Alison Wood Brooks (on the science of conversation) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepherd, and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hi.

Today we have Dr. Alison Wood Brooks. She is a behavioral research scientist and professor at Harvard.

At Harvard.

That's a very fancy school.

Harvard Business School.

That's right. HBS.

HBS. She has a new book out right now called Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. She is an incredibly good guest.

So fun. And I do think we take for granted conversation. We think we're just going to show up and be able to do it. I really, really like this in the context— I mean, in general, but dating, which we talk about a fair amount and why a lot of these are not very successful.

You actually put no time into planning how you're going to converse.

There's like real tricks for conversation.

Yeah.

And it's not disingenuous to use them.

Yeah.

Also, she's an identical twin.

Yeah.

So we had a lot of fun twin chatter. That part is Further imploring us to get a twin expert.

Yeah, we really want that. She's one of the guests that we have that is a teacher at a fancy school, and their class is like so packed.

The most impacted.

People on a waitlist.

Yeah, it's one of these favorite classes.

Do you know, I often, I have a recurring dream that I am not finished. Like everyone's finished with their classes. It's the last semester and I forgot to do my homework. to, like, put my classes in correctly, and now I'm behind, and I'm gonna have to take all these extra classes to graduate. And then I'm also looking at the classes, and I really want this specific class 'cause it's, like, the fun class that everyone wants to take. I have this dream a lot.

I have half of that. I don't ever have the class I'm trying to take. I have the, like, what happened? We're mid-semester. Have I gone to any classes? There's a final. I wake up on set a lot where I'm directing something I haven't read.

Right.

And I'm like, oh my God. It's ill-prepared anxiety.

But her class would be one in my dream.

You should add it. Yeah, you should incorporate it.

Yeah.

Please enjoy Alison Wood Brooks.

He's an object expert.

He's an object expert. He's an object expert. Most people who love Diet Coke will acknowledge it does seem to be a bit of an addiction.

Yeah, yeah, because it's a stimulant, right?

It's a—

it's majorly. We go through— we cut through like so many cases of Diet Coke at HBS, at Harvard, because like so many of the faculty are ADHD and they're self— they're self-medicating in tiny doses. Makes sense. For real.

It's their Ritalin. It's their over-the-counter Ritalin.

Yeah, in addition to their real Ritalin.

Although Diet Pepsi's becoming more of a thing. I don't know if you guys heard about the new trend.

Say it.

There's a song out called Diet Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi sales are skyrocketing.

Come on.

Yeah, it's real.

I wanna see the—

Oh my gosh. Some people have— it's, um—

I wanna see a link to the—

The data?

Yeah.

Okay, it's real. Some people have converted from Diet Coke to Diet Pepsi.

I wanted you to say that it was Britney Spears because she had that like amazing Remember the ad back in the day? She was so hot.

She was.

She was so gorge. I would love for her to see a resurgence. Get back in it. Britney Spears with the Diet Pepsi. She's the one bringing it back.

That's what I want. Addison Rae.

Addison Rae. Kind of a new-gen Britney Spears, if we're being real.

I don't know that. Is that the case?

Yeah, it is. My knowledge is like this, but my sense is that.

No, that's correct. That is absolutely correct, yes.

It's funny you'd say that, 'cause you have a reference in the book. You chose an artist, and I was like, That's a young artist. You have to research her.

Ariana Grande?

Yes. You talk about her video and con— as, as to art, to describe context.

Yes.

Look at you with your memory. Holy moly, majoly.

I was like, wow, you have 3 children. I don't know your age, but I thought—

I'm turning 40 next month, you guys.

Congratulations.

I'm at a major inflection point in my life. You're hitting me at the right time.

You're young.

Where are you from, Alison?

Originally?

Yeah.

I grew up in upstate New York.

Okay.

In the Finger Lakes area.

Oh, okay.

Very Rust Belt-y.

Yeah.

When I was growing up there, not fancy. Since I've moved away and become an adult, it's become a little bit of like a bastion of— for like, it's a beautiful place. And I think the world is like more onto it now.

Okay, so what's really exciting, and it comes up quite often, this topic. And in fact, we are in search of a great twins expert.

Oh.

But you have— am I the expert? Maybe.

Can you—

can I be? I think I might be the expert.

I think you're too close to it to be an expert.

That's a good point.

Yeah, you won't be as objective.

A lived expert.

Yeah.

But you have, um, Sarah is your identical twin.

Yes.

I don't think I ever really considered this, is, um, it's, it's adjacent to self-awareness. Like, we all strive to have a good deal of self-awareness, but you articulate it in the book, and I wouldn't have considered this, is you also have like an external version of self-awareness where you get to watch her Move through the world and try things and see how they react. That's very peculiar, isn't it? In an interesting way, Monica.

Yeah. Like seeing if being more outspoken— like, you can't say, well, it's because they look like this, or that you can't— all the factors are the same. So that is very interesting.

And we all have multiple selves, but like, as a twin, you get to see one of your sort of selves, like, outside of your body. It's really quite— It's a— it's an amazing, lucky life. I don't know anything else, but it's really quite something.

Are you mirror twins? Is one of you left-handed and one right?

No.

Oh, bummer.

No.

See, that's one of the things I need answered. Like, how many people are like that?

And— Yeah, I don't know. You're right. I'm not an expert. I don't know those answers.

But you're identical.

We're identical. We didn't know we were identical until high school.

What?

The, like, AP biology class was like, hey, can we test you and figure it out?

Oh, wow.

And they did.

And then you lay the results side by side. This was way before, like, 23andMe. And they were identical. I mean, looked like the same person. Wow.

Wow.

My parents didn't know they were having twins until I was out, you guys. It sounds like the Dark Ages.

Would you feel like an internal embarrassment when she would embarrass herself?

Of course.

You would?

Yes, of course. I mean, in the same way that you do if you're hanging out with your sibling or your very close friend and they do something, there's always like a vicarious embarrassment. But this is like amplified even more because it's a reflection of you. I mean, if you're watching yourself do an embarrassing thing, Yeah. As it unfolds live. And you're— and you have this, like, disapproving— you're like, don't do that.

Right.

You have that normal sibling thing where you're like, stop. Yeah.

You said there's, like, a combination of things that were helpful. One was being able to see how you seemed in public, but then also you guys had constant, unfiltered feedback to one another.

Yeah. So there's this— exactly, 2 things. You're sort of watching a version of yourself interact in the world. So that's sort of like a passive version of feedback where you're seeing how the world reacts to this version of you. But then you're also directly talking to each other in the way that very close siblings do.

Oh, yes.

And you feel even more empowered to be sort of brutal to each other, right? Like, what the hell was that? Like, ew, gross, don't do that. Just relentless. We are still that way. I mean, she lives a mile down the road from me.

Oh, she does?

She also has 3 kids, 2 boys and a little girl.

No.

Swear to God.

And is she a professor?

She is not a professor. She runs a nonprofit. She's a cool twin. She's— she runs a nonprofit. It's amazing. It's called Prime Coalition.

I never thought of that either. You could only give so many compliments to your identical twin before it would sound— it would sound indulgent and narcissistic. If you're like, she's beautiful, she's super smart.

Well, you are stunning. Yeah, she's the definition of—

You're the smartest person I've ever met.

I've never seen anyone who looks as pretty as her.

Yeah, you gotta be careful.

Exactly. It's like a weird self-toast.

Yes.

But really, honestly, I admire her She's done really amazing things.

So, your hair's naturally curly.

Big time.

And you chose to straighten your hair. So, you were doing things, right, to try to carve out some individual—

The whole existence, my whole existence anyway, is like this— like every moment, you're making these choices of like, who am I gonna be? How am I gonna— how are we similar? How are we gonna differentiate? When are we gonna cooperate and work together and collaborate? When are we gonna compete? When are we gonna do— she's gonna play the flute, I'm gonna play the oboe, but we're both gonna be in the orchestra. And so, like, every little—

Yeah.

And you were a 3-point shooter, and she was a mid-range shooter.

She's a 3-point shooter.

Vice versa.

I got that Brooks mid-range.

Woo!

Okay, so you both played basketball. It must have been so fun when you guys came to schools in junior high, and people were like, there's twins on this team.

Yeah.

Identical twins on this team.

And we're, like, loud. I mean, we're not quiet, like, shrinking violet girls. One of me would have already been a lot.

Yeah.

So, 2 is, like, too much.

There is this added— layer of like, you like a boy, if he likes you, I don't know, conceivably he'd also like your— I don't know.

Yeah.

Is there anything tricky there?

Of course.

Of course. Um, I think we only dated the same guy once.

Wow.

But you did do that.

Maybe. But when you're young, like you date, like maybe at one, one year we like held hands for a week and then like 4 years later they like went on a date. I think that's kind of the extent of it. Because that would be really weird.

And are your current husbands similar?

They are similar in some ways, but quite different. She's always had different tastes than me, actually. In men?

In suitors.

Yes, in suitors. Yeah. Um, and in the ways that complement how she and I are different from each other.

Right.

But, and you saw this a little bit in the book, I'm— I was so hard on her about who she was dating, right? Like my expectations for who she would end up with were, like, even higher than for myself, which are already so high.

Did you ever feel inferior to her? Or superior? Or both?

Both, yeah. Both in different ways. It's a— because it's like having a mirror, you actually get a better sense of what you're good at and not good at because you have this example of someone who is actually better and wor— slightly better or slightly worse than you at certain times. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. As a psychologist now, I, for a long time, I sort of would've loved to believe that everything is malleable, like everything is trainable and learnable and you can change so much about yourself. You really do. But I think being an identical twin does highlight how many things are outside your control and genetic. Like our hands, if you laid them side by side, I could not tell them apart. Our feet, our voices. We, I still to this day answer the phone, hello, this is Alison, because like I can't even tell the difference in our voices just on the phone.

Right.

Really, really simple. So there are, there are things about our bodies and about your mind that you don't have control over.

Yeah.

And then I had my own kids, which is another— they each come out so different and you're like, holy cow, this is like even more like nature's really a thing.

It's fascinating.

It really is.

So you went to Princeton for undergrad?

Yeah.

And then you went to Wharton for graduate school. What was the undergrad degree in?

Psychology was my major, and I got a minor, they called a certificate there, in finance. Not because I was interested in finance per se, but because I was really interested in like economics and this judgment and decision-making behavioral science stuff.

Right, behavioral economics.

Yeah. Wait, sorry, I have one more twin thing. I know, I know, we're like, we're past twins, but I'm so— I have to know if you have the thing that they all have where you can like sort of read each other's minds.

In this book and in my course and in conversation in general, there's so much mind reading that you have do of all people.

Yes.

Like, we're constantly trying to figure out, what are they thinking about? How are they feeling? Are they interested in this right now? Are they bored? Right? There's this tremendous level of mind reading. I think twins get better at that with each other. And maybe— this is a hypothesis, this has not been studied— but, like, possibly they get better at it with other people as well because they have just had more practice doing it. Their whole development, their whole childhood. But I think that's where the stereotype comes from with twins, is that they can read each other's minds, is like they've spent a lot of time together.

Yeah.

They know each other really, really well, and their brains work similarly.

True.

Right?

We got into, um, a little bit of a— just a chat about the validity of these telepathy tapes thing that's going around. And I said— we were using ourselves as examples because we're both quite good at predicting what the other— and I said, to me, I'm more inclined to think it's just pattern recognition.

Yeah.

And I also think if you observed your sister her whole life, so God, you've seen her react to every way, and then intuitively you kind of know how you would react.

Totally.

So you're like, you know, input A is going to equal this, you know, stimulus is going to equal this output. I don't know. I tend to believe it's that more than—

I totally— and what it has shown me is even though we're so good at predicting what the other person will do, we have this tight-knit, what psychologists would call shared reality. Like we just, you're good at, you're better at predicting what your twin's gonna do than probably anyone else in the world. And still, I still don't know exactly what she's thinking and feeling.

Yes. Wow.

It just shows you like, even when you have so much in common, you have the same upbringing, the same genes, all of it, you, so many shared experiences, you still can't read people's minds.

There's still a mystery element.

There's still a mystery. You can get close the more you interact with somebody. The more you actually care and are good at pattern recognition and pick up on patterns in their behavior and how they think, you can get better at it, especially within specific relationships. But still, like, you still don't know perfectly what Monica's thinking all the time.

I think what's interesting and worth following up on that thought is I actually think you probably could always predict, but you're often missing a lot of the context.

Yes.

You don't know what happened. This is the first example that we get to in your book. It's like, you know your sister really well, but you don't know if when she stopped at the gas station, someone called her a whore.

Yeah.

You know everything else you've observed, but that thing is still floating around. So I do think if you did know all the details, you would be in still the high 90s. You know, it's just we don't really know all the details.

Exactly right.

Okay. So you in graduate school, you start focusing on Negotiation.

Yeah. Feel and emotions.

Yeah. Why people's behavior is impacted by their feelings.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what there caught your attention?

I had— I realized that there was a lot of research in clinical psychology about anxiety and the sort of high-level anxiety that requires medication or therapy. And I was like, you know what, though? I think, like, everybody's feeling anxious, like, a lot of the time, and it's influencing how they're walking through the world, all of the decisions they're making, all of these choices, how they talk to other people. I wonder if there's a way that we can study anxiety in that way that's sort of outside the sphere of clinical psych.

Right. As a pathology.

As a pathology that needs, like, diagnosis or whatever, which is obviously so important. But what about the sort of lower-grade, normal anxiety that most people are feeling a lot of the time? Let's figure out how that's influencing the choices that they're making as they go through their day. Negotiation was one of the places that we looked, but we also looked at like advice. When do you seek advice? When do you take advice?

Who do you seek it from?

Who do you seek it from? Do you feel like you have to listen to it?

Dax doesn't seek advice from anyone.

No, I do. But remember I said I seek the advice that I think I'm going to get.

Oh, right.

We did talk about that.

To confirm, to make you just prop you up.

Yeah, like if I want to indulge in this bad behavior, I can call a person I know who regularly indulges in that and is not going to say, you know better. And then when I actually want to change, I call Tom Hansen. I think we all have a—

Yeah.

OK, so you end up at Harvard teaching negotiation.

Yeah.

And you start doing a lot of clinical work and experiments.

Yes.

And it definitely expands out from there.

It expands out from there for sure.

I have a list of fun things that you—

Negotiation has been this course that's been taught at like every business school and law school for a long time now. great course. You know, you show up, the students show up, they take on these roles, and they pretend to be, you know, the manager of a factory, and you have to negotiate all this stuff. And it's just, it's great. It's informative. It's great. As I was teaching it, though, a couple things occurred to me. One, our students at Harvard are already very strategic people.

Uh-huh.

And I was like, do I need to be teaching people who are already quite strategic to be even more hard-driving?

Yeah.

Does that align with my values?

Uh-huh.

That's question number one. Number 2, so many of the exercises were like, well, you have to negotiate for a car, or you're gonna go buy a house, or you're gonna negotiate a real— a merger or a really big deal at work. Um, I was like, you know, I'm a grown-up and I don't really have those conversations very often, maybe once every 2 months.

