A.J. Jacobs || A Gratitude Journey

Jacobs is the author of Thanks a Thousand, It's All Relative, Drop Dead Healthy, and the New York Times bestsellers, The Note All, The Year of Living Biblically, and My Life as an Experiment. He is a contribute MPR and has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly. AJ lives in New York City with his wife and kids. And I'm grateful too, kindam as a friend, Thanks for being on the show today, A J. Thank you, Scott.

I hope you considered me a friend as well or else. That's awkward. I know I should have said that. Yes, absolutely, I consider you a friend and I'm an avid listener of your podcast, so thank you for putting that out. I listen on Double Speed, so I get twice as much Scott Barry Kaufman, So don't be insulted. But I do love it. And sometimes I'll even listen twice on double Speed, so it's as if I were listening on

single Speed. I love that. Well, I'm honored to hear that, and I'm going to start actually going to start editing the podcast and Double Speed. But that's a little background information that no one needs to know. Okay, So what a really interesting book, What a really neat and clever way to talk about the late of science of gratitude through your own exploration. And you call it Project Gratitude. Is that right? Yes? Exactly? So what is the project exactly? Well,

the project is. It started a couple of years ago when I had read all of this research, including by you, about how important gratitude is. You know, it's good for every part of your mental health, your happiness level and recovering from illness, even and sleep and all sorts of so I knew it was important. So I decided to start this ritual of saying a prayer of Thanksgiving before every meal. But the trick is I'm agnostic, so it was kind of weird to thank God, so I didn't

do that. So instead I would thank the people. So I would think, you know, the farmer who grew the tomatoes, and then the trucker who drove the tomatoes to the store. And one day my ten year old son said, you know, Dad, that's kind of lame. Those people can't hear you. You're thanking them, but what good is that doing. You should go out, if you cared, you would go out and thank them in person. And I said, that is a very interesting idea a writer. I'm like, that's a book idea.

I am going to So thank you to my son for earning his supper. And I went around the world for several months thanking over a thousand people who had even the smallest role in making my cup of coffee of reality. So not just the baristo and the farmer, but those but also anyone you can think of, the logo designer, the person who drove the beans in his truck, and if he couldn't have done his job without the road. So I thank the road pavers and the people who

painted the yellow lines on the road. So the truck didn't veer into traffic, and you realize there are hundreds of people we take for granted in every little thing we do, and it was it was a life altering experience. That's wonderful. Before we go into more detail about those things, let me just step back a moment and get a very meta look at aj Jacobs. So you I love stepping back. Yeah. Cool. So you talk about how dispositionally you're moderately grumpy, right, you said to say you're like

a hybrid between Orry David and who else? Well, I'm going with mister Rogers now it's sort of in my mind. Yeah, there's a fight, and I think this is in everybody. There's a fight between the Larry David side and the mister Rogers side. And I think, if you believe evolutionary psychology, which I think has some merit, we are bred to be Larry David's that we have a built in negative bias because in Paleolithic times that had sur rival value.

You know, you wanted to be able to focus on the lion, You wanted to remember the one mushroom out of ten that was poisonous, So you were drawn to the negative. So to me, the idea was to bulk up my mister Rogers, just get him ripped and so he can take on the Larry David. And it's a lot about cognitive behavioral psychology, which I learned about on your show. Well, you know, the last two books, like this book and your most recent one, I mean, are

incredibly incredibly compassionate books. One they really point towards a unified theme of brotherly love, you know, not in group love, but brotherly love and really appreciating as much of the world as possible. If one were just to read those two books, which I did, I am one who did, I didn't at all get a Larry David from them. So have you like radically changed your personality in the

last fifteen years? Also hanging out with you, like, I consider you one of the most compassionate, thoughtful humans that I know in this world. So if you're the Larry David, then the world's really in trouble. I don't know, I don't know. Like, well, that is very nice of you to say, and I mean, the Larry David within me is strong, but I really addle it, so you don't say it out loud. So even in this conversation, right now, Like, is the real age age Jacobs having like negative thoughts

about me? What is that? And you just never well, I don't believe in there's a real Aja. I know. I think that is there one side of aj who's like being hyper critical of everything. But I am pushing that side down because I think this is another theme in my books is that acting is so powerful. I didn't make this quote up, but I love it. It's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way

of acting. And this is wisdom that goes back to Ecclesiastes in the Bible, and it's also talked about in cognitive behavioral psychology that if you act in a certain way, your mind eventually catches up. So that's what I've been doing. I try to act compassionately even when I don't feel it, and eventually my mind will catch up. And that has been the way I did this with gratitude. You know,

