House Calls Podcast

How Do Our Minds Help (or Hinder) Finding Connection & Purpose? (Part 1)

With guest Shankar Vedantam,

Host, “Hidden Brain” Podcast 

Hello and welcome to House Calls. I'm Vivek Murthy and I have the honor of serving as U.S. Surgeon General. I'd like to introduce you to Shankar Vedantam science journalist and host of the radio show and podcast Hidden Brain. Today, we talk about the power of purpose in our lives and the unexpected way our brain can sometimes hinder our ability to connect. This is Part One of a two-part conversation. Have you ever had a moment when you wanted to connect with someone but something stops you like the worry you'll say the wrong thing? Or have you had the experience of assuming that someone who disagrees with you must also dislike you? It turns out there's a lot we misperceive when we try to build connection with someone else. Our mind plays tricks on us that make it harder to connect. That's why I wanted to talk to Shankar Vedantam, host and creator of Hidden Brain, a podcast and radio show that explores the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior. Considered one of the best science journalists in the country, Shankar is a master translator of the latest discoveries in neuroscience, psychology and behavioral science. And he helps us better understand the paradoxes of human behavior. As we settled into our conversation, it was clear that talking to Shankar felt like talking to an old friend who shares a similar curiosity about the world. You'll hear us follow many threads. How can we get over our fears of connecting? Why is there a gap between my values and my actions? What is the real impact of an act of kindness? In the second part of the conversation, we explore purpose. Why is it a necessary ingredient of life? How does having a sense of purpose impact our health? How is purpose different from our goals? And what is it about that feeling of being connected to something greater, to something bigger than ourselves, that we all need? At moments, Shankar, ever, the journalist turns the tables and ask me questions too. This conversation, with Shankar made me reflect deeply on my own life, my own sense of purpose, and how I create connections. I hope you find this conversation as moving as I did. As always, the House Calls team is eager to hear from you. You can always reach us at HouseCalls@HHS.gov Well, Shankar, I'm so glad to have this conversation with you. Thank you for joining us for the podcast.

I am genuinely thrilled to be here, Vivek.

I was thinking Shankar before this conversation about the first time that you and I met. I think it was about eight or nine years ago and it was over lunch at an Indian restaurant in Washington DC. And I had been hearing all of these incredible things about you, about your podcast, Hidden Brain, about just you as a science journalist. And I was so eager to meet you and I left just really appreciative of just the kind of human being you are, your curiosity, your fluency in so many topics related to psychology and health and and the mind and I subsequently became and just a voracious consumer of your content and was listening to a lot of Hidden Brain episodes and I want to start there actually because I know many of our listeners will probably know Hidden Brain but for those who don't I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the podcast and specifically about the concept of Hidden Brain because I think that's such a fascinating title for the podcast.

Absolutely. And let me just say that I remember that first meeting very well, Vivek, and I remember having heard so many things about you before we met, but also being very struck in that conversation about the kind of person you were, that you modeled what it was to be a kind and empathetic and generous person in your conversation. And everything that I've learned about you in the last eight years, you know, has told me that you don't just talk the talk, but you walk the walk. So in many ways, I think, the ideas that we try and talk about on Hidden Brain, I can think of no better exemplar for those ideas than you. So this is truly an honor and a pleasure to be talking with you today.

Thank you so much, Shankar, I appreciate that.

So in terms of the origins of the term Hidden Brain, you know, I think of myself, Vivek, as being a very deliberate and intentional and rational person. But over the last 20 years, I've just come by voluminous amounts of scientific data that suggest that outside of our conscious awareness, our brains are doing lots and lots of things. And even though I'm not aware of most of the things my brain is doing, it turns out my brain, in fact, is doing a huge number of things. So about a dozen years ago, I wrote this book called The Hidden Brain, and I devised this term that really collapses together a range of things that the mind does without our conscious awareness. Some of those things are just outside of conscious awareness. So in other words, if we move our attention, we can become aware of them. But there are many things that the brain does that are permanently sealed off from conscious introspection. No matter how much thinking we do, we simply have no awareness of how the visual centers in our brain, for example, are processing visual images. We have just no idea how that's happening. We just know that it's done. And so I devised this term, the hidden brain, to really describe the range of these things that's happening outside our awareness. Much of the time, the hidden brain plays a very salutary role in our life because it allows us to outsource many of the things that we would otherwise have to think about to this organ that basically does all the thinking for us. But when I wrote the book a dozen years ago, I was especially interested in the domains where, in fact, we should be consciously aware of what we're doing when we're making hiring decisions or firing decisions, when we're making judgments, involve the well -being of other people, those are points at which we don't want to have the autopilot feature running the plane. We actually want to have the controls in our hands.

