Navigating uncertainty

Summary

TED Radio Hour – “Navigating Uncertainty”

Date: January 2, 2026
Host: Manoush Zomorodi (NPR)
Theme: Exploring how to navigate uncertainty—individually and collectively—with insight from medical clowns, psychologists, and an Icelandic writer on intuition.

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Main Theme Overview

This episode of TED Radio Hour tackles the pervasive feeling of uncertainty in today’s world by delving into real stories and research that show how we can find hope, connection, and clarity even in unpredictable times. Through conversations with medical clown Matt Wilson, psychologist Jamil Zaki, intuition researcher Rund Gunstansdottir, and human rights leader Yifat Susskind, the show examines how to sit with discomfort, transform our outlook, trust ourselves, and act with compassion, especially when the path forward isn’t clear.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Joy and Meaning in Uncertain Times: The Medical Clown’s Perspective

Guest: Matt Wilson, former medical clown
Segment: [00:43–13:00]

• Setting: Pediatric wing of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. Medical clowns from Healthy Humor interact with young patients and their families.
• Role of Medical Clowns:
  • Bringing play, lightness, and laughter into difficult clinical environments.
  • Using improvisation, nonverbal communication, and embodied movement to reach children facing pain and fear.
  • “The whole role of a medical clown is to reintroduce the sense of play and joy and trust and hope and light into a space that it doesn't normally inhabit.” – Matt Wilson [03:12]
• Research-Backed Benefits:
  • Reduced pain perception during procedures.
  • Improved sleep and well-being, especially for the elderly and those with autism.
• Embracing the Absurd:
  • Clowning is about “embracing the absurdity and sitting in it and sitting with it and mining it and finding it.” – Matt Wilson [05:54]
  • Not merely distraction, but accompaniment: “You're not actually trying to change the outcome...I am here to experience this with you.” – Matt Wilson [05:54]
• Memorable Story:
  • Accompanying a young child through a painful port flush, moving between laughter and suffering. The clowns provided “a source of power or control for the child while supporting the staff.” [07:38–08:56]
  • Long-term relationships sometimes develop, affirming the life-changing, yet transient, roles clowns play.

Notable Quote:
"Pain is pain and you're really not trying to distract from it. You're almost trying to accompany it." – Matt Wilson [05:54]

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2. Cynicism, Trust, and Hope: The Science of Social Connection

Guest: Dr. Jamil Zaki, Psychologist, Stanford University
Segment: [15:36–33:27]

• Uncertainty and Cynicism:
  • Uncertainty makes people crave control; cynicism offers “a sort of dark safety.” – Jamil Zaki [15:55]
  • Cynics often appear smarter due to the “cynical genius illusion” but are less accurate and less socially effective. [22:35–23:40]
• Downsides of Cynicism:
  • Associated with poorer physical health, psychological distress, and less satisfying relationships.
  • “Cynicism makes it harder to metabolize the calories of social life to receive nourishment from the people around us, which is tragic…” – Jamil Zaki [24:10]
• Cycles of Trust and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies:
  • Social environments (“ocean villages” vs. “lake towns”) shape the degree of trust and cooperation.
  • Trust begets trust, cynicism breeds selfishness and division.
• Hopeful Skepticism:
  • Skepticism is not cynicism: It means doubting assumptions, not people.
  • “Hope is the idea that things could get better, that we don't know what the future holds, and because of that, our actions matter.” – Jamil Zaki [30:43]
  • Advocates for “creative maladjustments” (after MLK Jr.): refusing to accept injustice while believing change is possible.
• Advice:
  • Engage with real conversations to disarm automatic assumptions about “the other side.”
  • Embrace hopeful skepticism to master uncertainty through openness, evidence, and persistence.

Notable Quotes:

• “We act as though trusting others is a sort of weakness... In fact, it's a gift that we give to other people that can change them for the better, and a gift that they often repay.” – Jamil Zaki [26:21]
• “If cynical stories can become self-fulfilling, our work shows that hopeful ones can as well.” – Jamil Zaki [29:41]

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3. Rediscovering Intuition and Inner Compass

Guest: Rund Gunstansdottir, Icelandic writer and filmmaker
Segment: [34:23–45:44]

• Inspiration from Iceland:
  • “Insai” means “the sea within” and “to see inside.” It points to the importance of inner wisdom and self-knowledge in navigating life’s uncertainties.
• Personal Journey:
  • After grounding in childhood intuition and awe, Rund lost touch during a high-stress, high-responsibility UN career.
  • Disconnection from self leads to burnout and breakdown—even to missing her own miscarriage.
• Finding Ground in the Unknown:
  • Returning to the sea and her roots enabled a radical life change—grounding herself in intuition.
  • “It's funny, running towards instability made you feel more calm.” – Manoush [41:26]
• Practices for Accessing Intuition:
  • Notice what you pay attention to and document it.
  • Recognize when your intuition is affected by emotion, fatigue, or external pressure.
  • Ground yourself before major decisions.
• Belief:
  • “The deepest sense of security we will ever find in our lives is within ourselves.” – Rund Gunstansdottir [45:27]
  • Intuition is available to all but requires conscious tuning-in and respect.

