Gretchen Rubin On The Power Of Exploring Your Senses

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1:32Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first, we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors.

2:20Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We've been having a bit of a disaster over here in the painted porch in the Daily Stoic Podcast studio, which is we've had fleas. I think it's from stray cats in the area. I don't know what it's from, but you feel like something on your leg and you reach down and you're like, it's always like a phantom itch or whatever. You never want to look down and there actually is something. Well, there has been, unfortunately, and we have fumigated and fumigated and it keeps happening. And I thought we did something about it or I thought we'd solved it.

3:02There was nothing going on. I've been in the studio a bunch. And then I'm sitting down with today's guest, one of my favorite people and favorite authors. And I can hear Dawson, who is our wonderful podcast producer and been a longtime member of the team. He also does all our YouTube videos, an unsung hero of what we do here at Daily Stoic. I could hear him talking on the phone while we're recording. And I sort of made this mental note of like, I got to talk to Dawson. You can't be talking in the middle of while we're recording, we can hear it through the studio door. Of course, I should have known there was a very good reason for it, which is that he was frantically calling my wife, another unsung hero of what we do at Daily Stoic, going, there's fleas on me, what should I do?

3:50And she was like, okay, you got to interrupt the thing, you got to move them into the bookstore. And then she's like, I'll call the fumigators again and we'll come out. So that's what we did. So the first part, the first 10 minutes or so of today's episode is in the Daily Stoic podcast studio. And then the second half or the next 50 or so minutes is at the big table in the Painted Porch bookstore. So you may have noticed, had I not brought it up, you may have sensed a slight difference in the sound because we went from a studio that's covered in books and is really good at deadening the sound to the 20 plus foot ceilings of the bookstore.

4:31It was a bit of a shift, but you will definitely notice it now that I'm bringing it out, which is actually the subject of today's interview. Gretchen Rubin is my guest today. She has this new book, Life in Five Senses, How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, came out on April 18th. But you may know her for her many other wonderful books, The Happiness Projects, which held millions of copies, The Four Tendencies, which is great, Outer Order, Inner Calm, which is one of my favorite of her books. And that's just a fantastic little mantra to live by as a person. And something I thought about was I was writing the Clean Up Your Desk chapter of Discipline is Destiny.

5:13Gretchen has been doing this a long time at a very high level. She was a lawyer. She clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O 'Connor, which I asked her about. She's been interviewed by Oprah. She's walked with the Dalai Lama. She's been written about in The New Yorker. She's even been an answer on Jeopardy. She has a great podcast called Get Happier with Gretchen Rubin. You can follow her on Instagram and Twitter and TikTok at Gretchen Rubin. And if you watch this episode on YouTube, it'll be uploaded here shortly at YouTube on at Daily Stoic Podcast channel. You will notice the shift from the studio to the bookstore probably won't affect your consumption of this in audio much, but you try to go to what she's talking about in Life in Five Senses, which is really about taste and smell and audio and touch, you know, see if you can notice when that shift happens.

6:09I wonder if you can. And see if you can even notice how we're talking differently, how it takes us longer to get back into a groove. Anyways, thanks to Dawson for, as I said, handling it very stoically, very calmly. We solved a vexing, frustrating, gross problem very professionally and cleanly. And thanks to my wife for then all the different phone calls she had to make to solve this. And then as I'm recording this now in my office, the fumigators are downstairs doing very serious work in the studio. And hopefully it will be ready in time for the two interviews that I have in person this week.

6:56Otherwise, you may hear another episode from the store until we get that done. So thank you all very much. And thanks to Gretchen for coming out. And make sure to check out her new book and some of her old books, which we have signed copies of in the store.

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7:47and we didn't notice any kind of change in the quality of service or network or any of that, just a whole bunch of savings. Turn your expensive wireless present into a huge wireless savings feature by switching to Mint. Shop Mint Unlimited plans at mintmobile.com slash six. That's mintmobile.com slash six. Limited time offer, upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months. Plans required,$12 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only, greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy, capable device required availability speed and coverage very c meant mobile.com you probably heard the headlines about all the different cuts to foreign aid and food benefits this is having a profound impact on the world's poorest people and the world's poorest communities but you know just hearing about that that's not what stoicism is about stoicism is to me what you're going to do about it and that's where give well comes in give well is trusted by tens of thousands of donors each year because they provide free and independent research that helps you understand how to have a big impact.

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9:23And if this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to$100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org and pick Daily Stoic from the drop-down menu under Podcast. That's how they know that you heard about GiveWell from the Daily Stoic and you'll get your donation matched. That's givewell.org, code the Daily Stoic to donate or find out more.

9:51So I was thinking about your book because I was just doing something up in my office. I was thinking about, have you seen the movie Gladiator? No. You've not seen the movie Gladiator. I mean, it's one of the greatest movies of all time. I'll watch it. You should. There's a scene in the beginning of Gladiator where Maximus, this is Russell Crowe's character, is just standing there. And it looks like this beautiful scene. And he's just sort of standing there and the wind is like ruffling through his fur collar and he's dragging his hands through this field of wheat. Then this bird lands and he's watching the bird and the steam is kind of coming off the ground behind him.

10:27And then the bird takes off and he follows it with his eyes and he smiles. And you're like, where is this beautiful heavenly place? And then it zooms out and he's on the front with the Roman army and they're about to engage in this ferocious, terrible, cataclysmic battle. And I was thinking about it because to me, this is a very stoic idea, which is that like we can see whatever we want to see, right? And the lens, which we look at the world or the senses that we perceive the world determine whether we're in a beautiful, lush landscape or a depressing hellscape. No, exactly. Or we think we're in a sterile gray box, but in fact, we're in the beach, but we're in the sterile gray box in our head.

11:11Yes. Yeah. The cubicle that you carry in your pocket can be - Oh, that's beautiful. Not beautiful. The opposite of beautiful. But yeah, it's like, so how do you get into the world? Yeah. Yeah. What's the Milton line? Like a man can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven. Yeah. It's all about how we perceive things to a certain degree. Yeah. And we perceive things very, very differently. Well, yeah, that was one of my favorite things in the book. You talk about some optical illusions, and then also just things that you've seen thousands of times in your life, but it's not until someone points it out or you decide to look at it consciously that you miss what's been happening the entire time.

11:46Like the FedEx logo. Or no, you talk about the Baskin Robbins logo. It also says 31 in the middle. Yeah. And the Hershey's Kiss one. Yeah. Tostitos. What's the Tostitos one? If you look at it very clearly, it's like two people's like around a, like a bowl of chips going like this. Really? That's the two T's. Yeah. What's the one, what's the version of that where like you, I was just thinking about this, like I was trying to remember this song lyric. And so I was writing it, like searching all these different phrases, trying to sing it in my head. And then I realized I couldn't find it because like I, I, I thought the person was saying tired of life, but they were saying tired of lying.

12:25Uh-huh. And it totally changes the meaning obviously. And now I can't go back to hear the song that struck me in a certain way. But like, it's not just visually that we do this. It's with all our senses. No, absolutely. I can't hear sirens because I live in New York City. So they just fade out. You can't smell your home the way a guest smells it. Because like to me, this bookstore has a very distinctive smell, but you probably don't even smell it because it's so familiar to you. Your brain doesn't alert you to it. Yeah. Isn't there a commercial that talks about nose blindness? Yeah, exactly. It's a real thing.

12:59You can't smell the air freshener. You can't smell the cats. I'm like, does my apartment smell like dog food? Because I wouldn't know. If I go away for a month, then I could smell it. But yeah. Of all the chapters of the book, that's the one that I related to the least in the sense that I have a terrible sense of smell. Like, you know, during COVID when people are like, you know, if you lose your sense of smell, like be worried. And I'm like, how would I notice? Really? Yeah, I had like septum surgery on my nose like twice because I screwed it up. And I think they messed. I don't remember ever having a strong sense of smell, but I think they messed it up when I had, like when they messed with my nose.

