Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. It's my great pleasure
Speaker 1: to have the Advice Goddess Amy Alcon on the podcast today.
Speaker 1: Amy writes a weekly advice column called Ask the Advice Goddess,
Speaker 1: which is publishing over one hundred newspapers within North America.
Speaker 1: Amy's also the author of the book I See Rude People,
Speaker 1: One woman's battle to beat some manners into polite society,
Speaker 1: and most recently, which we'll be talking about quite a
Speaker 1: bit today, is the book Good Manners for Nice People
Speaker 1: who sometimes say the word Amy. It's just such a
Speaker 1: delight to have you on my podcast today. It's so
Speaker 1: great to be here to talk to you, and you know,
Speaker 1: I miss having you out here in Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I miss writing with you. Those are some fun days.
Speaker 1: They were great days. Yeah. I wanted to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you. You know, I've noticed some common themes
Speaker 1: and lots of your writings. I thought I would ask
Speaker 1: you first, what you think are some of the common themes,
Speaker 1: particularly in the last two books that you wrote. That's
Speaker 1: a very good question, you know, I don't really. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of Elmer Leonard being asked whenever and just
Speaker 1: if in case anyone doesn't know he is. He's a
Speaker 1: crime writer. He wrote Get Shorty. He's most famous for that.
Speaker 1: But you know, people would ask him what are your
Speaker 1: books about? And he'd say, I don't know. Ask Sat Frank,
Speaker 1: the screenwriter who wrote I Forget which one I think?
Speaker 1: He wrote Get Shorty and some other things. And so
Speaker 1: I don't really think about, you know, the themes in
Speaker 1: my work. I don't have that kind of overview. But
Speaker 1: I guess one thing I was telling I just hit
Speaker 1: a new editorial as system start working for me. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I explained, and this comes out
Speaker 1: of addiction treatment research, is that telling people what to
Speaker 1: do does it make them change want to change? It
Speaker 1: makes them either defensive or want to collaborate you, depending
Speaker 1: on when you're doing it. And so I'm influenced, you know,
Speaker 1: I use science and all of my work, even though
Speaker 1: I tried not to make it sound like it came
Speaker 1: out of the Ivory Tower. I translate it basically what
Speaker 1: I use. I translate Ivory Tower research into understandable language,
Speaker 1: and then I transform it into advice so people can
Speaker 1: live less, counter productively live smarter. And so when I
Speaker 1: do that, I tend to use humor and metaphor to
Speaker 1: show people why their behavior is really not a good idea,
Speaker 1: rather than doing that thing that most advice calumists do,
Speaker 1: which I find really boring also, which is just hammer
Speaker 1: people and say do this, do that. I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people already know what to do or not
Speaker 1: to do, and there's a reason they're not doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, people are not morons, and I really get
Speaker 1: tired of how they get treated by like morons, but
Speaker 1: by many people writing for papers or writing advice. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you what I see, and correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm totally off base here, why sat Frank, But let
Speaker 1: me tell you what I see from when I read
Speaker 1: a lot of yours, I get the sense that you
Speaker 1: really are a voice of a lot of underdogs. You
Speaker 1: really don't like people who are marginalized, people who get
Speaker 1: unfairly treated. Am I right about this? It seems to
Speaker 1: be a very common theme. You are, I was a
Speaker 1: loser as a child, and I want to hear more
Speaker 1: about that. I wrote in Good Manners for Nice People
Speaker 1: sometimes say a bad word that I had no friends
Speaker 1: until I was thirteen, and then I'm starting on my
Speaker 1: next book right now, and I sort of looked at
Speaker 1: that more closely, and I realized that was aspirational. It
Speaker 1: was really fifteen. I mean, that's just so horrible, and
Speaker 1: when you don't have friends, the one one of the
Speaker 1: good things that came out of that is a sense
Speaker 1: of compassion for people who are left out, you know,
Speaker 1: the weirdos of society. And also I even look for
Speaker 1: them because now I sort of manage to transform myself.
Speaker 1: And so when I'm at a party or something, I
Speaker 1: have this vision where I look around the room and
Speaker 1: I look for that person who just looks like they
Speaker 1: want to just disintegrate into the carpet, and I go
Speaker 1: talk to them, you know, because I've been that person,
Speaker 1: and it just means so much when you're that person
Speaker 1: that someone does that, that they rescue you if you
Speaker 1: have the social capital to do that, or you know,
Speaker 1: if you're kids. It's really important to teach your kids
Speaker 1: that if you have those kids, if you have kids
Speaker 1: and they're popular, everybody likes them, they do well and
Speaker 1: sucker and all that stuff, you know that your kids
Speaker 1: can probably afford to adopt an underdog, you know, not
Speaker 1: as just a charity thing, but to actually be a
Speaker 1: real friend to them and friend with them where it's
Speaker 1: it's sometimes it hurts other kids socially, So I mean,
Speaker 1: you do have to think about that. You have to
Speaker 1: be a modern great your behavior with self interest but
Speaker 1: also interest in others. Yeah, that cane, you tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit. Why though you don't think you were popular.
Speaker 1: I feel like we would have been friends at like
Speaker 1: age twelve, Like we would have been like a playground
Speaker 1: everyone I know. Actually, someone says to my boyfriend, everyone
Speaker 1: you know is weird, and I do I know, and
Speaker 1: I like that. I know I'm weird. But they're weird
Speaker 1: in the sort of like you know, a normal society way.
Speaker 1: They're nerdy, and they have some kind of passion in
Speaker 1: something like really really, they're really passionate about something. Are
Speaker 1: you friends with other weird people at age twelve? Why
Speaker 1: did no one like you? I lived amost normal people
Speaker 1: And the truth is okay. I went my bed till
Speaker 1: I was twelve, Like, I just had that stench of
Speaker 1: the weird, you know, the smart I had red hair,
Speaker 1: I mean just everything. And then and they also generally
Speaker 1: like Jews where I grew up. So my dad we
Speaker 1: moved up to the suburbs in Detroit, and my dad
Speaker 1: thought we were just like everyone else, which is fine
Speaker 1: if they think you're like everyone else, but being weird
Speaker 1: and Jewish. My sister did better, she was normal and Jewish.
Speaker 1: I just really had a hard time that you get
Speaker 1: this stink on you and you just can't get it
Speaker 1: off unless your family moves. You know, if you move,
Speaker 1: you have a chance. And my family they're still there
Speaker 1: in that same house circle driveway. The trees, they know,
Speaker 1: big trees, you know. That's one of those the developments
Speaker 1: where they know they just clear cut everything, and you
Speaker 1: move in. It's like there's not a scrub of a
Speaker 1: scrub of shrubbery, you know, and now you go there,
Speaker 1: it's like a forest, a primeval forest. Oh man. And also,
Speaker 1: did you do you feel like you had symptoms of
Speaker 1: ADHD when you were a kid. I definitely did. And
Speaker 1: I'm one of the great things was getting diagnosed. And
Speaker 1: I like to say I got diagnosed by my friend
Speaker 1: David Baxter and Terry Rossio's hot tub up in the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Hill. I love this. People go to doctors, David
Speaker 1: Baxter said, and he had been diagnosed, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you have a d D and
Speaker 1: you should take you know, you should take medication for
Speaker 1: it would help you. He was actually right. But you know,
Speaker 1: the diagnosing of this stuff is so inexact. And I
Speaker 1: decided I would go to a doctor and fake the symptoms.
