1400: Leslie John | The Underrated Power of Oversharing

Dr. Leslie John explains why oversharing is underrated, how opening up builds trust faster than waiting for it, and where candor tips into TMI. Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1400 https://jordanharbinger.com/1400 What We Discuss with Dr. Leslie John: Why waiting to feel trusted before opening up gets things backward — a slightly edgy reveal is a social risk that signals trust, and trust begets trust (a lever CIA recruiters and con artists both know how to pull). How two people in love lost 20 years to the fear of saying the wrong thing, and why we tally the risks of revealing but rarely the cost of silence (the first “I love you” is returned about 80% of the time). What Miss USA’s ravenous pageant answer, an onstage bladder mishap, and a sassy Harvard job interview reveal about the sweet spot between TMI and its overlooked twin, TLI (too little information), and the respect hiding behind the cringe. How to tell genuine, gradually escalating intimacy from love bombing and catfishing, why you need a full competence bank account before making vulnerability withdrawals at work, and why transparency is the safer bet. How to build the revealing muscle with sincere, specific compliments (and less gossip), and why the cure for a disclosure hangover is usually to lean back in and check with the person — not retreat into a catastrophic replay. And much more... And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1344999619?mt=2&ls=1 — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking https://jordanharbinger.com/course — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course https://jordanharbinger.com/course! Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser https://www.jordanharbinger.com/news/ newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom! Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanHarbinger/! This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors https://www.jordanharbinger.com/deals/: The Cybersecurity Tapes: Listen here: thecybersecuritytapes.com https://thecybersecuritytapes.com/AT&T: Get an iPhone 17 Pro for $0: att.com/iphone or visit an AT&T store for details https://att.com/iphoneBetterHelp: 10% off first month: betterhelp.com/jordan https://www.betterhelp.com/jordanHims Weightloss: Get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you: hims.com/harbinger https://www.hims.com/harbingerSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. Our mission is to help you become a better-informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks. From spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional extreme athlete, real-life pirate or hostage negotiator. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Today on the show, you ever tell someone something personal and then spend the whole drive home wishing you could fake your own death? Meanwhile, they're thinking, finally, an actual human I can relate to. Today, Dr. Leslie John joins us to explore why opening up can build the trust we keep waiting to feel, how staying guarded quietly costs us relationships, and where honest connection crosses into oversharing or manipulation. Because there's a sweet spot between being in emotional witness protection program and making everyone at brunch wish you'd signed an NDA. Here we go with Dr. Leslie John. So I was trying to figure out, I was like, okay, I got Dr. Leslie John coming on. We're going to talk about oversharing. What can I overshare right in the beginning? But then that kind of defeats the purpose, right? I don't know. If you're just using it as a

• 2:30Speaker 01

  tool, does that defeat the purpose of doing it? And we'll get more into the tactics later, but I'm curious about that upfront because I was like, oh, God, do I have to involve like genitalia? And by the way, that's not out of left field. We were talking about that pre-show, just so people don't think I'm a pervert. You started it.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Sure, blame me.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  I will. It's my show. I can get away with it.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Well, now that you've primed the pump, I want-

• 2:53Speaker 01

  I have.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  -show me what you got.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Well, we are on video, so I'm going to take that as a figurative. Yeah, I was just thinking like, oh, gosh, I don't know. It's always difficult, right? Because I do overshare a little bit on this show, but I don't get ridiculous with it because like, you have to decorum with it. And this is to your points in the book. You can't just roll in and be like, what's up, everybody? I've got a yeast infection or whatever, right? You have to calibrate the whole thing-

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  -to the audience and like something that's an overshare for somebody that's working in the accounting department that you talk to once a week. It's not an overshare when you're telling your best friend who's like, you didn't tell me this last week when it happened?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  For sure. For sure.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  It's a really more delicate dance than most of us have ever consciously thought about, which is why the book is actually interesting. Because I think, I had a friend of mine recently, I texted her something, I've known her since high school, and she said, oh, I love this. You probably don't know this, or maybe you do, but slightly inappropriate overshares are my love language, is what she said.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I love her.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  I was like, oh, that's so great. And what a fun way to put that, too, because-

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  -for many of us, it's probably our quote-unquote "love language," if we can say that. Because what it kind of says when you overshare, and I want you to piggyback off this, is we're tight enough where I'm trusting you with this, and also I value your opinion on this, or I, it immediately gets rid of all the like, hey, are we like friends? What can we talk about? What level are we at? You're like, you just clear the desk with your hand and you're like, no.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Won't be needing that. Small talk. Get that out of the way.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Mike has barked on me this morning. And you're like, okay, I will raise you. I'll meet you there.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  So piggyback off this a little bit.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Totally. I mean, that's exactly the core thing, which is that oftentimes we kind of wait until we feel comfortable and feel like we can trust someone and then open up. But if we do it in the reverse, where we open up a little bit, a little bit more than we think we should, not STDs and rashes, but yeah, maybe my pet puked on me this morning-

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  -or my baby, whatever. That is what causes others to trust us back. That is what generates trust and rapport. And it's precisely because it's edgy, it's because it's a bit of a social risk that makes others want to trust us. It's because when we share something a bit edgy, yes, we're communicating something, but the act of doing that is also communicating something. The reason that I'm comfortable sharing this edgy thing is because I trust you, right?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  I wouldn't do this if I didn't trust you. And when we're on the receiving end of that, that feels really good, and then we trust them back. So I agree with you. Trust begets trust. Revealing, that's like one of the core ways we can make others trust us.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I think it's important to know, I feel like I'm ruining this too early, but I'm going to go for it anyway. I've done many shows with people who deal with con artists and things like that. And a skilled con artist, one of their tactics is they will come to you and be like, here's this huge problem I'm having in my life. And they're not like, you can help me by wiring me money. They're like, here's this huge problem. I've been done really dirty by, I don't know, some sort of institution or people or people that were supposed to be trustworthy or something like that. And they just kind of let it marinate for a really long time and gradually they build themselves up in your mind as this really amazing person who could not possibly be in the wrong. Then it comes down like, can you lend me money for this particular thing and I'll pay you back when this whole

• 6:17Speaker 01

  thing? And you're like, of course, right? So you give them like your 10 grand-

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  -or whatever. And you're like, I know I've only known her for four months, but surely she's not this much of a psychopath to have made up this huge tragic, right? This is like the story of so many con artists because it works so well.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Totally. You know, you can weaponize this stuff for sure. And I actually have recently been chatting a bunch with a former head honcho guy, technical term, at the CIA. And we were talking about revealing and how opening up increases trust. And he was saying, when they were recruiting assets in the CIA, they're first doing their own intel. They know a lot about that person. And then when they're conversing with the person to suss out whether they might be able to bring them in as an asset, they start the conversation by having something adjacent to what that asset would be interested in. So like, if you know that asset has a child that is struggling in school or something, you could say like,

• 7:16Speaker 02

  oh, a niece of mine just started school, something like this. And you see how they respond. And that gradually builds rapport between you two. And then you can kind of figure out if there's someone who will respond to your social cues and build trust and potentially be trustworthy. I mean, there's just so many, that sounded more positive than like your example was real manipulation.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  The spy craft stuff is so fascinating because it's, can be used in a very evil, manipulative way, but it can also be used in a way to try to kind of read people to your own advantage, which I think is pretty smart.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. I've come across some pretty clumsy espionage attempts, especially from the Eastern Bloc and that it's really super clunky, which is funny because you would think the stuff from your book, the vulnerability, the sharing, the rapport, it's not super difficult to do once you give it to somebody who has like a normal social background, I think.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  And yet, so many people, and I'm going to say this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, especially men, I feel like have a lot of trouble with this. Because guys are like, oh, I don't want to seem too vulnerable. That's not masculine. I want this guy to respect me. And it's kind of like, well, this guy is faking being a super tough guy because he had an abusive childhood. And I think if you went to that angle, you're probably going to end up doing better without trying to whip your you-know-what out onto the table and measure it with this guy who's just going to react poorly because of the way he puts this mask on. So I've come across these really like clunky attempts where they kind of try to relate to the mask the person has as opposed to the person that's underneath, which I find, again, totally just like amateur-level, yellow belt kind of thing.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Do you have an example of the clunky? I have an idea of what you're saying, but examples are really helpful.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  There was one where my friend was going to write a profile on the leader of Belarus, Lukashenko, who's been the president for like 25 or 30 years, whatever. He's going there and he worked for Rolling Stone or still does. He's going to go- Write a profile of the guy and he's dealing with the logistics and he gets this email that's like, "Hi, we know you're coming to Belarus and we want to show you a good time while you're here, before and after your interview. What kind of women do you normally like? Because you never know, you might find love of the forever kind while you're over here."

