A Slight Change of Plans

But I somehow never expected that one of my star psychology students, Maya Shunker, would grow up to become a podcast host just like me, and that she'd have an amazing new podcast on the science of behavior change. It's called a slight change of plans in retrospect, though I probably shouldn't have been surprised, and that's because she experienced her own devastating, not so slight change of career plans

when she was still only a teenager. If you had asked Maya back in the day what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have given you a pretty quick answer. One hund violinist. That was the thing I was super into. I started playing when I was six. My mom had my grandma's violin in the attic from India. She had brought it all the way with her, and she asked my three older siblings if they wanted to play, and they were like like this, this isn't cool. And apparently I wasn't that cool. So

I was like, this sounds great. And I fell in love with it really quickly, Like practicing didn't feel painful for me. And I also just loved the idea that like I could work hard at something and then I could see myself get better. So you're getting better and better, and then all of a sudden, when you're fifteen, everything changed. Yes, it coincided, I think when I was at my peak as a violinist. So at this point I had been studying at Juilliard for about six years. It's a Perlman

had asked me to be his private violin student. Even my parents, who had always been like we would really like it if you went to like a liberal arts college, not do this music thing, We're like, oh, actually, yeah, maybe MAYA can do the violin thing. So like we're all getting behind this, this idea of me becoming or trying to go pro. It's obviously very very tough industry. And then I was just playing a really challenging piece, and I overstretched my finger and I tore tendons in

my hand. It was a very serious injury. And then finally doctor said, sorry, kid, but you're out of luck. This career is over. So what's that Like, You're in high school, you thought you had this career all mapped out, and all of a sudden it just totally went away. Yeah, it was very disorienting as a kid. You're you just don't engage in a ton of introspection, right like who am I? You don't ask yourself any of those questions.

But then suddenly at fifteen, when the violin was taken away from me, I was forced to am in this question of who I was. And I realized, like this whole time, I have felt like a violinist first and foremost, Like even before I was Maya, I felt like I

was a violinist. My right shoulder to this day is a little higher than my left one because my bow arm spent so many hours practicing, like my body like grew in a way that aligned with the way the violins, like ergonomics were So it's only at that moment you realize that, wow, this thing was a huge part of my identity, and now that I don't have it anymore, I have no idea what comes next. And I was really scared. I was like, I don't I don't know

if I'm ever going to love something as much. I don't know if I'm good at anything else, Like I don't I don't know if I'm passionate about anything else. Like all these questions you know came to mind, but being good at something, being passionatest something that all came pretty quickly in a new field, like my field, the

field of psychology, right well, thanks to you. So basically, yeah, the summer four college, I'm dealing with the fact that this thing that I thought even got me into college and in the first place, violin is no longer a thing. So I'm like, I don't know what it is that I want to study. And then I read an interesting cognitive science book over the summer and my brain lit up and I was like, oh my gosh, the study of the mind is fascinating. Like I just never thought

about this stuff before. I never fully appreciated like how bad ass our minds are, right, Like we're always we're always like criticizing ourselves, are annoyed some personality trait we have, and you just like you read these books and you're like, we are all crushing it basically each and every day, just by virtue of living. So I just felt like I was in awe of the mind. But then I

was like, well, what do I do with this? And so I was looking through the Yale course catalog and I see that there's this major called cognitive science and you are one of the leaders of the program, right, And I remember reading in the course book that it was like an admissions only major. So oh no, I first of all, don't feel like I even deserve to be here anymore. And I now want to do a major that's like applicant only. Like, I just felt totally overwhelmed.

And so the way you dealt with feel like totally overwhelmed is that you chose to reach out to a young you professor in this field of cognitive science. Me. Yes, luckily, Ari Santos. Luckily, I have found your first email to me that you sent me way back in the day. Here's what you wrote. You wrote it is it's a torture for me too, because I was young back then. It was much It's like here's what you wrote. You wrote, dear Professor Santos, I am a freshman this year in

Calhoun College. I am heavily interested in cognitive science, and I was wondering if you had any openings, and so I kindly wrote back to you as like a keener freshman and told you about my lab. And what was funny is that you wrote back to me and your enthusiasm was so rich and incredible. You say, thanks so much for your reply exclamation point. I was extremely excited.

