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Shockingly, a lot

1:09

of people walking down the street do

1:12

think like, whoa, is that Tom Brady? I'm

1:15

Angela Duckworth. I'm Mike Mon. And

1:17

you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

1:20

Today

1:21

on the show, is obesity

1:23

a matter of nature or nurture? Wow,

1:26

we just got a gajillion genes

1:28

and got a gajillion experiences.

1:44

Angela, I'm so excited to talk to you about today's

1:46

question because it is

1:48

about something that is, I think, kind of taking

1:50

over the cultural zeitgeist right now.

1:52

Ooh, and what would that be? Taylor Swift? It

1:56

is about this new Wigovy-Ozempic

1:58

craze, which maybe you've heard about. There are all

2:00

these people using it to lose lots

2:02

of weight. Yes, I have heard of this miracle

2:05

drug. Well, so here's the deal. It's sort of

2:07

changing the face of obesity because

2:09

obesity has generally been viewed as an issue

2:12

of like personal responsibility. You don't move

2:14

enough. You don't eat right, stuff

2:16

like that. Right. I remember seeing these

2:18

headlines like this new drug shows

2:20

that it's not willpower, that really we should

2:22

think about weight as a medical

2:25

condition and it's not behavior

2:28

or motivation. Yeah,

2:29

so the idea is that for some people,

2:31

it's extremely difficult to lose weight probably

2:33

because of their biology. They maybe have this set

2:36

point that's naturally higher and

2:38

this medication helps shift that set

2:40

point. I mean, I've always dealt with weight

2:42

fluctuation. It made me curious to know where

2:44

my natural set point is or what

2:46

I can do to change it. So look, is

2:49

my weight totally genetic or

2:51

how much does my behavior matter if my

2:53

biology wants me to be a certain way? What

2:56

control do I have over

2:58

weight versus what control does biology have

3:00

over my weight?

3:01

I love this question, Mike, in part

3:04

because the nature nurture

3:07

question, like how much of who

3:09

I am is genetic? How much is

3:11

it that I was born this way and

3:14

how much of it is nurture, like my experiences

3:16

and my free will, just about obesity

3:19

and weight? This is about personality

3:22

and character and intelligence

3:24

and you could even

3:25

argue that this is about every aspect

3:28

of who we are. When it comes to weight though, I

3:30

sort of hate the idea that I'm

3:33

not responsible for it.

3:34

You hate the idea that you're not responsible

3:36

for it. Right, like I want to be able

3:38

to say that I can change it. The

3:40

reality is I should move more. I

3:43

should exercise more. I should make better choices.

3:46

I like the idea that I can control my own life,

3:48

but I also like the idea that,

3:51

oh, well, I guess no matter what I do, I can

3:54

blame my genes. You know, I

3:56

have a dear friend who eats whatever

3:59

they want. and will always

4:01

remain so skinny, and that

4:03

person hates that they're so skinny and they want

4:05

to gain weight. So obviously...

4:07

You're ambivalent because

4:08

on one hand, in a

4:10

way being exonerated from

4:12

weight issues by your genetic,

4:15

you know, the deck of cards that you're dealt,

4:18

the idea is that, oh, wow, that kind of lets me off

4:20

the hook. On the other hand, I think you have

4:22

an uncanny instinct for

4:25

any idea that is

4:27

going to enhance your sense of agency.

4:30

And that, by the way, Mike, has not gone up and

4:32

down over the whatever in 10 years that

4:34

I've known you. You really

4:36

like to have an internal locus of control. You

4:39

lean very hard into,

4:41

like, well, what can I do about this? I think

4:44

all of us have that. I mean, all of us want to

4:46

be forgiven our sins

4:48

or let off the hook for them and also

4:50

have an instinct that we should

4:52

probably take responsibility. And I think the

4:55

science on nature and nurture is

4:57

going to be helpful, but it's not going to be helpful

4:59

in a bumper sticker way. People so

5:02

often want, like, well, which is it? Nature

5:04

or nurture, like A or B. And if

5:06

they're willing to handle a little bit of nuance, they're

5:09

like, okay, fine, 70%, 30%. Right.

