Simone Stolzoff: We’re Getting Worse At Not Knowing

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist – Simone Stolzoff: We’re Getting Worse At Not Knowing

Date: June 2, 2026
Host: Mike Pesca (Peach Fish Productions)
Guest: Simone Stolzoff, author of How Not to Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers

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Overview

In this thought-provoking episode of The Gist, host Mike Pesca interviews journalist and author Simone Stolzoff about his new book exploring society’s growing intolerance for uncertainty. They dive into why humans crave certainty, how technology and abundance have shaped our need for answers, and what we might gain from becoming more comfortable with the unknown. Through rich storytelling and personal case studies—from cult survivors to workaholics and seekers—Stolzoff explores how grappling with uncertainty can lead to personal growth, deeper relationships, and a more resilient society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Our Deepening Discomfort with Uncertainty

• Evolutionary Roots:
  • Stolzoff explains that our brains are “prediction machines,” developed to ensure survival by reducing threats from uncertainty in ancestral environments.

    “When we feel certain, we feel safe and secure. When we feel uncertain, we feel a sense of threat.” — Simone Stolzoff [06:14]

• Modern Amplification:
  • The rise of the internet and mobile devices has made instant answers the norm, correlating with a marked decline in our tolerance for uncertainty.
  • Study cited: direct relationship between technology adoption and intolerance for uncertainty. [08:08]

2. Is the World More Uncertain, or Are We Less Tolerant?

• Pesca and Stolzoff debate whether recent events (COVID, wars, economic fluctuations) truly represent greater uncertainty than in ages past (like the bubonic plague), or if our capacity to handle it has eroded.

  “Our ability to tolerate that uncertainty is in decline.” — Stolzoff [08:08]
  “Almost every great leap forward was addressing one of those questions and giving the question an answer … The further back you go, the more uncertainty there was and the more likelihood you die from it.” — Mike Pesca [08:55]

3. Personal Stories Illustrating Uncertainty

• Kate Sweeney and Cult Psychology:
  • Stolzoff profiles Kate, who joined a cult-like campus group offering certainty in return for surrendering autonomy. Her later research revealed people suffer more from uncertainty (e.g., waiting on medical results) than bad outcomes themselves.

    “We are so uncomfortable with uncertainty that it can be as physically painful as a negative event actually occurring in our lives.” — Stolzoff [12:50]
    “Patients preferred to receive a certain electric shock than have the chance of receiving an electric shock.” — Stolzoff [12:50]

• Nuria and Plainsong Farm:
  • Nuria’s spiritual journey demonstrates the flip side: embracing uncertainty can lead to meaningful creation, both for herself and the faith-based community she built.

    “On the other side of uncertainty is possibility. No entrepreneur or scientist...has ever made something truly original without being willing to get to a point of uncertainty and persisting.” — Stolzoff [14:48]

4. Religion and the Comfort of Certainty

• Stolzoff draws a distinction between “blind faith”—submitting to religious certainty without question—and “conscious faith,” where questioning is embraced. Cites Judaic tradition of “wrestling with God.”

  “Some of these...pop forms of religion are trying to dictate a sense of certainty… What she's trying to create in a farm is the place where people can wrestle with some of these ideas.” — Stolzoff [17:33]

5. How Much Should We Let Go? Navigating Between Extremes

• Psychologist Mikhail Jugas describes two common responses to uncertainty: obsessive over-researching versus impulsive decision-making—both unhealthy at extremes.
• A healthy life, Stolzoff argues, requires a balance between certainty and uncertainty.

  “We need certain anchors...and we need to develop a tolerance for uncertainty so that we're not paralyzed by that doubt that we might feel.” — Stolzoff [19:26]

• Case Study: Adam, whose OCD led to paralyzing indecision, found some relief—not in removing all uncertainty, but in learning to live with it, partially aided by psilocybin therapy.

