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Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stup

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Speaker 1: works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Kristen and I'm Caroline, and let's talk about the title

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Speaker 1: of this episode. To kick things off, Caroline, Oprah wasn't

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Speaker 1: built in a day. No, No, This woman worked her

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Speaker 1: way up through failure, through sexual harassment, through people being

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Speaker 1: generally just a jerk and not understanding her true and

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Speaker 1: amazing skill set to be the amazing guardian angel that

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Speaker 1: I talk about in therapy and that my therapist raises

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Speaker 1: an eyebrow at me. But I'm like, no, sometimes I

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Speaker 1: prayed to Oprah. H. I don't see anything wrong with that.

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Speaker 1: I'm a secular American and I can praise Oprah. Oh.

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Speaker 1: I am just imagining a little Oprah shrine that you

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Speaker 1: have in your house that I really hope exists. If

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Speaker 1: it doesn't, just don't even tell me right now, let

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Speaker 1: me bask in my in my fantasy. Um, well, actually

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Speaker 1: I do. And it's in Uh it's in a bread box.

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Speaker 1: And I just opened the bread box and there's my

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Speaker 1: Opra shrine. And then she's saying, I love bread. It's

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Speaker 1: like a pop up book, but it's a pop up

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Speaker 1: bread boxes, her face pop out of its smiling live

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Speaker 1: your best life. I love bread, I love Oprah. Um

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Speaker 1: And funnily enough, when she got her second on airy

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Speaker 1: job that we're going to talk about more in just

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Speaker 1: a second. The promos for her debut were and I

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Speaker 1: and I kid you not listeners on busses and billboards.

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Speaker 1: I think they even had some on air spots asking

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Speaker 1: what is an Oprah? What is Oprah? And they had

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Speaker 1: no idea the question they were asking and the answer

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Speaker 1: it would become. Um, I know, a mega success, an inspiration,

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Speaker 1: a book club, maven, a car giving away, fantastic human,

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Speaker 1: a Michelle Obama friend. Yeah, hello, I mean no shade

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Speaker 1: to Gail. Gail came, of course, but floatas, I mean,

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Speaker 1: what a queen? What a queen? Um. Also, though, in

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Speaker 1: the spirit of transparency, we have to admit that, unfortunately

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Speaker 1: we are not the first ones to come up with

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Speaker 1: this phrasing of Oprah wasn't built in a day you,

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Speaker 1: I think for saw it on a T shirt right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I am currently as of this recording, awaiting the arrival

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Speaker 1: today in the mail of my Oprah Wasn't built in

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Speaker 1: a day T shirt from the company teas in the Trap,

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Speaker 1: and I recommend you all go over there look at

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Speaker 1: their amazing T shirts, mugs, toe bags, some they have

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Speaker 1: just you know, some pretty cool swag. And uh, I

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Speaker 1: saw the Oprah shirt and basically was like, I think

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Speaker 1: I waited a day because I was like, should I

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Speaker 1: spend more money on yet another T shirt? And then

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Speaker 1: twenty four hours later I was like, I was already

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Speaker 1: entering my credit card information. So yeah, thank you Teas

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Speaker 1: in the Drip, and thank you Oprah, really, you know,

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Speaker 1: thank you. Oh And we're talking about Oprah to kick

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Speaker 1: off this episode on failure, which which might seem like

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Speaker 1: an odd choice because is there really more of a

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Speaker 1: success than Oprah? I contend nay, because, as she talks about,

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Speaker 1: she had to go through one in particular, major flop

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Speaker 1: that was ultimately a stepping stone on her way to success.

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Speaker 1: And this is something that we hear about a lot

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Speaker 1: from really successful and really innovative people. Um And for instance,

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Speaker 1: the podcast episode that came out right before this one

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Speaker 1: talks all about women and inventing and patenting, and I

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Speaker 1: have a feeling that a lot of the folks we

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Speaker 1: talk about in that episode can definitely relate to the

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Speaker 1: importance of failure. And I gotta say personally, I am

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Speaker 1: only now in my early thirties starting to get more

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Speaker 1: comfortable with the prospect of failure and also processing my

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Speaker 1: own failures and not just putting on my blinders and

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Speaker 1: trying to moonwalk away from them. Yeah. I gotta say,

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Speaker 1: first of all, I've never seen you moonwalk, so we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about that later. You don't want to see it, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just fall over backward. It's more like just an

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Speaker 1: awkward backward gallop. Mind's more of an ashamed shuffle. The

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Speaker 1: shame show, do the shame show? Yeah. Um. I have

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Speaker 1: to say for this discussion today that we will deep

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Speaker 1: dive into is a continuation of our perfectionism episode, which

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Speaker 1: I know, based on your many many letters that you

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Speaker 1: wonderful people sent us, really resonated with you in the

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Speaker 1: discussion of tripping yourself up, being afraid of failing. Being

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Speaker 1: so smart and so accomplished and so skilled, whether it's

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Speaker 1: you know, writing or acting or art or whatever, sports

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Speaker 1: who knows, but not allowing yourself to go the distance

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Speaker 1: because you're so afraid of mucking it all up. And

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Speaker 1: so that's sort of gonna be the theme that runs

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Speaker 1: through this conversation too, and similarly to our perfectionism episode,

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Speaker 1: we're also, of course going to discuss the gendered aspects

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Speaker 1: of this, and I have to say, as long as

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Speaker 1: I've been doing stuff Mom never told you, and as

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Speaker 1: long as I've been a female human, a lot of

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Speaker 1: the points that we will address in this episode still

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Speaker 1: broke my brain in terms of thinking about my aversion

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Speaker 1: to failure. So I can't wait to dive into some

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Speaker 1: of this stuff with you. You and me both talking

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Speaker 1: about therapists like this is a huge issue for me

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Speaker 1: and something that I I hope I'm beginning to get

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Speaker 1: get better with. Well, yeah, I mean I, for instance,

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Speaker 1: I make the jokes sometimes of like, you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: not one of those try try again people. But I

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Speaker 1: had no idea how gendered that statement is, no idea.

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Speaker 1: I just thought that I was being silly and sarcastic

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Speaker 1: and self deprecating. But it turns out that there's a

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Speaker 1: little more to it feminine gendered. Yeah, okay, okay. Well,

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned, like, there is a big conversation, especially

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Speaker 1: in creative fields, around the importance of failure. You heard

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Speaker 1: a lot too in Silicon Valley and in science um iterate,

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Speaker 1: iterate it or rate is uh something that you will

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Speaker 1: probably here um in labs and startup offices and the like.

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Speaker 1: And as getting in Lickfield put it so perfectly over

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Speaker 1: at Courts, failure is in fashion. Oh yeah, fail fast

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Speaker 1: is Silicon Valley's motto. And this reminds me of one

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Speaker 1: bit in Lean In where Sheryl Sandberg talks about a

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Speaker 1: poster that's up in Facebook and probably many other Silicon

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Speaker 1: Valley offices that says, better done than perfect, just like

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Speaker 1: get over the idea of needing to achieve perfection, like

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Speaker 1: just execute it and then learn from it, um, which

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Speaker 1: to me makes me clutch my pearls a little bit

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Speaker 1: and say but but but well, yeah, I mean there's

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Speaker 1: just getting it done. And then there's that fear that well,

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Speaker 1: if I'm failing, I'm not doing, whereas a lot of

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Speaker 1: people would argue, no, failing is still doing. You're just

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Speaker 1: onto the next thing, right, And it's the most important

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Speaker 1: thing in all of ways that you can do, at

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Speaker 1: least according to a lot of successful people. UM. And

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Speaker 1: it is refreshing to hear, you know, it's definitely gotten

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Speaker 1: stuck in my head. If you are a fan of

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Speaker 1: Ted Talks at all. You probably heard a lot about

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Speaker 1: this too. But the question that we're really going to

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Speaker 1: dive into from there is whether that is easier said

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Speaker 1: than done for women and girls, because, like you mentioned, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: there is a lot of gendering that goes along with this.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of socialization that girls experience that might

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Speaker 1: make us more risk averse, or at least feel like

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Speaker 1: we should be more risk averse. Um. But it's not

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Speaker 1: to say that some women have not thrived in the

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Speaker 1: face of failure. Like there, I feel like there is

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Speaker 1: this like the one listical that is circulates around the

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Speaker 1: Internet and all sorts of pinterest infilo graphics of successful

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Speaker 1: people who failed first and the women's names that you

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Speaker 1: always see on it our J K. Rowling because of course,

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Speaker 1: she was rejected from more than a dozen publishers before

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Speaker 1: Harry Potter sold. Arianna Huffington likes to talk about how

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Speaker 1: her second book was rejected thirties six times, although I

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Speaker 1: would contend that if it's your second book, you've already

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Speaker 1: had your first book, like I mean, you're already successful.

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Speaker 1: But that we'll but we'll get to that in a

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Speaker 1: second too. And then you have a designer, Vera Whang,

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Speaker 1: who pivoted from figure skating to fashion because figure skate,

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Speaker 1: I think she might not have made the cut for

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Speaker 1: the Olympics back in the day. It's something like at

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Speaker 1: some point she hit her ceiling um and hopefully it

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Speaker 1: was not due to anything related to Tanya Harding. Well,

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Speaker 1: thank god she pivoted, because now my mother has so

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Speaker 1: much to talk about when she looks at magazines and

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Speaker 1: tells me what kind of wedding dress she's gonna buy me.

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Speaker 1: Vera Wang, Oh, I will get you that Vera Whang dress.

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Speaker 1: And I'm like, I've literally never said anything about a

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Speaker 1: wedding dress to you. But thanks so thank you Verywaying.

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Speaker 1: I'm glad you were successful in your second career. But also, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: the question that I really got stuck on is what

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Speaker 1: would the world, what would our lives be like if

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Speaker 1: Beyonce had given up after Girls Time lost on Star Search.

