Category: podcast

A talk with Jennifer Cohn (Twitter @jennycohn1), election integrity advocate, about American election security. Since 2016, Jennifer has been warning that our elections are insecure in many ways; you can read some of her writings on this topic on Medium. Her stance hasn’t changed but, after Biden won and Trump claimed that the election was rigged, it’s been understandably harder for her to get Democrats and liberal-leaning people and media interested in talking much about this problem.

I wanted to talk to Jennifer about how our politically polarized environment has changed things, how it’s affected her attempts to get attention for this problem, and how it’s changed her messaging. So there were some psychological aspects I was curious about, but I also just thought it’d be interesting to learn more about election security issues.

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Topics discussed: 

• How has Biden winning and Trump claiming the election was illegitimate affected our chances of improving election security?
• What kinds of problems does she see with the election process? 
• The difference between voter fraud (individuals voting) and more large-scale hacking/rigging attempts.
• What were some signs of suspicious activity she saw in the 2016 election?
• How do her concerns about election security differ from Trump and friends’ stated concerns? 
• How credible were Trump and friends’ claims of election tampering? 
• Is it possible to imagine an alternate reality where Trump won in 2020 and liberals/Democrats largely didn’t accept the election?

Elizaveta Friesem (www.elizavetafriesem.com) thinks and writes about media and our relationship to it. Her recently published book is Media Is Us and it examines the idea that media is not something “out there” but more something that is part of us, something that happens internally, similar to any other human communication. And perhaps this means that acting as if “media” (of whatever sort) is to blame for various problems we have is a simplistic way to view the world. And maybe it’s also a tempting way to see the world as it lets us humans off the hook for being responsible for what we believe and share.

Elizaveta opens her book with something we can all probably relate to: she shared an angry take on social media (in this case, about a Dove soap ad that was accused of being racist), but it turned out to be a bad take, based on something that was wrong and taken out of context. So we talk about that story, and how that phenomenon seems so common, with social media aiding so many people in over-reacting to bad or distorted or outright false information. We also talk about power dynamics in society, and how power is defined. And we talk about the power of empathy and understanding others. 

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TRANSCRIPT

Zach Elwood: Hello and welcome to the People Who Read People podcast, with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast about understanding human behavior, whether that’s reading your opponents at tennis or poker or board games, or about understanding the political motivations of people, or about understanding humanity in general. You can learn more about this podcast at www.behavior-podcast.com. If you want to get on my email list, I don’t have anything automatic set up yet on the site, but feel free to send me an email from that contact form and I’ll put you on it. I’m actually starting to work on a book about healing American divides and about how we have a lot more in common than we tend to think and how our main problem is our us-versus-them animosity and not as much about the issues as we think. So if you’d like to be kept in the loop on that, send me a line. 

On today’s episode, recorded August 5th, 2021, I interview Elizaveta Friesem. Elizaveta wrote a book called “Media Is Us,” which recently came out. You can learn more about her work at http://www.elizavetafriesem.com

Elizaveta opens her book with something we can all probably relate to: she shared something on social media, but it turned out to be a bad take, based on something that was taken out of context.  I don’t know about you but this has happened to me many times and I’ve learned to be very careful about the things I see and share online; I’ve just been bitten too many times and I’ve believed and shared too many bad, distorted takes, so I’m much more careful. And that carefulness, that sense of personal responsibility for how we consume media, is what Elizaveta’s book is partially about. 

We tend to think of “media” as something out there, as something that affects us, as something that can do something to us, as something we have to be cautious of lest we fall pray to bad media. Or if we don’t feel that about ourselves, we tend to think that’s true for other people: we have to police what they get ahold of, lest they, in their ignorance, fall pray to it. 

Elizabeta’s book examines how we perhaps should not think about media as objects or systems that are “out there”, but should instead think of media as something that happens inside of us. Reading a book or watching TV is essentially the same process as talking to someone or talking internally to ourselves; it’s all just various forms of communication, of spreading or reinforcing ideas. Hence the book title “Media Is Us.” That may seem kind of obvious or a semantic point at first but if you really think about the implications of that, it might be very important. For example, it might mean teaching people to have more responsibility for what they consume, for the conclusions they reach, instead of a focus on eliminating bad media. And maybe if we started thinking more like that in society, with more focus on our own responsibility and less focus on blaming certain technologies or certain outlets, it would eventually lead to less division and more alignment on a common reality. 

And Elizaveta’s book is also about avoiding blame, about recognizing how amazingly complex humans are, and how amazingly complex human relationships and communication is. And when you really recognize how complex things are, how many factors there are in these areas, it’s hard to blame people, it’s hard to get angry. And so Elizaveta’s book is about more than media, it’s about life, it’s about how we view the world and other people, it’s about everything really. 

A little more about Elizaveta: she’s an editor of the Journal of Media Literacy Education and she currently teaches courses at Columbia College Chicago. She’s passionate about using empathy to heal ideological and cultural divides, and her current work explores how media literacy education can be enriched through principles of nonviolent communication.  

The anecdote Elizaveta opens her book with is about her seeing angry takes on social media about a Dove Soap ad that many people thought was racist. If you google ‘racist Dove soap ad’, you can find more about this ad, it was from 2017. But basically the gist was that there was a section of the ad that showed a black woman removing her shirt to reveal a different woman, a white woman, there. And many people were drawing parallels between that ad and old racist ads that associated black skin with dirtiness. And Elizaveta did vet this angry take a bit; she saw respected news outlets talking about this. A Washington Post article, for example, reads “A Dove ad showed a black woman turning herself white. The backlash is growing.” A Time magazine article read “Dove’s ‘Racist’ Ad Isn’t the First Time the Company Was Criticized for Being Offensive”. You get the idea. And it was these well known outlets sharing these takes that induced Elizaveta to share it online.

We’ll pick up the story from when Elizaveta is talking about her decision to share her own angry take online.

Elizaveta Friesem: So I went to Google and I wrote ‘Dove ad’. I even wrote ‘Dove racist ad’ because obviously there are a lot of ads. So I thought, “Well, let’s see what comes up.” And lots of things came up. Lots of articles, blogs, and people were clearly writing about it big time. And some sources were trustworthy sources or something that I considered trustworthy back then. And I was like, “Well, if everybody’s saying that, I guess they looked into it and I shouldn’t look into it any further. [chuckles] So I guess there’s a problem.” So I shared it on my Facebook wall and I wrote, “Oh, my God, how come it’s so bad, it’s still happening?” So I shared that and I made this post public. And I was kind of surprised because maybe like an hour later, I had three people who I didn’t know, so three strangers responded to that. Normally, I don’t have strangers responding to my public posts. And all of them were critical of my interpretation. Two were kind of very succinct, sarcastic, sort of like, “If this ad exists, it must be racist.” [chuckles] Or something like that. And I was like, “Yeah, whatever. They probably don’t know, they don’t care.” And then the third one was a little longer and that one made me pause. It said, “Well, did you see the whole thing? Because that White woman actually also takes off her shirt and then turns into a different woman who has darker skin again?”

And my mind was actually blown up at that moment. [laughs] I was like, “Oh, my God, did I just miss something?” Because I was sure that every media outlet that I looked at– and I didn’t do comprehensive research, but I looked at a few– and they had this screenshot of putting together the picture of a Black woman taking her shirt, and then a picture of a White woman. Like, next to each other, two pictures. So it seems like they’re just that, right? So this third comment revealed to me that, “Whoa, there’s another person there?” So I started reading more and I realized that yeah, there’s a third person. And maybe her skin was not as dark as the first woman, but it was still darker than the second woman. And she looked more Hispanic, I guess. And her hair was definitely dark black even. Right? And then I read more and more and at that point I started feeling really, really bad. I was so embarrassed. [laughs]

Zach: Right. There was a lot more context. It was just a small piece of the ad and taken out of context and looked bad, but they were just switching between many people basically.

Elizaveta: Yeah.

Zach: Yeah. I thought that was a great introduction because I think it gets things that happen so often these days. I mean, it happens to me so often. And I see people overreacting to so many things online that are just, you know, the latest outrage of the day where the next day you look into it and get the full context and it’s just people overreacting to something that was either deliberately or accidentally taken out of context and shared. People getting the immediate view… You know, I’m a video film major and I actually worked as a forensic video analyst for legal and law enforcement for a very short time. And the thing I know about video and audio is even when it’s real, it’s so easy to take things out of context. And for something to be shown at an angle that that looks bad, like for real videos, I think your intro was great, I thought. Because I think it’s something that we can all relate to. Like, anyone who’s a little bit critical and thinking about how they use social media has probably lived through that multiple times at this point and hopefully, has become more skeptical as we have over time. So if you had to give the one-minute elevator pitch to someone about your book and why you wrote it, what would you say?

Elizaveta: Well, I guess I would say that I wanted to provide a different perspective on media. And part of my background is media studies and media literacy so I’ve read a lot of books and articles about media. And I taught classes about media and communication and I realized that something’s missing. So that’s why I felt that I wanted to write this book. So in this book, I talk about how media is seen as something that has appeared recently– fairly recently. I mean, the last 150 years, recently, if you took the whole history of humanity, right? And it’s something enabled by the latest technologies, right? And so the idea is that media did not exist before and now it exists and it creates a lot of problems for us human beings. And I see a lot of people from different walks of life talking about media and being concerned media. Scholars, educators, parents, politicians, a lot of people say that media is something we should be concerned about that it can cause troubles and negatively impact our lives, essentially.

As I’ve been thinking about that, I realized that the question that I want to ask is, “Do we really understand what media is?” Because in all the books and articles that I’ve read, there was surprisingly little space for definitions of media. It was just taken for granted. And most of the time, there were just presented with huge lists or small lists. Like a sample of lists of, smartphones, social networks, films, commercials, video games, or media industry as people working in the media industry. And all the time it was… So, media was presented indirectly as something different from the person doing the writing, and something worse than that person or something that can cause harm to that person or other people similar to the person doing the writing or thinking in this piece of publication, whatnot.

So I felt that I was not satisfied with that. And I felt that really in order to better understand media, we cannot see it as something separate from ourselves. It is important to talk about latest technologies, it is important to consider new cultural forms and how they have changed our lives. But if we only look at those differences, we are missing a lot. Because there are also important tendencies that have existed through ages that are not new and that can be connected to something deeper within us. So when we start connecting questions about media to those deeper inquiries, we actually turn it into questions about ourselves. So my book argues that in order to make sense of the modern media, we should actually explore some deeper fundamental principles of human communication, and essentially, what it means to be human. So yeah, the book starts almost like a media studies and media literacy exploration, but then it turns really philosophical.

And then I talk about how ideally, this whole exploration will help us better understand ourselves and others. So it’s not just about understanding media literally. Like, “Let’s look at this movie and analyze what the author wanted to say or what can happen if somebody watches it.” It’s not just that, it’s way bigger than that for me. And so when we understand ourselves and others, we can enhance our awareness and self-awareness and enhance our empathy. So that’s a big part of my journey and my exploration in that book. And then engage in collaboration that would replace polarisation based on blame. And so as you can see, I use a conversation about media to start a really ambitious discussion here about polarisation and all this stuff.

Zach: Well, yeah, that’s what surprised me. I expected your book to be about media theory, and then it gets into the broader philosophical discussions of what power is, how we relate to each other, you know? And I think you’re right in the sense that it spoke to me because you, to me, you can’t talk about any of these things without talking about our humanity and how we relate to each other. Media is how we relate to each other. I mean, that it is what it is. It’s another form of us relating. Like when we read a book, we’re relating to the person that wrote that or we’re injecting these thoughts into our mind. And it made me think of, you know, to write a modern completely helpful media literacy thing would require– as yours does– it requires talking about the psychology of humans and how they relate.

And that’s what I thought was great about your book and really spoke to me because you’re digging into the complexity and the interconnectedness of everything in a very holistic sense. It’s like, you can’t examine one piece of any situation without realizing how hard it is to separate that piece from everything around it, you know? That really speaks to me and that’s what I see in the world. Sort of the distortions of social media like your Dove ad experience, it’s like we’re seeing one thing and overreacting to one thing, and not trying to understand how this thing is connected to so many things. I mean, let alone the distortion– there’s the distortion element. But even if we think we’re seeing it completely, we’re not realizing just how connected everything is. Yeah. So I thought it was great.

Elizaveta: When you talked about social media right now, I was thinking about how I wrote this book to counter this view that ‘it’s just media’, like films or social networks that distort the way we see the world, and that’s the reason why we don’t understand what’s really going on and why we fight. So when I least– I provided this list of five fundamental principles of communication and I talk about how people just by virtue of being human, when they communicate, they create the world around them in their mind. And what I mean is that– just to give you a simple example– is well, you think you turn on news and there’s somebody there who decided what story to tell and how to tell it and how to make a video for the story and from what angle to shoot and whom to interview. So they create the way you see the story, right?

But you don’t think about how, say, you go to work and then something happens to you, you talk with your colleagues, you have a fight with a boss or whatnot. And then you go home and then you tell the story to your spouse, and the exact same thing happens! You choose how to tell the story. You choose words, you choose the angle, you choose what to tell, you choose how to tell. So it’s not just something connected with technology. It doesn’t come from technology, it comes from us being human. [chuckles] So it’s important to do all this thinking when we’re watching the news, but it’s also important to do the same kind of thinking when we are talking to each other and telling each other how we see the world and how we see things. And at that point is, “Yeah, everything is connected exactly how you said it.”

Zach: You push back on the idea in the book that the perception that a lot of people have is there’s these entities out there that are all powerful and call the shots and we cannot compete with them, but you go into the ‘which really comes first? The ‘chicken or the egg’ thing. For example, you talk about Rupert Murdoch and Fox News and how his power is perceived. And it’s really hard. You make the case and I agree and I’ve seen other work that supports it so it’s really hard to make a case. Is he actually the powerful one, or is he the chicken or the egg? Because you can also examine how it’s society, it’s the people that desire that, and he’s just given them what they want or leading the cart. I recently interviewed Kevin Arceneaux, he had co-authored a book called Changing Minds Or Changing Channels, which was about the effects of political news TV and cable TV. And his research showed that contrary to most people’s opinions, most people were already polarised before watching these polarised TV news outlets like Fox News or CNN, I guess– on the liberal side, basically. But it supports the ideas that you talk about, that it’s hard to separate the chicken from the egg in that sense of which came first.