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  And he's like, dude, look at this. I'm thinking, this is this dumbest, klutziest attempt at what's obviously going to end up as compromat on you. They're asking you what kind of women you like when they could literally Google photos of you with previous girlfriends and find this out immediately. Two, he has a current girlfriend, which either they just didn't care about, or assumed he wouldn't care about, or they could have also looked at photos of online and been like, okay, we can find her and like, turn the volume up to 11 on each of these things. And so that telegraphed their intention. The email sort of communicated, hey, we kind of figure that you're a cheating bastard and/or a total loser who can't get women. So we're gonna provide them for you. Oh, and it's totally, for no reason other than we want you to have a good time and find forever love here. It

• 10:10Speaker 01

  just read like a mail order bride website.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Where the copy was written by people who

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  They're just totally unaware of their target market.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  That's so interesting. So I totally see what you're saying. I had a different reaction to that. My reaction was, even clumsy works pretty well. Because what they're doing is, also men are often simple.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  But it's kind of flattering to have someone who cares enough to think about what you might want, right? Even if it's done in a very clumsy way, it's kind of like how, when people give us gifts, even if it's something that we don't really want, we feel really good. So, not that I'm condoning that type of question or behavior per se, but I actually think that even if you do it clumsily, it still can be very effective.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  I suppose. It must work.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. But it would have worked even better, probably, if they were a little more

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  subtle about it, you would think.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  I'm not a KGB agent. Those guys were obvious. The people who wrote that were actual KGB. And yes, the KGB still exists, but only in Belarus. The way I would have done it, and again, I didn't, I had to think about this for five seconds to come up with what I think is a better plan.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  A better way.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Which is, look at previous women that he's been with, find them and train them on his personality, which is everywhere. He's written a bunch of books and articles. Have them read all of those.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Create a dossier on people, which is what they do best over at the KGB. And then, maybe one of them is like the interpreter for what he's doing while he's there, and the other person is at the check-in desk, or there's a tour guide at a museum. That is a different option. Or like,

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  one of them is the friend of the person who's driving a mer- I'm like, you can really make this less than completely obvious.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  And state-sponsored. Because it also sort of assumes like, oh, this person's never heard of a honey trap before. So let's just make sure that we are as clumsy with this as possible.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  It is amazing, though, still, like, those honey traps, they're so, when I was in my 30s and found myself online dating again, like, I almost fell for one of these things. And it's like, I studied this stuff. I dare say it's like primal instinctual. Like, when someone reveals to us, expresses interest in us, it just feels so good. And it's hard to kind of, in a way, our logical brains turn off. But I also like your, that was a good audition tape for a spy craft job.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  I'm too old. I've already been told I'm too old. It's funny, because I get emails all the time.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  They need old spies, too.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Nah, they want you in, in your mid-30s at the very latest.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  To grow you.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Because they want you to get a full career.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Think about it. They train me now, it's gonna take till I'm 50, and then I'm gonna be out in what, like, a decade or something? So, yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  In a decade, I love it. Your view on time horizon.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Once you're 60, you're like, done.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Well, I think they retire you at that point. Or you end up with some like weird paper pusher job somewhere where you can't use the skills they've spent so many years training you to actually do. Plus, I'm pretty sure there's an element of, hey, do you want to go to an active war zone? And you're like, no thanks, I'm 50. Whereas when you're 31 or 28, you're like, where do I sign? I would love to. How long can I stay?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So, yeah. They're not interested in me at all.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  In your appeal.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  But I get emails all the time, and I used to get recruitment stuff, like, all the time.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Really? Like credible ones?

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, like real ones.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  From what countries? From the US?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  From the US, yeah, yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Being like, hey, here's some materials. Or from people that were, let's say, early guests on the show that were like, hey, you might consider doing a little bit of this too. Because, you know, the stuff you teach on your show, or that you talk about on your show, you'd be shooing for this particular type of program that may or may not exist here. I don't, I mean, that's not an email. That's like somebody telling me, like, you should apply. You know, I had that all through college as well, just because of the foreign language experience.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  I'm so fascinated with spy craft recently. I'm such a weird old person that I call it spy craft, but whatever.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  No, that's what it's called. Tradecraft or spy craft, yeah.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  But when you, I didn't realize this, when you go to an embassy in a different country, 80% of the people there are spies. The person standing your visa there are a spy. It's like widely known, apparently, among spy craft circles, that in embassies, everybody's kind of got a cover job. Isn't that bananas? And then I'm like, there's spy assets everywhere.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Consular people, I don't know, I'd have to think about that. Because usually they're not dealing with the public. Usually the cover story people are like, oh yeah, I'm the agriculture attache. And it's like,

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Agriculture is a big one, yeah. That's like a very spy-y.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yes. It's gotta be somebody who can be kind of gone a lot, and they're like, he's the agriculture guy. I don't know, he's probably on a farm somewhere in the middle of the jungle.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  And it's disarming, yeah, like an agriculture guy, like,

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  He doesn't have weapons.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. And then the other guy, because when I worked at the embassy in Panama, and it was like, the fifth floor was CIA.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Did you really?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The fifth floor was like the CIA guys.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  You probably are a spy.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  That's what people say. But I got a great cover with this podcast, because I talk about it so much, people are like,

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Right. You can't be a spy, yeah.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  One of my friends was like, you'd be the worst.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  You'd be the worst spy. And I brought that up to John Mendez, who was a legendary CIA agent from the 80s in Moscow, and was like chief of disguise for a long time. And she's like, no, that's perfect.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Oh, disguise.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Because some people who are like so dead on,

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  It's like, well, that guy can't be, because his cover would be absolutely shit.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  And she's like, that also works. It's also, like, it's turned up so high, like,

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Daniel Craig is a spy? He plays Bond. That's ridiculous. Get out of here.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I'm not comparing myself to Daniel Craig. I'm the Daniel Craig of nerdy-ass podcasts. How's that?

• 15:27Speaker 02

  I love it. I'm all in.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  So, the start of the book, take us to the airport at the start of the book. You have John and Grace.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  And bear in mind, people have not read this yet, because they're gonna rush out and buy it, but only after they hear us talking.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  How did two people who loved each other lose two decades by trying not to say the wrong thing?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  I know, it's brutal. So, John and Grace, they were in their 20s, and they had fallen in love. And the only rub was that he lived in Australia, and she was American, and he was only here for an exchange. They really felt super strongly towards each other, but at the time, neither of them really had the courage to express that. And so, they just kind of went off their own ways and lived their lives, and got married to other people, and had children. But then, they kind of serendipitously, after 20 years apart, had another phone call, had another go at it, and said all the things that they wished they had said in their 20s. They both then had been divorced, and so now they're together.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Like, I interviewed them for the book, and they just exude love, as cheesy as that is to say. And it's interesting, listening to them. I was asking, like, but why didn't you say the thing when you were in your 20s? And they're like, you know, it's, one is even understanding yourself, there's an emotional literacy piece, which I also encountered writing the book, I learned about myself, which some of the issue of not opening up is actually not really understanding how you feel. Like, I realized I didn't even have the emotional understanding of myself. But the other piece they talked about, which I think is the really, really big one, which is this fear of rejection, and fear of if I say too much, fear of if it's unrequited, this fear of TMI, this fear of being jilted

• 17:12Speaker 02

  or saying the wrong thing, which is super valid. But that's not a very even-handed way of thinking about this, right? This question, do I tell this person I love them? For sure there's risks of revealing, right? We go, our mind immediately goes there. But we stop there. Like, I'm a, speaking of nerds, I'm a decision scientist. I study, probably ad nauseam, how people make decisions. And the way we make these decisions of whether to reveal or not, they're super imbalanced. To the extent we think about them at all, we just think of the risks of revealing. We don't think about, what are the, okay, risks of revealing, you could get spurned, whatever. A benefit of revealing? Well, yeah, you could get spurned, but it could be requited.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  And even if they nag you, at least you'll know. And then what are some risks of not saying the thing? And then you get really meaty, right? If you think of that, you think, oh, geez, well, it's a missed connection, right? Remember on, uh, what was it Craigslist? The missed connections page of Craigslist where people would put like, I saw you and I didn't have the courage to say anything, right? So you have this ache that lasted for years, for 20 years with them. And they were super lucky that they got a second chance at it. But when you think about it, these decisions in a more fulsome way like this, you're like, okay, well, yeah, that would suck in the moment if they didn't requite my feelings. But think about the other, the other sides of this. And when, if you think about that, the long game and a fulsome way of thinking of the decision,

• 18:39Speaker 02

  you often will make a different decision and you often will end up revealing. That's not always the right answer, for sure. There's very good reasons to hold back in many occasions.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So this particular story is, I don't know, heartbreaking is not quite it because they ended up together.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  But she's kind of like, should I come visit you or whatever? And he's like, well, I don't know, whatever you want, bro.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, I'm simplifying, obviously.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  That's pretty much right. Yeah, she gets on the phone, so she has her ticket bought to go visit him in Australia. She's got her ticket bought and she basically wants him to say, I want you and I love you. But she's too scared to say that that's what she wants him to say. And we get caught in this in our own relationships, right? This mind reading. You don't share what you want or need because you think that they should just know. And then when they don't read your mind and when he doesn't happen to say the thing, you're like, oh, he must not love me, right? Meanwhile, on his side of things, again, with the benefit of hindsight now, because I could interview them, he said, you know, I had such powerful feelings. I didn't really understand how I felt and I was nervous about coming on too strong if I expressed my love for you, right?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  And so you see, you get these missed connections because we're really not communicating at the level we should be.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And then she didn't get on the plane and he showed up to the airport to try to pick her up because he thought she was on the plane.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Oof.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Right?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Brutal.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  And then he didn't go like, hey, you didn't show up. I probably should have said, they're continually blowing it.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Repeatedly. Because she could have probably gotten a ticket credit or like saved up and gotten another one, but no.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  I mean, geez, this is just such, it's a mess.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Oh, it is such a mess. It's such a relatable mess, though, right?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I suppose so. I suppose so. So what pact do they make when they were finally together, I don't know, 20 years later?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  So the pact they made is basically we're always going to share our feelings with each other. And they live that. I was talking to Grace and John was in the other room and he comes over and we're all chatting and they, they're just very tight and we're just always going to be honest with each other. And it's easier said than done, a lot of the times, of course. But that's why I think this idea of like opening up, sharing our feelings more, it really is a practice and it's a skill and you've got to like do it and practice and keep at it to get good at it in a way.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a tough box to open, I think, for a lot of people. I mean, I guess, speaking as a guy, it's tough, right? Because it's easier for us to say, what? He was worried about what happens if he doesn't share? This exact same thing. This is the worst case scenario and he basically got that.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  And he could have been like, I love you and I want you. And she could have been like, oh, my God, you're coming on way too strong. I'm not coming. Well, okay, but that's already what, what happened. So I don't know. I'm kind of thinking like, you literally opted for the worst case scenario and you had a chance to fix it and then still didn't.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  I know. And it's, it's ironic too, right? Because in the process of trying to say the right thing, they said nothing at all. And then the worst happened essentially, right? It's like this self fulfilling prophecy in a way. And you know, because again, I'm a huge nerd. I was curious, well, if you take a random sample of the US population and you just ask people, which I did, have you ever been the first to say I love you to someone? And I was curious, in the US, people who have been the first to say I love you to someone, what is the chance? Like, what percent of the time is it requited? Because my prior going in, maybe I'm just like really pessimistic or bad at dating. I would say it's requited like 40% of the time. By that, I mean like, right? Like 40% of the time, the person says, I love you.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  You'll get a positive response.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  But you know what that, do you want to guess or?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  It's gotta be like 90% of the time.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I set, you're welcome. I set you up at my expense to get it fairly right. It's 80%.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  80%, okay. I figure people wait so long that it's like, finally, of course I love you, you moron.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Been dating for three years.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  That's a, I think, important thing to keep in mind. But I do think the like masculinity, it's especially complex for men, right? I have two little boys and one of the things that really struck me in the research I did for the book was this finding, it's a finding where they studied basically expressivity in children. So how much emotion or feelings do kids let out on their face versus like hold in?