13:34Can you smell anything? I can smell like really bad smells or like, I guess I can, I think I can smell some new smells, but I tend, I don't, I wouldn't say I have a strong sense of smell. So people will remark on smells that you have not noticed. Yes. And ones that you don't, you can't smell even when they remark on them? Yeah. Okay. So people are like, oh, smell that cherry blossom tree. You're like, I don't smell anything. Yes. Or when someone is like describing, you know, I don't be like, I mean, I smell something, but that's not like you're, it's like you're just, you're describing something as a musician and me not being familiar with notes.

14:09Right. I have no idea the language that you're speaking. What's interesting. I have a neglected sense quiz. What's your neglected sense that people can take? But that is like for people who have access to a sense, but they're just not that interested in. Like I'm not, mine is taste. Like I taste fine. I'm just not that interested in taste. but you have something where like you may be neglecting it because you actually don't have the same access to perception that other people might be having with their nose. Well, it's probably a feedback loop where like, because it's not strong, the muscle atrophies or that your, your control of the thing is less and you don't.

14:45Or your interest in it. Yeah. Like I'm very interested in smell. So I explore, this is an appreciated sense. But for, but for me, taste is not, I had to really do a lot of things, which was super fun because I had all this low hanging fruit because I had not really done much to explore my sense of taste. But for some people, I mean, they even watch TV shows about, I'm like, why would that, like, why are you watching a TV show about taste? But you know, people love it because they're really interested in it. They want to explore it. They want to learn. They want recommendations. That's what you do with your appreciated sense.

15:13Did you just have an underdeveloped palate or it just, you're like, have a sensitive palate? What was it for you on taste? Or you're just not into it? I had a super strong sweet tooth. So I gave up sugar like 12 years ago, just because I was so boring to manage sugar. And, but I think one of the reasons that it was pretty easy for me to quit sugar was that I just am not that into taste. Right. So it didn't feel like a big loss, felt only like a gain. And then probably like deliberately neglecting it, like the high notes of taste, sugar is I think the ultimate high note of taste. It probably - It's like intoxicating because it's actually toxic.

15:53Yes. Well, it very much limited my range for sure. But I like, I enjoy food more actually now because I think you taste, like to me, something like blueberries taste very, very sweet and delicious because, you know, they're a little bit sweet. I love that in the book you were, I love whenever someone brings something up and you're like, I haven't thought of that that way or I haven't, I don't know, right? And you talked about what the inside of a blueberry looks like. I know, right? Do you know? I mean, I had no idea. I only know because my kids are still young. So there's a lot of like smashed fruit.

16:27Okay. Right, right, right. Underfoot. You're like getting them up with the sponge. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Although we just took them yesterday. This is my favorite time of year in Texas because there's wild blackberries all over. And so we were just walking through these fields, picking these wild blackberries. And, you know, you're noticing like, okay, you're starting to notice from the feel and the look and the color, which one is going to be delicious, which one is going to be is not quite right. And this is just a, it's like a spectrum that previously was totally compressed to you. Like it didn't exist or it existed only as the final product to you.

17:03But the idea that there was gradients along the perception because it's out of sight, out of mind. So you're just not considering it. And then there's something explosive and wonderful about when you suddenly become aware of a spectrum of sound or taste or, and then you're like, I'm going to really get into that. Right. Well, the thing about the brain is the brain is a difference detector. So it's looking for danger and opportunity. And when information is valuable, then it will start to really, really pick up on those nuances. And so then as you become attuned to it and it matters, then you start picking that up.

17:40But if you're just like, I'm wandering through a grocery store, just like grabbing a bag and they're all basically the same, then they all just look alike because you don't need them. And there's something fundamentally unnatural about those, right? So like the world of the grocery store, the world of the hardware store, it's filled with straight lines and manufactured things and mass-produced things. All the blackberries in the store, let's say, first off, they grow them a certain way. Maybe they're genetically modified in some way. They all get equal amounts of water and sunlight. And then as they're picking them, they're getting rid of all the bad ones, right?

18:19So you get this thing of artificial, unrealistic sameness. But then when you're out in the world, if you're looking for it, you know, there's the bad ones. There's the ones that were eaten by a caterpillar. There's the smashed ones. There's the one in the shades. Yes. The thing about sight is that because the way the human brain is wired, we have more real estate in the brain that is devoted to sight. And usually when there is a conflict among senses, sight will trump. And so one of the ways that you see that, and I'm not a lover of tomatoes, but people who love tomatoes are like, well, now tomatoes are very bland and tough because they've been bred to look good and to pack well and to look uniform and bright and round.

19:01And so they've sacrificed taste to sight. Same thing with flowers. Like I I love smell. And so I love hyacinths, roses, lilacs, things that have a beautiful, beautiful smell, but often they have been bred for longevity, resistance to insects and beauty, which is great. But I love the smell. You know what else is interesting to talking about seeing things like how often do people notice that this there was also intentionality designed into the thing because you never take the cover off and you never think about all the other. A lot of people do. Some people do. Different readers. But you're right.

19:39You don't necessarily explore it. It's like you have to look. I think to me, that's kind of the essence of the book is that like. Right. Exactly. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you don't look for. Yes. But it's there. Well, this is like ketchup because ketchup is ubiquitous. 97 % of Americans have it in their fridge. We think of it as being just kind of like this throwaway thing. And yet it's the secret ingredient of so many foods. And it's like a, you know, ketchup is magic because it has all five of the basic tastes. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. That's really hard for something to do.

20:12So it's incredibly sophisticated and complex. And when you really taste it, it's like an explosion in your mouth. And there's an aftertaste and there's the texture. And you realize like why it's so popular. But it's very easy to just take it for granted. Yeah, speaking of taste, someone was telling me like the reason you didn't like Brussels sprouts when you were a kid is that Brussels sprouts now taste different. So the opposite of the tomato thing you're talking about, which is that tomatoes are bred for appearances, which may negatively correlate to what people actually like to taste. Brussels sprouts, they basically realized that people hated them for pretty good reason.

20:50And then they bred them to actually taste better. Oh, interesting. Less bitter. Yes. And people, for whatever reason, decided to get good at cooking them and they don't just serve boiled Brussels sprouts anymore. There's a bunch of like amazing ways to do it. But fundamentally, the Brussels sprout is still a Brussels sprout. And by looking at it differently, working on it differently, it becomes transformatively different. Well, and a lot of things have bred to become sweeter. So apples are sweeter, grapes are sweeter. So it would make sense that they've just bred Brussels sprouts to be less bitter because the objection to them is that they're bitter.

21:27Have you had cotton candy grapes? Yes. How good are those? I mean, well, see, but I don't eat sugar. And so I wouldn't eat something like the cotton. You don't even eat things that have natural sugar in them. I sometimes will eat berries, but usually not. No, I don't eat things like watermelon or, yeah, I typically wouldn't eat grapes. Wow. Right. It's kind of a hobby, I have to say. Not eating sugar is a hobby? It's kind of fun. I'm like, I'm just going to go hard into this. Yeah, I really don't eat carbs. So there's a lot of things I don't eat. Wow. Flour, rice. You know, eat anything that is not carbs.

22:03There's a whole big, huge world of delicious food. I do eat meat. I eat meat. I eat fish. I eat eggs. I eat so many eggs. I eat a ton of nuts. It's like a squirrel nest in my house. We have so many nuts. I think that one of the things I take from optical illusions, which I think is an important also stoic concept, which is this idea that like, yes, your mind is your friend. Yes, your mind is this powerful thing. but your mind is also not your friend. Yes. And your mind is fucking with you. And what you think, what you would swear on your life is presenting to you as X could very obviously not be X.

