Navigating uncertainty in 2025

Summary

TED Radio Hour: Navigating Uncertainty in 2025

Host: Anoush Zomorodi | Release Date: January 10, 2025

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The TED Radio Hour’s episode titled "Navigating Uncertainty in 2025" delves into the pervasive theme of uncertainty that characterizes contemporary life. Hosted by Anoush Zomorodi, the episode features insightful discussions with diverse thinkers who explore strategies and mindsets to effectively manage the unpredictable nature of the modern world. The episode is structured into distinct segments, each focusing on different facets of uncertainty—from medical environments and psychological resilience to intuition and maternal instincts.

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1. The Healing Power of Humor: Matt Wilson's Journey as a Medical Clown

Speaker: Matthew Wilson (Also known as Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer)

Location: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York

Timestamp: 00:29 - 12:57

Matt Wilson, under the whimsical persona of Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer, shares his nearly decade-long experience as a medical clown working in pediatric wards. His role, orchestrated through the organization Healthy Humor, involves bringing joy and lightness to children undergoing severe medical treatments.

Key Insights:

• Role of Medical Clowns: Wilson emphasizes that medical clowns reintroduce "play and joy and trust and hope and light into a space that it doesn't normally inhabit" (03:09). They engage with children through improvised acts, magic tricks, and songs to elicit smiles and laughter amidst the grim realities of hospitalization.

• Impact on Patients: Studies cited by Wilson indicate that interactions with medical clowns can reduce pain perception during procedures and positively influence sleep patterns (04:04).

• Emotional Duality: A poignant story shared involves accompanying a six-year-old during a chemotherapy port flush. The child oscillates between laughter and intense fear, illustrating the complex emotional landscape that clowns navigate alongside young patients (07:35).

• Coping with Uncertainty: Wilson relates his experiences to broader societal uncertainty, proposing that building relationships, listening, and engaging in play are essential to coping with trepidation (12:04). He advocates for finding joy amidst suffering as a fundamental human resilience.

Notable Quotes:

• "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." (03:09)

• "Pain is pain and you're really not trying to distract from it. You're almost trying to accompany it." (05:51)

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2. Understanding and Overcoming Cynicism: Jamil Zaki's Psychological Perspective

Speaker: Jamil Zaki, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University

Timestamp: 15:28 - 33:19

Jamil Zaki explores the pervasive issue of cynicism in contemporary society, examining its roots, consequences, and potential remedies. His research highlights the detrimental effects of cynicism on personal well-being and societal interactions.

Key Insights:

• Cynicism as a Defense Mechanism: Zaki explains that cynicism serves as a "dark safety," offering individuals a semblance of control in an unpredictable world by prejudging others as untrustworthy (16:40).

• Impacts of Cynicism: He elucidates that cynicism leads to poorer physical health, increased depression, loneliness, anxiety, and strained relationships (23:34). For instance, cynics do not experience the same physiological benefits from social support as non-cynics (25:00).

• Cynicism Trap: Zaki introduces the concept of the "cynicism trap," where cynical individuals create self-fulfilling prophecies by mistreating others, thereby reinforcing their negative worldview (26:13).

• Hopeful Skepticism: As a remedy, Zaki proposes "hopeful skepticism," a blend of skepticism and hope that encourages individuals to remain open-minded and believe in the possibility of positive change without being naive (30:35).

Notable Quotes:

• "Cynicism traps us in a version of the world we don't want to live in and when we don't have to." (19:35)

• "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." (27:27)

• "A hopeful skeptic 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." (30:35)

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3. Embracing Intuition in a Noisy World: Rund Gunsten's Exploration of 'Insai'

Speaker: Rund Gunsten's Daughter, Icelandic Writer and Filmmaker

Timestamp: 35:22 - 46:43

Rund Gunsten's Daughter introduces the Icelandic concept of "insai," a holistic understanding of intuition that blends scientific and spiritual perspectives. She shares her personal journey of reconnecting with her intuition amidst professional and personal upheavals.

Key Insights:

• Definition of Insai: "Insai" combines "in" (insight) and "saie" (to see or the sea), symbolizing the deep, unconscious connection between the self and the surrounding world (35:43).

• Personal Struggle and Reconnection: Rund narrates her experience of burnout while working with the United Nations in post-war Kosovo. This led to a profound disconnection from her body and emotions, culminating in a miscarriage that served as a wake-up call to realign with her intuitive self (39:00 - 40:25).

• Cultivating Intuition: She advocates for paying attention to one’s focus and documenting internal experiences to discern genuine intuition from biases or emotional disturbances (44:56).

• Inner Compass: Rund emphasizes the importance of developing a strong inner compass to navigate life’s uncertainties, drawing from both ancient spiritualism and modern practices (42:57).