Speaker 1: But it turns out I actually have the symptoms, and
Speaker 1: I know I do now because I was taking This
Speaker 1: is sort of like two inside Baseball ADHD. But I'll
Speaker 1: just talk briefly about this because I like people to
Speaker 1: not feel stigmatized about taking medication to help themselves with
Speaker 1: it's from depression or anything else. I mean, really it
Speaker 1: is better, you know, chemistry for better living. I had
Speaker 1: my riddling wasn't really working. It got almost physically painful
Speaker 1: to concentrate, and so I started taking musin X and
Speaker 1: having this intensely strung coffee and riddle in to try
Speaker 1: to somehow be able to concentrate better. And in case
Speaker 1: anyone doesn't know this. If you have ADHD, coffee works
Speaker 1: on you sort of like warm milk does for other people.
Speaker 1: You know, I could take I could have strong coffee,
Speaker 1: go to bed. But I told this wonderful psychiatrist I
Speaker 1: got trans for two and he said, you know, I
Speaker 1: think you need adderall, which is to explain, Riddlin and
Speaker 1: adderall are both dopamine reuptake inhibitors, but adderall also pushes
Speaker 1: a little jokemine out into the brain. And it turns
Speaker 1: out I really need that because I had the best
Speaker 1: writing day I had in twenty years the first hour
Speaker 1: I took that. And also I ran around, went around
Speaker 1: my house, and when you have add Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is a misnomber about this, this quote unquote disorder, which
Speaker 1: I actually considered a gift with some issues attached. But
Speaker 1: it is not a deficit of attention. You have too
Speaker 1: much attention. That's the problem. And so it's like being
Speaker 1: you know, attacked by crows, that by sixteen crows while
Speaker 1: trying to think to have ADHD. And so after I
Speaker 1: took adderall, I looked around my house and I could
Speaker 1: see things everyone was, you know, you could see it
Speaker 1: was like a tornado, and I could see, Oh, that
Speaker 1: thing has been on that surface for seven years. Why
Speaker 1: don't I pick that up and move it? So do
Speaker 1: you think that those ADHD characteristics were conducive to your
Speaker 1: creativity and imagination at all? Great question? Actually yes, And
Speaker 1: I love the work you do on creativity. And I'm
Speaker 1: often sort of calmed and placated by by how open
Speaker 1: minded you are about it. And I feel that my
Speaker 1: ability to pun and to come up with rapid fire
Speaker 1: humor and these weird connections and have these weird visions
Speaker 1: things I put together that these things are one of
Speaker 1: the features of this quote unquote disorder, which is not
Speaker 1: a disorder. It's just you know, I you know, if
Speaker 1: I get a parking ticket, I need to pay it
Speaker 1: immediately or like six months later my car will be booted.
Speaker 1: Now I just lose I lose mail. It's like there
Speaker 1: are bags in my bedroom, like oh my god, I
Speaker 1: reregistered my car in July and then like the sticker
Speaker 1: had been in my bedroom, the new sticker that expired,
Speaker 1: you know, like I had the expired sticker on my car,
Speaker 1: the new sticker was under my bed in a bag.
Speaker 1: That's add or ADHD. Wow, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like so much of your like your creativity does
Speaker 1: come from this amazing ability to you do it. And
Speaker 1: I know because I hang out with you. I've hung
Speaker 1: out with you like in real time connect words that
Speaker 1: you put words together that most people do not automatically
Speaker 1: associate with each other. And aspoil, yes, yes, that was on.
Speaker 1: They did a list the copyet our David Yance is great.
Speaker 1: He copied it in my book and he copied it's
Speaker 1: my column's a scrammer ninja. And they had him put
Speaker 1: together a list of words that were not traditional. It
Speaker 1: was huge. Apparently most authors have like four words or
Speaker 1: ten words, and they were like pages of the stuff
Speaker 1: of like aspoil and cell bore. But I love doing that.
Speaker 1: I see no reason to be constrained by the dictionary.
Speaker 1: Well not only that, but you're not. Your own head
Speaker 1: is not constrained by anything. So the way your mind
Speaker 1: works is that you have cross wiring between your executive
Speaker 1: attention network and your imagination network and your your your
Speaker 1: temporal lobevere holds all your memories and everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no boundaries, right, I'm right with that. I'm grateful
Speaker 1: for that, and this is why I feel. And I
Speaker 1: talk to some kids, to friends, kids with ADHD. You
Speaker 1: know that they feel. People tend to feel ashamed if
Speaker 1: you have something that's psychiatric in nature. And the thing
Speaker 1: is they have to call these things disorders because otherwise
Speaker 1: they can't give you medication for it. And there's there's
Speaker 1: this tremendous prejudice against taking medication. Now I'm not for medicating.
Speaker 1: There seems to be an over medication of boys. And
Speaker 1: you know they now like your playgrounds. There's there's all
Speaker 1: this zero tolerance stuff and craziness, like where they're protecting kids.
Speaker 1: They basically wrap them in little cotton outfits and they
Speaker 1: want to keep them until they're forty like that. And
Speaker 1: so I think that boys don't get to play like
Speaker 1: they used to and be active like they used to.
Speaker 1: And boys, you know, and some girls have this tremendous
Speaker 1: energy when they're kids. I had it, and it needs
Speaker 1: to come out in a healthy way. And since it's not,
Speaker 1: then you get kids jumping on desks. And you and
Speaker 1: I both study evolutionary psychology, and so you look at
Speaker 1: our natural environment. I need to take medication to write,
Speaker 1: which I'm happy to do. I love writing because and
Speaker 1: this makes it better because I have would be probably
Speaker 1: a perfect hunter gatherer brain. I could watch do six
Speaker 1: things at once in a way other people can't. You know,
Speaker 1: multitasking is not supposed to be very a very effective
Speaker 1: way to go about life, but I can do it
Speaker 1: pretty effectively because I just noticed everything I'm not trying right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's actually bring up evolutionary psychology is
Speaker 1: a good segue into your latest book. I if I
Speaker 1: may segue into that. I saw someone wrote a review
Speaker 1: on Amazon every book. They said, quote, this isn't your
Speaker 1: grandmother's matter book. Well, first of all, your grandmother's manner
Speaker 1: book didn't include the latest research and evolutionary psychology at
Speaker 1: the very least. So your book, you know, you really
Speaker 1: do draw a lot on the latest science. And you
Speaker 1: say at one point in a book, quote our modern
Speaker 1: schools houses Stone age mind, and this is and you
Speaker 1: start trying to unpacked the implications of this. I thought
Speaker 1: maybe you could tell for our listeners a little, what
Speaker 1: is the impact on that for a society that is
Speaker 1: massively interconnected through technology. Well, I should first say that's
Speaker 1: a cosmetos lead to Cosmetis and John Tubey quote our
Speaker 1: modern skulls held has a stone age mind. And let
Speaker 1: me backtrack a little to give what I figured out
Speaker 1: about rudeness. So I figured out that we are rude
Speaker 1: because we live in societies too big for our brains.