Notable Quote:
“Attention is the gateway to intuition.” – Rund Gunstansdottir [43:58]

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4. Thinking Like a Mother: Compassion as a Compass

Guest: Yifat Susskind, Human rights advocate, founder of MADRE
Segment: [46:34–51:03]

• Introduction:
  • 9/11 as a moment of profound uncertainty and vulnerability; instinct to shield her child.
• Motherhood as a Lens:
  • Not limited to parents or women—means being attuned to the world’s vulnerable and seeing oneself as part of the solution.
  • Example: Sudanese subsistence farmers pooling money for Somali mothers during famine; an act of “the root meaning of love for humanity.” [47:00+]
• Love and Justice in Public:
  • “Justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West, cited by Yifat Susskind [50:15]
  • Positioning love as a basis for policy leads to more humane, hopeful, and constructive societies.
  • Migration, like motherhood, is “an act of hope.”
• Actionable Principle:
  • “Thinking like a mother is a tool we can all use to build the world we want.” [50:50]

Notable Quote:
“Thinking like a mother means seeing the whole world through the eyes of those who are responsible for its most vulnerable people.” – Yifat Susskind [46:34]

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Memorable Quotes and Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Pain is pain and you're really not trying to distract from it. You're almost trying to accompany it.” – Matt Wilson [05:54]
• “Cynicism makes it harder to metabolize the calories of social life to receive nourishment from the people around us…” – Jamil Zaki [24:10]
• “If cynical stories can become self-fulfilling, our work shows that hopeful ones can as well.” – Jamil Zaki [29:41]
• “Attention is the gateway to intuition.” – Rund Gunstansdottir [43:58]
• “Justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West, via Yifat Susskind [50:15]
• “Thinking like a mother means seeing the whole world through the eyes of those who are responsible for its most vulnerable people.” – Yifat Susskind [46:34]

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• Medical Clowns & Embracing Joy in Hospitals: [00:43–13:00]
• Cynicism, Trust, and How to Cultivate Hopeful Skepticism: [15:36–33:27]
• Rediscovering Intuition – The Icelandic Model: [34:23–45:44]
• Thinking Like a Mother—Leadership Through Compassion: [46:34–51:03]

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Episode Takeaways

• Sit with uncertainty, don’t simply distract from it.
  Accompaniment and presence (as modeled by medical clowns) can profoundly change experiences of fear and discomfort.

• Trust begets trust; cynicism begets isolation.
  Our beliefs about others and ourselves are reinforced by how we treat each other—hopeful skepticism can break negative cycles.

• Intuition is real, powerful, and accessible with practice.
  Slowing down to notice where our attention goes, and caring for our inner world, gives us guidance when logic and data fall short.

• Radically compassionate thinking is its own kind of strength.
  Acting from a place of shared humanity—“thinking like a mother”—can inspire effective, hopeful decisions in times of crisis.

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Conclusion

“Navigating Uncertainty” brings practical wisdom, grounded research, and moving personal stories to the challenge of living through unpredictable times. Through humor, trust, attention to intuition, and collective care, the episode offers listeners both comfort and actionable hope for whatever the future holds.

Transcript

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

This message comes from NPR sponsor How to Be a Better Human, a podcast from ted. It's a show for the self help skeptic. TED speakers explain how you can be the best you with science, thought provoking insights and hilarious stories. Listen to how to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This is the TED Radio hour. Each week groundbreaking TED Talks.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

Our job now is to dream big.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Delivered at TED conferences to bring about.

[Yifat Susskind]

The future we want to see around.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The world to understand who we are. From those talks we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

[Jamil Zaki]

You just don't know what you're gonna find challenge you.

[Matt Wilson]

We truly have to ask ourselves like.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Why is it noteworthy and even change you?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading From TED and npr. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. Today on the show Navigating Uncertainty at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer center in New York. The pediatric wing can be a tough place. Kids are going through truly awful treatments and often facing an unpredictable future. And you might be thinking right now, oh no, this is going to be a really sad story. But it's not. And on that farm there was a pig.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

A pig E, I E I O.

[Matt Wilson]

With a woof woof and a woof woof.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That's not how a pig goes.

[Matt Wilson]

Pig.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Oink, oink. With an oink oink here and an oink oink there. This is Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer and Dr. Filibuster, do do do do.

[Matt Wilson]

Minding our business a regular day here at the hospital.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And okay, they might not be medical doctors, but they are medical clowns for from the organization Healthy Humor. And on this day we followed along as they made their rounds in the pediatric ward. So you go first, Billy Bus.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

No, you go first.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

No, you go first.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

No, you go first.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

No, you go first. Healthy humor clowns are here three times a week for hours at a time, going room to room, getting to know the families there.

[Matt Wilson]

Can we come in again?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Listen.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

We learned in some rooms they sing songs. In others they pull out their magic tricks.

[Matt Wilson]

Abracadabra.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

What's going on? Something's happening. Something's happening. But everywhere they go, they improv and play off each other to coax out a smile or even a laugh. He just farted at us. He farted at us.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

This is stinky in here.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

You know what? I'm gonna add something. Cause I'm inspired. Oh, really? Godzilla on the bus goes.

[Matt Wilson]

Yeah, right.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Come on, Godzilla Godzilla on the bus.

[Matt Wilson]

Goes all through the town.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Medical clowns like these work in hospitals throughout the world. They can be an important part of medical teams.

