Explicit

Dr. Maya Shankar

Published Aug 10, 2021, 7:30 AM

Dr. Maya Shankar is a world-renowned behavioral scientist who has worked everywhere from Google to the Obama Administration. Dr. Shankar joins Sophia on the podcast to talk about the human experience and how we are so hard on ourselves, how sensitivity is weaponized, moral reframing, and what led her to completely shift life and career paths.


Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions

Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo

Editor: Josh Windisch

Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters

This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy

Hi everyone, It's Sophia and welcome back to work in progress. Today's guest is a world renowned behavioral scientist. She has worked everywhere from Google to the Obama administration. She was actually the first behavioral science advisor to the United Nations and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. She's been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Scientific, American, Freakonomics. The list truly goes on and on, and by now, I'm sure you all know that I was so geeked to have this conversation with her today. I had one million questions. Her brain is so fascinating and I cannot wait to introduce you all to the phenomenal Dr Maya Shunker. In addition to using behavioral science to advise presidents and the biggest company on Earth, Dr Schunker has also started her own podcast, which she hosts and produces, called A Slight Change of Plans. The show puts the spotlight on guests from all walks of life who have experienced extraordinary circumstances and takes a deeper look at how that changed the course of their lives. And that's a topic Maya knows plenty about from her own life experience as we will hear for ourselves. Let's get to talking. My It's so nice to have you on the show today. And before I ask you one million questions about your fascinating work, I actually always like to go backwards because I sit across from you today, you know, fascinated by your career and wanting to talk about behavioral science and and how the brain works. And I wonder how you got to be an expert on the brain. You know, we're were you fascinated by science as a kid? Was was eight or nine year old Maya really into what made people tick? Or were you on a whole other path? I was on a well, first all, it's great to be here, Sophia, and it's so lovely to meet you, um the fan of your show. U. So yeah. I mean if you had asked nine year old Maya about whether she was eventually going to become a scientist, to had been like, there was no way, that's not even possible. Um. When I was a kid, my true passion was playing the violin. Um. So when I was six years old, my mom went up to her attic and brought down my grandmother's violin. That she had brought with her all the way from India, and she tells me that when she opened up the case, my eyes just lit up, like it was an instant connection that I felt with the instrument. And things really picked up for me when I was nine because UM I auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music in New York and was very fortunately accepted, and that began weekly trips from Connecticut to New York, um every Saturday for about ten hours of classes. And then when I was a teenager, things picked up even more. When it's a Pearlman asked me to be his private violence student, and he was my role model. I mean, in my mind, the best violinist of our time. And as you can imagine, I felt very intimidated in the Juilliard climate. Right, it's very easy to feel imposter syndrome and and like you don't really have what it takes. But when Pearlman gave me his vote of confidence, I felt like, oh maybe I maybe I do have what it takes. Maybe I could actually go pro. And so I really doubled down on my desire to be a professional at that point, and every decision I made from that point on was was in pursuit of wanting to become a concert violinist. But then when I was fifteen, I had a sudden hand injury that derailed all of my ambitions to become a violinist. And actor has basically told me that I could never play the violin again. So that that changed my life in a pretty significant way. Wow. And I imagine, especially when you're so dedicated to something as a young person, I can't help but think about cognitive development and understanding that you know, we don't have fully formed brains until we're twenty six. Also, I think about all the dumb ship that I did in my early twenties, and and I just look around and I go, who lets us do anything until we have a full brain. But I think about you as a young child, I mean, from six to fifteen, loving this instrument and and developing the plan of your life with this instrument involved. I imagine that that must have been quite traumatic to be told you know, the trajectory of your life has just changed absolutely. And I think as a child, you know, you don't always ask these big existential questions about who you are and what you bring to this world, until sometimes you lose something and it inspires you to start to ask these questions like who am I? And especially who am I without the violin? Right? It's been such a foundational part of my identity for so long. Um. There's this insight in cognitive science called identity foreclosure, and it refers to the idea that we tend to, especially in adolescence, but it can continue through adulthood. We tend to attach ourselves quite quickly to a very specific identity, and we can cling to that identity and feel very fixed in that identity in ways that prevent us from exploring other avenues in life, other ways of being or living, or other pursuits that we have. And I definitely felt prey to identity foreclosure. You know, I thought I'm first and foremost a violinist. Um. If people ask me who I was as a kid, it was like I was first of violinist, and then secondly I was maya you know um. And so I I think having to confront the fact that I couldn't play at such an early age and that I was forced to pivot help challenge this foreclosure within myself and forced me to see my identity as far more malleable than I had, and I think it served me well. I think it's helped me navigate the many twists and turns that have come in my life ever since, in ways that I might not have had I not been, had this change not been forced upon me at such a young age. That's fascinating. I think about the the importance of being able to pivot, being able to react in real time, and and although not in a great circumstance, you learning that as a kid, I imagine really changed your life in some incredible ways. There are two details before we keep pulling on that thread that I would love to ask about, just for some of the folks listening at home, because I imagine you know, and we've all had the moment where someone says something that we're supposed to know, we go yep, And I know there's someone sitting at home going who's Ita Perlman? And if and I am curious if you if you talk about it, I don't know if you do, but but what did happen to your hand? I I'm fascinated for whatever reason, I'm studying for this medical show. So the architecture of the hands and feet to me, I just think is the most sort of sublime and complex thing in the human body. And so I, I don't know, there's something I'm very curious as to, you know, in these small spaces with all these little bones, what what happens and and how a doctor could determine what to your to your point a career ending injuries. So if you could answer those two questions you're wondering. Yeah, I know, for those who are not steached in the classical musically the violent world, UM, you might not know, but it's a Perlman is Yeah, widely considered the greatest violentist of our time. Um. Certainly as a little kid he was. I mean, he was so his abilities were so out of reach. Right. It's like I remember when I was really young, my mom brought me to one of his concerts and we found a way to go backstage, and I remember meeting him in person and just thinking it was the coolest thing that had happened to me in my life. Right, It's like an aspiring um young singer songwriter meeting Taylor Swift backstage and being like, oh wow, I could never dream of ever getting to interact with this person in the future. That I so admire what they do. So the fact that he took me on as a student. You know, I mentioned the vote of confidence, but more importantly, you know that this man who was an absolute experts at his craft, was now teaching me um so many valuable lessons about how to play the violin. Well, um so I cherished still to this day, the opportunity to learn from from one of the greatest um In terms of my hand, I I tore tendons in my hand. And you know, for something like the violin, which requires so much a jill it, that can be a career ender, right, And yeah, I guess you don't appreciate the dexterity again until until you lose it. And I ended up having surgeries and a lot of scar tissue form and ultimately, yeah, that ended my career. M M, I'm so sorry. Oh no, it's totally fine. I mean when I look back now, I'm