Speaker 1: And this is based on the research of Robin Dunbar,
Speaker 1: the British anthropologists. He figured out that the human neocortex
Speaker 1: has a capacity for about one hundred and fifty relationships.
Speaker 1: This is on average, but he found this in numerous societies.
Speaker 1: He found this in the number of Christmas cards people send,
Speaker 1: the number of Facebook friends they have. It's fascinating, and
Speaker 1: it was in hunter gather societies. There are army units
Speaker 1: that are the size. It seems to be a sort
Speaker 1: of I hate too this word but magic number and so.
Speaker 1: And the reason why, basically the problem is that beyond
Speaker 1: this number that the people, the civility seems to break down.
Speaker 1: And the reason is when we know each other, and
Speaker 1: we all know each other, we're in a consistent society
Speaker 1: of people who know each other. There are constraints on
Speaker 1: our bad behaviors. So even if you're a total jerk,
Speaker 1: you have to behave well because you're going to see
Speaker 1: everyone again. And now we live on what I call
Speaker 1: these vast stranger opolises. And many people can go almost
Speaker 1: all day without seeing somebody they know. And so when
Speaker 1: you're around strangers, if they're jerks, they can do anything
Speaker 1: to you. And this is what's happening. So and this
Speaker 1: is what's happening. You brought up technology on the Internet.
Speaker 1: We have this cloak of anonymity we have never had.
Speaker 1: And we got no world books but the Internet or
Speaker 1: cell phones. We just got this amazing telephone technology. And
Speaker 1: we are like chimps with our finger on the button
Speaker 1: of an info nuke. So all these people, well who
Speaker 1: would never say so much is excuse me? Do you
Speaker 1: know where the asparagus is in the grocery store? Are
Speaker 1: saying horrible things to total strangers on the internet, you know?
Speaker 1: And if you bring that back to real life, you
Speaker 1: say to them. I say to people sometimes who write
Speaker 1: to me write me horrible, insulting things, total strangers, never
Speaker 1: never encountered them before they read my column, or they
Speaker 1: didn't like something they wrote on the internet, and they say,
Speaker 1: you're ugly or a bitch, you look like a man,
Speaker 1: of horrifying stuff. And I'm so used to hate mail
Speaker 1: over the years because I don't shy away from controversy
Speaker 1: or controversial topics, but I'll say to them, you know,
Speaker 1: if you wouldn't walk up to a woman in the
Speaker 1: grocery store and say, you know, hey, wide load better
Speaker 1: rethink those twinkies, maybe you shouldn't talk to people on
Speaker 1: the internet the same way just because you can. You know,
Speaker 1: you need to behave as if you are posting your
Speaker 1: own real name, even if you can't do that because
Speaker 1: you're an elementary school teacher who's on a dominatrix website. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's a good point. You know, our brains are
Speaker 1: wired to manage social interactions with this band of one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people. So there does seem to be
Speaker 1: I mean, what do we do in this world of
Speaker 1: Facebook or this world of Twitter where you have thousands
Speaker 1: of people listening to your every word? And so it
Speaker 1: basically your point is like it really increases the potential
Speaker 1: for rudeness. Well, there are three things that stop rudeness,
Speaker 1: and one is not behaving counterproductively yourself. And I get
Speaker 1: into I use behavioral science to explain why we do that,
Speaker 1: Why we do the things we do, Why you want
Speaker 1: to get out of your car and bring out your
Speaker 1: golf club and smash someone's windshield when they go, you know,
Speaker 1: to go out and turn the stops, even though what
Speaker 1: does that mean? You're three seconds later to work, you know,
Speaker 1: the greater scheme of things, But that's there are evolutionary
Speaker 1: reasons for that that make total sense because we had
Speaker 1: adaptations within an environment that was very different from our environment. Now.
Speaker 1: It's very important to not let people cheat you because
Speaker 1: it impacted your survival. So anyway to get getting back
Speaker 1: to the three things, it's to not be jerks ourselves,
Speaker 1: to not behave counterproductively, to punish rude people, and not
Speaker 1: everyone can do that. And the other thing because we
Speaker 1: live in these societies where we are around strangers and
Speaker 1: because that doesn't really work for our psychology, and it
Speaker 1: makes people feel alienated and it's awful and nobody's looking
Speaker 1: out for each other. We're cooperative, communitarian people, so we
Speaker 1: need to reach out to strangers, treat strangers like people
Speaker 1: we know. And the way you do that is by
Speaker 1: doing small kindnesses for them, which actually is in your
Speaker 1: self interest because when you are kind and generous, it
Speaker 1: actually makes you feel actually probably far better than the
Speaker 1: person you're helping. Yeah, and there's a lot of research
Speaker 1: in positive psychology suggesting that's definitely the case. Yeah, Sami
Speaker 1: Mirsky does a lot of it. She is really good
Speaker 1: and really rigorous and writes well, which is always a pleasure,
Speaker 1: and she does a lot of this work on gratitude.
Speaker 1: And in fact, between the time my book was published
Speaker 1: and I was writing this op ed and somebody they said, oh,
Speaker 1: I think we want it, but we need you to
Speaker 1: support this a little better. The research hadn't been done,
Speaker 1: but I wrote to her and said help, and she
Speaker 1: had just gotten the data back and just written this
Speaker 1: paper about how when people in Spain did kind of
Speaker 1: acts and these are for people they know. So I
Speaker 1: think it's much more powerful in what hasn't been tested
Speaker 1: with strangers. I mean it as to some extent, but
Speaker 1: not really the way she did this. But she people
Speaker 1: in her office in Spain they did kind of acts
Speaker 1: for their co workers, and the people they did kind
Speaker 1: of ASTs for were three times more likely almost three
Speaker 1: times two hundred and seventy eight percent more likely to
Speaker 1: pay it forward. So this what this tells us is
Speaker 1: that really you if you do a kind act for somebody,
Speaker 1: just you know, put money in their meter. Look around
Speaker 1: in a cafe and see the person they're looking around,
Speaker 1: they're probably they want to pay newspaper you've read yours,
Speaker 1: stam up and give it to them. It takes very
Speaker 1: little that you do these things. And this is so
Speaker 1: so powerful. And to just give one example of that
Speaker 1: in the book, my ex assistant Steff, she and her
Speaker 1: girlfriend were in Boulder, Colorado, really hot. See this woman
Speaker 1: on a bench, older woman looking very not from bolder.
