Maya Shankar

When I was a kid, the violin was the center of my life.

I'd run home from the bus stop after school and practice for hours.

Every Saturday, my mom and I would wake up at four in the morning to catch a train to New York so I could study at Juilliard.

When I was a teenager, my musical idol, Itzhak Perlman, invited me to be his private student, and my big dream of becoming a concert violinist felt within reach.

But then, one morning when I was 15, I was practicing this tricky technical passage.

I struggled to get it right, and I overextended my finger on a single note.

I heard a popping sound.

I'd permanently damaged the tendons in my hand, and my dream was over.

I share this story because unexpected change happens to all of us.

An accident or an illness, a relationship that suddenly ends.

Today, I'm not a violinist, but I'm a cognitive scientist, and I'm interested in how we respond to exactly this kind of change.

I've spent the past two decades studying the science of human behavior, and today I host a podcast called A Slight Change of Plans.

Glad you guys like it.

Where I interview people from all over the world about their life-altering experiences.

I started this podcast because change is scary for a lot of us, am I right?

For one, it is filled with uncertainty, and we hate uncertainty.

Research shows that we're more stressed when we're told we have a 50 percent chance of getting an electric shock than when we're told we have a 100 percent chance.

It's wild, right?

I mean, we'd rather be sure that a bad thing is going to happen than to have to deal with any uncertainty.

Change is also scary because it involves loss of some kind.