00:01:35.580Those days are few and far between, but they do exist.
00:01:38.500And I think we all need them because we could all use a little bit more self-love in our lives.
00:01:44.880Today, we're talking to Olga about the things we can do to actually change our personalities.
00:01:49.420personalities. We're going to get into the myth that personality is a thing that's set like
00:01:54.860plaster, and the other big myth, right? The one that we're doomed to be just like our parents.
00:02:01.260Olga now believes that with a little bit of work, you can actually nudge your personality in a more
00:02:05.820positive direction in as little as a few weeks. And I've got to say that when I heard this,
00:02:11.600I was curious. I wanted to know if it was possible. Could I be a better version of me
00:02:17.300in less than a month? Let's find out. Hi, Olga. Hi. Big question right off the bat.
00:02:27.540Can I actually change my personality? I think you can as long as you really want to do it and
00:02:33.920as long as you take steps and create new habits that you do every day. Okay. I wonder that because
00:02:41.440I look at my kids sometimes and I think, oh my God, you were fully formed from the second that
00:02:48.380you came out of my body. My son came out, he was thoughtful. He was absorbing everything around him
00:02:57.640and that is how he is as a seven-year-old. And my daughter came out and stared me right in the eye
00:03:02.840and was like, it's you and me against the world, bitch. And she remains like that. So I'm just so1.00
00:03:08.740curious about how much our personalities are formed and how much we can choose to change them.
00:03:16.820So about 40 to 60 percent of our personalities are kind of inherited. Doesn't mean they're exactly
00:03:23.580the same as our parents, but it just means that they kind of come from our genes. So that's
00:03:29.220probably what you're noticing with your kids is that like that 40 to 60 percent has just been
00:03:33.280super consistent for them and has shown up in different ways. But there's, you know, that other
00:03:38.22040 to 60 percent, that is sort of amorphously determined. It's up to your environment. It's up
00:03:44.600to your upbringing, whether you go to college, what kind of job you have, who your friends are,
00:03:50.160who your spouse is, and some of the things that you actually do every day. So in effect, like the
00:03:57.240measures that you take in order to change your personality or to shape your personality.
00:04:01.160so what role do habits play in this because habits are something that we choose right
00:04:09.640habits are a big part of it and in fact a lot of the personality change process is basically like
00:04:16.600forming new habits so things like meditating or making a weekly kind of like standing dinner with
00:04:23.580some friends or gratitude journaling was like another one that i came across but a lot of it
00:04:29.240is also kind of mindset and the stories that you tell yourself because a big part of this especially
00:04:36.340with things like neuroticism is that you kind of have to like want to become less neurotic and
00:04:42.000believe that you can become less neurotic in order for it to actually work like you kind of have to
00:04:47.700change some of the mental stories that you tell yourself which is a little bit different than
00:04:52.480habit formation which is just purely like checking things off the to-do list well and this was your
00:04:58.960personal crisis slash journey you you liked your life right but but you were you weren't totally
00:05:07.660happy with what you describe as your neurotic personality what what do what do you mean by a
00:05:12.600neurotic personality like are we full Seinfeld here um I've actually never seen Seinfeld but
00:05:18.600so many people have recommended that show to me I was like just missed the cutoff for Seinfeld I
00:05:23.460think I was like 12 when it ended or something but yeah similar to that I I think basically I
00:05:28.280i had a really good life especially now if i just like describe you know some of the things that
00:05:33.120happened on like one of the days where i was like i have to do this i have to change my personality
00:05:37.680like i got a bad haircut but i had a whole like two hours to get a haircut by myself like this
00:05:44.840is before i had a kid um you know yeah no no more yeah like i would love a bad haircut now um you
00:05:51.320know i went to get photos taken and the photos didn't look very good i got stuck in traffic
00:05:56.220But it was like kind of days like that would really grind me down.
00:06:01.520Like I would have these really intense negative reactions to things that were like pretty minor and small in the scheme of things.