Speaker 1: And the woman says to Steph, who was a very
Speaker 1: kind person, could you give me directions to where I
Speaker 1: can get a diet coke? And so Steph, very kind,
Speaker 1: does this, meticulous and everything, and they walk on and
Speaker 1: Steph's griff and said I'm going to go buy her one,
Speaker 1: and Steff said, no, I gave great directions. You don't
Speaker 1: do that, No, but I will. And she did it
Speaker 1: and she came back with this and the one was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, oh my god. It was like the
Speaker 1: greatest thing anyone had done for her. And here's an act.
Speaker 1: If you do this for a friend, Hey, oh Scott,
Speaker 1: you know we've done this for each other. Oh I
Speaker 1: got your coke, got your brownie? Whatever, Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: That was really nice of you. I mean, it's nice
Speaker 1: and you appreciate it. But it's not like the heavens
Speaker 1: just open up in Angel's breathe on your on your head,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's really what happened with this, with
Speaker 1: this woman doing a kind act for a stranger. I've
Speaker 1: appreciated some of your when you bought me a brownie,
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. Yeah. So, I mean this is all
Speaker 1: very interesting because over the course of your book, you
Speaker 1: just you really outline so many different domains of rudeness,
Speaker 1: and in trying to prepare for this interview, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we only have a certain miss that amount
Speaker 1: of time, so let's pick some of the some of
Speaker 1: the ones that might be you know, we can get through.
Speaker 1: So let's let's why don't we try to talk about communication?
Speaker 1: Oh great, you you have you in your book you
Speaker 1: called the big three right communication? Would you mind explain
Speaker 1: a little bit about what those big three why they're
Speaker 1: so vital to positive communication. They are listening, empathy and dignity,
Speaker 1: and listening and empathy are very intertwined. We think that
Speaker 1: we persuade people by hammering them with the most rational
Speaker 1: point of view and I'm big on reason and critical thinking.
Speaker 1: But actually people will just put up a wall too
Speaker 1: if you do that, because you actually need to make
Speaker 1: people feel accepted and listen to before they will listen
Speaker 1: to you. Empathy is a big part of this. So
Speaker 1: this idea, there's a friend but with joke I love.
Speaker 1: She's one of my favorite her humors. She was influenced
Speaker 1: by James Thurber, who influenced me also, and she wrote
Speaker 1: the opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of
Speaker 1: talking is wait is waiting, you know, like waiting to say.
Speaker 1: But that's exactly what you can't do. And I used
Speaker 1: to be somebody I was all about me in conversation.
Speaker 1: It wasn't out of some venal hateful thing. I just
Speaker 1: in New York. I was starving, and I was always
Speaker 1: looking to sort of promote myself in case, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe someone could hire me. You know. My mother
Speaker 1: always said, you know, like always be on the lookout
Speaker 1: for a job, you know. And so I kind of
Speaker 1: was in conversation and it made me not connect with people.
Speaker 1: And so this guy I quote, he's very good, Mark Golston.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book called Just Listen. He's a hostage
Speaker 1: negotiation trainer and he's a former psychiatrist, and he was great.
Speaker 1: He talked about this about making people feel felt about,
Speaker 1: you know, this whole empathy thing, and I I, instead
Speaker 1: of talking, decided to start listening and I went to party.
Speaker 1: You have to pre plan this stuff. This is a
Speaker 1: big theme actually, if you talk about the themes of
Speaker 1: my book that we are we are really imperfect and
Speaker 1: fallible and everything, and in the moment, you can count
Speaker 1: on us to do the impulsive and very wrong thing,
Speaker 1: the stupid thing, the counterproductive thing. So it's really important
Speaker 1: to figure out how to behave before you get in
Speaker 1: the moment. That's what I did. So I decided, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go to this party. It's an annual thing
Speaker 1: for journalists and novelists and pundits and and I am
Speaker 1: not going to say anything about myself. And I just
Speaker 1: talked to everyone about themselves and I had the best
Speaker 1: time and really, you know, connected with people in a
Speaker 1: way I didn't when I was you know, miss panic stricken,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to sell myself, you know, from frommembering
Speaker 1: the time when I would just you know, be able
Speaker 1: to spend a dollar and a glass of water my
Speaker 1: friends went up to dinner, I'd show, you know, dessert
Speaker 1: and just say, oh, I, you know, not having anything,
Speaker 1: and I'd leave a dollar for my water, you know,
Speaker 1: glass of water. And it just was horrible, you know.
Speaker 1: So and it's really important to have something write about
Speaker 1: my next book, which is self compassion. So I look
Speaker 1: at that stuff. I understand why. I can understand it
Speaker 1: from the viewpoint of look at myself as like there's
Speaker 1: some redheaded girl in New York in this freezing place.
Speaker 1: You know, she'd bring a snowsuit because of the heat's
Speaker 1: not working and she doesn't have any money, and you know, horrible, horrible,
Speaker 1: and you know, and look at that girl and understand
Speaker 1: why she behaved out of fear. But then to want
Speaker 1: to this idea like people use fear as an excuse
Speaker 1: and so you know, I see things that I'm afraid
Speaker 1: of as things I need to do or change, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's a really helpful way to look
Speaker 1: at that the things you're afraid of. So just to
Speaker 1: recoup these three things, it's listening, empathy, and treating people
Speaker 1: with dignity. Yeah, and your example is just encapsulate all
Speaker 1: those yeah, dignity. Actually, I referenced this very interesting woman
Speaker 1: who's a conflict resolution specialist, Donna Hicks from Harvard, and
Speaker 1: she talked about dignity as making people feel that they
Speaker 1: are valued. That's her definition of dignity. And it's really important,
Speaker 1: you know that it's really important that when you're arguing
Speaker 1: with someone or you want to give them some quote
Speaker 1: unquote constructive criticism, that you don't do it in a
Speaker 1: way that removes their dignity. And one way that does
Speaker 1: and we both I think you were at the conference,
Speaker 1: the Evolutionary Psychology conference where Pinker talked about this is
Speaker 1: doing stuff in front of a third party because we
Speaker 1: evolve to deeply care about preserving our reputation, and when
Speaker 1: there's an audience, it's like criticism goes turbos. So people
Speaker 1: who do this, who you know, they they write some
Speaker 1: critical email and they see a bunch of people. This
Speaker 1: is horrible. If you're not intending to wound someone, don't
Speaker 1: do that. And if you are, let's check your motives,
Speaker 1: you know, because actually these people who are who are
Speaker 1: mean and you know, cut people off the ankles and
Speaker 1: this stuff, I mean, they're actually not that smart. Because
Speaker 1: it is actually people who are giving, but judiciously giving.
