YouSaid · the spoken record

Susan Cain

lines on the record: 119
first: 2022-06-28
most recent: 2022-06-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thank you so much. It was so great to talk to you. And I think it was what I said to you when we first got connected is thank you for your way of being in the world. I really, really love it.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's true. And I will tell you that my nickname for my husband is Gonzo. Of because of him, you know, he invented that form of gonzo journalism where the writer is totally in the story. And my husband, that's his personality. In everything that he does, he's really in it. He's really present. He just lives that way. So, his name is Ken, but I call him Gonzu like 90% of the time”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And even when I said, even when he asked me and I answered that way, I said, This is a way station. Like, I knew it was temporary.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I just felt like, oh my gosh, if there were anything I could do to make it that his life wouldn't have been such that he would be in this position in the first place. Like his struggles had to do with a long life history. So, I don't know why I feel that. But”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, a world where that wouldn't be necessary. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But yeah, like, so I had this moment. It wasn't so long ago I was doing some interview and somebody asked me what are you longing for right now? And my answer at that moment was like, you know what? I'm actually at this moment in life where I'm not longing for anything. I'm at this particular way station where everything is the way I want it to be Course, the minute you say something like that, you know, you're going to be proven wrong because like an hour later, I get. A letter from a reader who I've been in touch with over the years, and he was telling me about a psychic struggle that he's going through.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you just see it, and it's like some, whatever can deliver you to that mode of transcendence where you're no longer purely in your own self. In something higher. And when you're in those states of mind, You know it because you have the temporary sensation that You could die at that moment, that the people you love could die, and it will all be okay because there's something else. So that's my first answer. And then my second answer is. The need to relieve psychic pain. Like other people's psychic pain. I don't know why that's just like an impulse that I have.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah Because two things come simultaneously to my mind when you ask that question. And I've been asking it since I was four. I remember the first time I did”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we're still saying the same basic thing of do the thing you really love. But just set up the strategy. Exactly, exactly.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think we can refine it to say you actually have to really know yourself and how you respond to different kinds of risks. I would not do well in that kind of situation. I'd be up at 2 in the morning worrying about it. Whereas if I have some, like it doesn't have to be paying the rent in some grand way, but if there's some basic way of paying the rent, then my heart's free to do the thing I really love.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel like We have this narrative in our culture of like that the glamorous thing is to figure out the thing you love and then risk everything. Achieve that. But first of all, a lot of people aren't comfortable with that level of risk. And second, when you're living with that level of risk, That's a cognitive load, too. And so you don't have the full emotion and heart to be able to focus on the thing that you actually really love because you're stressed out about it. So I'd say like get the backup plan in place and then do the thing.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, here's what I think Should absolutely. That thing that you're dying to do, but you should always have a plan B and like a backup plan and a way of earning a living no matter what happens because”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I do think. I mean, we have really early signs of it from the research, and I'm sure we're just at the... Scratching the surface stage. But I mean, like we know, for example, that the vagus nerve, which is so fundamental that it governs our breathing and our digestion, that our vagus nerve also activates when we see another being in distress. There's like an instinctive impulse to want to make it stop. And the theory is that that's an evolutionary design because we had to be able to respond to the cries of our infants, you know, and from that ability grows the greater ability to respond to other people's cries too. That's probably just, you know. The very first step in being able to understand what all that is”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what I don't know because this is where I come back to the, as I told you, like the original reason that I wrote my whole book was the feeling that somehow in the expression of sad music is what other people see when they talk about God. Like there's something so Like an ultimate beauty there. I don't know if we have access to without that, but maybe we do Can say in this world it's a great way to get access to that state.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I don't know how much of this is a female thing, too. Like, I was watching with my son, my 12 year old the other day, we were watching this show about the Battle of Thermopylae. And it was like all about valor and glory on the battlefield. And I said to him something like, gosh, don't you just wish we lived in a world where. You didn't have to do all this in order for everyone just to live their lives. And he just looked at me completely puzzled. He's like, no, you know, like to him it all just seemed self-evident that the world would be structured that way. You know, and he had like the 12-year-old admiration for.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yea, though it's funny, I mean, you know, at the same time that I just wrote a whole book about the fact that this is the way it is, like, I really do believe this is the way it is. And with this reality, there's an intense beauty that comes along with it. So we have to accept the reality to get to the beauty. I believe that. And at the same time, there's a part of me that's just like. Yeah, but give me the magic wand to make the world different.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But when we said to them, you know, goodbye is part of life and this feeling you're having, everybody has it. You've had it before, you're going to have it again. You'll feel better in a couple days. But this is the way it's supposed to be. This is natural. That's when they stopped crying because I think that's when they stopped resisting. It's one thing to feel the pain of goodbye, and it's another thing to be feeling like this isn't supposed to be happening. The resistance part of this isn't supposed to be happening that makes life really difficult”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As opposed to understanding that it's all the main road. And I tell this story in the book of this time that we went on this family vacation where we rented a house in the countryside. And the house was next to this field where lived two donkeys that our kids fell in love with. And they were like really little at the time, two boys. And they're spending all this time feeding carrots to the donkeys and it's all beautiful. And then comes the day where they realize that we're leaving in like two days and they're never going to see these donkeys again. Start crying themselves to sleep. And the usual things that parents might say at a moment like that, of like, you know, maybe we'll come back or another family will feed them, we'll feed these donkeys. None of that made any difference.