Maya Shankar ON: How to Embrace Change Gracefully & Find Purpose in Difficult Times

the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you for learning, listening, and growing with us every single week. Now you know that I'm always trying to find new minds, new people, thought leaders who have insights that can help me learn, listen, and grow. And then I want to share that with you and today's guest. When I first read about it, I was blown away immediately, and I knew I had to have in the studio for this conversation. And so

we finally are here. She came all the way. She's with us in person. I'm talking about none other than Maya Shanka. Now, for those of you that don't know, she's the senior director of Behavioral Economics at Google and is the creator, host, and executive producer of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, where she interviews fascinating guests

that I can't wait to talk to her about. She previously served as a senior advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as chair of the White Houses Behavioral Science Team, a team of scientists tasked with improving public policy using research insights from human behavior. Maya, thank you so much for being here. Your resume is phenomenal.

You have an incredible set of expertise. I secretly wish I was a behavioral economist, so I'm hearing that that comes from my Behavioral economics has been like my passion since I was fifteen years old. And I'm not smart enough to be one, but I get to sit with you today and get to pick your brain. So thank you for being here. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me at such a pleasure to be with you and to be in person with you, which

feels so special at this point in time. Yeah, and we've already been talking offline and getting on so anyone who's listening to this podcast, you're in for a real tree. Maya is so warm, so relax, so just you have such a warm energy about yourself. I know you were saying that about my wife, but you have the same I need to tell your listeners. So knocked on the door and Radie Jay's wife opens the door, has no idea who I am. I'm with my friend Madeline, and

she greets us in absolutely the warmest way. She's like, hello, welcome to my home. I have no idea who you are, but I'm going to be effusive and warm anyway. And I was so struck by her presence and that kind of energy. And then of course you walk up the stairs and you have exactly the same vibe. So I know why you guys are married. It's very sweet to see that in action. Well, we felt the same from you immediately as well. And I feel like we're old

friends already. Yeah, and that we're talking. And I want to go back because I do want to use this as an excuse to get to know you better. But let's go back to the beginning of your journey. And I read that you were off to become a really successful violinist, and that was the path that you were on until you experienced an injury. I want to hear about that journey, your fascination with music and tell us

about how it all started out. Yeah, 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 when she immigrated to this country. So it's one of those few things that she carried with her. And when I was six, she brought it down from the attict and showed it to me, and she had only meant for me to see it. She said, oh, you know, I want you know this is your patty's instrument, right, that's how you

say grandmother and Thummel. And I looked at it, and she noticed that I was so quickly taken by the instrument. I very quickly asked for a pint sized violin of my own, and she went to the store and got me a quarter sized violin. And I was infatuated. I mean, my mom never had to tell me to practice. Every day. I'd rush home from school, go upstairs, open my instrument.

And I assure you, Jay didn't feel that way about everything I was studying in school, but the violin was something that just felt like it came so naturally to me. And so when I was nine years old, and I was that classic kid with really big dreams and no idea how to get there. My mom and I were in New York and now my parents have no connections at this point into the classical music world. And so, you know, my dad's a theoretical physicist. My mom helps

immigrants get green cards in this country. They had no idea how to facilitate, you know, this transition for me. But then my mom is such a fearless go getter. So we're walking by the Juilliard School of Music in New York one Saturday. I happened to have my violin with me, and she said, Maya, why don't we just go in? What do you why don't we just go in. We don't have an invitation, that's why we don't go in. That's nuts. And she's like, let's just go in. Let's

see what what's the worst thing that can happen. I was like, well, i'll tell you the worst thing that can happen. I'm gonna get rejected and it's going to be terrible. And my mom didn't care. She's like, we're going in. So we walk into Juilliard uninvited, and we stumble upon a fellow classmate, and my mom says, hey, would you mind if my daughter auditions for your teacher today. I know, you know, we don't have the formal invitation,

but that would be wonderful. And they were so generous and kind, and I auditioned for him and he accessed me into a summer program, and then six months later I auditioned for Juilliard and get accepted. So yeah, I mean, my mom is she sought me so many lessons, but one of them was don't wait for you know that silver plate, just create it right. And so that began my journey of just being so in love with violin. And when I was a teenager, it's a Pearlman asked

me to be as private violin student. And I'm sure a lot of your listeners can relate to this, but when you're in a deeply competitive environment like Juilliard, you don't really know if you have what it takes to succes. And so when Perlman took me on as his student, that was the vote of confidence that I needed, that like, oh,

maybe I do actually have what it takes. And so I was even able to convince my parents that I should you know, I wanted to go pro and they were finally like, okay, fine, you don't have to do the liberal arts education and you can go to a conservatory for college. So I had everyone on board, and then, like you mentioned, when I was fifteen, I had a

son and hand injury. Basically overnight, doctors told me that I could never play the violin again, and as you can imagine, I was just completely despondent because the violin had played such a formative role in my life up until that point. I felt like I was first and

foremost a violinists, right, it was my identity. And you know, there's this interesting insight from cognitive science which says, which is about this concept called identity foreclosure and refers to the fact that we can get really fixed in certain identities, especially in adolescence. I mean, it can carry through into adulthood, but certainly an adolescence, and I fell prey to that. I kind of felt like, for the first time ever, I was asking all these existential questions about myself, like

who am I? You know, who am I without the violin? I'd never thought to ask myself that question before, and in many ways, having being forced to pivot at that moment in my life has given me a much more malleable sense of self, a much more malleable identity, And I think that served me well as i've you know,

endured life's twists and turns. Yeah. Wow, I mean I can't imagine what it feels like to be that age and be told you can't play an instrument again, and you know something that you've built up such a close relationship with over nine years. I mean, tell us about what you were feeling. How did it affect your confidence? Because I'm guessing at that time as well, when your identities wrapped up in being a performer or being a violinist and you have this incredible mentor and then that's

taken away, what does that? What did that feel like? And you know what did that kind of push you towards? What changed about you at that point. I resisted it for a while. I was the impatient teenager that was like, I'm going to get through this. Damn those doctors, I don't care what they say. Well, actually those doctors were super right, and I needed to just have listened to

them from the beginning. But I think what it taught me was something very important, which was it was much more stable and sturdy for me to attach my identity not to a specific thing, but to the traits of that thing that lit me up. And so when I dug deeper, I realized, you know, my child brain thought, well, I love the violin. I love the instrument, I love the way it feels, I love the sounds it produce.

But actually, Jay, the thing that really got me ticking is the fact that my instrument allowed me to forge a close emotional connection with people, almost effortlessly. So imagine I'm a kid, right nine years old. I go on to a stage. There's thousands of people in the audience that I've never met before, they've never met me, and within moments, I'm allowing them to feel something they've never

felt before. Right, we have some sort of emotional intimacy and bond that's forming between us just because of the music that I'm playing. And I realize, like, well, that's what I'm actually passionate about. It's human connection. I mean, that's probably why I responded so much to your warmth, right, because that's genuinely what makes me tick in life, is connecting with other human beings, trying to understand what motivates them,

what pains them, what brings them joy. And I feel like that led me down this path to studying the human mind in all of its intricacies, right, the science behind the human mind. And in many ways it led me to this new podcast. I've been creating a slight change of plans where I have this license now to go into a room and interview people like Hillary Clinton and Tiffany Hattish and others and say, Hey, Hillary apropo of Nothing, what is your biggest insecurity, what's the hardest

moment of your life? You know, you can cut through all the pleasantries and just really dig deep. And I think when I look over the course of my life, that is the common thread. It's this deep design are to emotionally connect with those around me. And I've just

try to find that in other pursuits. And you know, for those listening, I feel like, if you're going through a hard time where you're being forced to pivot, try to identify what features or traits of things that you like and then try to engage in an exploration to figure out where else they might exist in other domains. Yeah, I'm so glad you raised that point. I think that's so powerful, Like we get so obsessed with activities and

identities shaped around activities, and it's not about activities. It's about the aspects, the subtle things, the role you get to play, the relationship you have with that thing that makes a difference. I often say to people, let people think like your purpose is to be a speaker, or your purpose is to be a podcast, And it's like, well, none of those are a purpose. They are vehicles and they are platforms and their modes of sharing a message. But the purpose is the reason why you do it

and your intention and what you put into it. I think we all get so lost with like, well, what's the activity that I want to do? So I love how you broke that down and simplified that, but you also gave me a few good You also gave me a few good questions to ask you now, based on what you've been asking other people. So I'm going to be using them. One you I was going in that direction.

