Jay Van Bavel

speaker

271 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

Jay Van Bavel’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Hidden Brain · You Are Not Ordinary · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

So I live in New York City and I've lived here for the last 16 years and I've developed an identity as a New Yorker, even though I didn't move here until I was already 30 years old.

And in New York, there's a very strong identity.

I've actually heard that even having the phone number 212 at the start of your phone number is something that New Yorkers value and really don't want to lose once they get it because it's a powerful signal that you're a true New Yorker.

Um, but I will say this, I was just actually last night planning my high school reunion with my friends because I grew up in a small town called Fox Creek, 2000 people in rural Northern Alberta in Canada.

And we still talk, you know, it's now 30 years since our, our graduation.

And we have a shared sense of identity from that place, experiences, memories, and connections that will still draw us together, that will pull people together from multiple countries to get together to revisit those and remember them and share them.

So place is incredibly important to people, whether it's a country, a state, a town or a city, or even your local community.

Some communities have a really strong identity where they have like group barbecues and activities that are just community focused.

So this can happen at

all kinds of place.

Yeah, a core part of identity is a sense of us and them.

Not only is there a sense of who we are, but who we are not.

There's a critical group boundary.

And in the case where you have a rivalry, like between Houston and Dallas, it actually provides a very powerful motivating force for people to come together to compete with the people in Dallas, whether it's at sports or forms of civic pride.

And that can actually be an incredible motivator.

There are studies that have been done actually at NYU's business school about the power of arrival.

That when we have arrival, it is actually one of the triggers that can really bind us together and motivate us to do incredible things.

And those things can be great things.

In America, I think of the Cold War and the space race and the development of all the technology that came from that competition.

And then it can lead to negative things.

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