Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Adam Grant:

Every day there’s breaking news that feels like the sky is falling and nobody wants to become Chicken Little. So, I think my test of what’s worth covering is are we still going to remember this event a week later?

Preet Bharara:

That’s Adam Grant. He’s a professor of psychology at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s also the author of six books and the host of two podcasts that explore how we work, think and live. Adam joins me to discuss how to reframe the dread of uncertainty, when we should and shouldn’t trust the experts, and a subtle difference between compassion and empathy. And folks, you can now watch this interview on CAFE’s YouTube page. Click on the link in the show notes to watch this and other CAFE video content. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

THE INTERVIEW

Psychologist Adam Grant teaches us how to connect amidst all our differences. Adam Grant, my friend, welcome back to the show.

Adam Grant:

Thanks, Preet. Always glad to be here.

Preet Bharara:

So, I’m a little nervous about this morning. I’m doing this on video. I entered into the podcast world with the firm understanding that it was an audio platform-

Adam Grant:

Me too.

Preet Bharara:

Not video. I have this bright new ring light that my team sent me. They assure me that it makes me look at least 10 minutes younger. So, I’m very excited about that. I’m not sure where to look. Adam, you do video podcasts. Do I look at you on the screen? Do I look in the camera? Do I look at my notes?

Adam Grant:

Mix of the two.

Preet Bharara:

I think I need more eyes. What do you think?

Adam Grant:

That’d be helpful. I have to say I don’t get the trend for video podcasting. For me, the whole appeal of a podcast is I can listen and learn and be entertained without having to look at a screen.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know. So this is an experiment. We’re going to see face for radio, trying out video. Let’s see if we can have the kind of conversation we usually have. So, we’re a few weeks past the election, lots of discussion about policy. For our purposes, obviously, lots of discussion about the topsy-turvy world of nominations, particularly the AG nomination as you might imagine near and dear to my heart and to my listeners’ hearts. We’re not going to talk about that stuff so much. As some of the things you’ve been talking about and writing about, you had an op-ed in the New York Times last week addressing the issue of people’s reactions, particularly the people who did not want Donald Trump to win, their psychology, their coping mechanisms. I don’t want to make too much of a big deal out of it, but a central premise of your writing and your research and your understanding is that things are not as bad as they seem. Which goes against the old saying things are darkest right before they go totally black. I think McCain used to say that. So, say something positive, Adam.

Adam Grant:

That’s a lot of pressure, Preet. I feel like I’m a victim of toxic positivity now, where you’re just forcing me to express emotions that I might not be feeling. And I don’t want to be a Pollyanna here. I think that things are just never as clear in the future as they seem in the present. I think that’s the larger point. So, there are a lot of people who are projecting out to the next four years and saying, “I think Donald Trump lacks the character and competence to lead a country, let alone a business. And I think it’s going to be really disastrous. And I was really unhappy with the first term.” And I would just say not so fast, because as human beings, we are dramatically overconfident when it comes to our ability to predict the future.

I got a taste of this on election day. I got an email from a super forecaster who is arguably the world’s best election forecaster. He anticipated the rise of Donald Trump in 2015. He’s predicted the results of many elections over the last decade successfully. And on Tuesday election day, he told me that he was putting Kamala Harris at 87% probability of a win. And even people who literally, it’s their job, their professional skill set is to look in a crystal ball, are constantly wrong. And I think this is one of the great lessons of history is very often, even when we’re right about what’s going to happen in the short term, we can’t see around the corner and know what the second order consequences might be. So, simple example, let’s go back to the Treaty of Versailles. The Allied powers-

Preet Bharara:

Let’s, Adam.

Adam Grant:

Well, we’re going there.

Preet Bharara:

That’s where I thought we would go back to. The Treaty of Versailles. That was the first thing that came to my mind.

Adam Grant:

Well, it was the first thing that came to my mind because that was supposed to be one of the most positive moments in the century. You’ve declared peace, you’ve been able to, as an Allied power, you’re celebrating the fact that World War I is over not realizing that the national humiliation that Germany faces is going to set the stage for the rise of the Nazi party and the World War II that followed. And I think we see this all the time. Let’s take a more recent example. How many Democrats do you know, Preet, who celebrated the Joe Biden victory in 2020?

Preet Bharara:

I’m raising my hand because we’re on video.

Adam Grant:

So, it felt like a lot to celebrate for anybody who was either liberal or anti-Trump. But with the benefit of hindsight, I think a lot of people feel it would’ve been better to have a Trump victory in 2020 than in 2024.

Preet Bharara:

Well, pause on a couple of things. One, I don’t mean to get overly meta here, but you are an expert. You’re telling us to doubt experts and you’re saying everything’s going to be okay. Should we not believe you based on your first premise?

Adam Grant:

Well, there’s a difference between expert knowledge and expert forecast.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you’re saying that that people are bad forecasters, and aren’t you, in a way, making a forecast about how we’ll feel in the future? Maybe you could be totally wrong, Adam.

Adam Grant:

Of course I could be wrong. That’s the point. And so could you.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I’m always wrong.

Adam Grant:

Not you. I’m saying you, the listener. You, the viewer. All of us.

Preet Bharara:

It’s better to insult me than the listener.

Adam Grant:

No, the point is that we just don’t know what’s going to happen.

Preet Bharara:

I saw that you wrote that in the op-ed, and you said it a couple of times, this idea that maybe things would’ve been better had Trump gotten re-elected consecutively as opposed to with a gap of four years. Why do you think that? What would’ve been different? Isn’t there an argument? And again, the ultimate conclusion is the who the hell knows? But that we might’ve had a darker plunge into what some people think is an autocratic sensibility on the part of Donald Trump. This reprieve we’ve had for four years maybe helped load up the courts with reasonable people, some people might say. How do you think about how that other eventuality might’ve been better, even for people who are opposed to Donald Trump?