I wanted to know since then, what do you think is the most difficult experience you've personally gone through since then? So that was obviously a big thing at fifteen sixteen, What since then has been probably the biggest personal challenge that you feel you've been faced with. I think the

biggest challenge one faces is growing into themselves. I think for me, if I were to summarize the biggest challenge in my own life, it is the acceptance of certain parts of my personality that I wish were different, that I just need to be okay with and to manage in life in spite of those things. Right, an example,

I'm incredibly impatient. I want everything to have happened yesterday, and that impatience can have lots of negative I mean, my mom would always say when I was a kid that she's like, before I know what, you were running across the street, you wait for the light to turn. She's like, I was always terrified something was going to happen to you. So I've always seen my impatience as being a negative thing. But then I think about the parts of my life in which that impatience has really

served me well. So a good example of this is so quick backstory. So, as I mentioned to you, I discovered cognitive science and I ended up becoming an academic. So I did my PhD, I did my post STOC and cognitive neuroscience, and I remember there was this moment I was in the basement. I was at Stanford at the time, so I was in the basement of an fMRI laboratory and I was scanning this guy's brain. I'd probably been in this windowless room in the basement for

about five hours at this point. So he comes in and within moments I'm peering into his brain, and I'm thinking to myself, given my personality, I feel like the order of operations is a little off here, Like I don't know whether this guy has kids. I don't know what he's passionate about. I don't know if he has children, I don't know his favorite ice cream flavor. Is these are important questions, jan I don't know anything about him, and yet I'm peering into his brain, which feels really intimate.

So I remember thinking to myself, I'm too social for this, like I need to pivot in some way. And I didn't know what to do, because what does the post talk and cognitive neuroscience do other than become an academic, become a professor. So I ended up talking with my undergraduate mentor who I know, you know, Laurie Santos, Yeah, yeah, I know that. Yeah, she's one of my closest friends and has been an incredible mentor to me ever since freshman year of college. I can share the story having

met at some point later. But anyway, UM, I call her out and I'm saying to her, Laurie, So the thing I've been doing for the last ten years, I'm kind of in like a JK moment before I no longer want to be doing this. But what do I do next? So I try to become a general management consultant, Like,

I don't understand what what I can do. So she tells me, Maya, Um, there's this incredible work happening in the White House right now where they are using insights from our field, from the science of decision, and it

is changing people's lives. So, for example, they are changing the default settings in this school lunch program that helps low income kids eat lunch every day, and instead of it being an opt in program, they're making it an opt out program so that all eligible kids are automatically enrolled without the need for a burdensome application or this stigma associated with signing up your kids for a public

benefits program. And now parents only need to take a step if they want to actively unenroll their kids from the program. So as a result of that change, twelve and a half million more kids were eating school at lunch every day. So I'm thinking to myself, So this gets to the impatient's feast, right, thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, I want to have that job. But that job doesn't exist. It just was work that was happening.

There's no role for a behavioral scientist. And so I go home that day and Laurie makes you know some connections for me, and you fly to DC and walk into the wild. It's like you've walked into Julia. That's that's what happens. Rights actually pretty close to that, Jay, I send a cold email to an Obamba advisor. He doesn't know who I am. I'm riding off the cotails of famous people like Laurie Santos and Cass Sunstein who wrote the book Nudge, and they're helping guide the way.

But I basically interview with the White House official. Two days after I send this email, I moved to DC without having a formal offer letter. I remember, I sold everything California other than my bike. I signed a one year lease in DC. And I was like, I'm here whether you all like it or not, because I need

to be here. So that impatience kicked in. And then it really kicked in when I was at the White House, where I have this big, grand goal to build a team of behavioral scientists and I wasn't given a mandate or a budget to do so, and that impatient personality really helped me thrive there, where I refused to take no for an answer. I pushed people every day. I

was like, everyday matters in this administration. I feel like accepting the parts of myself that I haven't always liked and trying to figure out if there are silver linings to those traits. Like my husband and I will often do this even in our relationship, right where I'll be like, I'll be like, Jimmy, you're being too much of a people pleaser, Like you need to just say no to the person, and he'll remind me. He'll be like, you know, Maya, the fact that I can be a people pleas are

sometimes it does make me a very loving husband. You know, I am very kind. I'm like, oh, you are really kind and loving. You're so right, And so I think my husband Jimmy has helped me. If we can do that with each other, remind each other that traits are complicated and complex, and they have pros and cons, and we should give ourselves the same compact. You know, we should. We should constantly remind ourselves. Um. And he you know, he was teaching me by role modeling it with himself. UM,

I should remember that there are also some pros. I love that comist. He's actually a software engineer. Okay, right, okay. I was just like, is he like, you know, she's very wise? I feel like he is a behavioral conomists

at times? Can I can I ask you that same question, though, which is is there a trait in you where you didn't always embrace it, but you've learned over time that there might be a You know, it's really interesting when when I think about I'd have to stop to think about it if there's a trait I feel that way about. When you started talking about that, the first thing that came to my mind was and I've been feeling this

a lot lately, and I've been talking about it. It's this idea of when I lived as a monk, I was trying so hard to be a monk, and now I've realized that that's just one part of me. I love being a messenger through media. I love being a thinker, I love being a content creator. I love being so much more than that. Yeah, and that's such a big part of my identity. It still is a massive part of my life. It's it's the foundation of who I am,

but it's not all of me. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a married man, and I love being married, and I love being an entrepreneur, and I love strategy and marketing, and I love all these things, which wouldn't You wouldn't think a monk likes all those things. And so it took me a lot of time to kind of unravel what that identity was, where I saw myself as such a long part of my life or such a deep part of my life as a monk, and now to

realize that's a part of me and not all of me. Yeah, And I think so I'm trying to think of a trait to give you a more specific answer. I think I've always been pretty self assured, and so I think I've turned stuff probably earlier than people would. And that's either that's my illusion or delusion, and I'm okay with that, but I'd say that intensity. I always talk about intensity

as one of my traits. I'm a very intense person if I'm focused and very laser focused, and that causes a lot of issues because I can have tunnel vision. I can be completely dedicated and obsessed with something and not care about everything else for that time. But I've also realized that's what helps me learn and grow quicker

and accelerate and move forward. And so I actually think if you look at every one of your traits, You're right, you'll find a prone, a con for every trait we have, and you have to I think we have to learn how to use them in a way that helps us serve ourselves and serve others, as opposed to use them in a way that forces other people to have to change. And I think that's the part. I think that's the part that I'm becoming more and more conscious of as

a trait. Is the trait of being extremely focused on something shouldn't stop you from being aware of other people's feelings. And I think if I can get that subtlety right, then I'm going to win. Yeah, But if I don't have that subtlety. I've worked with so many clients that that's exactly the subtlety they didn't have, and then that led to destruction of their families, their marriage, their personal lives, or whatever it may have been in the pursuit of

greatness in a certain regard. Does that make sense? It does make sense, And it's making me think too. As I'm listening to you share this with me, I think, well, of course you should embrace that, Jay, that's what makes you so special and unique and rare. And of course there's a silver lining, like, look at your life, look at the positive impact you've had on so many And what I'm realizing is that I so effortlessly see other people through that lens. But because I think it's people

as humans, we're just so hard on ourselves. We rarely turn it around and say, well, why don't you view yourself with that same complexity? Yes, and maybe that's been the hardest thing I've gone through, is trying to use that same amount of compassion with myself. Yeah. And if it's not our place to say, I also think it's it's the difference in gender and men and movement. Two. I do think that I have male privilege in that you are just a bit more self assured and more

confident because it's been reaffirmed. Whereas from the studies I've read, and you could probably speak to this a million times more than I can, but women are more likely to look at a job description and think, oh, my gosh, I can't do seven out of those ten things, whereas a man will look at it and go, oh, but I could do three out of ten. That's good enough, and that kind of discrepancy. I don't know how you feel about that and how that affects it, but yeah, no,

