Off the Record With Michael Easter

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Dr. John Delony Show — "Off the Record With Michael Easter"
Air Date: July 25, 2026
Host: Dr. John Delony (Ramsey Network)
Guest: Michael Easter (author, journalist, founder of the 2% group)

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Episode Overview

In this rich, candid conversation, Dr. John Delony sits down with his friend and renowned author Michael Easter to discuss how comfort, loneliness, and the pursuit of ease are quietly destroying health, relationships, and mental well-being in modern society. Delony and Easter explore the role of discomfort in building a good life, the dangers of over-optimization, the epidemic of loneliness, the value of social friction, and practical ways to reclaim meaning. This episode is full of personal stories, humor, and philosophical insights about marriage, culture, and how to intentionally navigate life’s hardships for deeper peace and connection.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Comfort vs. Discomfort—What Makes Life Meaningful?

• Discomfort Is Life:
  • John [00:06]: "Most of us are gonna do the thing that's just the easiest."
  • Easter [00:18]: "Discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good story."
• Easter [00:20]: “The discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters.”
• Stories worth telling always involve challenge and struggle [00:08, 74:02].
• Our society’s relentless quest for comfort (physical, emotional, digital) may be making us weaker, lonelier, and less resilient.

2. Cultural Shifts: The Epidemic of Disconnection and Loneliness [09:56–16:14]

• Easter describes his article “1000 Ways to Get Disconnected,” examining how technology, convenience, and work-from-home trends have drastically reduced daily social interactions.
• Easter [13:18]: "People interact with random others about 70% less than they used to ... That’s about 20 hours a month lost."
• Small interactions with strangers—once common at banks, stores, airports, bars—have quietly vanished, diminishing our sense of connection and empathy [10:00-15:16].
• Easter: “We lose something in the long term that I think is really important.”

3. The 2% Rule—Choosing Harder, Better Paths [19:45–24:14]

• Only 2% of people will choose the stairs over an escalator, though the benefit is well-known. This symbolizes daily choices between easy comfort and harder, more meaningful effort.
• Easter [19:45]: “We’re wired to do the easy, effortless thing that is good in the short term, but we don’t think of the long-term consequences.”
• The 2% concept applies to everything: fitness, relationships, communication (“call don’t text”), community engagement—these small acts of ‘discomfort’ compound into a healthier, deeper life.

4. The Value of Friction and Social Encounters [09:56–18:41; 23:40–24:51]

• Technology optimizes and “frictionless-izes” our lives, but removes the unpredictable, human messiness that makes us resilient, empathetic, and alive.
• Delony [23:40]: "I've tried to automate everything in my life. And it has walked me through what it's cost me."
• Mundane interactions (bank tellers, grocery clerks, waiting at airports) foster empathy, community, and even peace.

5. Over-Optimization—When Goals Derail from Values [26:04–33:27]

• Easter introduces “value capture” (philosopher Thi Nguyen) where easy-to-measure metrics subsume complex, holistic goals.
  • Weight loss loses meaning when it’s reduced to a number—health and happiness are not on the scale [28:22–30:41].
  • Grades, salary, and other measurements can pull focus away from actual learning, well-being, or fulfillment if not constantly tied back to core values.

6. Marriage: Friendship, Commitment, and Doing Hard Things Together [33:48–56:49]

• The hardest relationships are usually the most rewarding; commitment and shared struggle are what give marriage its unique meaning.
• Easter’s “romantic” marriage proposal story in a Vegas parking lot highlights that true commitment isn’t always grand—it’s about writing “the crossword in ink,” making decisions matter [36:18–39:02].
• Easter [38:56]: "It's the most rewarding relationship I have. And it became more rewarding once we started writing it in ink. Despite the struggles...discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters."
• Great marriages are built on deep friendship, humor, and the generosity of interpretation—assuming good about each other and working through differences [53:31–54:51, 55:00–56:49].
  • Notable advice: "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" [51:08].

7. The Narrative You Choose—Stories, Growth, and Resilience [56:24–60:41]

• Easter explains contamination stories (where negative events define your future) vs. strengthening stories (where you grow from adversity).
  • Cancer survivors, trauma research all show most people can find meaning and even gratitude in hardship with the right support/OUTLOOK [58:32–59:45].
• John [60:24]: "I can spend all of my time on that roller coaster gripping this thing as hard as I can, or I can throw my hands up and enjoy that ride."
• Challenges and hardships are not only inevitable, they’re what make for meaningful stories and lasting peace.

8. Do Something—The Antidote to Rumination and Stuckness [62:39–67:30]

• Easter recounts advice from Bill Stump: “Do something.” [63:28–63:41]
• Overthinking, talking, or rumination can paralyze—action, even imperfect, breaks the cycle and produces growth.
• This applies to both small (marital tiffs, health ruts) and large (career shifts, trauma) problems: progress requires taking even a tiny step.

9. Small, Actionable Solutions for Everyday People [69:11–73:10]

• Movement/exercise, especially with family, is fundamental for mental and physical health.
• Help others; volunteer when possible, even in small ways—helping others is reliably linked to better mental health.
• Live by “What would humans have done for most of history? Work, move, be outside, eat simply, connect face-to-face."
• Don’t get paralyzed optimizing every detail or by the scale of change—small, consistent “2%” shifts matter.
• Root out whether your daily choices are “for me or against me” [71:11–73:10].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the real sources of meaning:

  • Easter [00:08]: "The stories we tell each other are never, ‘Yeah, I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show.’ It's always the sort of things that had hardship attached to ’em."

• On marriage and commitment:

  • Easter [38:56]: "It's the most rewarding relationship I have. And it became more rewarding once we started writing it in ink. Despite the struggles and if you pull back, people value things that are harder to get and maintain."

• On stripping away social friction:

  • Easter [13:18]: “People interact with random others about 70% less than they used to...That’s a lot of time. And it turns out that time was actually really important.”

• On value capture and losing sight of bigger goals:

  • Easter [28:53]: "Oftentimes people will get to a certain number on the scale and they go, oh, I want that lower. But as that number gets lower, you start to do things that don’t actually help this overall larger goal.
  • Delony [33:27]: "We've done ourselves culturally a disservice by answering the question, ‘Hey, what are you worth?’ with a number... I think the answer is, ‘Who do you love and who loves you?’"

• On conflict and expectations in relationships:

  • Delony [54:32]: "I'll drive up to my house, walk in the door, and there'll be a laundry basket with towels in it... Instead of my default setting being, ‘What must have her day been like? I'm going to fold these real quick...’"

• On mentally reframing adversity:

  • Easter [56:52]: "The story you tell yourself about your life events determines everything. There are contamination stories and strengthening stories... People don’t learn from when times are easy. People learn from when things are hard."

• On basic, time-tested advice:

  • Easter [69:11]: "If I looked at most people most of the time, what helps? Movement helps. Call it exercise if you want to... Work with other people, help other people... What did humans do? We worked outdoors, moved, were with other people, ate simply. That stuff still works."

• On action as the antidote to overthinking:

  • Easter, quoting Bill Stump [63:41]: "Do something."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:06–00:26] — Comfort vs. Discomfort—What stories matter?
• [09:56–18:41] — Loneliness, culture shift, and social friction
• [19:45–24:14] — The 2% rule and choosing harder things
• [26:04–33:27] — Over-optimization, value capture, and loss of meaning
• [33:48–56:49] — Marriage, friendship, and real commitment
• [56:24–60:41] — Telling strengthening stories, resilience after adversity
• [62:39–67:30] — “Do something”—importance of action over thought
• [69:11–73:10] — Simple, practical advice for families
• [74:02–75:22] — Hardship and narrative as life’s story
• [76:16–76:44] — Pivoting in the face of lost dreams and change

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Takeaways

• Meaningful lives come from struggle, not insulation.
• Micro-interactions in daily life are vital to community and individual well-being.
• Optimization and measurement are tempting but can pull us away from true health and happiness.
• The “2%” who choose harder, more meaningful paths shape richer stories and relationships.
• Push against cultural scripts of self-involvement and comfort—seek friction, endeavor, and real connection.
• Action, even the smallest, is more transformative than endless rumination.
• In relationships, prioritize friendship, generosity, and shared commitment.
• Tell yourself strengthening stories—growth through adversity shapes a better life, not perfection or ease.

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This episode is a highly relatable, humorous, wisdom-filled meditation on what makes life and love worth living—choosing the stairs (literally and metaphorically), sitting with discomfort, and seeking meaning through doing hard things, together.

Transcript

[John]

Most of us are gonna do the thing that's just the easiest.

[Michael Easter]

The stories we tell each other are never. Yeah, I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show. It's always the sort of things that had hardship attached to em.

[John]

Discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good story.

[Michael Easter]

The discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters.