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Speaker 1: I know it's at the beginning of Flawless, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they lost a skeleton crew. Which have you heard

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Speaker 1: of skeleton crew, ladies and gentlemen, Well, probably yes, because

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Speaker 1: you've heard Flawless. But other than that, no, but she

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Speaker 1: and Kelly Rowland were both in Girls Time, and you know,

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Speaker 1: if if that had been it for Bay, where would

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Speaker 1: we be? Where would we be? And then of course

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Speaker 1: there's Oprah. I mean, we would have a world without

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Speaker 1: Beyonce if if she didn't try try again, And we

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Speaker 1: would also have a world where we did not know

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Speaker 1: the answer to what is an Oprah? I know? And

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Speaker 1: and just like so many amazingly successful people, Oprah oh,

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Speaker 1: she herself does have a failure quote. She says, there's

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Speaker 1: no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying

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Speaker 1: to move us in another direction. And she should know because,

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Speaker 1: as we made very clear at the top of the podcast,

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Speaker 1: she overcame a lot. In nineteen twenty two year old

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Speaker 1: Oprah jumps in her red cutlass and drives from Nashville, Tennessee,

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Speaker 1: to Baltimore to be at the co anchor on the

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Speaker 1: w jay Z nightly newscast with this guy Jerry Turner,

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Speaker 1: who is basically considered like the king of local news.

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Speaker 1: Was like Jerry Turner sounds like a real life Ron Burgundy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was a terrible human, is what it sounds like.

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Speaker 1: And he hated Oprah and he hated sharing the spotlight

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Speaker 1: with this new green uh well woman of color. Not

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Speaker 1: to confuse anyone, um, but yeah, he just he didn't

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Speaker 1: want to share the spotlight and he made things really

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Speaker 1: difficult for her. And Oprah ended up getting canned after

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Speaker 1: just more than seven months on April first nine, and

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Speaker 1: she was like, is this a April Fools joke? Right?

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Speaker 1: Because the way the station manager posed it to her

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Speaker 1: was classic office space style of you're not fired, we're

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Speaker 1: promoting you laterally to instead do these things that are

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Speaker 1: much less prestigious. Right. She was the person who would

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Speaker 1: come on during the break like in the Today Show,

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Speaker 1: the local anchor who gives you the news at the

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Speaker 1: top of the hour, the local news. So basically she

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Speaker 1: was completely invisible, right. And she, by her own admission,

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Speaker 1: is not a good newscaster. No, And okay, hello, this

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Speaker 1: is what I identified with so much when she admits like,

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Speaker 1: I'm not a great traditional journalist. I am something else.

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Speaker 1: I'm my skill set lies elsewhere I wanted to. I

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Speaker 1: want to help the people that I talked to. Um.

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Speaker 1: And you know, fast forward a couple of years and

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Speaker 1: that's what she's doing. She's running the Oprah Show after

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Speaker 1: a couple more stops, but she's running the Opra Show

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Speaker 1: and she's helping people and like that to me resonates

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Speaker 1: because it's like, ah, just because you failed at one

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Speaker 1: thing doesn't mean that there's not another door that's going

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Speaker 1: to open for you. Yeah, And speaking about that very

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Speaker 1: difficult time when she was in Baltimore, which is also

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Speaker 1: where she ended up meeting and befriending Gail King, who

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Speaker 1: I want to say might have been also working at

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Speaker 1: W jay z um jay Z w jy Z. I'm

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Speaker 1: just imagining it's jay Z and Beyonce's UH network, although

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Speaker 1: of course they'd never demote Oprah. But Oprah later said,

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Speaker 1: kind of reflecting back on that period, quote, I had

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Speaker 1: no idea what I was in for or that this

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Speaker 1: adult life. It shook me to my very core, and

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Speaker 1: I didn't even know at the time that I was

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Speaker 1: being shaken. And this is coming from a woman who,

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Speaker 1: even before she got to Nashville, had already survived a

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Speaker 1: lifetime's worth of abuse and throw you know, like ended

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Speaker 1: up moving out of her parents home and thrived in

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Speaker 1: school and made her way, you know, into the big

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Speaker 1: world and as immediately kind of knocked down, but she

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Speaker 1: gets right back up again. And now I'm kind of

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Speaker 1: quoting a Chumba Womba song and I'm not very happy

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Speaker 1: about it. I'm sure there was a whiskey drink involved,

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Speaker 1: probably probably a lot. Hopefully her and Gale just thrown

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Speaker 1: thrown a few back. And I'm sure that part of

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Speaker 1: what they were talking about was the humiliation that they

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Speaker 1: faced from not only people like a Jerry Turner, um,

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Speaker 1: but also just the sexual harassment that they had to

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Speaker 1: deal with. Oprah was even forced to babysit. Oprah being

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Speaker 1: forced to babysit for higher ups at the studio like that,

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Speaker 1: that just doesn't like, what a horrific way to try

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Speaker 1: to put someone in her place. Oh yeah, to make

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Speaker 1: her babysit for you, That's like, it's so insulting, abusive,

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Speaker 1: power much um. But she doesn't leave w jay Z

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Speaker 1: at that point. In August, she ends up co hosting

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Speaker 1: this new segment. People are talking with Richard Sheer, who

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Speaker 1: is delighted to co anchor with Oprah. It's much more

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Speaker 1: her style of more of a talk show than hard

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Speaker 1: news reporting. Um. And even though the Baltimore Sun television

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Speaker 1: critic at the time initially wrote it off um saying

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Speaker 1: that there was nothing much worth hearing or seeing. Jokes

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Speaker 1: on you, critic, because it ended up being successful and

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Speaker 1: it led to her move to Chicago, where she ended

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Speaker 1: up starting, of course, the Oprah and Free Show and

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Speaker 1: the rest of history. Yeah, look at how successful she

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Speaker 1: has been doing the thing that she is so good at,

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Speaker 1: being the helper, being that Oprah guardian angel and just

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Speaker 1: talking to people and listening to people. It's gives me chills. Well,

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Speaker 1: and it makes sense too that in that Harvard commencement

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Speaker 1: speech she describes failure is moving you in another direction,

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Speaker 1: because it took her failing in in that sense to

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Speaker 1: really learn, Oh, you know what, I'm I'm so not

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Speaker 1: into reporting the news. That is not my strong suit.

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Speaker 1: But I can do other things exactly. And so she

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Speaker 1: is a fabulous illustration of how failure is not necessarily failure,

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Speaker 1: that you can pivot and turn in a different direction

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Speaker 1: and find what works for you. But now we have

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Speaker 1: to ask when we talk about failure, and especially when

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Speaker 1: we hear about failure today in the more like Ted

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Speaker 1: Talkie sense of the word of embraced failure, run toward failure.

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Speaker 1: That's what you're gonna need to succeed. Like, what exactly

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Speaker 1: do we mean when we are talking about failure, Because

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Speaker 1: also on those types of listicles with J. K. Rowling

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Speaker 1: and Oprah, these people's failures led up to major successes.

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Speaker 1: But the failure that terrifies me is just the failure,

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Speaker 1: the banal failure of just really really just failing at life.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't sound so banal failing failing at life? What

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Speaker 1: did you fail? I fail? It's test? What did Christen fail? It? Life? Life,

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Speaker 1: top down, sideways, all of it. Yeah, all of the

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Speaker 1: little aspects of life that make up a day. There's

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Speaker 1: so much potential for for messing all of that up.

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Speaker 1: I I share I share your fear. And it's funny

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Speaker 1: because it's those little things that have the potential to

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Speaker 1: scare you, but that you also might not view in

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Speaker 1: yourself as oh, well, these just aren't important enough. It's

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Speaker 1: not like when I tripped and fell and dropped my

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Speaker 1: lunch and so I failed at eating lunch or something

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Speaker 1: like that doesn't add up to any great success. And

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Speaker 1: so over at Scientific American you have Miriam Zerringham, who

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Speaker 1: tried to launch this thing called science confessionals, with the

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Speaker 1: motivation of like, hey, there's a lot of failure and

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Speaker 1: try try again. In science, you know, you do experiments,

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Speaker 1: they fail, you move on to the next thing. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so she's like, let's empower ourselves and each other

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Speaker 1: by sharing our failures and and making them visible. You're

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Speaker 1: not alone. We all make mistakes or whatever. But nobody shared, right,

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Speaker 1: and no one said, well, I think she got a

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Speaker 1: few a few entries here and there, and even though

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Speaker 1: it was anonymous, the feedback she heard from a fellow

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Speaker 1: scientists who were hesitant to share was that their failures

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Speaker 1: weren't sexy enough, essentially like, oh yeah, my hypothesis was

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Speaker 1: just completely bunk. It wasn't that well. I was wrong

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Speaker 1: on this, but I pulled Thomas Edison and ended up

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Speaker 1: inventing a light bulb. So right, there's so many different

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Speaker 1: types of failures. And Stuart Firestein, who wrote Failure Why

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Speaker 1: Science Is So Successful, talks about good failures and he

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Speaker 1: refers to them as Stein failures because Gertrude Stein has

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Speaker 1: this quote of a real failure does not need an excuse,

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Speaker 1: it is an end in itself. And so he sort

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Speaker 1: of explores like what does that mean for a failure

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Speaker 1: to be an end in itself? And so, through his

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Speaker 1: exploration of what could Gertrude Stein possibly mean, he writes

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Speaker 1: that good failures are those that leave a wake of

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Speaker 1: interesting stuff behind ideas, questions, paradoxes, enigmas, contradictions. So not necessarily, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, having your mistake turn into a massive, massively

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Speaker 1: successful scientific innovation, but even opening the door to more

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Speaker 1: questions could be seen as a good failure, right because,

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Speaker 1: as Stein is talking about just quitting and stopping the

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Speaker 1: whole thing altogether, that's your failure, not stumbling perhaps on

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Speaker 1: or meandering on your way to getting to wherever it

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Speaker 1: is you want to go. Um and the concept of

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Speaker 1: grit and the importance of grit in order to process

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Speaker 1: that failure and keep moving and work toward a good failure,

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Speaker 1: as Fire steing Um terms, it is something that was

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Speaker 1: very scientific zitegeistie not too long ago with the publication

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Speaker 1: of Angela Duckworth's Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance

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Speaker 1: and which she talks about how resilience and passion are

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Speaker 1: the key ingredients of this thing called grit. And while

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Speaker 1: of course it takes more than grit to achieve success. Um,

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Speaker 1: that those are are really the core elements that help

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Speaker 1: us keep trying, you know, help us do the Thomas

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Speaker 1: Edison thing of finding ten thousand ways to fail before

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Speaker 1: you get to the right thing. Well, what's really fascinating

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Speaker 1: is to look at what failure is doing in our brains,

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Speaker 1: how we perceive it, what's happening to our brains when

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Speaker 1: we perceive failure. This is something that jonah Laire wrote

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Speaker 1: about over at Wired, which is kind of ironic now

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Speaker 1: considering the turn his journalistic career has taken. Well, wherever

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Speaker 1: he got this information from, it's very fascinating. Um. He

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Speaker 1: points to the anterior singulate cortex, which is a collar

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Speaker 1: of tissue located in the center of the brain, and

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Speaker 1: it's associated with the perception of errors and contradictions, and

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Speaker 1: he points out that neuro scientists often refer to it

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Speaker 1: as the O S word circuit. It's the thing that

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Speaker 1: lights up. Basically, when we see something that we know

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Speaker 1: is wrong, is a mistake, we recognize it as such.