[Matt Wilson]

The whole role of a medical clown is to reintroduce the sense of play and joy and trust and hope and light into a space that it doesn't normally inhabit.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This is Matthew Wilson, but for a long time he was known by another name.

[Matt Wilson]

My name in the hospital was Dr. Burpenfert. So.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

No, come on.

[Matt Wilson]

Yeah, no, he's Burpenfert. It's German. There's an umlaut on the a, the berb. Unfert. Yeah.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Matt was a medical clown in New York area hospitals for nearly a decade. With a big red nose and everything.

[Matt Wilson]

I had a clip on tie. I Wore Heelys Size 11. I usually wore skate shorts and I had spiky hair. It was me.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I love it.

[Matt Wilson]

At the end of the day, when you're a clown, it's like, it's, who are you? You know, it's being vulnerable to access, the sense of play. And that's literally what you're bringing into the room. Where's the play, where's the game, where's the fun? What tickles this person today? What do they find funny?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And studies do show the real tangible benefits to having medical clowns around. Can you share some of that research with us?

[Matt Wilson]

So some of the studies indicate that it reduces perceptions of pain during painful procedures like vannipunctures, blood draws. There's some really interesting research more recently that has to do with how interactions with medical clowns can potentially positively impact sleep. I'm really excited by the research. When it comes to working with the elderly, working in memory care, and also in dealing with folks with autism, you're using an embodied approach to communicating and to bridging gaps. Medical clowns are embodied performers. They're dancers, they're movers, they're using nonverbal communication. And that's what works in the space with folks who are navigating a wide range of abilities and disabilities.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Can you put me sort of through the eyes of the kids you were talking to? Like, what typically was going on for them? What sort of headspace were they in?

[Matt Wilson]

Yeah, sure. Honestly, hospitals, there's a lot of waiting. So boredom was always a factor. Other than that, there's the element of fear. You know, who's gonna come in the room? What are they gonna do to me? The majority of people that enter a room when a kid's in the hospital, they don't ask permission. So you're really being cognizant of that. The goal is to not place any more demands on them. It's almost to alleviate or ease the experience. Now that being said, sometimes they're ready to party. Just cause someone is in this environment, it doesn't necessarily mean it's all stumm and angst and tragedy. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of that. Yeah, but they might just be ready to play.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

What do you think injecting that bit of ridiculousness and levity does for a kid in a scary situation like that or an uncertain situation?

[Matt Wilson]

I love that you asked that. This notion of the ridiculous is really important to me. The human condition, it is ridiculous. Living on a day to day, there is so much absurdity. And I think the role of the clown, from my perspective, it's about embracing the absurdity and sitting in it and sitting with it and mining it and finding it. And so as far as when it comes to sitting in that with someone in the hospital with a 7 year old who's getting his port flushed, you're not actually trying to change the outcome. And I think that's what sometimes folks misunderstand. Like I'm not so much here to make it feel better. I am here to experience this with you. What can we experience together? And is there a way to, you know, shift the energy, shift the vibe that supports this experience? Pain is pain and you're really not trying to distract from it. You're almost trying to accompany it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

At the start of a new year, especially this one, a lot of us are facing a lot of uncertainty. So how do we get through it all? How do we help the people in our lives going through unstable times and stay grounded in ourselves so that we don't feel like we're careening through chaos? On the show today, we're going to figure out how to navigate uncertainty. Ideas about how to get through the unknown in your life and the world around you. So back to Matt Wilson. Medical clowns, he says, have to go through the uncertainty and fear that kids and their families live with every day. He shared one story from his early days in the hospital on the TED stage.

[Matt Wilson (Storytelling Segment)]

My colleague and I were invited to ACCOMPANY A young 6 year old with the most adorable southern accent to accompany him while he got his chemotherapy port flushed, a very uncomfortable and regular procedure. We joined him, his mom and the nurse in this tiny closed curtain cubicle. We start with a card trick. Fan the deck so he can pick. But as soon as the nurse approaches with the needle to flush the port. He starts screaming and cussing like no 6 year old I'd ever heard in my life. So we say, hey, should we come back later? He stops, mouth open, eyes wet with tears, face flushed pink with anger. And he smiles.

[Matt Wilson]

Oh, no, you're fine.

[Matt Wilson (Storytelling Segment)]

I want you to be here, okay? So we start playing a song. My colleague on recorder, me on whoopee cushion. The nurse approaches with the needle and it happens again, this torrent of four letter words. He went from playing and laughing to screaming and crying back and forth until the procedure was complete. For the first time, I experienced this odd duality of joy and suffering. But not for the last time. See, when we're there, medical clowns work moment by moment to create connections between the clowns, the nurse, the parent and the child. This provides a source of power or control for the child while supporting the staff with their work.

