Know Thyself
E198 - Dr. Todd Rose: Why Your Desires Aren't Actually Yours (Here's Who Planted Them)
09 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What are collective illusions and why should we care?
About two-thirds of Americans are actually self-silencing and outright lying about things that matter to them. And when enough of us do that, all we hear from is the fringes and the results of collective illusion. Entire groups end up doing something that almost nobody really wanted. Imagine if only 10% of the people around you hold some fringe belief, but you think it's 80%.
Your life is just diminished because you're not living authentically.
What was the biggest collective illusion being run on you that shaped who you thought you could become?
I was a Harvard professor for a dozen years, but I was also a high school dropout with a 0.9 GPA. It was really hard to do that poorly. I just assumed there was something wrong with me.
Chapter 2: How does social media amplify fringe views?
If you're acting in ways that you don't believe, you will not respect yourself. Do I actually believe this? And I realized I didn't. Your group actually agrees with you and you just don't know it. There is shared humanity that really is there. At that age of courage that's coming, it's necessary. And you have a role to play. We have a habit of living in a lie.
What does that look like on an individual level?
Chapter 3: What are the consequences of self-silencing in society?
If the problem is an illusion, then the answer is...
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast. Our guest today is a Harvard-trained social scientist, co-founder of the think tank Populous, and one of the world's leading experts on the intersection of individual psychology and collective behavior. Dr. Todd Rose, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me.
What are collective illusions and why should anyone care to listen to this conversation?
So collective illusions, it's just a phenomenon where most people in a group end up going along with something they don't privately agree with simply because they incorrectly think that most everybody else agrees with it. So as a result, entire groups end up doing something that almost nobody really wanted. So you can think of it like this. It's like groupthink, but you're wrong about the group.
And why is that such an important thing to reflect on? Like, what are the direct costs of an unexamined groupthink that is inaccurate to begin with?
Yeah, so this is the funny part. So we've known about collective illusions in research for about 100 years. up until the advent of social media, we didn't really think it was something that was such a big phenomenon that it warranted a lot of attention. Because think about it, most of the time you think, you tend to think your bias is that other people are just like you.
I like this, so everybody likes this. So this is the opposite, right? You believe something, and you're just convinced everybody else doesn't. So it was like, how can we be that wrong about others? But we'll talk about how this happens, and you'll see why this is a big problem today. But here's the cost and why people should care. Groupthink alone is bad enough, right?
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Chapter 4: What is the difference between belonging and fitting in?
So as soon as I just start going along with the crowd just because that's what they expect, I lose my individuality, I lose my self-determination. That's not controversial. But now imagine that you gave up your own judgment on things you believe in and care about because you thought that's what your group wanted from you, but your group never did. And so now you conforming to that phantom
is actually destroying the very group that you're conforming just to be a part of. And so collective illusions do double damage. They harm the individual because as you start self-silencing, not expressing who you really believe you are, we know from research there are incredible cardiovascular consequences. There are psychological consequences. You become less trustful of others, more resentful.
Your life is just diminished. because you're not living authentically, but collectively, it starts to tear at the very fabric of what holds us together as a people, right? So this group that I was bound to, and now I'm literally actively working to undermine it, even though I think I'm trying to get closer to it. And so we're seeing that across the board.
So we see it at the collective level, plummeting levels of social trust. high levels of resentment, this sense of isolation from other. And we think it's because we just don't have anything in common anymore, when in reality it's just a social lie.
I think this is one of the more exciting conversations that I have been looking forward to on this podcast for a while because in the pursuit of knowing who you are, you first start to parse through all of these unconscious, previously held beliefs and paradigms that you were born into, for better or worse, that become the lens in which you look at reality through and completely limit what you think is possible for your life, the levels of happiness and fulfillment,
And all of it. I remember early in the days, like maybe 10 years ago, hearing a quote first from, I think, Earl Nightingale. Most quotes on the internet are completely unattributable, you know, but that the opposite of courage is not cowardice, but that is conformity.
Yeah.
And we really do live in this hall of mirrors. You know, I think another great one from Cooley, I'm not who I think I am. I'm not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am. So maybe you could set the stage for how hardwired we are, like through the lens of evolution and anthropologically speaking, what is that wiring that has now been enacted?
Sure.
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Chapter 5: How can collective illusions lead to rapid societal change?
And if you can shatter them, societal change happens very quickly at a scale that you just seem unimaginable any other way because I'm not having to change your mind. I just have to get you to see accurately that other people agree with you. So a modern example, we'll come back to Velvet Revolution.
If you look at, say, marriage equality in the U.S., fastest change in public opinion ever recorded. 2003, only 30% of Americans agreed with gay marriage. 2017, it was 70%. That exponential change in public opinion does not happen if people privately disagreed with it. Right. Because the flip side was interracial marriage.
If you look at approval for interracial marriage, it took decades of linear change because people just weren't comfortable with it. So I have to change your mind, but changing your mind doesn't change the next person's mind, right? So it's just that slow process. Under a collective illusion, as more people start speaking up, it creates permission for other people by lowering the cost of courage.
And then it just goes. And so in the marriage equality example, in 2003, I believe was the year in Chicago, they had a convening of activists and scholars trying to figure out where do we go from here? And the consensus was, do not push for marriage. The public's not ready for it. It will backfire.
