SPEAKER_03: Pushkin. I live out in the countryside and I have a little guest cottage next to my house, surrounded by apple trees. And after coming back from a trip to California where I had a wonderful experience in an Airbnb in the Hollywood Hills, I thought to myself, should I Airbnb my cottage? Maybe you stayed in an Airbnb before and had the same thought. This actually seems pretty doable. It could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your whole place. When you're away, you could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home may be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
SPEAKER_04: From Pushkin Industries and Ruby studio at iHeartMedia, incubation is a new show about humanity's struggle against the world's tiniest villains viruses. I'm Jacob Goldstein. And on this show, you'll hear how viruses attack us, how we fight back and what we've learned in the course of those fights. Listen to incubation on the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_02: The one thing we can never get more of is time or can we, this is Watson X orchestrate AI designed to multiply productivity by automating tasks. When you Watson X your business, you can build digital skills to help human resources spend less time generating offer letters, writing job recs, and managing schedules and spend more time on humans. Let's create more time for your business with Watson X orchestrate. Learn more at IBM.com slash orchestrate IBM let's create.
SPEAKER_03: My good friend, Adam Grant, author and psychology professor at UPenn, has a new book out, Hidden Potential, the Science of Achieving Greater Things. He sent me a draft months ago. I told Adam, I love it so much that when it comes out, I want to sit down and interview you about it. And we'll run the interview in the revisionist history feed. Sure enough, Hidden Potential has now come out. And on Adam's publication day, he came to New York and joined me on stage at the 92nd street Y for what turned out to be a really, really fun conversation as we always have whenever we get together. So here it is. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. Um, Adam, thank you for, uh, uh, for coming to New York. You know, we have done this many times. We have, and this is, it's usually on my turf, not yours. This is what I was about to say. I was going to ask you what is different this time round and you, that's exactly right. You have finally come to my house and I was reflecting on this and I was wondering what kind of an idiot am I that I have agreed to go to your turf like seven times in a row before demanding that we return the favor. This is like a, you know, in basketball, this is like someone's seating, you know, home territory and saying, oh, well, let's just do it at your arena.
SPEAKER_05: I will say though, you once invited me to your actual house where we had dinner and you cooked. That's true. Do you remember this? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't say that was necessarily to your advantage if I was cooking.
SPEAKER_05: Well, it definitely wasn't because I've never told you this, but, uh, do you remember what you cooked? No, I think it was tilapia. Really? Or it was, it was something that swims and I don't, I don't eat seafood, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings. So I ate it.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I feel like we're even. Adam, that, that, that's very touching. You, you, you took tilapia for me. That's, I am, I wanted to start, um, we're going to be discussing your book, hidden potential, but I'm looking at the blurbs on the back and I just want to not read the blurbs, but just talk about who has blurbed your book. Okay.
SPEAKER_03: So the first blurb is from Serena Williams, right? World's greatest hands per. The second blurb is from Mark Cuban, the famous owner of the Dallas Mavericks, the guy who was on Shark Tank. The third quote is from Malcolm Glavo, me. The fourth quote is from Yo-Yo Ma, world's famous cellist. And the fourth quote is from us Navy Admiral William McRaven. Okay. Now, what's the theory behind the order? Why does Serena, did she, did she say I'll give you a blurb if you put me first? Like what, how does who decided she goes first to Cuban say, I'm willing to go second to Serena, but not if I'm, if I'm behind Glavo, I'm, you know, getting up. What happened? How did that work? I didn't choose the order. It's not alphabetical.
SPEAKER_05: Wait, are you, are you trying to argue for a higher placement than third? No.
SPEAKER_03: Is that what's happening here? No, no, I don't. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I belong third. I think I don't know why I'm ahead of, why would I be ahead of Yo-Yo Ma? Yo-Yo Ma in every way is more culturally significant than I am. I will be dead and forgotten that people will be listening to Yo-Yo Ma. Okay. William McRaven defends this country. And you have a blast like, where are your priorities by the way? This is how you treat a guest in your home.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, we have a history of me feeding you tilapia. So, all right, let's talk about your book. Um, which I like a lot by the way, otherwise it would not have blurbed it. You're interested in character, which is, is that sort of an interesting twist, isn't it? You would think an organizational psychologist would be someone who would be interested in structures and procedures and those kinds of things. I'm a psychologist first,
SPEAKER_05: and I happen to do a lot of my work on people at work. But what I care about is people and the quality of their lives and how much they get to grow. And so if you happen to do that in an organization, great, but I could care less about the org chart. But I care deeply about helping people reach their potential. Yeah. I want to make an additional observation about your books as a group.
SPEAKER_03: Um, and that is that it's, they're fundamentally about character, as you say, which are also very interested in sort of interrogating our intuitive ideas about character, right? I'm always reminded, and you will know this, didn't, um, Lee Ross write a famous paper, which was all about how our intuitions about psychology are wrong in the law, in the, in the main. Um, and that it seems to me a lot of what you're doing in your books, is this a fair summary of them is you are continuing on that path of kind of interrogating our intuitive notions about psychology. Some would call that Gladwellian.
