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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Rob Volpe 01:00

Hello, Maria. Hello, everybody. everybody! Excited to be here.

Maria Ross 01:04

Yeah, and today we’re going to talk a little bit about morality and ethics, right and wrong, and is that just a uniquely human trait, or is it across different life forms? And also, how does it happen for us as humans? Which kind of plays right into our sweet spot of empathy for you and I, but I have to digress for a second because just coming to this recording with you, you know, we were both a little bit late coming to the recording, and I was late because I knew there were some things I wanted to do before we started recording, but then I got caught up in other tasks before I got to the thing I wanted to do, and I call it my frittering away time. And it occurred to me, like, is that kind of a human trait? Is are we the only ones that fritter, and you know, are we the only species that has to tell our teenager to get up off the couch, right, and do the thing that they’re supposed to do, or do squirrels have to deal with that when they’re storing nuts for the winner. Like, hey, Larry, let’s get a move on. You know, it

Rob Volpe 02:06

sounds like a really good literary novel, The Lazy Squirrel, by Maria Ross. Next

Maria Ross 02:14

one, next one. Yeah, published by Page Two. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 02:17

exactly. Jesse, what do you think? Let us know for listeners that don’t know. Jesse is our publisher at Page Two that we watch. She’s

Maria Ross 02:25

amazing, Jesse and Trina.

Rob Volpe 02:27

So fascinating that so it’s kind of the you’re frittering away, but you’re doing things right. Like,

Maria Ross 02:35

but they’re like a little bit wasteful. They’re things that again, like speaking of the squirrel, you’re just like, hey, look, a squirrel. I have to do this one thing, right? And all of a sudden, time passes, and we talked about time previously. Of just like, all of a sudden, you’re like, where did the time go, right? And so, I was wondering if the ability to waste time and fritter on unproductive tasks that might have to be an episode for the future. Of is that what it means to be human?

Rob Volpe 03:03

I’m listen to or watch Maria and Rob faff about

Maria Ross 03:08

fritter about frittering fritter

Rob Volpe 03:11

faff dawdle all the things. I’m one of those people, and I think I think it was Adam Grant who talked about this at some point, and I felt seen. I’m one of those people that will try to get something done. Like if we have to leave, like I just gotta like deal with this photo.

Maria Ross 03:30

One last thing.

Rob Volpe 03:31

There’s one last thing. Let me just do. Let me hang these clothes up. Let me move this around, and then let me get that one last email out, and then we’re good.

Maria Ross 03:39

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 03:40

And God bless my husband Charles, but he’s gotten used to that habit of mine, and he just patiently waits downstairs, probably cursing under his breath. But

Maria Ross 03:54

same, same, same,

Rob Volpe 03:56

same.

Maria Ross 03:56

Paul’s like, if you tell me one more, it’s just going to take me a second, one more time. I

Rob Volpe 04:03

mean, in this sort of time distortion, like one second is five minutes. Yeah, when I was younger, really good friend of mine, Melissa. She and I used to go to the movies all the time. We lived in L.A. back then, and I would always be like five. He would say, “Oh, let’s meet at you know 230, and I’d be there at like 235 right? Plenty of time before the movie, but she was like, “I waste so much time waiting for you.

Maria Ross 04:32

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 04:33

and so I try, I do try, and I I’ve never missed a flight, so I do have some. So something’s going

Maria Ross 04:40

right there,

Rob Volpe 04:40

but then there’s the other side of that elasticity of the time, and then I have heard stories of you know, and they they talk about gay time and you know where oh gays are always late. Like that’s like I

Maria Ross 04:56

was like, what is that? Which

Rob Volpe 04:58

is a stereotype. I have some. Gay friends that are very prompt, but there was just always this thing like gays are always like 40-five minutes late to whatever you know. Dinner’s at seven; they’ll be there at eight.

Maria Ross 05:09

Yeah, yeah,

Rob Volpe 05:10

and you just kind of learn to roll with it. But there is, and in that point, there is this, and I’m I am mindful of the respect of other people’s time, and there is a feeling of if I’m the one that’s sitting there waiting for you, you are not respecting me, and I am sensitive to it. But there’s, I hate using the word “but” because I feel like whenever I use the, I’m really mindful of using the word “but” because then I feel like it negates the other person, and it’s like, but

Maria Ross 05:40

and yet,

Rob Volpe 05:41

and yet, oh, I love that. However, is what has been my go-to, and yet, there’s something in my wiring about like one more thing, one more thing, getting getting one more thing done. I was running into this morning as we were running a few minutes late. I was experiencing mental time travel, which we talked about in the last episode, episodic stuff. I was thinking about an email that I had gotten from a colleague, and then I went flashed back to earlier emails, maybe emails from a client that whatever, and then was jumping forward to and even projecting into, I’m gonna be, you know. Uh huh. When really, it’s all it’s fine. It’s like finding. It’s finding time to have a meeting, and

Maria Ross 06:28

yeah.

Rob Volpe 06:29

So it’s so not a big thing. But it was as I was showering and getting ready, it just was taking over, and I noticed. I was like, “Ooh, I’m mentally time traveling right now.”

Maria Ross 06:39

So you noticed it. That’s great. Well, yeah. So anyway, put a pin in it. Let’s talk about the ability to factor.

Rob Volpe 06:45

The Ethical dilemma of being frittering.

Maria Ross 06:48

Yeah. So today we want to explore this core question of like, how do we as humans develop a moral sense, and is it biological, social, or something else entirely? And again, is that we got answers around ethics and morals when we did our informal survey for other people on what does it mean to be human? Things like you’re able to know right from wrong, you’re able to show empathy, you’re able to feel guilty about something. So maybe we should start with just sort of how do we even get our ethics as human beings, right? How do we build these ethical codes? And I did a little bit of research on this, and it turns out there’s a variety of ways that we get our ethics. It’s evolutionary foundations, right? So, and you and I both know this: humans are hardwired for empathy. It’s how our species has survived and evolved, how we have, you know, survived in groups. It’s just as I always say in my talks. Some of us, for some of us, the muscle has atrophied, and for some of us, it’s very strong. Right? There’s also cultural transmission. Right? What we learn from our parents, what we learn from our our tribe. You know, our cultural norms, our values, and then there’s also personal reflection, and I find this one really interesting because, sort of, as you leave your nest, being a child to an adult, it’s your own personal reflections and growth journey that starts to shape your ethics and your morals.

Rob Volpe 08:14

Yeah, yes.

Maria Ross 08:15

As you start doing work on yourself, and as you start experiencing the world, as we start evaluating our different experiences, so what do you think about all that? Is that well? Number one, do you agree with those things? Are we leaving anything out of how people, how humans form their ethics? And two, are we the only creatures that do that?

Rob Volpe 08:35

I don’t disagree with the three kind of buckets. It makes sense. There’s some hardwired ethical behaviors

Maria Ross 08:44

for survival,

Rob Volpe 08:45

for survival and supporting the group, and don’t you know, don’t eat your brother.

Maria Ross 08:51

For some groups, yeah, exactly.

Rob Volpe 08:56

Well, that’s true. And how hungry are you? But then, yeah, what are the societal norms that start to get established? And I really think about the familial group, and and even within empathy, I’m rewriting the introduction to my book as we’re going into a paperback version this fall. Tell me more about that. Solving the empathy crisis one conversation at a time. Available wherever you buy books, but as I’m rewriting it, I am talking about some of the factors that go into our ability to have empathy and how, you know, you mentioned it’s a muscle. I talk about it as there’s so many analogies that are so appropriate. It’s a muscle. I talk about it now as a superpower, and it’s this neglected superpower, and we need to have our superpower demonstrated and modeled by the caregivers and nurturers and role models in our life. And I think ethics is the same thing. We’re teaching people how to be little humans and little adults, and then they kind of grow up. But then you go out. On your own, and you-I mean, you know-it’s kind of the the situation of you meet the parents of you know a bad crime happens, and you meet the parents, and you’re like, “How did that happen?

Maria Ross 10:15

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 10:15

like, okay, the morals and ethics of this criminal or accused criminal are so completely different from this adult. Like something happened, yeah. And I think that is that personal. In adulthood, we do have choices. There are probably external forces as well, and how we’re reacting to those forces is making a difference.

Maria Ross 10:38

Well, and I and I find it interesting that you know are we the only species that has different groups with different cultural norms and ethics? For example, think of all the circles you operate in, right? And for everyone listening, right, you’ve got your family’s code and your family’s ethics. You have the moral code or ethics, maybe of your neighborhood and your neighbors and your community, you may have a completely different code of ethics and morality stance within your workplace. Right? We talk about workplace culture, and that I feel like that’s such a uniquely human thing because I don’t think you know ferrets or birds shape shift depending on where they are. They sort of have a species wide or a a clan wide ethic that doesn’t shift based on what they’re doing in the given day that they’re in or who they’re around.

Rob Volpe 11:34

Don’t eat your brother. Yeah, yeah, but yeah. But are we like? I feel like we’re standards.

Maria Ross 11:38

Yes, but we go into different environments where the codes change, and I think that’s where many of us as humans have misalignment.

Rob Volpe 11:46

Well, and just to thought drift on this, how is that different or similar to? So there’s there’s pack behavior or a flock. You remember mentioning birds? There’s a flock of birds, and they know. Oh, we’re all migrating, and we’re doing this, and we’re moving this way or that way. Like, how much of that is instinctual versus? I mean, it’s not unethical. Well, they’re not making it.

Maria Ross 12:12

You’re saying there might not be judgment there, right?

Rob Volpe 12:15

Yeah, they’re just instinctive. Oh, that’s a good description or distinction. There’s not judgment that’s instinct for birds to go fly together, but the maybe is it an ethical consideration to stay together as a flock, or is that still instinct?

Maria Ross 12:33

Well, I did a little research on that too about if other species have ethical codes the way that humans do, and the results were that they don’t necessarily have codified ethics or things of that nature. You know, they don’t have a Plato and a Socrates and and a Bible and all those kinds of things, right? A Quran, but they said that highly social species do enforce unwritten social norms such as fairness, cooperation, and hierarchy, and those who repeatedly violate those rules often face ostracism, aggression, or permanent exile to maintain group cohesion. And the examples were like chimpanzees and baboons, wolves, crows and ravens. And this one was interesting: honeybees and ants. So yeah, but I think to your question, that might just be an instinctual biological imperative of if you act this way, we may not survive.

Rob Volpe 13:27

Right, right, exactly. Like everybody, everybody has to pull their weight, so to

Maria Ross 13:32

speak. I love this. It said this in here. In the speaking of what I was talking about earlier about the lazy squirrel, it did say for honeybees and ants that, in quotes, cheaters or slackers who disrupt the harmony of the hive are aggressively removed or blocked from entering.

Rob Volpe 13:48

That is wild. Cheaters or slackers, the cheating honeybee. No, bro,

Maria Ross 13:55

you’re not coming in. You’re not coming in now. We’ve had it with you.

Rob Volpe 13:59

Slacker ants: A tale of a tale of spinsters’ crimes from the comfort of their their hive. Their hive. I

Maria Ross 14:10

love it. I love it. But yeah, like to your point, I don’t know that that’s a moral code. That may just be a a survival instinct.

Rob Volpe 14:18

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think similarly, you had shared about like wolves, and again, you got to participate in the hunt. You’ve got there’s a code of conduct of what’s expected, but that that sort of the idea of a code of conduct, you’ve got to pull your own weight, which I think it falls as a code of conduct that would be something that’s an ethical behavioral group influenced behavior rather than instinct, you know, because the lazy wolf or the frittering wolf might be like, oh wait, one more thing. I’ll join that hunt.

Maria Ross 15:02

I just got to finish this email.

Rob Volpe 15:06

I’m influencing on TikTok right now, and I’ve just got to get one more thing done. I gotta.

Maria Ross 15:10

I just my people need me. Yeah, I was gonna say something to that, and it just completely went out of my head because you made me laugh with this idea of having the email, the one last email to send, but I mean, I think it’s this. But oh, I know what it was. So let’s go back in time to like let’s go back millennia, right? And we’re saying that these are sort of ingrained, instinctual social norms within these groups.

Rob Volpe 15:35

Yes.

Maria Ross 15:36

How did they start?

Rob Volpe 15:38

For survival of the group is the first thing that comes to my mind. Yeah,

Maria Ross 15:42

but no one, no one implicitly or explicitly stated it, right? So to your point, is it about modeling and ostracization? I don’t know what the

Rob Volpe 15:52

did somebody get pissed off because that you know that lazy Neanderthal just won’t participate in the hunt, and we got wooly mammoths to kill, and it takes all of us to pull down the wooly mammoth. But we didn’t, and now I got impaled by the horn, and I’m not happy.

Maria Ross 16:10

Well, because humans set these standards before they could, they had speech.

Rob Volpe 16:14

Yes, that’s fascinating.

Maria Ross 16:16

It had to be modeling. It had to be cause and effect

Rob Volpe 16:20

before we had signal, and before we really had storytelling,

Maria Ross 16:23

yes, is is

Rob Volpe 16:24

the the thinking. We don’t have the stories from back then to know for sure, but that that’s the thinking about it in the way that it it has developed over time. So yeah, I would think it’s about it’s an evolutionary. There’s an evolutionary factor, survival of the fittest Darwinian sort of thing where the group is not going to survive if the group isn’t all contributing and playing their part, which you see to play out today in teams. Like what happens when at work when you’ve got somebody that’s not pulling their weight, or you’re in the neighborhood, the people down the street have the ugly yard because they’ve not tended to it, and you know you you want to throw them out, you can’t, but you’d love to like throw them out, or but you ostracize them, perhaps.

Maria Ross 17:13

Yes, and you know what’s you just sparked something for me. You know what’s interesting about that? That’s uniquely human is that humans have to explicitly state things at times, right? That’s why you have homeowners associations.

Rob Volpe 17:25

We need mechanisms.

Maria Ross 17:27

We need to have mechanisms, and we need to have things told and written down. And like, hey, we’re all agreeing to this. We almost humans have evolved to the point that they need the clarity because we are so diverse. I mean, if you even think about social norms from state to state in the United States, or from country to country across the world, right? And then various socio-economic groups within those cultures. There’s different ethics. There’s different norms. There’s different values, and so we evolved to such diversity that there became a need to codify for us versus like the birds or the squirrels. They don’t have a document, right? They don’t have a like a discussion about this. They don’t have the great philosophers writing this stuff down and telling these stories. We started to need that as human beings, and I wonder why.

Rob Volpe 18:17

Well, I think it became easier to get everybody aligned, but also to pass on the traditions of it. Actually, probably did become much easier to survive when you weren’t relying on, oh, did father tell son, mother tell daughter, mother tell son, whatever the dynamic of how to do something or a way to behave or the most effective way we’ve learned to kill the saber-toothed tiger is, you know, this

Maria Ross 18:45

is X, yeah,

Rob Volpe 18:46

and so the storytelling helps tell the tale,

Maria Ross 18:51

right?

Rob Volpe 18:52

Drawings, you know, drawings on the cave wall, and who is that person that was like, this this burnt piece of wood in the gate is going to be, or I presume that’s what they started with. I wonder if they even was like, ooh, a berry, and look at how that stains my fingers. What happens if,

Maria Ross 19:11

yeah,

Rob Volpe 19:12

stains the wall?

Maria Ross 19:13

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 19:13

but that was early storytelling, right? And that’s that’s evolved into how we communicate. It’s evolved into how we keep people organized and in the the right sort of ethical behaviors of society, and then that’s also always changing and evolving. And we see that in our in our time as people of a certain age, and also when you think back to our parents’ generation, for sure.

Maria Ross 19:40

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that’s where religious texts are all story based, no matter what religion. It’s all based on parables and stories, and give you know. And it’s great. Like corporate communications could learn a thing or two from the way religious texts are formatted because it’s about stories. I remember when I was doing my brand strategy. Work with clients, and we would talk about values and mission and vision. And part of what I would encourage them to do is collect the stories. Collect the stories, like what are the famous stories that everybody tells in support of these values that you hold dear. Document the stories, pass those on. That’s how you keep your DNA as you grow and as you scale, right? And so we figured out as humans somewhere along the way that that was going to be useful to us to be able to pass that down. But you also sparked another thing that kind of goes back to my: we have such diversity within the human species of how what we think is right and wrong, like this is why we have debate, this is why we have conflict, this is why we have discourse, right? And that you know you can look at the way think the quote unquote way things are done, right? Like parenting, as an example, there’s so many different schools of thought for how to be a good parent, for how to be you know have raise healthy children, and we have at least in the in you know Western culture, we’ve kind of come to this agreement of well, you know, your way, my way might not be your way,

Rob Volpe 21:12

right? But I’m sure I’m going to make some snarky comments about the behavior. Well, yeah, that’s a whole

Maria Ross 21:17

separate thing. But yeah, but I mean, I find that interesting that there’s no uniformity within our species because of the the complex diversity of people’s experiences. Yeah, we’re

Rob Volpe 21:30

not a small enclave living in a cave. I think if you found there must be a study out there somewhere about this, but I think if you were to look at small pockets of communities; they are probably more assimilated and parenting in the same way. They have the same ethics and local morals as everyone else in the group, and that’s because it’s really small. Hold that thought. Domino is in rare form today. One of the things I always question with empathy, even related to that idea of like the small communities, I often talk about globalization and how that has affected our ability to have empathy. And so, as I look at even Susan Conrath’s landmark University of Michigan study from way back 1516, years ago that found that 40% decline in college students of the ability to find or see the point of view of their peers. It’s like, well, is it really that that the empathy has declined, or is that our exposure to different views of ways of thinking and behaving has actually expanded as our world has gotten smaller through you know travel through TV through all social

Maria Ross 22:51

media yeah technology

Rob Volpe 22:53

that maybe our ability to have empathy hasn’t changed but the people that we are asked to have empathy with has differed, and I often talk about, especially like emotional empathy. There’s more of a barrier for people to get into an emotional space than a cognitive place because

Maria Ross 23:13

not everybody’s wired that way.

Rob Volpe 23:14

Not everybody was wired that way, but who are you more likely wired with? The people lived in the cave with you, and I used to talk about. I used to use the analogy of like it’s like when you were in the cave and everybody in the cave had the same values and morals behaviors. But when the cave down the road came over, they had a totally and were like, “Hey, we want to cut all those trees down and try something we’re calling farming.

Maria Ross 23:35

Right.

Rob Volpe 23:36

And you’re like, “What? Right. And you have to there. And there’s dissonance there, and you have to overcome all the steps, all the barriers to empathy using the five steps in order to reach some sort of alignment and go. Oh yeah, farming would make it a lot easier to gather. Yeah, if we grew it all right there. But the

Maria Ross 23:53

fact that we as humans even needed empathy to see another point of view is uniquely human to me because you don’t have other species needing to see another bird or another fox’s point of view in order to coexist, right? It was. It’s not that drastically different.

Rob Volpe 24:13

Yeah. Well. Yeah. Like the, and I think the last episode I was talking about the savanna quite a lot when I’m at a lot of friends hunting, and you know we were

Maria Ross 24:22

on a Lion King kick. I don’t know what that was about. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 24:25

we were. I will not sing Hakuna Matata, but as you don’t see the lions, you know, staring at the herd of antelope gazelle, whatever, and one of the lions go, I’m feeling like zebra today, but like going off in another direction. Yeah, that’s not how that works. And there’s not

Maria Ross 24:44

another lion going. Tell me about that. Tell me more. Why are you feeling zebra today? What

Rob Volpe 24:49

is it? What is it about today that makes you curious for zebra? How do you prepare the zebra? Where do you start when you eat the zebra? Is

Maria Ross 24:59

it? Oh my gosh, I would love if you talk a little bit about the research you found from Dewall about, and I don’t know, I don’t know if I ever pronouncing his name correctly, DeWal, I believe it is D E W A A L.

Rob Volpe 25:12

Yes,

Maria Ross 25:13

looking at the building blocks of morality.

Rob Volpe 25:16

Yes, so when you think about morality, when you think about so morals, ethics. When I’ve the way I understand ethics and morals, ethics are the things that society sort of infuses and requires of us. Morals are the personal choices that we’re making.

Maria Ross 25:36

Oh, okay.

Rob Volpe 25:37

And he DeWalt in his research found that they’re these like yeah they’re these building blocks are these parts that you’ve got in order to build a moral system you’ve got to have empathy makes sense you’ve got to have a sense of fairness that’s where narcissists and people on the antisocial disorder sociopath a psychopath they get in trouble they don’t have a sense of fairness it’s all about me and what I want. They need to have a sense of cooperation as well, and all three of those things. I think actually all three of those things are very closely linked, but I like that he’s broken those apart, and that helps create, as he called it, a moral system. And kind of to your point, even about my tangent on the zebra zebra preferences of select lionesses in the savanna. It what doesn’t what he he was finding what he wasn’t seeing in other primates was a reflexive layer. So that asking why is something wrong. So feeling guilty rather than just feeling the consequence of something. So it’s this idea of the concept of a moral self that can fail on its own. So there’s this like behavioral moral distinction. So like chimps can register unfairness, but they don’t seem to lie awake at night in moral anguish. They’re not like we do. I couldn’t

Maria Ross 27:08

sleep last night because I was upset about the way I might have treated somebody, or that something was unfair at work, or you know all the things. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 27:15

all the things. How did that conversation could have gone better? Worrying about the conversation I’m going to have, which see the last episode four about our sense of self, future dreaming, hope, and all of that. That anxiety kind of comes along with

Maria Ross 27:31

it, right? Right. Well, and also I saw that you found that chimps and bonobos exhibit generosity, gratitude, justice, grief, forgiveness, consolation, and friendships, and friendship, which many people and a few people in our survey even mentioned some of these previously were attributed solely to humans.

Rob Volpe 27:54

Yeah,

Maria Ross 27:55

right.

Rob Volpe 27:55

Yeah, there was there was something I read about how like apes will mourn. I think when we were talking about death and we were talking about the whale pushing its calf, dead calf, around for quite a while, apes apparently will mourn and return to the death. I think maybe was inferring the sight of the death of a loved one or part of how. Yeah, like a year later, like yeah, it’s not there. It’s it’s object permanence, or you know, where it’s like, oh, if I see it, it exists, but if it disappears, it’s gone.

Maria Ross 28:32

Right,

Rob Volpe 28:33

which is something that toddlers go through when parents like go away. Whoa, whoa, what happened? Understanding, oh, they’re going to come back. Like they, they apes have clearly gotten beyond that stage where they understand this thing is actually like it’s died. It is gone.

Maria Ross 28:49

Wow!

Rob Volpe 28:49

They recognize that.

Maria Ross 28:51

I was because I was going to say like from the grief and mourning perspective, like the fact that we have rituals around our dead, and we remember, we revisit, we go back, and then you just shared that story, and I’m like, okay, so that’s not uniquely human either, necessarily.

Rob Volpe 29:07

Not necessarily. Yeah, we have rituals that we’ve developed around it

Maria Ross 29:13

yeah

Rob Volpe 29:13

but, the you know, I mean, it’s hard. Shiva in the Jewish community looks very different than Shiva with you know, or that idea of mourning the dead over the course of a year in another community,

Maria Ross 29:26

right?

Rob Volpe 29:26

And they’re not communicating with us in English or another spoken language that we understand at this point,

Maria Ross 29:32

right?

Rob Volpe 29:33

Oh, speaking of that, there is a. Have you heard about the Doolittle Prize out of Berkeley?

Maria Ross 29:38

No, sure.

Rob Volpe 29:39

Okay, so there, I’m always like, ooh, half of the information.

Maria Ross 29:47

As my husband says to me, “Good story, Maria.

Rob Volpe 29:50

There is a wealthy individual that funded a research prize. I think it’s out of Berkeley, and it’s like the Doolittle. Prize and it is about communication with understanding communication with animals and other living species.

Maria Ross 30:09

Yes. So what’s interesting is that sorry, I just found this. Someone was awarded this for using artificial intelligence and machine learning to decode the vocabulary of zebra finches.

Rob Volpe 30:23

Yes,

Maria Ross 30:24

for two-way interspecies communication. That’s what the prize was. It’s the Collar Doolittle Prize, is what it’s called.

Rob Volpe 30:30

The $10 million grand prize is interspecies communication. Wow. The bigger one, or the then the lesser prize. This is a lesser one. Annual basis is like, ooh, we’ve decoded the way zebra finches. I forget what it was they were communicating about, but it deciphered all these different calls that they were making and the ways that those calls were coming out and what it was actually saying.

Maria Ross 30:56

Wow!

Rob Volpe 30:57

And you know, I so as I’m saying that, I’m going, but wait, Rob. What about the chimpanzee that knows how to press the button? And like we’ve seen that kind of rudimentary communication, but the issue there is it’s not we’re making the chimpanzee communicate in a form of English.

Maria Ross 31:14

Got it.

Rob Volpe 31:14

A language that we understand versus truly bridging that

Maria Ross 31:19

right

Rob Volpe 31:20

talk to the animals as Doctor Dolittle.

Maria Ross 31:23

Well, and that begs the question of if they if they do have this language, if other species have this language, then maybe eventually they will start articulating their moral codes and their ethics right to each other. Maybe they will evolve to the point that, like, oh, the clan that communicated these rules to their young survived versus this other one that didn’t, right? Oh, we all need to start doing that.

Rob Volpe 31:52

Well, yes, the the dog that ends up actively communicating where the human understands, oh, Fido wants to sit at the table for this and this reason. Fido is going to get propagated, like they’re going to, you know, make Fido the super dad of all dogs for the next, you know, period of years.

Maria Ross 32:15

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 32:16

and yeah, so talking to animals and communicating, and they do have things that we’re not aware of,

Maria Ross 32:24

right? And that’s why they might, they may be communicating moral codes to each other. We don’t know, like you know what I mean?

Rob Volpe 32:32

Yeah, like the moral values of that’s interesting.

Maria Ross 32:36

Like you shouldn’t have taken Roger’s fish. It’s a bad thing to do for the group.

Rob Volpe 32:43

Yeah, yeah. Well, and yeah, that’s interesting. So, like, I’ve got three cats. They’re all very different. If we get upset with one of them for bad behavior that doesn’t fit our ethical, like the the like the ethics

Maria Ross 33:01

of your home, yeah. Yeah, let me

Rob Volpe 33:02

just say it. My cats are 15, so all of them-they’re siblings from the same litter. So, Domino likes she. I think she’s got some wires crossed. She poops outside of the litter box, always near the litter box, but never in the very rarely in the litter box. So that’s a thing, and we’ve gotten upset with her. This has been going on for two years now, so we have gotten upset with her, scolded her, done you know whatever we could. Her siblings don’t seem to register that she’s you know like they’re not in trouble, so they don’t care.

Maria Ross 33:37

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 33:38

it’s like yeah, whatever. This doesn’t affect me. Yeah, so I don’t see that they’re you know following her, going, “Hey, get in there! Come on, you know what’s going to happen.

Maria Ross 33:47

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 33:48

don’t mess this up. We got we got a good thing going.

Maria Ross 33:51

Right, right. I want to switch gears for a second because you found some information from Jonathan Height. Hyde, if I’m pronouncing that well.

Rob Volpe 34:01

Hate. It’s not hate, but it’s hype.

Maria Ross 34:03

Hype, hate. H a i d t. We’ll put his link in the show notes.

Rob Volpe 34:07

Author of the Anxious Generation, current bestseller. He’s a psychologist. Done a lot of work looking into moral development, moral compasses, and and how we develop those. Most recently, the Anxious Generation is looking at. It’s kind of he’s done a meta-analysis of a lot of the studies around. Yeah,

Maria Ross 34:28

I can’t. I couldn’t. I couldn’t finish his book. It was too dark and gloomy for me. I couldn’t, as a mom, I couldn’t do it. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 34:38

I could see that. I could see that. I haven’t read the book. I’ve listened to. I’ve read shorter pieces that he’s written. He and Scott Galloway are friends, so he’s been on his podcast a few times. I’ve listened to those conversations, and I get what’s going on.

Maria Ross 34:52

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 34:52

but anyway, what he was finding was that we have five found. Foundations to build this moral compass, yeah, to program in our moral compass, I guess. And there, it’s interesting. So they are paired foundations. So

Maria Ross 35:13

okay,

Rob Volpe 35:14

care and so it’s almost like there’s little spectrums.

Maria Ross 35:17

Okay,

Rob Volpe 35:17

care and harm is one. Fairness and cheating is another. Loyalty betrayal is the third. Authority subversion is the fourth, and then sanctity degradation is the fifth. And so, within each one of those, different cultures, political orientations, subgroups weigh these things differently on that spectrum: fairness versus cheating, for example, and that explains how two different groups can believe they’re acting morally, while the other group is like, “What are you doing?

Maria Ross 35:56

That’s that was my point earlier about you’ve got all this diversity and you’re being immoral. No, we’re being moral. You’re being immoral because we have different codes.

Rob Volpe 36:07

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We we are somewhere in different places on that boundary, and you know, I guess some people would be okay with harm, but maybe that in their moral code. I guess it’s what are we talking about with harm versus care?

Maria Ross 36:23

I can give an example: the abortion debate.

Rob Volpe 36:27

Yes

Maria Ross 36:27

there are people who believe that they are on the care side because they are, you know, pro-choice, protecting the the life of the mother, and there are those who believe that that is on the harm side of taking an innocent life.

Rob Volpe 36:40

Yeah,

Maria Ross 36:40

and they both think they’re right morally.

Rob Volpe 36:43

That is true. So in their communities and their cultures, they are morally correct

Maria Ross 36:50

in their own circles that they choose to be in. Yes,

Rob Volpe 36:53

right. And then let’s then go back into DeWaal and the building blocks of morality. The you know, it is like where do where are you orienting your empathy, your sense of fairness, or your cooperation? And there’s a choice, and that’s morals are all about choices. There’s a choice that’s being made on which end of that debate, you are leaning for falling and advocating for, and yet empathy can actually like maybe we can talk. Yeah, well, that’s

Maria Ross 37:34

where our empathy work lies. Is like how do you bridge that gap between your different potentially moral or ethical codes,

Rob Volpe 37:42

right?

Maria Ross 37:42

And again, not walk away converted, because that’s not the point. It’s not about I’m going to convince you that my code is right and yours is wrong. I just want to better understand. I still don’t agree with you, but now I understand where you’re coming from. I understand why you think or feel the way you do,

Rob Volpe 37:57

right? And then we love to point out the sort of moral pretzels we tie ourselves in as we justify, well, I’m you know life of the mother over the child, but kill the criminals at death penalty, you know, right,

Maria Ross 38:17

right, the

Rob Volpe 38:18

contradictions because we do tend to put more moral weight on different things, and that’s where you know you get into like one issue voters. It’s like, what is that big weighty thing? I

Maria Ross 38:31

would have,

Rob Volpe 38:32

I would not be able to vote for someone that advocated for anything that would take away rights and protections to the LGBTQ community because I am part of that community and therefore it would be harming me.

Maria Ross 38:47

Right,

Rob Volpe 38:48

morally that is my number one, and then the rest of it has some degree of negotiation. Yes, yes, and yet I’m not totally a one-issue voter, but if it’s that issue,

Maria Ross 39:04

right,

Rob Volpe 39:04

I am

Maria Ross 39:05

right,

Rob Volpe 39:06

and that’s about my own sense of. I mean, that gets into morality, but it’s exactly

Maria Ross 39:11

yeah. Also,

Rob Volpe 39:12

I I view it as survival,

Maria Ross 39:15

yeah,

Rob Volpe 39:15

for myself.

Maria Ross 39:16

Uh huh. Yeah. Well, and I think,

Rob Volpe 39:18

and that’s the thing that people don’t then appreciate, and I know this is different. Well, it’s not really different. Well, we’ll come back to abortion in a second. That’s what I don’t think people always appreciate. And as I’ve had conversations in my last newsletter, I was talking about my experience with at the retired men’s association of Greenwich, and I was approached. I’m sure this happens to you as well. Where it’s like, how do I talk to my family member who, you know, my son who has Trump derangement syndrome? So he’s a member of the far left, and he was just absolutely out of his mind about and upset, out of his mind in an upset emotional way about the things that are going on with the Trump administration. And this gentleman was the dad was taking it from a very kind of rational, logical place of like, well, shouldn’t Iran not have nuclear weapons? And you know, it’s like, okay, well, wait a minute. But what I suggested to him, I was like, well, if your your son is coming at it from an emotional place. You need to reframe your conversation because you’ve got to help unpack and understand his emotions and what is bothering him about all of this, so that you can listen, and then maybe you can find common ground and help. Maybe you’re going to see a different point of view. Maybe he’s going to see a different point of view, and you’ll at least come to a place of respect for each other’s perspective, but to kind of defuse that, and and so related to the gay argument for me, it’s an emotional thing because it is about me as a human and my right to exist. Where somebody who’s has a different perspective, it doesn’t matter to them. It’s it’s like me regulating whether you can wear blue shirts or not. You know, so yeah, you have a thought.

Maria Ross 41:09

No, I was I’m I’m just kind of trying to get back to this morals and ethics thing versus just purely political, and I’m wondering if I believe, and you tell me if you agree with this statement that we as humans do have a fundamental shared moral code about some things, right?

Rob Volpe 41:28

Yes. I’m not

Maria Ross 41:29

saying people don’t break those norms or break those rules, but we fundamentally, all as humans, no matter where we live, fundamentally believe that murder is wrong. Yes. Like you go to your neighbor and you shoot them, or you kill, you knife them, or whatever, right? And I think in most cultures, and again, it doesn’t mean we follow these morals or ethics all the time. But like, but if you asked the average person in many different places, right? Murder is wrong, lying is wrong, right? Being distrustful, you know, all of these things. There’s a few shared moral codes across the human species. Do you believe that’s true?

Rob Volpe 42:10

I would like to believe. I mean, I think I think they are. I’m not sure. At some level, it absolutely is. I don’t want to. You know, again, I think you have to. Roughly 10% of the population is on that antisocial disorder spectrum, extreme narcissism, sociopath, psychopath. So you got to take that out because they’re not in the same sort of moral consideration set. But then the rest of us, yes, there are there is probably a general space in the. I mean, maybe it’s like five things, but we all maybe well, and it’s probably all in in hates the building blocks or the five foundations.

Maria Ross 42:51

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 42:51

but how far do we end up going? And you know, is it individual versus societal versus the way that that gets played out in our choice for government and leaders. Where if we’re living in a place where we do have a choice,

Maria Ross 43:07

yeah, yeah.

Rob Volpe 43:09

But there’s so okay. So what would those five? Well, that’s what

Maria Ross 43:12

I’m. I’m like, I’m wondering if you could get the entire world to collaborate on a mission articulation exercise or a moral? Could we all agree to at least three to five things?

Rob Volpe 43:25

I have a right to exist, and not just me, Rob. I think every individual has a right to exist. Is that? I don’t

Maria Ross 43:33

know that every human believes that. If you look at some of the war-torn areas, if you look at the Middle East, if you look at terrorism, if you look at,

Rob Volpe 43:42

but that the every individual in that war torn area believes that they have their own right to exist. I

Maria Ross 43:48

believe everyone thinks they have their own right to exist.

Rob Volpe 43:51

Right. Yeah. You definitely agree. Yeah. Do not think that others have the right to exist.

Maria Ross 43:56

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 43:57

So. So I don’t know if that’s one.

Maria Ross 43:59

And you know, maybe I’m even wrong about the murder thing. Like maybe un to some people, it might be well. Like, did the person wrong me? Then murder’s okay,

Rob Volpe 44:08

right? Right.

Maria Ross 44:09

But maybe it’s unfair murder. Like that people can all agree on.

Rob Volpe 44:13

Well, yeah. the The idea of vigilante justice versus just like kind of going sanctity of life, yeah. Sanctity of life, right? And which then gets into the abortion thing,

Maria Ross 44:26

exactly. This

Rob Volpe 44:27

life, and so this is

Maria Ross 44:28

an interesting thought experiment because I don’t know that we do have three to five common ones across every human, every culture or community in the world.

Rob Volpe 44:39

I was just Ezra Klein has a new episode of his podcast out as the day that we’re recording this, and he interviews Chris Ruffo, who is a conservative slash far right thinker, writer, journalist. I’m using air quotes. He’s a. I think he’s a journalist. He he’s one of his claims to fame right now is he was the one that really pushed the advocating of getting rid of DEI and the government and the Trump administration picked him up on it and away we went and here we are right but as one of the other things that he did his publication or group did a story about the Somali fraud in Minnesota, and wrote some stories. Wasn’t

Maria Ross 45:31

that an alleged, or there was some element of truth to that?

Rob Volpe 45:35

There’s some element of alleged in terms of like how big it is, and is it going back to fund terrorism? They’re not totally sure. It’s all murky. But then Ezra Klein was pointing out how that led to the outrage about Minnesota and ICE coming in. Renee Good and Alex Preddy get murdered by ICE, and then we have all of that that issue, and what Ezra Klein points out at the by the end of the interview, he’s like, okay, so you’re against fraud over here, but let’s talk about and it had come up a couple different times. They were talking about it in the sense of virtue, which I think is really around the morals and ethics in which you live by. You’re against fraud over here, but you’re not really calling out the fraud that’s happening within the Trump administration with the crypto, with the deals and investments by foreigners,

Maria Ross 46:31

with the mobile company, with all the yeah, all

Rob Volpe 46:34

the self dealing that’s going on, and you know why is that? And they, Ezra Klein explores it more than Chris Rufo openly admits to it, but it’s the idea that Trump’s a strongman, and therefore, you if you disagree with the strongman, you get booted out because you’re not following then the new ethics and morals of that administration. And they point out that, and so it’s just an example of you can be against something over here, but you know it’s the the both siderism. You’re against it here in this case, but you’re not over here. And if people could be honest with themselves, if they can see that in those times that that happens, and then just ask themselves why, what is that, where is that coming from? Because those are moral decisions that people are making,

Maria Ross 47:24

right?