That's really fascinating because I think when people hear that there are hidden parts of our brain or elements of our function that are taking place underneath the surface sometimes that can seem great like okay our brain is working on overtime and helping us and but I know it's just some of some people may also sound disturbing like what are all these functions or some are they sometimes harmful? How do I become aware of them and perhaps alter their trajectory so they help me and not harm me? How do you think about those hidden functions in terms of when they help us versus when they can lead to harm?

I would say for the most part, the hidden brain plays a salutary role in our life. So for example, as people are listening to this podcast right now, they're not really paying attention to how they are breathing or how they are sitting or how they are walking or standing. All those things are being done automatically. Now, of course, when I mention it, you can become aware that you're sitting or standing or walking and you're aware now of whether you're listening on a headphone or you're listening on a smart speaker. You become aware of those things. But for much of our lives, as we go through things, there are lots of things we don't need to pay attention to. And so the hidden brain turns out to be a very efficient way of moving things that we don't have to pay attention to outside of conscious awareness. A very good model for this comes when we're learning a new skill. So for example, when we're learning to ride a bike, it takes a lot of conscious effort and focus to stay balanced, to make sure that we don't fall off the bike. But a few weeks after we learn how to ride a bike, we're no longer thinking about how to ride a bike anymore. And in fact, at those points, if we think consciously about what we are doing, as we're riding a bike or walking down a flight of stairs, it can actually get in the way of what it is that we actually want to do. So it's helpful to move things sometimes from the domain of the conscious mind to the domain of the hidden brain. The problem arises, I think, when our hidden brain interferes with our judgments, when we have stereotypes about, you know, women in the workplace or minorities in the workplace, what they can bring to the workplace. Our hidden brains are informed by what the culture is constantly teaching us. And now when we're evaluating two resumes and one of them looks a lot better than the other, we have to be really careful the hidden brain is not laying a finger on the scale and nudging us in a direction that is contrary to the to our conscious values.

That's such a good point. And those unconscious tendencies or biases or ways of thinking, you're right, may be happening underneath the surface. I want to also dig into how the hidden brain is affecting our ability to connect with one another. One of the subjects that you and I have talked about a number of times over the years has been the issue of relationships and human connection, including loneliness and isolation. And you've had a number of really fascinating episodes on this topic. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about some of the ways that our hidden brain may actually keep us from connecting with people.

Yeah, you know, I recall the conversation that you and I had when when you were coming out with the reports on the national epidemic of loneliness. And it struck me, Vivek, that when we had those conversations, how much people related to that topic? You know, we heard from people from all walks of life, young people, old people, people who are had busy work lives, people who were retired. But the theme of loneliness is something that strikes a lot of people. And I think you were one of the first to really pick up on this and really raise the flag and say this is something that we should think about as being a public health crisis. But there's a deep paradox here, I think, because I think as human beings, we are so attuned to needing social connections, of wanting social connections. We have so many skills when it comes to actually building bridges with other people. And yet we often go through life, surrounded by other people feeling lonely. And it seems like there's a real paradox here because we have all the mental equipment, if you will, to lead very rich and fulfilling and satisfying social lives. And yet, as we move through the world, so many of us feel like we are alone. I think the hidden brain plays some role in that. But clearly, as you identified in your report, there are a number of societal and technological factors that are also driving this, the fact that many of us are bowling alone these days.