  “It's not about banishing uncertainty or doubt, but being able to make decisions in spite of the uncertainty and doubt.” — Stolzoff [21:24]

6. Work, Identity, and the Will to Control

• Pesca notes an overlap between readers of Stolzoff’s previous book (The Good Enough Job) and those interested in uncertainty. Both types tend toward over-planning and over-identifying with professional achievement.
• Stolzoff traces this to the need for controllable results:

  “Often people become workaholics and it’s this chicken and egg thing where it’s like they're not sure what to do when they’re not working… If you've defined your whole worth...based on your professional output, you're not only intolerant of uncertainty, but you're likely to define yourself solely on your work as well.” — Stolzoff [23:47]

7. Problems of Abundance and Variability Across Society

• Stolzoff admits the “problem of too much certainty” is not universal, but more common in societies of abundance. Still, he argues, most people can relate at some level.

  “There are broader cultural critiques that both books make… [on] how much certainty people peddle that is just false…especially in our digital landscape with social media and a 24 hour news cycle.” — Stolzoff [26:11]

• Technology and social platforms flood us with “certainty,” flattening the world’s complexity into distracting, anxiety-provoking pseudo-answers.

  “Our phones flatten all of the world’s uncertainties and just bring them right into our pockets.” — Stolzoff [29:42] “We are just getting worse and worse in accepting what we don’t know… That is a practice that's robbing us of the skill of being able to cope with uncertainty.” — Stolzoff [30:54]

8. Reporting Philosophy: Finding the Story, Not Just Assembling Evidence

• Stolzoff distinguishes his approach from typical non-fiction: rather than retrofitting stories to prove a thesis, he reports stories in their own complexity, seeking the truth by immersing himself in subjects’ lives.

  “The story you find is always better than the story you seek. And that's one of my critiques of a lot of popular nonfiction...” — Stolzoff [31:49]

• Pesca praises the narrative drive and resistance to the formulaic self-help genre.

9. Memorable Case: The Year of Living Dangerously

• A couple on the brink of breakup opts for a year apart to “prototype” their decision, providing Stolzoff a real-time, nuanced look at living uncertainty, not just theorizing about it.

  “If I was just reading about this story in some tabloid, I would think that these people are just...not brave enough… but actually talking to the people really changed my understanding.” — Stolzoff [33:11]

• Stolzoff refuses to force the case into a “happy ending” or prescriptive model, underscoring his larger point.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On human drives:

  “It's why we're so attracted to people who can claim to predict exactly when the market's going to crash or exactly who's going to win the election... The problem is that often we grasp for certainty that is not actually there.” — Stolzoff [06:14]

• On the discomfort of waiting:

  “For breast cancer patients, the period between when you get a biopsy until you get a diagnosis is often the hardest part... It can be as physically painful as a negative event actually occurring in our lives.” — Stolzoff [12:50]

• On abundance:

  “We almost immediately...went from problems of scarcity to problems of abundance. And both of the things that you've written books about are problems of abundance.” — Pesca [25:01]

• On the nature of our digital world:

  “Our phones flatten all of the world's uncertainties and just bring them right into our pockets.” — Stolzoff [29:42]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:31–08:08] – Technology and declining tolerance for uncertainty
• [12:40–14:43] – The allure of cults and the pain of uncertainty (Kate’s story)
• [14:48–16:34] – Faith, possibility, and Plainsong Farm (Nuria’s story)
• [19:26–21:24] – Navigating when to let go and balancing obsessiveness vs. impulsiveness
• [23:47–26:11] – Work, identity, and who these books are for
• [29:42–30:54] – How phones and technology amplify uncertainty and anxiety
• [31:49–34:44] – Reporting philosophy and the impact of immersive storytelling (couple’s “Year of Living Dangerously”)

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Conclusion

This episode of The Gist offers a wide-ranging, approachable yet rigorously inquisitive look at the modern struggle with uncertainty. Through case studies, personal reflection, and social critique, Simone Stolzoff and Mike Pesca illuminate how our culture's quest for certainty—intensified by technology, abundance, and the modern economy—leaves us less able to navigate the unknown. Stolzoff’s narrative-driven journalism and balanced insights provide listeners with a meaningful framework to reconsider their relationship with not knowing—not as a flaw, but as a vital part of being human.

Transcript

[A]

I'm Kiana and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. I'm addicted.