Elizaveta: I do talk about power. I dedicate a whole chapter to the issue of power, and I think it’s super important and super complicated. And this is actually a part of my book that I guess I’m most worried about how people will interpret that. Because I tried to be very careful in the book. Believe me, I thought about it for so long and rewrote different parts so many times to express this idea that I don’t want to say that, say, with the example of Rupert Murdoch, right? You see him as so powerful, and people who watch channels or read newspapers that his companies produce, so you see this people as powerless. Right? So I don’t want to say, “Let’s flip this so he’s actually powerless and they are powerful.” I’m not actually talking about that, because this is an interpretation that I would like to avoid. I’m actually talking about how the topic of power is so complicated that it shouldn’t be seen through a binary or through this “either you have power or you don’t have,” or “the world is divided into those who have power and those who don’t have power.” And actually, I introduced a whole new theory of power that I called Theory of Micro and Macro Power. Basically, the idea is that one thing happens– when we look at relationships or interactions between specific individuals. It’s very easy if you take a pair of individuals to see a specific situation. A specific place and time and pair of individuals. It’s super easy to say who has power over whom. Say, a parent tells a child, “Go to your room,” or “Eat those vegetables,” or a boss tells his employee, “Do this report,” and stuff like that. But then when you start zooming out of this very specific sort of snapshot of power and start seeing this relationship in the context of other relationships, because each of the people in this peer is connected to so many other people. And each one of those other people are connected to other people. That has become so complicated that our mind is exploding trying to understand all that. But the more you’re zooming out, the more you’re seeing how the person who is powerful in this specific situation, they are also influenced by other things that seem to be out of their control when they’re influenced by those things that does make this powerful person not powerful. So since Rupert Murdoch does have power, he does have so many people working for him and he does create all those media outlets and programs and-

Zach: He could definitely make better decisions and that would have big impacts.

Elizaveta: Yeah, it does matter. I don’t want to say that it doesn’t matter and that he doesn’t have power, but also it would be wrong to say that he’s sort of-

Zach: -in a vacuum.

Elizaveta: Yes, his power exists in a vacuum. Like, he just has it and that’s it. And so prior to this interview, I was thinking how to describe it in a way that would sort of make more sense. And I came up with this metaphor that I actually didn’t use in the book but I think I would use it somewhere, that I think about society as a game. And in this game, this game is not perfect by far. This game has certain rules but some people break these rules and some people cheat and some people keep winning and some people keep losing, and there are issues with this game. Serious issues. So I agree with that. But what I don’t agree with is when some people say, “Well, look at the people who keep winning. They are the ones who control the game. They can fix it, they can fix the rules.” That’s what I don’t agree with because I say, “Well, I don’t think that they can just fix the rules. They maybe bend the rules and they know how to use the rules to cheat the system, but they didn’t create those rules.” And that’s the thing. Because all of us are playing this game, all of us are creating those rules-

Zach: As we go. Yeah.

Elizaveta: As we go, yes.

Zach: To take a topical example, your book is always pointing back to the complexity. For example, a cop committing excessive force against a citizen. In that context, people would say, “Well, they have more power than the citizen.” But then a little bit later, that citizen could sue them and destroy their life and that cop could face serious repercussions. So it’s like the power dynamics are always shifting. Obviously, in some contexts where there’s not those kinds of recources or there’s less social dynamics like that, some people can get away with more. But yeah, your point is just pointing back to the fact that these dynamics are so complex and nuanced.

Elizaveta: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That’s a good example.

Zach: Yeah. One thing that strikes me is whether on both on the left or the right across the political spectrum, it seems like so many people have such high expectations for media, you know? There’s this sense of holding them to this standard that to me is just not realistic. Because media is just, as you would say in your book, media is just people. It’s just people trying to accomplish different things. I mean, news organizations get things wrong, they make mistakes, they’re trying to sell papers, you know? I almost feel like part of the problem is people having too high expectations for media and expecting them to do a great job all the time, when really we could just be happy if they mostly do a somewhat decent job.

Elizaveta: Yeah. Well, that’s the wording that I actually… I’ve tried to be very careful with this kind of wording in my book because I didn’t want to say, “Well…” Going back to the Murdoch example. So you say Murdoch is a problem, but look at yourself. You’re probably part of the problem. And why I had the next chapter after the chapter about power, it was all about blame and how it’s not helpful. Right? Because the whole point of the book is not to say, “Well, let’s not blame them, let’s blame them or us or, you know?” [chuckles] Right? So it shouldn’t be about blame at all, it should be about recognizing how complicated it is and learning to help each other instead of just trying to undermine each other by saying that, “Well, you are the problem.” [chuckles]

Zach: Just a note here, I took out some of the interview here, and now I’m going to come back to me clarifying a question where I was asking her about how optimistic or pessimistic she is about our current highly polarised situation. To clarify, that was my question. It’s like, can we get enough people– just enough people thinking in these ways to avoid self destruction? That’s the part where I’m a little bit more pessimistic about. Obviously, we don’t need everyone thinking that way. We just need enough people trying to combat the Us versus Them dynamics. But yeah, that was more of what I would say.

Elizaveta: Well, I think if we– you and I, and at least I’m sure I know there are other people out there who agree with that– but if we want to avoid self distraction, I think it’s better for our own sake to think that something can be done. Because otherwise, it’s just so sad that we won’t do anything.

Zach: Yeah, I think that’s the point too. It’s like even if you’re listening to this thinking, “Well, obviously, I don’t have much power, other people have more power than me and news outlets have more power to me.” Even if you believe that, we only have control over our own behavior and our own activity and our own actions. So if you do see how your own behavior can be playing a role in society– which I don’t see how you can dispute that– and if you believe that we’re on the cusp, theoretically, of very bad things and you believe that these Us versus Them dynamics are bad, then I would say we only have control over ourselves. So still, you can make the case to think about all these things and think about how you might be contributing to the dynamics with your own behavior. Because that’s the thing that… I got interested in this stuff because a couple of years ago, I was like anybody else. I was just posting whatever insults or random things popping into my mind about the other group. If I had a witty thing to say or a cutting insult, I would post it. And always operated on the assumption that someone’s in charge and someone out there is going to bring us together or save the day or something. But then seeing how things have progressed, I realized that no, there isn’t some system out there or some power, as you say. The power is spread out amongst all of us. That, to me, that’s what changed my behavior and thinking about how my own behaviors may be contributing to these things. And I think understanding how it is so holistic and interconnected helps you want to change your behavior. It’s not some empathy saintly thing, and I think that’s another misunderstanding. We’re not trying to use empathy because we think it’s the good or the right thing or some saintly thing to do, it’s more like once you see how interconnected everything is, you really can’t help but act in a way that focuses on empathy and understanding multiple points of view. Because it is the truth that everything is just so interconnected and everybody’s behaviors, you know, what you post online has an effect on the dynamics of the whole system. That’s what changed my behavior. And I think for some people, they go through that journey of making mistakes like the Dove ad that you talked about, and they start realizing, “Oh, wait. I’m contributing to this.” To make this specific point, reacting to the Dove ad has the impact of the other side seeing this overreaction, and that influences them in various ways and so these dynamics are constantly bouncing back and forth. Like conservatives seeing liberals overreact and get pretty crazy way about something minor makes them think like, “Oh, that side is completely unreasonable. They overreact, their reactions to other things are similar to the overreactions there.” So it has this dynamic of accentuating the Us versus Them dynamics. Anything you want to add to that before I move on?

Elizaveta: Yeah. I guess I want to stress again this idea that I would like people to not to think, “Oh, I’m a part of a problem,” but rather, “I can be part of a solution.” Right?

Zach: You’re avoiding blame.

Elizaveta: Yeah. Cuz it’s so complicated that I don’t want to blame any… I think it’s not fair to blame anybody for contributing to this very complex dynamics that’s in the grand scheme of things. That’s what makes our society imperfect, right? So I agree that if we look at a specific case of, say, abuse or mistreatment, we can say, “Well, here’s a person who abused that person or those people, and we should fix that.” But at the same time, we shouldn’t think that doing that or punishing that person will fix the whole problem. Because there are so many other things behind that.

Zach: Yeah. And to take it probably to a philosophical step, I don’t believe that free will is likely. And that makes me see the world in a very holistic way because at the end of the day, I think we’re all just humans having a very mysterious experience of things happening to us and things happening that were based on the moment before the past, you know, all these factors around us. You know, I’m not different from anyone else. And I think that gets to what you’re talking about avoiding blame. Because I don’t blame anyone, I see it all as so complex. And who’s to say I’m right with my point of view? What good would it do for me to preach at someone? Because I don’t really know exactly what’s going on either.

Elizaveta: Yeah. I mean, you can say you are no different in some ways, but you’re all different in other ways. Right. And that’s what makes our society so wonderful, and that’s what actually should bring us hope. It’s that because people are different– I mean, it creates a lot of problems because then they start arguing– but they can actually generate solutions together by working together than if it’s just one person and they’re just stuck in their ways and they keep making mistakes. Historically, we know situations when one person or a group of people got an opportunity to use their thinking to modify a whole way of life of a whole country. Right? And that was no good, right? So that’s why it’s good that we’re different and we should tap into that difference, right? But at the same time, acknowledging that we have a lot of things in common. [chuckles]

Zach: Yeah. And by ‘not different from other people’ I just mean I’m not different in the sense of… I’m a human like everyone else and the only thing that makes me different… We all are different in various ways, but the only thing that makes me different is my different experiences and my different physical brain or whatever, you know, these various factors. We’ll probably getting too broad and philosophical here. [Elizaveta chuckles] But I did want to ask you, when it comes to empathy and when it comes to seeing other people’s points of view– which I think is very important even just for strategic reasons, like if you want to accomplish your goals it’s very powerful to understand other people’s points of view– and I wanted to ask, you know, sometimes I get pushback or there’s pushback in general on the idea of empathy because I think people can perceive it as, you know, we could perceive it as submissive. You know, if you tell some liberal people to think about a Trump supporter’s point of view, for example, they’ll have a reaction of acting like that’s weak and that’s submissive and ‘why is it on us to do this?’ I wonder have you heard those kinds of objections, and what’s your responses to objections like that?

Elizaveta: Well, I’ve definitely heard those kinds of objections. And maybe not to people objecting to my own work, but I witnessed conversations or maybe tried saying something along the lines of like, “Well, let’s try to understand them.” And I think it’s not just the idea that if you use empathy, you’re submissive and weak. It’s also the idea that if you’re trying to understand the other side, it means you’re also accepting excusing their behavior to some extent. Actually, I watched a podcast video by this really interesting person called Robert Wright. He has a channel called Meaning of Life. And in this in this video, he used a very interesting term that spoke so much to me. And the term was ‘explain/excuse conflation.’ So, people feel like if you’re trying to explain somebody’s behavior, you’re essentially excusing it automatically. And he’s saying, “No, that’s not the same.” And I write it in other words in my book that we can understand other people’s behavior without accepting this behavior. And I think as you said, actually, this kind of empathy is beneficial for us. So we’re not doing it for them, although you can see how it can also benefit the person you’r empathizing with like, but it benefits us. Because when we understand somebody’s behavior, we can better react to the behavior or be prepared for this behavior. Or if we see somebody make a mistake and if we try and understand their reason and go with explanations beyond ‘well, this person’s just stupid,’ then we start seeing how this actually has some parallels to what we might do and we can actually be more careful at what we are doing. It’s actually completely opposite to excusing their behavior. [chuckles]It’s actually just becoming more careful with our own behavior because we see it represented in somebody else and we are not happy about it. So yeah, it can be really beneficial for us if done correctly. I think that empathy is not something that we should just uncritically put on the pedestal and say, “Oh, it’s just empathy, empathy, empathy everywhere.” Although I feel like I do that sometimes. But it also needs to be practiced in a certain way. Like, say if we are empathizing with us of easy empathy and just empathizing with somebody who you already feel we should empathize with, this is easier. Right? It’s so much more difficult to empathize with somebody who we dislike. [laughs]

Zach: That’s the hard thing.

Elizaveta: Right? Yeah. And there’s a whole difference between cognitive and emotional empathy that’s really interesting to understand.

Zach: I think you hit the nail on the head there. Yeah. I’m glad you brought up the point that yeah, it’s exactly that about the conflation of, you know, people feel that acknowledging that you can see the other side’s point of view is saying that they have a point or that they’re right. And I see this every day because I spent a good amount of my time on Facebook and Twitter or even just in person showing people how you can have a different point of view on the opposite political side– to be specific, to show how there’s some conservative points of view. Showing those points of view to a liberal audience and showing how this doesn’t make you a monster, it just means you’re looking at it this way. Or there’s people even on your own side that can look at things this way. And I think when I try to do those things, often people focus on the issue itself, but what I’m interested in is the meta issue of how you can see those issues from different points of view. And I feel like that’s what people get stuck on. They’re focused on discussing the actual issue and showing who’s right or wrong, but I’m just saying, “Well, can you at least see the different point of view and how you could see it in a different way?” I think that’s where people really get bogged down. And they do feel that acknowledging that there might be that point of view that another person or a neighbor or a fellow citizen could have, or even they themselves could theoretically have, can drive some cognitive dissonance and make them angry. I’ve had this almost every day because I’ll post thoughts about how you can look at things from different perspectives. And I interviewed Michael Macy and he did research on showing the way our political stances grouped together are pretty random and probably arbitrary in the sense that they were kind of led by early movers and in a chaos theory kind of way. And we tend to make these narratives around like, “Oh, there’s a reason that these groups of stances are grouped together for a political party,” but really, it might be pretty arbitrary. For example, you can imagine if Trump had come out when COVID started with really strong and strict mandates, you know? With our polarisation being what it is, you can imagine Liberals taking a stance against that and being like, “This is draconian. These lockdowns are influencing communities of color and poor communities, we need to not be so draconian.” And you can see how the lines might have been drawn in a different way just based on initial conditions. There’d be a pushback to those things in a liberal framing. And I think that interview with Michael Macy and his work really opened my eyes to thinking about things in that way. Like, the things we tend to even just assume or make sense coherently are a lot of the times just us making these post hoc justifications of why the narrative makes sense, you know? And I think seeing that is related to your work, too, because it’s looking at the world and seeing this nuance and seeing how things could easily be different and seeing how it’s really hard to separate things or even say how things are, you know? And I think it’s a form of humility, really. These things are very hard to understand.