like, oh, you know, it was everything to me then. But obviously in anyone's life, right when theyre when they face a change and they move on. I think, you know, one lesson I learned was really digging into what it was about the violin that I loved and trying to figure out if I could find that in other areas. I think we tend as humans to attach ourselves to specific things, to specific things that we do, and it can be much more, It could be much safer and more durable to attach ourselves to the features of a pursuit that really makes us tick. And So if you'd asked me as a kid, you know, what do you love about the violin? I would say I love the way it sounds, I love the way that it feels. I love the notes that I can deuce on this instrument. But actually, I think the real thing that got me so excited about playing the violin is that I could forge a deep emotional connection with people that I've never met before within moments of playing a piece. So you know, as a young kid, you go on stage and there's all these people in an audience that are total strangers to you. You're a total stranger to them, but within moments you're making them feel something, and that's an incredible feeling to get people to feel things they never felt before, or to bond in this really deep emotional way very quickly. And I think what I've learned in hindsight is that that's actually the thing that I found so intoxicating about playing the violin. It was the ability to connect with people in this deep way. And I feel like, in many ways, my studying the human mind is another way of fulfilling this passion of wanting to understand how it is that people feel things, or think things, or develop their attitudes or beliefs about the world. And in many ways, my podcast A Slight Change of Plans taps into my desire to get to really unlock people and discover together how it is that they've navigated these big changes in their lives. And I know, Sophia, you also interviewed Hillary Clinton for your show, but it's wonderful to feeble to go into a room with her and say, you know, hi, Hillary, like Aprico of Nothing, what was the hardest moment you've ever had in your life? Or what's your biggest insecurity, or how did you navigate this momentous moment? And so you can kind of cut through all the pleasantries and you have license to really dig deep with a person. And so I've loved creating A Slight Change of Plans because I think in many ways I'm tapping into that same love and passion that I had with the violin so many years ago. And it strikes me that the thing you're talking about is a safe container or a welcoming container for empathy and experience. That's the way I think about storytelling and what I do, you know, whether it's on this podcast, whether it's in film and television. Also, I don't don't feel like I can do to the best of my ability without music. They're so intrinsically connected, the music that I source and then playlist for characters, the music that goes with a great scene when it's finally being edited. And I think that there is something about the experiences you know, that you and I have shared as performers that really can allow people to all meet somewhere. And sometimes that's people who otherwise would be to use your earlier term, in in whatever their silo of their own identity foreclosure might be, and people can share an experience and suddenly have empathy for someone who they're their particular identity may have told them to discount before, which I find really powerful. And it does feel like the through line from making art to studying the human mind, and and in that leap that you talk about or that sort of can acted arc What was the moment when you had the lightbulb when when something pointed to in a direction of the human mind of behavioral science. Yeah, I mean, first, I will say that you're absolutely right. I think that one thing that has been really empowering for me to learn as a cognitive scientist and has helped me go through hard times is just how much of our psychology we share with one another. Right. We can have such different life experiences, but at the end of the day, all of our minds, in some foundational way are wired very similarly, right, And I think it's important to recognize that because we can feel a lot more camaraderie with one another than we otherwise might. Um. So I've I've always thought to myself, like Stuttying, the mind is the greatest empathy builder. It gives you so much compassion for other people's views and mindsets, and when you understand why people think the way they do, then in turn, you can feel a lot of compassion and empathy for their views. So that's the first thing, um in terms of my lightbulb moments. So, the summer before college, UM, I was supposed to be in China touring with my violin classmates, UM. But instead I was at home helping my parents clean their basement. So awesome summer equally cool as the counterfactual world. And I helped my mom cleaned her house out last week, like four hours a day. So I respect the choice. I love it. Very kind of you to do that. I'm sure Mom really appreciated it. And so I I stumbled upon UM one of my sister's old of course books from college, and it was about the science of how the mind works. In particular, it was about our ability to comprehend and learn language. And this was something that I had always taken for granted, my ability to speak and comprehend language. And what this book taught me is that when you pull the curtain back and you realize how incredibly sophisticated the cognitive cognitive machinery is that gives rise to language, you really end up in all of the human mind. Like I think, I think so many of us are so hard on ourselves every day, right, we're like, oh, I don't like this part of myself. I don't like this part of myself. And when you take a step back and you look at all that the mind is capable of, you will feel like you're crushing it every freaking day. You feel like, this is the human experience is incredible. I'm legitimately crushing it. And so I just remember being in total awe of this organ and feeling like, feeling infinite wonder about how it is that we can produce language. But then also it led me to ask these other questions, like, well, if that's what's involved in speaking or producing language, what's involved in doing high level mathematics or complex decision making or engaging in productive discourse with another human being or falling in love? Like it just it opened up within me a very very deep curiosity for how it is that we go through this world and navigate it. M M. I love that. I love it, and it's making me think. I don't know if you've had time to read this book, as you know, you're doing major scientific research of your own. But Bill Bryson, you know, who wrote a History of Everything, and uh, he's such an incredible author, and he wrote this book called The Body, which was the first thing I jumped into prepping for um my my medical job. And one of the things that fascinated me most was the actual scientific disproving of these very tribal identities we carry. There's a moment where he talks about melanin and explains how it works and how humans evolved in different climates to have different amounts of it in their skin, and and he's sitting in a lab with a doctor who exercises a postage stamp size four layers deep piece of human skin from a cadaver. While he's in this lab explaining, you know, this woman is explaining to him how it works and she holds it up to the light and he's so shocked. He says, it's translucent, and she says, yeah, that's all that racist. And we have these fixed identities, and you see how you know, legacies of colonization and supremacy have been so harmful to humans, and we really are truly scientifically underneath it all all the same, and it's it's fascinating to me how we can carry these beliefs, we can carry these behaviors. The tendency to other anyone is behavioral. It's not based in reality. And something that always strikes me as interesting, you know, being a daughter of immigrants who have very particular food traditions, is the ways we tend to really get people involved in each other, um, and in each other's worlds, families, lives, cultures can often first be through food. M and I I'm often struck by this curiosity. I think about this question, how could we get people to love each other the way we love each other's food? You know what? What is that behavioral leap? Um? What identities do we have to kind of do away with and how do we understand why we form them in the first place. Yeah, it's so interesting that you bring this up, because two days from now I'm going to be interviewing Pudla left me first season two of a slight change of plans, and she built this incredible show called Taste in the Nation and it's it's really an expedition into all of the immigrant cultures that make up America and that food can be this extraordinary vehicle to bring people together. I think she says something like, you just can't hate if a plate of food, you just can't. It's impossible. Um, and so it can. It can really be this vehicle for