[B]

Start your free [e-mail] Foreign It's Tuesday, June 2, 2026. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. President Trump is known for his dishonesty, but sometimes it's his honesty that's most worrisome here. Eamon Javers of CNBC reporting on a conversation he had with the president yesterday about the ongoing but you may have noticed incomplete Iranian negotiations I asked the president about. I said, do you think the negotiations are over now on or is this a bluff by the Iranians? The president said, I don't care if they're over. Honestly, I really don't care. I couldn't care less if they're over, they're over if they're not. You know, I think they took too much time, frankly. I think they started to get a little boring. A little boring? Not enough razzle dazzle for him. No flyovers, no flag huggings, no fights on the White House lawn to hold his interest. I believe him. I believe him that he is bored. Bored like a family who isn't able to take a road trip this summer with gas at 450 a gallon. But you know what? They can watch that UFC fight instead. I guess alternative programming. Maybe the whole thing is a ratings ploy. If I had to be incredibly charitable, if I could turn into the Trump translator translating him from impetuous to presidential, I would say something like, he doesn't mean that Iran's delays have been boring. It means that their delays have grown tiresome and predictable. But anyway, even if that were true, even if that were his publicly expressed complaint, it wouldn't make me feel any better about a negotiation. I do not think the Iranians have the same need for stimuli as the President of the United States. Waiting out a straight of Hormuz shutdown hurts them a little bit, but they can clearly put up with a lot more pain, including the pain and pang of ennui, tedium or yes, boredom. I don't know. Maybe one day the historians will say this was the first war lost for Lack of excitement, Our missile supply didn't run out, it was just our attention span that did. On the show today, very good author, very smart guy, Simone Stolzoff, whose book is called how not to Know the Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands answers. And up next, I shall demand answers from Simone and I promise you he won't say we don't know and value that.

[C]

Foreign.

[B]

We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask, even in 2026. Enter how to the long standing advice show, an Ambie Award nominated best personal growth podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. And that host. Here's the reveal. It's me, Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. No question is too big or too specific. Some topics, how to protect the elderly from scammers, how to take psychedelics therapeutically, and of course how to emigrate to the Netherlands as a throuple. You've got questions, we'll find the answers. So follow how to with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Think about the following two statements. We don't know what microplastics do to the human body and actually we don't know the long term effects of social media on teenagers. They both are actually the same thing, but of course, and it's not just how I said them now, it's how you often hear them. They're very different valences. How we don't know that. We don't know. Just the very fact of not knowing. It's pretty complicated, it's pretty stressful. A lot of us don't like it and it is the subject of a book, a study, a contemplation of uncertainty. The name of the book is how to not know the value of uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers. Simone Stolzoff is the author. Hello Simone, how are you doing?

[C]

Well, thanks for having me, Mike.

[B]

So I think that there are many phenomenon here that you chronicle, but I think the many of them are epiphenomenon of some root causes and I want to get to them. And I'll tell you that I want you to lay out much of the premise of your book and then there'll be the challenging part of the interview and I just say that so there's no uncertainty about my intention here. Is that okay?

[C]

I appreciate it.

[B]

Very good. But if there was, I know you'd roll with it. So I think that, that how we latch onto certainty and how we want certainty is a reaction to, among other things, are increasingly algorithmic world. And the algorithm programs and defines the world in a certain way. And whether we know it or not, or feel it or not, all the time we're reacting against it. And that is why we either are attracted to reading your book or are like the principals of your book, who sometimes were caught up in so much certainty they couldn't get out of their own way. How do you think the algorithm interacts with what you're writing about?

[C]

Our brains are an algorithm. Our brains are these prediction machines. We're always trying to make guesses about what's to come based on what came before. If you think about this developmentally, if you were an ancestor in the jungle and you hear a rustling in the bushes, if you know the source of that noise, you, you feel safe and secure. But if not, that uncertainty can potentially be lethal. And those are the same brains, the same wiring that we're carrying around today. When we feel certain, we feel safe and secure. When we feel uncertain, we feel a sense of threat. It's why we're so attracted to people who can claim to predict exactly when the market's going to crash or exactly who's going to win the election, because it makes us feel like we can anticipate what's to come. It's the same reason why we like music that's based on repeating patterns. The problem is that often we grasp for certainty that is not actually there. We grasp for a false sense of certainty and that can leave us strung out. Especially on social media these days, there's so many promises to predict the future, of exactly how to sleep train your baby, of exactly when to buy or sell the stock. The truth is, when it comes to anything in the future, we don't actually know what's going to pass.

