now than at any time in recent memory.
Speaker 1: I would argue that there's a lot of we have
Speaker 1: a proliferation of unprincipled rebels right now, maybe that's why
Speaker 1: we principled rebels are more relevant. Do you agree with
Speaker 1: that or and elaborate on why it is more relevant.
Speaker 1: I love that framework and I completely agree with you.
Speaker 1: I mean, what, the people that are dominating the airwaves
Speaker 1: are rarely the ones that are pushing for healthy social change.
Speaker 1: So Alexei Navelne, he's arrested, he's in prison, and we're
Speaker 1: not talking about anymore as if there's closure on this
Speaker 1: guy's life. And he's trying to bring down a you know,
Speaker 1: an authoritarian system of government, and you've got one guy
Speaker 1: at the helm of this mission. And then you've got
Speaker 1: someone like Snowden, who everyone thinks that the big problem
Speaker 1: about him in terms of his descent was that he
Speaker 1: leaked government records they shouldn't have, But that really wasn't
Speaker 1: where the principal descent came in. The principal descent of
Speaker 1: Snowden was something Obama never gave him credit for and
Speaker 1: other people don't give him credit for, which is that
Speaker 1: he made us realize all of these big tech firms
Speaker 1: are collecting information on us, the government's collecting information on us,
Speaker 1: and nobody's warning US, and years later after he had
Speaker 1: extradite himself to Russia. Not that I'm obsessed with Russia.
Speaker 1: Here is all of a sudden, Apple has an update
Speaker 1: where now every single app by their by their company
Speaker 1: rule has to say, hey, do you approve yes or
Speaker 1: no of them tracking data on you. That's all trace
Speaker 1: to Snowdent, and it leads to I know this doesn't
Speaker 1: answer your question. It leads to one of the really
Speaker 1: cool principles about principle and subordination is your change often
Speaker 1: will be delayed, and you often won't get credit, but
Speaker 1: other people will benefit from the stand that you took.
Speaker 1: So nobody was writing an inc magazine or Fast Company
Speaker 1: or Harvard Business Review of saying this new edition by
Speaker 1: Apple is because of Ed Stodent. But it was. It
Speaker 1: was because he made us realize that. And I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying is so accurate is that the more
Speaker 1: disarray or chaos that exists in society from people making
Speaker 1: their own rules and not thinking about the welfare of
Speaker 1: society or other people. It's basically, you know, the Batman
Speaker 1: beaconing call for Hey, for all of the principled rebels
Speaker 1: among you, this is the time where we need you
Speaker 1: to band together to mobilize and stand up against people
Speaker 1: that kind of are you know, banning books and schools,
Speaker 1: or they're they're they're questioning whether a vaccine is effective,
Speaker 1: or you know, they're taking you know, they're asking themselves
Speaker 1: of is you know, is there a place for being
Speaker 1: transgender in sports in America? And all of their focuses
Speaker 1: on where they can't go, not where they can go,
Speaker 1: and they're not even having a productive dialogue, and so
Speaker 1: all of these non principled forms of dissent. They're just
Speaker 1: sitting there waiting for someone to kind of create some
Speaker 1: kind of constructive activity that can speed up cultural evolution.
Speaker 1: Enter Todd Kashton just giving a guidebook, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not just giving a guidebook. You are out there making
Speaker 1: some controversial points as well. Right that in a principled way.
Speaker 1: You're taking some of these ideas that exist in the
Speaker 1: public dialogue and you're trying to make them more principled. Right,
Speaker 1: you're trying to live your words. I mean I do.
Speaker 1: I have always stood by the belief the only purpose
Speaker 1: of having tenure is to actually take a stand on strong,
Speaker 1: valued aims. And it's disappointing in the world of academia.
Speaker 1: Have it been here for sixteen years as a professor.
Speaker 1: How many people get tenure and they're just trying to
Speaker 1: bank dollars as opposed to banking their social capital so
Speaker 1: they could take risks. And for me, it's an important
Speaker 1: one is that whatever your area is, you know, whether
Speaker 1: you're studying suicidality, whether you're studying for head of mine
Speaker 1: as a treatment for PTSD, or whether you're talking about
Speaker 1: how to help you know, civilian veterans re enter society
Speaker 1: is start taking some risk and figure out some better
Speaker 1: ways to reduce the problems that are happening. Absolutely. Hey everyone,
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Speaker 1: Transcender community. Okay, now back to the show. You have
Speaker 1: a lot of really important nuance in your book, and
Speaker 1: I want us to really emphasize that nuance. Another thing,
Speaker 1: not just between principled and unprincipled in subordination, is also
Speaker 1: the idea of winning. A lot of people want to
Speaker 1: win these days, but you'd argue for winning responsibly. And again,
Speaker 1: this is an important nuance. Can you kind of explain
Speaker 1: what that means. Yeah, there's a study by Juan Perez
Speaker 1: and Serge Moscovici in eighteen eighty. I think it's been
Speaker 1: cited forty three times, and that's, you know, over forty
Speaker 1: years ago. This is an amazing study. This study basically
Speaker 1: asked the question if you are a minority, So just
Speaker 1: to define that, because it's important for this conversation It
Speaker 1: could be in terms of your actual physical visible qualities, right, race, gender,
Speaker 1: sexual orientation. It could be by numbers. There could be
Speaker 1: just one or two of you in an organization that's
Speaker 1: a woman in a male dominated field. Or it could
Speaker 1: be power and status where you walk into a room
Speaker 1: and everyone ends up having you know, they're running newspapers,
Speaker 1: they're politicians, and you're just happen to be a guy
Speaker 1: that owns an ice cream truck and any one of
Speaker 1: those situations. You are a minority. Now. One of the
Speaker 1: things that Sergey Moscovici and then Juan Paraz asked is
Speaker 1: if a minority is trying to persuade the majority to
Speaker 1: change their ways because they are creating unnecessary barriers for
Speaker 1: them to accomplish the things that are desirable to them,
Speaker 1: just inequities. What happens if the minority group betrays themselves
Speaker 1: as a victim, and what happens if they betray themselves
Speaker 1: is they are an agent of social change that's putting
Speaker 1: their skin on the line because they feel as if
Speaker 1: there's unfairness and there's harm that's being caused. Thinking of
Speaker 1: kind of John heights, moral dimensions. So and this has
Speaker 1: real relevance for, you know, victimhood culture and the coggling
Speaker 1: of the American mind that people are talking about now.