• 22:44Speaker 01

  I just read about this the other day, not in your book, actually. And it was like, young boys stop showing their facial emotions when they're like four or five.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Or six or something like that, yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's so depressing, but rings true, right?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  And my children's age is they're four and six. And then when I learned that, that there's this strong gender difference that's that young, on top of that, the children who were holding it in, so the children who were, who were not expressive on their faces were more stressed.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That makes way more sense. Yeah, galvanic skin response, that's what they put a, when you're doing a lie detector, they hook it up and it measures like sweat or something, right?

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Exactly. So the ones that kept it in had sweaty palms and boys were more likely to keep it in. So just, it's physiologically stressful to do this. Yeah, and that children from such a young age, we program males to be like, not show your emotions or whatever. It's tricky. We ran a study where in the workplace, because in the workplace, I think that's a really, really hard context to open up. It feels more risky. It's more complex, these decisions of what to share and what not to share. And we found that even in those settings, even possibly even, especially with male leaders, if a male leader says to their team, hey, I'm working on my time management skills, says something that they're working on, like a weakness, right? They're not saying, I have a rash.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  They're, right, it's or, you know, they're, they're saying something a little bit deeper than what you would expect, not a lot deep, just a little.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  And a little bit of weakness or vulnerability, though I don't like that word. And then we measured like, how motivated are other people to work for them? They're way more motivated to work for that dude than the one that's just like, everything is awesome.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. That reminds me of a joke that I think you'll like, that we're going to have to bleep part of on the show here.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  So the guy's doing the job interview, right? And they're like, what's one of your weaknesses? And the guy goes, I'm just too honest. And the interviewer laughs to himself and goes, well, John, I, I don't think that's a weakness. And John goes, well, I don't give a what you think.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  That is so good. That's really funny. I love it.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Like, you're hired.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, come on in.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, in my interview for Harvard, I inadvertently sassed them, made fun of a guy's weight, essentially.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because when I'm nervous, I get blurtatious and I just blurted this thing out that totally insulted his looks and then I got the job. And it wasn't despite what I said. It's partly because literally when they called me to tell me I got the job, they said, when you sassed us like that, we thought you'll fit right in.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Really? Oh, my gosh.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  So like.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Lucky you.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Sometimes showing some of yourself is a good thing.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Nothing brings people together like a deeply personal story, especially when it ends with, anyway, can you wire me 10 grand? Speaking of people who would like your money, here are our sponsors. We'll be right back.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  This episode is sponsored in part by Dell and AMD. Cybersecurity threats keep evolving, but is your business prepared for what comes next? October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an opportunity to look beyond day to day security operations and ask bigger questions about how your organization protects its data, its infrastructure and its ability to keep doing business. The Cybersecurity Tapes brings these questions to life, blending fictional cyber attacks with practical perspectives from real experts to make complex security challenges easier to understand. As AI moves from models to autonomous agents, securing it requires careful consideration from the start. Explore how securing AI agents, sovereign AI and AI governance fit into that effort and how AI itself can help strengthen cybersecurity.

• 26:24Speaker 01

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• 27:08Speaker 01

  This episode is sponsored in part by AT&T. It's pretty incredible that our friends and family can live all over the world and we can still be part of each other's everyday lives. The grandparents can see the kids show off something they learned. A friend miles away can send a photo that makes you laugh. We're fortunate that staying close doesn't have to mean living close. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0.00 with iPhone Trade-In, any condition. It has the most advanced iPhone camera ever, a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long lasting connection. This fall, whether you're making holiday plans or calling just to catch up, make a little time for the people who matter. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone in any condition and get the new iPhone 18 Pro at AT&T. Learn how a deal this good can keep the good times going. AT&T, connecting changes everything.

• 27:51Speaker 01

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• 28:23Speaker 01

  Okay, I can relate to this a little bit. When I was interviewing for law firms, I had a really, I did not fit in at this British law firm that I originally got my job at. It was so uptight. There was all these social rules I didn't quite understand, like about what school people went to in London and like if you didn't-

• 28:37Speaker 02

  And the accents, the hierarchy of the poshness. Oh, yeah. The social hierarchy stuff there is, it's intense, isn't it?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I've talked about this on the show a million times, but I'll keep it short. I mean, I got, I got not reprimanded or in trouble, but I remember somebody my own age sort of dressed me down a little bit for using the word yo in a work chat that was like private.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  I was like, yeah, it means hello. And she's like, oh, I know what it means, but this is a work conversation. And I was like, okay.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  You had-

• 29:02Speaker 02

  Take the rot out of your bum.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Yes. And then the other example was, I was in the elevator going home on a Friday and a partner said, oh, what are your plans for the weekend? And I told him and I said, how about you? And he said, oh, I'm going to my fishing cabin. And then on Monday, they were like, did you ask Mr. Crawford what his weekend plans were? That man has worked very hard to get where he is. And I was like, yeah, he asked me first. This is a stupid rule and you are all idiots.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  So I didn't say that. I felt like saying that.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  But I was like, this is beyond pretentious ridiculousness. I'm not going to put up with this. Like, I'm just not gonna do it.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  And so when I went to New York, I told the guys at the new law firm, that was all these Brooklyn Italian and Jewish guys, I just said, I don't like it there. It's pretentious. If you don't use big words, they look down on you. They deliberately use big words and stuff like that. And not that I don't understand the words, but it's like, you can talk like a normal person. And they were like, oh, man, I fucking hate that. Oh, God, it drives me fucking crazy. And I was like, these are my people.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Completely, yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  The guy was throwing the football around in the office during the interview, like a little mini football, just for fun and fidgeting. And I was like, these are normal people.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  The pretense is gone. It just felt so much more relaxed. And I was like, do I want to spend the next few years worrying about like whether I have the right buttons on my blazer done correctly?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Or I'm talking too informally to a guy in the elevator who's talking to me and for, I don't want to have to think about this. This job is hard enough. I get it. It's like, when you sassed us, we thought this person will fit right in. Cause if you add someone to your group and they are, they're too closed off, everyone else is like, oh, I guess we can't-

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Sucks.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  -talk freely anymore.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Well, this sucks.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  And I think it's another one of these things that, I think there's people abide by these sometimes ridiculous norms of being super private and boundaried or whatever. And they're trying to signal that they're competent and high status, but it's ironic because sometimes if you just break the norm, if you're just like, oh, I'm exhausted or whatever, you just don't have a moment of realness, that actually is status building. Cause you're like showing that you're confident. You're so confident that you can be real, right?

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yes. There's something about, even at the British law firm, there was an American partner. The American partners were way more chill, right? And we were out doing something and he was on a very serious, urgent call that was like really not going well. And we were walking and I could tell he was super stressed out. And he goes, Bill, Bill, hold on a second. And he puts the phone to his chest. He looks at me and he goes, damn. And looks over at this lady who was like really done up and looking stunning. And then he goes, Bill, yeah, I'm still with you. I'm still with you. And I was just like, oh, this guy is like breaking it.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  This guy gets it, right? He looked at me and I was freaking out. I was like, what's happening? Are we all getting fired? What's going on?

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  It was a client thing. It didn't matter. But his subconscious was like, I need to reassure this kid-

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  -that we're fine. So he just said something goofy and I was like, I like this guy, right? Like, I would have worked for that guy.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  It's so disarming, isn't it?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  It is, yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Show your humanity. I think it's maybe more important now than ever before. Like, we've come out of COVID and now we've got, I don't know, the robot class is gonna take over or something.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  I don't know. On my dark days, I feel like we might become their service class. I don't know. I'm always polite to GPT, just in case.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Oh, God, I'm not. I should probably start doing that.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  If you like lean in, I hate that term, but be human. I think we're craving it.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think, look, this story ends beautifully. A lot of our anecdotes are great and very neat, but plenty of people reveal their feelings to somebody-

• 32:18Speaker 02

  And it goes bad.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  And they get fricking humiliated, they get rejected, it affects their life. So are we-

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  -just showing winning lottery tickets and we're like, the general rule is do all these things and if it doesn't work out for you, it's your own fault or something. I know, I don't want to do that.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, totally. I love that. Yeah, I mean, you can get burned really badly.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  You say the wrong thing, you just say you have ADHD to your boss, you get fired, right? Like, that stuff happens. So I think that, well, again and again, what I've encountered in research, in working with people, is we massively overweight those risks. They are real and they happen, but we think that they're more likely to happen than they actually are. The other thing too is, we often treat these things, do I say the thing or not, as like this one-shot thing, that it's either lose or win, right? And one-shot, and that feels very high stakes. But if instead, you make some edgy joke at work that maybe you felt like it was a little

