8: Modern rudeness in Stone Age minds

Amy writes a weekly advice column called Ask the Advice Goddess, which is publishing over one hundred newspapers within North America. Amy's also the author of the book I See Rude People, One woman's battle to beat some manners into polite society, and most recently, which we'll be talking about quite a bit today, is the book Good Manners for Nice People who sometimes say the word Amy. It's just such a

delight to have you on my podcast today. It's so great to be here to talk to you, and you know, I miss having you out here in Los Angeles. Yeah, I miss writing with you. Those are some fun days. They were great days. Yeah. I wanted to start off by asking you. You know, I've noticed some common themes and lots of your writings. I thought I would ask you first, what you think are some of the common themes, particularly in the last two books that you wrote. That's

a very good question, you know, I don't really. It reminds me of Elmer Leonard being asked whenever and just if in case anyone doesn't know he is. He's a crime writer. He wrote Get Shorty. He's most famous for that. But you know, people would ask him what are your books about? And he'd say, I don't know. Ask Sat Frank, the screenwriter who wrote I Forget which one I think? He wrote Get Shorty and some other things. And so I don't really think about, you know, the themes in

my work. I don't have that kind of overview. But I guess one thing I was telling I just hit a new editorial as system start working for me. And one of the things I explained, and this comes out of addiction treatment research, is that telling people what to do does it make them change want to change? It makes them either defensive or want to collaborate you, depending

on when you're doing it. And so I'm influenced, you know, I use science and all of my work, even though I tried not to make it sound like it came out of the Ivory Tower. I translate it basically what I use. I translate Ivory Tower research into understandable language, and then I transform it into advice so people can

live less, counter productively live smarter. And so when I do that, I tend to use humor and metaphor to show people why their behavior is really not a good idea, rather than doing that thing that most advice calumists do, which I find really boring also, which is just hammer people and say do this, do that. I mean a lot of people already know what to do or not to do, and there's a reason they're not doing it.

You know, people are not morons, and I really get tired of how they get treated by like morons, but by many people writing for papers or writing advice. Let me tell you what I see, and correct me if I'm totally off base here, why sat Frank, But let me tell you what I see from when I read a lot of yours, I get the sense that you really are a voice of a lot of underdogs. You really don't like people who are marginalized, people who get unfairly treated. Am I right about this? It seems to

be a very common theme. You are, I was a loser as a child, and I want to hear more about that. I wrote in Good Manners for Nice People sometimes say a bad word that I had no friends until I was thirteen, and then I'm starting on my next book right now, and I sort of looked at that more closely, and I realized that was aspirational. It

was really fifteen. I mean, that's just so horrible, and when you don't have friends, the one one of the good things that came out of that is a sense of compassion for people who are left out, you know, the weirdos of society. And also I even look for them because now I sort of manage to transform myself.

And so when I'm at a party or something, I have this vision where I look around the room and I look for that person who just looks like they want to just disintegrate into the carpet, and I go talk to them, you know, because I've been that person, and it just means so much when you're that person that someone does that, that they rescue you if you have the social capital to do that, or you know,

if you're kids. It's really important to teach your kids that if you have those kids, if you have kids and they're popular, everybody likes them, they do well and sucker and all that stuff, you know that your kids can probably afford to adopt an underdog, you know, not as just a charity thing, but to actually be a real friend to them and friend with them where it's it's sometimes it hurts other kids socially, So I mean,

you do have to think about that. You have to be a modern great your behavior with self interest but also interest in others. Yeah, that cane, you tell me a little bit. Why though you don't think you were popular. I feel like we would have been friends at like age twelve, Like we would have been like a playground everyone I know. Actually, someone says to my boyfriend, everyone you know is weird, and I do I know, and

I like that. I know I'm weird. But they're weird in the sort of like you know, a normal society way. They're nerdy, and they have some kind of passion in something like really really, they're really passionate about something. Are you friends with other weird people at age twelve? Why did no one like you? I lived amost normal people And the truth is okay. I went my bed till I was twelve, Like, I just had that stench of the weird, you know, the smart I had red hair,

I mean just everything. And then and they also generally like Jews where I grew up. So my dad we moved up to the suburbs in Detroit, and my dad thought we were just like everyone else, which is fine if they think you're like everyone else, but being weird and Jewish. My sister did better, she was normal and Jewish. I just really had a hard time that you get this stink on you and you just can't get it off unless your family moves. You know, if you move,

you have a chance. And my family they're still there in that same house circle driveway. The trees, they know, big trees, you know. That's one of those the developments where they know they just clear cut everything, and you move in. It's like there's not a scrub of a scrub of shrubbery, you know, and now you go there, it's like a forest, a primeval forest. Oh man. And also, did you do you feel like you had symptoms of ADHD when you were a kid. I definitely did. And

