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.

Appearances

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

states.

But if you actually put people from these different political parties in a conversation, they predict it will go badly.

And they're shocked when it goes as good as it does because their stereotypes are so negative and so distorted from reality that most people they're talking to once they're in the flesh and blood are actually much more personable and interesting and reasonable than they imagined.

Yeah, there is something about the New York identity that is about complaining about the smell, about the garbage, about all kinds of things.

But it is also a source of pride.

And there's actually a funny aspect of identity in that way.

And again, this goes back to this optimal distinctiveness.

New York feels different than every other city in America.

And the things that make it distinctive are the things that can be really frustrating as you live here day to day.

But they're also the things that make it special.

And when someone from the outside criticizes those things, you defend it.

My favorite quote on this, I saw someone post this on social media.

They said, everybody complains that New York smells like

urine, but they said the way you have to think about it is urine happens to smell like the greatest city on earth.

You're thinking about it the wrong way.

So Karen's experience maps exactly onto my experience.

When I was a kid, we'd play games of pickup hockey or pickup basketball or pickup football.

And I had my one friend, Jaron, he and I were almost best friends.

And if we were, if we flipped a coin and ended up on the same team, we got along famously.

But if we were on the opposite team, by the end of the game, we'd be yelling and fighting with one another because we were both very competitive.

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