[John]

What life in the rearview mirror do I wanna say I lived. And not the most insulated comfort, but the most advent feel, the most fun. Yo, welcome to off the Record with John here on the Dr. John DeLoney Show. Dude, I'm so psyched for y' all to hear this conversation. Today I'm talking with one of the greatest people on the planet. Listen, in this weird little ecosystem I live in, right, where there's experts and scientists and YouTubers and podcasters, behind closed doors, it's a, it's a small, tight knit group of people. Like, you're usually one or two people away from just about everybody, right? Somebody's got a number to somebody, who's got a number to somebody. And whether it's rumor, whether it's fact, people's reputations get around. This guest today, this person I'm having on is one of only a handful of people that I've never heard one person say something negative about because he's simply extraordinary. He's a great human, he's a great husband. Oh, I can't believe I'm saying this. He's a dog dad. But he is a great pet owner, right? And he is a brilliant thinker and distiller of information. He wrote a masterpiece that you've heard me talk about a million times on the show called the Comfort Crisis. I'm talking about the great Michael Easter.

[Michael Easter]

He.

[John]

He is the founding, the founder of the 2% group, right? And he has a. A substack. It's one of a few substacks that I pay money for that comes out a couple times a week. It's a newsletter that comes out where he takes really complex science and really complex nutrition, really complex workout information, really complex mental health stuff and distills it down so even a guy like you and me can understand it. He's a delightful person on this, on this episode, we talk about comfort in relationships, discomfort in relationships. We talk a lot about marriage, we talk about loneliness. We talk about how our whole culture has been set up for us to all be comfortable. And unfortunately, that's killing us all. And most importantly, he tells us what we can do about it. So relax, buckle up. Share this episode with everybody. It's a keeper. This is my conversation with a great human being, one of my great friends, the wonderful Michael Easter. So long time no see, dude.

[Michael Easter]

Long time.

[John]

A long time no see.

[Michael Easter]

Too long.

[John]

I feel like we had our most of this interview over breakfast, so I guess we can just talk about our favorite movies.

[Michael Easter]

Well, I. I do want to highlight from breakfast the biscuit. I live on the West Coast. That is not biscuit country.

[John]

It's not.

[Michael Easter]

And so I came here and the waiter said, you could add a biscuit. And you really said, you know, you're here in the South. You're here.

[John]

We like to add type 2 diabetes to every meal. It's like a thing we do.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I can. I could feel my blood sugar just. It was going north.

[John]

Your CGM was just beeping.

[Michael Easter]

It was so worth it. So worth it, though. It was so worth it. When in the south get diabetes

[John]

and then you'll go back to Vegas and sweat it off. Yeah, it'll be good. All right, so I was thinking about this. So I have a core life philosophy, which is have a guy.

[Michael Easter]

Okay.

[John]

Right. And obviously that's not gendered. I've got many women that I reach out to also, but have a person for any number of things. And so I've got one of my oldest friends in the world, works in H vac, and I've had two air conditioners go out the last decade in different houses. I've never even occurred to me to Google something. I just call him. I'm like, hey, which one should I get? And he says, where do you live? And he says, buy this one, and that's the one I get. And so I was thinking of all the things where you're my. The guy. And I. I was thinking of all the times I've texted and. Or called you or we've had a meal, and I'm like, hey, before we get going. And I rattle off. And so you've become my guy for mental health questions, for supplement questions, for workout questions, and now even for marriage questions. And so for everyone watching, this is my. The guy on your. Your influence over my life has expanded. So if I make it to 70 or 80, I think you'll. I got some mileage on this body from when I was younger. But if I do, I'll write you an email or I might just telepathically, whatever by that point.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, yeah.

[John]

But thanks for the work that you do. Like, we'll. We'll talk about this at the end, but you have the best substack that exists. Your podcast is awesome. Your writing is awesome, so thanks for the influence.

[Michael Easter]

Well, I feel the same way about you, man.

[John]

Well, in universal health.

[Michael Easter]

Questions?

[John]

Well, I'll tell you this. Universally, no matter who I talk to out in the. Out in our little weird world that we live in. 100. And that's rare because, you know, I mean, like, everyone has a thing with somebody, right? Oh, that guy's a lot. Or that guy's annoying, or that guy didn't tell the truth 100%. People are like, oh, my claser's the best. So thanks for being a good human.

[Michael Easter]

That's awesome. I feel the same way about you. And I feel like we connect. I mean, for God's sakes, look at us.

[John]

You did roll in here in a great.

[Michael Easter]

In a Dead shirt. I had to. I would never wear this publicly. Beyond a Dead show. But I'm like, you know what? You're always in your rock band shirts. I need to bring some hippie element. I need to sprinkle some hippie dust in here.

[John]

I've tried. I've tried.

[Michael Easter]

What I like about your work in particular is you're very intellectual, but we also connect at a, dare I say, bro level. Yeah.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

I could go hunting with you. I could. I could drag you to a Dead show. You could drag me to a punk show. We'd have an awesome time, but then in the meantime, we'd be like, yes, but Carl Young once said, right?

[John]

There's only a few people you can do that with.

[Michael Easter]

It's awesome.

[John]

Fantastic, man. All right, so I got, like, a whole list of stuff I want to talk about, and you tell me, let's go a different direction, and I'll ask you this. You've recently submitted a manuscript for a book that will come out next year. How much of that do you want to talk about or not?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, we can talk about it.

[John]

You sure? Okay.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. My publisher will slap my hand later. What do I care? It won't hurt now.

[John]

There you go.

[Michael Easter]

That's right.

[John]

That's a problem for future Michael.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

Very good. Okay, so I want to. You recently, let's start here. I've been talking about if I were to take all the mental health issues we have as a culture, and you and I talked this morning over breakfast, like, you can map the rise of the stock market in the US and almost directly on top of it. Map the rise of mental health diagnostics. Right on top of it.

[Michael Easter]

Yes.

[John]

And so, in this weird way, we've solved for Every problem that has plagued humanity forever. And if we just. Just look at data, it seems that we're going more insane. The more we solve for these problems, the crazier we're going as a culture. We're more anxious, more with more, more, more. And I think we could pull that apart and say diagnostics have expanded and. And that's nerd speak for, like, more and more people have more access to clinicians that then give more labels that go into data sets. All that. All that's fine.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. And just draw, you know, what we would consider trauma. Say 50 years ago meant you had to be physically assaulted to get trauma.

[John]

Right.

[Michael Easter]

Now you could have seen a physical assault. Or say 20 years ago, you could have seen a physical assault. And then today, someone could have called you something rude that offended you, and that could be considered trauma. So it's like this sort of. It's a widening and also the just changing definition.

[John]

Changing definitions. Yeah. There's a great George Carlin bit where he talks about World War I. They came back. It was called shell shocked. And then after World War II,

[Michael Easter]

I

[John]

forgot the one he had after that. But now it is post traumatic stress disorder. And we get further and further away from what the thing actually is, and it expands. Right. We talk about that. For me, if I distilled it all the way down, the one neon sign that's been flashing for me as I've read all the nerd stuff has been, we are super, super lonely as a culture. And I found myself accidentally, I don't say blaming, but pointing fingers at people saying, y' all need to go. I need to. We got to go make friends. Like we have. Kind of like, we used to have to work the farms. We don't do that anymore. So now we have to go to the gym. We got to move our bodies. Similarly, we used to be surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors. And that was our little tribe. We don't have that. So now you got to go make friends. You recently published A man. It's so good, I'll be citing you at the next big talk. I give expanding the issues with loneliness in a way that I had missed. It's way worse than I thought it was in. In panning all the way back at how our culture has shifted. And so talk to me about that article that you wrote. And just the way you laid it out was. It was overwhelming how much it has shifted. Right. It's not a matter of us just not having friends anymore or having a quote unquote trib Tribe it's way bigger than that.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. I believe I titled the article 1000 Ways to Get Disconnected.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And it really just looks at how society has changed in such a way that you no longer have to interact with people as much. So I had a bunch of examples. But to take one, people now wear EarPods everywhere they go. Well, you're not going to talk to people when you have earbuds in your ears. We were talking about how the other day on the show how when you went to order fast food, you did so through a screen and the food just sort of appears. You no longer even had to have that minute long conversation with the checkout clerk, which sometimes that's just, hey, I'll have the number two. And he goes, okay, that'll be $5. But sometimes it goes, hey, how's your day going? Oh, yeah. And then he tells you a funny story, you tell him a funny story. And those tiny interactions are really important. And this goes. I mean, this goes all the way down. Like if you just start to pick apart how life has shifted over the last hundred years, we have far more interactions, I would argue, one with the people that are closest to us for a variety of reasons, but also just people in our community that we would have used to talk to for maybe say two or three minutes. And that might seem like a throwaway. Oh, yeah, not a big deal. Who cares? No, those are actually really important when you look at the data.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

Like those tiny interactions. I mean, think you check out at the grocery store self checkout now. Yeah. Right. You don't even talk to the clerk. What else did I. What else did I have?