I'm one of the great things was getting diagnosed. And I like to say I got diagnosed by my friend David Baxter and Terry Rossio's hot tub up in the Hollywood Hill. I love this. People go to doctors, David Baxter said, and he had been diagnosed, and he said, you know, I think you have a d D and you should take you know, you should take medication for it would help you. He was actually right. But you know,

the diagnosing of this stuff is so inexact. And I decided I would go to a doctor and fake the symptoms. But it turns out I actually have the symptoms, and I know I do now because I was taking This is sort of like two inside Baseball ADHD. But I'll just talk briefly about this because I like people to not feel stigmatized about taking medication to help themselves with it's from depression or anything else. I mean, really it is better, you know, chemistry for better living. I had

my riddling wasn't really working. It got almost physically painful to concentrate, and so I started taking musin X and having this intensely strung coffee and riddle in to try to somehow be able to concentrate better. And in case anyone doesn't know this. If you have ADHD, coffee works on you sort of like warm milk does for other people. You know, I could take I could have strong coffee,

go to bed. But I told this wonderful psychiatrist I got trans for two and he said, you know, I think you need adderall, which is to explain, Riddlin and adderall are both dopamine reuptake inhibitors, but adderall also pushes a little jokemine out into the brain. And it turns out I really need that because I had the best writing day I had in twenty years the first hour

I took that. And also I ran around, went around my house, and when you have add Okay, so this is a misnomber about this, this quote unquote disorder, which I actually considered a gift with some issues attached. But it is not a deficit of attention. You have too much attention. That's the problem. And so it's like being you know, attacked by crows, that by sixteen crows while

trying to think to have ADHD. And so after I took adderall, I looked around my house and I could see things everyone was, you know, you could see it was like a tornado, and I could see, Oh, that thing has been on that surface for seven years. Why don't I pick that up and move it? So do you think that those ADHD characteristics were conducive to your creativity and imagination at all? Great question? Actually yes, And

I love the work you do on creativity. And I'm often sort of calmed and placated by by how open minded you are about it. And I feel that my ability to pun and to come up with rapid fire humor and these weird connections and have these weird visions things I put together that these things are one of the features of this quote unquote disorder, which is not

a disorder. It's just you know, I you know, if I get a parking ticket, I need to pay it immediately or like six months later my car will be booted. Now I just lose I lose mail. It's like there are bags in my bedroom, like oh my god, I reregistered my car in July and then like the sticker had been in my bedroom, the new sticker that expired, you know, like I had the expired sticker on my car, the new sticker was under my bed in a bag.

That's add or ADHD. Wow, you know. I mean, I feel like so much of your like your creativity does come from this amazing ability to you do it. And I know because I hang out with you. I've hung out with you like in real time connect words that you put words together that most people do not automatically associate with each other. And aspoil, yes, yes, that was on. They did a list the copyet our David Yance is great. He copied it in my book and he copied it's

my column's a scrammer ninja. And they had him put together a list of words that were not traditional. It was huge. Apparently most authors have like four words or ten words, and they were like pages of the stuff of like aspoil and cell bore. But I love doing that. I see no reason to be constrained by the dictionary. Well not only that, but you're not. Your own head

is not constrained by anything. So the way your mind works is that you have cross wiring between your executive attention network and your imagination network and your your your temporal lobevere holds all your memories and everything. I mean, there's no boundaries, right, I'm right with that. I'm grateful for that, and this is why I feel. And I talk to some kids, to friends, kids with ADHD. You know that they feel. People tend to feel ashamed if

you have something that's psychiatric in nature. And the thing is they have to call these things disorders because otherwise they can't give you medication for it. And there's there's this tremendous prejudice against taking medication. Now I'm not for medicating. There seems to be an over medication of boys. And you know they now like your playgrounds. There's there's all this zero tolerance stuff and craziness, like where they're protecting kids.

They basically wrap them in little cotton outfits and they want to keep them until they're forty like that. And so I think that boys don't get to play like they used to and be active like they used to. And boys, you know, and some girls have this tremendous energy when they're kids. I had it, and it needs to come out in a healthy way. And since it's not, then you get kids jumping on desks. And you and I both study evolutionary psychology, and so you look at

our natural environment. I need to take medication to write, which I'm happy to do. I love writing because and this makes it better because I have would be probably a perfect hunter gatherer brain. I could watch do six

things at once in a way other people can't. You know, multitasking is not supposed to be very a very effective way to go about life, but I can do it pretty effectively because I just noticed everything I'm not trying right, And I think that's actually bring up evolutionary psychology is a good segue into your latest book. I if I may segue into that. I saw someone wrote a review on Amazon every book. They said, quote, this isn't your

grandmother's matter book. Well, first of all, your grandmother's manner book didn't include the latest research and evolutionary psychology at the very least. So your book, you know, you really do draw a lot on the latest science. And you say at one point in a book, quote our modern schools houses Stone age mind, and this is and you start trying to unpacked the implications of this. I thought maybe you could tell for our listeners a little, what is the impact on that for a society that is

massively interconnected through technology. Well, I should first say that's a cosmetos lead to Cosmetis and John Tubey quote our modern skulls held has a stone age mind. And let me backtrack a little to give what I figured out about rudeness. So I figured out that we are rude because we live in societies too big for our brains. And this is based on the research of Robin Dunbar,

the British anthropologists. He figured out that the human neocortex has a capacity for about one hundred and fifty relationships. This is on average, but he found this in numerous societies. He found this in the number of Christmas cards people send, the number of Facebook friends they have. It's fascinating, and it was in hunter gather societies. There are army units that are the size. It seems to be a sort of I hate too this word but magic number and so.