I definitely. I mean, the studies are really compelling showing that there are disparities, and you know, it's reminding me nobody's immune to those effects. So remember so for my podcast, a slight change of plans, you know, the honor of interviewing Hillary Clinton, And what that interview taught me is

that Hillary Clinton didn't come out of the box. Hillary Clinton, she had to go through her own personal journey and development and also resolve a lot of the insecurities and anxieties that you and I are talking about right now. So I remember she was telling me, she was sharing this story about how she had just left the White House as First Lady, and she'd always been tethered to her husband's identity, right, that had been the role that she had played, and she was very productive in that role,

but it wasn't her role. And she so fervently believed that women should run for offices and be in leadership positions and be in power. So she was motivating all these people around her to do that. And one day she was an event promoting women in sports and this basketball player leaned down and whispered into her ear, dared to compete, missus Clinton, dare to compete. And she said she was astonished in that moment because no one had

said it to her like that. But she realized, suddenly, maybe I'm too afraid to do the thing that I've been asking everybody else to do. Maybe I don't think I'm good enough. Maybe I don't know if I have what it takes and if people will like me and if I have the right presence for politics. And that was so powerful to hear from someone like her. You know, wow,

even Hilary at times felt this. And then to see where she's come from there, I mean talk about inspiring, right, she was able to overcome all of that and go on to accomplish incredible things. And I think that experience showed me that we all have this kind of I mean, it sounds so cliche, but it's so true. It's like we all have some degree of self doubt and it's just a matter of finding ways to manage that and learning from other people's experiences. Absolutely, I want to backtrack

a bit too. First of all, having South Asian parents in being and car to play the violin and go to Juliard and then like, just your whole journey. I'm fascinated by your parents. Sound amazing, You're wonderful. Tell us a bit about what it was like, Like, what did you feel that other children in the South Asian dasper when cars in the same direction. Did you feel like an anomaly? I want to want to hear about how

you felt on that journey because it's very unique. I'm not sure whether other South Asian kids were falling that journey at that time because I grew up Yeah, I was going to say, I grew up in a primarily Caucasian hometown and we were one of the few families of color anywhere. How did that feel like? Tell me a bit about that, because I think that the South Asian experience in England is very different than the South

Asian experience in the US. So yeah, I think I was so eager to assimilate everything from you know, I have like textured hair, and I remember going to a birthday party and all the girls with the smooth, shiny hair got got like the pretty scruncheese. I was given a headband. It was like the one girl that didn't. Yeah, I mean clearly I'm over this Jay. It's not like I still remember anything, no, no no, no, totally, but it's

like these small things. Um, I just so desperately wanted to be um like the girls that I saw at school. And you know, my dad remembers when i'd write all these stories as a kid, I wouldn't use Indian names for my characters. It was always Catherine and Lindsay and Katie and you know and so um. It took me a long time to really feel comfortable in my skin.

And I think one thing that actually helped me on that front is well, one, I'm one of four kids, so I always felt a huge sense of tribalism, like it's my family against the world. You know, um and my parents were always deeply proud of being Indian, and I loved that. I mean, especially looking back. You know, it's like, my mom is a brilliant chef. She made us amazing meals. At the time, I was like, we should just get pizza, and I'm like, oh my god. I had gourmet food in my home growing up. How

could I not have appreciated it? Um, So, they were fiercely proud of being Indian, and while I rejected it as a child, I think I grew into it and then you know, now I'm fiercely proud to be Indian. And it's funny. One of the jobs that I had right before grad school was working at Sesame Street and I worked on the Indian version of the show, and yeah, there's an Indian version of what I love about Sesame

Street JA. A lot of people don't know that that is that it changes young children's minds in ways that families can embrace. So, for example, in this was back in the day. I don't know the show how the show's evolved, but in the South African version, the main Muppet character is HIV positive. She's always taking her medications

on time. It's reducing the stigma around HIV. And then in Israel, the main muppets one is an era of Muslim and ones that Israeli Jew and they're best friends and they both love hummus and they bond in all these ways. And in the Indian version, the main character Chunky is always wearing her backpack. She's committed to going to school. It's all about, you know, young girls striving

in school. And so what I did was I worked domestic kate the Indian version of the show so that families in the United States could have it, so that young kids growing up could feel the sense of pride that I wish I had felt as a youngster, of it only came later, so they could grow up hearing languages like Hindi in their homes and grow up seeing young kids, young muffets, eating Indian food, eating with their hands, you know. And so yeah, I mean it was a

very interesting experience for my parents to come here. And you know, my older three siblings thought a lot of exposure to thumble our mother tongue. By the time I came around, you know, they were like, oh, I think the kids should just assimilate, you know, like, no everyhere, we're all just figuring this out for ourselves. But I did spend my graduate years in England. I did my defail, and it did feel like the salt Asian experience is very different there. So I don't know if any anything

I've shared resonates or doesn't resonate with your experience. Yeah, no, I think a lot of it does. Actually, like the idea of I think in your early years to kind of be embarrassed or shy or unconfident about you Indian experience are like when my mum would make me an Indian lunch to take to school, like I would eat it in the corner and hope that no one could smell it or whatever. And now I feel the same ways you do. My mom made amazing food, and you know,

you're right with gourmet meals at home. And I'm I was when you were saying that, all I was thinking it was a jossa and I'm a massive fan, so I was, you know, But the idea of just like starting to understand the value of that culture and then sharing it out. But I love what you was sharing about sesame story. I didn't. I had no ideas, so I wish I had that to watch too. I didn't have any of that to watch when I was growing up, so I can imagine the impact of that. Tell tell

us about you, know, you've been studying human behavior. That's your fascination. It's you, it's your deep passion. You've done it at the highest levels and are doing it at the highest levels. What's something that you've learned through that about human behavior that scares you about you? Like, what's something that's kind of like difficult or uncomfortable as a researcher to come across and then you're trying to figure out or reconcile how to hopefully aid it or cure it.

That's a fascinating question. I've never been asked that before, and it's such an important one to ask because we have to be honest about the human condition and human nature. I think the scariest thing, given the state of the research right now, is that while it can be easy to inspire behavior change in people, it is incredibly hard

for people to change their minds. And I think as a culture, as a society, we are experiencing this in spades right now, in a time when things feel incredibly divided and divisive and you know, we can't even have a normal Thanksgiving dinner anymore, Right, It's tragic. What I've learned is that, you know, we know that people can disagree even on empirical matters, right, like is climate change real? Or is a coronavirus real? Or does gun control reform

actually reduce skun depths? And it's tempting for people who haven't or empirical mind to think, well, I'll just give them more facts. This is just the result of an information gap, right. I can easily fill the gap just by showing them the data, showing them the evidence. But we know from research that this is missing a huge part of the puzzle. And the piece that's missing is people do not generate their attitudes and beliefs just based

on facts. They generate their attitudes and beliefs about the world in part based on their membership to different groups and the values those groups hold. And so there's this really interesting study. It's actually from the fifties, and it involved controversial referee calls during a football game, and they had people who were fans of opposing teams watch this footage of these controversial calls, and even though they were

watching exactly the same footage. Their assessments of these calls vary considerably based on their group membership, based on their team loyal So those people who were fans of one team tended to feel like the unfair calls were in their direction and vice versa. Right, And what's astonishing to me about that research, and the reason I mentioned it is it's not like these folks are consciously aware. Oh, I know that I'm not able to be biased. I know that I'm seeing a warped version of reality. Of

course not this is their reality. And it shows how potent these group memberships are, that they can actually affect people's perception of reality. And so what that means in practice is that when it comes to bridging divides, we need to use different techniques than just throwing information at people.