Yeah.

But you know what I do all the time is talk to people in conversations that on their surface should be easy.

Yeah.

And then like at moments I'm like, ooh, this is maybe not as easy as it—

Yes.

Or as fun as it should be.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So my, so my sort of aperture of what I was getting curious about and thinking about how to help people was sort of widening, I think.

Yeah, you did experiments on speed dating, parole hearings, doctor-patient interactions, negotiations, sales calls, instant messaging, face-to-face chinwags between strangers.

What's that?

I love that word. Chinwag is literally like your chin just ah, bah, bah, bah. You're just talking. It's just another synonym for talk.

It's just a '30s way to say 1930s way to say talk.

I needed to know.

That's what you do here. That's true.

You could put those under all of those under the umbrella of negotiating, right?

True.

And I think the things that would be normally studied or you'd be drawn to is like All the things you listed are quantifiable. Like, I want this amount, they're offering this amount, the outcome is measurable. But like in a romantic relationship, or when you get into these gradients of leverage and control and power, and like, those are not easy to quantify and measure the outcome of.

I remember very vividly when, back when I was teaching the negotiation course, I had a student raise her hand one day and she was like, So is this just about solving a math problem? Because in the way that those exercises were set up and the way that we think about negotiating, it sort of is because it's all these things that are quantifiable. You put numbers on what you care about, and then you try and sort of trade on differences to expand the size of the pie and then claim the largest part of it. And as a psychologist, it made me sort of deeply uncomfortable. I was like, that's not— But like, not everything is quantifiable, right? Like, so much about life and about how we feel towards each other is emotional and like trust and fun and love and like, oh, I want to keep this private. And I don't know, I just felt like we were missing a big piece.

Yeah, I wrote down you said, um, while strategic and technical skills can help people get ahead in many ways, being a successful person is about relationships, and relationships are about talking. And I guess I wondered, yeah, did you kind of feel like the previous work in communication and negotiation felt maybe a little too calculated or manipulative? Like, even when I have people on that'll be like, how to talk to the right or how to talk to the left, I'm like, the underbelly still feels like the ultimate goal is to get someone to believe the things you do.

Totally.

Which I think is fundamentally— I'm against.

Yeah. And missing a huge part of what it means to be the most human we can be. And I'm like, like, we love each other and like want to have fun together.

Yeah.

And it's like not about just sort of transactional. How can I get as much information out of you? How can I tell you the most amount of information? Even now, like a lot of economists focus very narrowly on information exchange.

Right.

Sort of like, how are we exchanging accurate information? But so much of the social world is not about information exchange at all. We're just like looking to fill time.

Yeah.

We're looking to conceal information and, and maintain privacy. We just don't want to feel awkward around other people. We want to have fun. We want to, you know, learn from each other. So I felt like that whole bit needed more, more of a focus.

So you took all these conclusions, and then you wove it into a class you call Talk: How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life, which is just— I don't know who, where you got that, but what a stroke of genius it is. How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life. But it became hugely popular. It's a heavily impacted class at Harvard. And you've taught 1,000 students over the last 4 years. You were invited to be a consultant to the Celtics.

Wow.

Dang, girl.

Mid-range jump shots now.

You found your way to the Celtics as a basketball player.

That's right.

It all circles back.

Yeah.

Talk is a practical guide to having better conversations in a variety of settings: work, parenting, dating, trying to make connection. And so my first question is, do you think we underestimate the complexity of conversations? I think we all just are like, yeah, conversations, I know how to have them. I'm having them all day long. I might underestimate actually what an abstract and complicated thing a conversation is just on the surface.

I mean, we start learning to talk to each other when we're 1, 1 and a half. You're a toddler. You do it every day of your life with an enormous number of people, very diverse range of conversation partners. So by the time you get to be a teenager and then an adult, it's second nature to you. It feels like you should be an expert and like maybe you are an expert.

Yep.

You see other people who are seemingly amazing at it and you're like, wow. And then you feel bad if you're, you know, you feel like you're not.

It also has the illusion of being innate, which it's not.

Right, exactly.

It's like reading. It's this very abstract thing.

Exactly right.

I'm making a bunch of noises to transfer the thoughts I have inside of my brain internally into your brain internally.

It's crazy.

And you're gonna respond in a way that you'll transfer Or your thoughts, like that is highly complicated.

When you look under the hood of what's going on during conversation, it is remarkably complex. And so you get to this point of acceptance where you're like, of course there's gonna be moments of awkwardness. Of course we're gonna like forget to say stuff that we meant to say or say things that we regret or interrupt people or have all these little collisions because it's, it's not second nature. And watching children learn to do it, whether reading or talking, opens your eyes to how this is not, you know, natural. This is not innate. It's hard to learn to read. It takes years to really get good at reading. It takes even longer to learn how to be a good conversationalist. And we get to adulthood and we're still not that great.

Right. So I guess in just thinking it's innate, you might not think that it's something that you could approach mindfully with a tactic. I like that you say people will 20 minutes into planning their outfit to go meet someone.

Everybody. Yeah.

And they'll put zero thought into like, when I arrive, what will I talk about? What will I— what topics do I bring up? What anything? You don't give it any thought.

Think about how much time you spend picking out your outfit, making a reservation at the restaurant, putting on, buying your makeup, getting your hair done. And literally like all during all of that, you could be thinking, what are 2 things we could talk about once we're together?

Yeah.

But most people don't do that.

Right. You just take for granted it'll just happen.

It'll flow.

And then the dates suck.

Right. Well, yes. But also, do you think people might feel like that's contrived?

I know people think it's contrived.

Yeah.

So we've asked people. There's tremendous aversion to this idea of forethought, particularly for people that you know really well.

Oh.

It feels like— and it goes back to this assumption or like this hope that it's second nature. You have this feeling that, like, conversation should feel natural.

You say it's the myth of naturalness.

The myth of naturalness. It should feel spontaneous and sort of invented on the spot and a little bit magical that you just, like, land on topics that are fun to talk about and there's never gonna be a lull and you're gonna just know where to go. And we feel that way even more with people that we know really well and love. We're like, oh, it'll just come. Which is maybe like true a little bit more when you know somebody well compared to like your work colleague that you don't like. But in all of the cases, whether you're averse or not, when you actually have people plan topics ahead of time, their conversations are so much better, measurably better.

Well, I love that you're contrasting it with the other amounts of effort you put in. Like, no one's thinking like, well, I'll just naturally look good, and if I don't naturally look good, it's not a fit. Or I'll naturally arrive there. No, none of these things are gonna happen naturally. So, Would you give me a little historical context for conversation, how we thought of conversation, how it's evolved? I was kind of fascinated with the power dynamic of a monarchy and how that affected things. So like, how, how has our, our idea of a conversation evolved?

Yeah. So the, we actually know very little about when human, like humans evolved the ability to have dialogue and talk to each other. Their estimates vary quite widely. There are some signs. I thought those, this was so interesting. There are signs sort of like in the archaeological record, they use things like, oh, there's a fossil of a necklace, or, like, jewelry is a sign that they must have learned to talk by this point because they had to pass that knowledge down across generations in order for it to be, like, trapped in the archaeological record.

Or they even do these super fascinating things. Well, yes, they'll find a necklace of fox teeth.

Yes.

And then they'll do the actual math of how long it would take to procure that many teeth and then string it and all the work that would be involved. And what you have to acknowledge about this necklace is that it was a group effort.

Exactly. And then they make hypotheses about, well, would they have been able to collaborate on this if they hadn't yet learned to actually talk to each other, communicate in some way?

You would have to be able to tell them, like, here's what we're making. We're gathering teeth because we're going to make this project.

Here's the project.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Someone would have to lay out a game plan.

You'd think so. So, but that's the kind of like— that's how we're trying to figure out, like, when did humans evolve this ability? Then you fast forward, way fast forward to— the book starts in the sort of 1700s.

Yeah.

When there were all of these monarchies in Europe whose kings and queens told people how to talk to each other. They were like, here are the people who are allowed to talk to each other at these times, and these are the topics, and here are all the compliments you have to say about me.

Yeah.

Right? That was it. And then sort of around the French Revolution and right after, people in the Enlightenment and during what was called the Age of Conversation, people started to realize, oh, we can, like, get together and talk about what we want to talk about.

Yeah.

And it was in these fancy salons in Paris, and it was happening all over Europe. People were sort of realizing, I can get together with people and talk about the topics I want to talk about in the ways I want to talk about them.

Yeah.

And so the book zooms in on Immanuel Kant, who is this famous philosopher.

Yes, we love Kant.

And he lived a very fascinating, very regimented life. He would— most of his life, he would get up and he would, like, go for his walk at a specific time. He would sit down and do his work at a specific time. They called him the Königsberg Clock.

Oh.

So very regimented guy. He was not wealthy until late in his life when he was finally able to afford, like, a home of his own.

He couldn't even get a professorship.

Yeah. Yeah.

Blew my mind.

That's right. Yeah.

He lived at boarding houses, and he was like a sub-teacher, basically.

He's a sub-teacher, and he would, like, have dinner in these rowdy pubs at night. And as, like, this fancy, very smart philosopher, he would get really annoyed. He's like, this is boring. I want to talk to smart people about my smart ideas.

Yeah.

So finally, when he was able to get his own house, he started hosting these dinner parties, which became very well known. They were, like, highly coveted invitations to Kant's house for these dinner parties. What I found so fascinating to read about and learn is that his dinner parties had all these rules of conversation. So he almost was kind of acting like this little king in his kingdom. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

And his rules were, we're gonna talk about specific topics at the beginning, we're gonna talk about specific topics in the middle, then we're gonna, like, joke at the end. We're gonna have food and wine that mirrors each of the phases of the meal.

I wanna go to this. Right?

He curated the guest list so you wouldn't have 5 physicians. You'd have a physician, you'd have a clergy member.

A priest, yeah.

So it was gonna be an eclectic group.

Yep.

There were some ground rules, like no interrupting, no monologuing. There were some other—

No arguing. So surprisingly, it wasn't— he didn't like debate. So he didn't really like when people argued about stuff, especially about the French Revolution. He didn't— he was like, this is for us to, like, have fun and learn from each other, and it should feel delightful the whole time.

Yeah. Take the ideas or leave the ideas. You don't have to argue.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly. And so that was sort of the beginning of it. And during the Age of Conversation, this idea was cropping up all over Europe. There were all these philosophers who were pontificating about what it meant to have good, sparkling conversation.

Yeah.

And it was— it was sort of subversive because it was the first time that they weren't just doing what the king or queen told them to do.

Yeah.

And then the Industrial Revolution happened, and people started mixing a lot more. We're not just talking about, like, highfalutin philosophers getting their fancy friends together. It's sort of like, oh, people are going everywhere all the time. You never know who you're gonna run into in all classes and all status. And so we need to now figure out what are we talking about? How are we talking? What are the new rules of conversation?

Well, what you're first describing is like that mixing of the classes hugely impacted by the move from rural life to city life.

Yes.

Now you're like, you live within a stone's of the rich person and the crafts person.

And you're gonna see them on the road as you're walking past, and you're allowed to greet each other. So, like, if you say hi, what are you gonna say?

Yeah, the boundaries—

Can you even tell who's who anymore?

Right.

Yes. And I love that.

The boundaries really fell apart. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. So your framing of this is to think of conversation in terms of a game, in terms of a coordinated game, which you take from game theory. Tell me what a coordinated game is.

Yes. So fast forward. So all of this sort of mixing is happening. The big experiment in democracy is happening in America. All the Europeans think that Americans are no good at conversation.

Yeah, we're uncouth, right?

Yeah, uncouth. we're talking about ourselves all the time. They spit while they're talking. I mean, there's all kinds of, you know, stereotypes developing. Fast forward a bit more, the— in the mid-1900s, middle of the 20th century, game theory appears. So these are, like, economists and game theorists like John Nash, who from A Beautiful Mind. Oh, yeah.

Sure, sure.

Janusz von Neumann.

Yes, von Neumann. Morgenstern, Thomas Schelling. Now they studied what they called coordination games. which were really simple, but at the time they were really sort of hot and flashy. So it would be like the game of chicken as a coordination game. Any choice that you have to— 2 or more people are making independently that they can't talk to each other. So like in a game of chicken, you're coming towards each other, you both have to choose, am I gonna go right or am I gonna go left? But you can't talk about it. If you coordinate, you pass successfully on motorcycles or Sea-Doos or whatever you're on.

Or horses with jowls.

Yes, exactly. If you miscoordinate, you collide.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's a really— that's a simple one. There are non-cooperative coordination games like the Prisoner's Dilemma. Do you know the Prisoner's Dilemma?

The Stanford Prison— no.

No, that's different. That's the Stanford Prison Experiment where they had prisoners—

Milgram.

Oh my God, I did it.

Wow, you're good.

I've been trying to remember who did the Stanford Prison Experiment.

And I told her I don't care.

Yeah, but I said, I'm going to commit this to memory, and I did.

Good job. You did it.

I thought you just had an electric shock. I know.

That's how it felt.

Milgram.

That's how I remember it.

I was gonna react to the name too. Yes, Milgram did the Stanford Prison Experiment and the shocks. No.

No?

The shocks we just learned about. That was in England.

That was a different guy.

I thought Milgram did shocks.

Or is it Milgram that did shocks?

Yeah, yeah, Philip Zimbardo.

Zimbardo did the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Oh my God.

You flipped them? Yes. Oh my God, hoisted by your own baton. And you were celebrating and I congratulated you. This is wonderful.

This is a horrible conversation.

You were right. Okay, so Zimbardo did—

Yes, Stanford Prison.

Milgram is like the shock. Milgram. Okay.

I'm never gonna be able to—

I'm gonna quiz you at the end.

Okay, sorry. So these— yours is separate from all of this.

Different. Forget about Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. Forget about the shocks. So the prisoner's dilemma is a coordination game that people were thinking about where you imagine— it's this sort of scenario. You imagine there's 2 people being questioned in separate rooms. interrogated about a crime, and they both face a choice, and they can't talk to each other about it, to either stay quiet or snitch. Okay? If they both stay quiet, they're gonna go to jail, but not for very long. If they both snitch, they both go to jail for much longer. So, it seems simple that you should stay quiet, right? Except, if you snitch and the other guy stays quiet, you walk free.

Yes!

Right? So, everybody is tempted to betray.

Mm-hmm.

And so, this is a non-cooperative coordination game because you're incentivized to not cooperate.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

You are also incentivized to cooperate.

That's what makes it hard. Yeah. Well, it depends.

But the biggest reward is to walk free.

You're tempted to take the drug.

Yes, the biggest reward is— yeah, but I guess, I don't know, I'm trying to measure it in a utilitarian way. I feel like both people with a reduced sentence is still better.

Well, it's better in theory, logically, but if you're the person—

You start to get the sense why these guys games are interesting to people because then you can change all kinds of stuff. Who are you imagining in the other room? What's your relationship with them like?

What do you think they're gonna do? What do you already know about the person?