Adam Grant:

It’s always hard to play out the counterfactual. And I think the point I would make is that there are things that probably would’ve been better and things that probably would’ve been worse, but it’s not so clear which one would outweigh the other. So, if I were going to make the case that 2020 would’ve been better, I would say we have no big lie, we have no January 6th. And we’re not-

Preet Bharara:

And he’d be done.

Adam Grant:

Now we would have fresh candidates.

Preet Bharara:

It’s like those big billboard ads on the apartment buildings that you passed by on the train that said if you lived here, you’d be home by now.

Adam Grant:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

We’d be done.

Adam Grant:

But think about the damage done to faith in our democratic institutions by the claim that the election was stolen in 2020. That goes away. That’s a big deal. I think another thing that we ought to pay attention to is the appointees. You mentioned this. I’m pretty confident, I could be wrong on this, but I’m fairly confident that in 2020 we would not have had RFK, we would not have had Tulsi Gabbard, we would not have had Pete Hegseth. And I think that at some level, the adult supervision providing checks and balances would’ve been stronger. Now, how do we weigh against, would COVID have gone a lot worse through 2021? Maybe. I don’t know. The point is, it’s just not as clear now as it was then that the Biden victory was the best outcome for Democrats.

Preet Bharara:

You also don’t know what would’ve happened with the various wars. You don’t know would’ve happened with the economy. So, I agree with your central premise that who the hell knows. But, before we get back to the election, your point about experts is a point that a lot of Trump supporters make and Trump himself makes that you can’t trust experts. They’re wrong. So, why do we have them? In other words, it can’t be a reductionist argument that because experts are often wrong. You say in your op-ed, can I-

Adam Grant:

Are you going to quote me to me?

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to quote you to you because it’s a provocative statement you make. “In the landmark study, the psychologist Philip Tetlock evaluated several decades of predictions about political and economic events. He found that the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart throwing chimpanzee.” Is that an insult to chimpanzees? But are you making a specific comment about political science experts and prognosticators, or does that also carry through for infectious disease experts, or economic experts and others? And if so, what are we supposed to do with that knowledge?

Adam Grant:

Well, let’s do a few things with it. First of all, I think there’s a difference between expert knowledge and expert performance. Expert knowledge is having extensive information and a deep understanding of how something works. Performance is actually being able to use that knowledge. And I think it’s again, much easier to use in the present than it is in the future. I think, I go immediately to a debate that Danny Kahneman and Gary Klein had about a decade and a half ago, when basically Danny was finding that even as an expert you couldn’t trust your intuition. And Gary was finding that intuition was actually better than analysis if you had a lot of experience and expertise. And I think a lot of people would just yell at each other and argue. Instead, Danny and Gary embarked on a joint project to try to resolve their differences. It was an adversarial collaboration, which I think we ought to have more of in the world.

Preet Bharara:

Are we doing that right now? Is this an adversarial collaboration, Adam?

Adam Grant:

I didn’t know you were an adversary, but I’m all in for it.

Preet Bharara:

I’m not, but I can play one.

Adam Grant:

If that’s what you’re trying to do.

Preet Bharara:

You have caused me to play… You have been on the podcast before-

Adam Grant:

I have forced you to do that.

Preet Bharara:

We’ve talked about this offline. One of my favorite segments I’ve ever done on the podcast was during the height of COVID, I asked you, how are you supposed to talk to somebody who doesn’t believe in vaccines and doesn’t believe what the experts are saying about the vaccine/shot? And you made me play a vaccine hesitant COVID worrier, and that was very illuminating. So anyway, I can play the role if you want. I can be more objecting than I usually am.

Adam Grant:

I’m always up for it. And it actually gave me a window into one of the things that’s made you such a great lawyer is seeing how easy it is for you to understand your opponent’s point of view and then prepare to decimate it.

Preet Bharara:

You got to do that. You got to prepare the other side’s case as you would your own, as good lawyers know and say. All right, but I derailed you.

Adam Grant:

Well, no. So, let’s go back to the adversarial collaboration of Kahneman and Klein. What they discover is that they’re basically studying people in different circumstances. So, Gary Klein is studying people in highly stable environments. Think of firefighter, for example. There are only so many ways that a building can burn. And if you’ve been a firefighter for 20 years and all of a sudden you have this gut feeling that you need to get out of the building, you should trust that intuition and get the hell out. Danny, on the other hand, was studying people in highly unstable, unpredictable environments. Think stockbrokers, for example, where the market conditions of yesterday are not consistent with what the conditions are like today or tomorrow. And he found there intuition was highly unreliable because the patterns of the past, that had built up that subconscious sense of what was going to be smart or dumb, didn’t actually extend out into the future.

And so, I think the lesson here is that we ought to trust experts in a stable environment. We ought to doubt experts in a dynamic environment. And guess what? The world is becoming more dynamic. The more volatile it is, the faster things change, the harder it is for stable expertise to actually tell us what’s going to happen tomorrow. Now, that doesn’t mean that experts are always wrong. I think that you can still say the more knowledge somebody has, the higher their probability of being right. It’s just that the baseline probability is lower in a changing world than it is in a fixed one.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you what some other stable environments and situations might be. So, a member of my family had need of surgery or potential need of surgery recently, and one expert, and obviously, my family seeks out experts. My dad is a practicing or was a practicing doctor for 50 years in pediatrics. And somebody at the top of their field says, I’m going to change the facts slightly for the hypothetical. Somebody says, who is a person of great renown, “You don’t need surgery. Or at least not for a while.” Another one says, “Maybe you need surgery.” And the third one says, “You absolutely totally need surgery. And I want to put you under the knife next week.” That’s not politics, but it’s a situation that arises in people’s lives all the time. What is your advice? And the member of my family is an educated person who has access to a lot of information and also other medical expertise within our family. How the hell are you supposed to decide which renowned, credentialed, respected expert is correct?