5:11

That's what I was going to go through because don't

5:13

most studies show that it is more

5:15

nature than nurture, but nurture

5:18

is how you maximize within the range

5:21

that you can change. Is that accurate or no?

5:23

It's a problem in how you phrase the question. Okay.

5:26

So this question of nature and nurture goes

5:28

back a long time, at least

5:30

to the mid 19th century

5:33

when people like Charles Darwin

5:35

and his cousin Francis Galton wondered,

5:38

like, why do people turn out the way they do?

5:40

And why is one leopard faster

5:43

than another leopard? But also why are, like, leopards

5:45

faster than, you know, aardvarks

5:47

or something like that? Of course, Darwin

5:50

and others of that time didn't have

5:53

modern genetics. So I'll fast forward

5:56

you to modern times and 20 years. The

6:01

research on this goes under

6:04

the title of behavioral genetics. So

6:06

behavioral genetics is a study of how genetics

6:09

influences our psychological development. And

6:12

the first thing I want to tell you is what's often called

6:14

the first law of behavioral genetics.

6:17

And that was a phrase coined by Eric Turkeimer,

6:20

who's a leading scholar in this field.

6:23

And I'll quote him so that I don't get it wrong.

6:26

So the first law of behavioral genetics is

6:28

that all human behavioral

6:30

traits are

6:31

heritable. Not just like height, eye color,

6:34

size of your feet, whatever, right?

6:37

It's my personality, whether I... Everything. I

6:40

mean, we have 23 pairs of chromosomes,

6:42

right?

6:42

We have DNA, and those

6:44

chromosomes have a code. And everything

6:47

about you has to in some way

6:49

be genetic in the sense that

6:52

your DNA are like coding for

6:54

certain proteins. And that's

6:56

why you were born a human and not an aardvark.

6:59

And my genes being different from your genes, Mike,

7:01

are partly why I'm me

7:04

and you're you. So when Turkeimer

7:06

says that the first law of behavioral genetics

7:09

is that all human behavioral traits are

7:11

heritable, you can by extension,

7:13

just with common sense, think, oh, yeah,

7:15

all traits

7:16

are heritable. It's so mind blowing because

7:18

if you think about, oh, I'm a happy person,

7:21

I'm a grateful person, I'm a motivated

7:23

person, I'm a hardworking person, all

7:26

of those things are things that you can

7:28

work on. And I hate the idea

7:30

that I am inherently either

7:32

grateful or ungrateful. I am either

7:34

happy or unhappy. But I

7:36

think what you're saying is there is maybe a baseline.

7:39

I know some people, I have this... I

7:41

call him my new life coach. He's not officially, but

7:43

this guy Vinny, he's the happiest

7:45

person. He's just happy. I feel like every

7:47

time I see him, it's a little bit like a puppy dog. And

7:50

he makes me happy because he's so happy. I

7:52

think that's probably inborn in him. sunshine

8:00

personified. You know, one day

8:03

she was like, Mom, it's 72 degrees. And

8:04

I was like,

8:07

Yeah, I know. She's like, isn't that a

8:09

great temperature? And I was like, Oh,

8:11

my God, I love

8:13

that. So who dealt you these

8:16

dispositional cards? So I

8:18

know what you mean when you meet people and

8:20

they seem to be naturally extroverted,

8:23

or naturally confident, or

8:25

naturally gritty. And

8:28

when you then hear the first law of behavioral

8:30

genetics is that all traits are

8:32

heritable, it does make you think, okay,

8:35

so much is inborn. But let me explain

8:37

further what Turkheimer, if he were

8:40

in this conversation, I think would want to impress

8:42

people with and that is that human development

8:45

is fundamentally nonlinear

8:49

and interactive. And that is another quote

8:51

from Turkheimer. So let me unpack it. Human

8:54

development is fundamentally nonlinear

8:56

and interactive. Okay, so you

8:59

are conceived when the sperm

9:01

and the egg come together, and there's a little

9:03

genetic deck that's dealt. And from that

9:06

moment on, there are these extraordinarily

9:09

complex, almost computationally

9:11

infinite interactions that happen

9:14

between genes and

9:16

between genes and environmental influences.