SPEAKER_03: No, I don't think, I think you're, don't, don't, you're deflecting now, Adam. You're literally just deflected. No, no. Is anyone else watching this happen?
SPEAKER_05: His deflection is accusing me of deflection. It's meta deflection.
SPEAKER_03: It's not, no, listen, am I, I'm just a flat out contrarian. There's a difference between someone who gently interrogates what we get wrong as intuitive psychologists and someone like me who just says provocatively and usually erroneously that everything we think is wrong. I'm a bomb thrower. You're not a bomb thrower.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. I guess that's, I think that's a parody or a caricature of your work, but no, I think, I think I start with really wanting to understand what makes people tick and how we can improve the quality of our lives. And then within that, I want to focus on what's surprising and unexpected. So yes, I think you're right. Yeah. Which causes me pain to admit.
SPEAKER_03: Like we think again, for example, the idea of valorizing humility as a kind, as the kind of cornerstone, the key, as the cornerstone of intellectual growth is really interesting and not one. I imagine if you gathered a group of people, of students and asked them, what did they think? What characters trait did they think was the key to intellectual growth? Humility would not be in the top three.
SPEAKER_05: No. And that's why I wanted to write about it. Yeah. I mean, I go to work when we used to go to a physical workplace. And still when I go to teach, I walk into the classroom and I think, Donald Trump and Elon Musk both attended this fine institution. What would I want the next Trump or Musk to learn? And strangely humility is very, very high on that list. I wonder how you could,
SPEAKER_03: so tell me about the thought process that led you to think, okay, the next stage in this journey through character, I want to, I want to, I want it to be about hidden potential. How did you get there?
SPEAKER_05: I went down this path because I was once told that I couldn't write. Who told you that? Um, the Harvard writing office, my first week of college when they recommended me for remedial writing, which I was then told was for jocks and people who spoke English as a sixth or seventh language. So wait, keep going. This is interesting. Yeah. So I,
SPEAKER_05: I, um, I failed the required writing test as a, as a brand new freshmen. It was the first piece of feedback I got from Harvard. And if you think I had imposter syndrome before, like already worrying, like I'm the one mistake, I don't belong here. Now I show up, I take the writing test and they're like, Nope, you must take an extra semester of writing. Um, and you, you can't, like you can't explain your thoughts coherently and you don't know how to structure an argument. And I was like, I think I don't belong here. And I think that's the point, right? That's why I wanted to write this book is we make so many judgments of other people's potential. And so often they're driven by starting ability. Do you have the raw talent? Are you a prodigy? Um, do you look extremely capable? Um, and if the answer is no, you think you should give up because you don't have what it takes. And I think that's a huge mistake. I think it counts out a ton of late bloomers. I think it overlooks many, many slow learners. Um, and I think it also prevents us from stretching beyond our strengths and actually achieving more than we believe we're capable of.
SPEAKER_03: But so wait, but this is interesting because I would, you know, I associate you, you're 18. Can you, can you give us a little more insight into your 18 year old self? You said you had imposter syndrome. Why? I think I didn't,
SPEAKER_05: I didn't have any sense of what it took to be a Harvard student. I remember going to my interview and the interviewer was the first Harvard graduate I ever met. And I just, I thought that was a different intellectual league. I didn't know if I was smart enough. Um, I didn't have any patents yet. Uh, I did not get a perfect SAT score. Um, But you got in. Yeah, but I didn't know exactly why or how. And they're just evaluating me from a bunch of pieces of paper, right? Which is a pretty, it's a pretty poor proxy for somebody's potential.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Those of us who didn't get into Harvard are always baffled by those who did get into Harvard and profess to have imposter syndrome. I was in Los Angeles recently. I needed to stay for a good 10 days. So I got an Airbnb up in the Hollywood Hills, a gorgeous little cottage with an amazing view of the city. And I thought to myself, why doesn't everyone do this? I got to stay somewhere authentic and the people whose house it was got to make a little extra income. I mean, why don't I do it? I've got a little cottage next to my house surrounded by apple trees. Maybe you've stayed in Airbnb before and had the same thought. This actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. It could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your whole place. When you're away, you could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Or maybe you have an extra bedroom or an in-law unit where friends and family come to stay with you. You could Airbnb it and make some extra cash while it sits empty. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
SPEAKER_02: AI has the power to automate, but if it's using untrusted data, can you trust the results? Your business doesn't just need AI. It needs the right AI for your business. Introducing Watson X, a platform designed to multiply output by tailoring AI to your needs. When you Watson X your business, you can train tune and deploy AI all with your trusted data. Let's create the right AI for your business with Watson X. Learn more at IBM.com slash Watson X IBM. Let's create.