[Matt Wilson]

On the one hand, the work is very gratifying because it's very much moment to moment. You're very present. But you also don't always ever see the people you're working with ever again, the patients or the families. And sometimes it's a great thing, you don't want to see them at the hospital again. But also I was a supervising medical clown at Memorial Sloan Kettering. And so you're working there long term. And so sometimes if you don't see a family, it's because they're no longer coming back. And that's really, really sad. Well, there was one family I saw regularly and every time we went in, it's just we tore it down like gut busting, roaring, laughing. Sometimes people would be looking and they're like, what is going on in there? I mean, I carried tutus with me. I usually had four or five tutus, collapsible, like compressible tutus tool. Of course I would put one on and I'd be dancing and then maybe the dad would put one on and then maybe a doctor would come in and then the doctor had time. So then all of a sudden, you know, we've got a corps de ballet, you know, spontaneously dancing. And so this was just one of the families that we saw regularly. And they played hard because they were there all the time. And then I didn't see them anymore. And so you just wonder, you know. Well, one day out of the blue, I think at that point I might have been in grad school at that point, I'm not sure. But I'd been out of the hospitals for a minute, so I wasn't working regularly. And they found me and they reached out because they were having her Bat mitzvah.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

No. Oh, that's lovely.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

That's great.

[Matt Wilson]

Oh, man, I might cry just thinking about it. And so it's like. It actually was one of the best days of my life because I hop on the subway from Brooklyn, I do my makeup on the subway, and I get out in Westchester and I go to the synagogue, and it's just this massive Bat Mitzvah with dancing and some other medical clowns. And it was just as the first time I'd seen her in years. And. Oh, man, I just. You can't ask for a better ending than that, you know?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So you're dealing with a lot of uncertainty, too.

[Matt Wilson]

Oh, 100%. I mean, that's what you're walking into. I mean, you kind of sign up for the not knowing, you know, and if you can't think. I can't think of a worse place than, like, you know, some of the drama and trauma and pain of suffering in a hospital.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So the clown sits in that trauma so you don't have to.

[Matt Wilson]

Well, here's the deal. I don't know about that. Like, we're sitting it with you.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I think it feels like our country, the world, the planet, is in this time of unsettledness. And I think people like structure. They like feeling like they can predict what's gonna happen next so they can plan. Knowing what you know from your work as a medical clown, how do you broaden out sort of what people can do in their own lives to cope with trepidation that they might feel?

[Matt Wilson]

I guess what I learned is it really does boil down to relationships, listening, play. Play is really important to me. And part of play is figuring out how are we going to play together? How do we prioritize that? You know, I see it as a form of fitness. It's a component of building community. That's what I drew from my work. And what I think would apply now more than ever is like, okay, this is where we're at. This is my day to day. When am I around people that I can be with, I can play with, whatever that means to me. Where do we find our own fun? This is real humanity. And you're really just trying to be unearth that and find the joy amidst the suffering.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That's Matt Wilson. You can see his full [e-mail] Special thanks to Healthy humor and the team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital for letting us visit on the show today. Navigating Uncertainty. I'm Anoush Zamorodi and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. Stay with us.

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[Minouche Zamorodi]

It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zomorodi. On the show today, navigating uncertainty.

[Jamil Zaki]

I kind of think uncertainty is a perennial human experience. It's one that we're terrified of, but that we experience constantly. And right now is a moment of extreme uncertainty.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This is psychology professor Jamil Zaki.

[Jamil Zaki]

And cynicism is a sort of dark safety.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Tell me what you mean by that.

[Jamil Zaki]

Well, when the world is uncertain, we can feel totally out in the open. We can feel deeply unsafe. And so how do you recover a sense of control in a world that you fundamentally can't control? One way is to prejudge it and to prejudge everybody in it. And so a cynic by deciding that they can't trust anybody, by deciding that people are generally rotten. They might not live in a very bright and happy world, but they live in one that they understand. They feel as though they can predict the future. They feel as though they understand all the people around them. And that at least gives them some semblance of control over a chaotic life.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Jamil's interest in cynicism is part of his larger focus on the brain and human behavior.

[Jamil Zaki]

I study how people connect with one another, why it can be hard to connect, and how we can try to get a little bit better at it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

At Stanford University's Social Neuroscience Lab, Jamil measures the seemingly immeasurable qualities like goodness, kindness, and empathy. His goal is to experiment, document, and ultimately encourage these behaviors. And yet Jameel openly admits that his recent research into cynicism is very personal.

[Jamil Zaki]

I've been a secret cynic for almost my entire life, and a lot of people are surprised to hear that because I study, in essence, human goodness. But there's this phrase in psychology that research is me. Search the assumption that whatever you do, you must also be.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And during the pandemic, Jameel says he hit a bit of a breaking point.

[Jamil Zaki]

Yeah, 2020 and 2021 was probably among the most cynical times of my life. I think a lot of us felt really stuck in our homes, and we were experiencing humanity more than ever through our screens. And it turns out that it's very easy to feel cynical when your representations of other people are media representations, because a lot of media presents us with really terrifying, awful views of who other people are, especially people who are different from ourselves. And also that year in late 2020, a good friend of mine unfortunately passed away from brain cancer. He was a neuroscientist who also studied empathy. And he was also one of my heroes. His name was Emile Bruno, and he was one of the most optimistic and hopeful people I ever knew. And losing him, I felt, was sort of like losing his worldview. He so fundamentally believed in human goodness. And when he died, I felt this sense that I had lost the ability to see things the way that he saw them. That was sort of, frankly, a little bit of a rock bottom for my own cynicism. That made me think, gosh, I can't keep on living this way. And furtherm, if I, a scientist who studies human goodness, is having trouble seeing it, how is everybody else doing?