Now that is so true and I do think there are many societal factors including how technology has evolved and the role it plays in our life, even the structure of communities which have become more built for cars really than for humans and so we've been cut off from one another in many ways. I was struck though that in some of the episodes you've had, you've touched on some really interesting tendencies sometimes that we may have that prevent us from connecting to one another. For example, there was one episode you had where you shared a really interesting example of a man, a researcher in fact, who, Amit Kumar, who wanted to go and visit a friend who was going through a hard time. And even though he was driving through her town, he ended up not stopping to see her. And I think we all, I could relate to that because in my own life, I've had moments where I knew, that somebody was going through a tough time and I thought, hey, I should pick up the phone and call them, but I just kept allowing it to drop further and further on my to -do list. It would be on my mind, but I wouldn't do it. And then ultimately it almost felt too awkward then to reach out later. And I would wonder to myself, why is it that I had that resistance to actually moving forward and making that call? I think what you pointed out in that podcast, which I'd love for you to expand on is, is a really important thing is you said those are not actually failures of kindness per se. It's not that in that episode that Amit was an unkind person or that he didn't care for his friend, but there was something else at play. And I was wondering if you could speak to that.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think in some ways there's a deep tragedy here, Vivek, which is that if human beings, in fact, were callous and uninterested in other people, then it would make perfect sense that they're not reaching out and forming connections with other people, because in fact, we're callous and cruel and uninterested in other people. But the tragedy, I think, is that human beings, in fact, are deeply interested in connection, deeply want connection, and are deeply interested in being kind to others, even if they get nothing in return. I think there's a huge satisfaction that we get when we feel like we are useful to other people or that we are helpful to other people. And the tragedy is then, if you have a species where people in fact are kind, want to be helpful, why don't we see more kindness and more helpfulness? And I think that was the psychological paradox that Amit Kumar and his colleagues were trying to unravel. And I think there are many dimensions to this. One of the really interesting things he pointed out, and I think the moment you say this, it becomes, you know, it feels like a moment of insight because it feels so true. He pointed out that when we think of helping other people, we often think about what we are doing and whether we're doing the right thing. So we ask ourselves, someone has just lost a dog, a beloved pet. And I want to reach out to this person and tell them that I know they're going through a hard time, but I'm not a pet owner myself. I don't quite know what it feels like to actually lose a pet. I might say the wrong thing. I might say too much. I might say too little. And so we believe that we're going to be judged based on the competence by which we offer help. It turns out that recipients of help, of course, they care about competence, but what they really care about is the warmth and the intention that is behind the act of generosity, behind the act of someone reaching out. And so even if you don't know, what to say when someone has lost a pet or someone has lost a loved one or someone has lost a job or someone has been sick. Just the act of reaching out, even if you do a bad job reaching out, turns out to be very powerful from the recipient's point of view. And I think this is part of a much larger body of work, which is the way we perceive how we act, how we believe other people see us is often at odds with the way other people actually see us. In other words, there's a mismatch here. between our perceptions of how the world sees us and how the world actually sees us. And I think Amit Kumar was grappling with this idea in the domain of kindness with this very interesting paradox that we believe that we're going to be judged on competence, whereas really what we're being judged on is warmth.

Yeah, that is, I think that's extremely powerful and something that we all need to Yeah, that is, I think that's extremely powerful and something that we all need to be reminded of often. I think about episodes in my own life where my wife and I sometimes have been on our way to, or about to leave to go to a birthday party or to some sort of special event for a friend and we realize, oh wait, we don't have a gift to bring with us. And maybe if I was, more organized as a human being, I wouldn't be in that situation, but that is often the situation I'm in. And I have found that over time that a lot of my anxiety about thinking about, hey, how do I get the perfect gift for them? What are they actually gonna like in terms of what they use in their life? Like, what if I get them this book and they already have the book? I've worried a lot about that. And one thing I started doing differently, this is a shift for me, is I started saying, rather than, getting people gifts, what if I actually wrote them a letter or actually wrote them a card where it was actually meaningful, not just signed, you know, an inscription was already in a card, but actually just wrote a reflection, like on my friendship with them or what they meant to me or what I hope for them, like for the future. And I started doing that because I realized that when people gave me gifts versus when they actually. gave me something that felt like it came from them, like deep within them, from their heart, like a reflection, a letter. Like the latter meant so much more to me. And it didn't matter that it didn't cost any money. It didn't matter that it didn't have some brand attached to it. What mattered is that it came from that person's heart. And I often think about that in my head as a difference between what versus why. Like sometimes we focus a lot on the what. What are we delivering in terms of the object, the utility. But so many times, I think what people really care about is the why. Like, this person showed up because they care about me. They're expressing love and affection for me, warmth, as Amit Kumar was putting it. But that's something I find I have to remind myself of, because if you watch TV, for example, or look through magazines and consume ads, ads are constantly telling us that the way to express our love or friendship for somebody is to buy them things, whether it's clothes or jewelry or something else. And I just think that that misses, I think, the mark of where our greatest gifts really come from, which is from within us and from our heart.