Speaker 1: And what they found was, and they focused mostly on
Speaker 1: gypsies in Rome, and these gypsies have been mistreated for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. And they basically want to know is
Speaker 1: if these gypsies came out and said, listen, we've been
Speaker 1: persecuted for hundreds of years. We don't have access to education,
Speaker 1: we don't have access to clean water, we don't have
Speaker 1: access to cable, we don't access to any of the
Speaker 1: fine things that you know everyday citizens get. We want equity,
Speaker 1: but more importantly than that, we want to be compensated
Speaker 1: for how we've been mistreated historically. So this fits very
Speaker 1: nicely of what's happening in America in a conversation about
Speaker 1: what do we deal in the aftermath of slavery, what
Speaker 1: do we do in the aftermath of Japanese encampments in
Speaker 1: World War Two? You know, do we not only un
Speaker 1: try to make sure there's equality across races, but also
Speaker 1: do we owe something in terms of reparations. Now, what
Speaker 1: they found was, if you portrayed yourself as needing compensation
Speaker 1: for past historical injustices. You got your concession, you are
Speaker 1: more likely to get that money, You're more likely to
Speaker 1: kind of get a quota where Gypsies are represented in
Speaker 1: political government, get spots at universities. But once the majority
Speaker 1: alleviates their guilt, they feel as if they've shuck hands
Speaker 1: on the deal. You're good, I'm good, I don't have
Speaker 1: to feel guilty anymore, and the status quo is maintained
Speaker 1: where they tend to still be discriminated against, still be mistreated,
Speaker 1: and they're still not treated with dignity. So the race
Speaker 1: is a big question about this endgame, which is do
Speaker 1: you want the long game where you want equable treatment
Speaker 1: and you don't want to be treated differently because of
Speaker 1: where you came from, who you are, color of your skin,
Speaker 1: whatever your background happens to be. Or do you really
Speaker 1: just want this short term compensation to make ends meet
Speaker 1: and kind of put an end to the deal. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to get both, and it's a very difficult
Speaker 1: conversation because you're really talking about a long term unnecessary
Speaker 1: suffering at the hands of the majority, and you want
Speaker 1: to make a better future, and you want the both,
Speaker 1: and you really want the both, and but the science
Speaker 1: just really doesn't sell the point that that's really a
Speaker 1: healthy strategy. And it's a lot easier if you can
Speaker 1: actually think temporarily, time course wise of what do I
Speaker 1: want the short term, what I want intermediate term, and
Speaker 1: what do I want for my kids, my grandkids and
Speaker 1: my great grandkids. Wow? Wow, different time scales. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to think at the largest time scale when you're
Speaker 1: suffering in the moment. Yeah, so, how can you harness
Speaker 1: disobedience just a little? We're the kind of phrases you
Speaker 1: have in your book, like harnessing disobedience? It sounds fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I must share a similar personality
Speaker 1: structure as you because I like that. But how can
Speaker 1: we harness that? In ways you have really cool advice,
Speaker 1: like extract wisdom from weirdos? For instance, can we let's
Speaker 1: just double cook on that one, because and we'll go
Speaker 1: on to some others. How can you extract wisdom from weirdos? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: so let's let's use like some common examples that don't
Speaker 1: have the weightiness of the ones I've used so far. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I just had dinner with a friend of
Speaker 1: mine who was having a hard time with his second marriage.
Speaker 1: Not because of the woman. She just said, he hasn't
Speaker 1: been getting along with the kid. The kid's got some
Speaker 1: behavior problems, a little bit on the high on the
Speaker 1: psychopathy scale, a little bit high on the machiavellianism scale.
Speaker 1: I know, you do the light try this is the
Speaker 1: dark trio. It stuff, this dark trib Yeah. So we're
Speaker 1: having dinner and I'm to help them, try to resolve
Speaker 1: my things because people people basically pay me for food,
Speaker 1: and then I give them free psychological advice. And then
Speaker 1: two days later, I get a call and saying, listen, Todd,
Speaker 1: I'm moving out. I was a god like is that
Speaker 1: a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Like that?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that you reach that point, And he said no.
Speaker 1: We decided why do we have to have a traditional relationship,
Speaker 1: like because our main problem is just the kid. What
Speaker 1: if he lived in separate places, kept our marriage alive,
Speaker 1: and then just minimize the contact with your kid. Just
Speaker 1: don't tell them this is the reason why I'm moving out.
Speaker 1: And I just you know, one of the things when
Speaker 1: you write a book is you become very hyper sensitive
Speaker 1: to the elements in that book. So I'm very hyper
Speaker 1: sensitive to people challenging conventional social norms. This is very
Speaker 1: esther perel land of like, yeah, why not Like if
Speaker 1: you don't get if you get remarried and they have
Speaker 1: children and you really don't get along, whether it's unidirectional
Speaker 1: or bi directional, like why not consider these other kind
Speaker 1: of options. So they're basically going back to this romantic
Speaker 1: dating and they're challenging the status quo. Now, just hearing
Speaker 1: his story, for some people listening to this podcast will
Speaker 1: be like, we'll ask themselves what conventional views about marriage
Speaker 1: and long term relationships am I holding? Just because that's
Speaker 1: what I saw in the movies, that's what I saw
Speaker 1: with my parents. That's all I've ever been exposed to.