I remember. So I went to the first day of your class, right, and I show up the lowly freshman, and the room is packed all these upper classmen, people who want to write their senior thesis. Right, They're all in this room, and there's a limited number of spots, okay, And so you're like, I won't You'll accept all of you guys, but here's an application process. And I felt like I sold my soul on this application process. I was like, Laurie, you can have my unborn children, you

can have anything you want. And it was just so amazing of you to give me that chance because I was the only freshman that you were willing to let in that year. It changed my life, right. It allowed me to see that I did actually love something, like I loved the violin, and I just don't take it for granted that you like stepped in at a really crucial moment in my life. And of course it was a game changer for me. It was a game changer for me to Maya would go on to become one

of my most accomplished students. But the longer my estate in the academic ivory tower, the more she realized how much real world behavior she was missing out on. I was at Stanford studying decision making, and I was in the basement of this Fremri lab and I was like scanning this dude's brain. I'd been this like dark, windowless room for like five hours at this point. Here into this person's brain who I haven't had a conversation with. I don't know what his middle name is, I don't

know what his favorite ice cream flavors. There's lots of fundamental things I don't know about this person. And I remember thinking, I feel like I want to engage with people. I want to be on teams, I want to have like a hyper social dynamic. And the scanning part of this job the apportmise scanning is just not for me. So I called you and I was like, Hi, So I've been doing this like academic thing for like ten years now, but I actually don't think that I want

to do it anymore. I had no idea what came next, and you shared with me that there was some amazing work happening in the White House. At the time, it had never crossed my mind that a cognitive scientist could go work in the government. You and I had talked for so many years at this point about the potential of behavioral science. Oh, when do you use injunctive norms versus descriptive norms? Like what's the power of the growth mindset? Right?

Like when you talk about all these things? And then I remember in this interview I had at the senior Obama White House official, I'm talking about these ideas in the abstract and his responses. You know, I know, first Lady Michelle Obama like we can absolutely integrate that into her Let's move initiative, And I was like, what is happening in my life? This is totally insane, Like we

can actually make this stuff happen. In the end, she not only got hired but was offered a chance to start her own social and behavioral sciences team to make real changes. She helped military service members enroll in a new retirement savings program. She worked to ensure that eligible children had access to reduce school lunches. She helped family farmers more easily understand the steps needed to get a micro loan. But the biggest thing her new role taught

her was the importance of finding out about people's lived experience. Yeah, it helped me see the power of stories and the fact that when it comes to changing a person's life or helping to inspire change in their lives, maybe the first place we should go is to hear people's stories. And then next, you know, we look at the science. And so that's one of the big inspirations behind your new podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. So what is this podcast? Yeah, it is a podcast that's all about change.

It features really intimate, raw conversations with people who have experienced extraordinary changes of all kinds. And I've learned so much from doing this podcast about all the contours of change that exist and the kind of impact that change can have on a person's life. And like, you know, we dig in, like, what is that process? Like? I've heard this come out in so many of the interviews, people saying they felt so much trepidation or fear in

advance of a big change. But then what you find in virtually every case is that they are grateful that they went through the change. Even if the change didn't end in exactly the place they had wanted it to end, even if it taught them something wildly different than what they thought they were going to be taught, they do feel like they've grown from that change. There is a tension between change and happiness in a lot of ways,

which is like changing ourselves, changing our minds. It's a deeply uncomfortable process, right, it is so much easier to live our life not questioning the values we have, the ideas we have, the opinions that we have. But we know it's worth it in the end, right, we know that that tradeoff is worth it. And so I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on how we can try to incentivize people to want to change even though we know they might take a short term hit and happiness.

I mean, I think you know. One thing we know from the science is that people are awful at predicting the kinds of things that are going to make them happy. You know, that's one of the constant themes on this podcast is that we're really bad at what's called affective forecasting, right, predicting how things are going to go in the end.

