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

“And the fact that it's four in the morning and it's the end of December, like those are transitional moments, you know Night going into day It's December going into the new year Not an accident”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're still friends. So they're still, well, he refers to him as my brother, my killer, which is such a Leonard Cohn thing to do because it's always like, you know, it's light and it's dark all at once. Nothing is ever all one thing.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was a really good one. Yeah. And I also really like Rufus Wainwright's cover. But famous Blue Raincoat for people who don't know it, it's basically about a love triangle. And it's told from the perspective of a man whose wife has just been with another guy who is also his friend. And he's writing a letter to that other guy and he's reflecting on the way that all the relationships have changed in the wake of this.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For people who don't know Leonard Cohen, and this is your first introduction to him, it's going to sound so gloomy, but it's so good.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I've noticed that many of best podcasters are ones where when you're on my side of the table, you feel like it's more of a conversation and less like an interview or you're answering all the same questions you've answered a million times before.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when I was getting my publishing house did media training with me before Bittersweet came out. They were preparing me for the five to seven minute interview that you might have, you know, if you go on some quick TV thing or something like that. God, I hate that. It's like, it feels like You're basically having to not tell the full truth somehow because you can't tell it in such a short amount of time. So to me, podcasting is just the best thing that's ever happened.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the day, I think that's really what people want most is just to talk to each other and to know what people really think. And podcasting of all the media that I've ever seen is the one where people come closest to telling you the truth. To telling you Like the good and the bad, and the bitter and the sweet, and all of it”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I I don't know, but I assume it's tapping into something really ancient. Like we used to tell stories around the fire. Like our whole storytelling tradition was oral originally.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's like the ultimate social freedom. You can listen as much as you'd like. You can participate if you want, but you don't have to. It's no big deal.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but it would be interesting also with the kind of thing you're talking about of just speaking, like just you and the mic.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But for real, where are you going to talk about Hitler and Stalin and everything you're learning? Have you ever thought of? Using the medium of just speaking into a microphone but without the video. Curious about this because I fell in love with podcasts. Originally, before there was ever this whole video component to it, and I realized there's something so primal and And my favorite kinds of interviews still, very few people do it this way nowadays, but my favorite kind are when you're just talking into the microphone. So it's not over Zoom. It's not in person. It's just you and the microphone and the other person in the microphone and they're in your ear. Like the ultimate in intimacy”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It also takes so much time. I mean, I experienced that with the TED Talks. It's like, Get to a stage, so you're memorizing everything word for word, and at first, in that process, it comes out in a really wooden way, the way you're saying, like the emotion's gone. But once you really know it, so you've internalized the words, then all the emotion comes back and you can say them in a completely different way, and you're really speaking it from the heart. But you have to know it so well before you can do that.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so much anxiety because, yeah, you're not even so freaked out about being on stage so much as what if I forget something? Yeah, absolutely I mean, they do things like the last TED Talk I gave, I actually did forget something halfway through. Like, I just couldn't remember the next line. And so I had to walk over like over there were my notes. And so I did that, and the audience very kindly clapped while I did that. And then I came back to the spotlight and kept going. And they edit that out.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I definitely like to prepare. Before, but the kind of preparation that I've done for my TED talks is completely different from what I've done for everything else. Because TED talks are more like a theatrical event. Where it's like a one person show. And of course, if you were going to go on Broadway with a monologue, you would know every word. So it's kind of like that. And so I would rehearse it over and over the way you would do that.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and then like with this class, you go back the next week and he would have us come to the front of the room and stand up with other people standing next to us. So that you didn't have the feeling of being all alone in the spotlight through others sharing it with you. And you would answer some questions about where do you grow up? Where do you go to school? And you declare victory and you're done. And then little by little by little, you keep ratcheting up the exercises until you get to the point where you can do it. And then you start having successes and you realize, oh, you know, actually I can do this”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can totally give that advice because I used to, before I would give speeches, you know, if I had to do it in law school, if I knew like today was the day when I was going to get called on in a law school class, I literally one time vomited on my way to class. That's how nervous I used to be. And yeah, the way to do it is through desensitization. You know, it's like been figured out. It's the way to overcome any fear you have to expose yourself to the thing you fear, but in very small doses. So you can't start by giving the TED talk. You have to start. I started by going to this class for people with public speaking anxiety, where on the first day, all we had to do was stand up and say our name. And like that's the victory.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think there's just different styles of it. And I think that we just have. When we hear the word public speaker, we have a really limited idea of who that person would be. So for me, I used to be very phobic about public speaking. And part of the reason for it was because I thought that being the kind of person I was. Didn't equal being able to be a good public speaker because you're only imagining the super kind of out there showman. But I think there's another style of public speaking that's more reflective and thoughtful and conveying ideas and people like that too.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, but lots of introverts are public speakers, actually. Like, this is one of them. I knew this from the studies, but then also when I started going out on the lecture circuit, I realized that all my fellow speakers at all these conferences I was going to. They're all introverts because they're all people who spent years figuring out some idea and now they're out there talking about it.