Yeah. What do you know about the person? If you did this game 10 times in a row based on their prior behavior, what do you do in the last one?

Russians have a weird outcome in this game.

Tell me.

I wish I could remember the source because it'll just sound like xenophobia. But yeah, they're, um, one of these many books that has talked about the prison experiment. talked about how Russians are uniquely or asymmetrically will punish even when it costs them.

These games have been studied so much that I'm sure there are lots of cross-cultural findings about how Germans play, whatever, how everyone plays. So these— so economists and game theorists were kind of obsessed with these coordination games. Now fast forward to now, okay? We have whole fields that have been studying social psychology, communication, all of this stuff. And what I realized is is even though we have these whole fields that are about interpersonal interaction, like, not a lot of people had gone to the trouble of actually recording real people talking to real people at very large scale. And the reason they hadn't is because we needed new technology to do it.

Right. You couldn't have film cameras running, although your hometown would love it. Kodak would still be thriving. But yeah, we needed a digital revolution.

We needed a digital revolution. We needed, um, natural language processing and machine learning to help us analyze tons of transcripts at once. We just weren't ready to do it until very recently. But as we were sort of like, oh, we should do that, we should record tons of conversations and analyze them, I also realized, oh my God, conversation is just like those coordination games that the game theorists were studying back in the 1950s, like Thomas Schelling and His coordination. He has a famous one where he asks people, if you had to meet up with people at noon tomorrow in New York City, where would you go?

I know what the answer to this is.

Wait, is it a riddle, or is it just a fun topic?

It's just a coordination game. Like, you try and you can't talk about it, and everybody writes down their answer. But I think Dax knows the answer.

I unfortunately know too much about it.

Let's pick a new city. Let's pick LA.

Let's do it.

Okay, yeah.

So, if you had to meet up with Monica tomorrow somewhere in LA at noon, think in your mind where you would go.

It's not here.

It can't be here.

Right.

Think it in your mind. Commit to it.

Yeah.

Monica, what's your answer? Cara.

Yeah, same.

Oh, the bar at Cara? Yeah.

Or the restaurant.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's exactly what I thought.

Is that just 'cause we know that we—

yes.

The New York one, a lot of people will say the Empire State Building. 'Cause it's like a landmark. They'll say, you know, they'll say the Brooklyn Bridge, they'll say whatever. But there is a right answer.

The most frequent one that people say is Grand Central Station. Grand Central Station. 'Cause that's—

you'll be arriving there.

'Cause everyone will be arriving there.

Yeah, so there is a kind of a high probability logic to it.

It's kind of a riddle.

Kind of a riddle.

But it's like— so he— 'cause Schelling, Thomas Schelling called them focal points. It's because it's like stuff that your mind goes to quickly that you think other people are gonna do.

Yeah, high probability. The first thing you think of when you think of New York. I'll go there.

Yeah. We're here. Like, you're gonna, you, that's a focal point for you in your shared reality, in your relationship. Yeah. That helps you coordinate.

Yeah.

So what we've realized about conversation is like, it's just like these coordination games, except every little moment, every moment is like a coordination game when you're trying to decide what are we gonna talk about next? How are we gonna talk about it? What are they excited for me to ask? What are they, what should, where should we go next? Mm-hmm. Requires this This level of shared reality, these focal points, and this mind reading.

Yeah.

But it's so much more than just one choice. Do you stay quiet or snitch? It's like, and now, and now, and now, and now. And you have to make those choices relentlessly. So it's like this meta coordination.

It's almost incredible we can communicate.

I agree.

It is incredible. That's what linguists will tell you. It's incredible that we are able to do this.

It should go worse than— like, I think almost everyone can relate to some social anxiety, the fear of being judged, Small talk, being in an elevator, and that is all present. But in general, it goes shockingly well.

It does. It's incredible.

It's the anomaly you hear 2 people screaming at each other on the sidewalk.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, and even when they're screaming at each other, they're taking turns. They're listening to each other scream.

Yeah.

They are— there is some information being exchanged that they may get the opportunity to rehash later.

Yeah, exactly.

Like, it's still amazing that we are able to do this. And when you look at actual transcripts between real people, whether they're shouting at each other or not, you start to realize, oh, it is a train wreck. Like, people are— we're interrupting each other all the time. We're not actually listening. We're having half-finished thoughts. We get excited about a thing, and then we get excited about another thing.

You said, like, 24% of the time your mind is wandering.

And I think that's an underestimate.

Yeah, I do too.

I mean, because As a proud member of the recent legion of middle-aged people who've been diagnosed with ADHD, this really, so this was my research, and it really hit home. It was very validating to realize that, so there was previous research showing that people's minds are at a resting state, they're wandering, right?

Mm-hmm.

Our brains are not built to focus on like a one thing. So our resting state is mind wandering outside of conversation. In our research, we looked at it in conversation. So we interrupted people every 5 minutes, and we were like, Were you just listening to your partner? Were you just listening to your partner?

Interesting.

Asking them to self-report.

Sure. And that's where the— Which is gonna be, I think, skewed low.

It is way skewed low because people know that it's not polite to say I wasn't listening. Right. Or they're not sure if they were listening because they weren't listening.

They probably thought, oh, of course I was listening, but not really. They probably couldn't repeat.

Exactly.

Or you think you're doing both things.

Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm listening and I'm wandering.

Which is often true.

Yeah.

So I think this 24% number one is is staggeringly high and comforting to realize, and 2, probably a huge underestimate of what's really happening.

This is why Yuval was saying that an AI companion might actually be wonderful, 'cause they actually won't be thinking about anything but you, and they have no agenda to promote their own.

Yeah.

Can I tell you, this is, I think AI is so, I'm so curious and excited to see what happens with it, but you just put your finger on exactly the thing that as a teacher, coach, scholar of conversation, this is what's been on my mind about it, What makes someone a good conversationalist is relentlessly trying to focus on the other person and what the other person needs. And AI, if you're talking to a chatbot, AI, they don't have any of their own sincere needs, right?

Exactly.

They are only there to serve your needs. And what I worry about is that the more we interact with an entity like that, a non-human entity that's just there to serve you, and it's so good at serving you, right? It's amazing at serving you.

It's a narcissist machine.

Exactly. Is training us to, when we turn to an actual human, forget that, like, the mission is, like, the complete opposite.

Yeah.

Really?

That's so true.

Yeah, I think, A, it's bad muscle memory for future conversations, but I actually don't even think it'll be appealing. Now, it will be appealing to people who are abjectly lonely.

Yeah.

Yes.

The reward of conversation is the primate social interaction and the approval and the status and the connection and all the web of what being a social primate is. So having it within and out of an object doesn't really, I don't think, get you what you're after.

I know. I'm so curious to start studying, like, who— who is this appealing to? Who is enjoying it and why?

There will be no stakes in that conversation. There's always stakes between any real one-on-one relationship that come up. So, like, I don't know.

You're going on a journey through someone else's mind.

Yes.

I was just telling Monica, when I'm using the AI to make an image, I actually had to break myself of all my habits I have when dealing with people. And when I was dealing with the AI, the first time it would generate the image, I would go, great. I literally say— take the time to say this to the AI. Great job. Really good start. I think where we could do better— and I was like, did this happen? This four or five times, I was like, oh, I don't have to do any of this. I can treat it like a fucking slave.

I go, yeah, but then what if you lost that skill?

I know. Yeah, it's like how often am I doing that where then I talk to a human like that? Yeah, just as I obviously my muscle memory made me talk to a computer like that, which is insane if you think about it. It's lovely. Good job, little guy.

That's nice. Lovely.

You're a good boy.

They're real boys. They want to be real boys anyway. This is a ding ding ding because I. I was just talking about this with one of our friends. She has somebody in her life who doesn't have a lot of friends and struggles with that. And I was like, well, it would be great if there was a robot friend. And this—

She has other outlets.

This person has other outlets and is not fully reliant on her and can, like, you know, go to dinner with this robot. And you can program it to have the type of conversation you want. And, like, yes, it sounds scary, But some people— it's unfair because we're good at making friends. Yeah, that's what I was—

You know? Yes, I was gonna say, I'm saying that and that's a luxury 'cause I have real people in my life and I'm not terribly lonely. And I think it'll be more appealing. My prediction for what'll make it work is they're actually going to have to build in tension, potential conflicts.

So much they need to build in.

Yeah.

You need to tell it what to care about. It has to care about things.

Something, yeah.

So that it— that's what's gonna help simulate a real person, those desires will never be sincere, but you can tell it to pretend to care about you.

It needs the ability to get pissed off at you and be cold to you and be—

Yes.

And complicated. And to not— I mean, ideally not give you what you need all the time.

It's like when they talk about building the sim as a hedonic treadmill, it won't work. Like, if you have a simulation for humans to live in, just getting everything they want all day long will be a failed simulation.

What I worry about is people who are already lonely probably don't love conversation. Maybe they're not as good at it, or maybe they're just more shy. And then they do find AI very particularly rewarding. There are so many underserved populations or, like, vulnerable populations why that would be the case. It's like a little bit of a downward spiral then, where, like, it's actually then making— ruining your muscle memory for how to actually engage with real people.

Okay, so you lay out an architecture in the book to improve conversation.

I do.

And it's conveniently got an acronym, which is TALK. So we have topics.

Did you backronym that?

What does that mean?

We just learned about it.

Oh my God, teach me.

No, I am.

Teach me.

This is like Milgram.

Does it mean you back into it?

Yes. You're out past your skis a lot. I love that. I love what's happening.

I feel really bald in the back.

Milgram! Yeah. Oh, God. But okay, talk. Did you have talk, and then you're like, I'm gonna figure out how to—

no? It's so funny. I mean, I honestly don't really remember the deductive versus inductive process of it. What I do remember are the things that struck me as the most helpful and surprising as we were learning them from our research. And then I was able to craft them into a very logical, item framework that builds in complexity over time, focuses on the sort of informational transactional things we need to do in conversation and the emotional relational stuff.

Right.

It's in a way quite ambitious because it's trying to encapsulate like the full landscape of what we're trying to do in the social world.

Full range of possibility.

Full range, yeah.

But TALK does stand for topics, asking, levity, kindness. So let's start with Topics. You claim small talk isn't the enemy, and I have to push back on that. I, I, tell me, I talk for a living. I enjoy it so much, but having to talk about the weather, the fucking weather, you don't.

But this is the thing, you don't do small talk. You move past it immediately. That's why people like listening to you. It's why people like talking to you, is you don't get trapped in small talk world.

So tell me why it's not bad though. Why, why should we embrace it?

So, so many things about the way that we talk to each other are deeply ingrained social rituals, right? Small talk among them. You have to start at small talk. If you are meeting someone for the very first time, or seeing, like, you know, we didn't— don't know each other, we have to start with somewhere. And it has to be a topic that anybody could talk about easily. Um, it's this well-worn place that you're searching to move, ideally move away from, towards something more personalized, more interesting, more exciting.

Yeah.

The goal would be to chase the energy away from it. The problem isn't with the Small talk itself, but people get trapped there too long. They linger, and it starts to feel dutiful and awful and meaningless and shallow. And that's what everybody dreads.

And this is where we get into what we talked about, having a bit of a game plan before you end up places. In fact, you talk about dates, like the outcome of dates for a second date is kind of measurable if you go in with this, a bit of a game plan. So one of the techniques is switching topics Frequently.

Yeah.

So that would just— you got to come with some in the holster, I guess.

Actually, we saw this on the— in the dating data. One of the killers of conversation, dating or otherwise, are long pauses. Long pauses happen when you've stayed too long on something that you don't have anything left to say. Right.

You've really beaten a dead horse.

You've beaten a dead horse. People start repeating things they've already said about it. They start laughing uncomfortably. The pause is getting longer. You gotta move. You gotta go somewhere else.

Yeah.

By the way, just can we take a second to— right, like, that's one of the worst feelings. Just even you describing it, I get my body—

I get a mirror neuron.

And I think we all do. And that's why people are like, fuck it, I'll just be lonely.

Exactly. It's miserable. It's this little panicky feeling. Some people feel a great sense of responsibility in those moments to be the one to come up with the next thing I think a lot of introverts are sort of like, that's not my job, but I'm hating this.

Right.

I'm not gonna fix it, but like, I feel it. This is the worst.

Yeah.

Just having this mindset shift of before you even get to that panicky lull type of thing, move, move quicker, be more assertive about going to somewhere else.

Yeah. Don't be afraid to just drop a non sequitur in there.

Oh yeah. And people go right with you.

That's preferred to this long lull. Of course.

Yeah. I watched this amazing movie last night on the airplane.

Which one?

It was called We Live in Time with, um—

That sounds familiar.

It's with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield. Oh, that's right.

Isn't it supposed to be so sad?

I sobbed. I sobbed the whole way here.

But you know, there's been work on this. There's been social science work on this. On an airplane—

It's worse.

'Cause you feel you have a heightened sense of vulnerability.

You are.

You're vulnerable. And I was alone, and my husband wasn't there. I wasn't there the whole thing.

Your kids were gonna miss you.

And no, also this movie is supposed to be like so sad.

It was amazing.

Just—

we're gonna get back to the movie, but the reason I raised it is because I did the thing we were talking about.

I was about to say, I think you're doing it.

I did the thing where you just start talking about something else and everybody goes with you. You guys, it's fun.

Wow, you knew that?

Monica knew. She was with me the whole time.

You've been saying you know a lot of stuff that you don't actually know. So I feel like this is continuing the pattern you've already—

Welcome to my world.

I knew it. I knew it. Then why'd you participate?

Because I thought it'd be rude not to, because I'm a good conversationalist.

Golly. But if you just start talking about something else, like—

I feel betrayed.

It's okay. You don't have to be betrayed.

Yeah, be careful who you're talking to.

I feel manipulated and betrayed. Now I don't trust you, and I'm scared. Now I'm gonna be dominant.

Okay.

But back to the movie, for real, it's so good. It's so good. I sobbed so much.

Okay, asking questions. This makes sense. I just want to give a personal anecdote, and there's a big shout out to, um, Scotty Johnson. So I met this boy, uh, early into LA, and everywhere we went, every single girl was in love with him. A, he was objectively cuter than all of us, that's for sure. But it was happening with guys and with girls and everyone. And I was like, at first I just chalked it up to he's magic. And I— you can't really strive for that. You're magic or you're not. But at some point I was like, oh, wait, this guy asks more questions than anyone I've ever met in my life. And I really made a mental note like, oh, I want to move through the world a lot more like Scotty. And I've got to really up my game on asking questions. It's so powerful.

Let me ask about Scotty. Did he ask particularly—

Now, I know you just did that.

No, I didn't even do it on purpose! Oh my God, I didn't even do it on purpose!

I knew that one wasn't, and I knew it.

It's sincere!

It's sincere! Monica's with me. Um, Scotty, did he— did he ask particularly good questions, or was he just asking, like, really anything?

He had this ability to seem crazy interested in anything.

Yeah. And he probably was.