9:19

And it's like everything like your mom's

9:21

blood sugar on a certain day. And when

9:23

you are born, who holds you first

9:26

and then who your first grade teacher is and

9:28

who you get sat next to and whether

9:30

you trip and skin your knee in sixth

9:32

grade and whether your parents take

9:35

you to Spain or don't take you to Spain.

9:37

So there's just an uncountable number of

9:40

environmental influences that

9:43

interact with all of these

9:46

genes that you got dealt. And

9:48

one of the things that is

9:49

really hard to even

9:52

wrap a human mind around, I have found

9:54

it

9:54

hard to wrap my mind around. It's

9:57

just that because there's this soup

9:59

of

9:59

genes that you got and this uncountable

10:02

number of environment influences

10:05

and each gene and each environmental

10:08

influence probably has a teeny

10:10

tiny effect. But these effects

10:13

are like not just additive. They're

10:15

like interacting with each other. It's like, oh, and then this

10:17

happened. And then because this happened, something

10:19

else is going to happen. That's what Turkheimer

10:22

means by it being nonlinear

10:24

and interactive. It's like the weather.

10:26

You know, like you've ever heard that expression that

10:29

a butterfly flaps its wings in Houston and

10:31

there's

10:31

a tornado in Honduras. Yeah, it's a butterfly

10:33

effect.

10:34

It's basically a similar, not exactly

10:36

the same intuition, but like one event

10:39

among many will influence

10:41

this long-term outcome because

10:44

of all the things that it sets off.

10:45

I mean, if you're, we just went to children for a minute,

10:48

there's been for years this big debate

10:50

on breastfeeding or using formula

10:53

and all these people are like, guess what? Like I'm just

10:55

trying to survive. I just had a baby. How about you

10:57

back off and stop telling me how to feed my child?

11:00

It's enough to almost drive you crazy if you

11:02

think about it in too micro a level.

11:04

Yeah, I mean, it's true. When it's

11:06

hard, people tend just to shut down and

11:08

they're like, is it nature or nurture? Or how

11:11

much is nature and how much is nurture? Neither

11:13

of those phrasings actually makes sense

11:16

when you really understand how genetics work. So

11:18

when Turkheimer says, look, the first law of behavioral genetics

11:20

is that everything is to some extent heritable.

11:23

He's not saying it's fixed. He's not saying

11:25

it's genes or destiny. In fact, he's

11:28

saying the opposite, that development

11:30

is nonlinear and interactive. It's

11:32

so gosh darn complicated.

11:35

There's nothing about you that's easy to explain. I

11:38

mean, almost nothing. Eye color is an

11:40

extraordinarily common thing

11:42

that people think is genetic. And we,

11:45

at least I in elementary school was

11:47

assigned the family tree homework.

11:50

Did you ever have to do this where you have to like make a family

11:52

tree

11:52

of who's blue-eyed and who's brown-eyed?

11:55

I don't know if I had to do with eye color. I've certainly

11:57

made many a family tree. For school assignment?

12:00

Yes, for school. I don't often sit home

12:02

on Friday night and make family trees just for

12:04

fun. Well, by the way, when

12:06

you're Chinese, the whole family tree thing

12:09

where you're like,

12:09

please identify the eye

12:11

color of your grandparents and

12:13

your... I was like, easy cheesy lemon

12:16

squeezy brown. But

12:18

I bring up, you know, eye color because

12:20

when we were in elementary school, at least when I was

12:23

in elementary school, I was taught

12:25

that genes work in this very

12:27

simple way. Like if your mom

12:29

has blue eyes and your dad has

12:31

blue eyes, then you'll

12:32

have blue eyes and then, you know, you draw out these little

12:34

charts. Right. You make the little like quadrant

12:37

and it's the dominant recessive gene and you just do

12:39

your... Turns out that even things like eye

12:41

color have, I think, more than a dozen different genes.

12:44

So it's like not what they teach

12:46

in fourth grade. Hundreds of different genes

12:49

influence your disposition

12:52

to be heavier or lighter.