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Speaker 1: So while we have that anterior singulate cortex that is

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Speaker 1: alerting us to hey, this is an error, this is

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Speaker 1: a mistake. Um, I wonder if I have a hyperactive

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Speaker 1: dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, which I'm sure is on the

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Speaker 1: minds of most modern women these days, because, as Lair describes,

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Speaker 1: this is the area of the brain. It's one of

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Speaker 1: the last areas of our brain in fact, to develop

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Speaker 1: in young adults, and it, as Lair puts, it suppresses

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Speaker 1: unwanted representation. So it's kind of like a delete key.

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Speaker 1: It's a thing of like, oh, let's just look over there,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I didn't fail because maybe that just

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Speaker 1: never happened. I feel like that it's sort of the

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Speaker 1: self delusion center of our brain, and that is the

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Speaker 1: thing to me that that kind of kicks up in

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Speaker 1: my past failure processing of you know what, we're just

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Speaker 1: you know, we're not just we're just gonna pretend like

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Speaker 1: it didn't have just like nope, which is which is

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Speaker 1: a definite coping mechanism. But it's not a good way

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Speaker 1: to learn from our failures and learn from our mistakes, right.

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Speaker 1: And there's even a term for this called hedonic editing,

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Speaker 1: which is essentially lying to yourself. Donic editing sounds like

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Speaker 1: what I do on a Thursday night when I'm trying

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Speaker 1: to edit an article. I've just got like plates of

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Speaker 1: cake and cookies and all sorts of booze and wine

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Speaker 1: all over the place. I want to come edit with you.

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Speaker 1: Sounds magical, a real buck at all, um, But this

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Speaker 1: also prevents us from learning. You know, Um, if we

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Speaker 1: are too concerned about really protecting our own self perception

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Speaker 1: to ourself, if that makes sense, Um, we're not gonna

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Speaker 1: have productive failure. And this stuff really starts from childhood,

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Speaker 1: these kinds of patterns, and they're very recognizable to when

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Speaker 1: you learn about them. And this is coming from you

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Speaker 1: see Berkeley, which broke down four major ways that children,

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Speaker 1: regardless of gender, children tend to process failure. Starting with

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Speaker 1: the success oriented kids. These are the kids with grit.

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Speaker 1: They are intrinsically motivated, they're passionate. They process failure with

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Speaker 1: what Carol Dwet terms a growth mindset of you know what,

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Speaker 1: this is just one step along the way. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: growth mindset essentially acknowledges that, you know, who knows what

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Speaker 1: amazing things will happen when I work hard practice, you know,

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Speaker 1: allow passion to dry of me. It's something It's where

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Speaker 1: you basically acknowledge like things are going to change I

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Speaker 1: might mess up, but I'm going to learn from you know,

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Speaker 1: we're all works in progress. It's a really great place

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Speaker 1: to be and maybe one day I can grow up

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Speaker 1: and have a growth mindset as well. Um. The second

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Speaker 1: type of failure processing is in the overstrivers and the

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Speaker 1: closet achievers. These kids avoid failure by succeeding, which sounds like, okay,

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Speaker 1: that's great, but the thing is they're working really, really,

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Speaker 1: really hard in the background to get there. Basically, so

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Speaker 1: they might say like, I don't have time to study

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Speaker 1: for this test. I might you know, I might do

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Speaker 1: really badly on this test, and then they end up

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Speaker 1: studying all night and they ace it, and that just

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Speaker 1: serves to reinforce like you're not good enough. You had

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Speaker 1: to study all night in order to succeed. To other people,

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Speaker 1: they're just like, oh, you must be really smart. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there's a failure avoiding, which, no,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't sound familiar. Why do you ask? Uh. These

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Speaker 1: are the kids who say, you know what, I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna not even worry about succeeding. UM, I don't want

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Speaker 1: my failure to be put on display. And so with

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Speaker 1: this type of failure processing, you get a lot of

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Speaker 1: that procrastination, maybe just not participating at all or opting

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Speaker 1: to pursue tasks that are nearly impossible because that's safer, right,

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Speaker 1: because if it's nearly impossible, if you fail, it's not

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Speaker 1: that much of a fall. Yeah, I am totally a

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Speaker 1: blend of an overstriver and a failure, wrote me and

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Speaker 1: drew eras to two and three. Maybe that's why we

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Speaker 1: get along so well, we're just constantly worried exactly. But

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Speaker 1: it's better to worry, you know, in someone's company, right,

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Speaker 1: you know. Uh. And then finally, though, we have the

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Speaker 1: failure accepting kids, and that sounds positive. However, it's not

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Speaker 1: so much because they internalize their failure failure accepting kids

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Speaker 1: and adults. Let's be honest. They process failure as a

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Speaker 1: direct reflection of their work, and when they achieve a success,

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Speaker 1: whether it's say getting a part in a play or

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Speaker 1: making a good grade, they feel like it's a coincidence.

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Speaker 1: So for the play it's like, well, you know, I

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Speaker 1: was the only one who tried out for that role,

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Speaker 1: or if it's an a it's like, well the teacher

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Speaker 1: graded on occur it's just a total fluke and um

425
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: the you see Berkeley Fix wrote that with kids in

426
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 1: this group, this fourth group, they prefer non academic avenues

427
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:46,719
Speaker 1: like sports or art. And my thinking about this was like,

428
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: well sports, God, no, I avoid competition and hate sports

429
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:53,879
Speaker 1: because I don't want to mess up or look stupid.

430
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:58,639
Speaker 1: But what they were saying, Hugh's closer to it's not

431
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 1: necessarily like I doubt myself in academics, so I'm going

432
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: to go out for the soccer team. It's more like,

433
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 1: what are you just naturally good at? Like I was

434
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 1: afraid of failing at athletics stuff, So I was much

435
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: more the art kid or the writing kid because that

436
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:15,679
Speaker 1: stuff just came more naturally to me. So when I

437
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: excelled at it, I was like, oh, yeah, it's fine,

438
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:21,240
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. So what does gender have

439
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:24,480
Speaker 1: to do with all of this? Answer in all caps

440
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 1: a lot. And we're going to get into all of

441
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: that when we come right back from a quick break.

442
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: As stuff Mom never told you, listeners know, some girls

443
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 1: like to play with dolls, some like to play sports,

444
00:28:42,320 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 1: and some like to do both. But one thing all

445
00:28:45,720 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: girls have in common is that once they reached the

446
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:53,240
Speaker 1: age of nine, their self esteem and confidence begin to drop.

447
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: Researches found they become less likely to try to take

448
00:28:57,040 --> 00:29:01,080
Speaker 1: risks to expose their vulnerability. So it's up to us

449
00:29:01,120 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 1: to make sure they keep nurturing their passions, whatever they

450
00:29:04,680 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: may be. Lego Play provides a great opportunity for kids

451
00:29:09,040 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: to build, rebuild, to create and discover. There are no

452
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: right answers. What she builds with Lego bricks is right always.

453
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:22,000
Speaker 1: Lego has something for every girl to build of all ages,

454
00:29:22,040 --> 00:29:26,040
Speaker 1: based on her interest, whether it's a Minecraft, a friends set,

455
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: are simply building with bricks you have at home. So

456
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 1: let's help girls break free from insecurity and embrace the

457
00:29:33,200 --> 00:29:36,800
Speaker 1: process of growth and discovery with all its highs and lows,

458
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: and remember that we are all a work in progress.

459
00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:44,880
Speaker 1: Lego wants kids everywhere to keep exploring, creating, discovering and

460
00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: building their world brick by brick, just like Caroline and

461
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 1: I do. Here on stuff Mom never told you, and

462
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: you can learn more all about how Lego is helping

463
00:29:55,280 --> 00:29:58,960
Speaker 1: kids and parents do that over at pinterest dot com

464
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: slash Lego. So the bottom line is from early childhood,

465
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:13,520
Speaker 1: girls are socialized to avoid risk taking, and there is

466
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: a ton of research to back this up, and we

467
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: should mention to you like this is a very Western

468
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 1: centric body of research and I would be curious to

469
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: see more of across cultural take on it. But if

470
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: we are looking at girls um here in the United

471
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:34,240
Speaker 1: States and in the westmore broadly, chances are parents are

472
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 1: going to uh caution their daughters to be careful more

473
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:41,600
Speaker 1: than they are going to caution their sons. It's called

474
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: the skin the effect. This is something we've talked about

475
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 1: several times on the podcast before, of like letting the

476
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: boy run off and figure things out for himself, and

477
00:30:50,560 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: if that involves falling down, well he'll learn from it

478
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: and he won't do it again next time if it

479
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 1: hurt him. Whereas they tend to be, parents tend to

480
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: be a little more careful with their girls. They warn

481
00:31:01,080 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 1: them about dangers more often, tell them not to climb

482
00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 1: to the highest rope or not climb to the highest

483
00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: part of the playground in case they fall, rather than

484
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: letting their little princess figure things out for ourselves. A

485
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: little princess. Not that there's hashtag not a princesses. I'm

486
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: not projecting that. I'm just saying that the parents who

487
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: might be considering their girl to be a delicate princess. Well,

488
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:28,760
Speaker 1: and my parents didn't consider me and my sister's delicate princesses.

