Hi everyone, I'm Nicolai Tangen, the CEO

of the Norwegian Wealth Fund, and today

I'm in really good company with Susan

Cain.

>> [music]

>> Now, Susan is the author who gave the

world of introverts a voice because her

book Quiet spent 8 years on the

bestseller list, and her TED Talk has

been watched by millions and millions of

people.

She changed how millions of us think

about personality, leadership, and

creativity, and Susan, warm welcome.

>> Thank you so much, Nicolai. It is such a

pleasure to be here with you.

>> Um Susan, I'd love to start with AI

because the world is changing. Is it

changing the relationship between

introverts and extroverts?

>> It's very interesting with these

technologies in general. Uh I often feel

that they're

they often at the beginning um offer

more promise for introverts to have

multiple ways of communicating beyond

the conventional ones of being always in

person, always on, always activated. Um

and then uh somehow they they end up

often becoming

uh additional platforms for

self-presentation because that's so

prevalent in our culture. So, I I

actually with AI I'm adopting a bit of a

wait-and-see attitude.

>> Yeah. Um there is a new expression uh

which I heard which is the kind of the

high agency people.

People who kind of really leverage the

technology to make them even louder, and

I'm just wondering whether that's

one of those things, you know, which

amplifies

the extroverts even more. What do you

think?

>> Well, not necessarily. I mean, from the

dawn of the uh internet, there's

actually been this kind of concept of

the People call it sometimes the online

extrovert, the in-person I'm sorry,

yeah, online extrovert, in-person

introvert. And introverts are just as

high agency as extroverts in terms of

having goals that they're excited about,

projects that they want to accomplish,

um and being uh having high agency

in the service of those goals that they

care about. And in fact, I would say um

what is singular about introverts or

what distinguishes them is that uh they

tend to focus on one or two or three

goals in their lives. They tend to focus

on people in their lives that they

really care about. Um if they're

committed to a given company or to

leading a company, they're like really

really really committed. And so, um so

their high agency in that sense, and in

that sense uh being able to mobilize AI

towards those highly directed goals can

be incredibly amplifying and powerful.

>> So, who do you think are going to be

more robot-proof

in the future?

>> I don't know that that

that it's going to be introverts or

extroverts are more robot-proof.

Uh what I would say is that the most

robot-proof people are going to be the

ones who

care very deeply about maintaining human

authenticity. Um

we we as human beings we're

evolutionarily

designed to pick up a thousand

unconscious cues from the people around

us. And so so we take in information

from the people around us without even

quite knowing that that's what we're

doing, which is how we can often tell

that somebody is speaking the truth

versus telling us the lie. You know, you

just get some kind of a six a sixth

sense about that. So, when we talk about

introverts and extroverts, I don't know

that there's a difference there.

However,

there's this category of person that I

talk about a lot in my work. Um it's

category called the highly sensitive

person, and it describes about 15 to 20%

of the population. Many of these people

are introverts, although some of them

a few of them are or

who just like a lot of alone time. But

anyway, highly sensitive people uh

by their nature

react more to everything in their

environments, both the positive and the

negative. So, they see a a beautiful

sunset or a beautiful spreadsheet or

whatever it is, and they're very excited

about it, and it's incredibly meaningful

to them. Um

by the same token, when there's, let's

say,

a conflict or an upset in their personal

life, they they might feel that more

acutely as well.

Highly sensitive people

care a lot about authenticity. Before

authenticity was ever a word that people

were using hundreds of times per day, um

this is the way highly sensitive people

live and breathe. And so, for that

category of people, I believe there's

going to be a huge advantage, if if

that's even the right word, um

in the age of AI, because they are the

ones who are going to be resistant to

letting the machines take over their

self-expression and their leadership and

and their means of connecting with

people.

And, you know, I as we all know, I

that's going to be the big commodity in

in the

next decade is actually being oneself

and connecting human to human.