SPEAKER_03: Tomcat makes rat snap traps and a bunch of other rodent control products. Since they're fans of the show, they wanted to share a little rat history with us. For example, did you know back in the 14th century, flea ridden rats inadvertently helped spread the black death, wiping out a third of Europe's population. And during World War I, soldiers in the trenches had to contend not only with enemy forces, but also with massive rats. They spread diseases and added to the psychological stresses of the soldiers, making the harsh conditions of trench warfare even worse. And in October, 1987, a rat chewed through a power cable causing a significant blackout in New York City's financial district. This led to the New York stock exchange delaying its opening, which was a big deal given the importance of the NYSE to global finance. And now enter Tomcat rodent control, the modern solution to an age old problem. Ensure history doesn't repeat itself in your own. Tomcat kills and prevents.
SPEAKER_03: What I'm getting at with all these questions about your college years is to what extent this book strikes me. Each one of your books is steadily a little more personal. Some of the best parts of this book are where you illustrate some of your points with personal stories. And I'm wondering whether in some sense, this book is a personal, is a more personal project than your previous.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I, it might be, I think I've, I've gotten more comfortable realizing, I've gotten so much, um, I guess reader feedback and also listener feedback from podcasts. Like we, we like hearing your personal stories. Like don't always use the data as a crutch. I'm like, they're not a crutch. That's literally what I do. It's how I think. Like if you asked me a question about anything, I'll be like, well, what is the best randomized controlled trial on that? Um, so this, this is not me avoiding sharing. It's that I, I consider systematic evidence to be a better source of knowledge than my idiosyncratic lived experience. But I realized that a lot of people's brains don't work that way. And I think I've come around to the idea that yes, if I'm sharing my story story in service of explaining an idea or revealing a lesson, um, then that's not about me. That's actually me trying to, to offer a gift from my life to, to theirs. I think this book is a personal project because I've,
SPEAKER_05: I've realized over the course of writing it, that all my, all my achievements that I'm actually proud of were things that I started out bad at. And I thought most of my life, the opposite was true. I thought what I was supposed to be proud of were the things that came naturally to me.
SPEAKER_03: So this is really interesting and I want to dig into many parts of this, but I want to start with, we were talking earlier about the kind of hidden project in many of your books is interrogating our kind of lay notions of intuitive about psychology that are incorrect. And I'm curious about this. So the lay notion, this book is to you, just point you just made, the lay notion this book is focused on is we have this kind of veneration of innate ability, but in fact, the, what the evidence suggests is that, um, many of the most important accomplishes accomplishments we have are not about what we start with, but what we acquire along the way. And what I want to know is what I'm curious about is why do we have in this specific respect a lay notion that's so clearly at odds with the facts? Where did it, why do we, why would we venerate innate ability if innate ability is not nearly as important as like, what's the reason for that?
SPEAKER_05: Such an interesting question. Off the top of my head, I think there are a couple of things going on. Number one, um, how many parents do you know that are living vicariously through their kids? I mean, your, your kids are two in less than a year. So it's already started. It's already started. A lot of people, you know, whether it's, um, you know, wanting their kids to be highly intelligent, um, or accomplished in their careers or, um, you know, great athletes or incredible musicians, whatever dreams people have unrealized, um, they often impose on their kids. And I think saying I didn't have the natural ability, um, is a convenient way to say, you know what, like maybe I didn't waste my potential. I didn't squander an opportunity, which is a lot of cognitive dissonance to live with, to say maybe I could have been great and I just, I didn't have the right approach to learning or the right level of discipline or the right coach. Um, that's, that's unsettling to think about. And so I think just, you know, kind of blaming, right. Uh, a lack of progress on, on, on raw talent. It lets us off the hook a little bit would be one thought. I think the second thought is that when we see natural talent, we're just blown away by it. Um, you know, if you've ever watched a four year old play Mozart, um, you know, it's mind boggling and you realize that is, that is a human that's cut from a different cloth than me. And so it's, it's hard to ever see yourself in that person. I remember, actually, I'll give you a personal example on this since you invited me to talk more about myself. So, um, this is about to become the Adam Grant show. Are you ready? Yes. All right. Um, I remember when I, so you know, I'm an introvert. Um, I'm shy. I was extremely afraid of public speaking. And when I wanted, when I decided I wanted to do it, I said, okay, I have to go and learn from great speakers. So the first thing I did was I watched videos of MLKs. I have a dream speech. It was completely demoralizing. I mean, I watched this and I'm like, I will never, no matter how hard I work at this, I will never get that good. So I'm like, I might as well quit now. And I think that, I mean, it's just, it feels unfathomable, right? When you see that the innate ability differences between you and someone else could be that great. Um, it just seems impossible for you. And so you assume then that that is what is required.
