Sunday Pick: How to think critically about history — and why it matters (w/ David Ikard)

This episode is supported by Harvard Business School Executive Education. Their programs create powerful connections for leaders around the world, strengthening both organizations and individuals by deepening existing relationships and fostering new ones. Participants leave with lifelong friends, new potential business partners, and a powerful globe-spanning network of fellow change makers. Learn more at hbs.me slash learn. That's hbs.me slash learn.

This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. I often think about the big ideas in the future that we're building together, and honestly, climate news feels heavy. But here's the thing, there are people out there doing incredible work that actually gives me hope. And that's why I want to tell you about Planet Visionaries, hosted by Alex Honnold. Yes, the free solo climber who is turning his focus

to the biggest challenge of all, protecting the only planet we've got. Alex brings his signature curiosity to conversations with the people reshaping our planet's future. In one episode he talks to Mark Ruffalo, conservationist and actor about how he has leveraged storytelling to galvanize community and how we can rethink energy and spark real change.

These aren't doom and gloom conversations. From Arctic scientists to explorers and activists, every episode reminds us that optimism isn't wishful thinking, it's a strategy, and it's working. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening to this podcast.

This episode is brought to you by Pura. After the holidays are over and you start to settle back into your usual routine, you might find yourself just craving less, less clutter, less noise, less work. Pura helps you reset your space with premium smart home fragrance diffusers that are completely customizable without requiring a complicated setup. Right now, you can get a free Pura home diffuser when you subscribe to two cents for twelve months.

Set schedules, adjust intensity, and come home to the calming effects of your favorite fragrance with just a few taps in the Pura app. Get your free diffuser while the offer lasts at Pura.com. Hey TED Talks Daily listeners, I'm Elise Hugh. Today we have an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. This time it's how to be a better human. We shared this conversation on the feed a few years ago, but I think it's so good we wanted to share it again.

February is Black History Month. and to mark the start of the month. Consider why acknowledging and learning from history. How do we know? We learn is accurate. Have you ever recalled a story only to have someone point out that's not how it went? And what happens when what we misrepresent? Are our historical narratives. David Ichard is a professor of African-American and Diaspora studies at Vanderbilt University. In this episode from 2022, Ichard talks with

Duffy about the societal and personal dangers of inaccurate narratives and uncovers the real story of one of history's most iconic figures. If you want to hear more insights like this, listen to How to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcast. And just a little shameless plug before the conversation. Chris Duffy is out with a new book called Humor Me: How Laughing Can Make You More Present.

Creative, connected, and happy. If you are interested in hearing more from Chris about this book and how he has learned to keep laughing through it all, Mark your calendars for February 18th. That is when I will be speaking with him in front of a live TED audience for our first TED Talks Daily book club interview. a year. To learn more and RSVP, which we hope you do, visit go.ted.com slash membership. Okay, now on to Chris's conversation with Ickard.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris. Growing up, I remember learning a pretty standard by the book explanation of American history. Which means that now, as an adult, I'm frequently surprised to find out that the stories I thought I knew I actually had all wrong.

For example, I always thought that the story of Rose at Parks was of an older woman who decided that she'd had enough, and she refused to give up her seat at the front of a bus to a white man because she was tired after a long day of work. But as today's guest, Professor David Eichert, explains in his talk at TEDx Nashville, that is not how things actually happen.

Here's a clip. I am the proud father of two beautiful children. When Elijah was in the fourth grade. He came to me, came home from school, bubbling over with excitement about what he had learned that day about African American history. Now I'm an African American cultural studies professor.

And so as you can imagine, African American culture is kind of serious around my home. So I was very proud that my son was excited about what he had learned that day in school. So I said, well, what would you learn? He said, I learned about Rosa Park. Well, it's okay. What did you learn about Rosa Park? He said, I learned that Rosa Parks was this frail old black woman in the 1950s in Montgomery, Alabama. And she sat down on this bus and she had tired feet.

And when the bus driver told her to give up her seat to a white patron, she refused because she had tired feet and it had been a long day and she was tired of oppression. And she didn't give up her seat. And she marched with Martin Luther King and she believed in nonviolence. And I guess he must have looked at my face and saw that I was a little less than impressed by his.

um history lesson. And and so he stopped and he's like, Dad, what's wrong? What what what did I get wrong? I said, son, you didn't get anything wrong, but I think your teacher got a whole lot of things wrong. He said, what? I said, yes. Rosa Parks was only 42 years old. Yeah, you're shocked, right? Never heard that. Roach Park was only 42 years old. She had only worked six hours that day, and she was a seamstress, and her feet were just fine.

