Keith Payne

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

This is really fun because we just had another professor on with a book called Tribal and almost debunking a little bit the very popular tribalism explanation of our political divide, acknowledging where it exists, but also not looking at it as such a negative thing and rounding out our understanding of what we know about that.

us them in group out group thing so that's been kind of helpful and so that's maybe one look at the issue you look at it through a bunch of different lenses and why i'm most excited about this book is i don't really have many causes this is maybe the only one that i constantly am fighting for monica nice fights the most recent month have been around this topic oh great well so

Oh, right.

The book, I think you have a similar goal as mine, which is we have got to stop looking at half the country as bad or half the country as racist or half the country as hateful. And by the way, or if you're on the right, half the couple is whining babies and snowflake, you know, whatever stereotype they handed you in your in-group, we got to break out of that.

And so this book really kind of systematically looks at how we get there. And then a lot of hiccups in thinking that get us there. Yeah. What motivated you? You give a good story about your brother and Facebook.

Payola. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

You state some of the data that's out there. I forget what percentage, but it's younger people saying across the board they couldn't date anyone outside of their own political party. I think of these great examples like I remember growing up and getting a real bang out of the fact that the raging Cajun was married to, you know, a strategist for the Clinton campaigns married to Mary Madeline.

Mary Madeline, strategist for the Republican campaign. And I thought, that's admirable. That's really cool that those two love each other and they have completely different opinions. And that's like an anthem now. That's insane. The followers of either of those people would feel like it would be a betrayal for them to love and be in a relationship with someone on the opposite side. Go ahead.

Yeah, I did disagree. I do disagree. If I asked you to describe Callie and why you're best friends, whether you would list all these qualities and you wouldn't say, and she's a Democrat, you know, like I think the core, her character, what you like about her really, I don't think her political identity would come up.

Or if you were asked to describe why you liked any of your friends, I don't know that that Political identity would come and be like, they're dependable, they're thoughtful, they listen to me, they're caring, they're loving, they're generous. There'd be all these things.

So my objection is this very abstract thing of a political identity, the fact that it could nullify all these actual qualities in a person is scary to me.

So when you hear that, that little light debate, by the way, that was very light and respectful. It got a lot more heated in front of our boss last time. That's who we are.

And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show.

Well, you talk about this weird flip that also happened where it used to be when you were growing up and me as well, there was this dynamic where a child would go to a parent and say, I'm gay, and then kind of wait whether they were going to accept or reject them.

And now you have young people publicly on social media talking about having no choice but to reject their parents because of their political point of view. It's just kind of an interesting flip and very similar through whatever their point of view is. I'm going to reject this person. And that's kind of interesting and feels newer.

Yeah, I have that fear. I'm not naive. You have to be different than your parents. I was different than mine. My girls are gonna be different than me. I hope they can accept that. Or I guess I'll probably just fucking join them. I won't lose them over it. Maybe that's the power they have. But yeah, you talk about some warning signs and you list three of them.

And one is where democracy unravels into civil war. So one of them is dehumanizing. You want to talk about dehumanizing a little bit?

Yeah, outside the circle of moral concern you wrote. And I thought, oh my God, yes, that is so powerful. The second you decide they're not the same thing as you, then the sky is the limit. And we do it in even less malignant ways in that the Germans were Jerrys or Krauts. Anyone we've been at war with, now we don't do it.

But the long history of our wars, we gave everyone a name as well to help the soldiers dehumanize the opponent.

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It is. He has like Planet of the Apes. No one's shedding a tear when you got to fight the apes to maintain law and order. Yeah, that's scary. And then I've seen this in recent times, which is I saw liberals take some pleasure when COVID deniers would die or go into the hospital. And I was like, this is a little scary. I don't agree with their opinion. I don't think it's good.

The moment we're happy someone died or got tragically ill through their own ignorance, I don't know if that's where we want to be. And there were people on the right that were happy gays were dying of AIDS.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another of these three warning signals would be political differences, aligning with racial or religious differences.

Yeah. In the book, you say 90 percent of black Americans are Democrats. Two thirds of Hispanic Americans are Democrats. 80% of Republicans are white, yet only 60% of white people are Republicans. So it's pretty stark how everyone's filing into these political identities.

Any member of either of these sides would give all the issues that led them to this side. But if you were an alien hovering above Earth looking at it, and you go, oh, yeah, that's all good that those are the issues. But A, the issues have changed nonstop. They're flip-flopping back and forth.

And if there's a 90% chance of you're black, you're ending up in this party, there's something going on other than the issues. And if there's a 70% chance, if you're a Christian, you're going to end up. That's interesting.

I guess it's a chicken or an egg thing. It's like if you're born into this group, you will have these opinions and this identity. You'll just inherit it in a sense. I guess. I see what you're saying.

Yeah, right. You're going to reason through it, but I'm also going to tell you where your reasoning is going to take you. It's pretty interesting. And then I like this part that we have a universal, again, both sides have a universal tendency to believe that people who are different than us are irrational or foolish. I hear this all the time.

The most generous they could give the other side is to say, well, if they knew what I knew, they would think like I would think. The notion that you could all know the same thing and have a different opinions beyond comprehension.

Yeah, that's what we were going to get into. And you say the fundamental source of our division is our need to flexibly rationalize ideas in order to see ourselves as good people. That is so profound. Will you give the example? Well, let's get into psychological immune system. Define that for us.

Hi, I have for six and a half years spoke about one of my favorite books called Broken Ladder. And the author of that book is Keith Payne, who is a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

And can I just add what I love about the way it's framed in this is it's not even about being great or being a genius. It's just about being good. Everyone has a pretty baseline desire to believe that they are good. That's kind of sweet. It's not even that ostentatious.

