Leslie John

Michael Slepian over at Columbia has done, and Malia Mason, they've done some really great work on

a questionnaire to find out what people's common secrets are.

And it turns out that there are lots of things that people tend to keep secret.

It's a very normal thing.

Right, exactly.

Social media is so toxic for that reason.

It's exactly as you said.

People present a curated portrait of themselves.

And logically, we know this, but we have a hard time correcting for it, the visceral feeling.

You see someone who looks gorgeous with their perfect children and their perfect life, and you think, oh my God, meanwhile, my children are screaming.

And so it makes you feel badly about yourself, these kinds of comparisons.

Yeah.

I think I might hold the world record for the most awkward survey.

doctoral advisor advisee conversation.

So when I was a doctoral student, you know, I've been interested in this topic of revealing privacy, self-disclosure, secrets for a very long time now.

And so when I was a doctoral student, I worked with my advisor to devise a series of surveys where we asked people sensitive questions and we varied different things to learn different things.

So we needed to come up with really sensitive things to ask people.

And so we sat in his office.

It's one of these like flashbulb memories for me.

You know, you remember exactly what you were wearing and where you were seated.