I didn't. I woke up grumpy most days, but I would force myself to write an hour worth of thank you notes and by the end it actually my mind had caught up. But do your emotions ever catch up? Like, do you feel like you genuinely feel more caring towards people? Oh? Yeah, my mind, I meant emotions. Okay, I think your emotions do follow your actions. I think it's an incredibly powerful We always think of the inside affecting the outside, but often you can make it the outside affects the inner.

Behavior affects your thoughts and feelings. Good. And I like this because you're saying, even if someone as grumpy as you can become this gratitude like it, there's hope for for anyone. Sure. And I am also very lucky because in the book I have a gratitude guru, as I call them, and that gratitude guru is a highly respected author and podcaster, Scott very Caught. I want to thank you because, as you know, it's like, who's that, who's this?

This guy's taking my but I quote you several times in the book with your wisdom on how to become more grateful and strategies, because that's what I love is sort of I don't think it comes naturally to us, so coming up with these practices and strategies to make us more grateful. Yeah, it was my pleasure to talk to you and that really will get you all those strategies. That'll be something I know the listeners probably care even more about than your own personality. But so insulted. No,

are you really inserted? Are you really insulted? Absolutely? So you wrote nine hundred and sixty four thank you notes? That is? Did I say that nine hundred and sixty one? I thought I broke a thousand, I think, But yes I did that, and I think you know, some of them were written, some were emailed somewhere old fashioned, somewhere

over the phone, and some were in person. And it was, as I say, it was a remarkable experience, because on the one hand, is a pain in the ass, you know, to write that many thank you know ites, thank deam.

But on the other hand, it feels from a selfish point of view, it feels really good after a while, because I remember I call the woman who does pest control or the warehouse where my coffee beans are kept, and I said, you know, I know this sounds strange, but I just want to thank you for keeping the bugs out of my coffee. And she said, well, that is strange. I'll give it to you. But it also has it's a highlight of my day because we don't get thanked a lot. Who calls the pest control people.

So feeling appreciated is such an important part of well being. And I think that that really hit home, and then that would make me feel good. I'd get the dopamine or oxytocin or whatever it is. So there's I love it. Yeah, It's one of the greatest parts of human and nature to me is that being nice can be a selfish act. You know, I don't believe that that's why we do it, but I believe that the byproduct of being nice will make you happier, which is just a wonderful coincidence. Yeah.

I had a podcast chat recent with Steve Stewart Williams, an evolutionary psychologist who argues that altruism is not selfish if you get a genuine enjoyment from the giving act. It's only selfish when you are giving to someone, so that it's a means to an end for something else. So I wouldn't actually say that selfish. If you feel it's not selfish. If you feel good helping people, that's not selfish. That's altruistic. Great. Yeah, I mean I would

say it's sort of a semantic thing. But I think as a way to market being nice, it's good to remind people that it's like, you know, a little hit of yeah prozac. By being nice, it can actually make you happier. Yeah, I think that's right. And you picked coffee. Is this you're drinking coffee right now? In fact, well you do that again. I'm going to screen capture that. Okay, So I mean I can even tell as you're drinking it right now, you're doing it very mindfully and appreciative,

like it didn't go away, right, true? Yeah, well I try. I mean, I chose coffee because it's such a big you know, it's I can't function without it, and it's they're two billion cups of coffee drunk every day, and it has an effect on every part of our lives. And I also thought that it would show just how many hundreds of people are involved in every little part of our lives. So you know, this coffee was made with the help of biologists and miners and goat herters

