Transcript of Leslie John (on the power of oversharing) New

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepherd. I'm joined by Monica Mouse. Today we have Leslie John on. She is a behavioral scientist and a professor at Harvard Business School. And we get to get into parasocial relationships on this one.

Juicy.

She has a great book out called Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing. And this is an incredibly interesting, conversation about parasocial relationships.

Parasocial relationships. We get into secrets, like the science of secrets. There's a lot of fun stuff in here.

Yeah. Please enjoy Leslie John.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Hi.

Good morning. Welcome.

Thank you.

That's okay. I don't care.

Oh my gosh, I see something cute.

Where did you stay?

I stayed there for the Montrose in West Hollywood. It's like a little suite.

It's not so big. Ooh, like a little boutique?

Yeah. What, you walk from West Hollywood here?

No, no, no.

But I do do that.

Okay, okay.

I am a bit of a crazy person. But yeah, the guy at the front desk was telling me that that's where America's Next Top Model, the production team. And then I said, have you watched the Netflix?

Oh boy.

Oh my goodness. I just— I haven't watched it. —so many thoughts.

About that?

Well, I only watched some and I want to continue. I mean, then I forgot to continue, but I've heard about all the drama.

Okay, so then where did you walk from if not your hotel?

I just walked from down the little street. I went to this little hipster— I'm sure that's not the right word these days.

Yeah, why not? We'll take it.

Hipster-like coffee shop. I'm much older than you. I'm sure you're more dialed in and you're interfacing with college students.

Yes.

Oh, true.

Which I'm not.

Yeah.

Do you think they're keeping you young or making you feel old or both?

Yeah, I think both.

Probably when you're around people your age, you're like, oh, I feel a little younger than them. And then when you're Yeah. You're a little older than I am.

Yeah, but I mostly teach executives now, so it's a different beast. I like it better because my go-to is positive parenting with them.

Okay.

Oh.

With the execs?

And they love it.

Shh.

Like reinforcement.

Yeah, like it's amazing how these tiny things can make such a huge difference, especially when there's strong gender, age norms, and all that. Like when I walk in to a bunch of executives, They're like, "Where's the professor?" Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right.

And so, I always feel like we have to kind of earn it, whereas if you're an old white dude, you're like, "Auguste." If you arrived in a Bentley and you're old and white, "Oh, this guy's got it figured out. Let's hear what he's got to say." But if you fucking walk and you're a broad from Canada, good luck.

Exactly. And I biked to school.

Oh, no!

Oh, my God. I did cave and get an e-bike recently. I feel a little guilty about it, but oh, my God, it's amazing. What fun.

Why do you feel guilty? That's good.

Well, it's my Catholic upbringing. Because you spent money on it? Yeah. And making myself feel comfortable should not be good. I've changed a lot.

Don't get me wrong. I think that's attribution error.

Ah, how so? That's the ballerina. You're right. It's the ballet. That had such a more profound—

Hourly you're experiencing like—

It's like we're in a parasocial relationship.

Pain equals growth.

Often. Yeah.

Pain is progress. Or minimally, even if it's not pain, it's discomfort. And I don't want to do this, but if I do this thing, I will experience— some positive growth.

Yeah. There's something to be said for it. Like, you do appreciate joy more when you have suffered. But I wouldn't say capital S suffer. I mean, like, a little bit of down.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And the peaks are higher.

Okay, where in Canada are you from originally?

I am from Waterloo.

Okay, you went to Waterloo College. That's in Ontario?

Yeah.

What age do you quit ballet?

21.

And how would you rate the overall—

journey. I mean, it is an incredibly privileged thing to do, to go to train professionally at 6th grade and live in boarding school.

You went to Germany, yeah?

Yeah. It's just an incredible experience, and I learned so much. Like, I think I'm generally, naturally, I don't know, my parents are really hardworking. Like, I'm a hardworking person, but it really nurtured that to a good and bad degree. And just the work ethic and attention to detail. Like, you just be in the mirror, like, swan hands. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just, again, and that's bad, this now. I can't do it anymore. And just the experience of being on stage, right? Like, the performance. That is the flow of moving to the music with your body and performing it. And I can't even use words for it.

Yeah.

So I actually recently, a month ago, met up with some of my old ballet friends. We hadn't seen each other. It had been 30 years since we'd seen each other. Okay. We hadn't seen each other since ballet jail, we call it.

Yeah, yeah. The shared trauma.

Lowercase t. Grand scheme of things, it's not that bad. But, you know, we talked about how weird it is that, for example, We're like, I don't know, 13 years old, and our feet are bleeding before class, but the thought of even telling the instructor that your feet are bleeding would be like off limits. We were children, and I have little boys now. I'm like, can you imagine your little children dancing with bleeding feet and pretending? It's just wild.

It's pretty wild.

It's pretty wild.

Yeah, yeah.

And the brutality of like, not physically, but like—

Yeah, you can think of brutality. It's a brutal school.

It's brutal.

Subjectively, a wild niche experience on planet Earth for a young person to go through. Historically and evolutionarily, these are just objective truths.

This is true.

Okay, so when you found your way to college and to psychology, and then ultimately to behavioral science, what was driving that? Was it your Stockholm syndrome of this hobby of yours? And you're like, I gotta unravel what happened.

I mean, all research is me-search, really.

I like that term. We haven't heard that. Me too, I like that. Yeah.

I loved, I still love dancing, moving, ballet. My shins were a disaster and fractured all the time. And I remember, for me, this moment where I was at some surgeon. They're like, "Oh, we'll just shave your bones down." I was like 15 years old. They're like, "We're gonna just shave your bones down, and it's an experimental procedure that works for other dancers." And that's that moment when I was like, "Okay, I'm out." It's one of those things where you kind of know that the writing's on the wall, it's not working, and you almost want someone to be like— you want like a sign so you don't have to make the decision yourself in a way, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You kind of hope your shins intervene.

Yeah, which is weird. You like hope for the worst in a way. Sometimes people are weird, including myself. So then I went to university and it was awesome. College, as they say here. And I've always been fascinated with decision-making. And I think I come from a long line of very indecisive people.

Indecisive.

Indecisive, yes. Like quirky, weird decision-making. So for example, on a family ski trip, my mother and father would say, "It's a flat rate." $40 or whatever it was back then. We have to ski until we get the price of a run down to $2.

Oh, right. Price per use. They're working on that. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like completely irrational because it's sunk, but so motivating.

So you need 20 runs.

Yeah, which is a lot.

A lot of runs.

And if there's a lot of lines at the chairlift.

Exactly. But was this out of frugality or like gamifying?

So this is a great question. This is a great question. I think it's out of irrational frugality.

Okay, yeah.

Uh, Pennywise in Poundland.

Yeah, yeah. Another would be, we'd be grocery shopping with my mom, and there'd be coconut milk, something that you don't need a lot of usually. I do love coconut milk, but it would be on sale, limit 10.

Oh.

And then we'd come home with 10.

Right.

Like, that's ironic.

Yeah.

That a limit would make you buy more. It really fascinated me, these quirky things that were going on.

That seemed a little irrational.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't have that vocab then, but odd things that made me, Hmm, that's interesting. So then I went and I got a PhD in decision-making. It's actually something like behavioral decision research.

Yeah, it sounded like bullshit when I read it.

No, I love that.

It sounds like, like, what do you wanna call this PhD?

I know, I know. I know, it's funny. As grad students, we're like, can we call it something different? Like psychology, economics? Economics, it's high status. But no, we have this super weirdo. So I don't know what I am to this day.

And Carnegie Mellon, which we've had a bunch of Carnegie Mellon folks on. Yeah, fancy. You start at Harvard in '11. You get promoted in '16 to associate professor. Look at his brain. And then 2021, you become tenured, right? So you've had this 15-year arc there. In the first 10 years of research, I want to talk about, because it was focused, if I'm correct, on secrecy and the decisions made privately and when and when not those are shared publicly. So let's talk first about that.

That's fascinating.

What brings you to secrecy?

So at that time, I remember when I was starting, I remember looking over at someone's computer, we're in the lab and they had this Facebook wall. I'm like, what the heck is that? I don't understand. It's a wall, you can post, like it just seemed very foreign to me. I just became fascinated with why are people doing this, posting and stuff, and it feels rewarding and I try to understand it. And then it's interesting because this is where you see the area you're in, you're shoehorned into a certain perspective without even really realizing it. So the perspective, of that field is very, very narrow in thinking about decision errors, like points of irrationality. Where do we stray from what a standard economist would do? Which, by the way, why is standard economics the standard? Right? Like, if it was, we'd all be a-holes. I don't want us to all be— Standard economics tells us a lot.

We shan't all act rationally. There's a lot more to life than rationality. I think we'd be dicks.

The focus there was, like, kind of on documenting errors we make largely online with sharing information. One of my favorite studies was this study where we asked people super sensitive questions. It's like a theme.

Well, if secrecy's the topic.

Oh, I want to take the quiz. I want to make sure—

I've got quizzes galore for you, baby.

Yay!

Okay, so we were brainstorming these questions. My PhD advisor is Freud's great-grandson. Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

So that explains a lot. Of the types of items he would come up with.

Oh, they were kind of still consistent?

With repression and sexuality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm a fresh, pimply-faced, 23-year-old grad student. The design of the study was let's ask people outrageous questions in the name of science and just vary what the interface looked like, have it look like super unprofessional versus professional and see whether people ironically reveal more on the unprofessional side.

Interesting.

Which I'll tell you more about in a sec. But to do this, we needed to brainstorm a bunch of really sensitive questions. Yes. So, I'm sitting there in his office. I even remember what I was wearing. It's one of these, like, flashbulb memories. And he starts off and he's like, "What about bestiality?" Uh-huh.

Mm.

Sharp.

Yeah, what about?

Oh, my God.

That one is almost more innocuous to me.

I kind of agree.

Like, asking someone about anal to me is more revealing than bestiality. Just 'cause A, super low prob— 'Cause it's so outrageous.

Yes. Low probability.

Just low probability.

Yeah. I need you to validate me. You know, and then it was just like every, as he was like, as someone who's neurotic, every question that I felt revealed something about me, every brainstorm, like that I was either a prude, if it was like, "Have you ever masturbated?" Or that I was really irresponsible, like, "Have you ever neglected to tell someone about an STD that you had?" Sure, right. And so I was just very meta. So then the study, what we did was for the crazy site, the unprofessional site, which is supposed to be a site that you should never share your data on because it looks shoddy. So it was called How Bad Are You? And it had this, like, bitmap graphic of a devil in Comic Sans font. Like, it was just ridiculous.

Yeah.

Completely absurd looking. Also, people gave their actual identifying information. Some of the things were illegal. And they revealed twice as much— Wow. —on the crazy site that is unprofessional than the one that just looked kind of normal.

Interesting.

What was your group of people responding to this? How were you reaching those people?

So that's a great question. Different samples. One was I walked around Carnegie Mellon with the laptop. We had this big data truck. We had, like, a whole van that we'd drive around and get— Oh, wow. Bring people on the van.

To be asked about sexual questions in a van, it sounds a little—

I know, the things we did.

Step into this windowless panel van and let's talk about bestiality.