And the reason why, basically the problem is that beyond this number that the people, the civility seems to break down. And the reason is when we know each other, and we all know each other, we're in a consistent society of people who know each other. There are constraints on our bad behaviors. So even if you're a total jerk, you have to behave well because you're going to see everyone again. And now we live on what I call these vast stranger opolises. And many people can go almost

all day without seeing somebody they know. And so when you're around strangers, if they're jerks, they can do anything to you. And this is what's happening. So and this is what's happening. You brought up technology on the Internet. We have this cloak of anonymity we have never had. And we got no world books but the Internet or cell phones. We just got this amazing telephone technology. And we are like chimps with our finger on the button of an info nuke. So all these people, well who

would never say so much is excuse me? Do you know where the asparagus is in the grocery store? Are saying horrible things to total strangers on the internet, you know? And if you bring that back to real life, you say to them. I say to people sometimes who write to me write me horrible, insulting things, total strangers, never never encountered them before they read my column, or they didn't like something they wrote on the internet, and they say, you're ugly or a bitch, you look like a man,

of horrifying stuff. And I'm so used to hate mail over the years because I don't shy away from controversy or controversial topics, but I'll say to them, you know, if you wouldn't walk up to a woman in the grocery store and say, you know, hey, wide load better rethink those twinkies, maybe you shouldn't talk to people on the internet the same way just because you can. You know, you need to behave as if you are posting your own real name, even if you can't do that because

you're an elementary school teacher who's on a dominatrix website. Right, So that's a good point. You know, our brains are wired to manage social interactions with this band of one hundred and fifty people. So there does seem to be I mean, what do we do in this world of Facebook or this world of Twitter where you have thousands of people listening to your every word? And so it basically your point is like it really increases the potential

for rudeness. Well, there are three things that stop rudeness, and one is not behaving counterproductively yourself. And I get into I use behavioral science to explain why we do that, Why we do the things we do, Why you want to get out of your car and bring out your golf club and smash someone's windshield when they go, you know, to go out and turn the stops, even though what

does that mean? You're three seconds later to work, you know, the greater scheme of things, But that's there are evolutionary reasons for that that make total sense because we had adaptations within an environment that was very different from our environment. Now. It's very important to not let people cheat you because it impacted your survival. So anyway to get getting back to the three things, it's to not be jerks ourselves, to not behave counterproductively, to punish rude people, and not

everyone can do that. And the other thing because we live in these societies where we are around strangers and because that doesn't really work for our psychology, and it makes people feel alienated and it's awful and nobody's looking out for each other. We're cooperative, communitarian people, so we need to reach out to strangers, treat strangers like people

we know. And the way you do that is by doing small kindnesses for them, which actually is in your self interest because when you are kind and generous, it actually makes you feel actually probably far better than the person you're helping. Yeah, and there's a lot of research in positive psychology suggesting that's definitely the case. Yeah, Sami

Mirsky does a lot of it. She is really good and really rigorous and writes well, which is always a pleasure, and she does a lot of this work on gratitude. And in fact, between the time my book was published and I was writing this op ed and somebody they said, oh, I think we want it, but we need you to

support this a little better. The research hadn't been done, but I wrote to her and said help, and she had just gotten the data back and just written this paper about how when people in Spain did kind of acts and these are for people they know. So I think it's much more powerful in what hasn't been tested with strangers. I mean it as to some extent, but

not really the way she did this. But she people in her office in Spain they did kind of acts for their co workers, and the people they did kind of ASTs for were three times more likely almost three times two hundred and seventy eight percent more likely to pay it forward. So this what this tells us is that really you if you do a kind act for somebody,

just you know, put money in their meter. Look around in a cafe and see the person they're looking around, they're probably they want to pay newspaper you've read yours, stam up and give it to them. It takes very little that you do these things. And this is so so powerful. And to just give one example of that in the book, my ex assistant Steff, she and her girlfriend were in Boulder, Colorado, really hot. See this woman on a bench, older woman looking very not from bolder.

And the woman says to Steph, who was a very kind person, could you give me directions to where I can get a diet coke? And so Steph, very kind, does this, meticulous and everything, and they walk on and Steph's griff and said I'm going to go buy her one, and Steff said, no, I gave great directions. You don't do that, No, but I will. And she did it and she came back with this and the one was like, oh my god, oh my god. It was like the greatest thing anyone had done for her. And here's an act.

