Dr. Maya Shankar
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who served as a Senior Advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and served as Chair of the White House Behavioral Science…
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A sneak peak of what’s to come this season on A Slight Change of Plans with Dr. Maya Shankar, in conversation with her good friend and fellow podcast host Michael Lewis.
Maya Shankar
Hey, I'm Maya Shankar, host of the new podcast, A Slight Change of Plans from Pushkin Industries. We have an amazing season lined up for you where I talk with folks who've navigated remarkable changes in their lives. To help kick things off, I called up my good friend and fellow podcast host, Michael Lewis. We talk about the inspiration for my show, and you'll get a little sneak peek of what's to come this season.
I am recording. And Michael, before we start talking about the podcast, I did want to share, I went down memory lane a little bit around our friendship because we've been friends for like I don't know, five, six years. So I went back into the Gmail chambers and I found something very fun from 2015. This is after my husband Jimmy and I hung out with you at Dick [inaudible 00:01:09] birthday party. Okay?
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
So we spent a few days together.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
So I sent you the following email
Dearest Michael,
Jimmy Lee and I would like to sign up to be your friend. I'll work with your agent to complete the relevant paperwork.
Best,
Maya and Jimmy
So first of all, clearly I don't know how to play hard to get, but thankfully you didn't really enjoy the chase because you wrote back right away.
Dear Maya,
Your application has been reviewed by our committee. All boxes seem to be checked. We are pleased to inform you of your acceptance.
Michael
Michael Lewis
Yeah, I have a feeling ...
Maya Shankar
So that's how it all began.
Michael Lewis
I have a feeling we share these character traits. I have a feeling we both assume that other people would want to be friends with us, and so we don't actually ... Aren't very shy about it. When I met you there was no ... You had no media ambition. You were an advisor to Obama. How did you even get interested in being a podcaster?
Maya Shankar
So during quarantine, I was feeling really overwhelmed by all the changes that were happening around me. I think everybody was feeling really overwhelmed by the change happening around them, and I think I realized ... Because I'm a cognitive scientist, so I was thinking about this from the perspective of psychology, right? Which is like, how do we interact with this change thing that just happens in our lives, whether we like it or not. And maybe the specifics of what 2020 threw our way is unprecedented, but our human ability to navigate change is not. And so maybe if we heard stories from people who have experienced extraordinary changes in their lives, we could learn something interesting, right? There's no manual out there on how to navigate big life changes, right? We don't know what that process is supposed to look like. There's no science textbook on this. And so I was like, "Let's dig up the most fascinating change stories. Changes of all kinds, right? And then let's see what we can learn, see if we can change our own minds about change."
Michael Lewis
So you started with the subject rather than the ambition. You didn't think, "Oh, I want to be a podcaster and what should I do it about?"
Maya Shankar
Definitely not. That's just not the directionality that works for my brain. I need to have a really fascinating thing to say that feels interesting to me. It can't be the reverse. Like I really love podcasts, so I love the audio medium. It's super immersive for me, way more immersive than TV. So I'm a huge fan of podcasts, but I just never imagined myself having a show of my own.
Michael Lewis
What were your favorite podcasts?
Maya Shankar
Well, I'm a big Bachelor fan, as you know.
Michael Lewis
Yep.
Maya Shankar
So I absolutely subscribe to all the main Bachelor fan podcasts.
Michael Lewis
Yep.
Maya Shankar
I like interview shows. I listen of course, to Laurie Santos' Happiness Lab. Actually, let me just pull up my podcast feed right now and tell you what's on there. Yeah, I mean, I've got the classic ones. So The Daily. I got Against the Rules, but that seems shameless right now.
Michael Lewis
No, it doesn't.
Maya Shankar
Revisionist history. Still Processing. Hidden Brain. Oh, I love How I Built This. Actually, part of me when I was thinking about this podcast was like, "Oh, How I Built This talks about these elaborate journeys of humans who have built incredible things." And I was like, "I kind of want a version of how I built this life." And so that was part of the inspiration, which was people are going through all these changes and how do they maneuver? How do they find creative solutions along the way, and how did they navigate?
Michael Lewis
Have you always been interested in change or did this just kind of come up?
Maya Shankar
I study change, right?
Michael Lewis
Yep.
Maya Shankar
So I study how and why people change. I study how and why people make decisions, how they develop their attitudes and beliefs about the world. But I never elevated change to an important concept until I was thinking about this podcast. It felt in 2020 like a really big deal to think about. And I think against the backdrop of such a broken political society, it felt especially important to figure out how and why we change in potentially good ways.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
Because we are seeing so many fractures, but yeah.