Adam Grant:

Well, you don’t, because you don’t have the expertise to judge their expertise. This is-

Preet Bharara:

Right. So, it’s a psychological dilemma for lots people.

Adam Grant:

Such a problem.

Preet Bharara:

So I don’t know how to… Maybe there’s no answer, but can you provide one?

Adam Grant:

Well, I don’t have an answer, but I have a recommendation, which is, so I think your fundamental challenge here is the Dunning-Kruger effect, which you know that.

Preet Bharara:

You want to explain what that is?

Adam Grant:

So, the famous finding is that the more ignorant and unskilled you are in a domain, the more likely you are to overestimate your knowledge and your competence in that domain. And I think it’s easy to say, “Well, okay, so now I’ve spoken with three experts. I can gauge who’s going to be the most qualified or the most trustworthy.”

Preet Bharara:

Right. So, do you flip a three-sided coin?

Adam Grant:

No. What you do, I actually just did a podcast recently with David Dunning and asked him a version of this question, and he has some research on this-

Preet Bharara:

Dunning is still around.

Adam Grant:

Yeah, he’s-

Preet Bharara:

That’s very cool to have a whole thing named after you and you’re still around.

Adam Grant:

Oh yeah, he’s an active researcher at the University of Michigan. Go Blue. So, here’s Dunning’s advice, and it comes out of some data he gathered. What you can trust each of those experts to do is to weigh in on the credibility of other experts. So, what you do is you ask each of them, who is the best at this particular skill, or which surgeon, or which medical professional would you personally go to see?

Preet Bharara:

Don’t doctors always say themselves?

Adam Grant:

Oh, you don’t get to pick yourself. The question is, of the others, whose professional judgment would you respect the most? And then you’re trying to triangulate who’s the most respected one in the group.

Preet Bharara:

That’s interesting. So, what are some other stable environments where you can trust experts that people have to encounter in their daily lives or in their public lives?

Adam Grant:

Well, let’s think about this for a second.

Preet Bharara:

How about your stockbroker?

Adam Grant:

I would be a little skeptical. I think what they’re doing is they’re trying to gather a bunch of information about what’s happening now to make assumptions about what’s going to happen in the coming weeks and months. And those assumptions may be right, they may be wrong. They’re probably better than yours, but I wouldn’t just blindly follow their advice.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with my conversation with Adam Grant. So, going back to the political environment and the chimpanzee comment, what does that mean for the millions of people who still watch cable news and read people’s Substacks that are often, if not always, about predicting what’s going to happen in the future in politics and in the economy? Should people not bother with those? Should people rely on their own insular groups, whether it’s on social media or otherwise?

Adam Grant:

I don’t know that there’s a right answer to that question, because a lot of it depends on what are your goals. Are you trying to become more informed? Are you trying to prepare for all the possibilities that might exist, and hone your skills at scenario planning? Or are you trying to minimize your political stress, and not get trapped in gloom and doom about the future? I think where I’ve landed personally is, I don’t feel like I get a lot out of watching the news, compared to reading it. Psychologists have-

Preet Bharara:

Really?

Adam Grant:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So, by that analysis, should we not be doing the podcast or the video, but just put out a transcript?

Adam Grant:

Well, I will say-

Preet Bharara:

You’re going to put some people out of business, Adam.

Adam Grant:

I don’t want to put anyone out of business. And there are reasons to listen and watch.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, there’s some people you want to put out of business. Do you want to put astrologers out of business, Adam?

Adam Grant:

I do. I definitely do.

Preet Bharara:

I’ve already shown you to be incorrect just one minute ago. Okay.

Adam Grant:

Well, look, here’s the point that I want to make. I think there are lots of reasons to watch and listen. We know that when you’re watching, you feel a greater sense of connection with the host. When you’re listening, there’s that feeling of this person is talking right in my ear. And so, from an engagement and immersion perspective, that’s a win. When it comes to critical thinking, on average, we are more discerning when we’re reading than when we’re watching or listening.

Preet Bharara:

Is that in part because you can go back? I don’t know what kind of… So, I’m a slow reader, often, and part of the reason I’m a slow reader is I’ll read a sentence, and I’ll realize I was distracted by something, and I’ll go and read it again. So, the first time I read it, 70%, the second time I read, it’s 70%. Again, that’s 140%. So, it’s better than the initial 100%. If that makes sense.

Adam Grant:

That turns out to be one of the benefits of reading, is people are more likely to stop and reread, if they didn’t understand something or if it didn’t stick. Harder to do, if you’re watching or listening.

Preet Bharara:

Do you know what else I do? You know why reading sticks with me?

Adam Grant:

Do tell.

Preet Bharara:

Something you can’t do with video and audio is I underline and underscore and mark and put stars next to things. I’ve done that always, including in books that I’ve bought. Some people treat their books as pristine. I don’t. Look, since we’re on video, I have this whole memo. I have the grant dossier, which has lots of interesting things about you, Adam, and things you-

Adam Grant:

Why does that sound incriminating? I don’t want a dossier on me.

Preet Bharara:

Dossier is a neutral word. You’re bringing a lot of associations with it because you’re a paranoid and obviously guilty person-

Adam Grant:

Clearly.