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Yeah, not good.

[Jamil Zaki]

And it turned out, yeah, it turned out not that great. And that what I was going through was something that so many of us were going through. And that's what made me want to start thinking systematically about this problem and what we can do about it.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

Cynicism, the notion that humanity is greedy, selfish, and dishonest.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Here's Jamil Zaki on the ted stage.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

In 1972, 45% of Americans thought that most people can be trusted. By 2018, that had dropped to about 30%. We are living through a cynicism epidemic. But here's the thing. You might think that cynicism is a system upgrade that allows us to see who we really are. It's not. It traps us in a version of the world we don't want to live in and when we don't have to. One of my favorite studies of all time occurred in southeastern Brazil. Two fishing villages there are separated by just 30 miles. One sits by the ocean, where fishing requires large boats and heavy equipment. To make a living there, fishermen must work together. The other sits by a lake where fishermen strike out alone on small boats and compete with one another. Years ago, researchers tested how people in each of these villages responded to a set of social experiments. Ocean fishermen trusted strangers and cooperated with their neighbors. Lake fishermen competed and mistrusted instead. But here's the crazy these folks didn't start out any different from each other. But the longer fishermen worked on the lake, the more they competed. The longer they worked on the ocean, the less they did. Some families, schools, and companies are like ocean villages. People trust because they know others will earn it. Some are like lake towns. People look out for themselves because no one else will. Our social worlds shape us like clay into hopeful or cynical versions of ourselves. And right now, many of us are living in a lake town of historic proportion.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Taking the fishing villages as sort of a metaphor. Or do you see those two sort of approaches in different pockets of the United States?

[Jamil Zaki]

Absolutely. One big factor here is economic inequality. So more unequal states within the U.S. for instance, experience lower trust. Because when people feel as though resources are all grabbed up by a small percentage of people, they might feel like they really need to compete in order to be those people, in order to climb over everybody else. So that's one factor. Another is just the way that we've started to count everything about our lives. My colleague here at Stanford, Anna Lembke, says that whatever you can quantify can become an addiction. How many steps we take, how well we sleep, how much approval our opinions get on social media. And all of those become vectors for competition comparison and for cynicism, too.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

One of the things you say, though, is that people love a cynic, and I'm Curious as to why you'd say that.

[Jamil Zaki]

Our culture has glamorized gloom in a couple of different ways. One thing is that cynics appear smart to many people. This is what psychologists call the cynical genius illusion. So if you tell people a story about one person who's very cynical and doesn't trust anybody and another person who's really open and trusting, and you ask which one of these two people would do better on a series of tasks, 70% of people think that cynics will outperform non cynics on cognitive tasks, that they're smarter. And 85% of people think that cynics are socially smarter, for instance, better able to tell who's lying and who's telling the truth. In other words, most of us put faith in people who. Who don't have faith in people, which is a bit of a tongue twister. But it's true, and we're wrong. It turns out that cynics do less well than non cynics on cognitive tests. They're worse at knowing who's lying and who's telling the truth because they assume that everybody's on the take, and so stop paying attention to the evidence.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And this impacts your health, too.

[Jamil Zaki]

Yes. Cynics, they're physically less healthy, they suffer from more heart disease, they die younger than non cynics, they're psychologically less healthy, suffering from more depression, loneliness, and anxiety, and they're socially less healthy, having shorter and less satisfying relationships. There's one study that I find so poignant and sad. Researchers brought people into the lab and had them give a speech on a topic that they didn't know they were going to talk about, which would make anybody nervous, and it increases people's blood pressure. Some of these folks were given a cheerleader. I mean, not literally, but a person who was with them who said, I know you can do this. You've got this. Just kind of encouraged and supported them, and others didn't. And what these researchers found is that for most people, having someone supportive around lowered their blood pressure. But if you were a cynic, it didn't lower your blood pressure. Oh, you know, I think that social contact togetherness is like a form of psychological nourishment. And if that's true, then cynicism makes it harder to metabolize the calories of social life to receive nourishment from the people around us, which is tragic, because that's a huge part of what makes life beautiful and meaningful.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

So cynicism might not be as smart as you think. It is, but it's still powerful because our stories about each other become self fulfilling. Cynics are more likely to refuse intimacy and cooperation. They hurt others to avoid being hurt. They tend to spy on their colleagues and suspect their friends. And other people, unsurprisingly, react badly, sometimes acting selfishly in response. In other words, by mistreating others, cynics create the exact conditions they fear. They tell a story full of villains and end up living in it. I call this the cynicism trap. And my lab explores ways that people fall into it. In one study, we asked people how happiness works. Some thought that it's a zero sum game, meaning that as one person's happiness goes up, another person's must go down. Now they're wrong. It turns out that when we act generously towards others, that tends to increase our happiness. But cynics acted on their illusion. When given chances to help strangers, they were less likely to do so. They ended up less happy as well. By hoarding well being, they lost out on one of its key other people.