One of my favorite findings from behavioral economics to your point about whether we can ameliorate some of these concerns comes from a domain called moral reframing, and it's research that shows that it's much more effective to hold people's values as fixed and present an argument or present a position in ways that affirm those values rather than threaten them. So, for example, if you are trying to convince a conservative

to care more about the environment. You might frame it as caring about the environment means preserving our nature's beauty, our natural beauty, Right, it is patriotic to care about the environment. You're talking with a liberal, you might focus on the fact that investing in climate change reform can actually help elevate those with socioeconomically underprivileged status, right, it can help them thrive. And so in both cases, it's

the same policy objective. You're trying to get people to care about the climate, but you are taking to account what their existing value systems are. So if they don't feel that in agreeing with you, they're threatening their tribal membership. And that helps me build a lot of empathy for people right now, because let's take the coronavirus. Right, it's so easy to think it's just a mask, like just

wear when already I promise you'll make you safe. But when you look at it through the lens of psychology, through cognitive science, you realize wearing a mask for a person can carry huge symbolic significance, and it could potentially threaten the relationships in their life that they hold most sacred.

And so when you have that in mind. I just think it's the in general, I think studying the human mind is the greatest empathy builder that exists out there, because the minute you uncover why it is that a person has a particular belief, then there's an element of understanding that allows you to approach the person differently and for them to approach you differently potentially, and for you to try to make to meet halfway. You know, yeah,

I couldn't agree more. That was a beautiful answer, by the way, And you know, as as scary as it is, you are right that the study of the human mind is potentially the only antidote because then you start to see how you'll call it in your own trap yourself.

And I think that's the hardest part. As you were saying with those fans, they couldn't see that they were being really biased or you know, that they were getting lost on one side because of their affiliation, and they just couldn't see that, and not being able to see that, not being able to step back and be an observer and take your take the home jersey off, take the

away jersey off, and just be the referee yourself. And it's that's almost like we need referee vision, like you need to be able to see the game as hopefully an unbiased referee word to be able to truly make the right cause. Sorry, yeah gone, Yeah No, I completely agree with that, And I also think the wonderful thing about being in my field is that it is serving up solutions and is giving us tactics that we can use in our day to day life when we converse

with those we disagree with. So I was talking about this with Adam Grant, who I had on my podcast recently. A love Adam, huge fan, He's wonderful, And I was talking about how I had interviewed Darryl Davis for my podcast, and Darryl Davis is a black jazz musician who was approached by a member of the Ku Klux Klan when he was performing at a bar one night and the guy at the bar said, Hey, I love your music.

Man's it's incredible. And then Daryl finds out that this man is from the clan, and he starts to ask himself a series of questions like how is it that these people can hate me without even knowing me? And so he ends up pivoting in his life. Talk about a slight change of plans and ends up inspiring hundreds

of people to leave white supremacy groups. And it's an astonishing story of how someone who has every card stacked against them, even in terms of personal safety, having these conversations, conducting these interviews with members of the clan could find a way to penetrate their minds and ultimately get them to make one of the greatest leaps we can see in terms of my set change, which is going from believing in absolute vitriol to turning their backs on the clan.

And what I loved about my interview with him Jay is that so much of what he was sharing is corroborated by the science, so we know when it comes to changing people's mind certain tactics are very effective. You want to show genuine curiosity for why that person has their beliefs. You want to increase your question to statement ratio, so you're asking them, well, how did you arrive at this belief in the first place, and what evidence would in theory change your mind? What would you have to

learn in order to think differently about this? And one reason I love that question is that it presupposes that they ought to be willing to change their mind in the face of evidence, which is not something we can always take for granted. And then there's other techniques, like you try to affirm that you're not questioning their morals, you're not questioning their values or their humanity. Over the course of the conversation, you're just simply trying to understand

why it is that they believe in something. And then I think the most powerful one, and this is something Darrell shared with me, is he doesn't like to say that he changed people's minds. He likes to say that he inspired them to change their own minds. And the science there corroborates that beautiful, poignant statement, which is you want to recruit their own sense of agency. You want to make them feel that it was them who decided

to change their minds. You arm them with new perspectives, with information, with your own personal story, but let them wrestle with all that. And then the sturdiness of a mindset change that a person themselves inspires is far greater than trying to impose a set of beliefs on someone. Yeah, I could agree more. I often find that when when we're presenting something to someone and they're not taking up to it, we think it's because of their weakness. Yea.

Often it's our weakness in the presentation. Right. It's like, if something's not been clearly articulated or presented to someone or in a way they can digest it, they may not remember it and they may not understand it. But the response ability of that for so much more on those of us that feel we know and are sharing this new way or alternative path. And I've found that so much so in you know, the work I do when I'm working with people on which effectively is changing

their behavior. And I very early on a lot of people would ask me, like, don't you get frustrated when someone doesn't start meditating after you've been telling them about meditation whatever? Maybe, And I'm just like, I don't because I know how long it took me to start meditating. Safe to tell you now that I don't meditate even though I don't, because I know you're going to be empathetic. Yeah, no, exactly, because it's just, first of all, I know how long

it took me. Second of all, I know I know how hard it is. And I've seen this research on people's minds and I haven't done it, but I've seen it and read it, and I can also just recognize that I still haven't said something that lets the penny drop for them, right, Like I I there's somewhere where I need to go. And usually what I've found is it's not what I say or even I do, It's

an experience they need to have. And that's kind of the question I've always been asking, is what experiences this person not had yet that will help them change their mind, Because if they have that experience, then that's theirs. Kind of what you're saying, like, then that's theirs to keep. But if their experience is only through what I tell them,

then that's not their experience. It's my experience. And so for me, it's always been about creating and facilitating experiences and experiments for people to help them get their own research and data and their own conclusion rather than saying or doing anything. And so I'm always fascinated by how you can use experiments and experiences to help people have a new, a newfound solution that they didn't even comprehend before. Yeah,

I love the way that you just said it. That's my experience, not theirs, And it reminds me, you know, one of the women that I interviewed for a slight change of plans. Her name is Megan Phelps Roper, and she grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. I don't know if you're familiar with this church, but it is the othern poverty Law Center I think refers to them as the most rabid hate group of America. So they

are homophobic, anti Semitic. Basically, they hated everybody who's not a member of the church, and they do abhorrent things like show up at military gay military funerals. They wanted to protest the Sandy hook shot. I mean, it's horrible. And Megan grew up in this church. Her grandfather was

the founder, and she was absolutely indoctrinated. I mean she was steeped in the ideology from a very very young age, and she grew up to become one of those one of their most ardent, vocal advocates for the church, and people engage end up engaging with her on Twitter actually in this very compassionate way that you and I have been talking about, where they tried to just help her understand that maybe there were a few holes here and there.

That's how they know. The very slow process and they would reaffirm her humanity, and they would just point out some inconsistencies, like the moral reframing stuff that I was. They wouldn't say, Megan, what you believe is crazy. They would say, you know, actually there's a few issues here and there, and what she says. So she ended up leaving the church in her mid twenties, which meant leaving her family behind and leaving basically everything she ever believed

to be true behind. And I asked her this question, right, I said, how do you think about your family, right, and the fact that they haven't left, like what gives you hope? How do you think about your former self?

You know? And she said, I don't try to detach myself from my former self, even though I disagree one million percent with what that former self was like, because I can then feel close to the person that I was, And the person that I was was someone who was persuaded by absolutely terrible ideas and then one day saw the light. And that gives me hope that if my family experiences the same thing that I experienced, if people treat them and exactly the way they treated me, maybe

there's hope for them too. So it's exactly what you just described, where she knows I can't just I'm not able to just tell them that this is wrong. But I'm hopeful because I saw that journey in myself. I am a convert, and so I believe that if I can just set up the right environments for them to get that kind of exposure, they could potentially lead to Yeah. It's that idea of like people don't have a remote control that has the fast forward about it on life,

so you can't see the future implications of your current action. Yeah, and you can see around you, but it never feels you. It never feels like it's about you. And so the reason why it resonates so strongly with me is because and we spoke about this a bit earlier before offline, but I was someone who experimented with a lot of drugs when I was young, but I never got addicted, obsessed, or never really got into doing something for a long

period of time. And the only reason why that happened is I met one of my friend's aunt who was an addict, and I saw her have a fit in front of me, and it was such a traumatic experience where we thought she was going to die and she didn't, thankfully. We you know, we call the ambulance and everything else.