• 33:17Speaker 02

  too edgy, you said it and you, people kind of cringed and you worry, oh no, that's like, is it career suicide? I've been there. And it could be that that was TMI in the moment, but instead of beating up on ourselves and being like, that's the it, I shouldn't have done that. If you think about it at a broader perspective, okay, there was a downside, but also, might there be an upside? People respect you more when you're a little bit unguarded, right? I've had situations like this, which I, as you know, I talk about in the book, where I maybe made an edgy joke and people cringed and that sucked. But looking back at the episode, I'm like, well, two of the guys there became some of my closest mentors. And it's partly because I was human and real.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  And so, yes, there are real risks, but I think it's really, really important to contextualize those risks with the rewards that we get too. And oftentimes, the tricky thing is that like, those risks, the downsides are often super visceral and immediate, right? You say something off color and you see people's like making like the grossest pay, like you see people's faces. And you just conclude, that was a mistake. You don't see that they maybe partly admire your guts too, that maybe when they need advice, they're gonna tell you, maybe they have important intel on something in the company, maybe they'll confide in you. You don't like those. So it's kind of what I call, lots of people call hostile learning environment, right?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  So for the one thing, the one kind of mistake, oversharing, we beat ourselves up. But undersharing, when we don't say something that we should, we don't see the trust that never blossomed, the colleagues that, the friendships that never came to fruition, right? We don't see those things that don't happen. Even talking about it is confusing.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Right? You don't notice the dog that doesn't bark.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  I suppose in John and Grace's case, even the painful answer that they were both fearing would have been better than 20 years spent-

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Completely.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  -regretting or reinterpreting ambiguity or whatever it is.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Completely.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  The title of the book, Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing. Links in show notes, yada, yada. Thanks for supporting the show. The title kind of sounds like an argument for blurring out everything. So what exactly are you defending when you call oversharing underrated? And what are we not defending? Because to your point, I was the person people disclosed to when I was growing up. A girl named Courtney Patton in first grade, one day we were just coloring or whatever. And she's like, my parents are getting divorced. And I was like, okay, I don't know what to do with that. But that was so weird, because it's not like she was my best friend or anything. She sat next to me, but-

• 35:43Speaker 02

  I mean, you're still talking about it, so.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  Well, it happened a lot to me as a kid. People just tell me things, all the time.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  I wonder why.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  I don't know. I was a little bit older in elementary school, because I did kindergarten twice, which now is very normal for boys. And I needed to do it, because I was all over the place.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Our kid just started kindergarten yesterday and we held him back a year.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Boys need this. My daughter won't need it.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Completely. They're different animals, yeah.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  My son could have done a third year of kindergarten. Probably. Sorry, Jayden.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  We're all kindergartners at heart.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Yes. But my only explanation, and I told my mom about this when I was younger too, she's like, well, you're a little bit older and maybe you're a good listener. And I was like, I'm not though. I'm not a great listener, as a kid, anyway. I don't know, it just happened a lot. I think probably because I didn't start laughing at people or make fun of them, which was a default reaction when kids are uncomfortable.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  I would just ask questions, which is, I guess, what I do for a living.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  I wonder what, I mean, sorry, I keep asking you questions, because I'm curious.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  That's fine.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  How did you become like, that's so unusual. People don't ask nearly enough questions. It's really amazing. You go to like any kind of reception, I kind of, as a mean, sassy person, I keep track of how many questions I've asked people, how many they asked me. People don't ask questions. So the fact that you, as a child even, it came so naturally to you is interesting.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  I guess because I was curious, right? So my parents did not get divorced and I was like, so are you moving? And she was like, yes, I think so. And I was like, oh, that sucks. So are you gonna switch classes? Yeah, we're gonna go somewhere, I'm gonna go to Ohio, I don't know, whatever it was. And I was just like, oh, that's not good. I remember also, because I had a crush on her, she was so cute. And so I was disappointed by that. That's probably why I remember it 40 years later. But there was a lot of little things like this. Guys would tell me stuff, mostly girls would tell me stuff. And I don't really know why. I guess because they could share with other girls, but they didn't share with boys and they wanted to give it a shot? I don't, I don't really understand. Guys also told me things, but again, little boys, they share way less. And some of it's because they're not as emotionally aware and some of it is probably because they're worried about getting made fun of for doing it.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  But adults also have this, right? This disclosure hangover. So tell me about that, because that's also a real thing.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. It's that gut-wrenching, oh my God, the post-conversational replay of, it's like I poured gasoline all over my body in lit a match, right? You're just like, no, I didn't do that.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  But why are we mortified when the other person was pleased to be trusted in the first place? Why do we not have the same reaction?

• 38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It's such a mistake. It's a fundamental mistake. I think there's a lot of things at play. One is, we're very egocentric and we just, we ruminate about having maybe crossed the line. Part of it is because I think as society, we treat TMI as the greatest social sin, right? We don't even have a word, I made it up, TLI. We didn't even have a word until I came along. Too little information, right?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  TLI.

• 38:25Speaker 02

  We fear, fear, fear it. And we're so obsessed with it that we don't even see that, oh, in Courtney's head, like she's super grateful that you asked prying questions or whatever, right?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I hate hearing TMI when anyone's talking. Of course, when I'm talking, I hate it. But I hate it when other people are talking because I feel like it's one of those weird conversational shutdown things that means like one person's mildly uncomfortable because of their own shit and they want everyone else to sort of do gymnastics and reorganize the conversation.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  I know.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  So that they don't feel like they have to be vulnerable. It's like, dude, your job now is to shut up and not do anything if you're uncomfortable. Or like, you can leave.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  This is a you issue.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh, my God.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Don't rain on our parade.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  I hate that.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  And it goes against the kind of grain of the yes and spirit of a conversation, of rolling with it, right? Of improv.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  You can't say no, you can't shut down in improv. And you're right, TMI has that quality of, it's also like judgy.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  That's what it is. Imagine if you said what it actually means. I don't like what everyone's doing and talking about right now because it's making me feel icky. I want everyone else to rearrange what they're doing so that I can talk about something that is interesting or comfortable for me. And it's kind of like, who invited this guy?

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Right. They're no fun.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  No fun. And also, I think a lot of people do it and they don't even mean it. They're just like, I have, I'm gonna chime in and embarrass this person or something.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  I'm gonna call out that this is going too deep and it's a little weird. And it's like, nope, you could just let this happen and that would be good for everybody. I'm in this travel group that's all entrepreneurs and it's deliberately TMI, right?

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Oh, amazing.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  And you'll be seated with people and there's conversation cards. You can use them or not. And you flip it over and it's like, what's something that you regret deeply? It's not like, tell me your favorite color. It's, and so someone will just start telling a story about losing a child or something. And it's like, you can't even finish your appetizers. And so TMI is like, not a thing, right? You can just be hiking and somebody will just be like, so yeah, my wife hasn't talked to me for a week and I don't, you know, or whatever. And you're like, oh, my God. And so you really talk about real stuff. Any place where there's such thing as TMI is a place I don't necessarily want to be. Does that make sense? Like, it's a waste of time to be in that environment.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  It totally makes sense. At the same time, though, I think I also maybe picked up on in you, and I certainly felt when the questions of what's your biggest regret? I think that when we think about depth of opening up, like, are, we think vulnerability, what's your biggest regret? But I think of fun, fun anecdotes. Like, this morning, I was wiping two boys' poopy bums at the same time.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  The fun, like weird.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  That's the double fist thing I can get behind at age 47.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Wet wipes.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  That's such a runway. Like, you can do so much with that.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Whereas, it's interesting, those cards, I love those cards. We have a set that we use, the kids' version, which are wonderful. And then I bought for our, what was it, 7th anniversary this year? I bought a couples' card deck. And all of the questions were like that. They were so serious.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  And I don't want to do that. So we did the kids' cards. So there's a sweet spot still to be had. And you want to kind of know in friendships that that person, the person you're in a friendship with is always there for you, that you can say, hey, my wife hasn't, we haven't had sex in a while, like, right? What, like, you want to be able to have those important things, but you don't want to feel like it's kind of forced.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Vulnerability, or that it always has to be deep.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. The cards are interesting and a good recommendation. I have the kid cards, the elderly, older person cards, and I interview my parents using this pocket camera. So when they're sitting there on their phones, watching Fox News and CNN at max volume in the middle of the living room, I'm like, can you put that away?

• 42:00Speaker 02

  With subtitles, too.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yes. And I'm like, can you, anything but that? And then it's like, I want your opinion on what it was like in the 50s with your friends.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  I love it. So good.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  And so I have those, I have the kid cards. And then unfortunately, we have these cards that are called, they say intimacy cards, which is really misleading and sounds sexual and total, they're not.