Speaker 1: That people would just look at you like the shirt
Speaker 1: off their back and here ruin my mortgage because you need,
Speaker 1: you know, fifty thousand dollars. That's dumb. That's what my
Speaker 1: friend Barbokley calls pathological altruism. You know, that's that's quote
Speaker 1: unquote altruism that is sometimes both harmful to the person
Speaker 1: helping and the person they intend to help. You know,
Speaker 1: so you have to be judicious about it. But to
Speaker 1: be somebody who is open and giving and take risks.
Speaker 1: It takes risks to bring people into conversation when they're
Speaker 1: left out. This is very important and it does preserve
Speaker 1: people's dignity. Treating them as if they have value very
Speaker 1: very important. If you want people to hear you whatever
Speaker 1: you're saying, you need to communicate by listening, by having empathy,
Speaker 1: and by treating people with dignity. And if you're not,
Speaker 1: if you're attacking people, you're not going to get anything
Speaker 1: through to them except the fact that they think you're
Speaker 1: kind of a jerk. This is course. I hope that
Speaker 1: like some politicians read your book, Thank You, I do too,
Speaker 1: so said in the UK about the communications you know,
Speaker 1: and I sometimes get taken for granted. I think in
Speaker 1: a way which isn't to say I'm a huge ego
Speaker 1: about my work, because you've been with me writing and
Speaker 1: I'm terrible insecurity. Oh my god, is it good enough?
Speaker 1: Is this science clear enough? But you know when you
Speaker 1: write in a way that communicates, when you write science
Speaker 1: in a way that's simple, and that basically I really
Speaker 1: work hard, you know hard it is to translate complex
Speaker 1: science so it's understandable to just anybody on the street,
Speaker 1: I hope, and then turning it into solutions and then
Speaker 1: making it funny. People think, oh, well, you know this
Speaker 1: isn't serious science because it's not boring, right, I don't
Speaker 1: think yeah, and it really I just think that many
Speaker 1: people don't work very hard in they're writing, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's wrong, and I think that people are
Speaker 1: lazy and they just don't learn to write in a
Speaker 1: way that communicates. And the example I gave me four
Speaker 1: so I'm Elavimerski. I write her these fan letters when
Speaker 1: I read her studies and I say, I know this
Speaker 1: is boring, but god, this is a joy to read
Speaker 1: because they're so clear and her or her research that
Speaker 1: it's all thought out and everything, and it's just you.
Speaker 1: You love people who do their jobs in that way.
Speaker 1: And it's not easy. People don't get to that, you know.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, people just sit down a computer
Speaker 1: and bang it out. You know. It takes a lot
Speaker 1: of reworking, and it takes a certain respect for both yourself,
Speaker 1: science and the people who will be hopefully benefiting from
Speaker 1: it to do enough of the work to make it communicate,
Speaker 1: to make it right, to not have screwing math all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. Yeah, and I see, I see
Speaker 1: you do take you take the time to really get
Speaker 1: that right and get multiple perspectives. I think that's something
Speaker 1: that really really pisses you off, is when people try
Speaker 1: to uh say what they want to be true and
Speaker 1: when it goes against what the science says. And I've
Speaker 1: seen instance of that where you're you know that it
Speaker 1: seems I think it really upsets you. You know, you
Speaker 1: want to get you want you like these are the facts,
Speaker 1: you don't like it or not sort of things right,
Speaker 1: and people will they will excoriate you. I have Oh
Speaker 1: my god, if you I made the mistake of looking
Speaker 1: by accident on Goodreads, some of the reviews of my
Speaker 1: book and oh my god, it's they're horrible on Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's mostly like no, I know, but somehow you know,
Speaker 1: and really, you know. I wrote in the dating chapter
Speaker 1: about what we both know that there are strategic differences.
Speaker 1: This is based on David Buss and David Schmidt's work
Speaker 1: that there's strategic differences between men and women because women
Speaker 1: are the ones who get pregnant and they have a
Speaker 1: higher cost to any sex, that higher potential cost, whereas
Speaker 1: men can have sex and just walk away. And this
Speaker 1: is just speaking of them before the days of child support.
Speaker 1: But we evolved. This is the thinking. We evolved, and
Speaker 1: so this, you know, sort of cascades through throughout our
Speaker 1: dating lives and the people people have a problem with
Speaker 1: my saying what the sciences, which is that men and
Speaker 1: women are different. We have different biology, and out of
Speaker 1: that comes to different psychology. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about Marlon Brando. Oh yeah, you apparently met him in
Speaker 1: an internet chat room. I did. This is why I
Speaker 1: was starving in New York crazy. It was that was
Speaker 1: that was I was just so embarrassed. That was where
Speaker 1: I was. I talked about this before. I was embarrassed
Speaker 1: about you. I go out my friends would be out
Speaker 1: to dinner and I couldn't afford dinner, so I would
Speaker 1: just show up afterward and get a glass of water
Speaker 1: and leave a dollar. And finally, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: that's humiliating. It just feel terrible. The waitress looks at
Speaker 1: you like, will you be ardering? You know, like scumbag?
Speaker 1: You know, tell a story about about how you met
Speaker 1: brand I was gonna tell you. Now. That's why I
Speaker 1: started to just stay home and I would go in
Speaker 1: the AOL chat room because I like conversations. So if
Speaker 1: I have conversation, I could just get a diet pepsy
Speaker 1: at the Korean grocery store on the way home, you know,
Speaker 1: sit there and and talk. And and so I was
Speaker 1: being attacked in some rude way by somebody in this
Speaker 1: chat room, and this guy to pops up and defends
Speaker 1: me in a very chivalrous way. He was the count
Speaker 1: with an E and so, and I just saw the
Speaker 1: way he spoke in his in his little defense with me,
Speaker 1: and I thought, oh my god, that guy is incredible.
Speaker 1: So we started instant messaging, and then we over a
Speaker 1: period of about six months, we instant messaged, we'd email.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just been all night. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: anything gross and kind of love affair or anything. It
Speaker 1: was an intellectual love affair of anything. And we became
Speaker 1: very close friends. And what was cool for him was,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're a movie star, everybody wants something
Speaker 1: from me, and even people who don't want to want
Speaker 1: something from you, they treat you in a weird way
Speaker 1: because you're famous. It's just you. You have to question
Speaker 1: everyone's motives. And I was the one person who's motives
Speaker 1: you didn't have to question. We had to deal with
Speaker 1: de Niro. Then I was like, whatever, you know, And
Speaker 1: I mean, I was grateful that they gave us his
Speaker 1: deal Triback of Films, but I wasn't excited that he
Speaker 1: was a movie star. It's a guy who's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's his job and he does it well and everything,
Speaker 1: and you know, and so I think that he saw
Speaker 1: that that I wasn't into this stuff. And then what
Speaker 1: happened was I was still right out of college. I
Speaker 1: would produce commercials. I stopped doing that. I was doing
Speaker 1: short films for like Comedy Central, Like I did a
Speaker 1: three mockumentaries with Spinal like Spinal Tap, but with monkeys.