Yeah, by the way, this is an AA thing. It's like, It's like acting your way into thinking different versus thinking your way into acting different, right? So something could feel fraudulent to you on the surface, but you might be shocked with repetition how genuine it gets.

Um, this is a debate that we have in my class all the time because these students are coming to this class on conversation. I'm teaching them about the types of behaviors that tend to work, and then they try them with intentionality. And of course, through the whole thing, They're thinking, but isn't this manipulative? Like, if I do this with intentionality and knowing that I'm doing it, doesn't that make it by definition inauthentic in some way?

Right.

What's unique about conversation is maybe for a fleeting second, and you think to yourself, I should ask a question now, and then you do. In that moment, you're sort of nudging yourself to do it, but everything that comes after that is sincere.

I'll also add, it's a reward center activity in that what'll shock you is people are more interested than you thought they were or gave them credit for. And that you, you can only discover that through asking them questions because they themselves aren't great at remembering the most exciting detail of their life to share with you at that moment. But you could inadvertently lead them to that.

You draw it out of them.

It's like this self-virtuous cycle where it's like, yes, at first you're doing it in a way that maybe is calculated, but then you're rewarded for it.

Exactly right. You're very quickly rewarded for it. And questions have that beautiful power, is you get that reward almost instantly, right? Because they're going to tell you stuff you're going to say, See what is interesting in their answer, and then you can keep asking more. In my class, we do an exercise called never-ending follow-ups.

Ooh.

Where it'll be a pair like you. One person is the never-ending question asker, the other person's just answering.

Yeah.

And every time Monica talks, she has to end by asking a follow-up question.

Oh, wow.

And it sounds so extreme, but the experience of it is like Scotty. I mean, the experience of it is magic. You immediately move away from small talk. You start learning so much about the other person.

It's funny what a nugget of wisdom improv artists stumbled upon, 'cause you even reference it in your book. Like, using the improv rule of yes, and, not no. Should we play this game? I feel like we should.

Sure, but I'm nervous.

I'll be the— do you want me to switch?

Yeah.

So you're gonna ask me questions?

Where'd you get that sweatshirt?

Oh, I got it at Sarah Henler's studio.

It's vintage. Do you go there a lot?

I only— it's the first time I've ever been was yesterday, but I've been wanting to.

Oh, what took you so long to check it out?

I guess I'm just busy. I'm busy.

What are you busy doing?

I work a lot. I have a busy job.

You do? What do you do?

Have you heard of podcasts?

Oh, Jesus.

Oh, I'm not supposed to ask. That's where it ends. I gotta go.

Fuck this. You're on your own, toots. I don't like that sweater.

Hey!

That's— yeah, yeah, you did a good job.

Thank you.

But I felt scared.

Do you want to try it?

You guys, what are you doing?

He started playing a character. You started asking questions you already knew the answer to. The part of this that matters is that you should do it as yourself.

Like, make it sincere. Well, hold on a second. I didn't know the answer. Well, I knew the answers to what she did for— but I didn't know that was her first time. And I don't know what—

Right.

You didn't know where I got my And I don't know why it took you so long. I would've thought you've been there a dozen times.

You learned a lot very quickly.

That's true. I guess you didn't learn that I was busy, but—

Yeah.

Because you already know that.

We gotta reverse that. You gotta do—

Oh, fine.

Gotta do it.

Oh my God, I'm so scared. Okay, what should I ask? Well, I wanna ask a serious question.

Okay.

Can I?

Yeah.

So I know you're working on a personal project. It's been taxing, and I want to know, um, how you're doing.

Oh, um, I would say I'm, I'm mid-level. I, I'm still in the middle of it, so I don't know how I'm doing.

If you do a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most relief and 1 being agony— that's a weird scale, but can you please—

I like that scale. Um, I would say I'd say 4.

4. And are you doing anything to help balance it out?

Yeah, I'm cutting my hair compulsively, and I'm exercising compulsively. Yeah. And I'm trying not to blow my nose, which is new.

Can you tell me more about why you stopped blowing your nose?

I got convinced that I don't actually have allergies, that I've just injured my nose from blowing it so And then it's sending white blood cells to repair it. And then that is snot that I have to then blow really hard to get out. And then I'm just caught in this endless pattern of damaging and repairing. And I feel like I just have to stop for it to end.

Are you an addict?

Oh, like a motherfucker.

That tracks. Okay. But I did know some of the answers.

Yeah, it's hard.

It's hard.

We know it. We talk a lot.

Yep.

Where did you get your pants?

I got these at a local store near where I live.

Okay. Do you notice what all the other moms are doing? And do you feel like you pick up on— like, I don't— I'm not sure what pants I'm supposed to be wearing, but somehow everyone knows. Are you paying— how do you pay attention and figure it out?

I love fashion. I love fashion. I feel like you learn— I actually talk about this with some of my mom friends. As, as like a fashionista gets older, you get fewer and fewer touch points with like people who are actually fashionable, which is alarming because you're like, oh no, I feel myself getting out of touch.

And do you like have to factor in your age? Do you feel like there's age appropriateness?

Such a complicated calculus. Yes. So I see— so I have, you know, hundreds of students who are in their 20s, so I get to observe that. Yeah. fancy colleagues who are all ages and flavors of style.

Yeah.

I then have all my, like, community friends, parent— cool parents.

Right.

And then there's social media. So I'm like, am I following the right, like, influencer accounts? Am I seeing the right— am I getting the right ads? I think the calculus for women deciding what to wear in different contexts they find themselves in is so complicated.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Okay, so here's a calculated question I would ask, and I realize how I operate in thinking of this question, which is I would go, have you gone too— have you taken too big of a swing?

Oh, I try not to. So this is part of my, like, this is part of one of my goals is I used to go much harder when I was in my 20s. Like, I wanted to get noticed. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be the one sort of setting the trend. As I've gotten older, I think it's more about not taking too big of a swing. I don't like that feeling.

Okay, so you haven't, like, arrived at a restaurant and been like, oh boy, I went too young with this top. No.

Now I try, really try and keep— I play it a little safer, I would say. Even today, I was gonna wear, like, a hot pink sweater, and at the last second I was like, black, thank you.

That would've been cute. Were you— wait, you said you were afraid to ask that?

No, no, no.

So I—

I know that the kind of questions I ask is, I wanna get to a time you got embarrassed.

Oh, yeah.

Because that's vulnerable.

Yeah.

Well, you do it to me.

I didn't even realize you were doing it to me.

You thought this was a random conversation.

I thought you were just asking me. That's so fun. I swear to God.

But I want to get to the point, 'cause I think what's very bonding in a Fast Pass is as soon as we get vulnerable.

That's right.

So if I can get to a point where, like, you went too far, Can I tell you?

I think this is something I am always working on in myself about conversation is more quickly revealing my vulnerability, my mistakes, my failures, my moments of embarrassment and shame.

Yeah.

I'm so hungry to get it out of other people and probably too slow to share it with others.

Yeah.

Yeah.

To me, it's such a fast pass to like, oh, great, we're both now laughing at the time I tried to wear combat boots and you tried to wear a dress. And it's like, oh, we've just broken through a layer, and now we can kind of live here.

I have that too, but sometimes it back— it can backfire in a dating— I mean, even the question I asked you was immediately vulnerable. And I do, I do tend to do that even on like early dates because I want to know for myself what's going on with this person. How introspective are they? How interesting are they? What's going on? And so I'm like, tell me about your trauma.

And what do you—

what do—

how do people— how do they respond that you think that's not good? They're too diff— they're guarded, they feel threatened.

They often do it.

Yeah.

And that's lovely.

Yeah.

But then if I then don't wanna go on another date, oh, now I feel guilty.

Oh, that's interesting.

Because I've now like put them in a position to be very vulnerable and maybe do things, say things.

And make things feel worse 'cause you actually know them.

Well, that isn't even when I was— that's another bad thing. But I, but I feel more Like, I, I feel sort of manipulative. Like, I put you in a position to be vulnerable. You were.

Yep.

And then—

You trusted me, and then I deserted you.

Trusted me with your heart, and I stomped on it.

Yeah.

I crushed your—

crushed your soul.

But you get— but the, the reframe of that is that you actually gave it a chance. You actually were like, we're—

You wanted it to work.

I want it to work, and I'm gonna sincerely try and do the thing that we are here to do. And nobody needs to waste their time, like, small talking with people.

We're getting so off topic, but this is really interesting. I think when I have to do my own, like, sexual inventory, as you have to do in AA, and I think about times I've been irresponsible or not, I think what I underestimated sometimes is it came very easy and natural for me to have those kind of conversations with women. And for a lot of those women, it was such a unique thing they had only experienced with someone they were deeply in love with. And I do think it was quite misleading at times to women, which I fear in their reflection felt like manipulation or something. But it's just kind of how I am.

You're a sharer.

Yes. And I think it fast-forwarded— it's kind of like this thing we learned about in England where the GIs got all these English girls pregnant. Americans kiss really quick.

Yeah.

English don't kiss for a long time. So it tricked their— they were like, they jumped ahead 10 steps.

This is verbal kissing. This is you sharing something vulnerable or seemingly vulnerable with them and jumping ahead.

Truth be told, a lot of people associate that with a very unique kind of relationship they've only had once, and it was love.

There are people, though, like every relationship in their life is like this, and they want nothing else, myself included. I think that's what real— that's That's what I want out of people in my life and reality. I have a colleague at Harvard named Leslie John who's writing a book called Reveal, and it's all about this conundrum of, like, the spectrum from full opacity where you share nothing to full transparency. If you could download the full contents of your brain and give it to somebody else as a gift, we're making these choices constantly of how much do we share of ourselves and what pros and cons, what consequences come from it.

Yes.

And skipping ahead and accelerating relationship development is one of the pros. One of the downsides is it really does make you more vulnerable to heartbreak or exploitation, essentially.

Yeah.

I have this in male friendships a lot too. And this runs the risk of sounding arrogant, but I have observed it and it's real, which is a lot of guys are comfortable telling me things they generally won't tell other guys.

That's so nice.

A huge and incredible privilege, and it's beautiful. But I may be the only person they do that with. And so I'm kind of their best friend.

Yeah.

And then maybe they could feel hurt because I don't have a capacity for 150 best friends.

Well, I think about this all the time. One of the downsides of getting really good at conversation is that you don't actually have the bandwidth to be the best friend, the best boss, the best colleague to 1,000 people.

Yeah.

It's actually— it's like— and it's such a, like, first world problem of, like, if you, if you really work on this skill and people are willing to trust you and share with you and love being with you, yeah, the problem then becomes that person actually doesn't have the time and energy to fulfill that role all the time to that many people.

Yeah, I don't see I don't see the future solution being I'm less connected in a safe place to chat. It's that I think there's more options for those people to have that experience with multiple people.

With other people.

That's the positive future, is that there's a lot more dudes that are willing to chat about that stuff.

Send them my book.

I'm gonna send them your book. Okay, so asking questions, we got that. But I do wanna ask what a boomer ask is. I'm shriveling with embarrassment.

It is not about boomers. Let me say that first of all. It is about humans of all ages, and it's named after a boomerang. So it's when I ask you a question. So if I say to you, Monica, like, how was your weekend?

It was relaxing. How was yours?

Let me tell you about my weekend. Oh, you don't even ask. Even if you don't ask. I see.

I see.

And I'm like, let me tell you about the movie I watched.

You're asking so that you can hear, so that you can talk.

It can be even more grotesque and direct. You can go like, have you ever been to Tibet?

Exactly. Very specific.

Have you ever been in a fight at Franklin and Highland?

Yeah.

I'm clearly just trying to—

Very specific. Yes. Yes.

This is—

so this is boomerasking, because it's like a boomerang. You're throwing out the boomerang, you let them answer, and then you bring it right back to yourself immediately.

Yeah.

People do it all the time.

I do it. God, I hate that. Do you do it, Moni?

Yeah, I think, well, probably everyone does it in certain circumstances. I did it today. I did it today on the Fact Check. But God, that one gets— that's a little tricky.

Because it's a product.

It's a product. And so there is, weirdly, it's a mix of these because we both come in—

And then our feelings get hurt. Well, no, no, no. Navigating that.

We both come in sometimes knowing, like, I'm going to tell this story, knowing it will lead to a real conversation. But I want to come in with this story. So I, this morning, was like, oh, my hand looks different. Oh, I'm gonna bring that up on the Fact Check. So when I got—

Your hand looks different?

Yeah. Because, you know, if you get a cut and then it scars, and then you're like looking at your hand and it's not— you're like, whose hand is this?

You have very lovely hands.

Thank you very much. They were better about a week ago.

Beautiful. Yeah.

Thank you. But anyway, so I sat down and I said, have you ever had this experience?

Right, right, right.

To start the conversation.

You're open to hearing, I've had a similar experience.

Yeah, I want it. I did want to know the answer, but also I was like, well, 'cause I'm— we're gonna talk about this now.

It's all about the timing, right?

Yeah.

So if you really wanna hear about Dax's hands scar experiences, and he shares with you, he shares with you very openly, the important thing is like follow up on his thing first.

Yep.

So it feels like you actually care because you do.

Yeah.

Before we get back to your hand changing into a new hand.

Luckily, he did not understand what I was talking about.

Yeah, I mean, I understand if like—

You wonder what's better. Like, just come out and tell the story you wanna tell?

It is better. Direct.

It is, right?

Yeah, it's better. So we studied that exactly.

Oh, tell me.

So we randomly assigned people to either start with a question, let someone answer, and then tell a story, or just tell the story. Just telling the story is better. Whether you're bragging, whether you're complaining, Or whether you're just saying something weird and neutral.

Yeah.

Like, oh, I think my hand just morphed into a different hand. Um, it's better to just share it.

Right.

Which then may trigger reciprocity from the other person. That's the hope.

Yeah.

But you don't have control over that.

Right.

But sharing it is— you're gonna get the satisfaction of sharing whatever this thing you're dying to share. And you hope that the person you're talking to is actually interested and might, like, ask about it or share about themselves.

Yeah.

Yeah, interesting.

What's a gotcha question?

Oh, that's almost a gotcha question unto itself.

Oh!

It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not. Um, it's a gotcha question is, is really in the eye of the receiver. If you feel— if the person feels like you're testing them, ah, only leading them, leading them, making them feel like you're, you're— you want to prove how incompetent they are, that they're a liar, expose them as a fraud. So if I were to say, like, you know, like, Dax, you said that you, um, were an actor. Um, are you acting in anything right now?

Oh yeah.

Like, what the hell? You could do it for fun. If we're best friends and I want to tease you, that's like a really funny way to do it.

Yeah.

If we're not and that's a legitimate question, what an asshole.

Yeah.

That's a really quick way to make someone feel really bad.

Alison, you can't imagine how many people who only know me from acting will see me at the airport, and they'll go, what do you got coming out? And then I go, I have a podcast. And they don't have any sense that it's successful.

But they are really asking, though.

They feel so bad.

And they don't mean for it.

The nice thing is—

That's not a gotcha question.

What they're really saying is, I like watching you.

Yeah.