connecting humans across divides. But to your point, Sophia, about how our tribe identities can inform the way that we see the world and can breed division. There are some really compelling research called cultural cognition. It refers to the fact that we don't just develop our attitudes and beliefs about the world based on facts. We like to think, Oh, when someone doesn't agree with us on what we believe our empirical matters, like whether climate change is real, or whether the coronavirus is real, or whether gun control reform can reduce gun debts, we like to think, let's just let's just show them the facts. Let's just show them more information. If you throw enough information in the way, they'll change their minds. The research shows that's missing a huge piece of the puzzle, which is that a lot of what contributes to our attitude and belief formation is our group membership. It's the tribal relations that we have and the values that that tribe holds right. And so what that means in practice is that when we engage in certain behaviors, ones that might seem fairly trivial to other people, like whether or not to wear a ma ask, you know, sometimes I just get so exasperated. I'm like, oh my god, it's just a damned piece of cloth, doesn't wear it. It'll keep you safe, I promise. But then you realize that for some folks, wearing a mask can actually threaten their sense of belonging to a broader group that really matters to them and informs their sense of self. And when you understand that, you can try to use the right tools or tactics to engage with folks in really productive ways, um that actually get them to change their minds about things. And it reminds me of conversation that I had for a slight change of plans m with a but the man named Darrel Davis, who's a black jazz musician who ends up going on to inspire hundreds of people to leave white supremacy groups. And he doesn't do it by throwing facts their way. He engages in a lot of techniques that have been corroborated by the science, like showing genuine curiosity for why it is that someone might have arrived at their views in the first place, asked them what evidence might change their mind? Um, And I love that question because it presupposes that they ought to change their mind in the face of new evidence, which is something we can't always take for granted, you want to increase your question to statement ratio UM, so rather than talking at the person, you're really talking with the person. And importantly, you want to make sure that you talk in ways that allow them to not feel like their entire belief system is being threatened, because that can just lead them to create a wall, right, to like shut down the conversation entirely, but to engage with them in a way that allows them to see, in this case, just how vile their belief system is, but in ways that make them feel like they can be redeemable. Right that you've identified at least a semblance of humanity um, such that they can in fact change their minds and change their ways. And what Daryl reveal through his life experiences, you know, he was able to get people not just leave the clan that actually shut down whole chapter is because they just didn't believe in the ideology at all. And it's an extraordinary story. It's one that left me with some conflict internally because I was thinking to myself, you know, Daryl is so admirable that at the same time, why is the burden falling on people of color to have to convince people who have these reprehensible views to change their minds. So left me with a lot of open questions and it's I'm still I still feel lots of conflict thinking about that episode, but it it can definitely get people thinking differently about what's involved in mindset change. I think that is such a conundrum that I struggle with because if I think about gender issues, for example, I know that a group of men sitting around talking about what happens to women is not going to be as effective as a few of us educating a group of men on our reality. And yet it means that the the burden of the emotional labor always falls on the oppressed group. And and then I the way that I sort of was able to row sternalize some of that for myself as I thought about back in the day when I was a camp counselor, and I thought, oh well, I was tasked with and trusted with, by the way, being responsible for other people's children for weeks on end, because I had more information than those children about responsible behavior in the wild, how to take care of a natural ecosystem, how to have a buddy system, you know, with your bunk mates. And I thought, oh right, I was their teacher, I was their steward in nature, and I think it. I don't know what the answer is, but I have found solace in decentralized power structures that centralized stewardship because it allows us to, you know, come in, participate, educate, teach, be activists, and then take moments of rest. I can't imagine being the person who had to do all the work all the time. I've tried that before and sperience burnout. Um, but it is, it is. It's a really complex thing because you you think about what would have happened if Darryl hadn't done that work, if he hadn't followed his feeling of calling. But then is it really his responsibility. It's really hard. Yeah, there's a deep tension there. I think one thing that also reassures me about his story is that sometimes the most effective messengers of a new way of thinking, our converts are people who went through a journey of going from say, white supremacist to not. And what we saw at daryl story is that when he would convince one person, that person would in turn convince lots of people within their network. You know, the Department of Homeland Security uses this technique all the time, which is when they're trying to engage in anti extremist reform, they use people who were previously part of extremist groups to be those messengers, because basically what happens is you can the former extremists can talk with the current extre miss and say, hey, look, we used to share the same values. I started off in the same place that you're in today. Let me walk you through my journey of going from point A to point B to essentially help you see the light and see that you're their errors in the way that you're thinking about the world. And so when there can be these positive is still over effects, it at least allows me to see the entire burden. Thankfully did not fall on Darryl Right. He inspired this cascading effect of his early efforts and lead people to become their own advocates um for anti racist work. Mm hmm, yeah, that's beautiful. I wonder when you talk about that tension you know of his experience and and what a great piece of information also for us anyone who wants to show up for a cause to understand that whomever chooses to join us can also go out and advocate on behalf of it. I know so many people will write into the show and say, love this issue you guys talked about, or this really made me feel inspired. But what can I do as one person? And it's such a great reminder to continue coalition building because we're not supposed to do this alone. But when we think about the tension we all experience. And you know, I mentioned a little bit of my family story, um, and I know you and I both share experiences in the world and especially in corporate worlds as women. And I also know that you know your family immigrated from India, so you exist in a bit of attention I imagine as a woman as the daughter of immigrants. And then I when I think about this precious little girl, you know, taking up her violin. It's funny because as an adult we look at um child genius and musicality and all of these things and we go, oh, what a great kid. But often as a kid, being really smart or having some incredible talent, especially when it falls at least historically under a banded umbrella, can really you a target, you know, for bullying. And you mentioned growing up in Connecticut. What was that tension present in your life or did you have more of a of a great community that was more idyllically welcoming of you know, everyone's personal identities. Yeah, I wish it was, but it wasn't. Um. I experienced a ton of bullying as a kid, and when you're young, you don't know what the root cause of that bullying is. You know. Um, in hindsight, I can look back and think, oh wow, there were so few families of color in the community that I grew up in. Was did race play a role in in kids being pretty ruthless with me and saying just horrible things? And but at the time you think, no, it's just me like imax or I'm wy and I'm not like the rest and I'm you know, bad or whatever it is. Um. But yeah, absolutely, I mean I think UM. I mean, I really admire my parents looking back because you know, my mom just a quick aside on the immigrant story. Like my mom, Um, who's one of my role models. She met my dad twenty days before they got married, and then she she was she was a fifth grade teacher in India. She meets my dad on January first, they decided to get married that day. They get married twenty one days twenty days later, and she