Tell us what happened when you heard the Tara Reade allegations against Joe Biden.

That's right.

A thousand percent. And it's coming so quickly as you describe it in the book. Like you're in the kitchen making coffee. You hear that. You go through that whole, I know I'm good and I'm going to vote for this person.

So how do I take this very inconvenient piece of information and reduce it in a way that I can hold on to this notion I'm still good and still going to vote for someone that may or may not have done this?

Yeah, I have a friend who lives on the Gulf Coast and he was sending me videos and the house flooded then caught on fire.

see them doing it and we notice it's incredibly frustrating but what we don't realize is that we're probably doing the same thing i reflect back on the monica lewinsky scandal and at the time i remember and my family was very left my mother and i were like someone's sexual life has nothing to do with them running the country this is such a witch hunt it has nothing to do with the job we ask this person to do we don't care what he's doing sexually of course if it was our opponent

It's a much different analysis. And yeah, I just have caught myself a bunch of different times going like, oh, yeah, I totally if I like the person, I'm probably going to figure out a way why it's a little different or the ultimate good is still worth pursuing. And that may even be the most rational decision. But minimally, I have to grant the other side the same kind of empathy in that situation.

Holy smokes.

Yeah. Can you tell us the difference between reasons and causes for reasons?

He is okay, but their whole life is upside down.

And would it be fair to say that for your in-group, you're pretty willing to accept their reason? And then for the out-group, you're quite suspicious of their reasons?

Yeah, you give some inane examples like dad goes to the grocery store because he's got to cook dinner. Then there was one about mom and then you would intuit something completely different despite what she told you.

Yeah, because even in my utopian view of this, I'm not asking everyone to sell out what they believe and hold dear to them. What I'm asking is you don't have to align yourself with companies and products to demonstrate your political affiliation. You don't have to be online screaming at people and fighting with people. There doesn't have to be these riots we see. To me, we already have the roadmap.

We already have had dramatically different views and they've played themselves out when people vote as a democracy should, but we haven't necessarily had all the name calling and the otherness and the violence and the hate and the fucked up Thanksgivings and the families breaking apart. We don't need all that wreckage as a result of our different opinions. We just got to go vote.

Yeah. Similarly, I hope to escape a heat wave that's coming by traveling Wednesday.

I don't, but I'd have a problem with anyone that only bought cars from pro-life companies.

I don't like it. I understand what Rob's saying and I understand what you're saying. You don't want to put money in the pocket of somebody you disagree with who's also quite politically active in funding your opponent.

Let me start by saying, I hope it got back to you. I was the biggest fan of Broken Ladder. Did that ever get to your door that I talked about it a lot?

I get that. And that's a totally defendable position and it has merit. But if you play out where that all goes, so now every CEO has to declare all of their political... No, they shouldn't.

The only reason, so yes, that in the short term is a very, very, again, defendable. I get it. It's a very legitimate point of view. But if you play that out where now every time I see a Tesla on the road, I know that's the opponent. And I know that these four grocery stores have aligned themselves with LGBTQ matters and pro-choice. And so that grocery store is for Democrats.

And then this chain of grocery stores is for Republicans. You're just...

further accentuating this huge divide now if we all lived in two different countries it'd be great but we don't we live in one country i do believe in by american yes that is our group that we can be harmonious we can be at ideological opposite ends of the spectrum as russia it's not going to cause any riots or fistfights or gun shootings in this country because of it

So if we all line up every product now, if every product declares where they're at on the political spectrum, they'll just be endless. It'll really rule out the chance that you can bump into someone, have a nice conversation with them, then later discover they have a different opinion of you. You might as well at that point move to a state that they declare is only for Democrats.

I don't think it's healthy to go down that road. Yes, it's a great point on the surface. But I think if you play it out, then it's just a million different indicators that you're on the opposite end. I don't see that as very constructive for us as a country. Keith, sorry, we monopolize that.

Yeah, I get the urge. I totally do. I had bumper stickers. That's like our easiest way. Yeah. Can you tell us ideology without ideas? And I would love for you to talk about better than average. I think it's healthy for all of us to have some humility and just say like, either if you're right about your opinion on the left or you're right about it on the right, you still have the same broken brain.

There's not two different brains.

It extends to like driving. If you ask people if they're above average drivers and everyone thinks they're an above average driver.

Isn't that incredible? Yeah, that's good. They're still better than above average. And so how do people then when they prove to not be above average or they get some really undeniable evidence that they're not above average, how do they compute that?

Same. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we wouldn't want half the population to take on the fact that they're below average. In any given domain, half the people are below average. It wouldn't be good for us, for half of the world, to think they're below average at something. Right, and it wouldn't be good for them. Right. So they don't

Same age. Also, he had sanded down and painted his Monte Carlo by himself or maybe with some help. Your brother did the painting?

Yeah, back to the incongruity of their expressed political identity and what they actually think. I think we have some popular polls right now that really point that out. It's like you have over 70% of America being polled and being against the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and yet you have half the country on the right that will vote differently.

Yeah, they don't tend to be about lizard people on the left, but there's food conspiracies, there's health conspiracies. I hear conspiracies all the time on the left that are more in that realm, but they're just as irrational or imply so many people are keeping secrets and yeah, nefarious bad actor controlling all these levers. You did an experiment and I'll forget the details of it,

But basically people in the experiment, two different groups, earn the same amount of money. But they were told on one side, will you tell us about that experiment?

Yeah. And then drove it away to college. Drove fast on his way to college.