Michael Lewis
Your observation that this is a moment to investigate the phenomenon because of COVID is a really good one, and to me, it's interesting because you can see now as we start to come out of it by fits and starts, but that a lot of people, they had to change and it's hard for them all over again because they have to change. That they've adapted to some new kind of way of going through the world and they feel a kind of hesitancy about going back to the old ways. So people have very different attitudes towards it, it's not just one thing for everybody.
Maya Shankar
That's exactly right. And it's not one thing for everyone over the course of their lives, right?
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
I think that's one thing we're finding out is huge childhood trauma with change doesn't necessarily mean that you have an aversion to it later on, right? And we see some of that unfold in some of the stories.
Michael Lewis
Right. So give me an example of that. Give me an example of someone whose attitude towards change has changed.
Maya Shankar
Yeah, so one person I interviewed was Tiffany Haddish. She's an incredible comedian. She just won Best Comedy Album at the Grammys this year, making her the first black woman to win this award since the early eighties when Whoopie Goldberg won it. And she had a deeply traumatic childhood. When she was eight, her mom had a really terrible car accident that left her with severe brain damage and made her extremely violent and very verbally abusive. And so Tiffany is having to navigate this new world where this person that she loved most in the world is now actively tormenting her, and so it's a profound change in her life.
And so what's fascinating about Tiffany's story is that she recognized early on as a kid that she had this talent, and that was to make people laugh. But rather than treating it as this recreational hobby, right? The thing that she just did with her friends and whatnot, she repurposed it into a survival tool. And so she uses this over the course of her life. When she's a kid, she tries to make her mom laugh, even just for a moment to distract her from getting hit.
Michael Lewis
Does it work?
Maya Shankar
And it's working. Yes. She goes to school, doesn't know how to read. She charms her classmates into letting her copy their homework by making them laugh and being the class clown. And so she's so traumatized by change early in her life, but then slowly realizes that she's identified that she has this superpower along the way. And so now there's an element of her that embraces change because she realizes that she's got this amazing weapon that she can use at every turn.
Michael Lewis
It's actually ... It's just a great way to get at people's lives. I mean, getting in your life.
Maya Shankar
Yeah.
Michael Lewis
So you start your podcast, right? By telling everybody that you once were going to be a musician and that didn't work out because you had this horrible injury.
Maya Shankar
Yeah.
Michael Lewis
But back then you weren't ... Were you thinking about ...? You weren't thinking about change at that age as an abstract concept, you just had to go about your life and do something different?
Maya Shankar
Yeah, I don't think any kid is like, "Oh, and now I'm confronting change."
Michael Lewis
No.
Maya Shankar
I mean, maybe the philosophers among us were doing that, but I certainly wasn't. I was like, "This sucks." That's what I was thinking.
Michael Lewis
If I met the musician you way back when.
Maya Shankar
Yea.
Michael Lewis
When you were a kid, and I was interviewing you, would you be recognizable to me? Were you basically the same character, but just with a violin in your hands?
Maya Shankar
I think I was really the same. So when we look back at childhood videos, it's a little bit unnerving how similar I was back then. I think some of the traits I've preserved are getting incredibly excited about things.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
I'm very passionate about things. I was telling my production team that I have had to do months of voice therapy over the past few years because my doctor diagnosed me as getting so excited when I talk, I forget to breathe. This is apparently a medical diagnosis, but I've now had to retrain myself to remember to breathe. So I think that exuberance was certainly there when I was a kid, but I think I was ... Maybe the one thing that I had in childhood that I have not retained is just an absolute singular focus on a goal. I mean, I was so dedicated when I think back to being 9, 10, 11, going into a room and practicing for five hours, I just can't ... My brain can't comprehend today. Having that kind of discipline. I lost it. I stopped cultivating that skill.
Michael Lewis
If you could go back, learning what you've learned so far, or just taking what you've learned as a grownup, including all your behavioral science stuff.
Maya Shankar
Yeah.
Michael Lewis
If you could go back and consult the young after you're told that you're never going to play the violin again.
Maya Shankar
Yeah.
Michael Lewis
Is there anything you would've told the young you?
Maya Shankar
Yeah, I would've said, "Stop making long-term plans." I was an absolute ... I still am. I'm a type A, or whatever that means.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
I was obsessed with plan making. I wanted to know what my life was going to be in two years, in four years, in 10 years. That persisted through college and grad school, and at every point I'm like, "I just need to know what comes next."
Michael Lewis
So that trait ...
Maya Shankar
Yeah.
