Adam Grant Disses Musk and Mar-a-Lago Madness

Summary

Episode Summary: "Adam Grant's Post-Election ‘Antidote to Helplessness’"

The Daily Beast Podcast hosts Joanna Coles and Samantha Bee, alongside Ryan Reynolds, delve deep into the aftermath of the recent election and its psychological impact on individuals and workplaces. Featuring insights from organizational psychologist Adam Grant, this episode explores strategies to combat feelings of helplessness and foster resilience in uncertain times.

---

1. Introduction to the Episode

Timestamp: [02:05] - [03:04]

The episode kicks off with the hosts introducing the primary focus: understanding the emotional and psychological repercussions of the recent election. They set the stage for a candid discussion about navigating the turbulent political landscape and its effects on personal and professional lives.

---

2. The New Trump Administration and Cabinet Selections

Timestamp: [03:04] - [12:59]

Before bringing in the guest, the hosts engage in a lively conversation about the incoming Trump administration. They humorously speculate on the dynamics within the Trump cabinet, referencing figures like Elise Stefanik and Mike Huckabee.

• Joanna Coles remarks on the nature of cabinet appointments:
  "There would have been no January 6th. There would have been no lie about the election. We wouldn't be worrying about RFK as health czar now."
  [04:24]

The discussion touches upon the Overton Window—the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population—and how Trump's appointments may be shifting societal norms.

• Samantha Bee humorously questions the compatibility of high-profile figures:
  "How do you look at that in a way that's useful and practical? How should an employer look at that?"
  [08:46]

---

3. Guest Introduction: Adam Grant

Timestamp: [35:48] - [37:13]

Ryan Reynolds introduces the episode's guest, Adam Grant, an esteemed organizational psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Grant is renowned for his work on motivation, creativity, and organizational behavior, making him an ideal guest to discuss post-election psychology.

• Ryan Reynolds introduces Grant:
  "Adam inspires people to rethink their beliefs by asking how instead of why."
  [35:48]

---

4. Coping with Election Aftermath and AI Concerns

Timestamp: [37:13] - [44:38]

Adam Grant begins by addressing the collective anxiety stemming from both the election results and the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. He introduces the concept of "threat rigidity," where individuals, feeling uncertain about the future, focus narrowly on controllable aspects of their lives.

• Adam Grant explains threat rigidity:
  "I'm just going to focus narrowly on the things I can control."
  [38:11]

Joanna Coles shares her perspective on digital disruptions and contrasts past adaptability with current uncertainty surrounding AI, highlighting the paralyzing effect of not knowing how to navigate future changes.

• Joanna Coles reflects on digital disruptions:
  "We're dealing with the reverse of that now... Nobody has a clue what that looks like."
  [38:03]

---

5. Impact on Workplaces and Organizational Behavior

Timestamp: [44:38] - [60:58]

The conversation shifts to the workplace, exploring how political polarization and election-induced stress manifest in professional environments. Joanna Coles discusses initiatives like Accenture's Building Bridges, which encouraged open dialogue on divisive topics through moderated discussions.

• Joanna Coles on workplace discussions:
  "A lot of political discussion is happening in the workplace because our neighborhoods are fractured, our families are split."
  [46:59]

Adam Grant emphasizes the importance of meaningful work as an antidote to helplessness. He cites his research where connecting daily tasks to positive impacts significantly boosts motivation and job satisfaction.

• Adam Grant on meaningful work:
  "The best antidote to helplessness is a sense of helpfulness."
  [47:01]

Samantha Bee inquires about practical strategies for employers to foster open yet respectful discussions without exacerbating divisions.

• Samantha Bee questions workplace strategies:
  "Do you think that there are practical ways for employers to create an environment for open discussion without fueling division?"
  [44:45]

Joanna shares a compelling experiment from the University of Michigan, where informing fundraisers about the direct impact of their efforts—highlighted by a scholarship student's story—led to a 142% increase in phone time and a 171% rise in weekly revenue. This underscores the power of connecting work to tangible outcomes.

• Joanna Coles on the Michigan experiment:
  "They saw their jobs as actually enabling students to afford school so they could see the tangible difference they were making."
  [57:56]

---

6. Resilience and the Psychological Immune System

Timestamp: [60:08] - [61:44]

Adam Grant introduces the concept of a "psychological immune system," which allows individuals to recover from stress and adapt over time. He notes that while feelings of uncertainty and anxiety are natural post-election, this mental resilience helps people regain emotional stability within approximately ten days.

• Adam Grant on resilience:
  "No matter how stressful you find something, you are after 10 days, able to cope with it."
  [60:01]

The hosts reflect on their own coping mechanisms, acknowledging the universal struggle with adapting to tumultuous changes and the importance of finding personal strategies to regain control and optimism.

• Ryan Reynolds on the psychological immune system:
  "The best antidote to helplessness is a sense of helpfulness."
  [61:24]

---

7. Concluding Thoughts and Final Insights

Timestamp: [61:44] - [63:37]

As the episode winds down, Joanna Coles offers a balanced perspective, recognizing that while political changes can be unsettling, they often bring unexpected benefits. She cites Operation Warp Speed as a successful initiative, highlighting that not all changes under the Trump administration were detrimental.

• Joanna Coles on unexpected positives:
  "There are things he's going to make better, not just worse... Operation Warp Speed might not have happened under another administration."
  [60:57]

The hosts encourage listeners to focus on meaningful work and personal impact as ways to navigate feelings of helplessness and to contribute positively despite external uncertainties.

• Joanna Coles on personal impact:
  "What you do at work matters."
  [57:06]

---

Notable Quotes

1. Adam Grant on threat rigidity:
   "I'm just going to focus narrowly on the things I can control."
   [38:11]

2. Joanna Coles on meaningful work:
   "The best antidote to helplessness is a sense of helpfulness."
   [47:01]

3. Adam Grant on resilience:
   "No matter how stressful you find something, you are after 10 days, able to cope with it."
   [60:01]

4. Joanna Coles on personal impact:
   "What you do at work matters."
   [57:06]

---

Key Takeaways

• Psychological Resilience: Understanding that feelings of helplessness post-election are natural, but individuals possess the resilience to adapt and regain stability within a short period.

• Meaningful Work as Motivation: Connecting daily tasks to tangible outcomes can significantly boost motivation and job satisfaction, serving as an antidote to feelings of helplessness.

• Shifting Overton Window: Political discourse is evolving, with broader acceptance of previously fringe ideas, impacting workplace dynamics and broader societal norms.

• Organizational Strategies: Employers can foster healthier work environments by encouraging meaningful work and facilitating respectful dialogues, rather than avoiding political discussions entirely.

---

This episode of The Daily Beast Podcast offers valuable insights into navigating the emotional aftermath of elections and the ever-evolving political landscape. Through engaging discussions and expert analysis, listeners are equipped with strategies to foster resilience, find motivation, and contribute positively in both personal and professional spheres.

Transcript

[Samantha Bee]

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[Joanna Coles]

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[Samantha Bee]

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[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, the good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you're great at getting hints.

[Samantha Bee]

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[Adam Grant]

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[Hugh Doherty]

Deep in the ocean, an Orca pod is on the hunt. These aren't your average Orcas. These guys are organized marketing team.

[Joanna Coles]

Did you get those social media posts scheduled for the seal migration?

[Hugh Doherty]

Aye aye Captain. We even have an automated notification for all pod managers when they go live. They use Monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication clear and their goals in sight. Monday.com or whatever you run even orcas go to Monday.com to dive deeper.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Welcome to the Daily Beast Podcast. I'm Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer of the Daily Beast.