00:06:08.820And I noticed that it was kind of getting in the way of me enjoying my life and appreciating what I had.
00:06:15.360Like my life would get better, but I wouldn't really notice because I was still fixated on, you know, some of the negatives and the kind of petty injustices that my neuroticism would point out to me.
00:06:26.220Okay, fair, fair. Well, and I think a lot of us get kind of stuck in that cycle, right? Like, it's often hard to enjoy the good parts of our life because we focus so much on the negative things.
00:06:40.040Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And that is neuroticism. I mean, it's, you know, it's the trait that's
00:06:44.640associated with depression and anxiety. And basically, the way those two happen is that you
00:06:49.960you start like kind of negative thought spirals and you fixate on negative thoughts as opposed to
00:06:55.560positive thoughts. Which I think a lot of us are doing lately. Yeah. I mean, this feels like this
00:07:01.980book is coming out at the right time because I am actually, I don't think I'm that neurotic of a
00:07:08.860person. And yet, and yet, and yet, and yet, the world right now makes me feel neurotic and I am
00:07:14.940doom spiraling. So the idea that this is something that I can change is very attractive to me right
00:07:21.860now. Yeah. And I just, I mean, along with that, like a lot of people, I guess just to call a
00:07:28.080spade a spade you're talking about the trump administration i'm yeah i'm just talking about
00:07:31.600the world actually the world generally i mean yes the trump administration but even like not even
00:07:37.880the trump of it all elon of it all uh actually has me more terrified than the trump of it all
00:07:44.060uh and then you know the fact that the planet's burning down yeah and i mean and a lot of that
00:07:49.220is rational and like one thing i i don't want to do with this book is like try to tell people that
00:07:54.580anytime they feel bad, it's all in their heads. In fact, like a lot of managing anxiety or
00:08:02.540neuroticism, whatever you want to call it, is in kind of learning how to live with it as opposed
00:08:07.580to push against it all the time. So, I mean, you are going to feel anxiety because bad things are
00:08:14.860going to happen. In the words of my meditation teacher, things happen that we don't like.
00:08:19.960And it's normal to feel anxiety about those things or to feel depressed when they happen.
00:08:24.580But it's all about like what those emotions can teach you or what you do with those emotions.
00:08:29.420And are you able to, you know, live with those emotions and still, you know, enjoy your life?
00:08:36.080Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I think figuring out how to how to live with those emotions, you kind of embarked on a grand experiment, which I look, I love a book where you try something for a year.
00:08:49.480I really do. I am a huge fan of AJ Jacobs. Just love it. I love it. What did you do for a year
00:08:58.800to try to change your personality? So I really worked on three traits. I worked on extroversion,
00:09:05.600increasing it. Increasing extroversion. Okay. Yeah. I worked on reducing neuroticism. So
00:09:11.800increasing emotional stability. And I worked on increasing agreeableness. And I tried a whole
00:09:18.420host of things for extroversion it can basically be summed up as um just going to stuff like i went
00:09:25.080to sailing i went to improv i went to meetup groups i just went out a lot more than i had been
00:09:30.620you showed up i showed up you showed up yes uh for neuroticism it can basically be summarized
00:09:38.160as meditating like all different kinds of meditation every kind of meditation that
00:09:42.700you have heard of i have tried uh not all of it successfully um and then agreeableness was really
00:09:48.060like a whole bunch of different things. Um, I, I did a anger management workshop. I went to a
00:09:54.240conversation workshop in London and I volunteered for agreeableness. Um, so a big part of agreeableness
00:10:01.100is like giving back to your community. So I did that. Um, yeah, so I did, I did a bunch of stuff.
00:10:07.060You did a bunch of stuff. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back,
00:10:18.060Okay, we're back. This is a year where you have committed to trying to change your personality.
00:10:26.540How did it work for you? And also, how did it work for your family?