Michael Lewis
That trait survived that trauma?
Maya Shankar
It did.
Michael Lewis
That's amazing. It's amazing.
Maya Shankar
I was like, "Well, I lost this one, but surely I can control everything else." You don't always learn the valuable lesson that your ...
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
... control is an illusion.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
Until, I think you had a few more experiences with change.
Michael Lewis
Right. The next season in my podcast is about experts and we're still figuring it out, but there's a fair chance that there will be a show about experts whose expertise is no longer of use, or valued in any way. That they go from being prized or at least used.
Maya Shankar
yeah.
Michael Lewis
To being completely pointless. What do we tell them? Now you're a budding expert on how to endure these sort of changes, what do you do?
Maya Shankar
Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, when you first brought up expertise, I was like, "Wow, that's super relevant in my life." Because I had this expertise I had been building for over 10 years, and then overnight it became useless. Didn't matter at all that I had this dexterity and I could play all these pieces. I suddenly couldn't play the violin anymore. I think one thing I'm learning ... Actually, I had this really interesting interview with a young guy around my age. He's a cancer researcher. His name is Scott. He's a cancer researcher, but he's also a total health nut. So for the last 10 years, he's been a vegan and he's been obsessively trying to optimize his lifespan, okay? Intermittent fasting, high intensity interval training. You name it, he's done it, okay? Pours turmeric on his food, okay? Turmeric should not be poured on food. And I'm Indian, so turmeric is one of my spices. That's not how you engage with turmeric.
But anyway, he said that his worst nightmare was eventually becoming deeply ill. And last year, in the middle of Coronavirus, he gets a stage four cancer diagnosis that overnight leads him to have to amputate his right leg. He's had three or four surgeries since then, including removing vertebrae, having to do six rounds of chemotherapy, moving to MD Anderson for treatments. I mean, it's a gut-wrenching story. And it's particularly gut-wrenching against the backdrop of someone who spent his entire life trying to avoid this outcome, right? This guy's worst fear comes true. And what he was marveling about is the fact that today, the day that I was doing the interview, he more or less felt as happy as he had before the diagnosis.
Michael Lewis
Really?
Maya Shankar
Which was stunning to me.
Michael Lewis
That is stunning.
Maya Shankar
Because the happiness research does show that we are massively resilient in the face of adversity and setback. And then when really good things happen, we don't stay super happy for a long time at all, we immediately go back down to our original set points. So I was familiar with this research, but I always called bullshit on it.
Michael Lewis
Yeah.
Maya Shankar
I was like ... And I told Scott this, I was like, "I'm so familiar with this research. But I was always like, "Okay, I get all of you will respond in that way, but I assure you that if I went through this experience, no way in hell, I'm rebounding."
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
But to hear someone who could say to me, "Maya, I was in your shoes. I'm exactly the same way." Was really heartening. And he said, "If I had known the way that I would psychologically respond to this event, I wouldn't have spent so much time being so fearful of it in the first place." And I think there is a lesson there for ...
Michael Lewis
Yeah, totally.
Maya Shankar
For that episode you're about to do, which is there are always unexpected ... Almost I would call like side effects that happen with change.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
Right? Things that we can't predict.
Michael Lewis
So having decided to do the podcast on the subject ...
Maya Shankar
Yeah.
Michael Lewis
Are you finding the subject exhausting itself, or do you think that it's kind of endless? How long can this go on for, do you think? How many permutations on this theme are there?
Maya Shankar
Yeah, I was definitely worried when I was conceiving the idea like is this just a season? And my guests have proven me wrong, which I think is the best way to discover that there's more potential in something. It's not from doing your own research. It's not from having thoughts in the middle of the night. It's from your interview subjects teaching you that there are all these facets of change that you wouldn't even predict.
So my favorite kind of interview is when I go in thinking I know what a person's change story is, what moment really changed them, and the reaction they had, and they completely prove me wrong and show me that there was this other element of the change that was actually super formative. So this happened actually just on Friday. So I was interviewing Tommy Caldwell, who you might know. He's an extremely skilled climber. He's considered one of the greatest big wall climbers in the world. And he scaled the Dawn Wall, which was deemed impossible by just about everyone, and he did it with nine freaking fingers because he cut off one of his fingers during a wood shopping accident in his garage, okay?
So the change story I was most interested in had actually well preceded losing the finger. It happened when he was climbing in Kyrgyzstan and he was held hostage by these captors, and for six days was under their watch and was basically in a state of severe starvation. Extremely cold temperatures, they thought they were going to die of hypothermia. And they can't converse with their captors, they speak two totally different languages, and they're trying to plot an escape route. And in the end, Tommy ends up pushing one of his captors off of a cliff. I think he surprised himself because he's a very kind of soft, timid type, and he doesn't believe that one should kill. And so he has to reckon with this event for so many years.