Speaker 1: You know, I was dressed up in like a red
Speaker 1: set and combra this monkey with blonde wig and everything,
Speaker 1: and you know, Jim Shard and my left foot was
Speaker 1: talking about my left paw and all this stuff. They're
Speaker 1: fun anyway. So after I did those, I had to
Speaker 1: go shoot the last commercial I ever did for Tom
Speaker 1: McGann shoes with the talking duck in California. And so
Speaker 1: this guy was talking to him line. I sort of
Speaker 1: knew it was a man. I didn't. We didn't really
Speaker 1: talk about that, but he said, I lived in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I want to meet you. And we talked on the phone.
Speaker 1: It was like the voice of God, you know. And
Speaker 1: and he told me his name, and I said, that's
Speaker 1: so funny. And I had actually just been in Italy
Speaker 1: and they had no books in English, and I ran
Speaker 1: out of my books, and so I read I never
Speaker 1: would read something like this. I read his autobiography and
Speaker 1: like and some of the stuff he was telling me
Speaker 1: on the phone, something really familiar. He said he lived
Speaker 1: on Mulholland and he really like Jews and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: He admired Jews. You know. I had one friend in
Speaker 1: la and he lived in Mulholland across and he's joke.
Speaker 1: He lived across the street from Maryland Brando, so I
Speaker 1: knew that road, and so I sort of guessed before
Speaker 1: he told me. It was sort of amazing. But he
Speaker 1: just was, you know, to know that I didn't have
Speaker 1: any kind of weird designs or anything like that, and
Speaker 1: I didn't care. We were real friends, and I would
Speaker 1: tell him when I thought this same we could do
Speaker 1: with any friend that I thought he was doing something,
Speaker 1: you know, on tooward and he would sit on the phone.
Speaker 1: He'd make calls to make me laugh as a British
Speaker 1: lady's maid, and my job was to not laugh so
Speaker 1: much as I blew it, you know, all the gas
Speaker 1: company or whatever it was. Really he was incredible and
Speaker 1: when I they're doing a film actually about him now,
Speaker 1: and he was so he knew so much about science,
Speaker 1: and he invented things, and he loved poetry and literature
Speaker 1: and he loved looking things up. He'd called me at
Speaker 1: three o'clock in the morning about Madame Chang, the Chinese pirate.
Speaker 1: You know, I can always go back to bed, so
Speaker 1: that wasn't a big deal. We'd liked talking. He'd analyze
Speaker 1: my voices, I got on the phone decide what my
Speaker 1: mood was when I answered how I said, hello, he
Speaker 1: must have been quite old when you met him. I
Speaker 1: don't really know. And he died while I was in
Speaker 1: Paris for the summer, unfortunately. But I think that I
Speaker 1: think that it was nice for him to be friends
Speaker 1: with somebody who he had pretty good sense, just liked
Speaker 1: him for him, and I had no idea as a
Speaker 1: famous person she was talking to him. I just I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm more impressed by this guy Anthony Dimasio or who
Speaker 1: writes Antonio or Antonio. Yeah, I'm reading Descartes whatever brain
Speaker 1: right now. And you know, and I'm more of a
Speaker 1: fangirl for people like that than I am for actress.
Speaker 1: Just a job, you know, and if they do it
Speaker 1: really really well, that's that's cool. But it's not I'm
Speaker 1: not any more impressed than I am the you know,
Speaker 1: I'm impressed by what you do and the way you
Speaker 1: look in very open minded ways, but rigorous scientific ways
Speaker 1: at different ways of intelligence and creativity. So and I
Speaker 1: basically in that way with all my friends, I have
Speaker 1: like a human crush on them. I think like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're you know, women. I think like, Oh, you're beautiful
Speaker 1: and you're smart, and you're doing such great writing. And
Speaker 1: you know, because my friends mostly are writers or professors,
Speaker 1: you know, I just am impressed by people as humans.
Speaker 1: Absolutely can we cover another domein of I found very
Speaker 1: interesting serious illnesses because there are lots of ways that
Speaker 1: as friends, we think that we're really helping people, right,
Speaker 1: and the way we say things and frame things. But
Speaker 1: you say that some of some of those things can
Speaker 1: actually backfire. Well, you're talking about when people want to
Speaker 1: help people who are sick. Yeah, I had a friend,
Speaker 1: Kathy's Sype, dear friend who died of lung cancer. And
Speaker 1: for example, with Kathy, you know, people people will say
Speaker 1: things when you're when you they hear about your diagnosis
Speaker 1: that are sort of horrible and and and that's that's
Speaker 1: a thing that's very human to do. You want to
Speaker 1: say something, and you were just reached for the thing.
Speaker 1: You think, like, oh, how great that yourself? And yeah,
Speaker 1: because chemo is making me throw up forty times a day,
Speaker 1: and that's not a good thing to say. And with Kathy,
Speaker 1: she believed in modern medical care. She had great doctors
Speaker 1: at Cedar Sinai, and but people persisted in sending me
Speaker 1: these like you know, she drinks the juice of twelve
Speaker 1: you know, mushrooms from the Tree of the like in
Speaker 1: this bog and then stands on her head for half
Speaker 1: an hour or so. You know, her lung cancer will
Speaker 1: just go away. I mean want I mean to tell
Speaker 1: her this, and it's like, here's a person who believes
Speaker 1: in science. Is just you know, you don't force this
Speaker 1: stuff on someone. And really, what people don't really realize
Speaker 1: is that when your friend is sick. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not very grown up. How do you tell somebody I
Speaker 1: was saying, you know in the book that that I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to say. I'm sorry I said this. You have
Speaker 1: a flat tire, So how is that appropriate if you
Speaker 1: have cancer? And I never really knew what to say,
Speaker 1: but what I did was show up. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Show the hell up, Bring a casser role, figure out
Speaker 1: what they need, you know, go to their pot dealer
Speaker 1: for them. Don't say The worst you can say is
Speaker 1: if there's anything you can do. This is like saying
Speaker 1: like buying like a sheep. You know, you say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go you figure out if they have
Speaker 1: a dog. I think they need dog. Food. Say I
Speaker 1: can go to the pet store, you know and pick
Speaker 1: stuff up for you, tell me what you need, or
Speaker 1: maybe they're too tired to have contact with you. Oh,
Speaker 1: and don't expect people to cancer to email you back
Speaker 1: or some other disease. Oh my god. It's hard enough
Speaker 1: for people in the best of hell to keep up
Speaker 1: with their email. You know. That's another thing, you know,
Speaker 1: find out, you know, call their family member, call a friend,
Speaker 1: say what do they need, and like help them do that,
Speaker 1: but really just show up. They don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about cancer, by the way, can't even want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. She talked about cancer all day with like
Speaker 1: doctors and nurses and people stabbing her with sharp sticks,
Speaker 1: you know, in medical facilities. She wanted me to come
Speaker 1: over so i'd sit with her and watch Everybody Loves Raymond. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that makes complete sense. Also, I want to talk about apologies.