00:10:30.580Yeah, for me, I would say the ones that really worked were increasing extroversion,
00:10:39.660which honestly, like, I just did not realize that I needed way more social interaction than I was
00:10:46.320getting i thought that because i identified as an introvert what would be most replenishing for me
00:10:52.860is to was was just kind of be by myself a lot and when i felt bad to like be by myself even more
00:10:59.480but actually what i really needed was to like get out more and get out of my head more and
00:11:05.560doing things like improv though it would always sound nightmarish before i like began it honestly
00:11:13.400kind of forced me to stop like dwelling on myself and my problem um and i think that in the end kind
00:11:20.700of did make me a lot happier uh in a weird way for neuroticism it also worked but um my anxiety
00:11:29.180was still very high even after i had been meditating for months and months for like almost
00:11:34.660an hour a day but my depression really went down my depression score um so that did work but in
00:11:42.140kind of a strange way. And then my agreeableness also went up, but mostly because my trust in
00:11:49.640other people went up by a lot. Oh, all right. So how and how did you measure all of this?
00:11:55.280I was taking personality tests created by one of the researchers that I interviewed for this,
00:12:00.000whose name is Nate Hudson, and his personality testing website is personalityassessor.com.
00:12:06.420All right. Now, I mean, now we all know what we're doing with our afternoons,
00:12:09.980because i have never met a personality test that i do not like yeah yeah it's great he has all
00:12:16.420different kinds and the one i was mostly doing um was like the ip ip 120 or something but he has
00:12:23.220a bunch of different ones okay okay and so how did this impact your family you know i don't
00:12:30.920no journalist or author works alone in a closet as much as i would love to some of the time i mean
00:12:38.720How was how was this for the people around you? Because I know that a lot of journalists that embark on this kind of experiential, experimental work end up annoying the hell out of their out of their spouses.
00:12:49.640this um i think my spouse liked that i was doing it um and appreciated some of the changes that he
00:12:57.360saw i think like honestly one thing that it got me um that really like weirdly prepared me for
00:13:05.060from a family kind of point of view is that it got me ready to have a child um and sort of toward
00:13:11.180the end of my reporting of the book is um when i got pregnant and oh wow okay so this is a full
00:13:17.240full-on journey in so many different ways yes uh yeah it kind of like made me feel okay about
00:13:23.520becoming a parent um in a in a weird way it's still kind of hard to qualify or quantify why
00:13:29.700that happened i think i think both of those words work yes yeah like it sort of just like made me
00:13:34.500feel like um more okay with uncertainty and like losing control um which i think was the part of
00:13:41.520parenthood that scared me the most yeah i mean that is the part of parenthood that is the worst
00:13:49.280for me right up there with the fact that they don't let me go to the bathroom alone that part
00:13:54.520is hard that's hard it's just not talked about enough is the problem i really want to shine a
00:14:02.200light you ever got to like pee while holding oh yeah oh yeah that's a unique experience i've i've
00:14:11.460done both i've done number one and two while holding a child um and it was it was it was
00:14:17.660shocking uh the first time the first time i did it and then it became pretty standard but no it's
00:14:23.240more than just every single morning just there there they are standing there's three of them
00:14:29.260standing in front of me. Hey. Hi. Good morning. And I'm like, can I have privacy? And they're
00:14:35.480like, no, no, no. I just I just I just want to spotlight this challenge because we talk about
00:14:43.560a lot of things as moms that are hard, but not this. Not enough. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. But I will
00:14:51.040say, especially with my first one, it was the uncertainty that I think was so terrifying because
00:14:57.140you're you're constantly googling and you're you're terrified that something can go wrong at
00:15:02.360any moment by the time you get around to three you you are just kind of rolling with it you're like
00:15:07.300they they bounce um very often when when when they tumble onto the floor uh their kids are kids are