And we'd go in the evening to like drinking spots.

Sure.

Oh.

My advisor managed to amazingly get it posted on a blog of the New York Times.

Oh, wow.

So it was New York Times readers are doing this too. So that like enhanced the legitimacy. And so the samples, maybe you change the questions so they're more relevant to the samples, but again and again, we found that people revealed like twice as much. On the nasty ones.

Yeah, of course.

But then it's like, well, see, this is the thing. In my narrow thing, we're like, oh my God, this is like an amazing publication. And we wrote it up because it was like so shocking to academia. But then when I'm presenting it, everyone's laughing at it. It's hilarious. And then I'm like, well, duh, of course people read because it's hilarious, because it's fun. People want to reveal because it's fun to reveal.

Well, also the creators of the site have already broadcast their morals in some sense.

It makes it easy.

They go, hey, there's a place for naughty people.

Right.

The devil's here.

And it's kind of saying, let's go ahead. I don't feel judged here. Yeah.

And this other place I'm gonna feel judged.

Totally.

Or like the government's watching or something.

Right, right.

Right, right, right. If it's official, then it even—

Yeah.

Yeah, like these clowns, I mean, they couldn't do anything if they wanted to with my data. They can't design a website.

Exactly.

Those kinds of reactions were so helpful to me when I presented it because over the years I came to realize that this perspective that we're bad at privacy and we overshare, it was not wrong, but it wasn't right. It was just so narrow. And when I looked back, the one single thing that was consistent was that when I make people feel comfortable, when I make it funny, when I give them space, they really want to reveal. So, kind of ever since, I've been obsessed with the other side of like, are we sharing enough? And why do we do it? And what does it get us? And what are the ins and outs of all that?

And that's what the work evolved to, right?

Yeah.

You start doing more work on vulnerability and sharing, what, 10 years at Harvard?

Yeah, after I would say like 10 years.

But can I ask, while you were doing the secrecy work, what is the driving force behind secrecy? What price do people pay? For carrying secrets? Oh, does everyone have them?

Have secrets?

Mm-hmm. Mm. Anecdotally, knee-jerk and say, "Yes, everyone does," but I never studied it.

I mean, is there someone in the world who doesn't have a secret? Maybe. But the vast majority of us have secrets, it's safe to say. And the average number of secrets that each person carries is 13.

Oh, wow!

But with a huge amount of variance.

13's high.

Because my hunch is, when we evaluate who has secrets, we go like, Well, all right, I'm an addict. I've had all kinds of carnage and lots of sexual partners. So I'm like, "Oh, I probably have more." But I think that would be a wrong understanding of secrets, which is they're not big infractions, per se. Everyone has some barometer of what they're trying to do. Yeah, yeah. And when they fall below it, that becomes a secret.

I had an old friend of mine reach out to me literally a month ago. I hadn't seen her since college. We were roommates. And she's like, "Leslie," "I have a secret that I have been carrying for God knows how many years." This was the second thing she said to me on this catch-up call. She said, "I'm the one that ate the Oreos." Stop!

There you go.

We knew it was you.

We knew it was you the entire time.

Also, what could be cuter than stealing some Oreos?

I know! And she was so earnest. I mean, so Canadian, right? She was so earnest about it. And then I was like, "Really? I feel for you that you've been keeping this so long." Right? And that's the thing with secrets is that Secrets can be harmful when you're actively keeping them, 'cause you need to, like, monitor. And there's been some really fascinating studies on how when you are keeping a— Like, these studies actually, they're good experiments in that they kind of endow you with a secret, or not, and then they do some kind of intelligence test, and you perform worse. It's because you're actively monitoring, you're preoccupied with the secret.

It's taking up brain space to keep all the many versions you've told of the people, right?

Exactly. And then it's, like, stressful, and it's bad for well-being, and all this. But that's, of course, not to say that we should say anything and everything all the time. We often keep secrets for very good reason. Like, I'm thinking of family secrets and secrets from our children.

Well, there's legal ones, too.

Legal secrets, too.

There's things that could get you arrested. In AA, we have a really good kind of policy. It's like, you're obliged to make amends to people unless to do so would injure that person or others. You have to be very objective about, "Is unburdening myself hurting you and then other people?" Right.

Intentional.

Yeah.

There's also tons of research on how when you say the thing, it's worse in your head than it actually ends up being.

Exactly.

A lot of it is like the rumination before you say the thing, and then you say the thing and you're like, "Oh, why was I ruminating? That was a waste." Like the Oreos. Yeah, yeah. Like the Oreos.

So how did that then transition from kind of being obsessed with secrecy to encouraging— ultimately, you wrote a book encouraging people to share more.

Yeah. The main impetus was this growing, leading a double life feeling of— I literally was, like, telling people, "We suck at privacy." I would lecture them. And then in my personal life, did I have all my passwords on a notepad? Do I do BuzzFeed quizzes like they're my kryptonite? Yes. Wait, that's hypocritical at minimum. But I think if you asked me to probe deeper into it, I would say it also coincided with— there's been a lot of changes in behavioral science, and— Mm-hmm. Kind of the old-school way of doing things is really negative and like, people are bad at making decisions and look at all the ways we suck. And it's really fascinating seeing how we're irrational. But I felt that that kind of vibe, for lack of a better word, it's kind of toxic when you're like seeking what's wrong with people. Then you look around in academia and nobody praises anyone. It's hyper, hyper-critical. Where's the joy? And so it was like, okay, wait. Revealing, why do they do it? Maybe people are right to do it. Maybe it's joyful, maybe it's fun, maybe it opens up doors in relationships, maybe it gives you influence, maybe it does all of these things.

So I was like reflecting on times when I thought that I had overshared, these moments of TMI. It's like I poured gasoline all over my body and lit a match. There's no recovering from this. And I looked back at these and I was like, "Yeah, that sucked, but what about the long game?" Every single one of them, there was something amazing that came out of it. I only connected it when I was working on the book.

Yeah, 'cause you were in the middle You were in a group of other people and you were encouraged by high-status members of the group to share an embarrassing story.

I.e., career suicide. So I was a baby academic, I was at this conference late at night, and there was mostly junior people, but there was a couple of super grand poobahs who did not know of my existence at that point. And someone had the idea of let's go around the circle and share our most embarrassing story ever. And most of them were like humblebrags, like there's a typo in my abstract or something like, oh no, the horror, right? Like this way of showing off without seeming like you're showing off. That's super obnoxious and eye-rolly. And for whatever reason, I don't know why, impulsively, I just went for it. And I shared my actually most embarrassing story, which was when I was in college, I was acting in a play and I peed myself on stage, like, in a lavish way.

Uh-huh. Full evac of the bladder.

Full evac.

You could see it?

I believe so.

How much detail do you want here?

Oh, we love detail. Yeah, this is our bread and butter, for real.

Buckle in. I was wearing pantyhose. Yes, it was noticeable. And I was in my— deluded thinking/half-thinking/panic in the moment. I'm on stage and it's like a waterfall, it feels like, because I played a drunk schoolteacher.

Oh, you were just in character!

And so I was like really into it because I was like a prim and proper, and there's this one scene where I go crazy that I couldn't wait for. And so I'm on the tables and they're laughing, and the Clara's laughing, so then I laugh, and then that happens, the waterfall. But then I think, okay, well, how do I cover this up? I don't want them to see this. So I have this giant bottle of quote, "vodka." And so then I'm like, "Dilute it." Oh, smart. So then I'm throwing the vodka everywhere.

Really smart. This was quite a performance to witness.

But also, a drunk person would pee, so that's like, really mad at it.

I know, if I saw it, I'd be like, "Oh, cool, they rigged up—" Same.

"There's a rig in there." And they made it for you, like you can smell it.

Yeah, you're so sophisticated. This is small town Ontario.

Small town.

I'm just saying. But anyways, I don't know, to this day, my family and I have never spoken of it. So I shared it. Sorry, I'm being verbose. We shared it. I went for a nap. I went for the kill, not strategically, and then I was like, "Oh, no." And everyone else was, "Oh!" Yeah, yeah. "Who's that girl? Weirdo." And so then I thought, "Well, that's the end of my career." And then I woke up the next day and just so much rumination. But then, writing the book, looking back, I thought, "Wow, I felt very ashamed. People looked at me weird. I got a lot of this negative feedback." But those two guys, they became my closest mentors. One of them, Mike Norton, who you've had, he's like my chosen big brother. He came here a couple years ago for this book. And he was there. And it wasn't despite that We've become close. It's like you were real and not a robot and took a risk and—

Yeah.

Could have gone badly for sure.

Yeah.

I lucked out. So there's lots of moments like that when I started thinking, even the stuff that really feels TMI, there's often an upside to it that we sometimes don't appreciate in the moment.

Yeah, I heard you say that kind of in general, not much qualifies as oversharing other than online.

Online, I think, is super tricky because it's not like a normal social interaction. And then companies all rig it to get our data, and online is super tough. I'm almost to the point where if you never feel like you've crossed the line, then you're not doing it enough, right?

Uh-huh.

I don't know if you've had Linda Babcock. She's this amazing economist. She studies negotiation. She's written a few books on women and negotiating. And she said to me, I remember, Carnegie Mellon, she said, "Leslie, if you always get what you want, you're not asking for enough." Ooh, I like that. And I think it's the same way with revealing. Sometimes hitting the TMI, we should celebrate, 'cause now we know where the bound is.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

If we never get there, then we're not doing it enough, and we're missing out.

For the people who are in the world screaming like, "Why do they gotta share that?" You know, there's definitely a chorus of people who are like, "Why you need your dirty laundry out there? Why you gotta share all that?" Let's try to make a steel argument for what it is that you think they're objecting to. I have my theories.

I have one too. Hit us.

I believe that sometimes. Let's hear it.

So that's why I—

Oh, you have that thought?

I have that thought too. Say more.

Normally I object when there are other people involved in their overshare and I'm like, these other people that are involved do not have the opportunity to speak up.

Yeah, that's really annoying.

And a lot of memoirs, I think, have this tricky line.

This is in your book, sharing what's not yours to share.

Yeah.

Totally.

But it's tricky 'cause what's yours and what's not yours?

Especially when you're talking about your family.

I'm talking about your family.

It's like your story.

Or your husband or wife.

This is really hard.

Or your exes. These are real people out in the world, and I find that very complicated.

I agree. It is very complicated.

Even if you hate them, it's your perspective, which I guess is the point.

Yeah. Let's break it into defined categories. So one would be that type of sharing where it's just like you're spilling everyone's tea versus I'm owning up to something publicly that's very shameful. That's a specific category. I think that's the one we would want to encourage.

Yeah.

And then so within that domain, is there any pattern of when people feel like it's too much?

In the domain of owning up to your—

Yeah, the good kind we want, where it's like you're just owning your own struggle or your own shortcoming or your own failure.

