Transcript of Kelly McGonigal (on joy)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Armchair Expert Experts" on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hi!

Today we have Dr. Kelly McGonigal on, and she is a Stanford psychologist and best-selling author. Her books include "The Willpower Instinct," "The Upside of Stress," "The Joy of Movement," and now her new book, "Out Now: Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking." This is a delicious episode.

It is. It's a good reminder that we can find joy in all kinds of places, and we really need to. And just do it.

And the most interesting part to me was how many of us fight it.

Yeah.

Don't trust it.

Yeah.

It requires vulnerability, earnestness, some belief in oneself, and we fight it. And that's so fascinating.

It is. Also, in the fact check, we discuss "You Can See Everything," so if you've seen it, you'll probably want to listen to that. If you haven't seen it, don't listen to it.

Wow! You could sense it. I've had much worse. Incorrect drop-offs.

One time we had Dr. Phil on.

Oh, yeah.

And he was like.

Dr. Phil Phil?

That's right, the Dr. Phil. And he went like, I don't know, seven houses away and just knocked on some door. And then an old lady answered, which if you're an old lady, what could be better than you open your door and Dr. Phil.

Yeah. She probably thought she was dying or something.

Or one like the.

It came out of the TV.

Sweepstakes, the publisher clearing house.

Yeah, I was like, that was actually what I was thinking would be better. Oh, well, you know, Ed McMahon. I'm more of a hypocondriac.

It's a shame Dr. Phil didn't take over for Ed McMahon. He would have been a really seamless transition.

Sure.

Sure.

Yeah.

Take a check.

Yeah.

Are you old enough, Monie, to remember all the Ed McMahon commercials?

Yeah. I don't know if I remember it or I just know it from the Zeitgeist.

Oh, sure. Coming.

I used to dream about that. I used to get those fake, like the scams you get in the mail that would be like, "Congratulations, you are the winner of a million dollars."

Oh, uh-oh.

And you just have to send this back. And I remember trying to convince my parents, like, no, but this is real. And we just need to, like, send this back and.

Aw.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Straight and narrow.

It's hard when you're a parent and your children have, like, just naive belief in goodness, and you kind of have to break the news to them. Like, no, well.

The world is.

The world is scheming to get you.

Yeah.

Or some percentage of the world.

It's true. That is sad.

Yeah.

You're from New Jersey, huh?

I am.

There's a good deal of scheming happening over in New Jersey. Similar to Detroit, I'd say, where I'm from.

Is there?

I don't know.

Do you mean historically, or like right now in current events that I'm unaware of?

Historically.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I usually feel like I can tell when someone's from Jersey.

Oh, really?

You just catch that vibe.

What do you catch? What are you smelling?

I feel like, well, when I moved to California, one of the first things people said to me was that I complained too much. So I feel like there's definitely and then also that I walk too fast and that you're very intense. And I feel like there's a Jersey-Philly intensity.

I would only get rid of one of those three. Complaining too much is a drag.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But New Jersey, we must acknowledge. You've got Newark, you've got organized crime, you've got a lot of fun history. And by the way, all stuff I love.

This is great.

What city were you in?

Morristown, which is right across the bridge from Philly.

Oh. Oh, okay.

Not Morristown, which is the bigger one up by New York City.

Okay, so you might have more of a Philly vibe.

Yeah, Philly, Philly.

Yeah. And that, boy, we don't have time to go into Philly.

Not Little Brother energy. I don't know.

Original Brother.

Yeah.

Big Brother.

They're Big Brother.

They're Big Brother.

Little City Eldest Brother. Yeah, literally. Literally.

You have an identical twin sister?

I do. Are you her?

I have.

No, I know. We can't do that anymore. I mean, she also has kids. She likes to say that has age progressed her a little bit more than me.

Got it.

Which is fair.

Yes. She's a game designer?

Yeah.

Meaning video games?

No. So she creates so some of the games she's designed were things like World Without Oil, where people all over the world were living as if there was an oil shortage. So they were, like, growing their own food and doing things like that.

As a board game or like a natural experiment?

Like alternate reality games.

Oh.

So she's one of the inventors of games where you enter into, like, a simulation. She actually had people simulating respiratory pandemic.

Oh, okay.

I remember doing this with her, and maybe it was like 2008 or something.

No.

Aha.

She uses games to help predict the future and help people adapt to the future.

Whoa.

And did you feel like you guys had a head start when the 2020 pandemic happened?

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

It was interesting because when they had mapped out what are people going to do that is going to get them in trouble in terms of contagion.

Yes.

And they already knew from the way they were role-playing it that it was going to be, like, church, weddings, exactly like the things that people wanted to gather for.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

That were going to be challenging.

I mean, you know, so she's a futurist. And it's funny because I always think, like, her mind, even though we're identical twins, somehow her mind works so differently from mine. I am very present moment focused. I'm like, what's happening now? And can we make now a little bit better? And she's like, we're going to fix the world. We're going to change the world. We're going to imagine alternate realities.

30 years out.

Wow. Yeah.

Do you explain that by your I don't know her history with meditation, but do you explain this divergence in thinking by.

Mm-mm.

No.

We're mirror twins. So that means I'm left-handed, she's right-handed. We even have, like, moles where it's as if we were pressed together in the womb.

No.

And we have the same.

Wow.

So sometimes I wonder if it's something to do with how our brains develop differently based on that.

Yeah.

But no, I think I got interested in meditation because I was always trying to make the present moment better. If I'm suffering right now, how can I be okay in this moment, which meditation is really good for.

And parents were educators.

Yeah.

And you described some of it feeling like lockdown a bit.

Well.

Does that mean.

So it's interesting. So my parents were very, very strict in certain ways, and then also leaving us to our own devices in other ways. So we were often completely by ourselves, but we weren't allowed to cross the street. So we were at home. We could watch anything we wanted to on TV, watch any movies we wanted to, read any books. So we were very engaged in highly inappropriate content, but we were the only two people who weren't allowed to go on our high school senior trip.

Really? They kept you contained.

What was their fear?

Part of it was that we would be corrupted. My parents thought I was highly corruptible.

Oh.

Oh.

They definitely thought I would be a bit of a bad girl if I were allowed out of the house.

Do you think they were right at all?

Well, I mean.

I mean, you're just living, right?

Yeah. I probably would have definitely been more.

Adventurous.

I would have had more fun.

Well, you know, the best way to get someone to be adventurous is keep them contained for 18 years.

Yeah.

That's tough.

They can backfire.

Yeah.

Obviously, they had great academic aspirations for both of you, right?

They did. And another way they were unstrict is, you know, I often think about how I know that my parents weren't super enthusiastic about the things that I loved, like pop culture and dancing, and they wanted us, I think, to be more serious.

Uh-huh.

Like, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be a teacher. And I was like, you know, I want to dance on stage. I want to learn about fashion. But they never discouraged us. So me and my sister both had, you know, pretty unusual interests, and they always found a way to encourage that.

Oh, that's lovely.

I guess that was a way of not being strict.

But would I be writing guessing, like, they're totally monitoring what your grades are, if you're doing your homework, have you met with a guidance counselor?

They didn't monitor us. There was just the demand. Absolutely top of your class, nothing except an A is acceptable, always get the highest score on any achievement exam.

Oof.

But there was no oversight.

Right.

It was just, that's the requirement. But they were the opposite of helicopter. They didn't know what we were doing in school, when we had exams, what assignments were due.

You just delivered.

Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow.

So it was in a way that was good.

Yeah.

I'm taking their approach. I'm like, you know, let's hope they do their homework.

Yeah.

That's how yeah, my parents knew zero about what was going on at school.

At high school.

Yeah. But then when my brother came around, they had to pay attention. I think it was just because they liked what they were seeing. It was like, okay, she's doing well.

That's really important.

Yeah.

Like, yes, I have this laissez-faire attitude, but because they're delivering.

Yeah.

Like, I don't really, you know.

They're coming by failing everything.

They're not doing it.

You might be like, okay, we need to step in a little.

We need to reschedule.

Yeah.

They got involved when I got in trouble. I would get in trouble for what I wore to school, and then we'd have a serious conversation about it. Or I'd get in trouble because I had a bad attitude sometimes.

Ah, sure. Yeah.

That was the yeah.

Yeah.

I remember my mom got me the book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Sure.

When teachers kept putting me in detention. She was like, Kelly, you're going to have to learn how to make authority like you.

Okay, so you ended up going to Boston College.

University.

So sorry. What.

They're different.

I don't even know that there's a difference.

Yeah, they're different.

We're not addressing the elephant in the room.

Oh, no.

I had to just confirm this with your professor, McGonigal, no?

Well, my last name is McGonigal, but I'm not a professor.

You're not a professor.

I have a PhD.

Yeah, I said to my daughter, my 13-year-old today, I said, honey, I'm interviewing someone named Dr. Kelly McGonigal. Isn't that a great name? And she said, like, Professor McGonigal.

Yeah.

And then I thought, oh, Monica's going to be so happy.

I actually did not put two and two together. I think because you're right, I'm always associating professor with that.

You lecture at Stanford, which is confusing. That's not to say you're a professor, but you do lecture there.

No, no, I know. I've had so many different affiliations at Stanford over the years. I tried to leave, and they kept pulling me back, so I just sort of stayed and do my thing.

Could you be a professor just so we could call you that?

I think Stanford would have an opinion about that.

I think they should just give it to you. People get honorary doctorates. You can get honorary professor.

I mean, well, you know, then they'd have to give me benefits and stuff.

Oh, sure.

They don't want to do that. Maybe you could sign away that just so you get that professor. Anyways, very exciting. Very exciting for everyone in the house today. Okay, so you go to University of Boston.

Boston University.

I got to be right.

Oh, no.

I loved BU.

I'm so glad.

So we got to make sure we get it right.

Yep.

BU is where Rooney Mara's character went at the beginning of Social Network.

Oh, okay.

I did not know that.

We just had an expert on last week that was Boston College.

Very different.

Very different.

I wanted to go to a place like BU, not Boston College.

What's the diff?

You are right in the middle of the city. So my first dorm was across from Fenway Park and a methadone clinic.

Ooh. Oh, wow.

And nightclubs. It is a huge school, so you're kind of anonymous.

Uh-huh.

You know, I could go to class, and the professor would have no idea who I was. I just loved it. I felt like I started my life. I had real jobs all through college. You could feel like you were living life engaged in the world, and that's absolutely what I wanted. I didn't want to feel like I was at school still.

And where is Boston College? On the Cape?

It's up there.

It's up there like a huge hill.

You have this horrible face.

It's funny, I never actually went there, but you get on the tea, and you go up there. And my understanding is that it's like a traditional campus.

Oh, so it's like smaller, maybe?

Yeah, yeah.

Smaller.

You wanted to be in the city.