ends up moving to this country, um and leaving her entire I mean entire community behind and they moved to Cambridge and they're just living in a little dorm room. And I don't know if you've seen the movie The Namesake, but it's very reminiscent of my my parents immigrant story. But my mom is just forced to figure out this whole thing herself, right, like what this immigrant experience is like. And she tells me to this day one of the reasons why she had four kids. I'm the youngest of four, is because she was trying to build a little tribe around herself, a little army, so that she would feel less lonely in this country and feel like she had some kind of support system. But one thing that I loved, you know, we grew up in as I mentioned, in Connecticut, where there were so few people of color that we could bond with just their fierce pride in being Indian. Like I always grew up knowing that my parents were so deeply proud to be from India, and they would boldly, you know, teach us the traditions and the culture and the religion, and oh my gosh, the delicious food. I like cringe now because I'm like, why did I want pizza when my mom was cooking delicious South Indian meals? But I'm grateful that over time I started to feel that same sense of pride um in small ways, like making sure that people say my last name correctly, which is it's not Shankar, it's schunker Um, and like really making that a point to big ways, which is, you know, feeling so deeply connected to my roots and my ancestry and where I come from. So that it but it took time. And like any kid I was, I was so eager to assimilate and so eager to just be like all the other kids at school that I just didn't Yeah, I just didn't value it in the way that I wish I had. Mm hmm. But every kid, in many ways feels mothered in some way or another. Like I wonder, Sophie, if you had experiences as a kid where you're just so eager to be like others that if there was something that made you different or distinct and you kind of wish you had embraced it at that moment in time. Yeah, absolutely, And and it is really interesting. I'll never forget, uh, talking about, you know, some of the war wounds I carry from my childhood. And I was always such a sensitive kid, and that sensitivity was often weaponized against me. And I think we're now having larger conversations about what it means to weaponize sensitivity and why it's deeply toxic, and that when you are sensitive to other people's feelings, when you see a broken world and your reaction is to be heartbroken, it really does mean you're in tune. And uh, and yeah, gosh, I'll never forget a couple of months ago discussing, you know, some of the stuff that was really hard um as a kid, especially dealing with a sort of you know, classic nineties mean girls mentality in my high school and really feeling sort of suspended between all these different worlds within that world. Um, and my coach I just said, well, you gotta get over it. You know, you starting to get all these roles in plays and this happening to you, and this happening to you. Yeah, kids were jealous of you, That's why they were mean to you. And the dissonance I felt in her kind of calling me out and being like, you got to grow up about it. It was really hard because I my response to her was, but I have always felt less than I have always felt so scared. I've always felt like I was, you know, a step from failing. And she said, yeah, it doesn't matter, it's not how other people perceive you. And and the sort of difference of you know, being a kid who I always kind of felt like the man out. There's an interesting moment I find myself in as an adult, having to come to a sort of cognitive reckoning with regardless of how I feel, how do other people experience me? And how do I then hold space for both realities and when they're very dissonant, what does that look like? And you know, similarly to you, you you might have had days where you didn't realize that, you know, being the protege of the greatest violent the greatest living violenist, might have made you a target for bullying. You felt like you were broken, and I didn't take into account you know that I got a huge leadership role my senior year in high school that was deeply competitive in my community, and that that made me a target. I just thought everyone hated me, And so it's a very it's just so interesting the things we go through. Yeah, you don't. You don't realize it at the time, but looking back, it's always easier to sort of see the dynamics you're common about weaponizing sensitivity. Was so poignant, and it reminds me of a conversation I had recently with a black transman named Morgan Givens, and he talks about the fact that he was assigned female at birth and then he went through hormone therapy to align his body with his true gender identity, which is male, and that after this transition he was starting to grapple with masculinity and what that really means. And he said, you know, I'm a really sensitive guy and sometimes I feel, you know, well, his story is very complicated in the sense that he um, he's a black transman and he was confronted with the harsh reality of being a black man in society when he was pulled over by the cops and had subsequent engagements with the cops, and he ended up joining the police force, which in many places can be like the ultimate machismo macho vibe, like, you know, toxic masculinity, what have you. And it was so interesting for him to say that in many ways he had to dismantle his perception of what gender identity meant, because he said, I wasn't willing to lose so much of myself, like I am sensitive, I am emotional, um and sometimes he said in his particular experience that, you know, being in the force, it was as though he was being told he shouldn't feel things, you know, he shouldn't respond emotionally to things. And so anyway, I just found that to be such a fascinating, thought provoking conversation around how we think about our identities and how multifaceted they could be, and how many many different traits can exist within us that we just learn over time to embrace. I think about I interviewed my friend um Karamo Brown on the show last year, and he was talking about how he really got ruthlessly made fun of, you know, for bringing cultural food to school. Kids would make fun of him when his mom would make curry go and similarly to what you said, you know, when your mom was making this incredible Indian food, You're like, why did I want, you know, pizza, gross slice of pepperoni pizza? Why? But as a child, you just want what everybody else is doing. You know, you want to have it, you want to be it, you want it to be smooth. Um, And I'm curious, does your deep knowledge of cognitive behavior does it help you release some of your own childhood? You know, war wounds is the term I always use, But some of some of that hurt? Are you able to kind of transmute you know, your inner child who had a wound? Because of what you understand about the brain, do you think it makes it easier to you know, quote unquote do the work. Absolutely. I mean, I think when you learn more about the human mind and you learn about all the various forces that can lead us to develop the belief that we have. I mean, it can build empathy in one sense because you understand why, but it can also build than in patience in another sense, which is, okay, we understand why, but we also do have research showing how we can effectively change not just other people's minds but our own. And so I think I do feel a great sense of urgency because the state of affairs when it comes to racial and equity, gender, um, inequity, you name it is so severe. Um, I do feel like, oh my gosh, let's just get the research out there, Like, I just want everyone to understand what is involved in changing our own minds, because I really do believe that we all would benefit so much, not just from focusing on how to change other people's minds, that how to change our own minds, and if we can all look inwards and engage in that kind of work, society would be so much better off. So when you talk about that, it's funny because my immediate instinct is to say, Okay, well what does it look like? Will you give us a curriculum? Where do we begin? I want a full semester, I want I want to take the course. But and that that is true, I was about to say, all kidding aside, I'm like, I'm actually not kidding. But you know, that's that's a that's a large thing for a lot of people to theoretically sign up for. So where would you tell people to begin? Because I know there are other people listening right now who are having that same light up experience that I am going, Okay, where do we start and how do we change our minds? And and and to what benefit? So where do you point people, as you know, a starting line for learning how to change and better their own minds. Yeah, I think. Um, there are two experts on change that I had on a slight change of plans this past season, and we do a deep dive on some of these strategies, like if your listeners want to just get like the one on one in thirty minutes, you know. I talked with