And then also as you're kind of explaining your ability to click back into your previous worldview or mindset, I relate to you deeply. I feel like I have a very similar kind of background in a working class. My family's all from Kentucky. You grew up there.

Even if you land in the lucky group, you're still above average. You're like, yeah, yeah, I got the winning ticket of the lottery.

You flip that group, they're going to behave exactly the same as the other group. If you're below average, it was rigged. And if you're above average, it's a meritocracy.

Yeah, and you point out that there is some reigning theories, right? There's one theory that if you give liberals and conservatives these personality tests, you're going to see that liberals score higher on the open-mindedness personality trait and go on down the line. But as you point out, you're looking at, in the best case, if they were choosing out of five, it's like a difference between one.

It's like 10%. It doesn't nearly approach the explanation we would need.

As much as I love this broken ladder book, which felt so academic, then learning this personal story about you, I thought, oh, likely why it appealed to me so much that we have this.

Yeah, I found myself getting defensive about your rejection of that because mine that I hung on to is in either the Molecule Amore or Dopamine Nation. And you do find different dopamine levels in liberals and conservatives, which would explain the willingness for change. But again, that level of dopamine difference is probably in the single percentages of how different their dopamine levels are.

Yeah, there's most certainly some black Americans with lower dopamine levels than a lot of conservatives. So that can't be the smoking gun. Right. So let's get into some of those things. Tell me about Lincoln's map, this term we all know, kind of Mason-Dixon line, where that originates.

In a sense. Were you triggered by the hillbilly elegy? I hated that book. And I was very vocally against it.

And at the same variability within each of the counties, right?

Very. Is it?

Does that explain, which has always been a head scratcher to me, North Carolina, in that it has voted liberal in the past and it's in the South. And there's a couple of these that I wouldn't explain away by racial demographic. Like for Georgia to go, that makes sense. You have Atlanta. North Carolina, to me, was always a little bit like, oh, that's interesting.

They're more liberal than the rest of the South.

Look at that. So education, how do we fold education into? this divide?

Or once you get smart and educated, you'll naturally be liberal.

Everything you just read was the proof for this theory. I'm going to drop on the end of it. I didn't even think the memoir stuff was real. I'm like, that's not really how it works. I think you've heard these stories, but I don't think you were there for these stories. I don't know. That was my hiccup about it.

Oh, I would have thought the effect would have been more just being around those people.

Like they say, like the Vietnam War was one of the best things that ever happened for race relations. It was like one of the first times people were forced to live with one another in an integrated army.

I want to talk about income now because income also is, this is a big one.

Well, yeah. And then I think we have some stereotypes about how it works. And then maybe you can enlighten us how it actually works. But what are the stereotypes about how income is affecting our politics?

But Broken Ladder, I just want to talk about a couple of things, Broken Ladder, because they stuck with me so deeply. And I think they do work their way into your new book in a lot of ways. But tell us about what happens on airplanes. Yeah. If you remember that data, I know it's been a while. Right. But I think that stuff's fascinating.

It makes sense, but it's not what we're told.

I think the left is seeing the person they put on the news that's on the right. And it's the guy with the Go Brandon flag at the truck pole. And then they go, OK, that's the right. The guy's got no money yet. He's going to vote for this guy who could help him. I think that's what's like infecting our stereotype about it. Does that make any sense?

Yeah, you could easily credit the income for what is actually the diploma divide. Right. Talk about the lottery winners. This is a fun.

That less tax equals more job opportunities and overall is better for the economy. You just go out and find an answer that would help you maintain your self-image of being a good person. Right. It's hard to know if they believe it or not, though, too. That's what scares me because I'm reading this and I go, well, I'm not a unique alien. I'm a human being with all the same biases and

hiccups and pitfalls. And as I've made more money, has that affected my opinion on taxes? I still vote liberal, but yeah, I would go, well, what's interesting is this state, which has the highest taxes available, does not have the best services, does not have the best roads, does not have the best landscaping, does not have fewer people on the street. So I go into a place of, does it work?

You know, that's, I guess, probably my own way to be against being taxed at 50% and still feel like a good person.

No, in fact, weirdly, I was libertarian when I was broke. And then post 2008 financial meltdown, when I learned about credit default swaps, I was like, oh, no, no, we need a lot of regulation. I see. Like the system, Adam Smith and laissez faire. It's too complicated. So, no, I went the other direction.

But as I get older, there are liberal policies around me in California that I'm totally disenfranchised by. There are a lot of liberal policies that I've seen in action here that I no longer believe in. But it hasn't overridden my higher calling of reproductive rights and inclusion. There's a lot of things. It's complicated. And it's hard to track. Am I getting older or have I gotten wealthier?

I don't know. I'm just a human trying to approach being objective about myself.

Par excellence. Yeah.

I think that's so accurate. And I observe it in others. And I'm probably approaching that point where it's like there are people that we have liked in the past that are expressively liberal, but everything they're saying is not. They're not going to give up that identity marker, despite the fact that all of their opinions really are now conservative. And I'm comfortable saying I'm a centrist now.

My hunch is we're both getting hijacked by a identity. That's like my deepest real feeling is that I think people on the right are getting hijacked by it. And I think people on the left are getting hijacked by it. You look at these weird polls, like I said, 70 plus percent didn't agree with Roe v. Wade. So that's interesting. Why are we all acting like we're enemies when 70% of us agree on that?

What can I tell you as someone who's in those seats now, later in life, I'm embarrassed. That's why I don't look at you. I'm sure you imbue from me that I think I'm better than you and don't want to look at you. But I feel ashamed that I am there and you're not.