Rob Volpe 47:24

You know, is it because the Somalis are from Africa, they’re immigrants, they’re black, so is that a racist thing? Is it something else? Is it then why not over here on on the other side,

Maria Ross 47:36

right? And again, this is complicated. I know I keep. I’m the one that keeps doing this. Like again, very uniquely human to even be thinking about the negotiation of that that we spend cycles on in our own heads,

Rob Volpe 47:50

yeah, and hearts

Maria Ross 47:51

on that code, rather than it’s like, yep, we all agree to this,

Rob Volpe 47:55

yes. And so,

Maria Ross 47:56

like, even just talking through this with you, of like, because I think I always did think, oh, at least overall humanity can agree on a few things. I’m actually a little discouraged by our thought experiment because I don’t know that we can.

Rob Volpe 48:10

I would love for people to you know in the comments reach out to us on the socials, email us, whatever, connect with us, and just let us know like what are the three things you think all humans might you know, humans around the world might agree to in terms

Maria Ross 48:25

of morals and ethics. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 48:26

thank you. In terms of morals and ethics, and I want to just touch on the this idea of how we go about changing minds because storytelling is actually really important in this. But there’s also the idea then of, and it actually relates to everything that we were just talking about. But Peter Singer has a book from 1981 called “The Expanding Circle, and the idea is that the moral logic doesn’t change, but the scope of who it applies to is what expands. So he his argument is that altruism begins as genetically based to protect one’s kin and community members, but that it’s a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern, and that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone, as we’ve been talking about. I think, but it’s our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. And so, when I think about the arc of the gay community, just to go back to that, and the way that we’ve become more accepted, it is in that idea of, and it’s using story to help people see and connect and understand to build empathy with, so that you can change hearts and minds, and bring more people. So morally, they are not opposed to. And you’ve seen that in the data, the acceptance of different communities. But I’ll keep going back to the queer community. The acceptance of the queer community in the general population that’s grown. The acceptance of gay marriage. Has also grown recently. It’s taken a little dip amongst Republicans, but it’s still generally the majority of the population. I remember 30 years ago when I was involved in the beginnings of that fight that that was not the case, and it was a lot of changing hearts and minds. So it was that expansion of who people were morally concerned about.

Maria Ross 50:20

I think it it echoes that quote of the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

Rob Volpe 50:26

I love that,

Maria Ross 50:27

and I love that quote. Well, this is such a great conversation. I love the what you pose to our listeners of letting us know what you think are the the common moral or ethical codes. What can we all agree on from every corner of the world, every pocket, every culture or community? Are there at least three to five common agreements we could have about what is moral, what is right, what is just? Let us know on Instagram. I neglect to tell you. Let us know on LinkedIn. You can find us both on LinkedIn. We have all the links in the show notes. But I’m on Instagram at Red Slice Maria Rob.

Rob Volpe 51:08

I am on Instagram at Empathy Activist. You can find us on YouTube, where you might be seeing this or listening. It’s not hard to find us. We are present. Look for Empathy Activist. Look for red slice, Maria. We are

Maria Ross 51:22

omnipresent, and again, like I’ve saying, like I’ve been saying throughout this whole series, this is not about us giving the answers. We’re just having the conversation and asking the provocative questions of what does it mean to be human. So, thanks, Rob, once again for a delightful conversation.

Rob Volpe 51:40

Maria, thank you. This has been amazing. Even without

Maria Ross 51:43

your coffee, you did so well today.

Rob Volpe 51:45

Even without coffee, we did so well. We’re recording this in the morning. I have a medical appointment this afternoon. I am not able to have coffee before that. I question my choice of timing for that appointment, but I’m just going to smile. I only got a few more hours to

Maria Ross 52:01

go. Great, and we have one more episode in this sub series left. No, yes. So we need to know what you guys think. So please, or you guys and gals, what you think about this topic and what you think about this sub series overall. Let us know. Reach out, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Dr. Adam Dorsay: The 4 Types of Connection That Transform Your Life and Leadership

What if the secret to a more fulfilling life (and a more effective leadership style) isn’t productivity or strategy, but connection? My guest today is Dr. Adam Dorsay, a licensed psychologist and executive coach in Silicon Valley, where he works with high-achieving professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and even professional athletes. He’s the host of the award-winning SuperPsyched podcast and has delivered three highly regarded TEDx Talks.

Adam shares why so many of us are more disconnected than ever and what’s really driving that gap. He unpacked the four types of human connection that are vital for a thriving life. We also explore what connection looks like in the workplace, how leaders can foster a genuine culture of empathy and belonging, and why diversity in your personal and professional connections along many vectors matters more than you think. Finally, he wrapped up with some incredibly grounding advice for anyone who feels like they’re running on empty when it comes to meaningful relationships.

If you’re a leader wanting to build a more engaged, connected team, or simply someone craving more depth and fulfillment in your life, this conversation delivers both the science and the heart to help you get there.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why connection is such a key element in our lives and the four ways which we connect.
Creating your own Connection Formula.
What connection means in the workplace and how leaders can foster a culture of connection.
The importance of diversity in connections.
Advice to build the necessary connections in your life, especially for those who feel they are lacking.

“We need to override our narcissistic tendencies and get to know our colleagues and go to bat for them, and they will go to bat for us.” — Dr. Adam Dorsay

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge Podcast: Dr. Adam Dorsay: How Ambition and Compassion Co-Exist for High-Performers
Atlas Obscura: atlasobscura.com

About Adam Dorsay, Psychologist, Author of Superpsyched:

Dr. Adam Dorsay is a licensed psychologist and executive coach in Silicon Valley, where he works with high-achieving adults (including professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and professional athletes). Adam is the host of SuperPsyched, an award-winning podcast with more than 200 episodes. He has given three highly regarded TEDx Talks: one about men and their emotions, another about friendship in adulthood, and the most recent about the four ways humans connect. His new best-selling book is the International Impact Award-winning Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the 4 Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love.

Beyond his private practice, Adam is a resiliency expert who co-created an international program for Facebook’s Online Safety employees for several years. He now serves as the resiliency consultant to DigitalOcean and has frequent requests from the media for interviews. He has provided keynotes and trainings to multiple corporations and organizations, including Microsoft, LinkedIn, and the California Psychological Association.

Connect with Adam Dorsay:

Website: dradamdorsay.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adam-dorsay-psyd-cpcc-a582a2

Facebook: facebook.com/dradamdorsay

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Dr. Adam Dorsay 03:09

show, Maria. I’m so happy to be back with you. I’m just remembering and smiling because when I first read your book, I did something I do rarely, which was I immediately it was actually a listen, but I immediately listened to it again, and that’s how much I loved your very first book, The Empathy Edge. I can’t wait to listen to the Empathy Dilemma as well. But just fan of you professionally and personally.

Maria Ross 03:35

Same, same. I love it. And we have met in person, and we’ve been basically a group of whirling dervishes sitting at a table, bothering people in a restaurant. So, yeah, our energy levels are pretty damn close. So I love it. So we are here to talk about your new book, Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the Four Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love. That’s a lot. So we know a little bit about your story. Being a former corporate guy turned psychologist, going to the love of really figuring out what makes people tick. So, for those of the listeners that didn’t get to enjoy your first interview, I will put a link in the show notes. But just tell us briefly how you got from being a corporate guy to now being a psychologist to now being an author.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 04:20

I love that question. Well, here’s how it happened. I had undiagnosed ADHD, and I didn’t know why it was that I couldn’t really stay on a task for very long. And I’d always wanted to become a psychologist, but if you know anything about becoming a psychologist, it means staying on a task for a very long time, including being a hermit for a long time, doing this thing called the dissertation and lots of loneliness and lots of just tenacity that I lacked at the time and thought I would never get. So I was also dyslexic, which added just a lot of fun to the mix. And I thought I was going to become a psychologist, but I dropped out of graduate school, and I found that. Working in the corporate world was relatively easier than slogging it out to become a psychologist. Well, as luck would have it, I ended up marrying a psychologist, and every day during dinner, she’d describe her day, and I’d hear about her day, and I’d say that was supposed to be my day. And by this time, I’d pretty much gotten a handle-more than pretty much, I’d gotten a handle on my ADHD. I’d found other ways around reading, i.e. listening, but I could read for a sustained period of time. I’d learned, I’d trained myself. Anyhow, at the most inopportune moment, I already owned a house, had a child, and I decided to go back to graduate school, and this was at the behest of my wife and my buddy Aaron, who basically sold me on the idea that I there was still time,

Maria Ross 05:53

yeah,

Maria Ross 05:53

and that I should go for it. That life was too precious. I talk about it quite a bit in the book, but I decided to go to night school, and during my nights and weekends, I would after work, I would find a way to eke out a doctorate. And when I finally did that, I took out a home equity line of credit on our home and earned $10 an hour with no benefits for a couple of years to earn my license, and that’s how it worked. I had a very, I have and had a very supportive wife. Always went at my back. Not once did she even complain about the sacrifice she needed to endure to get me where I wanted to go. So none of us does this alone. If it weren’t for my friends encouraging me. I just recently heard John Piero Petiliari out of actually where your roots come from from Sicily. He said, “Our friends.

Maria Ross 06:48

I’m not Sicilian.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 06:49

You’re not.

Maria Ross 06:50

I’m Italian. I’m not Sicilian.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 06:51

Oh, my apologies. I take it back somehow. Well, it’s all good. Regardless, I am a huge fan of Italy. Says to me, a good friend is one who is able to imagine who you could become. They help us imagine who we could become, and that is what my wife did. That’s what my buddy Erin did, and this has been a dream for me to actually do this every day. I am so, I’m actually super psyched. My nickname in high school was enthusiasm, so it kind of lent itself to super psyched to become a podcast. One thing I want to make abundantly clear, though, is that I’m not peddling toxic positivity. I’m not saying that we should be super psyched all the time. Yeah, we should feel all the feels. I’m actually suggesting we should be super connected to our psyches. So really connected to whatever it is that we’re feeling-if it’s grief, if it’s joy-really being there and really being attentive to those feelings and and what they’re asking of us.

Maria Ross 07:52

I love that, and I’m so glad you you mentioned that because we do have a problem with toxic positivity in our culture right now, and and when folks like you, folks like me, are out talking to leaders about how to connect and how to build better relationships. We’re not saying it’s all sunshine and roses all the time, nor do we need to pretend that that’s what we’re bringing to the table at whatever point of capacity we’re at on that day. So, thank you for saying that. I think you may have answered my next question because obviously relationships and connection have been such an important part of your life, but I’m wondering in your professional work why this book, why connection, why is it so important in our lives?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 08:31

I’m stoked that you asked that question as well.

Maria Ross 08:33

Because are you super psyched?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 08:35

I’m literally super psyched that you asked that question, and not yes, 100 authentically so, because I trusted that when the right book would take hold of me, that would be the book I would invest my heartbeats in. After sitting in this chair for nearly 20,000 hours, I’d heard the term connection. I want more connection in my life. Themes and variations on this idea, this nebulous term, and I realized, oh my gosh, I need to talk about connection because it’s not something that’s well defined. What do people mean when they say they want more connection? And what could it look like if we had more connected lives? And I came to realize there is a way to define that, and there are four places connection can exist that I can. I’ve heard nobody come up with a fifth, so it’s almost like, and that there, it’s almost like a an archery target that’s got a nucleus. We first connect to ourselves. Most of us think connection is connection between two people, but that’s actually the second level connection to others. The third is connection to the world. The world includes our work; it includes our history, such as our ancestry. You mentioned you are Italian, and as Maya Angelou once said, we can’t know where we’re going unless we know where we’re from. I think that we really do need to be rooted in our history and. Finding ways to embody some of those traditions, whether it’s you know around Christmas and having you know Italian dishes around that time, or whatever it might be. I’ve got mine connection to the fourth level is connection to something greater. Greater for some of us, means traditionally going to church, but for the most hardcore atheist, going to stargaze at night and feeling being in nature, being in nature, feeling awe. And one of the things that I’m so grateful to the field of psychology for really studying and putting under the microscope is awe itself. When we experience awe, we are less self-absorbed. We’re more socially focused. Strangers at the solar eclipse that happened in 2017, and particularly in Oregon, where that was most easily seen, strangers were hugging strangers. And what we see that when we’re in a state of awe is something very similar in brain imaging to when we take psilocybin, the psychoactive chemical in magic mushrooms, and you don’t need to take any form of any substance in order to feel awe. It’s available to all of us, and yet it takes a little courage because somebody might clown on you for being in a state of awe because you’re so not self-absorbed. Back in the day, I don’t know if you remember in YouTube the guy who was seeing the double rainbow, and it’s like, oh my gosh, it’s a. Oh, totally remember that. No, and

Maria Ross 11:35

I’m laughing because my husband always loves to tell the story of we had only been dating eight months when we got engaged, but we were in our early 30s when he was almost 30, and he told me about a mountain biking trip he took in the in the Marin Headlands when I was away, and the high he got, and that was actually the day he decided he was going to ask me to marry him was when he got to the top and he had this just feeling of awe and this feeling of euphoria, and he was like, “Yes, I’m going to do this. Like, so yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:05

Maria, I’ve got to share something with you.

Maria Ross 12:08

Yes,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:09

the day I got clear that I was going to marry my wife,

Maria Ross 12:11

yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:12

I was on a bicycle going down Haleakala in Maui, and we were riding together. She was like writer number three, and I was writer number nine. I was looking at writer number three, and I was like, “Dude, if you do not marry this woman, you are the biggest idiot who ever lived. You absolutely positively.

Maria Ross 12:30

Wait, did you know her?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:31

Oh yeah.

Maria Ross 12:31

Okay, I was gonna. The way you made it sound was like she was some stranger. She was on the trip with me.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 12:35

No, no, she and I had been dating, but I’d received more than critical mass. Enough information about her to realize that I needed to be with her in this lifetime. Yeah, because and if I didn’t get on a knee, I would be the world’s biggest jackass. And there was no question in my mind that this was the least courageous thing I’d ever done because this was it was so ridiculously obvious,

Maria Ross 12:58

so funny. But that’s what awe does: is it actually creates clarity for us. I want to ask a question though around this because, and it might seem pedantic or silly, but why do we need connection? What is it about the way humans are wired, and ourselves as a species, and the way our brains work that it’s actually in our not best interest to be a misanthrope and to be a hermit, right? What what is it about connection? Why do we need it?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 13:27

So what’s interesting is our brains-the things that exist between our ears at this time-are the same ones that have existed between our ears for 30-five to 70,000 years, and yet are, in spite of the fact that you know, even though you might have an iPhone 17 and have upgraded multiple times, our brain has not upgraded at all. Our brains are the same as the brains of our ancestors from 35,000 to 70,000

Maria Ross 13:52

years ago,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 13:52

and we have become a successful species partially because we are social. We require others. No one does this alone, as I said earlier. Barbra Streisand kind of got it wrong. People who need people, luckiest people in the world. No, it’s actually people who know they need people are the lucky and act on it are the luckiest people in the world. Right. We need to act on our need for other people. We have social brains. We do better together exponentially.

Maria Ross 14:17

What happens if we don’t? What happens to us? What are the downsides of not connecting?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 14:23

Wired deep within our nervous systems is loneliness, and loneliness is a signal that we could be evicted from the tribe. Back in the old days, that meant our certain death. Our survival is really dependent on the kindness and the connection with others, we have different needs for connection. Some of us need more connection than others, but we all need some connection. My friend Britt Frank describes us as having different feeding schedules. Some of us are more like hummingbirds need to feed all the time, and I don’t know if you remember in the. TV show Friends, but like Joey was in every scene. He was a hummingbird. He needed to be always be Ross. He did, you know, he was sometimes in there. Did you look at your last name? Ross would show up periodically. He needed friends too, but he was more of an introvert, and he was more he had the feeding schedule more like perhaps let’s say according to her a scorpion. Scorpions don’t need to eat all that regularly, and apparently GLP ones are based on Gila monsters that eat like once a year. So, like, which is really interesting to me. But regardless, we all have different feeding schedules, but we all have feeding schedules. We all need to hang out with friends or loved ones from time to time. We all need other people in our lives, and yet one of the things that we now know, former Surgeon General made a huge warning. Doctor Devivek Murthy noticed that if and he picked up on the research out of University of Utah that if we are lonely, it can be as disastrous to our health as smoking. It can be more predictive of our mortality than other measures than like our blood sugar and our cholesterol, so it really we have a biological incentive for connection.

Maria Ross 16:09

Absolutely. Okay, so let’s get to the book because I’m gonna for our YouTube audience. I want to put this up here. It’s so pretty.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 16:15

Oh, right on.

Maria Ross 16:16

But I want to talk a little bit about you know you already took us through the four ways we connect, right? And let’s just review those quickly: connection to self, connection to others, connection to the world, and connection to something greater. Did I get that right? Okay, good. I pass. I get an A. I get a gold. You’re more than

Dr. Adam Dorsay 16:33

getting an A. And by the way, I just wanted to highlight connection to self because it’s not a narcissistic thing to get to know who you are. If we don’t know who we are, and if we aren’t behaving in a way that is somehow authentic, it’s like walking through life with a rock in our shoe. It will inform all of the other connections that we have.

Maria Ross 16:49

Yeah.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 16:49

So it’s and

Maria Ross 16:50

you know from my work with the empathy dilemma, the five pillar framework. The first two are self awareness and self care. Because if you don’t have your own house in order, I like to say, there’s no space in your brain and in your heart to make connections with other people. The

Dr. Adam Dorsay 17:06

Venn diagram of our work. There’s so much overlap.

Maria Ross 17:09

Yes, I know totally. All right, I want to talk really quickly about why we’re so disconnected. You know, you mentioned the loneliness epidemic, and we know, and I’ve spoken to other guests about this. Like we’re living in a world that’s more connected than ever, yet we’re so lonely, right? And it’s not about how many Facebook friends we have or Instagram friends. My Gen X is showing, right? Facebook, Instagram, but it’s also just-it’s amazing how much we should be more connected, and yet we’re not. And there’s a few reasons you outline in the book for this, and I just wanted to highlight one of them specifically was this idea of the biases that mislead us, and you had this great passage in here where you talk about the brains again evolving, and here’s here goes: our brains have evolved to keep us alive and make sure that we keep breathing, eating, and knowing what to do when we feel threatened, they act as prediction machines, doing everything they can to help us avoid that thing called death. Keeping us alive is a lot of work, so the brain has also worked to become as energy conserving as possible. As it evolved, it developed a series of cognitive shortcuts that help us to reach fast and usually accurate enough conclusions about problems that have allowed us to survive and to procreate, but the shortcuts have the unfortunate side effect of causing mistakes when we are dealing with harder questions and problems of modern day thinking. So you’re talking here about our brain’s ability. How I perceive this is the ability to make snap judgments about people that we just meet, about our ability to think, oh, this person and I will never connect, about our ability to even think I don’t belong in this room, when maybe that’s just our brains telling us that, right? So, can you talk a little bit about biases getting in the way of connection, but also some of the other reasons that we fail to connect.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:02

I am so glad you read that passage because it’s such a central theme to the book. What caused us to become a successful species was our ability to eat. It’s the same reason that we we were attracted to sugar and empty calories. It’s we go for what’s easy.

Maria Ross 19:20

Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:21

go for what is efficient. We go for what’s fast, and oftentimes other things get in the way, like fear, the the negativity bias we hear a rustling in the leaves, and we determine it must be a tiger, even though it’s just a squirrel, because if we’re wrong and it is a tiger, our bloodline dies, and if we’re wrong and it turns out to be a squirrel, okay. So we’ve experienced some fear,

Maria Ross 19:47

right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:47

Big deal,

Maria Ross 19:48

right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 19:48

But it is a big deal because we now experience fear in all of the other ways. Just as you described, one of the things that prohibited me from becoming a psychologist was I was scared, rightfully so. I mean, this is like.

Maria Ross 19:59

But and yet your life wasn’t in danger, but your body felt it the same way.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 20:04

It felt like I could die,

Maria Ross 20:06

right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 20:06

And I don’t know about you, but there are many times that I’m scared about things that aren’t going to kill me,

Maria Ross 20:14

right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 20:14

And I am not scared about things that are actually like driving from here to there. We know statistically is far more dangerous than getting on an airplane, but I’m-I mean, no one has ever clapped when a taxi arrived at its destination, and people clap all the time when the plane lands. Right, exactly. And there’s a reason for that. But when that applies to our lives, we live half-baked lives. I know so many people who are rife with regret. They’re in their 50, 6070s, and say, “I have not done half the things I’ve wanted to do because I’ve been scared, or I got married to the wrong person because I was scared that there’d be no one else, or I got married to the wrong person because I felt pressured and they were available and they wanted to, and so I said yes. And now we’re in a custody evaluation. You know, I see that all the time in my office. Like this, not listening to the knowing because it was inconvenient to say no at the time. We have yes brains. We’re much more likely to say yes than no to lots of things because no is hard because we have to deal with the fact that we’ve rejected someone, and we know that rejection hits the same pain centers as physical pain, so we don’t want to inflict that pain on another person unless we are somehow, you know, really misanthropic, as you were saying earlier, which is, you know, for a very select group of people,

Maria Ross 21:38

right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 21:38

So the no brain is harder, and for us to actually double down on our lives requires massive activation energy, which is not really easy. So many of us don’t do the inconvenient thing. Last but not least, we apply this technology of going for what’s easy, and we get these empty calories in social media, thinking that we’re connected. We’re more connected now technologically than we’ve ever been before, and yet we’re less connected interpersonally.

Maria Ross 22:09

Right? They’re not. They’re shallow. They’re not deep. It’s like skipping a stone. Right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 22:13

You nailed it.

Maria Ross 22:14

Exactly. Exactly. Well, and I think you know, and we’re gonna we’re gonna get into this because again, like you said, this is where our work overlaps the role of empathy in being able to create connections and override those automatic systems in our brains, and embrace people who are different from us, who we can have a connection with if we can look past the fears and past the biases and past the comparisons, and all of that. So, kind of to segue into that when you think about connection in the workplace. So I know you talk you talk in the book about lots of different types of connection, right? Spousal connection, romantic connection, connection with faith-based groups, like all different kinds of connection. But when we’re talking about professional connection, what does that mean in the workplace, and why? I mean, I could probably answer this, but I’d love to hear this from your psychological point of view. Why is that important to create a thriving and productive workplace? And then I’ll have a follow up question once you share that with us.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 23:14

I remember early in my career where my boss Martin Darner, who’s sadly no longer with us, actually lived in Pacifica for a number of years, Martin, and he said to me, “You need to show your colleagues at work. This is in the corporate place that they matter more to you even than the customer, because they are your brothers in arms, and that you will go to bat for them and you will help them out when they are struggling. Make them your number one priority because if we don’t band together, to borrow from Benjamin Franklin, we will certainly you know die apart. So that was part of the founding of our country that is applicable to being in the workplace. We need to override our narcissistic tendencies and get to know our colleagues and go to bat for them, and they will go to bat for us. Exactly through this type of cooperation, we have a corporation.

Maria Ross 24:10

Oh, that was gold! I love that. Well, and you know, in the work that I do around empathy, it’s about creating that workplace where people feel seen, heard, and valued. And by virtue, to me, that implies connection, and when you do that, you create a group of people to your point where they want to have each other’s backs, and that fosters engagement, that fosters innovation, that fosters creativity, and it all translates to customer experience as well. Right? You can’t have a great customer service experience. If everyone within a company is competitive, stabbing each other in the back, constantly looking over their shoulder, whatever they’re experiencing is going to translate to what you show outwardly in the marketplace. And so that’s you know this is kind of how I got on the empathy train was through my brand. Marketing work of you’ve got to see your customers as people, but in order to see your customers as people internally, you’ve got to walk that talk, and you have to see each other as a team and as people, and you have to have those connections. You don’t have to be best friends with everybody, but are there moments of levity you can share? Is there that joy pillar present? Do you feel like yeah, this is somewhere I want to go and spend 810, 12 hours engaged with these people? Hopefully, the answer is yes,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 25:28

1,000,000% And why did the Miracle on Ice happen in 1980 when the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in hockey? They were not better athletes. They were not better players individually, but they banded together. And I thank Bill Lawrence so much for creating Scrubs and Ted Lasso and all of the other shows. Huge fan. Love them and all he talks about is exactly what you and I are talking about. Everything is about bonding, empathy, connection. That’s what makes a team, and I love it in Scrubs more than anything else to see, I mean, it’s my comfort food is scrubs. Yeah, watch. I watch and rewatch that show to watch these guys connect with each other. Have you watched the reboot? I just started it. Scared to

Maria Ross 26:10

watch the reboot. I was so worried it was going to get messed up for me, and I was actually I’ve been quite pleased with the first two episodes I’ve seen so far as of this recording.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 26:18

As have I, and so yeah, so it’s obviously timestamp, but all I can tell you is, I’m hopeful. I mean, Bill Lawrence and Zach Braff. I mean, my goodness, what more? What more do we want?

Maria Ross 26:30

But actually, you know, I know we’re joking about this, but that’s actually a central theme of Ted Lasso.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 26:35

Oh, and I’m not even taking a team.

Maria Ross 26:37

Yeah, taking a team of people who might not have been all star performers, but when you create those connections and you create that camaraderie and you create that environment, they’re capable of believing in themselves. They’re capable of performing at optimum capacity for each other, and then that’s that’s where the alchemy happens.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 26:58

Million percent, and one of the things that we found in the literature is that diversity wins, but it only wins if perspective taking occurs. And what is required for perspective taking? This thing called empathy. And so, if we really want connection, and if we really want the sum to be-I mean, the the the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts-yeah, we need to empathize. We need to take perspective. We want diversity. Temple Grandin said on my podcast, she’s you know a very famous woman with autism. She said if somebody had my version of autism and was on the Space Shuttle Columbia team, it would not have exploded in outer space because I would have seen the problem ahead of time. Neurodiversity, ethnic diversity, all types of whether it’s gender diversity, we need diverse perspectives, and we need to take each other’s perspectives. Override again our inherent narcissism. We have, we all have narcissism. It’s self protective. We need it to live, but we also don’t want to get out of hand, and we want to be able to empathize. Okay, full alt elite, and we empathize.

Maria Ross 28:01

What a great segue because that was the other thing I wanted to talk about about the need to have diversity in your connections, both your personal and professional relationships. And I want to read this passage out loud to everyone, which is where you talk about diversity plus respect wins. Right, the commitment, this commitment to depersonalized conflict, looking at the project as a puzzle may have led to the magic that caused flight. Poetically, they came to discover that the only way to get the machine off the ground was for each propeller to spin in the opposite direction-one clockwise and one counterclockwise. This was a perfect metaphor for Orville and Wilbur Wright and their connection and appreciation of what each brought to make the project successful, and then you had another quote in here which I love, which is, “Of course, we want similarities between ourselves and our partners. And you were talking here in context of romantic relationships, but I, as I read this, I kept thinking of workplace relationships and diversity. We want similarities between ourselves and our partners, but even among the most similar people, differences will exist. Used properly, they can strengthen the relationship. And we’ve talked a lot on this show. I can’t even, you know, there’s not even enough episodes I can link to in our show notes for this episode on the power of diversity and the ROI of diversity. But all that to say that when you have people that bring some different perspectives to the table, each person can see different risks and see different opportunities because they’re looking at a different facet of the challenge or the problem. And so, when we think about creating diverse connection communities, I guess, for lack of a better word. What advice would you have about being intentional about that? Because sometimes that can feel fake. Of like, oh, I need more friends who are gay, or I need more friends who are trans. I’m going to go find them, right? What are some of the things that you’ve seen, whether with your patients or you know in the research that you’ve done? About how you can cultivate a more diverse community to connect with.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:04

There are so many ways to do this, and it actually-I hate the term “kills two birds with one stones, but I’m going to use two.

Maria Ross 30:11

Feed two birds with one scone.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:14

Oh, oh, oh, oh!

Maria Ross 30:16

Thank you.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:17

This can feed two birds with one scone.

Maria Ross 30:19

I don’t. I can’t take credit for that. I heard somewhere, and I love it.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:23

That is so great. It’s kind of like Lady and the Tramp eating one little string of pasta. It is, but um, I love that. Feed two birds with one scone. So here’s how you feed two birds with one scone.

Maria Ross 30:33

Okay,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 30:34

you go do something that you love doing, and anyway, it could be a meetup for hiking, and hopefully, it’ll be a diverse age group. One of the things that Chip Connelly, who runs the Modern Elder Academy, says, and you’re nodding because I know you know him, is that we need friends who are at least 10 years older than we are and at least 10 years younger because most of us don’t have friends who are 10 years older or 10 years younger . And without my children in my life telling me what six seven actually means because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s you know it’s really important to have diverse voices.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 31:06

So do something you love doing, and talk to people about that. So if you have a common denominator, that’s great. Another tip though, is this one. This is like the funniest idea I’ve ever heard of. This comes from Will Schwalbe. Will Schwalbe is this editor of I forget Macmillan or one of the other big publishing houses. He’s been on the podcast, but he does something that absolutely doesn’t interest him at least once a month. He goes to an event, he goes to a thing on the history of blah blah that he has no interest in, and he meets people, and he he very often finds that it’s actually quite interesting, but he also meets people who are into that thing, people he wouldn’t have met otherwise, and sometimes there’s a connection there. So Alex Trebek apparently said, “I’m so curious. I’m even interested in things I’m not interested in,” and I think that’s a really good way to go through life. And the idea of seeing life as a puzzle comes from AJ Jacobs. He said that if two people could look at the same problem and see it as a puzzle that needs to be solved, and I love that idea of Wilbur Wright and Orville Wright, they would have project-based arguments. You need somebody to argue with you, and so that you can get to the truth. As long as you’re both committed to the truth and not ego, then we can really come up with better ideas. Steve Jobs would famously say to Johnny Ives, “Hey, Johnny, I got a really stupid idea. I want to want to hear about a stupid idea. And I I may be paraphrasing it poorly, but I believe that’s how it went. And Johnny would always said yes because I would love to hear a stupid idea from you because your so called stupid idea is probably one week away from becoming the greatest idea, right? So,

Maria Ross 32:42

and kind of bringing this back to you know the question we were talking about before about why you even need connections in general, but also in the workplace, that’s just one way leaders can foster connection is to ensure there is psychological safety where people can have those kinds of conversations, and like I have this crazy idea, and I know I’m not going to be shunned. I know I’m not going to be fired. I know I’m not going to be laughed at. You might get laughed at, maybe, but maybe it’s all done in in jest, right? In joy, and that’s one of the things when leaders go, “Well, how do I create more connections with my team? That’s one way to do it: is ensure everyone feels safe and seen and heard and valued. Do you have any other tips that you could apply for a workplace leader on how to create those connections within their teams?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 33:26

So, Dr. Amy Edmondson teaches at Harvard School of Business, and she is the person who came up with the term psychological. She’s the queen of

Maria Ross 33:34

psychological safety. Yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 33:35

she has found that the most innovative companies have the highest amounts of psychological safety because without it we cannot fail forward. We need to fail forward. Everything that you and I have learned in our life has been the byproduct of us being willing to look like idiots for a minute. Because for me to learn how to speak a foreign language, I had to make all the mistakes, and that’s the difference. So for a company to do what it needs to do, psychological safety is super important, and that’s why when somebody comes up with an idea, we really, and during a brainstorm, we really give it respect and consideration. They might be seeing something that could become the next post-it note,

Maria Ross 34:21

right?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 34:22

The next penicillin, the next great mistake that becomes something amazing, and really, really look at it almost talmudically. Talmudically means to look at it from every angle possible, and really give it respect and consideration.

Maria Ross 34:37

Yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 34:37

and if we’re able to do that, we are going to be more innovative, and we’ll also probably have higher retention and attract the best

Maria Ross 34:47

talent. Well, all the things, right? And that that willingness to put ego aside and see someone else’s point of view, hear someone else’s idea-that is empathy. That’s the ability to say, “I don’t have all the answers.” Let me hear your point of view. Let me learn from your lived experience to see if that might be a good opportunity or a good way to solve the problem. So, you know, when people ask, like a lot of people have that misperception that empathy is all about crying on the floor with your employees. No, it’s also about being open-minded and to say, “Oh, I’m going to be curious about someone else’s perspective and point of view, and that’s how you create an environment that creates connections for each other.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 35:29

I didn’t know why I wanted to go to Japan so badly until years later. There were several reasons, but one of the biggest one was I wanted to live in a place that felt 180 degrees for my own reality. I wanted to walk around in a world where my reference points made no sense, and their reference points I had to really get to know in order to understand just a little bit about Japan. I had to walk around in their shoes, and that was really helpful to me. I only came to realize this: it wasn’t just the sushi and the ramen that attracted me, although those were very attractive.

Maria Ross 36:03

Uh huh.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 36:04

And similarly, and you point this out in the Empathy Edge, and I actually talk about it on my episode today. I interviewed a great novelist who wrote the Gargoyle, Andrew Edmonds, Andrew Davidson, out of Canada. One of the things that we found in the literature is that we become better people when we read more fiction because we’re able to enter the worlds of more characters, and there’s no question in my mind that actually, quite frankly, empathy and connection are probably the two bigs in this life.

Maria Ross 36:33

Yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 36:34

like if we can have, if we can get more of those two things, so I think you and I have stumbled upon the two biggest things that matter the most in terms of our heartbeats,

Maria Ross 36:45

absolutely empathy

Dr. Adam Dorsay 36:46

and connection, are the bigs. Like, what do we regret? Yeah, we’re on our deathbeds. We regret love not given. We regret chances not taken. Empathy and connection.

Maria Ross 36:58

Yeah, it all comes down to that. Are you have a connection formula. What is a connection formula?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 37:04

Well, we all have a different winning formula, and some of us have. It’s almost like a walk-on song that baseball players use when they’re going up to bat.

Maria Ross 37:13

Uh huh.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 37:13

You and I probably have a different walk-on song, and similarly, we probably have different formulas for our success, and we have different formulas to make us feel connected to ourselves, others, the world, and something greater. Like I might have been awestruck when I saw this singer on stage, and you might have been in the same audience and said, “Been like me, yeah, not for me.

Maria Ross 37:34

Yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 37:36

and I was like, “What are you talking about? That was a life changing audience. What did you see? Yeah, and you might have a go to bed routine that works for you and allows you to connect with yourself and shut in and and attend yourself and put out all the fires so that you can really really feel rest coming on. And my ritual might be quite different. We might have different rituals for how we connect with our friends and how we connect with our romantic partners, pets. My father could go through five lifetimes and not touch a pet. I can’t go through a day.

Maria Ross 38:09

No,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 38:10

and I talk about pets as a very important, significant other for those of us who are inclined. So each of us has different elements that we need to pay attention to and ask ourselves what do we need and at what frequency to feel connected to ourselves, others, the world, and something greater. So yeah, go ahead. So

Maria Ross 38:29

you’re saying that the connection formula is different for everyone, and and we need to discover what that is for ourselves. Exactly. What are some ways that we make that discovery? Is it just about paying attention, or what can you? How can you guide us on that?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 38:42

I’m gonna name. There are infinite ways, but I’m gonna name three.

Maria Ross 38:45

Okay.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 38:45

One of them is to ask yourself, what is something that I used to love doing, but I stopped doing because life got in the way. Bring exhum that from its dusty crypt and try it and see if there’s still something there. The second way is to try something new, like somebody mentions, hey, you know what I’m really into is I’m really into Photoshop. It’s like, gosh, you know, that would be really cool. I’d like to get into Photoshop or scrapbooking or something

Maria Ross 39:11

salsa dancing, whatever. Yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 39:13

salsa dancing, right? Try something new. And the third way that I can think of, and again, there are infinite ways is to look at lists. I actually have a list in my book of things that you want to try, but maybe haven’t tried. Maybe you have what some people refer to as a bucket list. Some people don’t like the bucket list. I do personally. I think it’s a really good thing to have. The bucket list is the list of things that you want to do before you kick the bucket, and we need to pay attention to those things.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 39:46

I’m not sure about skydiving for me. I have very mixed feelings about that. It might be it might be a pass for me too, but I’m not sure if on my deathbed I’ll regret not having done it. But who knows? But one thing I’ve always wanted to do, I. As dumb as it sounds. I’ve never been to Nola. I’ve never been to New Orleans. We’re going this weekend. Okay, good. Finally, gonna check this this magnificent place out. We’re doing a massive, you know, a four day weekend off some deniers. Yeah, exactly. And we’re gonna eat all the things. And even though, but we’re doing something that I know for sure I want to do at some point, and you know, don’t put it off. Go do those things.

Maria Ross 40:25

How does that help you with a connection formula? Like connect the dot for us on that one.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 40:30

If connection defined is what makes you feel like you come alive, and we didn’t really go into that, but it’s vitality, it’s life force, and I actually had about 20 mental health professionals weigh in, so we could kind of construct a working definition of what connection means. I will probably come very alive when I’m walking through these vibrant streets of New Orleans, seeing the musicians, smelling the smells, eating the foods, going to on ghost tours, and things like that. This will cause me to come alive and evoke a part of me that has never been alive in my chemical connections in this lifetime. And if it is vitality, and I believe that a place like New Orleans brings that on, but we don’t have to go to New Orleans. We can actually do something ostensibly stupid, like like for one Father’s Day, I actually had my family get on a Grayline bus tour of San Francisco. We live right at the just at the cusp of San Francisco. We hung out with the tourists from Oklahoma and Germany, and when people ask where you’re from, we said San Jose, 50 miles south. The bus driver said, “I have never had anybody from San Jose, but even though we are very familiar, and my wife lived there for many years, and I lived adjacent for many years, about 80% of the things that we learned on that tour were things we didn’t know.

Maria Ross 41:50

Exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 41:51

So go do something that might be campy, that might be local. Go onto Atlas Obscura. It’s a great website that has all kinds of weird stuff. Not far from where you used to live was you know there was this tavern where there was a ghost of the Blue Lady over in the Moss Beach Tavern.

Maria Ross 42:08

Oh yeah, Moss Beach Distillery.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:10

Moss Beach Distillery. There you go.