Katie Milton and Adam Grant, who are both professors of psychology, and Katie Miltman's book is called How We Change and Adam's Grant's book is called Think Again, and I think they both articulate in this really beautiful way, um, strategies that we can implement within our own lives to try and reach our long term goals and become better people, as well as ways that we can revisit our opinions and our values and beliefs ever so often to make sure that we are valuing this idea of changing our minds right rather than being embarrassed and feeling pride and shame and having been wrong, actually making it a pride point to change one's mind. And it's funny. I mean I use some of these strategies and in my day to day life, like my husband and I he's a computer scientist, but he's also a behavioral scientist, in part because he's married to me, so he knows he knows all the research, Sophia. But we know how hard it can be to change one's mind, um, and we know how many barriers psychological barriers there are in the way of admitting that we want to change our minds. Some of those forces are the fact that we attach our sense of self and our self worth and our identity to our values. So when we admit that we're wrong about something, it can threaten our sense of self, which can be hard, and then you know, pride can get in the way. We just hate admitting we're wrong because there's some element of say, embarrassment or or shame. But because of that, you really try to incentivize one another you to admit that they're wrong. So like when one of us says, oh, yeah, you're making me think differently about this. I think I might be wrong about that, we like enthusiastically pat each other on the back and are like, that's so awesome that you're willing to change your mind, Like that's something I really value, and I value so much about you that you don't let pride get in the way and that you are willing to say and admit when you're wrong. Um. And I think even those small changes in the way that you structure, like you not to get two technical, but like incentive systems within your life, so that you start to value these sorts of things, I think that can make a huge difference. I mean it's certainly, you know, within our our marriage, it makes a huge difference to create this really safe not not even just a safe space for admitting we're wrong, but actually it's a pride point to admit that you're wrong. I love that, and I'm curious. I can't help but think as you're talking about all of this, about the moment you and I find each other in the global moments certainly, but but really in particular, what's happening here where we live with such dangerous ideology around political identity and the kinds that we're seeing, in particular with um obvious lies about science, public health really weaponized, especially on the right. You've seen vaccinated television hosts telling their audiences not to get vaccinated because it's a it's an identity thing, which is simply not true. But they've weaponized public health to a point where it now falls under that sort of umbrella which you're referencing, which is if I, if I admit that I was wrong about this, it'll it'll dismantle my entire identity. And we're seeing unvaccinated populations largely exist by political lines, and we're seeing people currently dying of COVID are unvaccinated, and it's terrifying. And I'm very surprised by some of the response I get when I advocate around vaccine science. People are just so they are so entrenched and in sharing, you know, personal stories again because I believe they create empathy. You know, a doctor speaking about how they've had multiple patients in the last two weeks literally dying in the ICU begging for a vaccine, and the doctors saying, I'm so sorry, it's too late. It won't do anything for you now. And someone messaged me saying, you know, you really shouldn't guilt people like this, and I thought, oh, if if you are feeling sad, heartbroken for these people, that isn't my trying to guilt you. That's your authentic response to unnecessary death. That's the right response. That's sensitivity. But because of an ideology you're looking to blame that feeling on someone else. And I'm very curious how for this issue we see, How do you think we get over this? How do you think behavioral science can teach us to encourage people past the paid nuisance that they're watching on the news, which isn't being you know, accurately represented very often as a propaganda campaigns um from the Murdochs, but in fact is harming communities. How do we get people over that notion that that that's somehow tied to their identity? Yeah, I mean the first the first answer I have is we don't know the full story. UM. Getting people to change their minds is one of the most intractable parts of my field. It can be easier to change people's behaviors and extremely hard to get people to change their minds. So we do have techniques we can use, UM, but it is I think if we were to ever crack that nut, it would just be a game changer. Just we're far away. UM. So we have early ideas, we have techniques that we can use. Some of those are hard to use at scale, especially when they require one on one engagement. UM, But there are some and I do want to share one burgeoning, one growing body of research that I'm very excited about, and it's called moral reframing, and it refers to the fact that it's very hard for people to change their values, especially change their values overnight, and so the most effective way of convincing people of something new is to hold their values fixed, affirm their values, but change the framing of the message so that it reaches the goals that you have in mind, but it aligns with that person's value system. So to put this in concrete terms, let's say you're trying to advocate for climate change. Right. With the liberal you might talk about the fact that investing in climate change reform can lift up the disadvantage among us right and help bring about more social equality. For conservative, you might focus on the fact that investing in climate change reform can be a nice way of preserving our natural our nation's beauty, our natural beauty, that it's patriotic to care about the environment, that investing in the environment can help inspire job growth and you know, boost the economy. So in both cases, your end goal is the same, which is to try to get people to care about climate change. Probably the most important one of the most important issues of our time. But you're not threatening their entire value system. You're holding their value system is fixed, and you're trying to find ways to frame messages in ways that affirm rather than threaten that value system. And research is showing that it can be a very powerful mechanism to get people out of their very fixed mindset and to think, oh wait, actually believing in climate change can actually be consonant with my value system doesn't need to breede the kind of cognitive dissonance that it would otherwise breed. And I think that it's a nice antidote around the fact that we do so strongly attach our values to our our identities. I don't think that's going to go anywhere. I think that is such a foundational part of human nature and our psychology that to try to overhaul that part of our psychology might be too much to fight, too much to take on um. But if we can work around it with these you know, framing changes, that can be a potentially powerful antidote. And it is. It strikes me that it is a place where so many people, to your point about whatever their value systems or or perceived identities are, can find universal truths. You know, when you talk about advocacy, um, like Darryl Davis working on dismantling white supremacy, we would we would typically place that into the more sort of left bucket on the political spectrum. But then you also did so much work actually uh with the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team on veterans issues, which so many people, I would imagine anyway, would would place in a more quote right political bucket, even though folks who make up veterans and you know, service members and people who work you know, all the way up to the White House are of every kind of ideology and belief system. And I wonder about how when we get beyond those perhaps obvious or assumed ideologies, and then we get into things like, um, what you spoke about with Morgan on doing notions of masculinity. There's so much you know, masculinity and aggressiveness tied up in the notion of military. How did you, well, first, how did you end up in that position? Because I'm fascinating how do you go from you know, playing the violin at Juilliard to Yale to being a Rhodes scholar to winding up with the White House Uh, I'm wondering then, how, as the woman that you are, do you approach such deeply entrenched notions of identity and masculinity and and toughness working on veterans issues, which means you are serving and helping people who have largely believed that they don't they don't need anybody's help. Yeah, So the White House job definitely again was not on my calf. I didn't