Okay, let's get into solutions. The book is fantastic. People should read the book. You really get into rural versus urban country people. Will you tell us water witching really quick before we get into solutions? I want to get into solutions.

It's magic.

Yeah, I mean, I grew up shooting guns. This is another one, by the way. This is one of these polls that doesn't map like reproductive rights. Yeah. The vast majority of Americans are in favor of the Second Amendment.

Okay, so winging it together is the last chapter. This is kind of a sweet way to think about this. Tell us about winging it together.

And you're trying to be good, actually.

Yeah, and also I'll be stealing Jelani Cobb. Do you know who Jelani Cobb is? He's a Columbia professor. I heard him speak this weekend and he told this incredible story. So this is his. I think what can happen when you start there is this example. Jelani is a Brooklynite. He hates the Red Sox, was flying to LA to see the Dodgers play the Red Sox.

And obviously he's going there with the hopes that the Dodgers will destroy the Red Sox. And he's sitting next to a guy on the plane. And that guy is also a New Yorker flying to L.A. to see this game. And he assumes that he's hoping that the Red Sox will get slashed. And the guy says, I'm hoping the Red Sox win. And he's immediately can't compute why this New Yorker would be doing that.

What a betrayal of being a New Yorker. What kind of guy is this guy? Was he secretly always a Red Sox fan? And he continues to talk to the guy and he discovers that in this guy's rationale, the Yankees had lost to the Red Sox to go play the Dodgers. So if the Dodgers beat the Red Sox, it means the Yankees were the third best team.

Berkeley.

But if the Red Sox smashed the Dodgers, the Yankees are probably the second best team. And John, he's like, that makes a ton of sense. I'm not going to be rooting for the Red Sox in this contest. But wow, wouldn't have even thought of this bizarre way you could come to this. And it's pretty defendable. Right.

It's not going to be my opinion, but it changes the person to a maniac who's rooting for the Red Sox when he's a New Yorker into, no, it's in a weird way or a different way than his still supporting the Yankees somehow. And I think so many of our divides are that way. We're assuming the kind of worst case scenario of why they've come to this opinion.

They have hate in their heart or they have all these different things. And you might minimally learn that there's a different cause for this thing. And you can still... You can still vote the way you want to vote and have all your core beliefs.

Yeah.

Yeah, they want to give you the factual proof of why this opinion is the only opinion that one could have if they were rational and sane. Not at all what impact it has on their own identity or their sense of why it's a good thing.

Yeah. I'm so delighted you wrote this book. It's something I think about all the time, and it's very disheartening where we're at. And I hope that this book can help people, again, not all come up with the same conclusion or opinion, but not have to scream, shout, punch, kick, shoot at. You know, I don't think that those are the ways forward.

So I hope everyone reads Good, Reasonable People, The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide. Keith, you've done it two for two. Great book. Keep going. Oh, thanks. Well, great meeting you. Thanks for coming. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Yeah. That's the University of California, Berkeley.

I know, but before we talk about Halloween, which I can't wait to do.

Favorite night of the year.

You haven't commented on my new hat.

We were really talking about some serious stuff.

Isn't it cute?

Good job, Aaron Weekly.

Greg Davis designed it. Greg Davis is our genius graphic guy for Ted Seeger's.

But Aaron, I think, had the idea and the patch. Whatever.

I'll tell you who didn't do it. Me. And it arrived and I was like, wow, they knocked it out of the park.

I just scratched myself doing that trick.

I wanted to snap my head off really quick. I thought that was going to look cool for like one second. Even while I was doing it, I was like, this isn't going to look that cool. And then I scratched my forehead while I was doing it.

You know how you can go like this with a cowboy hat? You can reverse, pull it off from behind and do a roll.

Tuck and roll. You guys don't call a flip a flip, right? It's a tuck?

Back tuck.

BT.

Triple toe back sounds like reverse back. Anything with back sounds weirdly perverse. It does. And I like it.

You don't have to have four seconds of feeling less than in route to your seat.

That's another thing I want to address.

Really fresh in our memory right now.

We don't know the results.

And maybe even while you're thinking about this, you're probably decorating your home with some hints of autumnal color and some turkey decorations. You might even be transitioning into turkey day.

For Monsgiving.

Okay, was Alison.

Well, I could see the challenge for her is like, Like, once you do a Thanksgiving meal, what are you going to all of a sudden do Hawaiian pizza next year? It's kind of a one-and-done meal, no?

And she changes it?

Turkey always, yeah?

Dark meat, yeah. Yeah, it was really good. I like a dark meat.

It goes further if there's not a class distinction on the plane, then it drops even to its lowest point. Right. But I think the most salient point that you end that example with is that you would be inclined to position that as a story between the haves and the have-nots. And that in fact, it's the story of the haves and the have-more. People who are flying are already the haves by every metric.

Oh, wonderful.

Well, maybe she'll incorporate that in. Maybe there'll be more pureed foods for babies. Pureed. Would you want pureed stuffing? Yeah.

Part of it is the texture. What sounds grossest on the menu pureed? The turkey or the stuffing?

Can you puree meat?

You have to puree it and then they pour it into a form and that's patty.

Well, isn't it liver and stuff? Trigger warning.

She said, did you eat my elk? Now there's his and herself in the fridge. Oh, no.

Yeah. It's weird you have this position because you did take a bite and you didn't dislike it.

You do. But if you think about... And I'm not a non-GMO organic. That's just not my vibe. It's not my bag. Even though I'm not that way, you would agree at least that like the Holstein cow, it hardly resembles this thing that we started with. I mean, it is like, you know, it's a very refined product of selective breeding. We've kind of created this thing.