If you do this for a friend, Hey, oh Scott, you know we've done this for each other. Oh I got your coke, got your brownie? Whatever, Oh, thank you. That was really nice of you. I mean, it's nice and you appreciate it. But it's not like the heavens just open up in Angel's breathe on your on your head, you know. And that's really what happened with this, with this woman doing a kind act for a stranger. I've appreciated some of your when you bought me a brownie,

Oh thank you. Yeah. So, I mean this is all very interesting because over the course of your book, you just you really outline so many different domains of rudeness, and in trying to prepare for this interview, I'm like, well, you know, we only have a certain miss that amount of time, so let's pick some of the some of the ones that might be you know, we can get through. So let's let's why don't we try to talk about communication? Oh great, you you have you in your book you

called the big three right communication? Would you mind explain a little bit about what those big three why they're so vital to positive communication. They are listening, empathy and dignity, and listening and empathy are very intertwined. We think that we persuade people by hammering them with the most rational point of view and I'm big on reason and critical thinking.

But actually people will just put up a wall too if you do that, because you actually need to make people feel accepted and listen to before they will listen to you. Empathy is a big part of this. So this idea, there's a friend but with joke I love. She's one of my favorite her humors. She was influenced by James Thurber, who influenced me also, and she wrote the opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is wait is waiting, you know, like waiting to say.

But that's exactly what you can't do. And I used to be somebody I was all about me in conversation. It wasn't out of some venal hateful thing. I just in New York. I was starving, and I was always looking to sort of promote myself in case, you know, like maybe someone could hire me. You know. My mother always said, you know, like always be on the lookout for a job, you know. And so I kind of was in conversation and it made me not connect with people.

And so this guy I quote, he's very good, Mark Golston. He wrote a book called Just Listen. He's a hostage negotiation trainer and he's a former psychiatrist, and he was great. He talked about this about making people feel felt about, you know, this whole empathy thing, and I I, instead of talking, decided to start listening and I went to party.

You have to pre plan this stuff. This is a big theme actually, if you talk about the themes of my book that we are we are really imperfect and fallible and everything, and in the moment, you can count on us to do the impulsive and very wrong thing, the stupid thing, the counterproductive thing. So it's really important to figure out how to behave before you get in the moment. That's what I did. So I decided, I'm

going to go to this party. It's an annual thing for journalists and novelists and pundits and and I am

not going to say anything about myself. And I just talked to everyone about themselves and I had the best time and really, you know, connected with people in a way I didn't when I was you know, miss panic stricken, you know, trying to sell myself, you know, from frommembering the time when I would just you know, be able to spend a dollar and a glass of water my friends went up to dinner, I'd show, you know, dessert and just say, oh, I, you know, not having anything,

and I'd leave a dollar for my water, you know, glass of water. And it just was horrible, you know. So and it's really important to have something write about my next book, which is self compassion. So I look at that stuff. I understand why. I can understand it from the viewpoint of look at myself as like there's some redheaded girl in New York in this freezing place.

You know, she'd bring a snowsuit because of the heat's not working and she doesn't have any money, and you know, horrible, horrible, and you know, and look at that girl and understand why she behaved out of fear. But then to want to this idea like people use fear as an excuse and so you know, I see things that I'm afraid of as things I need to do or change, and I think that that's a really helpful way to look

at that the things you're afraid of. So just to recoup these three things, it's listening, empathy, and treating people with dignity. Yeah, and your example is just encapsulate all those yeah, dignity. Actually, I referenced this very interesting woman who's a conflict resolution specialist, Donna Hicks from Harvard, and she talked about dignity as making people feel that they

are valued. That's her definition of dignity. And it's really important, you know that it's really important that when you're arguing with someone or you want to give them some quote unquote constructive criticism, that you don't do it in a

way that removes their dignity. And one way that does and we both I think you were at the conference, the Evolutionary Psychology conference where Pinker talked about this is doing stuff in front of a third party because we evolve to deeply care about preserving our reputation, and when there's an audience, it's like criticism goes turbos. So people who do this, who you know, they they write some critical email and they see a bunch of people. This

is horrible. If you're not intending to wound someone, don't do that. And if you are, let's check your motives, you know, because actually these people who are who are mean and you know, cut people off the ankles and this stuff, I mean, they're actually not that smart. Because it is actually people who are giving, but judiciously giving. That people would just look at you like the shirt off their back and here ruin my mortgage because you need,

you know, fifty thousand dollars. That's dumb. That's what my friend Barbokley calls pathological altruism. You know, that's that's quote unquote altruism that is sometimes both harmful to the person helping and the person they intend to help. You know, so you have to be judicious about it. But to be somebody who is open and giving and take risks. It takes risks to bring people into conversation when they're left out. This is very important and it does preserve

people's dignity. Treating them as if they have value very very important. If you want people to hear you whatever you're saying, you need to communicate by listening, by having empathy, and by treating people with dignity. And if you're not, if you're attacking people, you're not going to get anything through to them except the fact that they think you're

kind of a jerk. This is course. I hope that like some politicians read your book, Thank You, I do too, so said in the UK about the communications you know, and I sometimes get taken for granted. I think in a way which isn't to say I'm a huge ego about my work, because you've been with me writing and I'm terrible insecurity. Oh my god, is it good enough?