Elizaveta: Yeah.

Zach: Well, thanks a lot for coming on, Elizaveta.

Elizaveta: Thank you so much for having me again.

Zach: That was Elizaveta Friesem. You can learn more about her work at her website, elizavetafriesem.com. I’m Zachary Elwood. If you want to learn more about this podcast, check out my website behavior-podcast.com.

Second interview of recently retired police captain James Mitchell (first episode link), who happens to be politically liberal. We continue tackling the question: when we see an American cop doing something that seems clearly over-reactive and overly violent, what are the factors that influenced that cop to behave that way? In our first talk, our focus was on mental health and de-escalation. In this interview, we talk about a broader range of topics, including:

• Role that our huge number of guns may play
• Racism (past vs current, and systemic racism vs racism of individuals)
• James’ experience with racist cops and how that manifested
• How cops are seldom convicted by juries, and how that has trickle-down effects
• Role of police unions
• Role that living in the neighborhood a cop polices can play

Also discussed is how our polarization and animosity around police issues fits into our polarization on other topics. See the bottom of this post for other topics and resources. Podcast links:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

Other topics discussed include:

• How the language that people use to people talk about “racism” can muddy waters (e.g., conflating racism of individuals with systemic racism, or conflating effects of past racism with current systemic racism)
• War on drugs
• No-knock warrants and why they may sometimes be justified

Related resources:

• First interview I did with James Mitchell
• Research paper by Data Collaborative For Justice about trends in policing that Mitchell collaborated on
• Book “Locking Up Our Own,” mentioned in interview, about the role that black leaders played in the 1970s and onward “war” on crime and drugs
• The Guardian’s The Counted project, an interactive database of killings by police in the U.S. for 2015 and 2016
• Book review of Tangled Up In Blue, a book by a law professor who became a cop to learn firsthand about policing issues

In this episode, I interview Jon Michael Hoefling, a sports analyst and broadcaster, about a recent story that was making the rounds: a young man named Theo Ash, who has a popular TikTok where he analyzes football, had found a physical tell that Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had: how Roethlisberger positioned his foot before a play indicated with almost near certainty whether he would run or pass. Jon Hoefling had written a piece for Deadspin about this, and I invited him on to talk about this tell – about why it showed up, about how likely it was that other teams had noticed it, about what the practical way to take advantage of it would be – and about some other football and sports tells. I may also have on Theo Ash in another episode, as I’m curious to know how he noticed this and what other things he’s noticed.

A transcript is below. 

See the bottom of this post for other topics and resources. Podcast links:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube

Other topics discussed include:

• The role that analyzing video plays in football and how they may not be focusing that much on individuals
• Some other football tells
• The football tell in the movie Invincible
• Some baseball tells
• Andre Agassi’s claim that he had a super reliable read on Boris Becker
• Cheating scandals in baseball, including sign stealing and pitchers using “sticky stuff”

Related resources:

• A different take on Roethlisberger’s tell, where they say they think other teams may have noticed it

TRANSCRIPT

[Note: transcripts will contain errors.]

Zach: Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast, with me, Zach Elwood. This is a podcast about understanding and predicting human behavior. You can learn more about it at behavior-podcast.com.

Today we’ll be talking about some tells in football and other sports. A recent sports story making the rounds was about how the Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had a tell; that whether his foot was flat on the ground or the heel raised indicated whether he’d run or pass. This was a tell discovered by a young man named Theo Ash, who has a very popular TikTok channel where he analyzes football videos. His TikTok is TheoAshNFL.

I’ve been incontact with Theo and might interview him for this podcast, as I’m curious how he studies footage and what else he might have found.

But today’s interview isn’t of Theo. This interview, recorded July 22 2021, is of Jon Michael Hoefling, a sports broadcaster and sports analyst. I read an analysis of the Rothlisberger tell by Hoefling on Deadspin and his analysis included mentions of other sports tells, so I thought he’d make for an interesting interview putting this tell in context with other football tells, and sports tells in general. I also thought maybe he’d give me some ideas for other sports-related interviews I might do in future.

You can read Hoefling’s work on Deadspin. He’s not that active on Twitter but you can follow him there at @jonhoefling –
That’s Jon – JON – and Hoefling – HOEFLING.

Zach: Hi John, welcome to the show.

Jon: Hi. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Zach: Let’s start out with the Roethlisberger tell. I know you didn’t discover that, but I was reading your piece about it. Maybe you can summarize what that tell involved.

Jon: Yeah, so that tell was discovered by, uh, a user on TikTok, Theo Ash, [00:02:00] NFL, and I thought it was super interesting. Nobody in the league noticed it, but it is just prior to a run or a pass or prior to a play out of the shotgun formation for the Steelers.

Ben Roethlisberger will lift his back foot if it’s a pass, slightly, his back ankle and he will keep it on the ground if it’s a run. And I’m not sure whether that’s, you know, something he does to help him take a three step drop back when it’s when it’s a pass, and then when it’s a run. Obviously he doesn’t have to do that.

When I was studying this tell and looking at other quarterbacks to see if this was something every quarterback did, I couldn’t find any. Josh Allen doesn’t do it. Baker Mayfield doesn’t do it. Patrick Mahomes doesn’t do it. Even some of the older QBs, drew Brees didn’t do it. So, but yeah, that’s all the tell is.

It’s just he either lifts his back foot. Or he doesn’t to indicate whether it’s a run or a pass.

Zach: Right. And this was when they were in a shotgun formation, which apparently mm-hmm. Is a pretty popular formation for

Jon: Oh, it’s definitely pop. It’s really popular with the Steelers. They ran that formation. I think the third highest [00:03:00] percentage, uh, in the NFL, I think only the Buffalo Bills and can’t remember the other team.

But the Buffalo Bills were definitely one of the only teams that, uh, used it more often. So this was a tell that came into factor a lot last year.

Zach: In your piece, you, you kind of implied, you know, obviously it can’t be proven, but you, you seem to think that it wasn’t noticed by. Other teams. And then I was reading a piece by Mike Florio this morning for, for Pro Football Talk, and he seemed to think that there was a good chance that other teams had noticed it, but it kept it secret.

But I, so obviously there’s not a way to know for sure, but I’m, I’m curious if you can summarize why you think that teams maybe didn’t take advantage of this or know about it.

Jon: I think teams didn’t take advantage of it because throughout the entirety of Ben Roethlisberger’s career, which has been since 2004, he’s been in the league since 2004.

When I was researching this tell, I went back to 2004. I watched a game in 2020, a game in 2016, a game in 2010, in the game in 2004, and in every single one of those [00:04:00] games outta the shotgun. He did that Exact same tell. It’s been throughout the entirety of his career. At some point throughout his career, there has to have been, and there has been, uh, several players who have joined the Steelers after long careers with other teams.

If those players knew about the tell, which you would imagine that they do,

Zach: yeah,

Jon: they would tell Ben Roethlisberger, right? And he would work to change that. But he hasn’t changed that. So my whole thought is. If people knew about it, Ben Roethlisberger would’ve gotten rid of it already because somebody, somebody would’ve told him a coach or a defensive player who ends up joining the Steelers.

Zach: That, that was a really good point and, and I was more likely to believe that than I, the other piece I was reading, which kind of implied like, oh, this was so obvious, somebody had to have noticed it. You know,

Jon: I just think that, you know, quarterback tells aren’t really something that. People look for every now and again.

I know Mike Vick had one with his mouth guard and in like, um, but that’s the only other [00:05:00] quarterback one I can think of. Uh, Mike Vick would put his mouthpiece in if it was a pass, but he wouldn’t put it in if it was a run. I assume he’d put it in for a pass because he might get hit on a pass, he might get sacked, and obviously he was a scrambling quarterback.

But he’d leave it out if it was a run because he knew he wasn’t gonna be a part of the play. Hmm. Like receivers have stuff like that. Antonio Brown used to tighten his, uh, gloves before a pass, and he wouldn’t do that for a run. But in terms of quarterbacks, that’s not really something that people look for.

So I think that’s why I went unnoticed all these years.

Zach: Interesting. So I’ve always operated on the assumption that teams and coaches and consultants were studying a lot of this footage and looking for reliable patterns like this. Am I right that they are studying? These things a lot?

Jon: I would think so. I mean, obviously I’ve never been in an NFL locker room or a film room or something like that.

I would think that that behavioral patterns and just tendencies would be something people would look into. But like I said, in the, in the NFL, it’s not really tells you’re looking for, it’s just [00:06:00] studying film and formations. You’re not really looking for what a certain player individually does. You’re looking at where the team as a whole is lining up.

Mm-hmm. If the tight end is on the right side, or if the tight ends in the or if they’re in the two tight end set. What does that usually mean? Does the tight end usually run behind one tight end or do they run to a side with multiple receivers? Do they run weak side more often outta the eye or something like that?

Mm-hmm. It’s not really a, Hey, let’s look at the halfback and if he, you know, fakes, right? That means all the time he’s going left. It’s not really things like that. Yeah. They’re looking at the macro

Zach: strategies and, and, and approaches. Yeah. Uh, regarding this Roth Asperger tell, what would be the practical way to exploit that?

Say you were the other team and you, you knew about that,

Jon: right? Yeah, I, I was thinking that too, because it has to do with his foot, right? Like linebackers and d lineman, they can try to look through the tight end and the O line that’s a bunch of big dudes and try to figure out what Roethlisberger does right before the snap.

But that’s a split second thing. And you know, [00:07:00] your view is obstructed and I feel like it’d be pretty inconsistent and lead to misreads. I think the best way to take advantage would be to have like a cornerback or maybe an outside linebacker. A signal to what signal, what the play is to his teammates. A runner of pass, uh, I think a corner, a cornerback would be really good at that too.

Now, obviously that means he’d have to take his eyes off the receiver, and that means a lot of his teammates would have to look to one side of the field to really get. The advantage, which I’m not sure if that’d be ideal, taking your eyes off the play to look at one signal, but like I said in my piece, I think if just one person knows what it is, that’s a huge advantage.

That lack of ambiguity as to what the play is going to be. I think the best way would be to have a member, uh, of the secondary on the bench, or maybe a coach just. Look at Roethlisberger because we could see it from the TV angle. So I imagine down low you have a much better angle of roethlisberger’s foot.

Mm-hmm. So I [00:08:00] figure a coach on the sideline could signal it to the near side cornerback and that would be a big factor on the pass because, oh, it’s a pass. Now the cornerback’s gonna do what he always did, but if it’s a run that cornerback can immediately break toward the backfield and seal off the edge.

Mm-hmm. For one of the sides. And that’s huge. Because all of a sudden that running back cannot cut back and if, if the other side gets sealed off as well. So that I think is the most practical use of it in run situations, forcing a halfback into the teeth of the defense

Zach: before we talk about other sports or other football tells.

Do you have anything else to say on the, the Roth Asperger one? Anything interesting that stands out for that?

Jon: Um, not particularly for the Roth Asperger one, like he’s obviously been a fantastic quarterback his entire career and I. Uh, I’ll be interested to see if he does this next year. Because obviously the best way to get rid of a tell is for other people to tell you that you have a tell and now it’s just out there.

Yeah. [00:09:00] He’s

Zach: gotta know now. A ton of people

Jon: know about it. Yeah.

Zach: Yeah. How long before was he, was his foot in place? You know, are we talking like this would show up just right before the place started, or

Jon: this would show up like half a second to a second before the play started? It, it, it is right before

Zach: Ah, gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah. But even that little bit Yeah. Like you said, could give you, you know, some, even one person noticing that can start thinking like, oh, okay, I gotta, I gotta do this. Yeah.

Jon: Football is the most team oriented sport is if, if an offensive lineman misses his assignment, all of a sudden the quarterback is sacked from minus seven yards.

So if even one person on that defense knows what the play is going to be, that just takes a world of weight off the defense’s shoulders.

Zach: You mentioned a few other stories about sports tells in your article. Are there any other. Ones that you haven’t mentioned already that stand out as really well known in the, the sports world?

Jon: Well, I think the most obvious one would be like pitchers tipping, uh, tipping their pitches in baseball. Uh, you Darvish famously did that in the 2017 World Series to the [00:10:00] Houston Astros. But like, you know, new information has come out since then about the Houston Astros stealing signs and whatnot. And I know it’s not just the Houston Astros, but no other teams have been proven yet, so I’m not gonna throw accusations out against other teams.

Uh, U Darvis did that in the 2017 World Series and the 2019 World Series, which is ironically against the Astros as well. Washington Nationals pitcher, Steven Strasberg. He, uh, would uh, shake his glove and flex his pinky for his off speed stuff, and he actually fixed that mid game, which I am really impressed with.

He just started shaking his glove before every single pitch. Oh yeah. So that the, uh. Houston Astros wouldn’t know what he was doing, so mm-hmm. I thought that, uh, like Steven Strasberg’s obviously a fantastic pitcher, but to be able to make adjustments on the fly like that to just your routine, because your routine is everything, whether it’s an NB, a free throw or uh, go or throwing out of the stretch on the mound.

Your routine is everything in sports. So to be able to [00:11:00] adjust like that, I think is hugely important.

Zach: That’s one of the major pieces of advice I give to people in, in poker when it comes to poker towel is because if you have a tell, if you know you have a tell, the best way to uh, cover it up is just do that same thing every time.

You know, if you mm-hmm. If you know that for example, you, uh, your breathing gets, uh, more shallow when you’re bluffing, then, then try to have your breathing be more shallow when you’re value bedding, things like that. Yeah. Just try to be consistent, basically. Yeah. Any other well-known sports world stories stand out for, uh, for tells.