489
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 1: But but I do think that we were similarly like

490
00:31:32,520 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: more cautioned than our brothers too, just not to hurt ourselves.

491
00:31:36,400 --> 00:31:39,479
Speaker 1: And I still have a major fear of hurting myself. Um.

492
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: I it's part of why I don't like heights a lot.

493
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:47,320
Speaker 1: Um and uh. There were a number of times during

494
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:51,200
Speaker 1: my childhood when if I hurt myself, I would not

495
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 1: try try again. That is why friends I am not

496
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,360
Speaker 1: a skateboardare now I and as what's funny? Has I

497
00:31:58,440 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: hurt myself so much as a child and I'm scared

498
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: to hurt myself? Do you know how scared? Name of knives?

499
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: It takes me forever to chop things for dinner. Yeah. Um.

500
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: But for a sense of the degree to which parents

501
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,479
Speaker 1: tend to do this probably subconsciously, I don't think that

502
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 1: parents are setting out to soften their girls. Um. Two

503
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:26,760
Speaker 1: separate studies found that parents socialized toddler girls three times

504
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:31,960
Speaker 1: more than boys toward avoiding injury, and they are four

505
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: times likelier to urge girls to be careful, even though

506
00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: boys have much higher rates of unintentional injury, probably because

507
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: they haven't been so conditioned to not get on tall

508
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: things on top above pea, gravel and such. Um. And

509
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:59,280
Speaker 1: when we look more at academia and hobbies and interests,

510
00:32:59,320 --> 00:33:01,800
Speaker 1: something that jump doubt to me is this question of

511
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: whether this even affects our intrinsic motivation as girls, if

512
00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: it even kind of puts some reins on that, because

513
00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 1: research also finds that girls are likelier to have their

514
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: autonomy and motivation threatened. And I have a feeling that

515
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:26,000
Speaker 1: that likely comes across in examples such as a teacher saying, oh,

516
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to go out there and

517
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:30,400
Speaker 1: get dirty with the boys. Oh well, do you really

518
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:32,160
Speaker 1: want to do that? I don't. I don't think other

519
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:35,040
Speaker 1: other little girls are are doing that, you know, just

520
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: kind of constantly being questioned if their interests lies outside

521
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: of our acceptable um our acceptable behavior for little girls. Yeah,

522
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:53,680
Speaker 1: And we read that it tends to be true that

523
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: boys efforts, regardless of the outcome, are praised more than

524
00:33:59,640 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 1: girls efforts, and so a way to counterbalance some of

525
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:07,560
Speaker 1: this gender division is to praise girls efforts just as

526
00:34:07,640 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: much even if they fall down, even if they fail

527
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:15,279
Speaker 1: and this kind of approach can really help foster that

528
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 1: growth mindset instead of the fixed mindset. And I mean,

529
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,160
Speaker 1: I had to have some real real talk with myself,

530
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: uh reading about the fixed mindset. It's basically the viewpoint

531
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: that your character, intelligence, and creativity are static. They don't

532
00:34:32,600 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: change their inherent Oh, little Caroline, you grew up and

533
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:38,759
Speaker 1: you were good at writing and art, Well, that's just

534
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:41,160
Speaker 1: because that was inherent, not because you worked at it

535
00:34:41,160 --> 00:34:44,719
Speaker 1: because you liked it, you know. Um. And it's the

536
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: view that basically your success is just an affirmation of

537
00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: that inherent skill or intelligence that you assume you just

538
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: lucked out with, and you avoid failure in order to

539
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 1: maintain that sense of being smart and skilled. Right, because

540
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:06,200
Speaker 1: this also speaks to our approach to our weaknesses. So

541
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: for me, one thing that kept coming to mind while

542
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: going over all of this research was how difficult ninth

543
00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: grade geometry was for me. It was my first year

544
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: outside of home school for starters, and the teacher I

545
00:35:20,680 --> 00:35:25,480
Speaker 1: had was phenomenal, but he was really really tough, and

546
00:35:25,520 --> 00:35:29,080
Speaker 1: there were things because of homeschooling that I had to

547
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:36,480
Speaker 1: play some catch up on really quickly, and I felt

548
00:35:36,880 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 1: so like such a massive failure anytime I got anywhere

549
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,080
Speaker 1: just like barely below an A, because I had a

550
00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: very fixed mindset about it of well, you know what,

551
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,880
Speaker 1: I'm just not good at math and I'm never going

552
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: to be good at math. And it turns out that

553
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:57,400
Speaker 1: with more of a growth mindset, the truth of the

554
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,600
Speaker 1: matter is, you can get better. And in fact, I

555
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,160
Speaker 1: did end up getting always in in all of my

556
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 1: math classes in high school hashtag humble bragg um. And

557
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 1: I mentioned that example because research has found that that

558
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 1: this growth mindset effect has been strong enough that women

559
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: in tough calculus classes who come at it with that

560
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:24,759
Speaker 1: growth mindset stick it out and fare better compared to

561
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 1: women with the fixed mindset. And that's controlling for the

562
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:34,359
Speaker 1: group's respective mathematics abilities. So I mean, it's I don't

563
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: want to say, like, if you just think hard enough,

564
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 1: then suddenly you will be, you know, a calculus star.

565
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: Obviously it takes work, but our mentality also has a

566
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 1: major impact on our performance and our resilience and those

567
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 1: things that it takes to process and push through stumbling

568
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: blocks or outright failures you And this ties back to

569
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that we talked about when it

570
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 1: came to well, hey, anytime we've ever talked about women

571
00:37:06,080 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: in the workplace, but also our imposter syndrome episode and conversations,

572
00:37:10,239 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: because as you've probably read and heard multiple times, women

573
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 1: tend to wait to apply for a job or promotion

574
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,399
Speaker 1: until they feel on qualified. And I mean, even if

575
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 1: we remove the research and look just anecdotally, like how

576
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: many female friends and colleagues have I heard say this,

577
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 1: Like I didn't feel totally um prepared for that job description,

578
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:36,959
Speaker 1: so I just didn't apply when like, oh my god,

579
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:38,680
Speaker 1: but it's so much more in line with your interests

580
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:42,280
Speaker 1: or it offers so much more money compared to dudes

581
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: who tend to, according to the research, apply for a

582
00:37:45,719 --> 00:37:51,640
Speaker 1: job when they are qualified. Yeah, and they often get

583
00:37:51,640 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: the jobs in promotion with the idea of like, well,

584
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: I'm going to learn on the job. I'm going to

585
00:37:56,480 --> 00:37:59,439
Speaker 1: you know, get acclimated to this new environment on the job.

586
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,400
Speaker 1: I don't need to be literally born for this job.

587
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:07,480
Speaker 1: And that starts well before we even get into the workplace.

588
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 1: Just generally speaking, girls are likelier to give up if

589
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:15,520
Speaker 1: we feel like we aren't going to ace something. And

590
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 1: I can relate to that. You know, there's still that

591
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 1: fear of it's not It's like we conflate not being

592
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:26,759
Speaker 1: perfect with that being failure, which is oh, such a

593
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:29,320
Speaker 1: such a dangerous mindset. And I just say that because

594
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:33,080
Speaker 1: I've lived in it for a good part of my life. Um,

595
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:36,680
Speaker 1: and that even applies to women who are smart enough

596
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:42,000
Speaker 1: to get into Harvard. So an economist, Claudia Golden, was

597
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:46,360
Speaker 1: teaching at Harvard, and she was really mystified as to

598
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,720
Speaker 1: why there was this three to one ratio of guys

599
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 1: to girls in her ECON majors once who made it

600
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: through the majors, because in the intro class there it

601
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:02,280
Speaker 1: was closer to fifty fifty. So she did some research

602
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:06,120
Speaker 1: on her classrooms and found that female students who earned

603
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:09,040
Speaker 1: just below an A, not even failing the class, just

604
00:39:09,080 --> 00:39:14,640
Speaker 1: below an A in an introductory ECON course, those women

605
00:39:14,680 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: were half as likely to complete the ECON major compared

606
00:39:19,320 --> 00:39:23,319
Speaker 1: to the guys who were making bees, who were just

607
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:28,240
Speaker 1: as likely to continue on with their major. That's crazy.

608
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I got a see in science in

609
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 1: high school and I still I still liked chemistry. I

610
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:39,680
Speaker 1: just wasn't any good at it. Well, but you certainly

611
00:39:39,680 --> 00:39:42,319
Speaker 1: weren't going to be a chemistry major. No, you know,

612
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:45,360
Speaker 1: I mean that's the thing where it's like the prospect

613
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:52,920
Speaker 1: of failure stymying your potential passion for chemistry. Say yeah, no,

614
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:58,399
Speaker 1: I was definitely not cut out for kim um. And

615
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: you know, again, going back to are imposter syndrome conversations

616
00:40:03,120 --> 00:40:07,359
Speaker 1: from the past, women are more likely to internalize they're

617
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:13,319
Speaker 1: perceived failures or or stumbles, whereas men are generally more

618
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 1: likely to say, well, that was a hard test or

619
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: that was a hard professor or something along those lines.

620
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: And this also relates to conversations we've had around the

621
00:40:23,560 --> 00:40:31,839
Speaker 1: stereotype threat and uh, this phenomenon that occurs particularly in science, technology, engineering,

622
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 1: and math courses, whether we're talking about college or down

623
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: to like elementary middle in high school, where if you

624
00:40:40,200 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 1: walk into a classroom having internalized the stereotype that you,

625
00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:49,440
Speaker 1: whatever your identity is, is just not good at whatever

626
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:56,280
Speaker 1: this subject is, regardless of your actual aptitude, you perform worse.

627
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:59,719
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of these self fulfilling prophecies. But

628
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: the thing is, though with all of these like dismal

629
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: study findings that are very broadbrush, the takeaway starts to

630
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,880
Speaker 1: seem like, well, gosh, girls are just kind of pathetic.