Is this science clear enough? But you know when you write in a way that communicates, when you write science in a way that's simple, and that basically I really work hard, you know hard it is to translate complex science so it's understandable to just anybody on the street, I hope, and then turning it into solutions and then

making it funny. People think, oh, well, you know this isn't serious science because it's not boring, right, I don't think yeah, and it really I just think that many people don't work very hard in they're writing, and I think that that's wrong, and I think that people are lazy and they just don't learn to write in a way that communicates. And the example I gave me four

so I'm Elavimerski. I write her these fan letters when I read her studies and I say, I know this is boring, but god, this is a joy to read because they're so clear and her or her research that it's all thought out and everything, and it's just you. You love people who do their jobs in that way. And it's not easy. People don't get to that, you know. It's not like, oh, people just sit down a computer

and bang it out. You know. It takes a lot of reworking, and it takes a certain respect for both yourself, science and the people who will be hopefully benefiting from it to do enough of the work to make it communicate, to make it right, to not have screwing math all that sort of stuff. Yeah, and I see, I see you do take you take the time to really get

that right and get multiple perspectives. I think that's something that really really pisses you off, is when people try to uh say what they want to be true and when it goes against what the science says. And I've seen instance of that where you're you know that it seems I think it really upsets you. You know, you want to get you want you like these are the facts, you don't like it or not sort of things right,

and people will they will excoriate you. I have Oh my god, if you I made the mistake of looking by accident on Goodreads, some of the reviews of my book and oh my god, it's they're horrible on Amazon. It's mostly like no, I know, but somehow you know, and really, you know. I wrote in the dating chapter about what we both know that there are strategic differences.

This is based on David Buss and David Schmidt's work that there's strategic differences between men and women because women are the ones who get pregnant and they have a higher cost to any sex, that higher potential cost, whereas men can have sex and just walk away. And this is just speaking of them before the days of child support.

But we evolved. This is the thinking. We evolved, and so this, you know, sort of cascades through throughout our dating lives and the people people have a problem with my saying what the sciences, which is that men and women are different. We have different biology, and out of that comes to different psychology. I want to ask you about Marlon Brando. Oh yeah, you apparently met him in an internet chat room. I did. This is why I was starving in New York crazy. It was that was

that was I was just so embarrassed. That was where I was. I talked about this before. I was embarrassed about you. I go out my friends would be out to dinner and I couldn't afford dinner, so I would just show up afterward and get a glass of water and leave a dollar. And finally, you know, it's just that's humiliating. It just feel terrible. The waitress looks at you like, will you be ardering? You know, like scumbag? You know, tell a story about about how you met

brand I was gonna tell you. Now. That's why I started to just stay home and I would go in the AOL chat room because I like conversations. So if I have conversation, I could just get a diet pepsy at the Korean grocery store on the way home, you know, sit there and and talk. And and so I was being attacked in some rude way by somebody in this chat room, and this guy to pops up and defends

me in a very chivalrous way. He was the count with an E and so, and I just saw the way he spoke in his in his little defense with me, and I thought, oh my god, that guy is incredible. So we started instant messaging, and then we over a period of about six months, we instant messaged, we'd email. I mean, it's just been all night. It wasn't like anything gross and kind of love affair or anything. It was an intellectual love affair of anything. And we became

very close friends. And what was cool for him was, you know, when you're a movie star, everybody wants something from me, and even people who don't want to want something from you, they treat you in a weird way because you're famous. It's just you. You have to question everyone's motives. And I was the one person who's motives you didn't have to question. We had to deal with

de Niro. Then I was like, whatever, you know, And I mean, I was grateful that they gave us his deal Triback of Films, but I wasn't excited that he was a movie star. It's a guy who's like, you know, it's his job and he does it well and everything, and you know, and so I think that he saw that that I wasn't into this stuff. And then what happened was I was still right out of college. I

would produce commercials. I stopped doing that. I was doing short films for like Comedy Central, Like I did a three mockumentaries with Spinal like Spinal Tap, but with monkeys. You know, I was dressed up in like a red set and combra this monkey with blonde wig and everything, and you know, Jim Shard and my left foot was talking about my left paw and all this stuff. They're fun anyway. So after I did those, I had to go shoot the last commercial I ever did for Tom