And so I was probing into that part of the story, right? Which is it seemed like you proved to yourself where your actual limits were, right? You were able to endure this really intense experience. But the part that was so interesting to me that I didn't even think for a second about until I got to the interview is that the true motivation for him, the reason why he's been able to engage in incredible feats since Kyrgyzstan is actually because he's been chasing a mental state that he had only experienced once when he was in Kyrgyzstan. So it was about four days into his captivity where his body, I think, totally turned. He went from starving and apathetic to survival mode, and he said that he felt profound mental clarity and focus in that moment. He was in the ultimate flow state. Everything in the world was sharp and clear, and he knew exactly what he needed to do and how to do it.
And he said it was so intoxicating that since that day, he's been chasing that high and has only reached it once. He even tried to starve himself once on a climb to see if he could get back there, okay? He reached it when he was scaling the Dawn Wall. And I remember telling him, "Tommy, if an alien descended on this planet and knew that you had had this deeply harrowing experience, and that you were then trying to recreate those circumstances in normal life because it was a change that you had actually desired, was something you were striving for, they would think you were insane." But that's been the secret sauce to his experience. And again, I just love it when a guest teaches me about their story and makes me think about change in a totally different way.
Michael Lewis
It's funny because you're naturally a performer, right? You were going to be a performer. You were going to play the violin. You were going to be on a stage. You've now built a stage, and you're on it again, and you're very naturally there. I remember when I first met you, when you were giving that talk to those people at the Harvard Business School, you were so obviously a performer. You were so obviously just made to be in front of people talking, and so now you're doing it. How is being a podcaster changing you?
Maya Shankar
So I think it is making me a much better listener, and I actually don't see myself as the performer. I try to approach every interview as though I'm giving the guest the stage.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
Because that's the person whose story I'm trying to shine the light on.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
And so my only role is to figure out the right questions to ask such that they reveal really fascinating things about themselves. I think it's actually just wonderful to be on this end of the mic, right? I've done tons of interviews. I've given tons of talks, performed so many times as a violinist.
Michael Lewis
Right.
Maya Shankar
And in many ways, I'm now an audience member, but I'm like an audience member who's almost like a music critic a little bit because she's trying to probe deep.
Michael Lewis
Yes.
Maya Shankar
And try to figure out where some of the cracks are and dig in there.
Michael Lewis
Right. So you're telling me that in five years now when you come over to my house for dinner, you're going to be kind of quiet, recessive, shy?
Maya Shankar
Yeah, you won't even be able to get a word out of me.
Michael Lewis
Yeah, you'll just be there.
Maya Shankar
It's going to be a very painful dinner.
Michael Lewis
I'll be ... You'll leave awkward silences that I have to fill. So that's where you're going?
Maya Shankar
No.
Michael Lewis
I'm going to cut this show off.
Maya Shankar
Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, I think the other thing it's teaching me is I don't tend to get any sort of stage fright or anxiety going into an interview or a conversation. I think maybe the reason for that is that when you're a little kid and you're forced to go on stage and play these deeply technical passages, when you're then told later in life you simply have to talk, like speak words, you're like, "Oh, wow. I'll sign up for that. That seems a hell of a lot easier."
And I'm hoping that the fact that I'm not approaching the conversations with anxiety is putting my guests at peace too, right? Letting them feel open and like we're really just having a conversation, which is what I'm hoping will be the vibe of the show. It's really meant to be not super formal. I can be quite irreverent at times. That is my actual personality, as you know, right? And so I'm hoping at least part of that comes through.
Michael Lewis
All right. All right, I'm going to let you go. Great to see you, and let's have dinner again soon.
Maya Shankar
Yeah, sounds great.
Michael Lewis
All right.
Maya Shankar
Okay. Bye.
Michael Lewis
Bye.
Maya Shankar
A Slight Change of Plans is created and executive produced by me, Maya Shankar. Big thanks to everyone at Pushkin Industries, including our Producer, Mo LaBorde, Associate Producers, David Zha and Julia Goodman, Executive Producers, Mia Lobel and Justine Lang, Senior Editor, Jen Guerra, and Sound Design and Mix Engineers, Ben Tolliday and Jason Gambrell. Thanks also to Luis Guerra who wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith who helped arrange the vocals. Incidental music from Epidemic Sound. And of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at Dr. Maya Shankar.
The Host