Speaker 1: What are the four parts like of an apology? First,
Speaker 1: you know, you really have to recognize that you're wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is really important and you have to
Speaker 1: recognize and admit it to yourself. You have to be honest.
Speaker 1: And people think that apologizing is a sign of weakness,
Speaker 1: but it's really a sign of strength. So this is
Speaker 1: this is something where a lot of people go wrong,
Speaker 1: and so if you can do that, it's actually it
Speaker 1: cleans things up for both you and the person who is, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're wrong, very very important. Expressing remorse is very very
Speaker 1: important because if you aren't sorry that it happened, you
Speaker 1: know it's gonna happen again. You have to let them know,
Speaker 1: and you have to know let them know why you
Speaker 1: were wrong. You know, it's it's you know, not just
Speaker 1: I'm really sorry I'm wrong. You have to actually seem
Speaker 1: like it was a problem for you that you were wrong.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing is pledging that it won't
Speaker 1: happen again. Now, pledges they go over better if they
Speaker 1: come with cash. And I don't mean you're gonna bribe
Speaker 1: your friend, but for example, you know that if you
Speaker 1: do something to someone you're late and it screws up
Speaker 1: their dinner party or something like that, that you give
Speaker 1: them some kind of gift. You put out some money,
Speaker 1: you buy them some flowers, or you know, you spill
Speaker 1: something in their furniture. You you know, you offer to
Speaker 1: make good and maybe a good plus, so it's like
Speaker 1: good with a little extra on top. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you you know, if you did something somebody, buy
Speaker 1: them flowers. It's it's just it's putting out, It's it's
Speaker 1: putting your money where your mouth is, showing that it
Speaker 1: means enough to you to repair the friendship. You value
Speaker 1: it enough the friendship, the relationship to go out of
Speaker 1: your way to give them some you know, mending gift
Speaker 1: that's very important. And then you know, and then making amends,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and that's part of some of that.
Speaker 1: I sort of like, uh, you know, went into some
Speaker 1: of that just now with this, you know, and you
Speaker 1: should figure out, you know, how to make up for
Speaker 1: what you did to somebody, you know, figure it out.
Speaker 1: You and you can't unhurt a person's feelings. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing where it's like you can say I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and then you can say it again with flowers. You know.
Speaker 1: I call this actually in the book the Baker's Dozen
Speaker 1: of Reparations. Give them what you own plus a little
Speaker 1: extra on the top. As I was saying, it's like
Speaker 1: a goodwill surcharge. And actually, so we can't always make amends.
Speaker 1: And so I'm for finding yourself, Like if you do
Speaker 1: something rotten to somebody in traffic and you realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, that was not fair. They didn't deserve that.
Speaker 1: I had a bad day and you realize that. You know,
Speaker 1: I say, when you put some feel bad into the world,
Speaker 1: that you need to, even if you can't find that
Speaker 1: person they've driven away, you know, do something nice for
Speaker 1: somebody else, like buy a homeless guy a sandwich, you know,
Speaker 1: wash the elderly neighbors car, you know, do something. And
Speaker 1: I actually I have you know, talked about free speech before.
Speaker 1: When people are rude to me on the internet, you know,
Speaker 1: they write me and they say something rude, I will
Speaker 1: ask them to give money to the fire dot org,
Speaker 1: which is a free speech defending organization on campus. And
Speaker 1: sometimes people do and that just sort of rocks, you know,
Speaker 1: and it really does show they really are sorry, because
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're willing to put their money where
Speaker 1: their mouth is. So you're all about free speech, but
Speaker 1: you're not. You're not about someone free speeching on their
Speaker 1: cell phone when it's on speaker, right, that's not And
Speaker 1: so for example, I said, Rebecca Solman is a snibbling idiot,
Speaker 1: So you know that is not cool for me to say,
Speaker 1: like if you're in a grocery store or whatever. To
Speaker 1: give the grocery store example for me to just say
Speaker 1: to some person right off the bat. But she wrote
Speaker 1: a notp ed and I'm responding to her op ed
Speaker 1: in a funny way, you know. And so it's acceptable
Speaker 1: to have debate. But you have to debate. You know.
Speaker 1: My mother did this, you know, or she is, you know,
Speaker 1: criticizing some debating with once a moment about her political choices.
Speaker 1: And my mother, oh my god, she could like I mean,
Speaker 1: she's an amazing debater. She won debates in college, the
Speaker 1: University of Michigan. And I said to her, that's not fair.
Speaker 1: It's like debating with the bunny. You don't get to
Speaker 1: do that. You know, there has to be some sort
Speaker 1: of fair game. But cell phone conversation, I've been with you.
Speaker 1: It's drive a driven at eighteen Street cafe where they
Speaker 1: mercifully have a no cell phones policy. So I would
Speaker 1: get down because I'm tall. I'm tall, I read hair
Speaker 1: and I wear eye heels up but the shower, so
Speaker 1: I would bend down to their level so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be you know, intimidating an offha and say just whisper
Speaker 1: and smile and say excuse me. They have a no
Speaker 1: cell phones policy. They'd like you to take your calls outside,
Speaker 1: and people would usually do that because here's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Instead of telling them what to do, I am simply
Speaker 1: telling them a fact. When you tell someone what to
Speaker 1: do that they want to clabor you, they don't want
Speaker 1: to change. I'm telling them a fact, and I'm not
Speaker 1: doing it in a way that assaults their dignity, like hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I just shut or you know, or in
Speaker 1: a way that just intimates that they're rude. So this
Speaker 1: allows them to just be a person who wasn't mindful
Speaker 1: at the moment and to go outside. And they often
Speaker 1: mostly did that. And this is something I use in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood. I live in Venice, California. I'm very very
Speaker 1: close to the street. People come out here. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1: It's like we're not a Hollywood set people. These are
Speaker 1: actual real houses. And two in the morning, people in
Speaker 1: them are sleeping. That's why they're dark. People come out,
Speaker 1: They've opened their convertible top and they have one of
Speaker 1: those babulous sound systems and they will blast the hell
Speaker 1: a lot of that sound system. One two, in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like, and believe me, it's challenging
Speaker 1: to do this. But you go out and you say like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, excuse me, but we're really close to the
Speaker 1: property to the property line here, and actually we hear everything,
Speaker 1: you know, and people will then say I'm sorry if
Speaker 1: you come out and you say, like, what the hell
Speaker 1: were you thinking it two in the morning, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm thinking. Actually, I'm thinking, like, what was
Speaker 1: your mother doing with the sailors when she was supposed
Speaker 1: to be teaching you manners? If you say that to someone,
Speaker 1: they might shoot you. So whereas the music was just
Speaker 1: a problem before, then you become the problem. The noise increases,
Speaker 1: so you're not a problem for your neighbors too. You
Speaker 1: made things a lot worse. So this is a lot about,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff in my book is a lot
Speaker 1: about let's look at how we evolve. We evolved to
Speaker 1: defend against people cheating. And one important thing I say
Speaker 1: is that goodness is a form of theft. And this
Speaker 1: is important because we do not evolve around strangers, so
Speaker 1: we don't have you know, there's sort of a four
Speaker 1: or four error like you get on the internet, when
Speaker 1: it's like there's a stranger doing something to you. So,
Speaker 1: but the way to take action against them. We none
Speaker 1: of us like to be robbed. That's our cheeter detection module,
Speaker 1: you know, coming up. And so when we can see
Speaker 1: rudeness as sect like people the neighbor who plays your
Speaker 1: stereo really late, they're stealing your sleep. The person on
Speaker 1: a cell phone on the pharmacy line, you can't go
Speaker 1: anywhere else to get your pills, and not like you
Speaker 1: go to the grocery store. They're stealing your attention. You know,
Speaker 1: we're all real rude people are stealing your peace of mind.