• 42:17Speaker 02

  It is not as fun as it's like.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  But intimacy sounds like serious sex, anyway.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yes. It sounds sexual and way too serious. And then half the cards are like, not something you want to deal with in the moment. So we end up bringing these to a restaurant and like hiding the box and then skipping the ones that are like, if you had to redo something last, and I'm like, I don't want to revisit something I don't like. It's date night. What the hell is this? I want to.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  So you skip to the ones like, talk about a trip that you're excited about, right? So it's.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Those are really, really fun and I recommend these to people. We'll link to these cards in the show notes because I think they're useful. But you're right, I do find myself being like, picking a card and being like, hell no, not right now, next.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Right. Exactly. And then you, you often get into deep spots with the kind of lighter prompts, which is fun, too. When you said your travel group, I just thought of one of my, a dear friend of mine is a, owns a travel company. And he was telling me, he's like, you know, you learn a lot of intimate things about people.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  He was booking a flight for one of his married clients. And he's like, the name is, and it was a different woman.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  And so he's like, one bed, one room. And so he was recounting to me, my friend, how he was in a non-judgmental way trying to arrange this client's travel as he went off with another woman.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So is your assistant going to be sharing a room with you? And do they need a separate bed for your assistant?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  I know. Wink, wink.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Got it. And the invoice is going to your office this time, just to double check.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  Correct? Yeah.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  So.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  So good.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Yikes.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  And bad.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  But hey, look.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  But people are interesting and all kinds of things work.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  If you're replaying something embarrassing you said, remember, the other person has their own life. You're probably a supporting character. In your anxiety, though, you've somehow secured financing for a trilogy. Back after this.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. If you've thought about trying therapy with our long-term partner, BetterHelp, insurance options may now be available nationwide with an average copay for eligible members of just $23 per session. World Mental Health Day is October 10th, but apparently nobody told your brain. Stress does not consult your calendar, burnout never sends a meeting invite, and that problem at work can suddenly convene a full board meeting in your head at about 11:47 PM. You also don't need a dramatic turning point to talk with a therapist. Therapy can be a place to examine the smaller things occupying a suspicious amount of mental real estate. A recurring relationship pattern, a decision you keep circling, or that persistent feeling that something is just off. If you've been waiting to start therapy, BetterHelp works with more than 125 health

• 44:51Speaker 01

  plan networks and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. Don't have insurance or live outside the US? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com/Jordan to explore your payment options. That's better H E L P dot com slash Jordan. This episode is also sponsored by Hims Weight Loss. You know that goal weight in your head, the one you keep saying you'll tackle when life calms down? Yeah, life doesn't seem to get that memo. Weight Loss by Hims offers access to FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and Penn Plus support along the way. With Wegovy, you can lose up to 20% of your body weight. People lost an average of 14% at 64 weeks in a clinical trial alongside diet and exercise. Get started with an online consultation at hims.com.

• 45:35Speaker 01

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• 46:16Speaker 01

  If you liked this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do. Take a moment, support the sponsors. They're all searchable and clickable on our brand new, recently revamped Deals page at jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find a code, email me, [email protected]. We're happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Dr. Leslie John.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Any sort of sharing makes you relatable. And I think, I get emails to that effect on the show. I don't overshare on purpose, or at least I didn't when I was younger. I just, I find holding things in is annoying and not as fun as sharing them. But you have this Miss Universe pageant example that actually illustrates this really well.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So I love beauty pageants. I know that may not be a PC thing to say, but I just think they're so fascinating and I love the spectacle of it. So there was this Miss Universe, 1997 or something. I'm sure I watched it when I was kid because I used to watch it every year. And it came down to the final three. Miss Uni, Miss USA was one of the final three. And when it comes down to the final three, for those of us who maybe don't have the vice of loving beauty pageants like me, when you get down to the final three, it's the question, the final question. So you're asked one typically tricky question in front of thousands of people, live audience, live TV. And so they put the two other contestants in the sunproof booth.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Miss USA comes out, the question, George Hamilton, right? That kind of soapy guy with the orangey tan face.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Says, if you could be crazy and do anything for one day, what would you do? And Miss USA just blurts out this delightful, you know, she said, I would eat everything. You don't understand, I would eat everything, twice. And then it just was uproarious laughter and she won. The other beauty queens, the other ones that were answering, one of them answered TMI a little bit, she went a little too far with that. The other one went a little T L I and just gave kind of a very boring, bland answer. But Miss USA's was just like, totally nailed it, right? That is like a beauty queen who can like, say the thing that, yeah, it requires deprivation and yeah, I want to eat, right? It's like, we like that person.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  That's true. Right. I didn't think about the fact that she's probably been on a diet for two years or something like that, a salad and protein diet for two years. So whenever she sees a sushi roll, she just, she has to be physically restrained.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Especially close to pageant time where your body fat's gotta be in the

• 48:48Speaker 02

  Oh, jeez.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Double digits or single digits for a female especially.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Right. So everyone's sort of silently thinking this thing and she's like, oh, I'm so hungry. I would eat everything twice. And it's like, oh, the cards are, the elephant in the room is being discussed. The cards are on the table. She's human. We're talking about this.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  That's an interesting way to look at it. I hadn't really thought about that. Man, had she said the same thing in a group that struggles with eating disorders, would that have been?

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Cancellation. Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Right. Total. That would have been career limiting disclosure.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  And that's where the situation is so important. I love that you raised the point about how the book's titled, The Underrated Power of Oversharing. It is, could be off putting because it could be interpreted as you should say anything.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Well, right. But there's a sweet spot and we've covered that. So the fact that a sweet spot exists, it kind of, to me, means there can't be a universal list of subjects that are TMI because it's always gonna be relative.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Correct. You can think of almost any topic, even STDs.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  With the doctor. But people don't talk about it with their doctor, the person who's supposed to help them. And we've all had that. If you have an embarrassing health issue and you think you're gonna tell the doctor and then you don't.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Right? All the time.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  I'm gonna overshare right now.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  I'm gonna overshare too. I've got a good story too. You go first.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  This is years ago. I've never had an STD or anything, as far as I know.

• 50:04Speaker 02

  Which makes you sound suspicious.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Which makes me sound really suspicious. So I go in and I'm like, look, I've got this thing on my, you know what? So I make the appointment and I walk in and the reception is, or the nurse or whatever who checks me in is like really, really cute. And she's sort of flirty. And I'm like, this is great. And she's my own age. And then I'm like, well, I gotta tell her what's going on. So I told her and she was like, uh huh, okay. And then attitude changed. And I was like, well, yeah, look, I'm here for healthcare. Sorry, not sorry. At least the doctor will understand. And I walk in and the doctor's this gorgeous, also my age.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Brutal.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Woman. And I was just like, what are you in for? And I was like, yep, I'm preparing myself for the exact same reaction. And she was like, congratulations, you have this skin thing that you definitely got from someone else. This is ridiculously common. It's not something that's gonna come back. It's very-

• 50:50Speaker 02

  But it's not an STD. It sounds like an STD.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  It's something you can get anywhere, apparently anywhere on your skin.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  But you get it from having moist stuff. So I, and this is decades ago. I'm not ashamed of it. It happens. And it doesn't mean the person was dirty or anything. It just happens.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  So I just thought, of course, this is-

• 51:07Speaker 02

  I mean, it means you were enjoying yourself. It was damp then there. Sorry.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. I did a good job. It just means that, of course, the one time that I have to go in for something like this.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Right, of course.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Every single person in the place is flirty and cute.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  And every other time I go to get healthcare for like, I don't know, I've got some stretch marks due to working out so much.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Where are the hot ones then? Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, okay, sit down, buddy. Calm down. No one cares.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting. I don't know if it would be like, if you needed a prostate exam, is it better to have someone that's really attractive? Or, I don't know.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  No, that's, you're not facing them. Ask me how I know. So it doesn't matter.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. That I've had a couple of times. I remember the doctor in Taiwan, I did in Taiwan, and he goes, so there's two ways I can do this. One is a probe and it's way faster and probably you wouldn't even necessarily feel it as much, but it's less accurate. And the other way is my hand and it's way more accurate, but it's way, there's another factor to consider. And I was like, do what you would do to your own kin. And he was like, okay. And that thumb went right in there. Yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Here it comes.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  And I was just like, holy moly. But you know what? It was also really fast. Guys, don't be afraid of it. It's fine. Your health is what matters.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. So my little STD story, which I also, now I feel, I feel like I need to say that I haven't had STDs because you said, but it's fine. It's super common.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  It is.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  It's actually STI is the word we should be using.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  STD, right. That's right. That's right. It's an infection now, not a disease.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  In college, I showed up at the health nurse station and when I got there, you know, you say what you're in there for. And what was such a gift is you get there and they, you just write down your complaint. So when you check in, you write it down. I'm like, this is amazing. I don't have to say it out loud what I'm here for. I just wrote it down. So I'm sitting there and the waiting room gets busier and busier. And then finally the nurse comes out and, hey, Leslie John for STD testing.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  No, that's ridiculous.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  I wanted to die. We were so close to getting it right. So close.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  That is possibly now against the law, actually. I don't know. That seems like it's against HIPAA.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  I mean, it was in Canada, so we're a little-

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. You don't have privacy over there? I got it.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  I don't know. We're-

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Wow, that's terrible. That's really, really bad.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Sheesh.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Holy smokes. Okay.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  It's a lawsuit, right? I'm talking to a lawyer here.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  We could make some money out of this.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  You could. You could over here. The damages could be like, I was there with my employer. Authenticity has also become a marketing strategy and I'm aware of that. So I'm careful with it, right? Something could be spontaneous and personal and completely inappropriate. But how do we distinguish authenticity from just impulse control failure or like manufactured imperfection? You see this a lot online. There's these couples that do influencer crap. They'll start talking at the same time and then she's like, no, you go. And he's like, no, you go. And she's, no, you go. And it's like, you staged this.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  It's so obvious.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Anybody who believes it is an idiot, but you're doing it because enough people believe it, that it's like, oh, look how authentic they are. They're so cute. No, it's fake.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  It's so eye rolly.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  It really is. It's cringe. How do you distinguish authenticity from just impulse control failure with disclosure or something staged and manufactured?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Is your question like, how do you share in a way that is authentic and not annoying?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  That may be part of it. I'm wondering how we distinguish authenticity from, one, impulse control failure where somebody's just verbal diarrhea.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Or two, the influencer nonsense. Cause like, I think people can tell, we're not sharing ridiculously embarrassing stories because we think the audience is more likely to, I don't know, stay subscribed based on the fact that they know I had a spot on my wiener. I don't think that's a reasonable sort of assumption. I think other people would maybe share some sort of, maybe even a fake story about something that makes them look good. And maybe I'm answering my own question here because I think a lot of times somebody will share something and it's like, LinkedIn posts do this all the time.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Oh, God, they're so annoying. They're so humble braggy, right?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  They are. It's like, oh, I was late to the interview of this job because I helped a stray dog on the side of the road with food and shelter. And then when I got to the office, the interviewer was the dog. And it's like, oh, my God.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  So what I always wanna ask those people that make those cringey, I think that if we were to like go psycho and analyze them, a lot of the time, I think what it comes down to is there's some kind of insecurity there where they like crave credit or praise or they wanna be seen smart. And it's the same thing. It's like this paradox of when you try to come across as smart, as humble, as sought after, by trying too hard, if that's your goal is to just look good, then it's gonna come across as inauthentic a lot of the time. Whereas if instead on LinkedIn, your goal was, hey, I like learned this really hard lesson in this interview. You know, I said something, I went a bit too far and I really wanna process it and understand it. And I wanna tell people of how to avoid