Jon: There are some, what, what’s the word? Misconceptions that, uh, like, because I’m huge in the world of offensive linemen, my dad was offered a couple D one scholarships to play guard. My, uh, my dad’s best friend played guard at Yale, and my godfather got drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs as no lineman. So I’ve.

Been basically taught the tools and trade of the O Line from every single person in my life. And one thing that’s always bugged us is the movie Invincible starring Mark Wahlberg about Vince Papa joining the Eagles.

Zach: Mm-hmm. [00:12:00]

Jon: And it’s just this huge oversimplification of. Oh, well, if their knuckles are white, then they’re leaning back.

Uh, they’re, if they’re leaning back on their knuckles, then they’re dropping back for pass coverage.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Jon: And if they’re moving forward with it, then uh, they’re coming right at you for the run. And obviously that is just something that every single D lineman would know, and it’s just a gross oversimplification.

Mm-hmm. Of offensive line workings. But that’s another thing about offensive line, is that offensive line work has become so oversimplified as a whole. Nowadays, you take a look at college football and there are tackles that just won’t even put their hands on the ground anymore. They just signal to the defense, Hey, this is a pass.

You know, it’s a pass. I know it’s a pass. I’m gonna drop back and protect his blind side. That’s what’s gonna happen. Try to beat me.

Zach: Mm.

Jon: And I think that’s good for college football, but that’s sort of moving into the NFL too now. And the NFL is just taking on more and more, uh, [00:13:00] situations from college by the year.

And that’s one of them that’s happening. And it’s just they’re telling defenses, Hey, we’re gonna pass here. Try to beat us. So tells are sort of disappearing from O line work.

Zach: So it’s, yeah. The, the information is, is more open. It’s, it’s more known and it’s just a matter of Yeah. Can you, can you beat us?

Jon: Yeah. And I just miss, I just miss the days when you could, when you look at an old lineman and you say, Hey, he’s leaning to the left. This is probably a trap play or something like that. I miss those. Those don’t exist anymore ’cause they’re just so open with it.

Zach: Interesting. Huh. Yeah, speaking of the movie stuff, yeah.

It reminds me of obviously so many movies simplify things so much. I mean, esp you know, when it comes to poker movies, you know, every, everything’s about a big tell or something. When in a similar way it’s exaggerated, you know, isn’t, wasn’t

Jon: an issue a lot of people have with Casino Royale’s when he does that.

Oh yeah. You know, that flipping the, the chip thing, it’s like, that’d be the most obvious tell in existence. Nobody would ever do that.

Zach: And a lot of this, you know, rounders is the, the stereotypical one [00:14:00] with the, the Oreo, uh, breaking the Oreos, uh, Teddy kg b’s, uh, tell when he ate, when he had a big hand. It’s, it’s, it’s debatable whether you can, uh, make an exciting movie sometimes without those, uh, kind of simplifications.

Yeah, but I mean, I, I think you can, I think you can. The complexity’s more interesting. Oh, you

Jon: absolutely can. But it’s just like for the people that notice that kind of stuff, and for the people who are. Huge into it. Mm-hmm. It’s, you know, it bugs it takes away from the immersion sometimes. Yeah,

Zach: exactly. You, it’s hard to suspend your disbelief when you mm-hmm.

When you know a lot about that subject. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Did you have any thoughts on the, the Andre Agassi anecdote of getting a, uh, tell on Boris Becker? Did you hear much about that?

Jon: Yeah. I actually didn’t hear about this until you, uh, until you brought it up to me. But, uh, I, I did some research into it, and like you sort of said, uh, I’m a little skeptical of it too, because.

I, I’ve been on a tennis court a few times, and I, I’ve got pretty decent vision. I could not tell you what somebody is doing with their tongue from [00:15:00] that far. Like, and he, the Andre Agassi quote was, if he flexed his tongue to the middle, then he was serving inside or at the body, right? Mm-hmm. And if he flexed his tongue to the left corner, then it was a wide shot.

So that’s a very minuscule movement, I feel like. Mm-hmm. To see from that far out. ’cause the server and the receiver have to be on opposite sides of the court. They cannot be inside the lines at all.

Zach: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jon: I’m not sure the actual, the exact dimensions of it, but it, I find it a little hard to believe.

But with that being said, I don’t know

Zach: if anyone’s interested in that. I had a, I interviewed a, a tennis coach, Carlos Coffee, uh, for about that. And he was, he was also skeptical. And I, I, I had a few reasons why I was skeptical. Yeah. The, the thing you mentioned just now is one, I mean, I, and I was actually looking at the footage, the old footage, and it looked like, I mean, I couldn’t even clearly find those instances, even when it was a very closeup shot of, uh, of Becker.

And it looked like if he was doing it, it was [00:16:00] like right when he. You know, turned his head to the side, which would’ve been really. You know, extra, extra hard to see, you know, the, the distance, let alone Yeah, the, the angle. So, uh, yeah. And plus just the, the fact that Agassi seemed to imply it was such a reliable tell that he, he wasn’t even using it all the time was to me, suspicious.

’cause I’m like, uh, in those games, wouldn’t you be using every, every edge of disposal, you

Jon: know? I get his reasoning it’s, you know, he didn’t want to reveal that he knew the tell, right. So he only used it in the most pivotal moments. ’cause Agassi obviously a legend. He could probably beat Becker pretty consistently, but if he ever found himself in trouble, I sort of get that right.

Like I sort of understand the thought process behind it.

Zach: Hmm.

Jon: But, um. Yeah, it’s just ’cause Becker was right-handed, if I’m not mistaken. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter because no ma uh, no matter what, if he’s right-handed or left hand handed, half the time he’s gonna have his face turned away from you.

’cause you have to serve mm-hmm. The opposite end of the court. He’s gonna have to turn his face away from you while he is [00:17:00] making this serve. So it, like you said, I think it’s a very, uh. I’m very skeptical

Zach: on it. I mean, the thing that struck me is there, there’s so many other factors in a tennis game. It’s like, would would Becker really pick up even if Agasy was using that such a reliable tell all the time, would Becker really realize it was due to the tell?

That’s what struck me. You know, and, and also the fact that AGA’s gotta be afraid like, Hey, that tell might go away. Somebody else might notice it. Uh mm-hmm. But yeah, there’s a, there’s a range of things. I mean, not to say it’s not possible, but I just. The number of things about it just made me think Eggi was trying to do something I a lot of people do in, uh, poker, you know, which is after the fact be like, oh, I had such dominance that I was, uh, seeing, uh, all of these things and I have such mastery.

And it, it is kind of a, a way to, uh, drum up the legend I think a little bit. Yeah, that sounds about right. Or he may be misremembering it too. You know, there’s a range of. Things too. Like sometimes we can exaggerate in memory like, oh, that thing was really powerful and I, I used it a [00:18:00] lot and you know, it may, it may have been like a tiny thing or something.

I was curious in your own sports footage analysis, because I know you’ve analyzed, you know, footage too. Have you found some interesting things on your own that have stood out?

Jon: Not really for, for tells. Like obviously the one that is most obvious and the one I do most often. Is pitchers tipping their pitches.

Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s just ’cause of how we’re conditioned as analysts and people who watch video, uh, we are designed to be like, Hey, watch this pitcher. Try to figure out something about him. Try to figure out how headers can take advantage. Whereas in other sports, like, I guess there’s a little bit of that in basketball.

Like, if James Harden makes a move to the left, then it’s more likely that he takes a step back, which is his signature move.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Jon: But it’s not really as prominent in any sport, nearly as prominent as it is in baseball.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Jon: Baseball, the entire purpose of it, the entire purpose of the sport is, [00:19:00] hey, find any inconsistency in this guy’s delivery and use it to your advantage.

Zach: Hmm.

Jon: And that’s why people were so upset about the Houston Astros cheating scandal. And the other teams, like I said earlier, other teams probably did it as well, but. The whole point of baseball is to figure it out on your own and use what you can. Use the tools at your disposal to take advantage of your opponent.

So that’s why when it was discovered that the Houston Astros were using electronics and high speed cameras to do that and signal it to their hitters, that’s why people got so upset. ’cause that’s not the game.

Zach: Mm-hmm.

Jon: The game is, hey, one of our hitters noticed this thing. That’s when it’s okay, but as soon as you’re stealing signs, no, that’s not okay.

But, um, baseball, I have noticed a couple things. There are some pitchers in college that will overstretch on their off speed stuff in an attempt to get to the plate faster. Which you don’t necessarily want to do, but some pitchers do. There are a lot of pitchers [00:20:00] who think that facial minutia is gonna play a difference in the mental aspect of it, and they’re gonna fool hitters with it.

So on their off speed stuff, they’ll flex their face and make it seem like they’re trying to throw really hard. And it’s just like, okay, that might work one or two times, but as soon as you do that, they’re going to, uh, as soon as you start doing that, every time they’re gonna pick up on that pattern, it’s like, oh, he’s flexing his face.

Right? That’s an off speed thing.

Zach: That’s interesting because then, yeah, I talk about that in poker too, because there’s very limited application to fake tells. Like you use it once and somebody notices notices it, then they’re just not gonna trust your behavior after that. Mm-hmm. They’re gonna know like, oh, okay, well even after one time, I’m like, I.

I can’t trust that information. Yeah. Which helps explain why false tells are, are pretty rare in poker and probably in other things too, because people realize it’s a, it’s a limited application. Yeah.

Jon: I think the most common thing though in baseball would be, uh, pitchers rotating their gloves depending on what they’re throwing.

Zach: Hmm.

Jon: Prior to the pitch while they’re [00:21:00] setting up, which I think is really important because that’s before the motion. So it gives hitters a lot of time to recognize it, but there are a lot of college pitchers that will, you know, rotate their glove almost entirely over their hand for an off speed thing to hide that they’re changing their grip.

I. Hmm. Um, and then when they’re doing a fastball, they’ll hold the ball and their glove pretty much straight up. And I think that’s probably the most common and the biggest thing. And that’s something that behavioral coaches and, uh, people who study, film and pitching coaches will iron out in the minor leagues if they ever make it to that level.

Zach: Hmm. Interesting. It kinda makes sense for that, that baseball would be so focused on trying to find this information because it’s, it’s one of the few sports where. There’s a lot of kind of dead time leading up to each action. Mm-hmm. As opposed to, you know, the, the very fast games like, you know, football or tennis, you know, that it’s mostly just playing out in the moment, you know, in these split second decisions.

But baseball, it’s like a long lead up and then an action, a long lead up, and then an action. Yeah. So you’re looking for these, these tiny clues about what’s gonna [00:22:00] happen now. Mm-hmm. Speaking of tells and behavior, did you happen to see this interview with a baseball player? I’m not sure who he was. I can’t remember the name, but he was talking about the use of, uh, somebody asked him point blank like, have you used this sticky substance?

Uh, yeah, yeah. On your, on your, on your bat knee ba He basically gave this long meandering non-answer, which was a very, I thought it was a, you know, a good example of just giving an answer that. Basically was like, yeah. Gave no information. And Which made you think like, yeah, he probably, he, he almost certainly, yeah.

The

Jon: sticky, the sticky substance situation is the biggest scandal in baseball right now. They just implemented the rule a month ago that basically told umpires, Hey, you have to check starting pitchers twice a game now, and you have to start checking every pitcher that comes into the game at least once.

And, uh, I’m not, I don’t think sticky substance had, like, you can search online. The most famous one in my favorite is the Mike Fires. No hitter. In Oakland a few years ago where every time a ball went outta play or they had to change [00:23:00] the ball, ’cause the ball went into the dirt or something, he would just rub his fingers on his glove and it’s like, okay, that’s obviously where he is keeping the sticky stuff and he’s gotta re grip every time the ball goes outta play.

And you can tell just every time, like clockwork, every time a foul ball was hit and it goes into the stands and obviously the fans get to take it home, it’s like re. Re grit. Grit. But I, I, I don’t think that that’s really a tell ’cause you like, ’cause you can use sticky stuff for absolutely every single pitch.

Uh, on fastballs it increases the back spin, which makes it seem like the ball’s elevating on the curve ball. It makes it break more so you can work it. You, you can use sticky stuff on every pitch. I’m not sure if that’s really a tell, but yeah, the sticky stuff is a huge issue in baseball and it just sort of got fixed this year.

Zach: But that’s an interesting point I hadn’t really thought of is, is in analyzing the, the footage for indicators that people are, you know, doing underhanded things or cheating or whatever.

Jon: Oh, well that, like, that’s another whole scandal we can get into. It’s like, it was so obvious. You can look at [00:24:00] any picture.

Garrett Cole, Adam, Wayne Wright, uh, James Cap, Mike Fires, like I just said, Felix Hernandez. And there’s tons of footage available of them, you know, rubbing their thumb under the brim of their cap or, uh, touching the back of their ears suspiciously. That’s just available. Everybody knew about it. Everybody who looked into it knew about it, but the whole scandal is, did Major League baseball allow this to happen while they knew about it, that’s what pitchers are upset about.

If Major League Baseball was allowing it to happen, and now all of a sudden they care about it. Mm, I see. That’s what the issue is like, there, there’s a famous, uh, lawsuit. That happened a few years ago where an Angels Clubhouse manager, Brian, uh, Brian Harkins, he was selling his, um, homemade sticky stuff that he called Go-Go Juice, and he was selling it to pitchers.

And when Major League base, when the information became public. This is a guy who won Clubhouse manager of the year back in 2014. By the way, he was beloved by players, but as soon as the information that he was [00:25:00] selling, sticky stuff became public, he sued Major League Baseball because they knew about it.

Hmm.

Zach: And

Jon: he had text to prove it. Derek Cole, the guy who gave the answer you’re talking about, was one of the guys who would text him, Hey, I need to get out of a, and this is literally the text I need to get out of a quote, sticky situation Winky face, but I’m not gonna be in Anaheim for a couple more weeks.

Is there anything I can do? Like he would sell it to that. Justin Verlander, a very famous pitcher, Mary Dec, Kate Upton. Won the Cy Young Award a couple times. He’s another guy who as soon as he got fired by the, as soon as Brian Harkins got fired by the Angels, Verlander texted him and said, I’m so sorry about what’s happened to you.