I wanted to be in the city.

And where is Harvard in connection to BU? Is it.

Across the river.

Okay. But close-ish, right?

Yeah. I mean, I never went there.

You didn't even go there.

I have been on campus once or twice in my life, but not while I was there.

Okay.

I was seeing a movie there. I think our daughter was like two at the time, and I was like, I'm going to take her on a little walk. We end up on the campus. Oh, cool. Let's look at the campus. And it happened to be the drop-off day.

Ooh.

And it was I don't know that I've ever witnessed anything as sweet as just sitting in the grass with my little girl, watching all these parents drop their kids. You know how fucking hard they all work to get there.

I know. I love that you love that. I think that kind of thing all the time.

Yeah. I love a campus. We love college.

Yeah.

It's like all of everything about it. Yeah, we love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but you didn't find your way to Stanford ultimately and get your PhD there. In psychology?

Psychology, yes.

Why were you drawn to it?

I have always been so curious about what it's like to be another person. I just think all the time, what's it like to be in somebody else's head?

Uh-huh.

What are people feeling? What are people thinking? What would it be like to have that life? I remember when I went to college, it wasn't for psychology, even though I'd been reading, you know, pop psych books all my life. I thought I was going to go into some communication field. But then I was taking these psychology classes, and I kept getting amazing grades with no effort because all it was was thinking about how other people think.

Yeah.

And I was like, I can't believe this. This is so fascinating. It was so intuitive.

Yeah.

Until I had to do statistics. That was less intuitive, but it's okay. We got through that. And I ended up going to Stanford. I was split between clinical psych and, like, regular psychology. I didn't want to analyze people and do therapy, but I was really interested. So the work I did as an undergraduate was with psychopathy. So we had a lot of psychopaths come into the laboratory.

Oh, nice.

And I was the research assistant. It was me and a graduate student, and we did all of the psych tests on them. It was really interesting.

What were the tests? I'm so curious.

You give them a baby and a hammer and see what happens.

No.

The test to get them in, we published an ad on the back page of these magazines, like these newspapers that don't exist anymore. So the advertisement were things like, are you smarter than everyone you know? Do people have a hard time keeping up with you? Didn't say, are you a psychopath or have you murdered someone?

Yeah.

What would you do if we gave you a baby?

Also, it feels like a narcissist study as well.

It was. It was a little bit. This was like 30 years ago, so I don't remember exactly what the questions were. And then when they got there, we would have to give them the test to see, are they really a psychopath? But then, you know, things like there was a memory task where you would show people a picture, and they'd have to trace it while looking at it, and then you distract them, and then they have to replicate it again to see how well they held it in their memory. We did electrodermal activity while showing them emotional words. And that was one of the ways that we confirmed that they were psychopaths. So they might see the word like murder and have absolutely no physiological reaction to it.

Oh, okay.

To see how well you learn from your mistakes. They don't learn as well from their mistakes.

Oh, wow.

This is fascinating.

Okay, anyways, somehow all of this leads to, I guess, let's jump to you have this enormously popular TED Talk you gave.

Oh, right. That actually started out as a lecture for introduction to psychology at Stanford.

I don't know. It's had like 30 million views or something astronomical. And it was maybe an attempt to reframe stress.

It was. Did you want to know the story behind that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For a couple of years, they'd been like, we're interested in having you give a TED Talk. What would you give a TED Talk on? And I was like, well, I do research on compassion. I would love to give a talk about my research on compassion. And they were like, I think we had a talk on compassion. It was pretty good. We're covered on that. We'll check in with you again in a year. And so I don't know if it was like the third year, and they were like, we're still interested in having you give a TED Talk. The theme of the conference is think again. Is there anything that you would like people to think again?

Yes.

Okay. So he used to give the lecture on stress in Psych 1.

Oh, wow.

He's an amazing lecturer.

He's like the top five smartest people on the planet.

He's amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

But his research has focused mostly on how stress is horrible, and there's very little you can do about it. So he would give this lecture right before final exams week to mostly freshmen and being like, are you stressed? Well, stress does this. It will kill you. It damages your brain cells. It makes you impotent. And then we haven't found anything yet that helps. And that was like the last thing they heard.

Oh, fun.

Before final exams week. So at one point, the people who ran the program were like, would you be interested in giving a lecture on stress? And I was like, what message would be really good for them to hear right before exam week? And I'm thinking, you know, there is this research about how if you're really anxious or stressed before an exam and you tell yourself it's normal to be stressed and that your anxiety could actually be helping you, which is true.

Yeah.

People who are anxious tend to do better than people who are totally calm. They might be a little dissociated or underperforming. And so I put that research into the talk. And that was how that TED Talk began. I said, well, I believe this message is probably good. There could be some benefit to people hearing this message. And then I thought, how can I get compassion in there? Like, oh, I have to get the thing that I care about most into this talk. So if you actually watch the talk, I tried to sneak in that whole you have an instinct to also be compassionate, and that also is something that you can do.

To modulate stress.

Yeah.

Okay, I want to do the thing that we do occasionally. Do you have an actor?

Oh, are you going to ask me to do an impression?

No.

Don't worry.

Sometimes we like to see if someone reminds us of the same person, and I'm getting the most incredible vibes for a very specific person.

Okay, I'll say one. I don't think it's what you're going to say.

Okay.

But let's try it.

Will you count us down? You say three, two, one. Yeah.

Three, two, one.

Lizzy Caplan.

Rachel McAdam? Okay, okay. Hold on. Wait, I heard Lizzy Caplan. What did you say?

I started to say Rachel McAdams.

Both compliments.

Both huge compliments.

But right when we were starting, I thought, no, I think it is, and then I couldn't call her name fast enough.

It was Lizzy Caplan.

That's right. I mean, I used to get one person all the time when I was much younger, but, you know, you probably wouldn't even recognize it. When I was a teenager, early 20s, I got Madonna.

Oh, I could totally see that.

You have to go.

You have to go see that.

Young Madonna.

Younger Madonna.

100%.

I could see it.

I loved it.

What a flattering thing to be told.

I know. I went into a store once. A person working the register called someone and was like, I think Madonna just came into my store.

I have a Madonna tattoo.

You do?

I do.

Oh, wonderful. Wonderful.

Very happy to have a renaissance in her career.

Man, we almost would have got it. I think we would have got it. Yeah, yeah. It would have been fun. Okay, so now I think now we need to talk a little bit about your meditation history because I think that has to somehow feed into compassion, right? There are many specific meditations geared just at specifically compassion, no?

That's what I've done research on. So at the Stanford Center for Compassion, we developed this program that taught compassion meditations to help people develop their empathy and self-compassion. But how I got my start was more with Zen meditation, how still can you sit and can you count your breath, and when your mind wanders, can you start again?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, what I really loved about Zen meditation is I've never actually heard Zen teachers talk about this, but my experience is you develop a different relationship with your breath. You know, I'd always experienced my body and my mind as a really unfriendly place to be. It's just not safe to be in this body or this mind. When you just sit and breathe and pay attention to your breath, over the years, something happened where my breath started to become like a secure attachment in the way that you might have to a parent or to a pet, like a comfort, you know, blanket.

Yeah, yeah.

I would turn my attention to my breath, and I felt, you know, what people say they feel when they're in that secure place.

Yeah.

My breath became something I could turn to that made me feel grounded and okay in this moment. Nobody in Zen talks about that. It's more about the ability to turn off the habits of your mind that create suffering, which it does help with that, but it gave me an embodied experience. And I think that bringing the body into it, I don't think meditation would have stuck with me if it felt like I was dissociating from my body. My favorite breathing exercise is to imagine breathing through your heart. That's one of the ones that we taught in the compassion training.

Oh.

This is one of the things I'm really geeky interested in. You know, your brain monitors the signals from your heart area, from the skin of your chest and the muscles in your chest and the actual rhythms of your heart and blood pressure in this area. And your brain monitors it, but not all the time.

Not all the time.

Not all the time. It's like information that's coming. And I mean, even like if I just ask you to notice your breath, the signals were coming into your brain, but your brain doesn't always pay attention to it.

I just want to be clear because obviously, autonomically, it is always paying attention because it's.

To make sure that your heart.

Yeah, yeah. It's just sometimes you're conscious of it, sometimes you're not.

Yeah, yeah. So the part of your brain that processes sensory information so that you feel it.

Right, right.

That also then interprets what that means. So there's interesting research that when you have more information coming from that sensory system, your sense of self feels like it's here rather than here. And that's something I'm really interested in. Like most people experience the world like they're behind their forehead and the eyes, and like the whole world revolves around them. But when your sense of self, and this is like a real thing people describe, the sense of self drops to here. There's a sense of being more open. There's like a 360 awareness of the world.

More connected.

And more connected. The boundaries between you and the world are also a little bit softer. And so heart breathing puts your awareness there and can drop you into that space. And then when you're in that state, then our bodies and brains start synchronizing. So like if we were in that state, like if as we're having this conversation, we're feeling more connected, my heart's going to start beating in a rhythm similar to yours.

Yeah.

And our brains will start to talk to each other.

Yeah.

This idea that like somehow my brain is communicating to your brain and affecting your brain activity, and yours is doing the same. When you look at the scientific papers for researchers who do this, they have these images that they draw of like head number one and head number two, and all of these nodes that crisscross. Like if I could turn this into an illustration, your head and your head, I would put all of these crisscross lines that bind your brains together.

Yeah.

So you're functioning now not as separate individuals, but as a connected system. If you were, you know, even a little bit aware, you would feel that as kind of like bonding, rapport, closeness.

It's almost like you create a shared neural network sitting between the two of you somehow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's so fascinating. Okay, so how does that lead us to joy? And I'm going to start by saying why I wanted to have you on when I read the description.

Yeah, I was very curious.

Yeah. I myself suffer from this, and then so many of our guests suffer from this. We just had this great singer, Ashaan, and she's at a moment right now where she has a kind of a breakout hit happening. In the amount of impending doom she feels, in the amount of impending doom I always feel, it's so ubiquitous among the guests we have. So I'm just fascinated on how hard it is for us to embrace joy, ultimately. And then I see you've written a book on joy, and then you're acknowledging that that's hard, and then that's what I want to know about.

For me, the place that I come to it from is I'm one of the most pessimistic people in the world. So I also have that impending sense of I think dread is my default nervous system state, which is an interesting emotion. People who don't experience dread don't understand that the feeling, it's not anxiety. People think it's anxiety, like what if something goes wrong. Dread is you know something bad is going to happen and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.

There's almost no anxiety about it. It's a fact.

It is.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's this feeling that you're being pulled forward towards a future you don't want to actually experience. That's my default state.

Oh. Yeah, yeah. I have a very similar.

Do you know what I'm talking about? It's a little different.