12:55

Every aspect of your genetic

12:57

makeup, which is super complicated, and every

12:59

aspect of your experience is super

13:01

complicated, they're all interacting. And

13:05

so, yeah, everything is genetic

13:07

or heritable in some sense. But

13:10

the reason

13:10

why you can do something about your

13:12

weight and your grit

13:14

and your extroversion and your honesty

13:16

is because development

13:19

unfolds

13:19

in that complicated way. Still

13:23

to come on No Stupid Questions, Mike

13:25

and Angela wonder if better understanding

13:28

of genetics

13:28

can help counter fat

13:30

shaming. There's so much I'll never know about

13:32

your DNA.

13:52

What else in mind is going a mile a minute

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16:45

back to Mike and Angela's conversation about

16:48

how nature and nurture shape your identity.

16:53

I think it's amazing when we see how much

16:56

change has been happening in the world as a

16:58

whole, and that leads to this question of

17:00

nature, nurture, all these things, right? I mean, when

17:02

you look at just the obesity statistics,

17:05

the worldwide prevalence of obesity

17:08

has nearly tripled between 1975 and 2016,

17:10

which obviously is not just because

17:14

everyone's genes suddenly change. That would

17:17

speak to sort of these environmental

17:19

or behavioral things that have come with

17:21

it. And there's a lot to be said about

17:23

the damage done by weight

17:26

stigma or weight bias for people who

17:28

are overweight, deal with a lot of negative verbal

17:30

commentaries, teasing, physical assault, eye

17:33

rolling, et cetera. You know,

17:34

I think there's a dimension of this that's super

17:36

interesting called genetic essentialism. What

17:38

the idea is is that we as human

17:40

beings have a tendency, quote, to

17:42

infer a person's characteristics and

17:44

behaviors as based on their

17:47

perceived genetic makeup. And

17:49

there are two scientists who

17:51

have made this observation, and their names

17:54

are Elon Darnimrod, who's

17:56

now a professor at the University of Sydney

17:59

in psychology, and. Steve Heine, who's

18:01

a professor of psychology at University of

18:03

British Columbia. So let me give

18:05

you a little quiz, Mike. They

18:08

have this scale called the genetic essentialist

18:10

tendency scale, and I won't redo all

18:12

of the items. But as I read

18:14

your statement, just tell me whether

18:16

you disagree or agree. Even

18:19

in an environment which encourages and nurtures

18:21

creative behavior, a person without

18:23

a genetic predisposition for creativity

18:26

will still be

18:27

uncreative.

18:29

Oh, I disagree with that. Okay.

18:31

An individual's particular behavior

18:34

is not changeable if it has a genetic

18:36

basis.

18:38

Strongly disagree.

18:40

I hate that idea.

18:42

And finally, most

18:44

irrelevant to

18:45

Ozempic and this conversation

18:47

about fat genes and what we can do

18:49

about them, a person with a genetic

18:51

predisposition for obesity

18:53

is destined to be fat.

18:56

I'm going to disagree.

19:00

I mean, I think that obviously

19:02

the likelihood is higher, but

19:05

I think you're not destined to be. Okay.

19:07

It's clear to me that you

19:10

recognize this tendency towards

19:12

genetic essentialism, but you counter

19:14

it in yourself, right?

19:15

You're like, I know it's not that simple.