You know, I have a question for you, Vivek, but before I get to that, let me just say that some of the research that Amit and others have done really underscores exactly the story that you just told me. One of the exercises that he has his students do is to think of someone to whom they're very grateful, but they haven't actually expressed that gratitude. You know, they think about… a teacher who has been important to them or a mentor who's been important to them or a friend who's done something important to them. And I think we have, you know, the same barrier in some ways. When somebody is has been kind to us for a long period of time, there's this odd barrier that we have where we say. I can't keep thanking this person over and over again because I've thanked them before or maybe they know how much I like them, you know, we're in a relationship already. I don't actually have to offer my thanks because it will be weird to keep telling you, telling this other person how much they mean to me or how much, you know, how valuable their relationship is. And I think as a result of that, very often we feel gratitude, which is in some ways it's not the same thing as kindness, but we feel gratitude, but we don't express it. And I think if, as your listeners are listening to this, any one of us can think about three people, if you just close your eyes for five seconds, you can think of three people to whom, in fact, you are grateful, people who have done really wonderful things for you that you actually have not thanked properly. And when Amit runs this exercise, he asks people to predict how difficult would it be to actually go up to this person whom you feel gratitude for and actually thank them. And people say, well, you know, it's been such a long time that this person did this nice thing for me. It's going to look really weird if I go up to them and say, you know, I really remember what you did three years ago. They're going to ask, why didn't you say something three years ago? And so we have all these barriers that keep us from expressing the gratitude. But when he makes it a class assignment and actually tells people you have to write this letter and he has them send off the letter, and then he talks to the people who receive the letters, no one who receives the letter ever says, Why didn't this person send me this letter three years ago? Why wasn't this letter written in three paragraphs rather than four paragraphs? People are not evaluating our gratitude in the way that we think we are being evaluated. And so it's again that mismatch between how we think the world will see us and how the world actually sees us. But the question I wanted to ask you, Vivek, is that I genuinely feel that you are one of the few people I know who genuinely comes across in his daily life as somebody who is very present and very warm. And I've always, I have to say, I've always wondered as I've talked with you, is that coming from a place of effort? Do you actually have to think about doing that? Do you actually have to remind yourself, you know, I want to be warm, I want to be kind, I want to be empathetic, or is that just simply who you are? Were you always like that from the start?

Well, first of all, that's incredibly kind of you to say, Shankar. I most wish my mom was here listening to this. She would feel very proud. But it's interesting. I think that in a lot of ways, I actually don't think I'm that different from most people. I think most of us are warm. I think most of us are inclined to be kind to others. But I realized in my own life when I was younger, one of the things that held me back from doing that was a fear of how I would be perceived. And also a shyness that I had. I was really quite shy as a young kid and I really did not have very much confidence. And so I was always skeptical about how I would be perceived by other people or if I said something nice, would I be perceived as silly or random or whatever it might be. And so this was, I think I actually held back on expressing that a lot when I was younger. Hmm. But as I got older, a few things happened. One is I did build some confidence over time. But I also, you know, I had this experience in residency training, Shankar, after I finished medical school, where I just, I was seeing so much illness. I was seeing so much pain and suffering in people's lives. And there was a time when I was, I remember as an intern, a first year resident. So that means it was my very first year out of medical school. I was taking care of oncology patients, patients who had cancer, and half of the patients on my service were young people in their 20s just like me who had metastatic gastric cancer. And that really stuck with me because I remember thinking I could be any one of them. We just don't know how much time we have. And that really shifted something within me that said I don't want to live my life Hmm. being scared or worried about what other people think. I want to do actually what feels good and I know that when I can be myself it feels good and that means when I can express the warmth that I feel that that feels good. Lastly, I'll just say that I think the reason in part that I was inclined to be expressive with my warmth was because of my father. And this has been unusual, especially for Indian fathers. And my parents like, yours are from India originally, but. My father, for reasons that are still utterly unclear to me, is one of the most physically affectionate and expressive people that I know. He grew up in a family where nobody was like that. He grew up in a very small farming village in India. Things were so strict that he never looked at his father directly in the eye. He always looked down when he spoke to his father. People didn't hug each other. They cared deeply for each other and loved one another, but physical expression was not part of that. But yet somehow he became incredibly expressive with my sister and me when we were children. And I think that had a real impact on me. It allowed me to in the confines of family experience what it was like to express warmth and to give and receive love very openly and I found that I really liked it It just took me some time to build the courage to actually be myself, you know, over time and when I was able to to build that courage I realized that I felt a lot better about how I was living my life.

That’s a wonderful, wonderful story. And it speaks, I think, to the power of role models, that in some ways, you know, we can model what it's like to be kind, what it's like to be grateful, and that when we model this, it becomes easier for other people in turn to be kind and grateful. That's a wonderful story, though. I mean, you were fortunate, I think, to have a parent in some ways who was modeling for you what it's like to be, you know, open and have his heart open to other people.