Preet Bharara:

In a lot of different ways. But I’ve internalized some of this stuff because I’ve circled words, I’ve underlined them, I’ve marked them up. Is there a way to do that when you take in information from television or through your ear?

Adam Grant:

You’d have to be writing it down. But to your point, you don’t have all the context cues, you’re not working around the existing text. You’re having to create it from scratch. I think that actually goes to another benefit of reading over watching and listening, which is oftentimes there are headings and paragraph breaks that allow you to know when a thought is pausing or an idea is transitioning. And that makes it a little easier to process. And then, my favorite benefit of reading is one we haven’t touched on yet, which is you’re less likely to get snowed or seduced by the charisma of the speaker. How many times have you seen a captivating lecturer who’s selling snake oil versus-

Preet Bharara:

Well, literally not snake oil, but yes, I take your point.

Adam Grant:

In the metaphorical sense, if you strip out the person’s speaking skills and emotion, the writing lays bare, the quality of reasoning, and it makes it much easier to see flaws in the logic.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a little bit of the difference between Trump at a rally and Trump on Truth Social. Although, I think his supporters really like his posts. They’ve come to like that… He’s come up with a theory, what does he call it?

Adam Grant:

Oh, is this his, the weave.

Preet Bharara:

He calls it connecting the weave. The weave. And people seem to buy it.

Adam Grant:

I always thought that was a comb over, but wrong context.

Preet Bharara:

No, that was a good joke. That was really good. I want to go back to the election again and people’s feelings about it. Are you a person who says that all feelings are valid?

Adam Grant:

No.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. So, which feelings that disappointed Democrats may have are not valid?

Adam Grant:

Well, I don’t want to invalidate any feelings in general. What I would say is that not all feelings are appropriate for a given situation for a given person.

Preet Bharara:

Or their overreactions or under reactions.

Adam Grant:

Maybe. Look, let’s try to put some empirical evidence behind this. So, if you go back to the Obama victories and the first Trump victory, it turns out that the people whose candidate lost in each of those elections dramatically over predicted how unhappy they were going to be, both the intensity and the duration of their disappointment in misery. So, in the case of the Trump victory, for example, in 2016, by about a week to a week and a half post-election, the average Democratic voter had rebounded to their pre-election state of happiness. Which suggests that maybe these events don’t take the toll on us that we think they will.

Preet Bharara:

Did you see this study? I don’t have the exact figures, but I’m reminded of it when you just made that point, that among Trump supporters, a certain percentage of people said that they’re economically worse off than they were a short time ago, and that number fell off significantly after the election. What some people have taken to mean along the lines of what you’re suggesting, that they unduly analyze the situation that they were in. I wonder if you think that that makes sense, or is it that their guy won, and so they have a much more positive feeling about the future, which is affecting their view of the past?

Adam Grant:

I think both hypotheses make sense, and I would be surprised if they weren’t working together. I think one of the things that’s well documented is, just like we have a physical immune system to fight off disease, we also have a psychological immune system to fight off malaise. And I think we tend to, well, we over-index basically on what’s wrong today, and underestimate our capacity to adapt tomorrow.

Danny Kahneman, I think he probably was the greatest psychologist of our time, he’s the only one to have won a Nobel Prize, and he said this is in part of focusing illusion. That nothing is ever as important as it seems when you’re focusing on it. So, if you zoom in on the election and you’re not happy with the results of the election, that is definitely going to ruin your day. If you zoom out-

Preet Bharara:

Hear that, listeners?

Adam Grant:

And you think about everything else in your life, it ends up a little bit more in context, and you realize that’s not what I wanted, but there are other things that are still going well for me.

Preet Bharara:

So, let’s analogize now to economics or the stock market. Even the densest, unsuccessful stockbroker or portfolio manager will tell you, you should diversify. You should have some stocks, some bonds, some property, some money market, some cash, whatever, because that protects against massive loss. It doesn’t necessarily get you the highest gain or the highest rush or the most money, it’s not the most lucrative way of going about it, but you are protecting against catastrophic loss.

Is there an argument that one should do the same in their other interests? In other words, how much they should be invested in politics in the future of the White House, versus their family, versus gardening, versus reading, versus exercise? Is that a weird way of thinking about one’s life or is that a good way of thinking about one’s life?

Adam Grant:

No, you just anticipated self-complexity theory.

Preet Bharara:

What theory?

Adam Grant:

Self-complexity theory.

Preet Bharara:

Really?

Adam Grant:

Yeah. My recollection is the research on this kicked off in the 1980s, and the basic premise was if you have all your eggs in one identity basket, if that identity gets shattered, you are in for a pretty unpleasant experience. Whereas if you diversified your identity and you said, “I care about my roles as a parent, as a spouse, as a colleague, as a friend.” The more those identities you had, the easier it was then when one was under threat or in jeopardy to appreciate how another one was actually going just fine. So, I like the idea of a diversified life portfolio, and it does seem to buffer against stress to some degree.

Preet Bharara:

So, should people have more hobbies or should people have more kids? What should people… Dare you hear it, a renowned organizational psychologist, Adam Grant says you should increase size of your organization by adding children to your portfolio. Fair?

Adam Grant:

No. No, I think what we all need is-

Preet Bharara:

We have a birth rate problem, Adam.

Adam Grant:

I don’t feel like that’s my problem to solve or yours, Preet, but-

Preet Bharara:

It’s not.

Adam Grant:

Keep trying. No. My favorite psychologist, Brian Little, would say, what you really need is rich-

Preet Bharara:

Wait, it’s not Dan Kahneman?

Adam Grant:

I think Danny was the greatest. Brian is my personal favorite.

Preet Bharara:

So the greatest and the favorite are different people?

Adam Grant:

They are different people.