and shippers, and it just goes on and on. And the part that you brought up about being mindful while drinking coffee, this is one of my favorite lessons that I learned from you was the idea of savoring, which is really integral to gratitude, and it will make your life much better because, as you put it, the key is to take a moment and really just latch on, slow down time, stretch it out, because otherwise life goes

by in a flash and it all blurs together. And that's what I tried to do with coffee in a literal sense. Try to save for it. You know, we're all busy, but if you leave on your tongue for just two extra seconds and think about it, it will make your life better. And one of the people I thinked on my journey was the guy who buys the

coffee beans. He goes around to South America Africa to buy coffee beans, and he's hilarious because he will take a sip of coffee and you know, his face will light up and he'll say, oh, I'm getting hints of maple syrup and apricot, you know, like overripe apricot. And I'll take a sip and I'll be like, I'm picking up coffee. Is to me, there's some coffee taste. But uh, if you do focus just for two seconds on the texture and the acidity and the sweetness. It will make

your life better. So that's what I try to do. But you know, of course there's we're all busy, so there's the temptation to guzzle. So you've got to really work at it. Make it a practice, absolutely with almost anything in your daily life. I was a really good example how you dug into that. So you started this project in reverse, starting with your local cafe and then working solely backward to the birth of the coffee. Let's start with the barista. It's barista, right, yeah, I think so?

And is that gender neutral? Am I? Is that political correct? Barista? Yes? Right? I think Okay, So I think it's gender fluid to use a yeah, is it a fluid term since coffee is a fluid get it? I do get it. That was That was good, So let's start with this. Cut that out. So what do we not really appreciate about the life of a barista? Well, a barista's life is not easy, you know. I spend a lot of time talking to my local barista, Chung Lee is her name,

at Joe Coffee in New York. And you're encountering people in a very dangerous state, which is pre caffeination, so people are not at their best, and she's had people make her cry just by being rude, and to her, one of the worst parts is people treat her like a venting machine. But yeah, they just hand her their

credit card without even looking up from their phones. They're just you know, focused and don't acknowledge her humanity, and she says, you know, it just makes her feel terrible, and so, you know, talking to her, I made the vow to actually make two seconds of eye contact when I have interactions with people. And I know that you're calling the Nobel Prize committ in Oslo right now, but it's actually it's such a small expenditure and it has such a big impact, you know, low cost, high benefit

for everyone and not just her. You know, it makes me feel better because I do think we're programmed to be social and look people in the face. So yeah, that was the big lesson from Chung the barista. And I will say this, she never said this, but I've read I read about Barisa's and some of them, probably not the majority, Like if you're a jerk to them, they will give you decaf to even so or extra caffeine.

Oh yeah, maybe the other way exactly. Okay, Look, so you know you bring in very cleverly, you we even seamlessly the science. So Bob Emmons has done a lot of great work on this. And what does he argue to the enemy of gratitude? Well, first of all, I loved when I interviewed you, you were very clear to thank Bob Emmons. Well, he's alleged in this field the legend, and he does well I think, and you know you

know better than me. But he talks about taking things for granted as being an enemy of gratitude because it's so easy to forget just how much goes into every little thing we do. I could have literally written about one hundred different books depending on which corridors I went down. You know, I could have gone down the cup corridor and just talked about the lumberjacks and the people who make the helmets for the lumberjacks and who they are. And so did I get the answer right? Is that

what the enemy of gratitude is? So what did you actually say, was the enemy of gratitude there take things for granted? Oh, taking things for granted? Well, I don't know. He said grateful living as possible only when we realize that other people and agents do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Is that right, that's pretty much the same thing, right, same area? Yea, I mean that. Yeah, that's the quote I put in the book, and I loved it because it is realizing are humans involved and

a lot of thought. And that's one of my favorite parts of the project, was just realizing how much thought goes into every little part of life. Like even this, I know it's a podcast, but this, I'll I'll take another picture. It's cardboard sleeve around the cup. At first of all, that has a name, which I love. It's Zarf Zarf. And there were zarfs even in ancient China too, made of gold and silver, and now they're made of cardboard.

But just the fact that someone came up with it, and I interviewed the guy who came up with it, like thirty years ago, who was in a car picking his daughter up and he got a cup of coffee to go and it's spilt on his lap because it was too hot, and he's like, I'm going to solve this problem. So just realizing that there was someone behind that who came up with him and there are hundreds of people who manufacture it. How do you spell that?