00:15:15.560wildly resilient uh but you don't believe that as as a first-time mom so i and i don't know if
00:15:21.940anything could have changed that for me so it's very interesting that you know this kind of
00:15:27.140going through this process for you kind of prepared you to parent in a different way
00:15:34.240yeah and i think uh particularly so this meditation class that i took like we did meditate a lot and
00:15:41.520a lot of it was just straight up like sitting there breathing yeah but a lot of it was also
00:15:46.000um sort of like these teachings from buddhism or like i don't even want to say from buddhism
00:15:50.600because it was definitely like watered down to make it palatable for americans so i'd never
00:15:55.780commercialized medicine yeah like yeah like it was definitely like this will be comprehensible
00:16:04.220to you um and but it was and i was it was honestly like just really nice i don't want to say it was
00:16:10.560like therapy but it was like a really nice like different way of looking at things um i had always
00:16:15.460had a lot of self-blame when things would go wrong in my life and a lot of what that class that i now
00:16:23.880realize that I change was I kind of stopped blaming myself when, as my meditation teacher
00:16:30.560said, things happen that you don't like. I kind of, it got me away from feeling like it was always my
00:16:37.440responsibility to make them go right. And I think that was like a really crucial thing in the lead
00:16:42.720up to having a child because so little of the time does everything go right. And if you think
00:16:49.860it's always your fault when it doesn't. Like you're just not going to make it through like
00:16:53.440any given Tuesday. You really won't. You really won't. One of the things that I'm so curious
00:17:00.740about that you dove into in the book is acting happy even when you're not happy, which is
00:17:06.260something that I do a lot in front of my kids. You know, it's like I do a lot of performative
00:17:10.600happiness in front of them. Again, because you can't be sobbing in front of your children
00:17:16.200all the time. I do believe we should show our children the full spectrum of our emotions,
00:17:20.540but I know that I cloak a lot of them. Does pretending to be happy actually make you happier?
00:17:28.000Yeah, I mean, it depends on how you're pretending to be happier. Like, I think the strongest
00:17:34.300research on that would be pretending to be an extrovert does seem to make you a little bit
00:17:41.760happier mostly because it kind of forces you to go interact with other people and even if those
00:17:48.480interactions are not like smile plastered on your face like happy happy joy joy like even if you're
00:17:54.520just like kind of chatting or making small talk or um catching up or like whatever you're doing
00:18:00.440um that still there's like a mood boost from being around other people from relating to other people
00:18:06.460um so when i think like i i'm i i'm sure that i use that phrase somewhere but i probably should
00:18:14.080have been more precise um it's more about kind of like um getting out and being with others um and
00:18:21.100and more so than it is like um faking being happy like by by like trying to um brute force some
00:18:31.640emotions that you don't feel. Right, right. Which I do on a daily basis. Well, that brings me to
00:18:38.820another point that we talk about a lot in the show. Americans do seem to be in a loneliness
00:18:45.920epidemic. And so a lot of this change seems to come from getting out, from having in real life
00:18:54.060conversations, from being in community. And I talk to a lot of people who are worried that
00:19:01.560that's hard. I talk to a lot of people who don't know how to find new community, how to find new
00:19:08.060friends. What did you discover about that? So, yeah, this is hard. I'm not going to sugarcoat
00:19:13.900that. It was hard then. It's harder now because all my time is taken up by a tiny being. But I
00:19:22.280I mean, so one thing I would recommend is just to sign up for something that you can't get out of.
00:19:27.740So be it a class or an activity or just something where you're going to see the same group of people over and over again regularly.
00:19:36.220That's going to be a lot more reliable and a better source of like potential connections than trying to make like plans with a group of people kind of amorphously and anyone can back out at any time.