Speaker 1: And I just limited the number of options available. And
Speaker 1: one of the ways of paying heed to the weirdos
Speaker 1: among us is when you hear these stories about these
Speaker 1: atypical approaches to human behavior, is to try to cultivate
Speaker 1: a sense of other people have lives unlike your own,
Speaker 1: and personalities unlike your own, and histories unlike your own.
Speaker 1: And if you could default to having this open minded,
Speaker 1: receptive attitude of asking open ended questions, that's your default
Speaker 1: when you meet these people as opposed to I can't
Speaker 1: quite fit you into a square hole or a circular hole,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to avoid you. So it's just this
Speaker 1: approach move as opposed to avoidance move when we meet
Speaker 1: these atypical characters, which sound so simplistic, but it's a
Speaker 1: really hard thing to do. But if you think about
Speaker 1: if you think of everything as a choice point between approach,
Speaker 1: approach and avoidance of like, can you just lean towards
Speaker 1: the approach more as opposed to the avoid Yeah, you
Speaker 1: talk about engaging the outrageous. That sounds like an approach behavior, right,
Speaker 1: Engaging the outrageous. A lot of people avoid it because
Speaker 1: they don't even want to be bothered. How do you
Speaker 1: define outrageous? First of all, I mean it's you know,
Speaker 1: the term is meant the terms in this book are
Speaker 1: meant to be as emotionally laid and provocative as possible.
Speaker 1: So because that's how you're gonna remember thinks, it's as
Speaker 1: pedagogical value. I mean, the outrageous is really any variant
Speaker 1: of thinking, of attitude, of behaviors, of motivations, of approaches
Speaker 1: to living that are outside of conventional thought. And so
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things things that happen in
Speaker 1: covid is you had this huge van life culture and
Speaker 1: there's nothing really super strange about this except that it's
Speaker 1: just a typical. Is that you don't have a physical
Speaker 1: home that you kind of walk into every day, where
Speaker 1: you have you know, our bookcases behind us and we
Speaker 1: know where our TV is. You really, your GPS system
Speaker 1: is not stable. You're just moving from place to place
Speaker 1: because all you need is Wi Fi and all you
Speaker 1: need is a plug to make sure you have air conditioning,
Speaker 1: your heat, and you're going to be basically all over
Speaker 1: the United States over the course of the next year.
Speaker 1: And when you listen to the details of how these
Speaker 1: people live their lives where they don't have to go
Speaker 1: into an office, I mean, why wouldn't you live the
Speaker 1: van life? I mean it's the idea of being anywhere
Speaker 1: from Tennessee to Idaho to Palm Springs, California over the
Speaker 1: course of a four week time span is a lot
Speaker 1: more interesting than living in the Northern Virginia suburbs. Sounds fun.
Speaker 1: I know. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's hit
Speaker 1: the road. We need a two day test in at
Speaker 1: least one vacation before we can go for a four
Speaker 1: week period together. That's fair, that is very fair. But
Speaker 1: it's possible. It's possible someday. So why is it important
Speaker 1: to do a cartwheel in the library. Well, this is
Speaker 1: a story about the first woman I fell in love with.
Speaker 1: I was a late bloomer, so it's freshman year in college,
Speaker 1: and it's about social scripts. It's about what are the
Speaker 1: social scripts we've adopted to as a man, as a woman.
Speaker 1: It's just as whatever age we are, you know, what's
Speaker 1: the appropriate behavior for a forty seven year old man
Speaker 1: in terms of working out, in terms of conversations. And
Speaker 1: when I was a freshman in college, I was in
Speaker 1: a library with two of my guy friends and there
Speaker 1: was this woman in the library who was doing cartwheels,
Speaker 1: and then she cartwheeled right over to where the three
Speaker 1: of us are sitting on a couch, and I just
Speaker 1: somehow eked out a few words of conversation. Was like,
Speaker 1: I have never seen a more beautiful, interesting person who
Speaker 1: has not said one single word to me in my
Speaker 1: entire life. She looked at me and did not say anything.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I wrote that in the book,
Speaker 1: but she didn't say one single word to me. We
Speaker 1: made this crazy eye contact that I remember. When she
Speaker 1: left to do this pulp fiction style. My two guy
Speaker 1: friends were like, what was that about? Like you have
Speaker 1: you met her before? Like you guys didn't even exchange
Speaker 1: a word? What is what is that? All she did
Speaker 1: was put her finger to her lips, picked up the
Speaker 1: book that I was reading, a textbook, flipped open a page,
Speaker 1: wrote her phone number in, and then it cartwheeled away
Speaker 1: as if she was, you know, in some kind of
Speaker 1: Saturday two pm karate film that you would watch in
Speaker 1: the afternoon. And I didn't call her for a while.
Speaker 1: I had a girlfriend at the time, And when I
Speaker 1: got to that page in the book, I found her
Speaker 1: number and I was like, how have I not called
Speaker 1: this woman before? And as soon as we did, you know,
Speaker 1: we hit it off and it ended up being my
Speaker 1: first love. But the important part of that story is
Speaker 1: there's nothing in their fits with anything you ever hear
Speaker 1: about how you pick somebody up, find yourself attracted to someone,
Speaker 1: approach somebody, and everything about it is exactly kind of
Speaker 1: the to engage in behaviors that match our personality as
Speaker 1: opposed to there's a one size fits all approach to
Speaker 1: to meeting you know, the man, woman or whatever of
Speaker 1: your dreams, you know, Todd. I love that story, absolute story.