[Samantha Bee]

And I am Samantha Bee, Chief Content Officer of Elon Musk's crop top collection. He's got a lot.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think he has a lot. But are they actually normal sized T shirts that just can't get over the belly?

[Samantha Bee]

They don't quite get there anymore.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I actually feel a bit like that with some of my T shirts. It's not just Elon. It's Thursday and I have stepped outside of the US I'm actually in Barcelona and the Europeans all think Americans have lost their mind.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh dear God. I know. I'm sure.

[Ryan Reynolds]

They are really worried about what happens to NATO, obviously, and what happens to the war that Donald Trump says is going to end on his first day in office.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, you're an emissary of peace and critical thinking, so just do your job and traipse across Europe communicating that some of us are normal here.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I'm here for an AI conference held by Five9. I'm actually emceeing it. So I'm an emissary for AI. I guess I daren't be an emissary for anything else. Well, and an emissary for the Beast. And on today's show, we're getting the download about how the Trump cabinet is shaping up from our Daily Beast executive editor. That's his official title, Hugh Doherty. And we're talking to a good friend of mine, Adam Grant, who is the organizational psychologist. His TED talks have been watched by 80 million people, and he was voted favorite Wharton professor seven years in a row.

[Samantha Bee]

Wow. He's gonna feel sad when this podcast beats his TED Talk numbers.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He is. What have you been voted best at seven times in a row?

[Samantha Bee]

I've never been voted best at anything seven times in a row. Or maybe even ever one time in a row, perhaps.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But you've got lots of Emmy awards and Emmy nominations, so that counts.

[Samantha Bee]

So many accolades. They're all hiding in a cupboard.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You should really have them on that shelf behind you.

[Samantha Bee]

No, I like to keep all the orchids people by me behind me. Can you see your orchid is back there?

[Ryan Reynolds]

That looks good.

[Samantha Bee]

It looks good back there. I myself, I spent the last weekend at a Planned Parenthood retreat. I serve on the board of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. That is my attempt to give back in some possible way. And we spent the whole weekend strategic planning because that feels necessary.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I saw that. There's been emergency buying of Plan B. I think Plan B sales in certain states were up 1,000%.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, it does feel like Project 2025's like, priority number three or four is to fully dismantle the organization. Will we even have contraception in three years? Who knows? Maybe I'll just be just a precious uterine vessel on two getaway sticks and they'll capture me.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And I feel like I've seen a couple of cartoons with women dressed in handmade tal outfits, and they say, well, he did promise to bring down the price of eggs.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, God.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Tell me something. What is going to happen to Planned Parenthood? Because, in fact, only 3% of its funding goes to abortion, right?

[Samantha Bee]

Yeah. Well, I mean, where I serve on the board, it is. I think it is maybe the second largest health care provider in the whole state of Connecticut, or it's really way up there. I mean, they do so much work providing no cost or low cost, like Frontline Health to thousands and thousands and thousands of people, like pap smears and contraception and sexual education and STI testing. There's just so much that they do that it would really be a disaster if something were to happen to it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Is it fair to say that Planned Parenthood slightly lost a figurehead in Cecile Richards, who led it for so long and was so prominent and felt like an excellent advocate?

[Samantha Bee]

Well, she was an incredible advocate, but I have to say that in my experience, the women or the people at Planned Parenthood that I talk to and deal with are just some of the most incredible people who are just wonderful advocates for people's health care.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It does seem extraordinary that we have to talk about this in 2024.

[Samantha Bee]

You really have to gear up to be. To be protective, to be proactive. There is literally so much work to do to keep the organization solvent and moving forward. It's unbelievable. I don't think people really understand what is at stake. But you think of Planned Parenthood as something that has just always been there and always will be there, but that's not necessarily exactly true. And so it is something that we have to continue to fight for and urgently protect.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, in more positive news, we were both on the Pivot podcast this week.

[Samantha Bee]

We were, and it was so fun. I think I made Scott very uncomfortable a couple of times. I. I think Scott is in a.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Permanent state of discomfort.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, that's good. Then. Everything went swimmingly. I think I might have made him blush. I just kept saying things like amniotic. I don't know why the words came out of me. And he turned red. What did you do over the weekend?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I did spend some time talking to people who are very knowledgeable about the Trump transition team.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, really?

[Ryan Reynolds]

About what's going to happen there. And I know we're going to be talking to Hugh Doherty, our executive editor, about the new cabinet members going in, who's been chosen.

[Samantha Bee]

Your life is so mysterious to me. What do you mean that you were talking to people who have directed knowledge of the transition team? What is happening? What does your social life look like? You are curiosity.

[Ryan Reynolds]

What I did get was a sort of sense of perspective in terms of how Donald Trump can't quite believe that he's pulled this off, that he feels like he's king of the world that he spent the last couple of days with people just calling him and from all over the world, heads of state, celebrities, business, people calling him to kiss the ring and that he's very much looking forward to now with the threat of jail of his shoulders in enjoying himself.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, what does that mean? What does that look like?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think it probably means that he swings his legs from behind the desk in the Oval Office and he has people come and pay homage. He talks at them. He's a talker. People say about him that he's a. He's a chatter.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, boy.

[Ryan Reynolds]

And we know he does the weave on the campaign trail. Now I think he'll be doing the weave from behind the Oval Office desk.

[Samantha Bee]

The thing is not woven yet. We're still weaving it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's a tapestry. It's a tapestry of life. It's a tapestry of modern America.

[Samantha Bee]

Did I hear that Ilana is overstaying his welcome there?

[Ryan Reynolds]

I love the fact that Kai Trump on one of her social media posts said that they're now calling him Uncle Elon.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, my God. Do you think they really are?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I wonder if he's wearing sort of. Do you think they have? I've never been to Mar a Lago. I've driven around the outside of it and I would kill to go inside. I'm fascinated by it. But do you think they have like, Mar a Lago dressing gowns or Trump dressing gowns that Elon's wearing? Is he hanging out in a robe by the pool? Is he wearing slippers?

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, the robe is tethered too loosely. If he's hanging out in a robe, the robe is partially open and I do not like it. Joanna, what would you do if you were at a party and Trump walked in? Do you go up to him? Would you sidle?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Of course I wouldn't sidle. I'd walk up to him. Yeah, of course. I mean, couldn't be more interested to talk to him. I mean, listen, what he's pulled off is absolutely extraordinary. And I do feel like we are all bit parts in his television show. He's the ultimate performer, the ultimate entertainer, and he's sort of pulled it off against all expectations, including his own.

[Samantha Bee]

Wow. You would go right up the center. I would crab walk out of the party as fast as possible, like the Exorcist. I would climb up the wall and I would crab across the ceiling and get the hell out as fast as possible.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Why wouldn't you want to talk about Planned Parenthood?

[Samantha Bee]

We don't have anything to talk about, Joanna. We do not have anything to talk about.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I do feel that Donald Trump might. Might remember the last thing that anybody said to him. I think if anybody could persuade him to fund Planned Parenthood, it would be you.

[Samantha Bee]

Sorry. I can't stop laughing.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't think I. I'm ever the optimist. I'm ever the optimist.

[Samantha Bee]

I marvel. I want to live inside your brain. I really do.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But I am very titillated at the idea of Elon cozying up to the family and being the guest that won't leave. You can imagine sort of Trump closing the door and sort of rolling his eyes and starting to complain that he's taking up too much time. It's going to end badly. It's going to end badly.

