Try This at Home

Take a shower (or bath). Research backs up this approach.

Happiness Hack

I’ve discovered the chaffle (cheese-waffle)! Delicious, low-carb if you’re a low-carb eater like me, easy, weirdly filling, and fast.

I bought this Aicok Waffle Maker, but any waffle-maker will do, I’m sure. People also recommend the $15 Dash Mini Maker.

Interview with Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell’s books are consistently #1 New York Times bestsellers—books like The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and David and Goliath. They’re all fascinating investigations into surprising new concepts about human nature.

Malcolm is also the host of the blockbuster podcast Revisionist History and his music podcast Broken Record.

His latest book is—no surprise—generating a tremendous amount of buzz. It’s called Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know. In his classic style, he starts with the question, “What happens when we have to deal with the unfamiliar?” He draws examples from the stories of Neville Chamberlain, Bernie Madoff, Amanda Knox, Sylvia Plath, Sandra Bland, and others to illustrate the argument that strangers are not easy. The tools and strategies we use to make sense of strangers are often flawed—and we’re often weak in just the areas where we think we’re strong.

Malcolm mentions the work of Tim Levine, for instance, Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception.

Malcolm’s Try This at Home

Have time in silence.

I mention the wonderful book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. 

Elizabeth’s Demerit

This is episode 241, and many episodes ago, Elizabeth committed to report on how she’s doing with her #6 goal for 2019. Short version: she hasn’t made as much progress as she’d hoped to do. 

Gretchen’s Gold Star

I give a gold star to Seattle—the city of flowers! When we were in Seattle for a live event, we loved seeing so many people walking around with bouquets of flowers.