Shankar Vedantam

And they're often upset or angry with their present circumstances in some way.

They basically say it's not fair.

You know, I did all the things I should have done, but I'm not where I should be in my career.

Or I, you know, I've done everything that I should, but I'm not in a happy relationship and I should be in a happy relationship.

And so they have a sense of fairness, a sense of anger.

Talk about how in some ways these get in the way of seeing reality accurately.

I want to look at some of the ways in which we do not live in reality, because the ways in which we dodge reality are sometimes subtle.

You once knew a high-powered corporate executive who worked in tech.

He was very successful, and he was presented with an ambitious problem that he desperately wanted to solve.

Can you tell me his story, Dave?

I want to drill down on the idea that accepting reality is not the same thing as endorsing reality.

You're not saying that we have to accept that we are stuck in reality.

There may be things that we can do to get ourselves unstuck, but the starting point of any design exercise is to clearly see

Can you talk about this idea?

Because some of the problems that people have in their lives involve things that are genuinely upsetting.

You know, a cancer diagnosis is genuinely upsetting.

It's unfair.

Or we might be struggling with some kind of problem involving a social injustice.

And you're not basically saying accepting reality for what it is means that you have to endorse reality for what it is.

We talked earlier about the story of your friend Gary, Dave, when he was dealing with his very serious health conditions.