[Samantha Bee]

It's going to end so badly. You can't have two kings. We know that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. And do you think he's going into the kitchen sort of at 2 in the morning and rifling through the freezer to find ice cream?

[Samantha Bee]

He is definitely doing that. And he is leaving a great big mess.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. And also I'm fascinated by what Melania and Elon have to say, too.

[Samantha Bee]

Absolutely nothing. They have nothing to say to one another. Nothing whatsoever. That's a SAMB guarantee.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We're now joined by a true media maverick and journalism powerhouse. I know that because I hired him. Daily Beast Executive editor Hugh Doherty. Hugh took over the reins this past June. He brought his no holds barred approach to the Beast from his reporting days at the Daily Telegraph, the New York Post and the Daily Mail. And I'm so glad we finally forced you to come on the pod, Hugh.

[Mike Huckabee]

It's a pleasure to be here, Joanna and Sam. I've been waiting for this day.

[Samantha Bee]

For years, I've been waiting for that. I feel like I've been waiting for this all my life. So thank you, Hughie.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I may call you Huey on air, as it were. It's been a pretty busy week at Mar A Lago. I think of you as our Mar A Lago patio correspondent. Tell us about what's going on down there. And I'm disappointed that you're not in your Tommy Bahamas best shirt.

[Mike Huckabee]

I gave you the option of buying a Mar A Lago membership for the Daily Beast and you did not want to part with a million dollars.

[Samantha Bee]

It's a million dollars. Are you kidding?

[Mike Huckabee]

The most recent memberships have been an offer for million dollars. Sam. I know you can probably stretch to that, but. So I'm going to do my best to Take you onto the patio and into the fake situation room that Donald Trump is using in Mar A Lago.

[Ryan Reynolds]

He has a fake situation room.

[Mike Huckabee]

So Trump and his closest aides are working in two places at Mar a Lago. During the day, they're in the fake situation room. They've set up a big room full of monitors and they are watching clips of the people that he is considering for his cabinet and for his top positions. And the big judgment for Trump, we are told, is how do they perform defending him on air?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Of course they do.

[Samantha Bee]

So who's the best attack dog? Are they telegenic? Are those the two markers?

[Mike Huckabee]

We believe those are the two markers. The best indication we have has been the order in which people have been appointed. And the first big name to be appointed, of course, was Elise Stefanik. She's a Republican member of Congress for upstate New York and she is going to become Trump's ambassador to the United Nations. She became best known for her all out attacks on the presidents of Harvard and Penn during the occupations of their campuses by anti Israel protesters. And she's endeared herself to Trump by being a ferocious defender of him, not just on Fox News, but on mainstream media as well. And because she's the first that was appointed, I think that gives you some insight into what he's looking for in his cabinet.

[Samantha Bee]

She definitely has the air of wanting to sit at the table with all the cool girls. I do have a question. Can I ask? Okay, so can you set the scene for me a little bit? Like, okay, so what does that patio look like versus the situation room? So they've made like a fake situation. I just want to kind of get a picture of it. Can you just kind of draw a picture of what that looks like? Like who's sitting where, who's there?

[Mike Huckabee]

So Mar A Lago, of course, is a huge complex. And the central stage is the lawn and patio. And at night it's set with tables. And the central table is set for Trump and whoever he is dining with. It's surrounded by a rope and it's underneath a canopy and around that are arrayed different tables. Of course, this is a great time of year to eat outside in Florida. It's 84 degrees, 85 degrees just about every day this week. And at the inner table, Trump is always present in the evening. And with him is whoever is in favor at that moment. For the last since the election, at least three times, Elon Musk has been spotted at the table. Melania Trump has been spotted at least once.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So she's moved back then.

[Mike Huckabee]

Melania's movements are not entirely clear. She has been seen at Mar A Lago on the night of, on election night and on a subsequent night. Whether she stays in Mar A Lago or returns to New York, we don't know. And obviously we don't really know what her plans are for the West Wing, although she has hired an aide from Goldman Sachs who is going to help her staff her presence in the White House.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I wonder if Elon moves into the East Wing. I loved Anna Navarro's suggestion that he was now the First Lady.

[Mike Huckabee]

Well, Elon himself is calling himself the first buddy. And Kai Trump, who is regarded as Trump's favorite grandchild, she's the 17 year old daughter of Don Jr. She's calling him Uncle Elon and saying he has reached uncle status.

[Samantha Bee]

Wow. And Susie Wiles is there the whole time in her aviator shades, keeping the whole process going forward.

[Mike Huckabee]

Susie Wiles is incredibly powerful as Trump's chief of staff. She was the co manager of his campaign and she has been credited with bringing organization and discipline to the people around Trump, which is a notoriously difficult skill. She's not what you think of as one of the Trump women and I'm going to defer on her appearance. But unusually, she's a 67 year old grandmother and she's from a very conventional Republican background and that's not something that has ever really been seen in the Trump circles before. He's referred to her as the ice queen or the ice maiden. And her tell, when she needs to bring some discipline and order and frankly to get Trump to stop is she puts on those mirrored aviators and that is said reduces him to silence.

[Samantha Bee]

Wow. Dolores Umbridge.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I love it.

[Samantha Bee]

I love it so much.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, that's interesting that she has a tell because Prince Andrew apparently when he was at parties, if he was bored with the people he was talking to, he would look up at the ceiling and that was the sign for the aides to move in and move him along. I dare say he wasn't doing that very much to Jeffrey Epstein's because I think he was thoroughly engaged there.

[Samantha Bee]

Wow. I need a tell. I need a tell for when I want to tell. Okay, so all day. So all day we're in the fake situation room. In the evening we're on the patio and then Donald Trump goes off and does like a DJ set. He spins, he spins the DJ wheel.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Dj, DJ T, dj.

[Mike Huckabee]

So far there's been no sign of President Elect DJ djt. But it is one of his Favorite activities at Mar a Lago. And he gets control of the decks and gets people up dancing.

[Samantha Bee]

I need to tell you the story of when I was okay. When I was at Full Frontal, I ended up interviewing some of Donald Trump's old housekeepers, and they told me a story off camera. They actually wouldn't do it on camera, but I think it's okay for me to share it here. About how they would prepare care his outdoor patio, because he does like to eat outside. And they told me that when they worked for him because he's so afraid of insect life and actually nature itself, but he does like to sit outside. Then if they knew or suspected that he was coming, they would just hang hundreds of sticky fly tapes on the patio to just catch every bug that was humanly possible to catch. And then if they heard that he was, like, coming into the suite, like he was, like, on his way right before he got there, they would run out onto the patio and pull down, down all the sticky tape and just hope that they had captured everything that was in the vicinity. And I bet they are doing that now as well.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm sure they are. It's a great story.

[Samantha Bee]

They are okay. And there are people out in the world, out in the press, they're auditioning for jobs right now. Mike Davis is called to mind. He's out there saying the most outrageous things, really. Just pushing, just pushing the boundaries of He's. He's gone far into indecent speech. He's absolutely horrifying. Can you, can you talk to us about the Overton Window? Can you explain that concept for us? Because it feels like a lot of people are transgressing, that they're flying right out the window.

[Mike Huckabee]

So the Overton Window is the idea of what it's normal and acceptable to talk about in political dialogue. Things that are outside the Overton window are those things that people really believe that they'd be harmed by saying. And what we're seeing at the moment is what people who study these things call a shift in the Overton window, that it becomes acceptable to say things which didn't used to be acceptable to say. You highlighted the possible Attorney General Mike Davies, who has used profane language to refer to Democratic officials. And that's something that, that in the past, we'd have expected resignations or firings, but in Trump land, it's become part of the norm. So that's the idea that the Overton window has shifted and that those things are now acceptable and in some cases, welcomed.