Z A R F ZARF. Okay, I'm going to tweet out picture of the screen capture I just took, and my look on my face is one of wonder and awe and uh that's what I want. Yeah, important emotion. I gotta say, that is what I was trying to tap into a lot of the time. Yeah, I'm correlated with gratitude. Yeah, so Bob. Back to Bob, you know, he argues that the gratitude emergers from two different information processing forms of information processing are stages. What are they

exam in my book? I know it's in my book. I'll tell you. I'll say, sorry, Affirmation and recognition. It's a good book. I do that too. I do that too. So he argues that we affirm the good and credit others with bringing it about. So affirmation and recognition. I just wondering if you could talk about and maybe give it a couple of examples of, like throughout the course of this journey where you utilized both. Yeah, I mean,

I think affirmation is so crucial. And there was just a study like a month ago that you might have sent me. But it was about how we overestimate how awkward it's going to be to thank people and underestimate how it is to them. And I love that study because it is a little awkward, you know, calling people out of the blue. And even in my own life, I would during you know, I became enamored of gratitude,

so I would. I called my old boss, who was like, you know, I hadn't spoken to him fifteen years, but just called to thank him for that all he taught me. And it's awkward, you know, because I hadn't talked to him, but it was also very meaningful to I, at least me and I think him. So affirmation is crucial, and recognition is one of my crusades is to show that. There's a whole section in the book about one of

the guy who does the tasting for coffee. He's also in a band, like an alternative rock band, and he's a bassist, and he talks about how important bassists are. They don't get the limelight like the lead singer or the lead guitar, but they are so crucial. And I found that such a great metaphor for so much of life, and that basis, you know, psychologist, like you call it the responsibility bias, that we tend to focus on one person that we think is responsible for so much, when

in fact it's almost always a team effort. And there's a part in my book that actually I got from Adam Grant's book on Give and Take, where we talk about Jonas Salk. And you know, I don't want to attack Jonahs Salt, but I'm going to because Adam did.

But he you know, of course he did a great thing by inventing the polio vaccine, but he was also kind of a jerk because he gave very little credit to his collaborators and there were lots of them, including six crucial people in his lab, so that made them very upset. And I think it's just bad for society as a whole that like everyone feels they have to be a rock star and if you aren't a rock star, then you're dissatisfied, when in fact you can lead a

wonderful life as part of a team. And then there's this I don't have this in the book, but there's a story that really sticks with me, and it is it's not apocryphal. I actually looked it up. It is when John F. Kennedy was president and was touring NASA headquarters. They came upon a janitor and just like sweeping up the hallway and JFK said, what's your job here? And he said, my job is to help put people on the moon. And I just love that because framing your

life like that gives it so much purpose. And it's true, he's not the you know, the astronauts could not do their job if they slip on the hallway and you know, break their skull. And so it sounded like someone just fell and broke their skull. What does that sound serious? No? Do you that I have my headphones on. Okay, I heard something like drop in the background. Okay, did I go check them in? Sure, there's no one. I think

we're good. Okay, good, okay, good. But anyway, that I thought was a lovely story and a lovely way to, yeah, to reframe your life, you know, and I love it. I really love it. I mean the reframing your life no matter what job you're in. I mean that's kind of like an easter egg or of your book. Like your book has lots of threads, right, and you have your main thread, but I feel like there's all these other really kind of profound points that were not kind

of you're either profound points. Yeah, and you know, you said a couple of things I wanted to talk about. So one thing you said saying thank you, but you you're right about how people consider it more sincere if you use the phrase I'm very grateful or yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't be more grateful? Is that right? That's a better way of saying it than thank you. That was a study of Wharton study that I think Robert Evans

talked about in one of his books. Yeah, that actually saying I think that it's the problem is thank you might seem robotic it, you know, it sort of falls ontoa fears So anything to shake it up and to remind people, you know, I'm not just saying these words, I'm feeling this emotion. And so I would say that to my wife and I'd be like, I am deeply grateful that you took our son to the orthodontist, and she'd be like, are you in some sort of cult?

