Sober AF, Michael Scott Phobia, and How to Politely End a Conversation

Marking a major personal milestone, Brené shares what led her to 30 years of sobriety and Adam asks what it taught her about change. From there, they pivot to why Brené can’t tolerate the cringe of The Office —and Adam’s take on how to engage with it. Finally, they deliver a masterclass on the art and science of ending social interactions, sharing the ultimate shortcut to a graceful exit. This is great! You can find The Curiosity Shop on ⁠YouTube⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠ (@thecuriosityshop). 0:00 - What Are We Talking About Today? 5:00 - Sober AF: Celebrating 30 Years of Sobriety 16:30 - Grieving for Joy 28:22 - Why Can’t Brené Watch The Office? 43:18 - Loving or Hating Violating the Rules 49:30 - The Art of Leaving Conversations Respectfully 1:03:40 - The Shortcut to a Graceful Exit 1:08:39 - What Adam and Brené Are Watching Now Gottman Institute - Research and History - Drs. Julie and John Gottman (Founded 1996) The Love Prescription, Part 2 of 3 - Brene Brown with Drs John and Julie Gottman, 2022, Unlocking Us Podcast The Power of Vulnerability - Brené Brown, 2010, TED Talk, TEDxHouston Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong - Johann Hari, 2015, TED Talk, TEDGlobalLondon The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior - Dai, Milkman & Riis, 2014, Management Science Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead - Brené Brown, 2012, book, Gotham Books I Love Lucy: Job Switching - Arnaz, 1952, CBS The Office: Scott's Tots - B. J. Novak, 2009, NBC Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny - McGraw & Warren, 2010, Psychological Science Office Ladies - Fischer & Kinsey, 2019-present, Audacy (Podcast) Do Conversations End When People Want Them To? - Mastroianni et al., 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage - Brown & Levinson, 1987, Cambridge University Press (Book) Want to Improve Your Relationship? Start Paying More Attention to Bids - Logan Ury, 2026, Gottman Institute The Virtues of Gossip: Reputational Information Sharing as Prosocial Behavior - Feinberg, Willer, Stellar & Keltner, 2012, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Jury Duty - Eisenberg & Stupnitsky, 2023-2026, Amazon Prime Video (Television Series) Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat - Eisenberg & Stupnitsky, 2026, Amazon Prime Video (Television Series) The Madison - 2026, Sheridan, Paramount+ (Television Series) Landman - Sheridan, 2024-present, Paramount+ (Television Series) Opening Up Closings - Schegloff & Sacks, 1973, Semiotica Closing the Conversation: Evidence from the Academic Advising Session - Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig, 1992, Discourse Processes Collaborative Strategies in Chinese Telephone Conversation Closings - Sun, 2005, Pragmatics Ending Social Encounters - Albert & Kessler, 1978, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order - Erving Goffman, 1971, Basic Books (Book) Sorry for Your Kindness: Japanese Interactional Ritual in Public Discourse - Ide, 1998, Journal of Pragmatics Getting Down to Business: Talk, Gaze, and Body Orientation During Openings of Doctor-Patient Consultations - Robinson, 1998, Human Communication Research Negotiating Last-Minute Concerns in Closing Korean Medical Encounters - Park, 2013, Social Science & Medicine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Brené Brown?

  Three topics for today. One, let's chat sobriety in my 30 years. I have some interesting thoughts I want to run by you. Two, we're going to talk about not just The Office, but why I'm incapable of watching shows that people love. And three, we'll talk about the art and science of gently leading conversations. How's that sound?

• 0:26Adam Grant?

  I mean, that's the perfect way to exit this conversation is to talk about how to get out of one.

• 0:32Brené Brown?

  Welcome to The Curiosity Shop.

• 0:34Adam Grant?

  A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network.

• 0:42Brené Brown?

  Hi, everyone. I'm Brené Brown.

• 0:44Adam Grant?

  And I'm Adam Grant.

• 0:45Brené Brown?

  Okay. I thought we'd start with a new question because John and Julie Gottman, who I absolutely love the Gottman's work, are celebrating their 30th anniversary. And they taught me this question. I use it with Steve. It's such a good question. What's on your heart and mind?

• 1:06Adam Grant?

  Am I supposed to have different answers to both?

• 1:09Brené Brown?

  I don't know. It depends on how far apart they live in your mind, in your body, I guess. But what's on your heart and mind today, this week, that we can talk about?

• 1:17Adam Grant?

  Well, 30 years. I mean, did you forget your post?

• 1:22Brené Brown?

  Oh, yes. John and Julie Gottman are celebrating their 30th anniversary, and I am celebrating 30 years of sobriety.

• 1:31Adam Grant?

  Congratulations, Brene.

• 1:33Brené Brown?

  Thank you.

• 1:34Adam Grant?

  Definitely want to talk about that.

• 1:37Brené Brown?

  Okay, we'll talk about sobriety. I am dying to talk to you about this conversation. I've had a small version of it with you. And then I spent an hour and a half talking to my kids. So Charlie, Ellen, and Ellen's new husband, JT. I spent like an hour talking to them about this. I cannot watch the shows that y'all all love, starting with The Office, which is a collection of some of my favorite actors of all time, but I cannot watch it. And so I want to get into why I can't watch it, and then I need you to cure me.

• 2:15Adam Grant?

  I definitely need to cure you. I'm not okay with this. You have to watch The Office.

• 2:19Brené Brown?

  Okay. And then the last thing, we're gonna talk, what, tell me.

• 2:24Adam Grant?

  Well, there, there's one other thing I want to talk about, which is, we were at a conference together. And you mastered, well, you, you did a masterclass in something that I've been struggling with. And I want to talk about what your tricks are.

• 2:36Brené Brown?

  What is it?

• 2:37Adam Grant?

  Leaving conversations. How to exit.

• 2:43Brené Brown?

  I love that I'm a specialist in leaving conversations. That checks out. Okay, we have talked about this before. And I wasn't sure if we were gonna talk about it today. So I prepped with a lit review on leaving conversations, because I would, I'm gonna tell you why. I was curious. I had this weird experience.

• 3:02Brené Brown?

  I don't know, maybe 15 years ago, when the TED Talk on vulnerability went viral. I saw someone like duo my talk and do a running commentary over the top of it. And I was so fascinated because this guy, this guy kept saying things like, "Here, you'll notice that she engineers a quarter of an inch head turn and moves her hips this way." "When she does a four-second pause and moves her left foot." This is conveying, and I was like, what is he fricking talking about? Like, why, what is this like, post-game analysis? That none of those things were in my head.

• 3:46Brené Brown?

  Or, "Listen to the pause here and then look how, you know." Have you ever seen people do that, where they, they try to like, build a system off something?

• 3:55Adam Grant?

  I have, sometimes.

• 3:56Brené Brown?

  Have you seen this?

• 3:56Adam Grant?

  We're even guilty of doing that. Yeah.

• 3:59Brené Brown?

  Oh, we, oh, that's true. We are guilty of doing that sometimes. But I'm talking about the people who don't do it well. Just kidding. So I was curious about how I think about leaving conversations, because we have talked about this before. And then I was curious what the literature said. So we'll get to that.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces. So I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 4:49Brené Brown?