00:19:49.260time um or have it be like a set thing where it's like we all get together at you know on
00:19:54.240mondays at five or whatever um uh so that kind of thing um i also like honestly had luck with
00:20:01.320the app bumble bff wait what is bumble bff bumble bff is a app for making platonic friends
00:20:09.800especially for women like i think there is a male version of it but it's mostly like a thing for
00:20:15.940women and I did I made a friend on Bumble BFF like we're still friends you made a friend on
00:20:21.800Bumble BFF like I mean I just kind of need to know everything about that yeah I so I signed
00:20:30.660it for Bumble BFF a lot of the my friend dates were a little weird um like a friend date does
00:20:37.640seem kind of weird to me although I will say you and I as parents you do have to do new friend dates
00:20:43.060because you you have the play dates where the people come over to your house and that is a
00:20:47.480new friend date in a lot of ways oh yeah yeah so it's like a play date except you don't have
00:20:52.320okay right or just like yeah brunch date with a random person um it's a little strange like we
00:20:58.880didn't have much in common or just like i felt like we kind of whatever it like like normal dates
00:21:03.740like after like a couple hours you sort of you feel it petering out um but yeah there was like
00:21:10.160one woman alex who i felt like we really hit it off and she's like super nice and great and we
00:21:15.040still get together and hang out all the time um wild wild that the world works like this now
00:21:21.200yeah so i i don't know i i mean it sounds really cheesy and hokey and like if you go into it with
00:21:26.000an attitude of like this will never work it's cheesy and hokey yeah like then probably you
00:21:31.880won't find anyone but like you know like what is the world if not bumblebee fff like you know
00:21:37.240anytime you're making new friends like you have to start somewhere you know totally totally and
00:21:43.060I mean that that also kind of feels like the ethos ethos of the whole book to me which is
00:21:49.560you have to go into a lot of these things with an open mind because you just never know you just
00:21:53.840never know when you're going to meet your new best friend or when you when you're going to
00:21:59.740meet your person uh you know for people who are single so I think kind of the openness to new
00:22:06.200experiences might be the thing that is a catalyst for changing our personality yeah well and it's
00:22:13.620interesting because openness to experiences is is a personality trait um it's kind of a strange one
00:22:19.260it's um basically like so yeah how open you are to new experiences um but it's also like how much
00:22:26.480you like like abstract art and how creative you are and whether you like poetry um things like
00:22:33.540that it's it's very strongly correlated with uh being a liberal politically um uh so yeah so i i
00:22:40.140am actually i already was very open to experiences when i started the this uh project and i kind of
00:22:47.540remain very open um so for that one i kind of interviewed other people who had increased their
00:22:53.300openness in various ways and i also traveled a lot um which is like one of the the ways to
00:22:58.540increase on openness but yeah it definitely helps like if you're thinking about something like this
00:23:02.800If you are kind of up for new things in my conversations with people about this project, like the people who are like, this will never work.
00:23:10.240I wouldn't want to do this. Like this sucks. Like, no, no, no.0.87
00:25:32.040And I thought this story was fascinating.
00:25:34.540I just shared it with a bunch of people about why people feel nostalgic for terrible times.
00:25:39.680And you are focusing on people, you know, missing the first few months of the pandemic. I think about this a lot when people get nostalgic for, you know, Laura Ingalls Wilder homesteading times, which were awful, which were just patently a terrible time to be alive as a human being. Tell me a little bit about what you discovered while writing this story.