McGann shoes with the talking duck in California. And so this guy was talking to him line. I sort of knew it was a man. I didn't. We didn't really talk about that, but he said, I lived in Los Angeles. I want to meet you. And we talked on the phone. It was like the voice of God, you know. And and he told me his name, and I said, that's so funny. And I had actually just been in Italy and they had no books in English, and I ran out of my books, and so I read I never

would read something like this. I read his autobiography and like and some of the stuff he was telling me on the phone, something really familiar. He said he lived on Mulholland and he really like Jews and stuff like that. He admired Jews. You know. I had one friend in la and he lived in Mulholland across and he's joke. He lived across the street from Maryland Brando, so I knew that road, and so I sort of guessed before

he told me. It was sort of amazing. But he just was, you know, to know that I didn't have any kind of weird designs or anything like that, and I didn't care. We were real friends, and I would tell him when I thought this same we could do with any friend that I thought he was doing something, you know, on tooward and he would sit on the phone. He'd make calls to make me laugh as a British lady's maid, and my job was to not laugh so much as I blew it, you know, all the gas

company or whatever it was. Really he was incredible and when I they're doing a film actually about him now, and he was so he knew so much about science, and he invented things, and he loved poetry and literature and he loved looking things up. He'd called me at three o'clock in the morning about Madame Chang, the Chinese pirate. You know, I can always go back to bed, so

that wasn't a big deal. We'd liked talking. He'd analyze my voices, I got on the phone decide what my mood was when I answered how I said, hello, he must have been quite old when you met him. I don't really know. And he died while I was in Paris for the summer, unfortunately. But I think that I think that it was nice for him to be friends with somebody who he had pretty good sense, just liked him for him, and I had no idea as a

famous person she was talking to him. I just I mean, I'm more impressed by this guy Anthony Dimasio or who writes Antonio or Antonio. Yeah, I'm reading Descartes whatever brain right now. And you know, and I'm more of a fangirl for people like that than I am for actress. Just a job, you know, and if they do it

really really well, that's that's cool. But it's not I'm not any more impressed than I am the you know, I'm impressed by what you do and the way you look in very open minded ways, but rigorous scientific ways at different ways of intelligence and creativity. So and I basically in that way with all my friends, I have like a human crush on them. I think like, oh, they're you know, women. I think like, Oh, you're beautiful

and you're smart, and you're doing such great writing. And you know, because my friends mostly are writers or professors, you know, I just am impressed by people as humans. Absolutely can we cover another domein of I found very interesting serious illnesses because there are lots of ways that as friends, we think that we're really helping people, right, and the way we say things and frame things. But you say that some of some of those things can

actually backfire. Well, you're talking about when people want to help people who are sick. Yeah, I had a friend, Kathy's Sype, dear friend who died of lung cancer. And for example, with Kathy, you know, people people will say things when you're when you they hear about your diagnosis that are sort of horrible and and and that's that's a thing that's very human to do. You want to say something, and you were just reached for the thing.

You think, like, oh, how great that yourself? And yeah, because chemo is making me throw up forty times a day, and that's not a good thing to say. And with Kathy, she believed in modern medical care. She had great doctors at Cedar Sinai, and but people persisted in sending me these like you know, she drinks the juice of twelve you know, mushrooms from the Tree of the like in this bog and then stands on her head for half an hour or so. You know, her lung cancer will

just go away. I mean want I mean to tell her this, and it's like, here's a person who believes in science. Is just you know, you don't force this stuff on someone. And really, what people don't really realize is that when your friend is sick. I mean, I'm not very grown up. How do you tell somebody I was saying, you know in the book that that I'm sorry to say. I'm sorry I said this. You have a flat tire, So how is that appropriate if you have cancer? And I never really knew what to say,

but what I did was show up. And that's the thing. Show the hell up, Bring a casser role, figure out what they need, you know, go to their pot dealer for them. Don't say The worst you can say is if there's anything you can do. This is like saying like buying like a sheep. You know, you say, okay, I'm going to go you figure out if they have a dog. I think they need dog. Food. Say I can go to the pet store, you know and pick stuff up for you, tell me what you need, or

maybe they're too tired to have contact with you. Oh, and don't expect people to cancer to email you back or some other disease. Oh my god. It's hard enough for people in the best of hell to keep up with their email. You know. That's another thing, you know, find out, you know, call their family member, call a friend, say what do they need, and like help them do that, but really just show up. They don't want to talk about cancer, by the way, can't even want to talk

about it. She talked about cancer all day with like doctors and nurses and people stabbing her with sharp sticks, you know, in medical facilities. She wanted me to come over so i'd sit with her and watch Everybody Loves Raymond. Yeah, no, that makes complete sense. Also, I want to talk about apologies. What are the four parts like of an apology? First, you know, you really have to recognize that you're wrong. I mean, this is really important and you have to