>> It's interesting when you say highly

sensitive people, of course, there are

some

immediate characters to come to mind of

my friends and so on. You What

characterize these people?

>> Um

well, I mean, we could start with uh

with what's happening neurobiologically

um for these people, and that is that

they have nervous systems that react

more intensely to all different forms of

stimulation. So, if you think of people

you know in your life who um

react more to a noisy environment, like

there's a lot of noise, and they it just

really bothers them, that kind of thing.

And by the same token, they react more

to beauty. Um

what's happening is that

their nervous system is much more

stimulated by those incoming inputs.

Um

and what they often have in common as a

result of that is a deep appreciation of

excellence,

um a commitment to having beautiful

environments or to making beautiful

things or products or whatever it is,

um and to having authentic personal

relationships because their very nervous

systems will react more um in the

presence of inauthenticity.

And so yeah, I I I I do think that once

you become attuned to the presence of

this 20% of the population, you you do

see them everywhere and you become

it

Yeah, one starts to notice them. And

I think the beauty of all of this kind

of work about personality and

temperament is you quickly start to

realize that the world really could not

exist without all these different kinds

of people. Like you you couldn't have an

organization that was made up entirely

of highly sensitive people.

Uh

but you also couldn't have an

organization without them. There There

There would be uh a core essence missing

there.

>> Is um social media making us all

less sensitive um

less social?

>> In a sense, yes, because what it is

doing and it wasn't like this at the

beginning. You know, at the beginning of

the internet or even at the beginning of

social media,

um

I think there was a desire to use it to

connect, right? Like people would get on

Facebook and they would use that to

connect with their oldest friends or

stay in touch with people, whatever it

was. And And there's still that aspect

to it.

But in in In the years to come,

uh social media has just become an

amplification of our already overloaded

culture of self-presentation.

Um so like one of the things I I

researched

in my book is uh

about the way that we moved in the 19th

or really at the turn of the 20th

century from what cultural historians

call a culture of character to a culture

of personality.

So in the culture of character,

this

was in the time when we tended to be

living in smaller communities with

people who we knew intimately. And if if

you were living alongside your and

working alongside your neighbors,

what really matters is inner worth.

Um you know, character. Like are are you

going to do the right thing in a

difficult time? Those kinds of

questions. Are you going to be a person

of honor and a person of integrity? And

if you look at the the self-help manuals

even from that era,

they were teaching people how to have

more integrity.

Then we came to the 20th century

and people started moving out of their

small towns and moving into cities and

um working alongside people they had

never known before and having job

interviews and sales presentations. And

suddenly what started to matter was

how magnetic are you? How charismatic

are you? How do you present yourself?

And so that's when we came into this era

of the culture of personality.

And so to so to answer your question,

right now in the 21st century with with

social media

and

though at first it seemed like it was

going to return us to an age of

heightened connection with people we

knew and love,

um

it has become an ampli-

amplified platform for self-presentation

and for the for just presenting

ourselves as as a package as opposed to

what we truly are.

>> How do you see differences between the

various geographies in the world when it

comes to this?

>> Oh, well, that's very interesting

actually because there there really are

um

great cultural differences in terms of

how we view introversion and

extroversion as personality traits.

Um so, you will not be shocked to know,

for example, that the United States is

one of the more extroverted cultures in

terms of what it values. Um

if you look at Confucian societies in

particular, you see much more of a

valuing of introversion because

Confucian societies, of course, are

cultures where people um

where there's much more of a focus on

group harmony.

And if you want group harmony, you don't

want

one person standing out too much or

drawing too much attention to

themselves. You want the the strong

functioning of the group. So,

in Confucian societies, for example,

some of the the common aphorisms would

be um

the the the wind howls and the mountain

remains still.

So, quiet is much more of seen as a

source of strength.

Um

>> Susan, how much of this is given from

birth and how much is it because of the

way we are brought up and

you know, encouraged by our parents?