00:26:01.880yeah i mean it seems kind of counterintuitive because like you might think that people would
00:26:07.980want to never revisit like really difficult experiences um but even uh researchers who
00:26:13.980study people who live through like the depression uh find that even those people get really you know
00:26:18.920nostalgic for their their childhood during the depression um and it basically comes down to the
00:26:23.760fact that um sometimes those really tough experiences are kind of like make us who we are
00:26:29.480like we they kind of like prove our metal to ourselves and so we actually don't really want
00:26:35.860to forget them because it's a little bit of a kind of a badge of honor um that we live through
00:26:41.280them and it it gives us meaning that we went through that so an example this is like everyone
00:26:47.300you know has uh who's had a baby knows that the first few months are really bad when it comes to
00:26:53.560sleep they're really awful i i say that i say this all the time i despise the newborn phase
00:27:02.540i have had three children who i love so much but i hate newborn babies i just don't like them i
00:27:08.780don't they're just just little little aliens who are exhausted yeah but it's like but you've had
00:27:16.100three of them right so like often like people go through that really really horrible phase
00:27:20.940where like uh you're no one's smiling at you they just have this like screaming little person who
00:27:27.560never sleeps and um you know they go they go back and do it again because there's something about
00:27:32.620that that you're like yeah i can do it and it does it is a meaningful time of your life even
00:27:38.480if it's not one that you would like to revisit and the same with like birth stories like i think
00:27:42.500i've told my birth story to like random like the mailman i'm like want to hear my birth story um
00:27:48.120and like why do we do that and it's because no one's birth story is like and then two pushes and
00:27:53.380he was just came out and like and then it was beautiful like it was it's almost always like
00:27:59.500something really like something something messed up happened yeah almost every time exactly but
00:28:08.100you're like kind of proud that you lived through it right and that you still like you know in some
00:28:12.400cases like went back for more with kids um so i don't know was it pride or is it nostalgia that's
00:28:18.260what i'm curious about right because i i do think that we're proud when we get through hard things
00:28:24.000but would we necessarily want to live in it again i would not give birth again for anything this is
00:28:30.240why i made my husband get fixed i was like we're done with that phase of our life then it's over
00:28:35.120yeah i mean it's interesting i don't know if the nostalgia like if the definition of that is like
00:28:40.360wanting to live through it again i think it's more just like calling it to mind fondly um and i
00:28:48.200honestly i i do kind of get that because i had a really really bad birth experience i had an
00:28:53.280emergency c-section but i still like catch myself looking at pictures of the day like after they
00:28:59.240cleaned me off and cleaned him up like uh you know and being like so cute oh look how small he was
00:29:04.660you know and like that day i remember just being like oh my god oh my god oh my god you know i
00:29:09.880definitely it was the scariest day of my life like i definitely would not want to relive it but
00:29:14.140um i yeah i don't know it's it's something about you can still maybe feel the warm fuzzies about
00:29:19.040part of it yeah i do i do feel i i do feel nostalgic for it on some level yeah yeah no i
00:29:25.440i do feel that and again i i think another interesting way of looking at it is the vacations
00:29:31.340or the travel that i talk about the most are the ones that went horrifically wrong
00:29:36.100yeah they were terrible right um i mean they make for the best stories even wait my kids are just
00:29:43.140starting to remember nuggets of things that happen when we travel and one of them is that my daughter
00:29:48.400ran straight into like one of the subway turnstiles and the dc subway just like didn't see it just
00:29:54.540face like three stooges physical comedy and yeah i mean she was fine she was she wasn't hurt that
00:30:00.520is the story my children tell all the time they're like remember when we were in dc and they just ran
00:30:04.160into the subway thing and i was like yeah and they're like that was the best trip ever yeah
00:30:08.540because it like it like sticks out in their mind is like whoa that happened um what happened that
00:30:13.520was crazy or it was or they're like remember when it was 95 degrees and we went to the coliseum
00:30:18.340and we all almost died of dehydration and i'm like yeah they're like crazy yeah yeah i mean