But it was like it was such a like traumatic live event of seeing someone who has an addict to a particular substance to then go through that in front of us as young men, and for me to go, Okay, I'm never messing around with this stuff ever again. And it was like an experience. And it's the same way I think about what you were saying earlier, that facts don't work, Like we know, every cigarette pack has the

label and it's never worked. Like you know, that doesn't stop people, But when someone loses someone in their life, or when someone hears about someone getting an unfortunate diagnosis because of one of their habits, it starts to change their mind. Tell me about something that we talked about, traits that you've started to see both sides of Do you think that works for everything? Or have there been certain behavioral changes you've made in your life that you

felt just had to be transformations for you? So I think for me, exercise has been the thing that I really had to introduce behavioral changes around because I've seen I almost don't do it for fitness reasons, Jay, I do it from my mind, and it is so powerful for my mind, like the days that I work out versus the days that I don't feel totally different to me. And I've actually used some behavioral change insights to motivate me to exercise. I'll share one of those with you.

It's an insight that was generated by my friend Katie Miltman, who's a professor who studies change, and it's called temptation bundling. And the logic behind this is to pair up an undesirable activity with a desirable activity, and you're only allowed to do the desirable activity if it accompanies the undesirable one. So one of my favorite things in life is to discover a new pop song. Okay, I'm into all of it.

Like course, Taylor Swift, I guess Casey musgraises and pop. She's someone I interviewed for my podcast and I love her music, but she's you know, she's genre defying. Yeah, but I love discovering a new song. But I know because of the way the brain adapts, that I'll only get like thirty or forty really good listens out of a song before it becomes old hat, right, and so

I save it. I only listen to these songs when I'm on the treadmill or I'm lifting weights, or I'm on the elliptical, and my poor husband, because he'll be like, oh my gosh, we're cooking dinner, let's play the new Casey Mustgraise album. And I'm like, we do not play recreationally, Okay, it needs to be saved for these sacred moments when

I'm working out. It's been wonderful to like, you know, even though I study change for a living, even though a behavioral economist, I fall prey to all the same human biases that we all fall prey to, of course, and so I'm using these strategies every single day in my life to try to optimize in and reach some of these longer terms. I love no one, So wait, is that reasons that she says you're only gonna get thirty to forty plays out of a song? Is that

reasons that no, this is just the my formula. I have no idea what it is for you, Jay. I think given you your Monk days, you're probably closer like a hundred because you'll see two mentions of the song that I can't possibly appreciate given your death and my relative superficiality. Um, but for me, it's about thirty and then I've done. That is such a no. But you know, that's brilliant. I love that. That is the most interesting,

unique piece of advice that I think. You know that that's going to help so many people who I can imagine everyone now talking to their partner or their friend today going I turn that song off right now. I'm only using it for those painful moments exactly. That's genius. I love that, And and that's a Mayashanka original special. I love that it's brilliant. Tell us a bit about what you're doing on a day to day basis. I find, like, you know, you have this role at Google and you're

studying human behavior on a day to day basis. I find there's two questions here. The first question is, tell me what you do on a day to day basis. What's fascinating about it? Because I have no idea what you do on a day to day basis. The more interesting question for you probably will be the second one, which is what is an area that you think behavioral economists haven't really uncovered or understood yet? Because so when

I've read books about behavioral science, behavior economists. It's been about the relationship between money and human behavior, the relationships between everything from lying and stealing in human behavior through to you know about the different character traits or the idea of giving and service and human behavior. But I'm wondering, what's an area that you're fascinated to uncover and you think we're just scratching the surface on we don't actually

know a lot about. Yeah, I love that question. I think one area, and this is actually something I was also talking about with Katie Milkman, is how durable some of these behavioral change insights are. Yes, such a good one. It's so hard because behavior change that's a one time thing, like the decision to sign up for retirement or get your COVID vaccine or remember to call your mom on her birthday. That's a maybe a once a year type of commitment or maybe a once in a lifetime type

of commitment, and then you're done. And from a public policy perspective, we become excellent at this. So I remember when I was working in the Obama White House, I was able to work on a lot of these nudges where you shift just one thing and then the person's life potentially has changed forever. So I talked to you about the school lunch program. Right, you make that one change and now millions of kids are getting lunch at

school every day. Or I worked with military service members in order to help them get enrolled in retirement savings plans, and again that's like a one time decision and then they're done. The ones that are much harder are the day to day behaviors where we have to build these habits over time and sustain those habits over time. And we just haven't cracked the nut fully on how to encourage long term behavior change on the things we value most.

And that's because we're human, Jay, Right, We're fallible, We fall prey to temptation left and right, and it's just very, very hard to be a highly disciplined person. Right. That's probably one of the reasons why you recommend everyone that they meditate, because I can help with sustained behavior change, but it would be wonderful to see additional innovations within

that space. Yeah. I love hearing you say that, because I've found that, at least through my own mechanisms and work, I've kind of found like a trifecta that gets closest and the challenges that a lot of behavioral changes you said is not around anything that is consistent. And so for the three levels that I've found that at least in my work that really do help people are coaching, consistency,

in community that have a massive impact on people. And we built a program three years ago now that was centered around these three areas, and through our research and studies, we've been able to see how people have become happier

and more successful, more financially free through the program. Yeah, and of course we're dealing with we're dealing with thousands of people, not millions of people in that program, but it's phenomenal to see how those three things together, coaching, consistency, and community are so powerful that coaching gives you that inside and advice. Consistency is the one I think is ignored in everything. It's like, like you said, you do that one nudge and that doesn't create a cascading life

changing effect. And so that consistency of weekly check ins and then finally the community aspect of having a group of people that you're doing it with has been so powerful. But yeah, tell me what you're doing on a day to day basis and what you're discovering and learning. I think the consistency piece that you just mentioned is really interesting, and there is one potentially powerful antidote for this that comes out of behavioral economics research, and that's called the

fresh start effect. And it's the idea that when we have these really big life changes, these big milestones like we move to another town, or we buy a home for the first time, or we get married, or we have kids, or we take a new job, those moments in time can serve as breaks from our past and all the habits that we used to have. In many ways, we can take on a new identity in this new role.

And what research shows is that people are far more effective at introducing a new kind of consistency or sustain behavior change when their surroundings are physically different. They don't have some of the same cues and reminders every day that might inspire them to, you know, eat the chocolate cake versus the fruit salad, and um. They're commute to work is different, so now maybe they're gonna walk versus

take their car um. And So I do believe in the power of fresh starts, and you don't necessarily to wait for a major milestone. Sundays can serve as fresh starts, like certainly January first conserve as a fresh start. Um

every Monday is a fresh start for me exactly. But we found, for example that military service members, again this is work I was doing in the Obama White House, We're more likely to sign up for a time savings plan on the first day of Spring when they reminded that it was a new beginning and a new start

to their future lives. And so I really do believe that if if your listeners are struggling with that kind of consistency and are looking to build a new set of habits that better aligned with their long term goals, look out for that moment, those moments in your life where you're breaking from the past and you can re establish herself and the kinds of behaviors that you aspire to associate yourself with can be more present. Yeah, I

can agree. Well, I think I've always used a new job, hile, moving to a new town, or joining a new group as being an opportunity to redefine my identity in that space of who I want to be. So I got introduced to spirituality, like just on the cusp of leaving high school and going to college. And so college is where I got to redefine who I was, whereas at high school I was a rebel and troublemaker and all the rest of it. And then all of a sudden, I went to college and I was like the kid

who meditate and everything else. And it was so great for me because I was no longer held down by that baggage of the identity I had crafted for myself

where people expected me to be a certain way. And then of course, after leaving being a monk and coming back into the world, it was easier to always come back and be like, oh, I don't go to that, or I don't drink or I don't do this, because I'd had this life experience, whereas if I would have joined the corporate world before, maybe I would have had a very different experience. So I completely can relate to so much of that advice. Yeah, I love seeing this

insight play out in your life. I'm wondering, you know, when you went to college, was it a really intentional action to change, Like, yeah, were you seizing that moment? It was? It was because I think I'd created such a role that I played at high school where I was, like I said, the rebel, the troublemaker, the person who was a funny drunk like I just had a role that I'd created. It was a role. It wasn't me.