[John]

There was.

[Michael Easter]

People go to bars less, which I'm not advocating. Hey, people go out and drink your face off. I'm not saying that at all. But bars used to be really important community gathering places where people would find common ground. They would go back and forth on political issues. But it was in kind of a safe space. And now how do people talk about politics on Facebook, screaming at each other. Right? Because you don't have. You don't see the humanity in the other person as you have that little conversation.

[John]

Or you might see a button on a. On a teller that said I voted a certain way. And they would smile at you and say, how's your day going? There was a humanization too. Right. Or somebody might stand in front of you with a shirt of a band that you thought was evil, but they're real nice person. Right. Or whatever. But all that has been. I was thinking even of Daniel Tosh has a hilarious bit about this. But, like, when I was a kid, you'd pull up and park at the airport, and you'd walk all the way through and you'd wait. I'd wait for my mom with my dad, for my mom to get off the plane and that. You just all stood around and waited, but you're standing around with a whole bunch of other people. And it was not a good, quote, unquote optimization of our time. And we missed potential clients or whatever.

[Michael Easter]

We've.

[John]

Nonsense. We've. We've piled into that. But there was a whole bunch of people standing around, and I got to watch all these different hugs and cheering and signs, all that stuff. And now you pull up to the. To the. If you don't Uber right now. If somebody asked me to, right? To like, hey, can you give me. Right at the airport? My first thought is, like, why don't you just Uber like an adult?

[Michael Easter]

Right? Right.

[John]

But somebody hops in the car and y' all are off, and there's no human. Right?

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

And then I get this message that says, these humans are trying to kill you. They hate you. They want you dead. And then I've got an ancient nervous system that's just like you. You wrote about, like, the ATM machines. Like, everything has been optimized to become frictionless, right?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. A lot of transactions that used to occur in person, like, you'd have to go to the bank, right. And then you talk to the teller and, well, now that's just all digital. And you can. You can apply that to so many different parts of our lives. And when I looked at the data, I think it said that people interact with random others about 70% less than they used to. And so this is a cutting out of about, I believe it was 20 hours a month of time that we would just be interacting with random people. Like, that's a lot of time.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And it turns out that time was actually really important. Not just beyond the, hey, you and I had a fun conversation and it lifted my spirits and you told me a funny story and we connected. But also to go back to, you see the humanity and all these other people that live around you, work from home, has rose super convenient that I don't have to commute at the same time. When you're in an office, you're having to talk to people. Like, you have all these little side conversations, right? It's not just, oh, you have the meeting and then you're done. There's the meeting after the meeting, which is like, hey, let's noodle on this idea a little more. Oh, by the way, how are your kids doing? Did they get into that school you wanted to. Oh, they did fantastic. Right?

[John]

Or they didn't. Oh, I'll share that with you.

[Michael Easter]

And you can. Yeah. And you can empathize.

[John]

And there's even. There's even minor. And they're. They're this big. They're teeny tiny. I'm going to get a cup of coffee at the coffee machine. And right when I get there, somebody gets. Comes. She gets there right in front of me. And so I have to wait. And that's just a normal social interaction. I'm going to wait. But when I live in my headphones and then I work from home, and then my food gets delivered and my toilet paper gets delivered, then I go to the restaurant and what, you have to ask twice for napkins? And it's like a major crisis. This place is awful. Right. Because I've lost that ability to just interact like a person.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. Here's where. Here's where this started to land with me, I think is when I was. So for this book that I just submitted, the through line is this 850 mile hike I did through southern Utah. Super hard hike. You. There's no trail, so you're navigating, but you got to resupply, right? So you got to get to a town at least like every week to resupply. So I'm with my friend Matt Sherman, wonderful, amazing human being. We'd pop out on these highways like 40 miles from a town, just go, well, how are we going to get to the town? Well, I guess we got to stick our thumbs out and pray to God that someone will pull over. And the first times you're doing that, you're going, who's going to pull over? No one's going to pull over. People don't do that. And if they do, they're probably going to murder us. Right? But we would get in these cars with these people and we'd be in there for, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes.

[John]

And you don't smell great.

[Michael Easter]

We don't smell great. We didn't shave, didn't cut our hair. We would have the most amazing conversations with people and you would just connect at this extremely human level. Cause we enter the car going, is this a serial killer?

[John]

Right.

[Michael Easter]

And as we're getting in the car, they're thinking to themselves, are these two serial killers? Right.

[John]

Those bodies in their backpack.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, but you. We would find that. And we got in the. We got in cars with people who were from all different walks of life. I'm talking deadheads like me out in the desert doing heck knows what to ranchers. Super right wings. They've got their, you know, their rifles in their cars to just sort of like vagabonds to tourists from other countries. And we would connect on this really human level that I was like, this just doesn't happen anymore because there has been sort of this grand siloing off of ourselves through various means that we did all this stuff to make life easier. Right. Self checkout is easier. I don't have to think of what to say to the clerk. They don't have to pay a clerk. I can mobile order my coffee. I don't have to wait in line. That seems convenient, and it is convenient in the short term, but we lose something in the long term that I think is really important. And so I think my takeaway from those experiences. And there was one that was particularly awesome. This was at the height of the US China trade stuff. And that morning, this breaking news had dropped. That was China's restricting this element. Whatever news is saying, we're on the brink of war. This couple pulls over and where are you from? We're from Beijing. And we're like, oh, guess what? We didn't talk about that. Yeah, guess what we did. We talked about, oh, you have kids. Where are you guys going? Talked about being outdoors, our interests. And it was like, you go, we hear all this stuff in the news, but when you sit down with people, whether that's from the other political aisle, whether that's from a quote unquote, you know, hostile country, you find we're all just humans on this big spinning rock just trying to figure it out. Yeah, we just want to have some friends. We don't want to be alone and we want to be loved. That's what it all comes down to. And it's easy to miss that if you just kind of go through the motions and do the easy thing that allows you to avoid others.

[John]

I was speaking at an event a few years ago that Malcolm Gladwell was speaking at, and he said something I'd never considered. And he said, I just want to recommend before you debate something, quickly pull out a piece of paper and y' all write down all the things you agree on. Just start there. And he's like, I promise you that list will be a thousand things. Healthy kids, air conditioner that works like no skin cancer. Like you. The list will be long. Yeah. And then let's Talk about the things we disagree with. It'll be six or four or two. Right? And if you start there and, and man, that's a powerful story I fall victim to. They like, they hate us. And it's like, well, Dan doesn't. And I know Dan. Dan just. Our kids go to school together, right? And so I, I can't figure out a way through that other than. And you've coined this, which I just love the 2%. Like, I see that everywhere now. Talk about 2%. And I'll try to thread them together and you tell me if I'm right or wrong.

[Michael Easter]

So the 2% comes from a statistic that found only 2% of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available. Now, 100% of those people know that taking the stairs is going to be better for them long term. But 98% of people choose to do the easier, more effortless thing that could actually harm them in the long run. Now, to me, this isn't a thing where you go, oh, those 90% of people are idiots. No, it's more like it suggests that we're wired to do the easy, effortless thing that is good in the short term, but we don't think of the long term consequences. And so it's not really about the stairs. It's sort of a metaphor for all these decisions we make every single day. Because it's like every day in life we have to make choices where you got to get to that metaphorical second floor. And you can either take those stairs, which are going to be a little bit harder now, but it's going to move the ball farther downfield for you in the way that you want your ultimate big goals in life. Or you can kind of do this easy, effortless thing that's not going to help. Right. The metaphorical escalator. And so I think when you widen that lens, you. You really can see it everywhere. Everywhere, Everywhere. Even as something as simple as I think I highlighted in that article, like, if you need to ask a question of a friend, most people just text, right? I mean, we text. I do it all the time. I'm just gonna text. The phone call is a little more of a pain. But what happens after you ask the question, how are you doing? What's new? The conversation spins is in an interesting way. And you connect as humans. You each get. I mean, it's like a minor therapy session. Yeah, right.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And that's important. Yes, a little harder in the short term, but the long term gains are there.

[John]

I think it's not even important. I think now it's when you look at the data on loneliness, right? With everything from Alzheimer's to heart disease to cancer to, I mean, everything. I've come to believe it's a matter of life and death. And maybe not in this immediate moment, but over the long haul. So two months ago I had this big. And again, it's. I've got big existential drama. I'm. Michael will tell you I'm a lot.

[Michael Easter]

We all do.

[John]

We all do about like AI and who's going to know what and all that.

[Michael Easter]

And.