00:30:25.180that's funny and like i noticed that too with my colleagues like i don't know past jobs or whatever
00:30:29.760like getting together with people uh who we used to all work together and like the first thing
00:30:34.780anyone brings up is like remember that horrible boss and like remember that horrible project we
00:30:39.440all had to do and like oh my god we had to work until like 2 a.m or whatever like you know and
00:30:44.180i feel like everyone does that because there's like a sense of like bonding through adversity
00:30:49.220in that yeah yeah exactly exactly it's like we got through this as a family and those kind of
00:30:54.900become core memories for my kids. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There's one more Atlantic
00:31:01.700story that I'm going to bug you about right now because it is in my wheelhouse. And I think you
00:31:06.620probably know which one it is. It is the doomed to be a trad wife. Can a marriage ever truly be equal1.00
00:31:12.500story? I think about this all the time. I, my marriage, I, we, we struggle every day to try
00:31:23.520to have an equal marriage and every day there is a failure at trying and sometimes I do look at1.00
00:31:30.060these trad wives and think maybe it would be easier if I didn't have to try if you if you had a role1.00
00:31:36.780and I had a role and we didn't have to constantly redefine our roles every single day yeah I mean
00:31:44.820the trouble is like we both work so right I'm like trad wife plus because I do everything around
00:31:51.300the house plus i have a full-time job um so i mean that's that's the whole problem is like
00:31:56.520sometimes i look at like ballerina farm or whatever and i'm like honestly if all i had to
00:32:00.440do is make a loaf of bread all day maybe that would be fine like doing like but i have like
00:32:07.120so much stuff to do on top of cooking dinner you know i say this all the time i would kind of like
00:32:13.460one job like i'm like okay i i would either like to be and right right now i am the breadwinner
00:32:19.060in our family. My husband is still looking for a job. So I'm like, I would just like to be the
00:32:23.920person who works. And I want you to take care of all of the other stuff. Men are not set up for
00:32:28.080that. No, they're just not. OK, we've been trying. We've been working on this. I'm like, it's cool
00:32:33.500if you actually wanted to be a stay at home dad, if you want to take this time and do this.
00:32:38.240But that is not what he wants, nor is he particularly good at it.
00:32:42.800Yeah, I mean, you know, and I don't know what it is like, but I honestly heard from so many women
00:32:48.020after that article came out and it was surprising because it was people who were like this guy is my
00:32:53.360everything he's my forever valentine you are the best dad who like these women and their emails
00:33:00.740are like i hate my husband he doesn't do anything and i'm like yeah i don't know what it is but like
00:33:06.600everyone seems to have the same experience where like unless they leave explicit directions step
00:33:11.700by step, put on the blue onesie, then make the oatmeal, then, you know, it just doesn't get done.
00:33:19.200I have a great example from this morning. And again, I actually, I really like my husband
00:33:24.780a lot and he tries. He does. He does try hard. I think culturally we are not set up for women to
00:33:32.100not be doing all of the things. But this morning, my five-year-old stayed home from school. She had
00:33:37.500of fever. And it turns out that my seven-year-old must have left his lunchbox at school. And my
00:33:43.240husband's like, where are we going to pack his lunch? What are we going to do? You're going to
00:33:46.000have to have a brown bag. And I was like, she's not going to school. Take her lunchbox. Problem
00:33:52.700solved. And that was just one of many things throughout the day that I'm like, no, I want
00:34:02.120this to be to be your jam to be yeah but it's but it's not and it's not and i i do think it is part
00:34:08.820and parcel not an evolutionary thing for men like they're like genetically not better at that but
00:34:14.760the way they've been treated in the workplace too whereas women like i was constantly doing 15 jobs
00:34:19.540at work yeah i have the societal expectations like my son has like like a pt and like different like
00:34:28.000specialists and stuff and they all call me and like during appointments they only talk to me
00:34:33.160and like like if the nanny has a question she asked me i'm like if i disappeared what would
00:34:39.080you all do how would you treat this child like i was like what the focal point like no one has
00:34:45.640ever asked rich my husband a question about about our son's care um and i think it's just like this
00:34:51.780expectation that oh ask the mom the mom will know like the mom will do it like yeah it is an