Yeah, well thank you Shankar, I appreciate that. You know, I'm just reflecting also on what you've been saying these last few minutes because I think that there's a underlying lesson here that I just really want to underscore and highlight in circle for everyone who's listening, which is that the fundamental nature of human beings is to be kind and to be warm. That was one of the earliest things you said. And I want to underscore that because I think many people look at the world right now. And they feel that the opposite is true, that in fact we are mean -spirited, we're selfish, we only look out for ourselves, we tend not to care about other people. But I think for various reasons that's how it seems right now, but one of the things that I feel very privileged to have access to are the stories of people all over the country. As I travel and get to visit communities across America, I'm lucky that people share a bit of their life and their story with me. And I just see so many. examples of people looking out for neighbors, of just putting their own health aside and taking care of their family, of being generous when there's a disaster in a community or when a family runs into health problems with their children. Like people step up in really incredible ways and part of what I wonder about is how do we tell a different and I think more accurate story about who we are, about those fundamental tendencies at a time where people… are feeling, I think, pessimistic and worried about not just the state of the world, but about the nature of humanity. Do you have any thoughts on that as a journalist?

Yeah, and it's interesting, of course, that you're bringing up my role as a Yeah, and it's interesting, of course, that you're bringing up my role as a journalist because I have to say that I do think that the media are part of the problem here. I think the response that many journalists have to what's happening in the world is often to tell people about everything that's wrong with the world. And that really is an important responsibility of journalists. It's an important thing to tell people. you know, that there is war or there is pestilence or that there is suffering happening or that there is injustice happening. And I think journalists are often very idealistic people and are highly motivated to tell us about the things that are wrong with the world. But I think there is something that is missing in this picture. It's that it's not so much that the bad things are not real or that they're inaccurate. The bad things are real and we should talk about them. It's just that it's an incomplete picture. of what the world actually looks like. And I think the predilections and biases of journalism and the media writ large and the business forces, to be honest, driving much of the media, focus us on things that are wrong with the world as opposed to things that are right with the world. And I think as a result, we are seeing the world through this distorted lens. So we see a world that basically looks as if it's filled with hatred, with vitriol, with animosity, with mean -spiritedness, with a lack of generosity. And while those things might be true in the individual instances that the news media is covering them, it fails to capture in some ways the more ordinary, you know, humble kinds of kindnesses that people show to each other every day. I think on a routine basis, I think you're absolutely right. People are kind to their neighbors. In fact, they're not asking, is my neighbor a Republican? Is my neighbor a Democrat? If your neighbor is an elderly person who is who is unwell, people take soup over to their neighbors and they don't ask. What is the politics of my neighbor and do we agree on hot button issues? They actually express kindness. That is somehow not being captured, I think, in our public conversations. I think the media in general and social media perhaps in particular are not very good vehicles because again, they amplify things involving conflict or disagreement or dissension. It's harder in some ways to focus on these quieter things. You know, this might be an analogy that may or may not work for you, but I remember thinking after I became a parent, you know, that becoming a parent was just simply the single best thing that ever happened to me in my life. It just was the richest and most fulfilling and joyful thing that ever happened to me in my life. But I realized that when I talked with other people about parenting, I invariably talked about the problems of parenting. I talked about how I hadn't had any sleep. I talked about how I didn't have any time. I talked about how I had scarce bandwidth. And it's the same kind of thing, which is oddly, parents actually experience parenthood as being an extraordinarily joyful, meaningful, and wonderful thing. But in our conversations with other people, we often focus on the problems with parenthood. And I think part of the problem is, it's a little difficult to tell someone else, you know, the pleasure and joy that I get from cuddling my daughter, it just is unlike anything else in the world. That's not the kind of thing we share in public that feels like it's inappropriate to share. but it feels perfectly okay to share the fact that you haven't slept all night because your child was not well. And so as a result, when you listen to the narrative and the discourse around having children, it's sort of the same thing, what we see in the media with sort of the bad news, which is you hear a lot of the problems, you're not hearing about the good news. And I think that metaphor, I think, is a powerful metaphor for how the world itself operates, that we tend to hear about the things that are wrong, not about the things that are going right.