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I mean, like I'm really not. I just love the idea of it. But then I also think, you know, I'm fundamentally a shy person. So I think it's much better that my medium is writing instead of singing. So like it all worked out.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So his favorite poet was Garcia Lorca. He actually named his daughter after him. His daughter's name is Lorca. And he talks about There's some poem that Lorca had written that made him realize that the universe itself was aching, but the ache was okay because that's the way you embrace the sun and the moon. And that's what I think is. That's why I think there's this whole rich vein in this bittersweet tradition that he embodies. That's like the essence of beauty. It's the way you embrace the sun and the moon.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So many of us songs really are about some form of parting or goodbye or an imperfection or something, or like the broken hallelujah. The thing that's so incredible about him. The way that he's taking all of that and pointing it in the direction of transcendence, it's not. Not just pure sadness, it's sadness and beauty. And that's the thing.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you don't even have the impression that they're thinking it's going to last. They more know that it's like a blaze of an intersection and the limousine's already waiting while they're in the moment. In the middle of it, and then it's done. He's talked about how his music He said something like some people are more inclined to say hello with their music, but I'm rather more valedictory. That's what he said.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have you ever seen? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but have you ever seen his son Adam Cohn and Lana Delray perform that song together?”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and then the number of artists and successful artists who were orphaned when they were young, who lost one parent or both parents. It's like an astronomical number. I haven't in the book. I don't remember the percentage, but huge. And he was one of them. He lost his father when he was nine. And his first act of poetry was. His father made suits. That's why I thought of him when we were talking about you in your suits. And he took one of his father's bow ties and wrote a poem in his honor and buried the poem and the bow tie in the backyard. And that was like his first creative act.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Connected to sensitivity, and many sensitive people are introverts. So it's kind of like a Venn diagram. About 80% of highly sensitive people are in. And then not all introverts are sensitive. So it's complicated. But he was definitely a sensitive type.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, I know he was an introvert because he actually tweeted about my book when it came out. So that was a precious moment for me, something that we should all be listening to the quiet. I can't remember exactly what he said. But yeah, yeah, no, he definitely was.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say it's the musician. I actually was thinking about this the other day. I mean, obviously, he's not alive anymore, but I was kind of running the thought experiment. You know, if you were alive still and I had the chance to meet him in person, would I want to do that? And I'm not really sure that I would because. He represents for me symbolically everything. Well, everything. The sentence right there. And I think that's okay. I think people can. Can express something through their art that they might or might not express if you were just like hanging out with them and having a coffee. And I'm happy to know him that way.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My book to Leonard Cohn. He's played such a huge role in my life. I love him. I love him. And I loved him with this crazy love that I've never been able to understand for decades. I think I understand it a little better now.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the longing for union is fundamental. It's just that it looks so different for different people, you know. And coming back to where we were talking about at the beginning, you know. Union looks incredibly social for a lot of people and hardly social at all for others, but everybody needs some version of union.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know, you know, I wonder about that all the time. Like, I know, obviously, there's that idea from Becker throughout philosophy and the tale of Gilgamesh about the idea that the thing we're longing for most of all is immortality. I feel like it's not only that, I think it's. More so, or also, let's say, a longing for the lions to lay down with the lambs, finally, you know, for the fundamental calculus of the universe to just be different, where life doesn't have to eat life in order to survive. And yeah, just a completely different situation. That immortality would not solve.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Essence of the human source code, which is a kind of spiritual longing, whether we're atheists or believers, there's this feeling of longing for a state and a place of perfect love and perfect unity and perfect truth and all of it. And an acute awareness that we're not there in this world. In religions, we express that through the longing for Mecca or Eden or Zion. Artistically, we express it with Dorothy longing for somewhere over the rainbow or Harry Potter enters the story at the precise moment that he's become an orphan. So he's now going to spend the rest of his life longing for these parents who he can never remember. And that's... There's something about that state that's at our very core, and I think that's why we love it so much”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I started wondering what that is. And lots of people have tried to figure out what that's all about. And there are different theories that it's expressing it's like a kind of catharsis for our difficult emotions, that it's, as we were saying, a sense of being in it together. Don't react in that sort of uplifted way when you just see like a slideshow of sad faces, which is something researchers have actually tested. No one really cares when they're seeing the sad faces But the sad music they're really reacting. And also, they don't really react when they're hearing music expressing other negative emotions, you know, like martial music or something like that. It's just the sad music that gives people this elevated sense of wonder. So I think it's the combination of the sadness and the beauty. And I think it's just tapping into.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I have a bunch of different theories, like the whole reason I started writing this book is because I kept having this reaction reliably to sad music and I realized that for people who I knew who were religious believers, the way they described their experience of God was what I was experiencing when I would hear that music. Like all the time. It happens over and over again.