I have had it. I've had it in moments, and I actually cannot imagine living my whole life like that is the worst possible feeling, in my opinion.

By the way, I only meditate and journal because in the morning it's at its apex. It's almost like as I'm recharging.

And I'm like, oh no.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, no. I've got a day.

Yeah, that's how I start.

That's how I start. I was like, someday I'm going to wake up and be like, glad to be alive.

Yeah.

So I say that because for me, joy is the antidote to that. Having that as your orientation to life is not the barrier or the obstacle. It's not a complete barrier or obstacle. The reason I'm interested in joy is because I can't imagine a reality where I'm happy all the time. I can't imagine a reality where I think about the future and I think everything is going to work out for myself and everyone else I care about. The aspiration for happiness that a lot of people have, that I'm going to get everything I want in life, everything's going to turn out okay.

Yeah, sure.

Things will go, but what can we appreciate in this moment that could be about the success or it could be about, you know, a stranger that you had some small connection with and that they could be equally valuable in present moment. Your life doesn't require the biggest success that you can imagine or the biggest relief you can imagine.

Yeah, let's go through some of the reasons joy is hard for us. I mean, the book starts with you talking with your father, telling me about writing a book on joy, asking him what his most joyous memories are.

And he was like, oh, I've only experienced joy a couple of times in my entire life. And he was 80 at the time, maybe.

Here's where we get into a little bit of the sociological aspect of it, because again, I think where you're from and where I'm from is a bit similar. So it's like, it's also very cultural.

Yeah.

Like it's not a good look.

Not to be too sincere and enthusiastic?

Yes, earnestness. Let's just talk about like the kind of the societal pressures. Perhaps it mirrors tall poppy. You'll be embarrassed. You'll be caught believing in yourself or trusting a moment.

I mean, there's so many stories we have that makes feeling good in the moment wrong. So one is the idea that if you're happy, it means you're full of yourself.

Right.

I mean, also, this is because people think the only thing you could be happy about are, like you said, status, being better than other people.

Yes, yes, yes.

But you can also be happy that, you know, a bird is singing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your little kid takes its first steps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's almost a misunderstanding also of what actually brings people joy.

Yeah.

But so there's the idea that joy or being happy is prideful. For a lot of people, there is this sense that the world is cynical, and if you're too enthusiastic, too genuine, too heartfelt, you'll be ridiculed.

And/or victimized.

Or victimized, yeah. People will exploit you if they know what you really care about or that you actually care. Better not to look like you care so much or that you can be so easily moved by helping a stranger, right? Then there's the fear all the strangers will show up. For a lot of people, people confuse pleasure that can get them into trouble with the pleasure that's built into the experience of joy. Joy activates the pleasure circuitry of your brain, and you feel it in your body as pleasure. And a lot of people have beliefs about pleasure being sinful or wrong or immoral or shameful.

Yeah, or a puritanical one.

Yeah, and not just pleasure, but sometimes also just good emotions. You know, you may have found that when you felt really good, that was when your heart got broken or that's when you ended up being taken advantage of or when you got disappointed. So having a good emotion, like feeling grateful or hopeful or good about yourself, can start a kind of immune response.

Yeah, it's like I put my guard down. I can't do that.

Yeah, you can't put your guard down. You have to protect yourself.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

Lots of people believe that if they let themselves admit that they're happy, the universe will punish them.

Yeah, that part's big.

We have historic allegory about this. This is like flying too close to the sun. This is like Midas. There's so many parables about warning us about this.

Yeah. Part of the book is about how this idea, it's not that the universe is going to actively punish you for being grateful that you have love in your life or success or that your body is healthy. The universe isn't like, gotcha, now we're taking that away. But of course, you know, impermanence is a real thing. And one of the things that really stood out to me over the course of writing this book is there was a human being, my father, and there was an animal, one of my pets, that sort of plays special roles in the book as my favorite memories and the things I love most. And they both died over the course of writing the book.

This is all the shadow talking.

Yeah. I would say that being willing to talk about joy, it required getting to know some of those shadow voices too.

Yeah.

Like another one is, who are you to talk about joy when there's so much chaos, conflict, crisis in the world?

That's exactly why you should be talking about it.

Well, I mean, I think it is.

Yeah.

But I thought it intellectually, it took me a little while to feel it. Like I didn't tell people what I was working on. You know, you see these messages where people are like, why aren't you constantly talking about. And then fill in whatever is the biggest atrocity of the day.

Which, by the way.

How dare you.

There'll be one tomorrow and the next day. Our whole life will be full of global atrocities. So if we're waiting for all atrocities to end before we experience joy, I'm here to tell you we're never going to experience joy.

And one of the things that really, you know, I was in the middle of doing this research and I was teaching a class on joy. One year, it was when the war between Russia and Ukraine had just started. And I always sent out surveys before class. You know, what are you thinking? What would be a good outcome for you in this class? What brings you to this class? And I had a number of people living in the United States who said they felt a little reluctant to take a class about joy while this war was going on. There was so much suffering. And then I had people from Ukraine who had suffered severely because of the war, who were taking the class and who were sending messages to the people in my class that joy was the thing that felt most urgent and that is what they craved in this moment and that it was possible.

You have an example in your book of a father who like lost a son and his thought was if I'm ever experiencing joy, it means I've forgotten him.

Yeah, I think that's common.

Yeah.

Which is so heartbreaking. And of course, you'd want to say to the guy, do you think your son's desire for you is to suffer?

He would ask himself what his son would want. And that was one of the things he told me that allowed him to allow for those mixed emotions and to choose to be grateful, to feel love, to plan things to look forward to, even though the son that he lost couldn't experience that with him. Yeah.

I've told my wife, like if I die, bring a date to the funeral. Like get going, fucking like, you know, I don't want you to spend one day miserable on planet Earth. Don't do it for me.

One of my cats died a couple weeks ago and we were at the shelter in days thinking, I mean, a similar thing. When there's suffering and you have so much energy that wants to go somewhere, you should allow yourself to find that thing.

I mean, I think so much of this has to do with our like, it's this or it's that. It's either you miss them or you're totally moved on. It's like, no, both things can be true. You can be missing someone every day for the rest of your life. And the thing is, we do it when it's tragedy, but like if it's your old grandparent or something, no one's like, well, I should just be very upset about this every day because that's like the natural course of things. But that should always be the case.

Yeah, anything premature feels like it's now somehow in a different category.

I think it's also, you know, grief can attack you in different ways based on your relationship to the person you lost or to whatever it was that you lost. And I think there's some forms of grief where your brain is really torturing you over it. And I think like that was certainly the case with losing a child. Your brain is just insistent on maintaining that bond, that this bond was so important. This was your reason for living. And your brain does all of these things that are like essentially forms of torture, like the memories that come up when you were doing something else and flooded with emotions.

Adaptive quality to it.

Moving forward, yeah.

I guess the goal would be in a collective grief way in war or something. It's like when we're all feeling like, oh my God, this is so horrible that we wouldn't do this again.

Yeah, but we do. Guilt and shame can work in that way too, the anticipatory. But the interesting thing, like what would anticipatory grief, because grief is at its most powerful with relationships, anticipatory grief would tell you not to get into a relationship. Don't have kids, don't love too much.

But this could be fun to think about this in what often is a fun debate, which is like, yes, you're thinking about it on a very singular, adaptive, or evolutionary way when you could think of this as a group evolutionary facet, right? Which is I observe other people suffer when one of us dies, we have value. Like what it could provide on a group level is kind of interesting, even if it might be not productive for the person suffering.

I mean, if people could imagine also that they would be grieved in a meaningful way, what that might mean to people.

It's somehow comforting, right? And we need examples of that. If no one grieved, then yeah, you certainly couldn't convince yourself of that.

Yeah. I'm not saying I would get rid of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're saying.

But I've been able to find like really clear functions for other emotions, the emotions we don't want.

Yes, yes. First, let's quickly delineate the difference between happiness and joy.

One way that I think about it is if you ask someone, how happy are you? They usually think about the totality of their life. They're like, how's things going at home, at work, my health? How do I think about politics? How's my financial situation? And they're like, yeah, I'm pretty happy because I don't have a ton of things I'm worried about. I haven't recently suffered a major disaster or crisis or change. And like happiness is often described as things going well in my life. It's a global assessment. You don't have to define it that way.

Yeah, I think so.

And also when they say they want to be happy, a lot of times what they mean is they want life to be easier. Whereas joy, it is in the moment. It is something good. Someone thanks you and you feel better. And sometimes you feel it in your body. Sometimes it just feels like relief and you feel your forehead relax. Sometimes you just feel for an instant this intensification of closeness between you and others or like a sense that who I am is good. It persists for seconds to minutes. It's always about something. And it really functions like a signal.

Pursue this?

Well, a couple different ways. One is sort of a baseline. Your brain also monitors really basic human needs like are you alone or are you connected? Do you matter or does what you do not matter? Is there anything you can do that is meaningful or pleasurable or do you have no options, no choices? Is there beauty in the world or is the world a hideous, horrible place? It's like there's just questions that the brain is always trying to get a readout on. And joy is this like reset that affirms something good that you need to know.

So what was interesting with your father's own journey with this is he starts by saying he's only had two moments of joy. But over the course of a year before he's diagnosed, this list expands, right? And there's a power in just trying to be aware of it, right? It has kind of a cumulative rising effect.

Yeah. You know, it's an act of generosity because he was really skeptical. It's funny. He was the same way with compassion too. He'd be like, ugh, compassion, ugh. But he said that.

He said that, but you know, one of his few moments of joy when he started excavating it was helping a stranger at a bus station. I was like, that, that's going to be one of your great moments of joy. And yet you're so skeptical of compassion. So I think like you said, there's some cultural elements to it.

I think there's very strong cultural elements.

You know, it was an act of generosity because I was writing a book about joy. And I think he was willing to have conversations with me about it because I got so happy when he told me his first memory or two.

Because they were about you.

Yeah. The first one was about the first time I smiled at him when he was bottle feeding us.

Because mama said.

She was, yeah, complications from birth. So she was still in the hospital. So first time father.

Two.

One, too many.

Yeah, so that was great. But then the other memories, you know, he told me the story about dancing when he was in the seminary, which was so surprising to me. So I teach dance. That's like this other side of my life. I love dance.

What kind?

I teach like dance fitness classes but different types.

Dance is very joyful.

It is.

Yeah, oh yeah.

In the same way that I describe myself as super pessimistic and also not particularly happy, but from teaching dance, I kept getting these cards from people saying, your joy is contagious. Thank you for bringing me so much joy. One of the reasons I got interested in joy because I was like, why do people keep using this word joy to describe what's happening in class or to describe me when I'm like not an optimistic or happy person? And I started to realize there really is a difference, this kind of sense of vitality and belonging and aliveness.