Speaker 1: So have you ever cartwheeled over to a woman you
Speaker 1: were interested in? I'm not even sure I can do
Speaker 1: a fully formed summersault forward or backwards without leaning towards
Speaker 1: my side, So definitely not metaphorically metaphorical cart wheels. Yes, yes, excellent, Okay,
Speaker 1: actually love that story. I guess it's like I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining like nineteen year old Todd, Like I could just
Speaker 1: totally see him like awkwardly saying something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: nowadays you smoothly say stuff like that. But I could
Speaker 1: see the origin story of it, of Todd Cashion all shock.
Speaker 1: And it was the attractive thing about her was she
Speaker 1: was more shocking than me. I mean, she was always
Speaker 1: trying to outdo me in terms of, you know, performances
Speaker 1: and the types of things she would talk about. And
Speaker 1: I remember the third date that I had with her,
Speaker 1: she took me by the hand and said, I need
Speaker 1: to show you something and we saw this, I think
Speaker 1: it was dazed and confused, the first Matthew McConaughey movie.
Speaker 1: And so we watched the movie and I could tell
Speaker 1: she was nervous the whole movie because her hands were
Speaker 1: sweaty and they were kind of shaking. And I turned
Speaker 1: to her and I just kind of asked the same
Speaker 1: woman was like, like, what's going on? Like what's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like listen, I got you, Like it's like,
Speaker 1: I want to be with you. Whatever's going on, I'm here.
Speaker 1: She's like, I just I wanted to show you something.
Speaker 1: On the roof third date, we had to climb like
Speaker 1: like one of those like doric columns of this of
Speaker 1: this building on the Cornell campus, and then we climb
Speaker 1: on the top and she got up the first I
Speaker 1: got up there, pretty scary. And then she just picked
Speaker 1: up a handful of rocks and she was just throwing
Speaker 1: them down this like brick pathway on the roof and
Speaker 1: had this this bizarre kind of boing boing boing sound
Speaker 1: that kind of the rocks had, and she was just
Speaker 1: doing this over and over again. It's like, is that beautiful?
Speaker 1: And we're just doing this for about fifteen minutes, and
Speaker 1: she grabbed me by the face and told me she
Speaker 1: loved me, and this is this is how she did.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything about her was bizarre and unusual and
Speaker 1: atypical and just doesn't fit with other people that it
Speaker 1: hated over the years. I love it, and I think
Speaker 1: I just fell in love with this woman for hearing
Speaker 1: these stories. No, well, I love people like that in general. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're my jam for sure. So as you work toward
Speaker 1: being a better rebel, why is it important to take
Speaker 1: good care of yourself. I thought this was a really
Speaker 1: important point that you made in your book. One of
Speaker 1: the things about being rebellious is you're not getting close
Speaker 1: to one hundred percent approval. I mean, just by definition,
Speaker 1: you are decent stabilizing whatever groups you're in. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if it's your friendship circle. And you start to say, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we do a cross country trip, why don't
Speaker 1: we do the Adirondack Trail, even though none of us
Speaker 1: have our camp before. You're raising these questions, and you're
Speaker 1: raising these possibilities that the group hasn't considered before. So
Speaker 1: there's this lack of cohesion about well, I'm not you know,
Speaker 1: I've never trained, I've never trained for it. I'm not
Speaker 1: really comfortable sleeping outside, and I don't know if my
Speaker 1: lower back is strong enough to hold a backpack for
Speaker 1: you know, three seven eight days for hiking that happens there.
Speaker 1: So you have these these rifts that form, these factions
Speaker 1: of those that are physically fit that could do the
Speaker 1: Adirondack Trail, those that are actually questioning themselves, those people
Speaker 1: that want to be fit. So it's aspirational, but maybe
Speaker 1: that they're not there yet. You've now broken that harmony
Speaker 1: and that positivity and that ease, that low maintenance nature
Speaker 1: where it takes just as much energy as required to
Speaker 1: have social interactions because now you're con they're playing other
Speaker 1: ways that the group can interact. When you have that
Speaker 1: level of challenge, you know you're going to get a
Speaker 1: little bit of ostracism, a little bit of rejection, a
Speaker 1: little bit of loneliness, a little bit of negative valuation,
Speaker 1: a little bit of static, a little bit of anxiety,
Speaker 1: a little bit of guilt about the things aren't as
Speaker 1: smooth and easy as they were before. And so, knowing this,
Speaker 1: all the qualities that you and I teach in our classrooms,
Speaker 1: and you know I preach and read books about talking
Speaker 1: about self compassion. You're talking about self distancing. You're talking
Speaker 1: about how can you better tolerate distress and frustration, You're
Speaker 1: talking about managing your self presentation around other people. All
Speaker 1: of these coping strategies come into play, but you have
Speaker 1: to anticipate that you're going to need them before you
Speaker 1: actually start publicly revealing the thoughts and behaviors that are
Speaker 1: counter to whatever the norms are. That's great, that's great advice.
Speaker 1: That's really great advice. What are the minority rules for
Speaker 1: producing powerful influential messages, especially people who lack power, status,
Speaker 1: and numbers. Yeah, again, keeping like those multiple definitions intact.