[B]

Sure, and the human animal was selected by the ones who were pretty good at discerning when the uncertainty was a danger. And not the ones who said, let us live with the uncertainty of that maybe being the wind or that being a saber toothed tiger. Now the way I think about it is we have maybe lost that instinct or lost that ability. So much uncertainty was thrust upon us in the ancient world really up until, you know, a few years ago that, that we're like a tribe that has not been inoculated against the presence of the vector of uncertainty. So perhaps now it bothers us more than it ever did in human history.

[C]

Yeah, I often get the question, is the world actually more uncertain than ever right now? And I'd say, well, if you were living in Florence during the bubonic plague, or if you were a handloom weaver at the turn of the industrial revolution, you, you might think the world was a little bit more uncertain. What's changed is our ability to tolerate that uncertainty is in decline. So there's this fascinating study from these researchers in Canada that basically found a direct correlation between the rise of the Internet and mobile phones and the rise of intolerance of uncertainty. And this makes a lot of sense. When we have the expectation that answers should be readily available, we think that everything should be certain and that uncertainty causes us more distress. The problem is our world both is uncertain right now and feels more uncertain than ever.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know if it feels more uncertain. I guess to the people asking the question, you're a much nicer guy than I and you probably were being paid to give that speech and want to get invited back, I would say, no, that's the stupidest question I've ever heard. You know what? I wouldn't honestly say that, but I would say most of human existence was defined by precarity and vicissitudes. And almost every great leap forward was addressing one of those questions and giving the question an answer to the germ theory of disease, to how do storms come to up until 40 years ago, how do air currents work to cause airplane crashes? Everything we have been getting more and more certain it has led to longer and longer lifespans. It is basically one way to think of human achievement. And a consequence of that is go to any point in history. The further back you go, the more uncertainty there was and the more likelihood you die from it.

[C]

Well, I mean, the question is, then why are we so anxious? And then I think that's the real crux of it. There's one study that is from this researcher, Nick Bloom at Stanford, who's tracked global uncertainty since the 80s. And he's found that the five highest measurements, at least according to how he does measurements, have all occurred in the past five years. So you think about COVID the war, the economy, the job market, et cetera. But compared to the existential threat of will I die tomorrow? If you're living in a society that has rampant plague, it might not be absolutely more uncertainty, but the felt experience of uncertainty is still very present.

[B]

Yes, that's true. The bubonic plague. We didn't know where it came from, and then we thought it was the rats, and then we figured out it was the fleas. We had no way to cure it. This current plague, the COVID we. Okay, there's the lab leak theory versus zoonotic. But we figured it out fairly soon. And unprecedentedly in the history of human experience. We rushed a cure that worked to an amazing degree. So you're right. We still feel uncertainty. It's. It's kind of. It's very interesting. Kind of crazy that we're feeling it now more than ever. And this is why your book is gonna get a huge audience, because this will resonate with people, and it will definitely resonate with the type of person who plans their life to the nth degree. And you profile a lot of people, profile a lot of researchers, and also a lot of people who either embraced or had. Had to. Had a. Had a dance with uncertainty. So how'd you find your people?

[C]

You know, I'm a reporter first and foremost. I'm always looking out for good stories. I put an ask out to the Internet, and often it isn't the people who raise their hand, but when I ask who else should I talk to? It's the people that they recommend that tend to be the best sources. And so in the book, there's a couple who's deciding whether or not they want to get divorced. There's a country in the Pacific called Tuvalu where the average height of the country is about nine feet above sea level. And the estimates are that by 2050, half of the country will be underwater. There is the replication crisis in the social sciences. So it's sort of like 10 different ways of. Of looking at this macro question of how do we get better at dealing with what we don't know? And the main sort of form of the book is I have these three traps that we fall into. The desire for control, the desire for hubris, the desire to know that you're right, and the desire for comfort. And how these traps, these psychological needs we have, drive us to look for certainty where there is perhaps no certainty to be found.