I want to keep my eyes out for something you're in.

Yes.

But when I say I'm busy doing a podcast, Instead of acting...

They get upset?

I think they feel really bad for me.

No! Oh, God.

And if you were to project that—

It's all about your read of their intentions, though, right? A gotcha question is if I'm reading you, as you're asking me this, to make me— to embarrass me, to exploit me, to make me look bad. That's a gotcha question. The same question lobbed from someone who doesn't actually know the answer and really cares about you...

Yeah, just wants to know.

...is great. So, it's all about— the importance is sort of caring. Yeah.

Okay, let's get to levity, probably my favorite part. I could see where people wouldn't prioritize levity.

Can I give you guys a compliment?

Oh, please.

Which is a levity move. Oh, she's doing it. Really, I think the reason that this podcast and you guys are so great is because you're so good at balancing gravity and levity. It's almost the whole mission of the conversations you have is like you want to have stuff you take seriously and you take learning seriously, you take issues and topics seriously, and all the way along you want it to be fun.

Very nice compliment.

And you accomplished that.

Thank you.

You accomplished the mission.

Thank you. I agree that that's the mission.

Do you disagree that that's the mission?

No, I was trying to do like a really thorough and honest assessment of the motive behind that. You know?

My motive?

Mine.

Oh.

You know?

Yeah, let's assess. Yeah, what's why?

I think the thing that might be truest Under all of it is it is my tool to both let go of power and maintain power. So by being vulnerable and honest, I'm giving away my power.

Yes.

And I'm scared.

Yep.

But I always have the skill set to steer the reaction if necessary. I do think it's my way of controlling how vulnerable I'll be.

Yep. So we've done research on the relationship between humor and power.

Oh.

Even one joke or one moment where you make other people laugh in a conversation means you're much more likely to be voted as the leader of the group.

Wow.

So I think often when we think of levity or humor, we have a tendency to think of it as like this bonus, this like extra sparkly thing that might happen sometimes, and that's nice, but whatever.

Yeah.

When you actually study the psychology of humor and levity in conversation and its relationship with status and power, The core determinant of the status hierarchy. So I think your sense of, like, I'm doing this to reclaim power and control is legitimate.

Yeah, 'cause when I tell you something that's very revealing, I get immediately scared, as I think most people do. And it's broader than this room. So my mind can't help but imagine however a million people take the thing I just said. And then I can take the legs out from it if I want to.

And it's this little micro moment of power because you're like, I know I'm gonna say this thing, and I'm pretty sure you're gonna laugh at it. Just even that power over somebody to evoke that emotional response in that moment is tremendous. And it signals something about you, that you have the competence, the wherewithal, the sort of dominance to make that happen again in the future. And people read that as a very core competency.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I also think it enables you to take big swings 'cause you have a— you can neutralize it.

Yeah.

I think of Jess. Like, Jess is very, very funny. He's also very, very provocative. So he's saying really provocative things, and if they go sideways, he's great at acknowledging they went sideways to then release the pressure of, I just—

A lot of funny people do this. It's like a recovery thing.

Yeah.

I'm gonna be here all night. You know, like, that was the goal.

Right.

Right, the recovery of like, well, at least I tried. So in this same research where we're studying humor and power, what we found is even when jokes totally flop, like people don't laugh, they think they're inappropriate, they don't think they're funny, you still get a boost in how people perceive your confidence.

Sure.

'Cause you were at least confident enough to try.

Yes. Yeah.

And even that is admirable.

Okay, kindness. And this is where we really get into listening. And we kind of, I feel like this overlaps a bit with asking questions.

Mm-hmm.

But why does it deserve its own category?

Moment to moment, when people are talking to each other, when they're walking through the world, what are kind people thinking about, and what are they saying to other people? I was so— as a psychologist, so curious to try and figure that out. And I think we've come up with some pretty concrete answers of what people who are prioritizing other people's needs more frequently than others— these are kind people. And they do some predictable things during conversation.

Ooh.

More respectful language that makes people feel worthy and seen and known and understood.

Could you give me an example of respectful language?

Using people's names is a good start. Oh.

Oh.

Right? That makes you say, like, I think you're worthy of even knowing who you are, just as a starting place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, think of how many conversations you've had where you didn't know someone's name. It's a very uneasy feeling.

Yeah.

Because you can't give them that respect. How, how can I show you that I care about you and respect you if I don't even know your name? That's a weird feeling.

Yeah.

Like, let's slap on name tags, guys. Right.

Yeah.

Just as a start. That's like such a basic thing. But every little linguistic choice you make is an opportunity to choose to show respect or not. Positive language is more respectful than negative. It shows people that you're You like being with them.

So again, what's positive language?

Literally things like, great, good, awesome, cool, love that.

Right.

As opposed to negative language that's like, no, uh-uh, that sucks.

Yeah.

That makes you feel like you're not enjoying being with me. And then this sort of worthy of care, making people feel like they're worthy of your time and attention.

Yeah.

Which then ties into, like, listening. So when we think about listening, there's all decades of work on active listening, which is mostly nonverbal cues like nodding, smiling, leaning forward. In our more recent research on listening, what we find is great conversationalists use their words to show people that they've heard them. Those can't be faked. So if you're sitting on Zoom, you can be like smiling and nodding, but you're like, you know, off to the side doing God knows what, making a grocery list or texting your friends. What you can't fake are things like follow-up questions, callbacks, which is your ding, ding, ding, I think.

Yeah.

Right?

Love a ding, ding, ding.

Can't fake a ding, ding, ding if you didn't hear Yep. Paraphrasing what other people have said, repeating back to them what they've said to sort of check in, am I understanding you right? There's another piece of kindness that we haven't talked about yet, which is receptiveness to opposing viewpoints. So when you confront a moment of difficulty where you really disagree, many of these same skills, the listening with your words and validating people, that's when it becomes especially important and especially hard to do.

Yeah. Right.

It's hard to say, like, oh, I hear you say— imagine that you were like a— like, you hate people who had affairs.

Yeah. Right.

And in that moment, your friend says, I'm having an affair.

I hate half the world.

You hate half the world. You hate everybody. And in that moment, what a good conversationalist would do would be like, I hear that you're saying you had an affair. It makes so much sense that you're feeling upset about that. Let's consider for a second, like, why this is a bad decision. So before you go on to disagree with them, you have to do that hard work of validating them, right?

Oh yeah.

And almost everyone skips that part.

My thing was like, totally, you're not a terrible, flawed person. You're not broken. You did something a lot of people do, and we gotta make sure you wake up with your family for the rest of your life.

Yeah.

How do we get there?

Exactly.

Right.

It's so interesting, this whole topic, because I feel like we think about it a lot, I don't know if this is gonna— if I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this, but for people who are neurodivergent, like that show, you know, the show everyone watched.

A Love on the Spectrum.

Yes.

I love that show.

I didn't watch it, but I— everyone loved it. There was a lot of this, right? Like teaching how to have conversations and active listening, all these tools.

And it is— Eye contact.

Yes. And it's so, it's so lovely to like have to see that in practice, but it's also, it's so, it's kind of arrogant of people of neurotypical people who are watching and they're like, yeah, they don't know how to do that. It's like, we don't know.

Nobody's doing it all.

No one's doing it right.

I love watching that show. Actually, one of the tactics that is most helpful on that show, they have these really lovely coaches who come in before their dates.

Yeah.

And they have them brainstorm topics.

Exactly.

Ahead of time. And I'm like, yeah, everybody needs to be doing that. Like, your neuro-normie people should be also thinking ahead.

That's my point. It's like, we can all learn from that. Neurotypical/neurodivergent is a false dichotomy in and of itself. This binary notion that there's neurodivergent, it's like we're all on this weird spectrum with varying degrees of adeptness.

In all different vectors, right? In all different directions.

Yeah. There are people who are not neurodivergent who are very uncomfortable with eye contact. I talk to them all the time.

Yeah, exactly.

There are any number of things that they might be struggling with people.

Totally.

Yeah.

They don't go to fucking dates with topics.

Yeah.

They're just gonna let their neurotypicalness take over. Right?

Correct.

Okay, now when you get into a group conversation, it gets more complicated. That seems pretty obvious. Um, but I, I did want to, um, talk specifically about the status hierarchy effect of a group chat and how it changes within conversations.

I think to some people it's not obvious how much more difficult groups are than dyads, than one-on-one, because it feels like you're doing the same task. Like, you're talking, you're listening, you're with other people. And I think it's clear that it's harder to coordinate, but I don't think we've realized how much harder. Even here, this whole time I'm toggling my eye gaze between both of you. Monica's so patient, she's such a good listener. And like, we're all doing this calculus that's quite a bit different than if it were just me and Monica or just me and Dax together.

Thank you, Monica.

As soon as a third person pulls up a chair, everything changes. changes. Someone can sit there, be part of the conversation, and never talk.

Yeah.

That's different than one-on-one where you have to go back and forth. And so I think people don't realize that as group size grows, the coordination challenges of all conversations grow exponentially. Every person in the group has a unique reality, shared reality, a unique relationship. What's boring to Dax might be really exciting to me and Monica. So all of those little micro decisions get even more fraught. And one of the things that we have to navigate is status differences as people get thrown into the mix. Every group has an inherent status hierarchy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What the revelation, I think, in this book and in my work that we've realized is— so the status hierarchy is determined by all kinds of things. Sometimes it's a formal hierarchy, like at an organization there's a boss, or, you know, on an army battalion there's the leader.

A lot of these companies have levels.

It's like, it's explicitly stated. Yeah. Sometimes it's age, sometimes Sometimes it's level of wealth, sometimes it's expertise, but it's other things, gender, it's race, it's all of these things that our minds are doing this calculation of who has the most power here, who has the most liking and respect, who's the most influential. And we do this internal sort of ranking of in a group, and it affects all the ways that people behave. We tend to look at people who have high status when they're speaking, they speak more, so you look at them, but also when they're not speaking, we look to see their emotional reactions more frequently.

We check in with them when someone else is talking.

Because they determine the norms. Like, are they surprised by this? Are they pissed about this? Should I be pissed about this? Which makes lower-status group members feel invisible. You're literally not looking at them as much. They feel less welcome to contribute. What we— the revelation that we've sort of realized by studying conversations at the topic level, as you move from one thing to another, the status hierarchy shifts from one topic to the next.

Oh, interesting.

We start talking about fashion.

Yeah.

All of a sudden, I am not going to be looking at Dax as much. I'm going to be deferring to Monica, who's super cool.

She's the expert.

Yes. Yeah, I forgot to give you my gift. Um, in a little bit.

If you're good.

If you're good. If you behave yourself. But if we switch to a new topic on which I have the most expertise, things are going to change. If we switch to something Dax— imagine there's 5 other people here who have all different expertise and levels of status. So it's shifting dynamically. as we move from one topic to the next. It's not like you go to a work meeting and like the boss guy's always top dog.

Right.

Imagine you land on a topic where all of a sudden, like, low woman on the totem pole has all the value to add. She better feel safe and included enough to— and welcome to speak when you get to that topic.

You probably don't want to be ensnared in this, but I can't resist right now. I constantly talk about this. I think status is what we are most conscious of at all times. I think it is driving so much of everything. I think it's just baked into being a social primate.

Yep.

I don't think it's escapable. I think there's a lot of young people who think the solution to this is the eradication of status.

You can't. It's how our brains are wired.

Even these movements I see, like main character energy versus supporting cast, it's like All the movement is like to get rid of status. And to me, it's just like saying, let's get rid of being bipedal and walk on all fours. Like, we have to acknowledge it's there, accept that it's there, and figure out how to navigate it best. But the notion of obliterating status, I think, is such a—

Eradication's not the right goal.

It's not gonna— it's absolutely impossible.

It's how we're built, what we're built to do. The goal instead, the sort of reframe is, when you are in that high-status position, What can you do to lift other people up? When you're in the low-status role and you're marginalized, what can you possibly do to cope with a very difficult position that you're in?

Yeah, it sucks.

It sucks. You have a narrower range of things that you're allowed to say that will be seen as appropriate or as a value-add. So then you're less likely to speak. And if you never speak, you're not actually bringing value. Nobody ever gets to know you and what you can do.

It's this crazy cycle.

It's a crazy double bind. Our job is to, like, look— try and learn as much as we can about each other regardless of status, but you can't eradicate it. It's how our brains are. It's what we're built to do. And status striving, right? We all want to ascend and maintain—

Whether we're conscious of it, it means more food and safety.

Yeah, food and safety and attraction and reproduction and love and— exactly.

Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna jump to apologies because— and I gotta give credit to— Uh, AA, there's a few things that it forced me to do. I had to, I had to embrace the dogma. Um, my favorite thing is the 4th step. I've talked about it here before, learning to actually take an inventory of how you feel and what fears are being triggered. That's been so incredible to understand. But being forced to say apologies, make amends.

Good.

And then getting the experience of delivering some of those and finding out the reaction's not at all what you you're afraid it'll be. I don't know how anyone else learns that unless they're in a program that demands it.

Yeah.

And then we have, as the 10-step, like, we have to do that daily. Now, it's not just like, oh, what you accumulated as an addict. It's like, daily, how has my behavior maybe impacted someone negatively? And I have an obligation to clean that up, because if I don't clean that up, I will have low self-esteem and hate myself, and I will use. So it's imperative.

Yeah.

And through practicing this for 20 years, a few things of like truths have emerged. One is what I just said, that it never goes bad like you think it's gonna. People are— and then what you realize immediately is like, oh, no one's getting apologized to.

Yeah.

Because the reaction to most people I make amends to or apologize to is shock.

I know, I know. When you say that people's reactions are sometimes not what you expect, in what direction are they surprised? The reactions surprise Or have been surprising.

Almost unanimously understanding, comforting, and touch that you did care. I think what people want to know is that you acknowledge that was hurtful.

Yeah.

And that you're not someone that is disposable, that they don't worry that they've upset.

Can I tell you who I talked to about this?

Please.

Orna. Oh!

You hang out with Orna Guralnik from.

Couple Therapy.

We are obsessed.

So this chapter on apologies opens with this story from couples therapy, one of the couples on the show.

Which one?

Tashira and Drew. They're from, I think, season 1 or 2.

Oh.

They're amazing. They— she got pregnant, and they started living together. They were in a really rocky place.

Yes.

And I think it was in the pandemic phase of the show-ish.

Yeah.

And he would bounce back to mom's a lot.

Yes. Well, and they didn't sleep in the same room, which is fine for those of you who don't co-sleep. It's fine. But they were in a really rocky place. And I thought that they were not gonna end up together. And then you follow them through their therapy, and by the end, one of the things that they got so good at is apologizing to each other.

Yeah.

They're not snipping at each other anymore. They're not, like, chewing on their resentments. And so, I talked to Orna about it and what she thinks of apologies broadly and in the context of this couple in particular. And she was like, here's what apologies do. They show 2 things. One, they show someone that you understand them, that you understand There was harm to you. There was harm to you.

Yep.

