Exploring the Paradoxes of Human Nature
episode
The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant
1h 16m
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 3 months ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What paradoxes are explored in this episode?
In today's episode, we're going to try to do two things simultaneously. We're going to try to unpack paradoxes and why they're hard and why they're important. And we're also going to try to learn to tolerate dad jokes. Maybe too tall of an order. We're going to talk about each of our favorite paradoxes, why groups go to places no one wants to go, why sometimes optimists end up shooting themselves in the foot. We're going to talk about the new anti-grade inflation policy at Harvard and what we think of that as teachers. We might even talk about Twilight and why it might be underrated. Welcome to The Curiosity Shop. A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Hello, Adam.
Hey, Renee.
How are you?
I'm good. How are you?
Good. I'm going to ask you a question about your monthly stress cadence. A lot of people, especially the mothers I know, we believe that May is often more nutty than December. Do you have wild Mays in your house?
Yeah. I just think it's America, not the house. Oh, really? There's just too much going on. We're moving toward the end of school. We're doing holidays that should be times to celebrate, but there's so much to plan for, for Memorial Day, for Mother's Day. It feels like a lot crammed into 31 days. You?
Yeah, exactly. I think we've had two birthdays. A graduation, two graduations, two birthdays, Mother's Day. We're still kind of in wedding debriefing, you know, anxiously waiting videos and photographs, that kind of fun stuff. And then also the wrap-up of school, kids moving out of dorms and apartments. You know, it's just, yeah, it's a weird transition month, I think. So it's been a busy May for me.
Same. And so busy, in fact, that Allison and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary and neither of us remembered.
Tell me you've been married a long time without telling me. Yeah. Yeah.
Like, oh, guilty as charged.
Guilty as charged. Yeah. No, we've we've we're guilty of that, too. Well, happy anniversary.
Thank you.
You know, I'm a big fan of your wife. And just, I'm going to plug, and you're going to be like, don't do that. I don't care. Allison is a writer and a poet, and she's got a book coming out in the fall that's a collection of poetry about her experience with breast cancer, and the name of the book is Lump. I got it to read an early, I'm a big poetry fan, as many of you know, and I got to read an early copy of it and it rearranged me internally. It's some of the most beautiful poetry I've read in my life. So highly recommend and can't wait till it comes out.
Oh, well, thank you. It was so kind of you to read and support it. And I was blown away by it, but I'm a little biased. So your validation means a ton.
Yeah, I think the first line of my endorsement is, this is why we invented poetry. Like, this is to take on topics like this in a way that actually leads us right to something we're going to talk about today, the paradox. the beauty and the brutality of our bodies. And so, yeah, so I love Alison. Don't forget your anniversary moving forward, dude. Unacceptable. Give it to me. I'll put it on something. I'm going to text you next year.
I just want the record to show I remembered before she did.
Okay. So noted, Mr. Grant. Dr. Grant. Oh, wait. Oh, this is a great segue.
You're not going to make me dad joke, are you?
Yeah, come on. We're going to talk about, in this episode, one of my favorite topics in the whole world and probably a lot of other stuff as it comes up. But we're going to talk about paradox, the power of it. He's got a paradox he's going to share with me that I've never even heard of, which is crazy because it's named after a city in Texas. I'm going to share my favorite paradox, and then we're going to talk about why they suck for us and why they're great paradoxically. But I'll start with this. While we were getting the cameras and everything situated, Adam goes... I've got a dad joke about paradox, but I can't bring myself to do it. I'm like, you have to do it as soon as we hit record. He goes, no, I'm going to do it now.
I said, well, then do it now. And he's like, we're going to talk about paradox and we are a pair of docs.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What paradoxes are explored in this episode?
0:00–6:34
2
How does the Abilene Paradox affect group decision-making?
6:34–15:52
3
What is the Stockdale Paradox and its significance?
15:52–18:52
4
How can we balance gritty facts with gritty faith?
18:52–23:39
5
What role does spirituality play in understanding paradoxes?
23:39–30:09
6
How do personal experiences shape our views on paradoxes?
30:09–34:40
7
What are the implications of paradoxical thinking in leadership?
34:40–38:21
8
How can we apply the lessons of paradoxes in everyday life?
38:21–1:16:14
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant
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Building Integrity in the Age of Normalized Cheating
Brené Brown on Protecting our Attention, Time, and Humanity in a World that Won’t Slow Down
Can We Build an “Us” Without a “Them”? with John Green