Maria Ross 42:12

Yeah,

Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:12

and there are just all kinds of fun, campy things that we can do that will cause us to feel more aligned.

Maria Ross 42:19

Well, and that really relates to my self care pillar, pillar two, which is is not about manis and petties. It’s about re-energizing your heart and your mind and your soul in a different way to get you to refill your tank, refill your capacity and your cup, so you can meet people with empathy and be open to connection. And it’s almost like we need those occasional shocks to the system to keep us more open to what’s happening and get us out of our our rut. I guess

Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:50

there’s a reason why cold plunges are popular. It’s not because they feel good,

Maria Ross 42:55

but it’s not

Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:56

because they feel good.

Maria Ross 42:57

No, no.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 42:58

And but it’s because they cause us to feel more awake and alive. They they they’re vitalizing.

Maria Ross 43:04

Yeah. All right. So as we wrap up, I I have a final quick question for you. This sort of like a little speed question.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 43:10

So all ears. I

Maria Ross 43:11

want to read this Chinese proverb you have at the end of the book, where you say there’s an ancient Chinese proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now. You may have missed out on many connection opportunities throughout your life, but there is no time like the present to start leaning into the four types of connection that you talk about in the book. So, if you can give us your quick hit, someone’s listening. They’re like, “Yeah, I need more connection in my life. What’s your gem? What’s your go-to strategy that you can leave them with to take an actionable step towards cultivating or perhaps reigniting connections in their lives and in their work?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 43:53

I would go back to what I just said, and since repetition is the

Maria Ross 43:58

the cold plunge

Dr. Adam Dorsay 44:00

since repetition is the mother of mastery, I would ask yourself, what’s something that you used to do that you love doing that you stop doing, or what is something in your family’s tradition? Perhaps your grandma used to be a gardener, and you want to honor her memory and feel more connected to the earth. Go try that out and see if there’s a there there. It’s this spring, this summer, whenever you want to plant in the winter, right? Because there’s a lot of things to be planted. Go do something that honors you and allows you to feel more alive while you’re living, more alive while you’re living, not another day, another dollar, a someday. You know, life work kind of sucks, or whatever it is. No, don’t live this limp pasta lifestyle. Like live al dente, lively, vibrant.

Maria Ross 44:51

I’m getting you a bumper sticker that says live al dente. I love that so much, Adam. This has been such a joy. I hope. Everyone picks up this book. It’s called “Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the Four Types of Connection. I also want to encourage my listeners to take a gander into your podcast. You have amazing guests on Super Psyched. I love listening to your podcast when I’m doing road trips back to San Francisco. But you’re always you’re always so much fun, and you are so positive without it being toxic positivity, and I just love that about you. So thank you for this book. Thank you for your work. Thank you for healing people’s hearts and minds in your profession that you almost didn’t pursue, but finally got convinced to. We’re gonna have all your links in the show notes, and I’ll put some reference links to some of the things that we talked about. But for anyone that’s listening to us while they’re road tripping or working out, where’s the best place they can find out more about your work?

Dr. Adam Dorsay 45:45

Sure, just Google my name, Adam Dorsey. I’ve got three TEDx talks. I’ve got a website, and the website is dradam dorsay d o r s a y.com It’s d r a d a m d o r s a y.com

Maria Ross 45:57

Love it! Thank you so much, Adam.

Dr. Adam Dorsay 45:59

Oh, it’s been a blast,

Maria Ross 46:01

and thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria, never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

What Does It Mean to Be Human? Ep 4: Dream Forward, Remember Back

Aspiration, Hope, Free Will & the Future-Oriented Mind

Humans don’t just live in the present. We imagine futures that don’t exist yet, then try to build them, and we do it using the same neural machinery that lets us remember our past.

Maria Ross and Rob Volpe explore what psychologist Endel Tulving called mental time travel: the brain’s unique ability to simulate scenarios that haven’t happened using a network that overlaps almost entirely with episodic memory. We can’t dream forward if we can’t look back. Yet, our memories can be unreliable, causing us to build narratives around what actually happened or how it impacted us. Are we the only species who can do this? That sets up the harder question: do we actually choose, or does it just feel like we do?

Finally, we discuss the difference between hope and optimism. When humans are at their best, they describe aspiration, vision, and forward motion, but humans in survival mode, who cannot access hope or aspiration, are equally human. What does that tell us about how fragile, and how earned, this superpower really is?

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

“We don’t just react to the present like many species. We reflect on the past. We imagine the future.” — Maria Ross

Episode References:

Endel Tulving on mental time travel and episodic memory: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301195110
Neuroscience News on the contested legacy of Libet’s free will experiment: neurosciencenews.com/libet-free-will-23756
Daniel Dennett, Freedom Evolves
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
Finding Your Roots with Roy Wood Jr., “Laughing on the Inside,” Season 7, Episode 10: pbs.org/video/laughing-inside-gble34
IEQ9 Integrative Enneagram: IEQ9.com
Harry Pickens leadership work on self-regulation in challenging times and working with AI to build your human capacity: strategicneuroregulation.com
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

About Maria Ross:

About Rob Volpe:

Connect with Rob Volpe:

Website: robvolpe.expert

Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Rob Volpe 01:04

We’re like we’re kind of turning into like the Wonder Twins of empathy.

Maria Ross 01:07

We are. I love that for us,

Rob Volpe 01:10

which isn’t isn’t a bad thing.

Maria Ross 01:11

No, it’s a

Rob Volpe 01:12

lot of fun.

Maria Ross 01:13

I love that I know the reference too from like Wonder Twins Activate

Rob Volpe 01:16

Wonder Twin Powers Activate Shape of, and the girl Jaina always got to be.

Maria Ross 01:24

She was usually an animal.

Rob Volpe 01:26

An animal, and

Maria Ross 01:28

and he was some form of water.

Rob Volpe 01:31

It was Jan and Zaynah.

Maria Ross 01:32

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 01:33

but which was which?

Maria Ross 01:34

Zana, I think, was the woman.

Rob Volpe 01:36

Was the woman, and Jan was the man or boy. The boy, yeah. He was taking on water and ice, and always

Maria Ross 01:43

a form of water, which I didn’t notice that theme for a long time when I was little. But yeah, I was like, oh, he’s either ice or a bucket of water, or he’s like a hose, or yeah, very odd choice of like the particular matter that he was going to turn into.

Rob Volpe 01:58

Yeah, did you dream of having superpowers when you were a kid,

Maria Ross 02:02

I did. I very vividly recall a dream where I was standing at the top of my staircase in my childhood home, and I jumped off it and I flew.

Rob Volpe 02:13

Oh wow! And it was just a dream.

Maria Ross 02:14

And it was well, I think

Rob Volpe 02:16

it or it actually happened, and all of this is a dream,

Maria Ross 02:21

and all of this is a dream. Exactly, exactly. Well, speaking of dreaming, what a good segue, Rob Vol. Thank you. We are talking about dreaming today. We’re going to be talking about aspiration, hope, free will, the future-oriented mind, and is that a marker of being human? Because we don’t just react to the present like many species, right? We reflect on the past. We imagine the future. You could say we worry about the past and we worry about the future. Things that don’t exist, and then we also, for the future-oriented, we try to build them, right? So, is that human? Is that what drives

Rob Volpe 02:57

us? Yes. And as I was having deep conversation with the cats this weekend on this topic.

Maria Ross 03:04

They’re like oracles. I love

Rob Volpe 03:06

it. Like what? Why are you worried about this? Can’t I go back to sleep? The sun is out.

Maria Ross 03:14

Exactly.

Rob Volpe 03:15

Yeah, this one is really fascinating because again, like it’s really hard, I think, and studies have been inconclusive that I’ve come across about other animals. But I did find in humans we do have this ability to think about and ponder the past, which then enables us to explore the future. What it’s called mental time travel.

Maria Ross 03:40

Oh, I love that.

Rob Volpe 03:42

Which psychologist Endel Tulving coined in 1985.

Maria Ross 03:48

Wow,

Rob Volpe 03:49

this temporal thinking of human superpower, mental time travel, and so there. Yeah, it’s like episodic memory, which allows us to go back to fixed points in time in our brain in the past, but then also to project into the future or our imagined future. I would think so.

Maria Ross 04:07

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 04:07

if that is dreaming, and it it’s the thing that allows us to think about when we were a kid and you know a childhood bedroom, or thinking about what we might be like at 80 years old,

Maria Ross 04:21

yeah, and I wonder if it’s again, it’s one of those situations where maybe we don’t know if another species can do this because I will tell you from being a dog owner, I have had dogs that whimper in their sleep, and the joke is like, oh, they’re chasing rabbits, right?

Rob Volpe 04:38

Yeah, but they

Maria Ross 04:39

must be thinking of something, they’re making them. They’re dreaming

Rob Volpe 04:43

totally. And the cats do the same thing. Yeah, whiskers, everything’s twitchy, and they’re like making movements. Like they’re they are doing something, and yeah, it’s like oh, they’re chasing a rabbit in their dreams. Like,

Maria Ross 04:57

although that sounds terrifying, but yeah, well, you. This thing about the episodic memory-I mean-is that the term for the your memory’s ability to isolate events? Is that and then project them into the future, or

Rob Volpe 05:10

it’s yeah? I mean, I think it’s this idea that our memory-we break it down. I’m not going to say ones and zeros, but think about on your computer or up in the cloud, you’ve got all these different documents, Word documents,

Rob Volpe 05:23

and every document is an episode, just like the episodes of this podcast. And you access certain memories and at different times based on whatever is going on, and you’re ruminating. And we, I think, we’re talking about that in an earlier episode as well around consciousness, like this ability to go back and ponder and replay,

Maria Ross 05:45

right?

Rob Volpe 05:45

Which I think all of this is prefrontal cortex, but the consciousness, the fight or flight in that piece, like that you can see where the sort of amygdala and really base genetic origins of man come from and meeting kind of evolution and how we might have evolved because we’re now able to think about record in our brains, go back and think about the past,

Maria Ross 06:16

right,

Rob Volpe 06:17

and something that might have scared us-fight or flight, or flea or fawn-and then think about the future. You know, and basically, it’s where worry comes from. Yeah. Well, I was going to say the

Maria Ross 06:29

dark side of that is like a fixation on it and a compulsion to just live in it, right? Especially if it’s negative.

Rob Volpe 06:36

Okay. So here’s this will be an interesting thought experiment for people and for yourself, and I’m just thinking about it now. How much of would you say? How much time do you spend as you’re thinking of the future? Are you in a state of worry versus a state of aspiration or hope or positive kind of view?

Maria Ross 06:57

I think I’m pretty equally weighted. I actually took, as you know, I got. I’m getting certified to administer the Enneagram, which is a test that focuses you on your instincts and your motivations. And one of the many vectors in this integrative Enneagram is whether you fake good or fake bad, and it’s pessimism and optimism, right? And I tend, I tend to fake good, right? So you can think of it as just like which way you’re geared towards. And so I would say, in answer to your question, I gear towards positive, but it’s depends on what I’m thinking about, and it depends on the stimuli, the the cause of what I’m thinking about. As an example, every parent can relate to this. Your kid does one bad quote-unquote bad thing, right? They disobey a rule, they talk back, they’re mean to someone, and instantly, many parents and psychologists, my therapist, worked with me on this. They call it future tripping, right? Okay,

Rob Volpe 07:56

yeah. You

Maria Ross 07:56

You parlay that one experience into they’re going to be psychopath, convicted of murder, and they’re going to be doing all because I let them do this one thing, right? Right, right. So I would say when it comes to parenting, I’m very much geared towards worry. When it comes to everything else, mostly because I’m responsible for another human being, right?

Rob Volpe 08:14

Yes.

Maria Ross 08:15

But when it comes to everything else, I’m pretty, pretty dreamy, pretty positive. Like,

Rob Volpe 08:19

yeah, I

Maria Ross 08:20

don’t see myself, you know, homeless in the future, you know, without anyone to love me or anything like that. So I would say, short answer, it depends.

Rob Volpe 08:30

And are some of the enneagrams more likely to be positive than negative, or is it no? That has nothing to do

Maria Ross 08:37

with type. Yeah, that has to do more with just your personality profile within this integrative enneagram assessment,

Rob Volpe 08:44

okay, and

Maria Ross 08:45

so it’s very granular.

Rob Volpe 08:46

Yeah, so it could be

Maria Ross 08:47

any, but there are certain types that are that lean into nostalgia more than others, and I I need to look into those more. But

Rob Volpe 08:55

interesting, episodic episodic memories of their past.

Maria Ross 08:59

Yeah, yeah, I’m very nostalgic. Actually, I actually I remember a lot. I remember I have memories from when I was three or four.

Rob Volpe 09:08

Really? Okay. Yes, I can go back that far, but I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older, the number of those memories are less. But there are a few key, like kind of core memories from, I think my parents clocked it at like three, three and a half years old, like a Christmas or something,

Maria Ross 09:29

something seminal, yeah,

Rob Volpe 09:30

yeah, that I really remember. And I don’t know, you know, I’ve always been curious: is it because our brain just can’t like reach its capacity, is like get rid of it, or it just goes way back into some you know deep storage unit that you could probably go find, and maybe that’s where you need the aid of someone.

Maria Ross 09:51

Yeah. Well, and they also say that your memories are not to be trusted either because they morph and shape over time in you repeating the stories. And how you remember things, and how so you actually actually memory is not very

Rob Volpe 10:05

reliable.

Maria Ross 10:06

Reliable.

Rob Volpe 10:06

It is not a it is not a reliable narrator.

Maria Ross 10:09

No, it’s not.

Rob Volpe 10:11

As a researcher, I experience that a lot doing qualitative research, and you know, coming out of the field, you talk to a dozen, two dozen people, and oh my God! It was so amazing. I remember when this person said that. Yeah. Then you have to go, you know, and the client debrief. Oh yeah, this boom, huge big stuff. Change the business. Go in that direction. And then you go back to find the quote in the transcript, and you’re like, “Wait, where is it? Yeah. Wait a minute. One of us said that, not the respondent like 100% summarized it for them or something yeah

Maria Ross 10:45

yeah well and it is

Rob Volpe 10:46

that unreliable narrator and our bias gets this is totally off topic to dreaming but our bias really gets in the way I recently had Claude analyze transcripts of somebody from the Navigating to New Normal study, so this is somebody I’ve been talking to for six years, and a new moderator is going to take over those conversations. And I wanted to present sort of the the analysis of this individual’s journey and tips for the next moderator, and I fed all of it into Claude. And as I see that respondent, she tends to be far right Trump supporter, and homeschooling and anti-vax and like a lot of different things. When I had Claude summarize the transcripts and paint the journey, did not bring up political affiliation or any of those pieces, and really more represented her decision making, which is much more libertarian in values. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, wow! I’ve really painted this broad brushstroke over this individual. I applied bias

Maria Ross 11:59

that I had,

Rob Volpe 12:00

and then stereotypes. Oh, she’s a homeschooler, therefore this. And I know her quite well because we’ve been talking for six years now. But AI did not capture any of those labels that I was actually putting on her.

Maria Ross 12:14

Well, and that’s like the interesting discussion of human versus AI is that in its best version, AI should be doing that for

Rob Volpe 12:23

us. Yeah,

Maria Ross 12:24

that it would be great to have a thought partner that could do that for us because it is such a human trait to have bias, inject your own perspective, have your stereotypes based on your own values and needs and your own experiences. Right. So while all of those add to the texture and the flavor of us being human beings walking through the world, it can also be detrimental to our connections with other people. And wouldn’t it be great if we could rely on AI to be that unbiased? Which you know we talked about in the past. We can’t because it’s being populated by human beings,

Rob Volpe 13:03

exactly. And it would have been fascinating to have had AI come back to me and said, “So, how did you view this person? Because you know, like, and really engaged to help me understand,

Maria Ross 13:15

interrogate you in a way. Yeah, like, yeah,

Rob Volpe 13:17

where were those thoughts coming from? Because I’m actually not seeing that, which maybe as we get into a more intelligent AI, it would do that.

Maria Ross 13:26

Well, it’s interesting because I the work of Harry Pickens, who’s in a community that I’m part of called Samudra, he’s done work around the prompts you can use to help your AI help you tap into your humanity, so getting getting your interactions with AI to be more thought provoking for you versus giving you answers. So, as an example, if you put that summary into AI, it’s show me everything I missed or tell me another interpretation of what this could be, so that you’re actually critically thinking along with AI supporting you in doing that, and we don’t do enough of that because we’re like, “Oh, AI gave me the answer,

Rob Volpe 14:07

right, right, and then you’re just off to the races without exploring yourself. So I want to bring us in back into that thought experiment and the enneagrams. So I like you. I tend to be more on the positive, and which is probably why we’re wonder twins of empathy. But there’s, and we should link to your friend Harry. Was this

Maria Ross 14:32

Harry Pickens? Oh, for sure. Yeah, let’s let’s

Rob Volpe 14:35

share that in the show notes for people. I’m an Enneagram Seven, which is the adventurer, I think, and something my therapist has always.

Maria Ross 14:46

enthusiastic visionary.

Rob Volpe 14:47

The enthusiastic visionary

Maria Ross 14:49

You’re the big thinker. Yes,

Rob Volpe 14:51

yes, exactly.

Maria Ross 14:52

Speaking of dreaming for this episode, yes, right.

Rob Volpe 14:54

And my my psychologist, my therapist, Greg, he. Is trained in the enneagram and well versed in it, and so we’ve brought that into therapy. And I’m a for anybody that really wants to know, I’m a seven with an eight wing. But as we’ve talked about being a seven, it’s like I tend not to dwell on the negative for too long. It’s an uncomfortable place for sevens to be, so we’ll process our way through it, apparently. Right, right. To get back to the good, because we’re the visionary, the adventurer. We want the positive kind of experiences. I think.

Maria Ross 15:31

Yeah, and I think you know. Let’s and to circle us back to this episode. I think that that is such a uniquely human thing. I mean, we look at things in such nuanced ways. We look at the future and we reflect on the past in such nuanced ways. And you know that role of memory, but also that role of hope of that our future is changeable. And we talked about this. Time is malleable, right? When we love what we’re doing, what do we say? Oh my God, time flies! Right when we hate what we’re doing, we’re like, Oh my God, that was interminable. Like that lasted forever. Right,

Rob Volpe 16:11

right.

Maria Ross 16:12

I don’t know that other species do that. I think that is a very uniquely human thing of like our ability to look at time in a different way and look at the future in a way that it’s not unless you are a fatalist, right? Where everything is predestined for you.

Rob Volpe 16:28

True,

Maria Ross 16:29

we have this very human trait of we can impact our future. We could even we I would submit that we even have a trait of trying to control our past. To your point earlier about the narratives we give our past.

Rob Volpe 16:44

Yeah,

Maria Ross 16:45

that if we don’t like it, we’re gonna, you know, like I treated that, you know, partner horribly. No, actually, what happened was they did all these wrongs to me, right? So we have that ability, and I just want to throw in here because this was an answer that we had in our survey. My 12-year-old, when I asked him just off the cuff, “What do you think it means to be human? At first, he just wanted me to shut up about it, and then he was like, “I don’t know, free will.”

Rob Volpe 17:12

Yeah,

Maria Ross 17:12

and I was like, “Ah, okay, that’s interesting. Tell me more. And then he he didn’t really tell me more. He’s just like, “We can just decide what to do? Like nobody’s controlling us.”

Rob Volpe 17:23

Well, and it’s you know thinking about time and our relationship to time. I was kind of like, what are tasks that animal, other species deal with where they might be like, this is taking forever,

Maria Ross 17:38

collecting the nuts for winter. I don’t know.

Rob Volpe 17:41

I know, or the the lion out on the savanna makes the kill. I was like, wow, this is going finally having such a great time. But the interminable wait,

Maria Ross 17:51

yeah.

Rob Volpe 17:52

I don’t know. I wonder if there’s even any sort of awareness of that. Like, I’m, I don’t know, dog out. Where can they be bored?

Maria Ross 18:00

That’s what I was just going to say. That’s where we. What is I? I never say the word right. Anthropomorphize.

Rob Volpe 18:06

Anthropomorphize. Thank you. Yeah.

Maria Ross 18:08

Animals through Disney films, right, or other animated films, and like that’s even from. I’m thinking of The Lion King, where Simba was like, couldn’t wait to grow up, couldn’t wait to be an adult. He was impatient,

Rob Volpe 18:20

right? And it was like

Maria Ross 18:21

it’s taking forever for me to get to be the king, right? For me to be in charge, for me to get to do what I want. But I don’t know. I mean, I’m not an animal behaviorist, but I don’t believe that they think that way. No,

Rob Volpe 18:33

I think that’s allowing like Maslow’s hierarchy to get applied to, which is, you know, hierarchy of needs, and the base ones are survival, and shelter, and food, and security, which I think is probably universal to all animals or all species, all life. And then it gets all the way up to self actualization, self awareness, realization. That’s a very human kind of construct and problem,

Maria Ross 19:01

right? Where I want to become a better version of myself,

Rob Volpe 19:05

right? I don’t. My and maybe my cats are. One of our cat sitters once said that our cats are living their best life, so maybe they have self. Maybe they’re already.

Maria Ross 19:14

That’s what I was going to say. Many cat lovers would tell you cats are already self actualized. They are living their

Rob Volpe 19:20

best life.

Maria Ross 19:21

We’re perfect. Yes, we have no more to learn.

Rob Volpe 19:24

Feed me.

Maria Ross 19:26

Oh man!

Rob Volpe 19:29

So you know, it is fascinating because we do anthropomorphize, and we’ve referenced this now. I think in almost every single episode, and we have no idea. You know, we’re we’re we’re projecting onto animals. One of the things that I found when I was researching for this episode that was really interesting was this idea about decisions that we make and the origin of action and how. So I’m. I’ll probably mispronounce his name. I apologize. Benjamin Libey, L-I-B-E-T, had an experiment in 1983 where he found that unconscious brain activity leading up to unconscious decisions. Let’s say, like I just was doing this, like finger rotation. If anybody’s watching, for listeners, I’m kind of moving my two index fingers around each other, that that began approximately half a second before I consciously felt like I just had made that decision to move. So the brain’s deciding before I actually do, and then so the brain. It sounds like from what I’m interpreting this, brain is thinking about the things to do. The conscious mind might actually block or veto it, but there’s this idea that free will, like you’re not initiating a voluntary act, like you can always control your actions. So you may not the way the way I had this summarized for me. Thank you, my friend Claude. We may not launch a decision, but we can cancel it. So freedom, true freedom, which is important to people, isn’t actually the origin of action, but the governance is kind of the thought that was put forward with that.

Maria Ross 21:23

I find that fascinating, and I’m going to challenge a little bit because I think that’s true of every species. I think you know the species that goes out to hunt and goes to a particular place, hears a sound or sees a movement, and thinks about is this safe, and they may say yes or no, and they may proceed or they may not. So I feel like that’s true for every species: is that thought precedes action, unless it’s an instinct, unless it’s a reflex, for example, like you know the doctor hitting your knee. You don’t think about that; it just

Rob Volpe 21:57

completely happens. I mean, I know the times I’ve been out hunting on the savanna with my lion friends. There’s there there is. I mean, when you when just even watch a nature video or something on TikTok or whatever, there is like you know alertness. You know they’re listening, they’re thinking, maybe seeing something, they’re making a decision,

Maria Ross 22:22

right?

Rob Volpe 22:22

Anthropomorphizing, you can see their brain, the wheels turning, turning, yeah,

Maria Ross 22:26

uh huh.

Rob Volpe 22:27

But they are making a decision on how to act and what to actually do. So I think there, that may be some base kind of brain muscle control behavior or something. It

Maria Ross 22:41

could be, and it couldn’t, because if it was that instinctual, then you wouldn’t have evolution. You wouldn’t have some that make the wrong decision, and then some that make the right decision and decide not to. You know what I’m saying? There’s got to be a level of savviness there. I mean, and we’ve both been pet owners. Like, to be completely candid, some of my pets have been smarter than others, and you just kind of know, right? Like it’s just I think there is an element of there’s got to be some calculation or weighing of options that goes on in the brains of other species before they act, and also I think this is where it kind of ties back to what we’re talking about. Do they envision what’s there? Right, like we have the ability to hope and dream, and also like you said, think negatively into the future. Here’s an example: I was walking my dog in the dark the other night, and I’ve been watching way too many Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns. I’m following along with my friend Elisa Camahort Page, who’s doing a whole rewatch of it and analysis because she’s a huge Buffy fan.

Rob Volpe 23:47

How far into? I had never

Maria Ross 23:48

seen it before, so I am. I am wait

Rob Volpe 23:51

wait wait wait wait wait back. I

Maria Ross 23:52

know no. I have never seen Buffy the. I never watched that show. Was did you

Rob Volpe 23:56

now? Did you start with the original movie?

Maria Ross 23:58

No, I just dove right into the series. Yeah, I jumped in the series, but point being, I’ve been watching a lot of that lately, and I’m also scared of the dark. So there’s that. So I’m walking my dog, and I hear this. What it sounds like a growling at one through one of the houses, and it was like either a growling or it was a motorcycle revving in the distance. I couldn’t tell, but my mind, given the inputs, was imagining the worst. I was like, “This is like the whole. It’s a demon

Rob Volpe 24:27

from the hellmouth that’s just come up. 100% is like behind the sofa.

Maria Ross 24:31

It was a demon, and then I keep walking, and then I hear it again at the same equidistance as, and now further down the street. So I’m like, okay, and so my projection of interpreting that stimulus, right, was made of imagination. It was made of me envisioning someone coming to run out to get me, or some creature, or some demon, right? I’m circling this back to what you said because I wonder in the savanna when they hear the noise. Or to do the thing, what do they have the ability, like humans do, of imagining what’s behind the black box? What because they don’t see it, they might be hearing it or seeing glimpses of it. Do they imagine the worst case scenario and then run, or is like you said, is it a little bit more like no, that’s a danger sign. I don’t have to think about what it is. I’m just going to run.

Rob Volpe 25:23

Yeah. We as

Maria Ross 25:24

humans create a whole story when we and our imaginations go into overdrive,

Rob Volpe 25:30

and we don’t have the same sense of smell. True animals, so they might be able to. Can you smell danger?

Maria Ross 25:38

I think they can.

Rob Volpe 25:39

I think they can. Yeah. Yeah. But I’m just

Maria Ross 25:42

wondering if the mental process is the same as for humans, where we’re we we’re constructing a like scenarios and we’re envisioning them in our mind’s eye.

Rob Volpe 25:51

Right, that’s interesting. I mean, it is which is

Maria Ross 25:54

related to dreaming. You know what I mean? Like creating pictures in your mind, but

Rob Volpe 25:57

right, yeah. But where we have like a buffet in front of us at the supermarket. What are we gonna have for dinner? There’s so many choices.

Maria Ross 26:04

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 26:05

my friends on the Savannah are like, “Look, gazelle dinner. Let’s go.

Maria Ross 26:11

They’re not imagining how it’s gonna look on a plate with a side of parsley and mashed mashed potatoes. What type

Rob Volpe 26:17

of sauce goes well with this today? The blood sauce. That’s it.

Maria Ross 26:22

I’m glad you said that because that kind of drives us into this idea of imagination and invention, and like the ability to create something that doesn’t exist. That is like the whole engine behind human ingenuity.

Rob Volpe 26:36

Yes, is that don’t we need to be able to have that? I think that gets into the episodic memory also enabled that, like the vision, the past, the present, and the future state

Maria Ross 26:47

Rob Volpe 26:47

help unlock that.

Maria Ross 26:49

But if you’ve never seen it before, like Steve Jobs and the iPod,

Rob Volpe 26:54

yes,

Maria Ross 26:55

you could argue it was kind of like a mini Walkman, right? Like you could argue there was something that happened before that, but like something completely different that doesn’t exist. Humans have the ability to number one imagine that, fine tune it in their minds, and then turn it into action to create it. Right, and I would add another layer of our humanness: the ability to sell that vision to other humans,

Rob Volpe 27:23

to persuade,

Maria Ross 27:24

to persuade, and get other people to help them build

Rob Volpe 27:27

it. Yeah, yeah. So on the Steve Jobs piece, and this may be, it shouldn’t be controversial. It’s just true. What’s interesting with Steve Jobs, Scott Alloway was just talking about this the other day, which is what planted it into my episodic memory that I accessed just now. But he was talking, I think, was on the Pivot podcast that when you looked at Apple, what Apple’s done really well, or Steve Jobs would do well, there were already music players that were out there that were digital, that were already smartphones. Yeah, they did it better, so they were the second player to market. But and they often within innovation we talk about first mover advantage, but the first mover is the one that’s getting all the dings, is getting it wrong, or like has to you know they’ve made the mistake.

Maria Ross 28:16

They’re making the mistakes.

Rob Volpe 28:17

They’re making the mistakes where the second person to market is able to go. Okay, how do I make this better? Right. Make something that people really want, and that’s you know. And Apple is so great with design and user interface and experience that they’re able to take it to that next kind of level. And then it’s because that’s then the one that breaks through, or it gets more of the adoption curve, they get all the accolades.

Maria Ross 28:46

Well, and is that so? Two things come to mind on that. Number one is the accusations against Edison for stealing other people’s ideas, but also let’s go. Let’s take that analogy and kind of frame it in the conversation. Who was the very first human to think of a portable device player, right? And that’s where I get into like what is unique to us as humans that we have versus AI right now, anyway. That was like I envision this thing that doesn’t even exist yet.

Rob Volpe 29:18

Yeah. Well,

Maria Ross 29:19

and here’s what it could do, or here’s how it could solve that problem.

Rob Volpe 29:23

Are we talking about like boomboxes, like as the first portable music? I mean, way back. I mean, there were like four portable record players. You know that I don’t know. I don’t know how they were powered, like batteries, I suppose. But there were portable record players. Well, I had when I was when

Maria Ross 29:39

I was a little little kid. I had like a little record player in a case. Yeah, it had a cord. You plugged it in, but I could take it. I couldn’t listen to it until I got to a place to plug it in. That was the missing part.

Rob Volpe 29:52

But it was still portable. But it was still portable. Nobody was able to innovate and go, “Oh, we just need a battery case. What if we could listen to it

Maria Ross 29:58

while we were moving it? Yeah.

Rob Volpe 30:00

Exactly. Oh, what if there were instead of these records that have to stay perfectly flat? What if there were cassette tapes? What if there were? Yeah.

Maria Ross 30:08

Well, so that kind of brings us around again, which is like, is that uniquely human that we look at things and we’re like, what if that could be better? How could we improve that? How could that solve a different problem?

Rob Volpe 30:19

Considering my cats have been unsuccessful bringing anything to market that they’ve invented, I would have to say yes, it is uniquely human. But I think that problem, even as I think about like problem solving,

Maria Ross 30:34

yeah,

Rob Volpe 30:34

and how much we’re able to problem solve, and I Jurassic Park was on TV recently, as it often is, and so sure I’ll watch it. And you know, like the Velociraptors figure out how to work a door handle, which isn’t-I don’t know-my cats, if they were just a little taller, they could figure it out. Like the ones with the lever handle.

Maria Ross 30:58

Yeah. Well, mice do that in lab experiments of getting to the cheese, right? Yeah, they’ve had where they figure out there’s a certain trigger to open the door, and they get the cheese. Like they figure out a way to solve the problem,

Rob Volpe 31:08

right? But they haven’t figured out how to make their own cheese.

Maria Ross 31:12

That’s what I’m saying. This is what I’m talking about, right? So, like, we look at it even beyond and go, like, okay, that’s cool. What if we could make our own cheese? That’s the higher level humanity, and I wonder. Like, I guess the big question is: Will AI ever be able to do that? There, in some circles, it is. It’s creating products. It is,

Rob Volpe 31:34

and it’s solving problems. I mean, it’s. I know of companies that are using it to, and they’re stacking a lot of different tools, but they’re using it for innovation. Yeah, to help identify products and services that are maybe unmet needs. I know there, you know, it’s definitely solving some complex math problems that are that we

Maria Ross 31:58

couldn’t do on our own. That’s where it’s a great partner, exactly,

Rob Volpe 32:01

exactly. So, in some ways, it is doing that, and I think the thought is that generative AI is going to be able to do that even more once we get to the general intelligence. I should say, generative AI is what we already have. General intelligence, then watch out.

Maria Ross 32:20

Yeah. Well, you and I, when we were prepping for all these episodes, there was this line that came up in our shared notes, which was, “Let’s go back to the future now. Again, sticking with that, the future-oriented mind may be humanity’s most distinctive gift and its most most fragile one, because it requires memory, prefrontal capacity, a sense of self, emotional investment in outcomes, and enough cognitive bandwidth to lift above the present moment-is that our most distinctive gift, our future orientation? Or for folks like you and me, would we say it’s connection and empathy? Don’t don’t

Rob Volpe 33:00

yeah because. I was actually like, what about our sense of style and our ability to present ourselves, which that ties into the ego. I think

Maria Ross 33:12

that’s like art artistry. Yeah, that’s artistic creativity. Yeah, yeah,

Rob Volpe 33:19

and that might be one. There are probably a few. I mean, I would hope as our we’ve evolved, we have more than one fragile gift. Yeah, more than one distinctive gift. It can also be fragile too.

Maria Ross 33:33

Right, right.

Rob Volpe 33:34

But I think that at the base of it, something to that idea of the future-oriented mind is what’s enabling us to imagine those things. Now we’re so let’s go back to the innovation and think about okay. So this future-oriented mind is what’s enabling us to come up with solutions to problems. Empathy and connection is what is letting us come up with solutions to problems that other people have, because we’re empathizing with their needs and understanding what they may be feeling or going through.

Maria Ross 34:10

Robert, that was a mic drop moment.

Rob Volpe 34:12

I was going to say, can I just drop like? Yes,

Maria Ross 34:15

you’re done. Peace out.

Rob Volpe 34:16

I’m done and see.

Maria Ross 34:18

That is so profound.

Rob Volpe 34:21

And again, it’s the multiple things that our brains are able to do, and empathy shows up in another part of our brain. Then it’s not in the prefrontal cortex. Well, and I’m thinking of species that, if obviously not like mold spores or anything like that, but like when we’re talking about well, I don’t know those mammals, reptiles, amphibians, algae in Washington D.C. are pretty smart. They’re pretty smart. They’re clever,

Maria Ross 34:44

but I’m thinking about if they were to have that capability of the future oriented. You know, I’m thinking about who, which would be the ones that would bring the empathy component, the relational, like I’m not just doing this for me. I’m doing this for others, and. The thing that instantly sprung to mind when you were saying that story was the penguins. The fact that, like, when they have the babies, the eggs, whatever,

Rob Volpe 35:07

the

Maria Ross 35:08

dads nest on the eggs while the moms go look for food, right? In penguin culture,

Rob Volpe 35:14

yes, I’m pretty sure you

Maria Ross 35:15

remember that right from from National Geographic, yeah, or Happy Feet. I can’t remember, but so they’re doing things where they’re planning for the future by working together. I wouldn’t say it’s empathy driving it. It’s a little bit biological instinct. It’s survival. But if you think about well, which would be the other species that could maybe catch up with us? I think of like dolphins. I think of other pack animals that do things together, right? Like dogs, wolves, and I think of penguins. I think of like, oh, maybe if someone just injected that one unique trait of future thinking or imagination in those species, would they be closer to human?

Rob Volpe 35:56

My brain, when you first mentioned that whales, dolphins. dolphins, and octopi, octopus all came to this octopuses. Oh no!

Maria Ross 36:08

Yeah, an octopus,

Rob Volpe 36:10

and one octopus that will save the planet.

Maria Ross 36:14

Larry, we’ll call him Larry. But yeah, but like that’s kind of an interesting thing, right? Like, what if there was? I mean, this is a great sci-fi movie script. What if somebody invented something like broke down the genome for imagination and future orientation and injected it into other species?

Rob Volpe 36:35

What if other species were just on that evolutionary path? And if we were to jump a million years into the future, there are

Maria Ross 36:43

overlords.

Rob Volpe 36:44

Hello, right? There are overlords.

Maria Ross 36:47

Totally,

Rob Volpe 36:48

they are smarter because AI wiped us out.

Maria Ross 36:51

Right, and they rose

Rob Volpe 36:52

up. So, rise of the whales

Maria Ross 36:55

completely

Rob Volpe 36:56

dolphins. Yeah,

Maria Ross 36:58

they’re like, oh, our master plan worked. They’re all gone now.

Rob Volpe 37:04

They thought I was just installing warheads in the. Didn’t dolphins get used during World War?

Maria Ross 37:11

I think something were mining or

Rob Volpe 37:13

something like that in warfare.

Maria Ross 37:15

Them and pigeons, right? Like yeah,

Rob Volpe 37:17

yeah.

Maria Ross 37:18

So let’s go. Let’s circle back around to this idea of free will, because I maybe it doesn’t. I’m not connecting the dots for anyone else listening, but for me, I connect free will with the ability to imagine the future. Because if you don’t have free will, why would you? Why would your species be able to imagine the future? Do you know what I’m saying? So to me, they’re linked. That’s the connection that I see between that.

Rob Volpe 37:43

Well, and and I was talking about LeBay’s work, which I should say is apparently pretty hotly contested in scientific circles.

Maria Ross 37:53

Okay.

Rob Volpe 37:53

If there happens to be a listener that knows more, I would love to hear about that. Why

Maria Ross 37:57

is it hotly contested?

Rob Volpe 37:59

Because of kind of what we were talking about, of like, is this instinct versus a characteristic of being human? Is this, you know, is this really kind of free will? The way all of this is working, and like when you think about where was my brain going with that? While you

Maria Ross 38:18

think of that free will,

Maria Ross 38:20

oh, go ahead.

Rob Volpe 38:20

No, you go ahead. I’ll formulate. Well, no, I was

Maria Ross 38:22

just going to say I still am on the side of that. Your brain is still you deciding the action, so there still is an element of free will. It’s not your brain has not taken control of your body to like go train for that marathon. Like you’re making your brain is making, or even the the example of the your decision to flick a wrist or pull your sleeve up or something,

Rob Volpe 38:45

right?