Like what the hell is this deeply grateful? But well that's just her personality. Yeah, exactly, So I wouldn't use the word deeply that seems to be going too far, but anyway to shake it up and be creative. And I found that in terms of of thanking in general, it's so much more powerful to be specific. And I am now in the midst of writing one to promote

the book. I agreed. I have the idea to write one thousand thank you notes to readers, and I've actually reached a thousand, but I'm extending it because I'm it's such a delight. It's a pain in the ass, but it's also delightful. So can I just if people want it? Ajjacobs dot com slash thanks and there's a form and you go, I'll put on the show NOTESJ Yeah, please.

I would love to write more. And what I love about it though, is you know it's got your You put in your name and your address, but then you put in a note of you know what you're interested in. It could be you know, you love the Seattle Seahawks or whatever, or you know you're graduating dentistry school. And I am able to write these very specific notes to these people and then they say some lovely things and

I'm able respond to those. And sometimes things get weird. Well, you know, I've gotten a lot of people who want me to thank their dog, which is fine. I understand I'm a dog person. One guy wanted me to thank his ex wife for divorcing him, so, which I suppose, you know, if it's probably better that she divorced him. So yeah, I am loving that. But the more specific a thank you note or face to face thank you

is the more powerful for both parties. That's great. Let's keep up the list of some strategies people can do to increase their sense of gratitude in their early life. Can you talk about some others? Yeah, Well, one that I use every single day is that when I'm trying to go to sleep, instead of counting sheep, I count things I'm grateful for. And I do it alphabetically, so I might start at A and you know, I'm thankful

for the honey Chris Bappel. I just had honey Chris Bapple yesterday, and I just I always forget how good honey Crisp is, and then be could be you know. I talked to Scott Barry Kaufman today and ye Erry, it's a stretch, but I wantn't get you in there. Uh, it's a stretch that you would be grateful for talking to me today. No, the b for gotcha. I thought it would be more natural to k or yes, but that would take too long to get there. Well, the honeycomb thing starts with an h anyway than apple, so

it's all good. Yeah, there you go. Okay, So yeah, I find that very helpful for falling asleep, because I rarely I don't think I've ever gotten to z. I usually am out by like amazing. So you just fall asleep because otherwise my mind I don't trust my mind. I think that if you leave it alone, it can go into some you know, rumination. It's really attracted to rumination and worries, and so I have to fight that. And this is a discipline I use to fight it. Good. No,

that's great. One. Okay, should we do another strategy? Sure? Sure, hold on, let me think of it. One you've already talked about is just writing thank you notes to people. Oh yeah, and there's tons of research on that, as you know. I mean, there was I think a famous experiment where the idea is and you did this with your students, I believe, is that right? It is one

of the exercises that's right. Yeah, yeah, so you can talk about it better than I can't tell the ideas that you have to write and not a long thank you note. So what did you ask? Maybe just tell me what you asked your students to do, because I think it is similar to what I did. Oh, I'd be happy to tell you. Well, I I feel like you're an expert on this, so why not get your point of view? Let me just google my course syllabis. Ah, okay,

if you're googling yourself, that's okay. Yeah. And by the way, niece went to the University of Pennsylvania and took your course and found it incredibly meaningful. So oh, thank you on behalf of her. You're being like really nice to me today. I mean you're you always, I mean you always are nice to me, but I feel particularly glowing. Well, you know, it's the mist around your sign. Listen, he's

really in full force today. I might get tired. When you get tired, then that's when the Larry David side comes out. So you might want to Yeah, you don't want to go too long or else that will come Larry David. But honestly, you know you can be with me. No matter how you feel, you know that I'm not. I'm very non judgmental, So I'll read the activity that I had the students do. So the exercise is choose a person in your life who has been especially kind to you but me not have ever heard you express

your deep gratitude to them. Rate him or her a letter with the intention of reading it out loud to this person. If at all possible, Describe in detail what the person has done for you and exactly how it has affected your life. Mention how often you remember his or her efforts, and how you may plan to pay this kindness forward somehow, if possible, read the letter out