[Samantha Bee]

When he goes off and he calls literature James a badass, which is disgusting. He, when he's an attack dog of the absolute worst kind, then when they hire someone for the position who isn't quite as extreme or quite as like, uses that type of language, their extreme ideas don't feel so scary. Is that the idea?

[Mike Huckabee]

Yeah, very much so. The idea of trying to move the Overton window is that you get to do things that you might not have been able to do before or say things that you weren't able to say before. And particularly when it comes to the criminal justice system that's been very tightly defined in the past by norms and values. So when it comes to the criminal justice system, the Trump world is really keen to use their powers for revenge on Trump's perceived enemies, and that's something that was way outside the Overton window. So when Davies speaks in such profane terms about Tish James, then that's helping enable the idea that it's okay to take revenge on enemies. Their response can be profane, too.

[Samantha Bee]

I think we've lived the past eight years in this realm, and it causes great agitation in the psyche of the nation. So we can expect four more years of that is what you're suggesting? That's what we can look forward to.

[Mike Huckabee]

I think if you listen to what Trump has said and to what those people around them have said, they definitely want to shift the Overton window in a much more aggressive direction, which I suppose would mean breaking the Overton window.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, smashing the Overton window.

[Samantha Bee]

Smashing it. So there's so much crazy in the Cabinet to get through. I feel like we should just hit some of the highlights because there's gonna be new ones by the time, and they're just dropping all the time, new announcements, suspicions, confirmations. So we've got Susie wild, Tom Homan, Mr. Family separation. He's back.

[Mike Huckabee]

We've got him in charge as the border czar, and it's not clear if he's going to be in the Cabinet. We think probably not. And of course, if he's not in the Cabinet, he may not be subject to Senate confirmation. So that would keep some of the confrontations that Democrats would want to have with him much more under wraps.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So, Hugh, just remind everybody a Cabinet job requires Senate confirmation.

[Mike Huckabee]

Yes, that's right. The Senate has to advise and consent on the president's most important aides. Everybody in the Cabinet is going to have to get an up or down vote from the Senate. But it's a Republican Senate and it's a MAGA Senate. The Republicans are going to have at least 52 seats, possibly 53.

[Samantha Bee]

So. And we've got Governor Kirsty Noem. She's the current governor of South Dakota. Right. She's actually get her confused with the one who got felt up during Beetlejuice on Broadway that time. But that's.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's Lauren Bourne. That's Lauren Bo. Yeah. Who's congresswoman.

[Samantha Bee]

Yeah.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Christine. Christine, no. Is the one who shot her dog and then she shot her goat.

[Samantha Bee]

That's right. That's right. And in her book, she said that she met with Kim Jong Un, but later would not clarify if she actually had. And nobody has any confirmation of that. And it very obviously didn't happen. So that's a quality pick. Stephen Miller, one of my favorites. Former director of speech writing for Trump first term. He's going to be deputy chief of staff for policy. He is generally a ghoul, has been hated since high school when he said, am I the only one who's sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us? He's horrendous. He's horrendous. Marco Rubio, little Marco, best known for drinking water, weirdly, during the State of the Union rebuttal up for secretary of State. There's a whole cast of characters. Everybody's jockeying for position. It's patio power games.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Patio power games. It's sort of auditioning. It's central casting, isn't it? I tend to try and think of everything that Trump does as through the eyes of a television producer. A friend of mine at CNN told me a very interesting story of when he was showing round both President Biden and Donald Trump in preparation for their debate, what turned out to be the fateful debate. And he said that Donald Trump spent 20 minutes looking at the cameras, asking where the microphone was, trying to understand the set so that he knew how to perform. And when Joe Biden came in, he came in and behaved very presidentially and couldn't have been less interested about where the microphones or the cameras were at all. And then finally just said, do you want a selfie? And took a selfie and then left. And I always feel that Trump's angle on everything is how does this play with the audience? How does this play on television? Because we are all now bit parts in his reality show. America is his reality show.

[Samantha Bee]

He also reminds me of myself in high school because I did not know how to blend my foundation and I only ever cared what was happening in the front. So I would curl my hair like Farrah Fawcett, but only in the front, as though the whole back half didn't even exist. I feel like he just. He lives very frontally. Do you know what I'm saying? What are we thinking about RFK Jr. Is he around? Is he part of the patio power games?

[Mike Huckabee]

He has checked into nearby hotel.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh.

[Mike Huckabee]

Even though the Kennedys do have a mansion down the road, seems he might not be quite welcome on that compound. He's checked into one of the hotels near Mar a Lago.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Is it the Breakers? Is he staying at the Breakers?

[Samantha Bee]

The one with the chocolate chip cookies? No, he would never eat a chocolate chip cookie.

[Mike Huckabee]

He had to check his wheel head in.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So I'm told that Trump thinks he's very charismatic, but that he's. The phrase that was given to me was, he's very charismatic, but he's crazy as shit.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, then why is he so involved? What is the deal?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I'm trying to figure out who. Who Overton was. Was the Overton Window actually based on someone called Overton?

[Mike Huckabee]

Yes, Joseph Overton. He was a conservative scholar at the Mackinac Institute in the Midwest and rather tragically died very young. Died in 2003, age 43. And he was not around to see the movement that the Overton Window has taken in recent years, probably in a direction that might surprise him. I don't think any conservative in 2003 thought that we'd be governed from the Mar A Lago patio.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I thank him for his work. A nation thanks you.

[Ryan Reynolds]

So have we. Have we named all the people that we're curious about so far to his cabinet? Who have we missed?

[Mike Huckabee]

Well, there's so many, Joanna, that are jockeying for position and are lobbying on the patio. One that might be worth highlighting that was a surprise success is Mike Huckabee. He used to be the governor of Arkansas. He's going to be the ambassador to Israel, which at a time of Middle east unrest, is a big issue for Trump to be engaged in. And Mike Huckabee brings some unique skills. You'll remember that he's a yo yo dieter. And he also has been. He's the pitch man for Relaxium. It's a herbal sleeping supplement that he promises will make you sleep better, but which a scientific study apparently showed actually didn't had the opposite effect. The placebo was better, but it's. It's a big development for the Middle east that, if nothing else, can bring peace. Mike Huckabee can Offer some relaxium.

[Samantha Bee]

Relaxium.

[Mike Huckabee]

Relaxium. And I know what you're thinking. It sounds like, but I can assure you that he has pushed it on many conservative channels.

[Samantha Bee]

And relaxing.

[Mike Huckabee]

We can get you. We can get you a supplement, Sam, if you. If you want to try it.

[Samantha Bee]

It just makes me know that what we need is a line of Daily Beast supplements. Yes, yes. Beat our own. Listen, there's so many.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's crazy, because actually, the supplement market isn't regulated at all. You could put a load of sawdust in a little capsule and sell it, and half the people who take it will think it's doing them good. It's really shocking.

[Samantha Bee]

Just a bunch of. Just a bunch of sawdust and just like some beet granules or something like that. Oh, for potency. Yeah, human. Human potency. I don't know. Life force. Oh, my God. We'll just call it Bebeast. We'll just call it Beast Capsules. We're gonna make a billion dollars, and then we're gonna be ambassadors.