It's really funny. It's such a stupid statement, but in so many ways, it's really hard to actually feel alive.

Yeah.

For whatever reason, the stranger interactions always for me are like apex feelings of like, oh right, I'm alive on planet Earth and that person's alive and here we are.

And I'm doing something that's affecting them. They're affecting me.

Yeah, like Monica took a ride home from a tow truck driver once and it was like she had gone away to like a two-week fucking meditation seminar.

It was incredible. It was incredible.

Because you connected?

Yeah, but I of course would never. I was like the idea of having to take this car called AAA, this day is a disaster.

An hour long ride in a tow truck in traffic.

Yeah, from school to the city. And then we start talking and we talk the whole time and he's this older man and he's telling me about his life. And I was like, I don't want to get out of this car. I love this person.

It challenges your fear about the world.

This is a type of joy people really need because there's so many messages we're getting right now through all sorts of media and culture and the people in our lives that are telling us that other people can't be trusted. When I first started teaching a class about joy and I'm asking people to give me their joy reports, I was shocked by how many peak moments of joy were these moments of connection with strangers. I didn't even believe some of the stories that people would tell me, like that they even happened, but also that people felt, they would literally say, this moment made me glad to be alive.

Yeah. I think people don't even necessarily know why certain things are magic. Like they actually would miss what the catalyst or act of property and experience was. So it's like anyone who's backpacked through Europe, I've yet to meet the person that's not one of their top experiences of their life. But what is it? Is it seeing Europe? Yeah, that's kind of fun. That's novel. But I think it's like you're in hostels with all these other kids who also are doing the same thing. And the true joy of it is like, yeah, these connections with people from around the world that you thought were other and it turns out, oh no, we're all the same.

Getting to experience yourself as a human being in different places too. I think like travel can do a lot in terms of creating that broader sense of self too. So many kids grow up feeling like there's one way to be. And then, you know, as a young person, you go to different parts of the world and there's a sense of freedom that comes from being able to be you, but in a different setting that pulls all sorts of different things out of you.

What is joy dampening?

So in a moment when you start to feel joy, you do something to feel less. So you might find something to complain about. And a lot of the people do this subconscious.

All the time.

Or you tell yourself you don't deserve it. It's not real. Like if the joy comes because somebody did something nice for you, you're like, oh, you know, they had to do it or they don't really mean it.

They just want this.

You start worrying about how it's going to go wrong. You distract yourself out of it. Sometimes it's the intensity of it is too much. And so you find a way to pay attention to something that's not good. And people don't know they're joy dampening, but they're just suddenly distracted and then they feel less moved or less open or less hopeful. And it's a form of emotion regulation that's really meant to prevent the expected bad feeling that follows a good feeling. You know, people who dampen joy, often they do it because they assume if I allow myself to feel this or show this, I'm going to fall off a cliff.

I have a lot of survivor's guilt from where I moved from. I have survivor's guilt from the people I was in the Gronnings with that didn't make it like I did. I have so much survivor's guilt that anything great that happens to me, which there's a lot of great things that happen to me. The example I always think of is I got this car. I grew up in Detroit. All I cared about is cars. I had posters all over my room of fucking supercars. I got this really crazy hard to get car that Ford made a very limited amount of. I got it. The few people that found out I had it, they go, oh my God, you got this car? And I go, yeah, I mean, you got to put this crazy wrap on it.

I think you do this a lot.

Yeah.

But I also think sometimes it's like not for you, but in general, you do. Sometimes I think your brain is telling you it's kind of for the benefit of the other person. If you're like, I got this bag or something that I've been wanting for a long time, but actually like it kind of sucks. Like don't worry. You don't want it. Kind of like this thing that you probably do want. You shouldn't want it. Don't worry about it. Don't put your energy there because it's actually like not as great as you think.

Because you know that human beings do social comparison.

Yes.

And so when something good happens to you, other people might feel.

You get a list and.

And they might feel bad about themselves.

Yes.

Resentful.

You're trying to like right size that.

Actually, you know, that backfires a lot because what people actually think is I can't believe this person doesn't appreciate.

Yeah, they don't even like this car. So A, it doesn't work. And then my therapist helped me through this, which is like, look, you're powerless over envy. There'll be envy. That's going to happen. Now, you can also ruin your experience and still experience the envy or you can just enjoy yourself and not be responsible for how people feel about it.

I mean, the other thing that I often think about too is because I've been lucky enough to ask so many people what brings them joy, I also am pretty convinced that it's not the car or the bag.

Exactly.

Sure.

And so you don't have to be in certain circumstances in your life to experience the things that people say bring them joy. And there's almost a way, it can be a little dehumanizing to think that somebody in a difficult situation is incapable of joy because they don't have luxury in their life.

But that's a societal issue we have where there is this idea that when you have all the things and the toys, then you're happy, which again is why that is different than joy because happiness does have a level of security to it and that's real.

You know, we have all of these aspirations for comfort, for security, for status. It makes a lot of sense to have all of that.

Yeah.

But joy is such a great resource because it doesn't actually require those things.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, I had as much joy broke as I've had with money.

If not more.

In some ways, a little more.

I call that meeting joy with joy too. When somebody else is happy or enthusiastic, when they love something.

Yeah.

Like the biggest act of support you can do is to be happy with them and for them. We were talking about empathy and a lot of people understand that there's value in having empathy for pain and negative emotions and suffering, but people don't want to be alone in their happiness or their joy or their enthusiasm or their excitement. People want others to share it with them, to be glad for them and to amplify it rather than dampen it.

But you even say in the book, it is easier for us to comfort someone going through something terrible than it is for us to join that elation. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe all the same hurdles we have for our own joy we're then projecting onto their joy.

It can be that. It's also if we aren't used to celebrating our own joy, it can be harder to catch the joy. I mean, part of what allows us to meet joy with joy is this like contagion effect where your happiness actually makes me happy. Like it actually gets in here. And if I'm really in touch, like I have great empathy for physical pain because I really know that well, I don't have to do anything for your pain to get into my experience and have great empathy and want to relieve your suffering. But if you aren't as familiar with your own comfort, being excited, being enthusiastic, expressing love and letting someone express their love to you, all these different dimensions of joy, it can be harder to have that contagious response where I'm just jumping into it with you.

I'm just thinking about when like Olympians win.

I know, don't you love that?

Oh my God.

One of my favorite videos is Best Olympic Celebrations. And then you just see and they group them by types of celebrations like the fist bumpers and the dancers.

This became the root of your eight-minute joy workout or the foundation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it is the case that when you express joy through your body, even when it's you're doing it before you feel joyful, there's a lot of research that you do these movements and you can start to connect to the feeling of it.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, so I did that workout where it's literally like you're throwing your hands in the air.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're bouncing, you know, with joy.

They go clapping. Clapping is the most hilarious activity and it like elicits so many different things.

Yeah.

I feel like half of the events I go to, it's not because I want to see the event, but I want the moment where we're all cheering and applauding.

Yeah.

Like I'll see any show if there's going to be a standing ovation.

Yeah.

So let's bolster this call to find, identify, enjoy joy. What are the neurological benefits? Like why is this a good endeavor for us physically?

Yeah, I mean, brain and body, right?

Yeah.

So I talk about joy as being one of the most biologically consequential emotions you can have. It's in the same category as stress. In a moment of joy, there's so much changing in your brain activity, brain chemistry, in your blood chemistry, in your immune system. It's as potent as stress, but it's often working in the opposite direction. So in a moment of joy, what's happening in your brain is this co-activation of the reward system, which makes you feel good, and then also the meaning system, which is giving a sense of significance or value to this moment.

Yeah.

It's not how many hours a day do you need to be joyful. It's more like at the end of the day, did you have any moments of joy? And if you miss them, could you go back in your mind and pick a few moments you want to appreciate now and you can get that benefit.

Perfect timing. So tell us about this incredible device that JPL invented, the Finder.

Oh, the Finder.

And then we'll talk about uplifts and micro lifts because that's virtually what we're seeing.

Yeah. You know, it's so funny because the way that I found out about this technology, I was telling people they need to train their joy radar because a lot of times people are kind of blind. They're not paying attention to uplifts.

You give a great example. Just we can test your sensitivity to sugar by filling a glass of water and putting in one eye drop of sugar. Can you detect it?

Yeah, versus do we need to put tablespoons in? And it's not just your ability to detect it, but also what you're willing to call sweet.

Oh.

So maybe like if I paid you a million dollars, you could detect that little bit of sugar.

Yeah.

But if I ask you, is this sweet? Maybe your threshold for sweet is so high that you're not willing to call it sweet until it's, you know, 50% sugar.

Yeah, you have a joy threshold.

Sort of like my father, the idea of joy is the one moment where everything is right in the world and it's like pure euphoria. But joy often emerges in these really small ways, these micro uplifts. Its function is to help you find the small moments, not the great milestones.

And if you fail to see them, you will not get the cumulative benefits we're talking about.

You can have this kind of joy amnesia or joy blindness. I was telling people you have to train your joy radar. And I was like, how does a radar work? And I was just trying to figure it out so I could like have an analogy. And I found out about this technology. It's like a rolling suitcase that NASA developed where it's used to find people who are trapped under like earthquakes or, you know, buildings that have fallen where they're trapped under rubble. People can't see them. People can't hear them, but there's a heartbeat and there's breathing that's happening like under 30 feet of rubble. So they developed this little radar and it sends out this little pulse of energy.

Wow.

And it recognizes the signs of life.

And there was one in Nepal and they put this briefcase on the top of a mountain and 48 hours later they have found three dudes that were unburied.

People have been buried for days and were still alive.

Yeah, and it's just detecting this nearly imperceptible specific wavelength of a heartbeat.

And so why I love this example is nobody is going to argue that it is stupid to look for that sign of life, that life-affirming signal. What could be more important than rescuing that person who's under the rubble and you need to be very sensitive. And I feel like that's what joy is. That's what these micro uplifts are. You have to tune yourself so that if there is something beautiful in the space or if somebody did something in the space to make life easier for you, you can recognize it. You're not blind to when somebody thanks you, you can believe it and let yourself be uplifted by it.

Yeah, like what's a starting protocol for that? What is, I guess, some kind of mindfulness around that?

Well, I just ask people to keep track of something good every day.

Yeah. Like your rose, the rose thorn.

Yeah, yeah, rose bud and thorn.

Yeah.

Exercise.

You don't have to call it joy. You can call it anything good.

Yeah. Something good that happened.

Anything. And I say like take a picture of it if it's something that made you smile or laugh or, you know, you can write it down or tell someone about it. But you're looking for the moment where when it happens, you just feel a little bit better or you're glad to be alive. And when people start tracking that, they start to learn what brings them joy. People are always surprised. It's like a great shock that it's not the milestone they thought it had to be, but some small pleasure that just synchronizes with who they are and what they love. Or it's the one moment where they're able to help someone or it's often laughter.