An elk is like our ancestors were pounding elk. They were. I know. That was a good animal for us to try to bring down.

That's fair. Yeah, you went indoor plumbing.

Healthcare. You're just reminding me I got to make a dentist appointment.

Can you believe it? That one does feel like Stanford, right?

Well, I'm taking it on all sides now from Richard Isaacson to my internist to... Anyone who finds out I'm not going lets me have it.

They finally wore me down.

Yeah.

Not as mad as they were about the toe, understandably. But I got to get down there.

I also, I just want to own that. I know it's frustrating to be around me at times because this was last night's declaration I made. And even as I was saying it out loud, I kind of thought they're so sick of this. So we generally brush our teeth as a family because you got to kind of oversee them and make sure they're not telling you. So it ends up we all kind of brush our teeth in our bathroom.

And so I had brushed my teeth. And I did a great job not eating a bunch of candy. But I was a little peckish because I was in the car for so long.

So I took a couple of these oat bars with me to bed. And Delta saw that.

Yeah, post-brush. And she goes, Daddy, you can't eat after you brush your teeth. And to which I responded, and I don't even know if this is true, but I vaguely remember hearing this. That the reason you're brushing your teeth is that over a certain amount of hours, the food on there turns into tartar and then plaque.

And what you're really doing when you brush your teeth is interrupting that phase before it can turn into plaque.

So I said to them that, and really my only commitment is to interrupt that phase every 12 hours. And I'm going to wake up in the morning and brush my teeth before that phase could have happened. And I could look at all their faces and they're like, A, I don't know if this, this doesn't sound right. B, why is this guy, why is he going to do everything so fucking different?

Either brush your teeth after the snacks, but guess what?

Yeah. That's the truth. Maybe I'll apologize to them. Well, no, it is the truth that I'm being naughty, but it's also true that I believe what I said.

What do we do with that?

Yeah, of course. And you're subject to a lot of this stuff, you know?

No, I've definitely thought that in the past. I had a moment of recognizing. But then some part of me is like, isn't that the fingerprint of life? Like, you know all the rules and then you kind of cobble together these ones you subscribe to and you don't. And that's just kind of your little, your art piece of your life is like, yeah, I know. And that doesn't make any sense.

That's in contradiction to this other thing.

Yeah.

Yeah, it would be really sugary. Well, then because I recognize they were like they didn't know they don't know what to do with. You know, that whole thing with me. And then they all left to sleep elsewhere. And I was laying in bed.

I didn't have a moment where I was like, am I sure on this thing I just said?

Like surely there's sugar sitting on your teeth for eight hours.

Even if it doesn't go through its whole cycle. By the way, I can already read the comments in my mind. There's going to be some dentists going like, this cycle you're quoting doesn't exist. I got myself open to the idea that I'm wrong.

Oh, wow. So I could be brushing my teeth once every three days it sounds like. Oh.

Ah, 20 minutes. But then how long can you have plaque on your teeth before you get some damage? That's a good search.

We should have a dentist on. I didn't expect this episode to be so educational.

Okay, so I'm not completely off base. No. This whole little story I have is rooted in something. Thank God.

Well, come on now.

When you wake up in the morning, it's a quarter to one. You want to have a little fun. You brush your teeth.

You brush your teeth. No, that's a fun song you sing with your babies when they're little.

Well.

That's a huge statement. Heart disease starts from a lot of different causes.

What can definitely happen is infections in the mouth can go to the brain. Infections in the mouth can go to the lungs.

I just want to say, I don't eat every night after I brush my teeth. It's a one-off. It's once in a while. But I will tell you, my breath isn't better or my breath's not great in the morning no matter whether I ate a couple bars or not.

You know, it's not like you brush your teeth at night and then you wake up in the morning and your breath smells great.

No.

Sure.

Let's say one more thing.

You got to make yourself brush your teeth at night. You don't have to in the morning. Like for me in the morning, I cannot wait to clean things up. But at night, things are fine in your mouth.

I'm not like, it's not like come 10 p.m. I'm like, oh, God.

Yeah. How often do you do that? Because I think it's probably only six times a year. It's so rare. Where I go, fuck it. We're not brushing our teeth tonight. And you're going to, but then, and I go, you can handle one night of not brushing your teeth. But then I go, it's going to be a pattern.

I get nervous of like my addictive personality and that like if I skip once, I'll probably, I'll be dealing with this for six months, but that's not been the case. Okay, that's good.

Especially for you if you're tipsy. I think it's much harder when you're tipsy to be handling all your chores.

That's why people that are drunk fuck without condoms more than sober people do. Like a lot of decisions get made.

You've got your skin. I got my hair, my fitting hair.

I agree. And I'm gonna add, and I think I've already talked about the sun here before. So forgive me if I have, but, and thank God Erin really, I have a couple of different people that relate to me. I hate showering so much. Now when I'm in there, I like it, but theoretically I'm like, it's such a waste of time. It's just like this chunk of time where I can't, I don't do anything else productive.

I have a real hard time with that. The other thing, a bad habit of mine is when I'm brushing my teeth, cause only one hand is required. It's the only time in my life I'm insistent I can multitask.

Yeah, and then even more shocking than that is that abject poverty that we would measure below the poverty line, the results of that in your later life outcomes, your life expectancy, your educational attainment, your incarceration rate, your health, we would think those would be really, really adversely affected by poverty.

I'm always like, okay, I'm gonna brush my teeth, but I'm gonna walk into the room and grab my socks, and I'm gonna walk over here, I'm gonna do all this stuff, and I'm gonna pee while I'm brushing my teeth.