22:39Yes. No, and that's very true with our senses because very often we think we're perceiving something, but maybe it's because of context or it's the lighting or it's our own. You know, you see this, people have conflicts because it's like, you're complaining. Oh, I don't like this. It's like, I don't like this music playing. And you're like, oh no, it's like, It's great for creativity if we have jazz playing in our open office plan. And it's like, no, people are very different. They have very different experiences, and they bring different things to their environments, and they take different. So sometimes it's show more compassion for yourself if something's bugging you that other people are fine with.

23:12Or maybe you need to realize that people may be complaining about something you think is fine, but other people find very distracting or annoying. Yeah, it's always weird. Like if you say you don't like something, people are like, oh, it's an acquired taste. and that makes sense to me and then there's also something strange about the logic of like no you have to endure how not good it is for a while and then either it becomes tolerable or it becomes good um why like let's say alcohol or something why are you acquiring so coffee yes right yes well i mean i think that's a big tension because we love novelty we're drawn to novelty but we also like in a way we prefer familiarity because it's easier.

23:56And so it's sort of like, well, maybe I could make myself like this. Like with music, I was always like my way of, you know, I don't really like music. Other people like it so much more. I have like this cramped vision. What does this mean about me? I'm a killjoy. And I'm like, and I kept thinking like, if I just listened more and more and more, but then I'm like, maybe I shouldn't try to listen more and more. Maybe I should do the things I already enjoy and not try to develop a taste for it. But then I also realized that I do like particular songs and I could just enjoy music that way. I was a song lover, not kind of a general music lover.

24:26Right. But I was thinking, could I kind of force myself to acquire a taste just through sheer familiarity? And I think there is something like if you drink coffee enough time. Yes. You might acquire a taste. Why are you acquiring the taste? Are you acquiring the taste because you actually do want to explore? You feel like expanding your palate gives you this whole other way of perceiving reality that's probably positive. are you acquiring the taste because you want to get wasted on the other side of taste? Or because people in your social class or group are making you feel weird for not liking that thing.

24:59That's probably the worst reason to acquire a taste. Okay. So here's an idea that's like one of my central mantras for myself. And tell me if this is a stoic idea. I want to accept myself and also expect more from myself. Yes, sure. The tension of unconditionally supporting yourself as you are as a flawed, imperfect person and then also questioning how fixed some of those imperfections are. And whether you could raise your aspirations for yourself. Yeah. Well, do you know the Stockdale Paradox? Okay, remind me. So it's in good to great, but it comes from James Stockdale, the prisoner of war, who gets it from stoicism.

25:46He's basically, Jim Collins asked him, like, who asks him who has the most trouble in the prisoner of war camp? Yes, I do know this one. The tension between acceptance and sort of indomitable determination. Right, right. Do you hope for the best or do you, like, resign yourself to, like, the moment? I think a lot of times there are these tensions within, because both are true. You know, the opposite of a profound truth is also true. And so there are these things where kind of our great challenge is to figure out how to think about it in a particular context. Well, I feel like in philosophy and some religious traditions, a lot of what people say are contradictions or paradoxes are really just a reflection of the fact that reality is complicated.

26:31Yes. And sometimes you have to do X and sometimes you have to do the opposite of X. And a great example of this. And again, stoic or not, this is like the game we'll play next time. You know, sometimes people say, well, you have to appreciate the moment, live in the moment. The moment is all we have. That's true. But a life that takes no consideration for the future is not a good life. And a life where you don't reflect on the past is also not a good life. And so it's like, how do we think about the present, the future, and the past in the right way? because they're sort of, they all have to be weighed against each other.

27:05Well, the one I think about the most is like sometimes the solution to a problem or an obstacle or a situation is to zoom way in, to look at it super close, just the immediate thing in front of you. And sometimes you have to zoom way out and see it from a distance, see it in light of what's happened before and what will happen after. And you might need to do one, one minute and literally the next minute and the next situation do the exact opposite of what was just supposed to be this universal problem-solving technique. Right, well, and for Life in Five Senses, one of the exercises that I did, maybe my most ambitious exercise was to visit the Metropolitan Museum every day.

27:44The daily practice that you talk about. Because I just was really interested to see how that experience would change over time with so much familiarity. And I didn't really know what to expect, but one of the big things that came from it is exactly what you're saying, which is I got such a sense of perspective. It's such a vast place. It's such a timeless place. My own petty grievances and petty preoccupations is just put into this thousands of years of human endeavor. And it just was so refreshing. It got me out of my head. And it just gave me a relief because I was just part of something that was so eternal and so transcendent.

28:23And how much of those daily visits was you managing to cram in what was more than a person could possibly do in a single day? There's so much stuff. And how much of it was you looking at the same things day after day? Well, that's the beautiful thing about doing something every day is no one time matters. Like this need to like make the most of it or be productive or like, you know, see as much as you can. It doesn't matter. I'm like coming back tomorrow. I'm coming back. You know, I still go every day. Like that year is long over. So it would just depend on what I felt like. And I have a very disciplined mind.

28:58I'm very, very disciplined. And so for me, it was kind of recess. So I really wanted to keep away from having, trying to discipline my mind or like have an approach that I had to stick to. So it was very much, sometimes it'd be long, sometimes it'd be short. Sometimes I do things like, it's President's Day. Let me go look at all the presidents I could find, kind of like fun little tasks. Sometimes I just go look at one thing. Sometimes I just sort of wander around and experience the museum as kind of a setting and not even really look at anything in particular. So it just changed day to day what I felt like I wanted to bring to, you know, what I was in the mood for, really.

29:32There is a stoic idea that we never step in the same river twice. Well, 100%. And how much of it would have been that for you? It's like, the art is the same, but you're different. Well, the one thing that I found is the art is changing much more than I thought. Even like there's new exhibits and like they're doing renovations, but they swap the paintings in and out much more. Like with no fanfare, I'm like, nobody notices this except for me because I'm literally coming every day. But yeah, it was, but who knew that? I did not know that. So it was, it was fascinating. Somebody that a lot of people have this urge to do something day after day because you see things unfold differently.

30:05Somebody told me that he goes to his same like chain drugstore every day. And I'm like, there's so much going on in a big chain drugstore. I would absolutely go every day. That sounds so fascinating to me. Like to watch a time-lapse of that drugstore would be incredible. How is it different? How does it change through the seasons? How does it respond to trends? What are the people doing? How are they behaving? How are they dressing? Oh, now we've got self-checkout. What's happening? How are people? I mean, there's a lot going on.

30:34Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

31:19We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven it across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

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32:41Well, also just to think like, okay, so the night before you go to the drugstore, like you go in the morning, that night, some crazy person could have come in and knocked everything off to the shelf. It could have been this huge event that is like an event that the people who witnessed it will remember forever. It was a giant pain in their ass. They had to do a ton of overtime to fix it. The police came. It was like one of those things. Yeah, it was in the paper. Yeah, like the night crew is buzzing to the morning crew. You never guess what happened. But then you as the customer come in at 1130, and there's not a single trace that this happened.

33:10Every paper towel roll is, yeah. No, it's really interesting. But then you would pick up all these subtle differences. Like, oh, these two people are like, these two people are having a fight, and this person's on the audio system all the time. Somebody's messing with the playlist. There's more security than normal. Yeah, or the seasonal changes. But anyway, so, but when I, when I did it, I thought this was very idiosyncratic, but it turns out a lot of people, like they'll take exactly the same walk with their dog or if they're like forest bathing, they'll go to the same sit spot. I think for, I think some people really thrive on novelty and they would never try to chain themselves to doing the same thing every day.