Speaker 1: So William Crano has this leniency contract model. That's where
Speaker 1: he kind of I grab this from, and he talks
Speaker 1: about when you're going to offer some ideas that are
Speaker 1: a contrary to whatever the group tends to do, there
Speaker 1: are two big questions the group's going to ask, and
Speaker 1: you have to pass these or the minority doesn't have
Speaker 1: a chance at survival for their idea. Your job. So,
Speaker 1: if you're in the majority and you have power, I
Speaker 1: mean you are in the c suite of a company,
Speaker 1: you are running the well being Laboratory, you are a
Speaker 1: professor at University of Pennsylvania and you're teaching you know,
Speaker 1: a really highly popular po psychology class. You've got the
Speaker 1: power you decide what the norms are. And so if
Speaker 1: you decide in your po psychology class University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: then everything's going to be held outside, and you're not
Speaker 1: really taking questions about out who wants to do it,
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to do it, who's got immunological issues,
Speaker 1: who ends up being like allergic to pollen. You might
Speaker 1: skip all of that and just say it's going to
Speaker 1: be outside, and most people will not speak again to
Speaker 1: even though they would prefer sitting in their chair inside
Speaker 1: of a classroom where you know the temperature and the
Speaker 1: lighting is perfectly situated for actually acquiring information. You've got
Speaker 1: the elements outside, you've got, you've brought in randomness into
Speaker 1: the equation. Anyone that likes orderliness, anyone that likes low
Speaker 1: levels of uncertainty, is going to have a little bit
Speaker 1: of problem of you making that. But because of your power,
Speaker 1: people will comply with your request, even if it's a
Speaker 1: very weak, fragile belief that they're holding, and it can
Speaker 1: be convinced very easily that you're wrong, but it'll look
Speaker 1: as if they are totally hook line and sinker behind you. Now,
Speaker 1: the minority can't leverage their power because people don't want
Speaker 1: to be like the minority, at least not yet. So
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're not making a comparison between
Speaker 1: who am I right now and who can I be
Speaker 1: if Scott my professor my psychology class, if I won
Speaker 1: his favor. The majority sets up a social comparison where
Speaker 1: people think to themselves, oh, I would prefer to win
Speaker 1: Scott's favor. Who has power and status over none, So
Speaker 1: I'm going to follow him. For the minority, it's about
Speaker 1: validation because nobody wants to be like them or win
Speaker 1: them over. It really could care less. It's like, I
Speaker 1: want to validate your view to see does it have merit,
Speaker 1: would it be efficient, and would it be effective in
Speaker 1: my life. So the minority, the group's going to ask
Speaker 1: two questions. Number one, are you one of us, Like,
Speaker 1: have you shown that you are worthy of being, you know,
Speaker 1: a recipient of our attention and a recipient of actually
Speaker 1: being invited to our social gatherings. And so I know
Speaker 1: you had Yang on your podcast. I haven't listened to
Speaker 1: it yet, but one of the mistakes he made as
Speaker 1: a mayor. As a mayoral candidate in New York City
Speaker 1: was he actually showed that He really wasn't in group member.
Speaker 1: He wasn't able to persuade anyone that he really understood
Speaker 1: New York City, that he was a Yankee or a
Speaker 1: met fan, that he knew the best pizza there, that
Speaker 1: he knew what it was like to live in an
Speaker 1: apartment that was so expensive for such a small amount
Speaker 1: of space in Manhattan. He just didn't pass any of
Speaker 1: the tests of you're an in group member. Everyone was
Speaker 1: very clear that you have great ideas, but you're kind
Speaker 1: of on the outside looking in. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you can actually do the job in New York proper.
Speaker 1: So he kind of failed that test, and that actually
Speaker 1: was one of the challenges that his campaign had as
Speaker 1: being mayor. So let's say you passed the test. Let's
Speaker 1: say that he could talk about Yankees in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: He can whip out Don Mattey's stats as a first baseman.
Speaker 1: He was really clear that he knew that Patsy's was
Speaker 1: the best pizza. So he passes. Then he faces the
Speaker 1: second question by the group. If we listen to your
Speaker 1: ideas and elaborated on them and brought them into the forefront,
Speaker 1: would you increase the strength viability and longevity of our group,
Speaker 1: or would you threaten our group? And so this is
Speaker 1: the group viability test. If he passes that test, and
Speaker 1: he passes, you're in group member test, like you're kind
Speaker 1: of one of us. Then the audience says, hey, you've
Speaker 1: got our attention, you've got the platform, you have the stage.
Speaker 1: We're going to listen to your message, and now you
Speaker 1: better have a good, a good highly you know, highly attuned,
Speaker 1: high quality message, because we're going to really think carefully
Speaker 1: about whether it's worthy of our attention. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: in this book how you outlined very clearly what it
Speaker 1: takes to be uh principled insubordinate. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that that's really really tricking along this path is
Speaker 1: overcoming audiences emotional resistance. Can you give our aspiring principled
Speaker 1: rebel some advice on how they can do that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean this some of this hits what I was
Speaker 1: mentioning before about question number two. Right, will your message,
Speaker 1: your beliefs, your attitudes, the behaviors are suggesting will it?
Speaker 1: Will it improve the longevity and health of the group.
Speaker 1: And this with this question, if you want to expand
Speaker 1: it further, you're really talking about can you spark curiosity
Speaker 1: to intrigue instead of threatened fear. And so there's a
Speaker 1: few ways that you can do this. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the ways is if you're opening up with a
Speaker 1: narrative about what's been difficult for you, and you make
Speaker 1: yourself vulnerable and why you chose this innovation you want
Speaker 1: to share. So, whether it's you know, Steve Jobs saying, listen, blackberries,
Speaker 1: cell phones, that's not the wave of the future. I've
Speaker 1: got this little thing, this little iPhone thing that's actually
Speaker 1: going to be better for this, it's a scary precedent
Speaker 1: to be I have to learn something completely new. I've
Speaker 1: got to figure out, like what do I do with
Speaker 1: my songs, what I do with my CDs, what I
Speaker 1: do with my records and tapes? Like how do I wait?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna how am I gonna write? My fingers are
Speaker 1: just too big for the you know, for this thing
Speaker 1: that doesn't even have a keyboard that's involved with it.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of things that people had to
Speaker 1: overcome in terms of the switching costs that happened there.