recognize and admit it to yourself. You have to be honest. And people think that apologizing is a sign of weakness, but it's really a sign of strength. So this is this is something where a lot of people go wrong, and so if you can do that, it's actually it cleans things up for both you and the person who is, Oh, you're wrong, very very important. Expressing remorse is very very important because if you aren't sorry that it happened, you

know it's gonna happen again. You have to let them know, and you have to know let them know why you were wrong. You know, it's it's you know, not just I'm really sorry I'm wrong. You have to actually seem like it was a problem for you that you were wrong. And then the next thing is pledging that it won't happen again. Now, pledges they go over better if they

come with cash. And I don't mean you're gonna bribe your friend, but for example, you know that if you do something to someone you're late and it screws up their dinner party or something like that, that you give them some kind of gift. You put out some money, you buy them some flowers, or you know, you spill something in their furniture. You you know, you offer to make good and maybe a good plus, so it's like

good with a little extra on top. So you know, if you you know, if you did something somebody, buy them flowers. It's it's just it's putting out, It's it's putting your money where your mouth is, showing that it means enough to you to repair the friendship. You value it enough the friendship, the relationship to go out of your way to give them some you know, mending gift that's very important. And then you know, and then making amends, you know, and and and that's part of some of that.

I sort of like, uh, you know, went into some of that just now with this, you know, and you should figure out, you know, how to make up for what you did to somebody, you know, figure it out. You and you can't unhurt a person's feelings. But you know, that's the thing where it's like you can say I'm sorry, and then you can say it again with flowers. You know. I call this actually in the book the Baker's Dozen of Reparations. Give them what you own plus a little

extra on the top. As I was saying, it's like a goodwill surcharge. And actually, so we can't always make amends. And so I'm for finding yourself, Like if you do something rotten to somebody in traffic and you realize, like, oh, you know, that was not fair. They didn't deserve that.

I had a bad day and you realize that. You know, I say, when you put some feel bad into the world, that you need to, even if you can't find that person they've driven away, you know, do something nice for somebody else, like buy a homeless guy a sandwich, you know, wash the elderly neighbors car, you know, do something. And I actually I have you know, talked about free speech before.

When people are rude to me on the internet, you know, they write me and they say something rude, I will ask them to give money to the fire dot org, which is a free speech defending organization on campus. And sometimes people do and that just sort of rocks, you know, and it really does show they really are sorry, because you know, they're they're willing to put their money where their mouth is. So you're all about free speech, but

you're not. You're not about someone free speeching on their cell phone when it's on speaker, right, that's not And so for example, I said, Rebecca Solman is a snibbling idiot, So you know that is not cool for me to say, like if you're in a grocery store or whatever. To give the grocery store example for me to just say to some person right off the bat. But she wrote a notp ed and I'm responding to her op ed in a funny way, you know. And so it's acceptable

to have debate. But you have to debate. You know. My mother did this, you know, or she is, you know, criticizing some debating with once a moment about her political choices. And my mother, oh my god, she could like I mean, she's an amazing debater. She won debates in college, the University of Michigan. And I said to her, that's not fair. It's like debating with the bunny. You don't get to do that. You know, there has to be some sort

of fair game. But cell phone conversation, I've been with you. It's drive a driven at eighteen Street cafe where they mercifully have a no cell phones policy. So I would get down because I'm tall. I'm tall, I read hair and I wear eye heels up but the shower, so I would bend down to their level so I wouldn't be you know, intimidating an offha and say just whisper and smile and say excuse me. They have a no

cell phones policy. They'd like you to take your calls outside, and people would usually do that because here's what I'm doing. Instead of telling them what to do, I am simply telling them a fact. When you tell someone what to do that they want to clabor you, they don't want to change. I'm telling them a fact, and I'm not doing it in a way that assaults their dignity, like hey, you know, I just shut or you know, or in

a way that just intimates that they're rude. So this allows them to just be a person who wasn't mindful at the moment and to go outside. And they often mostly did that. And this is something I use in my neighborhood. I live in Venice, California. I'm very very close to the street. People come out here. It's just amazing. It's like we're not a Hollywood set people. These are actual real houses. And two in the morning, people in

them are sleeping. That's why they're dark. People come out, They've opened their convertible top and they have one of those babulous sound systems and they will blast the hell a lot of that sound system. One two, in the morning, you know, and it's like, and believe me, it's challenging

to do this. But you go out and you say like, hey, you know, excuse me, but we're really close to the property to the property line here, and actually we hear everything, you know, and people will then say I'm sorry if you come out and you say, like, what the hell were you thinking it two in the morning, which is exactly what I'm thinking. Actually, I'm thinking, like, what was your mother doing with the sailors when she was supposed to be teaching you manners? If you say that to someone,

they might shoot you. So whereas the music was just a problem before, then you become the problem. The noise increases, so you're not a problem for your neighbors too. You made things a lot worse. So this is a lot about, you know, the stuff in my book is a lot about let's look at how we evolve. We evolved to defend against people cheating. And one important thing I say

is that goodness is a form of theft. And this is important because we do not evolve around strangers, so we don't have you know, there's sort of a four or four error like you get on the internet, when it's like there's a stranger doing something to you. So, but the way to take action against them. We none of us like to be robbed. That's our cheeter detection module, you know, coming up. And so when we can see rudeness as sect like people the neighbor who plays your

stereo really late, they're stealing your sleep. The person on a cell phone on the pharmacy line, you can't go anywhere else to get your pills, and not like you go to the grocery store. They're stealing your attention. You know, we're all real rude people are stealing your peace of mind. You know, it just makes life ugly and horrible. So if we understand that we're being robbed, we can get mad enough to stand up to what's effectively social thuggery.