[B]

Tell me about Kate, who went to Furman University and fell in with a group that was religious and very much wanted to extend some dictates over her life.

[C]

Yeah, so there's the opening chapter of the book. It's kind of a perfect storm for a researcher like me. It's about this woman, Kate Sweeney, who in college fell into what you might think of as like a cult like organization. It was an organization that told you what to do, what to wear, who you're allowed to date, what job you should get after you grad college. And I think cults represent sort of the perfect emblem of why certainty is so attractive. Rather than having to wrestle with these questions yourself of how to live a good life or what happens after you die, you just sort of cede control over to a guru or to an organization that tells you if you follow these steps, here's the protocol, then you're guaranteed to go to heaven, have professional success, what have you. The problem is that level of certainty is seductive and easy until it isn't. Until it comes crashing into the reality of your lived experience or maybe your own doubts that are often shunned away. And so Kate spoiled ending for this chapter. She leaves the cult. She ends up becoming one of the country's foremost researchers of uncertainty and goes into academia, gets her PhD and now does some really interesting studies, particularly in the medical realm. And is found, for example, that for breast cancer patients, the period between when you get a biopsy until you get a diagnosis is often the hardest part of the entire journey. We are so uncomfortable with uncertainty that it can be as physically painful as a negative event actually occurring in our lives. One more study that I really love is patients preferred to receive a certain electric shock than have the chance of receiving an electric shock. We would somehow prefer a bad thing definitely happen to us than have to deal with the ambiguity of not knowing whether or not a bad thing will happen.

[B]

Tell me about Plainsong Farm and one of the other characters or people we meet named Nuria.

[C]

Nuria is a great example of a seeker. She is someone who's always looked for a religious calling. And it's taken many different phases in her life. She was Jewish growing up. She spent some time as a Universalist Unitarian. She then went back to seminary to become an Episcopal minister. But in addition to being on her own spiritual journey, she was also in search of how do you create community for others? And in the context of uncertainty, I think faith is a great counterbalance. I think a lot of the reason why people turn to religion is to ask some of those questions about the great uncertainties of life. So here she is, she's a minister and then she also becomes an entrepreneur. She buys this farmland and tries to create a land based ministry where people come, they work the farm, and then they also have some sort of seminary service or something like that on Sundays. And I went to visit Kate and I went to visit Nuria. And I think she represents sort of the two sides of uncertainty. On one hand, you see uncertainty as a threat. When we don't know what is to come, it can feel extremely threatening. We enter a fight, flight or freeze response. On the other side of uncertainty is possibility. And no sort of entrepreneur or scientist getting a breakthrough or artist that's really creating original art has ever made something truly original without being willing to get to a point of uncertainty and persisting. And that's what I think Narya's story really represents. It's someone who didn't know exactly what the outcome was going to be, but was willing to turn toward her uncertainty, have some faith in things working out, and be able to build something that is a growing religious community in an age where religion is declining across the country.

[B]

So at the end of your talking to her, she gives you this quote. She pauses. You record her deep thinking. Religious institutions too often are about a God that humans made, a God that reinforces human prejudices and human expectations. A God that's not actually God, which you later say that you initially bristle at her use of the word God. Okay, she said, her voice suddenly taking on a priestly tone. We know that the way that God meant for us to live is in relationship to one another and the earth. Plain Song, the Church, the Farm helps remind people that, to quote Beyonce, God is real. Why is this a referendum or a dictate about certainty other than, rather than dressing up most of what you've just been saying, that we seek out religion because of uncertainty, dressing it up in some specifics, in some, you know, pop culture, and some, I guess, priestly intonation.

[C]

I mean, I think the distinction Nuria was trying to make in that moment was a difference between what I might call blind faith and a more sort of conscious level of faith. Blind faith is sort of. I'm not going to think for myself, I'm just going to follow this set of steps. Conscious faith is. I'm going to wrestle with these questions and I'm going to choose to put my heart on something. So, for example, I'm Jewish. One of the main ideas that I really like from Judaism is this concept of wrestling with God. The literal translation of the word Israel is to wrestle with God. I think what Nurya is saying is that some of these maybe more pop forms of religion are trying to dictate a sense of certainty. Exactly. This is what you should think. This is what you should believe. And what she's trying to create in a farm is the place where people can wrestle with some of these ideas without having to take everything one to one at face value.

