CM 279: Brian Lowery on Who You Really Are
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There's a thing that I try to convey when I can that the world is an amazingly large place and that sometimes we are afraid of that, I think, and we hold on the beliefs about the way things are that limit what we can be in what we can see.

Well, could not be curious minds at work. I'm your host, gale Allen. It's tempting to believe that the self is a constant that is a core component of who we are from the time were born.

But social psychologists and stanford professor brian library has a different view. He believes the self we are today is a product of our social relationships, our friends, our families, our communities, our technologies, even our geography. That is, our circumstances change.

So does the self we believe ourselves to be. In this interview, we talk about this and much more from his book, selfless, the social creation of you. Brian's argument explained so much about how we Operated the world, and he gives us another reason to prioritize social relationships in our lives.

Before we start one quick ask, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to leave a rating on itunes or whatever you subscribe. Your feedback sounds a strong signal to people looking for their next podcast. And now here's my interview with brian library. Brian lawry, welcome to the podcast. IT is great to have you on.

thanks. We're having me, brian.

You explain that we don't know ourselves nearly as well as we think. You also point out that the only way to know ourselves is through social interactions. What do you mean?

My guess is when you think about not known yourself well, that seems off because um you spend every waking moment with yourself so how could you not know your self but what's interesting about IT is that true, everyone? Obviously but when you think of other people, it's easy to see how people might not have are clear view of themselves. But somehow we sometimes think that doesn't apply us.

And so i'm really interested in how we came come to know ourselves and the way we come to know ourselves and what gets in the way of us knowing ourselves. And given what I do that is being a social psychologist, I think a lot about relationships and I think that the way we know ourselves are through relationships, you think you can think of relationships a bit like mirrors except they don't reflect back the truth. Um they construct a view of who we are that we see if you've been in a relationship with someone at some point, you might have heard the experiences like, oh, I really I leone, you learn something new about them when you see them in this whole different way.

In the way you see them, if you continue and arrest with them, changes how they see themselves. And so there is a way in which that shift is a creation of a new version of that person. But now that person gets to see through you.

so it's like a co creation.

exactly. So it's like you not born an artist. Artist are created in interactions. And you can say that for any any aspect of who you are, you not, you know, you might have a certain characteristic that makes IT more likely for you to be a successful artist or athlete. But those things don't make you an artist or athlete. What makes you an artist or athlete is what you're doing in interactions with other people.

This goes along with something that you saying, your book, which is that you point out that we don't have an essential self. There is no, you quote and quote, this is who I am. Instead, you explain, we have multiple selves both at the same time in over periods of time, help us rap brains around this so as .

you go to your life you have different I like to call them errors. You might be a funny kid or a shy adult or um there might be time when you think of yourself as an athlete and later when you don't.

They all these things are true and that as you go through time and then you can think about going through spaces, like in one space you might be appearance and other space you might be a friend, another space you might be somebody sitting at a bar having a drink, and all those things are also who you are in those moments. And they're different things. They're different things.

And we like to see ourselves as unified. And I get that because we have this continuous experiences of um who we are as moving through the world, right? There's there's not like a break when we go from one space to another.

But when you look at the way you're behaving, when you look at the way you feel, when you look at the way others are you responding to you, sometimes there is vast differences, both across time in our lives and across places in our lives. And i'm saying that we don't take those differences seriously enough. We think of those as small little details when, in fact, that's who we are in the world is what I want to say.

That sounds like it's more of who we are than we even come close to see IT.

exactly. I mean, I I I would say that is who you are, but IT doesn't feel like IT feels like those things are somehow costumes or masks. You put energy, you go from place to place in the real. You is under there somewhere and way. I like to say that is its masks all the way down.

When IT comes to research that gets at this idea of multiple cells, you cite Margaret cheese research work with a group of asian american participants. Can you tell us about this research?

Yeah that's one of the similar pieces in the sand of multiple identities work where um SHE looks at the stereo pes associations people have with asian americans versus women. And there is uh uh divergence when you think about math. So women are stereotyped is being not very good at math.

Asian americans are stereo pe as being very good math. And SHE basically has them think about themselves as asian american or women um but doesn't very suddenly so he just asked them at the top of the shit to report their ethnicity of their agenda and then SHE gives them a math test. And what you see is differences in performance as a function of how they are thinking about themselves, which suggests that the identity that's relevant in that moment affects the way you behave. And I think when you think about IT, it's hard to imagine that could be in the other way.