19:17

Where I want to be careful here, though, is

19:19

that some people have genes

19:22

that probably – you'll tell me if I'm

19:24

wrong – are so maybe

19:26

extreme on one end of the scale or

19:28

another that I have

19:30

some friends who never lift weights and are

19:32

incredibly strong and toned

19:35

and whatever, right? There's extremities

19:37

on both ends where someone's genes

19:39

are so potentially extreme on

19:41

weight gain or weight loss or

19:44

obesity or whatnot that there

19:46

is probably very little you can do. Most

19:48

people, I would imagine, fall within a range

19:51

where there is at least more control. So

19:54

you're thinking that for most people, they fall somewhere

19:56

in between, but for the extremes, maybe

19:58

those are a kind of like genetic anomaly. I

20:00

would assume so. I mean, what I don't want to do is say,

20:04

because I think it is very dangerous, this

20:06

whole idea of weight shaming,

20:08

weight stigma, weight bias. And

20:10

I don't want to say that someone who's on maybe

20:12

a more extreme end, I'm not going to put all the responsibility

20:15

on their head. And I don't think the science would tell

20:17

us that, right? Well, you know, the first law

20:19

of behavioral genetics should prevent us from

20:22

saying that things are, you know, like totally

20:24

under the control

20:25

of your decisions. Because

20:28

if it's true that all traits are

20:31

genetically influenced, they're heritable, then you're

20:33

exactly right that like, it is a deck

20:35

of cards. And some of us inherit

20:38

hands with a lot of aces,

20:40

kings and queens. And some of us are like,

20:42

so do I do this like two of clubs, right?

20:44

But one of the reasons I got into the complexity just

20:47

now is that when it's

20:49

a lot of genes that influence one

20:51

of your traits, it's less likely

20:54

that you can point to your really muscular friend

20:57

and say like, it's just genes, because that really

20:59

suggests that like, he inherited a deck

21:02

of many, many, many, many genes

21:04

that were all tilting in the same way. And again,

21:06

I'm not saying there aren't people who are genetically

21:08

lucky and genetically unlucky, and you're so right,

21:11

that should help us not stigmatize. But

21:13

just because they're on the extreme doesn't

21:15

mean it's genetic. It could be that

21:18

there are environmental reasons that that

21:20

person is in the extreme of

21:22

the distribution. But it's not our first thought.

21:25

And I'm as guilty as anyone else. When I see somebody

21:27

who's like, Lucy, I'm like, Oh, my gosh,

21:30

what did you do to win the genetic lottery and happiness?

21:32

And I forget for a moment that

21:35

behavior and development

21:38

are these fundamentally like nonlinear

21:40

and interactive processes. And I can't

21:42

say, Oh, she just got yes, yes,

21:44

yes, yes, yes, on all the genes for happiness.

21:47

It absolutely could be some path

21:49

dependent development where yes,

21:52

her genes, but also her experiences

21:54

and her experiences interacting with her genes and her genes

21:56

interacting with each other and so on like

21:58

that produced this happiness.

21:59

disposition. Yeah, look

22:02

I think it's amazing and there's so much being

22:04

said right now, obviously in this conversation

22:06

about genetic essentialism, nature

22:08

and nurture, not nature or nurture,

22:11

but you know we started this conversation out talking

22:13

about weight loss. So look, we would both love

22:15

to hear from our listeners about your experience

22:18

with weight loss. Do you think that your

22:20

genetics made it harder? What would you modify

22:22

about your situation? So record

22:24

in a quiet place with your mouth close to the

22:26

phone and email it to nsq at freeconomics.com

22:30

and maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the

22:32

show. I'd love to share with

22:34

you a little story about

22:36

Bill Maher, who is a late night host,

22:39

and James Corden, also a late

22:41

night television host, recently

22:43

retired. But back in September

22:46

of 2019, Bill Maher on his HBO

22:48

show talked about fat shaming

22:51

and he basically said fat

22:53

shaming needs to make a comeback because

22:56

some amount of shame is good. And

22:58

you know there are a lot of people like me who I'm

23:01

healthy, I can bike a hundred miles, I can

23:03

go climb tall mountains, but like medically I

23:06

am classified as overweight. Now obviously

23:08

sometimes medically things don't work

23:10

super well because you know by some

23:13

of the classifications Tom Brady was considered

23:15

overweight because of his height and size

23:17

but he was muscular and whatever. So these

23:20

scales are all not scientific

23:22

and not perfect in any way, but generally

23:25

speaking, we always use this phrase fuzzy

23:27

math over time still shows trends, I

23:29

think generally speaking the metrics

23:31

work but they're not great in any

23:34

measure. So

23:34

like you're saying that you're not

23:36

just Tom Brady who is such

23:39

high-percentage muscle. Shockingly

23:42

a lot of people walking down the street

23:44

do think like, oh is that Tom Brady? Just

23:46

kidding.