Notable Quotes:

• "Insai is the ever-flowing, unconscious mind. Stress, work, and financial pressures can block our access to insai." (43:01)

• "The deepest sense of security we will ever find in our lives is within ourselves." (44:08)

• "Pay attention to what it is that you pay attention to and document it. This is a very powerful tool." (44:56)

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4. Maternal Wisdom as a Guide Through Turbulent Times: Yifat Susskind on 'Thinking Like a Mother'

Speaker: Yifat Susskind, Founder of Madre

Timestamp: 35:22 - 52:01

Yifat Susskind introduces a transformative approach to facing global crises by "thinking like a mother." Drawing from personal experiences and the actions of women in crisis regions, she illustrates how maternal instincts can inspire resilience and proactive solutions.

Key Insights:

• Defining 'Thinking Like a Mother': Susskind describes it as a lens that prioritizes the needs of the most vulnerable, promoting empathy, protection, and proactive problem-solving (47:33).

• Case Study - East African Famine: She recounts how women farmers in Sudan responded to the famine in Somalia by pooling resources to aid starving mothers, exemplifying the selfless and solution-oriented mindset inherent in maternal thinking (48:28).

• Public Sphere and Love: Susskind echoes Cornel West's sentiment that "justice is what love looks like in public," advocating for love-driven policymaking to address fundamental social issues (51:00).

• Application Beyond Motherhood: While rooted in maternal instincts, Susskind asserts that "thinking like a mother" is a universal tool accessible to everyone, regardless of parenthood or gender (47:33).

Notable Quotes:

• "Thinking like a mother means seeing the whole world through the eyes of those who are responsible for its most vulnerable people." (48:00)

• "Migration, just like mothering, is an act of hope." (51:30)

• "Justice is what love looks like in public." - Cornel West (51:00)

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Conclusion: Synthesizing Strategies for Navigating Uncertainty

The episode "Navigating Uncertainty in 2025" weaves together personal narratives and scholarly insights to present a multifaceted approach to managing uncertainty. From Matt Wilson’s use of humor in medical settings to Jamil Zaki’s exploration of psychological resilience, Rund Gunsten's Daughter’s emphasis on intuition, and Yifat Susskind's advocacy for maternal wisdom, the episode offers a comprehensive toolkit for individuals seeking stability in an unpredictable world.

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace Diverse Coping Mechanisms: Whether through humor, psychological strategies, intuition, or empathetic leadership, multiple pathways exist to navigate uncertainty effectively.

• The Power of Relationships and Community: Building trust, fostering supportive relationships, and engaging with communities play pivotal roles in mitigating the effects of uncertainty.

• Self-Awareness and Inner Resilience: Cultivating self-awareness, listening to one’s intuition, and maintaining hope are essential for personal resilience.

• Empathy and Collective Action: Adopting an empathetic approach and proactive problem-solving, inspired by maternal instincts, can lead to meaningful societal change.

Through these narratives, the TED Radio Hour underscores that while uncertainty is an inherent aspect of the human experience, leveraging these strategies can transform how we perceive and respond to the unknown.

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References:

• Full Talks: Available at ted.com and ted.NPR.org
• Featured Individuals: Matt Wilson (Dr. Rockwell Squeesheimer), Jamil Zaki, Rund Gunsten's Daughter, Yifat Susskind

Transcript

[Anoush Zomorodi]

This message comes from Spectrum Business, who provides fast, reliable Internet, phone, TV and mobile services to help unlock the unlimited potential of your small business. Learn [e-mail] Business this is the TED Radio Hour.

[Narrator]

Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

[TED Speaker]

Our job now is to dream big.

[Narrator]

Delivered at TED Conferences to bring about.

[Jamil Zaki]

The future we want to see around.

[Yifat Susskind]

The world to understand who we are.

[Narrator]

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.

[Matthew Wilson]

We truly have to ask ourselves, like.

[Narrator]

Why is it noteworthy and even change you? 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 gonna be a really sad story. But it's not. And on that farm, there was a pig. A pig E, I, E, I O with a woof woof and a woof woof. That's not how a pig goes.

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

Pig.

[Narrator]

I'm going with a oink, oink here and an oink, oink there. This is Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer and Dr. Filibuster.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

Do, do, do, do this.

[Narrator]

Minding our business. A regular day here. It's Monday Hospital. And okay, they might not be medical doctors, but they are medical clowns 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. No, you go first. No, you go first.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

No, you go first.

[Narrator]

No, you go first. 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. Can we come in again?

[Jamil Zaki]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

Listen.

[Jamil Zaki]

We learned.

[Narrator]

In some rooms they sing songs. In others, they pull out their magic tricksabra dabra. 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. This is stinky in here. You know what? I'm gonna add something. Cause I'm inspired. Oh, really? Godzilla on the bus goes. Yeah, come on, Godzilla. Godzilla on the bus go.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

Through the town.

[Narrator]

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

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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.

[Narrator]

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

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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

[Narrator]

No, come on.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

Yeah, no, it's Burpenfert. It's German. There's an umlaut on the a, the berb und vert. Yeah.

[Narrator]

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

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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

[Narrator]

I love it.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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?

[Narrator]

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

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

So some of the studies indicate that it reduces perceptions of pain during painful procedures like fanny punctures, 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. Communication. And that's what works in the space with folks who are navigating a wide range of abilities and disabilities.