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's not part of the culture, and yet, you know, you see it in our behaviors because we're humans. So why do people listen to sad music? I mean, one reason is they're hearing expressed for them. Like the musician is basically saying to them this thing that you have experienced, I've experienced it too. So have lots of other people. But they're saying it all without words and it's transformed into something beautiful. And there's something about that that's. Incredibly elevating. And people don't know it, but There was one study that I have in Bittersweet that found that people whose favorite songs are their happy songs play it on their playlist about 175 times. The people who love sad music play them about 800 times. And they say that they feel connected to the sublime when they're listening to that music.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've had really deep kind of love, and I feel like we are prevented from perceiving that love as it's actually like the most obvious kind of love and it's right there and it happens all the time, but we're prevented from perceiving it because we're not really supposed to talk about things like that. It's like there's something unseemly about it.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, absolutely. Those are the kinds of life lessons that only work when you kind of step away for a while. They don't work in the moment of excruciation. There is something about the fact of knowing that all humans are in that experience together that is also incredibly uplifting.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of truth in that because, yeah, you wouldn't care so much if it weren't something that mattered to you. So it's always a signpost to the direction you really want to go to. That's always what it is. Yeah, and it's interesting to see the way the mystical versions of many of the great religions all point in this direction. You know, whether you were looking at Sufism or the Kabbalah or in Christian mysticism, you see this idea that the longing for what you lack is the very thing that gives you what you're longing for. So the longing is the cure. I mean, that's the way the Sufi poet Rumi puts it. The longing is the cure. You know, and he says be thirsty. Like be as thirsty as you possibly can. That's what you want to be.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Losing a loved one. I mean, I will say that. The truth that I think that we can come to after a lot of time on this earth is the idea that Love exists not only in its particular forms, so not only in the form of the one person, you know, that one person we love or that other person we love, but love itself is a state that we have access to. And so over time, the loss of person A can heal and you can tap into a kind of bigger river of love.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well The moments you're talking about, I think it's easier to appreciate the beauty of it all in the moment because you're experiencing Kind of experiencing the loss and the love all at the same time. Whereas if you're talking about straight up loss, like a betrayal or a bereavement or whatever it is, that's It's different. It's quite overwhelming.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always losing, but it's also always, but it's not that sounds really depressing, but you know it's not depressing because you experience this all the time. Those are the most beautiful moments I think life offers. I mean, it's intense, intense beauty in those moments because it's getting closer to the real thing that we long for.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never going to quite attain it, but you get glimpses of it here and there, and that those glimpses are some of the best things that ever happened to us. And they're suffused with sadness because they're not the real thing or they're not the full thing. They're just a glimpse. It's a glimpse of what we long for.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I know it exactly. I mean, that's the whole reason that I wrote Bittersweet. It's all about that. So, I know intensely what you're talking about. And by the way, my husband loves the book, A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway, which I also haven't read, but it talks about that same thing, you know, groups of people traveling around together and the group coalesces into some magical formation. And then one person leaves the group and it's never going to be the same again. And then they move on to the next one. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the deepest essence of human nature, the feeling of longing for some kind of state of perfect completeness, completion, perfect love, the Garden of Eden, all of it, and the feeling that”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the writer H ⁇ l ⁇ ne Boton regularly makes me feel that way. He's just this beautiful essayist and like observer of human nature. And he's just constantly expressing things in this gorgeous way that you've experienced yourself. And you feel like, I don't know, it's just this grand act of generosity. You know, you feel less lonely. You feel like this deep sense of communion. It's such an elevating experience.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know if I have an exact line, though, I mean, that feeling that you just quoted happens to me all the time. I'm just bad at recalling exact instances.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something so intense about that and so true. I think partly also because when you've just been introduced to somebody, you don't yet know that. Their difficulties. So you're seeing the most sparkling version of them. You're seeing like a platonic version of love and friendship.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And when you just said that, I just thought of this one moment in my life that I haven't thought of for. 20, 30 years or something, but when I was in law school. And a classmate of mine had his friend come to visit for the weekend, and the three of us hung out a lot, and we just had, you know, like an amazing time. And then this other guy who wasn't going to be coming back anytime soon, if at all. Sent a postcard to me. And the only thing written on the postcard was this quote from Oscar Wilde. And I don't remember the exact words, but it basically said that there's no pain as intense as the sorrow of parting from someone to whom you've just been introduced.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think that's the whole reason for writing or making music or whatever people do. Be able to have those kinds of connections that don't require having to be in a room together because there's only so many people you can be in a room with. In your lifetime.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, everything's more complicated. I will say with the small talk thing that I'm curious if you have this experience, but I find it fantastic to have a career where. I'm known for anti-small talk kinds of topics because it means that anywhere I go, like if I show up at a conference or something like that, no one does small talk with me. They're like telling me about the deep truth of their lives from the first hello. And I love that. And in normal life, you have to wade through a lot before you know if people are ready to go there. Do you have that experience too”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that's why people like your podcasts because you're like Get the small talk. I'm going deep into it from the very beginning.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of went into this whole thing thinking that it was, but from what I've seen, most people of study is that most people don't like small talk.”
2022-06-28 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #298 – Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source