The only thing that she was tired of was she was tired of inequality. She was tired of oppression. And my son said, Well why would my teacher You know, tell me this thing. You know, this is this is confusing for me because he he he loved his teacher and she was a she was a good teacher, a youngish, you know, 20-something white woman, really, really smart.

pushed him. So I liked her as well. But he was confused. Why would she tell me this? He said. He said, Dad, tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more about Rosa Parks. And I said, son, I'll do you, I'll do you one bet. He was like, what? I said, I'm gonna buy her autobiography and I'm gonna let you read it yourself. That is for sure how you know your dad is a professor, when he has you reading the primary source.

But in in all seriousness, listening to Dr. Eichert correct the record about Rosa Park. It makes me wonder what other moments from history I've been taking for granted. What are the historical details that we might be getting wrong? And why is it so important to question those narratives and get them right? Those are the questions that we're going to be diving into in this episode. Right after this.

Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on eBay where I go for all kinds of things I love, and there it was. That hologram trading card. One of the rarest, the last one I needed for my set. Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams. One of a kind. eBay had it. And now everyone's asking. Ooh, where'd you get your windshield wipers? eBay has all the parts that fit my car. No more annoying. Just beautiful millions of finds, each with a story.

eBay Things People Love This podcast is brought to you by Wise. the app for international people using money around the globe. With the WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive in over 40 currencies with no markups and no hidden fees. Whether you're sending pounds across the pond, spending Rials in Rio, or getting paid in dollars for your side gig, you'll get the mid market exchange rate on every transaction. Plus, most transfers arrive in less than 20 seconds.

Join 15 million customers internationally. Be smart. Get WISE. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. Ts C's apply.

And we're back. My name is David Eichert. I am a professor of African-American Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University and the proud father of Elijah Eichert, 19, and Octavia Eichert 15. So, Professor Eggert, thank you so much for being here. In your TEDx talk, you broke down how the story of Rosa Parks that many people learn, right? That there was this tired old woman who didn't want to give up her seat after a long day of work.

that that's actually a a fiction. That's a misrepresentation of who Rosa Parks was. Right. A complete fiction. And I mean I think it in some ways It reflects on our current moment, right up to the current moment, where there are two interesting things that I'm dealing with. as an academic right now that speaks to this particular dynamic of of history as this kind of constructed reality as opposed to this kind of fixed

you know, factual empirical thing, right? Our ability to be able to delve into the intricacies. And the the not so flattering aspects of American genocide and and violence and the and the ways in which we've eng engaged in certain forms of apartheid ourselves and and oppression and what what have you. And so we're at this interesting moment in which

There's a desire by one youthful part of our population to hear the truth and deal and grapple with it. And then an another part of our society, in many cases, an older aspect of our society that is terrified. Of what those truths will reveal and how they will impact this myth of American inclusivity and upward mobility and the American dream. So it's an interesting time to kind of have this very conversation about uh whitewashing history.

So starting with that, the fact that there's this whitewash narrative that has been taught for decades and continues to be taught in many places, the idea that there are students, white students, but students of of all races who are pushing for more inclusive education for more accurate education.

That's seems like one very concrete thing that people can be doing to try and get a more accurate understanding of history and and challenge some of these myths. What are other things that listeners could do to try and challenge some of these aspects of the the The histories that we're taught that aren't uh actually factual. We really depend on the the younger generations to hold our feet to the fire about what we say we want to be.

as a country, what we say we want to be as a global community in our best light. So I sied. Primarily as a as a moment in which you know, those old heads like myself, we're gonna have to support Sometimes it's not even about having to take a stand, but really support those younger generations of folks who are not afraid and who are who are trying to like make this thing a reality. We like

the anonymity of kind of staying in the on the sidelines of controversial issues because we don't want the stress and the strain. But what often that means is you tacitly support the status quo. So this is obviously right in your wheelhouse because, you know, so many of of your books and so much of your writing is is about this too, right? Uh in Lovable Racists and Blinded by the Whites, right? You talk about

And and you take apart the desire on the part of many white people to avoid talking about race or to to believe that we live in a post-racial America. And I think that kind of What you just said seems to hit at the heart of uh of what you've written about in a lot of these books, that it's not necessarily that you're against it, but that by wanting to do nothing, by feeling like it the work has already been done, that is actually worse than that.

it feels like a lot of why Reevaluating history and reevaluating the narratives that we've been taught can be painful is because There are these truths that we cling to, the stories that we've told ourselves that we want to be true. And it can be very painful to have the rug pulled out and to all of a sudden have to see the world, you know, to have the scales fall from your eyes. So I I'm curious in your opinion as a historian, right, as a a as a professional here.