That is so perfectly put and that analogy you shared by the way, the metaphor rather, I mean I can very much relate to that and I've heard actually students young people say to me that in a world where everyone is upset and angry and sad to express any optimism or happiness feels out of touch and naive and nobody wants to do that. So it's safer from a social perspective. I when everyone is angry and upset and sad, to reflect that as well. But I think that that builds this vicious cycle where we're constantly then focusing on what's negative, even though in reality there are some positive elements in our life that do bring us joy and that we could amplify if we were able to share those with one another. This is actually one of the reasons I have particularly appreciated your work as a journalist, Shankar, because on two levels, and I'd love to ask you about both. One is that you have managed through Hidden Brain to, to bring these really fascinating mind opening positive, and I would say optimistic stories to people to help us understand more about ourselves, about the world, but to also look at the future with a little bit more hope. And I think that that's extremely powerful. Um, and I think a huge, huge service. Um, but I'd love to understand sort of how you, came to be such a great translator. I remember when we first met, I was fascinated that your background was actually in engineering, that that's where your training was. And while I think that many might see that as a very unusual path to go from engineering to journalism, I think it has, in many ways, as you've said in the past, served you well. But could you say a little bit about that journey to be a translator of science and what that's been like for you?

Yes, you know, in some ways, I think it was Steve Jobs who said, you know, lives make sense when you look back at them. They don't make sense when you look forward at them, you know. And so when you look back at one's life, it's possible to look at all the different milestones and say there's a story here, there's a narrative here. But you're right, I did study engineering. And I think even though I was not a very good engineering student, and I'm certain I would not have been a very good engineer, it was a very valuable experience, I think, to go through engineering school. It taught me things about myself. It actually allowed me to what it is I enjoyed and what it is that I didn't enjoy. But it also, I think, gave me a familiarity with some of the tools and language of science that I think many journalists, in fact, do not have. I always, I think, had an interest in science. I think that might have been partly why I decided to pursue my engineering degree in the first place. But I realized after going through it that my interest really was understanding how things worked and why they were the way they were. And in some ways, you know, going through engineering school and transitioning out of it, I think, proved to be a very valuable experience. And looking back, even though I don't think I really enjoyed my college years very much, I do think that it was valuable. And there's a little lesson in there if we want to talk about young people and their journeys and how you sort of figure out your way in life, because sometimes journeys not linear. They take detours and they take side alleys and sometimes those look like they're a waste of time. But sometimes a side alley can teach you really important things that is really valuable as you go forward. I really appreciate the kind words that you said about hidden brain. I do think that I am genuinely interested and fascinated by the work that I'm covering and by the ideas that I'm encountering. And I think many people who listen to Hidden Brain say that one of the things that draws them to the material is I think they sense that I myself am deeply enthusiastic and find myself both mystified and in awe of the ideas that I'm exploring on the show. And I think there's a very important lesson here, I think, not just for me or for Hidden Brain, but I think… our lives in general, which is when we're doing things that we are genuinely interested in, where the interest actually is coming from the inside, it's motivated by these intrinsic drives, something happens in the way we do the work that I think other people respond to and reflect. They sort of recognize that the work is not just being done as an act of competence or an act of… you know, this is a deadline that has to be met, but it's being done with a certain amount of joy, that there's a real pleasure in actually doing this. And I think we all sense this. You know, you go to a restaurant, and I think you can sense when people are happy making the food. You go to a hospital, and you can sense when a doctor is really happy being a doctor. And there's something that's really powerful that happens. And I think what I'm talking about is the difference between having a profession and having a vocation. And I think when you have a vocation, you have the sense that what's motivating me, in fact, is not coming from the outside. It's coming from the outside. from the inside. And when you have that something, I think very powerful gets unlocked. So all I will say is I feel extremely fortunate to have stumbled onto this little, you know, what are often feel like very arcane and, you know, nerdy ideas, but I find them really fascinating. And for reasons that I'm not completely sure I understand, lots of other people seem to find them fascinating as well.

And they really are fascinating. I mean, you have received, I know, just reams of feedback from listeners who have found that just not only interesting insights, but have found that the show has really helped them make changes in their own lives. And I was wondering if you could share any of the stories that you hear from listeners.