>> It's a good question and of course, we

know by now that everything is a

combination of nature and nurture. Um

but, introversion and extroversion and

also high sensitivity that we were

talking about um

are among the most heritable of all the

personality traits. So, like I was

telling you at the beginning about how

highly sensitive introverts will react

much more to stimulation.

That's something that you can see from

the minute babies are born. Um so so,

scientists have done these fascinating

studies where they'll take newborn

babies and they will follow them over

the course of their lifetime or or for

many years, let's say. And um

they they start with these newborn

babies and they give them sugar water.

And what they see is that the babies

that salivate more in response to the

sugar water, that's an indication of a

nervous system that is reacting more to

all different kinds of stimulation. So

now you take that baby and they're 2

years old and they go into a playgroup

of kids they haven't seen before.

Those are the the the the children who

salivated for the sugar water

are the same ones who are going to be

more quiet in that playgroup because

their nervous systems are sending them

the signal

that there's a lot there's a lot

happening right now. We should pause, we

should check it out and figure out

what's going on here and let's get back

to equilibrium. And as soon as those

kids feel that they're in equilibrium

and they they figured out the

environment, then you'll see they get

comfortable and they start to go and

play.

And this

way of being

can stay with us. It's it's a

temperament. So even though we learn all

kinds of skills and we have all kinds of

experiences as we grow, that temperament

can stay with us.

Um

and and so then you talk about let's say

people in a company who are 40 years old

and now it's time to make a business

decision. Well, if you're the person

who's

uh

whose nervous system tends to tell you

we want to get back to equilibrium here,

you're that you're probably going to be

more attuned to if you're contemplating

a new business deal, let's say, you're

going to be more attuned to um the

potential risks along the way or just

the the the subtleties that are involved

in the business program because you want

to make sure everything's

getting to that equilibrium point. So,

these things affect us in fascinating

ways, and there are aspects

bottom line that we really are born

with. Although, we do, of course,

adapt and change over the course of a

lifetime.

>> Susan, what are the implications for

leadership? How should

introverts and extroverts be led

differently if so if they should?

>> Oh, how should they be led differently?

And we should talk also about the

difference between introverted and

extroverted leaders. Um but, yeah, in

terms of being

led differently, I I

It's really

the idea of leading the actual person as

opposed to just leading

an undifferentiated mass of humans

really applies here, of course, because

um

introverts and extroverts have

incredibly different needs for a perfect

work day.

If you think if if you go back to that

idea of equilibrium, and what is it that

gets each person into a state of

equilibrium? And by the way, so less

less sensitive people um

have nervous systems that react much

less to stimulation. So, for them, the

the downside and the danger is that

they're not having enough stimulation

coming at them, and then they can start

to feel unhappy and bored and sluggish.

So,

we have to take care of that as well.

So, you want to be creating environments

where

each employee can

have access to the proper amount of

stimulation for them so that they could

be spending as much of their time in a

state of equilibrium as possible. So,

this shows up in terms of how do we

design our office space? Um are we

making sure that we have spaces where

there's lots of interaction and

stimulation and noise, um which all of

us, whether introvert or extrovert, we

all want that at some point during the

day.

And then, do we have office places in

the office where people can go to be

quiet and focus and have their heads

down? Um in terms of how do we design

schedules? An introvert will probably

function at their best if they can have

a schedule where they can focus a lot

uninterrupted and get into that state of

flow.

Whereas

extroverted workers will need that some

of the time because all good creative

work needs that, but they're going to

start feeling unhappy if they don't have

enough uh

enough um social interaction during the

day. So,

you know, so thinking about how do you

structure the day? Like, do you want to

maybe have

uh designated zones where there's

uninterrupted flow time, no meetings, um

and then zones where the meetings can

happen.

Um in terms of how do you run those

meetings?

How do you make sure that you're hearing

from everyone? Um there is a study

outside of from the Kellogg School of

Business that found that in your typical

large meeting, you have three people

doing 70% of the talking.