Yeah.

Oh, you should see me around tragedy. I mean, the jokes. I'll be delivering the bad news and I already have one in the fucking chamber.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

So this Megagon Labs crowdsourced 100,000 uplifting moments.

And I read almost all of them.

You did.

I know.

And they're categorized by theme. And I just want to go through the categories and the amount that were logged because I think there's interesting.

I agree.

Yeah, so the number one thing that people logged was affection as an uplifting moment at 34,200.

And that was defined specifically as a moment of connection with people you are already close to.

Oh, okay.

So like family, close friends, pets.

And doesn't have to be physical.

No, but it's a moment where you feel close.

Yeah, okay.

To someone you care about.

Number two, very, very close, just 160 less, achievement.

Yeah. People will say things like I ran a marathon and people will also say things like I got out of bed. Achievement is really about doing something that you value, doing something that mattered, or doing something that was hard and you're glad you did it. It's really about an action. When you actually look at what people said, they are not achievement in the way that people often think about.

And not a promotion.

It's not I got the promotion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Third place, at about a third as many, is enjoying the moment.

We'll call this appreciation. You're doing something and you just realize this is good. I love this song. I'm enjoying this meal. I notice the beautiful sunset and I'm happy to be here.

You can have that at your job too, obviously, right? I think Monica and I have that often, right? It'll be like every fifth fact check, we'll be having such a good time and we could look at each other and we're like, oh yeah, this is bonkers.

Yeah. I think my propensity for appreciation has gone up since doing this job. I'm like highly aware of, oh, this is rare. This is special. Work is an interesting category. Also, when I survey people, it doesn't show up as often as you might hope.

Well, so few people love their job, I would say.

So you have to look a little harder. There are the moments where you feel like what you're doing matters, or there's moments where you're laughing with your coworkers, or there's moments where you're surprised or you fixed a problem. But it is interesting to me that, you know, there's a lot going on with people's jobs where the primary feeling is stress or pressure.

Well, your primary focus is the primary allocation of your resources and time is that, and it's not yielding the results should be a little bit of a warning.

Yeah.

Okay, after enjoying the moment, bonding.

That is feeling close or connected to people you're not already super close to. So it was often more casual friends or coworkers or strangers.

Yeah.

So I think actually I would lump those categories together and you would basically blow away all the other categories. But feeling close or connected to someone is the number one.

This one's important, I think. This is the one that I most want to talk about. So leisure is on the list, but it's at 7,500 logins versus 34,000 for affection.

Yeah.

Nature's 1,800. So it's kind of low. That tells me people aren't getting out in nature. Or does it tell you that nature's not as powerful? What do you think?

No, no, no. So I've also looked at surveys that have been done all over the world. This is an absolutely universal source of joy for people. In this particular study, it was, you know, English speakers anywhere in the world. But I think it's pretty impressive that that showed up.

That it even made the list.

Well, I would just say it is telling us something though.

Yeah, something.

So if we believe that it is a powerful source of joy, which I agree, it tells me very few people are getting moments in nature.

So the way that the survey worked is people were asked to pick one moment a day. So they were picking like their favorite moment. So it's not the same as asking, did you enjoy anything in nature today? Yes or no. So I think it's also telling that in a way people are asked about their best moment of the day. Anything that gets on this list, it's pretty impressive that it made it to its own category.

Yeah, so the one I would want to have been number two would be exercise at 1,200.

I mean, if you know anything about it.

And that one always surprises people. I always keep that on the list even though numerically it's not anywhere close to like feeling connected to someone. But people are often shocked by it.

But that's also an achievement, I bet.

It's not just the joy of achievement. It's when you use your body, when you are physically active, it seems to unlock all of these joys. So you might be out in nature. You might be playing or competing.

You might be on a hike with a friend. So you're bonding, affection.

You feel good about yourself. You feel alive. You may be doing it to music. You may be celebrating something. All these things that we know are sources of joy. When people are moving their bodies in a way that they choose to on purpose, they're almost always doing it because it puts them in touch with some type of joy that they value.

I guess the reason I even printed out this whole list is I think it's important. I don't know. Maybe this is self-serving probably. I think leisure's deceptive. I think like leisure has the allure.

People are getting out of it.

Yeah, you would think the number one source of joy would be leisure time or leisure, but I don't know that it's the best ROI.

Here's one of the reasons why I think. I think, you know, joy is this interesting combination of pleasure and meaning. So the things that really stand out to people are the ones where the meaning is more clear. Now, leisure can be very meaningful. People will experience meaning in activities that other people would deride as being pointless. Like, how could you be a fan of that? Why are you wasting your time? But people can experience them as quite meaningful. But I think that the reason that these other things show up so much more, these like taking action that you're proud of or feeling connected is because they're such core sources of meaning for human beings.

Yeah, I think that's why it always falls a little short. Unless I'm doing leisure with my friends and family, then that other thing's on the table. But if I'm just, every time I'm like, oh, I'm burnt out, I'm going to do nothing for two days. Halfway through the second day of doing nothing, I'm like, I can't.

There's such a lure of it too. You know, people ask if you could have a superpower. I want to be able to stop time. I want to be able to stop time and just rest. Like make it slow down.

Yeah.

There's such a desire to do less or do something easy or that particular type of leisure is the one that's least likely to produce joy. Forms of leisure that are really making the list are things like playing games with other people or doing things with your hands, being creative.

Totally.

Or watching something that you just love and talking about it with people who also love it.

What is positive empathy? And maybe you tell me the story of Hernán Díaz.

Hernán Díaz is an author who found out that he won the Pulitzer Prize while he was at a diner. Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was so overwhelmed. This has never happened to me, but I assume this is like a life-changing moment that he had to leave the diner and he went out to the side of the road and like collapsed and started crying. And these women walked by and they saw a man by the side of the road on his knees crying. And they were so concerned, they stopped to take care of him. Are you okay? What's wrong? And then he told them what had happened.

Oh, that's so sweet.

The way he tells it is he's very like, so it was a good moment. I love that story because it shows how the ability to join in someone's happiness, it comes from that same instinct as our ability to see someone who's hurt and want to help them. And positive empathy is when you are experiencing or showing a positive emotion, I'm happy for you. I think your happiness is a good thing. It brings me joy. I want you to cherish it and enjoy it. And I am going to show that to you.

All right, this is a two-part question. Do you think, A, that's weirdly easier to do with strangers?

Oh, yeah.

And then B, what is the psychological pathology behind? Because I guess we're kind of getting into envy a little bit, but I do think this thing gets triggered in us that it's a finite resource that is opposed to like, I'll be brought along. We feel like it's a finite resource. They just got it all. I have none.

Exactly right. So I think there are a couple of things happening. One thing with strangers is two, we're less self-conscious. We don't have stories about their happiness as much and we can just get swept away in it. And we're also less likely to think other people are judging. Like if you're crying tears of joy, I'm going to start crying too. And I think it's why people love watching these celebrations on TV or these video clips of good things happening because you just feel less self-conscious and you can feel happy for them. But you're right. When it's someone you know, you're more likely to go into social comparison. You're more likely to have that zero-sum mindset where it's like, oh no, if they got what they want, does that mean I'm falling behind?

Yeah.

People are often like, what if they get their heart broken? What if this doesn't work out? Are they just getting their hopes up? So many people I talk to, they say they wish the people who love them would join them when something good happened instead of immediately trying to protect them.

Poking holes in your heart.

Protect them.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's also some element too in this one I'm quite compassionate towards is like, I think people have an immediate fear like, am I necessary anymore? If this person's fulfilled and happy, like, will I be invited along for the ride?

Interesting.

Or does this signal that they're going in one direction and I won't be included?

All of these fears make sense. You know, I think you just have to have some compassion for yourself when those thoughts and feelings emerge and set a priority on experiencing a moment of closeness with this other person to really view it as an opportunity. This person will love you so much if you are happy for them and with them. It's such a choice you can make to prioritize the relationship.

Yes.

Totally.

You know, I love that there are people who have done research on this where they actually tell people something good happened to someone you know and they didn't tell you how do you feel. And people are hurt.

Of course.

And they say, I can't count on this person because they're like, why? Why would this person not want to share it with me? And so in the same way that if we experience envy, we may think we were protecting other people by not letting them know when we're happy or good things happen. But we're complex. Even people who might experience that jealousy or that fear, they don't want to be left in the dark about it.

I think that one's tricky. I don't think it's binary. So it's like, I think it's all right to assess there are people in your life that are not good with certain information and some are.

I would say treat it like a hypothesis. Test it.

Yeah.

And when you choose to be that person, when you start modeling it yourself, you're more likely to find the people who are going to also reciprocate.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

All right, last thing I want you to tell me about is kind of the collectiveness of joy.

Collective joy is when people are experiencing something positive together and they're showing their enjoyment, their positive emotions in a way that pulls everybody into a sense of being bigger than self. I mean, my favorite version of it is at concerts. I love the moments when people are holding up the phone lights now or the confetti drop.

Sports.

Happens in sports.

Yeah, they didn't win the game. They're sitting in the stands, but somehow they won the game.

I often compare collective joy to those moments of connection that we're in the happy database. When you feel closer connected to someone, it's like we're in a little bubble. There's a bubble around us. I feel safe. I trust you. And it draws us closer together. When you experience joy with a lot of people at once, what it does is it makes you feel like you belong to a society that is good and that you are accepted for who you are just because you're human.

Yeah.

It's a different kind of connection. And when you look at the effects of feeling collective joy, whether it's at a concert or a sporting event or at any place where people are laughing or smiling or applauding or singing, people say they are more hopeful about life. They're more confident that they can meet the challenges in their own life, but also that the biggest problems in the world are solvable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's this kind of uplift that makes you feel good about humanity. It's a particular form of joy that when we lost it during the pandemic, I felt it so deeply.

Uh-huh.

It's one that a lot of people still have a lot of resistance to. It's one that I'm often nudging people. Like if there's a place you can go where there are going to be a lot of people enjoying something that you enjoy, to put yourself in that environment, even if someone's going to spill their drink on you and it's going to be too many people, you'll feel crowded. It's a type of feeling of belonging and hopefulness that really makes people want to be alive. It's that way of connection that we talked about where, you know, bodies and brains are syncing up. You literally are having access to a joy that is big.

Yeah.

That's why for big sporting, like this is what happened during the Knicks' run.

Yeah.

Like.

I know everyone was sending me videos of that.

Yeah.

Every last which you were here.

It was so fun. And then of course there's some people that are like, you don't even like them. It's like, I don't. I don't care, but I like this feeling. I like that everyone is talking about it and excited and wanting the same thing.