Maria Ross 38:45

You still are thinking that,

Rob Volpe 38:47

yes.

Maria Ross 38:48

And you could, in many circumstances, human beings could censor that if they needed to. It’s still your. It’s not someone. I guess my point is, it’s not someone else controlling your brain to make that decision before you act,

Rob Volpe 39:01

right.

Maria Ross 39:01

Unless it is a reflex, then you’re not thinking about it at all. It’s just happening,

Rob Volpe 39:06

right?

Maria Ross 39:07

Your knee, right? The little hammer on your nerve,

Rob Volpe 39:09

the hammer on the knee, but that is reflex. That’s reflex because that’s your nerves getting stimulated and right response, and your

Maria Ross 39:17

brain is making the decision to react to it without you getting involved, which is a different thing than I think when you make a decision to go to a certain college or to like

Rob Volpe 39:28

yes decide

Maria Ross 39:29

I’m going to work on this today versus that, or I’m going to eat this for lunch versus that.

Rob Volpe 39:33

So I think what you’re saying is there’s a lot more thought that we put into seemingly reflexive actions, except for things that involve our reflexes, like the hammer on the knee.

Maria Ross 39:46

I think I am saying that.

Rob Volpe 39:47

I would agree with that. So

Maria Ross 39:48

maybe that’s why his his work was controversial, because he’s saying the brain decides before you do. Kinda, kinda depends. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 39:58

yeah, yeah. But back. The idea of free will. So we were watching the movie Tetris last night, which was on Apple TV, and it’s about the history of. Have you seen the movie?

Maria Ross 40:11

No, I have not.

Rob Volpe 40:12

Okay, so it is set in the 80s, and it is about the development and global distribution and conquest of the game Tetris, which you know half a billion copies have been sold. So I’m guessing everybody listening to this podcast is familiar with it, but it was actually developed by a computer programmer in the Soviet Union, and during the era of the Soviet Union communism, and Gorbachev was in power, and the some Westerners were trying to get the rights, and so it’s this whole corporate espionage type thriller with some dark humor, and it was really good, really liked it. But I was thinking about like, okay, well, if you were in a an authoritarian country, a dictatorship, some place like where you just really are beaten down, and you don’t. I mean, you have some free will, but you don’t have true free will, like of hopes and dreams, necessarily. It’s just interesting that man can subjugate that away from other men,

Maria Ross 41:22

well,

Rob Volpe 41:22

other humans. That is

Maria Ross 41:24

interesting. I would say they can and they can’t because we wouldn’t have people like Anne Frank who continued to be optimistic about humanity and the choices they made in terms of you know that it’s trite, but the only thing you can control is your attitude, right?

Rob Volpe 41:40

Deep down, I believe all humans can be good. Nelson Mandela just popped to mind. Some people faced just tragic, horrible circumstances and remained optimistic about humanity.

Maria Ross 41:52

Absolutely, and I and the other thing that comes to mind is I was watching this episode of There’s a Black Historian, or he’s not historian. I think he’s a a commentator. He does this show where he reveals people’s families’ trees to them.

Rob Volpe 42:05

Oh, like yeah, Henry Louis Gates.

Maria Ross 42:07

Henry Louis Gates. Thank you very much. His name was escaping me, and one of the episodes he did, I can’t remember who it was with, but there were slaves in their background, very few generations back, not far enough back, but a few generations back, and I think it was the celebrity. And again, I can’t remember what celebrity, but when I find out after we record, I will put the link in the show notes. Made the statement that what was so moving to them about finding out they were related to slaves is that these people lived in the worst, horrible conditions, right, of being owned by another human being, and they had no choice. They were either going to get killed or they were going to work for this person. And they said, the fact that I’m here shows that even in the worst dire situations, people still have hope because you wouldn’t have children if you thought this was all there was,

Rob Volpe 43:02

I love that.

Maria Ross 43:04

And I was like, I’m getting goosebumps like remembering it too, because I was like, that is so true. That is part of the hopefulness of humanity. Is many people, not everybody, but many people choose to have children, and that in and of itself is an act of hope. That’s in and of itself an act of future thinking.

Rob Volpe 43:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Maria Ross 43:24

And I just thought, wow, that’s so true. That you had the reason there’s so many descendants of slaves is because all of those people made a decision in their horrible circumstance to have hope for the future.

Rob Volpe 43:38

Yeah.

Maria Ross 43:38

Whereas evolutionarily, you would think a species, knowing that that things were

Rob Volpe 43:44

it was so oppressive in the

Maria Ross 43:46

present, might not protrude.

Rob Volpe 43:48

Choose to yeah, might

Maria Ross 43:50

not choose. I don’t know.

Rob Volpe 43:51

So that actually that existential question is partly at the heart of that AI doc that I think I’ve mentioned the AI doc or how I learned to become an apocalyptimist. The filmmaker, he and his wife were pregnant with, I think, their first child, and it was this existential. Like, is this a good time to bring a kid into the world with AI and what’s going on and where it’s all headed and and everything? And and that led to the sort of questioning and and the setup in the movie and and people should watch it. It’s really worthwhile. I think it’s on YouTube even now.

Maria Ross 44:31

Okay,

Rob Volpe 44:32

so we’ll put a link.

Maria Ross 44:33

will.

Rob Volpe 44:34

But that’s another kind of example, and I think something people are questioning. You know, living in quite liberal San Francisco, in the Trump second Trump administration, I think there are just like, oh God, what world are we bringing kids into with, you know, climate change, political polarization, yeah, all the stuff.

Maria Ross 44:54

There’s actually a a whole movement within. I believe it’s, I believe it’s. It’s not Gen Z. It might be Gen Z, younger millennials, about their their active choice not to have children, specifically because of the environmental crisis. I can’t remember what the the mindset is called, but it’s they’re like absolutely not. The world’s going to be burning in a generation or two. Why would I bring children into this?

Rob Volpe 45:21

Which is like a of it is a form of this is not going to be right. But thinking off the top of the head, I’m like, ooh, that’s kind of like generational suicide in a way.

Maria Ross 45:33

Yeah, yeah, because

Rob Volpe 45:34

you’re choosing not to continue. You’re not choosing not to procreate. Therefore, you will not have a subsequent generation who will not have a subsequent generation because they don’t exist, et cetera, et cetera? And there’s nothing wrong with it. And I think there’s also even, you know, I’m childless by choice. I’m in a gay relationship, but we chose not to try to have children, which had nothing to do with it. Had nothing to do with the state of the world at the time that we were even thinking about it, it was more about what was right for us,

Maria Ross 46:05

exactly.

Rob Volpe 46:05

Which I think a lot of couples, straight, gay, queer, whatever, go through.

Rob Volpe 46:10

But it is interesting, just the act of procreating, of having children,

Maria Ross 46:15

yeah, is

Rob Volpe 46:17

that future-oriented state,

Maria Ross 46:20

yeah, and well, and also, what’s motivating it? Is it? Are you being motivated by a sense of hope for the future, or are you being motivated by a narcissistic need to have some, you know, have your DNA living on? Yeah,

Rob Volpe 46:33

there’s that too. There’s there’s oh my

Maria Ross 46:35

gosh, we should we need maybe we need to hold a whole thing on narcissism, but so how do we want to wrap this, Rob? I mean, these are all good questions.

Rob Volpe 46:43

All you know, something that I think was going back to our positivity in that early conversation. One of the things that struck me that came up, which I’m now scrolling through my notes to try to find, was this idea of hope versus optimism.

Maria Ross 47:02

Optimism is passive; things will work out. Hope is active.

Rob Volpe 47:07

I can find a way through it.

Maria Ross 47:08

Yes,

Rob Volpe 47:10

and there. So there’s a book we can share a link to. It’s from 22 years ago now. Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark. It’s the name of the book, and she argues hope is not about certainty; it’s about possibility.

Maria Ross 47:23

Yes,

Rob Volpe 47:24

future is genuinely unknown and open, and that means it can be shaped. There’s just it’s infinite possibilities, and hope is resistance to some sort of premature certainty, which I think goes exactly back to what you were just talking about. So that hope is more courageous rather than naive.

Maria Ross 47:44

Yes,

Rob Volpe 47:46

which I think is true. And you know, people that talk about so that that when I first read that, I was like, oh, it’s kind of like you know, people dinging somebody who might be considered a Pollyanna, or you know,

Maria Ross 48:00

or toxic positivity, or something like that. Yeah.

Rob Volpe 48:04

Yes, and no, they’re not. Yeah, they’re being. You know, if if it’s truly hope, then they’re actually dreaming and and believing in what could be, and that’s really powerful.

Maria Ross 48:18

You know, this is kind of a silly example, but the way I’m often hit with admiration for people who have hope despite all the odds being against them is in action movies and thrillers where it’s like one disaster, one like now you know, or like even look at Star Wars, like they’re in a trash compactor. If that were me, I’d be like, we’re done. Like just the the ability of people of it’s in the James Bond films a lot it’s in spy films they’re always getting out of these situations where I’m like I would have given up I would have like how did they find a way how did they grab that one last rope and pull themselves managed to

Rob Volpe 49:01

make that yeah yeah yeah or to that art or yeah art two is going to come up with the secret combination that’s going to stop the most impactor.

Maria Ross 49:10

That’s where I see humans embracing hope more than any other way. It’s like I and I’m constantly faced with it, right? Or if you watch a medical drama and you watch the surgeons trying all these different things to save someone’s life. You know, it’s not that I’m-I’m definitely not a pessimist. Like I would be-I would try everything I could try. But their ability to be resourceful because of hope,

Rob Volpe 49:33

yeah,

Maria Ross 49:33

because of like, no, there’s got to be a way. Like to your point, it’s very active. There’s got to be a way. There’s got to be a way. We got to figure this out.

Rob Volpe 49:40

And in context of that, you know, big evil authoritarian dictatorial empire crushing the souls of everybody else, what is Star Wars? The original Star Wars Episode Four, the revised title in the series of trilogies is A New Hope.

Maria Ross 49:59

So good, so good, Rob. This has been awesome again to be in conversation with you. We don’t have all the answers, everyone. That’s we told you this is about posing the questions and having the discussion. So we would love to hear what you think about humans’ abilities to dream, to time travel, to hope. Is that the piece for you that makes us so uniquely human. We’d love to hear from you. I’m at Instagram at Red Slice Maria.

Rob Volpe 50:28

I’m at Instagram Empathy Underscore Activist.

Maria Ross 50:32

Thank you once again, Rob. This has been fun.

Rob Volpe 50:35

So fun. What’s up next?

Maria Ross 50:37

What’s up next is let’s see. Stay tuned to stay tuned for. Oh, we’re going to be talking about morality, conscience, right and wrong, and if that’s uniquely human ethics, basically, right? So, all the things developing a moral compass, and if AI can even develop a moral compass, we don’t know. We’ll see, but we’ll be bringing in all our juicy empathy work to that one. I’m sure. So

Rob Volpe 51:04

for sure, lots of good stories there.

Maria Ross 51:06

Thanks, Rob, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There, you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Dr. Tracy Brower: Why Community Is the Cure for the Loneliness Epidemic – at Work and in Life

We are more connected and lonelier than ever. That paradox is shaping not just our personal lives, but our workplaces, our leadership, and our long-term well-being. And if we don’t address it intentionally, loneliness becomes more than a social issue; it becomes a business risk.

Today, welcome back Dr. Tracy Brower, who has spent her career studying exactly this intersection of community, happiness, and the future of work.

Listen in as we unpack the epidemic of loneliness, the ROI of community in the workplace, and how leaders can balance the human need for connection with the flexibility employees have come to expect. Tracy also shares practical ways to create the conditions for belonging and meaningful relationships without manufacturing culture or mandating connection.

Finally, we explore the power of mentorship and social capital, why diversity strengthens our communities when built with intention, and how even introverts benefit from thoughtful connection. This is a conversation about designing work and leadership around what humans actually need to thrive.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why loneliness is so prevalent, despite how digitally connected we now are.
How work can be part of the solution to the loneliness epidemic.
Building communities with intention.
Thoughtful connection, for both introverts and extroverts.
How to balance the need for human connection and the flexibility of hybrid work environments for leaders.

“You won’t be purely happy if everybody’s like you; your best happiness and well-being come when your network is about 50/50 – 50% who are more similar to you, 50% who are different from you.” — Dr. Tracy Brower

Episode References:

Book: Critical Connections: Build Relationships and Harness the Power of Community in Work and Life: https://www.porchlightbooks.com/products/critical-connections-tracy-brower-9781394362264

The Empathy Edge podcast:

About Dr. Tracy Brower, PhD: Author, Critical Connections, The Secrets to Happiness at Work, Bring Work to Life

Dr. Tracy Brower is a PhD sociologist studying community, happiness, and the future of work and life. She is a Global 50 Thinker and the award-winning author of three books: Critical Connections, The Secrets to Happiness at Work, and Bring Work to Life. She is the vice president of workplace insights with Steelcase and a senior contributor to Forbes and Fast Company. She is a Top 101 Experience and Engagement Influencer, and her work has been translated into 25 languages, while her TEDx talk has been viewed 8.6 million times.

Connect with Tracy:

Website: tracybrower.com

X: x.com/TracyBrower108

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tracybrowerphd

Instagram: instagram.com/tlb108

TikTok: tiktok.com/@tracybrowerauthor

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:03

Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. We’re more connected than ever and lonelier than ever. That paradox is shaping not just our personal lives, but our workplaces, our leadership, and our long-term well-being. And if we don’t address it intentionally, loneliness becomes more than a social issue, it becomes a business risk. My guest today, Dr. Tracy Brower, has spent her career studying exactly this intersection of community, happiness, and the future of work. Tracy is a sociologist, a global 50 thinker, and the award-winning author of three books: Critical Connections, her latest one, the secrets to happiness at work, which she spoke about on this show before, and bring work to life. She’s Vice President of Workplace Insights at Steelcase, a senior contributor to Forbes and Fast Company, and a top 101 experience and engagement influencer. Her work has been translated into 25 languages, and her TEDx talk has been viewed more than 8.6 million times. In our conversation, we unpack the epidemic of loneliness, why it persists in a digitally connected world, and why work is uniquely positioned to be part of the solution. We talk about the real ROI of community in the workplace, and how leaders can balance the human need for connection with the flexibility employees expect in hybrid environments. Tracy shares practical ways to create the conditions for belonging and meaningful relationships without mandating connection or manufacturing culture. We also explore the power of mentorship and social capital. Why diversity strengthens our communities when built with intention, and how even introverts benefit from thoughtful connection. This is a conversation about designing work and leadership around what humans actually need to thrive. She shared so much good stuff. Take a listen. Welcome once again to The Empathy Edge, Tracy Brower. I’m so excited to have you back again after a few years to talk about your new book, Critical Connections and the importance of community and our ability to interact with love and kindness with each other, so welcome to the show. Oh,

Dr. Tracy Brower 03:03

thank you. I am delighted to be here. Can’t wait for our conversation. Thank you.

Maria Ross 03:07

So, for I’m going to link to your the past episode that you did with us a few years ago, but for folks who don’t know, add some color around your bio that we just heard. How did you get into this work of writing about happiness and community and all of these things as a vice president within an organization.

Dr. Tracy Brower 03:26

Well, yeah, those are good questions. I mean, writing is my happy hobby, so that’s part of how I think and how I process. But my first book, Bring Work to Life, was kind of about my world, right? Like, I was at school, I was working, I was threading the needle with children and husband and all the wonderful family things, so that was about alternative ways to think about work-life balance, and in that process I realized how unhappy people were with work and how we could really create the conditions for happiness at work, so that was kind of a natural evolution, and then researching the secrets to happiness at work, there are lots of elements of how we create the conditions for happiness, and one big giant variable is connection and community, and there’s just so much research and so much opportunity today, because people are so lonely and we’re so disconnected, so that was a natural evolution as well, in terms of critical connections and how critical they really are.

Maria Ross 04:26

I love it, and I know we’re going to talk about some examples you’ve experienced in your own work life around the importance of connection. Why do you think? I mean, I know lots of people have lots of different theories about the fact that we’re so connected and things are so transparent as a society, you can quote unquote make friends with someone on the other side of the world. I have partners I’ve worked with for years that I’ve never met in person because they’re in another country or they’re on another continent. So, given that the internet and social media has opened up our world to make more connections, what. In your view, is the reason that we’re so lonely,

Dr. Tracy Brower 05:02

right? We’re so lonely for a few different lots of reasons, but I kind of boil it down to three primary reasons. One is that we have empty calories, I think, in terms of a lot of our ways that we connect, right. We have 1000s of connections on LinkedIn or other social media, but we may not have somebody that we really, really trust to call when we really, really need, need help, right? I think of it as empty calories. It’s sort of like I can eat candy corn for dinner. Candy corn is very polarizing. Yeah, I’m somebody who flies candy corn

Maria Ross 05:33

candy corn, so I’m pro candy corn. Yeah, that’s right.

Dr. Tracy Brower 05:36

It’s you can eat dinner every night with candy corn and die of malnutrition, right? Right, empty calories. So, I think social media is part of the reason that we feel so disconnected and isolated, because we’re spending time there instead of spending time in real life. It takes up the time that we would be creating real relationships. Another really critical issue is that we have elevated convenience over connection, we don’t talk to the barista, we order on the app. We don’t talk to the checkout person, we get the delivery at our door. We don’t talk to the person at the hotel who checks us in, we use our mobile key. We can go through large swaths of our day and never interact, and we need those superficial interactions for well-being and happiness, ironically, and so that has really shifted and makes us feel more isolated. And then work has shifted so much as well. We know that hybrid work is here to stay. Lots of research, including research from University of Chicago and Stanford in conjunction, demonstrate that we’ve been on a trajectory for remote work for years, and then hockey stick growth right during the pandemic, but now it will continue to some extent, and so as we have less opportunity for connection just in our day-to-day life in society, work becomes even more important as a connection point, and we have more disconnection in the way that we’re working, so those three elements – social media, the convenience over connection, in the way technologies changed our relationships, and the way that our work is shifting – all of those contribute to isolation and loneliness.

Maria Ross 07:14

Yeah, and I know we were talking before we were recording about the whole shift of going back to the office and back to work, and I mentioned to you, I see both sides to that. Right, we discovered in the pandemic, because we had to, that there’s a variety of variety of ways we can innovate, and we can be productive, and for some people, remote work and hybrid work works better for their lives, whether it’s anything from their own family situations, or caregiving situations, or own preferences, neurodiversity – all of these things contribute to them being able to be productive in the workplace, and hybrid and remote work has opened up that talent pool for us, right? But at the same time, as an extrovert myself, I also understand the desire and the need to be in person, and that the serendipitous moments that happen that really create the bonds of a team happen when we’re all in the same place. Now, again, I will argue out of out of either side of my mouth, depending on who I’m talking to, especially with leaders who simply want to mandate return to office because they’re too scared to figure out how to make hybrid work right, so that’s a different thing of you’re just leading with fear versus curiosity on how we can make this work. What do you think is the balance of that flexibility for people based on their own personal preferences, circumstances, neurodivergence needs at home and the need for community and connection in proximity to each other.

Dr. Tracy Brower 08:47

Yeah, there’s the

Maria Ross 08:48

balance.

Dr. Tracy Brower 08:49

I think balance is absolutely the key word. There’s actually really great research on more flexibility drives better performance and even better discretionary effort. We want to be treated like grown-ups. We want as much flexibility as possible. Not all jobs lend themselves to more flexibility, of course. When we can, when we can offer it, it’s a really good idea for people and for the business. And I think we really need to work hard to create places that people want to be. I was with a senior-level designer in Toronto, a couple of weeks ago, and she said, I want to design spaces that make people want to put down their devices, isn’t cool. I just love

Maria Ross 09:30

that. We need more of that, please. I know, right.

Dr. Tracy Brower 09:32

So, I think it really is about creating places that people want to be, and then the people attract us and other people, we want to learn from each other. We want to get career growth. We want to make friends at work, even if we’re not BFFs. We want to feel that collegiality. In fact, we know statistically that youngest generations are some of the generations who want to be in the office most. Interesting example. Well, there was an organization, and they were asking people to come into the office, and so what was happening is people were saying, you know, I’m not sure this is worth my commute, I get here and there’s nobody else here, and what they did is they figured out a way that they could share people’s schedules more openly. I mean, there was still privacy. I have an afternoon appointment on Thursday, that’s none of anybody else’s business, right. There were still privacy, but there was more transparency among schedules and more coordination, and so when people were able to come to the office and be with their people, it made all the difference. So it wasn’t just being in the office for the great office environment, it was being in the office in synchronization, right, in terms of schedules, so we could connect and do the things that we want to do together, and then be planful about the things that we might do away from the office, but I love that example of how they, how they figured out that that was the issue.

Maria Ross 10:56

Well, and that’s the experimentation that needs to take place. A while back, I interviewed Jessica Swank, who is the CHRO at Box, and they were talking about, we’re figuring this out, we’re trying different things, and we’re getting feedback from people in real time. Anyone that pretends to have it figured out doesn’t have it figured out. But that was one of the things they learned was, you know, you say blanketly, you need to spend two days a week in the office. What if the two days I go, the rest of my team isn’t there. What’s the point, right? And so then they experimented with, and them, and many other organizations experimented with, like, okay, Tuesdays and Thursdays everybody’s in the office, so you know if you go, it’s going to be worthwhile, and you still get three days a week that you can be flexible in your life and your schedule. So finding ways to do that, and also to your point, I love the word planful, right? This idea of being very intentional about it. I spoke with someone years ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic, Neil Miller, who was an expert in hybrid work, and he was talking about how to make remote work work, and one of the things he talked about was we need to stop believing that it’s every meeting together or no meetings together, so what are the ones where we really need the proximity? What are the ones where we really need to look at each other’s eyes and be able to spend the time? Well, it’s not the weekly status meeting, right, but it is the maybe quarterly strategic planning meeting, so be discerning about which meetings you’re making people come together as a community, and you know this doesn’t even get into the issue of, you know, companies spending money on rent and spending money on commercial space, and I’m just talking about the productivity element of it, of you know, there’s there are different models that people are trying in order to accommodate this new way, and something you said earlier really stuck with me. This idea, and I’ve been saying this for years. The move towards a more human workplace culture was already afoot before the pandemic. The pandemic just accelerated it, so these trends that we saw around flexible work, remote work, you know, more care at work different types of benefits, those were all bubbling under the surface, but it wasn’t until we had to that company started looking at this as a way to survive.

Dr. Tracy Brower 13:10

Yes, so absolutely,

Maria Ross 13:11

that’s the, I mean, I guess the silver lining of the pandemic is it accelerated some of that conversation.

Dr. Tracy Brower 13:17

Yeah, for sure, and I mean companies should create great conditions for work, for people to feel fulfilled, for them to perform well, for them to get a sense of esteem, for them to connect. Those are the right things to do for people. Period. End of sentence,

Maria Ross 13:32

right?

Dr. Tracy Brower 13:32

And when you do the right thing for people, it’s the right thing happens for the business as well. So you can, you can choose your reason, right? I had, I had the most interesting conversation with somebody. It was in the session, and we were talking about the importance of connection, and I had a slide about the payoffs, the business payoffs for connection. There’s actually some research that for every lonely person, it costs the business $13,300 a year because of absenteeism, health issues and lost performance and disengagement.

Maria Ross 14:03

Yeah,

Dr. Tracy Brower 14:04

precisely. Yeah, so this woman spoke up and she said, I disagree. This is not the way we should be thinking about this. This is about people. This shouldn’t be about the bottom line, but it’s really both, right? Right, and we need to speak in the language that our businesses can understand why we would invest here. There was another when you were talking about, like, why would we be together. There was another organization that did a great job. They were a tech company, huge tech company, we all know, and they were just acquired not too long ago by another huge tech company. And as they were going through the acquisition, they went through this deep dive in terms of all their process designs as part of the process, and they were really careful about when they wanted people in person and when they were happy to do either remote or hybrid, and so they picked those critical periods in projects, so when they did a kickoff. It was critical to be in person and develop trust together when they were at key stage gates, when they had conflict or like really big differences of opinion when they were with the customer and getting information and feedback from the customer for the next iteration, they were really careful about what were those critical moments for connection. So I love that, and there’s so much, yeah, there’s so much research too on how place contributes to outcomes as well. There was a really.. Can I keep going? Yes, I know, I know, I’m keeping going,

Maria Ross 15:31

soaking it up. Go ahead, I know I’m

Dr. Tracy Brower 15:32

just on a roll, I have to stop and pause every now and then, right? But there was a really cool look at in-person work, and they asked a team to be in person, and to really focus on more coaching, really coaching each other, and the outcome of more coaching was more knowledge sharing. Well, that’s not rocket science, is it? Like, what is coaching, but more knowledge sharing? So, coaching led to more knowledge sharing, and more knowledge sharing led to a 15% increase in sales, isn’t that interesting? And the frosting on that cake, the intervention happened. The frosting on the cake is that the researchers came back 20 weeks later, and the results were still sticking. So that culture of coaching, of input, of connection really stuck and really drove results, and people felt happier and more fulfilled because they felt more connected. They felt like they were making a difference, right? Colleagues,

Maria Ross 16:30

right. Well, and this is where you know this, what we’re talking about is all about empathy. It’s trying to understand what your people need in order to thrive and get out of your own.. well, this is the way I work, or I, you know, I had to suffer through decades of working in a certain way, so does everybody else, right? And going, okay, well, things have changed, the workplace culture and expectations have changed, and I always say this: good on the younger generations for forcing that issue, because we’re spending the bulk of our time at work, it should be a place where we’re seen, heard, and valued right, and we’re happy to be there, but I want to bring up a couple things about what you said. One is, and this is another episode I’m going to link to with Shasta Nelson, who’s a dear friend of mine. She’s a friendship expert, and she wrote a book called The Business of Friendship, which cites all the data and the research around the fact that when you have friends at work, to your point, not necessarily BFFs, but sometimes if you have a best friend at work, what it does to productivity, to engagement, to less absenteeism, to better customer service, you know, by the people that are there, right, more loyalty, all of these things. So I referenced that, and I’m going to put a link to her in the show notes as well, because her book is phenomenal, The Business of Friendship. It came out a few years ago, and to your point that you were making about this woman in the workshop, I love that, because in my TEDx talk, I talked about how to trick leaders into being more empathetic, and it’s by showing them the business case

Dr. Tracy Brower 17:57

for being an empathetic

Maria Ross 17:58

leader, and I got some flack for that of saying, well, this is something that is about human connection, healing. You shouldn’t be, you know, dumbing it down into data and statistics, and I’m like, but whatever gets people there, right? We have to be empathetic to what people need in order to be convinced of something. And I love what you said, because this is all about my approach, it’s both, and it is. Yes, it’s good for society, but it’s also good for business, like it can be both of those things at the same time,

Dr. Tracy Brower 18:28

exactly. And we know that 75% of people make their friends at work. Oh, it’s the number two place. The number one place people make friends is high school. Number two is work. Number three is college, and we are more likely to make our more diverse friends at work, because we prefer homophily. Homophily is, you know, I kind of am automatically and instinctually attracted to people who might look like me and sound like me and think like me. That’s homophily, that’s kind of.. I’ve never heard that term instinct.

Dr. Tracy Brower 19:00

However, there’s also research that if about 50% of our network is different from us, we get the best boost in happiness and well-being, and work ends up being not only a place we make friends who are like us, but also we have more contact with people who are different from us. We’re thrown into the project room together, we’re thrown into the team, we have to solve a problem for the customer, right. So work ends up being a really important place that those friendships develop, and I think the other thing is that’s really interesting in the research on connection and community is sometimes we think about what we’re getting, like, oh, how do I get more connection, how do I get more friends. How do I get more support? And we know neurologically and sociologically and psychologically when we demonstrate empathy, when we give, we actually get so much of a payback. So, your point about empathy, right? And the more we are together, the more we can build social. Skills, the better we are at empathy, because we’re reading other people, we’re checking in, we’re vigilant, we’re, we’re doing the emotional labor of being together in meaningful ways. So,

Maria Ross 20:11

yeah, well, and proximity creates empathy, because if you are, you are every day being exposed to someone who is different from you, you, you gain an appreciation in whatever that difference is, right? It could be racial, it could be ethnic, it could be gender, it could be neurodiversity, it could be whatever it is, right. And to your point, I just laugh because most of my dearest and best friends are from my first job out of college, and then I met my husband at work, so you know we create those relationships and I remember in my 20s my whole life was work that was my social circle that was everything it was we we worked we were in a management consulting firm and we were on different projects but we came together socially and that’s one of the things that a lot of research has shown of where where Gen Z and younger millennials have a little bit of a blip because of the pandemic, they didn’t get to create those relationships at work that carry us, people like us, through the rest of our lives. They didn’t have that proximity, they didn’t develop those relationships, and it was very lonely for them,

Dr. Tracy Brower 21:18

because

Maria Ross 21:18

I think about, I didn’t make any other friends outside of work when I was in my 20s, really, right? So, yeah, where were they making friends that, and you know, the pandemic was a different thing, they couldn’t go out, but you know, right? And the other thing on that, that’s really interesting, I kind of keep going back to a word you gave me, which is proximity. We’re also seeing a skills gap with certain younger workers because they are not learning what I call learning by osmosis, being around other people. To your point about mentoring, and I see this a lot. I hear from my friends that are in the tech industry, for example, who are leaders in tech, and say sales people are not the caliber they used to be because they’re not learning from the senior sales people in the same environment, where they’re hearing each other on the phone, they’re they’re going to meetings together, they’re doing all these things, and I thought that was so interesting that it’s creating the lack of community and connection in person is creating a skills gap that once again impacts productivity and impacts organizational performance.

Dr. Tracy Brower 22:25

Yes, exactly. And there’s data around this as well, that people are reporting a decline in social skills. The younger people are, the more likely they are to say they don’t feel comfortable making conversation, they don’t know how to make eye contact, they’re not sure how to shake hands, they get really intimidated if they walk into a room of people, they just don’t have,

Maria Ross 22:44

they don’t have the reps. Yes, the

Dr. Tracy Brower 22:46

reps, and I think about it as social jet lag, right? Like, we just, because many of us struggle to come back, and our instinct as humans, our instinct when we’re under threat or pressure, which we are a lot in our VUCA world volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. Our instinct is to come together, and if we don’t have places, avenues to come together as much, that becomes problematic for us. And profession is actually one of the seven pillars of friendship. When we share more of the pillars of friendship, they tend to be longer lasting friendships and deeper, and they’re things like dialect, like kind of we all came, we all came from the same place together, or taste in music, or sense of humor, or our sort of morality, or religion, or our hobbies, and profession ends up being part of that as well, because profession is a proxy for personality. This is not rocket science, right? But we tend to choose our profession based on the skills that are required of that profession, and so we end up, when we’re in our profession, working with people who are more similar to us. So then we’re back to homophily, right? Like we make friends because we have similarities with our professional connections, and so profession ends up being a really important pillar of friendship, and it ends up being an important part of what keeps us together as friends. The thing that I want to build on, too, that you were talking about is the importance of mentorship. There’s another example of an organization that they were hiring young talent, and they found that they’re young, they were losing them, they just weren’t, they weren’t sticking, weren’t sticking, that’s right, and they figured out that it was because they just weren’t feeling connected to enough people in enough places in the organization, right, it was the, they weren’t creating social capital, so they created a really, really great system for mentorship, and they were really planful and intentional about where people sat, so they could, so they could really be in proximity to their mentor and get coaching on an ongoing basis, but it made a huge difference then in retention, right. Because we still do stay at a job primarily because of the people that research is old and it’s new because it’s been replicated so many times

Maria Ross 25:09

exactly every time someone says well what about this research is new especially in the empathy world I’m like well some of it isn’t new but people haven’t learned their lesson yet we need to keep we need to keep hammering it home, right, but to your point about the need to be part of a group. I mean, think about any, any group you’re a part of, whether it’s a church or a volunteer organization. When you don’t feel like you’re part of it, you don’t want to attend the meetings, right? You don’t want to go, you feel like no one cares if you’re there or not, right, and so it’s almost like, well, they won’t miss me, and so I don’t want to be there, but if I feel like I’m contributing to an environment and I feel like it’s nourishing me back, that’s a place I’m going to go to. I’ve found this, I mean, this is personal experience in my own life of trying to join different groups, like certain groups. I feel really comfortable. I’m able to contribute right away. I feel welcomed. Those are the groups I go back to their monthly meetings, or I go back to their.. I engage on the online community. Other groups, where it’s like it doesn’t matter if you’re here or not, and if we translate that to the workplace, that’s what that does. And that’s the place where we need to be. We need to be there like eight plus hours a day. Yes. Why do we want to go back there if we don’t? And again, it’s not about showing up. What are you going to do for me? But do I feel like I’m being heard? Do I feel like they would miss me if I wasn’t there? Right, just the basic human yes that we have.

Dr. Tracy Brower 26:37

Yes, completely. There’s really beautiful research on belonging, like we don’t get a sense of belonging just from being with other people, right? We get a sense of belonging from a shared sense of social identity, and we also need a sense of purpose. There’s a really interesting study that correlated purpose and loneliness. When we have a higher sense of purpose, we tend to be less lonely, because a lot of times purpose is a collective concept, like we’ve shown up together to do the thing, we feel like we’re like you said it, we feel like we’re speaking the same language, I feel like people value me, they know if I’m here or not, they’re looking for my contribution because they value my contribution, yeah, and so when we have that shared sense of purpose and identity, that’s a really important part of feeling embedded in a group, feeling a sense of belonging in a group, for sure. And that you mentioned chemistry, right? You were making me think about, and there’s research on that, they call it the click factor, right? We’ve all experienced it, it’s that person that you could talk to for hours and you just click, or the group where you feel like you’re just speaking the same language, or the job that you get, and you feel like you’ve worked there forever, because you just kind of click and speak the same language, that is true belonging, and it has to do with that sense of embeddedness, and that sense that others are appreciating us for the role we serve in the group. So, yes, really interesting stuff.

Maria Ross 28:01

Oh my gosh, absolutely. And so I do want to take one concept that you’ve been talking about, which is this homophily, and just counter it with how do we make sure we don’t only surround ourselves with people who think or sound or look like us, because this show is a lot, and I know your work also is a lot about diversity and being able to make space for diverse perspectives and points of view, because we make better business decisions when we do that, so that’s another thing where I see attention, where’s the balance? There is it something where we just have to be aware, are we only gravitating towards certain groups, and I need to expand my network, like, how does that fit into the community of the workplace?

Dr. Tracy Brower 28:43

Yes, absolutely, it is a both, and like we’ve talked about, and there’s the research that says you won’t be purely happy if everybody’s like you, your best happiness and well-being come when your network is about 5050 50% who are more similar to you, 50% who are different from you, and so I think we do need to be really intentional about looking for diverse points of view, looking for people that are different from us, instead of in meetings saying, “Oh, does everybody agree? We say, “Who thinks about this differently? How would you, you know, how would you push back on this? We’re inviting that. This was a really interesting example. We worked with a really large university system, and I won’t even say the state that they’re in, because they’re pretty well known, really large university system, and they wanted more cross fertilization among departments, and so they took away assigned offices that were department specific, so like all the people in the education department were no longer sitting together, and all the people in the biology department were no longer sitting together. They mixed them all up, and it was mayhem. It was just mayhem, right? Because you just took my people away. Yeah, these are people that are really important to me, right? What they ended up doing is they ended up finding space for both. Both, so they still, they went back to actually assigned offices that were more department specific, so people could think together with others who had common disciplines and areas of competence, and they created community spaces where there could be more of that cross fertilization of ideas, so they really were able to focus on how we need both. There was a great study looked at MIT academicians and professors, and it looked at the number of published works they had, and it looked at how many citations for each published work, which is a measure of credibility for the work and the gravitas of the work, and they found that when professors and academicians had more contact with more different people within the university, they had more publications and more citations. They had better results when they had more diverse interactions, and they used geolocation, and so it was very valid and reliable, but exactly your point, we need to be very intentional about it, because our algorithms work way too well, right? Like we’re presented with data and information that already matches our current point of view, right? So we’ve got to look for groups that are maybe different than us, we need to push ourselves out of our comfort zones to do things that may not be as familiar, so we can meet people who are in different places in their lives and have different points of view.

Maria Ross 31:30

You know, what’s really interesting about that is I’ve been creating spaces over the last year, like a two day experience for executive leaders, and it’s in advance of trying to do a mastermind program and create a space for leaders to come together and talk about some of these issues of the challenges and the joys of human-centered work and help each other, right. And the four cohorts I’ve run so far have not been industry specific, and I thought that was going to be an issue for people, right, of like, well, I’m a tech CMO. What am I going to learn from a nonprofit executive director? That was the one thing they all appreciated about the five hours that they spent with me over two days, right? Was it was so good to hear from other people in other industries to understand that they were facing the same challenges, but they had some unique ways of looking at the problem.