631
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: But here's a thing there layers to this, because even

632
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:21,120
Speaker 1: when you take all of the risks necessary and all

633
00:41:21,200 --> 00:41:26,280
Speaker 1: experience all the disappointments necessary to reach that C suite,

634
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:31,520
Speaker 1: when you become Marissa Meyer, say, or a Mary Barra

635
00:41:31,760 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: over at GM, that does not guarantee that you are

636
00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:40,400
Speaker 1: home free because of something called the glass cliff. And

637
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 1: this is where stuff really starts to get twisted and

638
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,120
Speaker 1: why perhaps our fear of failure does seem to be

639
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:54,040
Speaker 1: so ingrained in women. So the glass cliff is this

640
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:57,320
Speaker 1: term that was coined by Michelle Ryan and alex haslum

641
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: Over at the University of Exeter to basically describe how

642
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:08,760
Speaker 1: successful women get to a certain point and are elevated

643
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: to these positions, uh where they're kind of set up

644
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 1: to fail. Yeah, I had read about this concept. I

645
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: had not heard the term the glass cliff, but you

646
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: can kind of imagine it being exactly what it sounds.

647
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 1: So many sharp edges, so many sharp edges. I just

648
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:29,120
Speaker 1: picture like slipperiness, which I tend to slip and trip

649
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:31,600
Speaker 1: very easily anyway, So put me on a glass cliff

650
00:42:31,640 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: and it's just a nightmare. Not that I'm trying to

651
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:36,560
Speaker 1: put myself on the same level as a Marissa Meyer,

652
00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 1: but basically here's what it breaks down to. Um, maybe

653
00:42:42,200 --> 00:42:44,880
Speaker 1: a company isn't doing well, it's failing, it's going bankrupt

654
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:49,160
Speaker 1: or whatever, and it has been traditionally led by a man.

655
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:53,760
Speaker 1: Uh well, let's put in a woman or a person

656
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: of color, basically someone who's not the white man who's

657
00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:00,239
Speaker 1: historically led this company, and see if this person can

658
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 1: do better. But the thing is the person is now

659
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 1: helming a sinking ship and gets blamed for the incompetency

660
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: that most likely preceded them. Right. It's like, you know,

661
00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:18,400
Speaker 1: for instance, President Obama coming into the White House and

662
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 1: inheriting a giant mess that he is often just blamed

663
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 1: for it, even though it's it's a situation um that

664
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 1: was set up, you know, before he even got there.

665
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 1: And this bears out in studies as well, which really

666
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:42,240
Speaker 1: show our unconscious biases. So some research that was reported

667
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 1: on in the Harvard Business Review found that if you

668
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:51,080
Speaker 1: have a fictional company that's thriving and it's being led

669
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 1: by either a woman or a man, doesn't really matter.

670
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 1: The students aren't compelled to make any leadership change, why

671
00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 1: would you the company's thriving, it's totally fine. If yeah,

672
00:44:01,960 --> 00:44:04,319
Speaker 1: if a woman's running a company and it's doing well,

673
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 1: totally cool. And they also though perceived stereotypically male leadership

674
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: traits in this thrive scenario as being more valuable things

675
00:44:15,280 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 1: like competitiveness and decisiveness. So that's not really news. But

676
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:23,960
Speaker 1: if you flip the script and this fictional company is

677
00:44:24,000 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: suddenly in crisis, that's when we prefer stereotypically female strengths

678
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 1: like communication and our ability to encourage others to step

679
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:44,120
Speaker 1: into a leadership role. So it's it's funny to see

680
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:51,600
Speaker 1: how um we are we want women in a crisis. Basically, yeah, women,

681
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: people of color, someone who doesn't look like that traditional boss.

682
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:59,279
Speaker 1: But then we use what in some cases is an

683
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: inevitable failure of a company or a department to highlight

684
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:08,239
Speaker 1: what we perceive as like an assumed lack of what

685
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,760
Speaker 1: success or lack of um that women aren't good leaders.

686
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 1: Look at her, why wish? Why should we put another

687
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:19,200
Speaker 1: woman in the CEO chair if they keep failing well,

688
00:45:19,239 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: and she's also especially if you are at a level

689
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:26,239
Speaker 1: of say Mary Barra at General Motors or mersa maer Yahoo,

690
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:31,400
Speaker 1: you are going to receive so much more scrutiny to

691
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:35,760
Speaker 1: just by virtue of your gender, since you are replacing

692
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 1: the dude. You know, it's like, oh well, what what

693
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:40,960
Speaker 1: what's the woman going to do in this scenario? And

694
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: this is one penalty that's meal research has uncovered for

695
00:45:47,880 --> 00:45:52,000
Speaker 1: people in what are called gender incongruit fields. So say

696
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,439
Speaker 1: a female mechanic or a male nurse, people in jobs

697
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: that we normally wouldn't expect them to be in. Those

698
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:01,839
Speaker 1: folks are judged more harshly less competent when they make

699
00:46:01,880 --> 00:46:07,759
Speaker 1: mistakes compared to their gender congruent colleagues. So you go

700
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 1: to a woman mechanic and she screws up your car,

701
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,000
Speaker 1: You're going to think that she's far more incompetent than

702
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:18,279
Speaker 1: and probably attribute some of that to her gender than

703
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 1: if he took your car to a mail mechanic and oh, well,

704
00:46:21,600 --> 00:46:23,759
Speaker 1: of course, you know, he just screwed up the car,

705
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,319
Speaker 1: because not all mechanics are great hashtag no mechanics. I

706
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:29,480
Speaker 1: mean it goes back to inherent bias of like see

707
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:32,320
Speaker 1: I knew it a woman mechanic, of course she screwed

708
00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: it up. Or a male nurse. Of course, he's not

709
00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: a sensitive and attentive to detail. And I mean, these

710
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 1: things are nonsense, But we just have all of this

711
00:46:40,320 --> 00:46:44,239
Speaker 1: stuff literally and figuratively in our brains that we are

712
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:47,879
Speaker 1: working with. And to add a whole other layer to this,

713
00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:52,600
Speaker 1: which I was not expecting going into this research on failure,

714
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:58,239
Speaker 1: is kind of adding some nuance to this whole thing

715
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:01,840
Speaker 1: of you know, women and the so called confidence gap

716
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 1: and how you know, girls just need to kind of

717
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:08,640
Speaker 1: bootstrap buck up, get confident, raise your hands, get passionate,

718
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:15,840
Speaker 1: et cetera. Take those risks, fail more often. Okay, but

719
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:21,440
Speaker 1: that is harder to do when you are not a

720
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:25,840
Speaker 1: white dude. Like this whole Silicon Valley, particularly the Silicon

721
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: Valley ethos of fail fast, fail hard, I would argue,

722
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 1: and other people would argue, is a product of white

723
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:37,920
Speaker 1: male privilege. And wow, do I sound like a feminist

724
00:47:38,000 --> 00:47:42,080
Speaker 1: or what? Um? Because I mean think about Steve Jobs

725
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: or Steve JEWORBS as I like to call him, for

726
00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: really no good reason. Um, he's kind of the paragon of,

727
00:47:50,200 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 1: you know, the Gospel of failure, saying things along the

728
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:56,160
Speaker 1: lines of you gotta be willing to fail if you're

729
00:47:56,200 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 1: afraid of failing, you won't get very far. And that's

730
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:02,399
Speaker 1: soup or true, you know, And and it's so true

731
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:07,160
Speaker 1: in fact, that there's a whole lexicon of buzzwords that

732
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:13,440
Speaker 1: you'll now hear um in offices, especially in the startup world,

733
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:17,080
Speaker 1: where you want to have a soft landing that's failing

734
00:48:17,120 --> 00:48:22,080
Speaker 1: gently without any career harm. Sounds really comforting, It really does. Yeah,

735
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 1: I would like a mattress that can give me a

736
00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: soft landing. You want to fail harder, fail faster. There's

737
00:48:29,080 --> 00:48:32,319
Speaker 1: even a failed con that I believe. It's like a

738
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:36,759
Speaker 1: it's a technology conference, you know, celebrating like information innovation

739
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: and all of the failure that it takes to do that.

740
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:42,360
Speaker 1: And then you also have this concept of failing upward,

741
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:45,799
Speaker 1: and this is this is a failure that's totally not

742
00:48:45,840 --> 00:48:49,360
Speaker 1: failure at all. Failing upward means failing with an immediate

743
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:54,279
Speaker 1: career upside. And I just wonder how realistic that is

744
00:48:54,960 --> 00:48:57,160
Speaker 1: for a whole lot of women and people of color.

745
00:48:57,520 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: How do you fail? How do you reliably fail up? Yeah?

746
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,360
Speaker 1: And part of this failure conversation that's like like an

747
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:08,840
Speaker 1: aspect of failure that's taken for granted is like, Oh,

748
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 1: you're going to fail, but you know keep going. Well,

749
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 1: what if you don't have the money or what if

750
00:49:13,840 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 1: you don't have the people believing in you the experience? Uh. Basically,

751
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:20,200
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to get at is like, what if

752
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:21,880
Speaker 1: you're not already a white guy with a lot of

753
00:49:21,880 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: money and a really broad, strong network of of colleagues

754
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:28,399
Speaker 1: who will support you. What if you're a first time

755
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:30,799
Speaker 1: or into this realm whatever it is. Maybe it's tech,

756
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:36,440
Speaker 1: maybe it's writing a book, maybe it's whatever. But um,

757
00:49:36,800 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: one aspect again, like you, I was really surprised to

758
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:43,879
Speaker 1: read about and I shouldn't have been, again with all

759
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:45,800
Speaker 1: that we've ever talked about on this podcast, but I

760
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: was like, of course, of course the failure conversation is

761
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: one of privilege, right. I mean Jessica Lahy who wrote

762
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: a book called The Gift of Failure UM that was

763
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:00,080
Speaker 1: really popular. I want to say. It came out in

764
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,360
Speaker 1: she talked to The New York Times about how white

765
00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 1: men with connections to capital are the best equipped to

766
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:12,040
Speaker 1: fail because the stakes are the lowest for them. Really. UM.