  Okay, where do you want to jump in?

• 4:51Adam Grant?

  I think we have to start with sobriety. Take a, I think first of all, you have to take us back to 30 years ago.

• 4:57Brené Brown?

  This will be really interesting for you, I think, because I, I often say that my sobriety, I attribute my sobriety to the final project, one of the final projects in my MSW program, my Masters of Social Work program, was to create a family genogram. Are you familiar with a genogram?

• 5:17Adam Grant?

  No.

• 5:18Brené Brown?

  It's a map of your family that uses different shapes and arrows and dotted lines to understand their relationships. And sometimes a therapist will say, let's do a, tell me about your family. And the notes that they're taking is a genogram. So they'll have like disrupted lines showing hard relationships. And so we had to do a genogram for this class. And I thought, this is interesting. A genogram, not a genie, a genogram, it's genogram.

• 5:45Adam Grant?

  Genogram. You were trying to turn it into like a genie coming out of a magic lamp. A genogram will grant all your wishes.

• 5:51Brené Brown?

  A genogram. Yeah, like something you send somebody on their birthday.

• 5:58Brené Brown?

  So I started working on it and I got confused when I got to extended family. So I called my mom and I said, where is this person? Oh, dead, alcoholism. And, oh, okay, got it. So what about these two people? Oh, both dead, cirrhosis of the liver and alcoholism. And, and I, I was like, oh my God, what is happening in this, this, you know, it's like shake the family tree and all the alcoholics fall out. I kept thinking, what's happening? And I

• 6:35Brené Brown?

  I guess I was just ready and I wanted something different for my life and my history and that scared me and I knew my propensity to... You're at the age in graduate school where are you a fun party girl or is there a problem emerging? And so, my, my, the last time I drank was the night of my, I graduated from my, with my master's degree and I was hungover and late to Mother's Day brunch the next day at my mom's.

• 7:08Adam Grant?

  Oof.

• 7:09Brené Brown?

  Yeah, and I thought that combined, you know, it was funny because like when you're a fifth generation Texan, you just hear kind of stories and, and about outlaws and folklore heroes in your family, but then when you, you know, you sit down and you map it out, you're like, wow, there's a lot of addiction and mental health issues really. Turned into funny stories, but not so funny.

• 7:32Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Brené Brown?

  And so, I gave up smoking and drinking. I went to my first meeting that Monday, graduated from Saturday, Mother's Day was Sunday, went to my first meeting and you're supposed to find like a sponsor and of course I have the rulebook and so this woman said, let's go grab dinner after the meeting and I told her my story and she looked up and she said, I believe you have the poo poo platter of addictions. I need you to stop drinking, using food to comfort yourself and stop involving yourself in all of your family's problems and issues. I was like, shit, I'm gonna have a lot of time on my hands. And then that was it.

• 8:15Brené Brown?

  Then I worked the AA problem, AA program and went to meetings all the time for about a year and a half and was also working on that stuff in therapy and have been sober since.

• 8:26Adam Grant?

  It's incredible. First of all, congratulations.

• 8:28Brené Brown?

  Thank you.

• 8:30Adam Grant?

  Secondly...

• 8:31Brené Brown?

  Thanks, it's...

• 8:32Adam Grant?

  No good.

• 8:33Brené Brown?

  No, it's, um, I posted about it, which we can, is a weird thing. I posted about it.

• 8:43Brené Brown?

  On social, for a really weird reason, I sometimes post things like that and sometimes don't. The number of people that have come up to me over the last 15 years and said, "You sharing your story really helped me get sober," and putting a face on it that's different, really allowed me to get help. And so I had to weigh kind of, it feels private, but at the same time, hearing other people's stories really helped me. So it was interesting. I have to say, it's got a million impressions on LinkedIn and thousands and thousands and that, I mean, just thousands of people engaging with it, leaving comments.

• 9:27Brené Brown?

  But a lot of people, in the picture on LinkedIn, I'm holding a coffee cup that says "Sober AF." And on LinkedIn, people were just putting their date and "Sober AF."

• 9:40Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 9:41Brené Brown?

  And it was so shocking. So many people wrote, "How much shame is still attached to talking about being sober, especially in a work environment?" And again, you'll know whether it's safe for you or not, if you're listening or watching. But I don't know, it was hopeful for me.

• 9:58Adam Grant?

  Well, look at you, normalizing vulnerability yet again.

• 10:01Brené Brown?

  Hate it. Fuck it.

• 10:06Adam Grant?

  I have to, I have to tell you, there's something that, that's really amazing about your story, that I don't think, I don't think gets talked about enough. I don't know if I've ever heard it talked about, which is, people always say you have to hit rock bottom in order to begin making a change. And you didn't do that at all. You, it sounded like-

• 10:25Brené Brown?

  I had a high bottom, yeah.

• 10:26Adam Grant?

  Yeah, but-

• 10:28Brené Brown?

  I had a high bottom, that's what we call it in the program.

• 10:31Adam Grant?

  I mean, it sounds like you just, you saw the writing on the wall, and you didn't like the possible future you were staring at and decided to change. Why is that arc so different from the one we usually hear?

• 10:45Brené Brown?

  I think inside, you know, inside of the recovery community,

• 10:52Brené Brown?

  my experience is it's probably 20% rock bottom.

• 11:03Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 11:04Brené Brown?

  Maybe 40%

• 11:07Brené Brown?

  an event that's like, I can't do this anymore.

• 11:12Brené Brown?

  And then 40% I want something different for my life. And I feel like that, that, that kind of high bottom, the writings on the wall, this is not what I want for myself, has actually grown in the last 10 years when people say they're experimenting with sobriety. They're, they want to do something different. I mean, I don't want to overstate this, but it seems like the medical, the medical community is five minutes away from just basically saying, this shit's poison. And, and all the early findings about, you know, three glasses of wine will do you good to like, no, no, no. We, we're not sure this is, this is good at all. So I think it's changing. I think just, just outside of recovery, the story is rock bottom. And

• 11:56Brené Brown?

  the power of community, one of my favorite sayings is the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The option, the opposite of addiction is connection. And so it's a connection fueled program. And sitting in a room with people who, even having gone to some jailhouse meetings,

• 12:20Brené Brown?

  you can look at anybody. Maybe they killed someone in a drinking accident. I mean, you can look at anyone and think, oh, well, there but for the grace of God, you know? And I think that's part of the power of it. But for me, it was much more of a thinking bottom.

• 12:36Adam Grant?

  Wow. You know, I guess it makes me wonder if people underestimate the possibilities they have for change.

• 12:46Adam Grant?

  I'm thinking about-

• 12:46Brené Brown?

  Say more.

• 12:47Adam Grant?

  Well, I'm thinking about, do you know the research led by Heng Chen Dai on the fresh start effect?

• 12:53Brené Brown?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:54Adam Grant?

  The basic finding, which will not surprise you at all, is that people are more likely to make major life changes at turning point times and dates. On a birthday, on New Year's, the first day of the month, the last day of the month. Like, there's nothing special about May 31st. There's, there's nothing unique about June 1st. It's just a temporal marker that leads you to say, hey, I turned the page. Now I'm in a new chapter. And it seems like you woke up that morning and basically decided to turn the page and start a new chapter.