[Mike Huckabee]

And you can afford the membership at maralag.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh, thanks, Heaven. I want to go to a disco there. I am very curious to see whether or not the founding singer and the manager that they are married, of ymca, allows Trump to play YMCA at the inauguration. They've denied him the right to do that before, but I think they're coming around to it.

[Mike Huckabee]

She did indeed tell our Michael Daly that they would consider it very carefully and it would depend on where. Where it reached in the charts. And this week it reached number one.

[Samantha Bee]

Are you kidding?

[Ryan Reynolds]

And I think they said to Michael that they would be up for allowing Trump to use it at the inauguration if they felt it would bring unity to the country.

[Samantha Bee]

Okay, wait. Can you just. Sorry. You know what? I feel like we're missing from that. I feel like we're missing the beginning of the story that. It's a Daily Beast story.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's a Daily Beast story by our reporter Michael Daly about the popularity of ymca, which is now back, and also because it came out in 1978, which was Peak Studio 54, when Trump was just on the dance floor. Or actually he wasn't on the dance floor. He was at the edge of the dance floor watching other people on the dance floor. That's right, isn't it? He.

[Mike Huckabee]

Yes. He's been liberated in old age. Like every boomer in the villages.

[Samantha Bee]

Who's going to perform at the inauguration this year? Will it be the actual assembled Village people? The people who are left of the village, The Village person.

[Ryan Reynolds]

There's Only one original one, but there's one who's been doing it for 10 years, so he's semi original.

[Samantha Bee]

Okay, well, who else, who else could be there? Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood.

[Mike Huckabee]

Kid Rock's a gun.

[Samantha Bee]

TDS maybe Lara Trump, JOANNA Oh, I hope so.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I hope so because she needs to launch her singing career.

[Samantha Bee]

I really, if I was doing the lineup for the inauguration, I would have her do the Star Spangled Banner.

[Ryan Reynolds]

She could be in place of Amanda Gorman.

[Samantha Bee]

Yeah, I don't think Amanda Gorman is going to be there for that.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think they've asked her and she's busy.

[Mike Huckabee]

Well, Lara might have another role, Sam, before the inauguration. She is on the shortlist, we understand, to be the senator from Florida taking this, taking the seat of Marco Rubio. And she, as you know, isn't from Florida and doesn't really live there very often, but she is one of the people that apparently is going to be considered or Marianne Akers is reporting.

[Samantha Bee]

Sometimes when you give me information, it causes me to lose blood flow to my extremities. And I felt that just now. I felt my fingers and toes tingle and go numb. And so thank you for that. We've a really hot, hot four years, extraordinary time to be alive. Thank you so much, Hugh. This was so exciting.

[Mike Huckabee]

Only the best is yet to come, Sal.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, God.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Best is yet to come. Yeah. Huey, I'm worried we've taken you off patio watch and you need to get back there. Put on your Tommy Bahama and get back out there and find out what else is going on down there. But I wonder if Elon will last the week because the one thing we know that's consistent with Donald Trump is he gets bored of people very quickly. He doesn't like anybody to rival him, and he moves people, he moves through people almost as fast as perhaps relaxium I might move through you. Oh, dear. It's bringing us all down. I think I've just gone through the Overton window. Oh, no, I think I've gone through the Overton window.

[Samantha Bee]

Lexium so invigorating for your lower intestine. Olivia, wake up. Very refreshed.

[Mike Huckabee]

It's what you need after you've hit the shrimp buffet at Mar a Lago.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Hugh, thank you very much. Get back to the patio asap. And will you thank Mary Ann Akers and Michael Daley for their stories this week? Great work.

[Mike Huckabee]

It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Joanna. Thank you, Sam.

[Samantha Bee]

Thank you.

[Hugh Doherty]

Are you a professional pillow fighter or a 9 to 5 low cost time travel agent or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession. It doesn't matter. Whatever it is you do, however Complexplex or intricate, Monday.com can help you organize, orchestrate and make it more efficient. Monday.com is the 1 centralized platform for everything work related and with Monday.com work is just easier. Monday.com for whatever you run. Go to Monday.com to learn more.

[Joanna Coles]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

[Mike Huckabee]

So to help us we brought in.

[Joanna Coles]

A reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless how many get 3030 biddy get 30 get.

[Mike Huckabee]

202020 but to get 2020 biddy get 15151515 just 15 bucks a month sold.

[Joanna Coles]

Give it a [e-mail] switch $45 upfront.

[Unknown]

Payment equivalent to $15 per month new customers on first three month plan only taxes and fees, extra speed slower above 40 gigabytes.

[Adam Grant]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

We're joined now by this week's guest, our Beast of the Week, Adam Grant. Adam is an organizational psychologist. He's a professor at the University of Penn's Wharton School of Business. He's the best selling author of the originals Think Again, Givers and Takers and Hidden Potential. He was the youngest tenured professor at Wharton at 28. And he's known for his work on motivation and creativity. And Adam inspires people to rethink their beliefs by asking how instead of why. And I will tell you, my favorite anecdote of being with Adam is that the two of us were at a conference together in Sweden, in Stockholm, two years ago, and we were posing for photographs, and I looked around to see what he was doing, and he was doing a handstand.

[Samantha Bee]

What?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yes. And I was standing there trying to look. You know, I've got my hands in my pockets. Was this angle good?

[Samantha Bee]

Trying to look, like. So cool.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah. And he was. He was upside down. He's a former Junior Olympian diver.

[Samantha Bee]

What is it with these people? How dare you?

[Ryan Reynolds]

We need to have some underachievers on the pod. I'm beginning to get a sense of inferiority about this whole thing.

[Samantha Bee]

I really am. I know. Okay. I'm excited for this conversation. You know what? I'm going to be transformed on the other side. Sure of it.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Adam, I think of you just as Adam, one of my work friends. And so I've never actually really looked at your bio. And when I did, in preparation for today, I realized you're officially called an organizational psychologist. And I thought I should ask you to explain to us what that is because it makes it sound like you're going to come and, you know, declutter our desks. But I know that it's a bit more than that.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, I would like you to come and declutter my desk if you're available for that after.

[Joanna Coles]

I can't do it. I can't help with your closet either. And I definitely can't cure your ocd.

[Samantha Bee]

Okay. Oh, yeah.

[Joanna Coles]

Disappointing. Now, I study in a lot of my job, I study how to make work not suck.

[Samantha Bee]

That feels very validating.

[Joanna Coles]

Are you saying your work sucks right now, Sam?

[Samantha Bee]

No, this part doesn't suck. But work has sucked in the past. I feel that's a very useful endeavor.

[Joanna Coles]

It could be. I feel like work has been demotivating and meaningless for too many people for. For too many centuries now. We ought to do something about it.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, thank you for joining us.

[Joanna Coles]

Don't thank me yet. We'll see how this goes.

[Samantha Bee]

We're gonna ask you for a lot of insight today, so I hope you're prepared to fix everything in our world.

[Joanna Coles]

Done. Bring it up.

[Samantha Bee]

Okay, thank you so much. It does feel to me like the entirety of the globe right now is in a brace for impact position. Like on an airplane. Everybody's kind of thinking like, what is coming our way? We know it's something. We know it will be dramat. How does that translate into the workplace? People must be having zooms all over the place trying to figure out what's coming next.