Speaker 1: But Steve Jobs being the master, he sparked curiosity the
Speaker 1: way that he framed the iPhone when it first came out.
Speaker 1: Was he didn't go through here all the specs. Here
Speaker 1: are all the technological advantages. Here's how quickly it charges like,
Speaker 1: here's how great the battery is. Here's how many songs
Speaker 1: you could put on there. He basically showed you a
Speaker 1: visual of like what it looked like in terms of
Speaker 1: video games that were playing on it, songs that were
Speaker 1: playing on it, phone calls that you can make, and
Speaker 1: how smooth the transition was to move from one app
Speaker 1: to the other. So we didn't explain the how he
Speaker 1: gave you the wow factor, And the only way to
Speaker 1: find more information was not from him. It wasn't even
Speaker 1: from Apple. The only way you found information when an
Speaker 1: iPhone first came out, which is hard to do to
Speaker 1: go back in time to two thousand and seven when
Speaker 1: this first arose was you found from other users were
Speaker 1: posting information on message boards and posting videos of like, hey,
Speaker 1: when Steve Jobs is talking about how you switch from
Speaker 1: a phone to play music, this is how you do it.
Speaker 1: Nobody even cared. People were buying it with no knowledge whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and it was all from let me trigger your curiosity
Speaker 1: and wait, you want me to go like one step
Speaker 1: further with actual concrete tips about this. Oh yeah, that'd
Speaker 1: be great, man, of course. Yeah. So in the world
Speaker 1: of curiosity, you can think about this as how do
Speaker 1: you close the curiosity gap? And there's really like a
Speaker 1: three point process for doing this. So the first one
Speaker 1: is you have to anticipate in your audience, as the
Speaker 1: minority voice, what is the problem people are working towards.
Speaker 1: What are the difficulties of the challenges and strains that
Speaker 1: people are facing. So you have to do this, you know,
Speaker 1: this mind reading, this mental simulation, this real perspective taking
Speaker 1: in terms of not what I want or desire, but
Speaker 1: this exact audience. What do I think they crave, What
Speaker 1: do I think motivates them? What do I think is
Speaker 1: rewarding to them? And most entrepreneurs and innovators forget that
Speaker 1: while they might have a creative idea, they have to
Speaker 1: bridge this gap between what they're thinking and what other
Speaker 1: people give a crap about. So, first, exposed that you
Speaker 1: know what the problem or the aspiration is that's in
Speaker 1: their eyes, not yours. Second is to give a little
Speaker 1: bit of information that closes the gap between what you
Speaker 1: have and what they're desiring. So this is what Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs did right, just showed that there's these things called
Speaker 1: apps that even give them a word, just scroll through
Speaker 1: them on a screen that happened there. And the third one,
Speaker 1: which most people get wrong. So if you think about
Speaker 1: television advertisements for new cars, what you have is an
Speaker 1: aerial two font at rapid speed. Is dozens of paragraphs
Speaker 1: are appearring on the bottom as you're watching a car
Speaker 1: being driven on you know, Route one in California at
Speaker 1: an amazing pace while the roads are closed. You can't
Speaker 1: acquire all the information you think it's important. But because
Speaker 1: two things are happening, curiosity isn't elicited. One, you're getting
Speaker 1: way too many words appearing on the screen in a
Speaker 1: car ad to every car and truck looks exactly like
Speaker 1: the other one. Every ad looks the same. You're driving
Speaker 1: on a closed road, you're driving in the city at nighttime,
Speaker 1: you're driving on a country road. It looks gorgeous, the
Speaker 1: setting is amazing, but you can't remember which car and
Speaker 1: truck you're even looking at. What Steve's Jobs did was
Speaker 1: he provided a very small amount of extra information and
Speaker 1: you he gave you the autonomy. Listen, you're smart, You're intelligent.
Speaker 1: I'm treating them as such. If this interests you, go
Speaker 1: figure out the rest of jigsaw puzzle pieces on your
Speaker 1: own and then figure out that what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: It's freaking awesome. If you give too much information, you've
Speaker 1: closed the curiosity gap. What you want to do is
Speaker 1: activate it and keep it open for the other people
Speaker 1: on their own in the audience to close the gap
Speaker 1: by their own in their own way, on their own time. Brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliant reverse engineering there of his techniques, Steve jobs techniques there.
Speaker 1: It seems like a really important step. And everything you're
Speaker 1: describing is building stronger alliances with even your enemies, especially
Speaker 1: during times of conflict. So can you give some advice
Speaker 1: to the aspiring principled rebel along those lines as well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is how you and I supercharged our
Speaker 1: relationship really quickly. You know, you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: our high school years. I don't remember. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much you remember about this, but I think I
Speaker 1: was telling you about how I sucked in every single sport,
Speaker 1: and then it took about ten for me to realize
Speaker 1: the only sport, because I really wanted to be an athlete,
Speaker 1: the only sport. I can find any above average athletic
Speaker 1: prowess in was throwing a shot put a sixteen pound
Speaker 1: metal ball as far as I can. And you had
Speaker 1: that story that you tend to talk about how you
Speaker 1: met Kobe Bryant where you know in gym class. You
Speaker 1: know you weren't an athlete, you were I mean, you
Speaker 1: were a musician. And so this is interesting thing about
Speaker 1: where we met was not where we were really amazing,
Speaker 1: but in our failings and figuring out like where we
Speaker 1: could find the small few domains that we were exceptional
Speaker 1: at and it took a while to get there. And
Speaker 1: if we just if we had met, and this has residents,
Speaker 1: I think for anyone, if we had met with the
Speaker 1: conversation where you talked about how you're an amazing opera
Speaker 1: singer and musician and I started talking about how I
Speaker 1: was an all county shot putter in track and field,
Speaker 1: we would have met. We would have we would have
Speaker 1: met in a place of ego, and we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: met the you know, the key, the key for us
Speaker 1: meeting and connecting as human beings was what led us
Speaker 1: to those moments in terms of where we found our excellence.