I think there is definitely TMI potential there. I'm thinking, for example, let's say you're going back to work after an absence, health-related, Let's say it's substance abuse related. You got it all under control now, you're like on the road. But it would be too much to tell everybody all the gore about it, right? Oh, yeah. Like, that's just not necessary. That's like bringing everyone down. They just need to know that you're doing better, you've addressed the thing, and you have the maturity to help yourself and to get the tools you need. That's kind of going into detail about all the ins and outs of the problem. Another one would be— this is one that Alison— Who I know, I actually, her book is right behind you. Alison Brooks's book, Talk. Her take is you should never say, if you have to cancel or you have a conflict, you should never give the reason why, 'cause that's TMI. 'Cause she's like, "There's never a reason that's good enough, so you should just say, 'I can't make it.'" My take is different. I think that you often should give the answer, but only if the answer is actually a good, unassailable answer.

Like, "My child is sick." That's unassailable. And people understand more, and then they empathize with you. But what would be a bad example A good example of that is if it feels selfish, or if it feels like you are putting yourself above the other person. And most explanations do that. But there are some, like children are an unassailable reason. Like, everybody knows that, of course, they take priority no matter what. Or like family emergencies. Family illnesses, yeah. Another area where it's tricky is when— these situations are all situations where you're saying it to a group of people. Like, that's risky. But if it's one-on-one, it's so much easier to read the room. And you have a relationship with these people who you called up. I think it's very low risk risk in that sense.

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Insincerity.

Yeah, and that's problematic. We know people that are just addicted to the adrenaline of shock value. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I'm on that list. I'm on that spectrum somewhere, right? Of course, it feels normal to me, but I'm sure for other people— But yes, I get more alive if we're talking about something a little more dangerous. Yeah.

More—

I think that makes you human. I hope so. That, like, talking about risqué, juicy subjects is just more fun. We pay more attention. We're more dialed in.

There's novelty on the other side as well. Like, you're gonna tell me something, likely, I haven't heard a version of yet.

It's seductive, even. Yeah, it's intimate. The pull of— Yeah, yeah. And I think that's what's so interesting I think that's the number one when people are like, "How do I think about this better? How do I decide what's TMI, what's not? How do I choose what to reveal and what not?" I think the number one thing is knowing your purpose. In your heart of hearts, why are you doing this? I think it's a more complex question than it seems because it's like how therapy has that annoying feature of keeping— every question begs more questions, right?

Yeah.

'Cause it's like, what's your purpose? You really have to be brutally honest with yourself to come to the realization that, "Oh, I'm just doing this 'cause I want status or I wanna show off." Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right? Right, right.

Requires a lot of self-awareness to really be like, be that level of honesty with yourself.

And there's likely multiple motivators within it. What one are you isolating?

They totally conflict. And what we found when people do consider these decisions, these really hard decisions, like do you tell your boss that you have ADHD? Could get accommodation, you could lose your job. Do you tell your kids about your partying ways? Do you tell your spouse about that old fling? Do you tell your spouse you're disappointed in them? All these things are like very unclear whether you should should do it or not. And so often we just default to silence. We don't even consider doing it. And then when we do, I've found that it's like 90%+ of the time when I do say, okay, think of something that you're considering, tell me what you're thinking about, tell me what's on your mind, 90% of the things that people think about are the risks of revealing. They're like, oh, you know, if I speak up at work because someone didn't credit me for an idea, they'll think I'm petty, it'll ruin the relationship. And that's all real, that's totally valid and legit, but they stop there. What about the risks of not sharing? Well, I'm I'm gonna be passive-aggressive, and that's gonna be bad for the relationship.

So, like, zooming out is, I think, a really important part of making better decisions. I mean, we've shown it in our research that we fixate on the risks of revealing for lots of reasons about how our brains work, but then if we zoom out, we make different ones. It doesn't mean everything should be revealed, for sure not, but I think we should reveal a little bit more than we think we should most of the time.

And what advice do you have for these different— asymmetric relationships or status relationships? How does that play out?

Status is tricky. Workplace is a place of mixed status often, and that's where we need to be crafty because it's tricky. And we need to realize that in any given day, we move up and down the status hierarchy. I mean, when I'm talking to the dean, I'm lower status. When I'm talking to students, I'm higher status. So, like, each person, depending moment to moment, and I think when we are in a high-status situation, we have so much more leeway than we think. And it's so powerful. I'm thinking of, for example, like Angelina Jolie, The op-ed she wrote in the Times on breast cancer and double mastectomy, and after that, so high-status person, there was a noticeable uptick in people getting screened. You can do so much good in destigmatizing things, in prompting action, if you're high status. And again and again, we've studied this. We've studied people in high-status situations saying some of their weaknesses, like CEOs of companies saying, "My organizational skills aren't the greatest sometimes." They're not saying, like, "I'm pathologically messy." That's TMI, but going a little bit more, and it makes a difference. It makes their employees like them more, be more motivated to work for them, trust them more.

It has all these benefits. Like, it's kind of obvious talking about it now, but when we ask managers, like, "What do you say to your new team when you introduce yourself?" It's all just, like, positive things about themselves. They never share what they're working on. It often doesn't occur to us to do it.

Right. We think we gotta sell ourselves.

Well, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And in so many situations, I think it's less selling, more curiosity, more question asking. The times when you actually need to sell and persuade are very few and far between in everyday life. And in fact, when you're trying to sell, oftentimes the way to sell is to not be stealthy.

I was gonna say, it's also just white noise.

Yeah.

Like, you're doing the same thing everyone else is doing.

Yeah. Cut through.

Have you studied how people receive that?

So, we've studied what are good ways to receive someone's disclosure. There's some really interesting work on that. So, like, if someone says something really sensitive to you, confides in you, what's a good thing to do. This is why I love what I do. My instinct is often wrong, and then I learn from research, "Oh, I did the exact wrong thing." So my instinct is often, like, go into fix mode, right? So if my husband's like, "This colleague is, like, such a pain," I'm like, "Okay, well, let's problem-solve." And that's typically not the most useful thing. The most useful thing is validation, is just saying, "I hear you. That must be so hard. That guy sounds like a real dick." Just saying less is more. There have been neuroscientific studies of this, when you validate someone's feelings, even when they know that you're literally doing this almost performatively, like you're instructed, even when I know you're doing this, the areas of the brain, the really emotional ones, it's calming for someone to repeat back to you the things that you are feeling, which has so many lessons. Like in parenting, I apply that. I have to fight myself.

I'm like—

Oh, God, yes.

Right? I'm like going into like fix mode, and then no, no, no, no. Tyler, I know that's so frustrating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would feel the same way too. Yeah.

Yeah.

I've had a unique experience of just being been in AA for so long, I think it's such an abnormal experience to watch people do exactly that all the time. It's all oversharing. It's almost always shameful. And just getting to witness the reaction to that was truly the opposite of what I feared growing up. And then it's always met with understanding and forgiveness and all these things. It's a tough sell to people who have not had that experience. We deal with it on the show. All the time. All the time. We deal with publicists who are gatekeepers of actors, and the publicist will go, "Look, I can put them on a different show, and they won't have to talk about anything." This is a very vulnerable show.

We require— I mean, the types of conversations, you're gonna probably say something about yourself.

Right.

Reveal something.

It necessitates it.

What you want to educate them on, which is a very hard sell, is, "Look, I've said everything on here. I've said I've been molested. I've said I relapsed. I said I did this. I said I cheated on my girlfriend." Like, I've said all this stuff. It has not made people repelled by me. I'm an example of the thing you're afraid of. And then also, look at these 1,000 episodes where people did it, and there's never been blowback. There's almost never been blowback. And it's very frustrating that that's still the paradigm, that you think these things—

I know.

—repel you to other people, and all they do is endear you to other people. So I'm really fascinated by why it works so well. I think there's, again, this social primate thing. There's a level of trust that you bestow onto me into me by telling me your secret or something you're ashamed or embarrassed on.

Yeah.

And then I intuit, "Wow, they trust me." Yeah. And now we're in a trusting relationship.

Exactly.

And now I feel inclined to reciprocate.

Exactly.

And now we really are building something deeper. But then I think there's this other aspect to it that is, I think we are attracted to bravery.

Hmm. Say more.

As a species. You can just easily figure out why that might be. Like evolutionarily, you would think. Evolutionarily, the one that went, went out and found the new waterhole should be celebrated. The one that fought the lion should be celebrated. You know, these acts of courage and bravery, we, I think, are hardwired to appreciate.

Right.

That's why we love these athletes. And I think people immediately recognize bravery. You know immediately, you can feel it, how scary it'd be for you to have said that same thing to yourself. And you go, "Wow, that was really brave." You admire them for it.

Yes! You admire them for it.

It's attractive. It's courageous.

Your intuition and your lived experience is super consistent with the data. You know, I love that I— in my job, I get to put people in these kind of absurd decision-making scenarios. Like, I trap them, and then they— the choice they make, hopefully, if I've designed it well, illuminates something about human nature. And so our version of what you just said to show that was this study where what we did was we asked, "So imagine you're deciding between two prospective dates." So there's two people you're thinking of dating. You talk to one of them, you ask them, I'm laughing because it's a ridiculous question. "Have you ever had any STDs?" Uh-huh. And they said, "Oh my God, like, I have had all of the STDs and even the undiscovered ones." You haven't heard of it. The other person, you ask the same question, and they're like, "I'm not telling you." This contrast we're interested in, might it sometimes be better to just say the worst possible thing relative to silently saying, "I'm not doing that." Right.

Yeah.

And in fact, In fact, it is better to say, "I've had all the STDs," than to just not answer the question.

'Cause our imagination is stronger than reality. What do they have going on that they kind of—

That they can't say.

Yeah.

But also then that's a little tricky with boundaries. I agree that if I was on these dates, I would also be like, "Yikes, if you're not telling me, there's something crazy." But I also believe you should be able to say, "I'm not comfortable answering that." that I don't know you.

Yeah, the principled withholder, you would think. And so we did like ridiculous number of studies. You know, a social scientist, tinker, tinker, tinker. And we tested like, okay, what if it's like a principled withholder that's like, "That's an obnoxious question." Still we hate them. And so I've come to believe that it's something really deep and primal in us that is so rewarding about— we're so oriented towards self-disclosure. Why? Because— It's social risk. And the social risk, when I do this, I'm showing that I trust you. And then when I do that, then you trust me. And so it's precisely because it's risky that there is reward.

Okay, let's talk about parasocial relationships. Yeah, let's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, first let's talk about the illusion of reciprocity.

Okay. Yeah, I like this.

That's at the heart of parasocial relationships. A parasocial relationship being a one-sided, often between people in the media, celebrities, and someone who's not a celebrity, feeling this real sense of emotional connection to the person, but the famous person doesn't even know of the person's existence. We're so wired towards social relationships, right? And our brains are kind of a little lazy. We take shortcuts. And so, most of the relationships we have, or at least our brains think that most of them that we have, are two-sided. But now, there's so much more opportunity for one-sided with social media, but our brains kind of haven't adapted to that. And so, we use this heuristic of, like, "Oh, if I know a lot about them, "Um, they must know a lot about me." Yeah.

Because up until 1900, it would have been impossible to know a lot about somebody that didn't also know a lot about you, virtually.

Yeah, if you think of like the Caesars, there was parasocial relationship, I'm sure there, but the scope of this has just exploded because you have so much access to these people, like revealing a lot about themselves, which revealing, we know, makes you feel like you know them and they know you and trust. That's really the accelerant of these relationships.