• 13:24Brené Brown?

  I did. It was very deliberate and very intentional.

• 13:29Brené Brown?

  And I think because I didn't have a physical addiction. And, and I was very clear that I didn't have a physical addiction to alcohol.

• 13:39Brené Brown?

  I remember Steve saying, I mean, you drink less than most of your friends. And I was like, that's a really dangerous indictment of the folks I'm hanging out with. But, um, but I did have the physical addiction to nicotine. And that was brutal. I mean, the only reason I don't smoke today is I don't want to quit again and I don't want to die. Other than that, I miss it every single day.

• 14:01Adam Grant?

  Still?

• 14:01Brené Brown?

  Every single day.

• 14:02Adam Grant?

  30 years later?

• 14:03Brené Brown?

  Every day. 30 years later. And there are some things in my life that I do not do now.

• 14:10Brené Brown?

  Because I can't have a cigarette. I don't really sit in my backyard. Because what's the point if I'm not going to smoke? I would never have a non-alcoholic beer because what's the point if I can't have a cigarette? And if a really good song comes on like Boston or ACDC, I'm going to crack the window in my car and hold my pen. Like I'm smoking a cigarette and driving, like for sure. It's so, it was so habitual for me-

• 14:37Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 14:38Brené Brown?

  That

• 14:41Brené Brown?

  I could, I knew the difference. And so for folks who have to go into a physical-

• 14:48Brené Brown?

  You know, the the physical detox is sometimes that requires a rock bottom because I don't know that you knowingly, even with a fresh start date, opt in for that, the brutality of that physical experience. That is rough. Does that make sense?

• 15:09Adam Grant?

  It does.

• 15:09Brené Brown?

  Yeah. One thing I was thinking about that I wanted to, that I, I wanted to talk to you about, as I've been reflecting on my sobriety, is how, and this goes back to, I talked about this in my, in the TED Talk on vulnerability in 2010, how when we use alcohol, drugs, gambling, social media, whatever your drug of choice is, when we use substances or processes to numb the darkness, we by default numb the light. And it's not like we can choose to, hey, I'm, I'm gonna get rid of all the hard emotions, but stay completely

• 15:52Brené Brown?

  open and receptive to the, the positive emotions. It doesn't work that way. And one way that plays out in recovery that I think is really interesting, that no one talks about, which is terrible, is if someone that you know is in recovery loses their job, immediately people form a tight circle around that person, reach out, go to meetings. But we know from the research that if someone gets promoted, or engaged, or something really exciting happens, they're as or more likely to relapse.

• 16:26Adam Grant?

  Really?

• 16:28Brené Brown?

  Yes. Because they're so overwhelmed by the positive emotion that they've also been numbing. And the community doesn't surround that person in that moment because there's not a hard time. So they're alone in these incredibly excruciatingly vulnerable feelings of joy, optimism, and gratitude, which they also don't have experience feeling.

• 16:55Brené Brown?

  And so it can lead to relapse. I mean, to me, the hardest thing I've had to learn how to do was not grief or shame, but joy. That's the hardest for me.

• 17:07Adam Grant?

  Why?

• 17:08Brené Brown?

  Because I want to just rehearse tragedy when it happens. I call, you know, in our research, we call it foreboding joy. So when something good happens, I immediately feel this quiver of danger. I, this is going to be taken away from me. Something bad's going to happen to balance this out. I'm going to get sucker punched by pain if I let my guard down. So I push away joy. And that, that was the hardest part of my recovery.

• 17:39Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 17:40Brené Brown?

  I can tell you this, in our research, we found that ninety, over ninety percent of parents, while feeling a very overwhelming love for their children, immediately picture something terrible happening to their children. You're tucking a baby in at night, you're overwhelmed with love and joy, and then you immediately picture something horrible happening. It's the same thing. It's.

• 18:10Adam Grant?

  That feels different to me.

• 18:13Brené Brown?

  Say how, tell me how.

• 18:14Adam Grant?

  Well, love and the fear of loss, I think those go hand in hand. Like, joy, I'm having a good time. What is there to worry about?

• 18:24Brené Brown?

  Um, I think joy for me would not be, I'm having a good time. That might be happiness or pleasure or something like that. But real joy to me is, like, like this weekend, I was, I was with Steve. All, it's so fun to say all three of the kids now that Ellen, now I've got a new birdie in the nest with a son-in-law. And we all went out on the boat. It was a great day. It was just fun. And then I remember the kids, the older kids saying that we're going to head home. And I was like, call me as soon as you get there.

• 18:58Brené Brown?

  I think there's a real vuln- I think joy is the most vulnerable emotion we experience.

• 19:06Adam Grant?

  Really? I'm so surprised by this.

• 19:09Brené Brown?

  No, yeah, hands down. I think joy is incredibly vulnerable. And some people would say it's like waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's just in moments of joy, if we're not practiced in... The people who can lean into joy, we found, had one thing in common, and that's a very strong gratitude practice, that when they're in joy, they can say, "I'm really grateful for this moment."

• 19:36Adam Grant?

  Is that even necessary, though? Because...

• 19:38Brené Brown?

  Yes. I think yes.

• 19:40Adam Grant?

  When I think about great moments of joy, you're so absorbed in the moment that you don't even have to think about feeling grateful for it.

• 19:48Brené Brown?

  I would say for the majority of people we've interviewed,

• 19:54Brené Brown?

  real, true joy, deep joy, like a spiritual sense of being interconnected in love, is vulnerable. Yeah, I think it's, I think maybe, maybe not for everyone, but when over 90% of parents say, "Yeah, the deepest moments of joy are, trigger insane fear in me." I think it's the same thing.

• 20:18Brené Brown?

  But I can't think of a moment... You know, see if you can make sense of this. This is interesting. I'm so, I'm so, I'm so curious about your reaction to all this.

• 20:31Brené Brown?

  One of the things we found in our early research is that some people choose to never get too high in emotion or too low. And the reason why they don't get too high in emotion is they don't want to feel disappointment.

• 20:45Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 20:45Brené Brown?

  So they choose to live disappointed rather than feel disappointed. You know, they choose just to think, eh, it's okay right now, but it'll be bad in a little bit. Or this is nice now, but it'll turn soon. And I just, I hearken back to an interview with a man who was in his 70s. And he and his wife were in an automobile accident, and she was killed.

• 21:10Brené Brown?

  And he said his greatest, he told me his greatest regret was never leaning into the great moments out of fear that they'd be taken away, because now he had not accumulated those across his life.

• 21:26Brené Brown?

  So I, it's a gut punch. Yeah. And so I do think there's a vulnerability to letting, to giving over to

• 21:38Brené Brown?

  love and joy that's real.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces. So I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 22:14Adam Grant?

  But we have to talk about The Office, which gives me, I thought, a lot of joy.

• 22:19Brené Brown?

  Well, it could for sure. Good television, good film, good music brings me a ton of joy. It gives me a feeling of inextricable human connection.

• 22:30Adam Grant?

  Same. But why, why are you allergic to so many of our favorite shows? And which ones? Let's start there.

• 22:38Brené Brown?

  I think let's focus on The Office for right now because it will be a representative of other things.