SPEAKER_03: What you're doing with MLK is you're assuming that what you're observing is an innate, in fact, he's practiced, he grows up in an oral culture in the, he's grows up watching his father and others preach sermons. I mean, he's, he's surrounded in a world that is, you know, is, is, is speaking in that vein. It's like, he's the, he's the, he's actually not the right person to look at and see evidence of. That's exactly right. But we don't know it.
SPEAKER_05: You watch someone as good as Martin Luther King Jr. and you think that's gotta be a God given gift. There's no way. He was ever bad at speaking, right? He's do good. It's impossible. What we don't see is the history you're describing. Um, we admire people at their peak. We don't get to see the distance they've traveled. We don't see the fact that he started entering public speaking competitions when he was 15 years old,
SPEAKER_05: that he had 20 years of deliberate practice under his belt, that the year he gave the dream speech alone, he gave over 350 speeches, which is probably as many speeches as you've given in your career. I would imagine. Um, so I think, I think we have unfortunate access to greatness. Um, we see people at their peak, um, and we assume that they started far ahead of us.
SPEAKER_03: But is this an, is this a universal affliction or an American affliction? Because I say, I bring it up because one of my favorite chapters in this book is you have a chapter on talking about the educational system in Finland and how much it differs from the American system and the, in its sort of assumptions about learning and doesn't sound like the Finns, at least as it, as is expressed in their educational system, hold to a notion of innate ability and, and you know, so w w what are we dealing with here? Is, is this, is there something uniquely American about this idea? There may be to some extent, I think when, yeah,
SPEAKER_05: when I think about what we do culturally in the U S that's different from other parts of the world. Um, there is a tendency to make the fundamental attribution error more, um, in the U S. You should define that. Yeah. The tendency to attribute people's actions, um, and station to their, their innate characteristics as opposed to their, you know, situation and affordances and opportunity and circumstances. Um, an idea that you thoroughly decimated and outliers, uh, I will point out. Um, but we still do it a lot in the U S right. We, we like, we're an individualistic society. What we like to do is we like to say, okay, you, you are where you are because of the things that are inside of you. Um, and I think you're right. I think in Finland, I think in Estonia, um, I think in, we could probably make a whole list of other countries. Um, there's a stronger sense that, um, every child has hidden potential and it's the job of parents and teachers and coaches, uh, to realize it in two senses of the word, one, to recognize it and then to, to develop it.
SPEAKER_03: It seems to me fundamentally paradoxical and no one's properly explained to me why it would be the case that a culture like the United States, which is the highest achieving, you could argue it's flies achieving culture in the world on a number of metrics should have a notion about achievement that is fundamentally wrong. It just doesn't make any sense. In fact, if you said to me that America was the one place where people recognize that hard work, that everyone has a lot of potential and that it's, it's, it's revealed in hard work practiced over your life and that trying to judge someone on the basis of their performance at 12 is a fool's errand. Um, if someone said that is a distinctly American view, I would have said that makes sense. It doesn't make any sense at all that we should have a backwards of all, of all kinds of all cultures.
SPEAKER_05: I think part of the problem is our country feels too big to invest in everybody. And so what we often do is we say, okay, well, we're going to create gifted and talented programs and we're going to build a winner take all system so that the kids with the true promise are going to get to rise to the top. And that allows us to believe in the notion of meritocracy. It allows us to feel like we've earned all the success that we've achieved as opposed to partially lucking into it. And so I think there is a function there, right? It allows us to think that America, like when we, when we talk about the American dream and we say that anybody can live the American dream, this is the land of opportunity. Um, we are justifying our system and I think that serves a soothing function for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03: I was in Los Angeles recently. I needed to stay for a good 10 days. So I got an Airbnb up in the Hollywood Hills, a gorgeous little cottage with an amazing view of the city. And I thought to myself, why doesn't everyone do this? I got to stay somewhere authentic and the people whose house it was got to make a little extra income. I mean, why don't I do it? I've got a little cottage next to my house surrounded by apple trees. Maybe you've stayed in Airbnb before and had the same thought. This actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. It could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your whole place. When you're away, you could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Or maybe you have an extra bedroom or an in-law unit where friends and family come to stay with you. You could Airbnb it and make some extra cash while it sits empty. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
SPEAKER_02: The one thing we can never get more of is time. Or can we? This is Watson X orchestrate AI designed to multiply productivity by automating tasks. When you Watson X your business, you can build digital skills to help human resources spend less time generating offer letters, writing job recs and managing schedules and spend more time on humans. Let's create more time for your business with Watson X orchestrate. Learn more at IBM.com slash orchestrate IBM.com. Let's create.