23:47

Yeah you can easily get mistaken

23:49

for

23:49

Tom Brady. No one has ever thought that.

23:51

But BMI is just easy to calculate,

23:53

right? That's just you know a height

23:55

and weight that you can take in. BMI is a garbage

23:57

metric by almost all standards.

24:00

So Bill Maher on his show says, and

24:02

I quote, fat shaming needs to make a comeback

24:05

and that some amount of shame is good. So James Corden,

24:08

who's a British comedian, he's done the Late Late

24:10

Show in the US for years at this point,

24:12

he has since retired, is watching this

24:14

and James Corden is himself overweight.

24:16

And he said, he sat watching this

24:18

and thought, man, I wish someone with a

24:21

platform who's overweight could say

24:23

something about that. And then he's like, wait, that's me. And

24:26

this is what he said in sort of his

24:28

response, his monologue response to Bill Maher.

24:30

He just said, fat shaming never went anywhere.

24:33

Ask literally any fat person.

24:36

We're reminded all the time on airplanes,

24:38

on Instagram, when someone leaves a pie

24:40

on a window sill to cool and they give us a look, like,

24:42

don't you dare. Obviously he's joking

24:44

with this last part, but like he says

24:46

there's this common and insulting misconception

24:49

that fat people are stupid or lazy and

24:51

Corden says, we're not, we get it. We

24:53

know being overweight isn't good for us. He

24:55

said, I've struggled my entire life trying to manage

24:58

my weight. If making fun of fat people

25:00

made them lose weight, there would be no fat kids

25:02

in school and I've had a six pack right

25:04

now. And he ends by saying this to

25:06

Bill Maher. He says, when you're encouraging people

25:08

to think about what goes into their mouths, please

25:11

just think a little harder about what comes out

25:13

of yours.

25:14

Well, that's a really good phrase. I think

25:17

perhaps dragging you through

25:19

the mud of understanding

25:22

what nature and nurture

25:25

really are and making us who

25:27

we are. I mean, look, I don't know

25:29

if it's as good as what you just

25:30

said, but I hope it prevents us from

25:33

shaming anyone for anything. You don't know

25:35

about the uncountable number of

25:37

environmental experiences they've had. You

25:39

sure as hell don't know their

25:41

full genotype and what those implications

25:44

are. So maybe, and

25:46

this may be naive, but maybe

25:48

at least appreciating that we're

25:51

all really complicated and it's just

25:53

not a simple thing about you

25:56

were or weren't motivated. You do or don't

25:58

care about your weight. do

26:00

or don't have fat chains. Like it's super

26:03

complicated and what I do know

26:05

is that I have to order lunch today. So

26:07

what intentional decisions can I make? So you

26:10

know nothing about ozempic to me

26:13

made me think differently about nature nurture.