And it’s like, okay, well now we know Verlander was using that stuff too. So there’s, there was so much evidence of pitchers using this stuff. Right? It was just out in

Zach: the open. Yeah.

Jon: Yeah. And now Major League Baseball cares about it as soon as the information is becoming public and hitters like Josh Donaldson are complaining.

That’s the fishy part.

Zach: I can see now, now that his, his response makes more [00:26:00] sense to me because he was basically saying like, there’s all these things that people basically know were ways to get edges. And so yeah. His, his response does make more sense to me with that context.

Jon: Yeah. And I’m, I’m not trying to give the pictures any leeway because it’s obviously cheating.

If it wasn’t cheating mm-hmm. Then why weren’t they talking about this publicly prior to the move? Mm-hmm. Right. They knew it was cheating, that’s why they hid it. But at the same time, I think Major League baseball is as a whole, is a bit responsible. Yeah. Is big. Is more to blame ’cause they allowed it to happen rather than, you know, putting their foot down immediately.

Zach: And to make it obvious for people who don’t know anything about it, what is, what’s the result of using the sticky stuff? Like what’s the edge? Um,

Jon: it gives you a better grip, which allows for more spin on the ball. And I, I mentioned this earlier, but like, uh, on a fastball, there’s more back spin on it, which makes it, which elevates it for longer, which makes it seem like the ball’s rising.

And a rising fastball is just probably the toughest pitch to hit. In all of sports ’cause things aren’t supposed to do that. [00:27:00] They’re supposed, that’s how gravity works. Things are supposed to fall. So if something is moving upward, that is near impossible to hit. And that’s why a lot of people think hitting a softball is harder than a baseball.

I. Because softball, you throw underhand, so the ball is rising as it goes.

Zach: If people wanted to, uh, keep in touch with what you were doing, what’s the, what’s the best way?

Jon: Well, you can always follow me on deadspin and, uh, that’s pretty much the best way to keep up with what I’m doing. I post, you know, normal news stories and opinion pieces on Deadspin all the time, and I’m working on more journalistic pieces.

I’m currently doing a piece on the older athlete and how we’re seeing people like Tom Brady, Phil Mickelson, mark Andre Flory. Continue to succeed well past their supposed prime, when their prime is supposed to be. I’ve talked with a few doctors in, uh, the Western United States to try to get their thoughts on it, and that could be coming out anytime now.

So that, that’s the piece I’m really looking forward to.

Zach: Alright, John, thanks a lot for your time. It’s been great. Oh, thank you for having me. This has been wonderful. That was John [00:28:00] Hoffling. He’s on Twitter at John Hoffling. I’m Zach Elwood. If you’d like to learn more about My Poker Tells Work, which includes three books in a video series, you can go to reading poker tells.com.

I. If you’d like to learn more about this podcast and see past episodes, go to behavior podcast.com. Like this podcast. I’d very much appreciate a rating on iTunes as that’s the most popular podcast platform these days. Thanks for listening. Music by small skies.

For the purposes of political de-escalation and conflict-resolution (a frequent goal of mine with this podcast), it’s important to understand the more rational, well meaning arguments the “other side” has, and not perceive the other side as all as bad as its worst people.

To that end, this is a talk with Carey Callahan aimed at examining the more rational reasons for pushback to liberal-side transgender and gender identity stances. Carey Callahan is a family therapist who writes about gender dysphoria topics, with an emphasis on healthcare. There’s a transcript of our talk below.

Topics discussed include:

• Why it’s so hard to have discussions about transgender topics and why the emotions and animosity can be so high.
• Disconnects and miscommunications that occur in these discussions that increase perceptions of malice or bigotry even when those aren’t present.
• How the polarized and high-emotion dynamics on transgender issues are similar to other highly polarized and emotional dynamics on other hot button issues.
• Criticisms of gender identity theory, including the idea that gender identity theory itself, by how it relies on rather stereotypical “feminine” and “masculine” concepts, may be influencing people to try to categorize themselves with these binary labels, and may in effect be increasing people’s chances of having gender dysphoria.

See the bottom of this post for other topics and resources, including a transcript. Podcast links:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts

Other topics discussed include:

• Is it caring and supportive to avoid discussing whether transitioning is always the best answer for someone or is it possible that’s an avoidance of care and “the easy way out”?
• How some people conflate the criticizing of gender identity theory with disrespecting trans people, when those two things are not related (e.g., one can be transgender and criticize gender identity theory).
• The possibility of psychological and environmental factors in gender dysphoria and why it can be perceived as disrespectful to discuss that, even though those can obviously be factors for some people.
• The role families with more conservative/traditional gender expectations may play in affecting how a child views their traits (e.g., viewing gender expression as something fairly binary when it’s not).
• Carey’s recounting of her own story and what factors were present in her being gender dysphoric and deciding to transition, and deciding to detransition.

Related resources:

• Note: Carey used to have a blog on Medium where she had some great opinion pieces about trans issues and her own therapy work. I had previously linked to this but she has taken down that blog and her Twitter to step away from being in the public eye to focus on her family. I wanted to mention that in case people were wondering what happened to her work that was mentioned in this talk.
• Gender identity wikipedia entry
• Atlantic article by Jesse Singal about detransitioned people, including Carey
• 10 minute video about Carey, made by The Atlantic
• Interview of Carey on podcast Blocked and Reported, which goes into more detail about Carey’s story and the unreasonable hate she receives
• Economist op-ed: criticism of gender identity theory ideas from a trans person
• Zach Elwood’s piece on the inherent ways in which social media may be dividing us

TRANSCRIPT

Zach: Hello and welcome to the People Who Read People podcast with me Zach Elwood. This is a podcast about understanding human behavior. You can learn more about this podcast at readingpokertells.video. You can follow me on Twitter @apokerplayer. 

In this episode recorded July 13, 2021, I talked to Carey Callahan, that’s Carey C-A-R-E-Y. Carey is a family therapist who writes about gender dysphoria. You can find her writing on medium.com. Carey herself has suffered from gender dysphoria. She had previously identified as a man and had started the transition process including taking testosterone before deciding to detransition. She was featured in an article in The Atlantic about people who have detransitioned. If you want a quick summary of her story, there’s a very interesting 10-minute video The Atlantic did about her. You can find it by searching for Carey Callahan Atlantic video or go to my podcast blog at Reading Poker Tells video and I’ll have that and other related resources. 

Carey and I will talk about some gender identity and transgender topics. We won’t talk about all of them of course. Our focus will mostly be around the philosophy of gender identity theory and how the theory itself may impact how people think about themselves. We’ll also talk about how much it makes sense to attempt to educate people about concerns and risks when they’re thinking about transitioning, especially younger people. Along the way, we’ll question and criticize some of the common ideas that many trans activists and liberal people have around these topics. To some people, pushing back on some of these commonly held beliefs is tantamount to being a bigot, or at the very least, to not being respectful or helpful. But hopefully, you’ll see as the interview progresses that the things we are talking about are not actually that controversial, and that talking about these things may actually be much more respectful and caring than avoiding these topics and acting as if there’s nothing to talk about. 

To give you just one example of what I mean. There are many parents of young gender dysphoric children who wants to talk about these topics, who want to know what the right thing is to do, and want to have these tough conversations to help decide, how do I best help my child. But these parents have a hard time finding people they can have such discussions with, including in the medical community, because the standard approach seems to be mostly to avoid these serious conversations. The common approach seems to be to uncritically accept people’s ideas about themselves and what’s best for them, and to fast track people to getting hormones and surgery. So at the very least, even if you disagree with some of the things Carey or I say, hopefully you’ll see that we believe talking about these things is caring and it’s helpful. 

One criticism some people might have about this talk is why did you interview a detransitioned person about these issues and not say a happily transitioned person? Doesn’t that mean you’re in some way disrespectful and anti-trans? I’ve seen that criticism elsewhere about some other articles and interviews. I did actually consider interviewing a transgender person, but I had a few concerns there. The main one being that they would perceive my attempt to have some tough conversations in this area as bullying, that they would perhaps try to portray me as anti-trans before the interview even started. I’m sure I could have found someone who would have made for a great talk who’d be willing to talk about these things, but those were my anxieties and I knew it might take me a while to find the right person if I took that approach. 

Other reasons I asked Carey were that one, she’s actually experienced a lot of these topics herself. And two, when I read her writing, I could see she cared about the topic that she was respectful of gender dysphoric and trans people and supported their autonomy to make their own decisions. While she did detransition, she knows there are many happy transgender people who have transitioned and her work does not take away from that. If you’re interested in these topics, I highly recommend reading her pieces on Medium. Her work seems so obviously helpful and well-meaning. It’s a bit mind boggling to me that people would read her work and think that she’s anti-trans or perceive her as being malicious. She’s simply lives some of these things and wants to use her experience to help other people who may be going through similar things and who may have similar experiences. 

I also say that my desire to do this talk isn’t only related to the transgender issue. I think the often angry and hysterical us versus them dynamics around this topic are representative of a lot of conversations about hot button topics these days. Those topics where we’ve sorted ourselves into us and them, where many of us take the stance that anyone who doesn’t completely align with “our side” is the enemy, is to be feared. Trying to have nuanced reasonable discussions about some of these topics seems increasingly impossible, even dangerous. 

Many of us are afraid to talk about the topics to criticize “our side” and this means that more extreme and unreasonable voices tend to have more and more influence. So a big part of me wanting to tackle such a tough topic isn’t even about the topic itself, it’s about the meta topic of how we talk about tough topics, about our angry us versus them dynamics. My decision to have this talk is to maybe help foster the idea that we can have discussions and push back on ideas on our own side, and maybe that’s the best thing we could be doing.

I’ve spent a good amount of time researching political polarization and writing about it and interviewing experts on the subject for this podcast. And also, have spent some time researching and writing about how social media plays into these dynamics. So if the topic of political polarization interests you and how that’s related to this topic, stick around after the interview and I’ll talk more about that and what we can maybe do about it. Before I play the interview, maybe an important caveat. Obviously, I’m far from an expert about these topics just as I’m not that knowledgeable about all the topics I interview people about for this podcast. If I say something wrong or awkwardly, that’s because I’m pretty much an amateur in these areas. I’m just a person trying to learn about people in the world. Okay, here’s the interview with Carey Callahan. 

Zach: Hi Carey, thanks for coming on. 

Carey: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. 

Zach: I think an interesting place to start this would be talking about my own anxiety about even talking about this subject. Because despite having nothing but the best of intentions on my side and despite my belief that I’m going to be saying nothing actually controversial or offensive, there’s still this anxiety in me, and I thought maybe it’d be interesting to analyze my own fears a bit and see if they capture why these things are hard to talk about so I’ll try that right now. 

So one, I’m afraid of people perceiving what I’m saying as unhelpful or hurtful to them, and it hurts to have people perceive that even if you believe that that is not true, that that’s not what you’re doing. Then second, I’m aware that some people might attack me for things I say, call me a bigot or an anti-trans person for talking about these issues and even if I believe that I’m trying to have a helpful discussion and I’m not being a bigot or hateful or anything, it’s not a pleasant feeling to be attacked and that can have real life repercussions. I’m curious, do you think that’s a pretty good summary of the fears involved in trying to talk about these issues? And why most people just avoid talking about these topics even if the feel they are things to talk about?

Carey: Yeah, absolutely. I think that my own emotional journey, talking about these issues, I’ve had to really accept how scary I am to people and how scary what I’m trying to discuss is. You have to respect it. You have to get to a place where you say like, ”Okay, so there’s reasons for that fear.” And that doesn’t mean that you get less scary, and it doesn’t mean that you get more understood or less judged. But I think it has helped me accept being misunderstood and helped me accept no matter what effort I make to make the information and the messages as safe as they can be, the attacks and the misunderstanding is just inevitable. So it helps. I feel like that headspace helps me keep doing it.

Zach: Right. With these dynamics of being attacked online for whatever the topic, it seems like the two branches you could go down are either getting angry in response, and that’s a pretty common thing to see these days and I think that explains a lot of people’s really unreasonable behavior online. And then the other branch path would be empathy and understanding for why are these people angry at me and accepting that even if you don’t agree with them, respecting that anger and not letting it make you angry. It sounds like you’re taking the much more mature approach of empathy and-

Carey: I’ve taken both.

Zach: Yeah, well, yeah. Maybe on a one-on-one case because I think it’s okay to get angry in a one-on-one situation versus like I’m going to hate this entire group of people, which seems to be the case in so many of these hot button conversations. People get attacked online and then they’re like, “Oh, eff these people. Now I’m against them completely or something.” But yeah, there are still reasons to have debate and get angry and I don’t want to imply that that is a bad thing to. 

Carey: Yeah. What’s been really good for me actually is that I’ve gotten multiple messages from people who have told me like, “I used to watch your YouTube videos five or six years ago.” And I totally was like, “I’m totally different from this woman. She’s really messed up from trauma or whatever and this has nothing to do with me.” Then they reach out to me now and they’re like, “Oh, actually, you were saying good stuff.” So I’ve had encounters from people who misunderstood what I was putting out there and then came to understand it, so that helps a lot. Everyone really is on a journey. 

Zach: Yeah, that was one thing I was really curious about is because the perception online and the internet is such a distorted view of things. A few angry people can make it seem like there is a lot of angry people. I was curious to ask you. You must get a lot of appreciation almost behind the scenes maybe in a lot of cases?

Carey: Yes.

Zach: I’m curious if… Would you say you get just as much or more appreciation as you get anger? Is that a fair question?

Carey: Definitely through email, I get more appreciation. The people who get angry at me aren’t angry enough to write me personal emails whereas the people who are appreciative are appreciative enough to write the email so that’s awesome. I feel like mostly the hate comes not even in people tweeting at me, but in how people will talk about me or organizations I’ve been a part of in articles. So it’s not like they’re coming directly at me being like, “You’re transphobic.” It’s more like they’re discussing me as a transphobic. Which is still just to say very frustrating. I feel powerless when it happens. That would be when I feel angry when like…

Zack: Right, the distortions. Yeah. And the Internet has become– it’s such a hall of mirrors where somebody says something somewhere, it’s like a game of telephone, it’s taken out of context so quickly and I think that’s the dynamic we’re dealing with. To take a small analogy, my wife got in an altercation with a restaurant person online the other day and he basically was lying about her, he said completely untrue things and it really bugged her. 