767
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 1: In the same article, Camille Fournier, who is an engineer

768
00:50:16,680 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: and the former CTO of Rent the Runway talked about

769
00:50:21,440 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: how celebrating failure is quote an inherently privileged concept, and

770
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:29,799
Speaker 1: as I started reading that article, like light bulbs just

771
00:50:29,840 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: started going off, like you said, of oh, oh, of

772
00:50:32,680 --> 00:50:36,919
Speaker 1: course that's why. And also explain to me why I

773
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 1: have always had a little bit of a side I

774
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:45,480
Speaker 1: for the whole um digital media fail culture of like

775
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: I get it in my head, but something there's something

776
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 1: just slightly off. It's like it's like weirdly fetishized, and

777
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:57,040
Speaker 1: like I get, I get normalizing failure. That's a positive thing,

778
00:50:57,280 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 1: normalizing failure, learning from it. Yes, that's all positive, and

779
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,520
Speaker 1: I encourage that in others and myself. But the whole

780
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: like tech bro love for failure, like not everybody has

781
00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:12,319
Speaker 1: the luxury of getting up again, you know. And if

782
00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 1: that is in fact the path to innovation, which it

783
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:20,319
Speaker 1: really is, then the question we should be asking is

784
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:24,440
Speaker 1: how can we make it safer for people to fail,

785
00:51:24,520 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 1: regardless of their identity that they are bringing into this space.

786
00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,160
Speaker 1: And of course that's connected to all sorts of diversity

787
00:51:32,239 --> 00:51:37,759
Speaker 1: issues within um Silicon Valley specifically in this conversation, but

788
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 1: as Tanahassee Coates wrote about a few years back, in

789
00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. This also relates more broadly, um, when we

790
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: aren't speaking precisely about failure, but more um the how

791
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:56,640
Speaker 1: the stakes of failing and perception do differ based on

792
00:51:56,680 --> 00:52:01,440
Speaker 1: your identity. Um. He rejects the whole twice as good

793
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: notion that asks in the example he gave of, you know,

794
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:08,799
Speaker 1: how did Jackie Robinson managed to achieve greatness in the

795
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: face of racism? And Coats is like, no, like, we

796
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:15,440
Speaker 1: don't need to find exceptions to the rule to like

797
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:20,400
Speaker 1: make us feel okay. Rather, the more compelling question is

798
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 1: to ask, well, what could we do? What could he

799
00:52:22,640 --> 00:52:28,200
Speaker 1: have done if racism hadn't existed? And because he's such

800
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: a brilliant writer, Um, I would like to quote him

801
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:36,040
Speaker 1: directly because I don't want to mangle tanahassy Coats. Um.

802
00:52:36,120 --> 00:52:37,799
Speaker 1: And and just for a little bit of background, he

803
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:43,320
Speaker 1: was writing this in after the Academy Awards when Kim Novak,

804
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:46,719
Speaker 1: who is uh an actress from more the classic era

805
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 1: of Hollywood, showed up to the awards ceremony and she

806
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: had a lot of visible plastic surgery, and the Internet,

807
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:58,480
Speaker 1: of course like ripped her apart, and um it was

808
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:03,680
Speaker 1: incredibly sexist. So Tana Hausy Coats rights. We should probably

809
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:07,439
Speaker 1: stop bragging about Jackie Robinson and remember that he died young.

810
00:53:07,920 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 1: We should probably cite Ginger Rogers mostly as damning evidence,

811
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:14,279
Speaker 1: and that of course is going to the quote of

812
00:53:14,360 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 1: Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astare did, button heels and backwards,

813
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:20,400
Speaker 1: and he goes on to say, we comfort ourselves with

814
00:53:20,440 --> 00:53:26,440
Speaker 1: individuals who get over ignoring the broad masses who necessarily cannot.

815
00:53:26,840 --> 00:53:29,280
Speaker 1: I think we should pause before noting that Sally Field

816
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: is quote aging well, most of our fellow human females

817
00:53:33,080 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 1: will not. That's because the very notion of aging well

818
00:53:35,719 --> 00:53:38,600
Speaker 1: is riven with all our notions of who owns their

819
00:53:38,640 --> 00:53:41,239
Speaker 1: body and who does not. And I know that that

820
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:44,840
Speaker 1: seems perhaps tangential to this question of how do we

821
00:53:44,920 --> 00:53:48,440
Speaker 1: process failure? But I think it's so important for us

822
00:53:48,520 --> 00:53:54,200
Speaker 1: to realize that there are elements beyond our gender, institutional

823
00:53:54,280 --> 00:54:00,600
Speaker 1: and socialized elements of really a patriarchy that also tribute

824
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 1: to this pattern. What a good point. I think that

825
00:54:03,680 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 1: that's so insightful, um, And I think it is worth

826
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 1: pointing out that, UM. While it is important to be

827
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:19,040
Speaker 1: you know, gutsy and blow past fear individually to succeed

828
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:22,040
Speaker 1: in your own life or or what have you. UM

829
00:54:22,080 --> 00:54:26,080
Speaker 1: that that won't end those institutional forces. It's the similar.

830
00:54:26,120 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 1: It's similar to what you hear when you talk about, oh,

831
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:32,160
Speaker 1: well you do have a Marissa Meyer who rose to

832
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 1: the top, or a Cheryl Sandberg or whoever. Um. But

833
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:38,440
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that sexism is fixed just because you

834
00:54:38,520 --> 00:54:42,600
Speaker 1: have a handful of of women leading big departments or

835
00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:45,359
Speaker 1: big companies. Well, especially when you keep in mind that

836
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:47,879
Speaker 1: those examples are white, you know, and not to say

837
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: that it's only white women who are succeeding, but certainly

838
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:57,640
Speaker 1: opportunity is differs depending on identities. And to that point,

839
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:02,280
Speaker 1: I would like academia to also catch up UM from

840
00:55:02,600 --> 00:55:07,799
Speaker 1: our digging that we did. There is scant information on

841
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: how all of this breaks down when you look at

842
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:15,080
Speaker 1: low income kids or single mothers, women of color, people

843
00:55:15,080 --> 00:55:18,920
Speaker 1: who generally have less room in their lives for risk.

844
00:55:19,320 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: I mean, for me personally, growing up in a lower

845
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:27,839
Speaker 1: income household feeds one hundred and ten per cent into

846
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 1: my fear of failure in the way that that has

847
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 1: influenced my career choices. So as I was reading a

848
00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:39,760
Speaker 1: lot of this about gender as a woman, I was like, Okay,

849
00:55:39,760 --> 00:55:41,919
Speaker 1: I get you here, but what about this other thing?

850
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 1: You know there, there's so many other factors going into that.

851
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, there are ways that we can

852
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:54,640
Speaker 1: fail better, and we can kick off this segment by

853
00:55:54,760 --> 00:55:59,760
Speaker 1: quoting Amy Poehler perhaps Yeah the fabulous st Amy says,

854
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 1: the question you have to ask yourself is how do

855
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,440
Speaker 1: you want to fail? Do you want to fail in

856
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: a way that feels like it respects your tastes and

857
00:56:08,360 --> 00:56:12,520
Speaker 1: value system? Now? What does what does that mean? So?

858
00:56:12,840 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 1: I think Amy Poehler is saying, uh, do you want

859
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:18,560
Speaker 1: to have a good fail or do you want to

860
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:22,120
Speaker 1: pretend that it never existed and probably go nowhere? You know,

861
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:26,080
Speaker 1: because it's a very bold choice to fail in a

862
00:56:26,120 --> 00:56:29,239
Speaker 1: way that respects your taste and value system. You know,

863
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:32,680
Speaker 1: because that means that you are willing to even go

864
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 1: for it, and that if something doesn't work out, it's

865
00:56:37,160 --> 00:56:41,800
Speaker 1: not because um, you made some kind of foolish mistake

866
00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:48,040
Speaker 1: or you compromise something. It's because you tried. And the

867
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:50,360
Speaker 1: fact of life is not everything works out. Yeah, you

868
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:52,839
Speaker 1: went after the thing you wanted and did the thing

869
00:56:52,920 --> 00:56:55,680
Speaker 1: that you wanted to do, and maybe you failed. Sure,

870
00:56:55,800 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 1: but at least you did it in your style exactly.

871
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 1: I failed authentically. That's like the title of a book.

872
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:08,279
Speaker 1: I feel like authentic failure should be if it's not already. UM.

873
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 1: But we do have some quick hit tips to offer,

874
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:16,240
Speaker 1: starting with Tim Hartford, who is an economist. He also

875
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 1: wrote a book called adapt that's all about this um

876
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:26,280
Speaker 1: and some suggestions that Hartford offers for really cultivating better

877
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:30,160
Speaker 1: failure is to first of all, try new things, give

878
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:34,520
Speaker 1: things the college. Try. Are we sure? Yes? Because you

879
00:57:34,640 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 1: never know until you try. And I can hear my

880
00:57:38,640 --> 00:57:41,120
Speaker 1: mother's voice piping up in my head being like, well

881
00:57:41,240 --> 00:57:44,760
Speaker 1: with you know you don't have to try everything, okay

882
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:52,000
Speaker 1: within reason um. And then you can also experiment with

883
00:57:52,360 --> 00:57:57,360
Speaker 1: survivable failure to kind of condition yourself for failure when

884
00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 1: the stakes are not feast or famine. So in my

885
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:03,920
Speaker 1: creative life, one thing that has been helpful for me

886
00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 1: is participating in literary events in Atlanta where we live,

887
00:58:10,720 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 1: where it forces me to write something and presented in

888
00:58:14,680 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: front of an audience, get vulnerable and nothing is at

889
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:23,640
Speaker 1: stake except for my ego and fair listeners. She is

890
00:58:23,680 --> 00:58:26,360
Speaker 1: so funny when she does it on on purpose, not

891
00:58:26,480 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 1: like no one's laughing at her. She's she's truly truly talented,

892
00:58:31,480 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 1: thank you. Um. Well, and that goes for the next

893
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:40,520
Speaker 1: point of getting feedback, but also taking the harsh feedback

894
00:58:40,520 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 1: and understanding how you can take the venomout, so to speak,

895
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:47,760
Speaker 1: because peeps is harsh. Well, and you don't have to

896
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:50,680
Speaker 1: take everything personally, which is which is something that is

897
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:54,920
Speaker 1: very hard. It's something it's very hard for me, and

898
00:58:54,960 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: it's something that I have to constantly remind myself about.