Preet Bharara:

Okay. You’re very artful, Adam.

Adam Grant:

No one’s ever accused me of being artistic in any way, shape or form. But let me just say Brian Little has a great term, which is, he says, “What we all need is a restorative niche.” Which is a place to go or an activity you do that feels like home. It feels like you.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s an example?

Adam Grant:

Well, for me, it would be something like reading a Harlan Coben book. It’s such an easy experience to get into a flow state of wondering, “Okay, who’s the killer?” And trying to follow the twist and turns of the suspense that Harlan has created. The moment I start one, I feel like, for at least for a little while, all the problems in the world have vanished.

Preet Bharara:

Should I feel like a lesser person? For me, something that might be an analog for that is watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Adam Grant:

Why would that make you a lesser person?

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know. Seems much more lowbrow.

Adam Grant:

I don’t know. I think, I don’t know. Sometimes I think that Larry David-

Preet Bharara:

That’s valid. You’re validating that.

Adam Grant:

Gets clever when he rewatches his content.

Preet Bharara:

I’m glad you’re validating. So, here’s another thing that keeps coming up, and it’s related to this issue of people feeling overwhelmed by the political loss. And I’ve said this before, and I really do invite listeners to write in and tell me what they’re thinking. A number of people, we have another podcast called CAFE Insider that’s a subscription podcast. We have this one that’s free and open to everyone, the vast tens of billions of people in this universe and beyond. And some people have said, and this is born out also in some of the reporting I’ve seen about cable news channels and other news outlets, they want to tune out. And that’s particularly hurtful to me because literally our podcast is called Stay Tuned, and people are like, “We don’t want to stay tuned. We want to tune out.”

People will have another podcast called Tuned Out, and they’ll say, “No offense. No, it’s not a reflection on you. We just can’t listen to as much news.” And maybe that’s part of the healthy and salutary diversification of interests that we were just talking about a second ago. But do you have more of a reaction to people’s immediate need? And these are people, by the way, who are thoughtful, who care about their country, who are deeply involved citizens. Do you think it’s valuable and helpful for them to take a break, and then come back to things in a different way with a different set of voices that they hear, take a permanent break? Is that okay? Just what’s your reaction to a lot of people wanting to tune out?

Adam Grant:

Look, I think it’s easy, Preet, to… My first impulse sometimes is to judge people’s coping styles, and I don’t think that helps anyone. I think that odds are-

Preet Bharara:

I just want people to listen.

Adam Grant:

Well, okay, so here’s the thing. I think-

Preet Bharara:

How do I bring them back, Adam?

Adam Grant:

I think what we all need is a mix of timely and timeless content. And I think that one of the things that people are really struggling with is, every day there’s breaking news that feels like the sky is falling and nobody wants to become Chicken Little. So, I think my test of what’s worth covering is are we still going to remember this event a week later? Is it still going to be relevant to our lives? If so, that’s an opportunity for analysis and commentary and thoughtful discourse. But if this is a blip that’s going to vanish, I don’t need to worry about it, right?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Adam Grant:

And I do think, Preet, I think that’s one of the reasons that people come to you, is you take on the issues of the day in a way that does zoom out and doesn’t just get us trapped in the moment.

Preet Bharara:

Well, we’re doing that right now. So, I hadn’t thought of the phrase, it’s a very masterful phrase, that the best content is alternately or simultaneously timeless and timely. I think that’s what we’re trying to do. We covered the Matt Gaetz thing, which maybe people won’t remember in a year because he’s gone. But then we’re having you on, not to talk about any particular political event, but to talk generally about coping and empathy. We’re going to talk about that in a moment.

Adam Grant:

Wait, is that why I’m here?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, you’re the timeless. You’re the timeless and ageless.

Adam Grant:

That’s my aspiration.

Preet Bharara:

Mine too.

Adam Grant:

Timeless, ageless, hairless. Check, check, check.

Preet Bharara:

See, we could go off camera then nobody would know. By the way, for the people who are listening, and that’s most people, write us and let us know if it’s annoying for me to mention the visual cues that are going on while Adam and I are speaking, then we can see who’s right, my team or me. You talk about something that I don’t understand, compassion versus empathy. I thought of those things as interchangeable. What’s the difference?

Adam Grant:

This might be one of those distinctions that people feel is semantic, but it turns out to really matter in our wellbeing and also in our actions. So, my favorite work on this is by Paul Bloom and his colleagues. Their definition of empathy is feeling someone else’s feelings. So, you’re in pain, I feel your pain. And the question is, what’s the response to that? And it depends. One way you can respond to that is, if I’m feeling your pain, I could try to alleviate your suffering and help you out, or I could be overwhelmed by my own distress at your distress, and then retreat from the situation to try to escape, and avoid being exposed to your own pain. And it turns out that is a surprisingly common response to empathy.

Preet Bharara:

Can I just say that that’s surprising? Should it be surprising or not?

Adam Grant:

I don’t know. I think we all know people who are susceptible to empathic overload, who just get so upset seeing someone else hurting that they say, “I don’t want to deal with this. I can’t be exposed to that.” In fact, that’s part of why some people are tuning out. How much suffering can we see on the news per day?

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Adam Grant after this.

Can I mention a different phenomenon that not everyone will love? And I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but you’ll know because you read all the things. There is, Dr. Kent, a political social debate for a moment, but I’ve seen some graphs and charts reflecting polls that suggest that if you ask various demographic groups about their views of systemic racism and other things, liberal whites are more likely to say there’s racism and systemic racism against Black and brown people than Black and brown people. Discuss.

Adam Grant:

I’ve seen this report too.

Preet Bharara:

What do you make of that? And is that an issue of empathy, over empathy or something else?