Like the Eras Tour concert also is the same situation where you're just like, I am. I'm part of something. I'm alive.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And I got to just see it from the outside, which is a unique beauty to it. It's just like I'm taking my daughter to another country to see this concert and I'm seeing all these Swifties from all over the world. And I'm like looking at all these little girls and I'm like, oh my God, this is so sweet how united they all are over this matriarch.

I recently went to a Benton Boone concert, not really knowing his music too much, but I kept hearing that parents were taking their kids to their first concert because the kids really wanted to see him.

Yes.

And I thought, I want to be in that space.

Yeah.

And it was amazing. There was right in front of me was a dad with his kid who was young and the kid was so excited and the dad was excited because the kid was excited and that energy was everywhere at the concert.

Yeah. It's about as pure as it gets when you go to any kind of concert that skews towards younger people.

Okay, this is interesting. This is a good explanation for me. I feel kind of guilty about this, but I always want to like go out as opposed to doing a home hang. Not always girls' nights, but sometimes we'll do like friends' dinners or planning and I'm like, I think we should go out instead of doing it at home. And I think it's because there's something about being in an environment where everyone's doing the same thing, strangers are doing the same thing that you're doing. I don't know. I'm just realizing this one.

The apex experience of that is Disneyland. There's no other place you can go on planet Earth.

I've heard so many people say this to me recently. I've never been.

Oh, you have.

Listen, you have to go because.

Honestly.

Yes, because there's something so much bigger going on than the amusement park, which itself is spectacular. I mean, you'll go and you'll just have to admire how clean they keep it, how well it's run. There's a reason it is what it is. That's one element. But where else on Earth are you going to go where all 30,000 people there have decided they're going to have a great day today? The palpable energy of that is so infectious.

You can't study joy and not go to Disney.

I guess. I just don't have any connection to like the Disney properties.

It won't matter.

Being childlike is not like my.

It won't matter.

I really don't think.

Ideal.

It won't matter.

It won't matter.

It won't matter.

It's.

I'll report back.

The rest of the world does not exist inside of there. By design, the way they've arranged the park, you can't see any highways. You can't see any outside. Like if there was a building, they planted a tree that like you are encapsulated in a fake world.

I would be the person who would just sit in the middle and just watch.

Yeah.

Oh, so much.

Best people watching on planet Earth. Okay, so your book is called Joy Is a Risk Worth Taking. I hope everyone reads it. It's fantastic. This has been a blast. Thank you so much, Kelly.

Thank you for coming.

He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let him have the facts.

Time for my toothpicks.

Oh, for my toothpicks.

So I have these, I have hard gel on my nails.

Uh-huh.

And I feel currently claustrophobic with them. I need it off.

And they're a little challenging to get off, right?

Yeah. I think I have to like go somewhere.

No, I think.

It's not regular gel.

The girls in my house know how to remove them.

They do?

Because the girls have wanted them and they may have gotten claustrophobic now. Get them off. Or one falls off and they want them all off.

This is like on so deep. Like it's not.

Will you ever get them again?

I got them twice because the first time was for a birthday present, which was very nice, but then I paid and then it was like, no, that was supposed to be a birthday present.

Interesting.

So then I got it again as the birthday present.

Okay.

But then, so the lady who did it just then removed it and did the new one.

Oh, okay.

And now we're in a situation because they're awesome. I would do them again, but I don't want them on always. I want them to be off now for a bit.

Okay.

And I don't know what to do.

How long have they been on?

Okay, the first time was my birthday.

August 24th.

Yep. A month later was the second round.

So September 24th?

Yeah.

So they've been on for a month and a week.

Too long.

How long are they supposed to be on?

Like a month.

A year?

No.

Oh.

Like a month and then.

Because they start growing out, right? And then there's a gap between your real nails.

That's what happens.

Okay. And that's what's driving you?

No.

What part, what aspect is the one that drives you nuts?

There's something weirdly claustrophobic about it. And then I earlier this week like shaved them all down a ton because they were too long.

Sure.

And even now they're feeling still too long.

And are they getting in the way of some of your, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Typing is not as easy. I was using my little Zoom recorder this morning to record and I couldn't open the flap and I was getting very worked up.

Panicked. Overly panicked about it.

I was getting really, really, really worked up.

Yeah.

And then I had to use a knife to, I mean, scissors to open that thing.

Mm. Sure.

God, saying a scissors is so something my dad says.

It is it?

Yeah.

Yeah. You had to get scissors to open it.

Yeah.

Not a scissors.

Exactly. Anyway, so I just feel stuck and I wanted to tell you.

Okay. So if you're a little bit irritable or cagey, that's why.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

I had another question for you that I wrote down.

Another one? Was that last thing a question for me?

Mm-hmm. You know, you have a real way of when you find out that I might be a little on the edge.

To poke the bear.

Just push it.

You're kind of a badger. You're not a bear. You're kind of like a badger.

No.

Well, what? They're cute and small, but they're absolutely fearless and they fight every animal they come across.

Are they cute?

I think so.

Yeah, you used to think chinchillas were cute.

I still think chinchillas. I think all of the world thinks chinchillas are cute.

They don't even have a rib cage.

Someone told me in response to the Frank story that their chinchilla they thought was gone, but then they found it somewhere crazy. It's the craziest word to see spelled as well. Chinchilla.

Yeah.

There's like six or seven H's in it.

Uh-huh.

A ton of C's.

Chinchillas have a recurring place in my life because in college, my roommates, Kelly and Christina, were joking about getting a chinchilla. And I really, for some reason, was like, ew, no. And then they, like you, wanted to poke the badger, I guess, and really could not stop teasing and threatening.

Right.

And I hated it.

But they never went so far as to get one just to, by the way, you would have loved it. They're so stupid. They're like made for a pet store. I don't even know how they live in the world.

That's why I don't like it.

Wild.

It looks, they're fake. They're like seahorses.

Yeah. Just like seahorses.

Okay.

All right. So the second question you're going to ask me.

I want to talk about bidets.

Oh, okay.

Because you have, your toilets are bidet, have bidets built in. They're fancy.

Brundles.

Brundles.

Toilet seat that goes on top of the normal bowl and it sprays warm water.

Correct.

In your hiney or your vagina?

In air if you want to dry it.

Yeah. I don't use that option, but yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

And yeah, you guys have it. You've had it at your old house too. They are nice. I've used it.

Yeah. I told you I didn't have it in Europe and I think that's why I got a hemorrhoid.

Okay. Yeah. So, okay. So then in toto also.

Beautiful Japanese version.

Yeah. So we've talked about this before and I think you said you don't have, why don't you have a toto or a brundle or something?

Yeah. It's kind of crazy to me.

And I was like, no, I don't need that. I don't, whatever. I don't want it. But then I started thinking, I was like, why don't I? Like why wouldn't I have just put that in? Or why didn't anyone like bring that up to me to maybe put in or?

Well, my suspicion was always like, man, you will definitely put fashion over function.

So.

You're like, it's not attractive. So that's probably why no one wanted you to have it.

And that turns out to be correct and I'll tell you how I know. So at first I was like, uh, but I don't, I've never had it so I don't.

You don't miss it.

Miss it or need it.

But when you're here, do you not use it? Do you ever clean out?

I know. Every now and then, but not really.

No. Okay.

Uh-uh. But when I was in Palm Springs for Jess's birthday, they had one in the hotel.

Yeah.

And I used it and I was like, oh, it's, I like it.

Especially for the morning business.

Well.

It's nice to clean.

I just don't think twice about it.

I don't know that you need to use one when you pee. That's not a huge deal.

That's not.

But when you.

Go number two.

Escalate, yeah, to a number two.

Sure.

Then I think it's good.

New upgrade.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but I've just never been like, that's kind of, that's like extra. I don't really need to spend money on that. Okay. So then my parents were here. I hope this doesn't get back to them. My parents were here. My parents were here. And like a day or two in, my dad was like, I'm going to order a add-on bidet.

Okay.

Like a hose.

Like a tushie.

But it's a hose.

Now this is.

Because I don't have, and I said, oh, yeah, because I don't have.

But dude, using a hose for something?

Well, it's a, no, it's a spray nozzle. Yes. And it's called.

It always grosses me out when I'm at like an old-fashioned hotel and they have it.

I do too.

Like what am I going to fucking.

Well, it's what you're doing.

But I'm not holding a fucking nozzle like I'm in the garden.

I know.

It's spraying everywhere.

Yeah. Okay. Well, for him, it was, he at this point needed it. He was like.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They have at their house, they're all set.

That's the system he has.

No, I think they have regular ones.

Okay.

But I don't, and then at this point they're like, they can't go to the bathroom without this.

Same. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And so it did make me think like, wow, first of all, I need to now get these.

For your father, minimally.

I guess so. And also like, wow, if they're this good and you can't go back, like I should get it. But also if you can't go back, this is sort of like my, I have this issue with the Squatty Potty. Because I use the Squatty Potty and I love it. And now when I'm at hotels, I notice a difference.

You got to put the trash can, use the trash can.

I've done that.

Yeah.

You got to get those knees up.

Yeah. Again, my height, you on a Squatty Potty is where my knees are naturally.

Right.

On the commode. Your feet barely touch the ground when you're on the toilet, right? Or do they?

Sometimes. Depends.

If you're leaning forward.

Depends on how far back. Depends on which toilet.

Yeah.

It just depends. But he took it out, by the way. He put it in and then he took it out. He was like, you don't want it.

Oh, he just put it in for himself?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Well, he asked, was he do you want me to leave it? I said no.

Yeah.

So he took it out.

It looks too medical, that version.

Exactly.

It looks like a hospital.

And my mom was like, you're going to get water everywhere.

I'm sure he did.

Oh.

Yeah. What sucks about the fact that you didn't build your house knowing you were going to have them is that you have an outlet put behind your toilet.

My dad said, that's what my dad said.

And you probably don't have outlets behind your toilet, right?

So then I, of course, had to text Bill in the night on a weekend, bothering him about poop toilets, you know? And I was like.

But you started with, Bill, I just don't feel clean. I could feel cleaner, I think, Bill.

I've been thinking about it.

Yeah. I'm not as clean as I could be, Bill. Let's start there.

So I said, I hate to bring this up at this stage in the process, which is basically we're done.

Yeah.

But is it possible to do this? And he was like, yes. He was like, anything's possible? Yes. But then he said, aesthetically, they're not optimal. Which is probably why.

Most certainly why the designer didn't.

It did not come up.

Yeah. If ever there was a thing where you would say I'm prioritizing the, it's like, you're not showing off your toilet to guests anyways.

I know.

It's not like.

Upstairs. I mean, I'm just going to put one in my room and one in the upstairs. I'm not putting them all over.

Okay.

The totos look nice though. We have totos in all bars.

Some do look fine.

Yeah, yeah. We have nice, like they're nice looking toilets and they're not as like bulky on the seat.