[John]

And so I just said this month I'm going to not. I'm a. I disconnected my phone from my car, I took off every tracking thing I have and I went and got cash out of the bank. I'm going to. Oh, and I, I turned off Amazon Prime. Like I'm just going to navigate it this way. A couple things happened. One was I found myself more and more calm throughout the day and I found myself not, quote unquote, needing as much stuff as I thought I did. Just stuff, right? And it was a big pain. Like, it was a pain when I could just click something and know it would show up tomorrow to be like one of. Kids, get in the car. We got to go over to this thing and get one picture frame for a thing, right? And it was inconvenient. But if I pan all the way back out, going to the bank. And you should have seen the teller was a real young guy. There's only like two people in the bank now. And I was just telling him, this month I'm doing this. And he was like, man, I was like, I like coming into the bank. We ended up talking for 30 minutes. Young kid, he's like, what am I going to do with. Like I'm thinking about doing it ended up just being a. Like, now I'm the old man and he's the young kid, right?

[Michael Easter]

Awesome.

[John]

But it was a great interaction and I walked out with a smile on my face and it cost me a quote unquote hour of my day, right? Like, it wasn't. It didn't optimize my day. And that's forced me to ask deeper questions about what do I think is optimization, what do I think about

[Michael Easter]

how

[John]

like, I have tried to automate everything in my life. It just has walked me through what it's cost me. And I keep coming back to the 2%. Most of us are going to do the thing, myself included. That's just the easiest and I don't think that's the right thing. And the gap there means I'm going to be uncomfortable a lot more than I thought I was going to be. Right. And that discomfort is actually life. That's actually the good stuff.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, that's the good stuff. And I would also argue that once you go through that initial, oh, this is a huge pain, you start to understand the payoffs.

[John]

Yes.

[Michael Easter]

And then you go, no, actually, now that I'm done with this month long experiment, I think I'm going to pop into the bank more.

[John]

Yes.

[Michael Easter]

I think I'm going to get behind the wheel and go someplace to get this item that I could just get. Because you start to realize, oh, there's these intangibles behind that. Right. So the time savings is very easy to measure. That's clear. I saved 30 minutes doing that. We can put a number on it. What's much harder to measure is all these other things that happen. How do you measure how much happier you felt after that or how much

[John]

more peaceful it was?

[Michael Easter]

How much more peaceful these little things you learned all these other things. Now, because this is easy to measure, I think we can go, oh, that is clearly the optimal choice. And because these things are not easy to measure, they're a little more complex, can't put a number on them. We often devalue those. But life is not measurable. Living a good life is not measurable. It's usually the things that are these thorny big existential questions. Those are, what are worth living for really?

[John]

But that's a, that is a bold rejection of the bill of sale we've been. Yeah, we've been given. Right, Totally. If, if you can't measure it, it doesn't matter. Which is the mantra of the last 20 years in our world. If you it anything worth anything is measurable. That's business talk. That is personal talk. That is every. And I'm finding more and more. Yeah. The short term there, there's a lot of data on when you hand cash over to a teller, you actually spend less. And it's easier when you're putting down this, a piece of plastic to just be like, yeah, yeah, you want to. You supersize. Yeah, go ahead. Because it's not real. It's not a real transaction. When I'm handing you cash, it's like

[Michael Easter]

that cost something, it cost something, cost something real.

[John]

But I'm, I got to say, man, like, I recently saw some literature on what bodies opposite genders find attractive.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

And it ended up, I walked away Being like, oh, women are trying to create a picture that they think other women think is attractive. And men are trying to create a picture that they think other men think is attractive.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

But the. The big neon sign for me was, here is this picture of this RIP dude that I would. I'll write you a check if I could get a body like that.

[Michael Easter]

But.

[John]

And I ran it by my wife, and she's like, 1,000%. And it was the first time I believed her.

[Michael Easter]

I did the same thing.

[John]

Oh, did you?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

Because she said that body comes at a cost. I know that if you had that body, I would have to live with a guy who.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

Was always bickering with the waiter about what he cooked the food in, and we couldn't have ice cream, and we couldn't, and we couldn't. And we'd miss a date because you got to get your workout in. I don't want that.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, totally.

[John]

And. And it goes opposite way, too. Like, when she was like, what about this? I'm like, objectively, it's a beautiful person. I know what that life would entail for me, and I don't want to be married to that person.

[Michael Easter]

It becomes a marker of personality. Yeah. Yeah.

[John]

And. And it was like, oh, I've missed the whole boat. I don't need to optimize. Optimize. I want to be healthy. And I think looking at these things once a year, once every two couple, is important because it gives me direction. But, man, I'm watching folks in. I would say. I don't know a way to say it, but in health and wellness spaces, reducing. I. I noticed you don't, like. I don't need, like, reducing the number of trackers and the number of. Because it's played itself out. Like, I know. I kind of know is what my HRV is. I kind of know is these things. And unless I'm trying to hit a. I'm trying to do a cut for an event or something, I want to have a pretty good life. And that means sometimes looking at my wife, being like, you want ice cream for dinner? Not all the time. Or sometimes that's. Yeah, let's just go for a long, long hike and let's just go hang out.

[Michael Easter]

Right. Well, like, if we want to pull back and get all heady and theoretical, as you and I sometimes do.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

There's this idea called value capture.

[John]

Okay.

[Michael Easter]

And it's by this philosopher from the University of Utah. His name's Thi Nguyen. So it's T H I N G U Y E N. His parents are Vietnamese. Um, he's going to be on my podcast next week, and we often start a process. We'll take weight loss as an example. So why do you. Why does a person generally want to lose weight? They want to look better, they want to feel better, they want to look a little better, they want to feel healthier, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. How do we measure weight loss? Pounds.

[John]

One number. That's right.

[Michael Easter]

One number, right. So oftentimes people will get to a certain number on the scale and they go, oh, I want that lower. So then you go, well, we gotta keep getting that number lower. But as that number gets lower, you start to do things that don't actually help this overall larger goal. You were after feeling better, being happier, actually being healthier, being more energized. And so the number is like this crisp target, but it's really just a stand in for all these bigger goals we want in life. And so sometimes those two things track, but oftentimes we can get so focused on the number that we lose sight of the overall goal. Another example, Grades. Right? So why were grades even created in the first place? It's to make the lives of administrators easier. And when I was a professor, I'm sure you experienced this yourself. Our goal is to get students prepared for the future. So what do you need to do that? They need to learn all these things. They need to learn to function as a human being. They need to sort of learn the material in a way that they can apply it to their life and leave the university and be an effective human being in the world. But when we start to put in grades, what do the students care about?

[John]

How do I get that grade?

[Michael Easter]

How do I get that grade? They lose sight of this overall goal. We get so obsessed with the GPA or the specific grade that it captures that value. You go, because all of a sudden, this is this thing. This is the target. This is now the target. That's what they ultimately care about. Not, am I ready to go out in the world and, like, be a good human being who has a fulfilling career and can make an income and do all these other things. And you see that really any big sort of institutional measurement, that tends to happen. Salary is another one, Right?

[John]

Well, and for professors, and I've seen this data, we got judged on one thing besides research and whatever. We got judged on class evals, right? And so then there became that implicit, I'll give you guys A ors, Bs. Y' all give me good Evals, we'll high five and together. Whether it's explicitly, I've had professors just say, hey, I'll take care of y'.

[Michael Easter]

All.

[John]

You take care of me. But more implicitly, you get further and further away from the goal, which is I, dude, I had a very real lived experience after PhD one for me, when there was a student who was suicidal, like, really struggling, and a guy came in and sat and talked with him. And I remember walking away thinking this. And this is embarrassing to say out loud. Oh, he knew what to say. I need to learn that. Right. And that's what sent me to, like, my next degree was like, I need to learn this skill set. Because now I'm in the real world, and there's real consequences to me knowing or not knowing that. Forget the grades. And by the way, grades took care of themselves when I was that invested in the material, learning this stuff. Grades are an afterthought. Right. They're just a marker on the way to a. A race I'm running right to, how can I help somebody? But it changed the whole dynamic. My son's 16, and he's like, chemistry. And I actually get that, like, no one has ever pulled me over and put a gun to my head and say, hey, you know, what's a mole? Right. And also, there's bigger things here that, like, anyway. But you get these almost. You get what you measure. And that means you better be really careful what you're measuring, because it can take you on a weird trip away from where you wanted to go.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. I think the takeaway for people to pull back from the philosophy and just be like, how do you actually use this? Is those measurements can be useful, but you need to ask, what are we trying to. What's the larger goal I'm trying to accomplish, you know, with a salary? Right. People just want, oh, I just need to make more money. Make more money, make more money. Why do you want to make more money? Well, because I think it'll make me be happier. I'll have less stress in my life. Okay, well, what do you need to do to get that higher salary? I need to work a ton and get super stressed at work and be miserable. It's like, well, it sounds like maybe that's backfiring. Maybe you would be better just sort of settling. And so asking those questions, like, what's my ultimate goal here? Becomes really important. And it is this. It takes a minute. Right. It's not as easy because if I just say, if you just go 150k a year is better than 130k. That's much easier to just intuitively. Oh, better.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And these thornier questions are harder to grapple with. It goes back to that 2% concept. But if you can kind of make that analysis, that becomes much more rewarding for you in the long term and useful.