SPEAKER_03: Tomcat makes rat snap traps and a bunch of other rodent control products. Since they're fans of the show, they wanted to share a little rat history with us. For example, did you know back in the 14th century, flea ridden rats inadvertently helped spread the black death, wiping out a third of Europe's population. And during World War I soldiers in the trenches had to contend not only with enemy forces, but also with massive rats. They spread diseases and added to the psychological stresses of the soldiers, making the harsh conditions of trench warfare even worse. And in October, 1987, a rat chewed through a power cable causing a significant blackout in New York city's financial district. This led to the New York stock exchange delaying its opening, which was a big deal given the importance of the NYSC to global finance. And now enter Tomcat rodent control, the modern solution to an age-old problem. Ensure history doesn't repeat itself in your own. Tomcat kills and prevents.
SPEAKER_03: Another one of my favorite chapters in this book is about perfectionism. Um, and it's, it's sort of your critique of where perfectionism leads us, what it costs us. And you start with a, a really interesting discussion of your time as a diver in high school, um, and how you were a perfectionist. Can you talk a little bit about how your perfectionism manifested itself and how you came to believe it was self-defeating?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I, I, I actually, first I didn't know I was a perfectionist when I started diving. And then at some point it, it crystallized. And I thought it was a big advantage because in diving, I mean, you've all heard Olympic announcers say perfect tense. And I thought, okay, in a sport that's judged on perfection, aiming for perfection has gotta be the way. And it was such a liability for me more than an asset. Um, I, there are a whole bunch of things that I did that were counterproductive. Um, one was I just wasted a lot of time trying to perfect easy dives as opposed to learning harder ones, which limited my degree of difficulty. Um, I was, I actually got an award one year from my teammates. Uh, it was the if only award and there was a little drawing of me on a paper plate, uh, with, uh, with a cartoon that said, uh, if only I pointed my left pinky toe on that dive, I would have gotten an eight and a half instead of an eight. And like, that's not what mattered. Like I should have been stretching so I could actually touch my toes without bending my knees. That would have made me a better diver. Um, I think, uh, not only did I focus on the wrong things, I ruminated a lot. I beat myself up a lot. Um, and I was constantly shaming my past mistakes as opposed to trying to sort of educate my future self, um, from those lessons. And that was, that was not helpful. Um, probably the worst thing that I did though, was the bocking where, um, you know, diving when you're, you're going to take off forward, you walk down the board and then jump to the end. Well, if my hurdle, if I take off, if my approach wasn't perfect, I would just stop and start over and stop and start over. And then there's a two bock rule and then I have to get off the board and then I'm not doing dives all practice because like, what's the point of, yeah,
SPEAKER_03: if you balk to, you know, it was if you stop and start again more than twice, you have to dismount from the, well,
SPEAKER_05: that was the rule that my coach Eric best had to Institute because otherwise I would just bock all practice. So, but I, what's it,
SPEAKER_03: what's going on inside your head? Are you enjoying, are you enjoying being a diver? Yeah, I loved it. I loved it,
SPEAKER_05: but I was really frustrated feeling like I couldn't get it right. I couldn't get it right. I was really bad.
SPEAKER_03: And then when did you start reflecting on the experience and kind of, I think there's a reason I ask this question is, forgive me Adam, if I could play Dr. Freud for a moment and if you'd like to recline, um, I feel there's a lot more, there's a lot more of, your books are a lot more of a personal project than you let on. And this one in particular, I was reading this one and you had these little moments where you start talking about diving and I think, you know, if I was a psychoanalyst, I would say, Adam, this book is really about you trying to make sense of the mistakes that little Adam made and the experiences that little Adam had. Is that, is that not fair?
SPEAKER_05: I mean, I wouldn't frame that in Freudian terms because I think he set psychology back a century. Of course you would say that.
SPEAKER_05: I mean his, his approach was so unscientific and if you disagree with him, well you're in denial. Like I was that helpful to anyone. Exhibit A,
SPEAKER_03: who's in denial here.
SPEAKER_05: I will say there are some good meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials of psychodynamic therapy that show that it can have efficacy for some people in some situations, but I'm still extremely skeptical. Anyway,
SPEAKER_04: I will not be paging Dr. Freud.
SPEAKER_03: You're in a place called Manhattan and you're dissing psychoanalysis. What? Why do I don't know, Malcolm? I just, you want people to buy your book afterwards and this is what you're telling them? First of all, I think most people here have already bought the book.
SPEAKER_05: And I also think there's a point at which you stop blaming your behavior on the sins of your parents and start taking responsibility for your adult choices. I brought,
SPEAKER_03: I brought this up because I was wondering whether you were doing a version of the same thing, which was at the age of how old are you now? Now? 42. At the age of 42 still working out the problems you had as a swimmer in, as a diver. Oh, don't ever call a diver a swimmer. Yeah, no,
SPEAKER_05: that's like me calling you a jogger as a runner. I think there's a difference between trying to work out the problems of little Adam, which is how, um, Malcolm Freud would approach this discussion and trying to figure out if there are lessons from my biggest struggles and also my greatest moments of growth, um, that could become teachable moments for me and others. Yeah. I'm trying to reflect on, um, you know, the fact that I really was my own worst enemy for a good part of my diving career. But then I ended up ascending to a much greater height than I ever thought possible. Yeah. I should not have gotten where I got as a diver. I shouldn't have been a, like, what was I doing in the junior Olympic nationals as somebody who literally was called Frankenstein because I didn't bend my knees when I walked. Like something about this does not add up. And so I think that juxtaposing those kinds of moments with what is the social science tell us, um, is really powerful.