God, all y'all are so defensive of your bidets. Listen, they look crap. I mean, they don't look crap. They look like crap.

It looks like there's a microwave sitting on top of your toilet.

Exactly.

Yeah, but fucking get, like if ever there was a thing where who cares how it looks, it's such a toilet is all about function. Like what if you thought the hole was grotesque, the hole in the toilet was just too big? And so you had toilets with a tiny hole because it looked more elegant. And then it never, you were constantly plunging it. I mean, that's to me similar.

I have a toilet in the front, like the powder room when you walk in, that's, it could never, ever be a toto or a brundle. It's green. It is like mint green. The tank is in the wall. So you just, that could never be a toilet.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So elegant. I never use it because I am afraid.

To make it look dirty.

Yeah. Or like sometimes I'm like, well, what if it gets clogged? I can't get to the tank. Or not clogged.

I love that the tank's flying in the wall.

But it's really cool.

I'm constantly monkeying with.

The other ones, maybe this one for some, I don't know. Just, anyway, okay. So I probably am going to get some bidets going.

Okay, great. That will make me feel certainly more invited if I'm at your house.

You'll have to go upstairs to the Jack and Jill.

I would go anyways. I'm not going to go number two in your powder room at the front door when I could go upstairs.

But there's also one in the basement.

I would go there.

Yeah. That's the best place to go if you have to.

You might want to pop one in there too.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. That way if your guests have to shit, you don't want them to go up into the bedrooms.

You got to watch for the automatic seats too, because we put one in the boys' bathroom and Vinnie's so small that it just tries to shut on him all the time.

Yeah, I don't like automatic seats.

Yeah. We had to unplug it.

Oh.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because I've been urinating in one and it decides to close itself.

Oh my God.

Yeah, you got to get used to it. Yeah, I don't need, I can lift a fucking seat up.

These seem like a liability.

That's not a brundle.

Okay. Well, anyway.

You know the name of our home in Nashville is Brundle Springs.

That's right. And then my dad sent me an article about somebody else having bidets. Oh, Mum Donnie.

Of course. I'm like, what celebrity would he be reading about? That makes more sense.

No, apparently they're all over the place.

But it makes way more sense he sent you Mum Donnie has it.

Yeah. I mean, he read it somewhere. He probably looked up who has bidets.

Well, the White Sox, you said this thing where they hit a double, they would do this weird tickling motion because they got a Japanese player that had to have a bidet installed in the clubhouse. And it was all the first time any of them had used it.

Oh.

Oh.

And they loved it.

And you would do a tickling gesture?

It's like a weird, yeah.

Like the water tickling.

Maybe they would tickle him when he was on the hand motion.

No, the water tickling the ass.

That's the hand motion they would make after they would hit a double.

Oh my God, guys.

It's so scary.

This is too perverse.

Oh, a double because of number two. That's funny.

Oh, okay. All right. I thought they were tickling the poor Japanese player while he was on the toilet.

No.

I've never, ever heard a complaint.

All right.

What I hear nonstop is people come out of the bathroom going like, fuck, how do I get one of those?

I wish I had one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, that's an update, big update on my life. I'm going to probably be getting a bidet, two or three bidets in January.

Oh, great. In January. Okay, well, we've put a pin in for a long time now.

You can see everything.

You can see everything. And Rob, you've seen it?

Yes, I did.

Phew. Okay.

Okay.

You can see everything. The documentary we talked about recently, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim about Elizabeth Holmes. People really were freaked out by our connection.

Oh, were they?

Yes, our connection to Billy Evans, the husband.

The husband.

Okay, so you've since seen it.

Yeah. I want to start globally with a couple things.

Okay.

Like I had already, I had watched the documentary.

Okay.

I knew a lot about her. Did you?

Yes.

You did too.

Yeah. But I didn't read Bad Blood.

I am so confused by the mass confusion about whether or not people are debating whether she knows she did anything wrong. That it, what are you talking about?

She knows.

We know. She knew.

Well.

In her company, she separated her accounting team from, like she did so many things.

She did.

To hide this.

I know.

She couldn't possibly not know.

But don't you think that the brain is powerful enough? You don't believe she thinks at this stage that.

No. That it works? No, it doesn't work. It's never worked.

No, not that it works. Not that it works. I think, you know, in the scene, even though that wasn't even the machine, did you know that? The machine they show in the movie is not the machine.

Right.

That was not working, but whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I believe that a human brain is capable of compartmentalizing in a very, very, very scary way. That if you are not in it, you are like, what? Like you truly can't wrap your head around it and it makes zero sense. I don't know if she has convinced herself, but I think it's possible too.

By the way, what does that matter? Like first of all, like the bottom line is like, I almost feel like the discourse is like they believe her. This machine has always been a scam.

No, no.

It has always been a hoax.

Yeah. I don't think that's the, I don't think the confusion is whether the machine works. The confusion is whether she believes in it.

Well, but she told investors that they had a hundred million dollars in revenue on the year that they had one hundred thousand dollars.

I know.

She is a pathological liar.

I know, but that's a deeper question about pathological liars.

Yeah, I don't believe they don't know at all.

Isn't part of it too that maybe Sunny was manipulating her the same way Billy was?

Some people, that people wonder that, but she didn't have to know.

But this is a weird thing. These two things are happening in the gender space about this, which is fascinating. Like there's like, both are working in concert, even though they both nullify each other, which is like, I'm seeing posts like, oh, she just did what every male did. And if she was male, she wouldn't be going to prison.

Well, Sunny went to prison.

Right.

So.

Yeah. So forget that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And whatever. But there's that argument, right?

Right.

Which is like, she was just being male now because she's female, she's in trouble. No, she defrauded people out of a billion dollars.

She did. She did.

And then secondly, the other one is, is like, she's some defenseless vessel that Billy's controlling.

Well, he is insanely controlled.

Yeah, he's a piece of shit. Let's just be clear.

Oh my God.

He's a vile piece of shit. But those two are match made in heaven.

They are.

They are a deception team. This desire to like diminish her agency and say she's just the victim of these two men. Like the guy can be a piece of shit without her being, she can also be a piece of shit.

Sure.

Yeah.

But I think, I mean, like the dad, her dad is in it, you know, and her dad is convinced.

This is to me the great clue of why she is the way she is. As soon as you see that the dad is willingly going along with this complete fairy tale, as opposed to confronting his daughter that, no, hon, your thing doesn't work. It tells me that this guy has, that's her childhood. She was obviously, no one ever told her, no, hon, time out. What you're saying is not true. I know it's, there's no way the dad adopted this style later in life. It tells me that they've always been afraid to tell her the truth and confront her delusions.

Okay. That might be true.

Yeah.

But even more to me then, even more evidence that she believes it. Because I do think if you are never told that what you're saying is wrong or crazy or makes no sense or you're believing your own bullshit or something's wrong with you.

Believe whatever jokes you tell.

No, I think if you've been told your whole life that you've never been pushed back on, then you believe it. Like you really believe crazy shit.

We should be granular because one thing I will agree or concede to is, do I think she might believe it's possible?

Yes.

Yes. Do I think she might be convinced that it could still work?

Mm-hmm.

Sure. Does she know for sure it does not work? Yes.

I think she, she thinks it works, like in theory. Like this is the, this is, there's a whole conversation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a whole conversation between Nathan and her about the word can.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is ironic because you can see everything, you know, it's clearly, that's a sort of a play on that.

Yeah.

And it is weird because, you know, I guess I sort of see what she's saying. And I was like that. I was like, I mean, I am able to do, I see what she is saying and what she is saying.

That's her best lie she's come up with currently.

But I guess.

But she's trying to pretend like she was saying it could.

Okay. And then this is also one of the scenes, right, where he says, what's your definition of a lie? And first of all, she says she's never lied.

She's never lied. I mean, right away, I don't know what anyone's making any arguments in defense of her. Also, Billy is a piece of shit.

Yeah, he fucking hate him.

But she's smart enough to have a bad guy. He's doing all of her bidding. He's launching her company again with her. He's sitting there in lines at camp. He's, she wants money for the film and he's taken another chance.

That we know, we don't know that.

Well, let me ask you this.

I assume.

We do know.

You have to be on the word know.

I'll tell you why.

Okay.

We know.

Okay.

It's a really simple deduction.

Okay.

She said they did talk about.

Some stuff.

Right. Some stuff. Monica, there's only one thing. The only thing that was talked about was that they wanted money.

But Dax, you're filling, you are, you are technically filling in some blanks. I agree with you that likely, that this is very, very likely.

Just try to imagine the conversation is like, what'd you guys talk about? About it coming out in theaters. Oh, okay.

I know, I know, I know. But see how.

You can't really imagine the scenario where they had a conversation about what he just talked to them about where they're not talking about money.

He could have just said, yeah, we ran through the deal agreements and we signed it. I mean, look, I think the big question, which maybe you don't, clearly, is not what's real and what's not real, but what does reality mean? What does truth mean? Is it subjective or not? And that even goes into the love out there, their relationship, right?

Yeah. So let's take that one at a time.

Okay. But that to me is the most interesting part of the whole thing.

But reality in this specific case is not subjective at all. This machine either works or it doesn't.

I know.

Right?

But whether to her, her invention is real or not.

Right. Is not subjective.

To her, not to the world or my reality or your reality.

I just think it's interesting. Like I just, it's just because all the crying, like I don't know why everyone's trying to come to her defense. Nathan was.

I'm not, I'm not defending her.

But like it is a defense of her to go like, well, I know she's saying, but she believes it. That's a little get out of jail freaker.

It's not.

Because you're not.

She should be punished for this. I'm not saying that, oh no, she believes it. So actually it's fine. Like, no.

Okay.

It's like what we say often on here. It doesn't, it's still your responsibility.

Why is it plausible to everyone that someone that got in.

Because people are very fucked up.

Well, that's true.

People are extreme, the brain.

That's true. But someone who got into Stanford, who sees that the machine does not produce the results that she was hoping it would, and then goes and buys these Siemens machines to cover up for that. I'm confused how someone thinks she doesn't know it doesn't work because she had to go buy the machines. She did everything to hide it and solve it.

She's probably saying Sunny did that.

If she really thought it worked, she'd go, look, it worked.

She doesn't think it has worked. She thinks it has the capacity to work. And that's fucked up because anything has the capacity to work.

That's right.

I mean, later there's a man that it says like, oh yeah, they're all lying, everyone's lying about their products. They're all saying it can do something that it can't do right now. In general, like they're all doing this.

They're used founders.

Yeah. They're all doing this.

She is a symptom of this much broader sickness, which is venture capital and Silicon Valley, which is to bore people they already know. Venture capitalists have a very specific betting strategy. They're going to invest in 70 companies and they know 65 of them are going to fail and they know five are going to hit so big that ultimately it'll be a net win.