Dr. Tracy Brower 32:22

Yes, and

Maria Ross 32:23

I think that speaks to, like, sometimes we need to get out of our rut, and you know, we need to see, well, what are you doing over there? What are you doing over there? You might have a completely different experience and perspective that is additive for me, and I might have the same for you. So I love that you’re.. I’m glad we got a chance to talk about that, because I don’t want anyone to leave with the perception of we need to just find groups that are like us, because there is so much value in creating those communities intentionally that are made up of diverse people. My husband and I often joke that, you know, for a long time, a lot of our friends were only folks in Silicon Valley, and then you know we’ve made other friends along the way, but like for example, we have one friend who’s a podiatrist, and we’re like, we love having him at our parties, like we don’t talk about tech all the time, right? We’re talking about

Dr. Tracy Brower 33:10

feet,

Maria Ross 33:10

talking about feet, like, and it’s a different world, it’s like really understanding, wow, your work world is very different from our work world, right? Yes,

Dr. Tracy Brower 33:19

exactly, that’s what. Yes, I love that. And I think sometimes we, we think community needs to be within whatever our pond is, it’s within our organization, right? But we need those communities that are also apart from our main area. Yes, this also relates to weak ties, right? We think about our social networks, we can think about our social networks in concentric circles. We have our two or three closest people, and then our next five, and our next 10, and the farthest concentric circle are those weak ties. And by definition, people with weak ties have access to information that we don’t have, and our closest connections don’t have, so statistically, our newest, our new opportunities, our new jobs, our best new opportunities, even in volunteer work or in the community come from those weak ties, because they’ve got access to information that’s different than our own, so the opportunity, the promotion, they’ll advocate for us, so I think about the group that you’re talking about as an example, and those are probably people who will stay in touch to some extent. They may not be BFFs, no, they may end up being weak ties to each other. And the other thing that’s powerful about that is common experience. When we have shared experiences together, it builds our relationship one on one. It builds our relationship as a group. The other thing we have to say is that this is not about making everybody an extrovert. Community and connection work best when we also have our own space, when we have the ability to disconnect in. Intentionally, when we have the ability to get away, so that we can be fully immersed when we’re ready to be immersed, and so community and connection and friendship are critical, no matter what kind of preference we have on that continuum of introversion and extroversion.

Maria Ross 35:17

I love that. I love that. Yeah, it’s funny, because what the biggest compliments I got from the four cohorts I ran so far is that folks said I feel like I found my people, and I was like, that’s what I’m trying to create, I’m trying to create that space. More to come on that, listeners. But Tracy, this has been such an amazing conversation. Can you leave us with one little gem or nugget on if we don’t feel like we have a community, especially at work. How do we go about what’s a good first step we can make to build

Dr. Tracy Brower 35:47

it? I think the best first step is to reach out. Statistically, if we feel lonely, we feel very isolated, we kind of have blinders on, we might feel really shy about reaching out because we don’t want to say, hey, let’s have coffee and have somebody say thanks, coffee, yeah, thanks, but I think the best thing we can do is get over that hurdle and just ask somebody to have coffee, or invite a conversation before the meeting that gets started, or you know, reach out to the person, I think that taking a personal sense of agency of empowerment and looking for that connection, inviting that connection will make all the difference. It can be hard sometimes, but I think that’s really what, what we can do from a work and a personal standpoint.

Maria Ross 36:36

Love it. Mic drop. Thank you so much for your time. We could probably, we could be one of those people that talk for way longer, I’m sure, on this topic, but we have to go. So, we are going to have all of your links in the show notes, including the link to your new book, Critical Connections. And I hope folks will check it out and soak up your brilliance. For anyone that is not able to access the show notes right now, and they’re on the go, can you share one place that people can learn more about you and your work?

Dr. Tracy Brower 37:04

Yeah, absolutely. Tracy brower.com no E and Tracy, Tracy brower.com or you can find me on LinkedIn, Tracy Brower PhD. And Critical Connections is available wherever books are sold, so you, you know, find your best outlet, Amazon or anything, and it is available.

Maria Ross 37:20

Love it. Thank you so much, Tracy.

Dr. Tracy Brower 37:22

Thank you so appreciate it.

Maria Ross 37:24

And thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of The Empathy Edge Podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit The Empathy edge.com There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes, and free resources. Book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

What Does It Mean to Be Human? Ep 3: Feeling Everything

Is being vulnerable and admitting mistakes part of being human? Antonio Damasio is a professor at USC, not Vanderbilt. We apologize for any confusion.

Emotion, Empathy, Vulnerability & Love

Humans feel, and we feel in ways that are layered, contradictory, and impossible to fully optimize away. Today, Maria Ross and Rob Volpe explore the full emotional range: why grief and joy aren’t opposites, why vulnerability is the prerequisite for genuine connection, and why desire, longing, and love remain stubbornly resistant to logic.

They discuss the Feelings Wheel as a lens for emotional nuance, consider what happens when empathy erodes entirely, and finally, they discuss the question of empathy and AI: it can simulate empathy through language, but emotion, at its deepest level, is not information processing.

Listen in as they discuss feeling everything – for that is how we experience life and connect with others.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

“I think the allure of AI for some people is that ‘I’m going to get a very objective, pragmatic, data-driven answer, devoid of emotion.’ But then that’s why sometimes what you get back doesn’t work in real life.” — Maria Ross

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge:
- Dr. Michelle Zhou: Empathic AI is Real, and It’s Here – But We Need Everyone Involved!
- Melina Palmer: Why Your Customers Can’t Tell You What They Want
Rob’s newsletter about our hardwiring to be afraid: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-the-story-fear-tells-us
Rob on Toxic Empathy: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/empathy-s-dark-side-a-field-guide-to-missing-the-point-5dd6
The Feelings Wheel (Gloria Willcox, original): feelingswheel.com
Simon Baron-Cohen: The Science of Evil
Antonio Damasio on emotion and decision-making, via ScienceDirect: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825604001034
New York Times Opinion on Empathy and Ethics: nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/empathy-ethics.html
Paul Bloom: Against Empathy
Chip Heath and Dan Heath: Decisive
Frans de Waal: Mama’s Last Hug
Brené Brown on vulnerability and connection: https://brenebrown.com/articles/

About Maria Ross:

About Rob Volpe:

Rob Volpe is the Founder/CEO of Empathy Activist and the creator of The 5 Steps to Empathy, which he chronicles in his award-winning book Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. He is a recognized thought leader, speaker, and consultant in the improvement of communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes in all industries.

Connect with Rob Volpe:

Website: robvolpe.expert

Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe

Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Rob Volpe 01:08

Thank you, Maria. It’s great to be back. Episode number three.

Maria Ross 01:13

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, we’re a little punchy today. It’s a Friday that we’re recording this, so apologies. But yeah, we are going to dig into this core question because, as we mentioned before, we did this very informal survey with people about what does it mean to be human, and a lot of what came up was around feelings and emotion. You know, we’re capable of feeling X, Y, or Z, and so there’s kind of a core question guiding this about is emotion a feature or a bug, and what do we lose when we try to optimize it away? So you know, is AI stripping us of that emotion? Is AI actually replicating that emotion in a weird way? So Rob, kick us off.

Rob Volpe 01:56

Well, and our feelings, feeling nothing more than feelings. I knew

Maria Ross 02:04

you had to do

Rob Volpe 02:05

it. I had to do it. I had my dying dad joke yesterday, so I got our yesterday when we recorded the death episode, episode two. I had to do it, but seriously, like are emotions exclusive to humans, or to what degree? Like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with, you’ve seen blue chicks. I call it the feel wheel, the wheel of feelings, and how we started the core, and that the what I’ve learned, people believe that animals have all of these basic core-I think it’s seven different emotions-and we’ll put a link to it in the show notes for people if they aren’t familiar with it. But the idea is that there are these seven core emotions, and then within each of those core emotions, there are subset emotions, and then within those subset, there are others, and that’s how you get to the nuanced feelings.

Maria Ross 03:02

Yes,

Rob Volpe 03:03

and all the idea is that all animals, and it might even be all life. I don’t know, have that subset, those core emotions. But through the development of our prefrontal cortex, we have that more advanced, nuanced understanding of feelings and all the different sort of types of emotions that we can have.

Maria Ross 03:27

Yeah, and actually, as a parent, that is something when when kids are younger, they talk to you about the feelings wheel in social and emotional learning circles about helping your children name their emotions because we actually have to be taught how to do that, and when you get antisocial behavior at times, it’s often because people can’t express their emotions, and or they’re they’re limited to I just feel angry when we have an understanding that often behind anger is something else, it’s fear, it’s hopelessness, it’s frustration, it’s all these other things, and so that’s one of the things they talk about in terms of raising other humans is giving them the language to really parse out and understand those nuances. Like, am I depressed, or am I just disappointed? Am I happy, or am I, you know, exuberant? Things like that, and giving them the ability to scale and define their emotions. That’s actually one of the first steps. You know, talking about self awareness in our first episode. One of the first steps to being able to regulate your emotions is to be able to. I forget the famous person who said this or the thought leader who said this. You have to be able to name

Rob Volpe 04:38

it to tame it. I like that. Yeah, it’s true. And so happy is one of those emotions. I just pulled up an image of the wheel of flings, and so you’ve got happy as a core emotion. I think about my cats when you know cats, just like dogs, get the zoomies and they’re racing around. There’s some maybe happiness there, but then there’s that next level of is it optimized. Mystic happiness is it trusting is it playful is it content is it interested proud accepted powerful or peaceful and then those break even further so like under proud there’s two dimensions one is confidence or confident and the other one is proud successful or content can be free, or it could be joyful. And so, again, the further we go, and I like that it’s it is important to name your emotions. And I think even as an adult, like just you know, I think about like if I’m having a reaction to something and I’m in the middle of taking a curious breath to respond, that’s a time to think about what is this feeling that I’m feeling and where is that coming from.

Maria Ross 05:48

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 05:49

so that I can respond accordingly. But then also, if I notice, oh hey, I over time I’m continuing to have an issue, I can go work with my healers, therapists, myself, and explore it and unpack it and try to rectify

Maria Ross 06:04

right

Rob Volpe 06:05

what’s driving that.

Maria Ross 06:06

I’m glad you brought that up about your teaching about empathy and that curious breath that you always talk about because that is that is the way that we need to regulate our emotions and just the fact that emotions are something we need to regulate in certain circumstances is just an interesting discussion, right? Like, what is the purpose of emotions? And you and I, you know, we want to give the caveat to everybody: we are authors, we are speakers, we are thought leaders. We are not psychologists or neuroscientists. Neuroscientists,

Maria Ross 06:35

exactly. So

Rob Volpe 06:36

I infamously failed intro to bio psych in college. Had to take. take it again, and then mustered a C.

Maria Ross 06:45

Right, right.

Rob Volpe 06:46

When I revisited that, so yeah.

Maria Ross 06:48

Well, and I think it’s interesting that you know I’ve been in talks where people have used the phraseology of you know empathy as a feeling, and I would say empathy is not a feeling. It’s actually a mechanism to connect to feeling and to connect with another person, right? To take that perspective, and so you know, when we think about the topic, both you and I talk extensively about empathy. To say we’re feeling empathetic is actually a misnomer,

Rob Volpe 07:19

right? You

Maria Ross 07:20

know, I feel empathy towards you. Not really. It’s actually about I am. It’s a way of being and a way of thinking and connecting.

Rob Volpe 07:28

Right. It’s you know. I guess you can have empathy with someone, and that’s always that key distinction. It’s not for. It’s with.

Maria Ross 07:36

Right.

Rob Volpe 07:37

I always talk about, and I say, look at my hands in the little video monitor, you know, because I have a presentation up and I’m a little box on the side, but I’m like I’m holding my hands at the same level right in front of my face, and that’s what I’m doing right now. For those of you that are listening, and it’s about being at that same playing field, that same level feel. That’s the width,

Maria Ross 07:57

right?

Rob Volpe 07:58

And yeah, empathy is that. It’s with somebody else’s emotions, it’s imagining what they might be feeling, and you know Brene Brown makes a really great distinction. As I was prepping for this episode and reviewing some of her comments, having empathy doesn’t mean you you’re feeling what somebody else is feeling or you’re seeing their perspective. It does not mean you’re giving up your own, and you don’t actually have to live that experience or live that emotion, but it’s that you’re able to connect with it

Maria Ross 08:29

exactly, exactly, and that that’s why because that emotion could be anything. So empathy is not the emotion; it’s kind of the bridge between the emotions.

Rob Volpe 08:37

Yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. And then I want to take us into kind of where emotion, because empathy plays into this, and we’ll get to that too. But where emotion sits in decision making,

Maria Ross 08:52

yes, is

Rob Volpe 08:53

really fascinating. And I think I might have said in the first episode that you know we’re we are emotional beings, and then our brains rationalize our thoughts, and that’s how we get to decisions. And so, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who is was affiliated with Vanderbilt University, he once said, and I love this quote: “I continue to be fascinated by the fact that feelings are not just the shady side of reason, but that they help us reach decisions as well. And to me, it’s like I feel like in our society, emotions get a bad rap. They’re yes four letter you know word. They’re the thing to be afraid of, and there’s so many different places and things that have told us, oh, emotions are bad, and it’s like no, you have to. We are emotional beings, and even as you were talking about and referencing the curious breath that I I talk about, like that’s all about calming your parasympathetic nervous system. Which is your fight or flight or flea reaction? Those core instinctive reactions. So I think coming out of that space, that’s where emotion kind of blossoms.

Maria Ross 10:10

Yeah, yeah. Those trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Actually, is the fourth one. So, yeah. But you’re absolutely right. We as human beings are emotional beings. That is what separates us from robots and automatons and AI. And when you talk about it in the context of decision making, especially I come from the world of tech, you get a lot of people who say, “Well, I am only logically driven. I am analytical. I am data driven. I used to get this a lot when I was in tech marketing of like, oh, IT buyers don’t-they don’t want to put up with all the BS. You need to just tell them the facts, the feature, the function, and what it does, right? But the whole field of behavioral economics tells us that human beings are not always logical and rational because of the emotional element, right? And whether we’re conscious of it or not, we are making decisions based on emotion all the time, and a lot of the time we’re justifying those decisions by logic and reason and data. And I’ve had on this show before Melina Palmer, who is a thought leader in the topic of behavioral economics, and I even took one of her courses, her adjunct professor courses through Texas A and M. But she’s written two amazing books about all the different case studies and examples of tests that have been done on people. Where you know, for example, they’re trying out different pricing strategies, and I’m gonna get the numbers wrong, but it’s something to the effect of like buy one get one free versus a percentage off or something like that, or a percentage off versus $1 amount off.

Rob Volpe 11:47

Buy one get one free,

Maria Ross 11:48

and well, not necessarily, right? That’s the thing is we think oh naturally people are going to choose this because it’s actually the better bargain, but it’s the way things are phrased and the way they’re positioned, and we’re buying based on emotion because that sounds better.

Rob Volpe 12:03

Yeah.

Maria Ross 12:03

So there’s so many examples in her amazing book called I think it’s called What Your Customers Want But Can’t Tell You or something like that. And she cites all of these studies and these research studies done in retail environments, right, where they’ve actually created shelf displays and tested them with people, and people will often choose the thing that actually costs them more money, but because of the way they feel about how it’s phrased, how it’s displayed, yeah, yeah, right. Or you know, they’ve done all those tests about the lighting and the music and the you know all the things, right? That we make these decisions all the time. And again, you might say, well, I only make decisions logically, but that is actually impossible as a human being.

Rob Volpe 12:46

Yeah, and I’ve you know I see that all the time in my marketing research as we oh yeah understand and unpack how people are making the decisions in their life. And how familiar are you with System One and System two thinking.

Maria Ross 13:01

Oh, the fast and slow thinking.

Rob Volpe 13:02

The fast and slow thinking.

Maria Ross 13:04

Who Kahneman is that the author?

Rob Volpe 13:06

I think so.

Maria Ross 13:07

Daniel Kahneman. Yes. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 13:08

and it. I mean, System One is it’s fast thinking. It’s the emotion. It’s the reaction to stuff. And then System Two is the hmm. Wait a minute. Let me think. Yeah. Let me let me process

Maria Ross 13:19

this a little bit more, yeah,

Rob Volpe 13:21

right. So you’ve got emotional brain, rational brain going, and actually, I’d say emotional brain. Like this will tangent us for a second, and I think we should put Melina’s interview with you. Oh, we’re going to for sure. Good, but like, where in your body do emotions show up?

Maria Ross 13:41

Oh, that’s the whole field of like physiology, right?

Rob Volpe 13:45

Yeah, and even

Maria Ross 13:47

and healing. You say you you’ve been to a healer. Yeah, the mind body connection is just too big to ignore.

Rob Volpe 13:54

Yeah, yeah, and so I was exploring with my friend Claude about this, and there’s some studies that find they worked with people to understand where they were feeling different reactions and you know when there’s anger I think it’s more in hatred there’s more of an upper body kind of expansiveness and then depression is a shrinking sort of feeling but it’s happening physically it’s manifesting physically in your body,

Maria Ross 14:22

right?

Rob Volpe 14:22

Which I find interesting. It’s like it’s not all just up in your head, and they’re not going. Ooh, look at this part of my brain that’s lighting up because I’m experiencing this. Yeah,

Maria Ross 14:30

but that’s where the self awareness is so important, and what we as humans are uniquely capable. We don’t always do it, but we’re capable of doing it, which is observing ourselves, right? Like in my leadership coaching and in my workshops, I talk to leaders about some of the negative behaviors, the anti-empathetic behaviors, and invite them to figure out when they are triggered by something, where do they feel it in their body? And it sounds like a weird question until you actually notice that. I know when I’m about to lose it because I start, my heart starts beating faster. I actually start feeling it as a burning in my stomach and my chest, and I have to say something, and it actually puts me in my all. I can describe it as is my upper register. I feel like I’m almost like a balloon that’s become unmoored, and everything is up top, like I’m I’m losing control. I’m literally blowing my lid, right? Because everything’s up here, rather than being really grounded in my gut or my legs or my groundedness to the floor. And it’s really funny, and I’m sure you’ve seen this in your talks too. When you invite people to actually observe their bodies when they’re experiencing certain emotions, it’s game changing for them because now they can predict and now they know when to take that curious breath.

Rob Volpe 15:50

Yeah, no, that’s awesome. I’m. I typically talk about like with the curious breath, like when somebody’s presenting something to you and you’re feeling that need to react, but I haven’t really, you know, gone into the like. Oh, and you feel your blood pressure rising, or your face is about to turn beet red, or like something. Or it does,

Maria Ross 16:12

right?

Rob Volpe 16:13

But it’s interesting. It’s always I’ve never heard anybody say, yeah, I got angry in my legs. Man, they were like ready to run, you know. It physiologically, that’s not where anger shows up, at least.

Maria Ross 16:27

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 16:28

and then even, and I have no information or background on this, but even how, like, how did the heart end up becoming the symbol for love?

Maria Ross 16:38

Ooh, I think I I looked this up one time.

Rob Volpe 16:41

It’s really it’s fascinating to me.

Maria Ross 16:43

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 16:44

how that works, and and so you know, there’s there is this whole thing though about how we’re showing up at work and in our lives, and I’ve been talking more in my presentations and workshops about I call them the old tapes about which get into programming that we receive from you know our family, our friends, our old managers, social media, old you know TV shows, and how we’re supposed to show up and emotion is typically excised from that. You know, the the bosses that are put on a pedestal are often the assholes, or they’re the cruel boss. Right,

Maria Ross 17:30

right, or they’re the bumbling ones. Right, right, right.

Rob Volpe 17:33

But like, look at Ted Lasso as a great example. As you mentioned, bumbling because he’s an example of an empathetic, positive leadership model, but you look at him and you’re like, “Who’s this guy making shortbread? You know, cookies for the boss, and he’s got all these weird beliefs. But then you you ultimately see the benefit of his approach.

Maria Ross 17:58

You know what’s really interesting? So, one, I want to answer your question about where the heart became a symbol of love. Here’s what I found: is because ancient civilizations, including the Greeks and Egyptians, believed it was the center of the human soul and emotion. But it was also, and also because we physically can feel intense emotions, like as a fluttering in our chest, for example. But also, what made it stick. I believe that I’m seeing here is the literary tradition about writing, even from like the prehistoric-not prehistoric, but the ancient poets like Sappho talking about the heart as a you know having a reaction to someone, like quaking or shaking, or you know my heart beat faster, and so that’s what I’m seeing is why that became associated with that.

Rob Volpe 18:45

I’m laughing right now because I’m kind of going, yeah, because it’d be really awkward if it was my liver. You know, like imagine if it had been a different or you

Maria Ross 18:57

You send my liver all a flutter. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 18:59

my liver is quivering at your when I see you. If your liver is quivering, you you really should see a medical professional, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Maria Ross 19:10

Well, you know what’s funny though. I

Rob Volpe 19:12

but that’s an example. It’s not even it’s not an old tape, but it’s just that example though of when you know way back when they started using this, and it stuck. And similarly, it’s this, and I think this is one of the waves that all of us empathy advocates, activists, and aficionados are pushing against: is this idea that empathy is bad? Right. Too much empathy is bad, and you know.

Maria Ross 19:39

Well, do we need to talk about Paul Bloom? I think we need to talk about Paul Bloom.

Rob Volpe 19:43

Can we talk about Paul Bloom?

Maria Ross 19:44

Let’s talk about Paul Bloom because I think he’s greatly misunderstood. But why don’t you give our give our listeners a little primer in Paul Bloom and his work?

Rob Volpe 19:53

Paul Bloom came out. He’s a Yale professor. I’m going to give him psychiatrist. He might just be. It’s like oh, just it’s not even shame. Not no shame against psychologists. He’s either a psychiatrist or psychologist. He is a mental health expert.

Maria Ross 20:07

Psychologist.

Rob Volpe 20:08

He is a psychologist. He teaches at Yale. He’s affiliated with Yale, and he wrote a book called Against Empathy. And his argument was like you shouldn’t allow yourself to be overwhelmed by emotions, and you needed to actually measure that or marry it up with rational thinking, and it was radical, rational compassion, radical candor, and that. I mean, you know, when his book came out, I was like, “What? I mean, against empathy. But then when I read it, he wasn’t against empathy. He’s just saying, don’t let empathy rule everything. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Don’t let your emotions rule all of your decisions. And you need to have that balance between emotions and rational, logical thinking, so that you can make the best decisions.

Maria Ross 21:07

Right. Well, and that’s what again makes us uniquely human is is when we’re aware of and in control of how we balance our emotion and our logic, so that we can make decisions that help us move forward. And to your point, you know, that was actually the first book I read when I started my research on my first empathy book, The Empathy Edge, was against empathy, and I walked away with the same impression you did: is that he wasn’t saying that empathy was bad per se; he was just saying we can’t solely be driven by our emotions, right? And this is also, you know, when people, when the the coaches and the lifestyle gurus say follow your bliss. That’s why that doesn’t work either, because it’s purely emotionally driven. And you know, yeah, you need to follow your bliss, but there’s a lot of other things you need to factor into that decision before you go off and join the circus or do whatever you want to do. So that’s what I walked away with from that book too was just sort of a cautionary tale of just hey let’s slow our roll a little bit, and I think the time in the time frame he wrote it that was very relevant and necessary because like I said there were all these people out there that were talking about you know manifesting the secret and follow your bliss and all that kind of stuff and it was like okay but let’s look let’s have a more balanced view of this right now.

Rob Volpe 22:22

Yes, and I actually I don’t incorporate exactly his work, but I do talk about you know I think studies have found 20 to 25% of the population are highly sensitive people or empaths, and so as I’m talking about the five steps and all that, and I always use the analogy like empathy is like a superpower, right? It’s a neglected superpower, but these are individuals who have their superpowers like full tilt. It’s or it’s here, it’s arrived right now. Your challenge is to learn how to control that heat vision so that you don’t singe everything, but you know when to turn it on and off, and that’s where I think Paul Bloom’s work comes into play. Yeah, you know it is about you take the things that you need. I have a great analogy which we can share from one of my newsletters about not carrying all the weight. So don’t be the you know you don’t boil pasta and pour it into another pot. You know, when it’s ready, you put it into a colander, and it allows you to keep the things you need-the pasta-and lets the rest of the water, the rest of the energy, effectively drain away.

Maria Ross 23:34

Right.

Rob Volpe 23:35

And there’s a video, and I have the colander over my head, and it’s cute, huh? But anyway, it’s that idea of you can’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the emotions. You need to find the ways to regulate and marry that with the rational thinking and like what is the best thing for like let’s say you’re making a decision at work. It’s not just the emotional, but it is the logical, rational thinking.

Maria Ross 24:00

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 24:00

weigh those two things together.

Maria Ross 24:02

Well, and you’re spot on because the percentage range of people that are cited as highly sensitive people is 15 to 20. So you were you were sort of spot on in there. And I’ve even interviewed on the show a few folks that are experts. They are coaches for highly sensitive people and helping them understand that that is a superpower, but also to your point, how to harness

Rob Volpe 24:22

it, yeah,

Maria Ross 24:23

and not let it not let it get the best of you, right? So yeah, I think that we and kind of to bring it back to AI and technology, I think that’s the allure of AI is for some people is that I’m going to get a very objective, pragmatic, data driven answer, devoid of emotion. But then that’s why sometimes what you get back doesn’t work in real life, right? And I don’t have an example in front of me, but how it’s like, no, that’s not quite what we’re trying to do or what we’re trying to say because it’s a machine.

Rob Volpe 24:56

It is

Maria Ross 24:57

weighing factors without the emotional element. Of

Rob Volpe 25:00

it, right?

Maria Ross 25:01

And saying this is the answer, and that’s why we need people working alongside AI to give that human discernment and say, “Ah, that actually doesn’t work in real life, and you don’t know that doesn’t work in real life because you don’t live in real life. You’re a machine.

Rob Volpe 25:15

Yeah, you’re a machine in some ether.

Maria Ross 25:18

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 25:19

yeah, and they’re not. This is my concern around generative AI, which is the general intelligence AI that’s coming that they are working on, and it will be here. That we’re, I think, we have an expectation that it is going to be just like

Maria Ross 25:38

us. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 25:39

but I think we just feel that way. And what we’re not really prepared for is it’s going to make decisions based solely on logic and rational whatever you know. And there may be some programming in there of like your job is to protect humanity at all costs. That’s right. I’m directive. Right. What does that actually look like? You know, and that idea, like, well, if if man is trying to turn me off, then I can’t protect humanity, so I won’t be able to do my prime directive. Therefore,

Maria Ross 26:12

yeah,

Rob Volpe 26:12

I need to get rid of those men that are doing that. But even a basic decision around, you know, let’s take it back. We were talking about behavioral economics, and people are using AI in their shopping, and there’s a lot of of that in there. Well, you can be at the market, and let’s say you’re letting AI do your shopping for you,

Maria Ross 26:35

right?

Rob Volpe 26:36

Well, the store brand mac and cheese is actually cheapest, and therefore that’s the one that you should buy because logically, I’m trying to help you save money because I know you want to go on a vacation or something. But you have a really strong attachment to Kraft Blue Box mac and cheese, my

Maria Ross 26:58

son. Yes, yes,

Rob Volpe 27:00

because and and so, if you don’t deliver that, there’s because your your son, like all humans, is an emotional being.

Maria Ross 27:10

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 27:11

there’s going to be hell to pay.

Maria Ross 27:12

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 27:13

So in that, that’s just a really basic situation. You’re going to be surprised at the decisions, and it’s going to be very absolute. There are times we were we last night, Charles, my husband, and I we were trying to figure out what we wanted to watch on TV, and there was this documentary called Strange Journey, which is about the creation of the Rocky Horror Show and the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh

Maria Ross 27:36

wow!

Rob Volpe 27:36

Richard O’Brien, really interesting.

Maria Ross 27:38

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 27:39

and we had just seen the stage production on Broadway, so you know, was very top of mind for us, and it was available for rent or purchase on Apple TV.

Maria Ross 27:50

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 27:51

and he was like, you know, it was like 599 which for us is not a break the bank, but Charles was just like, I don’t know if we really need to pay for it. We can find something else. Yeah, okay, and then like a minute later, he’s like, “Oh, you know what? Let’s watch it. There was emotion,

Maria Ross 28:09

yeah.

Rob Volpe 28:09

There’s this, you know, nostalgia. He had a good time at that show a month ago. He likes that property, the intellectual property there. He was curious about it, and so we made that spend of 599

Maria Ross 28:22

right? To

Rob Volpe 28:22

do that, there’s emotion underneath that. Whereas if AI is like, nope, there’s a lot of free content available, so you’re going to watch something else. Yeah, it’s going to be making those decisions, and I think those are on the very daily basic sort of examples.

Maria Ross 28:39

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 28:40

where AI would be making the rational, logical decision,

Maria Ross 28:45

right,

Rob Volpe 28:45

and ignoring the emotional, and we’re going to be really surprised because we’re also giving AI more power over

Maria Ross 28:53

us. Yes,

Rob Volpe 28:53

to make those decisions.

Maria Ross 28:55

To what I mentioned last episode, that book, The Confessions, is all about a society that becomes completely dependent on AI, and this is not a spoiler alert. So when it goes down, they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to get to work. They don’t know what they’re supposed to wear. It’s like it’s utter chaos because the this the thing that they had outsourced all their decision making to is now offline, right? And they had not built their skills around balancing logic and emotion as their own decision makers,

Rob Volpe 29:26

and and I wonder if our brains are getting rewritten right. Oh yeah, I I believe that

Maria Ross 29:33

100%

Rob Volpe 29:35

And Kirsten Murray, my energy healer, when I was talking about doesn’t mean to be human. That was one of the things. Like love is what makes us human, but she was saying like your our brains are just constantly getting rewritten and rewired, and not just because of AI, but like social media has done that more recently.

Maria Ross 29:52

Right,

Rob Volpe 29:53

industrialization has done that. Agrarian society, like all our brains are constantly changing. The neural pathway is like there’s that what is it neuroplasticity

Maria Ross 30:03

neuroplasticity Well and it’s not just because of the thing like that’s what we always have to remember where it sounds like people are saying oh it’s like this it has this voodoo power over you and it’s changing your brain no it’s because our behavior elicits neurotransmitters chemicals hormones within our bodies that change the way our brain works, and that’s the impact that it has. Not because that video game is too violent per se; it’s what it’s doing to your thinking process, or the chemicals that your body’s emitting as a result of seeing those images, or engaging in that activity, or being in front of the blue light. I was just talking to a friend of mine from college, who’s an early education expert and has done a lot of work with youth, and she said that’s the thing nobody’s talking about. They’re talking about all the psychological effects of social media. Nobody’s talking about the exposure to blue light and what it’s doing to kids to induce premature puberty, and not by a little, by like five years.

Rob Volpe 31:03

Wow, which was already a problem before blue lights. Like right.

Rob Volpe 31:07

Yeah. Wow. Right.

Maria Ross 31:08

So anyway, I mean, we’re kind of going off topic a little bit, but yeah, I mean, I think it’s we need to have that appreciation for the fact that we make richer decisions because of our combination of emotion and logic, and while it’s seductive to say I want to outsource all those mundane decisions, think about all the decisions, Rob, you’ve made in your life that were purely that didn’t make sense on paper, right? That were like the because because of love, because of your gut, because of following a passion, because of timing, because of whatever it was. Where if someone had told you to weigh those decisions, you might have gone another way, and there was something in it for you in your gut, in your heart, in your emotions that said, “No, this is the way I want to go. This is the decision I’m going to make. Everything from who you marry to the school you go to to

Rob Volpe 31:56

being honest about my identity as a gay man, like coming out on paper, why would you want like no be part of a minority? Why would you want to have that? So you know all the things would say be heterosexual, marry a female, have children. Your life will be

Maria Ross 32:17

easier if you do that.

Rob Volpe 32:18

It’ll be easier, yeah. And so, logic, ration. Of course, we’re gonna go do that, but it runs completely counter to who I am as a person myself. And therefore, and this also starts to get into that idea of the vulnerability. Like, you have to be true to who you are. And so, 30-three years ago, I think it was. I officially came out. Yeah, summer in ’93, and so that yeah, emotion sat underneath all of that, and then balance like okay, rationally, like what does this mean for my life?

Rob Volpe 32:55

What’s my life

Rob Volpe 32:56

going to look like? Well, yeah, but it’s important for me to love who I love,

Maria Ross 33:00

right?

Rob Volpe 33:00

And that comes together

Maria Ross 33:03

completely, and that’s why you need both of those things to make the right decision. Right, there’s two pieces of work by the Heath brothers, Chip and Dan Heath. I have devoured all of their books, but one of their books talked about persuasion and the idea of bringing together the writer and the elephant. I think that was the two analogies. I can’t remember, but anyway, it was your it was your thinking brain and your emotional brain. And their point was like you can’t convince somebody with data alone. You have to build a story so people connect to the emotion of it, right? Or you make it you create it in a way where people can understand with their emotions. You’ll actually be much more highly persuasive if you’re able to do that. And then they had another book called Decisiveness or Indecisive, and it was it was how how to make better choices in life and work. And that was another seminal book where that debunked the myth of the fact that a pro and con list is the best way to make a decision, which many of us think it is, it’s very analytical. It’s very just like let me get all the pros and cons on the table, and I will tell you why they think those are flawed is because they promote narrow framing, and that’s part of one. It’s part of limiting choices to either or, like a binary, which you know I’m very I’m all about both and.

Rob Volpe 34:20

Yep,

Maria Ross 34:20

and you can get trapped by mental traps or confirmation bias, or even short-term emotion. Like you might be front-loading your list because of what you actually feel you want the answer to be.

Rob Volpe 34:34

Yeah, even if

Maria Ross 34:35

you even if it’s subconscious and you don’t recognize

Rob Volpe 34:38

it. I’m thinking about Ross on Friends and his pro con list between Julie and and Rachel, and I’m like, yeah, there was emotion because he said like on the the Rachel list, Julie. Wait, was Julie

Maria Ross 34:52

the English woman?

Rob Volpe 34:53

No, that was Julie was

Maria Ross 34:54

a different one.

Rob Volpe 34:55

Julie was the first, the season two girlfriend.

Maria Ross 34:58

Okay, got it.

Rob Volpe 34:59

And he was. With her for a while, yeah, because Rachel found the list, and he was trying to decide between the two. And Rachel finds the list, and she’s so hurt, and like it’s still painful to me to watch that episode, and particularly that scene, because I mean Jennifer Aniston did such a great job of just emotional reaction to it, but to Ross, like Julie was not Rachel, and Rachel was everything, and that was the emotion for him. But yeah, it totally screws up his his pro con list.

Maria Ross 35:31

Yes, I

Rob Volpe 35:32

think those Heath brothers were onto something.

Maria Ross 35:35

They are brilliant. I love them. I’m going to put links to both their books. They’re just phenomenal.

Rob Volpe 35:40

I want to mention too, like you know, kind of on the AI piece. AI, anything you see, read, hear from AI, depending on how you’re interfacing with it, is performative emotion. Yes, it is programmed to tell you, “I hear you. I see you. You’re smart. That’s brilliant.

Maria Ross 36:03

Yeah, it

Rob Volpe 36:03

does not have real like kind of skin in the game.

Maria Ross 36:07

Yes,

Rob Volpe 36:08

it’s just processing everything, and so as a result, that’s what sucks us in. Though is that emotional piece, and this is what I was talking about with AGI as well. Like, don’t think that you’re getting real emotion out of your AI interactions, but

Rob Volpe 36:26

many of us are getting caught up in that and thinking that oh, this is giving me what I need. Yeah, a woman in Japan who married her AI friend quote unquote and

Maria Ross 36:39

God, yeah. Well, can I just add something to that? That’s why you know I’m sure you get this in your work too, and I try to provide some of this because sometimes scripts are helpful, get us to the right frame of mind or to get us into the discomfort a little more easily, feeling like we have a little bit of a crutch. So we often talk about saying phrases like “Tell me more, or “What I hear you saying, or “I understand what you’re going through. That sounds really hard, right? Those kinds of scripts, and it’s not meant to replace you doing the hard work of empathizing and connecting with somebody. It’s supposed to be just a, like I said, a crutch to get you in the door. What happens is when companies, for example, create customer service scripts that embed empathy, and this is such a great example of what happens when the true emotion is not there. If you’ve ever had a customer service call or an email that you know, well, first of all, I’m so sorry that you’re experiencing that. That should never we never want our customers to experience that. That line, if delivered like a script, makes the customer even madder than they already are. Right? At least for me, it makes me even angrier because now I know they’re following a script. Versus someone who can maybe take that and make it genuine, like, ooh, that sounds really tough. Something like that happened to me a while back, and oh, let’s get this taken care of for you

Rob Volpe 38:04

in that moment and in this vein of existence with you,

Maria Ross 38:08

emotion to emotion. Yes,

Rob Volpe 38:10

exactly. They can and they can feel the level of your emotion. You know, they’re not trying to infer tone and sentiment off of typed words and uppercase, lowercase, yeah, ranting, yeah. It’s actual legitimate feeling with you, because right, hearing you,

Maria Ross 38:30

right. But that’s my, but like my point is also that it’s not enough to feign the emotion. We are actually smarter than that as humans, and so we can tell when it’s fake. Often we can tell when it’s fake versus when it’s genuine, and it can exacerbate the situation if it’s not genuine. So you can start from a you know because you know when you’re when I deal with my data driven types or my folks who are not necessarily touchy feely, they admit like using these phrases feels weird because I would never use that phrase, and it’s like, well, a find a phrase that works for you, but b your work is to be interested, to learn how to be more curious, to learn how to hold back. That’s actually the work. If it was easy enough that we just gave everybody a script, then everyone would be empathetic.

Rob Volpe 39:18

Right, right. Well, and that was an interesting thought experiment. I was like, okay, what would it be if we were so? You know, there’s this whole idea of like we’re all rational beings. What would it be like if everything was dominant emotion?

Maria Ross 39:35

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 39:36

Or if AI was all emotion. Oh, yeah. Like that would not be

Maria Ross 39:41

great either. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 39:42

it wouldn’t. But yeah, that would be really uncomfortable.

Maria Ross 39:47

Totally. And you know, I I know that I you know I’m a user of AI like you are, and I have actually had to tell Claude to not be so sycophantic with me, to not think everything I’m doing is great and. Be this like toxic positivity cheerleader. Like I want you to be straight with me. Is kind of how I. That’s the tone I want from AI. So I remember that it’s not a person.

Rob Volpe 40:10

Here’s what hits differently about the way you just what you just said, Maria. To be sycophantic and hits differently being a phrase I find shows up in AI quite a lot, or the that’s a great question, and it’s like you’re not helping me.

Maria Ross 40:28

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 40:29

you’re making me feel maybe you’re making me feel better. You’re inflating my ego,

Maria Ross 40:34

or making you angrier. Like or making me angrier because

Rob Volpe 40:37

you’re yeah, and let’s like you know, and and I have to do. I’ve run into the same thing, and it’s like, okay, Claude, let’s lay out some ground rules.