• 22:42Adam Grant?

  Okay.

• 22:45Brené Brown?

  My children can recite the dialogue from every Office episode verbatim. Sometimes when the show's not even on, they get into a back and forth on it that is like, you know.

• 23:02Adam Grant?

  Bears, Beats, Battlestar Galactica.

• 23:05Brené Brown?

  It's nuts. Since the time I was little, and I remember the first time it actually happened, I have such excruciating, vicarious embarrassment that I can't, I absolutely just can't watch that show. When I was a little kid, there is a version of I Love Lucy, which I used to watch after school, where Lucy and Ethel get a job at a candy factory. It's a famous episode. Most people will know what I'm talking about. And they have to wrap the chocolates as they come down the conveyor belt. And the conveyor belt is going so fast that they can't do it. So they start like eating them and then their mouth is full of them. And then they start shoving them right down their, down their shirts or their little candy, candy uniforms. And I just ran from the room.

• 23:53Adam Grant?

  Cringe?

• 23:55Brené Brown?

  Cringe.

• 23:57Brené Brown?

  A, you can't do that.

• 24:01Brené Brown?

  B, I'm so embarrassed for you. And my whole life, like, I could never watch Three's Company because I'm like, oh, my God, the robbers are gonna find out. This is not going to work. This is a nightmare.

• 24:13Brené Brown?

  Why? And so what I'm watching, the first episode of The Office I ever watched was called Scott's Tots.

• 24:24Brené Brown?

  Do you know the episode?

• 24:26Adam Grant?

  I think I do.

• 24:28Brené Brown?

  Yeah, where he promises people he's gonna put them through college.

• 24:31Adam Grant?

  Yeah, and then he reneges on the promise.

• 24:34Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 24:36Brené Brown?

  Yes. I can't.

• 24:40Adam Grant?

  Okay. All right, so.

• 24:42Brené Brown?

  I can't. I cannot. I cannot. I, I, I, I am having a meltdown right now in my chair thinking about it.

• 24:50Adam Grant?

  All right, Renee.

• 24:51Brené Brown?

  You cannot do that.

• 24:53Adam Grant?

  I have questions.

• 24:54Brené Brown?

  You cannot promise people stuff like that.

• 24:56Adam Grant?

  Yeah, but did you forget you're watching a TV show? It's fiction.

• 25:02Adam Grant?

  I know, I know we're supposed to suspend our disbelief in order to engage with a show or a movie, but you're still supposed to remember it's, it's a script written by a bunch of comedy writers to make you laugh. Like, do you, do you lose sight of the fact that it's not real?

• 25:19Brené Brown?

  It's not okay that anyone thinks like that to write that down.

• 25:24Brené Brown?

  No, and, and do I lose, you know, yes, I completely lose sight.

• 25:30Adam Grant?

  Do you have those same pro, can, can you not watch horror movies because they terrify you too much?

• 25:35Brené Brown?

  No, no, I would never in a million years watch something scary.

• 25:40Adam Grant?

  Okay. All right, so this is, this is deeper than just awkwardness. It's, you, you feel everything that happens on the screen.

• 25:48Brené Brown?

  Yes. But otherwise, what's the point?

• 25:53Adam Grant?

  I don't know. It's like.

• 25:56Brené Brown?

  Did you watch him that?

• 25:57Adam Grant?

  So, no, I haven't.

• 26:01Adam Grant?

  Wait, hold on a second.

• 26:02Brené Brown?

  I'm not, I'm not even recovered yet.

• 26:07Adam Grant?

  Okay, it's a little bit like riding a roller coaster.

• 26:11Adam Grant?

  You can get this sensation.

• 26:12Brené Brown?

  I love those.

• 26:13Adam Grant?

  Oh, you do? Okay.

• 26:14Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:16Adam Grant?

  But you also remember, you feel like you're falling and you're gonna die, but you also know that you're buckled in.

• 26:25Brené Brown?

  I can, that's definitely what I do on a roller coaster.

• 26:34Brené Brown?

  I can't do that in a visual medium.

• 26:37Adam Grant?

  Only in visual. So can you, can you read a book with awkward interactions? Or?

• 26:41Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 26:42Adam Grant?

  Could you read Stephen King?

• 26:43Brené Brown?

  And laugh hysterically.

• 26:45Brené Brown?

  Um, I have read, I can, I can read far past my tolerance for visual violence. Yes.

• 26:51Adam Grant?

  And what is it about the visuals that transports you? I mean, is it, is it literally just feeling like you're there and having all of your senses active?

• 27:00Brené Brown?

  I blame my parents because we were not allowed to watch anything. Like, we were, we were, it was so strict. We couldn't even watch shows where kids were disrespectful to their parents. Like, and we could watch, yeah, I saw Smokey and the Bandit with my grandmother, who was like a pearl beard, drinking, cigarette smoking, um,

• 27:23Brené Brown?

  like, no boundaries person. And I, even when I got home from my San Antonio summer, I was grounded for four weeks for watching a PG movie when I was 15, probably. Yeah. Like, we just, we're very strict. And so I don't, maybe I didn't learn to differentiate, but I don't think it's that. Maybe I'm just visually porous.

• 27:43Adam Grant?

  I believe that.

• 27:45Brené Brown?

  I want to pose this moral question. Is there something wrong with me because I can't watch Game of Thrones? Or is there something wrong with the people who can watch it because they can watch it?

• 27:58Adam Grant?

  Well, there's a lot more of them than there are of you. So I guess something wrong with, could be defined multiple ways.

• 28:05Brené Brown?

  I don't care about population. I mean, like, is, is it, is it okay that I'm not desensitized to violence?

• 28:14Adam Grant?

  I am.

• 28:15Brené Brown?

  So maybe no one's wrong. Maybe no one's wrong.

• 28:17Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't see this as a moral issue at all.

• 28:19Brené Brown?

  Right, me neither.

• 28:21Adam Grant?

  I watched the first two seasons of Game of Thrones and thought it was really interesting and well done, but found the violence too gratuitous and didn't want to go on.

• 28:30Brené Brown?

  But why don't you just tell yourself it's like a roller coaster?

• 28:32Adam Grant?

  Oh, I did, but the image is just like, I was just like, ah, there's a lot of good content out there. And a lot of the shows I watch, I'm not ambivalent about. So I don't need to engage with this one.

• 28:46Brené Brown?

  Okay, you gotta stop. I'm gonna take you back. You just said and went like this. The images were like, ew. Like, let's go back to that moment. What, unpack that for me. The images were what?

• 29:03Adam Grant?

  I mean, it's like, it, how would I describe it? It's like, it's gross and it's a little upsetting. And it's not like watching a civil war movie where there's a reason for depicting it. Like, you don't have to show me all this. It felt like, it felt like the gore version of Clickbait.

• 29:28Adam Grant?

  Whereas when you watch The Office, it serves a purpose. Like, they're making a point.

• 29:35Brené Brown?

  Wow, I'm just realizing just how, how subjective all this is, right?

• 29:38Adam Grant?

  It is, because I guess, you know, as I, as I listened to this discussion, or as I, as I reflect on what I just said, I think that maybe Game of Thrones was trying to make a point about the brutality of the world that they were depicting. But I don't know that that point needs to be made, or at least it doesn't need to be made to me. Whereas you, you don't get The Office without awkwardness. And Brene, you are the queen of awkward. Like, it's in your tagline. Stay brave, and you say, stay awkward.