[B]

Mm. Mm. I guess with so many of these insights. I read a lot of these books and yours is among the very best. Very well done. The question, the answer is what you have to do is let go. Or if the book were about pick any one that I've done about time management. The answer is you have to have a system or organize. And if the I don't want to go through all the iterations that a book could be. But yes, the answer is you have to let go. But then the question is how much, right. You can be the A book on scams. The answer is you have to be vigilant. But how much? And you could let go so much that it's not an answer. It's just thrusting ourself to the position of our ancestors where we were. Where we were harmed by the vicissitudes of the storms. So what's the answer to that? Or what insights have you gleaned from the people you talk to that answers the how much question of letting go?

[C]

It's a great question because this is one of the biggest things that I learned while reporting the book. I just thought it was like uncertainty is about accepting and embracing the unknown. And I talked to this psychologist, his name is Mikhail Jugas. And he said when people are really uncomfortable with uncertainty, they tend to have one of two diametrically opposed responses. The first is obsessive information gathering. I'm going to research every single water bottle on Amazon and I'm not going to make a decision until I've compared it in different ways and then I'll make my choice. The alternative is extreme impulsivity. And I'm going to go to the store to buy jeans. And instead of trying on every single pair of jeans, I'm just going to buy the pair of jeans that's in the window because that is the quickest way out of this uncertainty that I'm feeling. And I think either path is dangerous. To be healthy, I think we need some level of certainty and some level of uncertainty. There are people that I profile in the book. For example, this one guy named Adam who has severe ocd, which represents almost the extreme of doubt of certainty streak. They call OCD the doubting disease. And you can't make up any decision in his mind. He will stay in his apartment for hours debating whether he should get the 137 or the 1204 train back home. And that level of uncertainty. Yeah, exactly. That level of uncertainty is paralyzing. Then on the other extreme, you get someone in a cult that doesn't have any room for doubt in their mind, and they can be very misguided. And so I think that's the balance that is to be human and why my book isn't too prescriptive of, like, here's the five steps to get uncertainty out of your life. We need certain anchors. We need to know the things in our life that we hope will be steady amidst all the changing winds. And we need to develop a tolerance for uncertainty so that we're not paralyzed by that doubt that we might feel.

[B]

Adam took psilocybin, Right, for his OCD and his uncertainty.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

How did that work for him? Well, you know, I think in a very obsessive manner. He thought that it would be this silver bullet, this panacea. He wanted to find the miracle cure for him to never find feel OCD symptoms ever again. And in actuality, what the psilocybin did is help him accept the doubt that he was feeling in his life. So I think about it sort of like he had this huge balloon of anxiety, and the psilocybin helped him sort of right size the balloon, make it a little smaller, to understand that it's not about banishing uncertainty or doubt, but being able to make decisions in spite of the uncertainty and doubt, to continue to persist despite not knowing exactly where he's going to end up or how his decisions will work out.

[B]

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[B]

we're back with Simone Stoltzhoff, the author of how not to Know the Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers. And, Simone, your last book was the Good Enough Job, and it was about not letting work define us. This book that we've been talking about is how to accept some level of uncertainty. But I do think, and you tell me if this true, that there is a certain kind of person who reads both of your works and they appeal to that person. Both subjects immediately speak to them. The kind of person who says, yes, I work unbelievably hard and yes, my work defines me. When, when people say, who are you or what do you do? I always answer with my professional standing and status. Also, I plan very hard. I have a 401k. I don't want too many doubts in my life. I might be a more or less rigid scheduler. Am I right about that?

[C]

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense logically. Like one of the main increases in work time in the US in the past 40 or so years is among college educated men. And I was talking to a researcher and she had this theory that basically, especially new dads, once they have a kid, they don't necessarily know whether their effort will directly lead to results. You might try and set up your kid for all the success in the world and it might not necessarily pan out. Whereas if you're a stock trader or you work in tech, you might be able to see a more linear line between the effort that you put in and what you get out. And so rather than having to deal with the sort of uncertainty act of parenting, you deal with the certainty and the solid thing that work gives you in your life. And so I think that's like a common threat. Often people become workaholics and it's this chicken and egg thing where it's like they're not sure what to do when they're not working, so they work more and they work more. So they don't have much time to figure out what they do when they're not working. And I think that's sort of a common thread for me. It's like if you're very uncomfortable, if you've defined your whole worth in this world based on your professional output, you're not only intolerant of uncertainty, but you're likely to define yourself solely on your work as well.