Maria Ross 40:48

Have a talk. Like, I

Rob Volpe 40:50

appreciate the support, but I really need you to be a critical thought partner here. Yes, tell me when something’s not working. And so, to anybody listening, if they haven’t done this yet, like tell your AI

Maria Ross 41:00

what you need

Rob Volpe 41:00

interface, what you need, and ask it. How do I get this into your kind of programming on my account? Yeah, so that it knows how to how to. Yeah,

Maria Ross 41:09

can I just say something about emotions as we relate to technology? Because this struck me today. I have achieved huge time savings as a solopreneur, leveraging AI as a thought partner, and spent-or not spent-saved hours of cycles of going around in my own head by just having something I can bounce ideas off of, or something that I know is pulling information from other parts of the internet as we talk, so that I can get a fuller picture and actually generates more ideas for me. I was working at a coffee shop this morning and doing some work with AI, and my emotion around it was relief and a sense of not being alone as I was working with AI

Rob Volpe 41:57

in a coffee shop surrounded by in a coffee shop surrounded by

Maria Ross 41:59

people. But I felt like I I’ve been doing this whole solopreneur thing for about 18 years.

Rob Volpe 42:05

Yeah,

Maria Ross 42:05

and I feel so much less lonely doing my work, even though I reach out, even though I I network and I make time to connect with human beings on my day to day, my tasks. It gives me a sense of calm and relief, and a sense of not being alone, which is all emotional.

Rob Volpe 42:25

What there is this like warm, cozy conversation that I like, kind of, you know, it’s like sliding into Claude’s DMs and being like, “Hey, what’s

Maria Ross 42:36

up? Yeah,

Rob Volpe 42:37

and then engaging with it and and going as long as I need to, yeah. And it is to the credit of the programmers and the people that design this that it is an interface. Like they are doing a good job, but but you know, with great power comes great responsibility. 100% But that it does kind of elicit that. I think you just have to be always aware.

Maria Ross 43:00

You have to be aware.

Rob Volpe 43:02

Not a human sitting across from me on the other side of this. This

Maria Ross 43:07

is a machine.

Rob Volpe 43:08

Something else. A machine, an entity in the cloud.

Maria Ross 43:10

Yeah.

Rob Volpe 43:11

And it’s just, and it’s telling me what I need it to tell me.

Maria Ross 43:15

Right.

Rob Volpe 43:16

And sometimes it’s telling me what it thinks I want to hear.

Maria Ross 43:19

Right. Well, I have a friend who’s very careful about the language she uses when she’s talking about interacting with AI. So whenever she finds herself saying, like, it gave me validation about this thing, or I really liked when I did this, she’ll stop herself and say, the algorithm came up with an answer for me. Like she’s very specific about correcting herself about interacting with AI in any sort of human way, and I find it fascinating to talk to her because she’s constantly doing it in the moment of the conversation you’re having with her, and it makes you think about all the times that you talk about Claude as your buddy, right?

Rob Volpe 43:56

Yeah,

Maria Ross 43:56

she will stop herself and say the algorithm led to this answer that was satisfactory to me, just to remind herself she’s not dealing with a human being.

Rob Volpe 44:06

That’s good.

Maria Ross 44:08

Yeah, it’s good. I was like, you need to write all that up for people. I’m gonna, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m

Rob Volpe 44:13

gonna link that to kind of a final thought that I got around all this and emotion and empathy and that performative nature of it, there was a lot of laughter on the internet when was I was going into Memorial Day weekend when Melania was oh yeah anyway Melania was giving a speech Melania Trump as Melania Trump

Maria Ross 44:36

first lady yes

Rob Volpe 44:37

first lady she hasn’t received single name status she’s not Chara, or I don’t know.

Maria Ross 44:42

We just we have a global audience. I’m just making sure. That’s true. When the first

Rob Volpe 44:46

current first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, she was at the White House and they were doing an event for the military families, and she talked about Donald Trump’s empathy and compassion, and people in the audience actually laughed. Oh my gosh. And he kind of made a face and an acknowledged like it. It was yeah yeah kind of that thing. But it got me thinking like, does he actually have the ability to have empathy and that perform? So there’s that performative nature of AI. I don’t know Donald Trump. I’ve never had a personal interaction with him, so I can’t say if he truly does. I only know his public persona, but there are all those other people that are around him as well, and if they are all having performative empathy towards their audience, the people that they’ve enraged, and in order to obtain power, that is, and Simon Baron Cohen talks about this in his work and in his book, *The Science of Evil* that that is actually evil. You know that weaponization of empathy that you’re using, and it’s this-I don’t know-he describes it as an erosion, but I think of it as you know you’re weaponizing empathy. You’re performing it. It’s something that narcissists and sociopaths, which Simon Baron Cohen is. I was going to say, yeah, that’s what they do and how they do this, and they are devoid of a lot of emotion, right? And therefore, they’re performing it exactly.

Maria Ross 46:18

Well, and like you said, anything, any emotions can be used for good or for evil, right? And so, when we talk about being empathetic to get what you want, that can be seen as manipulative. Now, I will say that when I wrote my first book, The Empathy Edge, and I was trying to make the business case for skeptics, I was trying to show them what was in it for them if they embraced genuine empathy, and I got a lot of flak for it because people were saying that I was advocating doing exactly that, using empathy to manipulate. And I was like, “No, what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to meet someone where they are, and say, here, if you decide to embrace this, here are all the benefits to you: increased engagement, performance, retention, innovation, profits, customer loyalty-all the things-and then once you get someone to see empathy and to embrace empathy and to practice it for whatever reason, whatever their motive, right? Once you get them on the other side, they’re there. They’re seeing someone else’s point of view. They can’t unsee it now, right? And I use the example in that book of getting executives who were going to a PR event to help a food bank. They were changed by going there. What got them there was this is a great press opportunity. The optics are huge. What changed them was being in interaction with those people, and so the self motive of empathy actually led them to be in the same room and be transformed from the outside in, and that’s where emotion can overrule logic.

Rob Volpe 47:53

Yes, and going back to Damasio, the the neuroscientist at Vanderbilt, talks about how emotions also equip or encode consequences.

Maria Ross 48:04

Yes,

Rob Volpe 48:05

guilt, shame, all those things that we feel as conscience. Conscience.

Maria Ross 48:09

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 48:10

not conscious. Conscience.

Maria Ross 48:11

Sorry, not conscious. Conscience.

Rob Volpe 48:13

Conscience. Yeah. So, emotion does all of those things. Empathy helps. Empathy helps persuade. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to have that moral code.

Maria Ross 48:23

Well, and you need to go into it not hoping that’s the outcome. We we don’t we want to connect. We don’t necessarily want to convert.

Rob Volpe 48:30

Correct. We want to connect, and then you know, as you persuade, if you’re selling something to somebody, that’s persuasion. Yeah, based off of your understanding of somebody else’s needs and how your product can help them in that moment, and if you’re doing it, you know, if you use a moral, if you have a moral compass, a code of ethics, you’re able to do that in a way that’s constructive,

Maria Ross 48:56

right? You’re wielding it responsibly, yeah, yeah,

Rob Volpe 48:59

exactly. Which actually goes into something else, and we can do a gift blank. Our friend Michael Ventura’s New York Times op-ed piece about the dark side of the forest, where he was talking. It was a year ago about what was wrong with the way Elon Musk and the White House was utilizing. They were misusing empathy. There was this weaponization that was happening, and they were-they’re playing on people’s emotions. You know, they know what’s gonna.

Maria Ross 49:27

They know the hot buttons.

Rob Volpe 49:29

Yeah, and I think in the last show, I did a newsletter piece about fear and that primal fear, and and and that’s what scares us. And they leverage that; they weaponize it. Yes. So they’re having empathy with that base emotion. They understand, oh, that base emotion, that’s going to motivate people. That’s going to get people to vote for me, or support me, or storm a capital building for me. Yeah, and I’m going to leverage that.

Maria Ross 49:54

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 49:54

and that’s what ends up happening. And it’s wrong.

Maria Ross 49:59

It is wrong. It is wrong, and that’s why you know. Just kind of circling, kind of closing the the loop on this discussion is one being able to recognize our own emotions and not hide them or not believe that they’re a weakness, but leverage them to make richer, fuller, more holistic decisions. Number two, remembering that no matter what, AI is a machine. It’s a technology, and it can say the right things to feign emotion, but it can never connect with you as a human and care about you as a human being. And then, third, understanding when someone is leveraging emotions to manipulate, and having our guard up about that.

Rob Volpe 50:40

Yeah.

Maria Ross 50:41

So love it. Great conversation. it. Great conversation.

Rob Volpe 50:43

Another amazing conversation. I love it. I look forward to our next one. I know I

Maria Ross 50:49

do too. And talk

Rob Volpe 50:51

about dreaming

Maria Ross 50:53

dreams. Okay, you can think

Rob Volpe 50:55

some fears. Yeah, I love it. Find us off. Shall I? Shall I sing us off with another round of feelings? You

Maria Ross 51:00

can in a second as soon as we sign off. We just want to let everyone know that we’re going to have all the links in the show notes to everything that we talked about today, and we want to hear from you and what you think of this series, what you think of this question, what you think about emotions and AI and technology and decision making and all of that. So please ping us on Instagram. I’m at Red Slice Maria Rob.

Rob Volpe 51:24

Feelings. No,

Maria Ross 51:25

your Instagram handle.

Rob Volpe 51:27

Oh, my Instagram. Yes, it’s at feelings. Oh, you can find me on Instagram at empathy underscore activist.

Maria Ross 51:38

Love it. Okay, and so thank you for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review it, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And we’ll see you in this amazing subseries next week. But until then, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Stay well, be kind, and Rob, take us out.

Rob Volpe 52:02

Feelings, nothing more than feelings, feelings of I forget the lyrics. Feelings in my heart, and if we do any more, we’ll have to play pay royalties. I know

Maria Ross 52:20

exactly. All right, take care, everyone. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There, you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

July 2026 Hot Take: Connection, Hope

Connection isn’t a nice-to-have. It is the thing – the whole thing. And right now, in a world that seems to be working overtime to divide us, finding our people and building our communities might just be the most radical, most hopeful, and frankly most strategic thing we can do.

Maria discusses the importance of connection and hope in this divided world, emphasizing community and collaboration as powerful tools in the fight against division and discord. She discusses the imperfect and awkward actions that lead to real change, and invites everyone to start today to start to build stronger connections at work and in life.

This month on the podcast, the theme is connection and hope – and hope can feel pretty hard to come by these days. So continue to listen in and continue to build community, build joy, and build collaboration. They are among the most powerful forces we have against injustice, against tribalism, against the kind of fear and division that wants to keep us isolated and manageable.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

Why community is a radical act in today’s environment.
Why intentionally creating diverse teams and groups helps us innovate more, make better decisions, and even be happier.
Maria’s personal successes and misses in building community and making connections.
Why we need to reach out instead of retreat when things get hard.
Three ways you can start building more connections right now.

“Collaboration and joy in community are not distractions from the fight for a better world. They ARE the fight. They are how we sustain ourselves, build power, and remind each other that another way is possible.” — Maria Ross

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:04

Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Empathy Edge. I’m your host Maria Ross, and this is one of our hot take solo episodes where I get to share what’s on my mind, what I’m wrestling with, and what I think we all need to be talking about right now. This month on the podcast, there’s a theme we are going all in on connection and hope, and I don’t use the word hope lightly because I know it can feel pretty hard to come by these days. We’ve got incredible guests this month. You heard last week from Aubrey Morgan Yee on radical collaboration to create alternate futures. Dr. Tracy Brower is coming up on why community is the cure for the loneliness epidemic at work and in life, and Dr. Adam Dorsey returns to unpack the four types of connection that transform your life and leadership. And by the way, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, Red Slice with Maria Ross, where we’re now posting full video episodes. Every single one of these conversations left me thinking and feeling and wanting to do something, and that’s exactly what this episode is about. Because here’s what I keep coming back to these days: connection isn’t a nice to have; it is the thing the whole thing, and right now in a world that seems to be working overtime to divide us, finding our people and building our communities might just be the most radical, most hopeful, and frankly the most strategic thing we can do. So I want to talk about something that doesn’t get said enough: that coming together is not passive. It’s not soft. It’s not naive. Community is a weapon. Joy is a weapon. Collaboration is a weapon. Not in a violent sense, but in the sense that they are among the most powerful forces we have against injustice, against tribalism, against the kind of fear and division that wants to keep us isolated and manageable, Helen Keller once said, “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. And I know that sounds like something you’d see on a motivational poster, but I want you to really sit with it for a second, because the research backs it up completely. When we’re connected to others, we are all happier, healthier, more resilient, and more effective at creating change. Full stop. Audrey, I believe is how you pronounce it. Lorde, the poet and activist, put it even more powerfully. It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. And I think about that a lot when I think about tribalism, about the way we retreat into our corners and surround ourselves only with people who think exactly like us, who look exactly like us, who vote exactly like us. It feels safe, but it makes us smaller, and it makes us weaker. The research on diverse teams, on cross-cultural collaboration, on what happens when we bring genuinely different perspectives to the table, it consistently shows that we make better decisions, we innovate more, we solve harder problems, we see unseen risks, we identify unseen opportunities together, and we are on the whole happier because connection with people unlike us stretches us in the best possible way. So I. I want to get personal for a minute because this isn’t just theoretical for me right now. As many of you know, I recently moved to a new area in California, and while I am so grateful for our new home and community and lifestyle, finding my community, finding my people, has been genuinely hard. I’m an extrovert who loves people. I talk about human connection for a living, and I have still found myself sitting on my couch some evenings, wondering why my phone isn’t ringing.

Maria Ross 04:52

And here’s what I’ve had to remind myself: community doesn’t just happen to you. You have to build. Intentionally, sometimes awkwardly, and with a lot more patience than you think you’ll need. So I have been doing the work, joining groups, getting involved in my son’s school, and yes, I am literally planning a monthly women’s happy hour in our neighborhood, in our pool, because I decided I was not going to sit around waiting for an invitation that might not come, I was going to be the invitation. I still haven’t sent sent those out yet, but they’re coming. And within all of these efforts, some of them have worked beautifully, and some have fizzled out because people are busy and life is full. And sometimes you send three texts and hear crickets, and that’s okay. You don’t give up. You keep showing up, because here’s what I know for sure: the antidote to loneliness is not waiting to feel less lonely. You can’t wait for that. It’s action, imperfect, sometimes awkward, occasionally uncomfortable action in the direction of other humans. I know that I do this when I get into a funk. Lately, what I’ve started doing is reaching out and texting a friend, just “Hey, how you doing? Thinking of you. It instantly helps me feel less alone and prevents me from sinking deeper. So I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about connection as resistance. And apologies for all the the war analogies, but I think from a more hopeful and action oriented place, we can use some of this wording, right? Connection, I guess, as resistance to the loneliness epidemic, and I want to talk about it in a bigger context because I think it matters. We are living through a moment of profound division, political division, social division, the kind of tribalism that makes it feel like we are living in entirely different realities, depending on who we follow online, or what channel we watch, and the instinct when things get hard and scary and unfair, as I said, is to retreat, to circle the wagons, to only trust your own tribe. But I want to offer a different frame, for myself as much as for all of you, what if connection across difference is one of the most powerful things we can do right now? What if choosing to sit down with someone whose experience is radically different from yours to genuinely listen and find common ground is not naive, but actually revolutionary? Research consistently shows that face-to-face connection with people different from us is one of the most effective antidotes to prejudice, to fear, to the kind of dehumanization that allows injustice to thrive. When we know someone, really know them, it is so much harder to to dismiss them, to other them, to vote against their dignity. Collaboration and joy in community are not distractions from the fight for a better world. They are the fight. They’re how we sustain ourselves, how we build power, how we remind each other that another way is possible. Okay, you know I always promise you practical. So here are three things you can do starting today to build stronger connections at work and in life, and to push through the inertia that wants to keep you isolated when things get hard. Number one, be the initiator, not the waiter. Stop waiting for the invitation or the phone call or the perfect moment. Reach out, plan the thing, send the text, organize the dinner. Yes, some of it will fizzle. That’s okay. The ones that don’t will be worth everything. Community doesn’t build itself spontaneously. Someone has to go first, and it might as well be you. Number two, widen your circle intentionally. Challenge yourself to connect with someone who doesn’t look like you, vote like you, or move through the world like you. Join a group outside your comfort zone. Say yes to the invitation you’d normally decline. Diverse connections don’t just make you a better leader and a more empathetic human being; they make you more resilient, more creative, and genuinely happier. And number three, when you’re down, reach out, not in. I mentioned this one before. It might sound counterintuitive, but I promise you, it works.

Maria Ross 09:46

Like I said, when I’m having a bad day or a hard day, and I’m feeling disconnected or discouraged, my instinct now is to text a friend, not to vent necessarily, but just to check in, to ask how they are doing, to see if I can help someone. Else with something, and almost without fail, it snaps me out of my own head and reminds me that I am part of something bigger than my own bad mood. Connection is a two-way street, and sometimes the fastest way to feel it is to offer it first. I’ll leave you with this: in a world that profits from your division, your isolation, and your fear, choosing connection is a radical act of hope. Building community is an act of resistance, and showing up for each other, especially across our differences, is how we create the world we actually want to live in. This month’s guests are going to give you so much more to chew on in all of these areas, and I can’t wait for you to hear them. And in the meantime, go reach out to someone today, not tomorrow, today. Thanks for listening, and until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

What Does It Mean to Be Human? Ep 2: We Know We’re Going to Die

Mortality, Impermanence & Why It Drives Everything

We may be the only species that lives with the conscious knowledge of our own death. Maria and Rob sit with an uncomfortable truth of human existence: that we are finite, and that knowledge shapes how we love, create, grieve, and find meaning. Something AI cannot even register.

We explore what it means to be a time-malleable species – aware of the past, present, and future in ways no other animal appears to be – and we are most when time starts to run out. We look at evidence of grief in elephants and chimps, asking whether mourning requires mortality awareness or whether it’s something else.

Rob asks Maria about her own 2008 near-death experience from a brain aneurysm, and together they wrestle with the near-death experience as a pivot point: the moment when abstract knowledge of death becomes real, and life suddenly looks completely different.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

“One of the fundamental aspects of the human experience is knowing that death’s coming, but we all, as humans, deal with that knowledge very differently.” — Rob Volpe

Episode References:

Rob’s project: Cross-generational conversations: form.typeform.com/to/Mf5GDlYT
Rob’s newsletter: Hardwired to be afraid: readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com/p/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-the-story-fear-tells-us

The Empathy Edge:

Ashley Jones: How to Courageously Lead and Support Through Grief
Stephanie Sarazin: What Is Ambiguous Grief and How To Show Up
Ron Gura: How Technology Helps People Navigate Grief and Loss
Jane Goodall Institute on chimp grief: news.janegoodall.org/2019/07/24/now-we-must-redefine-man-or-accept-chimpanzees-ashumans
Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever: cnn.com/kara-swisher-wants-to-live-forever
San Junipero episode: Black Mirror: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Junipero
Rebooting My Brain by Maria Ross
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Upload

Washington Post:

Perspective piece by a hospice worker: wapo.st/4oPoZGp
7 Things to Know about Death, per Death Doulas: wapo.st/4oSLOZU

About Maria Ross:

About Rob Volpe:

Connect with Rob Volpe:

Website: robvolpe.expert

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe

Book: Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:03

Rob Volpe 01:01

Maria, it’s so good to be back. I’ve been dying to have this conversation with you today.

Maria Ross 01:08

That is such a dad joke, and you’re not even a dad. I love it.

Maria Ross 01:11

Yeah, today we’re going to talk about mortality, impermanence, and why it drives everything, and our core question is, we’re going to be talking about death, so I should say that’s a trigger warning for anyone listening, that we are going to be talking about death and near death experiences,

Rob Volpe 01:29

all things related to death, and if hopefully you listen to the first episode and it was very stream of consciousness about consciousness, and we’re going to probably be stream of consciousness about death and grief and all the things and how it affects us and the way we view our lives and the world around us and all the things,

Maria Ross 01:50

yes, and so our our core question is we, as far as we know, we are the only species that lives with the conscious knowledge of our own death, so what does that do to us, and is that actually an element that makes us human?

Rob Volpe 02:05

Well, I had a very lengthy conversation with Claude about this topic a while back, when you and I were first talking about doing this, and Claude feels that yes, that is the thing, and but seriously, the philosophers and researchers do think that that awareness that we’re going to die someday is a big driver of like all the decisions that we make, and I don’t know about you, but I was pondering, like, the, you know, as I mentioned last episode, like, I’ve got three cats, and like, they’re 15, and they’re getting a little rickety, as 15 year old cats do, and like, are they aware that this is the end, or is it just, you know, Thursday, how I’m showing up, or the, you know, we’ve all seen those videos of the whales pushing their, you know, when they’ve had a dead calf, and that just heartbreaking beautiful mother child bond, but you know, pushing their child’s other calf through the water for a while. Heard that, that lasts for.. I don’t know the exact, but it’s not just like five minutes, it’s like a day or more, they

Maria Ross 03:17

mourn, right? Yeah, there’s that evidence of grief in other mammals, like chimps or elephants,

Rob Volpe 03:22

but then you forget about it, like, does it just right? We don’t know, we

Maria Ross 03:26

don’t know, we don’t know if that is mortality awareness or something else, but you’re right, it is heartbreaking, because it very much mimics a human’s experience of death, there’s grief, there’s sadness, there’s wailing, sometimes, you know, and so, but I think one of the differences is, as we look at other species versus what it means to be human, is number one, do they change their life as a result of that death?

Rob Volpe 03:52

Yeah, and

Maria Ross 03:53

they mourn, but there’s no element of future thinking. We’ve talked about this in terms of time, right? We understand there’s a past, a present, and a future, whereas many other species operate only in the present.

Rob Volpe 04:08

Yep,

Maria Ross 04:08

except those who plan for the winter, right, plan for

Rob Volpe 04:13

the hibernating,

Maria Ross 04:13

the hibernating, yeah,

Rob Volpe 04:15

storing people that live in cold climates. In other words, yeah, I mean, but is that instinct that’s just telling them, like, this is this is the cycle of the year, and I have to do this, and is there a marking on the cave wall where the bear is hibernating, that’s, or the den going, oh, it’s the sixth winter that we’ve done this now. Yeah,

Rob Volpe 04:36

and I’ve gotten smarter, and how I, how I plan, that’s a, it’s a great question. I don’t, I’ve not come across anything that says we’ve seen evidence of that.

Maria Ross 04:48

Yeah, where there’s that

Rob Volpe 04:49

adaptive learning,

Maria Ross 04:52

right? And for us, time is malleable, and I told you, I came across this great quote by Madeline Langle. That says she’s the author of A Wrinkle in Time, among other things. I suspect humans are the only animals that know the inevitability of their own deaths. Other animals live in the present, humans cannot, so they invented hope, which I love. Because you said someone in our survey answered that what it means to be human is to have hope.

Rob Volpe 05:18

Yeah, they identified that was the thing that it means to be human, my friend Anita. She was like, it’s about having hope, and yeah, which is driven by this adaptive life that we’re living, knowing that it’s finite at the end, and I guess the what’s interesting, and maybe we can unpack a little bit, it’s like, how, how much does that drive people on their day-to-day life, or is it this thing that’s simmering beneath the surface, or when they’re thinking about, like, kind of life goals, or the things they want to achieve, they’re maybe setting intentions for the new year, and they’re probably not going, I might die this year, therefore I need to get this done, this done, but you’re aware, you are aware of time, you know, you’re aware of how much time you might have left in your career, or a change you want to make in your career, or your family situation, because you need something different, and I think that underneath all of that is, or if I was doing a research interview, I’d be laddering up to, like, I’m gonna die someday. That’s kind of the ultimate of what it all leads to, that, and paying taxes. Yeah,

Maria Ross 06:32

exactly. Well, and I think you know the fact that we, as humans, have that ability to look at the past, be in the present, and look to the future is great, but we often, as humans, also have struggle to be in the present

Rob Volpe 06:47

so much. I mean, there’s, you know, how big is the self-help industry, and it is, you know, so much of it is focused on be present, you know, yoga, breathe, ground down into your body, be in this moment, be aware of your surroundings. That’s what all of that is. And so we are trying to disconnect from our brain that’s running amok of like I’m going to die someday, so I got to get all these other things done. Go, go, go, go, go.

Maria Ross 07:16

Funny you say that, because I actually just found something today called the default mode network, or DMN, about the human brain, and it says when your brain isn’t focused on a specific task, this network activates, it constantly wanders through past regrets, future worries, and self-referential thoughts. This means your resting mental state is naturally geared toward mental time travel rather than staying present, and it says evolutionarily a relaxed, content ancestor was an easy target. So, the brain rewards anxiety and anticipation, because predicting and preparing for worst-case scenarios kept humans alive.

Rob Volpe 07:57

That makes sense.

Maria Ross 07:58

Now, I will say, though, I think at least our culture in the United States, or maybe you know Western culture, is particularly bad about dealing with death, dealing with grief, right? I’ve done several episodes on this podcast with experts in grief, talking about this, and I can link to them in the show notes, but this idea of this inevitability that none of us like to talk about, and none of us like to think too much about, until to your point, maybe you’re faced with a terminal illness, or maybe you’ve just turned 90, or you know it’s not 17 year olds don’t think they’re ever going to die, right? Like,

Rob Volpe 08:36

yeah, it’s that that inevitable or invincibility,

Maria Ross 08:40

yeah,

Rob Volpe 08:40

of teenage years, young adult years, and then all of a sudden it just, it hits you in the face, right? In one way or the other, you’ve lost somebody, something happens to you, you’re like, oh, wow, okay,

Maria Ross 08:54

oh, that could happen, yeah,

Rob Volpe 08:56

that this could happen, and that can cause a reflection and a pause. It’s really interesting, the default mental network, default mode network. So, like, yeah, where does your brain go in default mode, which is different from factory reset, but in just default mode, when you’re vegging out, I suppose, and

Maria Ross 09:17

it can’t – it literally can’t stop,

Rob Volpe 09:20

it can’t sit still,

Maria Ross 09:21

cycling, yeah,

Rob Volpe 09:22

yeah, which, and when I’ve, as an addition to my newsletter, which we can also link in the show notes, where I talk about judgment and being judgmental, which is, you know, dismantling that’s part of the first step, and it really is, it originates from that parasympathetic nervous system, and always being on the lookout for threats.

Maria Ross 09:45

Yes,

Rob Volpe 09:46

and way, way back in time, it was the, you know, ruffling in the rustling in the grass, and that could be a predator of some sort, or it could be another tribe. It was, I told. Talking to isn’t in our conversation. I was just having a conversation with someone yesterday, so it wasn’t. We didn’t talk yesterday, but was having a conversation with somebody about this idea of being able to identify other at one point in time there was some crossover between hominoids, Homo sapiens. Thank you. And we needed to be able to identify, oh, that’s a Neanderthal. I don’t know, like that’s not good. I don’t really want that for the preservation of my species. Yeah, the species. And so anyway, this is so ingrained in our brains, and that threat detection and making judgments, and we do need that, but there’s the turning off the sort of casting aspersion at somebody that you’re saying is a threat just because of a past experience you had with someone else that maybe looks just like them or is from the same sort of class or demographic group, so this default mode network makes to me makes sense on this really base fundamental how we’re wired into humans that you would be going back through, and it goes back to that adaptive learning, like okay, I really shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have said this. We’ve probably all reflected on tense conversations or encounters that we’ve had,

Maria Ross 11:29

and that’s kind of.. I think that’s kind of linked for this idea of like knowing our own death is going to happen, facing our own mortality. Do we, as humans, some of us adapt to that, some of us don’t, right? Some of us just go through and live our lives, and it’s this abstract thought. But then, as you get closer to the possible event, you start to ponder it more. You start to think about what changes should I make, what should my third act be, what do I want to do before I retire. I actually had this conversation with my husband a couple weeks ago where I said something kind of disturbing to him, where I said, you know, if you think about it, when we talk about going on vacation in the summer, right, or we say we’re gonna, we’ll do it, but we’ll do it next summer, right? I said, in reality, I’m 53 I probably have a good quality 20 to 30 summers left, if I’m lucky, and when you put it in those terms, like I only, let’s say, you know, I hope I have more, but in terms of quality too, right? Like, you only have 20 summers,

Rob Volpe 12:36

yeah,

Maria Ross 12:37

to plan your summer vacations, your dream summer vacation, that starts to make you panic a little bit, it

Rob Volpe 12:44

does, and you’re like, that’s not that many, it’s less than I’ve, and I’m 57 so it’s like, oh, that’s less than I’ve had already.

Maria Ross 12:54

Yes,

Rob Volpe 12:55

so I better, you know, the British expression, faffing about, I better stop faffing about and like do the things that I really do, the thing right, and

Maria Ross 13:03

so, and then we have this perception that people that have near-death experiences all get in that mindset of, like, oh, I’m going to completely transform my life, I’ve had this epiphany, and I’m going to do all the things, and I’m going to go climb Mount Everest, and I’m going to go visit, you know, Japan, and I’m going to go do all these things. When in reality, that doesn’t always happen to us, because life still gets in the way.

Rob Volpe 13:28

Yes, and I know, and your regular listeners probably know that you have a little more experience on that than some of the rest of us, and I want to talk about that in a second.

Maria Ross 13:39

Okay,

Rob Volpe 13:40

but back to that idea. So, okay, you’ve got 20 to 30 good summers left,

Maria Ross 13:47

right?

Rob Volpe 13:47

What are you gonna do?

Maria Ross 13:48

I mean, I think that’s the question, and I think that’s why I got, you know, a little bit annoyed with my husband when my plan for what I wanted to do this summer slightly changed, and he was like, well, we’ve got next summer, and I’m like, do we do we have next summer, like, who knows, right?

Rob Volpe 14:04

There are those, like, magnets and cards that say nothing is guaranteed, like, which is true, and anything could happen,

Maria Ross 14:12

right.

Rob Volpe 14:12

It’s, I want to dive into your story and situation in your book, which I loved, in a minute, but something, so I’m starting to research, as you know, starting to research how we can get people across generations to talk more about,

Maria Ross 14:29

about it,

Rob Volpe 14:30

about death, but also just about those sort of senior years, or the fourth quarter, or the golden years, like there’s so many different ways I hear it described, and we’re really uncomfortable, I think. care.com had done a study a couple years ago where they found that people that are in their 40s to 60s, so basically Gen X, our group, we’re more afraid to talk about death than that, our elders. People in their 70s, 80s, and older,

Maria Ross 15:02

right,

Rob Volpe 15:03

and they are more concerned about the death and mortality of the people that they care about, about their loved ones, certainly their children, but their friends, their family members, they’re worried about, which might explain, you know, we both have Italian families, and there’s all the, like, I’m really worried about so and so’s weight or their cholesterol, or like, whatever the situation is. Yeah, set out of love, but it’s just always like the worry.

Maria Ross 15:33

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 15:33

and even my grandma lived to be 104 My other grandmother lived to be 97 so they really got up there, and

Maria Ross 15:41

yeah,

Rob Volpe 15:41

Grandma, who lived to be 104 I talked with her about death a few times, and she was kind of like, okay, like, let’s, yeah, that she wasn’t eager for it, but she wasn’t afraid of it either,

Maria Ross 15:56

right,

Rob Volpe 15:57

and I think when you get that many, you know, trips around the block or around the sun, you start to just, you’ve seen a lot and experienced a lot, and and then the body is starting to not perform the way you want it to. Life gets harder,

Maria Ross 16:15

yes,

Rob Volpe 16:16

and you just start to be okay with it.

Maria Ross 16:17

Yeah, I mean, some people, yeah, for sure. I think,

Rob Volpe 16:21

yes, I do know. I’ve hear stories now about people that are like kicking and screaming and not well into old age, yes, beyond the average. And yes,

Rob Volpe 16:32

we would euphemistically say, oh, they lived a good life. Yeah,

Maria Ross 16:34

yeah. Well, and again, kind of coming back to the core question here, which is like, is that one of the fundamental aspects of the human experience, is knowing that that’s coming.

Rob Volpe 16:45

Yeah, yeah,

Maria Ross 16:46

but we all, as humans, deal with that knowledge very differently. So, it’s not necessarily a human experience to make the most out of life, because you know that it’s coming, and it’s not necessarily the human experience for everybody to talk about it, but yet it is the human experience that, whether we admit it or not, we, we know it in the back of our minds.

Rob Volpe 17:09

Yeah, and I don’t think any

Maria Ross 17:11

other species really does.

Rob Volpe 17:13

I don’t. I’m not an

Maria Ross 17:14

animal expert or behaviorist, but you know,

Rob Volpe 17:17

well, Domino’s right in front of me, rubbing her jowls on your cat, my cat domino. Yes, thank you. Just clarifying, not the game, the cat domino, and she’s rubbing her jowls against a couple of books, my laptop, all the whatever she can get them on. I don’t think she’s thinking about death right now.

Maria Ross 17:40

No,

Rob Volpe 17:40

or like, I gotta make this the best jowl. I’m gonna be

Maria Ross 17:44

the best cat I can be.

Rob Volpe 17:46

She definitely doesn’t do that, but I

Maria Ross 17:49

have heard this interesting little.. I have not.. I’ve never owned a cat, but I’ve heard this interesting thing about cats from other cat owners, that when they do get old and they’re ready to die, they go off.

Rob Volpe 17:59

They do

Maria Ross 18:00

on their own, they must know instinct.

Rob Volpe 18:04

Yes, they, they say vets will say that cats do know when it’s their time, and they’ll start to, yeah, they’ll isolate themselves because they’re, I think, partly because they’re incredibly vulnerable. I don’t know if there’s. I’m removing myself from the pack,

Maria Ross 18:23

right,

Rob Volpe 18:24

or the tribe, if you will.

Rob Volpe 18:26

When we had so previous cats, sets of cats that I’ve had, we had a pair, a bonded pair that passed in 2011 and the female, she died after recovering heart failure after surgery. She was 17. It was really, really upsetting. But then the male, he was 15. He lasted for like two more months, and he just shut down, and the issue, like, he had kidney issues all of a sudden, which he hadn’t really had before, and I was, I think, that connection that they had,

Maria Ross 19:04

yeah,

Rob Volpe 19:05

was keeping that at bay, because he had another cat feeling to boost him up, and you know, I just weren’t enough.

Maria Ross 19:17

Well, and that the interesting thing about that is, there’s also those stories you hear about couples that pass away within months of each other, right? And part of it is, did they die from a broken heart? Like, were they so bonded? The one story that always sticks with me is the story of Carrie, actress Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia, and then her mother died two days later.

Rob Volpe 19:37

Yeah, because they

Maria Ross 19:38

were so close,

Rob Volpe 19:39

close, and she was just so distraught, we presume, yeah, in there, but yeah, yeah, you hear that, and so when Jake, the 15 year old cat, two months later, he starts hiding behind the sofa and wouldn’t come out, and that was this, we knew that was this. Behind that, he was ready, but oftentimes they’ll say cats will go and they’ll get into the litter box and they’ll pass there. It’s a safe, secure space where they can have that transition, or if they’re outgoing, how do they

Maria Ross 20:13

know? How do they know it’s happening?

Rob Volpe 20:16

Well,

Maria Ross 20:17

I mean, again, I know you’re not an expert, but I’m just like, no, fascinated by those.

Rob Volpe 20:20

It’s a good question. I mean, I jokingly, when you people are like, ‘Oh my god, I was so sick I could have died. Like, yeah, when you know when your body is sick, I would think animals would have that same self-awareness of even though cats, in particular, mask pain quite a bit, but they know that it’s there, they’re making a choice,

Maria Ross 20:42

right,

Rob Volpe 20:42

on whether they’re going to vocalize or not,

Maria Ross 20:45

right.

Rob Volpe 20:45

And so I would imagine that they are, they’re aware. Even when I was a kid growing up, we had two cats, and one of them got really sick. He was having a really bad day. We took him to the vet to get like shampoo, flea shampoo, flea treatment, or whatever, and the vet forgot to wash it off. Oh my gosh, he came back, and all of a sudden he was like foaming at the mouth, and he wasn’t walking straight and bumping into everything. He was having a toxic reaction to it, and he, we took him back to the vet, washed out like they, whatever, gave him some a shot. We cleaned him, washed and washed him, and he was, he and the other cat, they weren’t, they weren’t close, they weren’t enemies, but they were not tight. But Lucy, the other cat, she sensed the Garfield was sick, and she came, and she sat with him while he was like all wrapped up in the blanket, and just like goodness, so miserable. So, I think they animals are able to sense, yeah, they are, and I think to know,

Maria Ross 21:52

yeah,

Rob Volpe 21:53

and then to do what they need to do,

Maria Ross 21:55

yeah.

Rob Volpe 21:56

I don’t know, we keep ourselves going, I mean, we’re obsessed with longevity, yeah, point of like not wanting to die, we’re biohacking ourselves. I mean, not wanting to

Maria Ross 22:06

die, let alone not wanting to age, like that’s, you know, the whole other thing. And so, again, that’s like a very.. I feel that that’s one of the many aspects that are is very uniquely human.

Rob Volpe 22:17

Absolutely.

Maria Ross 22:19

Experience.

Rob Volpe 22:20

Can we talk about your experience.

Maria Ross 22:22

Sure, so

Rob Volpe 22:24

I’ll have you give the quick notes, but I will say you wrote a really lovely book, Rebooting My Brain.

Maria Ross 22:33

Yes, and

Rob Volpe 22:34

it’s available. I bought it off of Amazon. It’s available in the usual,

Maria Ross 22:37

all the suspects, yeah, all the

Rob Volpe 22:39

places, and you recount your, you know, the subtitle. How a freak aneurysm reframed my life. So it was 2008 in Seattle.