33:48But for some people it's very appealing. And there, and I have to say that if it's the kind of thing that is attractive to you, I was, it's, it only becomes more interesting the longer I do it. It's not like I'm like wearing it out and now it's boring. It's like now I want to go to the Met every day for the rest of my life because it's so rich and it only becomes more rich. I feel a tension with that with reading because there's so many books that I want to read. But rereading is so great. And reading is amazing, yes. I absolutely agree with that. And I love to reread, so I have to fight the impulse to just reread.

34:22Yeah. In fact, I'm having the summer of rereading. What are you rereading? I'm reading The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. Crowds in Power by Elias Canetti, The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell. Have you read The Club about Samuel Johnson and Boswell? Oh, no, I have not. I had forgotten about that book. Is it really good? I read it a couple months ago, and I just finished doing my notes on it, and I found it absolutely incredible. Oh, 100%. That's great. I'll read it in advance to prep up. I love Samuel Johnson. He's one of my favorite writers. Well, anybody interested in human nature, of course, is interested in Samuel Johnson because he can say in one sentence what people write entire like PhD theses on.

35:03And then there's one other, oh, and then, well, I was going to reread Andy Warhol, but I think I'm going to like go on a totally, yes, I love, love, love Andy Warhol. But so I think I'm going to do a whole thing about Andy Warhol. So he won't be my summer of rereading. He'll be some other little reading task. Yeah, especially if you're someone who takes notes in books. Yes. So usually I'll reread the old copy that I have Yes And you notice what you notice Yes That's so valuable I've been like, no, I'm going to read a fresh Because I have this bookstore I'll just take a new one off the shelf And I'll go, I just want to experience it closer to the first time Interesting And then do you compare?

35:44Yeah, I'll notice, oh, I took way more notes the first time than the second time Yeah You just pick, because it's a different river Yes, yes Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's the same river, but it's slightly different. Because you're different. It's like a photograph of the river or something. Yeah. Well, and there's some authors who are famous for being different every time you read them. Like Tolstoy is famous that way, that it's different every single time you read it. I feel like Virginia Woolf is that way. Have you read his book, A Calendar of Wisdom? Oh yeah. Yeah. That one, like, so I read a page of that most morning.

36:13The thing is, Tolstoy is such a horrible person that I, if you love reading Tolstoy, do not read any biography of him. Like don't, just don't do it. because then you will love his fiction. But that's a great example. So you read the book and you have one sense of it and then you read about the man and then it's impossible for you to have the same sense of - I'm just trying to forget it as fast as I can so I can go back and love it as much as I do. I know, that is the tension. The art of monstrous men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly. No, I love Calendar of Wisdom. It's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. And not that many people know about it.

36:46And then the other thing is like, I've tried to find some of the quotes. No, he's very fast. and loose. Yeah, I think some of them he just made up. And that also changes how I, now I go, did he, so and so, like, because he quotes the Stokes a lot, so I'll be like, where is that at Epic T's? Did I miss it? And in some cases I missed it, and in other times this is a paraphrasing of a paraphrasing. Right, no, I have had exactly the same problem. And then it's the problem of translations, because these, some of these, you know, a different translation will get you to a very different place, and, you know, you will have your favorite translation.

37:18But yeah, with some of Tolstoy, I'm like, I don't, I couldn't find it. And so he's somehow either paraphrased it, as you say, beyond recognition, or he just was sloppy. Reading different translations is also a really great way to drill down on stuff. So you read a translation of the Odyssey from the 70s, and then Emily Wilson's new translation, and you're like, oh, wow. You realize, one, how much a translation is a reflection of the time that the author is writing in, and then also how much discretion the translator has over what is presented and how it's presented. Well, because I always have a dedicated summer of reading something.

37:59So I had the summer of Proust a couple summers ago, and I have a lot of friends who are big Proust enthusiasts. And so I said to them, well, okay, well, which translation should I read? And I mean, it was just like warfare, you know, because they had such strong views. So I ended up reading like the most classic one because that's the one I wanted. But people were saying it's really very, very different when you read a different translation. I usually say just don't read whatever one is free on the internet. Yes. Because it's free for a reason. You get what you pay for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

38:33That's a good rule. It's old enough that no one is even bothering to try to maintain the copyright. Like there's something to that. But a great way to see this sort of in brief is the Delphic Oracle. Like I love like the Delphic maxims. And if you compare them, they're really, they're different in very significant ways. And so I've thought, can you mix and like, if I had my own list, like here they are, or here are my favorites, can I mix and match translations or is that not legit? What do you think? I don't even know. Like I have to go through and be like, okay, well, which one, you know, there's, some of them are kind of strange.

39:09I'll give you one favorite. But first, I think that's a feature, not a bug of the Oracle, right? Even when the oracle was saying it, there was no debate over what it was because everyone spoke the same dialect of Greek. Because it was Greek, yeah. It was supposed to be just vague enough that you would perceive what you needed to perceive. Well, one of them is something like, perceive what you have known or something very Yoda. Or the famous one with Themistocles was like, go to your wooden wall. Oh, right. And he's like, that means boats. you know or like and you're like okay that's because you're a naval captain right you already wanted to do a naval strategy yeah or whatever but you realize that the the purpose of it was to be just deliberately vague enough that smart people could use it as kind of a way to describe or to yeah to put support behind what they already wanted to do but my favorite is from zeno the founder of stoicism so as a young man he's this part of this merchant family so he travels all over and he decides one time to stop at the Delphi to get like advice on his life.

40:10And they say to him, you will become wise when you begin to have conversations with the dead, which he's like, what does that mean? And I think also part of it was it was meant to be something that you chew on, like those Zen things. It's like, just sit there and think about it. Yes. And so he thinks about it for many, many years. and then he suffers this shipwreck and he washes up in Athens and he loses everything. He's penniless and he walks into a bookstore. That's why this bookstore is called the Painted Porch because he walks into this bookstore, which he then founds. A Greek walks into a bookstore.

40:47But anyways, he's in this bookstore and that's when he realizes, because the owner of the bookstore is reading something from Socrates or something. And he realizes that conversations with the dead is books. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Oh. That's what they are. But this is the thing is you make your own oracle. That's the genius of it. It's like the placebo. Your brain is the painkiller. Your mind, your imagination, like you are the oracle. Well, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. 100%. When you need the meaning of the thing, then it unlocks itself. Whereas before it was gibberish. Well, a project that I have had on the back burner for a long time is this one.

41:33It's called like Scientific Oracle. I don't know what I'm going to call it. Because I want to create a system of like oracular prediction myself. Because I'm so intrigued by this because you can't, it's our minds that create that meaning. And so what would the prompts be? And what would be like the symbolic? Anyway, it's like a whole other thing. Is that the Rick Rubin book? I just have it on the top of my library list, and it hasn't, you know, of course it was checked out. I'm really excited to read it. I've got one behind you. I'll give it to you. Okay, good. But he talks about this in the book.

42:05So he's like, when artists are stuck, he gives them two pieces of advice. Like, let's say they're stuck lyrically. What's the Buddhist thing? It's like— The mandala? No, no, no. The Buddhist thing where it's like random numbers, and it like unlocks stuff for you. It just like tells you what to do. A Cohen? No, no, no. It's this Buddhist thing where it's basically like - Oh, the Beijing. Yes. Yeah, you like, it's like - Yeah, yeah, right, right. It gives you these six - It's a set of instructions. Yeah, you cast - Yes. So he's like, just - He's basically saying hand over control to someone other than yourself.