And that is a disaster if you assume

that on average everyone has the same

number of good and bad ideas. And now we

know we're only hearing from

a few of the most vocal or dominant or

senior people, whatever. Um

well, that's

a lot of bad a lot of good ideas we're

not hearing, and there might be an over

weighting of less good ideas.

>> The extrovert and also the most highly

paid.

>> Uh often, often [clears throat] that's

true, which then uh

creates the has the cycle keep on going.

>> So, your So, your perfect day then. So,

you're you I mean, you are you are

self-declared uh introvert, right?

>> Yes, I am.

>> I uh

let's say I am a touch more extrovert

perhaps. So your perfect day, do you

have how does it look?

>> Oh, that's interesting. So um

I need to have social interaction in my

day to look forward to and then I like

to have a lot of

alone time in between. So

every day I try to play tennis and

that's partly social, partly not I guess

you could say.

Um

every day

I absolutely must have my alone time

with my laptop where I'm writing or

otherwise thinking. It's that's

incredibly

important solo sanctuary time for me.

Even when we're on family vacation, I

have to have that time.

Um

and then usually I like well, it

depends. If I'm spending if it's a day

where I have my family around, I don't

really have other social needs.

Um

If my family happens not to be around,

then I have to be scheduling something

at one point or another. And then

there's always business meetings and

podcasts and that kind of thing. But

basically, like I

I schedule my calendar I I can't let my

assistant, even though she's amazing, I

can't have her schedule a calendar for

me because every single day I'm

precisely calibrating it so that I'm

getting exactly the right amount of time

of social time and solitary time. And

and it's so

idiosyncratic that no one else could do

it for me. But I

>> What happens What So what happens now? I

take over your calendar. You know, I'm

going to work for you for a few weeks

now. I'm going to take over your

calendar and we're just going to pack it

full of stuff, you know.

>> Uh-huh.

>> Meeting people, open door policy,

everybody can come and grab you when

they want. There is no tennis, no

nothing. How What would it do to you?

>> Um

I would just start to feel

I probably I I don't know that I'd

really show it, but I would start to

feel overwhelmed

tired of it all

um

probably not focusing quite as well

just a little bit jangled more likely to

burn out

not enjoying the day-by-day I I

as I'm saying it

I'm just talking about myself now the

word that really comes to me is burnout

I would burn out quite quickly

though I'd function in the moment

>> well um

somebody told me that if you if you

pretend to be an extrovert than you are

you burn out straight away and I guess

that's what it is right?

>> yeah but it's a cognitive load

you also you're you're you're not you're

not thinking as well because when you're

when

when you're having to fight against the

way you really prefer to be spending

your time there's a kind of cognitive

load that's involved with that so

literally your brain is just not quite

as fluid as it would be otherwise

>> why do we promote so many extroverts you

know charismatic people to become

leaders?

even even the even then when they're not

you know what first of all why do we do

it and then of course are they are they

actually better or are they actually

worse?

>> well um I think there's two reasons one

of them is you know the very word

charisma uh

means a person who has a kind of magical

quality about them and we all love a

magical quality and it's one of it's a

great gift to have that and people like

to be around it so I mean that's just

one really simple explanation um

but then the other one is this culture

that we live in like that I was talking

about before that since the 20th century

we have lived in this culture of

personality where we're we're taught

from a very early age that

uh what [clears throat] what's most

important is

the

to be the most dominant to talk the most

um there's studies that show that people

will value as more will rate as more

intelligent

someone who speaks more loudly and who

speaks more quickly, and all of these

things.

Um but in terms of the actual outcomes,

what's interesting about it is there's

there are many studies suggesting that

introverted leaders deliver outcomes

that are as strong or in some cases

stronger um than extroverted leaders.

And that's a really interesting

phenomenon, and we could talk about the

reasons why that is, cuz I think there's

a few of them.