expect it. Um So at the time, Sophia I was, I was doing my post doc. So I just finished my PhD in England, came to California to do my post doc. It was incognitive neuroscience, and I just distinctly remember I was in the basement of a FM Mori laboratory, so basically just doing brain scans, trying to see how people's brains work. And it was probably my fourth hour of doing these scans. I was in a windowless baseman and this guy comes in for his brain scan and within moments and peering into his brain on this screen, I remember thinking, given my personality, I feel like the order of opera rations is off here, Like I'm a really social person. I don't know anything about this guy. I don't know whether he has kids, but his face for ice cream flavor is what motivates him in life. So the really science technical stuff might be for some people, but it wasn't for me. And I kind of knew in that moment, Okay, I need to be in a more social environment where I'm getting to know people and working on teams and whatnot. But I had no idea what could come next. I like, what is the post stock and cognitive neuroscience do other than become a professor or a researcher. So I was really lost, and I called it my old undergraduate advisor and she told me, my, there's some amazing work happening in the federal government right now where they're using insights from our field to get more lunches to kids who can't afford lunch at school every day. So basically what was happening was the government was offering um a school lunch program at a free or reduced price for for low income kids, but millions of kids were still going hungry every single day at school despite the fact this program was off heard. And so they did a behavioral audit of the program and they find out found out that there are at least two factors behind this. The first is that the form was extremely burdensome to fill out. It required referencing multiple tax documents, find a way to get this form back to the government at very specific moment in time, and if there were if you filled out the information correctly, there would be penalties. And think about it. I mean, imagine a single mom who's working three, you know, three jobs to make ends meet, and you're demanding this of her um and it can be really challenging to make sure that everything gets done in time and is filled out correctly. So that was one barrier was just how burdensome the form was. And the other barrier was that parents felt a lot of stigma around and rolling their kids into a public benefits program. Like when I was in the White House, I talked to principles who would say, these parents worked really hard for a living, and the idea of having their kids depend on the government was it was really demoralizing for families. So they didn't want to do that. So what the government did is that they changed the program them from an opt in program to an opt out program such that all eligible kids were now automatically enrolled in the program, and parents would only need to take an active step that they wanted to unenroll their kids in the program. And we know that this default setting can play a massive role in other policy areas, like when you automatically enroll employees into your retirement savings plans, right like great skyrocket from let's say, um So, it's so beautiful and elegant to see this used in the area of children's health and well being in their ability to prosper in school. And as a result of this change, twelve and a half million more kids are now eating lunch at school every day. That's amazing. I remember thinking that's what I want to be doing. I want to be helping to translate insights from my field into public policy improvements. But there was no job out there. So I ended up sending a cold email to a former Obama advisor, Cass Sunstein, and he had written books on the topic. He for in this book Nudge, which I also recommend to the readers that they want to equate themselves with behavioral science. He'd work for Obama and he connected me with the President Science advisor, and a few days later I was interviewing for this new job. Um and trying to convince them to hire a dedicated behavioral scientist to work in the White House. It's fascinating because the differences that are possible with just shifts in to your point, how we file paperwork, or how we ask questions, or how we explain things. I am. I had the privilege, the honor really of testifying before Congress a few weeks ago, and I was listening to an economic expert analyzing the incentives around overcoming vaccine hesitancy. And one of the things they've found the most effective is to remind people now that they can get a shot, but that there is a shot reserved for each and every one of us. It's waiting for you, it's yours. Has has been such an empowering piece of information for people to under stand, oh, oh right, we do have the immense privilege of living in a country that has provided enough vaccines for each and every one of us. There is a vaccine waiting for me, for you. I love, and it's yeah, it's it's it's a mental shift, you know, it's it's a linguistic shift, but it does create a sense of empowerment, and you know, and every day person trying to protect themselves. Yeah. I love this research. It's actually done by my friend Katie Milkman, who I was mentioning earlier. It's incredible research and it aligns very closely with a study that we ran in government involving veterans. So we are trying to get them to sign up for an employment and educational counseling program upon returning from their years overseas. And the reason why this is what you were doing at the White House. At the White House exactly. Yeah, I just want to get my timeline right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely so. So it's so important to help facilitate the transition from military to civilian life because it can be one that is fraught with lots of of challenges and folks might be dealing with PTSD like the The military experience is so profoundly hard, and it's important that we as a society protect and support veterans as they transition back to civilian life. So again, if this is an example of people not taking advantage of this program, in large part because I think as government we were not doing good enough job marketing the program and getting it out to folks. So I remember we were working with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our budget was limited. They told us, you can only work with this one email that we're going to be setting out to that's about the program. And to your point, you know, then what is the space for working in linguistics? Right, It's all about framing the message. And we changed just one word in the message, Sophia. So instead of telling that's that they were eligible for the program, we simply reminded them that they had earned it through their years of service. So if you think about the vaccine study, right, there's a vaccine reserve for you. It's like, hey, veterans, there's this educational employment of fit that's reserved for you. UM. It's really tapping into the same psychology, which UM is called the endowment effect. That's the principle, and it refers to the fact that we value things more when we own them or have earned them, because now we have something to loose, right, it's something that we we own, it's it's in our possession and we don't want to forego the opportunity of taking advantage of it. And so that one word change led to a nine percent increase in access to the Veterans Program, which was an incredible example of how even just small tweaks in the way that we frame something can have really outside impacts on behavior. That is so, so very cool. So working on that with the Department of Veterans Affairs and and under the White House, was there a shift in your ability to do that work when the administration changed? I I've heard so much about great programs that were underway. I mean even a national Oregon database for organ donation and transplants that that was derailed, you know, in and I'm curious, what what's become of this wonderful veterans program. Yeah. So I was fortunate in that I had a boss who had worked for Clinton for eight years, left for Bush, and then come back for Obama. And what he shared with me is that they had done so much work in the Clinton administration. And the metaphor he used was that it was as though they had built this elaborate standcastle at the beach and then one wave came and like the whole thing crashed over, crushed um. And his lesson from that experience to me was, when you're building out things like a behavioral science team, don't build them in the White House. Build them in parts of the government that are resistant to political leadership changes, that are resistant to partisan preferences, but that can exist just as a stable part of doing good government. UM. And so this led me to actually create the team in a very bipartisan part of government called the General Services Administration. And it's pretty insensitive to the whims of the White House, right They just continue to do solid work to help