[Narrator]

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?

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

Yeah, sure. Honestly, hospitals, there's a lot of waiting. So boredom was always a factor. Other than that, there's an 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. 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 stummen drang and angst and tragedy. I mean, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of that, but they might just be ready to play.

[Narrator]

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?

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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, 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.

[Narrator]

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, my colleague and.

[Colleague]

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. Oh, no, you're fine. I want you to be here.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

Okay?

[Colleague]

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.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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 with a 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're 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.

[Narrator]

No. Oh, that's lovely. That's great.

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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?

[Narrator]

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

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

Oh, 100%. I mean, it'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.

[Narrator]

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

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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

[Narrator]

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?

[Dr. Rockwell S. Squeesheimer]

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.

[Narrator]

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. This message comes from Grammarly. 89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority. The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at one third of Fortune 500 companies use use Grammarly with top tier security credentials and 15 years of experience in responsible AI, Grammarly isn't just another AI communication assistant. It's how companies like yours increase productivity while keeping data protected and private. See why 70,000 teams trust [e-mail] Enterprise.

[Matthew Wilson]

This message comes from BetterHelp. Every January brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled. What do you want your 2025 story to be? Therapy can help you craft the next chapters with purpose. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online with a diverse network of over 30,000 therapists worldwide. Visit BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com NPR today to get 10% off your first month support for NPR.

[Anoush Zomorodi]

And the following message come from Boland Branch. Change your sleep with the softness of Bolen Branch's 100% organic cotton sheets. Feel the difference with 15% off your first set of [e-mail] with code NPR exclusions apply. See site for details. Support for the following message comes from LinkedIn ads. As a B2B marketer, you know how noisy the digital ad space can be. If your message isn't targeted to the right audience, it just disappears into the noise. By using LinkedIn ads, you can reach professionals who are more likely to find your ad relevant. Target them by job title, industry, company and more. Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com results, terms and conditions apply.

[Narrator]

It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Anoush 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.

[Narrator]

This is psychology professor Jamil Zaki, and.

[Jamil Zaki]

Cynicism is a sort of dark safety.

[Narrator]

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.

[Narrator]

Jameel'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.

[Narrator]

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.

[Narrator]

And during the pandemic, Jamil 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 furthermore, if I, a scientist who studies human goodness is having trouble seeing it, how is everybody else doing?

[Narrator]

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 Speaker]

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

[Narrator]

Here's Jamil zaki on the TED stage.

[TED Speaker]

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.

[Narrator]

Taking the fishing villages as sort of a metaphor, do you see that 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.

[Narrator]

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 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.

[Narrator]

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 is 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. 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 Speaker]

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 Speaker]

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.

[Jamil Zaki]

It's hard not to state this bluntly, you should be in favor of stricter gun laws because you should care about.

[TED Speaker]

The lives of other people more than.

[Jamil Zaki]

Your outdated feelings of machismo.

[TED Speaker]

And here's a Republican writing to a.

[Yifat Susskind]

People need to know they are able.

[Narrator]

To have the freedom to bear arms.

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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 Speaker]

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 there are some common.

[Narrator]

Sense regulations that we should implement to keep people safe.

[Jamil Zaki]

We all want what is best for.

[Narrator]

The country and there are things we.

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

Can meet in the middle on to.

[Narrator]

Tackle the issue of gun violence and.

[Jamil Zaki]

A Republican 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 what's best for us, our loved ones. To us this was wild.

[TED Speaker]

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 ones can as well.

[Jamil Zaki]

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.

[Narrator]

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.

[Narrator]

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 a 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.

[Narrator]

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.

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[Narrator]

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Minouche Zamarodi. On the show today, 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 Gunsten's Daughter]

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.

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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 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.

[Narrator]

But as run 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 Gunsten's Daughter]

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.

[Narrator]

This was 2001. Kosovo was still in shock after the war. In the late 90s, the situation was also a shock to Rund.

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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

[Narrator]

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 Gunsten's Daughter]

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.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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 just thought I could.

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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. You know, it was very vivid dreams. 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.

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

I was traveling from Kosovo to Kazakhstan for work, and early in the morning, 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.

[Narrator]

She was pregnant and didn't even know it.

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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.

[Narrator]

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 Gunsten's Daughter]

But also I hadn't slept for weeks and I was exhausted.

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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. 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.

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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

[Narrator]

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

[Rund Gunsten's Daughter]

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

[Narrator]

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

Rund Gunstandsdotter continues from the TED stage.

Insai helps us reframe intuition because it brings together the scientific and the spiritual, the solid and the poetic. Insight 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 in today's world.

So you ended up building a whole new career for yourself around this idea of insight. 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 Gunsten's Daughter]

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 prejudice 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 honour it, to harness it, to hone it and respect it.

[Narrator]

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 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.

[Narrator]

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, Hirscha 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 Tivolt, Becky Brown and Jimmy Keeley. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hilash, Alejandra Salazar and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Minouche Zamorodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr.

[Matthew Wilson]

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