00:34:56.540expectation and i love that you talk to eve rodsky who's one of my favorite people on the planet
00:35:00.020i love fair play and you know but the constant conversation that i'm having with all of my
00:35:06.680friends that i email eve about too uh and talk to my husband about is is it possible to get there
00:35:14.100and fair play helps and the cards help and the questions help but i still i still think it's
00:35:21.800tough that said i don't think the trad wife model is good for women so no yeah it's like it's like
00:35:28.040the saying about capitalism that i'm going to totally bungle you know it's the the best worst
00:35:33.620um system um i'm totally see i'm failing at this right now you know what i mean right um it's the
00:35:40.920it's the best system out of all terrible systems right like it's like i would prefer to have a
00:35:46.580marriage where I work, where I feel productive, where I enjoy what I do and also get to spend
00:35:53.640time with my kids. I think the only people that have it are the really fucking rich because they0.98
00:35:58.700have all the help, right? So like I have one very, very, very wealthy friend who not only has a nanny0.97
00:36:05.840but also has a house manager. So their house is spotless all of the time because it's someone
00:36:11.660just organizing the house and who and who makes the summer camp appointments. It's essentially
00:36:16.580you have a trad you pay a trad wife. Wow. That's so nice. Sorry. Yeah, I know. It's0.58
00:36:23.720probably nice, right? Sorry to be anti-feminist. I don't think that's anti-feminist. I don't think
00:36:29.200that's anti-feminist because it could also be a dude. OK, a dude who's very good at this kind of
00:36:33.540thing. And they're far between, but it could be a dude. And I was actually served a company on
00:36:39.500instagram that uh matches you with a house manager again who has an extra eighty thousand
00:36:45.860dollars a year to spend on said house manager but i do think the only people who have figured out
00:36:53.100this like equal marriage thing are the people who are throwing all of the stuff they don't want to
00:36:56.580do at someone else and paying them to do it oh yeah i mean that's like like i'm the only one
00:37:01.960who's ever bought my kid clothes like because i think it just doesn't realize when they're too
00:37:08.180small no no he doesn't see a hole yeah squeeze it on he's like still good but i'm like can someone
00:37:16.440come and like just see when he moves up from 12 months to 18 months and like reorder all the same
00:37:22.800stuff and then it's like so so i don't have i don't know i know it's a small problem but that's
00:37:27.420like one of like 800 things i have to do but it's not a small problem it is one of 800 things you
00:37:32.960know i mean along with organizing the utility drawer and i mean my everything and this is not0.67
00:37:37.460a bitch fest okay whatever it's a bitch fest um no one else in the house seems to see when things0.99
00:37:43.640are just on the floor like that yes to see picked up yes you just walk by that fucking thing like1.00
00:37:48.640that that rat lollipop wrapper did you just walk you didn't see it you just walked by it0.98
00:37:54.620and mick does dishes and he does laundry but i'm like also see the thing yeah carry up the stairs
00:38:01.700that i put on the stairs yeah like is there a fair play card for just like open your eye
00:38:07.040opening it. I'm not the only one who sees this. I mean, look, I think all marriage is hard and
00:38:17.480tough. And, you know, just getting back to the book, it has so much to do with our personalities
00:38:23.280going into this. And ours were fixed because we got married so late. I mean, I was 35 and Nick
00:38:27.740was like 41 or 42. So we were really set in our freaking ways, right? So to change a person at
00:38:34.060that point but i do think i do think personality change is possible i do think we've managed to
00:38:38.700change each other i'm never gonna get him to see this stuff on the floor i kind of like was hoping
00:38:45.820that rich would read the conscientiousness chapter and be like and now i'm inspired to be more
00:38:50.020conscientious but instead he just like was like oh good for those people and like went on throwing
00:38:55.360his underwear on the floor socks and underwear okay yeah yeah it's what i'm looking at them
00:39:01.460right now i'm looking at my husband's socks and underwear on the floor of our bedroom right now
00:39:05.260i'm like why could you put him away tell us where we can find more of your work which is so good in
00:39:13.420the atlantic i'm always sharing it and your book thank you thanks um uh my work is at theatlantic.com
00:39:20.060um and i also have a sub stack at olgahazan.substack.com um and my book is me but better
00:39:26.860and it's everywhere books are sold March 11.