So what is the self? How would you define IT?

I think of the self as a an, a malgares tion, something constructed of all of our interactions and relationships is both the data day interactions we have and the larger groups and communities we exits within as well.

So to think of yourself, as I think myself, is black graph an american? what? What does that mean? That means I exist in this community, and that means I am engaged with, in particular ways that suggest I remembered that community that makes me african american.

That is a part of who I am, that is a part of myself. But that part of myself, again, is constructed by, and exists within relationships. And I think that's true of every aspect of what people think of as their self.

We had talked about, however, the course of a lifetime, we become a new self, even set ourselves, and that relationships are key as we work to understand ourselves. You explain, we tell yourself stories to fill in the gaps. How does this work and why .

do we do that? I don't think we tell our self stories that filling gaps mean were the only stories that's all that all there is. I mean, look at I don't as to be clear here. Of course, I think we have our genes in our physical makeup.

And you know where I don't know, you're five, ten and you weigh, whatever, hundred and sixty five pounds or what, you know, whatever these kind of things are, your apparent a mother, father, brother, the things that are physically true of us are probably not the things that we think of us, who we are. It's the things that shape our experience, where we see the world, that we think we are right, how people respond to us, that we think we are, we think we are extravert. We think we are funny, we think we are kind.

We think we're honest. And those things exist within relationships. Those things are stories we tell ourselves about how we behave, about how people are responding to us and what that means.

Those are all stories that we're telling ourselves about who we are that become or is who we are. So I think it's not the stories of filling the gaps. It's that who you are, the story you're telling yourself all the time.

So we think we'll be Better predicting our behavior than we actually are. Why is this harder than IT seems to actually make predictions?

This goes to like knowing yourself. And IT turns out that is true, that we have a lot of information about ourselves, so we can make pretty good prediction sometimes because we've seen ourselves behave a lot of different situations. Like if you go to a party, you know how you behave in party, so you can make a decent prediction about how you behave at a party.

And then what we do is we try to extend that, the situation that are new and novel. So if you've never been to a an award ceremony you think is like, that's like a party here, how behavior party, here's how likely behave at an award ceremony. But if the award ceremony is actually not like a party, that prediction will probably be pretty bad.

So we don't actually know how we're gonna have a novel situations. What we can do is use our past experiences to predict how we might behave in a new situation. And so another way to think about this is we have theories about how things work, right? Uh, if you push, I mean, for a little kid, you learn if you push something off the table with falls and breaks, right? We have these theories about ourselves, too, and those theories are pretty good because you spend so much time with ourselves that we can start to think that we know how we're gonna have and all kinds of situations but in fact, really making guesses based on past experiences um and so when you face a new situation, it's really hard to have good predictions about how you might behave um and this this becomes an issue when you start thinking about making sense of other people um if you've never had, for example, a parent or a child or spouse die. 我 觉得 really you know um intense experiences that not like other experiences， it's hard to predict how you're gona behave in a situation but that will be but that will feel like you know IT won't be good you know to be terrible, but it's hard to know how you in particular will respond to that is what I would say and that's just an extreme example. But we will not get IT predicting how we behave because we know ourselves the same way we know other people, except we just have a lot more information about ourselves.

You talk about this a little bit. What world does our biology, our genetic makeup play in our development of self?

You know, this is a very, in some ways, very, I think, complex questions. So what are this temperament? Meaning there are people who are more likely to be or kids who are more likely to be fussy, let's say the other kids.

I don't think that is. I don't think that what people mean by personality, honestly, there are also obviously genetic differences and things like hate, right? I don't think anybody thinks of that as personality.

There are genetic differences. And I don't know, let's call IT face symmetry, which people might think of as attracting us. Now, all these things, a fact the way other people interact with us and effect, therefore, the way response to them.

So they do have an effect on who we are and we become, but that's different than than being who we are. And I think that is an important, important point. And even some of these things, like your physical size, the meaning of that, not the, not the reality of IT, right, like you, you so on.

So you seat in such tar, you seat in such wait. If you're skinny or fat, like those things exist within cultures. Cultures give them meaning.

Relationships give those things meaning they don't have means by themselves. So you could be in one culture where being sanny is something that is Priced. You'd be another culture in which that same thing is ridiculed.

So you put two different people for you with the same genetic makeup in those different cultures, and the way that genetic reality affects them more differ atl. So it's not as if our physical makeup, our biology doesn't matter. It's more than IT interacts with at the social realities that we exist in, the communities we exist in to create meaning. And what we care about is not the biology. What we care about is the meaning of the .

biology brand. What about neighborhoods that we grow up? then? I think maybe you.