How do we get a sense of an accurate history? Like what needs to be at the core of our understanding of historical events so that we know we are telling the right narratives and to avoid having that clinging on to something where the rug's gonna get pulled out from under us. You know, we had begun the conversation by pointing out that history is in fact a construction of perspectives that are kind of weaved together. It's it's socially constructed.

So I think we're at a moment now where we're, and I think it's very important, that we're starting to consider like, well, what what was the experience of women during the Civil War? What was the experience of black folks? doing the American Revolution. What what how did those folks who were um on the margins, the queer folks, the transfer how did they figure into this'cause we know all of these folks were there.

And all of them pay a role in that history. And now the challenge is to recover that. It's interesting because I I hadn't ever thought of it this way before we had this conversation just now. But uh it's funny, you know, when sometimes

Something small will happen with me and my wife and then we'll be out at a dinner with someone else and we'll try and tell the story and I'll tell my version and she'll go, No, no, that's not what happened. And we'll both be like, No, like come on, that's we can't even agree. Exactly. And and when you think about it, right, like we're telling the story of a of a guy we drove past on the street who's wearing a costume.

And we can't even agree on the smallest of the facts on that when you think about how history is really the the idea that there's one definitive narrative, uh that is something I'd never thought about before. That it's really right, each person sees it in their own way and brings a new piece. Absolutely. And we never can Right. We never can fully get back to that moment where, like, because we exist as subjective beings, everything that we see is filtered through an interpretive lens.

Right. Whether I'm a Christian or a Muslim, whether I'm straight or queer, whether I'm like rich or poor, all of that informs what we see and what we do not see.

So maybe then I'm asking the wrong question in the first place when I'm saying how can we get to a more accurate history? Maybe it's like how can we complicate the historical story? I think so. I think that's yeah. Yes, and I think that's right. I think that um and I think that's also the scary part of it because there is a political utility to history.

Right. I mean, if you come to the South, if you spend any time in the South, you'll see hotels that are plantation this and plantation that and Old South and Dixie this and Dixie that. And the only and and it's it's a clear kind of nostalgia for the past, right? Where things were so, you know, s simpler and more wholesome and whatever. And in order for that narrative to be sold and celebrated and commodified.

You have to sanitize all of the lynchings and all of the violence and all of the sexual assault and all of the bloodiness that came with that culture. And so there's a there's a need. to romanticize it, not because there that had anything to do with the actual history, but because we use those notions to help us feel good about ourselves. Right. So we need them because we need that version of the past for this version of our romanticized present. It seems like we we simplify things.

You know, and I I say this as a white person. I think often a lot of the historical misinformation or whitewashing happens because cause white people are trying to avoid discomfort or acknowledging historical mistakes and and present-day mistakes too. But it does seem like there's a sense in which

Sometimes we can go one way and say like, no, it was all good back then. We don't want to hear about the problems. And then there's this other way where we say, like, that person was all bad and they were just an evil person in history. And we don't see like Well, you know, there were positive changes that came out of this horrible event as well.

And and that's difficult, right? That's a lot harder than just being like, they were good, they were bad, done. Let's move on. So it's not a balance to be like, oh, let's balance it here. No, the scales have been so warped. But what we really need to do, it's and we see this in TV, right? We see, well, we're gonna get this side of the political issue and that, and we're like, but that doesn't really get us at the truth.

uh or at least the truth of the moment, which is that this is such an imbalanced thing that we don't have to go like, hey, what about straight people's rights? Yeah. Right. That's what we learn about. Why isn't there a straight history month? We don't need that. The rest of the months are straight history months. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It's I mean it it's the same impulse. It's interesting because a lot of your writing uh and your earlier books have to do with kind of like

Obama-era white liberalism and this idea that we're white people wanting to believe that we're we're in this post-racial era. And interestingly, that has kind of flipped to the other side of the aisle. Not that it's not still happening with liberals, but when you hear people push against

somet a movement like Black Lives Matter by saying all lives matter, right? Like it's the same thing that you're saying right now where it's like that side is getting pushed so much. We don't need to re-push that side. That is not correcting the scale, right? We're trying to fix an injustice, not just reiterate. Absolutely there there's a perfect cartoon. That illustrates this where there's uh there's somebody with a water hose who's hosing down a house that's not on fire.