It was just just an identity that I enjoyed being because people enjoyed that version of me, and none of my and I took gap year before I went to college, which was great because all my friends went off to their respective colleges and lived their first year lives and all the rest of it. And I went to a college where none of my school friends went, and so I had a complete blank slate when no one knew who I was and there was no history, and I

could completely reframe who I wanted to become. And so I ran a philosophical society every week at college, and I meditated, and everyone would come to me to learn these skills and techniques I was learning from monks, and it was almost like I could be the person I wanted to be. And I think that helps so much. You know, this reminds me of another insight from behavioral economics.

It's called identity priming, and it refers to the fact that our behaviors often aligned with the identities, the social identities that we either associate ourselves with now or aspire

to associate ourselves with. And I think your experience underscores the importance of, especially when you're young, not allowing people to give you labels, because the moment you're given a label the rebel, funny, drunk, whatever it is, you feel some degree of pressure to assimilate to that or to ensure that your behaviors are aligning with that identity day

to day. And part it's just to reduce cognitive dissonance within yourself, right you want to believe that your identity means something and that you're living it out every day.

And you know this was true in when I was talking with Darryl Davis, who says, you know, it's sometimes it's important to label behaviors as racist versus people as racist if you feel like they're redeemable, that they can change, because if you give people a label, they will carry that with them and it might not facilitate the same

kind of change. And I remember when I was working with the reentry population while at the White House, We're designing guides for people who were leaving prison and you know, the transition back to civilian life can be a very challenging one, but it's also a fresh start in which we want people to tap into their best selves and reach their goals. And we were very careful in this guide book, this transition book, to not refer to people

as former convicts or ex convicts or ex prisoners. Instead we called We made sure that the labels we were using were community members, job seekers. Those kinds of labels are forward looking. You can allow people to use those identities. So, yeah, it's just your your personal experience. Trasitioning from high school to college allows me to see how important it is that we just we don't let others label us, and we also don't label ourselves. Yeah, yeah, and I love that.

I love that how simple, even when you are describing that, just hearing those words changes how you view that person, even for the new people that are going to get to meet them. And I think so many of us are carrying around old labels and old baggage and old identities that we don't want to be anymore. I think, I mean, so many people are like Jo, I don't

want to be this person anymore. But all my friends think I'm this person, and so I love the idea of, you know, at least starting to test who we want to be in new new phases of our life and new places of our life. You've mentioned the podcast throughout the conversation of these amazing conversations that you're having. Tell me about why you decided to start a podcast and why you called it a slight change of plans, because I love the title, but I want to know the

reason for why you did that. Yeah, I think it was part inspired by my personal experience with change, you know, losing the violin at a young age and asking myself all these existential questions about identity. It's in part inspired by my role as a cognitive scientist, right, someone who studies the mind. And I was eager to marry, you know, these two the narrative storytelling part of my life with

the cognitive science part of my life. But the catalyst for this happened in twenty twenty and I was feeling really overwhelmed by the pace of change that was happening around me, and I know everybody was. It was this collective moment in the world where we all so acutely felt a loss of control. We realized how much of an illusion control is, and it was easy to feel intimidated.

That would be the best word I could use to describe my state of mind as someone who loves planning and likes knowing how things are going to end out, and then also seeing all the tragedy around me in the racial upheaval, like it was just it was just a hard, very very hard time. And then I tried to put on my cognitive science hat, and what I realized is, well, the specifics of what twenty twenty through

our way was absolutely unprecedented. Our human ability to navigate changes not in many ways, our minds are built for change, and that's really important for us to recognize because, as you know, as a human civilization, we've done this rodeo many times before, this change thing. But there's no textbook out there with answers. It's not like in the throes of a huge life change, you can go to your textbook and open it up to page ninety and be like, ah, yes,

here's the path that I should take. And so I thought to myself, why don't I try to find people who have been through extraordinary change in their lives? Right? People like Tiffany Hattish and Hillary Clinton and Casey Musgraves and Tommy Caldwell and then just a bunch of people I've either heard about or met in my personal life and hear their reflections and try to mind their stories for insights and lessons that we as listeners can take back into our own lives that might help us think

differently at that change in our own lives. And it has been an absolute joy to make this podcast. I mean, I've never felt more closely aligned with something given who

I am. Remember I told you about the basement of that framer I lab the podcast is the opposite that is actually the thing that I just I mean, I've fallen in love with it, and I think the reason is that you can meet people with two very similar sounding stories, but how they define their change moment will be radically different, the lessons that they learn will be radically different. And so I feel like I mean this

talk about eating a slice of humble pie. I have been so humble doing this podcast because my guests have taught me so much about change that I never would have appreciated absent listening to their stories. And it's been wonderful to go on this expedition with them about how it is people have navigated some of the toughest changes that you can imagine in life. Yeah, no, absolutely, living or not living. Who would be someone that you are fascinated about the amount of changes in their life for

all those transitions in their life. I mean there's always Oprah, That's the obvious one. You know what's interesting, Jay, is that when you meet someone, you don't always appreciate the full depth of their life stories. I'll give you one example. One of the people that I interviewed for this podcast. His name is Scott. He's just a friend and colleague of my husband's. I've had dinner with him once back in twenty nineteen, and he is a self proclaimed health nut.

So he sounds like you and Rabi now right, So he's vegan, He does intermittent fasting, he does high intensity interval training. He adds turmeric and chia seeds to like his food whenever possible. Outlook, we're both Indians, so we know that turmeric is a delicate spice, so if you not pour it on anything, but this guy is adding a turmeric to his food. So if it's in a

book somewhere saying that something's healthy, He's done it. And then in twenty twenty, Scott got a stage four bone cancer diagnosis and within weeks he had to get his right leg amputated. He had to pack up his bags, moved to MD Anderson in Texas do eighteen administrations of chemotherapy. He also had to get a verteber removed from his spine, and I think his tibia was removed from his other leg. Scott's worst nightmare came true. He had literally spent his

entire adult life trying to avoid this outcome. Now I talk to him and I'm interviewing him for this podcast, and he's telling me he's in the throes of it all. When I'm interviewing him, he actually just finished up his treatment yesterday. He says to me, you know, Maya, my worst nightmare came true. But I'm sitting here in my backyard sipping a cup of coffee, and I'm realizing the emotional thermostat has prevailed. I am more or less as happy as I was before the diagnosis. Sure, the bad

moments are worse, I'll give you that. Nause is intense, the pain is terrible. I have moments of fear, but the good moments are just as good. And he said, if I had known that I would respond this way psychologically, I would never have been as fearful of cancer as I had been in the first place. That's so stirring to me. And those are the kinds of insights that I carry with me, you know, because they give me hope and they make me understand just how resilient we

are as people. Not everybody has Scott's story. You know, I'm not sure I would respond in that way, but he didn't think that he would respond in that way. And so I love it when a guy I just had dinner once, you know, I can have this kind of conversation with and he teaches me. He gives me so much wisdom. And another thing he shared with me is he said, you know, I put so much emphasis My identity was so intricately entwined with my fitness up until this point, like I was smart fit Scott, like

those are the two labels. You know, he's like a Harvard grad and all that stuff. And he said, this whole experience is allowing me to see that maybe these traits that I saw so core to my identity are more negotiable than I thought. He's the word negotiable, and I love that he goes, yeah, maybe I can't do a handstand, but like I'm still Scott at the end of the day. And the final lesson that I learned.