Or— and maybe it was at your hands, maybe it wasn't, but you— it shows that you understand them and that you are taking some responsibility, that you care that they've been harmed and that, like, you want to be part of the solution.

Yeah.

So that if you can show those 2 things, that you understand someone and you're taking accountability, if you can do that without apologizing, you don't have to apologize. However, apologies are the best shortcut that we have.

Yeah.

To do those 2 things in a sincere and really meaningful way. I really think they're the most powerful thing we have in our conversational toolkit.

My kids are great at it.

Oh!

They're really great at it. I think maybe the thing I'm most proud of my children—

I said the same thing in the book. I wrote this little story about my oldest, Kevin. It was honestly, like, the most rewarding moment, I think, ever as a parent.

What did he apologize about?

Oh, it's a doozy. When he was a— he was a heck of a toddler.

Sure.

He was like a biter, hitter.

Okay.

He used to headbutt. And so there was what— he had this tantrum. He was— he has all these big ideas, and he was a late talker. He was so frustrated he couldn't express them.

Because boys are dumb.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So dumb.

Can't communicate.

So he was having a tantrum, and I picked him up, and he flung his head back, and he broke my nose.

Oh.

You can see it's like a little crooked. It's okay. I know I still look great. You do look great. It's fine.

You're finally different from Sarah.

He knows why.

You're welcome, not an apology.

He had to be maybe 3 at the time. It was so enraging, right? For all the reasons, right? Like, I still hadn't taught him to be the kind of person who wouldn't hurt someone like that. He also was 3, so he didn't really care. You know, it's all terrible. A hard mothering phase. Fast forward to maybe he was, like, 7. He's now 9 turning 10. Maybe it was around when he was 7, he was reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I love that series. And the main character, Greg Heffley— we were reading together, and Greg Heffley apologized to Rowley, which is his best friend, which was rare. He's kind of usually like a jerk to his best friend. And Kevin paused, and in that moment reading the story, he like turned to me and he was like, Mom, remember when I broke your nose when I was like a toddler? And I said, yeah, it wasn't great.

I won't ever forget it.

Yeah, I will never forget. Thank you for the reminder. And then I was staring back at me in the mirror, And he literally— he looked in my eyes and he goes, I'm so sorry.

Aww.

It was so beautiful. I can't— I couldn't believe that that occurred to him, that he was thinking about—

It's more powerful than I love you.

I think it is more powerful. It's hard because it's harder to do, harder to say.

It is the action of loving someone, not just the words.

You're so right. You're right. It's the act. You are doing an action by apologizing that is harder and more vulnerable to do. It is the action of love rather than just saying, I love you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're like, whoa, they really— I know how hard it is for me.

Yeah.

And they just did that? They fucking love me.

They're also saying in that moment, I'm saying this to you because I want to have a relationship with you in the future. Because I want you to see me as the kind of person that deserves being in a relationship with, and I want to be with you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I want to be known to each other.

Yeah, and I want it to exist up here. And when I did, lowered it to here, and it's just— I'm desperate to be back here.

And my standards for us are high.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And let's get back there.

It's fucking awesome. I, I— yeah, I— it's, uh, it's so hard.

So hard.

And I wish people could, could just practice because it's, it's nuts. I— Monica will tell you, I've gone too far. This is one of my favorite stories. This house has been worked on for 7 years, right? That's how long it took. And we lived here through lots of the construction, and I had all my car chargers plugged into the wall this one extension cord. And I came out, guys were working, they were sawing, and all my chargers were unplugged. And I went to— and I was late to bring the girls to school. A bunch of things had piled up.

And I—

my reaction was, don't fucking unplug my shit. I fucking— there's an extension. Like, I really lost it.

Yeah.

And I dropped the girls off at school and I'm like, ugh, I feel terrible about this. These guys are fucking working their asses off. I'm an entitled rich person. Uh, how ugly of me. I've got to say sorry. So I come back and I'm like, guys, guys, there's like 9 or 10 guys working. I just want to say I'm really sorry about how I talked to you guys. None of you deserve that. I know you're working really hard, and I'm so sorry. And what was funny is this apology went on long enough that I did recognize, oh, this is more painful than the shouting was. This is like male-on-male vulnerability. is actually making them wanna throw up more than the yelling did. So then I was like, I gotta make sure my apologies are serving the people I'm trying to apologize to.

But this is the crux of kindness always, is figuring out what other people need.

Yeah.

And giving— do they need to hear the apology? Most of the time the answer is yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And every once in a while, sometimes if you're apologizing like 9 times for the same thing, you're gonna start just reminding the person of the thing that happened that wasn't good. There is a tipping point where it becomes too much.

Or you just start feeling like, well, that means nothing.

Exactly. It becomes meaningless. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Because I'm hearing this all the time and nothing's changing. Yeah.

There is not a single study of live conversation that shows that refusing to apologize or neglecting to apologize is better than apologizing.

Yeah.

But the key is the sort of tipping point is when your partner doesn't feel like it's sincere.

Right.

Or you're not doing it well. You're saying like, I'm so sorry you feel that way. You know, there's a lot of ways to give a bad apology. Yeah. to apologize frequently, but do it well.

Yeah.

And really curb your behavior to prevent future—

Oh yeah, don't just promise to change, actually change.

I was gonna say, that's one upside of having to do a 10th step as well, is that I am sometimes on the verge of blowing it. Blowing just sobriety? And then I'm gonna have to apologize.

Blowing sobriety or blowing relational?

Yelling at somebody.

Yeah.

And like, as I'm about to let it fly, You go, I know I'm gonna— I'll be apologizing for this if I go. So weirdly can curb your behavior too if you're in a real habit of doing it.

Because it's part of the healthy suite of skills that is going to help you do the right thing to begin with.

Yeah.

If you're able to anticipate like, oh my God, it's going to be super hard for me to come back, stonewall for a while, take space, come back, apologize, give them time, then they forgive me, then we move on. That process can be circumvented by not yelling in the first place. Yeah, but we're human.

Yep.

We're all gonna mess up. We're all gonna yell at people sometimes if they Yeah. You're human. Yeah. But if you do—

Just hope you don't, you know, get physical when someone breaks their nose. That's about the best you can do.

Well, it was sort of— his name's Kevin. So I was like the mom from Home Alone. The last— Kevin! I like plopped him down and like ran away to look in the mirror and twirl.

Yeah.

Well, Alison, this has been a blast. I hope everyone checks out Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves. And I'm really jealous of everyone that gets to take your class.

Oh, me too. How fun. You guys, thank you so much for having me.

Oh, it was so fun.

You're so fun. So helpful for so many people, I think.

I want to interview Sarah now.

You should.

I want to see how tricky she is.

You can call her. You want to call her? This is very—

I want them to both come in with the goal of trickiness.

Are you Sarah?

Maybe I am.

What if?

Maybe I am.

I love it. It'd be like the sociopath we interviewed.

Yeah.

Let's never know what's what.

Exactly. We did a twin trick in my class the first year I ever taught.

You did?

I had her— I saved— I didn't tell anyone I had a twin, saved it till the end of the semester. It was our day on deception. We were talking about deception, and we dressed the same. And I went in and I did the normal milling with the students before. Then you go out and to close the door, but Sarah came back in and she started the class, and she just like opened her arms and she was like, deception, what do we think? And she got the class like having a discussion. They went on for like 5 minutes.

Wow.

And at some point, a student raised his hand and he goes, I think we're being deceived right now.

The Monica of the room.

The Monica of the room. The precog of the room. I think we're being deceived. And so I ran in and it was like a standing ovation.

Wow.

This is my favorite movie. The Nolan movie.

Yes.

Prestige.

Prestige.

The Prestige.

The Prestige.

I want to rewatch it.

Yeah, me too. I want to rewatch it too.

It was a twin thing, wasn't it? In the end, that was the ultimate trick, is it was a twin thing.

Yeah. And you got to live— you got to live the routine.

Yeah.

Yeah. And he, like, loved one girl, but the girls were—

Spoilers.

Okay. All right, Alison, this has been a blast. I hope everyone checks out Talk. Please come again when you write another book.

Thank you so much, you guys. You're awesome.

I love the fact-check with Miss Monica. Oh, guess what? This is some hot goss.

Okay, great.

Kristin was at the doctor today, and there's an anesthesiologist there. And the last time she met him, right before he gave her the local, he was behind her and she was face down. And he said, welcome, welcome, welcome, as he— Oh!

Yeah.

So then this time, she was like, oh, I'll bring him a sweatshirt or a t-shirt or something. So she brought him something today. And he said, I need you to know that I was eliminated in the second round of taking Monica on a date.

Wait, what?

Do you remember when you guys put out, like, a—

For Monica and Jess season 2?

I guess.

That's the only time we put anything out, but we didn't even get that far.

Well, he submitted.

Oh, my God.

I know! An anesthesiologist?

They're very wealthy.

They are. That's supposed to be the highest starting salary in 1993 when I was in high school and looked it up.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

I feel sorry.

You feel flattered, and then you feel guilty that you feel flattered.

Well, I feel guilty that someone felt eliminated. We need to have her say— we need to have her clear things up.

She's gotta fake an injury.

Bring a new item, like a mug, and say—

And people will be so concerned. Her shoulder hurts.

It's just—

that's not— she doesn't have any issue. I think when they hear anesthesia, people will be off to the races. I find that flattering. Don't you think? Do you think most people would be flattered to hear a doctor has the hots for them? We do that, right?

I'm attracted to that.

Yeah, right? I'm susceptible to that.

I feel flustered.

Okay. 'Cause there's this hot anesthesia artist.

Is he married now? 'Cause that was a while ago.

Married and divorced.

Oh yeah, annulled.

Great. Oh, and consummation.

That's bad. Oh, that's good.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. We should put out as an impromptu annulment.

Great idea, Robbie. Write it down, write it down.

Yeah, annulments.

Oh my gosh, maybe he's a vulnerable boy.

He's certainly a vulnerable boy. You wouldn't listen to this if you were a boy.

Exactly.

And if you were not a vulnerable boy, unless you're a cookie boy.

Cookie boy.

Speaking Oh, let's talk.

We have big news. I mean, we've already discussed this before. We have new merch out.

Yes.

And it's fun.

It is.

You want to hear something crazy?

Yeah.

So one of— I was, I was thinking, and I just want to continue to thank the armchairs who showed up in San Francisco. It really made the whole show. Um, when I was leaving the theater, I took pictures with folks, and a woman had our new t-shirt on.

Which one?

The crow.

Oh!

The mouse and the cherries.

Oh, as a kid.

And I go, oh my God! I got so confused. I thought, are they already out and she bought one? And I go, oh my God, you have one of the t-shirts! And she goes, it's— I know it's pirated. And I go, oh, that's okay. We're actually weirdly making that t-shirt now.

Yeah.

So I saw it as like, it was a really good idea because here this person went on their own and made it.

Great.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, we have all of our merch limited sweatshirt designs on t-shirts.

On t-shirts.

Available. We have our own shop popping. We have a pop-up. We have a pop-up merch shop that will be up until we have official merch with Wondery.

Wondery and Amazon.

And that's probably gonna be at the end of March-ish. So until then, we have our pop-up merch that we made our own.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so get on there. There's— I'm really proud of a lot of the designs. I think they're They're really cute. So we have those tees.

Right.

And then we have—

So we have the robot. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Yes.

And then we have ball sack cowboy.

Yep. We have the cowboy on the mic.

On the microphone.

We have duck, duck, goose.

Uh-huh.

And we have—

Crow, cherries, and mouse.

They're on tees now. And we have 2 new tees. We have a cookie boy tee.

Cookie boy time. Yeah, that's only for the pervious armcherrys out there because I think you are inviting some sexual attention if you're wearing a reverse back shirt.

You might want that.

I would— I'll be wearing one.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's really cool looking, um, and, and chic and sleek. And we have a sweatsuit— 2 sweatsuits, same design, but one is a hoodie, one is not. And...

What's on the sweatsuits?

It says AE. It has a crow on top of it and a cherry in its mouth and some cherries falling down the sleeve.

Oh yeah, very cool. I'm gonna wear that sweatsuit too.

I know, me too. I'm really excited for the sweatsuit. I'm gonna— I'm gonna go crew neck. That's my aesthetic. I'm not gonna go hoodie. But yeah, that's too much.

You have too much hair for a hoodie. Is that what—

maybe that's part of it. It gets caught up in there. Yeah, although apparently hoodies are the most selling item.

I love a hoodie, but I don't have long hair.

Yeah, yet.

Yeah, so just to be clear, we, we have, we have brokered this deal with Amazon, begged them to let us sell our own merch for a month, which means our turnaround is really quick. So go on order. There's gonna be a little bit of delay, but we have this window to sell for a month, basically.

Yeah, and it's cute.

Yeah.

So, uh, get on that. That's, that's a good fun update.

Yes. Everyone's happy but Cardi.

Should we give one to my new maybe boyfriend who's married and a nun?

Yes, for sure.

And I wonder what— what do you think?

When we reverse bag.

Yeah. But Cookie Boy's so fun.

Yeah.

He had the confidence to wear a Cookie Boy t-shirt.

Do you think it's—

I wouldn't wear a Cookie Boy shirt.

Really?

No, it sounds to me like I'm advertising Like eating out, power bottom, like a cake boy.

I would expect you to wear it. Yeah, I would. I would have thought you would have worn it. Confident man will wear it.

What if? Hold on a second. This isn't fair.

I think it is.

What about a shirt that says cake boy? That's like it feels like false advertising. Like I shouldn't wear a shirt that says cake boy.

What is a cookie boy?

Ask the computer what cake boy.

No, a cookie boy.

I don't know. I don't know.

It's not—

Rob, am I insane? Uh, I don't know what cake boy means, but cookie boy, yeah, I probably wouldn't wear a cookie boy shirt either. Yeah, it's okay.

Well, I thought everyone said we wanted that as a shirt.

Yes, because I want our— we have 70% of the people— did you find out what cake boy means? Cake boy is someone light and fluffy, effeminate, uh, not meaty. Yeah, that's what Urban Dictionary says.

Doesn't mean gay. That could mean baby girl. Yeah, baby girls are—

it's just always used in reference to gay guys. Okay, it's saying metrosexual. Okay, a feminine male. Yeah, a feminine male.

A feminine male isn't gay necessarily. Like, Timothée Chalamet is not gay. He's dating Kylie Jenner.

Oh, this Urban Dictionary says a soft, feminine, heterosexual male. And the quote is, Jerome ain't gay, he's a motherfucking cake boy. Okay, so Jerome's not gay, he's a motherfucking cake boy.

Oh, okay. Anyway, I—

Hold on a second. I don't want to be— I don't want there to be any upsetness or hurt feelings about this.

Well, there's not. You invented cookie boy.

For you, yeah. This says a cake boy is someone who's confused for being gay but it's really straight.

Okay, okay, I think we have had enough.

Do you think in general girls want to be described as masculine?

No.

Because that's a one-to-one. Do boys want to be described as feminine? I think not.

Now I'm like, should we change up the color of the shirt?