[Jamil Zaki]

It's not just that people are trustworthy or not trustworthy. It's that when we trust them, they reciprocate. This is what's called earned trust. The idea is if you have low expectations of somebody, they know they can tell it comes through in the way that you behave. And people don't like that and they retaliate. So if you treat somebody like they're not trustworthy, they actually become less trustworthy. You create this toxic, self fulfilling prophecy. The good news is that the exact same is true of trust. People are more likely to be trustworthy if you trust them. And that's something that I don't think people realize. We act as though trusting others is a sort of weakness. Like we've shown our belly. We've made ourselves vulnerable. In fact, it's a gift that we give to other people that can change them for the better, and a gift that they often repay.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

Cynicism doesn't help us see reality more clearly, but it does change reality, poisoning our relationships, our lives and our culture. It is not a system upgrade, it's mental malware. But we don't have to accept it. In one study, we changed how people thought about empathy in politics. Some people were randomly chosen to read a cynical essay. It began, and I'm paraphrasing, you might think that empathy is a weakness that will make you lose every argument. And you'd be right. Afterwards, we asked these folks to write a note about gun control to someone. They disagreed with and they sniped at each other. Here's a voice actor reading what one Democrat wrote to a Republican.

[Matt Wilson]

It's hard not to state this bluntly. You should be in favor of stricter.

[Jamil Zaki]

Gun laws because you should care about.

[Matt Wilson]

The lives of other people more than your outdated feelings of machismo.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

And here's a Republican writing to a Democrat.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

People need to know they are able to have the freedom to bear arms in order to protect themselves. You Democrats don't get to take that away from us.

[Jamil Zaki]

Basically we recreated Twitter by accident.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

Other people read a different essay. You might think empathy is a weakness that will make you lose every argument and you'd be wrong. And went on to describe empathy as a strength in politics. Again, we asked these folks to write to an opponent about gun control. But this time things changed. Here's a Democrat.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

There are some common sense regulations that we should implement to keep people safe. We all want what is best for.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

The country and there are things we.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Can meet in the middle on to tackle the issue of gun violence and a Republican.

[Jamil Zaki]

Horrible crimes can be committed using guns. Everything from school shootings to murders because of racism and white supremacy. It's very understandable that you think it makes sense to make gun laws more strict. We're all reasonable people and we just want to what's best for our loved ones.

[TED Radio Hour Narrator]

To us this was wild. Remember, Just like ocean and lake fishermen. These people did not start out any different. But just reading one essay turned some of them into new optimists and others into new cynics. We taught these people that empathy was useful. They used it and it became useful. This is what I want you to remember and what I want you to know, that if cynical stories can become self fulfilling, our work shows that hopeful.

[Jamil Zaki]

Ones can as well. The evidence is really clear that people on each side, Democrats and Republicans, are dead wrong about their adversaries, about their opponents. When asked to imagine the average person they disagree with, people on both sides, imagine somebody who is way more extreme, twice as hateful, twice as anti Democratic and four times as violent as the truth. We're really fighting phantoms in a way. And as we draw further apart from one another, we don't get the evidence, the data from real conversations to know that actually people we disagree with, first of all are still people. And second, that they're probably more reasonable and peaceful and open minded than we think they are.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This gets us really to your prescription for overcoming cynicism. It is what you call hopeful skepticism. Please explain that idea.

[Jamil Zaki]

Yeah, let's Take the two pieces of hopeful skepticism one at a time. Skepticism is often confused with cynicism, but it's really quite different. If cynicism is a lack of faith in people, skepticism is a lack of faith in our assumptions. Skeptics think like scientists, and they don't imagine or assume that people are great or that people are terrible. They wait for evidence to figure out who they can trust and who they can believe in. And because of that, they learn more quickly and are able to adapt to new situations. Hope is often confused with optimism, and it's not. Hope is the idea that things could get better, that we don't know what the future holds, and because of that, our actions matter. I am a big fan of putting these two perspectives together. I think that both hope and skepticism are a form of mastering uncertainty. So a hopeful skeptic, to me, is not somebody who is naive, not somebody who thinks that things are great or will be great, but rather someone who's open to learning about what people are really like and using that common ground to try to craft a future that more of us want.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So what do you say to those people when they say, oh, Jamil, so positive?

[Jamil Zaki]

I say, if you could only see inside my mind, you would not accuse me of being too positive. I think about one of my favorite terms for I guess what I would think of as a fierce sort of hope comes from Martin Luther King Jr. In 1967, he spoke to the American Psychological association, and he was much more diplomatic about it. So I'm paraphrasing here, but he in essence said, you all are so obsessed with people being positive and happy and well adjusted, and why should we be adjusted to a world of bigotry and violence and inequality? We should not be adjusted. He said, I think that what we should focus on is creative maladjustments. We should absolutely reject a status quo that is unjust, but we should be creative in knowing that something better is possible and that a lot of people want that better outcome. That, to me, is a perfect encapsulation of hopeful skepticism. It is not the same as saying things are great. It is writing down that list of all the things that are terrible, but also acknowledging that many, many people around us want things to improve. And in that, there is power. In that collective will, there is great power to produce change.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That's Jamil Zaki. He's a professor of psychology at Stanford University and lead investigator at its Social Neuroscience Lab. You can watch his full [e-mail] on the show today, Navigating uncertainty. I'm Minouche Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. On the show today, I. Uncertainty. So we've talked about our outlook during uncertain times, how to support people in very unstable situations. And now the importance of finding our inner compass.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