42:41No, I'm - Yes, I'm very preoccupied with that. And he tells, not in the book, but the famous example of him doing this is the band System of a Down, their big song, Chop Suey. It has this really haunting sort of bridge. What is he saying in the bridge? Like, why hast thou forsaken me? He just like sings this over and over again. And it's like haunting and dark and amazing. The song was a huge hit. The story was they didn't know what they wanted the bridge to say. And Rick Rubin told them to go to the shelf, take a book off of the shelf. So they took the Bible, obviously. And just pick a random line.

43:17And that is it. So the idea of like handing over control to something other than yourself, that's what the Delphi was also. So in the book, I write about how like I had this list of what I was calling indirect directions that were just like these kind of gnomic, like break the frame, rearrange the parts, you know, just dozens of those. But I didn't like the fact that it was in my computer because it felt very ghost-like. And also I was like, I'm just going to – I create so much stuff. I'm like, I'm just going to forget I even have this one day and I'll just vanish. So I, I, and I found my father's old Rolodex and I was so enchanted by it.

43:52I bought a Rolodex and wrote all these things. Yeah. So I can just pull them when I need them. But the first challenge that I had, the first creative challenge, which again, I wanted to use that random pull was what do I call this thing? I didn't like calling it the Rolodex of ideas or the, or the indirect directions. I'm like, I need a better name, but what is it? So I was stuck. So I used my own Rolodex and the thing that I pulled was find a fresh metaphor. And so I was like, okay. So I like pulled out the card, stuck it on my bulletin board. And then I was at the Met and I saw this ink stand of Apollo.

44:26It was this, it's super elaborate and it's covered. It's got all these little cubbies and it's covered with muses and poets and gods. And then I thought Muse Machine. That's the name of my Rolodex of ideas is the Muse Machine because it's like an idea generator. And I was so excited. But that's the thing is I think there's this, and also when you pick something at random, It feels like the universe is some, you're like somehow participating with destiny or divine providence. And so it's very attractive to, and then it's your creativity that somehow, because we all need something. It's like the sonnet form.

44:58You need something to work with. And so it gives you that idea. The constraints are actually. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Freeing. Yes. It gives you, it gives you a place. Yeah. Oh, good. Well, I'll read that. I heard his, I've heard him interviewed. That I'm psyched to read it. Okay, good. Yeah, I was thinking when I was reading your silence chapter, I was thinking of John Cage. Oh, well, yes, he's Mr. Silence. Yeah, Mr. Silence, but also he used that whatever that - Randomness, yeah. The randomness thing, he would use that to produce art or to make artistic decisions. In the end, randomness is very limited artistically, I think.

45:34It's something, it's a tool, but I think it runs out. Sure, yes. Speaking of silence - You can be one John Cage. Yes, and also John Cage is very interesting. Right. Who's listening to him right now. Everybody talks about him. Everybody's like, yeah, it's incredibly, yeah, it's very compelling. Yes, yeah. Yeah, he exists kind of as the exception that proves some rules. Yeah. He makes a point, but then you're not interested in seeing person after person after person making the point. Yes. Or like random theater. It's just like, you know, I don't know. Yes. But have you been to that church in Helsinki, the Church of Silence?

46:16No. In like whatever the main square in Helsinki is, you walk in and it's this non-denominational church. And it was designed, I don't know if it was inspired by the John Cage thing, but I've been twice. But it was just designed, everything was designed to create and foster silence. You're not allowed to talk in there. There's nothing on the walls. Oh my gosh, I'm going to make a pilgrimage. Yeah, it's incredible. I have never heard of this. Yes. I love silence. I can't believe, it's called the Church of Silence? If you just search Church of Silence, Helsinki, whatever the crazy finish name is.

46:47I've been wanting a reason to go to Helsinki and now I have it. Excellent. Oh, I would love to. That's one of the things I love about the five senses is it's like a reason to go on all these adventures. It's like, I've never done a sound bath. Why don't I do a sound bath? Yes. You know, immerse. A sensory deprivation chamber. Oh yeah, I did that. I found it boring, I have to say. It was not - Did you fall asleep? No. I fell asleep in one way. I found it was, I did not find it transformative. Interesting. Like cryotherapy. You did ayahuasca? I did ayahuasca. Yeah, I read about that. Big bust. Did not work for me.

47:17That was a big disappointment. It was a great adventure. And talk about pushing yourself. Like if you knew me, you would be very surprised that I had tried ayahuasca. Yeah. So it was something where I was pushing the boundaries of my natural behaviors. Yes, yes, yes. And it was a huge adventure. It was like a whole thing. But as a - Did you get more out of that than the doing it? Oh, 100 % because I got nothing out of the doing it. It was like a five senses, heightened senses. Could I experience the universe in this way that I couldn't ordinarily get to on my own, which I was very excited about.

47:54Right. But it was also a reason to do it. It wouldn't have occurred to me except I was like, ooh, five senses adventure. Let's do something actually psychedelic. This should be amazing. But I just threw up three times and fell asleep. And then I was just myself. just normal. So nothing, but it was, it was a whole, it was a whole thing. Do you think that's just uniquely you or do you think the whole thing is overrated? Oh no, I think it was uniquely me. I think I, I think I just got it out of my system so fast and it was all happening very, very late at night. I'm a real morning person. And so I think that my body was like, you know what, it's time to shut this down.

48:27Why are we awake so late? Like, let's just get rid of this stuff. Um, and, and some of the people I was with, a lot of the people didn't, they, they didn't have that problem. And so maybe, maybe that's why their experiences were more intense. So that's interesting. But that's what they say about ayahuasca. Like it's not predictable. That's part of why it's not. Somebody was saying to me, that's why it's not addictive because for things to be addictive, you have to know what to expect. And even the people I was with, everybody had wildly different experiences. So mine was a bust. I've been joking that, you know, it works because they have to do it a lot of times.

49:00No, you know what I mean? They're like, it was transformative. It changed everything. And that's why I do it all the time. Oh, interesting. You know what I mean? Okay. Like, it sounds like you're describing basically every drug to me. I don't know anybody who's done it a bunch of, well, I guess I know a few people who have done it a bunch of times, but they do everything. Just move to Austin. Right. Okay. All right. Okay. Yeah. Well, I run with a very square crowd. So as a former lawyer, no, yeah. Yeah. So I love the idea though, that like the senses are both to be explored and followed. And then the tension of like, also don't trust them.

49:35Mm-hmm. Yeah, because you have to remember that what you are experiencing is very much affected by your genetics, your upbringing, your culture, your expectations, the context. If you tell people, oh, you're smelling Parmesan, they'll be like, oh, this smells good. If you say, oh, this is vomit, they'll say, oh, it smells terrible. Or my daughter, I brought home a paperwhite narcissus, you know, and they have that very particular smell. And I said to her, oh, I love the smell of paperwhite narcissus. And she's like, oh, I didn't know they had a smell. So she leaned in and took a big sniff and she's like, oh, I hate that smell.

50:06I thought we had like a dead mouse. I was really worried about that. And then once she knew it was a flower and not a dead mouse, she was like, I don't mind the smell. She doesn't love the smell. But when she thought it was, when her mind was supplying this like very dark image, she really disliked it. And then when she thought it's like a holiday flower, it became much less noxious. That's a good example, like the way you can be primed. So it's like, if someone says a high number, you're anchored on the prime number. or this is an expensive wine or this is ecologically friendly coffee. People will rate it higher if they value the environment.

50:40Yes. Or they'll take a fast food restaurant and put the food inside a regular restaurant and people are like, this is amazing. Right. And it's like, no, this is McDonald's and you would have looked down on it under ordinary circumstances. Yeah, where so much of it is what we expect. Or a flower in a weed. Talk about marketing. It's, you know, if something doesn't sell well, double the price and sell it. And it will often sell better. No, no, no, no garden, no, no weed, you know, um, or ban it. Oh, a hundred trying to make, well, I want to write a book of aphorisms. And one of my aphorisms is if you try to hide something or make it secret, it unfailingly makes it more interesting.