• 30:14Adam Grant?

  So don't you want to raise your awkwardness tolerance?

• 30:19Brené Brown?

  Is it the?

• 30:23Brené Brown?

  Oh, I don't even want to say this out loud. It makes me, I don't, I don't even think I want to know this about myself. Because I'm trying to think about whether it's the awkwardness or the rule breaking.

• 30:40Brené Brown?

  That's really hard for me.

• 30:45Brené Brown?

  You know, it's like, I, and I'm not talking about political correctness, because, I mean, that doesn't really bother me, and I can find a lot of humor in that sometimes. But when you said, maybe they were trying to, maybe in Game of Thrones, they were trying to teach a lesson or make a point about the brutality of the world they had created. Maybe, but it, but I don't need to learn that lesson. Maybe it's for me, maybe with The Office, they're trying to make a point about

• 31:18Brené Brown?

  the just terrible idea of putting groups of people together in the workplace and expecting it to go well. I don't know what the point is, but that's funny. But they don't need to make it to me. I already know that. And I don't, and, and I just think it's the,

• 31:35Brené Brown?

  it could be like my, the firstborn

• 31:40Adam Grant?

  Daughter.

• 31:40Brené Brown?

  Rule-following, do you know what I mean?

• 31:43Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Brené Brown?

  That is just.

• 31:45Adam Grant?

  Yeah. It could be. I just.

• 31:47Brené Brown?

  Like.

• 31:51Adam Grant?

  I can, I can relate to that. But I think that, I think world-class comedy is rare. And I think The Office was the funniest material on television for a whole decade. And the characters are so, they're so quirky and so lovable despite the rules that they break and the norms they violate. I just, I think it's like, not watching The Office is like not watching Friends or not having seen Star Wars. It's just, it's just a core part of our culture.

• 32:23Brené Brown?

  Don't bring Star Wars into it. I guess Star Wars is like very much up my alley and Star Trek, but, but let me ask you this. I wish you were the kind of psychologist where you had like the couch and you could analyze me.

• 32:35Brené Brown?

  What does it mean that if I'm going to share a meme with someone to convey something, 90% of the memes I share are from The Office?

• 32:46Adam Grant?

  It means you're-

• 32:46Brené Brown?

  I just can't watch it.

• 32:48Adam Grant?

  You're a, you're a careful student of culture even when you're not fully up to speed or in the loop.

• 32:56Adam Grant?

  It means you're paying attention.

• 32:57Brené Brown?

  That's...

• 32:59Brené Brown?

  Yeah, no, because I think they're really funny and the memes are so good and like Dwight and the beat for, I could probably talk to you about it ad nauseam as if I'd watched it. The other one I can't watch is Veep. I'm like, the thing, the thing, the thought bubble that's going off all the time in my head is you can't say that. You can't do that. Saying that is not okay. You know, doing that is not okay. Like, that's what's going off in my head the whole time.

• 33:23Adam Grant?

  Ah, Brene, but this is, I mean, this is, it's one of the core pillars of comedy. I, I'm sure you've read Peter McGraw's benign violations theory of humor.

• 33:34Brené Brown?

  I doubt, no, I have not.

• 33:36Adam Grant?

  Oh, I mean, it's, it's probably become the most influential theory of humor and this, I mean, I, I think giant warning label analyzing comedy almost always kills it. But Peter, Peter does these highly entertaining studies in his lab where basically the easiest way to get someone to laugh other than, you know, just kind of simple physical comedy is you, you create a benign violation. So something happens that shouldn't, but it's also harmless. And people find that inherently funny.

• 34:12Adam Grant?

  I think, like, I, I, I think it's really hard to create clever comedy without violations of norms and rules.

• 34:19Brené Brown?

  Okay, this is so helpful.

• 34:23Adam Grant?

  Why?

• 34:23Brené Brown?

  This is so helpful.

• 34:27Brené Brown?

  I don't like it when people violate rules.

• 34:31Brené Brown?

  Do you know what I don't like? This is probably why I struggle with a lot of comedians. Although I, I, but although I can watch comedy specials and, and really laugh hard,

• 34:43Brené Brown?

  I do not like your reverence.

• 34:46Adam Grant?

  It's related to the sarcasm discussion we had early, early on.

• 34:50Brené Brown?

  Is it?

• 34:50Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think it is. That's my favorite kind of humor.

• 34:54Brené Brown?

  But I'm very sarcastic.

• 34:56Adam Grant?

  You, you are. That's true. But we don't always like to receive what we send, right?

• 35:02Brené Brown?

  No, I, I like sarcastic people, too.

• 35:06Adam Grant?

  Case in point, let's, let's take a specific example. I just, I just want to get your reaction to one of my all time favorite Office scenes, which I think is a great example of a benign violation. Okay, so you, do you know, do you know that Jim likes to prank Dwight and that?

• 35:22Brené Brown?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 35:24Adam Grant?

  So some of the pranks I think are just genius. And my favorite one is there's an episode where Dwight picks up the phone and accidentally slams himself in the ear with it. Like basically just clocks himself in the side of the head. And the camera cuts to Jim saying something to the effect of, every day I've been unscrewing Dwight's phone. And the first day I put one nickel in it. And then the second day I added a second nickel. And for months I've been adding nickels to make the phone handle heavier and heavier and heavier. And today I took them all out. And the phone handle is just too light. And he just whacks himself in the head. First of all, I

• 36:09Adam Grant?

  mean, the, the genius of the person who came up with this prank, I cannot, I, I want to hang out with that writer every day. But more important than that is the fact that this is a benign violation. Like you are not supposed

• 36:25Brené Brown?

  I love it.

• 36:25Adam Grant?

  You're not supposed to cause your coworker to hit himself in the head. But also, it's not going to leave a mark, and it happened on TV. And the Office is full of these kinds of moments. How can you not love that?

• 36:38Brené Brown?

  I do love that prank. I think that's funny. I do love a prank.

• 36:42Adam Grant?

  Okay.

• 36:42Brené Brown?

  I do, I do love a prank. Yeah, that's funny.

• 36:46Adam Grant?

  So how many of these do I have to give you before you decide that the pros are worth the cons?

• 36:52Brené Brown?

  I don't know. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to think about it. Um, I do love a good prank. I mean, like, I'm a terrible person because like the funny, the Instagrams where I'm laughing so hard where I think I'm, I'm gonna pass out because I can't breathe are like people getting scared.

• 37:11Brené Brown?

  Those are really funny to me. I don't know why, because I scare really easily. I don't know. I'm gonna have to think about it. I don't like the... Did you think Scott's Tots was a funny episode? Where he promised all the kids and they celebrate them that their whole K through 12 life? And then it's time for them to graduate and they're gonna be the first cohort going to college and...

• 37:34Adam Grant?