Um

One is

so there was a study uh you're probably

familiar with the book Good to Great,

Jim Collins's famous work, and um

in that study he looked at the

top-performing CEOs in the United States

at that time, and there was 11 of them,

and he found that

all 11 of these CEOs were described by

their colleagues

as quiet, unassuming, soft-spoken, shy

people, which is not I I think the what

we expect.

But they were also described as having a

fierce sense of dedication to their

companies and like real commitment and a

real vision for their companies.

And this gets into the the heart

of what introverted people are like,

because I was saying this before,

introverts by nature, we tend to

invest deeply in the subjects that we

really care about and in the people that

we really care about. And if you have

an employee who's incredibly talented

and dedicated in that way,

they can end up becoming incredible

leaders, but they'll often get to that

leadership po- um

point through a different means. It's

It's like they're they're getting there

through their commitment, and they end

up acquiring all this expertise, they

end up building networks with with other

people who share their passion. Um

and and they end up attracting people

around them who also share their sense

of commitment. So, it's a very different

uh route to that leadership position,

but it can be incredibly powerful.

Um

And and they also like once they get to

those leadership positions, they often

have a very different way of

communicating. So, one of my favorite

examples of this is Douglas Conant who

um until not long ago, he was the CEO of

Campbell Soup. Um he is by his own

description a very shy and introverted

person.

And

he and he really cares about people and

you can feel that the minute you meet

him. Like he really cares.

And he

when he was at Campbell, he would

identify who were the employees who were

really contributing to the company.

And he would sit down and write to them

these personal letters of gratitude.

And people would carry those letters

around like it meant so much to them. Um

and he wrote

30,000 of those letters during his 10

years at Campbell. And an extroverted

CEO would would connect in a completely

different way. No more, no less

powerful. It's just different.

So,

so there these alternative routes to

leadership that that we don't think

about. Um

and then there's also a a famous study

by the social scientist Adam Grant at at

Wharton. Um

And he found

this is really fascinating. He found

that

extroverted leaders do produce better

outcomes in situations where

um their employees are not as motivated.

And the extrovert can come in and

deliver a lot of inspiration and

charisma and kind of like get them get

them going.

And the introverted leaders

got delivered better outcomes than the

extroverts when they had proactive

employees. Because in those cases

the introverted leaders were more likely

to listen to what those

um proactive employees had to say. The

proactive employees would share their

ideas and the introverted leader would

would take them in and think about them

and listen to them.

And that would produce better outcomes

in the end.

So, there's all kinds of factors to

leadership that were not

well enough taken into account and as a

result

we're not cultivating for leadership

opportunities many of our most talented

people, which

is a waste and a shame.

>> So, now we are establishing a new

company and it's called Susan Cain

Limited [laughter] and we produce great

stuff and do incredible We just do

incredible things.

Now, you are the CEO. You are now

building up this company, recruiting the

people you want, making the mix of

people you want. Do whatever you want.

Just how do you

how do you go about it? What is the

right mix? Um

you know, who do you recruit? Just how

do you think about all these things?

>> Well, I mean I I assume you're asking

kind of from a temperament point of view

and what I would really want to do is

create it it is hire a mix of people. A

mix of introverts and extroverts. Um we

know that teams who have introverts and

extroverts on them, mixed teams

do the best.

Um because introverts and extroverts

really like each other. Like they like

working with each other. They complement

each other. And you see it in marriages,

too. I mean, I'm married to an extrovert

and that's not an accident. Um

so

that's what I would be looking for in

the hiring and I would also probably be

looking for

a co-CEO or a deputy or something like

that who is more extroverted than I am.

Um

so that there would be

we each get to play to our own strengths

instead of having one person try to do

everything.

Very important.

>> Is home office

good for introverts?

>> To some degree, um but

we all have social needs.

Uh

so

everyone's social needs need to get met

just to differing degrees.

And we all function better with people

who we truly know. So, there's got to be

some way of having that connection. And

it it it I I it's really a question of

degree.