51:18Interesting. Yes. Sure. When, when people say you shouldn't be able to have it, people go, let me, let me check on that. Let me check it out. Or like, there's the famous server, Barbara Streisand, they were doing a coastal survey. And, and so there were all these aerial photographs of like everything along the coast. And her lawyers found out that you could see her house. So they like wanted them to take it down. Yeah, the Streisand effect, yes. Right, the Streisand effect. And so before the lawsuit, like six people had seen it, including her lawyers. And then after the lawsuit, like two million people have seen it because everybody's like, ooh, what is it that Barbra Streisand doesn't want us to see?

51:50Or gun control in California is mostly the result of conservatives reacting to liberal groups like the Black Panthers arming themselves in the 60s and 70s. So when your opponent does something that you would under ordinary circumstances like, you perceive it very differently. Right, right, right, right, right, right. And then people think, oh, because people support this, they're totally ignoring the causes or the reason that thing happened in the first place. Well, it's fascinating how reframing something can completely change it. Like, do I get to do it or do I have to do it? It's like you feel very different.

52:28Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a mark as a realist thing I love where he goes, you always have the option of having no opinion. This never a truer word has been said. And I always think of it as like, what happens if I mind my own business? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Often it's like, yeah, you don't have to weigh in. Yes. Especially on issues of taste, like just the idea of like, I don't like this. Right. And that is as far as I've thought about this thing. I really don't care that you think that comedian is funny. Right. Then it is true. They are funny to you. Right. But it's my desire to make reality conform to my taste that is the problem.

53:08Exactly. I mean, you have people who try to convince you, like, wine is so good. It's like everything, you know, if you've ever been with somebody who's like a huge wine, and you're just like, I'm just not interested. And they're like, but I could make you interested. I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not, nothing is inherently interesting. Nothing is inherently fun. Just because something's fun for you doesn't mean it's fun for me and vice versa. And yeah, you just, again, you have to keep that in mind.

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56:28All right, this is my last marks release quote, I think. There's two things that I think pertain to your book here. So one, I think the most beautiful passage in the book is he's walking through this field and he's like commenting on the grain and he's commenting on flecks of foam on a boar's mouth. He talks about the way that bread cracks open in the oven. He's basically just commenting on a bunch of ordinary stuff as if it is the most beautiful thing in the world, the way that a poet looks at the world. And that's one of the things that I took from your book was you were like, I'm just really going to notice stuff.

57:03And when you really notice stuff, it would be unusual if what you noticed was how awful and ugly everything was. What you noticed is that how wonderful and amazing and unbelievable and majestic things that you totally took for granted are. That's true. But it does make me more aware of, you know, clutter and racket and stink. but it's almost like I like it better because it's just part of the range of experience. So even things that I would say I don't like, I still kind of, I don't begrudge the experience the way I think I used to be just sort of irritated by it. Now I understand it's just part of the range of perception.

57:41Yeah, I think it was Margaret Thatcher, someone, she was driving in the United States, someone was driving her and she saw like the sprawl of, I don't know, Phoenix, like some urban, like, you know, ugly American city. and they said, look at this sprawl. And she said, isn't it beautiful? Yes, right, right, right. As opposed to how it shouldn't be this way. Yes, that's a great example, right? It's jobs, it's building, it's growth. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think about that with my kids when I see like I walked into their playroom this morning and it was a disaster. And I go, this room is well-played in.

58:15Yes, right. As opposed to this room should be, should look like kids don't live here. Right, right, right. No, and back to the thing about not having a judgment. It's like, I feel like with parents, it's like, you're either too boisterous or you're too sluggish or you're too bold or you're too timid or you're too bookish or you're not bookish enough. It's just like. It is what it is. Yeah. You get what you get and you don't get upset. Yeah. I think sometimes people want this like impossible mix in their children. Yeah. Whereas acceptance is probably a happier, healthier. Well, and the same thing as a bug and a feature.

58:49Yes. You know, so. Yeah. Or, you know, your dishes, you got a sink full of dirty dishes. It's like, is this a chore or is this the tax you pay on the dinner that you just had together? Right, right, right. Like how are you choosing to see it? It's a natural consequence. Yes, yes, yes. So the other Marcus thing, he's sitting at like, you know, probably the emperor's table. It's some huge table like this and it's piled with all these, you know, like luxuries. And you were talking about wine and he says, you know, like, it's all rotten grapes. And he's like, this is a dead pig. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

59:18This is a bloated stuffed fish. Ooh, so the opposite. Just seeing how ugly everything is. Yes. Right. And then you're like, I don't care that it's the most expensive wine in the world. It's this, you know? Right. I think he's saying that you strip things of the legend that encrust them. Like we just had this tour of the White House and you're like, this is like an office. Yeah. It's very shabby and small. Yes. It really, it's very surprising how small it is, right? Yeah. And then also it's like, do you know how many dumb idiots have worked here? Like, like, you know, like on the one hand you can see like, this is the seat of power of the modern world.

59:57And this is where Kennedy stared down the Soviets and the missile crisis. And then you're like, also, this is where, was it Harding had an affair in the closet. And, you know, this is where they, they plotted the segregation of the federal, you know, the federal office. Like you can see, I think the idea is if you see them for the dinginess or the contradiction, like that also helps you not be so intimidated or blinded to the marketing that goes along with it. So I guess the stoic perspective would be to just try to understand that both things can be true at the same time or that you don't have to judge.

1:00:37You don't have to go in there and say, this is amazing or this is terrible. You can just say, this is what it is, and how do I try to truly take it in? Yes. And, yeah, with sort of a calm and— When you're depressed, you should look for the wonderful side of it, and then when you're high on your own supply, you should look to ratchet it down a little bit with the other. Now, is it true, or is this just like urban myth, that when the emperors would go on their triumphant parade, somebody would say, remember, you must die. Yeah. I think Epictetus talks about it. Yeah. And he worked in Nero's court.

1:01:16So, I mean, maybe it was - Might've been a one-time thing. Yeah, or it was a legend even then. Right, yes. But after a certain point, it's true. Right, right, right. How long are we going to go back before it's true? It's true whether it's factual, I guess. It's very powerful. Yes, yes. And it's interesting to think that they mean that in a couple senses. So memento mori is like all humans are mortal. But if you think about it in the context of the slave whispering in the emperor's ear at their moment of greatest accomplishment, I think they're trying to say you're still a human. It's not about mortality per se.

1:01:54It's that you're not special. You're not like you're still a human being. You're not a god. We're literally telling you you're a god. And then we're also telling, we're reminding you that you're not a god. Right, right. Right. At your moment of triumph. Yes. So you're not a music person? Well, what I realized is I'm a song lover, not a music lover. So I like individual songs that I feel very passionate about and love, but I don't like, I won't listen to everything by an artist or a whole genre or listen to suggested playlists or where I almost never go to concerts because I just like the one song.

1:02:31Right. Yeah. I think that's an interesting distinction. I am a song person too. I tend to listen to the same songs on repeat. When I'm writing, I need to get into an emotional place that means like picking a song and running it in a cycle. You know, one of the things that was interesting to me is what kind of auditory surroundings help people to be focused and productive. And it seems between silence, busy hum, which is like coffee shop, white noise. Matt Lebel deliberately writes in coffee shops, which is like the worst place in the world. A lot of people love that, like airports. music with words, music without words, and then like music on repeat.

1:03:08And it's interesting, like this idea of the loop. There's a whole sub-genre of people who have the loop, and it's just bonkers to me. What do you think that is? I don't know, but it's really, like I talked to somebody where she said if she was working with words, she wanted music without lyrics. And if she was working with numbers, she wanted music with lyrics. So I think part of it is just knowing yourself. And what I love silence, but I will take Busy Hum, but I don't like, I would never, never, never work to music. And in fact, I was on the plane and they like had music playing like while people were getting seated.