• 55:58Speaker 02

  this, right? That kind of a motivation lends itself to like actual authentic sharing. That's like purposeful in a way, right?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I suppose.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  I do think like, for sure, there's a mistake of people that blurt things out in my interview with Harvard, when I kind of blurted out this insulting thing. That was an impulse control thing that happened to work in my favor and happened to make me start reconsidering all these choices of me being buttoned up when instead I'm like, what if I shared more? But fundamentally, I think that was a bit of an impulse control issue. And I think that that's where this idea that revealing is a skill, where it's a skill of managing the situation, reading the situation, being sensitive to the room, to others, being sensitive to the culture, the context, the social dynamics, and to your purpose. All of that I think of as like a skill, maturity, all of those things come

• 56:48Speaker 02

  with wise revealing. So the blurting stuff is kind of a bit of an immaturity or failure to manage our boundaries, I guess.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  I could see that. I think, I'm wondering what role cultural context plays in this because I've, I've shared stuff with friends and it goes really well. And then I'll share it with British friends. And one of them was absolutely horrified. Well, one said, this feels weird to talk about. He said that. And I was like, that's a cue to maybe not do this anymore.

• 57:15Speaker 02

  Or to do it more.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I did torture him for a little while. I was like, why? And he's like, no, it's the British in me. I'm sorry. Continue. But another friend of mine said, why for the love of God are you telling me this? And that made me just go ahead and pause.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that one's worked. I'm like, okay, fair point. You don't need to know this.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  He later goes, oh, your AI bot was really funny. And I was like, what do you mean? And he goes, yeah, your AI chatted me up on, I think it was WhatsApp. And I was like, oh, he's giving me this out where I can pretend it was like an AI experiment and it wasn't really me. Yeah, yeah. And so I was like, oh, thanks. Thanks, Ian. Yeah, lol. And he's like, oh, you're very clever.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  We'll have to dial my bot down. Woo hoo, bad bot.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  It was basically like, got it. You never wanna hear anything like that from me again. We are not on that level. Got it.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's interesting. Interesting, but also revealing too. Like, we're not on that level, right? When someone shuts you down like that, it's a pretty strong move, right? Just like we remember Courtney opening up to you. Courtney Lopp or whatever.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Courtney Patton.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Courtney Patton Swoon. Where are you? I love you, Courtney.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  So funny. She's probably been married for 30 years by now.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  New name. Cultural context is really, really important. And one way of thinking about it is the individualistic and collectivist continuum. So like countries that, if you think of like a classic collectivist, like Japan, somewhere there's more interdependency. People are less like the US where it's very me, I, individual focused. This is a very American idea, I would say, in the sense of the idea of opening up and being vulnerable in the benefits because culturally we're more okay with being our own individuals. And when you think about it, revealing a lot of stuff about yourself is individuating. That being said, in more private cultures, Japan, if we use that example still, people

• 59:08Speaker 02

  are a lot more guarded because the idea is it's about the community, the whole. And if you start blabbing about yourself, then that goes kind of against the collectivist values. But even still, the way I would think about it is that's where, when you go into different cultures, your situational awareness needs to be heightened. Because all the context stuff is different, right? The kind of base level of how much is appropriate to share is different. But when it comes to the basic social dynamic of like, if you are with someone, I don't care whether it's in Zimbabwe, Japan, London, or Boston, if you open up a little bit more than what the norm is, whatever that norm is, it will make them like you and trust you more.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  9.9 times out of 10, wherever you are, like that basic dynamic is really fundamental human nature.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  You discussed this dating app thing where people disclose things that they've done. I'm curious about this because there is an element of when you disclose something, it makes people trust you a little bit more than when people refuse to answer a question? And maybe first give us an example of that. It's not like we're trusting their morality if they confess to doing something bad, but maybe we're just trusting that we can predict that person better than somebody else? Plus, our mind fills in the blank with the worst possible thing when somebody's keeping it under wraps.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Totally. There's all kinds of reasons. Yeah, so I was, as a decision science nerd, I often put people into situations where they have to make kind of a brutal or an impossible, a really difficult choice. And hopefully that choice, what they choose, if I've designed the thought experiment well, it illuminates something broader about human nature. And so in this particular thought experiment, if you were a participant in this study, I would say, Jordan, which of two people would you rather date? So I'm going to show you these two prospective dates. Maybe here's a photo of this person, photo of that person. And I'm going to also show you how these people answered a bunch of questions. So, and you have to like, come along with me because the questions are quite edgy. But you helped in, well, all this talk of STDs frankly is very apropos because one

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  of the questions we asked them is, have you ever knowingly exposed a partner to STDs? And not told them, right?

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Terrible.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  I know, right? Total douche move.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Ugh.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  And the one person, when we asked them that, this candidate, they said, frequently. I do it all the time.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  Like, ew.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Ew.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Ew, and yeah, all the bad things.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Straight to jail.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Right. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  The other person, though, when asked that same question, they said, I'm not answering. They just refused to answer. Who would you choose? And I force people to make a choice. For sure, neither of them is exactly like a fine specimen, as my dad would kind of creepily say.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  But if you had to choose, right? Who would you choose?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Gosh, that's a really disgusting, no.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  It is disgusting. I know, I love my job, all for science.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  If I had to go out with one of them, I'd probably choose the one, oh god, I don't know, it is hard. I'd probably choose the one that refused and just pray that they refuse because they're too uptight about it, not because they've routinely exposed people to an STD that they have.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  You're such a lawyer. You know, when I give this, talk to law firms, the lawyers tend to skew towards refuse.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  That's really funny.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  They're a different breed.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  The person who takes the fifth doesn't mean they're guilty.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Doesn't mean they're guilty.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  That is the most ridiculous thing ever. Like, okay, you have this thing that literally people only do when they're guilty, but you're supposed to be like, no, no, don't read into that.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  I will not incriminate myself. Not that there's anything to be incriminated by, but I will not do it on principle.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  The other person's like, yeah, I give people infections and I don't care.

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  That person's a psychopath, first of all.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Is possible, could be correlated. So this is a really kind of ridiculous thought experiment, but it's also purposeful in the sense of, might we be so predisposed to like people who open up to us that we even prefer someone who admits to super creepy shady stuff relative to the person who's just like, I refuse to do this thing that is really important for humanity, right?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Revealing, opening up trust is super important. And so the fact that not 100% of people choose the reveal, this is a strong test. 60% of people choose the reveal. I would have thought 0% should prefer the reveal or for exactly your litigious reason, right?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Right, yes.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  The other person who opts out, maybe they're opting out because on principle, this is an unfair question, whatever. But yet, the person who refuses, who actively conceals, is someone who just is so, we can't trust them. We can trust the STDer more than the person who just refuses.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  That's true. You can. Although it's only one date, I'm not getting physical with either of these people.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. I mean, what is the date? Is it coffee? Is it?

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Last time I checked, STDs don't spread by coffee, right?

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Let me introduce you to several people that I secretly really hate. Ugh. So, but is it the uncertainty that people find threatening? It's the, that we cannot predict them? Is that what's going on?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, uncertainty is a huge, we hate uncertainty. That's a huge, hugely threatening thing to us. So we hate uncertainty, that's one of the things going on. You may think like, oh, well, at least the devil I know, at least, well, I'll wear a condom or like, whatever. Like, you know what you're dealing with, you can work with it. But if you don't know this person, they're not even, I can't work with that if they're not even like telling me. I can't work with it.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, this makes sense. Also, vulnerability is like a costly.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Signal, right? It's like the dog showing its belly.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Trust me, and this high cost signal is always, it shows a strength somehow.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. With the puppy analogy, like, being vulnerable, how puppies flip over on their backs when they're trying to like ingratiate themselves. The belly is a very sensitive, vulnerable spot. And so when they take that risk, it's like puppy rapport building, just the human analog to showing our bellies. Yes, I'm arching my back and look like a puppy right now. The human analog of that is to take the social risk of saying you have STDs? No, I'm sorry, I have to stop it with the STDs.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Or just pissing yourself on stage. Yeah, let's switch subjects to you urinating and wetting your pants on stage during a play.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  I know, true story, right?

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Tell it right now.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh. Okay, okay, you asked for it.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Well, I was a new academic, I was a baby academic, and I was at this conference late at night. There was me and some other junior newbie people with two very senior grand poobah academics there. And we sat in the circle and somebody had the great idea of saying, let's go around the circle and share our most embarrassing story ever. And so we get like, people are doing this like performative candor thing, this performative like humble braggy, oh, there was a typo in the abstract of this paper I wrote in a fancy journal. Oh no, like, that was so humiliating, right? So people say these kind of faux vulnerability things, but then for whatever reason, again, this might have been one of these kind of unfiltered moments.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  I really didn't put too much thought in it, but I just was like, I'm going to share my actual most embarrassing story, which happened to be about when I was in college, I was in a play in front of hundreds of people and the scene, I was laughing so hard in it because it was a funny scene, that I just started peeing myself. I just peed my pants.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  You asked for the details. I was wearing, actually you didn't, but I'm telling you the details. I was wearing a dress with thin pantyhose and I should just like sit on my hands because my hand gestures are not helping me.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  That's fine.