[B]

Wouldn't you also say, would you also say that the kind of person who. For whom it is a problem, that they work too hard and define themselves too much through work, and the kind of person who has too much certainty in their life is, first of all not typical of, say, the median person in the world, let alone the median American that are living a life of much greater precarity and aren't so, say, professionally organized around their identity, that they don't have that problem? But I don't want to just say this to say, aren't you writing for, you know, Aren't you engaged in, what do they call it, first world problems? We live in the first world, that's fine. I mean it more like it's a problem of abundance. I think like we used to have all these problems of scarcity and then we address them in terms of food and then we addressed it terms of things to be interested in, or we addressed it in terms of education and then we almost immediately, I think without a week and a half interregnum, went from problems of scarcity to problems of abundance. And both of the things that you've written books about are problems of abundance.

[C]

I think, yeah, I think there are problems of abundance and things that exist on a spectrum. So maybe you don't have to be a hyper workaholic to benefit from reading my first book. Maybe you don't have to have OCD to benefit from reading my second book. But there is something that we can all learn because they're sort of universal questions. How do I negotiate my relationship with work? How do I get better at dealing with what I don't know? Now certainly if I gave this book about how to deal with uncertainty to someone fighting on the front lines of Ukraine, they'll be like, fuck you. What are you going to tell me about dealing with uncertainty? If I am trying to make an argument about diversifying your identity to someone that is holding down three jobs just to try and provide for their family, it's going to fall on deaf ears. But that being said, there are broader cultural critiques that both books make. So for example, the first book is very much a critique of the United States relationship to work and how work centric we are as a society, how we treat CEOs like celebrities, and how we think that our self worth, our self actualization should all be found through this one realm of who we are. The second book is a critique of how much certainty people peddle. That is just false, that just isn't true. Especially in our digital landscape with social media and a 24 hour news cycle. And so that being said, I don't think the books are for everyone. I didn't try to write them to be for everyone. But even if you're not on the extreme of say the I work therefore I am spectrum, or the extreme of I can't tolerate uncertainty for a second spectrum, there's something that you might be able to glean from it.

[B]

Yeah, and again, I'm not here to try to back foot you. I'm I guess broadly in those categories. But I, I will admit I haven't read the first book, but I did listen to your TED talk and I did listen to a bunch of podcasts about it. And in the TED Talk, the word money doesn't come up. And then I listened to your Dan Harris interview and the word money came up 14 times. But that's only because he did an ad for rocket money with 11 references. Middle of it. But the point is, once you don't have money, you work to get money and you don't really think about identifying yourself through work. I don't think you try to get either enough shifts or into a profession where you have your material circumstances taken care of. And then when you don't have certainty, you might not consciously be saying, I'm working for certainty. And I'm not even talking about the person working three shifts. I'm talking about. I think the vast majority of Americans who, because of our society and how it's set up and it's capitalistic nature, don't know for sure how they're going to pay for school or how they're going to pay for retirement or health care. I think a small portion do, and those are the people that are super duper worried about it. So there's a variation on the last question. I don't want to ask the last question again. I think it's. I think there's probably something either in our nature, but maybe not maybe in our technology that takes this, that takes the successful person, the person that has, you know, made it and elevated themselves among the vast majority of people in the richest country of the world to take away that worry about money and that worry about certainty and injects a worry upon them. I mean, do you, do you think it's, do you think it's tech overlords? Do you think it is just human nature, we were always fated to never be happy and to invent these problems. What do you think it is?