Carey: Oh man, that’s awful. 

Zach: And I’m just reminding her like, “The internet is just a bunch of distortions.” There’s people purposefully lying, there’s people misinterpreting things, there’s people basically playing game of telephone where they’re just repeating what they saw elsewhere in wrong ways. And so, I think it’s… I’m sure you’ve thought about these things a lot because those are the things that make you realize that a lot of the hate that you get is distorted. It comes from people without the full story and you’re just angry at that moment and want to lash out.

Carey: Yeah, scared and angry. Still, I wish that fact checking was more of a thing, but still.

Zach: For sure. That seems like a cat who’s out of the bag or Pandora’s box. But something you said that really struck me in The Atlantic feature of your story, the complexity of the truth is inconvenient to both sides. I think that really spoke to me, not just on this issue, but on so many issues where we’ve become so polarized and it’s really hard to have a nuanced debate about things because everyone wants to force things to one side or the other. So I really like that quote.

Carey: Yeah, I still absolutely believe that. Especially in the American context, the American healthcare system is so complex. And even if you’re talking about differences between states, differences between insurance companies, the specifics of a person’s situation matters a lot. So when talking about detransitioning or talking about the low quality of trans health care that people have encountered get simplified into being anti-transition, that really bugs me. 

Actually, it’s funny this year in my personal life, that simplification has popped its head up where people have assumed that I’m against a certain person transitioning and that’s never where I’m coming from. I want every person who experiences gender dysphoria to get the highest quality of health care they can get and I think it’s really worth it to talk about what’s going on when that doesn’t happen. Because I as someone who experiences gender dysphoria, I think that we’re very valuable, right? So to have that become that I’m somehow against someone’s autonomous choice to make themselves feel better and have a fulfilling life, it just feels really weirdly off to me. 

Zach: That’s what’s frustrating to me about your story. It just seems from reading your writing your heart is in such an obviously good place to me. Obviously, people can detransition and make mistakes and those people exist and to act like that is not a thing. Somebody has to talk about that. To attack like people shouldn’t talk about that it’s just wild to me, for instance. 

Carey: Yeah, it’s wild. Sometimes people will say, “Well, it’s way more common for people to detransition for a short amount of time and then go back to transition.” That does happen quite a bit because medical transitions are really tough and also just building a life around that is really tough like jobs and apartments, discrimination is very real. But I’ve never understood that argument because if someone’s doing a temporary detransition, that is a person who needs lots of support just like the person who is detransitioning in a much more permanent way. Both populations need care that is like pretty open-minded to what challenges they might be facing and what kind of support they need. 

Zach: Yeah. It’s clear that even if the amount of people that can be argued about, even if it’s a very small amount of people who detransition, there’s still a population that exists and theoretically with totally a very large population. So to act as if that’s not a population to be served or on the other side, to act as if there aren’t things to think about before transitioning, which is the other thing you write about, potential concerns. One great example that comes to mind is you talking about not smoking a lot of weed when you’re thinking about transitioning because marijuana is a dissociative drug. These kinds of things are just fantastic advice. They come from a very well-meaning place and that people could think that that was not coming from a good place is just mind boggling to me.

Carey: Right, it’s coming from a well-meaning and experienced place. I think I do understand why medical transition is such a hard project to pull off. I do understand why people feel like keeping it really positive and keeping it supportive is important. It’s such a tricky project that you want to slow people down and make sure they’re thinking about all the details. Now, I found that for myself, my head was in a very fantasy prone place and you don’t want to be making these plans from that stance. You want to be dealing in specifics and you want to be making very specific detailed plans for how things are going to go.

Zach: Yeah. I think I’m going to attempt to summarize what I see is the problem in that area of where a lot of the anger comes about and I think it’s because many liberals seem to think that the way we show support for trans people is by not questioning anything, that the kind loving answer is to essentially say, don’t question any of this, don’t set up any obstacles at all to the people who want to transition, don’t consider any debate that there might be other issues that might be at play, don’t be concerned about young children who want to transition, give them whatever they need at any age, don’t ask any questions. When I attended to talk about this with one liberal acquaintance, one of her responses was basically, “This is serious business. People are dying. You should be more respectful.”

And I think that’s a common attitude for a lot of people that an attempt to talk about this stuff is itself the problem, that it’s doing harm to gender dysphoric and trans people. But I think many people stances and probably your stance would be we’re actually doing a big disservice to people, especially to younger people, by not having serious talks about these subjects of not offering some cautions and some learnings and some debates along the way. Am I getting the crux of that problem right?

Carey: Absolutely. And this is actually something where I get a little bit angry. Because I’ve had very similar conversations with people and I had one in particular with someone whose relative was transitioning, and this was an area that I knew well so I knew the doctors in the geographic area. I asked this lady like, “What surgeon are they going to?” And she was like, “Well, that’s none of my business.” Right? And that’s very easy. That’s a very easy stance to take. If your stance is I’m a good person because I refuse to engage with my loved ones about the specifics of their health care, wow, that really lets you off the hook. That’s really easy way to be a good person. But some doctors are scumbags, some doctors are not good at their jobs and your relative deserves a doctor who knows what they’re doing. A question like that, that’s not about someone’s identity, that’s not about whether someone has the right to identify as a gender that will make their life work for them. That’s about the care that they’re receiving. These surgeries and these hormonal treatments are not easy stuff. So when I get attacked in situations like that, that’s a hard one for me not to be angry about because I do feel like that hands off approach can become selfish. You want to be a good person so bad you’re not willing to steer your relative towards thinking about the quality of their doctors? 

1Zack Elwood: Yeah, it seems like a least resistance path that is masquerading as love, as empathy and I think it’s like these… I see that in other areas too where it’s like we won’t question things and that is our form of showing respect. Another analogy for this that was thinking about young children having kids like teenagers having kids and many young people say, “I want to be a mother. I want to rush out and have kids.” Is it loving to say, “There’s nothing to think about. Go ahead. That is your choice. If that is how you want to form your life, there’s nothing to think about.” Is that supportive? Is that loving? Is it helpful to avoid tough conversations?

Carey: Exactly. I can absolutely see why it’s tempting to be really hands-off and really unilaterally supportive, especially when someone’s doing something that is risky like having kids or like changing their body. But you have to ask yourself like, “Yeah, am I being selfish here? Am I being really self-centered and this unilateral support that this person will eat up and love, but maybe will not serve them?”

Zach: Yeah, maybe a good segue here because as you know I want to talk about some of the gender identity theory stuff and maybe a good segue to is theoretically, by not questioning anything at all, including the theories and the ideas that are in the environment, there’s chances that more people affected by the environment will believe they have gender dysphoria when they don’t actually because the ideas are just so pervasive. And that’s obviously a controversial topic that I want to touch on more later, but maybe a good way to start this is, what is the gender identity theory or theories as they’re commonly thought of?

Carey: I always think of this particular anecdote in my life, which is I worked at a community mental health agency for a while and this community mental health agency had a parenting manual for everybody because a lot of what they did was parenting education. It was very popular one. It’s called Nurturing Parenting. In this parenting book, just like a little soft cover thing of worksheets and illustrations about things like how to swaddle your child, how to feed your kid healthy stuff, how to set a schedule for your kid, they said that girls and boys have different brains, and one of the proofs of this are trans people, right? What that means is that at least in Northern Ohio for low-income families, they are being given information from trusted sources saying that the female brain and the male brain are distinctly different and that is why girls are more relational focused and boys are more focused on trucks and guns. 

And so, I don’t want to simplify gender theory too much, but that’s what it comes down to the idea that these stereotypes that we have about female and male people are rooted in reality about our brain structure. Research does not tend to bear this out. But the existence of trans people for some reason gets folded into this overarching theory. That all these things that we could pin on socialization and social pressures or even on just the physical differences between our bodies and who’s stronger, that is wiped away and it just gets pinned on these mysterious structures in our brains.

Zach: A small but maybe important update here. A trans person who listened to this episode pointed out to me that many people don’t believe gender identity has anything to do with the brain, that it’s more about one’s own feelings, that one’s traits don’t match up with society’s expectations. That it’s more about one’s own view of oneself. This person told me that therefore our talk was way off the mark, that that’s not how they or many people view gender identity at all. And they’re right, there are different conceptions of what gender identity represents and many people do think it’s a much more subjective thing that one decides for oneself. Clearly, some trans people do seem to be more on the intrinsic brain related side of things and believing that they are in some intrinsic way miscast and that their brains were born into the wrong body. So there are clearly different conceptions of gender identity theory. But I don’t think that in any way detracts from the ideas that Carey and I discussed here. 

For either conception of gender identity, it still gets down to an idea that some traits are or should be more associated with masculine or feminine. Both conceptions are entirely subjective because even if you believe it’s something brain related, we have no proof for that generally or for individuals specifically. Both of these conceptions of gender identity are about deciding something like these traits of mine don’t fit most people’s conception of what the traits of someone with my biological sex should be. So I just wanted to mention this in case there was an objection for anyone listening. I actually had edited out some stuff where Carey talked about how people’s conception of gender identity was a bit more complex than what she had said, but she was trying to boil down the essence of it and how it’s perceived by many people. 

I’m probably saying what people listening know, but the idea is that if you’re say a man, you might identify as a female gender because you feel in feminine ways you act in feminine ways and you might associate more with the feminine side of the spectrum is the basic idea of the gist of it. Is that accurate to say for people who have gender dysphoria?

Carey: Yeah, that if you were in the world, in a male body, but you were very empathetic, very gentle, very interested in nurturing, maybe more interested in relationships and stories than you are in destroying or building things. Or if you’re interested in being pretty, flamboyant, getting desired visually, all of these things, since we associate them with female stereotypes might make a male person think that they have a different brain than other male people.

Zach: To state probably the obvious for most people, but in this theory, this is not at all related to who you prefer sexually for your sexual attraction in other words. It’s just about the gender identity that you associate with interiorly. I just wanted to make sure that that’s clear. 

In other words, gender identity theory is a theory of psychology, it’s an idea of how our minds, our brains might operate and you could liken it to other theories of psychology. It is just an idea of how things work. I want to say that because this is where I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding too where a lot of the anger comes from that me attempting to talk about or debate about the gender identity theory is disrespectful to gender dysphoric or trans people, when to me, I see no connection between a debate, an intellectual debate about that theory and issues of respect for trans people. In other words, disagreeing with this intellectual theory of the mind is in no way related to being for or against trans rights. You could be a trans person and disagree with a theory. To make an analogy, you don’t need to believe in a specific psychological theory to be gay. And presumably, you also wouldn’t need to believe in a specific psychological theory to have a strong urge to transition to another sex. 

Assuming you agree with me, maybe you can talk about is my take right that people equate the debate or criticism of the gender identity theory with criticism or disrespect of gender dysphoric or trans people? Is that an accurate read of the situation?

Carey: I do think it’s accurate, and I think it’s the reality of what beliefs are in the trans population about gender is so much more complex. There are so many trans people, especially intellectuals frankly, who do challenge the brain sex theory. I call it brain sex. But it’s like the overarching narrative that organizations like GLAD or HRC push is this brain sex theory and I think what’s going on is that there’s this belief that it needs to be super, super simple for the straight normie population to accept it when in actuality, trans intellectuals don’t accept it because it is so simplistic and also it breaks down so quickly. I think it’s interesting. I think it’s a theory that is driven by a sense of political experience. I think most thinking thoughtful people in the trans community actually don’t buy into it.

Zach: Interesting. I did not know that.

Carey: That’s my take. That really is my viewpoint so I could be wrong about that. And also, it’s a little strange to say that someone’s rights to change their body or live as a certain gender needs to be predicated on them having some difference in their brain. That’s actually respectful. 

Zach: Totally, because that’s what bugs me about some of the gay rights talk is acting as if they’re born that way so it’s okay. It’s like, “No, that’s not why it’s okay. It’s okay because they’re adults who can do what they want.” It doesn’t matter how it came about. It’s exactly whether there’s environmental factors or whatever it is, it doesn’t matter to me and it shouldn’t matter to other people because we don’t really know it at the day. So to act as if it requires a physical explanation or a specific explanation like that is disrespectful to me.

Carey: Yeah, I would agree. I understand why the born-that-way narrative got so popular and I don’t think it’s necessary if we really, truly respect people’s rights to build the life they want.

Zach: So maybe you could talk a little bit about the criticisms of the gender identity theory, and to be completely transparent as I’ve told you, the logic behind it strikes me as is very circular, very self-referential in terms of how it on one hand, wants to transcend traditional gender stereotypes and roles, but very much relies on those gender stereotypes and roles. So I’m curious if maybe you could give a rundown or I could keep going about the criticisms, but maybe you have a better concise way to put it.

Carey: Well, I’ll just go through my criticisms of it. I think the criticisms of it are so numerous that it would be hard to even get them all because it’s so easy to pick this apart, right? One, all the processes that get left out of the picture if we pin gender stereotypes on brain sex, so that means that we’re never going to talk about socialization, we’re never going to talk about just material reality in terms of strength and aggression, we’re never going to talk about whose bodies are implicated when reproduction happens and how that changes things. Like what does it mean when half the people are going to at some point be eight months pregnant as I am, and how that changes what you can do and who you’re dependent on. So there’s a lot that gets left out of the picture. 

Switching levels of discourse, I think it’s really interesting how the brain as an organ is elevated to this very definitional spot, so we talk about the importance of gender in the brain. It’s funny because there’s no other organ where it’s that important, right? We can talk about differences that might exist in men and women’s livers, they’re not considered definitional of what it means to be a man or woman. I guess the uterus and the penis and stuff like that is definitional, but I think it’s really interesting how our ideas about the brain and the split between the brain and the body play into this discussion. 