[John]

I think we've done ourselves culturally a disservice by answering the question, hey, what are you worth with a number? Totally. And because that gives me an objective finish line, I am worth this much dollars versus, I think the answer to the question, what are you worth? Is who do you love and who loves you?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

And that's. That's a much more squishy thing to measure.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

Switching gears to marriage, but really along the same line, when my wife and I were sitting across the table saying, are we done right? We're being adults here. Are we going to call this thing? And it was a hard, hard conversation. This was years ago, but it was like we'd reached the end of the marriage as we knew it. And the question was, are we going to build a new one or is this it? Right. One of the things. And that was. That was nuclear conversation number one.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

And then obviously there's a bunch of laughtershock conversations. Like in my. I think it was my wife. I'll give her credit. One of us asked. I'm pretty sure it was her. She usually asked the wiser questions. It was out of exasperation. But she asked a very similar question. What do you want this house to feel like when you walk in? And I remember for the first time in my whole life, vomiting up, like, I want you to be happy I'm here. I want my daughter to come running at me and give me a hug. And I want my son to be making fart noises over there because he lives in a house where. That's hilarious. Right? And as I just threw up, like, here's what I want this place to feel like. That was the first time she was like, okay, we can get there. And it's gonna take a lot of work to get there because you can't bring your last meeting home. And if you skip working out for three days, you're tough to be around. Right? And, and, and for her, like, I've got to change this. And the, like, seeing you walk in and be happy that you're here has to be more important than a perfect kitchen.

[Michael Easter]

Right?

[John]

But it's that one thing. What do you want this thing to actually look like? And let's reverse engineer that. Not let's get a couple of quasi arbitrary metrics and try to say that's our. That's our. Our goal. Right. When I was. I also just hit send on a thing. It's got sent back to me with lots of edits.

[Michael Easter]

So that's a good thing.

[John]

Such as the part of writing books.

[Michael Easter]

It's a good thing.

[John]

I called you and I, and as I was asking people like, why did you just get married? You had by far the most romantic love story about why you chose to get married. Would you be willing to share it

[Michael Easter]

when we actually decided to get married or what I said.

[John]

I'm being really sarcastic.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, it was.

[John]

It was by far the best. I didn't put it in the end up put it in the manuscript, but

[Michael Easter]

the sun was setting across a remote beach in the Bahamas. No, no, no. Setting is Las Vegas, Nevada. Clearly the, you know, the most lovely city on earth.

[John]

Romance happens.

[Michael Easter]

It's where romance happens very quickly and often. Oftentimes at a cost.

[John]

Very short.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. So we're in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble. We had just moved to Las Vegas, me and my now wife Leah, then girlfriend, we moved to Las Vegas. Leah had just gotten out of law school. I had just started a job at the university as a professor. Her health insurance ends while mine is kicking in. She's stressing about health insurance and how she doesn't have it. You know, we're sitting in the car, literally just about ready to go in, but we gotta finish our conversation. She's stressed out. And I was like, well, you know, what could we do about it? And she goes, well, we could get a civil union, right? I go, why don't we just get married? She goes, hold on a minute. She pulls out her cell phone, says here the marriage is only five bucks more than a civil union. And I think it has more tax benefits, Michael. So, yes.

[John]

Thus the romance is the romance. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And then came the to bring it back into Ramsey financial world that goes, well, what are we going to do for the wedding? And she's like, ah, man, my parents are going to have a hundred people at this wedding. And where are we going to have it? Because my family's in Utah. Hers is in like New Jersey area. So I go, why don't we just go get married? We'll go get a marriage license. We show up to get it. We think that's the thing. They're like, no, you actually have to have a witness and a thing now in Las Vegas because it's a place where People get married on a whim. There are literally homeless people who hang out outside of the courthouse and will be your witness for 20 bucks. Now that was just too much.

[John]

You're a romance.

[Michael Easter]

No, no. You know the guy with track marks in his arm and did you need a witness?

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Easter]

Now we're good. So we got married at a casino by a three times divorced officiant whose name was Earl. And it was awesome. Yeah. But what was interesting is that, and I think this is the reason you called me, because you were like, why would you get. Why would you get married? You guys were fine. And I will say something internally changed. And I think the thing I told you that it's like now you're doing the crossword in ink. The decisions now matter, and now I have to factor this other person and this larger thing into all these decisions I make. I can't be as selfish anymore. Now that is a giant pain in my butt. I would love to just live on Michael Island.

[John]

And that's a big 2% staircase to walk.

[Michael Easter]

It's a big staircase, but it's the most rewarding relationship I have. And it became more rewarding once we started writing it in ink. Despite the struggles and if you pull back, people value things that are harder to get and maintain. There's very good reasons for that. I think it goes back to raising kids, keeping the tribe alive, you know, raising kids. I don't have kids, but everyone I've talked to who does, they say, that is a giant pain in my butt. Oh, my God, these kids. It's so much work. But if you ask people what's the most important thing in your life, where have you gotten the most meaning? It goes back to kids, but that's just kind of like this big metaphor for all these other decisions we make in life. And so kind of, as you said it, the discomfort and the hardship is often a signal that this really actually matters. You get something for free for no work at all. Yeah, it seems great, but really it's not as rewarding. Good example, lottery winners. Someone cut you. The government cut you a check for 200 million because you won the Powerball. Seems awesome for about a week. And then you find they get totally miserable because there was no struggle in that. Had they had to earn that $200 million, things would probably be very different for them.

[John]

So how do we. I think the. She's a writer. Her name is Freya India. And she was writing about this idea of commitment. And I was raised in an ethos where if I didn't have another line in the water for work. Right. The picture I grew up with is I'm fishing. And if I get married and I got kids, I would be insane to have a job. One line in the water that my boss could take away from me at any moment. That would be dumb. I should have other lines in the water at all times. I should be always, quote, unquote, networking. There's a network, events, and I should always have a plan B and C and D. And then that leaks over into relationships. Like, man, if you go all in on this one, all in, both feet in the boat. Everybody's in this thing, man, you can get really burned bad on this. Right? And what she writes is, we've been told the only commitment that you can make is a commitment to yourself. And I called you a second time. I think maybe it was a longer version of that first conversation, but I think the only thing that matters. And tell me if I'm crazy here. If I look back, all the data, the. We were made or we've been, We've been. We've evolved to this thing where the only way I'm going to achieve this thing called peace is if I put myself in a position where I'm as healthy as possible so that I can give my entire self away. And in a marriage, if that person does the same thing, we'll ride or die forever.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

One. One writer says everyone in a marriage should. The best marriages, that each person should be secretly thinking they got the better end of the deal. Right. How do you back all the way out of a culture that it says the only person you can count on is you? And the best way to do that is to simplify your life. I mean, to ease your life as much as possible, to be as comfortable as possible when really the opposite is true. The more challenging commitments I anchor into. Or as a psychology mentor mine once said, what if you lived your life as though you could never move? Like, what things would you do differently there? It feels so counterintuitive, countercultural to say. Because there's. There's reason. One of the reasons we're still married for several times is it was gonna be too much of a pain to unwind it. Right. We'd put. We got. Had a government thing. We have a joint checking account. All of our. All of our wills are. It would be such a pain to unwind it. And I don't want to see my kids only three days a week. Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow. And we'll start over again. Right. And culture would tell us, oh, that means this is over instead of, no, it's hard today, but show up again tomorrow. Right. How do you push back on a culture that is just said the whole reason for living is we talked about this morning, like the hedonic treadmill. Get on it and then find. Suck as much pleasure out of this thing as possible. Extract as much pleasure as possible so that you can live this little bubblegum life.