There was a small group of activists who had private opinion data at the time that showed this just wasn't true. That a small majority of people, it was like the love is love crowd and libertarians were like, I don't really care, right? Privately, we're like, this is fine. It's fine. But when you ask them, well, what do you think? What do you think your neighbors think?
What do you think your fellow church members think? Your colleagues? Oh, no, no, they're not okay with it, right? So recognizing that it was an illusion, they peeled off and went to Hollywood. Instead of trying to persuade anyone, they used a different strategy, which is called social proof.
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Chapter 6: What did the Velvet Revolution teach us about authenticity?
I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just going to show you. I'm going to reveal. So you got will and grace. You got these kinds of things. And it wasn't invasive. It's just like, I'm going to show it to you as if it's not a big deal. Right. And then we internalize it because it's kind of funny. Um, Your brain, as smart as your brain is, it's not that smart.
It treats fictional characters that you care about as part of your in-group, even though you know they're fictional. So if I hear it talked about on a show that I like, it has an exponential effect on my perception of what my group believes.
Yeah, that's where music and the entertainment industry plays a huge... So powerful.
These are the artifacts that tell us what we believe, right? And so that worked there really well, really well. The Velvet Revolution is, for me, the single best example at a societal level of what's possible when the problem is a collective illusion. You choose the right strategy. Don't persuade. A big and.
Chapter 7: How can individuals contribute to raising collective consciousness?
A big and. And in fact, before we get, I keep promising this. It's great for retention.
Just keep on watching, folks.
Keep watching.
We'll get to it at the end.
We're about like this, right? Because we go off the cliff in the car. Stay tuned next week. When I say the strategy really matters under collective illusions, it's really important that you don't try to persuade because it will actually entrench the illusion. Best example of that, that there is, and then we'll get to the Belt Revolution, is remember the St. Otter Drugs campaign? Yes.
I heard you talk about this. Yeah. I mean, I remember seeing it in school.
It was based on a small uptick in first-time drug use for marijuana amongst teens. The government spends about a billion dollars on a massive ad campaign. Everybody remembers. It was unbelievable from an advertising standpoint. The typical American teen saw...
was it three ads a day for six years so this was was it strictly american or was it okay i mean they might have done it somewhere else too but this this particular one that that so yeah probably half of our audience maybe isn't as familiar with it like you get pulled into school if you google the say no to drugs campaign and you'll see these dumb commercials like this is your they crack an egg in the frying pan yeah this is your brain on drugs any questions and i remember i'm like wait how's my brain like an egg you know but um well here's what's funny so
It turns out that the government was wrong. Private opinion data at the time. So the government thought that the reason kids were trying drugs is they were curious about drugs. They were wrong. Private opinion data existed showing they were skeptical about drugs. What they wanted was to fit in. And they were under what I think is a pretty hilarious illusion.
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Chapter 8: What role does personal fulfillment play in achieving societal change?
I mean, who else would spend billions of dollars on a marketing campaign if it wasn't the case, right? Exactly. So they were blitzed with a billion dollars of ads trying to scare them straight. They took from that, this must be what we do, because why would adults try so hard to stop, get us to stop? In which case, if that's the majority, I'm part of the majority. So great, now I know what I do.
We'll do drugs. Yeah. So no kidding, scholars have pretty conclusively shown that that campaign directly led to an increase in first-time drug use. So we're not doing that, right? What the Velvet Revolution taught us is if you pursue the social proof strategy, the kind of things that we can do together as a people, that everyday individuals can do, is incredible. And here's what that is.
The Velvet Revolution is... The only example in history that we know of where an authoritarian communist regime was overthrown without anybody losing their life, without a single shot being fired. And at the time, you know, you see it into the 80s and 90s, like you had other Soviet satellite states, Hungary, these other places, like bloody suppression of revolts.
Like, I mean, hundreds of thousands of people being just murdered. Right. So this is weird. It had puzzled scholars forever. Like, why was this so different? And what was so fascinating is not just that it happened, but who led it, which will give you the secret. This Václav Havel, poet, playwright. No military experience, wasn't a politician at the time.
And he was an anti-communist, but he was obviously a creative, an artist. And he had written a play called The Garden Party. which you can look it up. It's pretty great. It was this subtle satire of communism. It was so subtle that the censors didn't know they were being made fun of. So they let it get put on. So he puts it on. It becomes a runaway hit.
It was literally like the Hamilton of its time. This is communist Czechoslovakia. Yes. And so he... Good point. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for putting that. Really important point there. I'm doing my job. And so he's like, well, okay. He realizes, he attends every showing of it, and instead of watching the play, he watches the audience. And he said, they laughed at all the right parts.
He said, they laughed at places that you wouldn't find funny if you really believed in communism. So he realizes that the problem in Czechoslovakia is not that everybody believes in communism, it's that everybody believes that everybody believes, and it keeps them living in this lie. And he wrote what is a remarkable manifesto. You can download it for free right now.
It's called The Power of the Powerless. It is so worth reading. It's about 80 pages long. You'll think he's writing about today. It's that good. And he writes about how he discovers the illusion at the heart of the problem. And he decides, well, wait, if the problem is an illusion, then the answer is authenticity, right?
Okay, well, everybody else that's part of the revolutionary crowd is like, are you kidding me? He was mocked, like, you're so naive. Like, they have all the guns. You're going to defeat them with authenticity, right? But so he goes about setting up these, what he called these small works, right?
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