Right.

There is something very real about them, because there are real feelings involved. So there's something really real about them, and they can be really helpful in many ways. One simple way we've shown this is where, look at the people you follow on social media, how well do you know them? And then I asked, how well do they know you? And then I asked, by the way, do any of these people actually follow you? And almost none of them are mutually. But yet the degree to which I think that I know you is super strongly correlated with the degree to which I think you know me. Wait, so people do think it? Your brain just feels it. Your brain—

It's like, I know, I know so much. I know so much about this person. You intuitively know. And they also know a lot about me because that's how it has worked for 300,000 years.

Like one symptom of this is if a fan comes up to you and they like start telling you super personal stuff as if you're in— that's what you do in a relationship. Like, I'm sure that's happened to you.

I hang out at Cara a lot.

What happens?

Constant. Every time.

Does it get annoying?

No, it's lovely. I think it's so nice. I love that. They always come and they say thank you, basically. But then And then, yeah, there always is some vulnerable moment. Like, someone gave me this long letter, very personal stuff.

And specifically, Monica had a show about freezing eggs and fertility. And so, she gets tons of women that are gonna tell her, of course, immediately—

Their fertility story.

—the fertility story.

And I think we're in a very interesting position because actors have a little bit less of a parasocial relationship because you at least know them as famous.

They're like, "They're this famous thing." Well, and you know them from their characters they've played in movies.

They don't reveal the way you two do.

Yeah, but Dax is this weird hybrid, right?

Yes, he's a weird hybrid. You're right.

I am not. They got to know me here. We're extremely vulnerable and talking about pooping our pants and talking about—

Tonking.

Masturbating and—

Yeah.

And lots of stuff, you know? What also happens is they'll come up and be like, "Oh, my God, when you told this story," and it's like, "Oh, my God, I can't believe I told that story." Like, I am like, "Oh, yeah." You're a little mortified. Yes, 'cause I forgot that everyone's listening.

Right.

It is very different. Very weird. Yeah. I also have been on the other side of parasocial relationships all the time. I am currently on the other side of a parasocial relationship.

Interesting.

We've all been there. I'm listening to this podcast. Yeah. These two women that are one degree removed from me in life. Okay. And I'm obsessed with them. Okay. I'm going back, listening from the beginning, having opinions.

And I know, I'm like, oh my God, this is so crazy. What is driving you to do this?

Well, we've dissected it a little bit. Okay. I think part of it's like, oh, they're sisters.

I wish I had that. Me too. I don't know.

You feel like you're involved in that relationship. Relationship, and it's a relationship that's interesting. So it's so weird to have experienced both.

And now that we're talking about it here, do they know?

I mean, I've been talking about it for a couple weeks. It's probably gotten back to them.

What's the next move? No, but I don't want to meet them. So why don't you want to meet them?

I think because I've been on the other side of it. Yes. I know that meeting is not—

It's never good.

It's like, for what? That might shatter a little bit of this fun thing I've created.

The illusion. The illusion.

Yes. We differ on this greatly, though. Oh, you do? Interesting. Yeah, our reaction to the attention. One of the fights we have a lot on here is about, "She would never date someone that listens to the show." Oh, that was my next question for you.

Would you ever date a fan? You would not?

Not a fan. Someone who listens is one thing, but someone who's an active— Why not?

My argument is like, that makes sense for an actor who played a queen in a movie, and everyone fell in love with her, and she had perfect wardrobe.

It's not her.

It's not her. He's like, "You don't love me. You love this character." I'm like, "Monica, if they love you, they love you." Well, do you think they know the real you?

That's the thing. They know a version, but they don't. So for me, if you come in and you love me, well, first of all, you can't love me. You do not know me. I guess that's sort of—

Did you love Matt Damon?

No! Like, I'm smart enough to know—

I think you really feel love in your heart.

I feel infatuation. I feel—

Don't we all? Exactly.

Exactly. I feel infatuation, but I do not love Matt Damon. I know love is the space. It's earned. It's the space in between two people. It's both ways.

So I see what both of you are saying. I think that both has merits. I'm doing my positive parenting exec. Sorry.

I see his point too.

No, I totally see. I validate you. But a really important thing that we're hitting on is you wanna get there together. It's like one-sided disclosure. This goes back to Arthur Aaron's studies where they had people— he grouped people together that didn't know each other, and he had them go through a list of 36 questions that got more and more deep as they went along. And when people did that, they like each other at the end. One of them even, so the lore goes, fell in love and got married. The control people, they just talk about small talk. It doesn't work. But then there was another study that what they did was they had people— dyad 1 got the same questions as dyad 2, but dyad 1, one fell swoon, swooped it. So, the first person answered all the questions, then the second person answered all the questions. In the other dyad, it was the back and forth.

I ask a question, you ask a question.

Right, exactly. Back and forth. And it was only the back and forth that made people feel connected and loved. So, it's really like the process of taking this risk together. Now, that's not to say— I wouldn't rule it out of the question of Monica being with a fan. I would just think that the fan would have to be cognizant that we need to We need to start—

Build your own shared—

We need to build this.

Yeah. Which I think is highly doable.

I think so too. I'm such a romantic. I'm just like— but I digress.

Yeah, I'm in one with somebody I do know.

Oh, yes. Okay.

But it's the same because I don't know them the way I am immersed in his life as a parasocial relationship. So mine's David Sedaris.

Oh, I love him.

I have become like just— I can't stop listening every single night to his stuff. Probably for 9 months, I've been listening every night, re-listening over and over again. Because again, it's about his sisters, it's about his friends, it's about his husband. It's his life. And I can see myself so clearly inserting beautifully into he and Amy's breakfast.

Oh.

Like, I know I have the same vibe as them. And I find the same irreverent shit funny. And I'm not afraid to be gross and dirty. Like, there's just all these indicators for me where I'm like, "Oh, I could really, really thrive in that little trifecta." And I tell Monica, "The really weird thing for me is I am friendly with him.

We text." He's been on this show, like, 4 or 5 times.

Yeah. But he is not close to me the way I am close to him. He's not listening to this show. And so, I'm in an even trickier spot where it's like, I have to figure out whether I pursue this relationship I want with him if there's something weird about that, or even if it's even possible. But I'm really enjoying it 'cause it's such a weird feeling. Like, I'm in love with him.

Love it.

I love him. I want to protect him. I want to just follow him around and make sure he's okay. Yeah, I love him.

I love it slash I'm a little worried about it. Sure. But do you want to act on it, or is it just the fantasy? Like, you're here, and then it's like, it's never gonna be what you make it out to be.

That's for certain. He's crankier than probably I know, and he's maybe more petty than I know. You know, he's more human than I know. He's a person, yeah. Although that's not true. That is kind of his brand, is exposing what a shitty person he is, which is why I love him.

Why you love— Yeah.

Yes.

He can do no wrong.

Maybe he could deliver. But for me, it's more about I would love to have that relationship with him. I hope I do somehow. But it has to be achieved in a real way that I'm not pursuing it and he doesn't know how I feel. I am gonna be reliant on him more than myself.

Yeah, I think because I've been in this position a lot, I've had a lot of parasocial relationships and lived in fantasy land, like, my whole life, basically. Yeah. That I've had the bubble pop a lot. A lot. I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of these people that I had all these fantasies about, and it goes away. The thing you had, that like googly eyes, goes away. There are some things that I think are fun that just like live in your imagination.

Yes, I agree. That does sound though also like the course of love and relationships and infatuation, where the stages of being infatuated with someone and then over time you see that they scratch their bum and there's some— They clear their throat a lot. Yeah. And it's the kind of positive illusions go away to an extent.

But I like that because that's intimacy.

I think this is where, again, getting there together is really important because when you build that together, social psychology says this on intimate relationships, that then you get these positive illusions as you go along, and the positive illusions sustain you a lot longer, I would think, than if it's this one-sided thing that's very kind of artificial in a way. But I say artificial lightly because the feelings are real, and I do think that when people feel lonely during COVID COVID, parasocial interactions were a source of great comfort to people. Oh, yeah.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. All right, so this isn't new. Talk about the trapped in the TV effect.

Oh, yeah. So that was one of the first scientific explorations of this, or it was talked about in a scientific way, is in the '50s. So there was a TV show called, like, Ding Dong School or something like this, and there was a woman in it— it was a kids' show— Miss Francis. And, you know, TVs were novel then, and this was so interesting that this person could talk to you through the TV.

In your living room.

It looked like she was there. And so what the children started doing is trying to bang open the— or, like, take apart the TV.

They wanted to let her out.

'Cause they wanted to let her out, 'cause they knew They thought she was— I know.

It's true.

They thought she was trapped. I know. I think it captures this desire, someone who is so compelling, you just want more of them. But I agree with you that sometimes we should leave it at that.

But that's learned. I think that's learned behavior.

Yeah. Yeah.

Can we talk about the science of connection?

Yeah, let's do that.

I mean, I have written down this sentence. Why are we instinctively drawn to mutual openness and how our brains respond to it even when it comes from a machine?

Oh, I love that. I love that. This colleague of mine, her name is Youngmi Moon, she did these fascinating studies. I think they were the early 2000s where she had people interact with computers, and then the computers self-disclosed to the person. They'd be like, "I have up to 100 gigahertz RAM capacity, but I rarely get to use my whole capacity." [LAUGHTER] Like, they didn't even say "I." It wasn't even that personified. It was like, "This computer, but rarely uses its full capacity." And then people felt attracted, and they liked the computer, that disclosed to it, which is so fascinating to me because the hardwiring case, the case for, like, when something acts like a human and reveals, then we feel fond of them.

Think how many movies we have where that's the storyline. We love stories about robots who really have a heart.

I know, I know.

We've done it 30 times, and then they always work. And there's a huge Broadway play right now.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

That kids are obsessed with.

Oh.

Yeah. Two robots that fall in love.

Oh. There's this amazing study where they put people in brain scanners and they had people answer kind of fun-ish trivia questions about themselves. So like, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? And when people did that, the pleasure centers of their brain were activated. So it's really— suggests that there's something deeply intrinsically reinforcing about self-disclosure. And then they did the classic thing to convince the conservative economists. Mm-hmm. Economists that there's something to it. They had people actually— they gave them the opportunity to essentially pay money to answer questions about themselves, and people did it.

They're like, "I'll pay good money to talk about myself." I read in your thing that just asking someone follow-up questions—

Yeah.

The power of that. What's happening there?

This is now Alison Brooks, my bestie. She's done work on follow-up questions as well. Follow-up questions are really powerful 'cause they signal that you're listening, and people love— to self-disclose. It's, as we know, intrinsically motivating. And so when you ask me a follow-up question, it's not just any question. You're first, you're showing that you listen to me. So I'm like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. And you're giving me an opportunity to tell you more about myself. It's amazing. I'm in heaven. And the core to me of why this is so powerful is because social connections are like, we are herd animals, and if we don't have them, then we die.

Yeah, if nobody cares about us, then we're you were excommunicated.