Speaker 1: You know, it just makes life ugly and horrible. So
Speaker 1: if we understand that we're being robbed, we can get
Speaker 1: mad enough to stand up to what's effectively social thuggery.
Speaker 1: Social thuggery. Wow, fair enough your final chapter. Last question.
Speaker 1: You know your final chapters dedicate to ways you can
Speaker 1: make the world a better place for others, claiming that
Speaker 1: that's the legacy we leave behind after we die. What
Speaker 1: simple things can our listeners can my listeners do to
Speaker 1: leave a positive impact on the world. Oh, I love
Speaker 1: this question. This is great, this is your moment. It
Speaker 1: is well it's really important to me remember that the
Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness is the wrong way to going to
Speaker 1: go about getting it, and that what seems to be
Speaker 1: the case is that the way to be happier is
Speaker 1: to look for to inject meaning into your life. And
Speaker 1: believe me, you know, I mean, I'm libertarian and not
Speaker 1: some COMMI saying look, let's all wear paper shoes. You know,
Speaker 1: I give the ferrari to the goodwill. I'm not like that.
Speaker 1: I like if you have a ferrari and it makes
Speaker 1: you happy, But the thing is to have meaning, is
Speaker 1: to do kind of acts for others and really will
Speaker 1: be much happier. And there's an example in one of
Speaker 1: snie La Mursky's studies where she talks about ms pere
Speaker 1: counselors for MS for multiple sclerosis that they, you know
Speaker 1: this is a reason speak, but that they after a
Speaker 1: month of counseling other patients as volunteers, that they were
Speaker 1: like seven times globally happier than the people they counseled.
Speaker 1: And so true. So it is in your self interest
Speaker 1: to live meaningfully, and that means being bigger than just
Speaker 1: yourself giving to other people. It really really does feel
Speaker 1: good and this is very important going back to how
Speaker 1: we live in these bass stranger who has this makes
Speaker 1: us rude because we are around strangers all the time.
Speaker 1: We can do anything to them if we're rude. And
Speaker 1: so what's really powerful is to do good for others,
Speaker 1: but especially others who are strangers. It's really really important.
Speaker 1: And you can get the habit of this and you'll
Speaker 1: you'll feel so good. And this is I forget the
Speaker 1: guy's name, there's it's it's a classic social science paper
Speaker 1: referencing sala Olinski. Actually it's about small wins that you know,
Speaker 1: if someone says cure poverty, well, that's too big. So
Speaker 1: you just go like, oh, I'm gonna go watch the
Speaker 1: Honey Boo Boo Dashians on TV, I mean, or whoever
Speaker 1: you watch on TV, Jeopardy or something. But if someone says, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a homeless guy in your block, do you have
Speaker 1: anything your refrigerator you could give him? You can do
Speaker 1: that and that actually makes you feel so good. And
Speaker 1: if people will just try say that, you decide. I
Speaker 1: feel that basically that our cover charge for being a
Speaker 1: human and living in this world should be one kind
Speaker 1: of act to day. So if you try to do
Speaker 1: one kind of act to day, I would. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that everyone who does this, because this is
Speaker 1: you know, sort of born out in studies, that you
Speaker 1: will feel so good from that that you'll want to
Speaker 1: keep doing it. And then there's really wonderful research by
Speaker 1: Hate and Elgo, Jonathan Hate and Sarah Elgo that I
Speaker 1: reference in the book about how we are so inspired
Speaker 1: by other people doing good. We see them, we hear
Speaker 1: about them, even telling stories, even if you link to
Speaker 1: stories on the internet about people doing wonderful kind acts
Speaker 1: for strangers or people in need, that this this inspires
Speaker 1: people to do kind acts. So like the friend, like
Speaker 1: the stuff, my ex assistant and her girlfriend who bought
Speaker 1: this stranger and coat do these little kind accs, and
Speaker 1: you know what they are. Here's an example. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to be it's not self aggrandizing. It's just a
Speaker 1: thing that you notice these things. Okay, my car, I
Speaker 1: have a tiny hunt of insight from two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: It looks like it was parked in Appalachia for six
Speaker 1: months because I never get to the car wash. I
Speaker 1: barely leave the house anymore, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: am used to this thing of like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: driving somewhere and you think, like I have to pull over,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill someone and wash off your windshield. This
Speaker 1: woman stops, like six o'clock in the morning. She's doing
Speaker 1: the thing that I do with a plastic bag on
Speaker 1: her windshield. And I got like, oh my god, but
Speaker 1: I live here, so I go, I get wind as
Speaker 1: I bring it out here in paper towel, and she
Speaker 1: just was so grateful and happy. She was happy. You know,
Speaker 1: I gave her a bag to put the paper talent,
Speaker 1: so she went, there's a nice car, so it would
Speaker 1: soil the car. It's just little things like that. Notice
Speaker 1: what people need. Get in the habit of noticing strangers
Speaker 1: and their needs and doing a little things for them.
Speaker 1: Look for the person when you're pulling out of a space,
Speaker 1: starts to pull out of space, look around to see
Speaker 1: if there's somebody looking for a space, and tell them
Speaker 1: you're leaving as you're walking to your car. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Just those small things they make such a difference in
Speaker 1: both how you feel, how other people feel. And then ultimately,
Speaker 1: because this catches on as Sonya's research show, Sonya Lebermirski,
Speaker 1: you know three times more likely people were at this
Speaker 1: office to pay it forward, and this is when people
Speaker 1: they knew did kind ask them and it just so
Speaker 1: much more powerful when strangers do it. So if we
Speaker 1: all do that, it really is a way to make
Speaker 1: the world stop feeling like a vast strangerhood and feel
Speaker 1: like a just a really, really big neighborhood. Thank you, Amy,
Speaker 1: that was a great message to leave on. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking this time to be on my podcast,
Speaker 1: My Pleasure. I loved it. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you
Speaker 1: found this episode just as performing a thought permok you
Speaker 1: I did. If you don't have to read the show
Speaker 1: notes for this episode for your past episodes, you can
Speaker 1: go to the Psychologypodcast dot com Unum