I don't animal, talk about this way often, but you can think of relationships and concentric circles. There's like the people who are in your home, the people that are close to you, there are the people who you spend a lot of time with, like extended family are close friends. There are the people who live close by.

There is a broader community, your igher hood you live in. And I think all these things matter, and they matter in this way in which they affect each other, meaning that you are part of your neighbourhood in your neigh's od is affecting you. I think IT has important implications for who you become.

And what's what I also think is as you go out, think into the out further away from the sender, your ability understand the effective on you probably gets smaller, faster then the effect when you actually get some hole. But that I mean, it's easy to see how your family affects you and you think IT affects you greatly. It's harder to see how the neighbor d affects you, but IT is affecting you, right? And you're probably underestimate the effect of the neighbourhood, right?

As you go further, like you're underestimate the effect of the culture on you because it's the effect becomes harder to sea, but that is a means diminished. And I think neighbourhoods actually have quite a big effect in the research of this is pretty clear. When you look at things like economic mobility, neighborhood matters a lot, but people don't think that's what's gonna predict. Their economic mobility are like how successfully are in life. But IT turns out IT has a pretty big effect.

So you're write about the fact that you know, when we think about human potential, what you're talking about right now about neighbor ods, it's very connected. You know, we want to believe that human potential is limitless. You know that it's all. I ask if we believe that we can make that happen. But where are the flaws in this thinking?

I think the biggest flaw is this individualism, this idea that you can just do IT independent of this environ you know, the situation you face. I don't know how we came to that when it's so obviously not true and and not only is that not true, I don't think we even really believe that there's this this um funny how know what you'd call IT like schizophrenia a around mat in this country. And here's what I use an example.

Parents spend in order an amount of time and money trying to give their kids the best of everything in advantage. Some parents know that this is the clearly the minority try to cheat to get their kids into the the right colleges. And all the while we continue to talk as if merit is somehow purely a function of the individuals inability and desired workout. I just I don't even is crazy me you do not know how to makes sense of IT like we claim that is all on the individual and then we spend all this time and energy have all these arguments about who's going to a get what.

In this interview, brian lawry expose the concept of self from the perspective of his work as a social psychologist. If you'd like to learn more about the cell from a neuroscience perspective, check out episode two twenty seven with gregory burns. Other of the book of the self delusion, we talk about how life experiences and memories impact the self.

Who you are is literally who you think you are. And the power of thought is, is what drives IT. Now let's get back to my interview with pride library. There's something interesting that you talk about in the book. What about the fact that we know more, then we consciously see that was something that really stayed with me.

Yeah, I think we we over estimate our I cognate of awareness. We we think we we see. And no, oh, what we see and no.

And what we can think about is the most important thing. And to some extent, we we might think that the think the most driving us when again, um research on this seems pretty clear. And on a with a little reflection, you can see how that's probably not true.

In fact, that would be strange if you if you were true. One of things that that's important from the for the book is that we are incredibly, incredibly sensitive to our social environments, to the people around us, like we we can, we we can. You can be with someone to be like all they seem off.

They're something wrong and you couldn't point to like exactly what IT is that tells you that you just are since IT feels like you just sensing IT. I mean, we're feeling like tiny mico changes in people's expressions in the way they're moving in their toned voice. And we're putting all that together in and responding to IT in ways that we we can even verbalize exactly or don't even know how we're doing IT little bit like learning the right of bicycle walk.

You think about the physical complexity of IT just started this day walking. The physical complexity, walking is amazing, like the number of tiny little muscles that have to be recruit just right to keep you from falling over as incredible. And there is no way you can purposes li control all of them to create walking in a smooth way.

But yet we do that. Many of us, most of us do IT all the time because it's become automated because we've learned over time, like from being a little kid how to do this, that there's you know there are some even genetic predisposition to learning how to do IT smoothly. But you don't control conciousness.

You couldn't. That's true about a lot of our social life that we are so sensitive and so attuned to what's going on around us. And it's influences us in ways that sometimes we can even we don't know. And that also means, on the other hand, we know a lot about what's going on that we we don't know, we know or can bring the conscious awareness.

which is tRicky, right? Because you want to sometimes when you do have senses of things, you want to put language to them, but is sometimes even hard to do that if we are even aware that they're something there.