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, there's a lot to say. So on the bittersweet side of things, the wisdom that I would give is Especially for kids who are growing up in relative comfort with everything going pretty well. They get the idea that. Real life is when things are going well and when things don't go well, it's like a detour from the main road”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But there's always going to be one. There's some other new one. You got to find out in 10 or 20 years, but so far so good.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I have to say, I mean, knock on wood, I actually feel like we're doing pretty well. Like my kids are teenagers now. I really had thought that I wasn't going to repeat the issues that I had been through with my mom, and I can say I really am not. Yeah, like my mom, for various reasons, just had a lot of trouble with my independence, and I just don't feel that at all.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really do believe that the original love that we long for, like that one of the great things that you learn as you grow older is that the love exists in some plane that's more general than the particularized form in which you first knew it.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know though. I mean I do think, like, I think everybody goes through experiences in this life where you're experiencing a fundamental pain of separation and desire for a union. And it takes so many different forms. And this was my primal form of it. But, you know, for someone else, it's a betrayal or a bereavement or an exile from a country of their birth or whatever it is.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's the most powerful, and in fact. When this started happening, I got to college and I took a class in creative writing, and I tried to write a story, a fictional story, a fictionalized version of what was happening. And I called it the most passionate love because of what you just said. And the teacher actually said to me, she was like, you know, you should put this story in a drawer and not take it out again for 30 years because you're way too close to it. So I've now finally written it like 30 years later”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Need for love and love of love and all of that, but I don't look I'm not dependent on my mother for it the way I was then, and that makes the experience really different.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or whether that was just the fantasy of a child, and maybe it was always difficult, and I had not seen it. Seeing her now, and I realized that it was all true, everything I remember, it was all true, it all happened, because it's happening again.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I will say, you know, two things happened. One is that I've spent the last six, seven years writing this book about joy and sorrow and loss and love and all of it. I've really come to terms with all of it. And then the second thing that happened is My mother now has Alzheimer's. In her Alzheimer's, she's still actually the same person. Like she's forgotten most things, but she still has these conversational lanes that you can travel down that are like the way she always was. And The way that she was when I was a kid, which was so incredibly loving and so connected and so warm and sweet and funny and all of it, all the things I remembered, like it's all come back. For all these decades, I had been wondering whether that Garden of Eden I remembered had actually happened.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. It was like a feeling of like, yeah, like I know what Eden was like, and it's not there anymore. And I think it was all the more confusing because if you lose someone to actual bereavement, you go through a morning process and people have thought for thousands of years about how to do that. But with something like this, there's no process because you're not even admitting to yourself, especially when you're in your teens and 20s, that you're mourning something. But it was the case that for decades, for decades, I could not answer even the simplest question about my mother, like where did she grow up without tears in my eyes? Or more than tears in my eyes, like embarrassing tears. So I would just try to steer the subject in another place”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We still would get together for holidays and talk to each other on the phone and all that. Was a sense in which it was over at that point, the relationship was over.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well I mean, I've been through a lot of bereavement just in these last couple years with COVID, but. Even before that, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff I write about in the book. And in some ways, I feel like I can write about those kinds of things better than I can speak them. But I had a really complicated relationship with my mother growing up. Had a kind of garden of Eden during my childhood. We were intensely, intensely close. My mother, because of Some vulnerabilities that she had reacted. With a lot of trouble to my adolescence and to growing independent from her and starting to have different religious views and different political views and all kinds of things. And we had a pretty intense break that I describe in the book. And it was so intense that even though after that,”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you really think you could triumph over it, would you still be telling that same story? And I've been thinking about that question ever since.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In some ways, I really share your instinct. There was one scientist who I spoke to at that conference who's one of the leading advocates, and he said, you know, that's a story that we've invented for ourselves because we have no choice. And if you really believe that you have no choice, then it's adaptive to tell that story that death gives meaning to life.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's the great philosophical question. And I went to a conference of people who are working on this. And I thought that they were going to be talking about those questions all through the conference. But the MO is much more like, we're so happy that we're here with people who have gotten past all those quibbles. You know, and we just know there's going to be meaning no matter what.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I actually, like, in the book, I spent a bunch of time with people who are working on radical life extension, you know, or the quest to live forever. And people ask them a lot questions like, you know, the kinds of questions you were talking about earlier. Well, like, how are you going to feed everybody and how is there going to be space for everybody if everyone really could live forever And what about conflict when we haven't intensified conflict? And their answer to that is. They point to terror management theory, you know, and they say, because it's the fear of death, they're basically saying it's the fear of death that are causing our conflicts in the first place. And that if we remove the fear of death, we'd have less conflict to contend with. And that, I don't really buy that.