[Michael Easter]

Well, I like your boat metaphor. When it comes to marriage, who you getting in the boat with? That's an important decision. Yeah, right. If you think you're a pretty good sailor or rower sailing, you still want a crew member who's like, I can row too. Yeah, I'm a good sailor too. Who are you going to go through the storm with? Right. You want to make sure you're making the good call on someone that you'll have good teamwork with in navigating the storms, because they will come. And so for me, it's, I think, being willing to. One, you gotta work on yourself too, but also finding someone who has that quality in them as well. And I do think that to sort of pull back to your larger question. Yes, society does say, do the next, easiest, most comfortable thing. Despite all the podcasts where people say do hard things, it's like, and I'm one of those people, you still look at what people do day to day. And the way society is set up, it's. Things are designed to be as easy as possible. But I think it's finding in yourself and others the quality to be willing to work through things. When it gets hard and keep on pushing, the boat takes water. Are you like, oh, we're gonna die and drown. We gotta shoot up the flare? No, you want someone who goes, all right, we gotta start bailing right now. We gotta start bailing right now. And is willing to do that work. I mean, I think if I think of my own marriage, it's like, well, why did I marry Leah? A lot of it is sense of humor, funny. There's like three people on earth who can make me laugh. She's one of them. Like, laugh out loud. And we had. So we actually met at work. We were at a big media company, kind of like this. Never really saw each other or talked for a year. And then this was at a. Is at a big magazine. And so the Internet was sort of eating magazines and there was this crazy round of layoffs. And this is sort of a contextual joke, but the company was owned by this family that was really hippies. And in this new hq, which they poured a ton of money in, they created an energy vortex, Kiva in the middle. It was the stupidest thing. It totally messed up the design of the building. You had to walk around it. But the whole idea is, like, energy circulates in the kiva, and it'll make us all more creative.

[John]

You know, Kelly's always doing. She brings her crystals in here and her.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, stuff like that. And we're in the mail room after this. I'd never really talk to her. Our co workers are scurrying around the office in a panic, and she just looks at me and goes, not even the kiva can save the energy in this place right now. And I just lost it. It was one of the funniest things. Just, like, dry, deadpan sense of humor. And I was like, I immediately like this person. And then I was like, oh, you want to hang out later? You know, like, fingers crossed, sure. And then we just hit it off. And so I think it's like finding similar personality traits, and we both don't take ourselves too seriously. Humor is how we deal with the world, for better or worse. But it was kind of aligning on that, and I found that, like, we've definitely gone through some hard things in our lives, but we know we can count on each other. We'll be there for each other, whether it's with a joke, a hug. For me, it's usually me trying to hug her and just being. And her side of sort of, now get off of me and saying a joke, you know, but it's like, it's. It's just finding that sort of strange alignment, like leaning into your personality quirks, I think, and using those as a superpower when things get hard. I don't know if that answers the

[John]

question, what would she say about you?

[Michael Easter]

She would say that I probably have the same quality in that I just try and find humor in things. I mean, big picture to me is that there is never a better time to be born right than right now

[John]

in ever in human history.

[Michael Easter]

Ever in human history.

[John]

Right.

[Michael Easter]

And if you want me to rattle off some stats, I can, and I might as well. Your kids are literally more than 100 times less likely to die before reaching the age of five than they were even a couple hundred years ago. Like, the infant mortality rate was more than 30% on average. Right. People, the average age used to be 35, because everyone was dying off it before age 5, and most people didn't even hit 35 because you'd get murdered. You'd fall off a cliff, you would get a nick, and it would get infected. Not to mention you're walking around looking for food all day. You're starving. You could rarely find enough food. You're exposed to the elements. On and on and on like, it has never been a better time to be alive. So for me, personally, that's where humor comes in, because it's like, could always be worse. It could always be worse. So we have a bill that sucks, and it's going to be stressful to not cover. It's like, this is a ridiculous problem in the grand scheme of time and space. A thousand years. The problem was, well, we pissed off that tribe in that other canyon, and now they're coming to chop our heads off. That's a real Right. You know what I mean? So I think we align on the humor thing. I think she would say about me, I probably, this can be a good thing and a bad thing, but I'm able to remain like, it'll be fine.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

Even, you know, even when things do get bad. Whereas she's like, she sees a problem about 10 steps away and starts to solve for it, which can be good in the event of a real problem. It offsets my own, like, man, it'll be fine. But also, if it's not a big problem, she can get sort of like, neurotic. She's a lawyer. So we also. We compliment each other's faults is what I'm trying to say. You know, we meet, like, we're able to compliment each other on our good things, but we're able to sort of offset each other's personality traits that sometimes backfire, I think. And so it's just like, how do

[John]

you keep from taking those personality traits that are different? Personally, I struggle. For years, my wife would do a thing, and often what I found is spouses do a thing.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

That they would want done in that in a situation, like, we get, there's some conflict. I want to watch this. You want to watch that. You never want to. And it immediately goes to never and always. Right. You never want to watch what. I want to watch you always. And let's say she steps away because in that moment, she would want me to step away. Right. Well, for me, that sets off every alarm I got. Like, you're not lovable, and you're always going to get abandoned. And then I'm like, no. Right, right. And how have you learned to not take stuff like that personally? The things that might be innate responses in her that are different than how you would, like your automated system would respond to it. Maybe you're just more mature than me.

[Michael Easter]

You mentioned how your wife likes the kitchen. Perfect. Mine, Leah, is the same. She likes our house to look like a museum. And if we're up to her, my profession would be cleaning the house.

[John]

Correct.

[Michael Easter]

I'm opposite.

[John]

Yes.

[Michael Easter]

I'm a clean person in the sense that, like, things aren't dirty, but, like, I'm a writer. There's. There's stuff everywhere. There's, like, studies and whatever, and. And so that raised some conflict because all the crap out stresses her out. Where for me, it's just like, this is just part of the tornado that ultimately ends up helping us add money to the bank account. Like, this is. This is my process. And ultimately I had to ask myself. And I learned this from another person who was wise. So do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? How hard is it for you to organize the studies at the end of the day and put them in a cupboard? Michael?

[John]

All right,

[Michael Easter]

good question. The answer is really not that hard. And so now when things come up, I'm just like, just put the freaking cup away that you left out for a day. Just put it away. Now, I don't always remember that, but I try and keep that in the back of my mind. How hard is that? Ultimately, I want her to be happy. That's my goal. And if the path to getting there is just stacking some books orderly at the end of the day, like, that's a pretty low cost.

[John]

That's right. You know, and on the other side, my wife has been like, he's not leaving books out me. Because he's trying to make a point. Cause he hates me. Like, I could just shut this door and go on about my life. Cause he's a pretty good guy. Right? And so it works. Yeah, totally works both ways.

[Michael Easter]

She's definitely given some grace. Right. If I had given entirely, the house would look like a museum. It looks much closer to the museum than it did. But I'm actually, you know, that's one of those things where, like, you know, if you were to pick one or the other, I would say her path is probably right. So let. Let's like, exactly. Give me some grace. But I'm gonna. I'm gonna lean that way. I'm gonna try and do my. I'm not always perfect. I'm not. She's probably listening to this, being like, dude, you still leave so much stuff over.

[John]

There's a. My Big light bulb was. There was some Gottman's research, and obviously they're the big marriage researchers. But essentially it distilled down beyond beneath religion, sex, money, all these things that we. Proxy wars that we fight over and write thousands of books have been written on. It was really good marriages. Are. Are y'.

[Michael Easter]

All.

[John]

Are y' all great friends? And I have a buddy named John. He go. I go by Hyper John, he goes by Fat John, right? So I've known him for 30 years, but there was always a joke like, that guy leaves stuff out everywhere. And when we're at his house or at my house, wherever we happen to be, it's just, stuff's up. And not one time in 30 years have I driven home from hanging out with a guy that has stood between me and literally getting my teeth knocked out of my head. Right. A guy who has shown up for me in wild ways. Right. Have I ever driven home and thought, what is he trying to say about our friendship? Not one time ever.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

Because that's just him.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

And yet I'll drive up to my house, walk in the door, and there'll be a laundry basket with towels in it. And my first thought is really about my wife. You couldn't, like, what are you trying to say? Instead of my default setting be what must have her day been like, I'm going to fold these real quick and I'm going to go see if anything else in the dryer. That takes me a net three and a half minutes.

[Michael Easter]

Totally.

[John]

Three and a half minutes.

[Michael Easter]

Totally.

[John]

And it reduces my strokes, it reduces my. My blood pressure. Right? But it's like, oh, she's my friend. And so what else needs to be put up around here? Right? And it's just that I would do that at any of my friend's house, Right?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

But for some reason, for 15 of the 25 years, I'd walk in the door and be like, what about. Instead of, oh, that's my friend. Yeah, she must had a crazy day.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, I had a friend. To your point about being sensitive, I'm the same way. And I had a friend I was talking to and I was kind of laying some stuff, you know, I was airing my grievances. I was laying out my case like it was in court. Well, I was right, here's the evidence and calling a witness. Here's the case. Clearly I'm in the right. And he just looks at me and goes, did it ever occur to you that you might be too sensitive,

[John]

but you're not allowed to ask that On Instagram, Right?

[Michael Easter]

No, it did not occur to me. But you may have some good counter evidence in this hearing. Yeah, and I try and think about that, too. Like, I just, you know, if she says something that maybe hurts my feelings, I go, you know, there's a lot of different ways to interpret that. And I don't know why she's saying I can. I know that she loves me. I know we're best friends. So I'm going to guess probably my interpretation that was completely negative is probably wrong in at least some ways.