Adam Grant:

It might be. I’m not sure. I think-

Preet Bharara:

So, whose perceptions are correct or not correct? And is there a paternalism in that also?

Adam Grant:

There might be. I don’t know who’s to say whose perceptions are correct. I think part of me wonders if there’s a difference in even definitions of what counts as systemic racism. If you have a bunch of people who are individually biased, is that systemic once we aggregate them or does it actually have to be a structure, or an institution, or a policy that discriminates? I wonder if there are different assumptions behind that. So, I’m hesitant to put too much weight on what does this finding mean, because I don’t know if it’s a robust finding or not. But I definitely worry that white liberals are a little paternalistic when it comes to telling marginalized groups what’s good for them and how the world is for them. We should have a little more humility than that to realize we don’t know other people’s experiences.

Preet Bharara:

And how should… I wonder also if those things are true, and I’m skeptical of all studies except the ones that you do, Adam.

Adam Grant:

I’m skeptical of my own studies too. We should all be.

Preet Bharara:

You should be. That’s a healthy thing to do. And play devil’s advocate with your own work. That is that white liberal view, not really their view about Black and brown people, but their view of white conservative people?

Adam Grant:

Entirely possible. It tracks with the way that we’ve seen a lot of people, a lot of liberals react to the election, which is to once again, just like 2016, demonize Trump voters. How many posts have you seen on social media-

Preet Bharara:

A lot.

Adam Grant:

Of people saying, “I knew it. America is sexist and racist and homophobic”?

Preet Bharara:

So, here’s the other thing I’ve been talking about on the podcast recently since the election, and I wonder if you have any insider thoughts about it. We have all these complicated models about who’s going to vote why, and there’s self-interest, or there’s a culture war, or it’s taxes or these other things, and is the country turning left? Is the country turning right? And people talk about the overlay of policies, and protectionism, and populism, and the problems of incumbency. And there are all these complicated theories that interlock and are often wrong as we’ve described. But then, there’s also this idea that you can break through no matter what your policies are and attract an overlapping constituency if you are simply a charismatic iconoclast rebel. Two examples, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, and Donald Trump who share a constituency, which makes zero sense from a policy perspective. What do you, given the work you do and the analysis you do, make of that overlap?

Adam Grant:

I wouldn’t have expected it. So, let me register-

Preet Bharara:

You wouldn’t have expected it?

Adam Grant:

I definitely wouldn’t have expected it.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, goodness. Now I don’t know what to think.

Adam Grant:

Look, maybe I’m over-indexing on the data that I’m familiar with, but party affiliation is still the best and most consistent predictor of how people vote, and so my assumption was that people were going to mostly vote a consistent ticket. And the idea that you could vote for both Trump and AOC would not have crossed my mind. When I think about that, I think in some ways they probably both appeal to people who are skeptical of the status quo and want to see major change. There’s some research I’ve been reading lately on what’s called the need for chaos, which-

Preet Bharara:

Is that being done by Steve Bannon?

Adam Grant:

No. There’s a group of political scientists and psychologists who are observing that a lot of people, when they think that the current system isn’t working, they think the best solution is to blow it up. And oftentimes the most extreme members of each party, they seem like good candidates to do it. So, I wonder if that’s part of the appeal here.

Preet Bharara:

And how advanced is that research? And is it a reaction to what’s happening in the real world and to the political event of the last eight years?

Adam Grant:

It seems to be, but I wouldn’t limit it to the US. I think that this is one of the engines of support for populist leaders around the world, is people feel like there’s growing inequality, globalization is threatening their way of life, and the system is not working for us. We need to hit the reset button. Nevermind the collateral damage.

Preet Bharara:

I have to ask this question, Adam, since Thanksgiving is upon us. We’re recording this the week before Thanksgiving, but it’ll air both video and audio. I emphasize-

Adam Grant:

You got to mention that. You’re not self-conscious at all.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I want people to listen to it and then I want them… I don’t know. Do you know this guy, Joe Rogan? Have you heard of this guy?

Adam Grant:

I’ve heard of him.

Preet Bharara:

He does the video too, right?

Adam Grant:

Apparently.

Preet Bharara:

We’re experimenting with maybe starting to do a three and a half hour show. Would you come on for three and a half hours?

Adam Grant:

Nope.

Preet Bharara:

Nope?

Adam Grant:

Not a chance.

Preet Bharara:

What’s your maximum? What is your limit as to how long you would be on the show if time permitting?

Adam Grant:

I’ve done a couple of three hour podcasts and I just think they’re diminishing returns to the quality of the conversation.

Preet Bharara:

After what minute, 60 or 90?

Adam Grant:

I feel like 90 to 120. But here’s what I would say, I don’t mind you recording for three hours, just edit it and give us the best 90 minutes.

Preet Bharara:

Drive Time With Preet. Maybe that’s how we bring the listeners who don’t want to think about politics back into the fold. So, Thanksgiving is upon us. I’m sure this is an annoying question for you, but I think you’re in a good position to answer it given everything that’s happened. We just had a very tough election, lots of raw feelings on at least one side. And by the way, raw feelings on the winning side too. I keep seeing people saying things like, “Can we remind the Trump folks that they won?” There’s an angry victory lap being taken by a lot of them. But notwithstanding those two things, do you have any advice, Adam Grant, to listeners who are going to Thanksgiving dinner with some non-like-minded family members when it comes to politics? Should he just stay away from it? Should he say pass the Turkey leg or not?

Adam Grant:

I think this is probably going to vary from one family to the next, but I think there are a couple of things that might be helpful. The first one is set some boundaries around what you’re going to talk about or how much time you’re going to spend on politics if you do decide to go there.