And I think one of the things you're seeing in so many of your episodes is like, you know, if you can get through the friction, if you can get through the fear that comes with the prediction in the end, things are going to wind up being much better. People are usually much happier after that change. I think that's completely right, and I feel like that's especially emboldening when people on the are on the receiving end of a

change that they really don't desire. So, for example, I spoke to this young man, Scott, who is in his early thirties. He's a cancer researcher and a self proclaimed health nut and control freak. So he has spent the last decade of his life totally optimizing for his health. He is a vegan, he does intermittent fasting, he does high intensity interval training, He pours turmeric on all of his food, and then at thirty two he gets a stage four cancer diagnosis. This is his worst nightmare realized.

And what was so fascinating about this conversation is that post chemotherapy treatment, multiple surgeries, a leg amputation. He's sitting outside in his backyard drinking a cup of coffee, saying, you know, I actually feel as happy now as I did six months ago before I even got the diagnosis. I loved hearing him say that because I was so familiar with the research right, and I just always wanted

to call bullshit on that. For myself, I'm like, Okay, I'm sure everybody else is that way, but I'm not that way. I'm not that resilience. But I felt like Scott and I we connected on these levels that allowed me to see like, oh, we're more similar. And I remember he said at the end of the interview, if I had known that I would end up in this place happiness wise, that this profound change in my life would actually have made me a better person, I would never have feared it as much as I did in

the first place. And I just, yeah, I just found that. I mean, it's stirring to even say that, Like, it was so powerful for me to hear that a huge thanks to Maya for talking with me about her new podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, and now I'm excited to share with you a short clip of her first episode. It's an interview with Darryl Davis, a black jazz musician who convinced KKK members to leave the clan. You can subscribe to A Slight Change of Plans wherever you listen

to the Happiness Lab. Okay, here's your quick taster of what's in the show. So I was riding in my car. I'm driving and this klansman was sitting in my passenger seat and we got on the topic of a crime, and he made the mention that black people are born with a gene that makes them violent. And I said, look, I'm as black as anybody you've ever seen. I have never done a drive by or a car jacking. How do you explain that this man did not hesitate one second?

He answered me instantly, he said, your gene is latent. It hasn't come out yet. That's Terryll Davis, a blues musician. And yeah, you heard him right. He's driving in his car with a member of the Ku Klux Klan. You know, I was speechless. I was dumbfounded. And he's sitting next to me with all smug and securely. Huh. You see, you know you have nothing to say. And I thought about it for a moment rather than attack him. You say it's not true. It's not true. I said to him.

I said, you know, white people have a gene within them that make them serial killers. And he said, why would you say that. I said, well, face it, name me three black serial killers. He thought about it. He couldn't name anybody. He couldn't do it. I rattled off Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dalmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David Burklewitz, son of Sam Albert de Salvo, the Boston strangler. And I said, son, you are a serial killer. And he said, Darrell, I've never killed anybody.

I said, you're Gena's legent hasn't come out yet. He said, well, that's stupid, and I said, well, dug, it is stupid. And he got very very quiet, and I could tell that the gears in his head were spinning super fast, probably you know, burning a hole in there. And then he a moment later he changed the subject, but within five months, this guy quit the Ku Klux Klan. Since that car ride thirty years ago, Darryl Davis has gone on to convince dozens of people to leave the Ku

Klux Klan. Convincing someone else to change their minds their view of reality is one of the most elusive, coveted types of change, which is why Darryl's story feels so improbable. So how does he do it? I'm Maya Shunker. As a cognitive scientist, I've always been fascinated by how we change our minds and why we change our minds. On this show, I'll have intimate conversations with people who've navigated extraordinary change, and hopefully their stories will get us to

think differently about change in our own lives. This is a slight change of plans, our constituions arcs. Daryl didn't set out to change anyone's mind He was mostly just focused on his music, but one night his life took an unexpected turn when he was playing a show at