[John]

I think most of them. Becky Kennedy told me it was called the. She said it so beautifully as she does. Most generous interpretation. Yeah, maybe that's it. Like, you just. Someone just said a thing. I get to choose what story I make up about what they just said. And I can make up one where they're coming after me and I'm going to come back, or I can make up one that was like, they said that kind of dumb, but I know what they meant.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

The story is I get to make up the story.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, the. The story you tell yourself about your life events determines everything. That's. I mean, you hear all these things online and fitness spaces about, like, mental toughness and this and that and that. It's like, no, it's really just what story are you gonna tell yourself about an event? And that 100% shapes your outcomes? And there's so many different. Of course, there are very extreme events where it's gonna be hard to get a good story.

[John]

There's not. Yeah. When your house burns down, there's not a good story. Yeah, it is an is.

[Michael Easter]

But I would say in the trenches of daily life, the narrative you place behind an event and where it's gonna lead. So there's these two different types of stories. I'm gonna forget their exact name because I wrote about this six months ago, and things just sort of fly into the ether afterwards. There's called. One is contamination stories, and 1. I forget the exact wording, but we'll say strengthening stories. Okay. So same event happens. Contamination story is. This thing happened. It is going to mess me up. All these bad outcomes are going to happen, and I'm never going to be good again. Strengthening stories are this bad thing happened, but what did I learn from it? How am I going to grow from it? Could there be a way in which this actually makes me a stronger, better person? Same exact thing happens. Someone who tells themself the contamination story is going to have a worse life course. Worse health outcomes, worse mental health because

[John]

your body starts solving for that story.

[Michael Easter]

Yes, exactly. Whereas with the strengthening story, you have better outcomes and you actually become better off from those events because you learn from them. People don't learn from when times are easy. People learn from when things are hard. This is why you and I have talked at length about Joseph Campbell and his work. Yeah, yeah, but that's what the hero's journey is, right?

[John]

But that's. That's post traumatic growth and post, you know, post traumatic stress disorder, like just a small percentage. Most people have a really awful thing, and given the right tribe, you become stronger.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

Or maybe not even stronger, but you become a different version of yourself.

[Michael Easter]

Great example. I love. There was a study on cancer survivors. Most of them retrospectively said that cancer was one of the best things that ever happened to them.

[John]

Isn't that wild?

[Michael Easter]

Because why. Why would that be? Because it reset how they saw their life. They go, oh, it sort of put like a firm. Like, it made me realize that, yeah, this ride is going to end. And that changed how I rode the ride. You know, they start to go, oh, okay, I'm going to drop all this stuff that's not really going to matter in the end. I'm going to spend more time with friends, with family. I'm going to do things I really like. And so that's like, cancer is extreme, and the vast majority of people find they grow from it. And I read that study, and I'm like, well, let's see if this is bs. So I called up my mom. She's been cancer free for 10 years. So I read this study. What do you think about this? And she goes, oh, yeah. She's like, I feel like it shaped my decisions, lowered my stress, because I see things differently. I'm like, it's not as bad as cancer. This, you know, this thing that happened in my life. She spent more time with me. She said it even made her nicer. My mom has a tendency to, like, don't piss her off.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Easter]

She made me much nicer around people. So I do think that's sort of like a metaphor for sometimes these things can actually turn out to be good things.

[John]

So I just got a picture in my mind that I've never had before. So if we all view our life as though we're on a roller coaster and there comes a day when it runs out of track, it will. That's 100% guaranteed. This roller coaster runs out of track, and it might run out of track over a cliff, it might run out of track. Up against a brick wall, but it runs out of track. I can spend all of my time on that roller coaster gripping this thing as hard as I can, or I can throw my hands up and enjoy that ride.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah, totally.

[John]

That's a wild. Like that to me, just changed. That's a good frame for me.

[Michael Easter]

And here's another thing. How fun is a roller coaster that's perfectly flat with no turns and no corkscrews and no upside downs and no bubble? All this crazy stuff.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

Boring. No, you need the crazy stuff to make that ride thrilling.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

I would also argue that today it's never been easier to avoid the thrilling stuff.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

BS pops up in your life, you can avoid it. You got a problem with a relationship, you can ice them out. You can just. You don't like your boss, I quit. I'm gonna go find another job.

[John]

Or your spouse. I'm just gonna swipe right, man.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

Like, I don't want to deal with this conflict. I'm out.

[Michael Easter]

Totally.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And so those sorts of things are what make life interesting.

[John]

It's funny you say that, because I was riding on a kitty roller coaster with my daughter when she was really young, and. And it was. But it wasn't high. And I said, here comes the big one. And it went. And she said, dad, I wasn't. You know what I mean? But I tried to manufacture some. It was a really small little hill, but I tried. Here it comes. She's like, that's not that big a deal. Right, man. Okay. You wrote about this a long time ago, may have been a couple years ago. And it has stuck with me. And in fact, it reoriented how I think about mental health because I've been trying to wrestle with it for years as I was a grad student. And then out in the real world, we've told ourselves a story about mental health, which is, if you get all the thoughts in the right order, you will somehow be mentally. Well, we need to keep talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. And 1. If you talk about it enough, you'll order this thing in the right way and your body will go, ah, we're. Well, you told a story, and I'd love for you to tell it here about the magazine where you were one of the associate editors and it was clearly not going to make it and you had a run and I don't even know if you know what story I'm telling, but you're talking to. Maybe it was the editor in chief somebody. And you said, what are we going to do? That follow up line that he gave you has shifted everything for me. And I would love to hear that.

[Michael Easter]

Everything for me too. There's a reason 10 years later, I'm writing about it. Yeah. So context out of big magazine. Internet is like killing print. Not to mention at this magazine, we'd had a bunch of layoffs. We didn't have an editor in chief. We'd lost like half our staff. We got to get a magazine out in the next week. Like, magazines are a lot of work.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

And we got to figure out like new stories to do with half the staff. All this. I mean, the walls are crumbling. Right. And leading up to that, I had had all these ideas for stories, but I needed to get them just perfect. They needed to be absolutely perfect before I sent them in. Everything had to be dialed, blah, blah, blah, Perfect. And Tom stressing out about all this, everything. And I walk out in the hall and guy's name is Bill Stump.

[John]

What a great name.

[Michael Easter]

Bill Stump. Yeah. Raised by a pastor, I believe. Awesome guy. I said, bill, what are we going to do? And he just looked at me and goes, do something. That was it.

[John]

Those two words have changed my life. Michael.

[Michael Easter]

Do something. Yeah, just like, oh, okay. So I go back into my office and I'm like, do something. We need story ideas. You've been sitting here in your head trying to get everything perfect for some imaginary jury that you think is going to read a line and be like, this guy's so dumb, let's fire him.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

I sent in imperfect ideas. One of them hit. I wrote the story as my first big feature in the magazine that literally launched my career. Do something. So I think the lesson is when things come up in your life, whether it be a mental health problem or relationship problem or work problem, whatever it is, if you're anything like me, you're probably pretty good at sitting around and overanalyzing every possible angle. The reality is, unless you're a really good fortune teller, you have no idea where those are going to lead. So take the evidence you have. Pick the best path. Do something. Because the more shots you take of the basket, the more likely something's going to go in. And I do think we societally like the rise of mental health conversations and therapy. Good thing overall. At the same time, we can sit around and just talk and talk and talk. This and that, we got to unpeel every layer of. When I was a child, this thing happened. And this thing happened. It's like, just do something. Yeah, right. Like you can't change that. I'm not saying that's bad, but I am saying all talk, no action, that's probably bad.

[John]

I think that leads it. I think it pours gasoline on a fire.

[Michael Easter]

Totally. The more you talk about a mental health problem, the more symptoms set in. That's been shown in the data all the time. In fact, it's odd because we are told to sit down and like really analyze our thoughts deeply. But in general, for most people, most of the time with the problems of general living, expression it off and be like, man, yeah.

[John]

Or go do a thing, right?

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

And what's so strange about the way when you wrote about that, it locked in. I looked back over the course of my professional life and whether I'm sitting in a house helping police officers move bodies, right. Or I am sitting with a parent whose child is dead in that next room right there, or I'm sitting with a kid who just got beat up is when I was working at universities because they were the wrong color in the wrong place or they loved the wrong way, Whatever the thing was, no matter what we were going through, it always distilled down to a question, which was, what are you going to do now? Yeah. Right. And here's some options for you, here's some resources for you. Here's how I'll walk with you. But what are you going to do now? And I can't believe that I hadn't crystallized that in my own life on not the big things, right. If my house blows over, I know what I'm going to do next. If it. I've been in a, in a, on a campus where there was an active shooter, like I know what to do in those things. But at the granular level when me and my wife are just being pissy, what are you going to do now? Are you going to turn on the TV or are you going to go find one thing to do for her? Yeah, right. Like do a thing. When me and my 10 year old daughter get. I still try to take on a 10 year old, which is so stupid. Like it. I remember calling a buddy a few years ago and I was like, hey, I was arguing with my 14 year old about. And he goes, I'm going to stop you right there. Why are you arguing with a 14 year old? And this guy like, is the CEO a landscape company? No, mental health. And he's like, why are you arguing with a 14 year old? And I was like, all right, that's all I needed here. That's it. But it's like when I find myself in those moments, what's a thing I can do to lean towards that relationship that I'm with forever? Right. Yeah. What's a thing my boss doesn't appreciate? What's one value add I could give to my company right now?