improve the experience of student loan borrowers and formerly you know, people who have formerly been in prison who are leaving, or veterans or military service members, are low income students, or women who have just gone through pregnancy, whatever it is, whatever the population, this group dedicates themselves to just improving good government practice. And so the White House part of the team I disbanded when I left UM, but the part, the real heart of the team, was based in this agency and they continue to do incredible work during the previous administration, like helping on the opiate epidemic, helping on wildfire relief areas that all Americans can get behind, you know. And that was a great lesson to me that at the end of the day, I mean, I've always seen behavioral science as being a very nonpartisan thing, right, it's just about how do we make sure that our policies and programs reflect our best understanding of human behavior. And it was so critical that we make sure that this part of government fell into place where you can't challenge the importance of making sure that we're building out a programmer policy. We need to take that population we're serving into consideration to make sure that it is really reaching its goals and maximizing the positive impact it has on the population it's it's seeking to serve. That's so great, and that's what I think we should hope for in general. You know, we're not supposed to be playing this eye for an eye partisan game, and the upper echelons of our government really anywhere in our government. But you know, the notion that the administration was just nuking incredible government pro rams to kind of get back at the you know, at President Obama was so hard to watch and and I think I hope, my hope for us is that we can also, regardless of you know, where we come from or what we might believe or what our ideologies are, understand the danger of that. I mean, the fact that Trump disbanded the Pandemic Response Network as it was as a gotcha, and look at what happened. You know, it's it's a it's a frightening time. And what strikes me in the beauty of what you all did and establishing this program and making it able to withstand any kind of see change, is that that I believe could actually help with our behavioral identities and our social identities. If we could really rest confidently in the truth that there are these departments in our government that are taking care of us no matter what I think, we could actually um calm some of the mania down, which would be beautiful and and and so it makes me curious how you think in that theme, behavioral science and social science can play into issues like public programs and and really even into the economy. You know, I think it can be so tragic when the government builds out a policy or a program and it is so well designed, it's such a useful program, like for example, with the school lunch program. Right, the meals were nutritious, they are being offered at school, they were available. But then we don't get that last mile problem, correct, right, we we forget that there are barriers to accessing the program that are really the kind of profound implications on participation rates, or that there's a certain psychology held by the person or people that were trying to um have take advantage of the program. And when we miss that part, it can mean that all of our efforts up until that point where we're not because we're just not getting over that finish line and making sure that the program's eligibility or the requirements for enrolling or what have you, or the way the choices are structured or the way that incentives are structured aligns with the science of human behavior and what motivates us and what drives us and what conserve as an antagonist for us. And so I just think considering the full range of psychological factors that might be at play when someone is thinking about engaging with the government in a certain way is such a crucial piece of the puzzle. Mm hmm. I love that was was that understanding? Uh? What led you to work with Pete buddhach Edge on his debate prep team. I'm so curious. How did you get that call? Do you think that was I made that call? Oh my gosh, I'm like the Queen of I'm the Queen of the cold Cold. It's very Yeah, so I should probably also mentioned that when I was the young kids, I mentioned how I auditioned for Juilliard, and just give you a quick backstory and how that happened, because it's very relevant to the approach I've used since. Um. So, my parents had no exposure to the classical music world. Um. My dad's a theoretical physicist. My mom helps immigrants get green cards to study in this country. So when I developed a huge love of the violin, um, they didn't know what to do. Like, they had no exposure to Western classical music. So my mom knew that my dreams were really big. She knew that I aspired to audition for Juilliard, but we had no connections with that world. So one day we were in New York to his mother daughter trip. We're walking by the Juilliard building and my mom goes, why don't we just go in and see what happens. It's like, quitin, just go in, that's crazy. She's like, let's just go in and see what happens. You've got your violin with you, you know, maybe we can find something out of this experience. So wow, we walk into the Juilliard building unannounced, uninvited. My mom strikes up a conversation with a woman and the elevator and her daughter and says, hey, when you guys are done with your lesson with this teacher, would you mind if Maya just played for that teacher for just a few minutes. Would you be willing to just make an introduction? And they said yes, And it was a lesson to me that sometimes when you just ask, you'll get a yes in return. And so they made the intro. I auditioned for this teacher. He took me on as a summer student. And it is only because of that summer boot camp that I experienced that I even had a chance of getting into Juilliard in the fall. So she taught me, like, you know, in this case, it wasn't even it wasn't a cold. Calls like a cold, you know, walk into the building. And so I've been using that ever since. So I as you know, I called emailed a former White House official to try to get the Obama gig, and then with Pete, I just sent him an email and I was like, hey, you know, I worked in the Obama White House. One thing I've learned is that it's important to make sure behavioral science informs policy and programs, But what's extra important is making sure that behavioral science informs how we tell stories around policy and politics, and that we use it to inform the narratives that we build the way that we communicate about public policy. Goal is because so much can get lost in translation. Um, And at the end of the day, language is the inspirational tool that we have to get people excited about policy reform and help bridge divide. So I remember when I emailed him asking to, you know, volunteer to help his campaign. It wasn't on policy that I was eager to help, even though that was where I've been coming from in the Obama White House. It was to help on messaging, to make sure that the right stories were getting in the hands of voters, to make sure that we were framing our policy objectives and ways that aligned hopefully with people's long term goals for themselves and their families. And so yeah, I just sent him an email and was like, hey, um, would you be interested in working with me? And he wrote back and said yeah, And I ended up being a part of his debate preparation team. So I slew all over the country and helped him prepare for every single debate leading up to his win in Iowa, And it was incredible experience to learn from the other many former Obama debate coach veterans on the team. So I just felt like I was a student, you know, watching the great you know, do this coaching, and like I was in this masterclass. But it was an incredibly illuminating experience to have that behind the scenes look at how a candidate builds themselves over time. I never worked on a campaign before, and I just learned. Yeah, I learned so much from from the experience. Do you think there are strategies that we as voters might be able to learn from the folks who are out there campaigning Things we should look for, things we should listen for. How we can really listen for the things that are most important, because it's easy to get swayed by a slogan or we've seen to to drum up tension. But as we both discussed earlier, climate for example, should be our number one priority. If we don't have a planet to live on, none of the other stuff we argue about is ever gonna matter. So how can we as the voting body better engage with the messaging we're hearing. Yeah, it's a great question. I don't think the responsibility should fall on voters. I put the response to ability entirely on the people who are running for office to build a really compelling argument for why it is that they're running for the position and what they can offer. Like Elizabeth Warren was on point or regarding her argument for why she was running her office, And I think it's up to it's