I have to say I'm always a little taken aback by this because again, I feel like the work that we're doing, we're often juggling so many different episodes that we're building at any given time. I'm reading so many papers that have been published. We have a very talented and hardworking team at Hidden Brain that's looking for ideas and putting the ideas together in a beautiful way. And I think we're so involved in the craft of what it is that we are doing that… we're a little taken aback sometimes when it has the response in people's lives that it does have. So, you know, I can't say that I fully understand it, as I said a second ago, but people have routinely said that they love listening to the show. You know, they find it soothing. They find it a source of inspiration. We hear from many teachers who say that they have imbibed the ideas in their own teaching, but also are sharing them with their students. We hear from students who say they're sharing them with classmates. There are many listeners to hit brain who act like ambassadors for the show. And I think in some ways that is that's something that gives me tremendous joy and pride. The fact that people are not just saying, I have taken away something from this, but I feel like what I have taken away is so interesting and so valuable that I want to share it with other people because that's the same spirit in which I encounter the ideas. that I am covering, which is I'm coming by these ideas and I'm saying, my God, that idea that there's a difference between we think we're being judged on competence, but other people are judging us on warmth. And that explains, in some ways, our lack of kindness when we want to express it. That seems like such an interesting idea to me that I feel like I want to jump on the rooftops and stop people and tell them, have you heard this really interesting idea? Because it explains so much about human nature. And I love the fact that people listen to our show and then feel motivated in some ways to do the same thing in their turn.

I'm so glad you get that feedback because I was looking the other day at some old episodes of Hidden Brain, just at the list of topics that you cover. And for anyone, and I would encourage people to do this, just to look through just the incredible episodes. It is such a range of topics that you cover, from helping people understand how to talk so that other people will listen, helping people understand how to be better listeners. Helping people understand the power of small acts of kindness to be much more transformative than sometimes large grand gestures. Helping people understand hidden tendencies that may prevent them from taking a leap of faith or taking a chance in their life on a new career path or a relationship. I mean, there are so many topics that are so incredibly relevant to like the day -to -day choices and decisions that we're making. So I think it's extraordinarily powerful. I also am curious though, like how, if you can share a little bit about your process for how you think about the topics and episodes that you come up with. And please don't reveal any trade secrets. I don't want to in any way compromise your process in any way. But I'd love if you could give us any insights into how you craft these wonderful episodes.

Well, again, thank you for the kind word, Vivek. It is, in many ways, Hidden Brain has been a labor of love for the last decade. And it's just a delight to hear that that labor of love means something to the people who are listening to our show. We have, as I said, a small but mighty team, very talented people. We are constantly talking to researchers. We are scouring the academic literature for interesting articles that have been published. We're also, I think, on a routine basis, attention to ourselves, things that happen in our own lives. You know, for example, I've noticed that… there are times I have to decide, you know, do I want to be generous? Do I want to give someone an extra big tip? Do I want to, you know, thank someone for doing things? And I often have the voice inside my head that basically says, you know, hold back, be careful. You know, maybe it won't be misinterpreted. It won't be heard correctly. And I find that every time, of course, I do the generous thing or the kind thing, I never have ever regretted doing anything that is kind or generous, ever. my regrets are always in the opposite direction, why didn't I do more? Or I should have said this kind word to this other person and I didn't say it. I have never regretted reaching out to someone. But I think if you spend some time noticing these things about yourself, then it becomes in some ways an occasion to think about what is actually driving the psych, what is the psychology behind this and is there an episode here? And I guess what I'm trying to say is that, When you pay attention to your own life, you start to see gaps between your values and your actions. And then if you're curious about those gaps between your values and your actions, it leads you to ask questions about why is there this gap? What is actually driving this? And one of the drivers for the episodes that we do is I think we are trying to pay attention to our own lives. We're trying to notice things that are happening in our own lives, in the lives of the people around us, things that people tell us at the dinner table, things that people tell us at a party. And as you you notice these things, not all of them turn into stories, but just the act of being curious, of saying, what is actually going on here? Why is the sports coach behaving this way when they're down two goals, as opposed to behaving the other way when they're up two goals? What makes the difference between those two things? When you start to think about human behavior with this kind of curiosity, I think what happens over time is you start to notice patterns, and those patterns eventually sometimes lead to stories. So there's no one… formula in some ways for coming up with a story for Hidden Brain. A lot of it, I think, is informed by the academic literature, the studies and research that's being published by brilliant researchers all over the world. Some of it is coming from ideas that we are reading about in popular culture. We see a television show, and you laugh at something that's on a sitcom, and then you ask yourself, why was this joke funny? What made it funny? Is there an idea here behind this joke that actually we can draw on? I feel like we make a reference to the show Seinfeld every fifth episode of Hidden Brain. And when you watch a show like Seinfeld, the humor in the episode, in the series, is connected very closely to the fact that I think the show is about psychological themes. It's getting at things that, in fact, are in all of our lives psychologically. So I wish there was a more simple and straightforward answer of how stories come together, but it's really a… variety of different things. And over time, you know, if you the metaphor I sometimes use is that You know, your role is really to play the role of a gardener, which is, yes, sometimes you put seeds into the ground, but a lot of what you're doing is you're just, you know, you're keeping your field healthy. You're plowing the field, you're irrigating the field. And when you do those things, the sprouts come up sort of on their own. And in some ways, I feel like that's true for idea germination on Hidden Brain, which is that if you do the work of thinking and reading and reflecting, over time, the ideas for new episodes will sprout on their own.