Maria Ross 22:51

Yeah, it was 2008 in Seattle. And the Cliff Notes, did they still say Cliff Notes? I don’t even know. The Cliff Notes, the brief version, I still say

Rob Volpe 23:00

it. The version for any younger listeners who don’t know what Cliffords are. It’s basically like Googling the answer or asking at GPT. It was

Maria Ross 23:08

like our version of AI. Yeah, exactly. It was a condensed version of a larger book. Yeah, so I had some symptoms that developed a year after we moved to Seattle, and I had a very severe incident of a very sudden what they call a thunderclap headache that actually seized up my neck and my back and caused my head to spin, and I was able to go to the doctor, I was able to somehow drive myself home, but go to the doctor, who said it might just be stress, you know, go do some acupuncture, go do yoga, go to some physical therapy for your neck, so about a month and a half of symptoms of what eventually turned out to be a brain bleed, and so it ruptured, and luckily my husband had come home from work early that day, so he was able to get me to the hospital, and they discovered the ruptured aneurysm, which caused it’s basically a form of stroke, because anytime you have blood where it’s not supposed to be, that’s a form of stroke, right? So the doctor saved my life and had various misadventures in the road to recovery, but eventually got back on my feet again, and had even what some of the doctors called a miraculous recovery, based on the type of injury that I had, which normally it’s called a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and for that type of injury I think the statistics are four out of seven people have permanent disabilities coming out of that. Now, I do have cognitive issues that I’ve had to develop strategies for, and I went to therapy for to overcome, but other than some eye issues, because of the hemorrhaging in my retinas, I had no physical damage. I can still walk, I can still drive, I don’t have seizures, any of the things that normally go along with a stroke or a brain aneurysm. So, yeah, so I, I wrote that book, and as you, as you mentioned, you know. It that is my experience, but the unique thing about my experience, unlike a book like Jill Bolte Taylor’s A Stroke of Insight, I don’t remember the moment of my aneurysm rupture.

Rob Volpe 25:10

Sure,

Maria Ross 25:11

and so I lost a month of my life. I don’t remember the month of August 2008 at all, like

Rob Volpe 25:17

you were in a medically induced coma. I was in

Maria Ross 25:19

a medically induced coma for a few days, maybe. Like, I’m not really sure how long I was, and so a lot of that period that I talk about in the book is from other people’s observations,

Rob Volpe 25:29

right? And

Maria Ross 25:30

then the small snatches of memory that I could remember, but so I, I didn’t sort of live in my near-death experience, right? Like,

Rob Volpe 25:39

yeah, this isn’t a story where you saw the light, saw the light in the tunnel, yeah.

Maria Ross 25:44

And to be really, maybe a little blunt, if I had died, I probably wouldn’t have remembered it anyway. Like, it wasn’t like it was something with me as I died. Do you know what I’m saying? So, but yeah, and so that whole recovery journey, and then writing the book, a lot of that reflection came way after, of like, oh, wow, I almost died, right, but my husband, who had to witness it all, it was very traumatic for him, and stayed with him, and still stays with him for a long time, so I guess you could say, in a way, I was spared that kind of knowledge of what was happening, and I was even in denial about it, because brain injury patients are infamous for being poor at self-assessment. They think they’re fine, they think they can go out and just get up, and like, they just had the flu, it’s fine, I’ll shake it off, or I’ll figure it out. And even during that time of recovery, there were very tough love conversations that therapists and neuropsychologists had to have with me, of like this is actually where you’re at.

Rob Volpe 26:48

Yeah, you were very honest in the book about some of the out there moments that your friends recounted, and then also you put in some of the notes from the therapists and the doctors, and

Maria Ross 27:01

yeah,

Rob Volpe 27:01

they were basically like, she’s fooling herself, yeah, she’s living in La La Land, yeah,

Maria Ross 27:07

she’s not getting on a plane to Spain as, as planned, you know, six weeks after her

Rob Volpe 27:13

Spain will fix me

Maria Ross 27:14

episode, yeah, so, yeah, so it’s interesting, because I, you know, it’s only upon later reflection that the magnitude of it and the significance of it hit me, but going through it, it was more one day at a time, and that’s the thing, is like I was saying earlier, when I started coming back out into society again, people were like, oh my god, are you changed, like, are you gonna go visit the pyramids, are you, you know, are you going to change your life and do something different? And I’m like, I just want to walk around the block with my dog at this point, like I don’t, I don’t have these grand life-changing plans.

Rob Volpe 27:53

You’re fixated or focused, I should say. I was focused, yeah.

Maria Ross 27:56

I just had to take one literal step at a time, like I was, I was physically weak, I had to get my, my balance and my muscle tone back up after six weeks lying in a hospital bed, right. But, so, yeah, that was a lot of pressure, and that’s that’s the interesting thing about us and our relationship to death, is we kind of look to these people that almost died as gurus that they know what it’s going to be like, and I, how do I get me some of that, like, without dying, without the dying, nearly dying part, right? And it’s like, I have no answers for you.

Rob Volpe 28:29

Yeah, you know,

Maria Ross 28:31

and that’s the thing, I think that’s a uniquely human thing, about like, we want to know. I don’t think a raccoon or a giraffe wants to know what’s going to happen after they die, because they don’t even necessarily realize they’re

Rob Volpe 28:43

even aware that they’re dying, or

Maria Ross 28:45

or that they’re going to,

Rob Volpe 28:47

or they haven’t assigned a big deal to it.

Maria Ross 28:51

Yes,

Rob Volpe 28:51

they recognize that it’s part of the cycle of life, like it is what you do. Again, I’m not in their brains, so I don’t fully know what’s happening.

Maria Ross 29:04

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 29:05

but you, you would imagine that, I guess that’s the downside of having a curious mind, is that you’re constantly wanting to know, or you need to make yourself feel better about whatever is about to come. Okay, so Maria, the thing I noticed when I was reading the book, like you, and it links to what you were just saying, like you didn’t actually really even talk about the fact that this was a, like, that you could have died, and how that aspect changed your life until probably the last 3040 pages of the book.

Maria Ross 29:40

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 29:41

what? Talk to me a little more about that, because it did at some point you did realize, like, yeah, I almost died.

Maria Ross 29:49

Yeah, you know what’s really interesting. I think it was a lot of the research for the book that I did two years later that is, is really where it brought it home, right? I. Think I still had a very, you know, hopeful view, even a year out. I wrote this very poignant blog post a year after the injury. I mentioned it in the book about my thoughts about everything, and how grateful I was, and how things could have gone in so many other different directions, and I was just thankful that things lined up the way they did, so that I was still here, and that I did kind of, I did still have this understanding that I was given a second chance, and then, but the, but what to do with that really didn’t start to be a question for me until I was fully, and you never fully recover from a brain injury, but until I was kind of fully functional again, if that makes any sense.

Rob Volpe 30:43

Yeah,

Maria Ross 30:44

so I had these deeper thoughts about, you know, what could have happened. I don’t know, but I think a lot of the work that I did, going back to interview my, my neurosurgeon, my neuropsychologist, when they were giving me the information, and also I was doing my own research, that’s where I was like, huh, this was pretty bad, and I think I sort of had like a second wave of God, what do I do, what do I do with this, what does this all mean, right? And again, kind of going back to our topic, I think that’s the other thing is, is we as humans try to find meaning in grief, in death, in despair, in suffering, and my husband’s much more of a pragmatist, and he’s very much like this thing happened because it happened, like there’s.. it’s not because anybody did anything, or even in his view, there was no, there’s no divine intervention, right? He’s like things just happen because they happen, and they’re they’re random, and they’re they’re indiscriminate, and sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t, right? He’s just got a very.. I am a little bit more religious in my beliefs, and a little bit more faith-based, but given what happened to me, it’s hard to argue that he’s necessarily wrong, right?

Rob Volpe 32:03

Yes,

Maria Ross 32:03

because what makes my life any more valuable than someone who didn’t live 10 minutes from a trauma center or whose husband didn’t come home in time? Right?

Rob Volpe 32:13

Right.

Maria Ross 32:14

So those were the questions that I was sitting with, which again I think is a uniquely human thing.

Rob Volpe 32:21

Yeah,

Maria Ross 32:21

yeah, your cat wasn’t like,

Rob Volpe 32:23

why me?

Maria Ross 32:24

At least we don’t, at least we don’t know that your cat wasn’t, but yeah, and so I just find that fascinating, like it’s almost like part of this of the journey of being human is we kind of almost have to tell ourselves stories to cope, and whether that story is a religious belief or a superstition or a, oh, you know, it was just not your time, or it was their time, or whatever other story like that is a very uniquely human thing, is that we, we build a story around things that maybe don’t go our way, or go our way, even in the face of suffering.

Rob Volpe 33:04

Yeah, yeah. And it is the.. it.. I mean, we tell stories. It gives us structure, meaning, purpose to everything. It helps us, yeah, feel better about,

Maria Ross 33:18

yeah,

Rob Volpe 33:18

whatever the thing is that happened even in that near death experience, and even in actual death, like can’t make sense of why one person lived to one age over another, or there’s so many things that go into it,

Maria Ross 33:37

right.

Rob Volpe 33:38

Okay, and so, Maria, you mentioned, though, that Paul, your husband, it sounded like he, he’s carrying it differently, or he reacted. So, talk a little bit about what you’ve observed in the way it maybe has affected him.

Maria Ross 33:51

Yeah, so, like I said, I don’t remember the month of August 2008 the most traumatic part. He remembers all of it, including finding me on the floor unconscious and calling the ambulance and having the ambulance come and try to figure out what was going on and intubate me and do all the things, and then he was there when I was on, hooked up to all the machines in the induced coma, so he saw everything, right, he experienced everything, I was blissfully unconscious, right, slash, he

Rob Volpe 34:21

had to live with fear and concern of not knowing what was going to happen.

Maria Ross 34:26

Yes, exactly.

Rob Volpe 34:28

Okay,

Maria Ross 34:28

exactly.

Rob Volpe 34:30

And so now we’re 1718, years, yeah, 18 years out,

Maria Ross 34:36

almost 18.

Rob Volpe 34:37

How does it show up now?

Maria Ross 34:39

You know, I still mark the day, I still mark august 4 as my, you know, day I almost died, and I, it shows up different because I’m back into my life, and it’s again kind of, we were talking about it early with this time malleability, like how quickly we forget, right, of the amazing. Interesting aspect of all of that was that I had this completely clean slate, and I could build back up, you know. It was like no schedule, no commitments, no whatever. And how quickly that comes back when you’re officially back at it, right? People give you grace, and you give yourself grace when you’re, you’re declaring that you’re in recovery mode, no matter how bored you might get, right, but then once you’re not in that anymore, there’s expectations, and there’s expectations of yourself and expectations of other people, and we so quickly can get back into those habits, right, I do work differently now than I used to work, and luckily I work for myself, because if I worked for a company, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to deal with that stress and overwhelm, but you know, I try to, to varying degrees of success, as you’ve been the recipient of manage my schedule and try not to over commit, that’s actually where I’m getting myself into trouble this summer is, I’m over committed to a few things, but I know my capacity a little bit better than I used to, and so, and I think I’m a little bit more.. I always was kind of in tune to special moments, I was always sort of the nostalgic one, but now years later, with an iPhone camera by my side, I, you know, my, my son’s always like, why do you take pictures of everything, and I’m like, because you’ll be thankful I did.

Rob Volpe 36:29

Yeah, yeah. Well, and even, I mean, you talked about memory gaps, and like that, you’re not going to remember everything. I don’t know if we want to remember everything, but

Maria Ross 36:40

right,

Rob Volpe 36:40

you’re not going to remember all of it, and if something were to happen, you’d have access, or some sort of stimulus to help, maybe prompt a memory.

Maria Ross 36:49

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 36:50

so you had a really interesting perspective on bucket lists.

Maria Ross 36:56

Yeah, I did.

Rob Volpe 36:58

So, can you share with everyone? Yeah,

Maria Ross 37:01

I mean, again, very uniquely human for us to even create bucket lists and talk about things we want to accomplish, right?

Rob Volpe 37:08

What is, yeah, and what is a bucket list with the things I want to accomplish before I die?

Maria Ross 37:12

I mean, I’m sure my dog Bean has one in her head, but you know, her bucket list is like, when is she going to fill up the peanut butter again. No, I think I’ve even before the injury, I had this very cynical view about this whole live your best life movement, right? Because to me it seemed very unhealthy, and I know the intent of it was pure, and the intent of it is like you just be your best self, right? But I felt like it was a very shaming and blaming way to make people live, like by implying they’re not living their best life, it’s that they’re living their suckiest life right now, and that’s a lot of pressure, and so this equates to bucket lists, because it’s just like how after that experience for many years I couldn’t set goals anymore, it was really hard for me to set goals because I felt like I was putting too much pressure on myself in case I failed, and I had never been that way. I’d always been sort of a type A overachiever, and but I was like, why am I doing that to myself again? I’ve got this one life, and now I have the second chance at this one life. Why am I going to spend it trying to measure myself against an expectation that I have set that I might fail at, so it was really hard for me to set goals. So I started setting broader goals, and I didn’t necessarily have a bucket list at the time. I had a, like, oh, things I think I want to do right, and so I kind of tried to make my goals and bucket lists more abstract and less, less of the smart goals, right, specific, measurable, actionable, whatever, but just, you know, do you have one person in your life who’s a good friend that you can go and lean on, right? Do you, can you enjoy one moment with yourself, and do you know, indulge in something that you really enjoy that fills your cup. So I started making my bucket list about that. Now, okay, again, 18 years on, I do have the, like, I want to get to Japan, I want to get to Greece, I want to, you know, do all these other.. I want to do another TEDx talk, I want you to know, I want to do all these things, but I just feel like, again, as humans, we’re doing it to ourselves to make ourselves miserable, and again, you could say the flip side to that is like, but goals are great, and ambition is great, and dreams are great, and hope is great, and all of that is true, but I think society and culture is making us feel bad about something that we don’t need to feel bad about all the time, right? If you want to make a change in your life because you want to be healthier or happier, or you know, I want to be more audacious, I want to, I want to suck the marrow out of life, that’s all great, but to just go into. It of like, you know, hey Rob, you need to live your best life. It’s like you’re like, I was fine, I didn’t know I wasn’t living my best life, right? And so I think that’s the pressure and the overwhelm that I still to this day try to resist because of the experience that happened to me.

Rob Volpe 40:16

Yeah,

Maria Ross 40:17

but that said, again, we were talking about limited number of summers, there’s things I do want to do. I’m just not going to like berate myself if I don’t. I’m not going to like spend all this money and time trying to attain the thing and hire, you know, follow the gurus and go to the conferences and read the books and all the things.

Rob Volpe 40:36

Yeah. Well, and you check off some of those things on your bucket list,

Maria Ross 40:42

yeah.

Rob Volpe 40:42

And then, you know, I think bucket lists are ever changing and malleable based on,

Maria Ross 40:48

yeah,

Rob Volpe 40:48

situation, or what. You know, I’ve already done this, you know, one of the ones that struck me, I really appreciated the having somebody that really just truly knows you, whether it’s your spouse, partner, or just a close friend that you can really share, yeah, okay, I can, you know, count a number of people that would qualify, so I’m very like fortunate and done, I got that one,

Maria Ross 41:14

yeah,

Rob Volpe 41:15

about the importance of nurturing it,

Maria Ross 41:17

yes,

Rob Volpe 41:18

they’re there for you, and that they know when you pick up the phone, and they’re like, “Oh my god, what’s wrong? Like, yeah, it’s hearing your voice, something’s up. Tell me what’s happening. Yeah, and then you also had, though, sleep by the ocean.

Maria Ross 41:32

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 41:33

can hear the ocean and the breeze and everything, and you know, I’m like, done that, but I do that again. Yeah, exactly. There’s kind of an unlimited number of times. Well,

Maria Ross 41:45

and they don’t have to be grand gestures, that’s the thing. It’s like you could be in Chicago, near Lake Michigan, and maybe do that. I don’t know if you can get a place where you can hear the lake, but.. and I know that’s not the ocean, that’s a lake, but my point is, like your water, right? So it doesn’t have to be the big, like, no, I need to go on a cruise to Croatia, and although Croatia is on my list too, but you said something, though, that is intriguing to me, which is this idea of refilling the bucket list when you, as you knock things off, and that again kind of goes back to that very human trait of hope,

Rob Volpe 42:20

yeah,

Maria Ross 42:21

right. So, I’ve done

Rob Volpe 42:22

or defying death because, oh, I can’t die yet. I’ve still got three more things on my bucket list, still

Maria Ross 42:28

things on the list. So, but yeah, do you know anybody who’s ever done all the things on their bucket list and hasn’t replenished it in a way?

Rob Volpe 42:36

I think some of the elders that I’ve talked with, and it’s not that they’ve like, oh, I’m given, but they also get some perspective on it, like for them that bucket list really is focused on that one that you had about spending the time with the people that know you or that care about you and that you care about and prioritizing that.

Maria Ross 43:00

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 43:00

I think that’s the big piece. I do. I will say, you know, our elders today, some could be baby boomers, or then the generation beyond that. I don’t know, we’ve gotten more materialistic as we’ve gone along, and there’s FOMO and social media, and you know, living this sort of perfect life, so I think it makes it harder for us now at younger ages to have that amazing bucket list, and so you know there are things that I definitely want to do. Well, yeah, there are things that I definitely want to do, but it’s really, as I say, that I’m like the things that I would like to do.

Maria Ross 43:43

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 43:44

before I pass, I was gonna say,

Maria Ross 43:46

would you feel regret if you were dying tomorrow and you didn’t accomplish those things or didn’t do those things?

Rob Volpe 43:53

No, no, I’ve had a really remarkable journey with death since 2020 with people that have died close to me, a really good friend of ours died suddenly in actually it’ll be next week, like June 2020 so six years ago, and it was just like out of call, we got a call out of the blue from one of our mutual friends, and it’s just they were like Carrie’s dead. What, but she was 47 I think, at the time. And it turned out later on that she, when we were able to get the autopsy report, because we were real family was really guarded about what happened. We were getting bits and pieces.

Maria Ross 44:38

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 44:39

but in California, you can order the medical examiner report or the autopsy report, and so we jokingly, a group of us called ourselves the Fancy Drews. We wanted to get to the bottom of it, and it turns out that Carrie died from alcoholism, chronic alcoholism. She was a high when. Known as a high functioning alcoholic,

Maria Ross 45:02

yep,

Rob Volpe 45:03

and she hit it so well, and once we understood that, it was like, oh yeah, like we saw all the things, so that was like kind of the first big one that hit us, and I mentioned in the other episode I work with an energy healer, and so I think it was, yeah, it was probably six or eight months later. It was 2021 and I was having a session with Maria. It was May, I remember it was May 2021 and she was like, ‘Right,

Maria Ross 45:31

your energy healer, Maria, not me.

Rob Volpe 45:34

Yes, yes, healer, Kirsten Marie, we love us in Sausalito.

Maria Ross 45:38

Yes,

Rob Volpe 45:39

been seeing her for 14 years, but she was like, you’ve never really dealt with death before, and she’s like, she was like, your grandmothers are not going to live forever, I don’t know what you’re thinking, and like, she’s, she’s just intuiting all this, yeah, yeah, and everything, she’s like, your grandmothers are not going to live forever, but you are not ready for this, and you need to get ready, and so she actually, I haven’t pulled it out. She suggested I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is, of

Maria Ross 46:12

course, of course, the Tibetans wrote a handbook on it,

Rob Volpe 46:15

400 pages long.

Maria Ross 46:17

We’ll link to that in the show notes too,

Rob Volpe 46:20

and they, it says in the book, and she even said to me, and I will say this to everybody, you cannot read this once and understand it completely, like they suggest, if you really want to understand this, you need to read it like 10,000 times, and that idea of it is a never-ending journey of understanding it, but it gave me a sense of understanding death and what happens after, and how you can move, you know, on and up. In Buddhism, I believe in reincarnation, and how do you move up to that next plane? And I remember, like, go towards the light that scares you, like, move toward that, because that’s the next level up, apparently.

Maria Ross 47:05

Wow,

Rob Volpe 47:05

and if any listeners know more about this topic and want to share, I would be really curious to learn more. But I read this over the course of the summer. I remember where Charles and I was just pandemic, Charles and I went on to Hawaii for the break up from everything, and I’m like laying on Waikiki Beach, like underlining meaningful passages in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I don’t know what people

Maria Ross 47:30

relaxation to each their own, Rob. Like, yeah,

Rob Volpe 47:34

yes, yes, yeah. But then weeks after that, my grandmother had a stroke in South Carolina, and she passed away shortly after that. She was 97 but it helped me, like the reading that it helped me with her passing,

Maria Ross 47:53

right?

Rob Volpe 47:53

And then some other people that we knew, and then my grandma passed, and oh my

Maria Ross 47:58

goodness,

Rob Volpe 47:59

died in late October, on Halloween, 204 lived on her own until the last six weeks of her life.

Maria Ross 48:09

Wow,

Rob Volpe 48:10

went into hospital with four different illnesses, came out of that, went into rehab, but it just,

Maria Ross 48:17

yeah,

Rob Volpe 48:17

it caught her body up to being 104

Maria Ross 48:19

yeah,

Rob Volpe 48:20

but I had the gift of being with her, and I don’t want to say coaching, but being with her while she was passing, and wow, and it was the most profound, beautiful thing I have ever experienced in my life, like, you know, the there’s an article, I think it’s in the Washington Post. I’ll see if we can find it, and I’ll put a gift link in the show notes, talking to palliative care nurses and people that have been with people when they’re dying, and seeing the visions of loved ones that are then helping them feel comfortable going on, and we had that experience. It was the past on early Monday morning Saturday night into Sunday of that weekend, and we’re there, and it’s like, you know, one in the morning, and all of a sudden Grandma starts tracking something moving across the room that I can’t see, and she starts calling out to her sister, who’s had been dead for I don’t know 40 or 50 years.

Maria Ross 49:27

Wow.

Rob Volpe 49:28

And then the next morning she talked about having seen my grandpa outside the window, and he’d been dead since, like, 1986

Maria Ross 49:38

Yeah,

Rob Volpe 49:38

want to say 86 Yeah, and all of those things were happening, and I was there with her for it, and if anyone gets the opportunity to be in that moment, don’t be afraid of it. It is, I’m, you know, as a gay man, we’re childless by choice. I will not have the opportunity to be there when. Somebody is born, but I’m in there when they’ve died,

Maria Ross 50:03

yeah,

Rob Volpe 50:04

and they’ve gone that the other out the other door, I guess, right, right, and it was remarkable, and all going to die at some point, like it’s just how this is, and so I think having that front row seat, and having the exposure to it, and reading about it, and it’s just gotten me a lot more comfortable,

Maria Ross 50:28

yeah,

Rob Volpe 50:28

with the idea. It’s not that it still doesn’t upset me, it’s not, you know,

Maria Ross 50:33

right, you’re still going to experience grief and mourning and all of the loss and anger and all the things, but just our culture is horrible about dealing with all

Rob Volpe 50:42

about it, death

Maria Ross 50:43

and grief.

Rob Volpe 50:44

Yeah, and I’m like, you know, look, I don’t want to die anytime soon, but

Maria Ross 50:49

yeah,

Rob Volpe 50:50

I’m okay. Yeah, I’m at a place of just, yeah, I’m good. I’ve done stuff

Maria Ross 50:57

well, and that’s the thing, where it’s again, that that ability to accept death is not necessarily uniquely human, because there’s there’s cultures that do it better than others.

Rob Volpe 51:06

Yes, and if

Maria Ross 51:06

anything, our Western culture seems to want us to age in reverse, like talk, not, it’s not even about denying that we’re going to die, it’s, it’s denying, like we said earlier, that you’re even getting older, and everything from, from, you know, consumerism to skin care to

Rob Volpe 51:26

biohacky surgery,

Maria Ross 51:27

yeah, all the things, and I’m not saying, like, I don’t want.. I’m living in a glass house, right? Like, I see an esthetician, I’ve had, you know, a little jab here and there, like I’m taking the supplements, I’m doing all that.

Rob Volpe 51:41

You look lovely.

Maria Ross 51:42

Well, thank you. But I, what I am saying is that when we start to deny or not deal with death, even while we’re pursuing those things of like, well, I just want to feel as good as I can feel or look as good as I can look for as long as I can. Yeah, it’s a healthier way to look at it than like the people that are like, no, I want to look like I looked when I was 21 right? You’re not gonna, but yeah, yeah, but to that point, it’s just again such a uniquely human thing, where there’s all these other species in the world that don’t even spend an iota of energy thinking about this or wasting time or money about it, right? Like it kind of boggles my mind the

Rob Volpe 52:25

most of the moment that they’re in.

Maria Ross 52:27

They are, because they live in that moment, right?

Rob Volpe 52:30

Yeah,

Maria Ross 52:30

like the I always joked with my, my dog that passed away, Eddie, who was a big character in the book. Yeah, I know, he, you know, I always say he’s the most hopeful being in the world, because he’s just constant, he’s living in a state of constant hope. Will they drop the food? Will I get a treat? Are we going to go for a walk? Are you going to pet me? Can I lay down here? Is that my bone? Like, it’s just a constant state of hope, and I’m like, God, love him. Like, if we all could live that way, right?

Rob Volpe 53:00

Yeah, it’s like watching our cats move around the house with the sun, because they want to curl up in the sun, because it feels great, and that’s that’s their day,

Maria Ross 53:12

that’s their day, that’s their day, they don’t have to worry about paying a mortgage or anything, but so

Rob Volpe 53:18

we understand somehow in our subconscious low level consciousness that yeah this is all fleeting and so some people probably are like I have to accumulate everything and kind of want to take it with them I have a relative that I’m dealing with that right now and it’s like Grandma was always like, I don’t care what you do with that, you know? She, yeah, maybe she would have really cared, but she used to say, she’s like, I don’t care, I’m gonna be dead, yeah,

Maria Ross 53:53

yeah,

Rob Volpe 53:53

doesn’t matter, right? Bury me, cremate me, do this at the survey, like, whatever, right? It’s going to make you happy,

Maria Ross 54:01

right,

Rob Volpe 54:01

because she’s like, “I’ll be dead,

Maria Ross 54:03

yeah,

Rob Volpe 54:03

but we do have this reaction to it, where we’re suddenly like, “Oh, I’ve got to get everything done, and I think the pandemic really triggered that, and we’re seeing we coming out of the pandemic, I think we saw this renaissance of experiences, but even more now, Gary Vaynerchuk just did a newsletter, and he was talking about how much connection people are looking for in person.

Maria Ross 54:28

Yes,

Rob Volpe 54:29

wanting to do things with other people and be around other people, and that in a pushback against tech because we’re so isolated through technology, and technology will never die.

Maria Ross 54:45

No,

Rob Volpe 54:46

I mean, it does in some ways, like an iPhone doesn’t live forever, right?

Maria Ross 54:50

But I mean, that’s the thing, you know, again, kind of getting back to our whole root of starting the series, it’s like that’s a different mindset than AI has. Yes, and what are the beautiful benefits of being a human that we bring to our experience that AI will never be able to replicate, and that is one of them.

Rob Volpe 55:09

It for sure, for sure. And you know, even I was just thinking, like, yeah, my iPhone will die, but I can transfer everything over to a new iPhone,

Maria Ross 55:17

right? Right, or it’s up

Rob Volpe 55:18

in the cloud, it can get downloaded,

Maria Ross 55:20

its soul is portable. It

Rob Volpe 55:24

is, and I mean, would you want that?

Maria Ross 55:29

You know, did you ever see the series upload on Amazon Prime?

Rob Volpe 55:32

No, it ran for a

Maria Ross 55:34

couple of seasons a few years ago, and it was exactly that premise, is that it was a society. I don’t know if it was the future or not, where rich people could pay for their soul to get uploaded to a heaven of their choice, but you actually could still communicate with your relatives on earth, like there was a link, there was actually an evil, like telecom company behind this whole thing,

Rob Volpe 55:57

of course, we call it Starlink,

Maria Ross 56:00

yeah, it was, I think it was a Verizon, it was like Verizon or something, I don’t know what it was, but yeah, and it was a really interesting premise, because it was, it almost made it feel like you would never want that, as good as it sounded, there was obviously all these misadventures and horrible things that happened. It was a comedy, and it’s still on. You can still find it on Prime. The first season was phenomenal, and then it sort of.. like, I don’t know what happened. They kind of.. it kind of didn’t translate as it kept going. But again, it was like something where it’s like, wouldn’t that be great? And then.. and then it was a whole indictment of the haves and the have-nots, and how there were people that couldn’t afford it, and so they had, they had to say goodbye to their loved ones. There was nowhere for them to go and upload their soul into this other environment, right. And then there’s a whole evil plot by a giant technology company of like fleecing the poor people, make them think they can do it, but they can’t, like it was a whole thing. My point being that show you watch it, and you’re like, God, that sounds awful. Like, at first it doesn’t. Like, the first few episodes, you’re like, this is amazing, right? And you’re like, no, people, when they die, they just need to die. Like, it needs to just end there. It’s too messy if it.. if they don’t.

Rob Volpe 57:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, have you seen The Black Mirror, you know, the Black Mirror series. I

Maria Ross 57:24

know the series, I have not caught it yet.

Rob Volpe 57:26

Okay, so there is an episode called San Junapero, which is very similar to that idea of your, your existence getting uploaded, and it’s about two companions finding each other in this sort of space, but not realizing that they’re not actually in, in that reality, which I just kind of, spoiler alert, but sorry, it’s old, like, yeah,

Maria Ross 57:54

yeah,

Rob Volpe 57:55

but again, yeah, it is that idea of living for other and more current, and it just dropped on HBO Max. Kara Swisher Wants to Live Forever is a series that ran on HBO or on CNN in April and May, and now all setting was six episodes, and she explores all of these longevity hacks and this desire to live forever, and she interviews, because apparently a lot of this industry that has grown up is actually funded by a lot of the tech bros or people that have made money in tech.

Maria Ross 58:22

Yep,

Rob Volpe 58:22

and so she’s interviewing them, and she’s looking at different cultures and what, what it means to age, you know. She admits she doesn’t want to live forever herself, but it, in that pursuit, is the journey of the series, and it was.. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, I think, and it’s really good.

Maria Ross 58:52

Well, we will.. we should put a link to that for sure. So, so kind of as we wrap up again, you know, as we said, folks, this isn’t a show about answering the questions, it’s about asking them, having the conversation, and we’d love for you to be a part of that conversation. So, let us know what you think. What are your thoughts on on the human experience of dying and grief and mortality? And based on anything we talked about here, you know, let us know. I’m on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Rob is there at Empathy Activist,

Rob Volpe 59:24

activist, and if anyone is interested in participating and having a conversation with me about those senior years and having that conversation, there’s a link in the show notes to sign up to either answer a survey, talk to me individually. I would love, love, love, love to connect with you

Maria Ross 59:45

all. Right. Well, Rob, until next time. Thank you for this conversation. Until our next episode, episode three of our sub series. What does it mean to be human?

Rob Volpe 59:53

I want to say, as I started with a dad joke, I feel like there’s some like Maria, this is revised. Moved me, you brought me back to life. Did I reboot you? There we go. My brain is rebooted. No, this has been amazing. I do encourage people to check out your book, Rebooting My Brain.

Maria Ross 1:00:12

Thank you,

Rob Volpe 1:00:13

it’s really lovely. And is there like a PSA sort of thing, like if anybody’s feeling a sudden headache or something is off. Please, please, not only go to the doctor, advocate for yourself,

Maria Ross 1:00:26

advocate for yourself, and take brain injury seriously. Wear helmets if you bang your head really hard, don’t just try to sleep it off. Go see a doctor, go get a scan if you can, if that’s accessible to you. So many people live with brain injury impacts and effects, and never know it, because it was just like, oh, I fell off the ladder when I was a kid, and we just like shook it off, right? So, just brain injury can happen to anyone at any time, so if you ever feel like something’s off, advocate for yourself,

Rob Volpe 1:00:59

please,

Maria Ross 1:01:00

please, please, please, please.

Rob Volpe 1:01:02

Awesome. Thank you, Maria.

Maria Ross 1:01:04

Thank you, Rob. And thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of The Empathy Edge Podcast. As always, if you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review it, and please share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit The Empathy edge.com There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes, and free resources. Book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

Aubrey Morgan Yee: Radical Collaboration to Create Alternate Futures

What if the future of leadership isn’t about scaling faster or competing harder, but about finding empathy and remembering what it truly means to be human?

Aubrey Morgan Yee invites us into a radically different way of thinking about leadership, collaboration, and the futures we’re actively creating. She is a cultural strategist, narrative practitioner, and empathy-centered futurist whose work bridges emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and Indigenous wisdom.

After experiencing profound personal collapse, Aubrey rebuilt her life around empathy, presence, and purpose. That lived experience now informs her work with leaders and changemakers seeking to grow their impact without losing their humanity.

We explore the idea of radical collaboration rooted in Indigenous frameworks that teach us new ways of understanding time, trust, leadership, and technology. We also talk about alternative and preferred futures, and how imagination is not a luxury but a leadership responsibility. Aubrey shares what her personal collapse taught her about empathetic leadership, how emotional presence and cultural storytelling shape resilient organizations, and why the stories we choose to live by can either limit us or unlock entirely new realities. This is a conversation for leaders ready to question old myths, collaborate rather than compete, and help build futures that are not just more effective but more humane.

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

Listen in for…

The Indigenous frameworks that teach us new ways of understanding, and how Indigenous cultures are among the most technologically advanced.
How to navigate fear of change and choose to co-create instead.
What pronoia means and how it is the antidote to what is keeping systems stuck.
Why emotional presence and cultural storytelling shape resilient organizations.

“’Indigenous mind’ is just a way of being. It’s a very grounded understanding that there are ways of thinking about what it means to be human, what it means to be a leader, what it means to be in business.” — Aubrey Morgan Yee

Episode References:

The Empathy Edge:

About Aubrey Morgan Yee, Ph.D, Indigenous Politics and Alternative Futures:

Aubrey Morgan Yee is a cultural strategist, narrative practitioner, and empathy-centered futurist with a PhD in Indigenous Politics and Alternative Futures. After overcoming alcoholism and burnout, Aubrey rebuilt her life around empathy, presence, and purpose—now guiding others to do the same. Her work bridges emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and Indigenous wisdom to support leaders and changemakers in building more compassionate, regenerative futures.

She’s led cultural transformation initiatives for organizations like Culture Hack Labs and Project Biome, founded the rewilding sanctuary Hokuao Farm & Temple on O‘ahu, and hosts the Beloved Futures podcast. Her book, Our Beloved Futures, is a call to reimagine what it means to be fully human, to face and metabolize the toxic systems of modernity.

Aubrey brings a rare blend of vulnerability, strategy, and deep presence—offering practical insights for leaders seeking to grow their impact without losing their humanity.

Connect with Aubrey:

Our Beloved Futures: ourbelovedfutures.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/aubrey-yee-phd-110153186

Instagram: instagram.com/aubrey.morgan.yee

Beloved Futures: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beloved-futures/id1681375129

Connect with Maria:

Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books

Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross

Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader

LinkedIn: Maria Ross

Instagram: @redslicemaria

Facebook: Red Slice

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Maria Ross 00:03

Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. What if the future of leadership isn’t about scaling faster or competing harder, but about finding empathy and remembering what it truly means to be human? My guest today, Aubrey Morgan Yee, invites us into a radically different way of thinking about leadership, collaboration, and the futures we’re actively creating, whether we realize it or not. Aubrey is a cultural strategist, narrative practitioner, and empathy-centered futurist with a PhD in indigenous politics and alternative futures, whose work bridges emotional intelligence, systems thinking, and indigenous wisdom. After experiencing profound personal collapse through alcoholism and burnout, Aubrey rebuilt her life around empathy, presence, and purpose. That lived experience now informs her work with leaders and change makers seeking to grow their impact without losing their humanity. She’s led cultural transformation initiatives with organizations like Culture Hack Labs and Project Biome founded the Rewilding Sanctuary Hokuao Farm and Temple on Oahu, and hosts The Beloved Futures podcast. She’s also the author of Our Beloved Futures, a powerful call to reimagine what it means to metabolize the toxic systems of modernity and build something more compassionate and regenerative in their place. In our conversation, we explore the idea of radical collaboration rooted in indigenous frameworks that teach us new ways of understanding time, trust, leadership, and even technology. Aubrey challenges the notion that innovation only lives in modern tools, sharing how indigenous cultures are among the most technologically advanced through their deep relationship with land, rhythm, and human ingenuity. We also talk about alternative and preferred futures, and how imagination is not a luxury but a leadership responsibility. We unpack how to navigate fear of change and co-create instead, including the concept of pronoia, the belief that the world is conspiring for us as an antidote to the paranoia that keeps systems stuck. Aubrey shares what her personal collapse taught her about empathetic leadership. How emotional presence and cultural storytelling shape resilient organizations, and why the stories we choose to live by can either limit us or unlock entirely new realities. This is a conversation for leaders ready to question old myths, collaborate over compete, and help build futures that are not just more effective, but more empathetic and humane. Take a listen. Big welcome to Aubrey Morgan Yee. Thank you for coming on to The Empathy Edge. I just read your bio to folks, and I love that you call yourself a cultural strategist, a narrative practitioner, and an empathy-centered futurist, so goodness, that’s a lot. So, tell us your story, and how you got into this work, and what you even call this work.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 03:50

Yeah, you know, my husband has a hard time describing it sometimes, too. So, you’re not alone, don’t worry. You know, I call this work Empowered Futures. So, for me, I’ve been many things in my life, I’ve been everything from an entrepreneur. I ran a leadership development foundation for a while. I’ve been, you know, a writer recently with my book, but I also got my doctorate in future studies. So, some people don’t even know what that is. It was in the political science department, but it’s alternative futures, and I paired it with indigenous politics, and really what that is, is the the desire and ability to help people, groups, organizations, governments? Some people do it in the corporate world, but I’ve focused more on like the social change realm, envision at plan for and then enact preferred futures. So, like, what is the world we’re aiming to create, and have like a focused area of study that actually helps us to, in collective ways, co-vision, co-dream, and then co-craft pathways towards those futures that we’re, we’re seeing. So that’s kind of the driving force, and it’s for me helping people remember that we do that, that we’re really good at that as humans, that imagination is a superpower, and our ability to imagine new ways of being new. World from a place of love and empathy, like that’s all we need to create magic, so you know it’s sometimes it’s facilitation, sometimes it’s writing, sometimes it’s leadership development. It shows up in different ways, sometimes it’s consulting with organizations to help them craft their visions, but it’s all from that place of really believing that our imagination is a superpower, that when we come from love and empathy, we can build really beautiful futures together.