  I mean, that was a little sad. But what made me okay with that episode, even though it's not a storyline I would have written, it's not one of my favorite episodes from the show at all, is you have Michael Scott, and if you just take him at face value, you think he's a jerk. But what you forget is, he's in this documentary, stuck in Scranton, Pennsylvania at a paper company. And he's trying to become famous. He's trying to become a reality TV star. And so he does all these idiotic things in front of a camera to try to get attention. And it's a parody of how reality TV works in our culture. And that makes it funny to me. Because he's basically saying, this is what somebody would do to try to get famous.

• 38:19Brené Brown?

  Maybe I could watch it with you.

• 38:22Adam Grant?

  You want me to... I'm gonna pause and analyze every two minutes and I'm gonna just ruin the whole show for you.

• 38:27Brené Brown?

  No, no, maybe if you could just do a running, like a running thing, that would be really helpful for me.

• 38:33Adam Grant?

  I'm in. I've been waiting for an excuse to re-watch it, but we should also listen to the Office Ladies podcast afterward.

• 38:41Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I've listened to the podcast. I've listened to several episodes of it. Like, you have no idea how much I love the actors in The Office.

• 38:48Adam Grant?

  They are amazing. All right.

• 38:50Brené Brown?

  They are amazing.

• 38:50Adam Grant?

  We're adding this to our to-do list.

• 38:52Brené Brown?

  Okay.

• 38:53Adam Grant?

  Okay, wait. One request for listeners. If you have an episode that you want us to either move to the top of the queue or to talk about the implications of, let us know.

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• 39:36Adam Grant?

  Can we talk about how to get out of a conversation? So I need to tell you a story.

• 39:42Brené Brown?

  Okay. Oh, God, I'm worried. I'm so worried, y'all. I'm so worried. Make me look good.

• 39:47Adam Grant?

  Oh, it's not about you. Don't worry.

• 39:50Brené Brown?

  Oh, perfect. Great.

• 39:50Adam Grant?

  You're the contrast to the story.

• 39:52Brené Brown?

  I thought it was something you witnessed. Okay.

• 39:53Adam Grant?

  So we were at this conference last week, and I went to the gym with a couple other attendees in the morning. And one of them is a fitness nut and offered very generously to play personal trainer and lead the rest of us through a workout. And so we show up, we're a couple minutes into our workout, and the other guy who's with us gets accosted by somebody I think I've met at the conference once before. And the guy basically just launches into what had to have been a nine-minute story. And I'm watching my friend.

• 40:35Adam Grant?

  He's got this look on his face like he's trying to be polite, but he's also trying to figure out how to get out of the conversation. And meanwhile, it's holding up the whole rotation that we're in because we're on a circuit. And he's just too nice to say, "Excuse me, like, I need to do a set," or "Could you cut to the chase?" Which obviously would be a little rude. And I watched that happen. I realized I have been this guy my whole life. I am constantly in conversations that I don't know how to get out of. I avoid, I avoid phone calls. Sometimes I just don't even answer because I'm afraid if I pick up, I won't be able to exit the conversation. It just, it feels rude to cut someone off.

• 41:18Adam Grant?

  And the contrast between that and what I saw you do, in the middle of conversations, just say like, excuse me for a second, and then give someone a reason to walk away. I was like, okay, this is a skill that you have that I want to learn. How do you leave a conversation without making somebody else feel bad?

• 41:38Brené Brown?

  Okay, I, I'm still like shocked about the workout person that came in, saw people working out and jumped into a nine minute story.

• 41:49Adam Grant?

  It was, I, that was, yeah, it was shocking. And he was not reading the room at all.

• 41:55Brené Brown?

  Okay. So I, I've, I've been thinking about it. And I did pull an interesting lit review, which I actually think is helpful to talk about some of the research. Because I didn't really have words for what I did until I read the literature. The way I always think about it in my mind was, I always thought about it, even tried to teach it to my kids with this metaphor. Pull the band, rip the Band-Aid off and leave some relational sticky.

• 42:26Adam Grant?

  Ooh. Tell me more.

• 42:28Brené Brown?

  Yeah, that's how I always thought about it. Like, I'm going to, I'm gonna exit stage left when I'm ready and when I need to. But I am gonna do it in a way that's highly relational. And so had I not read the lit review preparing for this conversation, I wouldn't have understood what I was doing. So this is like a win for research. So, um.

• 42:54Brené Brown?

  I'm, I'm gonna do these things. I didn't know they were, I didn't know they had names. Have you ever had that experience with research? Like, you're like, here's what I do intuitively, and then here's, isn't it wild?

• 43:04Adam Grant?

  Love it.

• 43:05Brené Brown?

  God, I love, I love it. So why do I love it so much?

• 43:09Adam Grant?

  It's, it's both validating and enlightening at the same time.

• 43:12Brené Brown?

  Yes, okay.

• 43:14Adam Grant?

  I feel seen, and also now I can talk about it.

• 43:17Brené Brown?

  Yes, it gives me language. Cause you know, it's not helpful to say, well, just, you gotta rip off the conversation in like a Band-Aid Adam, but just make sure you leave some relational stickiness on that person when you pull it off. Like, you're like, not helpful, right?

• 43:31Adam Grant?

  Not yet.

• 43:32Brené Brown?

  Not, it's not that, no, not yet. Okay, so here, here's, and we're gonna put all of this research in the show notes, so you can go to the actual articles. But here's some interesting things I learned. The polite assumption that they wanna keep talking is almost always wrong, based on the research. Exiting earlier is usually doing the other person a favor. It's not a slight.

• 43:56Adam Grant?

  I love framing this as pro-social.

• 43:59Brené Brown?

  Yes, I, it was a landmark study of 932 conversations.

• 44:03Adam Grant?

  Oh, wait, is this Master Yanni and Gilbert?

• 44:06Brené Brown?

  Yeah, yes, it is.

• 44:07Adam Grant?

  Yes.

• 44:09Brené Brown?

  Okay, so, so, God, you're so wild that you do that. Like, God, in this last season of my life, let me have the ability to recall the research like Adam Grant.

• 44:20Adam Grant?

  You don't want it.

• 44:20Brené Brown?

  Amen. Okay.

• 44:21Adam Grant?

  It's a curse.

• 44:22Brené Brown?

  I do want it. Okay, it isn't. Okay.

• 44:24Adam Grant?

  I wanna, I wanna talk about some of the findings of that research, actually. Cause I, I think they're, they're very relevant here. But no, I wanna hear the rest of what you found first.

• 44:32Brené Brown?

  Okay, this is, this is what I thought was interesting. This is how you, something that I just kind of do intuitively, I guess. But it actually breaks it down. A typical, a typical closing has

• 44:47Brené Brown?

  Well, one thing to say is they are collaboratively negotiated, not unilaterally announced. So I want you to sit with that for a second. Yes, it's so good. That a conversation end or graceful exit is collaboratively negotiated, not unilaterally announced.

• 45:10Brené Brown?

  And what helps that is a four-part sequence. One, a pre-closing token, which is, and this is across, across culture. Okay, well, oops, time's up. Or, oh, some kind of, oh, great catch-up, I'll send that link. Some kind of pre-closing token is really helpful, followed by an arrangement or summary. So, okay, or well, number one.

• 45:42Brené Brown?