Speaker 1: And you don't connect over the greatness. You connect over
Speaker 1: Oh you're the type of person that puts in the
Speaker 1: hard work at six am in the morning, and then
Speaker 1: after everyone goes to sleep, you get back to work
Speaker 1: and you go outside, you know, to play your musical instruments.
Speaker 1: You don't wake up your roommate. And I'm going outside.
Speaker 1: And I bought my own shot put and actually drew
Speaker 1: a circle on a soccer field in my neighborhood and
Speaker 1: we just heave it hundreds of times over to soccer
Speaker 1: goal by myself at night while I had my You know,
Speaker 1: those are those sponge headphones with the walkman that you
Speaker 1: would carry and people would pass me by and be
Speaker 1: like Todd, dude, when are you going to and they
Speaker 1: would drive past me. It's that perseverance, it's that obsessiveness,
Speaker 1: it's that love of figuring out like what are we
Speaker 1: capable of? That's where we met. And I bring up
Speaker 1: this example because the way that we meet people, especially men,
Speaker 1: men are given a script of you show the best
Speaker 1: side of your personality, and you don't show the challenges
Speaker 1: and difficulties and adversities to help you get there unless
Speaker 1: it's an amazing story where you know you're rock climbing,
Speaker 1: you're a mountaineer. You got into a fist bit really
Speaker 1: manly man kind of you know, uh ways of dominance,
Speaker 1: hemiway kind of action. Right, We're traveling a foreign country.
Speaker 1: I'm by myself. You know, I woke up drunk in
Speaker 1: an alleyway. I picked myself up and I couldn't even
Speaker 1: find my hotel, so I slept on the floor, you know,
Speaker 1: of a hostel. Those stories are not vulnerability. Those stories
Speaker 1: are kind of like humble bringing stories in some ways.
Speaker 1: And so where we meet with our even if so
Speaker 1: even if we have a good ending, if we meet
Speaker 1: in the painful journey to get there, it super charged
Speaker 1: the speed that you develop intimacy and connection. And when
Speaker 1: you meet someone that actually faced a similar diversity to you,
Speaker 1: you know, they lost a parent, they may have had
Speaker 1: older siblings that picked on them, they may have been
Speaker 1: physically weak when they were younger, so they were bullied,
Speaker 1: and you meet someone has that. It's amazing the lasting
Speaker 1: residue of those connections. And so the form alliances as
Speaker 1: a minority is not necessarily in the area where you're
Speaker 1: trying to persuade an influence, but in the area of
Speaker 1: being a minority as like in terms of identity, that's
Speaker 1: a stronger way to form connection, to form your alliances. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and can't you sometimes form alliance of someone even a
Speaker 1: specific form of suffering is not similar, but just the
Speaker 1: fact that, like, you come across someone who you can
Speaker 1: tell that they've they've really had some traumas in their past,
Speaker 1: and you've had some traumas, and you just you just
Speaker 1: bond with a fact you've both overcome something really significant,
Speaker 1: even if the things you've overcome are quite different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean here, I mean, here's a question for you,
Speaker 1: which is, when you meet someone that does a slight
Speaker 1: reveal about that adversity or trauma, how do you stay
Speaker 1: in the zone of I'm meeting you as a future
Speaker 1: potential friend versus going into therapist mode, which is your
Speaker 1: you have your psychologist Scott coffin mode. Oh, I mean,
Speaker 1: when I meet people outside of a professional context, I
Speaker 1: try to keep my professional hat off as much as
Speaker 1: possible and just have fun with the person, just the
Speaker 1: person I am. I mean, I I don't I don't
Speaker 1: see that that usually doesn't become a problem for me.
Speaker 1: I don't psychoanalyze people as much as just kind of
Speaker 1: jump into the stream of their consciousness with them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, but you know, but you do have the
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth expertise and kind of post ECSTATICALWTH expertise.
Speaker 1: So I can imagine like there's there's a dual part
Speaker 1: of you. One is hot getting to know you. The
Speaker 1: other one is, oh, I see like someone that's suffering,
Speaker 1: and I want to be with you and work with
Speaker 1: you because I can see there are some other ways
Speaker 1: that you can actually maybe even live a life with
Speaker 1: a little bit more effective coping skills in your palate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now that you mentioned it, maybe there are some subconscious
Speaker 1: ways in which I'm actually even more attracted to people
Speaker 1: who've suffered in the past because maybe subconsciously I feel
Speaker 1: like I can also help them grow, and I want
Speaker 1: to help them grow. Maybe, now that you mention it,
Speaker 1: if I you know, if this was a psycho analytic
Speaker 1: sssion right now and you were my psychologist, maybe that
Speaker 1: would have been one of the insights that I would
Speaker 1: have had about myself. Yeah. No, no, And that's and
Speaker 1: that's an attractive element of like of a relationship. Is
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we we spend a lot of time,
Speaker 1: especially I think this has been hyper active in the
Speaker 1: past few years, where you know, you have this heavy
Speaker 1: level polarization, heavy level ideological extremism, and heavy level of intolerance.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of this trifle and I think people
Speaker 1: spend too much time in the first one, just the polarization,
Speaker 1: but it's really the intolerance and extremism that I view
Speaker 1: is actually more problematic. And when that occurs, you're less
Speaker 1: leaning and you're less receptive to people that have these
Speaker 1: you know, these personalities and these ideological stances and these
Speaker 1: storylines that are really diverging from your own. Like we're
Speaker 1: if we feel that we're in a socially threatening environment,
Speaker 1: which kind of this you know, the current social media
Speaker 1: world is a very strange norm. It's almost as if
Speaker 1: I keep thinking to myself, why would young people want
Speaker 1: to create such a damn stressful environment and spend so
Speaker 1: much time in it? Point because we're not digital natives.