[Michael Easter]

Totally.

[John]

What's one thing in my financial situ? What's one more hour I could work somewhere to get some more money in my house? Or what's one thing I could not buy this month? Month. Right. But it's like, it's weird that I have a podcast and I write and I whatever. And I'm telling people, maybe listen to a few less podcasts and go start doing some of that stuff. Or I'm surrounded by religious people who go from Bible study to church service to personal journaling time. Go feed a homeless person. Right. Go find some addicts that are struggling and sit with them and just bring water, man. You know, I mean, like start going to do something. And I find for me that's the most exposing thing, is not what are you thinking about? What are you talking about? Like, I've gotten to a point where I honestly don't care a lot. People say, I just want to know what, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing in the world? When it comes to health stuff, mental health stuff and scarcity Brain is is one of my favorite things you've written talking about just kind of peeling back the layers of addiction. I think the first thing I asked you yesterday was I may or may not have a nicotine pouch problem, but I've got a hyper addictive personality. What are some things that the exhausted mom with three kids listening to the show or the dad who's working two jobs, like what are some things we can do that are low level that you've seen across all your books, all your research that like here are some value adds to your day when you're time strapped, when you're whatever. Like, here's some things you can go do that's gonna make a positive impact on your life. That's a broad question.

[Michael Easter]

It's a broad question. There's a lot. It's case by case. But if I looked at most people most of the time, what helps movement helps. Call it exercise if you want to. And if you're busy with kids, get them involved. You know, you can sit on the couch and watch Netflix. That's fun. It's a distraction. But you could also like go for a walk with your kids. Yeah. Take them to the park, run around. You're Going to get movement, you're going to spend time outside. That's really good for mental health. You're going to connect at a more human level because you are talking to each other. Rather both. Rather than both. Watching the screen, you might see another

[John]

parent and all you'll do is this. Just the eyebrow raise and you realize, oh, we're all in this. Right, Right little thing.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

Okay.

[Michael Easter]

Work with other people, help other people. That's like consistently linked if you can. If you don't have time for that, I get it. There's different seasons for life. You might have to wait till your kids are say 8 or 10. You know, after writing the Comfort Crisis, for example, I had a lot of parents reach out to me. They said, okay, should I take my kid on this, you know, two week crazy backpacking trip or should I move? I even had one friend who was like, should I move into like the worst part of town? Would that make it more resilient? It's like, no, don't do that. Like, the reason you work is so you can have a good life. But you could take them to volunteer at a homeless shelter like you're going to. Your kids are going to be exposed to other ways of living and maybe realize they have, they have it pretty good in the grand scheme of time and space. And by helping people, that's going to help everyone's mental health. Like when you're helping other people. Yes, outwardly you're helping them, but you're also helping yourself.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

Significantly. That, Yeah. I mean, I think like for me a lot of it is just like, what did humans do? For most of the time we worked outdoors, we moved our bodies, we were with other people, we ate food that wasn't filled with 50 million ingredients. Right. Like that stuff still really works at a fundamental level. And I think we over complicate things.

[John]

I remember this is probably 10 or 12 years ago and this is when the word biohacking was first getting thrown around. Right. With some of the OGs. And I remember a colleague of mine, he since passed away, but he came, we were talking over dinner one night and I was like, what did you learn at the conference? And he's. And I'll never forget this, he said, oh, that all goes away. And I was like, what do you mean? And he goes, because if you just already look, all the biohacking stuff is gonna say, move your body, hang out with good people. We're a pair of bondage species. So marry one person, do really well and have lots of good sex. And raise good, healthy kids. He's like, it's just going to end up there. Yeah, Right. And so all this stuff will be cool and great and whatever, but a lot of it will be theater. Just do those basic things. And for me, one of the big do somethings is. And this may not be fair, but I've kind of distilled my life into. I'm doing an action for me or I'm doing action against me. And there are some moments when they. Right. Like this morning I skipped my big long workout. Right. I'm at the end of school season with my kids. I'm at the end of a long project. I'm tired.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. You had to eat biscuits with me.

[John]

Did have to have biscuits. But I traded, I did a. Slept in an extra 45 minutes and that meant I got a 15 minute walk. I threw on a rucksack, thanks to you, and I took off and I told my son, I'm going to get you to school, but I'm going to go do this real quick. And. But it was something, right? And it was a little bit of a thing and it wasn't my big grandiose plans and whatever. And I made this trade for this trade. And tomorrow I might trade 45 minutes of sleep for a longer time, but it's not even going to be the same thing all the time. But it's. What am I trying to solve for today? I'm trying to solve for peace in my house. I'm trying to solve for a relationship with my kid. I'm trying to solve for being on time. And I need to do human stuff, man. And my goodness, what a different way to live.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. And I would say think, try to be creative with the 2% idea we talked about.

[John]

I finished Comfort Crisis and handed it to my. He was 12 at the time. And I said, everything stops. You read that. And he read it in like two or three days and he's like, it's good, dad. But even him at five in the morning when we're walking into somebody's ranch that they're letting us hunt on and I'll be like, I'll just drive us up. And he goes, no, dad, come for crisis. We're going to walk. I'm like, I'm like, dude, okay, he's keeping you honest. And I'm climbing up a tree and I could barely breathe. But it's that those stories he'll tell at my funeral about the time dad and I hiked through at 5am not we drove up with the Heater on until the last possible. You know, I mean, it's. It's what life in the rearview mirror do. I want to set lived and not the most insulated comfort, but the most adventure filled, the most fun, the most best relationships. It's awesome.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. No one. The stories we tell each other are never. Yeah. I sat in this really comfortable chair and watched this show. It's. It's always the sort of things that had hardship attached to them.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

Right. Like go out and live a life where you get a lot of stories you can tell to party. There you go.

[John]

Yeah. In the. The eulogy versus resume thing has stuck with me. Like, I want stories with my kids. Did I keep my suit perfectly clean? Or do I want my daughter wiping away tears at my funeral, saying one time, dad is in his suit and. And he. I bumped him and he went flying into the mud puddle. And then he dragged me down. Like, that's the story they'll tell, right?

[Michael Easter]

Totally. When I think about, like my. When I'm reporting books and I travel all over for these, if everything goes right, the book is not going to be as good. When I had to go to Iraq, that trip went off the rails.

[John]

Yeah.

[Michael Easter]

But the whole time in the back of my head I'm thinking, this is a pain. This is mildly dangerous. But guess what? This is going to be.

[John]

It was not mildly dangerous. It was pretty dangerous.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah. Okay. But it's gonna be awesome in the book. So one of the takeaways for me was, no problem, no story. If you don't have a problem, probably not gonna get a story out of it. Now, for me, that's really important as a writer. But I would argue for us as humans that communicate with each other and wanna live an interesting life, that's also like pretty good rule.

[John]

Yeah. And to pan back, everybody's scared about their work. Everybody's scared about AI. Everybody's scared about the economy. Everybody's scared about war. You've been a good model for me in. You know what I want to do? I want to go be a journalist.

[Michael Easter]

Right.

[John]

And I want to be a journalist and write at a major magazine. Oh, here comes the Internet. Right. So I'm going to pivot and become a professor. Oh, higher EDS turning into a cesspool. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to. And you have been a great job. Been a great example for me from afar of saying, every one of us is going to go through those things and so we could. I could. You could. You could still be trying to be one of those bitter, burned out journalists who smokes four packs a day and trying to find a small, smaller and smaller magazine to write it. Because I'm a magazine writer. Or you could still be the union. We both have friends who are just hating their life as college professors right now. Or I'm gonna do something. All right.

[Michael Easter]

I'm gonna go find what you did.

[John]

Well, yeah. Same thing, right? Yeah. But it's like, okay, I'm seeing this thing play out in front of me. I can sit here and be bitter about it, or I can grieve it and be sad. I would be awesome to still be writing for magazines. I still love getting magazines. Right? Be awesome. The idea of being a college professor is still the greatest job on the planet. Interact with costumes. It's amazing. And what I have in my head doesn't exist anymore.

[Michael Easter]

Yeah.

[John]

And so I can choose that reality and then go do something. It's awesome. Dude. Thanks for being my friend, man.

[Michael Easter]

Likewise, dude. This is fun, as always.