I think it's more the phrase cookie boy than the color.

No, but I'm saying if girls are gonna buy it—

Yeah, I think just make it straight for girls.

Change it to like pink. Oh, listen, don't worry, just leave it. Just leave everything. Oh my God, I hate this new collection.

Oh no!

Don't buy it. Don't buy— I'm just kidding. It's fine. It's great. I'm excited to wear it. I'll wear it. Okay. Anywho, I forgot what we were talking about.

Let's reset. Let's remerch. We're having a very good time.

Merch.

Yeah, merch is on.

Just did a snot.

Oh, because this is— this is—

I've been fighting the rain so hard.

No, Cookie Boy's not anything worth unraveling over.

I thought it was cute.

I think it's great.

Okay. There's a kind of masculine shirt on there too that I designed for you.

It's okay. The vast majority of the people who order our stuff is women. I don't mind at all that we have a shirt that's skewing towards women. I'd probably even wear Cookie Boy on this show.

Yeah.

On camera, yeah.

I think you should wear it on Kimmel. Yeah, do it. Be the man you are. You are a cookie boy.

Hold on a second, man. I'm a lot of things.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't have to be like— I don't— I can—

You are though. You're confident.

But that doesn't mean I have to declare myself a cake boy.

Don't make that the same thing.

I think they are very similar. A cookie boy and a cake boy.

No, we invented cookie boy. Cookie boy is— we invented that. It's a boy who loves cookies.

No, it's a girl who loves cookies. It's you. That's what a cookie boy is.

No, I think Aaron. It started with Aaron or something. I forget how this started.

You're the original. You're the OC original cookie boy. Okay, I'm a lake boy.

That is not a cool shirt. Probably not. I would be so attracted to. A muscly, tall anesthesiologist wearing a Cookie Boy shirt. That boy is confident and I like it.

Look, I wear pink and stuff with a lot of confidence. I'm trying to think what boy— yeah, anywho.

You wore that Gucci.

That's, that's wild.

Yeah, flamboyant.

It's flamboyant for sure. Absolutely. It's totally flamboyant. And my pink is very feminine.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny, you like that mixed messages.

But would I wear a shirt that says bottom?

I hold—

don't dismiss me so quickly.

I'm not dismissing you. I'm just telling you that's not what Cookie Boy means.

I'm— I don't know that anyone knows what Cookie Boy means.

Including us.

Including us. Most importantly, us. And so I think a lot of people are going to be wondering what that person's declaring about themselves.

And you don't think that about reverse back, which is interesting because that reverse Reverse back could easily be gay anal.

Yeah, I hope you know. I think it's just its proximity to Cake Boy. All right, and Cake Boy is just a very known saying. I okay that you did. I know you didn't know it.

I didn't know it either.

Rob didn't know it either, but the internet knew.

I think the millennials don't know it.

They don't know Cake Boy.

I guess Gen X. Gen X men will probably not be buying it. And boomers.

Unless again, if I were a bottom, I would totally wear a shirt that said bottom or power bottom, because that's what I am. I can't wear a shirt that says queer on it.

No.

It would be wrong of me. I'm not queer and I can't claim that.

Correct.

And now we're on this continuum. I can't wear a shirt that says queer. I can't wear a shirt that says bottom. I shouldn't wear a shirt that says cake boy.

I think you could, now that we know the definition. It doesn't mean— it doesn't mean you're declaring that you're gay when you're not and being a hypocrite. And the other one, what was after queer? Bottom. You could, and that would be interesting for people.

Yeah.

'Cause maybe you are a bottom, even in your heterosexual sex.

Meaning Kristen pegs me.

Or you're on your back and she's on top.

I don't think that would constitute a bottom.

I mean, look, definitions.

Because the top is often on bottom and the bottom's on top.

The top is on—

Riding. Bottoms usually receive penetration.

Right, right. I know that in the homosexual community.

Yeah, they can receive that penetration on top or You're still— So I'm saying I can't really be a bottom in Kristin and I's relationship, whether I'm in time and space on top or bottom. It would have to involve some penetration.

He's technically on top, you're saying?

Yes.

Physically in space.

And the top's on bottom.

But he is a bottom because he's getting penetrated. Yeah.

So we could do a shirt that explains all this, because maybe a lot of people are confused.

No, thanks.

Okay.

Um, okay.

Now—

We could call it top bottom and it's a bottom on top.

Well, our— okay, look, not to make this even more complicated, but the, the masculine shirt is cherry on top, which kind of looks like a butt. So that also could be seen as sexual.

Cherry on top sounds good sexually though. There's also a—

Change it to cherry on bottom.

There's also a cowboy riding a penis on one of them.

Yeah, our shirts are disgusting.

That's straight as hell. That's straight as hell. A cowboy riding an enormous penis.

Anyone who wants to— oh, I see you're making a joke.

I'm making a joke.

Oh, wow.

I'm pointing out the hypocrisy.

I see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think people who are straight don't want to declare that they're gay, and I think gay people I don't think people don't want to declare they're straight, and I don't think men who identify as men want to declare they're women.

I don't think anyone needs to declare anything. It's a cutesy shirt with a little mouse on it.

Yes, yes, yes, it is. It's an adorable shirt. I really like it.

I think the deeper problem is we've decided that cookie boy means something that it doesn't.

Again, I blame cake boy. Right.

I mean, I don't— I don't know what to say. A cookie boy has nothing to do with sexual appetites.

This is—

it has to do with loving cookies, right?

So what if I made shirts that said Tim Boy?

Tim Boy?

What do you think of? Be honest.

A man named Tim?

Oh, okay.

What, what does it mean?

I would think tomboy.

Oh.

I think, oh, it's some other now version of tomboy, but now we're saying Tim Boy.

Oh no, I'm not thinking that. That's a Jenna. Okay.

Okay.

Gen X is really upset about words. I think millennials aren't thinking like this, but Gen Z and COVID gen, they're definitely not thinking about it.

Do they have their own acronym now?

I think they do.

COVID Gen Z?

I heard that once, but I think it's called maybe Gen Alpha or something.

Oh, yeah.

Something like that.

Also, my beef with gens now, I may have already aired this.

Okay.

It used to be like Gen X covers from 1968 to 1983 or something. It's like this 20-year window virtually. And there's been 7 gens since Gen X. It's like you entitled, all you entitled millennials wanted your own generation every 4 years. I don't even know what I'm saying. But yeah, it's this increased uniqueness where they need their own gen every year they were born.

I know, but I actually think theirs makes more sense because millennials— Yeah, we have—

That's a good argument.

My brother's in my gen. We are not in the same— we shouldn't be in the same gen.

You don't think so?

No, he grew up with internet and phones and stuff. I got one in college or late high school.

You know, it's different. So maybe there's legitimate reason for—

Breaking it up more.

Yeah, 'cause every 2 years the world's completely different.

I think so.

All right. Well, I'm learning a lot in this episode.

Well, I guess I sort of have an update here. Sort of. Okay.

This is the matchmaker?

Yeah. So I think I dropped— I dropped an album that the matchmaker entered my life again.

With an option that you didn't feel sad about. With an option that was intriguing to me.

And we texted— we texted a little bit to make a time, you know, make a date. Yeah. You and the cameraman. Yes.

Not the matchmaker.

Correct. And so, but it was very just like logistics. There was like one, one cute exchange and then it was on to logistics. Right.

Well, you guys sound both Type A. He's got the funds to get a matchmaker.

I guess so.

Yeah.

So this was Saturday and, and he said, I have a really busy week. What about next weekend? And I said, yeah, that should work. And He said, "You're in blank, right?" Los Feliz. And what if I started getting very protective?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, "Yeah, and you're on the west side." And then he never responded again.

He said he was on the west side.

I said, "I asked the question, and you're on the west side?" Question mark.

Ah.

And that was Saturday.

Okay.

He didn't respond.

Oh my gosh!

And so I was like, "You think he's been killed?" Well, no. I was like, "What happened?" But yeah, okay, whatever, who cares, right? And then on Friday, he texted six days later. Uh huh, six days later.

Seven days.

Yeah, yeah. And he said, "Hey, sorry this got away from me. Are you still good for this weekend?" And I was like, "No." Yeah, yeah, good.

Yeah, yeah, good for you.

Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Then I felt like, oh, am I just being like doing a normal— like, this is an out.

Finding a way out.

Finding a way out.

Well, 2 things could be happening.

Yeah.

Some of it could be that. What I like about no is I'm not gonna be playing along with this role as you as the boss, and you can call me in 6 days when you remembered. So I won't participate in that.

Yeah.

Go see me for 6 days checking in going, we still good?

Exactly. It's not for me.

That's a no. I would— if a— let's just say if a woman did that to me, I don't even know if I'd respond to the follow-up in 7 days.

Mm, that's interesting.

But I do like that you said no.

I said— and I, at first, I was, I was like gonna be pretty harsh.

Uh-huh, yeah.

And then I backed off and I just said— what did I say exactly? Let's see what I said.

You left room for him to apologize and—

Kind of. I wanted to see how he would respond.

Yeah.

Um, yeah. I said, you're on the West Side? He said, hey, sorry, lost track of this. Yeah, I'm on the West Side. A week later.

Yeah, yeah.

Are you still good with tomorrow? I said, hey, no problem. I made plans this weekend, but happy to try to schedule something again. And then he said, oh, okay, bummer. Well, we can try another time. And that was it.

Yeah.

And I, I said, yeah, for sure. I said, next week nights are pretty open for me other than this. And I didn't hear anything back. So it was interesting because I—

So first of all, that was much nicer than I was expecting. And I even nicer than I think he deserves.

That's—

yeah, I might have been really direct. No, you can't ghost me for 6 days and then ask, are we still on tomorrow? That's not for me.

That's—

and then allow him to mount a real apology because he owes you an apology, not, hey, I lost track of this.

Right. I agree. I agree. And that was my instinct. But then I thought, well, maybe whatever. Like, I don't know him.

Maybe he was in surgery. for 6 days straight.

I mean, I was just like, I don't— maybe I should give it another, like, offer up some other option. But—

I'm impressed.

Thank you. Well, for me, I kind of thought, oh, this person is used to that being fine.

Sure. Yeah, that's one. That could also be it. But that would be, like, the least generous version, right?

Well, I think it's kind of generous. It's like, for him, Women are happy to just go out with him when he's ready to go out with him. She said he's really hot and tall, so like I don't know.

All the more reason you gotta say absolutely.

Well, I agree.

Like good for you if this has worked out for you in the past, but that is not.

I would just want it to be a little more clear than it's not that you just made plans.

I know.

It's a no because.

You can't do that.

You can't go 7 days and then check in to see if we're still good for tomorrow.

I know.

That's not how I operate.

Yeah. But then I knew—

And not even hurt feelings needy. Just like, that's a hassle.

I just didn't want to get into that. Right. Then it's like, oh, sorry. Or whatever he's going to— I don't want to really have that interaction with someone I don't really know. Although I did. That was my instinct. And I did ask for advice. And I guess it was— I got bad advice.

Well, I don't think there's good or bad. This is a version.

I don't know. But he didn't respond again. So, like, I'm not seeing him, obviously. And that's 2 strikes.

That's 2 strikes. Yeah, with the matchmaker.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's hard for me to not— I have to really fight being judgmental of someone that would be using a matchmaker.

Well, I am.

No, the man.

Well...

Because, yeah, why do I want to be jud— I want to— I want to say you can't farm out that activity. Like, you can't just pay your way into that. It feels like a call girl service a little bit.

You don't think that about the apps, but I guess you're the one scrolling.

Yeah, you guys are just mutually looking around and hoping to find somebody, I guess. But there's something about farming that out to somebody that feels a little entitled. Like, I'm a busy person and I'm just going to have them go find— I like this, this, and this. I'm acknowledging that I'm trying to fight through that.

Yeah, because I think it's—

I'm sure there's a lot of versions that are not that.

I don't think it's that dissimilar from telling all your friends like, hey, I am I am single and I want you to keep your eye out for me. This is what I like.

Yes. You know what it feels like if you were at the Four Seasons and you called the concierge and said, I need a date tonight?

Yeah.

Like calling the concierge to get you a date is a little bit the— when I want to be judgmental of it, is what it feels like.

Yeah, I understand that. I understand.

And they don't deserve you, anyone that would call a concierge to get you. Okay. Can I just say that?

Yeah.

But again, I can't— I can't— I can imagine Bill Gates, who I worship, going, I need help. I always get help from experts when I don't know what I'm doing. So why wouldn't I go see an expert to help me find love?

Yeah.

When I paint it that way and I make it a real person, then I'm right. I'm sympathetic to it and I'm supportive of it. If you dare.

But I agree with you. I don't think in all these cases it's not necessarily, I don't know how. I do think a lot of it is like, make this easier for me. But it is hard to date. So I do think, you know, make this easier for me. is a real thing to want and pursue. I mean, of course my ego also, even when he said, I'm busy, I was like, bitch, I'm busy too.

Everyone's busy.

Everybody's busy. Yeah, you're not the only— and I do think, I mean, I don't know what he knows about me. If he knows my last name, I don't know if he's— I don't know. It's kind of what you've talked about before Of, and like the really, really, really gross part of being so insecure, but also like knowing your worth or like having like a, a, a strong ego too.

Yeah. Zero self-esteem and megalomaniacal thinking. That's, that's me.

I know. But, and I, but I don't, I don't think I'm megalomaniacal about it.

You're not as extreme on either ends of the spectrum.

Right. Exactly. Yes. But I do think there are moments, and I guess it depends on who I'm interacting with. But in this case, when he says, like, I'm so busy, with no other question. You know, it's not like, I'm so busy, what do you do? What do you— you know, it's just like, this is my life. I'm busy.

If you can work your way into my life, we've got a deal.

Exactly.

That's what's being triggered for me.

Yes. And then what happens for me, which is equally triggering, Yeah. Is you have to work your way into my life. This is not gonna work because I'm you.

Yes. I think I could create the statement that would perfectly sum you up.

Okay. I'm scared.

Indulge me.

Okay.

I'm very unattractive, and I'm a hell of a catch.

Yeah, but—

This is your story about yourself. I think you think you're unattractive, and I think you think you're a hell of a catch. Which is the thing we're talking about.

No, I don't think— no.

Okay.

I don't think it's— I, I'm not— I don't think I'm unattractive.

Okay, great. That's better than I was expecting you to say.

What?

You think you're ugly? Is that what you said?

Okay. Yes. But I, I do think— I think I'm ugly, but that I— there is something overall. Yeah. Overall.

All right. So now I don't even feel bad. Yours was worse. I'm ugly, but I'm a fucking catch.

Yeah, I guess. Although when you say it out loud, it's like, no, I'm— if I'm ugly, I can't be caught.

By the way, that's kind of what mine is. That's what mine's been since I was like 15. Like, yeah, I'm not much to look at, but I'm a fucking catch.

I hate myself. I need to read an upcoming guest book, but I really don't. I don't hate No, I mean, that's— I don't. I, I do.

You're a catch and you know it.