SPEAKER_03: But if you had, I guess what I'm trying to say is the, the work that you've done, the extraordinary work that you've done as an adult is in some way, we're all beneficiaries of some of these struggles you had as a, right. If you had been this kind of non nerdy golden boy who was a kind of diving prodigy and to whom things came easily, we don't get this book. Definitely not. Yeah. To go back to our earlier point, this is another kind of crucial flaw in the kind of obsession with, um, innate ability and the, the way in which we celebrate. Um, we happen to celebrate those who achieve things early and morrow without apparent effort. And that is that we're not thinking about the downstream consequences, right? We're not thinking of that a lot of what looks like struggle at an early age is simply kind of raw material and preparation for some kind of future better thing, right? Being a struggling as a diver, as a freshman is in the grand scheme of things, a pretty small thing, but it's a little kernel that becomes something really interesting when you're 40 and you're interested in, in, in writing about hidden potential, right? Starts to matter then. I think you're onto something important here. And, um, I think I,
SPEAKER_05: I read a book once, they called it desirable difficulty by you. Yes. Uh, I think that, yeah, this is actually something that Maurice actually stressed to me that I, I hadn't appreciated. So you know Maurice from the book is a chess grandmaster and I think an extraordinary coach who recognizes and brings out the hidden potential in kids that nobody else thought had a chance. And one of the things Maurice said is he has watched in chess over and over again. The biggest prodigies young are the ones who have the biggest struggles when they're older because it came too easily to them at first and they're just, they're used to kind of having this, this natural success and all of a sudden they lose the game and they can't take it. And they, they haven't, I think the, the fundamental problem there if you look at the research is they have not built the character skills that are necessary to face obstacles. Um, they don't know how to, to embrace discomfort. They don't know how to accept the right imperfections and say these mistakes are actually part of my growth. And so I think that sometimes early success does a major disservice to our future selves. I reminded a couple of weeks ago,
SPEAKER_03: I was sitting in a coffee shop in Orlando, Florida. Long story. And I, I emailed me about this. There's two surgeons sitting next to me. Of course I was eavesdropping. And one of them had a daughter who was at Cornell medical school and he was boasting about how she was, she loved Cornell. Cornell's amazing. She got into Cornell. Isn't that fantastic? Blah, blah, blah. And I emailed Adam and I was like, how does this guy get it completely backwards? Why doesn't he boast about his daughter that my daughter's having an amazing time in medical school. Isn't it amazing that she's the kind of person who can go into an institution and find what's meaningful to her and flourish. And you know, he was focused on Cornell and he wasn't interested in the character traits his own daughter had that allowed her to flourish and be happy and find meaningful. And I was just like, there's something about parents. What you're describing is why are parents so bad at kind of decoding the psychology of their own children? It just strikes me as like, well, why are we making these mistakes? Then why on earth are we so in love with prodigies? Like I don't, I, again, I mean, I'm just baffled by this. I mean, when psychologists study this,
SPEAKER_05: they talk about parental over involvement and over identification and the notion that as a parent, like we were touching on this earlier, you start to define your own success by your children's accomplishments. And I just want to sit parents now. I see this all the time with, with our students at the end. I want to sit these parents down and say like what your children achieve is not a reflection of your greatness as a parent. Like you should be much more concerned with who your kids become and how they treat other people. Great. Being a great parent is not about how much procedure kids attain in their school choices or in their jobs. It's not about career success. It's about character. I think you might've found someone who had not yet internalized that message.
SPEAKER_03: You say on this subject of perfectionism, I want you to talk a little bit more about what in general, what precisely is damaging about and having a perfectionistic attitude and what, what do you feel we should have instead? Okay. So if, if you look at the current work,
SPEAKER_05: which I think is the most comprehensive and rigorous to date, what we see goes wrong with, with perfectionists is one, they lose the forest and the trees. So they tend to focus on small details and overlook the big picture. Two, they do a lot of the rumination and sort of self shaming as opposed to self compassion that's necessary for learning from your mistakes. Um, and three, they, um, they actually tend not to, to stretch themselves much. Um, they want to focus on the things they know they can master, um, as opposed to venturing into uncharted territory and by avoiding failure, they actually avoid risk taking and they avoid learning and challenging themselves. Um, and that means they end up with a static or even ever narrowing comfort zone as opposed to an expanding domain of expertise.