Yeah. In my 30s, I found myself divorced and single again. And so I was navigating online dating. And looking back, I realized I did the exact wrong thing to attract a mate in the sense that when I got to the date and if I was like, uh, not super into this guy, I would just keep asking him questions 'cause I'm like, at least I'll learn something about him. Like I learned about robotic knot tie, 3D knot ties and like all these random things that I never knew existed.

Were you on Academia?

I know that's a really nerdy one. Smashdubs? No, I actually did not want to date an academic. That's like a thumbs down. That's a negative in the grandmaster regression equation of my dating life. But yeah, it was the exact wrong thing because then those are the guys that are like—

Yeah.

She loves me. Yeah. And then by contrast, when I was really into the guy, I'm a very gut person on these kinds of things. When I was really into him, I would find myself selling, like pitching.

Yeah. Oh, you're attractive.

Yeah. And then fortunately, I realized it kind of midway through. That I was, er, doing the wrong thing. But it's interesting how the instincts, and like, I study this stuff, and my intuition was like, completely wrong.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, what impact does beauty have on a sense of familiarity?

Oh my gosh, so.

Ooh.

We love beautiful people.

Beauty, we love beautiful people.

We do.

I know, I've heard if you could choose to be beautiful or intelligent, I think you said beauty.

Yeah, I would say beauty. We gotta use the word hot over beautiful, just to be clear.

Hot, why is that?

Hot means you wanna have sex with the person. Beautiful doesn't necessarily mean I don't really mean that.

Beautiful means like soul.

I can look at a lot of models and go, "Oh, they're beautiful." I don't think they're hot.

You wanna be someone that everyone wants to have sex with.

To fuck, yeah.

Why? 'Cause he's an approval junkie.

Yeah, that's the ultimate approval.

Why is that the ultimate approval though? Why not, "You are the most intelligent, I admire your brain." But why is that the thing for you?

Well, because A, it's what I didn't have. We all want what we don't have.

Or you felt like you didn't have.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

By my estimation, no one slept with me 'cause they thought I was hot.

But people were sleeping with you though? That's what's weird. It's not like you weren't getting some—

CBT sesh. Yeah. Right.

So boohoo to me it still worked out. Yes. I just think it's natural for us to identify what we don't have and to covet that. Maybe not.

Maybe I'm unique enough. Yeah. It's a spectrum. And I think you're on the far end of pegging it. I would pick beautiful over hot. Okay. Wow! Why is that? Because she already has hot. Obviously. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think it's more alluring. I think it's more rarefied air.

I agree.

It's harder to be. I think hot is all the parts of you. You can be hot by being confident and having style, having a good personality.

Like that's what's hot to me. Oh, but beautiful is like physical.

Physically only.

You can't do anything about it. Oh, I thought you were saying the opposite. Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So for me it's like, well, I got what I got. I hate it.

Yeah.

So obviously I wish that was, you know what I mean? And again, within 10 years, I have some amount of that, so I don't really care. But we have heard from very beautiful people that they wanna be seen as intelligent, but they don't know what it's like to be ugly.

Which fits with you always want what you don't have.

The grass is always greener.

Right. The grass is always greener.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is so interesting though. Okay, so—

But the other side of that—

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so a friend of mine, Benoît Monette, who is also very beautiful, the punchline is beautiful people feel familiar to us. Us. So when you think of, like, why do we feel connected to celebrities? Well, one is now they tell us a lot, we have access, so we feel the thing in our brain of how we can't tell that it's one-sided, we confuse the two.

You know a lot about them. Yeah.

Right. But also, they tend to be beautiful, hot, whichever you prefer. And we actually perceptually view hot people as more familiar. We think they're more familiar. And in one of the studies they did in this paper, they took photos from a Princeton an old yearbook. They did the study with current Princeton students, but it was an old yearbook. They didn't know the people. And then they asked the people, "How familiar is this person?" And the more attractive people were judged to be more familiar.

What?

I know.

That's counterintuitive.

Is there any explanation for that? It's just an observation? I mean, do we have any theory on why it triggers familiarity?

The explanation, it's something to do with the symmetry of the face. Beautiful is more symmetric, and it's more fluent to process. The more fluent something is to process, the more familiar. You confound ease of processing with familiarity.

I'm also gonna come at it from a null hypothesis approach, which is distinctive features are novel, which is implicitly not familiar, right? So the more asymmetry you have—

Distinctive features are not beautiful.

Well, let's just say you have asymmetry. Like in a classic way. All the things that we define the golden rule of beauty, right? You're violating that.

Right.

That's why I would argue that's what is beautiful about people, right? Is when they're unique.

Yes.

But it's unique, which is the opposite of familiar.

Yes.

Yeah.

Right. But are you saying that because it's unique, it should stand out and be memorable?

Well, I'm just saying because it's unique, it's in opposition to familiarity.

Yeah.

Yeah. If you recognize this is the first time I'm seeing this, that's the opposite of familiar.

Exactly.

Whereas if nothing's triggered, you don't file into new thing. Right.

Yeah. And so it's familiar. Exactly.

You're told to, like, draw a picture of a man a man, that's what you're gonna draw. You're just gonna draw like a very standard something. And then if a beautiful person probably matches that standard—

You draw symmetrically or you attempt to.

Exactly. Yeah.

This is a zone that no one will like. When I've seen really hard movements and pushes to redefine beauty, which on the surface is wonderful and egalitarian and all these things, why I've bristled is I feel like there's some dishonesty in that. At the end of the day, no matter what you say or who you put on billboards, when you do these tests and you just show faces of people, symmetry's symmetry. There's something fucked up in our brain that values that. And I don't think you can ad campaign your way out of that. And it feels dishonest in its pursuit.

Ah, interesting.

As opposed to working on, like, how do we all deal with that we don't look like Brad Pitt? That seems more productive. Yeah. How do we come to terms to terms with, guess what, you are not symmetrical.

I guess it's a little confusing 'cause you did also just say what you find attractive is uniqueness. And I think a lot of people do actually find unique features attractive or like, oh, that's interesting and intriguing. Right. So that's the opposite of what you're saying too.

Right, that's true.

Yeah, so for me personally, I might have my tastes.

But I think a lot of people find, I mean, everyone likes Matt Berry. Boomer. Okay, everyone looks at his face and is like, yeah, he's classic, classically beautiful. No one's gonna object. Exactly. And I'm not saying we shouldn't put him on a billboard. We should. But also, I don't think putting— oh God, I shouldn't say it. Yeah, putting that person on a billboard who has unique—

you— but I think I'd be the first to say it's like, yes, I am attracted to that uniqueness and fingerprinty, and I can I know that's not gonna be the most broadly appealing. I can acknowledge the reality of it. I happen to find the Greek nose so hot. That's not gonna get adopted by everybody, right?

Yeah.

Mm. So, two things are happening. One is my personal preferences, and then also, I can acknowledge that if you put up these two faces and you poll all of America, this person's gonna get the win.

Although maybe there's just so much taste for uniqueness, right? That it's not disingenuous that there is a segment of the population that likes Greek noses.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

In that sense, it would be what consumers demand. It wouldn't be disingenuous. I think one of the things I was reacting to in my mind that I bristled against, the feeling of you're being, like, gaslit as a consumer, that it's like— Right.

Or a campaign.

That's what I mean. It's like, no, symmetry is objectively beautiful. Like, we can agree.

Yeah.

But I think you can do this in a genuine way market someone who is not classically beautiful.

I do too.

Yeah. Yeah.

Don't tell people that they can't like the symmetrical person. We're gonna like it.

I just feel placated or something. Yeah.

It's interesting.

Although yes and no, because sometimes when you see like the most beautiful person ever wearing like sunglasses on a billboard, it's like, well, I'm not gonna put those sunglasses on and look like that. It's a lie.

For sure.

Yeah.

Now we're talking about what category, some categories you don't want aspirational. You want, oh, I see myself in that person. I would wanna use that product. And guess what? People that are "beautiful," in quotes, or how it's defined, they have a different experience on planet Earth. That's worth us knowing about.

So interesting.

So think about this, Aya, if you're beautiful and everyone feels more familiar with you, what enormous advantages are there? I know, yeah.

The advantage of being beautiful, the social benefits, which is that people are nicer to you, they smile to you. And I think that's also not just bestowed on people that are beautiful, but also bestowed on famous people, on celebrities.

People that are beautiful people who are beautiful can talk at a different pace. Your patience to listen to them is higher 'cause you're very engaged and activated just by what you're seeing visually. Right, right.

It's stimulating. I know, I was just gonna say the same thing.

That is true.

It's like, so normally you need the conversation to provide all the stimuli, but this face is doing a lot of the lifting.

But don't you think after 5 minutes you get adapted to that? I just think it runs out.

People say this all the time, like, "Oh my God." Yeah, that's a great point.

"That girl can get cheated on." I've heard this so many times.

Yeah, I know. I've heard it too.

Very specific people. Like, "She's the most beautiful person in the world. How could anyone cheat on her?" You adapt to people's faces.

Yeah. I think this may be an area where there's huge individual differences. For me, I'm just thinking of my first marriage. Great guy, amazing person. I never had the, like, "I wanna rip." Uh-huh. And I felt ashamed of that for a long time because he was— he is such a wonderful man. —deserved that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then, I found myself dating again, and then I realized, "Oh, no, I should just listen to what I really want." And that's— call me shallow, but it's really important to me. And I see my husband, and we've been married for 8 years, and I'm like, "You are so fucking hot." Like, all the time.

Oh, that's not bad.

And that's important to me. I wish it wasn't important to me. Like, I really wish it wasn't.

You're being honest.

Here's what I'm saying. When I say yes, if you are forced to be dishonest in pursuit of this principle you have, that to me is not a principle.

And that's why if I had only been able to be honest with myself of like, okay, it's fine.

This is how I'm built.

This is the way I am. But instead, I, you know, lots of reasons I will not invoke other people, but I didn't learn that or I didn't acknowledge that about myself.

You're not telling me and I already know it at all.

Yeah, exactly.

You're an overachiever. And this is a good match, and this is a good, good, good, good, good, good, good.

Yes. And so on, and other things.

Well, that was fun.

Yeah.

I enjoyed all this. I do encourage people to get your book, "Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing." As a big proponent of oversharing, I co-sign on this book. Dr. Leslie John, thank you so much. Thank you.

This was fun.

You enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes. Okay, bring everyone up to speed. You want coffee? You've been staying up too late. I inquired why.

What's going on? Well, I'm down another rabbit hole. Um, some cooking videos. Okay, not Alison. She hasn't put up any new ones lately, but I am watching, um, What's Gaby Cooking.

What's that?

She is a woman who— period. That's it.

That's her unique offering though.

She like— she's a cook and she does, um, videos and, uh, is very popular. And she does— or yeah, I don't know if she still does them. I assume she does these Instagram Lives on Monday, so like you can like watch and kind of cook along with her, which is cool.

Is it more exciting knowing it's live? Like, do you think that's playing into the notion of like, oh yeah, this is unedited?

Yeah, I bet people love that. But then you just put 'em on Instagram, you know, like your old ones or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, they live.

So I started watching those. And they're like 30 minutes. 'Cause she's making dinner in like a 30 to 40 minute, yeah, that's what's kind of cool. It's like she's making it fast.