[Joanna Coles]

I think a lot of people are avoiding their zooms for the most part. But, yeah, I think, you know, in some ways what we're seeing right now is the opposite of what happened during the digital revolution. So I remember right around 2000, as I was just starting to think about what it might mean to be an organizational psychologist, there were just tons of leaders who didn't believe that the Internet was going to change anything. I remember one of my first projects was at a bookstore called Borders. You might remember it, watched it go out of business. Similar things, I think from different distances. We could all see BlackBerry, Blockbuster, Kodak, Sears, Toys R Us. And what was so fascinating to me then is that once you believed that digital disruption was real, it was pretty obvious what to do about it. You need a website, you need some kind of digital distribution mechanism, and you could sort of figure out the next steps. I think we're dealing with the reverse of that now, which is everybody believes that with AI and many other changes on the horizon, massive changes coming, but nobody has a clue what that looks like. And I think it's unsettling for a lot of people. It's paralyzing for some, it's saying society provoking for others. And probably the biggest response to it that I'm seeing is called threat rigidity, which is basically, I'm worried that something bad is happening. I don't know what it looks like. So I'm just going to focus narrowly on the things I can control.

[Samantha Bee]

I see. I feel like I see that almost everywhere I look.

[Joanna Coles]

I don't know what to do about it, by the way. I just name these things and then, you know, good luck, I guess.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I was thinking, Sam, were you meaning that brace for impact because of the results of the election? And was Adam talking about brace for impact because of the oncoming AI storm?

[Samantha Bee]

I actually think that it's both things because, I mean, obviously the fire hose of disinformation during the election season is really emblematic of how much we've given over to these tools, how little we understand them, how they're evolving is going to impact all of us for the rest of our natural born lives. And of course, we have an administration coming in that's going to blow everything up in a probably pretty significant way. So I think writ large, brace for impact holds.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Adam, do you think it's likely that the new administration is going to blow everything up?

[Joanna Coles]

How would you define blow everything up?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, it was Sam's expression I'm tossing back to Sam.

[Samantha Bee]

I mean, blow everything up. I mean, undo norms, make sweeping changes to government agencies, act quickly to just make big sweeping social changes.

[Joanna Coles]

I think there will be a lot of attempts to do that. I think there's an open question about the strength of our democratic institutions and how easy it is to actually transform them. But I think that goes to a more general point, which is we are remarkably bad forecasters. As human beings, we love to believe that we can look into a crystal ball and see what's coming around the corner. And the reality is that even the world's best professional forecasters get it wrong all the time. And obviously I've been hearing from a lot of liberal and Democratic voters that they're terrified about what's to come.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, hold on a minute. I mean, not least the pollsters, right? The polls were completely wrong. So they feel like the first institutional. I know they're not an official government institution, but the polling was so wrong that no wonder we're bad at predicting what's going to happen.

[Joanna Coles]

And the polling is the easy part, right? All you have to do is figure out there whether the people you've talked to are going to do what they say they're going to do and whether they're representative of the population. The much harder part is then asking, okay, what are the second order consequences, consequences of the outcome of the election? And I do think it's really worth pausing to think about the counterfactual there. So I remember if you go back to 2020, pretty much every Democrat I knew was celebrating. But now with the benefit of hindsight, is it possible that the world would have been better off or America would have been better off had Trump won in 2020 as opposed to 2024? There would have been no January 6th. There would have been no lie about the election. We wouldn't be worrying about RFK as health czar now. I think there's so many ways that what looked like a good outcome then might actually have been a bad outcome in the long run. And this is how it always goes with forecasting, right? What seems like it's worth celebrating turns out to be extremely disappointing or unsettling. And Vice versa. And so I think for me, that's a dose of humility to remember that, yeah, there are things to worry about around the corner, but they could always be worse and they might be better than we think.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I guess I'm trying to make Sam feel better here, but I spent some time over the weekend with people who've spent some time with the Trump transition team, and their point of view on it was that that Donald Trump is ecstatic to be in this position, that he didn't think it was happening. The threat of jail is now off his shoulders. And actually what he wants to do is ensure a good economy and have a good time. He wants to invite all his friends to the White House. He wants to play a lot of golf. He's 78, and actually he doesn't want to spend his last years in constant fights with people that. That I agree, seems unlikely because he's clearly. That's one of his sort of default positions. But actually, what he wants to do after a fairly difficult four years is enjoy himself.

[Samantha Bee]

But his friends are Nick Fuentes. They're dinner companions. That's a problem for me, although I do have a theory about RFK Jr. Which Joanna has heard, which is that I'm not very worried about him at all, because he has. I think that Trump will get sick of him very quickly because he doesn't like people around him with gravelly voices. And I do understand and appreciate that his gravelly voice does not indicate that he has a terrible cold. But I think in the end, it's going to disgust Donald Trump because he doesn't like any, Any. Any symptoms of anything in his purview.

[Joanna Coles]

Not a theory I've heard before. But I will say I've never been so excited about. About Trump being quick to fire, as I am right now.

[Samantha Bee]

I'm so excited about that. I do have a question, because there's been so much. This has been a really tough election season. There's been so much hurt. There's been just so much mudslinging. It's been a terrible experience. And that must come into the workplace. Our workplaces can be so polarized. Do you think that there are practical ways for employers to create an environment for open discussion without fueling division? How do you look at that in a way that's useful and practical? How should an employer look at that?

[Joanna Coles]

I think it's really hard. So Accenture did this fairly effectively a few years back. They had a Building Bridges initiative where they encouraged people to talk about politics and religion and other potentially Divisive issues. They did it with moderators and they said, we're going to come here to listen to each other and learn from each other. And I think in that case what they were able to discover was they have strong norms of professionalism and people were very concerned about ruining their reputations or making a career limiting move. So they tended to communicate in fairly respectful and thoughtful ways. I think what we're seeing in most workplaces is not that there's some brand new evidence from BetterUp, where I chair a center and serve on an advisory board, full disclosure. That the vast majority of people don't want to talk about politics at work and that people who do end up more stressed out and less excited to come to work. But that unfortunately a lot of political discussion is happening in the workplace because our neighborhoods are fractured, our families are split, and people don't feel like they have another place to talk about it. It just kind of comes out. I think we're seeing more and more organizations just discourage political discourse at work. You obviously can't ban it, but it's pretty hard to focus on your job when we're talking about where we stand on issues of abortion or on guns or immigration or fill in your hot button. So like, not the best way to get people to think creatively or to focus.

[Samantha Bee]

Right. I mean, how do you avoid it? How do you put mechanisms in place to shift people away from that election related stress and channel their energy? Just more projects?

[Joanna Coles]

No, not more work.

[Samantha Bee]

More work. More burdensome.

[Joanna Coles]

I think the answer might be more meaningful work.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Okay.

[Joanna Coles]

You know, a lot of people are feeling helpless right now. And the best antidote to helplessness is a sense of helpfulness. Which means if I'm working on an important problem or I see the people around me need my support, that's going to be something that grabs my attention and allows me to concentrate on something other than what's going on in the world that's beyond my control.

[Ryan Reynolds]

But the people who voted for Donald Trump aren't feeling helpless.

[Joanna Coles]

No, I think that's fair.

[Samantha Bee]

They're the angriest winners in the world.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, are they actually? Or are you just falling for that stereotype? I mean, the amazing thing to me is that there hasn't been any rioting. This has been a very sort of peaceful resolution to what was, as you say, a very fractious election. But actually, you look outside, the sun is shining, it feels very normal.

[Joanna Coles]

This is one of the patterns we see repeatedly. Right. So we tend to project our emotions out into the future. As lasting much longer than they actually do. If you look at the Data after the 2008 election, for example, McCain supporters thought they were going to be much more miserable than they actually were when Obama won. If you look at post 2016 voters in Democratic states and liberal voters, within about a week to a week and a half had gone right back to their baseline levels of happiness after Trump won. So there's an adaptation period, right? We all have what's called a psychological immune system along with a physical immune system, where we start to find silver linings. We make sense. We shift our attention to things that we can make sure go well. And, you know, this sort of event that people think is either amazing or terrible doesn't end up taking over our lives as much as we expect it to.