Yeah you tell a story, you do you tell a story, you tell a story about my that person is upset with me, right? Like you feel something there's something off like you might be wrong about exactly what IT is, but you maybe you are reading something and you tell a story based on prior relationships, based on fierce anxieties and then that story that affects you as if it's the reality because for you, IT is the reality.

I mean, goes back to this is we're constantly doing that. I mean, if you've ever been in some significant relationship at some point, I promise you told a story about the other person to yourself, and maybe was true, maybe he wasn't. Sometimes IT is, sometimes IT isn't, but is still a story that you created to make sense of who knows what?

What's the connection? Because this is one of those relational ones, this is an interactive one as well between freedom and the self. How does the self in relation to others and to systems impact our understanding of freedom as well as our understanding .

of ourselves? I think what people want is the feeling of freedom, the the idea of in the feeling that i'm deciding that I I have agency that I think people need that. But when you start to examine that in push a little bit, IT starts to look IT starts to look that so nice.

It's unclear what constraints are OK in which one aren't. When people talk about freedom, usually they mean, I think they really mean absence of constraint. And think about any decision you're making.

You want to, to be constraints by something you wanted make what you would think of and other people would think of as a good decision. So there are some constraints out there. Um and you want them, they're useful. What for you when .

you're write about them, you write about them, they're relational, right? The people in our lives who organic constrain us and thereby help us become ourselves. We are yeah.

I mean that if so, in terms of the all, in terms of action is one highlight, even decisions you make. You know, I don't think people want those to be unconstrained. And the point I make about relationships is that being unconstrained, completely unconstrained, require being without relationships.

And nobody wants that is just not that mean human beings are not designed for that. And every relationship you have constrained you. I mean there's no relationship that doesn't impose some constraint on you.

And basically people like IT, I mean not every relationship, obviously, but we think about your most um pozza relationships, relationship that mean the most to you. The ones that are painful to think about living without those also constrain you in ways that feel comforting. If you have a good relationship with your your parents, like being a child your parents feels come from you have a good ship with your kids being their parent IT defines you.

The way that that you feel as positive in those relationships are also constrains when we talk about freedom. The complication is that often don't know what people mean when they use that term. And I also think that most people don't haven't really examined what they mean when they say they want freedom.

I mean, I think what they really just mean is like no one forcing me to do something or no one standing in my way of doing the thing I wanna do. Um but those are actually very um those are on those are uncommon situations to some extent. What's very calm in is the people in your life are also constraining you in ways that are that you completely fine with.

you know, interesting. I was talking A A little while back to Emily Austin, who's writing a book about epicurus living with pleasure. And SHE was talking about how, you know, we think about, curious, is this pure headers? And he did rebel in hedonism in a certain way, but there was a certain kind of hedonism.

IT was a certain kind of pleasure. And for him, pleasure came from having really strong relationships in his life, friend's family, people who asked something of him that would require him to maybe not be able to do the thing he wanted to do, but instead to do things for them. And IT reminded me so much of that when I was reading your book.

Yeah, I mean, what he's basically sent talking about is taking pleasure in the relationships, rain.

taking pleasure in the relationship, but in the things that we give up in order to satisfy the relationships that mean allowed to us.

yeah, I mean, I am really that present with me, obviously. And taking pleasure in the things you give up mean taking pleasure in the denial that the really ship demands that the sacrifice produces the benefit. Without the sacrifice, you get less from the relationship.

Brian, you you write about the fact that identifying with and belonging to certain groups is about energy conservation. And IT comes with downsides as well. But overall, you describe IT as essential, especially for building yourself. Talk about this.

the identifying. So when you ask about identifying, you mean identifying at what level? Can you say a little bit more?

Well, you had mentioned that will all out to speak for my perspective. So I am a woman Operating in the world, specifically a White woman. And so by saying that a lot of identifying with that group, and you know, I could add a whole bunch of other adjectives to that around sexual orientation, eeta and IT could be on the one hand, that that could be seen, as you know, that identification is a limiter, but in a lot of ways it's not a liter. It's is a way for me to also contribute to the creation of myself. And so you write about that in the book, and that's what I was referring to.

I do think it's a limiter. I just think you don't I think you don't mind the trade off. Every relationship, every identity is a trade off, right? You're going to give something up. You're going to give something in return.

And there, what you're getting in return is a sense of how you fit in the world, a sense of what you expect and what you can expect for our mothers and what they expect and can expect from you. And there's comfort in that. There's comfort in that clarity.