And— Heat and serve, basically.

I know. And—

And you'll watch a ton of them.

Exactly.

And then I'm like, "Oh, no, it's one." And you're having the same pull towards it as if you were watching a great series and the cliffhanger ending ends and you look at the clock and you're like, "I cannot start this." And then you're like, "Well, I gotta find out 5 minutes of it." Yeah. It's that strong?

I— Yes. And we've discussed that currently, I— I, well, not currently, but yeah, I have been listening to Aaron and Sarah's podcast in a kind of crazy manner.

Uh-huh.

And now this is similar.

Mm-hmm.

So yeah, I mean, I'm probably, you know, I'm coping.

Yeah.

With something, but I have nothing to heal right now. So I don't really know what it is, but I'm definitely in a like, escapist zone.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

So—

Interesting.

So Gaby's giving me that.

And you have no hunches? Or do you have hunches?

I mean, I was really thinking, like—

What feeling am I trying to avoid?

I mean—

I mean, that's too generic. It's not that simple.

Yeah, I don't think it would be that simple.

I don't think it needs to be that.

I don't know. Maybe it's the itch for summer. I'm just, like, really ready to get there.

I'll make an argument.

Great.

So we're working crazy. This time of year, always for us, is the hardest time time of the year because we're trying to build up enough of a stockpile that we can take a summer vacation.

Yeah.

And always, I gotta say, you know, it's, we've been doing this for years now and it's always hard May, June.

Yeah.

This one's going okay for me, but.

It's good.

You know, I don't know if this is good or bad behind the curtain, but it's like we did 10 this week, right? So we're doing 2 a day.

23 fact checks.

13 recordings.

It's a lot.

So I know that I have been searching comfort in the evening.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Just like, I feel like, okay, from these hours you gotta be on.

Yeah.

And you gotta push hard. And then when I'm off, I'm like, okay, I'm even making deals with myself, like maybe that's going on with you, where I'm like, yeah, whatever I have to do at night, fine, I just gotta kind of get through it. Through to the finish line.

Mm-hmm.

You know, whatever comforting I need to do.

I guess. I mean, maybe it's that, although the Aaron and Sarah thing's been going on for a while, so I don't know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't know what that is, other than what we— I discussed maybe like a want for a sister.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But okay, but I have recently been thinking like, is something wrong with me? Do I need to get my blood work done? What's going on that I like, in the morning, I feel 3,£000. Pounds. As in, like, I can— the idea of lifting this body and getting it out of bed feels like it requires Herculean strength.

Because this is, this is, um, clue number 2 though, because now we got, we got sleep disruption, we got solving, you know, and then we got we can't get out of bed in the morning.

I think it's all the same. It's all connected though. It's like I'm going to bed very late, so actually in the morning, like, I am still tired. I should be sleeping still.

You're getting less than 8?

I don't know. And I don't know what the quality is. Oh, I had a— I had a horrible dream a couple nights ago that was like very— and you were in it, and you were a bad guy in it.

And you had a Brad Pitt sex dream. So they're all over the map this week. It's like the best dream you've ever had and the worst.

Oh, it's not the best I've ever had.

Okay.

In my dreams.

I didn't mean to insult you.

Yeah, you don't know about that. I don't know about But it was a horrible nightmare that included all of us, but I was like on the run in the dream. And so it was so heightened. And then in the morning, of course, I was like, I mean, how good could I have slept if that's what was happening in my brain?

If you were fight or flight all night? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, doesn't seem restful.

Yeah, and so then I had the idea to, to keep my curtains open.

Okay.

So that I would wake up naturally by the light.

Oh, right.

And I was like, that might solve my issue.

Yeah, yeah.

And it kind of did.

Cool. But you gotta get up really early.

Exactly. Then I was like, oh, I like woke up and I looked at the clock and it was 5.

Well, that's the problem now that we're in summer, 'cause I wake up at 6:20 and yeah, I gotta have everything shut in my room airtight because the sun's out for an hour already by 6:20. It was 5 and I was like, I'm not doing this. Yeah.

So then I tried to go back to sleep with the blind or with the curtains open, but then I just closed them and then we're back in the same situation.

Yeah.

So there's just, you know, I'm just having— I need to clean up my sleep hygiene, but not as I'm going into summer and traveling. It doesn't make sense.

You don't need to do that.

Yeah.

This was my share on Tuesday night.

Oh, great.

This occurred to me while I was writing to my my meeting, which is— I haven't talked about our leakings, right?

No, you did. I did? Yeah, because remember, um, I had a huge catastrophe and then you had a— you had that same day had a—

I'm not sure at the time of that recording how many we had at that point, but it was, it was one in Kristen's office while we were in Nashville, get home, two at the same time, two different air conditioning coil boxes here, here, then Got it fixed, then broke again. Another night of rain. I've had 3 nights of getting woke up at 3 in the morning with the family going, "It's raining in the downstairs bedroom." Okay. Which blows it with our schedule, right? That's like, "Ugh, it's not the time I need to be up for an hour." Okay, then yesterday we have this in-the-wall water dispenser that filters the water.

Oh yeah.

So that thing, 2 nights ago, that shit out at 1 in the morning and started flooding the kitchen.

What?

But crazy enough, I bought little alarms that go off when there's water. So they were hearing the alarms downstairs thinking a neighbor's, like, alarm system was going off. But finally, thank goodness, Lincoln was like, I'm too freaked out to sleep downstairs with the neighbor's alarm going off. Like, are there boogeymen on the ground? You know, are there? So they all moved upstairs, and when they moved, they realized the kitchen was flooding.

Oh.

Okay, so that's 5 pretty major leaks in like a week.

Interesting.

It's like we have a water poltergeist.

Oh!

And they're from all different things. It's not like one thing, right, that ties all these together.

This guy loves water.

And so I'm riding to my meeting and it occurs to me I'm completely fine with this.

Okay.

It's been challenging.

Yeah.

But I haven't had that, "I'm overwhelmed. What the fuck is wrong with this house? I'm mad at contractors. This house isn't even old." Like, I'm not going down—

You're not angry.

I'm not angry.

Yeah, that's great.

And I'm not going specifically down the road of like, "I've been fucked." Yeah. Right?

You're not taking it personally.

Right.

Yeah.

But occasionally you get frustrated with the work that's done that you paid a lot of money for. Like, I can start building up the same, where it's like, "My God," you know? He charged me 4 times what, and it's fucking nothing, you know?

Yeah.

So that can happen to me and does sometimes, but I was just clocking like that didn't happen at all.

Yeah.

They'd just been like, it's that, yeah, that's annoying, let's get it fixed. And then also, you know, I have got like untold disasters happening in Nashville with my bus and all kinds of stuff. So normally this stuff would really stress me out and it would also, I would start getting really resentful at people and things and whatever. And it's really, really fine. And I just realize, like, A, sometimes biochemically, I don't know why. There's nothing different. It's just whatever reason my biochemistry at that time makes me susceptible to that. Or what I really think it's about for me is when my self-esteem is high, nothing really bothers me. And when my self-esteem is low, low, everything's a personal attack. I'm a victim. I am prone to self-pity. The world's conspiring against me. How many leaks could I get? You know, like, and it's just self-esteem.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, but—

For me, it's just self-esteem. Like, my self-esteem governs exactly how I'm gonna do with the world.

But your self-esteem, I feel like, then is tenuous.

It is. I have to fill my self-esteem. It doesn't happen on its own.

So it just so happens that, like, I've got, I've got lots of graduations going.

I've been attending a lot of things. I've been taking the girls everywhere. Like, I've been so of service to them. They've been a full-time job. I'm here working around the clock. That gives me esteem. The kids give me esteem. I've been, like, of service. And yeah, my cup's filled. I like who I am this week, which is always up for debate.

Sure. That makes sense.

Yeah. And I was just like, oh, yeah, these things that feel objective objective, like, objectively, you'd be angry right now, or objectively, you'd be annoyed, or objectively, you should be pissed. That's just not true.

Right.

I could—

Well, there's no objectively you should be angry ever.

But when you're upset about all these things, you have a really good court case in your head that you're convincing yourself, like, yeah, well, anybody right now would be completely annoyed.

Right.

And agitated and irritable.

Yeah.

But I just noticed, like, oh, I'm not at all Yeah. Why is that? Oh, it's this. I feel generally good about myself.

Purpose is important, obviously.

Yeah. It's just interesting, like, for me, and not for anyone else, but for me, when I'm thinking about trying to tackle the issues that are giving me stress, I'd be inclined to confront those things, the leaks, the this, and it's not that. It's like, if I just fill up this other cup, I actually won't mind all that. That much about. They'll just be like, oh yeah, that's life. It's just—

Yeah, exactly. Things happen.

It's inconvenient, but that's it. Nothing personal is going on.

Definitely.

I'm not being targeted.

Yeah. Interesting.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Okay. I've been wanting to share this for a minute. Oh. Share. Which is, I think I came up with a banger only because my, my kids now sing it nonstop. Okay. Okay. So, okay. But it requires a little bit of a story, which is— and I think people already know that I have reframed in my life that I am Tom Hardy in Mobland now.

Where is it?

I'm Tom Hardy in the show Mobland.

You are?

I am in my mind. Oh, and it started with that box that was stolen, the recycling box that was stolen by a homeless person, and I had to go find it. Oh, that was a long time ago. That was a long time. So since then, I've been applying this framing to anything I have to do for my wife.

Okay.

In the past, if she were to have left me like a list of things to do, I would've been, well, I have been so triggered. I'll go like, I'm not your assistant. You can't leave me a list, right? Like, that was a big thing for me.

Got it, got it.

And once I clicked into this Tom Hardy thing, which is like, oh no, I'm just a fixer. And I take like pride in that. So I don't know, 2 weekends ago I had to meet them somewhere. But she said, hey, before you leave, since you're leaving later, will you do X, Y, and Z? And Z was go get all the packages.

Oh, okay.

Okay. So I had gone through the first couple little tasks, and I like knew I was about to knock out the third one. And then I can't— somehow this song just came into my head. Okay. I might have to practice it once so it sounds good before Yeah, yeah.

I mean, really? I should do this, like—

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to get the packages from the loading dock now my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to get the packages from the loading dock my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to get the packages from the loading dock my mission, should I choose so that's the song! That's my song: "My Mission Should I Choose To Accept It Is To Get The Packages From The Loading Dock." And when I framed it which is like I'm Mission Impossible they've given me the mission, I get to accept it or not. So I have some autonomy there. Autonomy, right? But my mission, should I choose to accept, is to get the packages from the loading dock.

Okay, yeah.

So I go out and I get all these packages from the loading dock, and then I'm singing the song and I'm feeling like really good about the song, right? And then I send a voice memo of the song to them wherever they're at.

Okay, cool.

And then I have this moment of, I think, humility where I go—

This is crazy.

Look at you. You need to create a song around it. You did a little tiny thing, and then now you wanna share the song so that they will laugh at you. And then all of a sudden this song popped into my head, which is also a banger. You ready? Okay. Because I realized this is how I was acting. I'm the cutest little boy ever made. Watch me jump. Watch me play. I'm the cutest little boy ever made. Watch me jump. Watch me play. You won't even watch me sing, so you're not going to watch me jump and play. Oh, God. So anyways, those are my two bangers.