a bar called the Silver Dollar Lounge. The silver Dollar Lounge at the time was an all white lounge, and I say that not meaning that black people could not go in, but meaning that they did not go in by their own choice because they were not welcome there. And when you go somewhere where you're not welcome and alcohol is being served, sometimes it does not make for

a good combination, especially when you're outnumbered. So we took a break after the first set and I was walking across the dance floor to go sit you with the bandmates when somebody approached me from behind and put their arm around my shoulder. I don't know anybody in this place, so I'm turning around to see who's touching me, and it was this gentleman, maybe fifteen eighteen years older than me, and he's all excited. He says, man, I sure like

your piano playing. This is the first time I ever heard of black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. And I told him, I said, well, Jerry Lee got it from the same place I did, from black blues and boogie woogie piano players. Oh no, no, no no no, I never heard no black name play like that. For you, Jerry Lee invented that style. I said, look, I know Jerry Lee Lewis. He's a good friend of mine. He's told me himself where he had learned how to play.

The guy didn't buy that either, but he was so fascinated with me that he wanted me to come back to his table. He's going to buy me a drink, so I don't drink, but I agreed to have a cranberry juice. He bought it, paid the waitress, and then he took his glass and he clinked my glass and cheered me, and then he announces, you know, this is the first time I ever sat down with a black man and had a drink. So innocently I asked him why,

and he didn't answer me at first. I asked him again, and his buddy sitting next to him elbowed him and said tell him, tell him, And the guy looked at me and said, I'm a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Well I burst out laughing at him because now I do not believe him. I thought he was putting the joke on me. I'm laughing. He goes inside his pocket, pulls out his wallet, flips through it, and hands me

his clan membership card. I recognized the plan insignia, which is a red circle with a white cross and a red blood drop in the center of the cross. And I'm thinking to myself Oh, my goodness, you know this is for real. So I stopped laughing. But he was, you know, very friendly and very appreciative of my music

and all excited. He gave me his phone number to you know, to call him whenever I was to return to this bar with this band, and so I called him every six weeks and say, hey, man, you know I'm down there at the Silver Dollar this weekend, come on out. You say, it's so nonchalantly like, so I called the guy. It is remarkable that you called this person. And you know, I don't think I'm alone in struggling to understand you know, what was going through through your

mind at this moment. If someone told me that they were in the freaking clan, I would certainly not call them back. In fact, I'd probably just flee the scene. And I think this is for pretty good reasons. Well, you know, I was questioning myself for a second, like what the heck am I doing sitting here with a klansmen.

But the guy was friendly. He disputed the things that I had in mind of the image over typical klansmen, and he wanted to share my music with some of his fellow clansmen and clanswomen, and they would, you know, get on the Dancelore and Dancelore I music. You know, they didn't come in robes and hoods, right, you know, they came in you know, regular street clothes. This goes on for a year, an entire year. Darryl would play a gig at this bar, and he would invite clan

members to watch him play. This is one of those things that makes Darryll's so unusual. I mean, for me, a huge part of what makes someone who they are is their belief system. And so if we share the same taste in music, that's fine, that's great. But if I then find out they're a flagrant racist, that's going to fully eclipse everything else about them. So how does Darrell look past that? He says, it's not like that.

He wasn't looking past it. He wanted to learn from it. See, Darrell had spent his early childhood overseas in a school he describes as a United Nations for little kids. Race was always in the background, But when he moved back to the States when he was ten, he couldn't escape racism. And ever since then he's been interested in why people hate.

I had had an experience at the age of ten, where some racist people threw rocks and bottles at me during a parade in which I was the only black participant, and never having had this happened to me before, I was perplexed as to why people were doing this, and when later my parents explained that it was racism, my ten year old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me before, who had never spoken with me, and knew nothing about me, would want

to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than the color of my skin. You know, that just did not compete with me. Well later, when I realized this was true there are people like that, I formed a question in my mind, which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And some people would just say, well, Daryl, you know that's just the way it is. Well, no, it's not just the way it is. There has to be a reason behind it. Well it's always been that way. That was not good