SPEAKER_03: You make the comment in the book that you think perfectionism of the sort you've just defined is on the rise. Uh, why would it be on the rise? So empirically perfectionism has risen in the U S in the UK and the great nation
SPEAKER_05: of Canada. I think if you look at why it's increasing, what everybody does is they say social media, like it's gotta be social media. Everybody has a perfect image of themselves on Instagram and that's leading our kids to have unrealistic expectations. That may be part of the story, but guess what? Perfectionism started rising a generation before social media existed. It started rising when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers. So there's gotta be something else going on. And my read of the evidence is there are two things that seem to be contributing to it and both of them are parental behaviors. One of them is a rising parental expectations for kids, uh, holding children to increasingly impossible standards. And two is increasingly harsh criticism of kids who don't meet those standards.
SPEAKER_03: Did you, so why would, okay, let's, let's take one step further. Why would parents, I mean, it seems like an obvious question, but I don't know that I know the kind of good answer. Why would parents expectations have risen? So we're talking about the nineties, eighties, nineties. What's driving parent parental expectations in that era? So we don't, we don't know.
SPEAKER_05: I think the probably the consensus hunch right now is that, um, the world has gotten more competitive. So, you know, however hard it was to get into college, um, in the eighties, it got a little bit harder in the nineties and it got increasingly difficult over time. And so in a world that feels more and more zero sum, um, I think we've, we've probably seen a lot of talk about how the current generation of kids is the first in America that might not sort of outdo their parents or have a better standard of living than their parents. And so when you see that world, when you see a world of scarcity, you think I've got to do whatever it takes to help my kids succeed. Forgetting that the very things you're doing to try to help your kids succeed are just turning them into achievement robots who one day realize like, this is no way to live a life and burnout.
SPEAKER_03: How were you, how did your parents, would you think your parents were guilty of that?
SPEAKER_05: My mom used to tell me, Adam, no matter what grade you get, as long as you do your best, I'll be proud of you. And then she would add, but if you didn't get an A I'll know you didn't do your best. She said it with a smile. I think she was half kidding, but I, I took it seriously. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I guess there was a little, I didn't, I didn't get the harsh criticism though, but I definitely felt like expectations were high. Yeah. Um,
SPEAKER_03: the last chapter of your book, you talk a little bit about interviews and admissions and college admissions and things that I had. I had some big and some small questions about that. You have a very interesting part where you talk about what the evidence social science evidence tells us about the success and or failure of affirmative action programs. Can you summarize what we, what social science tells us about that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I went in to read the evidence to ask what is the impact of these programs? A lot of people have strong ideological positions on them. I feel like my job as a social scientist is to look at the most careful research that's been done and try to paint the picture of what do we know? And I think what the evidence suggests is that affirmative action programs are a double edged sword. Um, even for the very people they're trying to help. So on the one hand, um, they do manage to open doors for people who have historically been denied opportunity by virtue of group membership. On the other hand, if you enter a university or a workplace that is known to have affirmative action, you perform worse if you are a beneficiary of that program, then if the program didn't exist. So we see this with women, we see it with racial minorities. Um, what happens is, and I don't think this will shock anyone. Um, people start to doubt whether they really deserve that spot. Um, am I qualified? Do I belong here? Um, it's a massive version of imposter syndrome and not the healthy kind. And then, um, other people will question it too. And they're like, well, I, I don't think you really got in on your own merit and that self doubt and constantly being doubted by others. That takes a toll. Um, it's exhausting to deal with. Um, it's distracting to constantly question your capabilities day in day out. And so, you know, I, I came away from this evidence thinking, I don't, I don't know. I don't know where I stand. I think that we're sort of damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. But I do think there's an alternative approach that might be helpful to think about.
SPEAKER_03: What, um, two questions about that. One is, um, why doesn't that same logic hold for the white beneficiaries of affirmative action? If I'm a legacy kid gets into Harvard cause daddy went to Harvard. Why aren't I walk walking around with a big burden of imposter syndrome? I'm only here cause daddy gave $17 million to, does it not work? Do white people exempt?