[Samantha Bee]

What kind of effect do you think that empty promises have on people? Because, I mean, elections are obviously full of them, but we seem just surprised and disappointed every four years when we hear them again and nothing comes to pass in the way that we thought it would. Does that go into kind of the big stew of the erosion of the public trust?

[Joanna Coles]

I think so. I think that it certainly seems to breed cynicism. And when people get cynical, they either disengage altogether or they end up with this motivation for chaos that we've seen rise in the last few years, which is a growing number of people, regardless of ideology, saying, you know what? I don't care who I'm voting for, I know what I'm voting against, and we need to blow it up and get the elites outside of Washington. And I do think that's in part a consequence of promising that we're going to make change and then not seeing it happen. I think at the same time, though, people should be much more aware than they are of just how hard it is to get anything done in a giant bureaucracy. Every time I hear a conspiracy theory about Washington, as somebody who spent time serving on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon done, I actually wish that people had as much power as you think they do, as small groups of leaders. They might actually get something done for once.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Isn't that actually what to some people might be exciting about the idea of someone like Elon Musk coming in and snooping around government. I mean, it's very clear that a lot of government is too big, it is too slow, it doesn't work for people. And you can sense that people want change. And why wouldn't we bring in our biggest, most successful innovators? I'm not saying that that his Behavior on X is anything to emulate. But why wouldn't we be excited about someone who's got as extraordinary a brain as Elon coming in and at least having a look at it?

[Joanna Coles]

Well, one, because there's a lot of evidence that people who are high achievers in business actually fail in politics. Because the trial and error. I'm just going to keep taking on ambitious goals and doing whatever I can to pursue them. Overlooks the fact that the way that you solve problems in politics requires relationship building and coalitions. Not exactly Elon's strong suit.

[Samantha Bee]

No, exactly.

[Joanna Coles]

I think also, I mean, if you look at what makes Elon a great innovator, in particular, he's a genius when it comes to hardware engineering. I think about building rockets and electric cars. I don't think that he's our greatest manager. I wouldn't necessarily hold him up as an exemplar for a lot of the leadership skills that I study and teach at his alma mater. So I think that if we want to bring somebody in, we ought to bring somebody in who's an expert at organizational change. Somebody who's great at leadership but isn't.

[Ryan Reynolds]

One of the things that Elon is good at doing, and one of the things that the tech world prides itself on doing is thinking in new ways. And very clearly, especially with the advent of AI, people are going to have to think in different ways. And I totally get your point about Elon's reputation for management, but the things he's been successful at are things that people said you couldn't do.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, Joanna, I'm sympathetic to the argument. I think, though, you're putting too much faith in one individual. Let's not bet on Iron Man. We have an image of a few super geniuses who we think can do anything and everything. The great news about the American government being as enormous as it is. There are tons of pockets of really smart people who have great ideas that are not being heard. And so what I would do is let's go to some of those people I think about on this Defense Innovation board that I was part of for a few years. One of the things we did was we visited different military bases and we tried to find people who identified themselves as loyal oppositionists. People who were constantly challenging the status quo and getting themselves in trouble because they were kind of bucking the authority of middle managers. But they were doing it because they were passionate about the mission and they were looking for a better way. And I would say when you've got an organization of hundreds of Thousands of people. Actually, we're talking millions in the case of the overall government. Let's start internally and find the disruptors before we go to outsiders in tech who may not have a clue about how government works.

[Samantha Bee]

Yeah, it's also finding someone who has an impulse or a desire to work for the public good, which you have to find someone who wants to give themselves over in a public service capacity also. And I don't think that he meets that marker. In my opinion.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I just feel less afraid of bringing outsiders in to take a look at things because sometimes I think that's what you need. But, Adam, what is the best mechanism now for the Democratic Party to figure out where they go?

[Joanna Coles]

That's a really good question. I think there's just a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking happening right now, now. And I think people are too quick to reach conclusions and much too slow to start running experiments. So the first thing I would do if I were running the Democratic Party is to say we actually have a great opportunity because we have lots of local governments around the country to do a piloting of different ideas and figure out what resonates with voters, what brings back, for example, the working class. What is it that's going to get people to think about the competence and character of leadership leaders as opposed to just the single issue that they might vote on? I think we can make a whole list of questions, and then there's a temptation then to just plunge in and implement solutions that seem reasonable or that voters tell you in focus groups resonate with them. I'm like, let's run the AB test. Let's actually find out what works. And then as ideas are tested at a local level, we can begin to scale them nationally. And I say we suggesting that this should not be unique to the Democratic Party. Republicans should do this. I think that there ought to be an independent movement to do this as well. Last I checked, I think it was Churchill who said that democracy is the worst system of government, except all the others that have been tried. And from my viewpoint, not that many iterations have been tried. Why not start experimenting more?

[Samantha Bee]

You are a professor at Wharton, which Donald Trump loves to remind people that he attended. What type of effect do you think that the next four years of his presidency is going to have on the school, if any will? It should.

[Joanna Coles]

I don't know that it actually has much effect on the school at all, but I do think that, politics aside, when I look at the actual behavior of Donald Trump, it's the opposite of what we teach as great Leadership. My core principles are be a giver, not a taker, Be a learner, not a knower, and surround yourself with people who challenge your thought process, not the ones who just affirm your conclusions. I mean, it would be nice to have a president who reads a book occasionally. And I think that maybe now we're more motivated than ever to teach those principles to the next generation. I think about this every day. Every day that I walk into the classroom, I think, there is a young Donald Trump or Elon Musk in my classroom. What do I wish those leaders had known when they were in their twenties?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Can you get us his transcript?

[Joanna Coles]

No, no, I don't know how to do that. I don't even think it exists anymore.

[Samantha Bee]

Just give Joanna your pass key.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, if anybody's got his transcripts out there, the Daily Beast will be very happy to take a look at it. Similarly, with his tax returns, the two missing documents that might have changed the course of history.

[Joanna Coles]

Joanna, do you really think that anything would be changed by the transcripts? We know that he wasn't a good student.

[Samantha Bee]

We just want to know because it would be delicious. It would just be delicious, and it would really bug him.

[Ryan Reynolds]

It's always interesting to have early insight into a character, isn't it? There might be a teacher who knew all along that he was going to be president or that he was copying someone else's homework.

[Joanna Coles]

I don't think we need that. We have the Simpsons. Right. So, all good.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, this was great.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I think we're still in a little bit of shock. I tell you what I would like to ask you, Adam. This election has gone on forever, it feels like, and I think both sides are now sensing anticlimax. How does one deal with that? I mean, in the workplace, what are the ways to get people back and motivated again? One of the things you teach is motivation and meaning. How do we find that?

[Joanna Coles]

Well, I think probably this might be my favorite experiment I've ever done, actually a series of them. So I'll just take you back with a quick story and then try to answer your question. So let's go to the University of Michigan, where you have people on the phone phones calling alumni, interrupting their dinner and trying to get them to donate to the university. They get rejected all the time. People are like, yeah, I already gave to the university. It was called tuition. Leave me alone. And it's a very difficult job to find motivation in. I design a very simple intervention. It takes five minutes. Some of the callers are randomly assigned to just a five minute interaction. And a month later, they've spiked 142% in weekly phone time, caller by calling, and 171% in weekly revenue that they brought in.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow.