I'm so annoyed that I have to spend a minute and a half doing this thing, that I end up trying to do a bunch of things, and inevitably, what always happens, I can't learn this lesson enough, I find that I now, I've now taken on something that requires both my hands, and now I just have a toothbrush hanging out of my house. It doesn't save me any time. I always, somehow I end up needing both hands.

Everywhere. You ever get toothpaste everywhere? You ever been brushing your teeth and get it everywhere? I'm dying to see. I want to walk into your bathroom and it's just fucking all over your shirt and some's in your hair. Eyebrows are covered in toothpaste.

Yeah, do you look like the woman from Chimp Crazy when she has the numbing cream on her lips?

Sure, sure, sure. Maybe you use an excessive amount of toothpaste and you're getting too much foaming.

I think less than we do as with everything, right? We always use way more than we need to. So my hunch is, you know, more. But I would like you to take a picture tonight of how much paste you put on your teeth. Maybe we'll post that.

Because I know people are dying to know. A pea-sized amount. A pea? I'm going much bigger than a pea. For sure. I bet I'm going three to four Ps.

Oh, big toothpaste is convinces. Well, because in the commercial, you grow up watching these great commercials and they do that beautiful, wavy.

Swirl. Do you have one in your mind? Because mine goes to an exact one.

What's yours?

It's the one that had three colors.

What was that brand?

Aquafine. You're right, it was Aqua something. It was like Aquafresh.

They have the very best insert shot of toothpaste of all time.

Yeah, we don't need to get into that.

Rob, can you put things on this TV? Or no, that's got to... Yeah, no, I can. You can? Will you put up the image of the Aquafresh? Yep. Like if you can find that classic thing that Monica and I are both thinking of. Maybe this is Mandela effect though. Maybe we're going to see it and it's like red. That's another good one. It's on the box. Who was red?

Remember that used to be red.

I don't think I'm thinking of cinnamon gum, but I know one of the toothpastes was red. Anywho, should we get into Halloween while Rob pulls it up?

As you should be.

But in fact, people who perceive that they're poor have worse outcomes than people who are abjectly poor. but don't perceive themselves as poor.

Yeah. You're pretty much, you're either, well, that's okay. So I'm looking for the actual, like a photo of the toothpaste on a toothbrush. But boy, look at that. That already brings back. Is that even still, are they still rocking and rolling? I haven't bought aqua fresh in some time.

Well, this is harder to find than I thought.

Oh, yes.

I was, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not giving it the respect I totally deserve. I was so distracted by toothpaste in my audacious claim of last night. Yeah, you're either recording or editing all day, every day.

Schedules are hard too.

And I went through this. So, of course, I had F1 and I absolutely loved it. But, you know, it was a little bit more work than I could handle in addition to some other things, which I talked about earlier about cease and desist letters and whatnot. But still, it was – it pushed it over to where it's like, well, now this is pretty much all I do. And I'm –

I'm less good at the primary job because I am not showing up as rested and excited to explore all this stuff. It just, you know, there is some kind of critical mass where... There is a critical mass.

Well, especially something you love.

Yeah, that's the biggest.

I have felt terrible running into F1 fans when they're really disappointed.

Tons of love. I always love being on.

You got to lay off of ASU. They don't have a lazy river. We covered this. They're a good school with good people. Back to Keith. He is, in addition to being a professor, he's also an international leader in the psychology of inequality and discrimination. He has a new book out that is tremendous. It's called Good, Reasonable People, The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide.

Yes. I would imagine so because we hear so often how impactful that was.

To a lot of women.

Maybe some men. Well, we did hear a man, a man, a man. We heard a man tell you they were grateful for the perspective because they couldn't have really understood what was going on.

So yeah, some men too.

I mean, we got to because now it would be 17 weeks after Halloween if we didn't. I mean, we can sum it up.

You were, you and Anna were the Olsen twins.

Anna told me last night she was Ashley.

Yeah.

That's what they say. You got it, dude.

It was a jumper. It was a jump jump.

It was a baby's outfit, kind of.

Uh-huh.

Oh, big time. Yeah, you looked hysterically.

Yeah. I looked like a little guy.

In case the opportunity arises.

Now you. Okay, so we were, and to remind everyone, it's assigned. It's assigned. For you. The girls vote. The girls fell in love with Anchorman this year. So we went as the Channel 4 News team. Oh, I'm going to forget people's name, but I know the actor's name. Lincoln was Paul Rudd.

She looked incredible.

Mustache, chest hair, cool leisure leather jacket. And I will say the funnest part of Halloween for me last night was I saw the magic of what the Groundlings is where you put on a wig and a mustache and all of a sudden the character's there. Yeah. I know. You look at yourself and you know exactly how to move. And Link, it was just on fire. Every photo of her, she is in deep, deep character.

And she's crushing. And then we discovered something else. Have you seen the pictures of Kristen in the photos?

I think this is next to impossible. That's a full impersonation of Ron Burgundy just in the face. Can you see that from where you're at?

I don't know if I've ever seen someone do a full impersonation just by moving their face.

There's no voice or walk.

You look at that photo and you go, oh, she's playing. That's Ron Burgundy.

That's clearly Ron Burgundy. I was... I'm not going to claim I was good at Champkind at all. This is me as Champkind.

Yeah.

I did.

Well, let me ask you this. Are your outcomes worse if you feel poor versus you are poor but don't feel poor?

Sweet, sweet David Keckner. Yeah, that was a fun costume. I kind of liked it because I could still dance in it.