And then there's a house that's on fire that's not getting any water at all. And the caption is all houses matter. Right? So you're giving water to the house that's not on fire while you're watching the other one burn. And I think that's exactly right. You know, I and I think that's how we've engaged, that's how we

You know, we avoid dealing with the hard stuff, right? That's a way to deflect, that's a way to obscure, that's a way to try to get us away from what's at the core. But at the end of the day, as James Bowen would say, That that type of obfuscation also hurts white people. That type of whitewashing also means that they're not in touch not only with the reality of marginalized people, but with their own reality.

We are going to have so much more conversation with Dr. David Eicherd in just one moment, but first we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. Hi this is Matt from P1 with Matt and Tommy and this episode is sponsored by eBay. The cars you'll find on eBay are just different. They come with a story that you can't wait to share.

Like this 1973 Dodge Charger on eBay that has been tucked away in an Arizona barn for over 40 years. Only 55,000 miles, and somehow in great running order. Even has a rare sunroof. Suddenly a car that was hidden for decades is being delivered in just a few clicks with eBay's secure purchase. All the paperwork handled. There are thousands of cars on eBay, from unique finds like the Pontiac Grand Prix SJ to daily drivers, and now with a new way to buy them. eBay. Things people love.

My dad taught me a lot, including how easy it is to forget to cancel things. So I downloaded Experian, my BFS. F Big Financial Friend. Experience could help me cancel my unused subscriptions and lower my bills, saving me hundreds a year. Get started with the Experian app today. Your big financial friends here to help you save smarter. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions eligible, savings not guaranteed, six hundred thirty one dollars a year.

with one plus negotiations and one plus cancellation. membership with connected payment account required cxperian.com for details. Flowers die in three days. Matching underwear from Mi undies, that's a gift that lasts. Me Undies creates matching prints for couples and friends, same adorable designs in different cuts for each of you, all made from their signature ultramodal fabric that feels impossibly soft.

With 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five star reviews, Miyandi's matching prints are the perfect gift. Valentine's Day is February 14th, so don't wait. Get exclusive deals up to 50% off at meundies.com/slash ACAST, code ACAST. That's meundies.com slash acast. Code ACAST.

And we are back. So Thinking in practical terms, what are some of the best resources that you found and you would recommend to parents trying to talk to their kids about this stuff, to parents trying to educate themselves, to people who don't have kids trying to educate themselves? What are some of the resources you found that you feel like are the

The most helpful around this. I I one of the things I, you know, when I was talking about in my TED talk was that Rosa Parks, contrary to all of these prevailing myths about her, actually wrote an autobiography. Dispelling the very myths that were not only alive after she she passed on, but were very much alive while she was alive, right? Um and that's why she wrote the autobiography. It's called Rosa Parks My Story.

So, what I would employ parents to do is to start doing their own homework because there's a lot of resources out there. that, you know, help to like demystify some of these things about uh the civil rights movement, their children books about the civil rights movement, children children's books about Rosa Park. And many, you know, many other figures that oftentimes either don't get taught in school or get taught in a way that is actually twisted and misinformed.

It feels like a big piece too that that can shift things a little bit is rather than having someone else digest the information for you. to look for the primary source, right? To hear Rosa Parks in her own words rather than read the book that someone else wrote about her. Yeah, it's read Martin Luther King's letter to a Birmingham jail, but also read The letter from the white clergy that he was responding to. Right? All of that is a simple Google click away.

Right. And I all when I teach it, I try and teach both so that students can see 'Cause you know, you have a bunch of white clergy, you know, you have, you know, uh rabbis and you have Catholic priests and you have Protestant ministers who are all get together and I say, Look, Martin Luther King Wig, we we believe in your movement. We believe

All the things that you're saying. But we just think that if you will just, you know, give it time, right? And let the let the system work itself out. And Martin Luther King was like, When has that ever moved the needle on any type of issues of social justice? And so it's in it's important to try to like put things in conversation and it's important to do do that work on your own. It's about like if I don't know about how to treat you fairly, then that's not on me, that's on you.

And that's the mindset I want us to kind of move away from and to start taking ownership of educating ourselves and not putting the the the the honest on. the people who are marginalized to also do the work of Right, teaching people how not to oppress them. Yeah, it's I it's interesting. I mean, I I I'm hearing a couple of I think really important pieces here, right? One is like listen to people in their own words. The other is be curious about what you don't know, be curious about yourself.