I never

write my books at home ever. I find it

much too isolating. I always go off to

coffee shops to do my writing because I

like to have people around me. So, these

things are not always as um

as predictable as you might think. But

yeah, I I do believe hybrid is the way

to go.

>> Susan, 10 years after you wrote um

Quiet, you wrote another book,

Bittersweet. And um

I I read it as someone where I was uh

you know, quite down and it just

resonated so incredibly with me, you

know.

Um

tell me, what is a bittersweet

personality?

>> It's um

it's a personality that

understands and is aware of the fact

that in our lives and in this world,

there is always a mix of joy and sorrow.

That that's just part of the nature of

being human. And that paradoxically, to

live with that awareness and with an

awareness of mortality and all of it,

leads to a richer form of happiness in

the end. Um because it leads you to

appreciate each moment and and there's

also just a curious

beauty in it all. I mean, you know from

reading the book, I I actually got

started on this quest because I was

curious about why I kept having such an

ecstatic reaction to listening to

minor key sad music. And I would

It didn't make sense. Like this music

that is by by definition sad music, why

would it make me happy? Um but

there is a kind of heightened joy that

comes from

realizing just the fragility of being

human and the fact that all our fellow

humans were equally fragile and there's

a a kind of connection in it all and a

savoring of each moment that comes with

that outlook on the world.

>> You are critical to what to what some

people call toxic positivity.

What is that?

>> Well, it's

uh

the insistence, the unspoken insistence

that people show up every day at work or

anywhere really um

with a relentlessly

happy uh

presentation.

I Okay, so I think about this all the

time. I often get called in to do um

Zoom calls where it's like a company or

a group of employees or something and

everyone gets on the Zoom and the person

who's leading it will

ask everyone, you know, tell us in the

chat, what are you

how are you feeling right now?

And everyone types in the chat, I'm

feeling great, I'm feeling excited, I'm

feeling happy.

And like there's no way that's true.

There's no way that all those people are

feeling that way. Um

and yet there's this expectation that

that's what we have to perform for each

other. Now, I'm not saying actually that

we should have workplaces where

people feel the opposite expectation

that they should be disclosing

everything that they feel, the the good,

the bad, the sad, the happy. Um

but when there's the expectation that

you have to kind of pretend to be happy

in a way that you're not, that

that is an unspoken load.

Not only because it takes so much energy

um out of the individual people, but the

real issue is the connections that don't

actually happen um

when we're performing that kind of

positivity. And you know, you know in

the in the book I talk about um a

Harvard Business School study

of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Uh

and this oil rig had an incredibly

masculine culture where you had to

present a very positive face all the

time. And also you had to present that

you always knew what you were doing, you

had no doubts, nothing bothered you.

And

and and and and then what happened was

the um the

the this oil rig was moving to an even

bigger oil rig. It was going to be more

dangerous, more challenging, all

the whole thing.

And the CEO, this guy named Rick Fox,

he

decided he he was he was worried about

this move and about the safety

implications. And he started bringing

all his workers into rooms where they

would

talk to each other from morning until

night. They like holed up together for

like 10 days in a row and really

encouraged each other to share what was

happening in their personal lives, their

family lives to the extent they wanted

to.

And and they developed a completely

new and more open way of connecting with

each other. And as a result, the

accident rates, even once they had moved

to the the more dangerous, bigger oil

rig, the accident rates plummeted and

their productivity went way up. And a

lot of this was just a result of the

guys no longer feeling like they had to

pretend that they knew what what they

were doing when they didn't. Or if they

saw that there was a problem in the

machinery, they would feel comfortable

saying to their co-workers, "There's a

problem here. Uh what should we do about

it?" And these these subtle little

shifts of a culture can make a huge

difference.

>> But positivity, isn't that a good thing?

I mean, positive people are on average

happier, aren't they? They recover

easier from setbacks. They make more

money.

I mean,

how how wrong is it to be positive?

>> I mean,

the point is not so much be positive,

negative. Um it's great whenever

whenever we're feeling positive, it

feels very good. It's it it feels good

to be around positive people. The point

more is to um

be able to be more or less what you

actually are.