[C]

I wish it were just one factor. I think it's many different factors. The whole advertising industry is about peddling a sense of deficiency and so you buy more products. The technology industry is about thinking that there is just chat with ChatGPT or Claude or whatever. The first thing that they'll say is, you're absolutely right, you know, exactly. Or this is the answer. We think that we can just sort of chatgpt big questions like who should we marry or the future of our careers. And the truth is these expectations that answers should be readily just aren't born out and what the information age has done. Yes, it's helped Eradicate some diseases. It's helped us improve technologically as a society. But this influx of information has often just made our lives more anxious. I think about my phone these days. I can track my kid's every moment of his day, know where he is. I can track real time updates about what is going on in Iran right now. It's like our phones flatten all of the world's uncertainties and just bring them right into our pockets. And then when I don't know, the

[B]

name generators, they are designed to overwhelm our threat matrix. Exactly.

[C]

Totally. I mean, even 15 years ago, I might have been okay not knowing the name of a given actor. But now, if I can't think of the name of an actor, I feel this almost involuntary need to reach into my pocket. We are just getting worse and worse in accepting what we don't know. And that is a practice that's robbing us of the skill of being able to cope with uncertainty.

[B]

I've read 300 books where someone has a thesis, someone has expertise, and then they read the literature that's out there and they prune what's good, what's not good, they bring it to the reader. But what you do that almost no one else does is then you go out and find, when you can find the person who did the research, sometimes it becomes a full chapter. Sometimes you just describe that she meets you on the highland and is wearing an all or the high line is wearing an all black outfit. Why do you do that? How do you do that? What taught you to do that? What's the benefit of that?

[C]

I'm a reporter. You know, what I like about the process of writing books is being in the world. It's not compressing 30 research papers or trying to make the summary that AI would generate a little bit more readable to the average reader. I like finding the story myself. My first editor used to say, the story you find is always better than the story you seek. And that's one of my critiques of a lot of popular nonfiction is people have their idea of the story and then they seek a bunch of evidence to support it. When I go into a book project, I try and have a big question and then I try and triangulate my way to something of an answer along the way. The other reason is that as a reader, I prefer reading narratives like I like to read a story that has an arc, that has characters that I can identify with, that has some sort of change, as opposed to just what is kind of pat in the nonfiction genre. Which is like a few paragraphs of a person in a situation, and then just a lot of prescriptive advice. That's one size fits all.

[B]

Yeah. And as human beings, we're connected to other human beings and characters. Was there one or two where if you hadn't met the person in person, you'd have a totally different conception of what they were saying?

[C]

Yeah. I think the story that I opened the book with is about this couple that's out having a drink in New York, and they've been together for 17 years, married for 10. They think there's something wrong with the relationship. They're not sure how to put their finger on it, and they decide to do something crazy, which is they do this thing called the Year of Living Dangerously, where they take a year and they go their separate ways, and then they come back to the bar to determine whether or not they want to stay together or not. And if I was just, like, reading about this story in some tabloid or something like that, I would think that these people are just kind of chicken shit. I'd think that they're just not brave enough to either have a hard conversation about getting divorced and breaking up or gritting their teeth and carrying on and realizing that relationships aren't perfect, but actually talking to the people really changed my understanding of the situation. And what they did is they basically created a container to prototype what it's like to break up and have a felt experience of what it's like to be on their own and then come to a conclusion together. And even as I informally interview people about whether they broke up or stayed together, it's about 50, 50. Like, half the people are like, it's the Pina Colada song. Of course they fell back in love. And the other half of people are like, no. Like, if you spend a year giving your energy outside your relationship, there's no way you're getting back together. And I won't spoil this. You'll have to read the book to figure it out. But that's the kind of nuance that I think I get from actually doing the reporting as opposed to just using a case study to make a point.

[B]

Simone Stolzoff is the author of how to Not Know the Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers. Simone Stolzoff. Thank you so much, Simone.

[C]

Well, I appreciate you having me. Thanks, Mike.

[B]

And that's it for today's show. Corey Warr is the producer of the Gist, But Not Today. Jeff Craig produced today's show. Well, Cory helped. I don't want to get into all the inner dynamics, but it was, let's just call it a tandem job. Jeff usually produces how to Ben Astaire is the booking producer of the Gist. Kathleen Sykes runs the Gist List, and Michelle Pesca oversaw that palace couple as the coo. She knows about Kooz Improve. And thanks for listening.

[A]

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[B]

Com.