1:03:48And I just was like, oh, I just want to turn it off. I want to read my book and I don't want this music playing. And, but it's very, and you see like worth an open office plan. Or if you get a boss who's like, oh, I read research saying that jazz makes people creative. It's like, not everybody. Because you want to listen to the same song. And you want to pick that song that works for you. And then forever, do you associate a song with a book project? Does it immediately take you back? It hits me more. I listen to music usually when I'm reading. And so I'm cycling through songs. You do. I can't do that.

1:04:25Every once in a while, the song and the book will line up so perfectly that then that book or that song is indelibly associated with the Civil War or this thing. And then I also tend to eat while I'm reading. I do it during meals. So also I crack open the book and I'm like, oh, that's what I was doing. Clearly an Italian restaurant. Right, right. You could do an interesting – because one of the things I do in the book is I do a taste timeline where I went back. It might be interesting for you to do a reading music timeline where you like track those associations. It might be the kind of thing where it might take a while for those memories to come back, but over time they would come to your mind.

1:05:06And it would be a really interesting chronology of your own preferences and interests and how they matched up. And then in the future, it probably would help you remember that better. I've done a playlist, like if you pre-order some of my books, I'll give you the playlist of the songs I listened to the most while I was writing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're usually like, Like the association exists only in life. Exactly. You never guess. They don't seem like they're related in some way. Well, in the book I read about doing my audio apothecary for all the songs that would cure the blues, and I put it on Spotify.

1:05:39And since people have seen it, they keep being like, I can't believe you didn't include this song. And I'm like, there's a bazillion songs. You know, I picked my songs, but people are like, I can't believe you left this one out because everybody has their own list. But again, it's like, Like it's, you are the one making the choices. There's no objective. Well, of course this song must be included because everybody's, you know, your playlist for your book, like no one else could come up with that. Of course. Because it's an individual, it's so idiosyncratic. That's part of what's fun. I am jealous of music though, in the sense that like what a musician can do in five seconds, you know, even me at my absolute best, like the height of my powers, I'm the most locked in.

1:06:22most, I feel like would take me 20 pages in the sense of like striking the mood, conveying, like the emotion in music is so. I don't, I don't like the imprecision of visual arts or music because I can't with reading, like I can't control what you think, but I can tell you exactly what I am trying to communicate much more. Let me tell you what I mean. Let me like, yeah. And I, and so, So, you know, I think that that to me is very satisfying. I get what you mean, like in terms of like conjuring. Yes. But I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is it's like - But that's partly I don't value music that much.

1:07:01One of the best prose writers of all time. Like let's say we took Fitzgerald or something. Okay, right. And then we were somehow able to translate what they were doing to some even, like we had a musician and we had Fitzgerald and we made them do the same thing and we're like, who's better? I feel like a mediocre, musician could reach the same emotional heights that it would require the absolute master of this other profession to do, if that makes sense. It's like one has an incredible tailwind. The music playing in a commercial is like tearjerker right away. And you're like, you're like, yeah.

1:07:38A movie score compared to what the screenwriter had to do on the page to get you to feel that way to what the author had to get you to feel that way in a book. It's like, you No, it's like pages of prose, a handful of bits of dialogue, and then it's like three notes. Right, right, right, right. It's like a spider top. I think E minor is the saddest key. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that already did most of the work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just, it's like you just have. So of the neglected sense, you know, I have this quiz, what's your neglected sense? So my most neglected sense is taste, but my second most neglected sense is hearing.

1:08:15And I think I'm just not, I'm just not oriented for hearing. And so I don't look to it for pleasure or interest or engagement or curiosity particularly. And so it's interesting. Like, it would never occur to me to think that. Yeah. But for somebody who likes music more, then that's something that, you know, you would – you'd have a thought like that because you're more oriented to sound and music and hearing. But you talked to your podcast editor in the book. I thought that was interesting. And they were just like, no, I – they're noticing all these things that you're like, what? Yeah, well, because for my podcast, every week I tell like a little story, a little teaching story.

1:08:52You love a teaching story. I love a teaching story. So I tell like a little teaching story. I don't call them that because that sounds so boring, but - There's a Greek word for it. It's called akrasia or something like this. And it means like an anecdote that teaches a lesson. That is what I do. I'm going to look that up. Okay, we'll do that. Okay, I did not know that. Right, so that's what these are. And so what, and he records them. And so he's, and a lot of them involve music. like the farmer and the cow man from Oklahoma, which is like, oh my gosh, the thoughts that I have around that song.

1:09:23And so he'd heard me tell these like very heartfelt stories related to songs. And so he could say to me, you do have strong emotions related to songs. You know, I don't understand why you're saying this about yourself. And it just, it allowed me to see myself in a completely different way. I'm a song lover, not a music lover. Well, and also though, like if you're not an audio person, there's all these things that as you're operating in, say, an audio medium. Like we were in one room, now we're in another room as we're recording this, as I'll explain in the intro. But like you and I would probably not perceive any difference or any dropping, whereas some people are going to be like, I like the first 10 minutes and then I had to stop.

1:10:01Or just all these different, like, I don't like the mic that you're using or I don't like how you pronounce these words. The plosives, yeah. Or people email me, I don't like how much you say the word like and being from California, that's just how I exist. So that would never, not only would it never bother me, but I also don't understand the kind of person that would write in to tell the person that it bothers them. But as I've come to realize is that like, oh, this is like, they're wearing like a very scratchy sweater. Like that's what that is for them. And they can't, they're overwhelmed by the sensation that this is bringing up.

1:10:36And it's creating literally zero sensation in me. Well, exactly. And to your point about we see what we look for that our perceptions can change. If somebody says, pay attention, you'll start to be overwhelmed by it. Whereas before you might not have noticed it at all. Yes. Yeah, and if people want to play with this, I encourage everybody to run and watch the Monkey Business Illusion on YouTube. This is where you don't notice what's happening. Well, yeah, yeah. Something you're told to count something about basketballs. Yeah, if you don't know this, go check it out. Monkey Business Illusion. And it will, it's bonkers.

1:11:08There's even a version that if you know, if you know the illusion, there's one where it outfoxes you. But I can't get into that without spoiling it. As we wrap up, I wanted to talk to you because I read Evan Thomas's biography of your old boss. Have you read that book? I did not read it. She wasn't a person. I talked to him for it though. Oh, really? She wasn't a person that I was primed to be particularly excited or interested in. And I found his biography of Sandra Day O 'Connor just like totally riveting. she's an icon two things a couple things that connected with your book is one he tells this story where um she like you know she leaves her office one day she makes like a bunch of her clerks come with her maybe this was you but um she's she starts collecting uh cicadas uh like you know every 15 years or whatever they appear yes and she's like um she's picking them up and she's like put these in this box and then she makes her clerk mail it uh back home to Arizona and they're like, what are you doing?

1:12:07And she was like, my grandkids have never seen this before. And she was like, and I want them to be curious about nature and the world. And she said this great line that I think about. She said, because if you're not curious, you're not smart. That's so true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very Justice O 'Connor. That's exactly. I asked her after I wrote the Happiness Project, I said to her, well, what do you think the secret to happiness is, Justice? And without a pause, she said, work worth doing. And the more I've thought about that answer, the better I think it is. Because she doesn't say work for pay.

1:12:39Right. Or work for power or work for influence. It's work worth doing. Yes. And that's something that only you can decide. But I think it's a really, but like it's, if you don't have work worth doing, it's hard to be happy. Yeah. Well, it's like, if you don't have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning. The other one I liked is he, one of the clerks is, I think it's a female clerk, was saying that what she always admired about her was that she never said sorry before she said no. So if she was like, hey, do you want to come talk at this? Do you want to come deliver this commencement address?