While I learned so many lessons, one of the final lessons I learned from Scott's interview was he said, you know, my would be a shame if my body deteriorated, my personality also got worse. So I'm going to use this to become a better person. And to me that was a testament to the fact then this is a trade I see across all my guests us is we are

natural storytellers in our hearts. You know, no matter what you're spiritual or non spiritual beliefs, it is just human nature to try to find meaning and silver linings in adversity and change, to almost justify the randomness of it all. And hearing Scott be so intentional about that growth and saying, look, I need to just make the best of it, I love that, and I think that's that's such a powerful story.

So maybe maybe to your earlier question, I think my dream guest is someone who just teaches me something new helps me see the world through a different bantage point. You know, they don't have to be someone I've already heard of. I just love seeing the world through different lenses. Yeah. Absolutely, I think that's a beautiful answer, and I'm so glad

you shared that journey. I just on Saturday, I got the news that my best friend, who is almost like my brother, who was a monk, he just passed away after suffering with colon kans of four years, but it had spread far beyond his color and it was everywhere, and so he like I don't know how many cycles of chemo he had, like thirty or something like that, and it was just every time he did feel it's

gone away, it had gone somewhere else. And I got to speak to him on the phone about three days before he passed away, and I didn't know obviously, you never know. And I got a message from one of the senior monks who was with him and said, oh, we're just talking about you and we're thinking about you. And so I called him straight away and it was

like he'd gone to London for his treatment. It was like eleven forty pm in London and three forty pm here, so I called him up and I got to be on FaceTime with him, and he was like completely emaciated, like hunched over, but he was smiling, like he just had this massive smile on his face, and he was

like that throughout his whole cancer journey. And I could tell that this was the worst I'd ever seen him, because up until every time I'd seen him, because he was taking treatment, he looked normal, as in not normal, that's the wrong word, but he looked his usual self. This was the first time I'd seen him completely, you know, emaciated and in bed, and he was just smiling away, and we were joking around, and we were both telling each other stories and memories, and he'd lost his voice,

so he could only like really whisper. And the senior Monk knows us birth, so he was kind of helping speak for him and translate for him and add for him. And it was just remarkable to me to see someone at the end of their life be so blissful, and all I could see was bliss that when I spoke at his memorial yesterday, it was the most blissful memorial I've ever I was on zoom, of course, everyone was

there in person, in England. But it was the most blissful memorial I've ever been to because that was him. And that's from what you're saying about Scott. It sounds like a very similar energy of how to deal with this. And you know, while he was at cancer, he was leading charity initiatives to raise funds for cancer, raise awareness

for cancer. He was organizing meditation retreats for cancer patients that were struggling at him so that they could all grow together, because that's what he was doing, So he was extending his practices out to them. Yeah, and he just lived with so much purpose in the last four years and so much service in the last four years. And yeah, that kind of mind is just unbelievable and phenomenal. Like you said, he's not famous, he doesn't have follow us, no one knows who he is. He's not having impacts

on millions of people's lives. But everyone who knew him would say that he changed their life. Yeah what an honored him. Yeah that's friends. Yeah, Yeah, I was very lucky to you know, he was kind enough to be my best bud for a few years. But anyway, when you're talking about Scott, I love that answer because I think it's so true that there were just so many people in the world who are going through enormously difficult things,

and hearing their stories gives us so much faith. Yeah, and in part I almost see my responsibility as uncovering the hidden stories. There's one There's one interview I did just just recently. It was with a guy named Morgan. He was assigned female at birth, and he went through hormone therapy to align his body with his true gender identity, which is male. And for a while, Morgan is feeling intoxicated by the joy and liberation that comes from being

freed from his female body. He's a black man, and he said his joy was punctured when he was confronted with the harsh reality of what it means to be a black man in society. And his first confrontation with this was literally being pulled over by the police in

his grandmother's driveway. And it's an incredibly insightful, thought provoking set of reflections from Morgan, because not only does he share what it means to have gone through this transition and you know, embrace himself, but he ends up joining the force, He ends up becoming a police officer, and

with the goal to reform it. And again, those are the kinds of those are the kinds of stories that I live for, you know, and I want to hear them because I feel like, you know, we talked earlier about how being a cognitive scientist to me is like the greatest empathy builder. Well, if you marry the science with storytelling, it's it's an unbeatable combo in terms of empathy building and just understanding the full range of human experience. And um, yeah, I guess you can probably see it

to my face. People can't see it. But I just love obsessed with having these interviews because I do feel like every single one I learn, it's not even that I learned something new, I learn a new way of interpreting the world around me. It's a perspective shifty and that's I'm sure you find that when you when you interview different people, as it changes the perspective with which you look at the world, and that's an incredible gift

to be given. Yeah, and it's totally unpredictable. Like when we started this conversation, it's I felt different to when I first read about you, and it's different to when now we're coming to the end of our conversation, It's like, we can have so many perceptions about someone and what we expect to learn from them, and I can honestly say that, sitting with you for the past hour, this has been a totally unexpected conversation in a good way.

And I'm like, I think that's the power of getting to listen to stories and listening to people and getting to meet people that you'd never meet before or otherwise, because I think we're so good at and I guess that's where Babor science is so interesting, because we do have to box people to make sense of stuff, but then we need to unbox them to actually make sense

of them. Like it's a it's a weird paradox, right, Like we always put people into categories so that we can make decisions, but then we need to get them out of those to really deeply understand them. And so, you know, I wasn't expecting that our conversation would go down the journey that it has, but that's what's so beautiful about it. And so yeah, I want I want to thank you for you know, doing your podcast. For those of you who haven't listened to it, go and

check out a slight change of plans. It's it's beautiful to hear these stories that you have even been sharing with us on the podcast, and I can't wait for my audience stature go and listen to some of these conversations. I know I'm going to do that because it sounds like you're just speaking to some people who and in a way that you know it's going to be really insightful for people's changing growth but also for their heart.

And I think that's what I love I You're What I love about you from the little time that we've spent together is that it feels like you bring a lot of heart to science and that's rare, Like it's it's very rare. I feel like you're you're bringing your heart into how to help people change how they think. And so, you know, storytelling is one thing, but heartful

storytelling is is even a deeper step. So that's so kind and generous of you to say in such a compliment too, because my hope is that I really can marry you know, science and humanity, I guess right. I mean they're obviously really interconnected, but that has been my goal With a slight change of plans and It's kind of been my goal living, you know, It's like, how do I bring my heart to as many things as

I possibly can. So it was such a pleasure to get to talk with you, jam I'm such a huge fan of your show and I'm just I'm just so grateful for the opportunity. So thank you, Well, thank you may Well. We're not done yet. We end every interview the final five. Oh, this is the fast five round where every question has to be answered in one word or one sentence maximum as sentence I believe, or at least I've made this up as seven words maximum, so I don't know if that's real or not. It's seven

to ten words maximum. So this is your fast five. Your first question is what is the best advice you've ever received? Find amazing mentors? Great? I love that. That's a good one. And you've shared so many wonderful examples of mentors that you've had in your life and absolutely and the amazing impact they've had on you. I'm gonna I'm gonna destroy my rules here, but it's important to do that. Yeah, how do people will find good mentors?

Teach us that? Because you know, I have my own, my own thoughts on this, and I share that a lot with my audience, But I'd love to hear your perspective how people can find good mentors. Yeah, it's a good question. I've never done it intentionally. I've always slipped into the mentee role, almost without realizing it. But my mentors have played a profound role in my life and

the way that it happened. In case this is helpful to folks is I'm always searching for people that I admire and whose life I would love to lead, yeah, you know, and and who's who bring that kind of heart to things because that's something that speaks to me personally for me maya right. And then when I find those people like Laurie Santos, I just I cling to them, you know. I I say, Oh, Laurie, like, you know, addition to you mentoring me, um, can I work in

your lab? Can we get coffee? Can you actually be my lifelong friend? You know? And I think as I've gotten older, one way to do that more effectively is I've just always I mean, everyone has different philosophies on this, but I've always learned I've always blurred the line between colleague and friend and it's irresistible for me. I can't not bring that really personal side of myself to my work, no matter what it is that I'm working on. It's funny.