I do know it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you could get the first end of that thing addressed, uh, you—

I don't know if it would help me to know that because I think it's— I actually think—

I think it would.

Really?

Yes, because you're also right in your honesty that you're also carrying a lot of baggage of, of, of insecurity.

Yeah, I am.

And you're looking for reasons to save yourself the embarrassment of not being chosen.

Yes, I am.

So that's really happening.

Yeah.

And it's strong. And I think if you felt hot and you knew you— I mean, you know, you've got a great career, you know, you're super smart, you know, you're personable, you know, you're good in a crowd. Like, you know, all the other things. You're not insecure about any of those things.

Yeah, that's true.

So if you just added that, I'm hot, I don't think your mind would let you go to a place that you're not gonna get picked. Even if something didn't work out, you would go like someone with great self-esteem.

Right.

It wasn't a match.

Yeah. That's—

it's not that I wasn't picked or I wasn't good enough. It's like the audition where it's like, yeah, you were a better actor than so-and-so, but they're fucking Chinese and I need a Chinese guy.

Yeah, I guess so. I, but I, I wonder if I just had like 100% self-esteem, no insecurities. I felt so good.

Yeah.

I don't know that I would ever find some— I mean, I already am never finding someone, so I guess what would be the difference? But—

Yeah, you're in a zero risk.

I guess that's true.

Yeah.

But I think I would—

And I don't say that to be mean. I say that to be— that's a really good part of your counter-narrative CBT training, which is like, I'm not risking anything. But I think if you had those other components, I think you would, because there's also this kind of self- self-fulfilling prophecy, which is like, you're not actively going out there and spotting someone and making it fucking happen.

Yeah, I'm not.

So you're in the incoming call business, and guess what? You don't love the incoming calls. And then also, you didn't select them. And there's all— but if you had those other things, it wouldn't be about like, who's gonna knock on your door one day? You're like, every time you saw someone that interested you at all, you'd be like, oh, I'm gonna go make that fucking happen. Right now. What's up? What are you doing? Do you like coffee? Do you like bagels? Here's the things I like, and I cook. You would hit them, and they— and you would— and if they didn't respond, you wouldn't give a fuck because you're like, I'm hot and I got a great career and I'm everything.

Yeah, yeah. I don't— I don't do that. I don't know how to do it. I don't know what that's like. Yeah, I don't.

And I think most people don't.

Yeah.

And I think—

I think a lot of people are afraid to go pursue— yeah, someone they It's scary. I think my success in life has solely been as I wasn't afraid, or I overcame my fear to go say hi to everyone at the bar that I liked.

Yeah.

I just got in there, and these other guys that they probably would've rather been with just never came up and said hi to 'em, and they were stuck with me. But I'll take it.

It worked out.

Yeah.

But okay, I have a bad question.

Okay.

Do you think— My stomach growled. Also, this is kind of a ding, ding, ding because this is for Alison. Conversations, dating.

Talk.

Talking. So this is very relevant, actually. It is, accidentally. You do recognize, right, that like— or am I wrong? I mean—

Or am I wrong? Or am I wrong?

Do you ever get to the place, Yargh! Tultas.

Arwar?

Not everyone's physically beautiful. Or am I wrong about that?

I think you're a bit wrong about that. Look, I'm not one that would deny there are things happening on a primitive level, which is like symmetry. These— we know these things are real.

Yes.

We know fertility is somehow deduced by looking at— like, things are happening that I will not be a denier of. I, in fact, I find it annoying when people pretend that some people aren't gonna— 98% of people are gonna find Brad Pitt attractive.

Exactly.

We can acknowledge that's the truth.

Physically, just by looking. No personality.

Right.

But Kristen, like, I think 100% of people will see, just see her face.

Yes. But I can think of, and I'm not gonna name them out loud because I don't want it to run the risk of sounding mean.

Yeah.

But there are— I know many women who decide They were hot as fuck and sexy, and they are.

Right.

And a lot— and they have made it in show business, some of them.

Right. And you don't think—

And you can do that.

But you don't think on face— I mean, you can do— I mean, I think confident, but that doesn't do anything to their— are you— you think it like morphs their face?

It 100% morphs their face.

Yeah.

Because they're carrying themselves like they're hot shit.

Yeah.

You're like, fuck, they know they're hot shit.

Yeah.

You then go, what am I missing?

Yeah.

And you go like, oh yeah, her fucking hair is awesome. Yeah. And then that's— oh, what a smile. Yeah, look at her eyes are this. And you go like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. But if they walk in like this, you're like, oh God, they've been told they're a mess their whole life. It does.

It does.

No, it does. You're right. You're right. But even—

And I just know because I'm speaking—

I am the I have—

that has been my angle.

Yeah.

For a long, long time. And it hasn't worked all the time.

Yeah.

A lot of girls are like, no, buddy, you're not fucking— you're presenting yourself as some 10. You're not. That certainly has happened.

No.

Yes. No, it's happened a bunch of times.

Well—

But it's also worked a bunch.

I think you potentially like personality more than your average gal.

I think you're right. And I think it weirdly is a sign of my confidence. Which is, I don't need a trophy woman. I don't need to be seen with a woman that's hot. Yeah, but I need to be with the coolest woman in the room. Right, for sure. So sure, there will be men who don't prioritize that, and what a blessing you've weeded them out.

Yeah, but I'm like, there's no one left.

No, there are a lot of dudes.

I kind of think there's no one left. It's like the guys with the with who, who respect a woman's personality and like is attracted to that and like that. They're not like physical. They're taken. Like, those people are— for women, that is the most attractive thing.

I think that is overly pessimistic. Okay, well, there's numerous reasons why great people find themselves single all the time. Well, nullment's one of them, but their partner didn't grow with them.

Right, right.

That's true. Whoa. Okay. We're lost.

We are lost indeed. Okay.

But my thing about you shaving your sides has always been about that.

I know, but it's not me.

You don't know what me— like, you can't say because you've filled in what that means from something else you've seen.

No, no.

I—

and then this is the other swing that I'm talking— I know me.

Yeah, yeah.

I am not unclear about me. Like, I know who I am, and I like that person. So I am not going to be like, I guess maybe I'll change up this whole me in order to be—

Broadcast.

Attract. Exactly, to broadcast or be more, like, overtly attractive. to people. I'm like, I think—

See, I think you were assessing that whole suggestion on aesthetic.

Yeah.

And my story about you is, actually, you had been a chameleon your whole life. And in this show, I had— we have friends who go, oh my God, I didn't know that side of Monica.

Uh-huh.

You have become more and more yourself.

Yeah, that's true. And just with age, probably.

And you are unique. on a level that shaved sides makes sense. You're thinking of it in this, like, really ironclad aesthetic and punk rock, but you're missing the point that I'm making, which is that—

I know the point you're making.

Actually, I'm one of the most unique people here. I'm one of the most original people here, and I'm different.

I know that.

And this thing is a visual cue that I am.

I know. I know what you're saying. But, but you might not be hearing what I'm saying, which is I get that.

That's not who you are.

I am not someone who— and I like this about me— I am not someone who is like, look at me, I'm so unique, I'm so special. For me, I'm like, you get to know me and you have that, you make your opinion, and hopefully you come to that conclusion. Yeah, but I am not here to— yeah, to like throw that in your face. And I like that about me. I don't— I don't love when people need to do that.

Yeah, you're like, I want people to find out I have a great body. Literally. Well, that is— And I want people to find out I am like this very unique person.

Yeah.

I hope everyone is like, you know, willing to be presented with one thing and then have to climb through some layers to find out all this great stuff.

That's what I'm saying. That's why I'm Like, if you have to get over the hump of my face, then—

Oh my God. I was warned about this, but here I am.

Okay, let's do it. We have to—

Yeah, we gotta wrap up.

Yeah, we really do.

Suzanne's almost here.

Oh my God.

Okay, great. We are resuming. We had to break to interview, and I have since been out in the rain. Is it obvious?

I see some spittle.

I feel something on my forehead.

Oh yeah, that's true. I put my hair up.

I would hate for— Well, if we were completely in—

Oh, geez.

So it's a real— Yeah. Okay. Wow, wow, wow. Well, the listener won't give a fuck.

Okay. So some facts for Alison.

Okay, great.

I loved this episode. I thought she— It was really interesting. Just the most basic topic possible. We really do take for granted.

I've thought about it a few times in conversation, Yeah, the thing that stuck with me that I really liked is this fallacy of naturalness, that everyone thinks that everything should happen organically, or that means it's not a good fit.

Yes, exactly. And even just boomerang questions I've noticed from people. Even me, I think about ending on a question. I've just been more aware, which has been interesting.

Oh, I'm such a boomerang questioner. It's so embarrassing.

And the group hierarchy. in conversation. That's really fascinating to watch.

Yeah.

Yeah, I loved it. Okay, I'm gonna play a tiny bit of Diet Pepsi, a song by Addison Rae, that comes up in the episode. Mm.

She's my kind of gal. Makes me rethink Diet Coke.

Yeah, you might need to—

I have to weigh her against my affinity for Bill Gates and Diet Coke.

Oh, God. That's a lot to balance. Yeah. You know what I like about her?

You know what I like about that? That she likes that her boyfriend's got a Costco chain on?

Oh.

That says a lot.

This is like cookie boy.

This is like— I respect her. She's not, like, trying to have some dude in Gucci. She's like, her man looks good in this Costco chain. She's like a real chick. I'm gonna have a Diet Pepsi. Do you like those things?

Costco chain?

Yeah. I think that's a cool detail of it.

Yeah. I mean—

Okay, go ahead.

No, it's great. But it's exactly what I said. said about Cookie Boy.

How so? Tell me. Explain the connective tissue.

Confidence.

Cookie Boy.

Yeah.

It's exactly the same.

It's the same. Okay. How many people are mirror twins? About 25% of identical twins are mirror twins.

That's not good enough.

You want 90.

I gotta stop saying it. I thought the majority of twins did this.

I know, but you can still ask because maybe you'll find One of the 25%.

Yeah. One in every 4 people I ask will say yes.

Exactly. Okay, so we talked about coordination games, game theory for a little bit, which was interesting. And there's some classic ones. Prisoner's dilemma, which we spoke about.

Uh-huh.

The battle of the sexes. Okay, I'm gonna read about that for a second.

Okay.

The game involves 2 players, boy and girl, deciding either going to a football game or going to an opera for their date. Which respectively represent boys' and girls' preferred activity, i.e., boy prefers football game and girl prefers opera. This example is a 2-person non-cooperative non-zero-sum— that's called a TNNC—

Okay.

Game with opposite payoffs or conflicting preferences.

I don't know why it's zero-sum, because whoever wins is going to win everything and the other person's gonna get nothing of what they wanted. That feels like the definition of zero-sum. Okay, well, it's a zero-sum game. We'll keep going.

Because there are 2 Nash equilibria, this case is a pure coordination problem with no possibility of refinement or selection. Thus, the 2 players will try to maximize their own payoff or to sacrifice for the other. And yet non-zero-sum for you if you lose, I guess.

Zero-sum is chess. You can't kind of win. You can't win halfway.

Right.

You either win or you lose.

Yeah, exactly.

Poker, you could come with $200 and leave with $300.

Right.

Other people could also have $400. Someone could be down. There's varying degrees of success.

Yeah.

But this feels like it's all or nothing. It would be zero-sum.

Oh, this does feel zero-sum, you're saying.

I see, I see.

You're either gonna get to go see your thing you wanted or you're not. You're gonna be stuck at the opera.

Right, okay. Thus, the 2 players will try to maximize their own payoff or to sacrifice For the other, and yet the strategy without coordination will lead to 2 outcomes with even worse payoffs for both if they have disagreement on what to do on their date.

Okay, which is all— they'll have to go to a prison cell or something is the 3rd option if they don't agree. It's got to be something worse than the football game for her and the opera for him.

That's all it says.

Okay, that's pretty good. I like it. Jesus.

It has a chart, but I don't get it.

But really quick, yes, if there's a third option that they are penalized with for not agreeing, then yes, it's not zero-sum.

Sure.

Maybe all of them have that element.

Yeah.

Now there's a matching pennies game.

Ooh.

This game is a 2-person zero-sum game. In order to play this game, both players will each need to be given a fair 2-sided penny. To start the game, both players will each choose to either flip their penny to heads or tails. This action is to be done in secrecy, and there should be no attempt at investigating the choice of the other player.

Let's keep it honest.

After both players have confirmed their decisions, they will simultaneously reveal their choices. This concludes the actions taken by the players to determine the outcome. The win condition for this game is different for both players. For simplicity in explanation, let's denote the players as Player 1 and Player 2. In order for Player 1 to win, the faces of the pennies must match.

Okay.

This means they must both be heads or tails.

So you've got tails or heads.

In order for player 2 to win, the faces of the pennies must be different.

Oh no.

The payoff/prize of this game is receiving the loser's penny in addition to your own.

Okay.

2 pennies.

Okay. Kind of outdated.

Well, you'd keep playing and playing. Yeah. Looking at this matrix, we can conclude a few basic observations. One, for all scenarios, there will be a winner and a loser.

Yeah.

2, this is a zero-sum game where the payout to the winner is equal to the loss of the loser.

Like it.

3, there is no pure strategy Nash equilibrium. We didn't— we don't know what that is.

Right.

Okay.

That would be a third. That has to be a third option that's less bad than the, uh, worse outcome and not as good as the ideal outcome.

Non-cooperative games are generally analyzed through the non-cooperative game theory framework, which attempts to predict players' individual strategies and payoffs, and in order to find the Nash equilibria. I love this!

The wordage.

This is so fancy and hard. Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna become an expert in game theory.

Oh, I hope you do.

I'm not smart enough for that, but I want to be, so maybe I will. Okay, that's that. Kant's dinner party rules. Conversations—

We need to know these if we're gonna host a Kant dinner party.

I know, and I want to. Conversations Structure. Dinner conversations should have three stages: narration, argumentation, jesting, lighthearted plays of wit. Code of secrecy. Dinner party conversations should not be discussed with anyone outside of the dinner party. Ooh. Purpose.

The goal of that one's gonna be hard for me if I hear something great at the dinner party. I will keep the anonymity of the speaker, but I might want to get the message out.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm gonna violate that one. Okay. I just want you to know up front.

Not invited. Okay. Purpose. The goal of Kant's dinner parties was to encourage civility and listening to others. Kant believed that participants would hear each other and feel heard. Other dinner party etiquette tips: RSVP, arrive on time, be respectful of the host's practices, beliefs, and environment. That's bad for you. You won't eat the gluten bread.

Okay.

Be a good conversationalist.

And I'm going to smoke cigarettes.

Be a good conversationalist. Bring a gift or something for the party to enjoy.

Oh, okay.

Parties should be limited to 9 people and no fewer than 3 to avoid side conversations.

Yeah, side conversations. I was just with my whole family, and there was some side conversing.

There was, and it was driving you a little nuts. Yeah, it's a little—

All right, that's it.

That was everything? Yeah.

Okay, wonderful. Bye. Love you.

Love you.