Preet Bharara:

With a timer?

Adam Grant:

You could set a 30 timer. If this isn’t going well, at the end of 30 minutes, we’re moving on.

Preet Bharara:

Is that what is happening at the Grant Thanksgiving dinner?

Adam Grant:

I don’t expect that to be happening.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Adam Grant:

But it could be fun. I think if you decide to dive into politics, I would just say it’s such an obvious thing to do, but very few people do it, start with common ground. The evidence is strong that if we can agree on something first, we realize like, “Okay, you’re not an entirely hateful person. You have some redeeming qualities.” And the good news is that there are a lot of issues that we all agree on. The overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans want criminal and mental health background checks for gun purchases. They want de-escalation training for police. They want paid parental leave. They actually are pretty aligned that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest in the early phases of a pregnancy. And the list could go on and on. And I think we ought to start with a couple of those issues before we dive into the ones that are more divisive.

Preet Bharara:

I think that’s very good advice. I wanted to get to another subject that you write about and talk about and that I think about because I have college-aged kids, and that is whether higher institutions of learning, particularly Ivy League institutions of learning, one of which employs you, I believe. So, watch what you say on this audio and visual podcast. Are they failing us? Are we overemphasizing those credentials to the detriment of individuals and also large swaths of our working force?

Adam Grant:

That is such a broad question. I don’t even know how to answer that.

Preet Bharara:

You can narrow it however you wish.

Adam Grant:

I think that we as parents are failing our kids if we think that to be successful they have to go to an Ivy League school.

Preet Bharara:

That’s not what a tiger parent would say. They would say, “Our kids are failing us.”

Adam Grant:

Of course it isn’t. But who decided that these are the best universities?

Preet Bharara:

So, how are we failing as parents? And don’t point a finger in this direction.

Adam Grant:

Well, I think that, let me tell you about my favorite research on this. There’s a Making Caring Common study, which surveys over 10,000 parents and ask them, what’s your highest priority for your kids? What do you want most for them? And most parents say, “I want my kids to be happy and kind.” Then you go and ask their children, “What do you think your parents want most for you?” And guess what their kids say?

Preet Bharara:

Rich and successful.

Adam Grant:

Successful, high achieving. Exactly. Now, we don’t know who’s right, but I think a systematic mistake that a lot of parents are making is sending the message that they only care about success. And it happens because of the conversations we have on a daily basis. Your kids come home from school and what do you ask? What grade did you get on the test? How many goals did you score on the soccer game? And the emphasis is really narrowly on achievement. So, one of the things that Allison and I have been doing for years is we ask our kids when they get home, who did you help today and who helped you? Completely different conversation.

Preet Bharara:

Is that an effort to get at cheating Adam?

Adam Grant:

No. No.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, I see what you’re trying… That is a subtle form of interrogation. You would’ve been a good law enforcement officer.

Adam Grant:

I definitely wouldn’t have been. But what’s interesting about it is our kids, they come home with great examples of not only how somebody was lost in the hallway at school, they helped them find directions. A classmate was struggling on a math problem and they gave them some tips. They start to look for those opportunities to be helpful because they know they’re going to be asked about it. And then also, who helped you? This was Allison’s idea. She said, “I want them to pay attention to who’s caring instead of just who’s cool.” And I think that the questions we ask our kids as parents send important signals about what we value, and we ought to make sure that we’re asking, this goes back to your portfolio idea, we ought make sure that we’re asking a diversified set of questions.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it’s interesting because you say, because I think about how my kids are doing, and you talk about the overemphasis on getting straight A’s, and that’s not the greatest thing in the world. Also, you write the evidence is clear. Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. And those differences in grades become trivial within a handful of years after college. And you’ve also written that people who do well in these places don’t necessarily do much for less fortunate people. There’s a study that I saw, a report that I saw recently that stuck in my mind along these lines of 47%, and if I have this wrong, my readers will correct me, but it’s something like this. 47% of Dartmouth grads last year went into finance.

Now, you’re surrounded by finance folks at the elite university that you’re at. And against that backdrop, and I’m not trying to virtue signal, but my older child works for the Legal Aid Society and tries to prevent people from getting evicted. And she wants to be a civil rights lawyer, and I’m very proud of that. There’s not a lot of money in that. My second spent his summer working on behalf of special victims who are the victims of elderly abuse, and that’s what he cares about. And he wants to probably make a living doing those sorts of things. But they’re also straight A students. All of this is not by way of asking for a pat on the back, but I’m very proud of them for these reasons. How should we parent better so that we’re raising generations of people who want to give back to their community and give back to their country?

Adam Grant:

Well, I think you and Dalya have clearly conveyed these values to your kids. And I think that a lot of people, they think that the way that we raise kids who care about making a better world is we preach our values to them. And the reality is that nobody likes to be preached to.

Preet Bharara:

No, it’s more modeling than preaching.

Adam Grant:

I think it’s more modeling than preaching. It’s also helping them think about what problems they already care about. You will not be surprised to know that when you study toddlers as young as a year and a half or two years old, they’re already bothered by injustice. I am sure you’ve seen the videos of the monkeys who don’t like it when they got vegetables and then the other monkey got grapes. They start throwing them out of a cage. There is very-

Preet Bharara:

They do the same thing with vegetables instead of grapes.

Adam Grant:

Be careful on that one. But there’s a very deep-seated instinct to see people treated fairly. And I think that talking to your kids about what injustices in the world bother them, what problems do they think shouldn’t exist? It’s a great way to get them to actually define the terms of where they want to make their mark.