899
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,800
Speaker 1: And um, you know, and and there's a difference like

900
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:03,440
Speaker 1: maybe you ask for feedback, so maybe you're more prepared,

901
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:07,360
Speaker 1: uh if you receive negative feedback, um, But if someone

902
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:13,280
Speaker 1: just offers unsolicited feedback, um, it can be helpful to

903
00:59:13,280 --> 00:59:16,480
Speaker 1: try to look at it as genuinely helpful in a

904
00:59:16,520 --> 00:59:19,600
Speaker 1: way to build future successes, rather than just saying I

905
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 1: must be such a failure if they're offering slightly negative feedback. Well,

906
00:59:24,360 --> 00:59:28,560
Speaker 1: especially because in online comment culture, a lot of the

907
00:59:28,600 --> 00:59:32,600
Speaker 1: criticism is really personal, so it's an extra challenge to

908
00:59:32,920 --> 00:59:38,640
Speaker 1: depersonalize personalized criticism. Yeah, that's why, well, that's why I

909
00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 1: appreciate so much the thoughtful emails we get when they

910
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:46,160
Speaker 1: are offering a correction or criticism, and they are willing

911
00:59:46,200 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: to act like humans and take into account that we

912
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:51,560
Speaker 1: are also humans and that we're not perfect and that

913
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:54,320
Speaker 1: if we mess something up, we didn't do it on purpose.

914
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:57,800
Speaker 1: And uh ps, listeners. The they in that sentence is

915
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:01,280
Speaker 1: you so thank you, thank you for being cool, but

916
01:00:01,360 --> 01:00:06,680
Speaker 1: seriously thank you. Um. There's also a phrase from William

917
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:10,200
Speaker 1: Faulkner that is super helpful, especially if you're a writer.

918
01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 1: Does it have any punctuation in it? There is a functuation.

919
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:19,120
Speaker 1: It's just a phrase. Funknarian, very funknaria. Um. But this

920
01:00:19,200 --> 01:00:23,200
Speaker 1: can apply to really anything, any project you're working on

921
01:00:23,240 --> 01:00:26,040
Speaker 1: that you are attached to. And the thing is, you

922
01:00:26,120 --> 01:00:29,400
Speaker 1: gotta kill your darlings. You can't. You can't be too

923
01:00:29,480 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 1: precious with your work, because the more precious you are,

924
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:38,720
Speaker 1: the harder it's going to be. Too accept constructive criticism

925
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 1: except that perhaps your work is not perfect. Well, it's

926
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: part of that fixed mindset stuff. I mean, I totally,

927
01:00:45,640 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 1: I very much appreciate the motivation behind saying kill your darlings,

928
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:56,560
Speaker 1: because if your work, or your achievement or your whatever

929
01:00:56,880 --> 01:00:59,280
Speaker 1: is too precious to you, you won't be open to

930
01:00:59,320 --> 01:01:02,360
Speaker 1: that feedback and you won't be open then to potentially

931
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 1: creating something even greater. Like imagine if Oprah had not

932
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:10,400
Speaker 1: been able to rise to being Oprah. I mean what,

933
01:01:10,680 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have a podcast. Really, I wouldn't have a

934
01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:16,960
Speaker 1: T shirt coming in the mail. Um And through all

935
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 1: of this in the background, we need to be fostering

936
01:01:19,200 --> 01:01:22,040
Speaker 1: self compassion. It is the whole thing. And Amy puller

937
01:01:22,080 --> 01:01:25,600
Speaker 1: against st Amy talks about this a lot where we

938
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:28,280
Speaker 1: need to get better about talking to ourselves like we

939
01:01:28,320 --> 01:01:31,200
Speaker 1: would a friend and self talk y'all. Oh, I can

940
01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:34,920
Speaker 1: tell you from personal experience again, like it is powerful,

941
01:01:35,160 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 1: and it is also powerful when you choose self compassion

942
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 1: over self hate and just say, you know what, what

943
01:01:46,080 --> 01:01:47,920
Speaker 1: would we would be? You know what would I say

944
01:01:47,960 --> 01:01:50,520
Speaker 1: to you if you were in the same situation exactly.

945
01:01:50,680 --> 01:01:52,760
Speaker 1: I was looking at my cellulite the other day and

946
01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:55,080
Speaker 1: I was starting to feel really bad, and I was like,

947
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 1: what would I say to my nice, smart friend. I

948
01:01:59,600 --> 01:02:02,600
Speaker 1: would be like, don't worry about it, you're amazing. Everybody

949
01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:05,400
Speaker 1: has it. Yeah, I'd be like, it's genetic. Also, watched

950
01:02:05,480 --> 01:02:07,960
Speaker 1: this stuff mom never told you video that would breakdown

951
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:10,120
Speaker 1: why it's not a big deal and it's such a

952
01:02:10,160 --> 01:02:14,280
Speaker 1: lie that it is um And to go full circle

953
01:02:14,400 --> 01:02:17,000
Speaker 1: with this episode, I did want to come back around

954
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:21,240
Speaker 1: to getting lick Fields courts piece, where in the process

955
01:02:21,240 --> 01:02:24,360
Speaker 1: of talking about how failure is so in fashion, he

956
01:02:24,440 --> 01:02:29,560
Speaker 1: takes issue with it, saying, you know what true vulnerability

957
01:02:30,200 --> 01:02:33,280
Speaker 1: is admitting you failed, that you're still failing and then

958
01:02:33,320 --> 01:02:36,160
Speaker 1: it hurts like hell, and being honest about this while

959
01:02:36,200 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 1: you're still in the thick of it is the real

960
01:02:38,400 --> 01:02:41,840
Speaker 1: triumph because a lot of times when we hear about failures,

961
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: it's in the context of success, in the context of

962
01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:46,920
Speaker 1: how these failures got you to success. But when you

963
01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 1: are knee deep in the middle of it, you might

964
01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:51,760
Speaker 1: not be able to see the light at the end

965
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:53,840
Speaker 1: of the tunnel. And we need to be able to

966
01:02:53,880 --> 01:02:58,680
Speaker 1: acknowledge that, hey, sometimes that failure is not going to

967
01:02:58,800 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 1: lead to you know, your own Oprah network and magazine

968
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 1: where you are on the cover every single month. I

969
01:03:05,240 --> 01:03:08,200
Speaker 1: love it, and that it hurts, and that it's okay

970
01:03:08,200 --> 01:03:10,400
Speaker 1: that it hurts, and that it doesn't make you a

971
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:15,040
Speaker 1: less cowardly person. And when all else fails, just remember

972
01:03:15,240 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 1: and by the shirt if you need it. Oprah wasn't

973
01:03:18,160 --> 01:03:21,440
Speaker 1: built in the day. No, but what amazing stuff she

974
01:03:21,600 --> 01:03:24,720
Speaker 1: is built of and is still building. I know, you know,

975
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:27,800
Speaker 1: Oprah is still a work in progress and I knows it.

976
01:03:27,920 --> 01:03:33,040
Speaker 1: And I think Oprah God knows that. St Oprah knows it.

977
01:03:34,240 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 1: St Amy and st Oprah. You know, if if there

978
01:03:37,760 --> 01:03:41,000
Speaker 1: is an Oprah God, hopefully you are listening, both of you,

979
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:46,640
Speaker 1: um and listeners. We want to hear from you about this. Obviously,

980
01:03:46,720 --> 01:03:50,680
Speaker 1: Caroline and I had a very personal connection with this episode. This.

981
01:03:50,960 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 1: This did feel a little bit like therapy. So thanks

982
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:57,560
Speaker 1: for talking to me about a Caroline, UM. But I

983
01:03:57,600 --> 01:04:01,400
Speaker 1: do think this is such a such an important issue, UM,

984
01:04:01,440 --> 01:04:04,560
Speaker 1: And it's an important issue if you are a parent

985
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:07,840
Speaker 1: or if you are a person or someone growing up, Like,

986
01:04:08,760 --> 01:04:10,840
Speaker 1: failure is a part of our day to day life

987
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:14,280
Speaker 1: and it's nothing to be scared of. And it's taken

988
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:15,919
Speaker 1: me a long time to figure that out. But y'all,

989
01:04:15,960 --> 01:04:18,920
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, it can be pretty liberating and exciting.

990
01:04:19,320 --> 01:04:21,760
Speaker 1: So we want to hear from you. Mom Stuff at

991
01:04:21,760 --> 01:04:24,600
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com is our email address. You

992
01:04:24,600 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages

993
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:30,160
Speaker 1: on Facebook. And we have a message to share with

994
01:04:30,200 --> 01:04:39,200
Speaker 1: you right now just one message, because it's a special

995
01:04:39,240 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 1: note that I loved and appreciated, and it is lengthy,

996
01:04:42,200 --> 01:04:44,200
Speaker 1: so I didn't want to be reading letters for the

997
01:04:44,240 --> 01:04:47,439
Speaker 1: next three hours. But this is a letter from our

998
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:52,080
Speaker 1: j in response to sort of our Philish Laughly episode,

999
01:04:52,240 --> 01:04:56,000
Speaker 1: but really not focused on Phillis. She says, Hi, as

1000
01:04:56,040 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 1: a new Wish listener of your show, I have to

1001
01:04:57,760 --> 01:05:00,240
Speaker 1: start by saying that I appreciate so much what the

1002
01:05:00,240 --> 01:05:02,440
Speaker 1: two of you were doing with Sminty. I discovered the

1003
01:05:02,440 --> 01:05:05,120
Speaker 1: show while driving across the state to a work conference,

1004
01:05:05,120 --> 01:05:07,920
Speaker 1: and it was such a breath of fresh air. Listening

1005
01:05:07,920 --> 01:05:09,960
Speaker 1: to Sminty has been a huge comfort to me and

1006
01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:12,320
Speaker 1: helps me feel less alone as a young woman in

1007
01:05:12,360 --> 01:05:16,960
Speaker 1: a much older, male dominated field, which is exactly what

1008
01:05:17,000 --> 01:05:20,560
Speaker 1: I'm writing in about today. In your most recent episode

1009
01:05:20,600 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 1: on Philish Laughley, I remember Kristen being frustrated at the

1010
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:27,760
Speaker 1: prospects of ever undoing peace laughs influence. But maybe I

1011
01:05:27,760 --> 01:05:30,160
Speaker 1: can give you a little hope. I'm a twenty six

1012
01:05:30,240 --> 01:05:33,120
Speaker 1: year old woman from Pennsylvania who works in local government.