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think they find that people become more tribalistic You know, like there was one study where they found that after they primed people that way, that They would then give them the chance to put hot sauce on a meal that their political opponents were going to be eating, and they put way too much hot sauce on after they've been primed to worry about death.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The researchers had people watch different movies, like happy movies, sad movies, bittersweet movies. And they found when people watched Father of the Bride, which is like the ultimate bittersweet, you know, you're walking, your daughter down the aisle kind of feeling. That was, they would give them creativity tasks after watching these different movies. And the people who had been primed for bittersweetness were the most creative. They were like primed to remember finality. You know, like love and finality, basically. Love and impermanence. There's something about that that gets us to our most beautiful state.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To notice the grandeur of the painting hanging on the gallery wall or the new company that's just been created, but it takes a thousand different forms, right? You know, you could bake a cake or like in the wake of the pandemic, we've had more people applying to medical school and nursing school. And after 9-11, you had people applying for jobs as firefighters and teachers. So there's something in the human spirit that takes pain and turns it into meaning. when we're at our best. And when we're not at our best, we deny the pain and then take it out on ourselves and on other people. So there's a kind of fork in the road of what to do with it. We know, I mean, there's all these studies that I go through in the book, there was one where”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's definitely in those domains, but it's in all domains. We're all going to face pain in this life at some point. And we all have the ability to... Weathered and withstand it Live with it for a bit and then try to transform it into something that we find beautiful. It's very easy to”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, absolutely. Like when we were talking about this idea of longing being the source code of humanity, I think that's also the source code of our creativity. It's the same longing for Eden. It's like you're always reaching for something that you want to get to or that you want to build. It's the best of us.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, no, I was just saying, yeah. Like, I find that when I take photos on my phone, I hardly ever take photos at the moment you're supposed to. Like everybody's gathered for some event. I'll forget to take the photo. But I take a lot of scenes from everyday life. That's what I actually want to remember in the end.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and enjoy it while it's happening because those are life experiences, also, but not to mistake those for being everything.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tolstoy was saying that actually it was the opposite that he was really making, he was really advocating for everyday life. He was saying it's scenes from everyday life. He was juxtaposing Anna Karenina with all these other couples who were just living happily and quietly day by day. And that was what he believed was the ideal. As opposed to the grand rush and as opposed to the Intensity”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it's like I was just listening to something about the different Russian writers. I was mentioning him to you, this academic, his name is Gary Saul Morson, and he studies Russian literature. And he was talking about, I don't know if I'll be able to get this right, but basically that the people misunderstand a work like Anna Kareninum and that we think of it as telling us that you're supposed to live these grand, tempestuous romances that might end in death or despair or whatever it is, but you should be in it for the intensity of the emotion. And he's saying, actually, that's not exactly not.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't actually experience it as that much different from when I'm on the other side of it. Like if I'm the reader. Some other writer has made me feel that way. To me, it's the same thing”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's interesting because I don't know if this is the introvert in me talking and the writer in me talking. Don't know, like, I love most the moments where, let's say, I'll get a letter from a reader who will tell me what something I wrote meant to them. And they'll talk about having had that kind of moment of, you know, the communion between the writer and the reader. Obviously, I wasn't there physically when it happened, so I wasn't getting that kind of rush that a musician would get in a concert. But just the knowledge of that having happened out there in the world due to something that I added to it. It's the most amazing thing. You love it. But see, imagine”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's got to be times when he's about to go out and he's not feeling it, and he has to figure out some way of getting himself into that heart space.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wonder if it's because, in a way, he don't mean that he oveited it, but he apparently worked on that song for years and went through gazillions of verses and checked most of them out. So I wonder if we're hearing his version after he's a little tired with that process.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trent Reznor salt. You talked about it on your podcast with Rick Rubian, which is when I reached out to you, I love that.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A Monday, it was just like a random Monday, and we got on the plane. So, like, everyone's out of school, just so I can go to this concert. I got there, and at the beginning, I was feeling like, oh, this was all a terrible mistake because it's all these other musicians playing this music and I don't actually really want to hear them. I'd rather listen to him on YouTube. And then And then a musician named Damien Rice came and played famous Blu-ray. And he sang it. And he did the most amazing thing at the end. The whole thing was amazing. But then at the end, he sang this musical riff that was like, All I could say is it was like a musical lamentation of the ages. And the whole audience just rose silently to its feet It was one of the greatest moments That I've ever had”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's like, you know, you should really go to that concert. And I felt so ridiculous. The whole family went all the way to Montreal on a Monday.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That can put you in a place. I mean, David Yaden, who's a researcher in psychedelics and consciousness at Johns Hopkins, he's a great guy. And he's done research that has found that when people are in their transitional moments of life, you know, and it could be a career change, it could be a divorce, it could be that they're nearing the end of their life, that they very often will say those are their most meaningful moments and their most spiritual moments. And so I feel like that's what Leonard Cohn knows how to tap into instinctively. The year after he died his son, Adam Cohn, made a memorial concert for him where all these famous musicians came to Montreal, where they had lived and performed his music. And my husband, who's not a Leonard Cohn fan and he's not a bittersweet type at all, but he knows how I feel about him.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source