loud to the recipient. If this is not possible, you can read the letter over the phone or mail the letter and follow up with a phone call complete a rin reflection to detailing what it felt like to engage in this gratitude intervention. You may feel free to share the letter itself and your reflection, but you do not have to. So that's the lovely And do you have any Do you remember any particular instances where it was

particularly powerful for a student? You know, I do, I vaguely do now I remember receiving a long email from a student three four years ago saying like, while I totally rekindled with like my dad, who haven't talked to in many years, or something like yeah, this person like really felt like they reformed a connection that was meaningful to them. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that the research, if I remember correctly, says that it has a lasting effect.

It's not just you know, a week, It like lasts months, if not years. The sort of the boost you get from doing exercise like this. Yeah, we don't know exactly how long, but certainly at least two weeks. I would say, Yeah, it's nothing. If you write one of those notes every two weeks, then you know, oh yeah, booster shots. Yeah, that's what you gotta do for sure. So did you want to talk about any other strategies you did? Like maybe one more? Sure? Let me think of that. Where

the other strategies, Well, all right. One strategy I had is just making sure I notice the hundreds of things that go right every day, because that, as you know, my default mode is to notice the three or four that go wrong. So you can do this a number of ways. One is just like spend five minutes, you know, I would press the elevator button. I'd be thankful the elevator came, I'd get in the elevator. I'd be thankful it didn't plummet to the basement and break my classical.

So you can make a list in five minutes of one hundred things that go right that we take for granted. Another way to do this was to really make a note when something goes right. Because, for instance, if you asked me five years ago, what's your luck? Do you have good luck or bad luck? I'd be like, oh, I always I'm on the you know, always on the slowest line when I go to the drug store. What's up with that? But that's not true, that's just my bias.

That's just because when I am on the slowest line, I get so annoyed that it sticks in my memory. So making a conscious effort to when you're on a line that zips right through, I like to try to say aloud to myself, like, remember this, don't be an idiot. This is an example of things going right. And next time you're on a slow line, remember that. I do like that. There's a form of gratitude that I'm trying

to coin, and wanted to run it by you. It actually emerged from a conversation I had with the physicist Sean Carroll. Oh, I love his book. Yeah, you recommended his book to me. I'm in the middle of it. Oh, that's right, Yes, you're right. It's really good. And by the time this our episode comes out the Sean Carroll one, well, I've already been out. And this idea of existential gratitude is not discussed, hasn't been measured, but I'd like to

start maybe doing some research on it. And I would just think of it as just like, at the very least, why not just have be happy that you're alive? And how improbable that is considering how many things could have gone wrong in the creation of you. Oh yeah, that is interesting. I remember Bill Bryson has a passage about how unlikely it is that you exist at all. Yeah, like, out of the millions of sperm, you know, the one

with you was the one that connected. It's crazy. And I also I loved when I interviewed another one of my advisors in this project, Will mcgaskell, who is a philosophy professor at Oxford and I love him. He's one of the founders of a movement called effective altruism, and I asked him, what are you grateful for? And he said, well, sometimes I'm just grateful that I have arms. And he said, you know, it's easy to be grateful for a raise at work, but being grateful for those things that we

truly don't even think about, like having arms. And I thought that was that was a wonderful way to put it, Absolutely wonderful. Yeah, I know, it's very true. I I don't know if that's the same thing as existential gratitude. But what did you think of the idea of existential gratitude? Did you think it was promising? And you can be honest with me if you no. I love it. I think it's very important. I mean the question as long as your life is a net positive, which I do

think most I don't know. I can't say that, but I knew, I knew, I knew where you were going with that, and then I knew I knew the thought process that put the brakes on it. I can't say that. I mean, I think my life, luckily, I'm so lucky that you know, it is a net positive despite all the horrible things that happen in everyone traditional life. Yeah, I had this debate with Will mcgaskell. Actually, like you know,

is the average human life a net positive? And he says he thinks so, otherwise there would be mass suicides. I'm not sure that tracks to me, because your survival instinct could out weigh your decision to commit suicide even if your life is a net negative. But anyway, for me, I consider myself extremely lucky and my life is so far I think a net positive, and so yeah, I