• 1:07:01Speaker 02

  But you're like, keep going, keep digging your drink, grave girl. It was like a waterfall between my legs. And I had this bottle of, because I was playing a drunken woman, a drunken old uptight school teacher, and there's this one scene where she goes crazy in a bar and she gets drunk. And so it was super funny. And I was laughing so hard that I actually started peeing myself. And then I thought, in a moment of delusion, I thought, well, how am I going to save this? So I take the giant bottle of vodka, water, and I start pouring it all over, splashing it across the stage and everything, because I thought that would deflect people from the waterfall.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Between my legs.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Oh, it must be the water she's splashing around. She didn't just urinate in her pants.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. So anyways, I told that story, and here I am telling it again, and people cringed. And they're like, ooh, look at that girl. But then, the two grand poobas, they became some of my closest mentors. One of them is a dear friend and colleague at HBS. I don't think I would have gotten this job without his sponsoring me. He's like, she's okay, we can hire her.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Oh my god, well, lucky you.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  She passes the pee test.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Pass the piss test, exactly, exactly. Did any of the people respect you less because of it? Or was it everyone just kind of like, wow, look at that, that was amazing? For me, I think that would just be so funny and so relatable and what are you going to do, pile onto a person who wet themselves on stage? I mean, you have to kind of respect it.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  That's really punching down, yeah.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I could tell the other rookies, the other junior people were like, oh, she did not do that. I don't think they respected me. I think they were just like, wow, career suicide girl. But I think the more senior people were like, ooh, she's got guts. I think it was differentially received. But the people that really mattered in that sense.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  Were the grand poobas, I guess.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  Nothing spices up date night like a card asking you to excavate your deepest regret before the calamari arrives. Apparently, the safe word is separate chicks. We'll be right back.

• 1:08:58Speaker 00

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status Benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Now for the rest of my conversation with Dr. Leslie John.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  I wonder if things like that are charming when somebody is already adept and competent. Would the story land the same way when it's the person who's the office screw up?

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Are you calling me adept and competent? I'll take that as a compliment.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  I am. Yes, I'm unqualified to make that compliment or observation, but you take it however you want.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Way to diminish it. Yeah, I think it is more impactful when the people see the person as having social skills, because if someone basically is not very socially skilled and does that, then I think it's more likely to come across as just weird and dysregulated. So I think this is again, something where picking your moments, reading the room is really important. I think I partly got lucky there. It wasn't this considered decision. It was more of a blurt, but it did work in that setting. And it was more broadly, one of these experiences in my life that I looked back at and I'm like, oh, you would think that that would have been career suicide, but if I was given the other opportunity to do it today, I would do it again. Right? So there's this upside that I didn't appreciate. The next morning, when I woke up with this massive disclosure hangover, oh, my God, did I just tell that story?

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in the book that's very practical. There's tests and quadrants and how do I know whether to disclose this? Or what happens if we miss fire and the other person doesn't share? Or like, what happens if they don't pass the torch? There's a lot in the book that's practical. So if people are into this, I recommend just going in and diving in on that. The online dating thing, I think, is, I can't get off this topic because online dating just requires this. You know, so after your first marriage ended, you entered online dating as both a participant and a disclosure researcher, which has gotta be a weird angle to go at it.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Why do dating profiles force us into such unnatural decisions about what a stranger needs to know before meeting us for a frickin' cocktail?

• 1:11:15Speaker 02

  They're so brutal. To me, my learning is you need to get out and meet the person. I just found like so often people would get into these crutches of texting forever and ever with each other. And then it was a crutch. And then you reveal more and more to each other over text, but you don't know the person because you haven't met them. And then I think that that process, if you spend too much time on the chat without having met the person, you come up with these illusions of how amazing they are, which just sets yourself up for disappointment. So I was pretty ruthless, I mean, over time, because I dated a lot, was if I thought the person was handsome and seemed to be a reasonable sane person from their profile, I'd be like, let's meet.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Because there's nothing like meeting that really, you can really sense if you have a vibe. But I was faced with, I remember making my profile, I'm, what do I put as my age? So I was 36 at the time. And I remember thinking, I'm such a nerd. Well, maybe I'll put 35, because I had frozen my eggs. My eggs are 35, so I should just put 35 as my age.

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  And you said, Jordan, you're such a lawyer. Meanwhile, you're like, I can get away with this particular fidget.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Wait, because I was like, people probably have filters that cut off at like discreet points. People probably have like a 35.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, this is why guys lie about their height, because they don't show up in search results or whatever.

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  There's a discontinuity at six feet, like everybody's six feet, right? There's no five.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  I may be 5'10", but I'm six feet if you count my shoes. And then my hair is, if I use a blow dryer, my hair adds another inch and a half. So that counts.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  So there's a lot of these, even like the decision of, I was forced into, I don't know if you have to do this anymore, but even on Tinder, and I know it's ironic, I was on Tinder, I was looking for love, I really was. The reason I was on Tinder was because Tinder at the time had a feature where you could set it up if you paid enough money, which was a pittance for the value I got, where the guy could only see me if I had swiped on them. Because I was really worried that my MBA students would see me. Because you don't want your students. So that's why I was on Tinder, because it was the only app that had that feature where I could effectively prevent, so I would see them on mine first. And obviously swipe left, it would guaranteed that they wouldn't see me, which meant I had to be on the most hookup-iest app. But I did find my prince charming.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Darn, I just had to get laid a bunch over the next few months because I didn't want my students to see me. Yeah.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  Even then, you had to put, and even on Tinder, like, what's your status? It was a forced response. And it was divorced, single, widowed? And I'm like, well, I'm not divorced, but I'm separated. But if you put separated, then it sounds like you've got baggage and it's not a done deal. And then I'm like, why do I even have to, I am single. Why do I have to say I'm divorced? Like, why do we even have that? Now I was getting too philosophical and maybe too ranty about it. But it's interesting how these seemingly small decisions of like, how do you present yourself? They actually end up being pretty important.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, I'm getting secondhand stress hearing about dating after a divorce. And I don't want, and I'm married, I don't ever have to do this. But it's like, God, I do not envy anybody who has to deal with this.

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  It's really hard, yeah. One piece of advice, I'm like, if people are like, how much should I put on my profile? What, it is a scientific fact, as I bring my anchorman or wheel feral voice. But the less is more in these apps. Your instinct is often to like say everything because maybe, but that one signals kind of you're too eager, which playing hard to get really only matters at the beginning. You want to signal that you're discriminating, right? That you're not just accepting anyone. So having less and then having just a few relatable, interesting characteristics. Less is more, just have a few traits, not a ton of traits, just a few. Leave them curious to meet you.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  I had a friend, this is years ago, when he was doing a lot of, online dating was new. That puts a timestamp on this. He really liked women with red hair. And he was a really good writer, but he was a shorter guy, a little bit older, divorced. He had a lot of the stuff that a lot of people online are not into, but he's a great writer. He's a really, really good, talented comedy writer. And so he wrote a really killer dating profile. And he ended up selling a product based on online dating because he was so good at it. But again, he liked women with red hair. And so he tested a profile that told everything about himself or whatever in his sort of funny way. And the bottom had said, no redheads.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  Oh, hilarious. That's so good.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  He would get these messages like, I loved your profile up until the end, no redheads. What the hell is wrong with you? And he sort of talked to them for a while and be like, you seem really cool. I guess I'll make an exception for you. And then they'd meet in person and he'd be like, all right, what's up with no redheads? And he's like, oh, no, I love redheads. That was a bunch of bullshit.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  That is amazing.

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  And they were like, oh, so you just sort of predicted that we were kind of gonna react to that? And he's like, yeah, actually, it totally works.

• 1:15:54Speaker 02

  I mean, swoon. I mean, a man who like understands psychology is, that is a keeper.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Obviously, he can't say I'm into redheads. That would be super creepy.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  It's creepy. Right. So he said, no redheads. And then they were like, how dare you?

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  Brilliant. And he's attracting them. Oh, my God, that's so good.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  He crushed it. It was like, he would pull them in with the profile and then be like, but not you. And I'm like, wait, what? Why not?

• 1:16:15Speaker 02

  Right. And then they're like, trying to convince him.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yes. And he's like, fine, I'll meet up with you, you gorgeous, tall redhead, who is exactly who I'm looking for. Tell me about people misusing this, right? We sort of touched on the very beginning with the spy craft stuff, but there's false intimacy, there's love bombing. I mean, people who are really good at this are what, cult recruiters? Abusive people, love bombers and these weird narcissistic personality types? So how do we distinguish genuine escalating intimacy from the manufactured sense of specialness that these victimizers like to use?

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  Totally. Oh, my God, that's such an important point. And especially because when we're dating, like, I don't know, like, I'll just speak for myself. When I was, found myself single in my mid-30s, I think I was, I was a good target. I'm vulnerable for this kind of thing because you, I so wanted to find a relationship. So I think you, in your question, had the answer, which is, I think you have to be really sensitive to the dynamic of the disclosure. Is it in fact mutual and escalating and gradual, right? Is it, I share something and I, then I learn a little bit more from you? Where you, we started this call, like, I share something and then you see me or raise me a little bit, right? Are we doing that? Because if we're doing that, that feels much more real and organic

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  as opposed to someone that's more of a fraudster, they may be less sophisticated. If it's not real, the way to fake it is, if you're faking it, you're less attuned to the social dynamic of it. If you're not really in it, if you just want to kind of get to, this isn't to say that a really good fraudster could do this, right? So you do have to kind of follow your gut and follow the natural. But anytime someone's taking a step, at least for me, because I did encounter some catfishers or whatever they're called. And when I look back at those, fortunately, I didn't fall for it, but there was always something off. Oftentimes, it would be like something inappropriately deep. It would be taking a giant, giant step. It would be like, hey, we're making some flirty banter.