Yes.

And because that is the approach, that is not how anyone can live their life or trust people. No one can work on a margin of five to 70. But because the few founders, they're all delusional.

They're all delusional.

But because five of the 70 were less delusional and the victory was so big, we've embraced a system that allows for this rampant lying and delusion because it has paid off so big for Google, for Tesla. This is, she is but a symptom of this larger sickness of our.

I agree with you.

That wing of capitalism. It's rewarding a system that is delusional and there's a lot of lying and bullshit involved because this handful of people weren't full of shit.

Well, but that's then what people are, maybe some people are saying, well, all these other people should go to jail too, which some of them do.

Well, just like I think we're a little focused on this one symptom as opposed to this symptom versus this whole systems what created this.

Totally.

Like 40 years ago before venture capitalists, she comes in and pitches General Electric to manufacture this device. They're going to go make it work. And then when it doesn't work, they're not going to give her a dollar.

Yeah.

But we're in the system now where she's like, look, and they don't even make her, make it work.

But that's part of the question that's been the question from the beginning is how did she convince everyone, all these people to give her money when her thing didn't even work? And yeah, no one's even asking to see this. Like how did she do that?

Yeah, of course Eric and I were arguing a bunch, right? Because he loves these big companies and he loves VC and he's like.

Right.

You know, but so, you know, Elon too looked crazy. And it's like, again, we can't have a system that accounts for 5% of the people being correct.

Well, also.

That's insane.

They can't be lying outright, which I guess a lot of, I mean, a lot of them are.

Some of them do.

A lot of them are.

In the culture, because there have been these people that were lying and then ultimately did pull the rabbit out of the hat, like Elon.

Yeah.

Several of them.

Yeah.

We go, well, fuck it. We can incur this much deception and lying because when it does work, it's going to be so big. And that's just a really fucked up system of evaluating risk that somehow this VC thing has infected our whole landscape with.

Yeah. But also with this, because it was medical and then there was some misdiagnosis of people.

Yeah, people were going to Walgreens in, or whatever, CVS, whatever partnership she had.

Yeah.

And getting wrong results.

Yeah, like they had HIV and stuff and they didn't. So like, yes, this, I mean, some VCs and startups and stuff, they're lying and quote, they're lying or exaggerating or whatever they're saying. It's not so far having an impact on people's day-to-day or their health or whatever. Whereas in this case, this woman came in and I do think a lot of it is gendered. It's very gendered. It's that she came in and sort of wooed all these people.

Yeah.

Men.

Yeah.

And it was a big lie.

She has kind of hypnotic eyes.

She, but to me, this is what I, I'm like.

I find them very off-putting.

No offense, I'm saying, no offense to her. But it, the fact that all these men could be wooed by her.

Bambi eyes.

By this kind of like, I'm sorry, absurd, absurd eye contact. And she looks to me very absurd. And I think to a lot of women she does. And there is something kind of interesting at like, huh, all these men were just totally swindled by this kind of crazy.

But they were, I don't even know that they were swindled. Like, because again, they were VC people. Like they don't even fucking know.

They're all like Henry Kissinger or whatever. Like there's like random people.

Once we got down to swindling the, whether it was Walgreens or CVS or whatever one it was.

But like politicians.

And then people, normal people started investing. So then, yeah, she was swindling those people.

Everyone.

But I said, I said her stare and I, we have a mutual acquaintance that has this, which is like the illusion of presence and focus with absolute vacancy behind it. It's a very eerie.

It's so scary.

It's like ultra focused and present, but also you can see behind the eyes, there's nothing there.

Well, I read something that was, I think a psychologist like really breaking down. She was basically saying how you do it. There's like a way to like lift, like lift your eyelid.

I just invented a pinprick.

It's like.

It'll tell you what day you die.

Exactly. You lift your eyelid and then you don't, you don't blink.

Ever blink.

But she said that really is a mood for dis, a mode of disassociation. She's like, you see a lot of people who are disassociated doing that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, which to me, again, is sort of indicative of like, yeah, she's like not, the one thing I will say I believe is that her brain does not work the way a lot of other people's brains work.

I think she's just going to, like she's in denial and she's going to try to reality force field the way our hero, Steve Jobs did.

Mm-hmm.

She's like, I'm going to, I'm going to warp reality around me.

Yeah.

So that everyone believes this lie I'm selling.

Again, back to our original thing. I agree. It's like, I'm, I need this reality to be so true.

Because I can't handle the shame.

Of course.

And embarrassment of admitting it.

Yes. But so, but then to her it is. And that doesn't, again, doesn't mean she can't be true.

I don't think she could have done all that cover-up if she, if she didn't know.

I, again, I guess I don't know then. I'm talking about her now, her in the dock, her with time, her about to go to jail.

Yeah.

I think her brain believes it.

Okay.

I really do. And again, that doesn't mean anything other than the brain. To me, the brain is so powerful. Do you think she knew who's on first or not?

Yeah.

You do?

Yeah.

I just think she'd have to be such a good actress.

I almost want to read it out loud, this thing I read. It might be a little long, but let me, let me just quickly see if it's.

Just a couple pages.

It might be more.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

A licensed psychotherapist explains what Elizabeth Holmes teaches us about our own susceptibility. I do want to credit this person. It's on Hello Joe Nucci is where I found it.

Okay.

Is Elizabeth Holmes intentionally manipulative, potentially a psychopath, or did she get carried away with her ambitions and get used by the powerful men around her?

Yeah, I don't think it's as black and white as all of that, but yeah, let's hear what it says.

Many people feel like the film's appeal is in fact that there's no clear answer here, but I disagree. As a licensed psychotherapist who spends his time in entrepreneurial circles, I actually think the answer is fairly clear. One, these things aren't mutually exclusive. Manipulators can also be used. Two, it's incredibly transparent that Holmes knows exactly what she's doing and is more than willing to lie and manipulate to get her way. The interesting part is why it's tempting to second guess ourselves. There are so many examples of Holmes' intentional manipulation in the film. The most relevant example of this is that even when she is going to prison for 11 years, she is trying to rebuild Theranos.

That's what I've heard this take, yep.

There's a scene where Fielder asks Holmes the question everyone has wanted to ask for a decade. Did she lie about what Edison the machine Holmes was building at Theranos could do? Can it run hundreds of blood tests from a single drop of blood? She insists that the machine's capabilities are real and that she never defrauded anyone. It was all dependent on the chemistries and communication with the cloud so the program could run the machine properly. Notice what she did here, because if you don't, manipulators are going to use this technique on you in your life. What Holmes gave Fielder is a conditional.

I mean, I agree with pretty much all of that. I don't think she believed it necessarily when she was doing it. Well, look, she believes they're in love, and I actually believe they're in love, and it's all manipulation.

Mm-hmm.

But what's the difference if you believe? I mean, this again, it's like there's, there's, everything's being mirrored.

But love is subjective, right? It's not objective. We can't measure it. I can't possibly tell whether she has love for him and he has love for her. I'm inclined to think they do love each other.

Mm-hmm.

And I think the bond created by being two people against the universe, like they're the only two people in the world besides that bozo with the laser company who's acting like he has the solution now.

Yeah.

That's a very bonding and unifying position to be in.

Which is made up. There's no you two against the world. That's a made-up prison.

Well, I mean, the whole world's telling you you're a fraud and you and your husband are claiming you're not a fraud.

Uh-huh.

So that's like, in that sense, it's you two versus everyone else agrees that you're a fraudster.

Well, you're saying she knows she is.

Yeah.

So then that is like, if you really believe you're not and this other person really believes you're not, and that, to me, that's, that is us two against the world. That is we. But if it's like we're together conning everyone, to me, that's a little different of a thing.

See, I think you see this a lot in like addict-codependent relationships.

I agree. Yes.

Where it's like they're living in a complete fairy tale.

Yes.

That the one person's not an addict and everyone around them knows that it's very obvious.

Uh-huh.

And I think that weird.

Yes.

Dimension makes them closer.

Closer.

Yeah. Not, not in a healthy way, but, but it, but it makes you, 'cause you only have that person now. It's like you two are perpetuating this lie. We know it's a bonding.

It is, and it is not.

Healthy.

Real. I mean, again, this is back to, this is like, this is why I find this movie so interesting. You, I, to me, it's on all the levels of this. It's like, what is real and does it matter? Because to me, obviously watching them and like he has power of attorney over her. He is.

Oh, the Twitter part is incredible.

The Twitter. I mean, running her Twitter.

Don't be able to fuck off.

Yeah.

Fucking.

Yes.

I made me want to rejoin X just to follow her.

Oh my God.

And instigate him. Well, even I love, I mean, the, I think one of the first questions Nathan asked him is like, why did you like her?

Exactly.

And it's like, yeah, he doesn't have.

Because he went there.

He saw a ticket.

A ticket. A hundred percent.

Also just, I mean, there's so much. Like I also, I'm exposed to so many people that have learned the seven words from investing and/or tech, and they repeat them, but they don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

Yeah.

And he kept using all these.

Yeah.

Go-to fucking Silicon Valley words.

Yeah.

And I'm like, you don't know how to run a goddamn business. You don't know how to fucking do anything. You found your parents are rich, and then you found a meal ticket.

Yep.

And you're riding it.

But he found a meal ticket, but he also chose very interestingly because he found one that he knew was like going to jail. And so it's, it's, it was an interesting choice.

I'm not a psychoanalyst. I can't say this, but he, he appears to me to have a degree of narcissism.

Yes, a hundred percent.

That I do think for a narcissist, fame is good, period.

Yeah.

Just to be famous would be good. It doesn't matter if you're famous for being a fraudster. Just the envy of the attention.

Yeah.

That this person demands. I think if you're a narcissist, it's appealing. I don't think you care what it's derived from.

Yeah.

You're just like, fuck, I wish everyone in the world was talking about me. I wish I was on magazine covers and.

Yeah, maybe. I, I don't, I don't know.

And he was right to be in the stock. I'll tell you that.

Well, they call, they made the stock happen.

Yeah.

This was their idea.

And he wanted to be film showering, which is so great.

That car.

That was the most revealing part of his character.

It's also so, it was, it was so, so it's of course so funny 'cause all the men in my life is, that's the very first thing they brought up was his penis.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Being shown. And none of the women brought that up at all.

Oh, really?

Which I do think is telling or just interesting. And I, for me, I was like, oh my God, this person chose to not only keep it in, there's a camera crew right outside his shower with the shower open.

That's what Christine initially, of course, she's such a benefit of the doubt person.

Mm-hmm.

She goes, well, they, he might've thought they were filming from above.

Uh-huh.

I said, but honey, you have to remember he had to have the shower door open.

Exactly.

You can't get that shot from inside the shower above the waist.

Yeah.

The door's open.