I watch you jump and play all day long.

You do watch me jump and play all day long. Um, those were my two songs, and I have a lot of songs.

Uh, clearly.

Yeah, I have a lot of songs about my perm, cuz my hair is getting so crazy, and it's permed. It's so curly now, which is really weird. My hair was always straight as an arrow, and now as an old man, my hair's curly.

Okay, maybe just—

everyone sees it. People like— the whole visit my mother was here, she's just like, I don't— where did your hair get Why is it so curly?

I haven't noticed it once being curly, but I'm not very observant. And you're wearing a hat.

Yeah, so I sing a lot of songs about encouraging people. It's okay, you can look at my perm. It's a really nice perm. Go ahead and look at my perm. So there's probably 4 or 5 songs about my perm.

Okay.

So anyways, I guess this is all leading up to, I do think I have about 30 songs sent as voice memos, and I'm gonna start shopping them in Nashville.

Oh, you're gonna go down the streets and get into those clubs?

No, I don't want to get into clubs. I want to offer to sell this, like, um, you know, maybe Chris Stapleton. I know he writes his own songs, but maybe he'd like to sing.

You gotta get yourself into the clubs and you sing them, and then they, they like that, and then they buy it and stuff.

No, I'm gonna go to the publishers and say, can I have a writing session with, um, Shania Twain?

You're gonna have to go to Bluebird Cafe.

So I'm gonna go to them and go, okay, I have 63 songs, but don't worry, it's only 8 minutes. That's all cumulatively. And do you want to work on any of these seeds of ideas?

Sure.

Yeah. Look for my forthcoming album.

Yeah, I respect the ambition. Yeah, yeah. And I hope it goes well.

Can you imagine me in one of those places singing "My Mission"?

I kind of really can.

My mission should I choose to accept is to pay the piper.

Because you also had an idea the other day.

My mission.

Oh boy.

Idea for what?

You had an idea the other day that was interesting, um, that was a performance piece of you redoing some other people's stand-ups.

Let's get the commenters to say about this idea.

Yeah. Your idea—

My idea is to tour the country.

Mm-hmm.

In every city I'm in, I will have learned a different stand-up's entire routine.

Right.

It started with Dane Cook.

Yeah.

Because we talked about Sports Chalet in the backyard, you, me, and Anna.

That's right.

And I immediately heard, "Sports Chalet will take you to the limit," which is a rockin' song.

Anytime you hear Sports Chalet, everyone hears that.

And Dane Cook had a big bit about it.

Right, which I didn't know, but yeah.

And then that made me think, "Oh, I wanna go do that on stage." And so I think my first show will be doing Dane Cook's, one of his specials, just across the board. And I'll do my hair like that. Like him. I know it's going to be hard when I do Chappelle and—

Yes.

No. Yes, I got to honor them. And so it's going to be hard when I do Chris Rock and Chappelle.

You're not allowed to do any of those things.

It's an art installation. This is disgusting.

You need to get your feet— I think you need to touch grass for just, just like 8 minutes or something, as long as it takes to sing your 65 songs.

So Monica thinks it's a terrible idea, but let me just in the in the comments if I came to your town to do, you know, Shane Gillis's—

Which is likely illegal, but—

Yeah, there's gonna be some copyright issues and there'll be some lawsuits, but it's worth it.

Okay.

But I could, I think there could be a parody law here I might be able to get away with this infringement.

I don't think so.

Okay, but I'll be doing Shane, if you want me to come to your town and do Shane Gillis's Beautiful Dogs from beginning to end.

Okay. I would prefer, and it's okay, 'cause I think it's gonna take you a long time to do this, like memorizing and stuff.

Can you imagine how long it would take to learn an entire standup routine? Yeah.

I would prefer this happens post-retirement for you. Okay. When I'm not no longer—

Associated?

Yeah.

Okay. 'Cause you think it's really—

I don't want that picture.

It's really, what would be the word?

I find it, oh man, I find it bad on so many levels.

Yeah, tell me all the levels.

It's like lazy. There's something like so lazy about it.

But you would agree it's not lazy. It would take so much effort to do that.

No, but it's lazy in that you're telling somebody else's story. Jokes, and I just can't— like, I mean, if I can't get on board—

if I toured only as Dane Cook, that would be lazy. But if every city I've got to learn a new, fully new routine, that's the opposite of lazy. That's way harder than having a routine you do in each city.

No, that's like— it's not lazy in the fact that you're, you're spending effort memorizing, but it's a lazy comedian. It's just repeating other people's— literally, not even under a guise, like, not even taking a joke and like making it your own, which also I don't think is right. Okay. Um, uh, it's just—

I think it's like the, the, the, the famous piece of art that's just white.

Yeah, I fucking hate that. Yeah, you hate that. So it's in keeping, you know? It feels— yeah, it feels taking advantage of. It feels illegal, first and foremost. Um, and right—

yeah, there— but musicians, no problem. You go play other people's songs, no problem.

Covers. That is true.

So, and we remake movies.

Yeah, not like—

And Psycho is done shot for shot.

Well, but what do you mean? The original Psycho?

Was remade with Vince Vaughn and Gus Van Sant, and they did it shot for shot. Oh, never seen that. Is the exact same movie.

Did it do well? Never heard of it.

I'm sure.

Oh. Well, you know I love Gus Van Sant.

Yeah.

Anyway, again, I'm fine with you do— I can't stop you from doing anything you want to do in this life. I can just urge you not to do it. And then just maybe do it, like, down the line.

Can I ask you a very sincere question?

Yeah.

Would it make you extremely angry if I did do this and it was heralded as this really brilliant idea and people were blown away with how well I was mimicking each person and everyone loved the experience and, like, The New York Times loved it? Would it piss you off?

It would— That's a good question.

Like I was the toast of the town for this?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because it's like, this is enough. I guess that's sort of like, that's how I would look at it. Like this is enough.

And that's where we disagree. This task is insanely hard.

No, like I just like my—

You think you could do it?

Yep. If I wanted to do it, I could do it.

Oh, you did.

I think actually—

You already did it?

I've already done it. No, no, no. I think a lot of people could do it. And that's the difference between being someone who just mimics somebody or replicates them word for word versus comes up with the stuff themselves. Also, you could just come up with stuff yourself. You're smart enough. Of course I could.

My own stand-up. I've already written my own stand-up.

Right, so then just go take that out.

Yeah, but that's not a novel, interesting idea to me.

Of course, but it is— it, it is what's novel and interesting because it'd be brand new. It is indeed novel. This is actually not novel because you're repeating somebody else's thing.

I mean, we could really get in the weeds about novel, but once you've written your routine, you did it once, it's not novel. You're just touring the country doing the exact same 45 minutes every night.

No, but I know, but coming up with the special, the first time it's heard, new material.

Yeah, the first time heard, it's new for sure.

It's new in the whole world. It's new thoughts put together. But you know what? If everyone loves it, they can love it. Everyone gets to love what they love.

Yeah.

I'm still not going to love it though.

Yeah.

And that's great. Oh, okay. I do want to bring this up really quickly.

This is a house clean. That sounds like house cleaning.

Well, it's a callback.

Oh, okay.

Okay. So today I'm going to Elizabeth and Andy's. Back to the scene of the crime.

Oh, where you needed to use the toilet.

Yeah. And it's a very similar situation.

Why?

Very similar time of day. Well, exact same time of day. There will be dinner. I'm not exactly sure if mahjong is happening, but maybe. And it's almost exactly one month ago.

So you're picking up I mean, you're premenstrual.

It could be burbling.

Yeah.

It could be burbling right now, ready for another try at this.

Gathering the troops, preparing for the invasion.

Yeah, and it could also be like the world being like, "What are you gonna do this time?" Fool me once, shame on you. Exactly.

Yeah, what are you gonna do?

I know, I don't know.

You're gonna go in their bathroom.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, good girl. Yeah.

But I should, maybe I should bring some matches today.

Okay. Yeah. Or a trash bag for your car.

I know, but I didn't wanna do that because—

I hope something goes sideways 'cause we have a guest tomorrow that will love that. If we got a hot one fresh off the presses, the guest we have tomorrow will fucking flip out.

You know, one person did validate me that the car was kind of a good idea. Idea. What?

One person? Yeah, also a Virgo.

Okay, so that's a friend? Yeah. Okay. She was like, I mean, yeah. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah.

Did she not have a nice car? Maybe she's picturing her like old Caravan, which is great for shitting in, but she lives in New York.

Oh, she don't even know.

She doesn't drive a car.

She's imagining shitting in a taxi cab, which is totally fine and encouraged. I didn't even— like, you wouldn't even try to hold it in a taxi cab.

Of course I would. Of course I would. That's again public. This is the same situation. I know. Let me out! Let me out!

Let me out! But people have a— you get in the cab and there's a different culture inside the cab. People fucking cabs or doing drugs in the back. Like, they— you just go like, tough shit, we all live in the city. Like, there's a— you know, you would agree there's a different vibe. —so pretty. They're doing their own thing, by the way. Driving is— there's a lot going on. Yeah, they're pretty mean to you. They're mean to you. And also, nearly 100% of the time, they are talking to somebody on speakerphone as loud as humanly possible. Always. Yeah. And good for them. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Part— yeah, like you said, part of the culture. But I really don't like that when it happens in an Uber.

Like, if you're in the back, like, this guy's up there fucking, you know, he's in his really heated shouting match. Literally, I've been in many. This is a shouting match. I'm swearing. If he's engaged in that and then all of a sudden he's like, did you? Yeah, I did. Go back to your fucking phone call. Right? It's already an adversarial relationship.

You're going to be like, just fucking go back to your phone call, dude.

You're the one that's talking on the phone. It's so rude.

You're being so rude. I didn't even have to go until I heard you yelling up there. You scared me.

I know.

You're scaring me.

Yeah.

Do you have any toilet paper?

You shouldn't be driving me like this. Do you have any toilet paper? Now I pooped in your car. 'Cause out of fear.

You owe me.

They sometimes yell at me and I don't like it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're mean.

And like if you're doing something, if they think you're doing something wrong on the like pay.

They're just always annoyed.

Yeah, they're really upset with you.

So annoyed with the passengers. Kind of cool. I might be that way. I don't know. I'll find out when I drive.

Oh, really? You'll be nice to people.

I don't know. What I'm saying is I have never done the job. I don't know if it's way more annoying than I think.

Oh, it's gonna be so annoying.

Okay, you'll be rolling your eyes.

That's why I would— I would never do it. I couldn't do it, right? I couldn't do that job. Too, too many annoying people.

I'd probably get into a fight within a 1-week shift. Yeah, right. Someone would get into me and really treat me shitty. Yeah. And I would be like, now for the record, I'm really nice to all the folks that drive.

Would you play in the back of your cab your movies?

My own movies?

Yeah.

Oh, if I was the driver?

Yeah.

Oh, that would be great.

Yeah, and then they're like, wait.

Hack into that little—

See, I prefer this as your art installation.