I especially like the fact that there is honest introspection and observation of your own life that's driving some of this. And I remember even when I was in business school years ago, being taught that if you want to build a company or product or a service that's really effective, try to understand what the real problems are that people are facing in their other lives. And you can start with yourself even asking, what do I wish was easier? What do I wish was more accessible? And then try to build around that. Yes. that in your own way that you're drawing really from primary experience here and asking about those gaps. And one other thing I want to comment on that you didn't say, but I've heard you say this in the past is that it's something that really struck me, which is that these episodes don't all come together in two weeks, but in some cases, sometimes they take more than a year to put together. And what I was struck by the first time I heard you say that was just how there's a lot of patience involved in your work as well of, allowing ideas to germinate, waiting for more ideas and data points or research papers or observations to come to the surface and then you're connecting the dots and when you ultimately feel that rope is strong enough with enough dots in place, then you build an episode around it. But I also just think that that's so important because I do think that sometimes it seems like people who have great ideas or great products just, you know, pick them out of the air and then craft them in a few weeks. But your labor of love is truly taking place over time, which I found really interesting.

Yeah, and I think there's a there's a there's an important lesson here, I think, for any young person who's trying to figure out how to do something with their life or to even ask what they do, what they should do with their lives. And I think the. very often there's a huge pressure on us to say, what is the end product? Where am I ending up with? What is the final goal or for the final destination? But in many ways, that final goal or destination is actually not knowable. And I think the, you know, the agriculture metaphor is really powerful here, which is that you can do things as a farmer. You can plant seeds and you can water your crops and you can make sure that they get enough sunlight. But at the end of the day, you really are not growing the plant. The plant is growing. itself and all you're doing is providing the conditions under which the plant can actually grow really well. And in many ways I think what you're pointing to Vivek is the larger lesson that in some ways when we do the things that we should be doing, the things that our lives are going to become, you know, it's almost what physicists might call an emergent phenomenon. It's not something that is actually planned. It's something that actually emerges from all the other things that we're doing. And I think that's actually a useful idea to keep in mind, especially I think if any of your listeners are starting out and they're early in life. There's a lot of pressure to answer the question, what do I want to do in 20 years time or what do I want to do in 30 years time? And in many ways, those questions are unanswerable. You are not going to be the same person in 30 years that you are today. The world is going to be entirely different 30 years from now than it is today. But what you do have is the ground that you have under you right now. You have the soil. You have the choice to actually plant things. and you have the choice to water your plants. And then the imperative that you just pointed out, Vivek, of the imperative of patience, which is at some level, you have to be patient. And once the plant germinates, people will ask you, well, how did you grow this plant? And now you can tell a story saying, oh, I had planned it all along. This is exactly what I had meant. But this goes back to that Steve Jobs quote, which is, lives make sense only when you look backward at them. When you're looking forward, all that you can do is just take the next step in front of you.

Yeah, that I think is really powerful for people at any stage of life, whether you're a young person trying to find your way or you're later in life trying to find your way again, because we're all constantly shifting in our journey. I think that point of just looking for the next step and understanding what would make sense there versus planning for 10, 20 years out, I think that's really important. I would often tell students when I was working with medical students and residents that, part of their goal should actually be to think short term and not long term, which is counter to how many of us were raised. And it doesn't mean that you don't invest money so that you can pay for college down the line. It's not about the financial planning per se, but it's about recognizing that sometimes in our careers, just figuring out what would be the most meaningful thing that I could do next is the most important question for us to answer versus mapping out the next decade or two.

Yes. And being kind to others along the way, being helpful to others along the way. And just doing this as a matter of course. And yes, some of this, I think it's worth doing just for its own sake, but I think some of these, this is like irrigating your field. When you put kindness and gratitude out into the world, eventually it will come back into your own life as well.

This concludes Part One of my conversation with Shankar Vedantam. Join us next time for part two. Wishing you all health and happiness.