Preet Bharara:

Should we abandon our belief in and trust in what we call meritocracy? I’ve had, Michael Sandel has been on the podcast a couple of times. We’ll have him on again to talk about this idea. And everyone feels better when they say we have a meritocracy, but there is deep unfairness in what we call meritocracy because the economy and our system rewards certain gifts and skills more than other gifts and skills. So that’s a bit of luck too, right?

Adam Grant:

Yeah. One of the best predictors of success in life is intelligence. You didn’t get to choose your IQ. It’s heavily heritable. So, look, I don’t think we should abandon meritocracy as an aspiration. I think we should recognize it’s much more of an ideal than a reality, and what we should be trying to do is get closer and closer to it, and that means rewarding. Well, that means for me, broadening our ideas of how people earn opportunity and success.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have any other words of wisdom and coping for the folks who are anxious about politics, beyond diversifying their interests and their hobbies?

Adam Grant:

Honestly, I think we’re doing vacations wrong in America.

Preet Bharara:

We are?

Adam Grant:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Well, first of all, we are not doing vacations enough compared to our friends in Europe, right?

Adam Grant:

Yeah. The six-week summer holiday in Europe, I think we need to adopt that. But I think they’re doing it wrong too. My read of the research is that instead of taking a single two-week vacation, if you had taken two 1 week vacations, they would be more restorative. It’s the frequency of breaks, not the duration that matters most. And so, there’s-

Preet Bharara:

You should have told me that, I just booked a two-week vacation in December.

Adam Grant:

I’m not saying you should undo that. If you can do two of those though, it would be better. If you could make it work timing-wise, break that down into shorter, more frequent vacations. But I think that one of the things we don’t think about enough is, I think that obviously it’s hard to get away, and sometimes you go away and you come back and now you’re even more behind, and the root causes of your exhaustion haven’t changed and you’re just digging out of an endless pile. There are some researchers who recommend that we should just start treating our weekends like vacations. And I thought that was a nice framing to say, if you could pick one, even one weekend day a week, pick Saturdays, and you’re going to imagine that you’re on vacation every Saturday. It’s an excuse to restore and rejuvenate in ways that most of us don’t make time for.

Preet Bharara:

Can I just ask you a personal question? So, I feel like when I was growing up, I was lazy, I didn’t like to work that much. Although I did work hard. I’m one of those people who cared about my grades a lot, but as I became older, when I went on vacation, and I like to work and I work a lot and I have a number of different jobs, and I enjoy that, by day four or five of vacation, I start to feel-

Adam Grant:

Antsy.

Preet Bharara:

Antsy, and I need to do some work. I haven’t done any work, and I would call the office or I would look at a document. Does that make me unhealthy or is that okay?

Adam Grant:

All right. My colleague, Nancy Rothbard, actually studied this and she found that there are two kinds of workaholics. There are compulsive workaholics and engaged workaholics. Compulsive workaholism is the unhealthy kind. It’s where you feel guilty and stressed if you’re not working, and you feel this sense of pressure and obligation to go back to whatever your tasks are. Engaged workaholism turns out to be not unhealthy. It might even be a little bit healthy, where instead of having to push yourself to work, you’re pulling yourself into it. You’re doing it because you’re interested, you love it, you find it meaningful. Is that you?

Preet Bharara:

From that description, I can’t tell which of those I am.

Adam Grant:

You might be both.

Preet Bharara:

I guess. But I simultaneously am a procrastinator. So, I got to work some stuff out, Adam.

Adam Grant:

Well, I can’t help you with any of that, Preet. But what I will say is to the extent that you can minimize the compulsion and maximize the engagement, that works well. So, when you’re supposed to be taking a break, work on things that you’re excited about, not things you’re stressed about.

Preet Bharara:

I think it’s both. I feel like I’m getting behind, but also I feel achievement and accomplishment in getting something done and advancing the ball. So, it’s not a feeling of dread. It’s a feeling of what makes me happy. Anyway, I’ll work out my problems on my own and call you offline and you can charge whatever rate is traditional for helping me work some of my problems. Adam Grant, great to have you, talk to you soon.

Adam Grant:

Thanks for having me.

Preet Bharara:

You can now watch this interview on CAFE’s YouTube page. Click on the link in the show notes or head to cafe.com/youtube to watch this and other CAFE video content. And for a limited time, visit cafe.com/november to get 40% off your membership for the first year.

BUTTON

Thanksgiving is once again upon us. I am, as always, grateful beyond measure for so many blessings that I have. But given this moment and this medium, I want to take a second to express my special gratitude for the privilege of this platform. So I wear a number of hats. I do a number of jobs. My law degree allows me access to the courts to help clients with their troubles. My teaching appointment affords me the chance to influence a few young minds every year as they embark on their own legal paths. My occasional TV commentary can reach a lot of people, but usually only for a few unnuanced moments. And social media, don’t get me started.

This platform is different. It’s a special place and reflects, I think, a unique privilege. Here I get to commune with hundreds of thousands of inquisitive and thoughtful people every week. Here I get to explore with the smartest people around, issues inside, and more importantly, outside my wheelhouse. Here I get to be curious and frank and serious, and sometimes not so serious. Here I get to be a lifelong student. I get to learn in what feels like fun one-on-one tutorials, except I’m the one who gets paid. How lucky is that? How lucky am I? I feel luckier than anyone I know.

In a few months hosting this podcast will be the longest job I’ve ever had. Longer even than my seven and a half years serving as U.S. Attorney. I will never take the privilege of this platform for granted. Thank you for listening, and thank you for caring. And thanks to the best podcast team in the business. You hear their names at the end of every show, and I’d be nowhere without them. God bless you. I wish you all a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving, and see you on the other side.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Adam Grant. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara, with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The Deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai, and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.