But you you do give things up, right? And like i'll else, stick with gender four second. That one is a very clear one. If your women and men too, but if your woman, there are expectations associated with with that identification, those expectations can be quite constraining in in our society and in most societies.

Now you do get clarity in return you do get a sense of connection with other women and a way to connect with men that would not be available to you without accepting that identity um and the things that you get are enough for you to accept the constraints or I mean I guess in this case, IT could also be the society we talk about neighbourhood, the society, the neighbourhood, have you want to fine that the family might seek to finish you if you don't accept that identity too, right? There's also a cost to deny IT. So there's both what you get from IT.

I I guess you can think of what is the career in the stick is both the care, there's benefits, they're positives that you get from IT. And there are punishments for not accepting the communal understanding because the community would see that as a rejection and as a threat. And so they are the sense of, like, I am this thing, i'm a man or woman, as if internally you just decided this is how much the community is playing a role in that.

There is a great couple sentences in your book when you talk about how our identities are part of a story. We enter a story orty underway. Our ideas about who we are flow from relationships that existed before we did.

They reflect connections that ground us in the past. Think this is something else we don't think a lot about. Could you could you say more about that?

Yeah, it's funny. Like, I think about this in my own life, and anybody can have this, can can have this thought experiment. I mean, it's is if like, I showed up in the stories, I know about the stories and I was a child, then what my and I when I became more aware myself, my stories, my childhood stories and then how they affected me as I grew up and who I became, that's that's the story that I tell about who I am or how I think about myself.

But the the point i'm making there a bit is there was already so much going on before you even were conceived. Like how did your parents get together? How did they think about having kids? We are excited how their parents think about them getting together.

Where do those things come from? Um all those things do affect you, right? So if your parents were you know really desperate to have a child that's more likely to have an effect in terms of how they behave and how they respond to you as a child.

Then if they weren't expecting to have a child, right, if their parents are proved of their union, that's probably different than they didn't approve. And all these things affect you, but you weren't even there for that you can exist IT. And so the point there is like our stories start before we're even conceived and that's that's just the the most direct.

But you can also think about you say i'm a woman, i'm a White woman, those things, the construction of those identities predates your parents in your grandparents and their parents and their grandparents, right? These things about how you see yourself right now, we're constructed by people that you know that aren't even related to you in any way that goes back, you know, in some cases, hundreds, thousands of years into the past. That's A A strange thing to consider. But how you move the world right now, what that means to be a White woman, but IT means to be an american, these things were defined for you long before there was you.

You will also talk about the way that ourselves help us think about the meaning in our lives. And i'm going to quote another part from your book, when the future has weight, the decisions we may have meaning and sold our lives. Talk about this in the connection to self.

This is one of things where I my thinking in the book, I still I still um I still resonates with me and I think they still a way of thinking about relationships and meaning but it's evolved a bit so this is so I have a ted talk now where I talk the hotel because about mean in this if you read the book, this one i'm going to say next will um connect very directly to the book what I what I think now the way I talk about IT is that we get meaning in large part by participating in other people's lives.

So on the bug, I focus on the self and how the self is constructed in relationships. But if you turn that around, you can say how you are participating in the construction of other cells. When you are telling a story and engaging with someone else, construction who they are.

What's amazing about that is that person will then go out, have been been affected by you and have effects on everyone else they engage with. And so there's away in which are engine with others and constructing them has profound effects on the environment in the people around us. And that, I think, gives our actions wait IT gives our actions incredible significance.

So it's not just what you do in the world as an individual, it's how you are constructing and affecting everyone around you is like what to give your actions in your life the most weight and meaning, I think. So we think about meaning in the study. And meaning there are three ideas that are highlighted.

One is coherence, one is purpose, and one is what people call significance or mating. And coherence is can think of that is like the self is one source of coherence, or daily routines as a source of coherence. Coherence is the idea that when you wake up, you cannot know what to expect.

You know how the world works. Get the world makes sense as coherence. Purpose um is interesting, but sometimes, because sometimes people treat purpose as the same as meaning and in the literature that doesn't look to be true.

So purpose is the idea that you have something to do that there is a reason that you get up and do what you do. You get up and you know what's expected of you, what success would look like, what you, what you hope for, what your goals are. So purposes like this goal orientation, the sense of what the future will be, what you trying to produce.