1013
01:05:33,760 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 1: You may have heard of my fictional alter ego, Leslie Nope,

1014
01:05:37,240 --> 01:05:40,560
Speaker 1: heroin to park Lovers and young women in politics. Everywhere,

1015
01:05:40,880 --> 01:05:43,760
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, no, Parks and Wreck is

1016
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:46,760
Speaker 1: not a hyperbole. It's an accurate depiction of my life.

1017
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:50,480
Speaker 1: Much like Leslie, I'm in an assistant city manager role

1018
01:05:50,520 --> 01:05:53,520
Speaker 1: in a medium sized suburban community and have a boss

1019
01:05:53,560 --> 01:05:56,800
Speaker 1: that deeply believes in the sacred practice of grilling year round.

1020
01:05:57,520 --> 01:06:00,000
Speaker 1: Her character did a lot for women interested in public

1021
01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:03,920
Speaker 1: sector careers. But although Parks and chronicle the difficulties of

1022
01:06:03,960 --> 01:06:06,520
Speaker 1: breaking into the old boys club, there's one thing they

1023
01:06:06,600 --> 01:06:10,480
Speaker 1: failed to address more explicitly, the severity of the gender

1024
01:06:10,520 --> 01:06:14,720
Speaker 1: divide in the field of local government. Only cent of

1025
01:06:14,840 --> 01:06:18,120
Speaker 1: leadership roles in local government are held by women. That's

1026
01:06:18,160 --> 01:06:21,000
Speaker 1: one of the worst industry statistics out there when you

1027
01:06:21,040 --> 01:06:23,960
Speaker 1: consider this alongside the fact that the average age of

1028
01:06:24,000 --> 01:06:27,960
Speaker 1: local government employees is three years higher than the national average,

1029
01:06:28,360 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 1: and actually one of the professional managers organizations I'm a

1030
01:06:31,600 --> 01:06:34,320
Speaker 1: member of has an average age of fifty five, more

1031
01:06:34,360 --> 01:06:36,959
Speaker 1: than twice my age. It can seem like a really

1032
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:40,280
Speaker 1: unwelcoming career for young women, but I'm writing to say

1033
01:06:40,320 --> 01:06:42,600
Speaker 1: that it's so so important for women to get involved

1034
01:06:42,600 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 1: in public careers and help swing back the gender gap.

1035
01:06:46,360 --> 01:06:49,760
Speaker 1: The Atlantic recently published a really interesting piece about how

1036
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:54,200
Speaker 1: women entering the workforce has negatively affected civic society, and

1037
01:06:54,240 --> 01:06:56,480
Speaker 1: they also give a shout out to piece Labs herself,

1038
01:06:57,160 --> 01:07:00,520
Speaker 1: essentially saying that before women were working like the boys,

1039
01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:03,480
Speaker 1: they used to be the driving force behind civic groups

1040
01:07:03,480 --> 01:07:08,000
Speaker 1: that advocated for policy change, volunteered in their communities, worked

1041
01:07:08,000 --> 01:07:10,200
Speaker 1: on campaigns to get out the vote, and so on.

1042
01:07:11,080 --> 01:07:14,000
Speaker 1: So if women are too busy having those darn jobs

1043
01:07:14,080 --> 01:07:16,520
Speaker 1: to make their voices heard in the same way as

1044
01:07:16,520 --> 01:07:19,680
Speaker 1: they did in the early twentieth century, and only of

1045
01:07:19,720 --> 01:07:23,439
Speaker 1: us are in management in local government, where exactly are we?

1046
01:07:24,240 --> 01:07:26,160
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to let Kristen finish this letter

1047
01:07:26,200 --> 01:07:29,640
Speaker 1: as if we're reading too o wonderful. The good news

1048
01:07:29,800 --> 01:07:32,560
Speaker 1: is that recent graduates of degree programs that lead to

1049
01:07:32,600 --> 01:07:36,360
Speaker 1: public careers like public administration or been planning aren't nearly

1050
01:07:36,400 --> 01:07:39,800
Speaker 1: so lopsided. The bad news is that even when we

1051
01:07:39,880 --> 01:07:42,720
Speaker 1: do get into leadership roles, because of the nature of small,

1052
01:07:42,760 --> 01:07:46,880
Speaker 1: individual community offices, we don't have much contact with each other.

1053
01:07:47,080 --> 01:07:49,680
Speaker 1: It can be really isolating and difficult to hang in

1054
01:07:49,720 --> 01:07:52,600
Speaker 1: there for the long haul. And that's where Sminty comes

1055
01:07:52,600 --> 01:07:54,880
Speaker 1: in for me. And don't even get me started on

1056
01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:57,640
Speaker 1: how to navigate planning a family when we're you're one

1057
01:07:57,640 --> 01:08:01,080
Speaker 1: of a handful of people running an entire town. Fortunately,

1058
01:08:01,120 --> 01:08:05,160
Speaker 1: because many of us are those troublesome millennials that can't

1059
01:08:05,200 --> 01:08:08,280
Speaker 1: ever put down their phones and get off Facebook, something

1060
01:08:08,320 --> 01:08:11,800
Speaker 1: that really baffles at least one speaker at every professional gathering.

1061
01:08:11,840 --> 01:08:15,200
Speaker 1: By the way, we're forming networks of young people online

1062
01:08:15,400 --> 01:08:18,800
Speaker 1: at both the regional and national level. Emerging Leaders in

1063
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:21,720
Speaker 1: Local Government is one of the larger organizations, and they've

1064
01:08:21,760 --> 01:08:26,760
Speaker 1: been doing incredible work putting spotlight on the hashtag problem

1065
01:08:26,800 --> 01:08:30,120
Speaker 1: and how we can solve it. I know local government

1066
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:32,360
Speaker 1: probably sounds like a really boring field to a lot

1067
01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:35,519
Speaker 1: of people. Technology is sometimes a struggle, and yes, most

1068
01:08:35,520 --> 01:08:37,920
Speaker 1: of our records are still on paper, but it's truly

1069
01:08:37,920 --> 01:08:40,240
Speaker 1: an awesome way to invest in the community and actively

1070
01:08:40,280 --> 01:08:43,200
Speaker 1: make a difference that you can see. I may not

1071
01:08:43,360 --> 01:08:45,840
Speaker 1: be testifying in front of the Senate every day, but

1072
01:08:45,880 --> 01:08:48,479
Speaker 1: if a senior resident calls me because they're no longer

1073
01:08:48,520 --> 01:08:51,040
Speaker 1: able to maintain their home and are afraid they'll have

1074
01:08:51,080 --> 01:08:53,040
Speaker 1: to leave it, there are ways I can help. I

1075
01:08:53,120 --> 01:08:55,360
Speaker 1: get to watch thousands of people come together at our

1076
01:08:55,520 --> 01:08:58,559
Speaker 1: annual Autumn Festival, and also drive them to their parked

1077
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:01,400
Speaker 1: cars in a golf cart when it's were Seriously, I

1078
01:09:01,439 --> 01:09:05,439
Speaker 1: wasn't kidding about Leslie note being my alter ego. Oh man,

1079
01:09:05,520 --> 01:09:07,520
Speaker 1: and I just hope that you have a little Sebastian

1080
01:09:08,040 --> 01:09:11,840
Speaker 1: hanging out at that Fall Fall festival. Back to the letter,

1081
01:09:12,400 --> 01:09:15,400
Speaker 1: During a time when federal politics are making people feel

1082
01:09:15,439 --> 01:09:18,320
Speaker 1: anxious and alienated, it's a way to connect with residents

1083
01:09:18,360 --> 01:09:20,479
Speaker 1: and still have them feel like they can have a

1084
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:25,120
Speaker 1: good relationship with their government. That's my spiel. Hopefully I've

1085
01:09:25,120 --> 01:09:27,120
Speaker 1: restored some of your faith that women in government are

1086
01:09:27,160 --> 01:09:30,679
Speaker 1: here taking back their influence on politics and policy, even

1087
01:09:30,720 --> 01:09:35,479
Speaker 1: if sometimes you don't see us. R J. Thank you

1088
01:09:35,640 --> 01:09:38,720
Speaker 1: so much for this fantastic letter. Thank you for the

1089
01:09:38,760 --> 01:09:41,440
Speaker 1: work that you're doing. Also thank you for the reminder

1090
01:09:42,160 --> 01:09:46,400
Speaker 1: that local government matters. And y'all, if you're listening to

1091
01:09:46,439 --> 01:09:50,960
Speaker 1: this before the presidential election, don't forget the down ballot votes,

1092
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:56,840
Speaker 1: don't forget so also don't forget to send us your thoughts.

1093
01:09:56,880 --> 01:09:58,920
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our

1094
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: email address and for links to all of our social

1095
01:10:01,400 --> 01:10:03,680
Speaker 1: media as well as all of our blogs, videos and

1096
01:10:03,720 --> 01:10:06,920
Speaker 1: podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more about

1097
01:10:06,960 --> 01:10:10,040
Speaker 1: how to fail. Head on over to stuff Mom Never

1098
01:10:10,120 --> 01:10:16,799
Speaker 1: told you dot com for more on this and thousands

1099
01:10:16,800 --> 01:10:26,880
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com