[Joanna Coles]

What happened in that five minutes? All I did was I brought in one scholarship student who told them where the money they raised was going. And instead of thinking about their jobs as harassing alumni, now they saw their jobs as actually enabling students to afford school so they could see the tangible difference they were making in the lives of living, breathing human beings. And I think we all have jobs that make a difference. I think we often are disconnected from knowing what our impact is. And so what I would encourage people to do if they're trying to find motivation at work is to ask, if your job didn't exist, who would be worse off? And then the people in groups that come to mind, you need to know their names, their faces, and their stories, because they remind you that what you do at work matters.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Sam, who would be worse off if.

[Samantha Bee]

I didn't do this job?

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, go.

[Samantha Bee]

I don't think anyone would.

[Joanna Coles]

No one.

[Samantha Bee]

Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm crushed. Closes COMPUTER SLOWLY TURNS OFF all notifications.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I would be worse off.

[Samantha Bee]

I would definitely be worse off.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah, I would be worse off. And our Daily Beast. Our Daily Beast listeners would be worse off.

[Samantha Bee]

I found this fascinating. I'm sorry, I. My eyes started to twitch when we started talking about the Trump administration. I will admit that it literally started to twist.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, it's all happening. You're gonna have to figure out survival techniques for the next four years.

[Samantha Bee]

I know.

[Joanna Coles]

Well, look, there are things. I know this is blasphemy to say with probably a more progressive audience, but there are things he's going to make better, not just worse. If we go back to the fact that nobody knew there was a pandemic coming, Operation Warp Speed might not have happened under another administration. We know that saved many lives. And I just. I think it's worth remembering we don't know what's coming around the corner. Corner. And every change has losses. It also has gains. We can worry that the losses are going to outweigh the gains, but we shouldn't overlook the gains.

[Samantha Bee]

That is so funny, because when anybody asks me that question, that's the only. That's the single one thing I can say also, Operation Warp Speed was pretty.

[Joanna Coles]

Great, and it really mattered. The stakes were extremely high.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yep. America got their vaccine first.

[Samantha Bee]

Yeah. Okay. Yes.

[Joanna Coles]

I mean, let's hope we don't have another pandemic.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Well, I think they only Come every hundred years, don't they?

[Joanna Coles]

Give or take. But we're also more globalized than we were throughout that entire history, so it seems like it ought to be accelerating.

[Samantha Bee]

Never say never. Joanna. Fantastic. I love talking to you. Thank you so much.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I still want you to come and organize my desk, though.

[Samantha Bee]

Adam, I'll.

[Joanna Coles]

Not only can I not organize your desk minus mess, I'm very good at.

[Samantha Bee]

Organizing other people's lives, just not my own.

[Joanna Coles]

You shouldn't, though. There's. There's some evidence that people who have slightly cluttered desks are more creative than people who are super need. And it's not just the kind of person you can actually clutter someone's desk, and they become a little less linear and more divergent, which is sometimes helpful for having creative insights.

[Samantha Bee]

So there you go, Joanna.

[Joanna Coles]

Little mess goes a long way.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I'm going to let people know that, because I think people come in my office and they're, like, horrified by my desk, which is a massive. It's a mosaic of sticky notes and papers and old computers.

[Joanna Coles]

I'm not licensing your big mess. I said a little mess can go a long way. Nice try, though.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Adam, thank you for joining us. I feel like you've left us on a very positive note, actually. Operation Warp Speed. I love that conversation. Sam. And I was very struck by his point that not only do we have a physical immune system, but we also have a psychological immune system, which kicks in after about 10 days. No matter how stressful you find something, you are after 10 days, able to cope with it. So we're. We're. We're not quite there, but by this time next week, we'll be there.

[Samantha Bee]

We will be there. And I'll be doing handstands all around you and showing you up with my gymnastic skills and my physical prowess.

[Ryan Reynolds]

You know what I want us to do? I want us to do a podcast together, and I want you to bring some of your baking in. You talk about your baking. I'm not sure it's true. They're like, I've never tried your baking. I've never seen your baking.

[Samantha Bee]

That's true. Okay. All right, well, get ready. When we're in person, when you're not enjoying pan kontamat in all kinds of exotic places, I'll bring you in Barcelona.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I keep hoping I'm going to bump into Penelope Cruz, but then I remember that she's probably not here.

[Joanna Coles]

Why.

[Samantha Bee]

Why wouldn't she be? She might be there.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I don't think she's here. I keep the Whole thing is like an Amal Duvar movie.

[Samantha Bee]

You know what? It's all in how you frame it. Joanna. Penelope Cruz is right around the corner. You just have to be open to receive.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I do. I will tell you one thing. I went out for a quick walk this afternoon and as I was going at the hotel, concierge said to me that I should remove my earrings because the pickpockets are now so bad in Barcelona that they will just whip them out of your oh, okay.

[Samantha Bee]

Well, that was Penelope Cruz.

[Ryan Reynolds]

That's her side hustle I'm hoping to or I'm planning to come back with my lobes intact. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please like subscribe and share this episode with a friend so you can argue about it and whoever sends us an email first to beastpod thedailybeast.com today you'll get a free box of Relaxium, but consult your doctor before consuming.

[Samantha Bee]

We bear no responsibility for what happens to your body and I promise that we'll buy it from a third party seller so that the money doesn't go in my cockabee's pocket.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We'll be back next Thursday with another episode of the Daily Beast podcast.

[Samantha Bee]

As my former muse once said, be best everybody.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Oh Sam, you know it's be Beast.

[Samantha Bee]

It is. That relaxium is going to be a beast.

[Ryan Reynolds]

The Daily Beast podcast is produced by Sarah Demonkoft, Svia Beren Reinstein, Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Additional writing by Sasha Seinfeld and editing by Deanna Chapman and engineered by Cameron Shanken.

[Samantha Bee]

Gifting is hard, but here's a hint. Give the gift of connection from US Cellular.

[Joanna Coles]

Not sure what that means. Well, here's a slightly more specific hint. You can choose four free phones and get four lines for $90 a month from US Cellular.

[Samantha Bee]

Your family wants new phones, so how do we know? They told us.

[Joanna Coles]

Yeah, the good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you're great at getting hints.

[Samantha Bee]

So take the hint and get them four free phones and four lines for 90amonth.

[Joanna Coles]

US Cellular built for us.

[Samantha Bee]

Acast powers.

[Joanna Coles]

The world's best podcasts. Here's a that we recommend.

[Unknown]

Welcome back to two Judgy Girls. I'm Mary from the Bay. And I'm Courtney from la. TJG is the podcast where we spill all the tea on your favorite reality TV shows, celebrity gossip and everything in between. We're here to bring you our unfiltered opinions, hilarious commentary and plenty of laughs along the way. We're two SDSU Delta Gamma sisters with a microphone and a whole lot of opinions. Each week, we dive headfirst into the wild world of reality television. From Bravo to all the trash TV you could want. We break down the drama, dissect the latest scandals, and share our thoughts on everything from the jaw dropping moments to the embarrassing antics. But that's not all. We're not here to just gossip. We're here to connect with you, the jurors, and share our love of all things pop culture. Whether we're dishing on the latest celebrity break breakups, discussing our favorite guilty pleasure movies, or sharing embarrassing stories from our own lives, we promise to keep it real, keep it fun, and keep you coming back for more. Come judge with us.

[Joanna Coles]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Samantha Bee]

Acast.com.