And then the third one I love, which I've actually never heard someone say in these terms before, but it's like, hey, Google it. Like you don't need to ask someone. It's out there. They've written books. There are podcasts. There are movies.

Yeah. It's out there. You can find the answer yourself. Oh, it's out there. One of the things that I I'm curious about is I sometimes find myself under that rock of like, what rock have I been living under? How do I not know this stuff? Right. And You know, there's the research to be done, right? And there's the books to be read and there's the primary sources to listen to. Sometimes I think it can be a challenge, and I wonder if this happens to you too, to know what questions to ask yourself.

So I wonder like when you encounter a historical story or depiction of a historical event for the first time. What do you ask yourself? What are the kind of ways in which you approach a new story? Well, I mean that uh I mean, one of the things I try to I'm also someone that studies and writes about black feminism. Yes. And so you have a a wonderful book about

Yeah. And so I have I cannot tell you how many times I have stuck my foot all the way up in my mouth, thinking, oh, you know, I I study this, I know this and whatever. And got around some black feminist scholars and and, you know, spouted off thinking I knew what I was talking about and just found myself sitting down, being quiet and feeling very, very dumb. uh but also recognizing that I had more work to do.

And that and that there's always this slippage that even when you get educated, you start believing your own, drinking your own Kool-Aid and true social transformation.

requires a level of humility by those that are are in need of education. And so there's always these points in which you think, oh, I've arrived at a certain kind of thing. And you but you can never Get to the point where you're not actually listening to those people who have that lived experience, that embodied experience, who have to live in that skin.

um every single day and and are gonna have a unique purchase, a unique insight that you will never attain, regardless of how much you read, how many podcasts you listen to. And so sometimes

you know, the best move is to just listen and try to absorb. And I and again, I think when you use your platforms and you use your energy and you use your leverage to bring attention to that, which I think a show like this is absolutely trying to do, then that's a different type of labor than someone who is lazy and they basically want you to give them the answers without having to do any work. Right. I think there's a fundamental difference in that.

in kind of what we're doing in terms of creating an opportunity for there to be real conversation in education. Yeah, I think it's a a s a very important idea that none of us are above criticism or above improvement. It it it actually makes me think in a in a way that is a kind of a little to the side, but I I I think is a relevant example is right, as a writer, sometimes I I send my writing out.

Who are friends to get feedback. And you think that what you want is someone who says this is great and that's perfect. But I have a few friends where when I send my writing to them, they say, Oh, wow, I love this.

And I I stop sending it to them because that's not helpful. Right. What you want is the friend who doesn't say it's all bad or all good. They say, here's the ways you can make this writing better. Yes. And I think the more that we see ourselves, and you know, I say this as a white person who I think we especially as white people need to view ourselves this way as like

It's not you're good or you're bad. It's like you can be improved and you need to keep working to do the improvement. That seems like a very big shift that a lot of us need to make. And I uh for myself too. Yeah. I think, you know, I you you see this in parenting. Right. I think I wanna talk about your the way you parent your your children'cause I feel like that's a big piece of this. I mean I think I think as I think the the best parents that I

experience are the ones who constantly worry about being bad parents, right? They're like you know, they're not you know, you see these incredible parents and they're doing all this work and they're listening to their children and they're trying to engage their kids and they're pushing their kids and

And you know, you go say, Hey, John, you know, you see this, you know, great father. You're like, dude, how how are you doing? It's like, man, I don't know, man. I hope I don't screw up my kids because I've, you know, I've fussed it. Little Johnny the other day for like not washing the dishes and you know, dah dah da da. Or but that that the reason why that's so hard.

Is that requires vulnerability. In our minds, we've been taught that we're we're the parents, we're the authority figures. So if we show inconsistency or weakness, then we're gonna lose the respect, the authority respect with our children. When in fact, What we're actually doing is modeling for them how to behave, how to be humble, how to be, how to make mistakes. So when they go out in the world and they make a mistake, they're gonna be able to come back to us.

And say, yo, dad, I I I I did this and I'm I'm ashamed of it. They're not gonna be like, I'm not gonna tell my dad. He never makes mistakes. And if he finds out that I flunked. calculus or I skip school or whatever. I mean, he's gonna think I'm the worst person in the world. I I've never thought about the the concept of intellectual vulnerability before, but it feels like that's at the core of a lot of what we're talking about. The you know humility there. Look.