26:15

That had no bearing on this

26:17

like foundational complicated

26:20

question. It is settled. Nature

26:22

versus nurture is the wrong question. How

26:25

much nature, how much nurture is

26:27

also an oversimplified question. The

26:29

answer is nature and nurture

26:32

in a very very complicated

26:34

nonlinear interactive way and whatever

26:38

your

26:38

genes are

26:39

you always have something

26:42

that you can do and at the same time

26:44

whatever you do you're

26:45

always gonna have your genes. You know I

26:47

think the thing that's been most motivating to me

26:49

in terms of losing weight. I had a really good friend Michael

26:52

Katz who just came to me years ago

26:54

and he said I care about you and I want you to be

26:56

around for a long time. So I want you to

26:58

take better care of yourself and that

27:00

to me was a really powerful

27:03

external motivator that he wasn't

27:05

shaming me he was saying I care about you a

27:07

lot. I want you to be here. It's like the

27:09

opposite of shame in a way. Right because

27:12

it was this caring approach

27:14

to it I took it as he

27:16

wants to help me he wants me to be better he wants

27:19

me to be around to be an uncle to his kids

27:21

and everything else and that really

27:24

powerful effect on my desire

27:26

to not only believe that I could do something about

27:28

it but that I was going to get up and do that. I

27:30

mean this may be a bridge too far but

27:33

I'm gonna walk over it and see if it holds up which

27:35

is that I think really

27:37

understanding the complexity of how we become

27:40

who we are really having some

27:42

grasp on the fact that like wow you just got

27:44

the gajillion genes and gajillion

27:48

experiences and they all interact

27:50

with each other I do think it brings you

27:52

to a more enlightened place where you can

27:54

say to yourself and someone else

27:56

like there's so much I don't know about you there's

27:59

so much I'll never know your DNA and I do know

28:01

that I care about you. I want you

28:04

to be here and maybe I also

28:10

know that you have some control

28:12

over what you do and I have some control

28:14

over what I say. This

28:17

episode was produced by me, Rebecca

28:19

Lee Douglas, and now here's a fact

28:21

check of today's conversation. Angela

28:24

says that mapping out the eye

28:26

colors of her family tree was quote,

28:28

easy cheesy lemon squeezy because

28:31

all of the members of her Chinese family have

28:33

brown eyes. She likely meant

28:35

to say easy peasy lemon

28:38

squeezy, a phrase which reportedly

28:40

came from a 1950s British commercial

28:42

for the lemon scented soap squeezy.

28:45

That's it for the fact check. Before

28:47

we end today's show, let's hear some thoughts

28:50

about last week's episode on self-compassion.

28:52

Hi, my name's

28:55

Logan. I don't have a great answer for the question

28:57

of how I show myself compassion in chaotic

28:59

times. I'm still working on that. But

29:03

I do think there's a lot of benefit to

29:06

having a conversation with your friends about

29:08

the kind of things you say to yourself. I

29:11

decided to ask

29:13

one of my friends slash co-workers and she

29:15

feels she's very self-critical. You

29:18

know, we had a really nice conversation about it and

29:20

towards the end I mentioned to her, like, I have

29:22

the tendency to come home from work and think

29:24

about something dumb that I said or a

29:27

mistake that I made and say to myself

29:29

like, oh, you're f***ing moron. And she

29:31

looked at me and said, I would punch

29:33

somebody who said that to you. Honestly,

29:35

it made me tear up in the moment.

29:38

But since then, I anytime

29:41

I think to myself, oh, you're f***ing moron.

29:43

I

29:44

stop myself halfway through and I think

29:46

about that kind of conversation.

29:58

how

30:00

it relates to characteristics like weight. Send

30:03

a voice memo to nsq at Freakonomics.com

30:07

and you might hear your voice on the show. Coming

30:09

up

30:13

next week on No Stupid Questions, do

30:15

you have imposter syndrome? God

30:18

I am overrated, people are gonna find me out.

30:20

That's next week on No Stupid Questions.

30:22

No Stupid Questions

30:24

is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network

30:27

which also

30:27

includes Freakonomics Radio people

30:30

are mostly admire and the

30:32

economics of everyday things. All

30:35

our shows are produced by Stitcher and

30:37

Ren Red Radio. Lyric Bowditch

30:39

is our production associate. This

30:41

episode was mixed by Eleanor Osborne.

30:44

We had research assistance from Daniel Morris-Rabson.

30:48

Our theme song was composed by Louise Guerra.

30:50

You can follow us on Twitter at NSQ

30:53

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you have a question for a future episode

31:00

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Freakonomics.com. To learn

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more or to read episode transcripts

31:07

visit Freakonomics.com slash NSQ.

31:09

Thanks for listening.

31:13

So when you know like the hand

31:15

goes up in an audience that I'm speaking

31:17

to and they ask me is grit nature

31:20

or nurture and I have ten seconds

31:22

to answer the question I'm like

31:24

well it

31:26

takes all the grit you have not to

31:28

hit that person. The

31:34

Freakonomics Radio Network the

31:36

hidden side of everything. Stitcher.

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As

31:47

the weather warms Ohioans are

31:49

finding more ticks. Avoiding

31:51

tall grass and wearing light-colored

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long pants and long-sleeved shirts are

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just a few things you can do

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to protect yourself after being

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outdoors, be sure to check for

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ticks. And if you find any, remove

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them. And watch for any symptoms

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if you find any bites. For a

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full

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