Speaker 1: So everything about this environment, I mean, you and I
Speaker 1: we exchanged texts about some of the horrific trolls or
Speaker 1: not criticisms, but just like mean vitriol look responses. It's
Speaker 1: like a fun thing that we kind of we've traded
Speaker 1: over the years and it's you know, we bond over that.
Speaker 1: And it's weird that people would want to spend more
Speaker 1: time than necessary in such a stressful, like you know,
Speaker 1: cortisol inducing environment, whereas like sitting here talking to you,
Speaker 1: even though there's a camera here, I mean, just your
Speaker 1: physical presence, even even through like you know, even through
Speaker 1: the screen, is calming and relaxing, and there's a tranquility
Speaker 1: that occurs there. And I think about this, It's like
Speaker 1: I can't imagine being sustainable, not because social media doesn't
Speaker 1: connect people, but because the stress level knowing that the
Speaker 1: negativity bias of getting vitriol at you is so powerful
Speaker 1: that like, what's that going to do mentally and physical
Speaker 1: health wise for people that spend twenty thirty years where
Speaker 1: this is the dominant place where they're interacting with people.
Speaker 1: And anyone says they knows the answer, like, by definition
Speaker 1: doesn't know the answer. Yeah, And I wouldn't claim to
Speaker 1: know the answer. But I think a part of the
Speaker 1: puzzle is that people really fear boredom. People are terrified
Speaker 1: of low stimulation responses to the environment. And you know,
Speaker 1: even sometimes if it's they hate it, at least it
Speaker 1: gets their adrenaline going, and they prefer it. But this
Speaker 1: is only a small part of the puzzle. I don't
Speaker 1: claim to know the whole thing. Yeah, that's that Tim
Speaker 1: Wilson research where people take electric shocks over sitting in
Speaker 1: the room and being bored daydreaming, even just daydreaming. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: mind wandering. Well, that's that's interesting, is you know the
Speaker 1: impetus for mind wandering because it's such a simple, easy
Speaker 1: access portal. I always like recommend this to my especially
Speaker 1: my three kids, all the time of like, don't enjoy
Speaker 1: this boredom moment. Just know this is the quickest, most
Speaker 1: efficient way to really creative storytelling and thinking and processing.
Speaker 1: So it's common around the horizon. It might not come
Speaker 1: this time, but like one in the next seven board moments,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a creative insight. It might not
Speaker 1: be that amazing like the new comic book to create,
Speaker 1: but there's something going to be there and you just
Speaker 1: want to make sure that you can trap it with
Speaker 1: soft hands and be able to write it down and
Speaker 1: retain it in some way. And so that's kind of
Speaker 1: how I always communicate with them of like, boredom is
Speaker 1: not something to fear. It's like this. It's the waiting
Speaker 1: room in a doctor's office, but the doctor's office is
Speaker 1: really will you want his chocolate factory, but you do
Speaker 1: have to sit in the waiting room. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's brilliant. I love that. So kind of ending our
Speaker 1: interview today, I want to point out something. You have
Speaker 1: a clinical psychology background, right, like you've training in clinical psychology.
Speaker 1: I actually believe that you are one of the most
Speaker 1: underrated psychologists of our generation. And I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever said that to anyone on this podcast
Speaker 1: before explicitly, but I want to make this explicit that
Speaker 1: the full breadth of the work you've done in your
Speaker 1: career and the topics you've covered, and the seminal papers
Speaker 1: you've written for our listeners who are not as familiar
Speaker 1: with Todd Cash and I mean it really, truly is
Speaker 1: remarkable what you've contributed to our field in a really
Speaker 1: rigorous scientific fashion, and the extent to which you've moved
Speaker 1: the needle in the field of positive psychology and really
Speaker 1: significant ways beyond just happiness. So I would feel remiss
Speaker 1: if I didn't bring that up, not just because I'm
Speaker 1: your friend. I would have said that even if I
Speaker 1: wasn't your friend. I mean I appreciate that. I mean
Speaker 1: I have an amazing set of collaborators to include you
Speaker 1: on several papers. I mean, every paper that I'm proud
Speaker 1: of has multiple scientists, and I mean we have the
Speaker 1: best profession possible. We get to sit there, talk, think,
Speaker 1: and take anything in the environment that interest us, and
Speaker 1: then create questions and test hypotheses. Thank you, Tod, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to end on this quote of yours that says,
Speaker 1: remember that what will most benefit the world is not
Speaker 1: what you share in common with others, but what sets
Speaker 1: you apart. Push hard into your uniqueness and help others
Speaker 1: do the same. Do it boldly and compassionately. Whether you
Speaker 1: succeed or not, It's the only way to reach your
Speaker 1: human potential. This is a beautiful, beautiful quote, and I
Speaker 1: think really nicely encapsulates the main point of your book.
Speaker 1: So I wish you all the best in the book tour,
Speaker 1: and thanks again for coming on my show. Listen anytime anyplace,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you anywhere. Thanks DoD. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to react in some way to something you heard, I
Speaker 1: encourage you to join in the discussion at thus psychology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com or on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.