So Iceland is a volcanic island. We have lots of lava fields and, like high lava rocks, and there's. There's mountain and fjords.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This is Rund, Gunstern's daughter. She is an Icelandic writer and filmmaker who studies intuition, or what's called insai in Icelandic.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

So insai is put together with two words in and say. So in it means insight or into, and saye means to see or the sea. And so when you look at the world like that, it opens up the whole world inside us and this world of intuition.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Rund remembers feeling this connection, this symbiosis between her and her surroundings. All the time.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

I would roam the lava fields around my home. I would. I tended to get really lost in my imagination, which I think is something nature does for you. You know, I just remember all these days and late into the evening and night, just walking outside. Maybe I was 6 or 7, and I could really imagine there were trolls, you know, in the lava field. And I had to hide or I had to run away. And I felt really lucky to have been able to come back home and I was still alive and. And imagine that my parents were so happy that I survived the trials in the lava field, you know, with all the drama. Yeah, I just remember lying in the snow and I was looking up at the stars, and I just felt like the stars belonged to the same world that I belonged to. And I felt this very deep connection to my surroundings and the earth I was lying on. And just. I was given the permission to be alone and just to experience this moment and be in absolute awe of the universe that I belonged to.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

But as Rund got older, she wanted to go beyond her small island nation and experience the rest of the world. So in her 20s, she got what seemed like a dream job working at the United Nations.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

I got a job with one of the UN agencies in post war reconstruction in Kosovo. I became the head of that agency, a program manager. And coming to Kosovo just after the war felt like walking into an open wound.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

This was 2001. Kosovo was still in shock after the war. In the late 90s, the situation was also a shock To Rundle, you are.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Working with people that have just survived probably the most horrible years of their lives and war and their lost loved ones.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

I mean, you must have been seeing in these places that had really been ripped apart by war, where neighbors were killing neighbors. You must have been surrounded by so much grief and pain.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Yes, I think that I definitely internalized the pain of others. You know, I remember saying to a friend something along the lines of, I couldn't take a day off because this was not about me. It was about the people I'm working for. Just like I was just pushing myself so hard. And that just takes a lot of toll. And I think it's especially when you think that you can just continually pour out of your well without filling it again, which I. I just thought I could.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

As the months went on, that grounded feeling in saee that had defined Rund from a young age started slipping away.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

I had become more and more disconnected from my body and my emotions. So I would even wake up in the night because of a nightmare of bugs crawling all over me. It was a very vivid. And while I was thinking that I was dealing really well with the difficulties around me, I was basically just stuffing hard stuff somewhere in my body and my body just couldn't take it anymore.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Run believes that that disconnection can be summed up by an incident that happened to her on a work trip.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

I was traveling from Kosovo to Kazakhstan for work and early in the morning I. I felt this terrible pain and I started to bleed. And my reaction was to was something like, this really hurts. And I took some painkillers and just continued with my travel and work.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

She was pregnant and didn't even know it.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

I'd had a miscarriage. This really should have been a wake up call. And it's a very strong example of how disconnected you can become from your body.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Rund ignored the signs of what many would now consider burnout. She kept going fast forward several years. She was promoted. She went to work at UN headquarters in Geneva. She and her fiance had a baby. She was ticking off all of life's boxes.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

But also I hadn't slept for weeks.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

And I was exhausted by her body started breaking down. Her relationship fell apart. Her job meant nothing to her. She was losing sight of who she was.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

But I did manage somehow to find a moment with myself. And I literally walked down to the sea close to where I live. Just. I've always been drawn to the sea. I think it's the sound that's very calming. It's this broad horizon which does something to your mind. There was something inside me that was like, okay, you've been very. There's an Icelandic word to do in Danish. It's like somebody who perseveres and has grit and never gives up, you know. But then I thought, so why am I doing this? And I had this moment where I really had to. I knew I had to make up my mind from the deepest roots of who I am and what my sense of meaning is in this life.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

She decided to start a new chapter as a single mother without her partner and without her un job.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Just this deep calmness came over me and I realized what I wanted to do. And it was very unsensible. Manus, it's that nobody said to me, that's a great idea. What a great career plan.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

It's funny, running towards instability made you feel more calm.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Yes, the complete unknown. Yeah, there is insecurity on all levels. You know, personal life, income, everything. It was extremely hard and I. I was really forced to connect with my intuition and I got to know it all over again.

[J]

My search for answers brought me back to my roots and helped me see with fresh eyes the Icelandic word for intuition.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

Insai rund gunstansdottir continues from the TED.

[J]

Stage in SAEE helps us reframe intuition because it brings together the scientific and the spiritual, the solid and the poetic. Insai means the sea within and refers to the ever flowing unconscious mind. Stress, work and financial pressures can block our access to insight. And while we can't get rid of these pressures, we can learn how to clear the way to insei when we need it and we gain clarity in mind. Intuition picks up information with all our body. So next time you feel something's off, you get tilts down your spine or a gut reaction. Ask yourself, what is my unconscious trying to tell me? Insight also means to see within, to be self aware. And one of the most powerful ways to see within is to pay attention to how you pay attention and document it. And lastly, insight means to see from the inside out and has to do with how we navigate the ocean of life from within. With a strong inner compass. Unconsciously, we process a massive amount of information, sensory data that our body picks up, including the brain. While this is unconscious, it still shapes our actions. Intuition helps us tap into this information. I've been able to practice, research and interview scientists, spiritual leaders and artists from around the world. And I've discovered that we all have intuition and it's up to us to tune into it, which can be quite a challenge.