  I'll follow up on that, it was so good to see you. That's number two. Number three, terminal exchange, take care, you two, have a great conference. And then, four, a farewell, which is, bye-bye. So, one, tell you a funny story about one. One, okay or well, this is your closing token. Two, an arrangement or summary, great catching up, I'll send that link, good to see you. Some kind of summary. Three, a terminal exchange, take care, you two. Four, a farewell or bye. And then this researcher writes, skipping straight to bye feels rude precisely because it omits the pre-closing collaboration.

• 46:24Adam Grant?

  Yep. Yep, where, okay, this makes a ton of sense, where you're signaling that it's time for the conversation to end before you've actually said it out loud.

• 46:32Brené Brown?

  Do you know, in another set of research, the signaling is so strong with your body, kind of like angling toward the exit area moving, that in this other study that I read, when patients see physicians start to do the signaling of a close,

• 46:54Brené Brown?

  that's when they're most likely to say, oh, I've got a couple of last-minute questions, I've got just a couple more questions. Because they can see the collaborative dance start to happen.

• 47:02Adam Grant?

  Yeah, time's running out, I better, I better spill.

• 47:08Brené Brown?

  Okay.

• 47:10Brené Brown?

  This is why, this is Brown and Levinson's politeness theory. Do you know this work?

• 47:15Adam Grant?

  A little bit, not well.

• 47:17Brené Brown?

  Okay. Frames leaving a conversation as a face threatening act. It can imply the partner is boring or unimportant, or that you're imposing a constraint. So this four steps really helps collaboratively in something. I just do it intuitively. So I will say, oh, shoot. It was so good to see you. I've got to run. Can't wait to catch up again.

• 47:48Adam Grant?

  Much harder when you're in the same captive location.

• 47:51Brené Brown?

  So I was thinking about the conference where we both were. Even if I've got to run from one huddle of people talking, or just one other person to another one on one that is literally 10 feet away, I will still do this. Oh, shoot, I just saw so and so. I promised them I'd give them some information. It was so good to catch up. Glad we get to be at the conference together. I'll see you soon. Tell me about these four steps for you.

• 48:16Adam Grant?

  Oh, I like, I like them a lot. I think in, in, actually, to go back to the Gottmans, in Gottman language, you're making a bid that...

• 48:24Brené Brown?

  You're making a bed.

• 48:25Adam Grant?

  Oh, like, here's a bid. Like, I'm sending you a message that I would love to collaborate in wrapping up this conversation. And unless you're oblivious, or from a different culture, or neurodivergent, you're going to pick up that signal and start collaborating to, to close it out, because it would be very awkward to track me back into it as I'm trying to leave.

• 48:47Brené Brown?

  I mean, I think that's right.

• 48:48Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I like that a lot.

• 48:49Brené Brown?

  And I think your list of caveats is also big. Important.

• 48:53Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I think they're, I mean, a lot, I think a lot of these situations may, I think the caveats might capture some of the situations where it's, it's hard, because you initiate the collaboration and the other person denies the bid, as opposed to accepting it. What do I do? Should I just be more direct? I don't want to hurt their feelings.

• 49:10Brené Brown?

  Yes.

• 49:14Brené Brown?

  I think that's when I do the soft hand on the forearm. I'm so sorry. I'm so glad you're here. I want to catch up later. I've got to run. It's so good to see you. That's my, what I talk about when rip it off, but leave the relational sticky.

• 49:29Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 49:30Brené Brown?

  One of the things I've been thinking about from a work perspective in the work that I do with leaders is this is why it's so difficult for transactional leaders to lead real transformation. They don't leave behind any relational residue, even when they have to cut things short.

• 49:46Adam Grant?

  Exactly right. And so it feels abrupt and impersonal and just instrumental, task focused.

• 49:55Brené Brown?

  Yeah, I got what I need. I'm leaving now.

• 49:57Adam Grant?

  Yep.

• 49:58Brené Brown?

  So there's no collaborative closing.

• 49:59Adam Grant?

  It's an end for me.

• 50:01Brené Brown?

  I mean, that's exactly right. One thing that I highlighted in this little lit review that I did, I want you to diagnose this sentence for me. Are you ready?

• 50:10Adam Grant?

  Ready.

• 50:11Brené Brown?

  This is, again, this is part of how to, this is my how to exit a conversation gracefully lit review. For introverts specifically. The literature suggests the discomfort that drives early exit is not a social deficit. It surfaces a coordination signal the other person was likely also feeling, but suppressing.

• 50:33Adam Grant?

  Okay, so.

• 50:37Brené Brown?

  Do you want to read it again?

• 50:38Adam Grant?

  No, I'm just, I'm just thinking, I'm actually, I'm connecting it to the Mastroianni and Gilbert paper.

• 50:46Brené Brown?

  For sure.

• 50:47Adam Grant?

  Okay, so that, that study of nearly a thousand conversations. The, the thing I remember so vividly from it is that of all those conversations, only 2% ended when both people wanted them to.

• 51:02Brené Brown?

  That's right.

• 51:03Adam Grant?

  So 98% of the time, at least one person is not happy with how long the conversation went. And I think their takeaway, which is resonant for introverts, is it's better to leave too soon than too late. Leave people wanting more, not less.

• 51:20Brené Brown?

  I think that's true. I like, in this research, Mastro, Mastroianni? Is that how we're pronouncing it?

• 51:29Adam Grant?

  I think it's Mastroianni.

• 51:31Brené Brown?

  Mastroianni, okay.

• 51:34Brené Brown?

  The authors frame ending a conversation actually as a coordination problem. The conflict is in coordinating the end, not in wanting to end.

• 51:46Adam Grant?

  Right, yes.

• 51:47Brené Brown?

  Which is what you're saying.

• 51:48Adam Grant?

  Yes, exactly. And, and the coordination is tricky in part because our feelings change during the conversation.

• 51:57Brené Brown?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Adam Grant?

  How often have you been in a conversation where the first few minutes you thought, okay, we didn't click, forget it. And then a few minutes later, you're really into it?

• 52:07Brené Brown?

  Many.

• 52:08Adam Grant?

  Yeah. So there's the dance, the dance of leaving is happening at the same time sometimes as the dance of, wait, I actually want to stay. You know what drives me crazy?

• 52:21Brené Brown?

  What?

• 52:22Adam Grant?

  When somebody says, sometimes people end meetings early and they say, I'm going to give you your time back.

• 52:31Brené Brown?

  I hear that all the time, every day.

• 52:33Adam Grant?

  One of my biggest pet peeves. You don't own my time. You can't give it to me. Like, this is, this is a coordinated decision. I chose to meet with you. If I, if I want my time back, I will claim it by ending the meeting. Or we should decide together.

• 52:48Brené Brown?

  I've never thought about it that way. It does assume ownership of your time.

• 52:54Adam Grant?

  It does. And there's a little, it smacks of entitlement to me. Like, here, I'm going to bestow upon you this gift. I have power over you and I am, I am unilaterally declaring that you have freedom, but without that, you'd be trapped with me.

• 53:09Brené Brown?

  What if, what if I said, I would love to get a little bit of my own time back today and hope maybe that's helpful for you. I think we can wrap here.

• 53:18Adam Grant?

  Such a win. You're my hero if you say that in any meeting ever, including right now.

• 53:26Brené Brown?