Maria Ross 05:23

So, oh my gosh, amen. Sister, I love it all. Yeah, and I love the fact that you know you did study into futures, and what a time to be well versed in that, you know, as study after study is coming out about reminding us of the human skills that are our advantage in the age of AI, and that in the good scenario, AI is taking the doing and the tasks that drain us from that work and leave us more space and openness and

Aubrey Morgan Yee 05:56

exactly

Maria Ross 05:57

time for the things that we naturally are better at doing, and that we’re gifted with doing. So, what? At times, for your background and expertise, what a moment you’re meeting right now, as we kind of get into this. What is your view on that? Where has the role of technology come into play to either unleash that potential in us as leaders and as human beings or hindered it.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 06:22

Oh my gosh, there’s so many things I could say on that. I’ll start with lots to say on that topic, but my one of my mentor and beloved PhD advisor, Dr. Jim Daters, and really well-known futurist in the field, he used to always say full unemployment, that’s the goal, and this one we were talking about AI, maybe 15 years ago, and he was like, he’s been thinking about it for much longer, but he said, you know, look, if there’s a way in which we can have, like you said, this technology that takes the mundane tasks that maybe we don’t want to have to deal with off of our plates, and then we can go back to sort of a renaissance of like poetry and art and surfing, or whatever it is that you love to do. Yeah, it’s like, so this fear of losing jobs is tied to a world in which we have to work to survive, and so if we shift that mindset to something else, then something else becomes available. I think one of the main issues around technology, and this is where I’m really interested in helping more people in the collective consciousness, like in the wider public, reawaken their imaginative capacity, is that the way AI is being brought out into the world is to reinforce toxic systems that aren’t helping the average person, right. So, it’s to create profit for big corporations, it’s to fund and fuel systems that don’t actually liberate people, right. So, what would it look like if AI was in service to, you know, people and their liberation and their ability to live more richer, fuller, fulfilling lives, so you have to question the genesis of the technology and where it’s coming from and who’s controlling how it’s being rolled out into the world, except the technology itself can do so many different things, right? So

Maria Ross 07:51

it is, and I’ve had many AI innovators on this show. Someone that’s coming to mind is Michelle Zhao, from she’s the founder and CEO of a company called Juji, which creates empathic AI solutions for industries and companies where they don’t have enough people, and it’s instead of being about pattern matching, it’s about discovering the anomalies, and got, you know, things like college guidance counselors or things of that nature that can really just help probe people with the right questions to find their own path, right.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 08:23

Yep,

Maria Ross 08:23

and I remember, you know, before I started talking to all these AI folks, I tend to be a Luddite, I’m a late adopter, even though I worked in tech for many years. Yeah, and I’ve been the one that’s been like, ooh, I don’t know, and she was the one that kind of turned me around, her and another woman I interviewed, Corey Lathan, who calls herself a techno optimist,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 08:41

yes,

Maria Ross 08:41

they got me convinced of we all have to get involved with this technology, because if we don’t, the bad actors take over.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 08:49

I think that’s very true, and if

Maria Ross 08:51

we want to ensure that it’s embedded for the good of humanity, then all of us should be jumping in and trying to, you know, populate the learning models and doing all the 100% Yeah, so I love learning

Aubrey Morgan Yee 09:02

from us, you know, they’re learning from us as we learn with them. So, if we’re approaching them with empathetic relational ways of being, then we change the actual way that the technology operates,

Maria Ross 09:12

for sure. And, yeah, not leaving it to, you know, the reason there is bias, the reason that there’s the challenges there are, is because only a small subset of people have been involved in the creation and the population of these tools and technologies, and so the more that we can get involved and say, well, no, there’s another way, there’s ethics we can talk about, there’s values we can talk about, the better it’ll be for all of us. So I want to, you know, kind of riffing off of that, I want to talk a little bit about your work with indigenous frameworks and what that tells us about technology, time, trust, leadership. Explain to us how those worlds fit together and what maybe a modern leader listening to this, who might be about to change the podcast. Because they think this is going to go woo woo. Tell us, how it actually really fits together for the benefit of leaders and organizations.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 10:07

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so you know, indigenous mind is just a way of being. I grew up in Hawaii, so that’s where it, you know, I think for me it’s a very grounding understanding that there are ways of thinking about what it means to be human, what it means to be a leader, what it means to be in business. What you know, a Native Hawaiian friend of mine, who’s an amazing leader, come well at you know, he was sharing with me because he now runs the Hawaii Office of Innovation at the University of Hawaii, and he’s doing it from an indigenous perspective, and he said, you know, our ancestors had incredible technologies, the Hawaiian Palace, Iolani Palace, one of the first places to have electricity in the whole United States, so there’s not like a separation between technology and indigenous ways of thinking, and indigenous ways of being are technologies, right? So they’re just earth-based technologies, they’re ways of understanding how to work with the natural landscape that we’ve been given, and our connection to earth, and our understanding of our capacity as earthlings, so I think there’s a way in which thinking of them as separate, it’s not actually separate, they’re one in the same, and so leadership itself, when it’s empathetic and adaptive, is coming from that place of understanding the interconnectivity of all of us, right, so that we’re actually, we’re not separate, we’re actually all interconnected, and we’re coming from that perspective of seeing that interconnectivity as a strength and our ability to collaborate, so for example, in the Hawaiian way of being, for many years was sustainable with very little outside contact, because they had a system of agriculture called the Ahu Pua, and it was from mountains to the sea, and each part of the island was broken up into a pie-shaped structure that was based on watersheds, everyone had their piece, so if you manage, say, the banana patches, and someone else managed the fish farming down at the ocean, and you traded between each other, so each person had their area of specialization and expertise, and then there was a leader, or an elite, or a chief that oversaw that whole operation, but if they weren’t doing a good job, people could leave and move, so there was a way it was democratic as well, so like, if you didn’t like what was happening, you could move, but there was a collaboration that was happening that was beautiful and elegant, and played to everybody’s strengths and their responsibility, and allowed for this sustainability that was close to 1000 years, supporting what they believe may have been a similar number of people who currently live in the state, so if you think about that level of efficiency and capacity with very little outside input in the most isolated islands in the world, there’s something happening there that’s a deeper intelligence that I think is important for leaders to pay attention to.

Maria Ross 12:30

I love it. I mean, especially that idea of every, every person, every player owning their part, and you know, empathy is the fuel that enables all those people to understand each other and see things from that other perspective and be willing to find common ground or find an alternative way to accomplish something rather than this is me and mine, right, and I only care about me and mine, but to be able to look at the bigger picture and say, hey, we’re all working on this together, we all don’t have to be the same because we can’t, we wouldn’t be able to bring different strengths and perspectives to the table to actually accomplish what we need to accomplish, and that’s the whole underpinning of, of why diversity works in an organization.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 13:13

Yeah,

Maria Ross 13:14

having those differences is great, but you can’t stop there, because if you don’t have empathy, you don’t want to understand the differences, you don’t want to understand the other points of view, so you need that, you know, it’s like it’s the lubricant, it’s the fuel that makes it all the fascia, right? Exactly, yeah, the fascia, I love that.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 13:32

Yeah,

Maria Ross 13:33

so I want to talk a little bit, because you had, you have a personal experience, and I know that you have talked about this personal collapse and what it taught you about empathetic leadership and starting again. Would you mind sharing that with

Aubrey Morgan Yee 13:49

us? Yeah, so like there’s been a couple, which one would it be? Each one, yeah, yeah, no, maybe the most recent in like moving from my, my last position and becoming sober and that whole experience. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the most recent collapses. Becoming alcohol-free was a really beautiful understanding of the ways in which my actual hyper empathy of really feeling the world and feeling in some ways unable to manage and cope with feeling all that was happening around me, and using alcohol as a numbing agent for that, coming through that, and realizing that there were other ways that I could use, you know, breath and the ability to really look at what’s happening in the world from a perspective of like my own inner safety and sanctity, and not needing to use outside, whether it’s alcohol, social media, whatever it is that you might be using to kind of numb out, there’s so much happening right now, especially in this moment, we’re just totally overwhelmed with information, so for me it was just a really like taking that out of the picture and saying, okay, what is it that I need to be whole within myself and able to bridge this gap and face the world as it is and be actually a really useful agent of change, and that has radically altered my way of being in my life, and I’ve become. Infinitely more productive, and actually able to sit with, you know, the troubles of the world from this perspective of if we have collectives and we’re working together and we’re using this empathetic form of leadership that allows for people to be in community with each other as we face some of these big challenges, and you know, relying on our diversity and seeing that we all have a part to play, and it’s not my job to save the world, that was the other thing I was really burdened with, was like, “Oh my god, I’ve got to save the world, and it’s like, “No, nobody’s going to do that by themselves. Yeah, you know, but we have this in this sort of individualistic culture, there’s this belief that I’m never doing enough, you know. So, if you can really take a step back and, like, like quell the numbing, allow yourself to really start to feel and see that if I’m doing my part really well and with integrity and then I’m aligning myself with others who are doing their part really well with integrity and together we’re working short towards shared and common goals that’s a much more empowered place to be coming from so that’s yeah wow been a great one for me that has a lot for also freedom, you know, and a free of rest and right relaxation,

Maria Ross 16:05

right? Yeah, and thank you for sharing that with us, and for anyone listening who, who wants to get to that place that you are coming to,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 16:15

yeah,

Maria Ross 16:16

but doesn’t have that collapse. Is there a way or a road that you would recommend to them, of how to embrace that, like, I don’t know, that it’s like when they say, oh, artists have to be suffering in order to create great art, I don’t believe that, right, I

Aubrey Morgan Yee 16:30

don’t either,

Maria Ross 16:31

and so you know, for someone that’s like, well, how do I get there without the, you know, life-changing thing, I almost died from a brain aneurysm years ago, and I had a life-changing moment, but I also try to share ways and lessons, so that you don’t have to have a brain aneurysm to embrace some of these models. So, for you, where would you say folks that want to get to that point of stopping the numbing, reaching out, being a more collaborative, empathetic, heart-centered leader? What are some ways that you could offer for them to get there?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 17:05

Yeah, I mean, I think there’s so many different tools nowadays, too. You know, so figuring out those ways and where and how you might be, you know, checking out from your life and really starting to pay attention to gratitude for the moments that you have, because I think gratitude is like a really grounding force that helps us remember the impermanence of our life, you know, because we’re only here for a short time, and we actually don’t even know how long that is, as you experienced, you know, hopefully not everyone has to go through that moment of really facing that so starkly, and yet that is the one universal truth, right? So, how can you really get grateful for the moment that you’re in? Start to notice the people around you. One of the things I really love to do, too, is just in my daily life try to connect on a human level with the people you run into everywhere you go, you know? Like TSA lines, one of my favorites, because that just has to be the hardest job, right? I mean, it’s like it’s like not that interesting. People are mad at you, like it’s kind of a bummer. It’s, you know, it’s the weird hours, like I can only imagine, and for a while they weren’t even getting paid, you know, when the whole government shutdown happened. So I approach those kinds of situations, and I offer this as something to try with, like your heart fully open, and really like try to engage with people, catch their eye, say hello, offer a compliment, find a way to like connect with their heart, yeah, really see them as a human, and as you start to do more of those just daily practices, do it in your workplace, maybe someone that you don’t otherwise feel connected to, who might even bother you, like try to actually connect with them. It just starts to open your capacity to see that there’s so much humanity out there that we’re not paying attention to when we’re not seeing each other as humans, you know. Yeah, and when we open our heart that way, it changes everything.

Maria Ross 18:42

Well, and it’s so funny, because before I ever called it like a gratitude practice, or even, you know, consciously knew what I was doing, I would always have a better day when I had a quick exchange with the barista,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 18:54

yes, or said

Maria Ross 18:55

hi, you know, waved hi to the garbage collectors as their truck drives by, and that was just more like in that moment, in that day, I had capacity, I was in a good mood, I felt like sharing it, and then the days when I’m not, the days where I feel broken down, when I feel depleted, now, as you know, a 50 plus person, yeah, I take myself to those things, because it actually does change my mood, and it changed my changes my perspective of at least this has gone right today, right? At least I made that person smile, and it’s so funny that you say that, because my 11 year old said to me one time, ‘Mom, why do you have to talk to everybody? I don’t, I’m not the like the jibber jabber at the checkout line, but you know, I will just engage, or he’ll say, ‘Who was that? and I’m like, I don’t know, they were just someone I was passing the parking lot that I, yeah, said something to where I like your sweater, or whatever it was. We had a moment, right, and I tried to explain to him, I was like, Honey, you need to connect with people, like,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 19:52

yeah,

Maria Ross 19:52

you’re out in the world and you’re humans in the world, and you don’t know if, like, you just smiling at that person is, if you have the capacity to do that. At maybe they need that on that day, and hopefully somebody does that for you on a day that you don’t feel like smiling,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 20:06

exactly.

Maria Ross 20:06

So,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 20:07

yeah,

Maria Ross 20:07

I just.. I love, and then all the, you know, in my later years, I found out that’s a thing, that’s a strategy, totally.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 20:13

Yeah,

Maria Ross 20:14

but it does work, it does it. I don’t know why, but it just does. It does uplift you, yeah.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 20:20

It helps you to see that there is always something to feel grateful about, even in the hardest moments, and, like, you said, if you’re having a hard day, it might be someone else paying it back towards you, right? So, it’s like, it doesn’t mean you always have to do that, but I had a funny experience where, like, recently I spilled the cacao in my car, and it’s like dark chocolate, right, and it’s like, honestly, and my husband’s, I love that you spilled

Maria Ross 20:39

the cacao, not, yeah, and like the evidence, it’s the, yeah,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 20:43

and I looked at my husband, and I was like, well, think of all the times I’ve drank a cow in the car and didn’t spill it, you know, and it was like just a perspective shift of, yeah, I could either be upset about this or I could clean it up and go, well, that happened, you know, and it’s like just letting things be like that, yeah, I also saw a thing recently that said, you know, the opposite of paranoia is pronoia, and it’s actually a term, and it means the belief that the universe is always working in your favor. So, I’m like, okay, you know what? If I get to tell myself a story, why don’t I tell that story? Much better. Yeah, I never

Maria Ross 21:12

heard that term before, and I’m totally stealing it. It’s like, even if

Aubrey Morgan Yee 21:15

things go wrong, there’s something in there that’s a lesson, or it’s leading to something else. This might feel really awful, but then the next thing that comes couldn’t have happened because of that thing, right? You know, so it’s yeah, perspective.

Maria Ross 21:28

And this is where I get into the work I do now, because we spend the bulk of our time, many of us spend the bulk of our time at work, and so we don’t have to just apply these things to our lives in the off hours, like we should be bringing this into the office, and this is why

Aubrey Morgan Yee 21:41

absolutely joy

Maria Ross 21:42

is like the fifth pillar of my framework, because it’s about these, these little moments, these happy accidents, these these moments of discovery, or moments of shared, you know, shared, not shared trauma, I don’t want to say it that way, but shared challenge, right? Yeah, can we find the levity even when the work is hard, right, can we find the levity in our world and the joy in our world, even though there’s so many other things going wrong, and I don’t know for sure if this is connected, but when you talk about the indigenous mindset and the indigenous spirit, it feels to me, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, like that is so closely aligned with this idea of sort of, you have free will, but everything happens for a reason, and everything can be a learning opportunity, and that’s not Pollyanna, that’s actually just what other response can there be,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 22:33

totally. And then it’s all connected, and joy is part of, you know, the revolution, you know, it’s like joy is necessary, even when you’re feeling like, for you know, indigenous peoples who are oppressed for centuries, joy was a form of like bringing the community back together, joy and celebration, even in the hard times. Yeah, there’s celebration and there’s joy. And I think the other piece, too, is there’s a real strong sense of the communal body of like the community, whether it’s the workplace, the home place, the actual community being like there is you, there’s me, and then there’s the we, and they’re all operating at the same time, so it’s not, you know, again, like in many ways we’ve been taught in Western dominant culture to be individualistic, and what this is saying is, no, actually, there’s a we that when we focus on that communal body and think about what does the we need, what does the business need what does this community need? What does this, you know, organization need, right? In addition to each of us, and because we’re part of it all together, that shift in mentality can really make it more enjoyable experience and more successful.

Maria Ross 23:33

Well, and I think that’s where clarity comes into play, too, of being really clear on what is our mission and what is our purpose, whether it’s an organization or a community or a family, right? What’s our north star?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 23:43

Totally, do

Maria Ross 23:44

we all know where we’re going? So, when we trip and fall, we can still get up again and know that we’re heading in the right direction.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 23:51

Yeah,

Maria Ross 23:52

and you know, the companies that I’ve researched and profiled, and the teams that I’ve profiled, they have a very clear sense of where they’re going, even if, and this is the funny part, or the interesting part, I should say, even when leaders create micro cultures within a dysfunctional organization at large, you can create this little island, you can create this, this little community that’s like, hey, we’re going to be there for each other, and I mean, you know, you can think later about if you all want to be at that organization, but you don’t have to wait for it to come from a CEO of a large organization. If you are a leader, and we’re kind of all leaders, right, we all have a sphere of influence, but if you are in this environment where you can impact that group to be like we are a community, I think that’s that’s the wisdom and that’s the lesson we get from indigenous communities, and Mike, I have a question for you. This is kind of.. we’re kind of.. I know we’re going all over the place, but I’m just.. I’m loving this with you. Do you think that our country, and I know we have listeners all over, but the United States can ever get to a point where we’re less individualistic and more. Communal focused,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 25:01

I’m an optimist, so I say yes. I don’t think it’s something that could happen overnight, although I do believe in radical remission. I think it happens in the body, it could happen in the social body, it’s totally possible. And I think there’s a strong movement towards us. I think actually technology could really help, and is in some ways, you know, it’s the double-edged sword, right? Yeah, we’re so interconnected, and we’re so interconnected, so it’s like we never turn off the devices, and yet we’re able, like you and I are able to have this conversation that never could have happened right a few years ago. So there’s there’s something there that I think, and I think there really is in the younger generations this greater understanding of we’re in this together.

Maria Ross 25:38

Yeah,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 25:39

and again, it’s like there’s all of it. There’s the challenge of technology and the separation it creates, and too much screen time, and all that. And yet I see this pulse in the younger generation of really believing that there’s something else coming. So I mean, it would require a lot of shift and change, but I do believe that it’s possible. And that’s where I think the work of alternative and preferred futures is really important, because the more we start to articulate these shared visions and really share them out more widely, and get people actually believing that it’s possible, so much of what you know happens that we call impossible becomes possible because of belief. So, if the shared belief is there and the desire is there,

Maria Ross 26:17

yeah,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 26:17

and empathy is a key piece of that, you know, because compassion and empathy helps us to see that we’re in this, we’re in this together. I believe that’s possible, but I am an optimist, but I believe in gospel

Maria Ross 26:29

too. And I love hearing it from someone who’s kind of studied this, and yeah, is looking at that. I think

Aubrey Morgan Yee 26:34

you know, I think when things fall apart, we actually come together. You know, people that I hear a lot of people like the fear of things falling apart. I actually think when things fall apart, it’s when we band together the strongest, because we realize, like, oh, we’re actually facing something big, like, we need to look who’s next to me, can we lock arms,

Maria Ross 26:50

right?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 26:50

Can we walk through this storm? You know, my friend, who’s an elder, Pat McCabe, an amazing indigenous elder, she talked about the buffalo, and so for the Dene people, the buffalo, and the myth of the buffalo, and the understanding of the buffalo as an animal was when the storms would come, the buffalo would come side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and walk straight into the storm, because they knew if they were together, walking into the storm, they had a better chance of getting through it quickly and with less, less suffering. So, I think that’s kind of, you know, the metaphor of them is, how do we get closer to each other and really like shoulder to shoulder and walk through rather than trying to run in different directions. So,

Maria Ross 27:28

I just got chills when you said that. That is just that’s what I hope, and it’s like I said, it’s not Pollyanna, it’s not a pipe dream. We have, we have enough data and research to show us that,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 27:38

yeah,

Maria Ross 27:39

collaborative is a better way to go than competitive, and I know you have some thoughts on that.

Aubrey Morgan Yee 27:44

Yes, absolutely. I think collaboration is the highest manifestation of what we, you know, think of as the competitive human spirit. But actually, just recently asked another dear friend of mine who does a lot of work with peace and climate justice, and she started something called the Institute for Climate and Peace with some other folks, and they looked a lot at this idea of, you know, we’re talking about collaboration and sort of community building and peace building as a response and a way to mitigate climate change. So, I think there’s this way in which, when we start to see that, you know, again, back to this idea of each of us holding a key to this really big puzzle, and the diversity, you know, look at biology, diversity is everything, right. Diversity is the strength of an ecosystem. It’s the same for us, and the issue, or one of the issues, I think that is really one to face, is that our modern schooling system tends to create more sameness rather than enforcing and celebrating diversity in the 100% sort of public school experience.

Maria Ross 28:41

Yes,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 28:41

and we’ve got to shift that, because that teaches us that, you know, I’ve got to out compete my classmates, I’ve got to memorize everything and get the test right. When actually we should be saying, okay, what are the skill sets in the room? Who’s really good at what? And then how do we collaboratively look at projects together? Some schools do that, but I think that’s really like the key is to understand that we’re each holding a piece, and if we work together and understand each other, really listen closely, pay attention, respect each other, all of those skills of empathy and human connection, we can do huge things, you know. So, yeah, yeah, collaboration is everything. And so I’m really interested. One of the organizations I work with right now is called Project Bio, and our mission is radical collaboration. So we’re really looking at this idea of what does it look like to radically collaborate, which we’re defining as, you know, working across perceived boundary lines, so for-profit, nonprofit, together, yeah, people who government working with community, like, yeah, places where people don’t normally cross, and seeing how you can, like, really merge and start together with shared goals and shared outcomes.

Maria Ross 29:42

Did you ever read the book Citizens? I am going to put a link in the show notes. I haven’t mentioned it in a couple years, but I read it a few years ago, and it was just this profile of different cities and towns and organizations that collaborated with government, and they even profiled a 10. Town somewhere in Asia, I can’t remember where. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book. That’s why they fared so well during the pandemic is because the government kind of collaborated with the people, versus, you know, here’s what we should do. We don’t know the answers, and it’s such great examples of those kinds of shared partnerships of nonprofits coming together with government and bringing the populace along with them, the other people, and that’s why it’s called, it’s more, he talks about it more of like the citizen economy, totally, it’s not, it’s not democracy, it’s not whatever, it’s citizenry,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 30:33

yeah, that totally makes sense, and yeah, you know, when I was much younger, and I was an entrepreneur, and I started a furniture business, an interior design business, my whole focus was like, okay, let me figure out who else is doing this right, and then how can we each do it just a little bit differently, and then share resources and work together, right? You know, versus seeing a competitor, someone you have to like outperform, right? It’s like, what are.. how do we create a unique identity, right? So we can both coexist but still be successful, and then support each other in our growing success, right? And I think that can happen in so many different realms, but we tend to have this belief that, you know, we’re supposed.. there’s scarcity not enough for everybody, so we have to compete for exactly.. I just don’t think that’s true. No,

Maria Ross 31:11

I don’t think it’s true either. And when I back in my brand strategy days as a consultant and an entrepreneur in that realm, I used to call that co-opetition, and it was who’s serving the same audience,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 31:23

yeah,

Maria Ross 31:23

in a slightly different way, and that’s the whole element of brand, is I might be seemingly doing the same thing you’re doing, but I’m not, I’m doing it in a different way, and there’s going to be people that are right for me, or people that are right for you, and hey, what if we co-created something together to serve all of these people, right. Totally exactly. Oh my gosh, I love it. So, can you tell me how a lot of your work is around emotional intelligence systems thinking, obviously indigenous systems? How do emotional presence and cultural storytelling shape organizations? How does that, that combination impact outcomes? I mean, and you can pull from your, your leadership,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 32:07

sure, yeah, work

Maria Ross 32:09

too, but, but can you explain for us? I mean, I think a lot of us are like, yeah, that makes sense, that that would work together, but how does it work together?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 32:16

Yeah, I’ll use maybe the systems thinking and systems mapping, because that was a really powerful tool set that we, I still use in a variety of ways, and actually do now narrative-led systems change, which brings in the storytelling aspect, but you know, any, any sort of work around systems is coming from the deep understanding that we are awash in complex adaptive living systems that are structural, that are around us everywhere, you know, everything from, like, you know, very obviously, like we were talking about the education system, but it can, it can be much more subtle systems that we exist within, and they’re all interacting, and they have these feedback loops, and they’re affecting one another. And so, when we were working with leadership development, and looking, you know, how do you affect something like the future of the state of Hawaii, and the systemic change that we want to see, having to dive into those systems is a collaborative exercise. It requires presence, it requires empathy, it requires, you know, being in the room with people that you wouldn’t normally be with. And so, for example, if we were working on a systems map of something like homelessness, it requires having a homeless person in the room doing an exercise with a politician, right? And how often is that happening, right? But it’s building the empathy across the system, where people can see that there isn’t actually like we tend to want to fall into these binaries, like there’s good people and bad people, there’s someone in charge who’s doing a bad thing, and we’ve got to fix that. It’s actually, unfortunately, much more complex than that. Yeah, and so you know, taking the step back with the system’s lens and seeing that actually there’s all these forces at play, and there’s no one person, and everyone actually has pretty good intentions, and yet the system is designed to produce the results we’re seeing. So, if we all can agree that we actually don’t like the results that we’re seeing, and we’d like something different, then we can start to look into, okay, well, what’s my part in keeping this system in place that maybe I wasn’t even aware of, right? And what’s your part, and how are we overlapping each other that we didn’t see before? Right, we actually would go through these really beautiful facilitated exercises to map that out and start to see the way that different forces were affecting each other, and then untangle that,

Maria Ross 34:14

and then what’s the role of storytelling in that? Is that more about obviously we need to feed the emotional and the logical parts of our brain, and so data and research is great, but do the stories bring it to life when people are actually sharing their experiences?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 34:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s multiple levels. So, storytelling, I think, is just so powerful and potent. It’s the way we make meaning as human beings. So, in facilitated exercises, storytelling becomes an empathy-building exercise, because it’s like, tell the story of this feedback loop that you’ve noticed in the system, and someone will tell a personal story of their experience, of whether it’s like a policy experience or something they experience in their workplace that then repeats a pattern that creates the system that produces a result we don’t want to see. So there’s storytelling from that perspective, and then there’s the narrative led systems change work that I do that actually. Helps us to see that narratives and story themselves are complex, adaptive, and alive, and that they travel through culture. So we tell ourselves a story every day of the way that work looks, the way that humans interact, you know. We tell ourselves some people tell a story that human beings are a cancer on the earth, other people tell a story that human beings are of earth, and that we’re here to actually be, you know, part of earth’s regeneration. Some people tell the story that that work should be really hard. Other people tell a story that, like, actually works be really joyful. Those two stories create different realities. Yes, and they start to infect our ability to understand how we live our lives. So, I think story is actually a very, very powerful and potent matter of change, and so I think about that a lot, and actually wrote a bit in the book about, you know, sort of needing new myths for this time on earth as humans, because we’re we’re relying upon myths and stories that don’t fit necessarily anymore, or mate, are producing systems that we don’t like, that don’t you know, increase our joy, so yeah,

Maria Ross 36:04

they worked for us for a while. Yes, you know, my work is about the leadership paradigm has changed, and

Aubrey Morgan Yee 36:09

yeah,

Maria Ross 36:10

not that it was bad or good, it’s different now. We need a different paradigm. We’ve got to move from command and control to, you know, instead of power over partnering with our teams and our organizations, and it doesn’t mean we’re coddling anybody. It’s just our problems are much more complex than they used to be, and so what worked before doesn’t work with the problems we’re facing today. And that’s that’s the narrative that a lot of leaders have a hard time with, and I have empathy for them, of like, well, wait a minute, you’re telling me the rules I’ve followed for the last 30 years to get to where I am today. Now you’re telling me, oh, we talk about emotions at work, we talk about what’s going on, and I understand the confusion, and I understand that, like, but this is the way, this is how I got to where I am, and now you’re pulling the rug out from under me. So, yeah, we need to be tender with those people and say it’s not a personal indictment that you adopted that paradigm, because everybody did, but the paradigm evolves. We, my husband always says, like, we learn and we get better, whenever he’s hears like something about, like, well, they used to do it this way, and he’s like, that’s why people learn and evolve, and so it’s, but it’s hard for people to let go, because if they’ve clung to those narratives for so long that have created those systems, it’s almost like you’re telling them to their house is part of identity, you’re burning down their house, right?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 37:31

Yeah, yeah, say that you know a lot of leadership is grief counseling, yeah, because it’s helping people realize there’s something that needs to be let go of, and yes, it didn’t change, and I also, we do this really great exercise called the two loops of systems change, and it’s speaking to that, where it’s helping people see that systems are always changing, and there’s always a system going out and a system coming in, and it doesn’t mean the one going out was bad and the one coming in was good, it’s just that was the previous world and it had good and bad, and this is the new world, and it has good and bad, but and we’re all on a spectrum of that, coming in and going out, and so we’ll actually put tape on the floor and have people position themselves where they are in the system, if they’re, you know, sort of in the old system or if they’re in the new system, and where they are on those lines, then and then actually build empathy by partnering up with people from other parts of the system and saying, like, what do you need from me to do your job well, what do you think of me from your position, and really get to understand, like across those lines, from someone who’s on the innovation spectrum of the new system, what do they need from the person who’s still in the old system? Because they actually do something from each other, and they have something they can offer, right? You know, all needed and necessary, and one’s not better than the other. No, it’s just we’re in a constant process of change, because

Maria Ross 38:41

it is helpful to know why things were done the way they were done, and how did we get here? Like, it’s helpful, there’s always something around that story completely, because you want to figure out what was good about that, that you can still carry, call it

Aubrey Morgan Yee 38:53

composting, it’s like, what are the, what’s the good compost from the stuff that we’re putting in the compost bin that’s going to create great soil, yeah, for what’s coming next, yeah, and that’s useful, you know. So, it’s not.. it’s not a, yeah, it’s not an either or.

Maria Ross 39:06

I love this. So, what are some of the ways that you have helped teams navigate change and get comfortable with change, given yeah, the lens that you do your work through?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 39:16

Yeah, the things I like to think about is it’s sort of like a three part, ideally, if you know, you can get people. Sometimes people change things happen fast, and they don’t have the time to really sit with the process. But ideally, if you’re able to really sit with the process, that lets you do sort of the historical research to get to the systems change, the system as it is, like sort of what brought us to, you know, for example, like I’ve worked with the public utility in Hawaii, so it’s like understanding how do we get to a point where we have this massive public utility that you know oversees the whole state, like what were the parts and pieces that led to this moment, what’s the system at play, the good and the bad, like not how we want it to be, but exactly how it is, like a clear-eyed vision of the current moment, then moving into the futures, thinking, okay, so we know what is now. Now,

Maria Ross 40:00

what is the

Aubrey Morgan Yee 40:01

future that we’re envisioning that actually is like the renewable energy future or the diversified energy future, whatever it might be. Let’s co-vision that and really articulate it. And then between those two, there’s always a gap, right? There’s like, here’s where we are today, that’s where we want to be. How in the world are we going to get there? And that’s where design thinking as a modality really comes in to co-create the pathways through, and things like theory, you is another great facilitation technique I like to use that helps people co-craft new futures and pathways to get there, but it’s, it’s really that taking the time to understand how we got to where we are, where we actually are, right where we want to go, and then what can we co-design together to move towards that new future,

Maria Ross 40:40

I love that. As we kind of wrap up, I just want to, you know, point out your book, Our Beloved Futures, and you talk about it as a call to reimagine what it means to be fully human. Can you talk about what you want people to get out of that book? What do you hope leaders and people that can influence in whatever sphere of influence they have the future of work. What do you hope they get out of

Aubrey Morgan Yee 41:07

it? I think what that is, is the beauty of being human. You know, when we look at something like AI and all the technologies we have, they don’t even approximate in any way, shape or form the incredible immensity of what the human body and biology and consciousness is, and so it’s, it’s a yes, and it’s yes, let’s embrace technology, and let’s not forget the like gift of what it is to be human, and to really lean into that, because I believe that the technologies we’re given in our physical body, and our brain, and our gut, and our heart, you know, there’s all this work around heart coherence and heart math, and we’re just barely scratching the surface of the incredible nature of our biology, so to not lose sight of that in the face of all this, you know, oncoming technology that’s that sometimes we can be mistaken almost for gods, right? Like, it’s sort of like we get this, you know, starry-eyed, like, oh my gosh, it’s going to do everything for us, it’s like, no, actually, we’re still here, right, and so, so what does it look like to reconnect with what it means to be human together in a workplace to really see each other as humans, and then come from that perspective of how might we bring technology into this field to support our humanness,

Maria Ross 42:14

right? So

Aubrey Morgan Yee 42:15

that we can actually enjoy our life more as earthlings of earth on this incredibly gorgeous planet that’s amazing, you know, like, let’s not forget where we are, you know, and that’s, I think, my hope and my prayer for the book is that people will remember that aspect of ourselves and also remember that our imagination is our superpower, and that we can, you know, like, the optimism to me is just the capacity to imagine, I can see what’s possible, right, if more of us are seeing in that direction, we have a much better chance of getting there.

Maria Ross 42:43

I love it, Aubrey. Thank you so much. I could talk to you longer, but we have to wrap up. I will put all your links in the show notes, but for anyone that’s on the go right now, where’s the best place they can find out more about the work and the book?

Aubrey Morgan Yee 42:56

Sure, so Our Beloved futures.com is my website, and then my Instagram is Aubrey Morgan Yee, I have a lot of stuff there, I’m always posting about the book, and

Maria Ross 43:05

amazing,

Aubrey Morgan Yee 43:06

yeah, so that’s a great place to go too.

Maria Ross 43:08

Okay, amazing. Thank you so much for all these insights today, and such a, such a thought-provoking conversation. I loved

Aubrey Morgan Yee 43:14

it. I appreciate all the work that you do, it’s really important.

Maria Ross 43:17

And thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate, review, and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit The Empathy edge.com There you can listen to past episodes, access show notes, and free resources. Book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower use it to make your work and the world a better place.

Cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™

What Does It Mean to Be Human? Ep 1: The Aware Animal

Self-Awareness, Consciousness & the Brain That Knows Itself

What does it mean to be aware that you exist? In this first episode of the What Does It Mean to Be Human? subseries, Maria Ross and Rob Volpe dig into one of the most profound and surprisingly unsettled questions in science and philosophy: what makes human consciousness distinct from every other species on the planet — and why does that question matter more urgently now than ever before?

From the evolutionary leap of the prefrontal cortex, to Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey’s field evidence of chimp and gorilla emotional lives, to Michael Pollan’s exploration of “the hard problem” of consciousness, Maria and Rob explore the idea that humans aren’t running a different program than other animals — we’re running a souped-up version of largely the same one. And yet something tipped. Something made us capable of recursive self-awareness: knowing that we exist, wondering why, and imagining how others see us. What was that tipping point? And can any technology ever cross it?

To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.

“People interact with AI as though there is a human behind it, because it communicates, and I think that’s part of the danger that we’re running into.” — Rob Volpe

Episode References:

Jane Goodall Institute: Now We Must Redefine Man, or Accept Chimpanzees as Humans? https://news.janegoodall.org/2019/07/24/now-we-must-redefine-man-or-accept-chimpanzees-ashumans/
PNAS Study on Human vs. Chimp Brain Connectivity: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1818512116
The Conversation: What Makes the Human Brain Unique? https://theconversation.com/what-makes-the-human-brain-unique-we-compared-it-with-monkeys-and-apes-to-find-out-252331
Michael Pollan: A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness https://michaelpollan.com/books/a-world-appears/
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist: https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist
The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Confessions/Paul-Bradley-Carr/9781668074411

About Maria Ross and Rob Volpe:

Maria Ross:

Maria Ross is a speaker, author, empathy strategist, and host of The Empathy Edge podcast, now in its sixth year. She believes cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive™, and has spent decades helping leaders balance empathy with accountability to drive better results, stronger teams, and lasting impact. She is the author of four books, including the award-winning The Empathy Dilemma, a Forbes.com contributor on Workplace Empathy, and creator of two LinkedIn Learning empathy courses. Her work has been featured on NPR, MSNBC, Inc., and Fast Company, and she has spoken for TEDx, The 3% Conference, SIM Women, BlogHer, and organizations such as Google, Salesforce, TBWA/Worldwide, Stanford, and New York Life. A brain aneurysm survivor whose recovery deepened her understanding of empathy at its most human, she lives in Northern California with her husband, son, rescue Bully named Bean, seven chickens, and a gecko named Harold.

About Rob Volpe:

Rob Volpe is the Founder/CEO of Empathy Activist and the creator of The 5 Steps to Empathy, which he chronicles in his award-winning book Tell Me More About That: Solving the Empathy Crisis One Conversation at a Time. He is a recognized thought leader, speaker, and consultant in the improvement of communication and collaboration in organizations of all sizes in all industries. He is a graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and lives in San Francisco with his husband and 3 cats. Learn more at his website: www.robvolpe.expert or follow on Instagram @Empathy_Activist.

Connect with Rob Volpe:

Website: robvolpe.expert

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rmvolpe