There was a quick anecdote just sorry, from from my time in you know, Bamba's White House. So the government had just shut down, and there are all these ethics rules about the fact that we couldn't hang out in our quote professional capacity. We could only hang out on our personal capacity because otherwise we'd be violating federal rules. But we were just planning. We're you know, we're all very friendly and we just wanted to hang out as friends.

So I was joking with folks. I was like, ah, I can't wait for all of you guys to see me in my personal capacity. And you know, one of my friends best is like, oh, Maya, you're exactly the same. And then another one of my friends goes, we're still

waiting to see Maya and her professional capacity. So I think that says everything, which is I've larted that line, and I think what ends up happening is I just like naturally, end up becoming friends with the people I admire, and then I find that they can be that they have been just wonderful mentors. But it's always been I know this might be unsatisfying for listeners to be like, oh, why did it have to be an organic process for you buy? I want the like one, two, three checklist?

But I think that's kind of the only way I articul genuine. You know, you really want to be friends with them because you're genuinely curious about the way they think, in the way that they live. Yeah, I love that, and I love that that's your authentic, genuine way that it's happened. That's beautiful. I think one of the most amazing things for me is that I genuinely believe you

can be mentored by people you've never met. And so I've spent my life studying the lives, the words, the teachings of so many people that I admire that are no longer alive, and simply sitting with their biographies and their autobiographies and listening to every interview and watching every TV show they went on or whatever they did, just looking at the records of their life. There's often times where I'll sit there and be like, well, what would

that person do with? There is an answer, It's somewhere there and I've loved that because I would have loved to have been mentored by Martin Luther King or Steve Jobs or some of these people that I never got to meet. And I can be mentored by the people that met them, or I can be mentored by them through their own lives if I studied them deeply enough. And of course I agree with you that I'd say any mentors that I've had in reality have not been

calculated decisions. It's I agree with you, It's always been very natural. So yeah, I love that you actually reminded me of something. I'm totally going off here that you're fast live is you reminded me of something. You asked me that question about what traitors changed, and you said something there that actually triggered something you said asking people to be my lifelong friend. So I've I've always been very much warm, my heart on my sleeve kind of person.

I've always been that way because my mum raised me that way, and I always was honest with people, and often you were. You know, often when you're that as a teenager, it's not a strength. It's seen as a weakness, like you're weird or you're strange or you're you're needy,

or you're desperate, or whatever it may be. And I never let go of it because I realized I would rather say what I really want to say to someone and then let it be whatever the result is, versus not tell them the truth and then realize we could have been best friends. And so till this day, I've got some of my closest friends in my life who when I got to know them, the first thing I said to them was like, I really want to be friends with you as as a thirty year old man

I loved I do the same thing. I think it takes people with back then. I'm like, look, I may as well just be straightforward. You can say no to this, And I'm so okay with someone saying yeah, actually, I feel like I'm getting a much more honest take on like whether this is going anywhere. And now I'm not living in the wood. It could have should have whatever I'm living in Okay, Well it didn't work and that's cool. Yeah, And I'm so much more happier with that sense of closure.

And now we're talking about relationships, but it's like, I'm so much happier with having honest, transparent conversations rather than this idea in my head that so anyway, you that was the trait. I think that I've learned to really see as a strength and not see as a weakness. And you know, so yeah, I think I have something very similar, which is I used to see my openness maybe as weakness or something like that, because I am so open with the people in my life that I love,

even about just my affections for them. Right Like, I'll probably be writing you like a long email after this being like Jay, You're so amazing and it's all heartfelt, and I sometimes felt like, wow, you're so open, and it was it was so interesting. I was at a wedding this weekend and I was talking with one of my cousins. She was like, wow, may you really ask these like deep questions of people. And my sister in law waded in and she said, but Maya always gives

you her full self in return. Yeah, she gives you that depth back. And I thought that was such a lovely thing to say, because I do feel like in reinterpreting that openness as a weakness, I've seen it as well. Actually, it's amazing to be able to share so much of yourself with someone else and hope that they can return that in whatever capacity they're comfortable sharing themselves. Totally, totally,

I love that. I'm going to make that now the second question, I ask you, what's what do you think is a wonderful question to ask someone to evoke a connection and create a relationship with someone, if you if you had your favorite question to ask in an interview or your favorite question to learn about someone. We're on the second question, so yeah, you can. You can turn the seven words? Okay, what have you changed your mind about? Love? And then if I had nine words? I think that

was seven I'm not sure? And why? Okay, beautiful, all right, bad question? What have you change your mind about? And why? Sounds a little bit meta, but it's totally true. I've changed my mind about why it is people believe the things they do, and that's been in studying the science of why it is that people believe the things they do, and I've always felt sits on some of the themes we talked about earlier that if we can fully understand why, then we can generate the how how do we change

their minds? Given that if we think it's important for them to change their minds and what is the why? Usually where where's that? Where do you think you see

the patterns of why people think the way they do? Yeah, I think it relates a lot to the the Darryl Davis story, and it relates a lot to what I was sharing about tribal membership, which is, at the end of the day, I think one of our most primal human instincts is we want to feel like we belong to something that's bigger than ourselves, to a community, a group, something that validates us and where we feel an implicit sense that values are shared, Yes, that there's commonality and

understanding that. I mean, it sounds so simple. Oh, of course some of my beliefs would be informed by my group membership. But if you really think about it, that does run encounter to a lot of people's intuition about how it is that we generate our beliefs, and so I feel like once you understand that that it's this human desire to belong um, you can then tailor make better solutions that don't feel aggressive or confrontational or threatening

in any way. I love that beautiful. All right. Question number four, what's the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do before you go to bed brush my teeth. So boring that I do need huge fan of you know, hygiene. Yeah, great teeth. Yeah, uh, you know it's usually it's usually eating a snack before I go to bed, which is I mean, you'll probably tell me it's a terrible behavior. Yeah, I'm in now.

I try to make it healthy. It's just gosh, I was telling um preferent battle in another way, were like, I get I would I wouldn't call it hanger. I'd say I get heritable. If I can make that, Okay, you just made it up. I get I get heritable, and no one likes me when I'm heritable. I don't like me when I'm heritable. So I just feel like I just need something to take a little bit of the hunger edge off. Yeah, so I'll have some sort

of evening sex times. I like, I'm very heritable as well, and so is my wife, and we know when we're heritable for sure. I just need to eat a bigger dinner. That's the key. I know I'm not supposed right for a bedtime, but I definitely can't fall asleep when I'm hungry. That's very hard for me. That makes sense. That definitely made all right. Fifth and final question, and seeing as you've worked in public policy, I think this will be fun. If you could create one law that everyone in the

world had to follow, what would it be. Smile at everyone you see on the streets? Beautiful. There is a lot of research showing how these small moments that strangers share can have profound impacts on well being and happiness and a feeling of connectedness and whether or not I'm having a good day. I make I make a self commitment to smile at everybody that I see when I'm just taking a walk, acknowledge them in some way or another. And it's been hard with COVID and mass and whatnot.

But those moments brighten my day. Um, I hope they brighten the people that I'm smiling at. And yeah, I just think I think the world would be a much happier place if we could all find it within ourselves to to just do that small thing. I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you so much, such a great answer, every Amyashanka. Please please please go and listen to a podcast. We will put the link in the description below and

the comments. It's been such a joy sitting with you. Honestly, I could talk to you for ass and I really do hope we get to spend a lot more time together me too, And it's been it's been such a wonderful connection. I totally this conversation has gone in so many new different directions that I know we haven't even started uncovering. But I'm really really excited to get to know you more and excited for my audience to connect

with you more as well. So thank you so much, and everyone's been listening or watching wherever you are, make sure that you tag us both on Instagram to let us know your biggest insights, takeaways, any of the stories or studies that stood out to you. And please please please leave a review as well and let me know that you heard this podcast specifically and how it moved you. Thank you so much everyone for listening and watching, Amya. Thank you so much for sharing so wonderfully. Thanks so

much for having me Jay. I appreciate your time and I appreciate you so thank you, Thank you so much,