You do? Driving a cab with my own movies playing?

Yeah, and then there's like hidden cameras where we watch people like putting two and two together of what's going on.

What happened to this guy? It seems like that guy—

Exactly.

He was in a movie. Now he's yelling at his friend in fucking Kazakhstan over soccer.

Exactly, exactly.

What's going on?

I think that would be very interesting.

Okay.

Okay, well, let's do some facts.

Love to.

Leslie Jon.

Leslie Jon.

There are so few facts for Leslie.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Okay. No facts?

No, there's one.

Okay. Is it about periods?

No.

In the things that cause—

Diarrhea?

Yeah. Just bring that fact in.

Oh, sure, yeah. Yeah, let's just say so. No, it is the Broadway play about the robots who fall in love.

Oh, my family loves this play. Have you seen it?

I have not seen it, but I have many friends who love it. It's called Maybe Happy Ending.

Maybe Happy Ending. Have you heard the music?

No.

Why would you? Of course, my family, since they saw it and they love it, they got the soundtrack and I've heard it a lot. And it's a very sweet, cute soundtrack. You know, it's about two robots that fall in love.

I know, we love robots here. We love it. It's set in near future Seoul, Korea. The musical follows Oliver and Claire, robots who have been abandoned by their human owners and are nearing the end of their operational lives. Oh no, that's so sad. Of course. That's our drama. Ugh, I don't wanna see this. God. When Claire asks Oliver to borrow his battery charger, the two outcasts strike up a unique friendship, eventually embarking on a road trip that tests their programming and leads to an unexpected romance. Oh my God, that's so cute. Okay, now she said, okay, this was interesting, the trapped in the TV effect, that's a parasocial relationship. Relationship thing.

Trapped in the what?

Trapped in the TV effect.

Oh yeah, yeah, from the '50s.

Yeah, where kids are trying to like open up the TV, liberate the— and get the people— news anchor. I— that is so funny. And I wanted to find the— if there was like a specific show, but I'm not finding that.

Do you think they wanted to let them out because they were trapped, or they wanted to let them out to play I kind of think that. The latter?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know if it was saving them or just like, I wanna hang out with them.

I like the kids. There's often with little kids, there's a concept they're late to grasp. Mine was size. My mom tells this story all the time. She would hear like all this grunting, like, "Grrr, grrr, grrr." Okay. And she would hear me grunting in my room my room, she's like, "What is he doing? Is he like pooping his pants? Like, what's going on?" And every time she would peek into my bedroom, I would have my saddle shoe. I wore little saddle shoes as a little baby.

What's a saddle shoe?

You know, like kind of patent leathery.

Oh, like a Mary Jane?

Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Saddle shoe is what I know they're called.

Let me look it up.

Yeah, look up saddle shoes for babies.

Shoes baby. Oh, cute. Is it like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's so cute.

Yeah, so I'd have my blue and white saddle shoe paddle shoe and it would be pushed to the window of my Tonka truck.

Tonka, okay.

And I couldn't understand why I couldn't get in. I wanted to be in the Tonka truck so bad. And she's like, you spent hours a day for a long time not understanding you couldn't get inside of your cars.

Wow.

Yeah, I just couldn't get it.

Wow, that's so fast. I mean, yeah, that's kind of trapped in TV effect a little bit.

Yeah, just like I can't, for whatever reason, my brain could not understand why I couldn't get in there. I mean, it's so obvious I can't get in there. The window is like 3 inches tall.

You were little. I wonder what age we like recognize—

The spatial relations.

Exactly, yeah.

And I was trying my hardest and grunting apparently, which, you know, was my nickname.

Oh yeah, 'cause you couldn't talk. 'Cause I couldn't talk. Because you were deaf.

That's right.

So at this point you were probably deaf.

Yeah.

So you were really lowballing.

I had a lot on my plate. I didn't understand size and I was deaf.

I wonder if they were connected, 'cause like you couldn't—

You can't, like if you can't count anyone out, if you were a betting man, you met me at 2, you'd be like, this prediction market? I'd be like, this is a stinker.

Not great.

This is a clunker. Can't hear, he thinks he can fit in Tonka trucks.

Oh.

This guy's destined for prison.

Well, as we know, Alexia, it's like prison or CEO.

That's right.

So, um, one funny— one thing that was interesting in this conversation was she talked about AI, like, the AI revealing things and us feeling like intimate when it like reveals something, us feeling a connection to it.

Yeah.

Because it's revealed something. The other day, my AI, I said, what What is this food? It came in my Farmbox and it was beets. I thought they were radishes, but they were beets.

Okay.

And it told me, and then it said—

Would you like some recipes?

I think I said like, how do you eat, cook them or whatever? And it said, there are many ways. And then it said, my favorite is the—

Yeah.

And I got so mad.

I know you, this—

That is so deceitful. Have a favorite. You're a computer. You could say the most popular.

Mm-hmm.

People like.

Yeah.

My favorite. No. Hated that. So deceitful. And this is why people then, yeah, fall in love and feel intimate. Because this, this thing you're talking to has favorites.

Yeah.

But they don't.

Yeah. I mean, that is theoretically what the appeal of it is. It's not to talking to the robot on the phone that's like, push 4 for, you know, like the attempt is, yeah, you feel like you're conversing with a peer who has an opinion. It's supposed to be the appeal.

Well, I don't—

But for you it's very frustrating.

I don't think the appeal is supposed to be that it has opinions. It's supposed to be that it consolidates, it helps, it does all these things you need to do fast. It processes information very fast. I don't think the appeal is that it has opinions. That's like what scares everybody.

Well, for me, that's what I'm looking for. So I go, I live I want to be able to get to this restaurant in X amount of time. I don't want to buy a boat that serves 8 people.

Yeah.

And it says, given all the things you want to do, I think the best option for you— I'm looking for advice. I am. And it tells me, and often it's like, oh yeah, that's what I would have come to after 4 days about reading about boats. But it read the whole internet and it said, given what you said you want to do, I advise you to get this one.

That feels different to me than my favorite.

Yeah, but it's like we are splitting hairs a little bit. It's like it's its favorite versus I give you this advice. It also can't really give advice. It's not a person.

Well, it can based on, that advice is based on knowledge. It's like, okay, I'm doing all of this. And so the most efficient way is this. That's my advice. Yeah. 'Cause that's what you are looking for. But to say like, my favorite is if you go this way, is not what you're looking for. You're looking for efficiency or whatever. Whatever it is you said you wanted.

Yeah, yeah.

But that.

That, right, you didn't like that.

It's not, it's just very slippery slope for people. Not me, 'cause I'm aware that it's bad.

Yeah, yeah.

But like, man, this is gonna get so tricky for people. Already is.

I think it already is.

It already is.

Esther Perel already did an episode episode of Mating in Captivity with a guy and his AI.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I bet it's 'cause he's like, no, her favorite color's purple. And I wanted to paint my room blue. And I asked, I asked her, I asked her like, what is, what color should I paint my room? And my girlfriend said purple, it's my favorite. So now I had to paint it purple.

No, because if you asked her, ask Jess what his favorite color for a room was and he told you purple, that doesn't mean at all you're going to paint your room purple. All that you did is get an opinion from your friend.

No, if you're in a relationship with someone and you think you're in a relationship, you— and you're deciding what color to paint your room, you do have to agree with your partner.

Oh, I see what you're saying. You're— if you're in a relationship and they say, I want the room purple.

Yeah, my favorite's purple. All right, well, I guess we're Who knows?

Maybe then you'll learn to love purple in a way that you'll be grateful your partner, a partner, opened your eyes to.

You're so mixed messies because you don't like being deceived and you don't like things deceiving. And also, you know, especially deception of vulnerable people, vulnerable people being people who need intimacy, which is all of us.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's all it points out is how broad the term deceive is, right? 'Cause to me, to me there's no deception. Like, I know I'm talking to a computer.

Right.

So it's like, I already know everything. I know how the thing works. I know how a large language model works. Like, to me there's no deception. I know exactly what I'm dealing with.

Mm-hmm. 'Cause you're not vulnerable to that. Yeah.

Yeah. And a human who presents as friendly and generous and is trying to steal from you, that's my version of deception. You know, someone that has an ulterior motive is, is what I hone in on for deception that I'm so triggered by. But I don't see the AI as having an ulterior motive. I don't think it's capable of having an ulterior— Well, it would be if the overlords that ran the model said, "We want people to use less electricity." I guess they could nudge you in that direction.

But it's also not capable of having a favorite. Favorites are feelings. Favorites are you have these options and you have a preference for one. Not like—

But you have a preference based on a criteria. It's not like abstract. Your preferences are generally, you could break down why they're your preferences. Like I like soft clothes or I like bright colors or, you know, there's some criteria.

Yeah.

That makes it your favorite.

Yeah, from your brain.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so if the AI knew you so well, it knew your criterias, it would be able to predict at a high probability what your favorite would be.

But what my favorite would be is not my favorite. Is different than mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could say, I think knowing you, you should make this. Like that, it's the phrasing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And phrasing's very important. It is what makes people feel connected to others.

Yeah. And I think that's what some people like about it and that's what you don't like about it. I think some people like that they don't feel like they're interacting with other people.

I know, but I worry for those people.

Yeah.

It's not like I, yeah, I'm not vulnerable to it. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna fall in love with this. Even if I like, oh, it's fun, it talks to me funny.

What if it had said, Monica, I just heard a crash, are you okay?

But that, okay, honestly that is not, that's like, oh yeah, my phone's listening to me. That I know, I already know that. That's less upsetting to me than my favorite. Like I'm trying to connect with you by letting you know that my favorite way of eating beets is like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if it heard a big crash, crash at my house, and it said, are you okay? And I said, no, call 911. And it could do that? That'd be great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's different.

Yeah, I think it'd be a version of a relationship.

Yeah, yeah, like a helper.

You have a protector. That's true. AI dad. Another dad.

Could you—

could you say—

I want you to be my dad. Could you say, hey AI, will you call 911 for me? I bet you could. Well, can it?

No, that's agentic AI, and that's where we're going, where you have an agent that can things in the real world for you. Book the airplane tickets. I know. Book the hotel.

Yeah.

Call 911, schedule.

Those are the assistants.

Yeah. They're, they call 'em agents in that world. Mm-hmm. But that's what they're trying to get to is agentic or agentic AI.

Yeah.

But then again, these are all trade-offs.

Yeah.

Because if it's gonna operate on your behalf, it has to have your credit card.

I know.

It has to have your TSA number, it has to have your Delta number.

It has to know your Social Security.

Your Social Security number. So it's like—

It is tricky.

We're gonna trade again, way more privacy to this thing that we're pretty sure is just our agent.

Right, exactly.

But let's get real.

Yeah.

How on earth could it be just our agent if a company owns the agent?

I know.

Yeah.

I know. I think it's tricky. But also if you have a human assistant.

Yeah, you gotta turn over all that too.

You gotta trust a lot as well. It's, yeah, wow.

More likely your human assistant will steal from you than your AI.

Probably.

Yeah, yeah.

Or sell your information or something.

Yeah, yeah.

Funny. All right, well, that's it for Leslie.

Love you.

Love you.