>> Is it a choice? Is positivity a choice?

>> There are It's a very good question

because

we definitely, I would say in micro

moments, have the ability to

um do things like fake it until you make

it or to decide I I

um you know, I'm going to put on a smile

and that's actually going to make me

feel better temporarily in the moment. I

I'm not even talking so much about

moment-by-moment choices as I am kind of

a a broader outlook.

>> And it I think it's kind of funny

because every time

every time I'm asked to send pictures to

a US uh you know, whatever it is,

seminar or speaker engagement, I get the

picture back and I'm asked to send a new

one with a big smile on.

>> Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah.

>> I I never smile on pictures cuz I don't

think life is that funny, you know.

>> That's very, very interesting. Yeah, and

interest I was just having um dinner the

other night with uh a couple. The guy is

American and the uh

the the what

gal is from the Czech Republic. And we

were talking about those cultural

differences and how like

you look at pictures of people from the

Czech Republic. Like no one's smiling in

the pictures. So, same thing. And from

the US point of view, that looks so

surprising.

>> Talking about um uh Beatrice Wei, what's

the mistake you have done in your life?

>> The biggest mistake

That's interesting.

Something I ask myself about all the

time is, you know, I wanted to be a

writer from the time I was 4 years old.

But I went to law school and I worked as

a corporate lawyer for about 7 years.

And

there's some ways in which that was a

mistake because I was spending

such a large part of my extremely like

productive like inexhaustible years

doing something that ultimately wasn't

really my calling.

But

I don't know. In the end, I don't

exactly regret it because I feel like

I wouldn't have the outlook that I have

now without having had that experience

in the hardcore business world and

one thing just led to the other. So,

yeah.

>> What are you What are you reading just

now?

>> Um I just finished an incredible novel

called uh

Flashlight by Susan Choi. It's about a

Korean family living in Japan um in the

World War II years. I love learning

about history through reading novels. I

will say by the way, I don't know if

you're noticing this, but I went through

a period of time where I wasn't reading

very many books and I was really worried

about the

the future of books cuz I saw that I

wasn't reading and I like I was always

such a reader all my life and I felt

like, well, if I'm not reading, no one

must be. And all of a sudden in the last

6 months or 12 months

I'm back to books again.

And I think it is a kind of just

reaction, you know, to

to everything being screens. And so, I'm

hoping that I'm a kind of human

barometer here and I'm not the only one.

But how about you? Are you reading books

right now?

>> I'm I'm reading all the time.

Um

I just think it's the most incredible

thing, and that's how I spend my my

holidays. But, I don't finish all the

books. I don't think

I don't think you need to finish books.

I think they really need to deserve to

be finished. And so, I probably finish

um

>> I agree.

>> Yeah, not all of them. That's uh to be

frank.

>> Have you read um Iain McGilchrist? He

wrote The Master and His Emissary.

I

I've been reading a lot of his work

lately, and I think he's fantastic.

He writes about the left and right

hemisphere of the brains. I think you

would like it.

>> I'll put it on I'll put it on my list.

Susan, lastly, what is your um

advice to young people?

>> My advice to young people is

to think about

what did you really love, and who were

you really when you were a child?

Because that gives you the clue to who

you really are.

And you're getting so much pressure in a

thousand different ways, not just about

introversion and extroversion, just a

thousand different things. You're

getting pressure to go in

direction X.

And

if you remember what your childhood self

was, it will tell you what you really

want.

>> That's a beautiful piece of advice, and

it's the first time I've ever heard it

on this podcast. So, big thank you.

>> You're very welcome.

>> Susan, it's been great having you on. Uh

big thank you for all you've done in

terms of increasing our understanding of

this super important uh

topic. I mean, it means life and kind of

life and death to so many people every

day. So,

big thank you.

>> Oh my gosh, big thank you for having me

on [music] and for this podcast. Really

enjoyed it.