No significance is like harder. I'd like, I think, of significance, says the idea that we extend beyond the present moment, that it's not just what we're doing right now, that there is even after we're gone, that that would matter that we were here. When you think just about your own behavior, all of that will eventually fell away.

The matter how successful you are, the things you produce won't matter when you did, but when you affect other people, those reverberations will continue after the present moment. After you leave that situation, after you die, they still persist. And I think that persistence gives a certain type of wait to what we do, and that is a huge part of what meaning is.

And so in the ted talk, what I really, what I really discusses, people sometimes focus on achievement like what they've produced, right? Did they get a fancy home where they have a great job or they have a kid? I mean, just if they think of that those things as achievements, and they don't sometimes realize the achievements alone, won't the meaning, and that I make the case that being a character in someone else, a story is a lot to meaning. So instead of focusing on the self, which is kind of what I do in the book, turn IT around in realizing that you also are participating in the construction of other selves. And that maybe highlighting that is the way to maximized meaning brand.

There are two questions that I rub up the podcast with. Whatever guest, what are you most curious about today?

transitions. I think that life is constantly about transition. So understanding and having some sense of where we are moving through in the in battle een space in fear, uncertainty, ty excited about what will be.

And there's something in all transitions that I think can be univerSally understood. So i've been have been reading a couple books, I just finished a couple books. Both are um or the the protagonist in both the middle age White women and it's about um transitions of around age.

So one is it's really big right now on all four years but my and july i've read that I also read a book on called him vlad mir. It's about a of a woman professor and like a small town in new england, I think she's may be around. I think she's fifty eight or seven.

What's going on with her and obviously, i'm not a i'm not a middle aged White woman, but I deeply resonated with those books um in part because I think they are about something universal in terms of the transitions and I think people get caught up in the what I think of the superficial aspects of the transition and the availability of a preexisting rapper for the transition about that. I mean I think the books that i've read um are easier to write about transition because there is this preexisting wrapper of mini pose, a iai use around a certain type of transition. And so there's there's a there's cultural hooks to hang the story on about transition um and for me, i'm less interested in that preexisting story about the transition is more interested in what IT is to experience IT.

And when I read those books, I find something universal in the experience of the transition, independent of the particulars um and this is something i'm just really interesting. I think also because right now i'm you know a certain stage in my career where that I feel like i'm at a point of transition as well and is harder because I don't think there is a preexisting wrapper or cultural story about the nature of my transition. So it's hard for for me to make sense of IT.

There's not a lot of people are writing about you know middle aged black professors going through transitions. So IT makes me just curious, not so much just to understand in mind, but thinking about the universal experience of IT and what that, what that means, what we can learn from IT, how I can help us live Better by engaging with transitions in them, more productive or more directions. So that kind of into right now, just transition.

And I think this super complicated, like the one I gave. You are both physical and psychological and cultural, but you have you know all types of loral transitions like fashion or social moraes like sexual Morris. Um you have like norms.

You know how many women should interact. Those things shift over time. You have age, right? What that means to be Young or old, what those, what even is Young or old, where are those things exist and live?

You have transitions from being a parent, not being appeared to being a parent, being married to not being to being adult or not being adult. Like constantly going through these transitions. And I think i'd really like to understand what's underneath them. That's common.

My last question is what's one thing I haven't asked or one thing that you wanted? Leave the listeners with that we didn't get to.

Like, good job asking questions. thanks. What I don't know this is the question you haven't asked. But there is a thing that I try to convey when I can, that the world is an amazingly large place, and that sometimes we are afraid of that I think, and we hold on to beliefs about the way things are, that limit what we can be in what we can see.

I tell people like going, if you read the book, I think this comes through like I don't you don't have to agree with everything i'm saying and I hope you don't. But engaging with ideas that chAllenge you, engaging with possibility, really make the world and so much more of an amazing place. And I wish people did that more.

It's a great thing to leave us with, to chAllenge us almost to to aspire to that, to practice IT. But I can thank you enough. IT has been such a pleasure .

to speak with you. Thank you.

Curious minds at work is made possible through a partnership with the innovator circle and executive coaching firm for innovation leaders. A special thank you to producer and editor of make a belly for leaving the amazing behind the scenes team that makes IT all happen. Each episode we give a shout out to something that's feeding our curiosity.

This week it's elf shop fox novel. There are rivers in the sky traveling back and forth and time between london and turkey. The author waves the story of history and water that's bound up in several compelling characters. It's a journey of empathy and insight. They're so much to learn and consider.