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

In today's world.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

So you ended up building a whole new career for yourself around this idea of Insai. You wrote a book about it, traveled the world to make a documentary. You must get a lot of questions about how to connect to inside. When there is so much noise and chaos in the world, what do you tell people?

[Rund Gunstansdottir]

Absolutely. And so the world we live in is characterized by uncertainty and turbulence. And so this is going to sound very simple, but believe me, it's a very, very powerful tool, and that is pay attention to what it is that you pay attention to and document it. Because we pay attention to so many things throughout the day. Like our attention. Our mind has become the main market space. But attention is the gateway to intuition. We pay attention with all our body, all our senses, and just put down whatever your tension brings your way. Don't judge it, just put it down and allow it to be what it is. And you start to see patterns emerging, but also to know yourself well enough to be able to understand. When am I following a good intuition? When am I being biased, following fears or prejudices or even wistful thinkings? It's knowing when you're too angry, too excited, you haven't slept. It's not the good time to listen to your intuition. So especially when we need to take brave decisions about our life, it's very important to be well grounded in ourselves and well anchored in our intuition. And I firmly believe, and I take this from ancient spiritualism as well, I firmly believe that the deepest sense of security we will ever find in our lives is within ourselves. We all have intuition, but it's absolutely up to ourselves to acknowledge it, to honor it, to harness it, to hone it and respect it.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was Rund Gunshtand's daughter. She's the author of the book Insai Heal, Revive and Reset with the Icelandic Art of Intuition. You can see her full [e-mail] to close our show about navigating uncertainty, we want to share the advice of a human rights advocate. Yifat Susskind is the founder of the nonprofit Madre, which yes, translates to mother. Madre supports local women's rights organizations around the world. And Yifat believes that thinking like a mother can be a great guiding principle for anyone living through uncertain times. Here she is on the TED stage in 2019.

[Yifat Susskind]

One morning 18 years ago, I stepped out of a New York City subway on a beautiful day in September. The sun was warm and bright. The sky was a clear, perfect blue. I had my 6 month old son in one of those front facing Baby carriers, you know, so he could see everything. And when I turned right on 6th Avenue, what he saw was the World Trade center on fire. As soon as I realized that this was an attack, the first thing I did, without even really thinking about it, was to take my baby and turn him around in that carrier. I didn't want him to see what was going on. And I just remember feeling so grateful that he was still young enough that I didn't have to tell him that someone had done this on purpose. 911 was like crossing a hostile border into uncharted territory. The world was suddenly in this terrifying new place, and I was in this place as a new mother. Well, my son turned 18 this year, and in that time, we have all crossed into this hostile, uncharted territory of climate breakdown, of endless wars, of economic meltdowns, of deep political divisions. But there is a way to face these big crises in the world without feeling overwhelmed and despairing. It's simple and it's powerful. It's to think like a mother. Now, to be clear, you don't have to be a woman or a parent to do this. Thinking like a mother is a lens that's available to everybody. The poet Alexis Devoe writes, motherhood is not simply the organic process of giving birth. It's an understanding of. Of the needs of the world. A few years ago, East Africa was gripped by a famine, and women I know from Somalia walked for days, carrying their hungry children in search of food and water. A quarter of a million people died, and half of them were babies and toddlers. A group of women farmers in Sudan heard about what was happening, and they pooled together the extra money that they had from their harvest and asked me to send it to those Somali mothers. Now, these farmers could have decided that they didn't have the power to act. They were barely getting by themselves. Some of them, they lived without electricity, without furniture, but they overrode that. They did what mothers do. They saw themselves as the solution, and they took action. You do it all the time. If you have kids, you make major decisions about their health care, their education, their emotional well being. Even if you're not a doctor or a teacher or a therapist, you recognize what your child needs and you step up to provide it the best you can. Thinking like a mother means seeing the whole world through the eyes of those who are responsible for its most vulnerable people. And we're not used to thinking of subsistence farmers as philanthropists, but those women were practicing the root meaning of love for humanity. We recognize hate in the public sphere, right? Hate speech, hate crimes, but not love. What is love in the public sphere? Well, Cornel west, who is not a mother but thinks like one, says it best. Justice is what love looks like in public. And when we position love as a kind of leading edge in policymaking, we get new answers to fundamental social questions, like what's the economy for? What is our commitment to those in the path of the hurricane? How do we greet those arriving to our borders? Because you know that migration, just like mothering, is an act of hope. Think like a mother, thinking like a mother is a tool we can all use to build the world we want. Thank you.

[Minouche Zamorodi]

That was Yifat Susskind. She's the executive director of the human rights organization Madre. Thank you so much for listening to our episode on Living with Uncertainty. It was produced by Rachel Faulkner White, James Delahusy, Hersha Nahada and Matthew Cloutier. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour, Katie Monteleone and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Fiona Guerin. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Neil Tiefold, Becky Brown and Jimmy Keeley. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hylash, Alejandra Salazar and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Minouche Zumarodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

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