SPEAKER_05: Can we just pause to acknowledge the fact you just called legacy admission, affirmative action for white people? That's what it is. I think that's an accurate characterization. I, I think that not only should legacy admission be banned, I think that if there used to be used by a lot of Ivy Ivy league schools as a tiebreaker and I think it should be a reverse tiebreaker. If you're on equal footing with somebody whose parents didn't go to an elite institution, then you already had an advantage. So the other person should get it. Yeah. I think first of all, a lot of people don't know who the legacies are. I think also there's not the same stigma. Historically there hasn't been the same stigma associated with legacy admission. So affirmative action is seen as lowering standards. Yeah. Um, and in most cases it's not right. It's just saying, we're going to look at, um, at people who all meet the qualifications and requirements and then we're going to make sure that those whose groups have been historically disadvantaged get a shot. But, um, I think in the, in the case of, you know, of legacy, uh, there hasn't been that stigma. It's been assumed, Oh, you come from a genius family. You belong here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: So the problem is really not, it's not necessarily the problem is inherent in the notion of, in this case, treating a group of disadvantaged students differently. It's the narrative we tell around the policy that we don't have the same kind of, we have a disparaging narrative around racial affirmative action, but not a disparaging narrative around rich people affirmative action. Look,
SPEAKER_05: we had a Supreme court ruling that happened as the book went to press. Yeah. And I think actually, um, one of the, the ideas that I float in this book is, is maybe an option now that we ought to take seriously, which is maybe we should stop defining people by their group membership. Maybe instead of assuming that just because people came from a particular background, um, that they had the same degree of difficulty and the same adversity, we should actually get to know the individual students and find out the obstacles they faced and then adjust our expectations of them, according to how much poverty did they individually face, um, according to, did they, um, did they run into major challenges? And I think that that, that seems like a much more fair way to give people who've been disadvantaged, a real shot. Yeah. Wait, I want to, it's a very, I,
SPEAKER_03: I mean there's much to be said for that idea. Um, and that's a longer conversation, but I want to ask, we're running out of time, but I have one last thing I want to say this. So this is, I'm now, I'm asking you to give me some advice cause I'm working on book right now. And this is very ideal with this very question we're talking about in this book. Are we talking about the, uh, the revision of the tipping points?
SPEAKER_05: A different book, the revision of the tipping. Are we allowed to say that publicly that you're reading the tipping point?
SPEAKER_03: Revising the tipping point. And I, so I, I was thinking of posing the following question, given what you're saying, what advice would you give to a bright, uh, ambitious African American student who's interested in STEM, wants to be a doctor or engineer or scientist of some kind who has two, uh, uh, admissions, um, offers, one from an Ivy league school and one from an HBCU. So one where he goes, she goes with the stigma of affirmative action on one where she goes without the stigma. What would you tell that student? If that's, that's a fascinating question.
SPEAKER_05: I'm not sure I'm qualified to advise on it is my first reaction. My second is a book called hidden potential. Yeah, but I, I'm trying to look at what works for most of the people most of the time, not necessarily assume that I know the path that's going to be most effective for a complete stranger. Um, I'd want to see, I'd want to see much better data about what are the life trajectories of, you know, of students with similar profiles who both have the same set of opportunities and then end up, um, for a variety of reasons and you know, in one or the other. Um, I guess the first thing I would want to do though is I'd want to know, what are your goals? Like are you trying to maximize your status or objective career success? Are you trying to, um, you know, to, to lead a life you can be proud of? Um, are you pursuing happiness or meaning? I think there, there are lots of different outcomes and I think that the big mistake that I see, I've, I've had a lot of students come by office hours with these kinds of dilemmas, um, over the years, often their grad school dilemmas or their job dilemmas, but sometimes it's high schoolers trying to choose a college. And the main advice that I find myself giving them is, is to say, you don't want to just define your, your success by achieving your goals. You should think about success as living your values. If you have a career target that you hit, but it requires you to compromise your principles, that's not success. That's failure. It's the worst kind of failure because you've abandoned what matters most to you. So why don't we talk about what your values are? Um, is one of your core principles, uh, to break a bunch of grad, excuse me, to break glass ceilings. Do you want to prove to people that other people can follow in your footsteps? Karen Nolton is here. Karen did some brilliant work on being a trailblazer. Is, is one of your core priorities in life to open a door and clear a path for other people? If so, you can ask, do I want to do this by starting out in an Ivy league school or do I want to go to an environment where I might be more supported? Um, and maybe it's easier to blaze a trail later. I don't know. I can't predict the future. Um, that's the kind of conversation I'd want to have and it wouldn't end with advice. It would, it would end with me asking, um, what have you learned through this conversation about your values and which path do you think is going to help you avoid straying from them?
SPEAKER_03: Adam, that's a, that's a beautiful answer to the question. You started by saying you didn't think you could answer the question. Then you gave me a beautiful answer to the question. That's cause I didn't answer the question. No, no, no. But, but it goes to, and this is actually a, uh, I think a lovely moment to kind of sum up. Um, we are, if, when I read this book, when I read this book, the, the first and overwhelming thought I had was we really are at, we really are asking the wrong questions about something like potential. We're just like our premises are all wrong, right? That's what you're getting at here, right? In one, one chapter after another, you're just saying, wait a minute, we're starting with this perspective and it's just like, we're, why, what do we, you know, it's that, that kind of need to go back to, um, to fundamentals and re-ask some really basic questions is what this, what is, what is really wonderful about this book. And, um, please go and buy Adam's book. Thank you all.
SPEAKER_00: This bonus episode of Revisionist History was produced by Nina Lawrence and Jacob Smith. It was mastered by Ben Chano. Special thanks to Daniela Bellareso, Paul Durbin, and Constanza Gallardo.
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