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  And then, hey, I can pick you up in my private jet. And that literally was one of them.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  What are these people thinking?

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  But the fraudsters are getting better, so I don't know. This was almost 10 years ago now, so I don't know what the latest is, but.

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Gosh, the jet thing has to work only with the dumbest of the dumb. Eventually, it's like, where's your jet? No, you know what, it's getting refueled and Boise, but I'm gonna send my driver in an Uber X.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  The dumbest of the dumb, like, there was a moment where I was like, oh, back to the point about even crudeness, right?

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Sweet summer child.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  I have a PhD. I mean, maybe I was born yesterday. But even people who are, I think reasonably smart can, when you're in this place of Really, really wanting.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  You're vulnerable.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  I was thinking before, this is a little bit of a departure. I was just thinking before about the people at work trying to do this. You really do need a full-ish competence bank account before you make a vulnerability withdrawal.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  Yes, you do.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Right? Otherwise, you just look like a schmo.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Yes. And that's where the workplace, it's this tricky fan dance. And that's why I was saying like leaders, right? Leaders have this competence bank because they're already high status. If you're like in a job interview, you're low status. Of course, you shouldn't. Sharing weaknesses can be risky unless actually actively requested. But even there, you can be a bit more open. And that's where I make this distinction between transparency and vulnerability. So vulnerability is the really deep stuff, sharing feelings, sharing weaknesses. It's more risky. Transparency is, I like to think of it as you get a lot of bang for your buck. Transparency is simply like telling people your thought process, telling the way you're thinking through the question.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  That is a kind of candor, a kind of openness, a kind of revealy that signals confidence that is unlikely to backfire in the sense that trauma dumping might, for example.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, this makes sense. And this is something that people can apply, even if the other pushback on this is, great, that's fine if you're a tenured professor. I'm a TA who's one year in. I can't do the same thing. And that's largely true, but it doesn't mean it's completely off limits. And your book talks about that quite a bit.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  And I do think too, okay, whatever, so and so is a tenured professor, so and so is accomplished. No matter what kind of official role we have, like every single day, all of us move up and down the status hierarchy, right? When I'm talking to the dean, I have a different approach to this than when I'm talking to my MBA students, right? You need to be very flexible. And that's another point. It's like the people that have the most flexibility and range that navigate this, that make the best decisions in terms of what to reveal or not, is the people that go from like total openness. The one person is my husband, right? Total openness. I should be able to tell this person anything I need to versus complete guardedness. Like if I'm in a deposition or something, I'm, the law stuff is top of mind. But right, that full flexibility is really important.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  And typically, we use a really small range of what's possible.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  We're short on time here. I wish I could, I need like another hour, but we're gonna do it in a few minutes. What is one thing you think people should reveal more often, category wise?

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  Praise, compliments. That's a nice low hanging fruit too, right? Because that's the way you can kind of get started with this. You're at work, you, in my land, it would be like, hey, I love that experimental paradigm you came up with, right? It has to be sincere and specific. And usually we just think these things and we don't say them out loud. But if you say them, you'll start seeing it's actually really beneficial to you. And for a report, it has all these benefits. So I love that it's a thing that we almost always should share more of, specific, genuine compliments. And it's also a way to kind of get the ball rolling with getting the skill of revealing wisely.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Okay. What's something people should reveal less often?

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Gossip. So saying negative things about other people.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Easy.

• 1:22:02Speaker 02

  Not good. It also doesn't make you look, it makes you look bad.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  And telling, relatedly, like telling other people's difficult stories, things that are not for you to reveal. That's another no-no, I would say.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  I see. What do you say to the person lying awake tonight? They've got this disclosure hangover, right? They're replaying every sentence and assuming they've destroyed their relationship or they're standing at work. How do we reassure that person?

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  Chances are you didn't. And also, you're not helpless. If you made a joke that was a little too edgy, the next day you can stop by their desk and say, hey, how are things going?

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Right? So we often in our mind, we go off on this catastrophic tangent of like, oh no. It's helpful to get actual data on is, was it really the downer that I am imagining it to be? And if it was, then I can patch things up.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  So it's interesting, the answer to feeling like you overshared is often actually to lean in and dig in and share more and ask more as opposed to withdraw, which is often what our instinct is.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And I've had, I've had a similar problem. Some, I did something, it's not even important what it was. It was like very context dependent. And I remember a bunch of people were like, oh, that wasn't good. This person feels this way. And I went straight to that person and they were like, no, I don't.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  And I was surprised and I was like, no, no, you don't have to lie to me about this. Like everyone said, and they're like, no, I literally don't care. It's not a big deal. I don't know why they. And I was like, wait a minute. Everyone was just trying to make me feel bad? And that was actually really valuable information. Cause I was like, oh, these people are actually all trying to make me feel bad about something. I don't even think this was an honest mistake. I came to the conclusion that they had decided to sort of make me feel like crap about. It was almost like gaslighting or something. I'm glad I went straight to the person because they were like, I actually don't care at all. And I thought that this thing was funny also. So don't lose a wink of sleep over this. And it made me look at the other people in a totally different way. Cause I was like, oh, they essentially colluded to make me feel really bad about this just for the sake of making me feel bad.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  That's not a group of people I want to be around.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  That was an interesting discovery. I wonder as AI becomes the easiest, safest and most endlessly patient confidant that we have ever had, what happens to human intimacy when a machine becomes the first place that people tell the truth? Cause I see this happening more and more every day. I'm sure you do as well.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  I know. Is it real? Is it real connection, real feelings?

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  No, it's not connected to you, but you're connected to it, right? I mean, you think you are anyway.

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think the feelings can be real. It's just parasocial relationships. We feel connected to a movie star. We feel we have true liking or whatever lust towards them. And I think those are actually real feelings. And I think it can be really helpful. There's a huge amount of promise, I think, with the mental health crisis. The fact that there aren't nearly enough skilled therapists out there for all the doozies that we have in our brains. So that is helpful, but of course there's strong downsides. If it's substituting for human to human, I think that's where we get into problems. Cause I, call me a fuddy duddy, but I do think there's something really special, unique.

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  Like it'd be interesting to do brain scans of people who are like with human to human versus human to AI. I think there's something uniquely important reinforcing and rewarding when it's human to human. So the substitution worries me.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  That'll be interesting. So you think that if you had, I don't know, whatever, FMRI hooked up to somebody talking to another person versus them talking to a machine, it would look different?

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  Then define human, because the robotics are going to get more advanced.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  And you'll have like a humanoid thing. And so then if your brain can't tell the difference, I don't know. You go down all these different, interesting and sometimes frightening rabbit holes. But a problem with AI is it's so obsequious. It gives us overconfidence in our knowledge of ourselves and the world. And it doesn't give us enough diversity and variety of exposure to different people because it's just trying to please us. So it gives us kind of this illusion of social adeptness.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  That is true. That's why, well, also it's just there to flatter you. That's why you see these people who are like real estate agents. No shade on real estate agents, but they think they've invented a new way of doing physics. And it's like, you have made yourself mentally ill.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  From talking to chat GPT. That stuff scares me.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Last but not least, we speak 10 years from now. What conversation do you hope you will have not spent that decade avoiding?

• 1:26:17Speaker 02

  Oh, um.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  You don't have to tell me the specific conversation. I think the dilemma is more.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think for me, it's talking to my dad more. I know that's, I don't want to be dark, but people who you're gonna lose. And he has Alzheimer's, so it's like this very salient, slow loss.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  My mother has Alzheimer's right now. Yeah. And it's recent diagnosis.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm so sorry.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  So I can relate.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  It's so crushing. And, and like even thinking about like someone's voice. So like I've been recording, it helps to ask him about his childhood. He has better memory for that. And even like is the sound of his voice, like I don't want to lose him. And I do think it's full circle with the theme of revealing of like, you kind of are what you reveal. And you need to get it out of someone for their memory to live on. And so I think that's the thing that I really, I don't want to regret not learning as much as I can about my heritage.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Dr. Leslie John, thank you so much for coming on the show.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Thanks so much for having me, Jordan.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  Your body fights microscopic cancers before you know they're there. But what happens when its defenses slip? Here's a preview with Dr. William Lee.

• 1:27:23Speaker 04

  I'm a researcher as well as a physician. So being a doctor and a scientist gives me an unusual lens. It turns out the actual new biology of cancer, we're actually forming cancers in our bodies all the time. The fact of the matter is, is our bodies are made of about 40 trillion cells. Those are the building blocks of our body. These cells have to copy themselves over and over and over again, over the course of our lives. 40 trillion cells copying and pasting each other. Do they make an error? And the answer is yes. That's how we understand cancers can actually form. So they sit there abnormally until our immune system wings by, finds them and then knocks them out. And that's actually the key.

• 1:28:07Speaker 04

  Most of this stuff gets taken out by our body's health defenses. Meaning that when our defenses are working well, these kinds of things are going to get taken out. We're not going to be worried about them. And so our health is a result of our body's defenses firing on all cylinders from the day we're born until our very last breath. Having your shields down is really the problem. The diagnosis of cancer is still a big deal. But we are beginning now to see the end of cancer with treatments that are actually able to take very advanced cancers and literally dry erase them. The developments are happening so fast now. I never thought in my career, I would see stage four cancer going to stage zero. And it's happening.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  To hear which foods can help and which health trends could backfire, check out episode 1357 of the Jordan Harbinger Show with Dr. William Lee.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  My biggest takeaway from this one, silence has a cost too. We remember every awkward thing we've said, but we rarely count the connections we missed by saying nothing. This week, tell someone one real thing you've been holding back. A compliment, a feeling, something that matters. Give them a chance to actually know you. All things Dr. Leslie John will be in the show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Tadis Alauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who overshares and loves it, or maybe needs to overshare a little bit more, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.