So long as you recognize that the path to the intellectual understanding is about like revision. I know this now, but then I've learned something else. So now I have to revise what I thought I knew, have to revise the questions and the assumptions because now I've learned something new and that now changes everything. So long as you stay humble to the information and you stop.

And you don't get to the point where, like, well, I invented critical race theory, and therefore you can never bow down to me. So long as you remain thirsty and humble and you're always understanding that what you have say today is subject to revision, then you're actually doing real good scholarship. The moment you feel that somehow you have arrived and that everybody needs to listen to everything that you have to say or they're just

uninformed, then that's when you're starting to like become full of yourself and you be and you stop being useful. What are the ways that we can shape the way that historical narratives are recorded? I I'm thinking about like recording family histories, writing memoirs, constructing genealogies, like

What are the pieces that are most useful for people to do when they're thinking about adding their own voices to history? Well, first of first and foremost, I will say based on, you know, what we know about African American history and how that history was literally kept alive by a handful of people. Um, and how we've seen, you know, one or two people have seismic ability to change historical narrative through roads of parts of the world, for example.

It it means that there is no type of social historical erasure that is insurmountable. That you can uh despite the way it may look that your history or your your perspective will be forever lost, your voice does matter. Agitation does matter. Pushing back does matter. So I think what I would emphasize more so than the do this or do that is understand that whatever you do, you're not wasting your time. During their hears', uh their eyes were watching God had gone out of print.

in like the 1950s by the 1960s out of print. And a group of black feminist scholars got a hold of an old copy of Their Eyes for Watching God. And because it was out of print, they literally had to photocopy the whole novel and and spread it to the and give it to the class in order to teach it and put it on their syllabus. Now their eyes are watching God is considered one of the most important American novels. in American letters, right? And those handful of women.

Right, along with Alice Walker, who wrote that very important uh piece on Jordan Hurston, have now brought her back into view and and and put her in her rightful part place at the top of the heap. of American letters. And it was literally done by a handful of women who just would not let her legacy die. Hm. Right? So it it just a constant reminder.

that like it matters. Whatever you do, however you try to recover that however you, whether you're writing poetry or writing your own personal history, whether you put it on Twitter, whether you put it on Facebook or Instagram, it matters. Never give up. Always push. Always have your, you know, push for your voice to be heard.

Well, I I feel like I could genuinely talk to you for six more days rather than just six more minutes, but uh what is one idea? It could be a book, movie, piece of music, play, anything. What's one thing?

That has made you a better human. My children, I think it's one thing to kid yourself that you're the greatest scholar, blah, blah, blah, because you get accolades from your student or you get accolades from your profession and you get tenure and you get, you know, these positions and everybody tells you you're great. But your your children know you. They know you when the lights dim and when you're at home and you're in your real, you know, your real light. And I think My kids

hold me accountable. They they they they hold me to the things that I say. That I am. And it's a humbling experience. That makes all the stuff that we do. worthwhile and it keeps you sharp, it keeps you hungry. And you know that it's important for you to be a good human being because there are human beings that you have had a hand in creating that are looking at you as a role model. And I take that absolutely

crucially seriously. Well, Professor David Eichart, thank you so much. It has been uh an absolute pleasure. You've given uh uh so much to think about and uh I hope that people will read your books and dive even deeper into your work. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. That is it for today's episode. To be a better human. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you to our guest, Dr. David Eichert.

Red Side, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by Abimon Udus, Daniela Ballarezzo, Frederica, Elizabeth Yosefov, Ann Powers, and Karen Newman. From PRX Productions, our show is brought to you by Jocelyn Gonzalez, Pedro Rafael Rosado, and Sandro Lopez Monsalve. We will be back with another episode next week, but in the meantime, please share our show with someone who you think would enjoy it. And thank you again for listening.

At Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus Get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award-winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit Schwab.com to learn more. Flowers die in three days, matching underwear from me undies? That's a gift that lasts.

Me Undies creates matching prints for couples and friends, same adorable designs and different cuts for each of you, all made from their signature ultramodal fabric that feels impossibly soft. With 30 million pairs sold and 90,000 five star reviews, Me Undies matching prints are the perfect gift. Valentine's Day is February 14th, so don't wait. Get exclusive deals up to 50% off at meundies.com slash ACAST, code ACAST. That's meundies.com slash acast code ACAS.

Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing, you're managing all the things. So why waste time sending important documents the old fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with stamps.com. Print postage on demand 24-7 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust stamps.com. Go to stamps.com and use code podcast to try stamps.com risk-free for 60 days.