Social thuggery. Wow, fair enough your final chapter. Last question. You know your final chapters dedicate to ways you can make the world a better place for others, claiming that that's the legacy we leave behind after we die. What simple things can our listeners can my listeners do to leave a positive impact on the world. Oh, I love

this question. This is great, this is your moment. It is well it's really important to me remember that the pursuit of happiness is the wrong way to going to go about getting it, and that what seems to be the case is that the way to be happier is to look for to inject meaning into your life. And believe me, you know, I mean, I'm libertarian and not some COMMI saying look, let's all wear paper shoes. You know, I give the ferrari to the goodwill. I'm not like that.

I like if you have a ferrari and it makes you happy, But the thing is to have meaning, is to do kind of acts for others and really will be much happier. And there's an example in one of snie La Mursky's studies where she talks about ms pere counselors for MS for multiple sclerosis that they, you know this is a reason speak, but that they after a month of counseling other patients as volunteers, that they were like seven times globally happier than the people they counseled.

And so true. So it is in your self interest to live meaningfully, and that means being bigger than just yourself giving to other people. It really really does feel good and this is very important going back to how we live in these bass stranger who has this makes us rude because we are around strangers all the time. We can do anything to them if we're rude. And so what's really powerful is to do good for others, but especially others who are strangers. It's really really important.

And you can get the habit of this and you'll you'll feel so good. And this is I forget the guy's name, there's it's it's a classic social science paper referencing sala Olinski. Actually it's about small wins that you know, if someone says cure poverty, well, that's too big. So you just go like, oh, I'm gonna go watch the Honey Boo Boo Dashians on TV, I mean, or whoever you watch on TV, Jeopardy or something. But if someone says, okay, there's a homeless guy in your block, do you have

anything your refrigerator you could give him? You can do that and that actually makes you feel so good. And if people will just try say that, you decide. I feel that basically that our cover charge for being a human and living in this world should be one kind of act to day. So if you try to do one kind of act to day, I would. I mean, I'm guessing that everyone who does this, because this is you know, sort of born out in studies, that you will feel so good from that that you'll want to

keep doing it. And then there's really wonderful research by Hate and Elgo, Jonathan Hate and Sarah Elgo that I reference in the book about how we are so inspired by other people doing good. We see them, we hear about them, even telling stories, even if you link to stories on the internet about people doing wonderful kind acts for strangers or people in need, that this this inspires

people to do kind acts. So like the friend, like the stuff, my ex assistant and her girlfriend who bought this stranger and coat do these little kind accs, and you know what they are. Here's an example. I don't mean to be it's not self aggrandizing. It's just a thing that you notice these things. Okay, my car, I have a tiny hunt of insight from two thousand and four. It looks like it was parked in Appalachia for six

months because I never get to the car wash. I barely leave the house anymore, you know, And so I am used to this thing of like, you know, you're driving somewhere and you think, like I have to pull over, I'm gonna kill someone and wash off your windshield. This woman stops, like six o'clock in the morning. She's doing the thing that I do with a plastic bag on her windshield. And I got like, oh my god, but I live here, so I go, I get wind as I bring it out here in paper towel, and she

just was so grateful and happy. She was happy. You know, I gave her a bag to put the paper talent, so she went, there's a nice car, so it would soil the car. It's just little things like that. Notice what people need. Get in the habit of noticing strangers and their needs and doing a little things for them. Look for the person when you're pulling out of a space, starts to pull out of space, look around to see if there's somebody looking for a space, and tell them

you're leaving as you're walking to your car. Oh my god. Just those small things they make such a difference in both how you feel, how other people feel. And then ultimately, because this catches on as Sonya's research show, Sonya Lebermirski, you know three times more likely people were at this office to pay it forward, and this is when people they knew did kind ask them and it just so

much more powerful when strangers do it. So if we all do that, it really is a way to make the world stop feeling like a vast strangerhood and feel like a just a really, really big neighborhood. Thank you, Amy, that was a great message to leave on. Thank you so much for taking this time to be on my podcast, My Pleasure. I loved it. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as performing a thought permok you

I did. If you don't have to read the show notes for this episode for your past episodes, you can go to the Psychologypodcast dot com Unum