Yeah, kind of been like a fashion forward suit.

Right. That hat was hot. I had to take the hat off in the car.

And we had Shake Shack truck, which was awesome. It was great. All the neighbors came and ate hamburgers.

Delicious. By the way, I had the gluten-free. I don't generally ever like it. It was phenomenal. I ended up eating two.

And then the hayride. So I was in the car the entire time. Yeah. But I added this year black lights, eight black lights. I added a fog machine.

Okay, good, good, good.

I don't know who was counting. I wasn't counting.

Sure.

And it's fun. The neighborhood's gotten more and more and more fun. It's really, every year it gets better and better and better. Like this is, I am so like touched and heart filled by the notion that I, it reminds me of Michigan. Like, I live in a neighborhood now where people love Halloween and they put a lot of effort in and they invite people into their homes and everyone's in a great mood.

God, is it fun. And there's these little pods of people walking through the neighborhood and they generally get on the hayride in a pod. So I get to see like different groups of friends off the back.

We have some new members of the neighborhood and they're going hard. Like they've shown up. Like this is a neighbor that just moved in. This is her first Halloween and she turned her whole house into an exhibit.

Oh, you didn't.

Oh, I thought you did because when I pulled up, we had our pod on. They all got out there and then cycled through and then got back on.

You were protesting the hayride at that point. I gave Lincoln a lot of praise. I got to throw out there, too, that Delta in the picture is incredible because she was playing Brick, Tamlin. And she looked so dumb in every photo. She made herself look, she was just like. Like, she nailed it.

I was the weak link in the family.

Yes, did you have fun, Wobby Wob? Yep, yep. The boys had a blast. Good. They're so cute. I think I knew how tiny Vinny was, but I didn't know how tiny Vinny was. When you guys showed up, Rob, and I looked at Vinny, I thought, this little person is too tiny for the world. Yeah.

He's impossibly cute.

Oh my God. Beautiful skin.

Enough.

Strikingly beautiful.

Now, did she supply that information or did you inquire?

yeah and where it's like most painful is when people are living in the shadow of these huge gaps like there are cities that it's dispersed much more evenly and then there's really dramatic cities this would be i would imagine one of the top cities for that oh yeah la new york these big cities that are wealthy are also highly unequal it's

Yeah, yeah.

You know what a lot of it might be, too, is currently—and this will change— is there is still a slice of novelty to it. Like, I wonder how much of it is what you're attracted to is you're seeing novelty. You're seeing some mix of these two ethnicities that you have an idea of what those ethnicities look like on their own.

And so I would just say that that supports the claim that, like, what's beautiful is novelty.

Okay. Okay, great. This is C. Okay.

Yeah, I will say this. I've already talked and slash bragged about it a lot, is the route itself is quite tight.

I live for this turn into an alley that is almost impossible.

And that's enough to do. What has always been on the plate is I'm also DJ. So I've got my playlist, but then I've cycled through it once or twice. Then I feel, I start fretting over, we need some fresh blood in the mix. So now I'm going through my phone and I'm pulling the trailer and I'm going in the alley. And that's always been on the table. So I'm juggling a little too much.

Well, now I added in these smoke machines. Now the smoke machines, unfortunately, you can't just turn them on and have them work. At least the ones I got. So I have to be... Also hitting a remote control every, the countdown is 200 seconds. So it's like I fire it up. I start driving. 200 seconds later, they shut off.

Every time it shuts off, I've got to return on the remote. I got to re-put on 200 seconds on the timer. And then I got. Oh, boy. So I always, and I have three of them. So I had on the dashboard, I had like, I had my iPhone on the armrest for the tunes. And I had these three remotes to operate the fog machine. And I got to refill the fog machines with the fluid every, I don't know, 20 minutes. Sure.

So I'm hopping out of the car to refill the things. So I had a lot going on. But I like a lot going on.

You know? Did it start on fire at one point?

Yeah, it smelled terrible. One of them, the only one you could turn on and it would run for a really long time, I had two different brands going. That one, when it ran out of oil, it kept going and I think it kind of like burnt the oil. And all of a sudden, and this was a great thing and he deserves a really special shout out. Ryan Hansen came as Ken on Rollerblades.

And so what he did is held onto the back of the trailer and did tricks and like he was on his blades going on the route. And then what was helpful about that for me is that when anything happened on back, he could quickly roller blade up to the front and tell me what was happening.

Like one time a little person wanted to get off early. Great. Another person, can we get off at the top of the hill? Yeah, I'll stop there.

And then one was he rolled up and he's like, I think the brakes are on fire. I was like, oh boy. Okay. Yeah. The trailer doesn't have brakes.

It's not a big enough trailer. Okay. I can't imagine Eric's Tesla's brakes are on fire from this very slow seven-mile-an-hour crawl through the neighborhood. So then I got out like, oh, God, do we have some kind of electrical fire?

And it was that one smoke machine. And, yeah, it stunk terribly.

My apologies to those folks that were on that.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Once you smelled that smell.

Yeah. So I lost some customers. This just makes me think really quickly. This is one of the few times where I will be very generous. But in truth, it's not generosity. Do you find that when you cook, let's say you cooked three chicken breasts.

You have guests over. I'll always take the shittiest one. Like if I've cooked five steaks and one's a little not done right, I take that one.

It seems really nice, but really it's my ego.

Yeah. I don't want anyone to eat a less than perfect steak. Totally. Yeah. So in that same way, I guess, yeah, I guess I'm glad the pod had the stinky smell.

I would say it's the best one.

They're getting better. And I have some more. Now I have ideas for next year.

Yeah. Very exciting.