enough for me. I want to get to the nucleus of it. So Darrell dedicates himself to answering this question. He devours books about race and racism. He reads nearly every book that exists on the clan, but he's still unsatisfied, so he decides he wants to write his own book about the clan. All the books written on the clan

except for mine, have been written by white authors. You know, white authors obviously have an easier time getting in contact with the clan and sitting down and not fearing any ramifications or whatever, or they might even join the clan undercover. A clansman would have a different perspective sitting there talking to a black person than he would a white person. And how do you feel that perspective would have been different because he's sitting there telling the person that he

hates why he hates him. So now he's having to face me and face those same questions you know that somebody would ask, or even different questions that a white interviewer journalist would not ask because they don't think of him, because they don't feel the things the same things that I feel. As Darrell starts researching for his book, it suddenly dawns on him he already knows someone in the clan, that guy from the Silver Dollar Lounge, So he goes

on a mission to track him down. It takes a while, but eventually he finds the guy's address, and I knocked on the door, you know, unannounced, and he opens the door and sees me, goes, Darrell, you know, what are you doing here? And look looked up and down the hallway to see if I brought anybody with me. So it was more of him that who was intimidated than me. And when he stepped out of his apartment, I stepped in.

So he turns around, comes back in. So now we're standing inside his apartment and he says, you know what's going on? Are you still playing? What's going on? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm still playing. But listen, I need to talk to you about the clan. He says, the clan. I said, yeah. He goes, well I quit. I quit a while back. I said, well, you know, where's all your clan stuff? He says, well, they came and got it. And I said, what do you mean they came and got your robin hood?

You know, don't you own it? And he explained to me, when you join the clan, if you have the money to pay for it, you can purchase your robin hood and it's yours to keep forever. If you cannot afford it at the time, you can still take it home with you, but you put a little extra money in every time you pay your dues until you pay it off, sort like layaway kind of thing. A bizarre financial lead system within the clan. Love it, Yes, exactly, equal opportunity

for everyone who's that's right, okay, absolutely so. Anyway, he said that, uh, they came and got it, but when they came to get it, he could not find the mask, and um, he has since found it and he needed to return it. I said, what can I see it? So he goes down the hallway, comes back and hands me the mask. And I said to him, I said, do you know Roger Kelly? He goes, yeah, Roger was my grand Dragon. I know him. And I said, well, listen, I need you to hook me up with mister Kelly.

I want you to interview him. I'm going to write a book on the clan. Now, let me explain how the hierarchy of the plan works. You understand these terms. We would call a state leader a governor. They call that the Grand Dragon a mayor. That person is known as the exalted Cyclops. Anybody on the great level is yeah, very the self importance of these names, truly, we see that's yeah. But see that's also what attracts people because

you know, they get titles, they feel important. Yes, it's a sense of self importance, you know, because they're getting that from the society in which they live. So, you know, this brotherhood, this gang, if you will, gives him those things. So at the time, Roger Kelly was the Grand Dragon state leader from Maryland. So I said, I'll tell you what you need to return this mask, right He said yeah. I said, give me Roger Kelly's phone number and his

address and I'll go and return it for you. And he snapped that thing right out of my hand and said, in no way. And so I begged and pleaded with him. Well, he finally gave it to me on the condition that I not revealed him, mister Kelly where I got it. And he warned me, he said, Darrel, do not go to Roger Kelly's house. Roger Kelly will kill you. And I said, well, that's that's the whole reason why I need to talk to mister Kelly. I know, why would he kill me? What is going on in his mind

when he sees me. I have to understand this. You did realize that you might not get the answer to the question if in fact the dangerous part happened first? Right, true, this is true? But but I but I was he know that I would prevail. I'm the eternal optimist. If you will, I hope you enjoyed hearing this teaser of

A Slight Change of Plans. If you want to check out more of Maya's transformative life stories and learn more about the science that goes along with them, and subscribe to A Slight Change of Plans today, you can download it wherever you get The Happiness Lab and all your other podcasts. And not to worry, The Happiness Lab will be back with season three, which will launch later this summer. Until then, stay happy,