  Okay. One of the things that my takeaway from thinking about kind of how I do this and then reading this lit review again, which I found very helpful.

• 53:43Brené Brown?

  If you really struggle with a graceful exit,

• 53:51Brené Brown?

  we'll put this research in the, again, again, the show notes. But I would say the shortcut here is warmth and connection and genuine warmth and connection. I think if you have those things, it's easier to leave. If those things are not present, I would rely on the four steps and practice it a little bit. Because I think it's very easy for me with people I genuinely care about to say, even with people that I care about, I'm thinking about some people specifically right now, one or two people in my life who

• 54:27Brené Brown?

  probably I don't share, we probably have different levels of how long we'd like the conversation to go. And mine is much shorter.

• 54:36Adam Grant?

  Chronically.

• 54:38Brené Brown?

  Chronically, I mean habitually, predictably, longer.

• 54:43Adam Grant?

  Do you address that with a person then? As opposed to having to repeatedly find the graceful way to escape?

• 54:51Brené Brown?

  No, I think I'm just graceful in saying, I loved our catch up. I've got to run. It was so good to see you. No. Because, no, because I think to address it chronically would be to get ahead of what they might be bringing up. If they bring up something that's really tough or they really need me for something, I'm happy to extend that time. But I'm, you know, I, the other thing is I'm not, one Lent, many years ago, maybe 15, 18 years ago now, I gave up gossiping for Lent.

• 55:25Adam Grant?

  Wow.

• 55:28Brené Brown?

  And I realized.

• 55:32Brené Brown?

  That I have a few very good friends and then I have a lot of friends where the connection is somewhat counterfeit because what we mostly talk about is shit around other people. We just talk about other people in not a positive way, which is why I gave it up for Lent because it just, it actually, going back to sobriety, this is a clean little tidy thing.

• 55:53Adam Grant?

  To cleanse.

• 55:54Brené Brown?

  It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't work for my program, you know. So the folks that sometimes want more of my attention want to get my hot take on people that I'm not going to share a hot take on. Not that I don't want to, it seems really fun and great and I would probably enjoy it and I'd be very good at being shitty. But I just can't afford it.

• 56:16Adam Grant?

  Yeah, I, I respect that. I think, I wonder, I wonder if you have an exception, which is, there's, well, I, I think about the, the really critical function of, of what's called pro-social gossip.

• 56:30Brené Brown?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 56:31Adam Grant?

  Like, I need to warn you that this person has a pattern of being a selfish taker, watch out. That's different, right?

• 56:37Brené Brown?

  Yeah. That, that's, that is different than all we have in common is to talk shit about some other people.

• 56:45Adam Grant?

  Yeah, that's not cool.

• 56:46Brené Brown?

  Like, if, yeah, if we can't find a way to have an interesting five or 10-minute connection, that doesn't involve being hurtful toward anyone else, then I'm questioning either how hard we're willing to work for it is, or if it's just not there. So I think that's a big one. I have to just end this, that I was telling Ellen and JT and Charlie this weekend that we were going to talk about the, the graceful exit. And I, I asked JT, JT told me the funniest story that he was, he had saw, he had seen a YouTube video about this conversation and the comments, someone wrote, I don't know why I think this is funny, this is probably not going to be funny, but someone wrote, we always know it's time to wrap up in our family when my dad is sitting down and slaps both of his knees and then

• 57:31Brené Brown?

  stands up. And all I thought of is like, well. And really, in my, in my family, whenever my dad would be like, well, I'd be like, oh shit, get, get the, get the casserole pot in your purse, because it's over. This is, this is exit stage brown family.

• 57:50Brené Brown?

  So I thought that was really funny.

• 57:51Adam Grant?

  I love that. It seems like we should all build a simple norm that everybody reads the same way.

• 57:57Brené Brown?

  Oh, I'm gonna go with this one. Well.

• 58:01Adam Grant?

  See ya.

• 58:01Brené Brown?

  It was nice to catch up.

• 58:04Brené Brown?

  All right, this was fun. Before we go, I have to ask, anything that you're watching, listening to, or thinking about that is interesting?

• 58:13Adam Grant?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Brené Brown?

  That I, I.

• 58:15Adam Grant?

  Did you watch Jury Duty?

• 58:17Brené Brown?

  No.

• 58:18Adam Grant?

  Oh, okay. Maybe, I mean, maybe this, maybe this will fail for you because it's too uncomfortable. But it was, it was one of the cleverest reality shows I've ever seen. It's a, it's a show about a bunch of jurors. Only one of them doesn't know that all the rest are actors.

• 58:37Brené Brown?

  What?

• 58:38Adam Grant?

  Yeah. And it's, it was, I thought it was brilliant. And now they have a second season. It's Jury Duty Presents Company Retreat. And it's a similar premise. It's a fake, a fake family company with all actors hires one real person. And Alison and I just watched the first episode, and I think it's very promising.

• 59:00Brené Brown?

  Okay. I, I, okay, I will make you this, I'll make this commitment. I will watch, how many, how many episodes in the season of Jury Duty?

• 59:08Adam Grant?

  I think it was eight, if I remember correctly.

• 59:11Brené Brown?

  Okay.

• 59:12Adam Grant?

  What about you?

• 59:14Brené Brown?

  I'm gonna watch it.

• 59:17Brené Brown?

  Um, what am I watching right now?

• 59:23Brené Brown?

  I'm mostly listening to stuff right now. So, well, I did finish The Madison, which is Taylor Sheridan's kind of new, he's, he's the writer person behind Landman and Yellowstone. I couldn't watch Yellowstone because of the violence. I'm gonna watch Landman. I love Billy Bob Thornton's wild to me, and I like to watch him on screen. But The Madison, I, my sister told me to watch it, and I was like, I don't know. I thought it was the most beautifully observed.

• 1:00:00Brené Brown?

  Television on grief. I felt such a loss and longing. I mean, the way grief is explored in it, I thought was really interesting. And it is beautifully shot in wide open spaces, which is a Taylor Sheridan hallmark. And it involves fly fishing, which I'm obsessed with. I don't, I've never done it, but I, I just think it's so beautiful. Like it's very river runs through it. So I, so I watched the Madison, I thought it was really great. Michelle Pfeiffer was wonderful in it. But I am going to watch the jury duty. I will, is it called the jury duty or jury duty? Jury duty. I will report back.

• 1:00:40Adam Grant?

  I'd rather, I'd rather you watch The Office. Just saying.

• 1:00:45Brené Brown?

  I can't. They're, they're not following any protocol or rules.

• 1:00:50Adam Grant?

  Doing a viewing party. It's happening.

• 1:00:52Brené Brown?

  I'll watch one episode. We, the, the, the folks are going to push up an episode for us to watch together. And be thoughtful, y'all. Don't push up the cringiest because, you know, walk me into the cringe, the baby pool of cringe. And then I'll do the deepen if I can make it.

• 1:01:07Adam Grant?

  And with that, Brene, it's been really delightful talking to you. And I have some TV to watch now, but I look forward to chatting again soon.

• 1:01:15Brené Brown?

  This was so fun. I'll see you soon.

• 1:01:19Brené Brown?

  The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brené Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

• 1:01:30Adam Grant?

  We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award winning shows at podcastvoxmedia.com.

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