1:13:17She would just say no, not sorry, I can't. Being a Supreme Court justice is a very special thing. Sure, sure. Yes, that, yes, that you do not, you do not apologize for what you do and don't want to do. But I think this clerk was saying that from the perspective, especially maybe earlier on, of a woman not being a people pleaser in the sense of like, I just, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. So I agree to do a bunch of stuff that I don't want to do. I think we all struggle with that. I love the idea of no being a complete sentence. Yeah. Or I don't want to. Yeah. No, I know some funny stories related to that that I will not tell.

1:13:58But yes, that is very characteristic of Justice O 'Connor. Absolutely. Yeah, but she was very clear on what she did and did not want. Yes. In the most kind of straightforward and pleasant way. She was a very gregarious and kind person, but very clear on what she did and didn't want. I feel like that's something we could all be better at, though, right? It's like we don't want to say no to one person, even though that inherently means saying no to other people, if not ourselves. No, but, and that's a great, this gets into the four tendencies personality profile, which we won't even get into. but if you want to know about that, my Four Tendencies book.

1:14:37But often for people who have trouble saying no, the way to help them is to say, remember to say yes to one person, you have to say no to somebody else. If I say yes to my team and work late, I have to say no to my family. We've talked about how I'm going to be home by 6.30. Or like if I turn down this opportunity, someone else has a chance to get up and speak at that convention or somebody else can be on that faculty advising committee. And for me, I don't want to do it. And for somebody else, It could be like a life-changing, career-changing opportunity. If I say no, then I can say yes to something else or somebody else gets to say yes.

1:15:10And that's for certain people, that's a very, very helpful thing to remember to help them have that kind of outer accountability for what they need to assert that. And this sort of invisible graveyard of projects you could have finished or done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that phrase. I like that phrase, yeah. like when the pandemic happened and suddenly I wasn't traveling, I wasn't doing me. Like I was like, oh, this is the level that I could be operating at creatively. Like the opportunity costs are usually hidden from us. Yes. Ooh, opportunity cost is, I remember learning that idea in law school and being like, this explains so much.

1:15:55Yes. Like it's a really important idea to understand. and everything has an opportunity cost. I think we're very, very bad at understanding that. Absolutely. Ooh, that should be your next book. The Stoics Look at Opportunity Cost. Well, Seneca's favorite or most famous quote is about how if somebody stole your money or encroached on your property, you would be immediately aghast. Yeah. But you will let people impose on your time. Yes. Without question, even though that's the only irreplaceable non-renewable resource. And we think about this for ourselves. Like, why are we, I mean, you never waste time because you're always doing something with time, but you often will, I think often people feel, and that's one of the funny things I found about, for people who are too attracted to their phones, turn your phone to grayscale.

1:16:42It's so much harder to use because just the sight that you need to use your phone is so cumbersome that it's much easier to put it down because that is one thing where over and over you hear people say, there's better uses for my time than doom scrolling or, you know, or just going through the newsfeed or whatever. And so make it harder to use and then it's less appealing. And then, or I've heard of people putting things on their home screen, like read, you know, to remind you so that a device reminds you, this isn't how you want to be. I don't want to steal my own time. I don't want to waste my own time.

1:17:14Yeah, we're willing to steal an unlimited amount of times from ourselves or our sort of future potential. Yeah. Whereas we're pretty, we're better at protecting other people's time for some, I don't want to waste your time, but I'll waste my time, you know, scrolling on this thing. Right. Right. So it's all about, yeah, it's all about the self-awareness. I have, Instagram is the only social network I have like the password to, but it's on my wife's phone. And so it's like, there's just like having one little extra step or just, it's not literally in my pocket, inherently limits the amount of time I can spend on the thing.

1:17:53And then not, not, not having access to Twitter has been the best one over the years. Cause I've never been on there and been like, I'm glad that was good. That was better for me. Well, so I wrote a book about habits called better than before, about the 21 strategies of how to change habits. And one of the most universally useful ones is the strategy of inconvenience because to like a hilarious degree, we won't do something if it's even slightly, there's hilarious research about with a salad bar that if you, if people have to use tongs instead of a spoon, they take a lot less food because they just can't be bothered to use the tongs.

1:18:27So the least bit of inconvenience and having to go to your wife and be like, Hey, can I look in your phone? That's a pretty, that's a pretty major inconvenience. Um, that's a great, that's always like, if there's something you don't want to do, make an inconvenient. If you want yourself to do it, make it convenient. And this really, this really, really works. When the feedback loop there is then you also realize that you didn't miss it, which I'm sure you kind of found on the sugar stuff. It's like you cut it out. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Well, and it's with the sugar thing, it's even kind of more magical because one of the things I couldn't understand is like, everybody's always like, oh, there are all these food cues.

1:19:01How are you not distracted by food cues? And I'm like, why am I not distracted by food cues? Oh, like you see an image, you smell insomnia cookies, you're walking through an airport and it's Auntie Anne's, whatever. Ooh, smells. You know that's a company that does that? Oh, 100%. The same company that does elevator music owns the company that pipes in smells at all of those restaurants. Well, and it's the baking and yeah. It's like the sounds in the movie. It's not actually a horse on cobblestones. It's a person who has a better version of making that sound. Right. And so, but you know, there's all these, you know, anywhere you go, you see images, whatever.

1:19:37So these are food cues. And I thought, well, why am I not distracted by them? But then like doing the research for Life in Five Senses, I realized it's because this information isn't useful to me. My brain is moving it into the background. So when I had my active sweet tooth and I was eating sugar, if there was like a plate of cookies in the middle of a conference room, I mean, all I could see and think about was, oh, my gosh. One cookie, two cookie, three cookies. Now it's my birthday. It's raining. I deserve it. Tomorrow. But now it's like I hardly even notice them because I don't eat them. So they just fade away.

1:20:08They're just like a pile of pens. It's like, do I need a pen? And so I think often when we're trying to do behavior change, it's reinforcing in ways that we don't necessarily anticipate because part of what it is is we begin to adjust. Right. And maybe like we really get into reading and so we start a book and now we're like, oh my, this book is so good. I want to keep reading, you know, hour after hour, but you have to read for 10 minutes before you realize how much you love the book. and you know so a lot of times these things will you can have a virtuous cycle or an or an unvirtuous cycle depending on what's going on well the other part of the virtuous slash unvirtuous cycle there is then you have the thing that you cut out your diet let's say you cut out bread and then you go have regular pizza which maybe you had once a week previously and then you just feel terrible because your body's not used to having that thing and you go oh, I was just used to this feeling.

1:21:04I had the acquired, like we talked about acquired taste. You had the acquired taste and you go, this is why I don't do that. Right, right, right. You realize that, like you said, sugar is a toxin, but you're used to it. So it doesn't feel toxic. And then you get some distance from it. It becomes clear why you should continue to avoid it or you hopelessly relapse. Right, right. Well, yeah. You have to start the cycle over again. Yeah. No, you definitely appreciate it more. You experience it more intensely when it's rarer. Yes. Well, I loved the book and I'm glad that it's not rare that you publish a book.

1:21:43I feel like you are the exact right amount of prolific. Oh, good. Well, thank you. You're prolific yourself. We both like to write. But I might be the raw, I might be slightly too, like you don't do a book, you're like every two, two and a half years. It's like just enough. I'm like, it's been a while. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, I'm so happy to hear you say that. Yeah. It's exciting to have another book out in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's she been up to? Yeah. Yeah. No, it's fun. Yeah. Well, it's so fun to get the chance to talk to you. Thanks.

1:22:20Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode.

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