Oh, God. I like Keith Payne.

He keeps knocking it out of the park.

He's a great writer.

Yeah, raising and keeping four people alive on 30,000 a year before taxes with rent. I mean, so hard. Although if you're listening in some other country, you're like, are you crazy? There's lots of countries where.

Yeah, way, way lower. It's all relative.

And then you're doing cash, same cash day loan shit with a terrible interest rate. The whole system's set up to.

Disproportionately punish.

I'm reading a book right now. I think I told you I'm reading on Audible, Nate Silver's new book.

Do you know Nate Silver? He's like a statistician. He's always, especially around election time, he's always front and center. He does these models. And this book is about risk taking. And it talks in there about the lottery is just, if you really look at it, it's just kind of a way to make money online. Low income people.

If you look at who buys lottery tickets and how much of it that the state keeps of it, it's just kind of, it ends up being a bizarre tax on lower income people.

Well, they got to try something, right? And then the state is keeping this huge percentage. It's not like it just goes to the winners.

So this huge chunk of it comes out. He goes state by state. I mean, at best, I think it's like 30%. In some states, it's like 80% they're keeping of the thing.

And it's just low-income people paying the state.

And like who pays the highest interest rate, low income people.

The big sales pitch to every state to get the lottery is that it's going to education. But then there's been a lot of op-eds about how much really gets to education. It hasn't worked out in the way, in many, many cases, that it was promised to work out.

I always bring this up, but it's like so many of these thought processes really end up boiling down to, again, kind of Kantian or utilitarian. Because like you could look at it just from a Kantian point of view and go like, yeah, if someone wants to buy a lottery ticket, they should be free to buy a lottery. They want to buy a lottery ticket.

And the state should take that money and use it for something good. Great. On the surface, that's very defendable. But then if you just step back and what are the results of it? Well, the results are that the lowest income people in the state are paying for education.

That doesn't like.

Well, or I'm sure that scholarship, the HOPE scholarship does benefit a ton of low income people, but disproportionately low income people aren't going to University of Georgia.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's just interesting. Like both both arguments are really fair. But at some point you got to like zoom up 30,000 feet and go like, well, what at the end of the day, what's happening?

Well, poor people are paying for education.

I wonder if it should be a tax base we're trying to create. I don't know if that's the place we should be looking for tax revenue.

To me, that's maybe like the kind of ethical, like they should have a lottery, but 100% of the money should go into the pot to be won by the people who want to play it.

Should the state find a different way to fund education?

Sure, sure, sure.

from the state.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a dangerous search. You're now on a anti-white nationalist.

We've got a single person cell.

And they're, this'll shock you, they're not white. Yeah.

That great movie with, what's his tush? Cutie Pie from Ken.

He played a... White nationalist? He played, yeah, a Nazi who was Jewish. And it's a real story. Oh, God.

The Believer.

It's really good. He's great.

Forthcoming.

Cities, yeah.

Can I guess number one?

Salt Lake City, Utah.

I think the suburbs mitigate it, though.

My apologies.

Columbiana?

Not Columbia.

Guess what's third? Milford, Michigan.

96.5%.

Except, wait, so we can actually figure out what percentage Sanjay Gupta's family was offsetting that because that's where he's from.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally where we're at across the street is a dramatically different socioeconomic bracket. It's 13 feet away.

It did?

He liked Livonia.

Yeah.

Yes. It can be really hard. And he seems to really have enjoyed growing up in Livonia. Okay. I think his mother was like one of the first female engineer at Ford. Something cool like that.

I guess maybe Salt Lake has Latinos now. I'm kind of shocked Salt Lake's not. When I'm in Salt Lake, I feel like, oh, yeah, this is a very white city.

That feels right. Your vacation destination with your Indian parents?

That's interesting. White cities.

That was it.

Okay. I love Keith. I really hope he keeps writing books. They keep expanding my mind.

Very kind of a best boy.

I know. I hadn't played it, but I read it in the comments. Did you play it and see it?

Oh, I want to go back. I want to look at the other ones.

I'm so delighted they're archived now.

Yes. I love it. Archives are where the party's at.

Ooh, Wabi Wabi Sabi.

Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

There are societal differences around the world where if a population of people tends to up compare or down compare, that changes radically depending on where you're at in the world. We're a big up compare society, right? We're always looking and comparing ourselves to people above us.

But there are many that would compare themselves to people below and then their kind of mental health benefits from that greatly. So when I was reading the book, so I agree with you, it's a huge problem. I've experienced it personally. Then the solution for it, my question is, do we think we can augment and change reality to suit everyone?

Or do we think we need tools to help us with this psychological hiccup? that if I have an ice cream cone, I'm great as long as the guy next to me doesn't have one. But if someone's eating a banana split next to me, now I'm miserable. Does everyone need a banana split? Or do we need to figure out how to stop that line of thinking and have tools in place?

I hope people will bear with me. I know it's a little bit of my soapbox. So important to me. And I'm so excited that a guy who had written a book completely unrelated to that topic that I absolutely love tackled this topic because I think he did it in such a beautiful way. So check out Good Reasonable People and enjoy Keith Payne.

Well, and then I would add, too, that they have access to things that other people don't have access to. So you can't climb the ladder.

Yeah, not Jordan, but the dude who scored five points more than you in the game, maybe.

Unfortunately, like all things, there's not a right or wrong. It's got to be some weird percentage you work out in your life that results in happiness, I guess.

And even maybe what are my real goals other than what I'm coveting is just flashy. OK, so your new book, Good, Reasonable People, The Psychology Behind America's Dangerous Divide.