I have to say that seeing that nurturing parenting book and seeing that low-income families, we’re being told, like, “Hey, your girls are going to be more interested in caring for their siblings than your boys because of their brains,” really upset me. Because one of the unfair parts about female socialization is that girls often are parentified in their families and get turned into little mothers’ way too young in ways that are not good for them or their siblings. So having that be normalized is like, “Well, that’s stemming from your girl’s brain.” It’s like, “No, it’s not stemming from her brain. It’s stemming from your work schedule.” It’s stemming from you being overwhelmed and looking for a babysitter. So that’s my main criticism is that I think there are so many circumstances where like clearly justifying different treatment for boys and girls through pinning it on the brain, it’s not healthy for boys and girls.

Zach: I think to me it just seems like, maybe I’m talking about the simplistic version of the theory that you said, but it seems like the reasoning behind it is so circular in the sense that we’re saying we cannot transcend and be more than these restrictive stereotypes of male or female, but then it’s also saying that those stereotypes exist inside of you that they are real things like me and many other people I’ve talked to about this cannot relate to the idea that we have a gender identity and it seems weird to me that and I’m sure as you say many people have written about various criticisms, but it just seems weird to me that why are we accepting this theory that to my mind has no real intellectual backing to it other than that it’s popular when so many people can’t even relate to it, people who are open to the idea can’t relate to it. 

I think if I looked inside of myself for something like that, I just wouldn’t find it. Because at the end of the day, I just feel like I’m responding to the environment, I have various biological things that are probably mysterious that are happening I don’t know about. I feel like if I wanted to behave femininely, I would do that. That’s the thing. I don’t believe that there is a thing necessarily called feminine other than that is associated with certain things that are associated with females. I think we should be trained to transcend those things and not put these boxes inside of us. I’m sure I’m not explaining this as eloquently as I could, but these are some of the problems I would say.

Carey: No, you are preaching to the choir. I really hate actually the words feminine and masculine just because the meaning is so fluid for each.

Zach: Right. It’s like as soon as I say it, I find fault with it. 

Carey: Yeah, definitely. And so often when people use the word feminine, they mean passive and okay, but then how does that connect to being female exactly? I think all these words are really mythic and big. But you come back to reality and someone has to wipe baby’s butts and hold people’s butts and that’s work that has to get done. Doesn’t that matter that like how that work has gotten a scientist mostly been based on someone’s role in reproduction? I think it does matter. I think that all that millennia of how we divide up labor matters a lot. 

Zach: I think there’s so many things underneath the surface that I wouldn’t even pretend to understand. When I look at the factors in my life that dictate my behavior, I’m very much at a loss to understand what they are really. I believe lots of things are fluid about me, including my behavior, my sexuality, lots of things are fairly fluid. I think the thing that bugs me about these ideas is that it’s trying to make concrete, a thing that to me just seems so amorphous and shouldn’t be put into categories. Probably, I’ll make an analogy here. To me, it’s like if some people came out with a theory of internal racial identity that went something like, “Hey, race doesn’t matter at all. We’re all more complex in these restrictive racial stereotypes. We transcend these stereotypes.” But then they follow that up with, “But if you think you have good rhythm, your internal racial identity is Black.” To me, it doesn’t make sense. It’s enforcing these society enforced stereotypes that to me I think we should be trying to move away from them. I feel like I’m rambling now, but I’m-

Carey: Yeah. And I think what’s tempting is this idea that we need to ignore how the ideas don’t fit together to be compassionate. That’s not real compassion. If compassion isn’t balanced with respect, then it’s feels not right to me. I think having been trans identified myself, you know when people are being compassionate to you and they don’t respect you, and that experience is not fun. And certainly, it is not that people who are trans are not good at thinking. They’re very good thinking. So I’m not sure that these super simplistic ideas that don’t actually fit together are respectful to anyone.

Zach: I’m curious when you were going through your gender dysphoria, experience in the trans experience, did the gender identity theory play a role in your perception of that or motivation to change yourself?

Carey: Yes. And just to say I still experience gender dysphoria, not all the time. It comes and goes, depending on what’s going on in my life. So when I was growing up, I’m a pretty opinionated person. I can be a pretty sometimes angry person. I can be a pretty risk-taking person and an impulsive person. I have ADHD. And so, there were a lot of things about how my brain worked that did not make sense to me when I looked at the other girls. And I’ve realized now that I’m older that I was actually getting pretty overt messages from the adults in my life that something was not right with me. That idea that there was something distinct about my brain that made me trans and different was very tempting to me. 

I didn’t transition as a kid, I transitioned as a full adult. I was 30. I was adult. I went to a therapist. I was already ensconced in a trans scene, I was dating a trans person already. When I went to the therapist, I knew what I wanted to do already. But what therapists will tell a lot of gender dysphoric people, especially female people, is just try testosterone and if it feels good, that’ll be confirmation that it’s what your brain needs. The problem with that is testosterone almost always feels great. It in general makes people feel more energetic in general as an antidepressant. So I got on testosterone and I felt amazing. I loved it. And so, it’s funny because for me, that experience shifted me into a much more hardcore brain sex believer. I went on testosterone and it felt so good and I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I actually really do have a male brain. This is why this feels so good. I was missing something I really needed.” But in actuality, I was just having a ball on testosterone. I really like to be aggressive and horny, and I love to- 

Zach: You took a drug. 

Carey: Yeah. My detransition happened in a pretty messy way. It was not that I decided I wasn’t trans and then stopped testosterone. I had to stop testosterone and then about a year and a half later, I started thinking hard about whether this belief that I had a different brain was actually good for me. Because it wasn’t good for me. My life really took a nosedive. And just for me, the more I cultivate the perspective that I have actually a lot in common with a lot of different people that I’m not particularly distinct or special, that grounds me and that’s good for me. I can go way overboard with this idea that I am different and need different treatment and different special things to make my life work. In general, I need very common normal things to be happy and grounded. So yeah, so I think that these ideas are really complicated I guess and I think when you’re really building an adult life like one where you have to pay rent and have a career and feel good about yourself and date people and have long term relationships, that still is hard for everybody. So we should be open-minded about how different factors play into that.

Zach: I was curious it might be a too personal question. But when you said you were getting signals from your family at an early age, was your family fairly conservative?

Carey: No, no, actually. My family is very progressive, almost Marxist frankly. I come from Rust Belt pro-union like community organizing people, but you can be that liberal and be pretty darn sexist.

Zach: Right. I was wondering if I had this question about if people from not necessarily politically conservative, but maybe more traditional family and environment might be more likely to assign their feelings to gender dysphoria because they’re used to being put in these more constrictive stereotypes, whereas like the way I grew up where I basically could have acted any way I want and I don’t think my parents would have made me feel uncomfortable, at least in terms of so-called feminine or masculine behavior. But yeah, so I was curious of that might play it play a role.

Carey: Yeah, my family has really long-standing patterns of moms beating up on their daughters and a lot of martyrdom being really respected. We’re Catholic so there’s this Catholic martyrdom lady thing that they expect out of everybody so everyone becomes a nurse. And looking back, if you could do that or you could be like your brother, then why wouldn’t you want to be like your brother?

Zach: Yeah, I see some of that where it’s like, “Well, if I’m faced with these alternatives, if you’re only giving me these binary options,” and actually my wife, if we were talking about this, she was a big tomboy when she was young and she had some real gender dysphoric experiences and really question because she thought female was this and she was not that so therefore it was like a binary thing. Whereas I think maybe in some environments, you wouldn’t be thinking in terms of I have to fit into these binaries.

Carey: Totally. Family environment can make a huge, huge difference on how you think about yourself, no doubt.

Zach: Can a theory itself like gender identity theory, do you think the theory itself can play a role in making more people believe that they are gender dysphoric?

Carey: Well, not to harp on this, but certainly if your mom and dad are getting told that there are boy brains and girl brains, then that to me would make your mom or your dad more likely to give you messages about what kind of brain you have, and that’s from my experience with my mom and dad. But I think that parents and other adults in a kid’s life, we’re constantly giving feedback to our kids about their accessibility and how they fit in and you want kids to all grow up in an environment where what they’re being told is like let you be your unique self and figure out how you fit into this world and what a joy to see you get to do that. But that’s not the reality of this world and parenting normally. So I think parental anxiety about kids behavior and kids likes and dislikes can create a lot of negative messages for kids about their difference. Does that make sense?

Zach: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think another important point here that I think is another key factor in some of the angry interactions around this issue is that as we’ve been doing, we’ve been talking about the role of one’s environment in these things. And for a lot of people talking about that or talking about psychological issues, not necessarily problems but just psychological aspects, talking about the environment or psychological aspects to these things is framed in terms of like, “Oh, you’re saying trans people are crazy. You’re saying we’re not in our right minds that we’re influenced by others or whatever.” 

But that’s not at all the case when I’m talking about it because I think in my mind, everybody is influenced by the environment. We’re all influenced by the things around us, and to talk about those things is not at all offensive. We were talking about gay people, to me, it doesn’t really matter to me whether there’s a biological component, or environmental component, or a mix of them or whatever for why people are gay. That really doesn’t matter to me because I think we’re all to some extent affected by our environment just as I’m affected by my environment for everything I do pretty much and how I’ve been formed. I think there’s a there’s a big disconnect there too where people take those kinds of debates and try to interpret them in the worst possible way when that I think that’s not the case when we’re talking about it.

Carey: Yeah, and I think that that is not the case for other conditions that are listed in the DSM. When I was going to grad school to be a therapist, we were taught to conceptualize clients in this biopsychosocial sphere. So you want to be thinking about what’s happening in the patient’s body on a biology level, on a interpersonal psychology level, and on a social level. People are coming to you for a reason. They want to make changes in their life. And then, after you’ve conceptualized them in these different intersecting spheres, then you can work with all of those spheres how you move them forward to what they want, right? So if they’re depressed, stuff is happening in their bodies, stuff is happening in their families and happened in their past with the families of origin and then they’re dealing with social stresses too like unemployment or breakup, all the stuff that bums people out. 

So for other conditions in the DSM, it’s accepted that it’s always complicated what created that condition. Even something like ADHD, what causes ADHD is actually pretty complex and we don’t really have a handle on it. People will tell you that it’s brain chemistry, people will tell you it’s maternal stress, some people have suggested there’s a connection with lead poisoning. And that’s accepted that that’s okay that we don’t currently totally understand what will create ADHD in a person. And just because we don’t totally understand it doesn’t mean that each person dealing with that condition can’t find a path forward for dealing with it. That might include medication, it might really not include medication, and it might include just lifestyle change or just self-acceptance. So gender dysphoria is interesting because making the discussion complicated in terms of the biopsychosocial concepts is considered offensive. But it’s not offensive for a depressed person or person with ADHD or a person with bipolar. So that’s strange.

Zach: Yeah. And there’s so much questions about so many things we experience we don’t even… There’s a great book called My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel where he, who I also interviewed for this podcast, where he talks about the… You could look at it. There’s just so little we know even about anxiety. There’s biological components, there’s environmental components, they overlap. It’s really hard to… It’s like to pretend that these are not very overlapping and nuance things is missing the complexity in these things. And something you said that I wanted to follow up on, talking about when we have problems, when we have anxieties, when we have struggles, there can be multiple paths forward. I think that’s also a route of a disconnect there because implying that you for example, theoretically, there was a path where you were completely happy with transitioning in some worlds, some parallel dimension. 

And so talking about that or talking about that you had multiple paths available to you and that there were multiple factors available here, I think people think by saying that there might be other paths that’s disrespectful to trans people, but I think what we’re really trying to do is acknowledge that there are multiple paths and a lot of times people can be completely happy with multiple paths. It’s more like you want to think about all the factors that could be present and think about what you’re going through more

Carey: Totally. And I think because I am someone who’s had the experience, I think about the parallel universe’s thing like a lot. My parallel universe trans man self is someone that I think about. Any number of factors in my life could have been different and that could have been the life path I took and I don’t think that that would have been necessarily a tragic life path. There are some times where I think even it would have been in a lot of ways really similar. I’m really happy to be pregnant and to be married and stuff. I think that even if I had continued down that path, those would have been things that I would have sought out. I think now since I like look in the mirror and I look so pregnant and stuff, I think about what I would look like as a trans guy pregnant and frankly, I’d probably look pretty similar. Maybe I’d have a beard and obviously, I would have gotten a mastectomy. But yeah, life is so rarely either/or. That’s usually not how life is. 

Zach: Do you feel like your life experiences have taught you to be more uncertain about what your needs and wants really are?

Carey: Yeah, I think I understand about myself. One, I learned that I could be fantasy prone, and that’s really important to understand about my brain. And then I definitely learned about myself that a lot of what keeps me happy are very regular basic things like getting enough sleep, like getting enough exercise, like having stable relationships, having enough money, that kind of thing. Which is the case for most people, people are much like babies. We need schedules, we need security, we need safety. But that can be hard to remember when you’re fantasizing about your ideal life. So I definitely learned about myself that I can get ideas about what I need to be happy that totally forget about the basics, and that was important for me to learn. 

I think I also learned a lot about advice and just how useless advice can be. Advice is so much more about the person giving the advice than it is ever about the person being given the advice. It’s so much more about the ego of the person telling you what to do than it is usually about the person being told what to do. I definitely learned through the process that the people giving you advice they just are in no way invested in your life the way you are and the repercussions for them don’t exist. So whatever advice you get, you just really have to be super skeptical because you are the only one who will live through the consequences of taking that advice or not taking that advice. So it was a very valuable experience.

Zach: For myself, when I tried to look inside of myself and try to figure out aspects of myself or what will make me happy that is a very difficult thing to do because a lot of times especially when we’re younger, we think oh this will make me happy, this will make me happy. But when it’s actually achieved, you realize that it wasn’t. So I think with age can come more uncertainty, which I think a big part of wisdom is uncertainty and not trusting ourselves really.

Carey: Yeah. And I think most young people have to go through that. The experience of screwing your life up and then regretting it is actually, as long as it doesn’t kill you, really, really valuable. I went into tricky thing because so much what I do is give advice and I also know how useless it is and how much that can be about who I want to be. But I try and remember that journey of screwing it up, is sometimes the very most valuable thing a person can be doing at that point in their life.