should be unbelievably grateful that I exist. And you know, I forget where I read it, but just this idea that we are, you know, just this little sliver of light between two black doo eternal blacknesses. And I actually I am very into Memento Maury, the Reminders of Death, because I think it's a wonderful tool to remind ourselves

that how short our lives are. And you know, I studied the history of them and they had a lot of in paintings in the Renaissance, they would have skulls all over just to remind people your mortal So, you know, try to live life while you can. And I have a Meno Maury on my computer, Like on my computer, I have a little it's not a scary skull because I didn't want to be depressed. It's like sort of

a happy, fun, psychedelic, colorful skull. But I do like to remember, you know that life is fleeting and have existential gratitude, as you would say, wonderful. This conversation really did get existential and dark, but I started it. So let's talk a little about something a little more hopeful, and that's appreciating mom. So you talk about the house. Zeene was was a son of someone you interviewed. Is that ny who suggested the son of mine? He's your son? Yeah?

There you go. Okay, so your son Zane suggested to you. You know, really, birthday celebrations should be about honoring the mom. Why is it always about the kid? Oh? Yeah, I love that idea. It's so crazy that we on our birthday it's all about the person who was born, But the person who did all the work that day, who you know, went through incredible pain. Is the birth the mom? And so why we only celebrate the birth ee and not the birth is insane once you think about it.

And you know, I think the the phrase labor day has already been taken. But uh so we've got to find another name. But I do love the idea of thank every birthday. Now I write a thank you note to mom for birthing me. And by the way, speaking of moms, I don't know if you know the economist Russ Roberts, but he I was speaking to him, and he turned me on to a poem called the Lanyard that is so lovely about appreciating moms and how much

they do for us. And we think, like when we made a lanyard at the camp and gave it to them, like now we're even, Like here, I gave you this lanyard for all that you've done for me, So we're pretty even. It's by Billy Collins, the poem so I would google that. It's a wonderful little poem, thank you. I think a lot of people will be googling that. So you also talk about the importance of interconnection. You

say the gratitude trails intersect and overlap everywhere. In fact, if you mapped it out, you could probably connect almost anyone in the book to almost anyone else. I mean, isn't there an obvious thread there between that and your prior book? You know how everyone? Oh yeah, it's all relative,

How everyone's right? Right? My previous book was called It's All Relative, And for that one, I joined this group of researchers and scientists who are trying to build a family tree of the entire human race through DNA and through sort of internet wiki technology. And again, yeah, exactly, it's the six degrees of Kevin Bacon and everyone's Kevin Bacon. So that and you can figure out how you're related to almost any We figured out how we were related, right,

didn't we? No? I don't think we ever did that. All right, I'm going to have to do that. I would like to do that. Actually, yeah, all right, it's easy. I mean I find it fascinating because there's an experiment two years ago by Harvard where they took Israelis and Palestinians and one group they showed concretely how they were genetically related, how closely they were, and the other group

they didn't. And the group that was told how they were related treated each other with more kindness in these various memory tasks, and they were more open to negotiation. So I actually think that it's not going to solve all our problems, but this seeing concretely how we're related and linked can be a nudge in the right direction. Yeah, how is Trump and Obama related? I did find that out that I don't think has worked out in terms

of their cooperation yet. But yeah, I actually think in all seriousness, this whole in group outgroup way of viewing the world as a zero sum game is what the way Trump views the world, And any way we can get to a road that way of thinking is going to make the world a better place. Yeah, very well said. So you say if we connected the world with threads

signifying gratitude, the result would be thick as a blanket. Well, I am really quite grateful not deeply grateful, but quite grateful for the book you wrote and for putting these ideas out into the world, not just in this book. But there's this theme that does emerging through your entire existence, I would say, a deeper existence that is quite hopeful and loving at its core. Well, thank you. I know I have to say it because it's my job, but I do mean it. Thank you, Scott, and thank you

again for all your wisdom. It made the book so much better and gate So I didn't pay you. I didn't pay you to say any of that, and I didn't pay you to be the record that's true. Thank you, aj I really do appreciate that. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the

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