up to the politician to take very complex policies that don't have you know, it's not it's not easy to unpack decisions around pipelines and whatnot, you know, in a few sentences. But I think it is the job of the politician to distill really complex concepts into language that feels accessible and relatable and relevant to our day to day lives. Um so that voters feel the poll to go to the ballot box and cast their votes. So I think that is Yeah, I think that is the responsibility of the politician to make sure that politics feels like it is a part of our everyday lives and it has consequences, and to make sure that we understand topics that are otherwise extremely complex. Like I was behind the scenes, and I was like having to brief myself, like, wait a second, what exactly are the implications of this policy? This is way more complex than I ever thought. Um, so I think that burden falls on again the politicians. But I will say one thing which is working in the Obama White House gave me an appreciation for just how complex any given policy is, and that it is No decision is easy, right, it's fair. I think it's easy for us to hear the top line messaging and be like Obama, of course it should have been X or Y. But Obama is considering the hundreds of you know, still over effects of policy change might have, or the long term consequences versus the short term consequences, and how different countries will respond to this change, or how different communities will be disproportionately affected by a change. And I think it is so. I think if there was one thing that I would want voters to better appreciate is like that level of complexity and that we can be screaming from our living rooms like of course you should be doing X or Y. The typically the story is more complicated if you just pull back the curtain a little bit. Indeed, help me build empathy towards all the politicians that you know I've liked or not liked, or just you know, allowing me to see the complexity behind their story. Yeah. Well that's wonderful. I mean, that's that's exactly what we all need. Did your kind of ability to, as you said, be on the inside, you know, both of the human brain and your behavioral science expertise, but also in terms of you know, upper echelons of government policy. Is that what led you to create your podcasts? Because I feel like perhaps it was the same instinct for me, which is I want to give these conversations I'm so lucky to be part of to everyone who wants to hear them. Yeah, it's a fantastic question. I think this podcast in many ways emerged from my humility as a scientist, and what I learned from my experience in government is that a lot of the answers around how we should navigate big change in our lives doesn't mine in a textbook. I wanted to be in a textbook. I want to be able to open up my textbook to page ninety and feel like, oh, I'm going through this big change, or as a country or as this globe, we're going through this big change, how do we how do we navigate it? And just like flip to the page and you learn the lessons. But experience in the White House taught me the power of storytelling and how important it is to listen to people's stories, their life stories, their perspectives on change their perspectives on their lives, because it can fill in gaps in our understanding of how it is that we can better support people. So give you one concrete example. When I was at the White House, I worked with Flint, Michigan during the Leaden Well. The Leaden water crisis is ongoing, but our goal was to distill um safe water practices within the community. And it was only when I visited and actually met folks on the ground and Flint that I realized the depths of this problem. It's not a water problem. Water was a symptom of a much deeper problem that was resulting from decades of disenfranchisement, systemic races, um people of color in the community not feeling like they had a voice in their government and the decisions that were made by their government. And so to try to just solve for the water crisis was missing the underlying cause and the breach of trust that it happened between residents of Flint and their government. And so seeing that for sand and hearing people's stories, I mean, it just gave me a much more nuanced, rounder, under fuller understanding of what was that play. And so I have always felt like we have so much to learn from people's stories. And my podcast is slight Change of Plans in many ways is my attempt at marrying the science with storytelling, you know, so I bring science to the table. We learned about the science of change, We learned about the science of um changing people's minds. But then you hear a story from someone like Darrell Davis, the black Dass musician who actually convinced people to lead the clan. Or I talked to Hillary Clinton about her decision to change her last name back in the day in Arkansas out because of all the pressure she faced since she wasn't fulfilling the cookie cutter role that a first Lady of Arkansas ought to fulfill. Or a talk to Tiffany Hattish about navigating the foster system and an abusive mother and discovering her superpower, you know, navigating or her superpower, which is to make people laugh, and how she use that superpower to navigate danger and get herself what she wanted over the course of her life. And I feel like when you hear people's stories, that's how you can learn some of the best lessons, you know, like you can mind people's stories for insights and fresh ways of thinking about change that you might never have thought of otherwise. And I, you know, to that point about having this fundamental humility around how much we understand about the science of change, Like I've learned so much from my guest Sophia about how to think differently about change in my own life, and that is such a gift, such a blessing for me to leave every conversation being like, huh, maybe I should think about this thing differently. Or just last night, I was reflecting on a conversation I had with a person who's in the throes of stage four bone cancer, and I was just telling my husband, you know, I struggle with X y Z. But then I think about Scott's story, and you know, one of the lessons he taught me was that maybe my sense of identity is more quote negotiable than I thought, Like maybe the things that I thought were so coret of who I am aren't actually that court of who I am. And he's saying this as he's in the middle, He's a self proclaimed HealthNet in the middle of getting you know, a leg amputated and a part of his spine removed and eighteen administrations of chemotherapy, and he's telling me how he's revisiting his sense of self. And so I'm going back into my own life thinking, oh, wow, I should revisit my sense of self, like as Scott can do, what anyone can, you know. And so yeah, it's just been such a blessing to get to learn about change and how to think about change through people's narratives. That's beautiful. And one of the things I find myself most inspired by is when people choose to expand the amount of space they hold for new information and and for new experiences, both in the world and in in themselves. So that makes me feel really giddy and excited. And I love that, beautifully said. My favorite thing to ask everyone, and I wonder if that might be your answer, is what in your life at this moment feels like a work in progress? Yeah, it's related to my answer for sure. I think that works of progress for me is you know, as a scientist, it's so seductive to feel like there could be a one size fits all answer for people. And I think in making this podcast, I'm realizing how tailor made advice needs to be when it comes to the topic of change and how we navigate change in our lives, because the way that we interact with the change can be so idiosyncratic. And so one thing I've had to be satisfied with is if I just lead every conversation and listeners lead every conversation thinking new thoughts about even one idea with the change domain, that's a success. There's not You're not going to get the how to guide on change from this podcast, and that's kind of the point, which is every person will take something different from any given person's story. You know, you might hear the Hillary Clinton interview and think one thing. I might hear the Hillary Clinton interview thinks something completely different, And um, I think that's part of the magic of what it needs to be human, which is that we've taken all this information and ultimately we do need to figure out how to tailor it to ourselves given our best understanding of who we are. I love that the ability to always add change, be flexible, that that, to me, feels like the kind of behavior we all need to really lean into. So I appreciate that answer very much, and I thank you so much for joining me today. Of course, it was such a pleasure to chat with you, Sophia. Thank you for your time.

Work in Progress with Sophia Bush

Work in Progress with Sophia Bush features frank, funny, personal, professional, and sometimes even  
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 251 clip(s)