Zach: Your advice is around uncertainty really. That’s what you’re advocating is thinking more about it and not being certain. So in that sense, I don’t see how you can go wrong with advocating thinking more about things.

Carey: Yeah, I do think that more information is way better than less information. And then also, you can change your mind then. Definitely when it comes to being totally fully informed about medical interventions and what you can expect to come down the road as far as medical interventions, more information is better than less always. It might be you get all the information on a medical intervention and you learn all the risks and you’re like, “This is still the right decision.” And good for you, then.

Zach: Maybe they get a little too existential and broad here at the end, but I sometimes think it’s possible that some of these issues for some people are related to the fact that in the modern world, we have so much more free time and more time to examine questions about ourselves and our place in the world that we are more likely to come face to face with this abyss inside of us. I don’t mean a bit in a bad way, but more that we have this interior, this inner world that’s very mysterious and undefined to us and we have the capacity to basically create our own worlds and our own truths. That knowledge can be very scary and anxiety producing and I think this kind of existential anxiety might be why some people reach for labels, whether that’s traditional roles that they’re playing, the traditional roles stereotypes, or as I see it for some people, these internal also equally stereotype gender identity labels. And I also see this maybe with some of the clinging too labels that some people seem to have about I’m autistic around the autistic spectrum or I have this thing, whereas I think maybe we need to not label ourselves so much and I think sometimes the labeling can be restrictive even if it’s comforting to belong in a category or a box, maybe getting too broad there but I wanted to add maybe on that note.

Carey: Absolutely. It’s such a profound need to be understood and it’s also such an unreachable need because we can’t really ask other people to understand us because we’re always changing and fluid and we always contain all these potentials, but we want so badly to just make sense to the people around us. It’s very profound.

Zach: Well, thanks a lot for talking to me. I appreciate the chance to have the conversation. 

Carey: Yeah, thank you. 

Zach: That was an interview with Carey Callahan. That’s C-A-R-E-Y. And you can find her writing on Medium. She’s doing a series right now called Talking About Talking to Doctors, where she’s talking to people about their healthcare experiences in this area. You can also find her on Twitter at CareyCallsBS. 

Part of my reason for wanting to do tough talks like this on controversial topics is that I think showing how there can be disagreement and discussion on one’s own side helps create empathy for people who believe different things from us on the opposite side of the political aisle. In our increasingly polarized country, people tend to reside so much in homogenous bubbles of thought that we forget or don’t notice that there can be many forms of reasonable dissent on many topics. For example, if a conservative were to say, “I don’t want my child taught about gender identity theory,” many liberals would say, “Oh, that person’s a hateful bigot.” But hopefully, you can see how someone can think that and not be a bigot. If you’ve listened to this podcast, you’d understand why I myself would not want my child or children in general to be taught gender identity theory. This isn’t because I don’t respect trans people. This is an intellectual disagreement. I think that theory is wrong, that there’s no validity to it, that there’s been no real testing of the idea, that it’s no more scientific or real than an idea like Freud’s Oedipal complex. And I think that theory itself by being so incoherent and circular in logic, creates confusion and makes people more likely to consider themselves gender dysphoric. 

And to be clear, I would want children to be taught that many people have stereotypes about sex and gender, but those are mostly illusory stereotypes. We should all feel free to behave however we want as long as we’re not hurting anyone, wear whatever we want, transcend stereotypes however we want, love whoever we want and not feel a need for any labels because those labels are just our human attempts to categorize things we don’t understand. I’d want to teach children to not judge others for how they appear or how they act in these areas because no matter how you think it comes about, there’s obviously a lot of variety in how people present and how they behave. 

In other words, I prefer a theory that didn’t attempt to categorize what I see as elusive and mysterious internal states, then instead said something like, these stereotypes about gender related behavior don’t actually matter. It might seem like they matter sometimes because we live in a society with stereotypes, but those are just people’s ideas. You shouldn’t pay much attention to these labels and categories and just do what makes you happy.

Some people listening might be thinking, that’s all well and good for you a cisgender male to say who hasn’t struggled with this stuff. But actually, I do relate to a lot of this. I’ve never related to stereotypical male things. In school, the behavior of my male classmates often made me nervous, the rambunctious and aggressive ones. I used to get sad and disturbed watching the boys stomp on crickets in the high school gym locker room. Even today, aggressive people in conflict make me quite nervous. Even though I think playing sports can be fun, I’ve never liked watching sports, never understood what the appeal was. As a kid in elementary school, when many other boys were roughhousing on the playground, me and a couple other friends had an ongoing game where we pretended to be bunny rabbits. In elementary school, I had a physical, albeit non-sexual crush on a male friend. In middle school, I was mostly friends with females. I can easily imagine if I were growing up in today’s environment that I might be tempted to think of myself as gender dysphoric. In the same way that my wife who struggled with some gender dysphoria issues in her childhood, also says that she thinks it’s entirely possible that she would have been attracted by these ideas. 

I suppose some people who believe in the gender identity theory would say that I identify internally as a male because I presented in some stereotypical masculine ways. I suppose people would say that. But the thing is I don’t relate to any of these ideas about gender traits having a place inside of me. Well, I think that some of my behavior is likely biology caused and some of it is society caused. I don’t have any handle on which is which, it’s all a black box. I don’t feel that there’s some internal gender aspect of myself. 

Put it another way, if societal expectations were that I as a male should wear a dress and wear some makeup and maybe be more passive and how I relate to others, these traits that many people associate with females, I’d probably be doing that, not because I relate to it in any internal way, but just because it’s the path of least resistance. I simply don’t think most of this stuff in any way has much of a bearing on who I am. In short, I think we’re talking about complex and impossible to quantify things here and I don’t think our stereotypes of what constitutes “feminine” or “masculine” mean much at all. There are attempts to place a wide range of diverse behavior into various boxes and I think this is largely for our own comfort.

If you’ve listened to this podcast much or read some of my writings on social media, you know I think a lot about political polarization and the psychology behind that and I see the polarized and angry discussion around trans topics as very much analogous to how we talk about so many other hot button topics these days, from race, to police violence, to immigration to many other things. The thing I think many people don’t understand is that these very us versus them polarized dynamics we’re dealing with are very common dynamics in large groups. They’re common dynamics that many other countries have gone through and are going through. They’re common dynamics that have destroyed many other countries before ours. We tend to think that America is unique, that we’re fighting about very important issues, that our population is clearly divided about the issues themselves. And of course, the issues can be important, I’m not denying that. But what is much more important in these dynamics is what researchers call affective polarization or emotional polarization. That is it’s less about the issues and more about the animosity between the two groups. That ever increasing animosity creates more and more pressure for each group to take a unified stance against the other group and not criticize their own group. As each side becomes increasingly intolerant of internal debate, they grow more extreme in their ideas. 

This isn’t about which side started it. Obviously, we all have our own beliefs about which side is worse. But it’s about recognizing how the dynamics work. If you look at other currently polarized countries and those throughout history, the dynamics are the same. The issues are different, but what is the same, what is most important is their underlying psychological tendency to sort ourselves into two extreme and opposing groups and ramp up those us versus them dynamics. It’s a very human weakness, probably our main flaw. And there’s a good chance that will be the cause of our extinction at some point in the not-too-distant future, especially as our technology, including our weapons get more powerful. You can see those dynamics playing out for so many hot button topics these days. Each side becomes increasingly resistant to internal debate.

To bring it back to transgender topics. I know there are many well-meaning liberal people who want to talk more about these issues, but simply are afraid to or don’t have the time to do it well because it takes so much effort to do it well and not say things wrong and make it clear what your intent is. I think for many of these hot button issues, many people believe that while the other side seems so cohesive and monolithic, and the stakes seem so high right now, maybe it is best for us to stick together to not question our side. It’s uncomfortable to question things, but maybe it’s also best if I don’t question things. But from what I’ve learned in researching polarization, that is the wrong intuition. That is the path of least resistance that leads us to more and more polarization. Instead, a better approach is to continue to attempt to find nuance, to continue to attempt to have debates, to criticize your side when you think they’re doing something wrong. 

I could go on for quite a while about the benefits I see of doing that, but a couple quick points. One benefit, questioning your own side helps make your side more reasonable. A big part of how groups grow more extreme is that dissent is increasingly taboo. So by questioning our side, we’re helping make it more reasonable, more nuanced, more capable of having conversation. It also results in your side just being more persuasive to people outside the group. The more people outside your group perceive you as avoiding topics and not having reasonable debate, the less persuasive your group is. Another benefit, questioning your own side helps bring down anger from the other side. A big part of how these dynamics play out is that each side is responding to the worst of the other side. For example, Trump supporters take something hateful and unreasonable a liberal says and use that to act as if that’s a common stance amongst liberals and that riles up their group. So the more nuanced we attempt to be, the less that dynamic is a factor. Obviously, there always be people that will attempt to paint the worst people in your group as the norm, but it just helps bring down that dynamic.

One of my podcasts episodes was an interview of Jaime Settle whose researched political polarization and did studies of how use of Facebook seem to amplify polarization. In her opinion, one of the most helpful things we can do is to show how we don’t fit into the usual stereotypes of “our group”. To break the polarization cycle, one thing we can do is to show how we don’t fit the template of the stereotype of our group and maybe this will inspire others to do the same. But that takes a lot of bravery because we’re understandably afraid of being cast out from our own tribe. We’re afraid of being tribeless. But maybe if more of us did that, we show how others can do that, show how this isn’t weakness, that it doesn’t prevent us from being able to fight against things we think are bad, that it in fact may be the most helpful thing we can do. 

And to be clear, I’m not saying you have to question your side in public on social media as I actually think social media is a horrible place to have discussions. I’m talking about private conversations in our homes and with friends and family because that’s a big part of how we form our ideas and where polarization grows. And on the topic of social media, you may enjoy a piece I researched and wrote about the role that social media may be playing in amplifying our divides and extreme thinking. My piece is about the inherent effects of internet communication. For example, the fact that writing things down has been shown to make us more stubborn about our ideas. And now with social media, we’re all writing our ideas down more than ever before, things like that. I’m very proud of that work. If you want to check it out, search for Zach Elwood social media polarization and you’ll probably find it. 

This has been the People Who Read People podcast with me Zachary Elwood. You can learn more about this podcast at readingpokertells.video. Use the contact form there to send me any ideas and criticisms, especially if you think I’m way off based on something and want to point me to a good resource to help me learn something. You can follow me on Twitter @apokerplayer. Thanks for listening. Music by Small Skies.

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In this episode of the podcast, I interview Ashley Pallathra (twitter) and Edward Brodkin (twitter), co-authors of Missing Each Other: How to Cultivate Meaningful Connections. Our modern world seems increasingly isolated, in how we separate ourselves from others, in how many of our communal activities and institutions have gone away, in how we are increasingly online. Also, in our increasingly politically polarized world, we also end up thinking more negatively of other people, which results in us being less charitable, less humane. In this interview, we talk about the obstacles we face in our attempts to form better connection with others, and how we might connect better.

Podcast links:

• Apple Podcasts (embedded below)
• Spotify

Topics discussed include:

• Is the modern world growing increasingly isolated?
• What are some inherent obstacles to us connecting well with each other?
• How there can be an existential paradox within attempting to connect well with others: we have to both maintain our own self boundaries, and also focus on the other person, and this can create a bit of a conflict.
• How other people’s emotional contagiousness can be one reason why connection can feel threatening.
• How connecting well with others requires us to be generous of spirit, to be forgiving of others’ mis-steps and mistakes.
• How there can be physical aspects of connection (being physically relaxed; having a physical feeling of connection) and other more intellectual, philosophical aspects of connection (thinking about how we are all humans; being generous and giving, etc.)
• How our political polarization, the us vs them dynamic, can make us pessimistic about connecting with others.
• How it’s important to focus on our desire to connect and taking small steps and not feeling like there’s any one right way to connect better.
• How therapists may rely on being in touch with their patients’ moods to get a sense of emotionally important content.
• How there is value to connecting well even to people we dislike, or think are horrible.

Related resources and links:

• Publishers Weekly review of Missing Each Other
• A podcast interview of Ted and Ashley about the book
• Zach’s piece on how social media may be amplifying polarization and extreme thinking

In this episode of the People Who Read People podcast, I interview Brandon Singer, aka Nocturnal (his Twitch, his Twitter) about reading opponent behavior in the video game Apex Legends. We discuss: getting reads of how experienced players are, how much predicting behavior plays a role, how much tilt and mental considerations play a role. We also talk about the financial aspects of being a pro gamer: what revenue streams are there, how hard is it these days to get sponsorships, and more.

Podcast links:

• Apple Podcasts (embedded below)
• Spotify

Related resources and links:

• Post I put on Reddit Apex Legends group asking about role of reading behavior
• Liquid’s post welcoming Nocturnal to their team
• Washington Post article about covid and gaming, where Nocturnal gets quoted.

A talk with experienced tennis player and coach Carlos Goffi about the role that psychology and reading opponent behavior and mood can play in tennis. To learn more about Carlos, visit his site. He’s been coaching for more than 30 years, and has coached John McEnroe and John’s brother Patrick McEnroe, amongst many others. He’s maybe most well known for his best-selling tennis book Tournament Tough, which he co-authored with John McEnroe. During our talk about the role of reading behavior, we discuss Andre Agassi’s claim to have a very reliable tell on Boris Becker: that he could predict Becker’s serve direction based on how Becker’s tongue was sticking out.

A transcript is below. 

Podcast links:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts (embedded below)
• Spotify

Other topics discussed include:

This is the first of two talks with James Mitchell, a retired police captain who worked in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and who happens to be politically liberal. We talk about excessive force by police in the United States, with the goal of understanding some of the factors that can lead to unjustified and too-aggressive police responses. (Here’s part 2.)

Topics discussed include: what he would do if he were put in charge of a federal department given the task of solving this issue; the wisdom of “abolish the police” and “defund the police”-type slogans and beliefs; George Floyd’s death and how Chauvin and his fellow cops handled that situation; how our mental health issues relate to police violence issues; how cops can escalate a situation whether they mean to or not, and more (below).

A transcript is below. 

Podcast links:

• YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

Other topics discussed include: