 Hello Olga, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your book. Absolutely, yeah thanks so much for having me. Yeah I had actually I hadn't heard of anything of your work and I just see this book weird and I'm like I've been kind of weird my whole life so I'll check this out. So Ken for those who haven't had the the pleasure of checking out your book yet can you kind of discuss like what inspired you to write this book because you write all the time what made you say this deserves a book. Yeah so I think I kind of like I started working on this in 2015 and I had sort of been thinking a lot about my own identity and where some of my neuroses come from and I mean honestly like a lot of them come from the fact that I was the only Russian Jew in my town that I grew up in in West Texas and in general I was sort of always like the kind of outcast sort of kid kind of until college basically and but I didn't really feel like that unique of an experience honestly to write a whole like memoir but I've always been interested in this question of identity and like people who kind of fight against the odds and people who decide to do something kind of unexpected so I ended up interviewing several dozen other people who are kind of different from everyone else around them so they might be like the only person of their gender in their field or the only person of their religion living in their town so people like that or like political affiliation that was one too where like they there's just no one else no one else like them around and sort of how do they deal with that kind of I guess like now we call it othering but I didn't it was that term othering wasn't really around as much when I first started working on this. Yeah yeah no it was it was great that was one of the things I loved about your book I love when you're able like you you intertwine like your personal story you know and then you know the interviews but also like a lot of psychology and research and I'm a big like psychology nerd so like fantastic like it was really great and and yeah like so when when you were growing up as an immigrant in in Texas and being you know just feeling kind of not a part of what was what was something that was like keeping you together was it like just like were you really like tight with like your family like did you just kind of isolate and be alone or like how how did you navigate those waters you talk about a little bit of the book but for anybody yeah I wouldn't say that I was like very tight with my family um I was like really a loner like I spent a ton of time alone um I would say like one thing that really helped is journalism actually so I um I started doing journalism really early on I took my first journalism class um when I was 11 um and then I got really into it I did like high school newspaper I was editor of my high school newspaper I went to journalism camp um I um for the true nerds I did like journalism competitions on the weekends wait hold on what is the journalism competition what is that a journalism competition um so you uh go with these other kids who are like hopeless nerds toward the end it was just me like the other kids were like I'm not doing this um and so and then you'd like drive or are driven in my case around to different towns in Texas to compete against other kids in writing uh news articles um and so you're given like a list of facts and like quotes so sort of like what you would get from reporting and then they're like okay write this into a news article uh or write this into an editorial or whatever um and so and then you would have like 45 minutes to write an article and then like whoever article was judged the best like one that's that's awesome I never heard of that and now look at you you're like writing you know books in that the Atlantic and all sorts of stuff it paid off it's all from the journalism camp no I don't know maybe play a role um but yeah but like so there's like some uh interesting research that like a lot of times um people uh who are kind of uh different in whatever ways are drawn to being kind of on on the outside and so journalism like it's very observatory like you're basically never participating um like you're kind of always like watching what's happening so like someone's doing something and you're like writing down what they're doing is sort of like the most classic form of it and um I found that to be like very therapeutic and like sometimes um and I've heard this from other people like other journalists in particular like they're kind of drawn to journalism because they like kind of feel like they can't participate or they can't be a part of regular society so like the easiest thing for them to do is to like step back and to describe what they see and that's like actually more calming or like more like a mode that they can work in and it's um it's shown to have like some psychological benefits too like this kind of yeah kind of like looking at your own life from like an outside perspective is um can be therapeutic yeah and I remember you discussing that in in the book too and it's it's interesting like it wasn't until I think last year where I read uh Susan Cain's book quiet on like introverts and stuff and I was like oh and like I was like okay this is making sense like I can have conversations like this but in social situations I'm awkward and nervous and all this other kind of stuff and I remember you talked about like kind of observing and writing and you know that and I'm like yeah like that's my thing I've always kind of like watched people and all this and like so I'm curious like doing your research writing this book or even growing up or even you personally right like do you do you see this like being more of a tendency of like feeling weird like for like introverted people rather than extroverted people like I see you on Twitter and stuff and like very active but our online personalities can be much different than in person yeah I mean I would say like my Twitter is like very curated still I mean like I occasionally like get vulnerable but like it's still like a very very like a very small slice of like the number of things I think in a day so I think that's true of like most online personas I would say most of the people that I talked to are I want to say yeah they're maybe introverted there's like a couple people like I talked to one person who was a mayor and she seemed pretty extroverted but most of the people had like introvert tendencies were kind of like writerly or like kind of like I don't know about this people like who yeah we're sort of had that kind of same personality but I didn't go looking for introverts necessarily that wasn't like what am I criteria yeah just kind of something catch along the way and something something I think about whenever I think you know just anything about this conversation about weird right because as I sort of get older I started looking around and I'm just like what what is weird because in order to be weird you know it's relative like what's normal like and I don't remember but I don't think there's something you like kind of dived into like in it in the book but like what do you what would you say is is normal like this is a conversation I recently had with my son like what's after after writing an entire book on what's of like to be weird like what's normal yeah um so it kind of depends on your situation I'm sorry I know it's probably not what you wanted to hear it's like a problem with like interviewing any kind of person with any involvement in the sciences is like we need more data so it yeah it depends on the situation so there's um there's this um kind of concept that I write about called tightness and looseness um so tightness basically means that like everyone is kind of the same so if you think about like the military right you all dress the same you have the same haircut like you all like do the same things at the same time it's a very tight culture so um so what what that means is that it's very difficult to be different in that environment so um what you saw with like so for example don't ask don't tell and gay people in the military and trans people in the military is that um trying to be different which I would say like even though there's a ton of gay people obviously in society like it was still pretty unusual to be gay in the military um that was like something that was seen as like really strange or like oh I don't know about this or like we need to have a congressional hearing and like is this going to be okay like because it's a very tight culture everyone's doing the same thing to do something different was seen as like not very accepted um and this isn't I mean the military is an extreme example but you have examples of that um in you know different types of offices so like law firms I've heard from a lot of people tend to be very tight um and so people kind of all wear suits and they all like send emails that are phrased a certain way and like there's a certain expectation of everyone to behave in a in a specific manner um so you kind of usually know when you're in an environment like that like you tend to like start filtering yourself a lot more and start only presenting a certain side of yourself you know um you know and on the opposite spectrum we have um Burning Man or like you know or like I live in Las Vegas so yeah we got crazy stuff yeah okay so Vegas is a perfect example it's very loose right um very few rules for like exactly what you should be doing at any time like in general like there's a greater number of things that are allowed um and people you know it's not that hard to be different or I mean it could still be hard but it's it's not as like oh my god I'm a shock to the system here because it's Vegas and like you know there's going to be someone walking around with like no pants on and like tail feathers or whatever like you know this is true you know it's like it's like there's always going to be someone weirder than you so um yeah so that's kind of like kind of how it breaks down hands yeah so yeah that's it's interesting because it seems like it's relative to what the you know cultural norms are for that specific area but I'm not sure if like the part where you grew up in Texas because when you were talking about that I think about like religious areas of of the country right like I've grown up like I grew up in California and then Las Vegas and pretty like liberal loose you know areas but then you know what's normal here if I went to like the south not so normal so do you notice that like just from city to city and you know even as you've grown older and traveled and and stuff like that yeah yeah for sure so where I grew up in Texas it's west Texas um so it's not Austin um so everyone's like um when they hear from Texas they're like oh Austin um Austin's very loose right like the phrase Austin is like keep Austin weird um and so yeah and it's a big college town like a lot of like different kinds of people living there big kind of melting pot of different ideas um uh Midland where I'm from is not like that it's an oil town it's very religious um it's very segregated um uh and yeah I mean I found it to be very culturally tight um like it was it was very um yeah I mean like the expectation was that you are a Christian and that um you know that like it was like being an immigrant required some explanation like yeah I mean people weren't like rude but it was just like what who are you what are you doing here kind of thing like um so yeah and I and like it's interesting because I thought that that was just like something I noticed because I'm Russian um but later I remember I was living in LA and I had this um Jewish friend who was like I'm Jewish so I can say this I guess like he was like or he considered himself to be like visibly Jewish like I don't know how to say that like he would that's how he would self describe um and so um he always hated going to Texas because he felt like people always would like ask him about his ethnicity or his faith or like kind of treatment or in a way where it was like the most like typical thing you know ever in Los Angeles but you know he like really didn't like that feeling of being in a state where people like would identify him as Jewish and be like why are you Jewish or like you know like ask him questions about it he really didn't like that um so it can still happen even if you're not like an immigrant or don't have a strange name or something like that yeah no I absolutely I I can somewhat relate to that because I you know what I have to like say it or nobody realizes I'm half black but I look white as hell right so like it's depending on where I am like like because my dad raised me you know my black dad and like I'm a little white dude right and like depending on where we were there'd be strange looks or in other places where it's like more like you know there's interracial couples and things like that you know what I mean so it really depends on where you are and feeling weird but that kind of transitions perfectly into what I wanted to talk about next is like like when you're talking about going to an area where people are asking you things or perceiving you as different one of your early chapters you talk about like the exclusion in the sting right so can you kind of explain like you you touch on it in the book the evolutionary psychology behind this how like it hurts and there's research around like when we feel excluded or not a part of can you kind of explain like what's going on with us when we feel like an outcast yeah so it's like um it's it's obviously like very painful to feel like you're not included um and I think that uh sometimes people who are um adults or like not kids anymore they kind of try to push past that feeling like they kind of say like oh yeah like it doesn't feel good to not be included but like it's not a big deal I'm an adult I have like my own friends in my own life um but actually there's like interesting studies suggesting that um that adults even psychology researchers even psychology researchers who um know that they're being studied um actually really really don't like being excluded um so hang on with that I'm trying to pull up this exact um study because I want to be sure that I that I read it right and uh yes okay um so so um this one group of researchers in Ohio um did this experiment where they all um would like single out one of them in their circle to like ostracize for a day so that and they said they would put like a little o for ostracize above their door for that day maybe like okay you're the you're the guy we're like gonna ostracize today so they all knew about it they were totally in on the experiment and they like so they were like oh we feel like nothing's gonna happen because we're like all adults here and we know that we're doing this um but then like they kept like little journals and like their journals are just like very um sad like they're just like um uh uh no matter how much I know why they're ostracizing me there's a part of me that wonders if it isn't something else yeah like despite knowing the reasons behind it um you know uh we we questioned each other's motives had difficulties carrying out our day-to-day duties felt disengaged um they were like frustrated um some of them started to like like make weird jokes or just like try to get the other people's attention just like so they could have some yeah like kind of like any kind of interaction um so it can be really hard to um feel like you're not connected to your colleagues or your friends or or whoever else um even if like you're an adult and you're like past this yeah um so I don't know I thought that was like a good demonstration of that yeah no it's crazy I was just reading a book like uh a lot of people know about uh the cyber ball study right where like the two computer or the computer's like passing the ball and then stopped passing it to the person and they like hooked them up I I believe it was uh brain scans and even when they knew even when they knew when they said hey these computers are gonna stop passing it to you they still is still triggered that response of like hey I don't I don't like this and it's interesting it's so interesting like one of the things I hate about being like a psychology nerd is that I I have this better understanding of human behavior but it still bugs me like you were just mentioning like with those psychological researchers like they knew they knew what was going on they knew what was going on the research but like our our like the way we evolved is so strong it's like I don't care if you're self aware of this it's it's still gonna happen so this is something I think about a lot like through writing this book and all your research and all this has it like dampened any of this at all for you like if if your co-workers or someone doesn't get back to an email or do you still go through all like those like rapid fire thoughts of like cognitive distortions and stuff oh man that's a really good question like did writing this book fix me um I wish that it you know I definitely wish that like oh yeah like I learned all these tricks and now I'm completely better um I would say like I I did get marginally better like I would say like learning some of this stuff and like you know reminding myself of it occasionally and like you know especially when things when I like really get into an anxiety spiral if I'm like okay well like you learned about this like this is you know your black and white thinking right now or like whatever um like you know it can be really helpful but like the problem is that like a lot of you know a lot of these responses are like so ingrained and like evolutionary like you said and you know it's sort of like this is how you know our ancestors got you know avoided like being eaten by the lions or whatever like it's it's hard to just like override that with an Malcolm Gladwell book or whatever like yeah you know like it's you can try and like you know you I do try and it's it's helpful to know the tricks but like it's it's not something that completely goes away I would say here's a question I have for you uh with the stories you cover I've only recently got into your articles but I don't know if you've ever touched on like a hot button issue have you ever gotten like a bunch of anonymous strangers coming at you and that kind of you know pushback has made you feel that kind of same way and I'm asking because I I have my own experience with that as a content creator online and I'm curious if if you've even seen that online yeah so um this used to really actually this is a really good example because it's something that I totally through habituation have like come to terms with so I I used to get really really really freaked out when I would get a lot of negative feedback like especially the first few articles that I wrote like years and years and years ago I remember I wrote this one um article about how expensive housing was in DC and I this is just something like as a young journalist I like didn't foresee really like I focus my article a lot on like these like really desirable areas of DC to live in for young professionals like this sort of like these trendy neighborhoods and like how people couldn't afford houses but I like I to the like detractors credit and did not did not write about like the areas of DC that were still affordable and that like people like didn't want to live in because of like perceived like high crime or whatever um and so um I so people did write in like it was it was for the Washington Post so it's like a really big outlet and um you know I got a ton of feedback and it was all really really mean because they thought you know they don't see me as like this young reporter who's just trying and like learning they see it as like the Washington Post says that like no one cares about this neighbor um and you know yeah people were like a very very mean and I like I think I like cried at my desk because I was like oh my god like I didn't mean to hurt their feelings like you know people are like attacking me and like um and and yeah that really I felt like such a bad journalist and like I just I was like I let these people down and like I let my boss down and um I felt horrible and you know I mean part of it over time like I just learned to be like a better reporter like so I probably wouldn't make that same mistake again like kind of in my reporting um but also you just get used I mean it sounds bad but like people are always gonna be mad like right yeah you know there's always gonna be someone who's like I didn't like the way you wrote this or I would have written it differently or I would have included this or that and it's like yeah I mean okay like please don't like call me something anti-Semitic because of that but like yeah exactly but that's fine you know we'll agree yeah it's it's something that you know I had to do and you know my situation uh you know because I a couple years ago I was blowing up on YouTube a bunch of people got mad at just thousands of strangers but there's that self-doubt and like you know even like when you're writing or creating or whatever it is start to doubt yourself and like am I dumb am I terrible am I in the wrong thing they're like you know what I mean and all we could do is kind of learn and grow from it you know what I mean and do our thing but but yeah we're never you know that's something I've learned too we're never gonna please everybody but something I had to learn a long time ago and I saw this every day when I was you know as a recovering addict working in a rehab for a few years like I have to remember it's not always about me right like someone could be just have a terrible day they read something the wrong way and then they go off you want to hear a funny story Olga this for everybody I back in my addiction days I hated the weatherman here in Vegas and I wrote him like a two-page letter about how inaccurate his forecasting was right but a couple years ago if I found out he moved to Sacramento uh where my girlfriends from we're up there and I like wrote him a nice email like you probably don't even remember me he was telling me like he's got like worse emails and stuff but uh but yeah it was just because I was a bad day and I was you know not even in my right mind so that that helps me with my career I try to be like okay this person might be you know struggling yeah yeah but um when it comes when it comes to being weird and different something I had never heard about until your book was optimal distinctiveness theory all right so this is interesting so it's it's kind of I'm paraphrasing here it's like we want to be different but also be accepted can you kind of explain that in a much better way than I just did yeah um so yeah don't you love how like sociologists as a college will come up with a term for everything it's like eating lunch it's like a midday meal like yeah so this is just this is like a pretty um uh it's like an interesting little finding that shows that that people tend to want to be like a little bit weird like people it's sort of like a u-shaped curve where people want to not be so different that like nobody gets it and like nobody like uh you know kind of kind of whatever feel like they're part of the group but they also want to be innovative and not like everyone else so like where we get the term like basic is because basically it's just like too many like white women decided that they like you know pumpkin spice and like fall which are just like nice things that a lot of people like but it's like oh well like now too many people have said they like this now that's basic you know um so you have to come up with like a new thing to like like whatever mocha lattes or you know just and it's it's like interesting that like we tend to want as people to be you know in line with everyone else but then like a slight little twist on you know what's already popular like I like the normal thing except like one little notch to the side so I don't know it's just like a interesting little observation about fashion and culture and such yeah so okay we might we might need to dive deep into this for a second because you might be the perfect person to talk to about this I've been wondering about this forever right so and we see this all the time where people want to be different but they're so different that they become part of a a group right like we saw this during the hipster area era right where they were so different so and just like try to do everything obscure but but you're clearly part of a very large group where you're going to be accepted like did you come across any research that kind of discusses that when they try to go so far that they end up just joining a whole new group um that's yeah that's like an interesting observation that's like unfortunately like when I really tried to get into like like what is weird and what is normal since like so many weird people end up doing the same thing um basically that's what like the conclusion that all the researchers come to also is that like people who try to be like rebels ultimately just end up finding other rebels to be around and then that becomes its own like little subculture that in in many cases like overtakes the um the like original culture right so like hipsters or indie music is like a really good example of that like indie music is some of the most popular music now like like vampire weekend is a is a hugely popular band it is not indie like it is it is just a mainstream band that's in car commercials um and you know because I think like like people who liked that kind of music or who were rebelling against whatever the prevailing like rock at the time was um kind of like got together and they were like well we're not mainstream we're indie uh and you know ultimately that became more popular than being mainstream yeah yeah absolutely it's it's something that I have just thought about like since I was a teenager because here in Las Vegas I actually for the first time we were masked up but I went to a show here in Vegas I love concerts right and and I've just always noticed like you know I have friends who are just like oh I love this obscure band right and even like people make dating decisions off this right like they're like I love this obscure band then they meet someone who loves that obscure band but I'm like when you go to the concert and there's like hundreds of people there it's clearly not that obscure if this many people like it so it's not that weird to meet someone you know I know we want to find people who like are interested stuff but that's always just been really interesting to me because it becomes part of the norm eventually you know yeah yeah nothing will really disabuse you of the idea that you're cool like going to a concert because it's like oh like hundreds of other people just in my town have heard of this I don't know yeah and it's it's weird because we're all dying for social connection so it's like at at some at a certain point we kind of want that and it makes me it makes me think of you know this other kind of social phenomenon I see so like uh one thing I love about your book and we'll dive into a little bit of this like just when you're feeling weird and like how you find support and stuff but some people it feels like they use weirdness as a tool almost to attract attention or I don't know like you know what I mean like for example when I went to a show the other night sometimes it feels like there's a competition to see who can dress the weirdest right or you know whether it's like you know haircut or hair dye or clothes or whatever so have you come across anything where like the weirdness is like kind of an a an attention seeking type behavior because a lot of your book talks about weirdness makes you feel kind of isolated and not a part of but it seems like some people do that to kind of bring attention on themselves yeah um okay I I don't know about weirdness as attention seeking because I think what you're seeing is not weirdness it's a culture it's like it's like the culture of Vegas right like I think like oh yeah what if it's just in my city and I'm just in a weird bubble so so I will I will tell you that like living in DC people do not do that um and instead the pressure is on being as normal as possible like yes it is the pressure is to be as like um mainstream like for DC as as possible like it is it is too like I mean I will tell you okay so for for another thing I'm I'm taking improv classes um nice so I went to my first class last night and um it's in DC and like the people there are are just so nice and so lovely just like DC professionals just like me um and uh like so many of our skits devolved into like policy adjacent or like jokes about politics or like like our big scene was about four seasons total landscape and like like I think that's because like there's this sort of um like I mean I guess we did veer off into like one kind of unexpected tangent toward the end but it's like it's like um it's just like sort of a city that's sort of like people all come here to do politics and people are very politics minded and so like and the nature of politics is to be like um kind of mainstream it's like it's like a mainstream sort of like it's something that regresses toward the mean a lot um and I sort of thought that happening with the people in improv we're like even when we're trying to be crazy we're like I can't imagine something crazier than like a Trump supporter yeah so what about when you were living in you said you mentioned you lived in LA for a little while like did you see a big like contrast or was it kind of like similar because west coast like you get towards the beach and stuff a little bit looser if you will yeah yeah so that was um that was interesting because uh yeah so it was a very loose culture and I actually sometimes felt like I was a little bit lost because I um was used so I went to college in DC so like even even my college like even my like freewheeling college days like kids would wear like suits to class and stuff really um but it's it's um yeah it was interesting uh in LA because I found that like so the DC question is like what do you do for work like that's like the first thing everyone asked and like yeah that's what they want to know about each other so in LA I remember I asked one woman I was like what are you working on and she said I am drawing I am painting pictures of my grandmother with short ribs um coming out of her eyes like lightning bolts that's such an LA response I was like oh like how much money does that bring it like I didn't ask that but I was like I guess she does not want to talk about like market labor she wants to talk about her creative pursuits um so that's like a good example of the cultural difference yeah yeah yeah it's really interesting one of my friends recently moved back to Vegas from Long Beach and that's a whole interesting area right over there um but but yeah so uh as I was mentioning like with your book you talk about you know that kind of loneliness right that we feel like more weird and uh something I I was talking to you about the other day was this social media piece right so like is this um this is a weird question are you you're like in your 20s right I'm in my 30s okay me too all right cool all right so so you you kind of saw like the introduction of the internet and social media and all that and I don't know about you but it was extremely helpful for me to start finding more weird people like me into the same weird like I was building like I'm all over the place still as an adult but I was like building computers and playing video games and stuff like that and you know like the school I went to not everybody was into that so the internet was super helpful but um I sent you this New York Times piece from Jonathan Hyatt and Gene Twengey and it's it's not just them but there's like this kind of like idea that internet's bad social media is bad for our kids and all that but as somebody who's like a mental health advocate and it helped me so much I see all the benefits of social media so like for those of us who feel weird like how do you kind of view the the internet like I see you on Twitter and stuff right so I don't think you're gonna trash it too bad but you know like are there pros and cons balance that we need to find yeah I mean so I'll say that I'm not an expert on child development so I like actually don't feel super equipped to like I would basically just trust any resource development over me yeah I okay I have a few thoughts on social media so first for me I have really enjoyed Twitter like I feel like most of my Twitter followers like are just like kind of like light friends with me like they're not you know they're not like hardcore fans and they're not like maybe some of them are fans but they're also like not like detractors really and so like mostly I'm just talking to like a group of people who like are kind of like yeah that's a good point or like ha ha me too like um so I have found it to be like a fun place to hang out um but I know that that's not been the experience for a lot of reporters especially female reporters um uh and but a lot of the people that I talked to for the book like they they did get a lot of good out of the internet like I talked to some people who were like some of the first people to ever do online dating yeah yeah and like they like people looked at them like they were just like freaks they were like why would you go on the internet to find love like it's like you know in the 90s um and uh and you know they were like yeah like this is what I'm gonna do like we have a connection and um you know so but it's because they were like living in these remote kind of areas where there wasn't a lot of other people and so they kind of had to branch out so I think it can be like a force for finding community especially if you find community with people who share your interests um I think for kids it's tough like at the same time I'm like very glad social media didn't exist when I was in my school um I just don't think that like when you are really young that you have the like emotional maturity or the emotional regulation to understand that like the number of people who like something on instagram is not a good reflection of like your worth or like yeah you know the number of like people that uh you know who are scp to a facebook event does not predict that person's like later happiness like it just it's you kind of when you're a you know teen I think you take things a little too personally and you kind of don't you don't have the frame of reference of knowing like this is not real life this is just like a small little slice of life and yeah so I don't know I I didn't have social media when I was that age and I don't have kids yeah no it's yeah it's weird my my son's 12 and his first year of middle school was in the pandemic so they were doing it from a home but it's it's interesting because he's the opposite of me when I was a kid I was super introverted didn't want to talk but he like introduced himself and talked to people and even with online school he was just trying to you know it was sixth grade middle starting middle school want to meet some new friends and stuff and it was hard for him to find people with similar interests even basic stuff basic boys you know kid stuff like marvel and video games you know what I mean but you know I I see he comes he's able to come home and he has friends who he plays with certain games and stuff so he's able to find you know people who are his type of weird and you know kind of connect and all that but you know I try to teach him to branch out and not just stay in your little bubble so yeah it's weird but I think about how definitely afraid I am for the internet like like especially especially because I was an awful kid at some at some points and the things that would have been like on my Twitter feedback in the day would would haunt me and you wouldn't be allowed to talk to me just nobody would you know so so yeah but I I try to teach him about adapting to all this and and yeah I love that part in the book about online dating because I was I was one of those guys I was like oh cool so I don't have to like go talk to a girl in person I can just kind of you know do this so so it's been helpful for friendships and romantic relationships but what is one of the other studies you talked about was on rejection making people perform better and I have some questions about that can you kind of explain that study or research what what you found with that yeah hang on I'm gonna um I'm gonna pull up that study just because I want to describe it really accurately and I don't want to like misstate anything I absolutely love how you have this stuff like in your mind and ready to go I've interviewed a ton of authors even some journalists and you you are just on it I love it I mean I've talked about this a lot um but um okay so this is this is sort of this study like is sort of like one of the like crux cruxes I don't know if you can have multiple cruxes of uh of my book um and it's basically this paper that found that um okay so this this researcher at Hopkins invited people in to um to do the series of exercises but before they started their exercises she kind of um like rejected some of these participants kind of um she told them like you're not chosen to work as part of the group so it wasn't like too hardcore of an insult but it was sort of like oh you're like over here you know you're not part of us um so she just kind of wanted to make them feel like a little bit left out um and so then they had to do like these like little word exercises like kind of like what's um what's like the similarity between like the words fish mine and rush and that's like gold obviously um so um or like they were they had to draw like aliens from other planets like um uh so it turned out that the people who were told that they're not part of the group were actually better at both things um so they um they were better at the word association task but they were also like their aliens were like more creative like they um they they drew things that like looked actually like they could be from another planet instead of just like the little Martian yeah the basic like yeah exactly um so like so you kind of had this uh this like phenomenon where like once you tell people like you're not part of the group they actually do better um and they perform better um and basically researchers think that this is because um it's sort of like uh kind of like okay you you like don't you're kind of like not trying to please anybody like you're no longer trying to appeal to any kind of societal standard um and like the rules are kind of broken for you so you kind of like you decide okay well whatever I'm just gonna do whatever I want and I'm gonna I'm gonna break the rules even further and sometimes that can mean that you um you can do like even better than than people who are like normal or or mainstream yeah yeah yeah and I think the reason why like that that study stood out to me is because I'm always trying to just like decode myself and like pull out the good stuff and you know teach it to my son or you know I was running a mental health YouTube channel for a while and teach it to others and things like that and it's something that I've I've noticed about myself is you know when when I feel you know reject or whatever I get like motivated right it doesn't like knock me down like you know I I joke oh well half jokingly that one of the reasons I was able to stay sober were people who said I probably couldn't you know just things like that I'm like oh I'll show you but yeah kind of like what you're talking about like once those expectations are gone it's like all right screw it you know now I could do this I can have more freedom to you know so I'm curious if like through you know that study or anything else you've come across like how you know because that kind of conflicts with what we were talking about earlier where there's this like kind of pain and you know it can make you feel anxious or depressed if you get rejected so have you come across anything where like we can like harness that like is there a a trick a tool we can use um so I will say in that study um this was that like um advantage was seen among people who had like an independent self-concept so they already felt like they didn't really belong they're like really independent they like kind of have a really strong sense of themselves already um so I mean yeah unfortunately like I don't know that there's like but if you tell yourself this one thing it'll definitely work yeah but I mean you know like maybe it's okay like if you're if you don't have a lot of friends growing up or if you are kind of introverted to be like hey you know this is just me I'm kind of introverted I spent a lot of time building computers or like doing my own thing and like I am comfortable with that like you're not trying to change yourself maybe you know you're not you're not trying to be someone you're not but you have you develop an independent self-concept and that can kind of shield you from feeling like you're not part of the group later on in life um but yeah it's it's hard to develop an independent self-concept yeah it's it's it's it's weird too because you know like when I talk about like being socially anxious or introverted like it's like this balance of like constantly caring what other people think while also not yeah you know and it's just like weird like this this tug of war you know but it makes sense I hope everybody listening they pay attention and get your book and see all the other studies because yeah like the other things you talk about that are beneficial um like you dive into you know the the benefits of therapy for those of us who who feel weird can you talk I know you share your personal experience and like if you want to talk a little bit about that but like how does how does that help talking with a therapist is people like oh I could just figure this out on my own you know what I mean yeah um so the therapy part really um helped me first with um my social anxiety um so I did it wasn't really therapy so I did like an app um it's called joyable and joyable yeah it doesn't like exist in its original form anymore so just if anyone like watches this but you might not get the same joyable that I did basically um but um it essentially was like this little app that I did little exercises like you know like uh which is where it like taught me about like black and white thinking or another thing yeah um but it also came with this like little helper person who would call me and be like hey are you doing okay like are you like having trouble are you um and so we would talk for like 15 minutes um and my person was just like really great like she she really listened she like was calling it like very opportune times um and uh she would always like so I would tell her like whatever I was struggling with like whatever the problem was and she would kind of be like yeah well it's not like you're really personalizing this I'm like you know that like it's not you know it's not something that you did it's more just something that's the result of a situation and like you know maybe there's nothing that you could have done differently in this case and like um and that doesn't sound that profound um but it was it was like very helpful and I don't know I think to the extent even if even if it's someone who's not I mean I'm not suggesting people go do unlicensed random stuff but like you know she's not a licensed therapist um but she was still helpful to me so yeah there's there's so many there's so many things that are just even if it's not therapy it's therapeutic or whatever like you know uh because especially just with our healthcare system and everything like that like not everybody can go just get therapy right but that's one of the reasons I fell in love with books I'm like there are people there are these therapists psychologists just experts writing books or putting together apps because I I remember that was my favorite part of the book because when people discover like cognitive distortions like wait a second wait a second my brain is kind of twisting situations like because I used to be like that like somebody like wouldn't say hi to me and it would mess with me all day you know and just weird and then I'm like oh oh cognitive distortion is like black and white thinking or catastrophizing and so for everybody who can't afford therapy there are apps there are workbooks there are so many things and you you talk a little bit about changing your personal narrative too what's what's that how how how does that work or help even so this is like um this is based on this kind of this body of evidence that suggests that like we're kind of always telling ourselves stories about how things are going so like um okay let's say you were like um bullied like in school and now you feel like your boss also sometimes is like too hard on you or something you could kind of create a story that's like oh my god I suck like everyone in school thought I sucked and now my boss thinks I suck too and like um I'm you know this is just my life like this is this is how it's gonna be and like um I definitely have fallen prey into some of those stories like I'm not trying to be like holier than now um because I'm definitely not uh but you know there's like another way to tell that story which is just like you know yeah I had a rough time in school because a lot of people have a rough time in school and um you know I learned how to persevere through that and not let you know haters get me down um and now I have like challenging conversations with my manager sometimes and I'm learning to navigate those and that's part of life and like all of those things are making me stronger and like that is still technically true but is like a better story and a more empowering story for yourself than the most negative possible interpretation of what's happening um yeah yeah a few years ago I I came across uh rational emotive behavioral therapy and the guy who created it I think it's Albert Ellis but anyways he wrote a ton of books and a lot of it is like that and like like changing our kind of our stories that we're telling ourselves like for example just with anxiety like this is the worst thing ever I'm gonna die it's like okay this is gonna be pretty bad but not killing me you know what I mean um but yeah I I only got one more question for you Olga and this is what I'm curious about um let's say something happens time machine pops up in your room you go back get to visit younger or Olga who feels weird doing journalism competitions and stuff like that from what you've learned writing this book and researching and all this stuff like what would you what would you say to a younger person who feels weird even if it's younger you oh wow um yeah I didn't weren't ready for that were you that's no I was not ready for that um man um I would just say okay I would tell younger me to read more is that is that um because I feel like I spent so much time um being anxious trying to do things that would make other people like me um trying to like I don't know I like took a bunch of like stupid like time-wasty like retail jobs because I like wanted to buy like nicer clothes so kids would like me um and I feel like I could have just used that time like now I have kind of like you said like I have such a strong connection with other writers just like by reading them like I'm reading this really great book right now that is like I like feel so identified with the author and like I don't know I just feel like if I had maybe uh branched out intellectually instead of trying to like um narrow myself into the definition of what was good in like suburban Texas where I didn't intend to stay for like a minute after I had to um I like I you know I like I don't know why I was trying so hard to like make it there you know I couldn't just been like kind of doing things on my own terms yeah yeah no I absolutely I didn't start reading until my early 30s like I just gave up on books for a long time and and no I agree like just educating myself and learning and just you know all these things and and yeah and like like you were saying like that like what you're talking about that's something that led to my like substance abuse issues was trying to fit in and do things and be a part of and all these other things you know so I can definitely relate to that but yeah Olga just such a fantastic book and it's so awesome that you wrote it so can you let everybody know two things where can they get weird and you're you're constantly writing and working and all over the place so where can people find you to keep up with all the cool stuff you're doing yeah totally um you can buy weird wherever books are sold so at your local bookstore or uh like amazon the big website uh or any other any other website you you'd like um and it's available in kindle audiobook etc um and um my work is all at theatlantic.com um and you should subscribe if you'd like to support uh me and other journalists yeah absolutely and I'll link your social media down there and you'd share out the stuff you're doing and sometimes you even ask like for help and feedback from other people and stuff so I love it but yeah Olga thank you so much I'm so glad that we finally were able to link up and talk about an awesome book this was very fun yeah thank you so much for having me so come back when you write your next book all right okay okay we'll do that right thanks