[Music] welcome to ear biscuits the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time I'm Rhett and I'm Jesse you gotta say this week at the round table of dinner I knew you weren pay attention welcome to ear biscuits the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time I'm Rhett and I'm Jesse and this week we are sorry welcome to earbiscuits the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time I'm Rhett and I'm Jesse and today at the round ta
ble of dim lighting well it's really this week but you can say today because technically it is today today at the round table of dim lighting we are going to be talking about personality characteristics that's right we don't have any of those n zero personality less both of us it and it didn't take us uh about 12 minutes of recording to get to this point no that didn't happen and we're not going to show you any of that it's it's a good day it's a good day to be here R um this is the day the Lord
has made it is and we will rejoice let us rejoice and be glad in it an interesting thing happened right first of all Jesse is here because uh link has retired no link is on uh he is on vacation he'll probably talk about this when he comes back is spring break he's on vacation by himself but not the whole time is Lando spring break he and Christy and Lando did some stuff now he's doing some stuff alone that I'm I'm sure he's generating all kinds of great podcast fodder as we speak but uh I thoug
ht you could join me again for the second time and I thought it was a good if when you asked me to come on I was like wait I'm going to get to see you and talk to you in the middle of a work day and I was excited about that but now after the way it started I don't know if started great excited about that it started great and one of the things that happened right before it started was we printed some things out and uh attention got a little bit high is Jesse was trying to send me the thing for me
to print out because my computer is like connected to the network here and the first thing that I ended up printing out she texted me this was not my fault I would like to make texed me a PDF yes I did text you a PDF uh and then I clicked on it to print and all it did was print our text history for the past week and that went out into the bullpen and the very first I'm just going to show you you can see right here purple hearts I don't think you need to read it I think it's good I think the sto
ry is good enough recently recently when Jesse was out of town uh on Monday she texted me I love you oh and then there was a followup text these came in quick succession that was sweet I miss you nice again I want to kiss you oh well and then there was a Jessie there was about an hour and then she said are you there do you like how I wasn't aggressive I didn't say what do you not want to kiss me I just ask if you were there and I said I was in therapy I love and miss and want to kiss you too tha
t was sweet um and then you said how did it go and I said good how how many of these are you going to read and he said that's all I get and I and the reason is I had moved on to something else I don't have that I don't know what anyway that's a little insight into our relationship I don't have anything to say about that um I'm so glad that you're here I like spending time with you uh our son is out of town right now we're like little empty nesters this is what it's going to be like in a few year
s us just doing podcasts well just like last night we went out to eat together we did um and tonight we're going to we've made plans to sit out by the fire and just talk about life for a long time but we're going to do that right now I I didn't want to um tell the story because I think given where we're going to go on this podcast and talking about these personality characteristics I'm refraining from using the term personality test because I know that's a turnoff for a lot of people and I promi
se you that this conversation and the test that we're going to be talking about stands the best chance at being the personality test for people who do not like personality tests and people who do not trust personality tests it's true I am one of the people who implicitly trust I I shouldn't say implicitly trust but I do love personality tests um I've tried them all love them all of course the inag is my favorite even if people do have all kinds of um issues with the inag but I didn't I I thought
let's talk personality test but let's talk about the personality test that is actually scientifically backed data driven so people who uh value that which I'm one of those people um will will will be cool with it there's e evidence-based reasons to believe that anyone can benefit from the conversation we're have but before that um it's been a it's been a while but since you don't come on the podcast very often just my second time this is a fresh story to everyone else and I want to talk a littl
e bit about our Valentine's Day night date our little dinner that dinner date that we went on and um I don't know what the term for this is but you know how sometimes you show up at a restaurant and the seating arrangement is it called French cafe seating where you feel like it's family style well I'm talking about French cafe where there's tables and you're sitting across from each other but you feel like you're closer to the person next to you than the person you're with right you know what I'
m talking about that that is my least favorite seating arrangement I didn't go to the restaurant to meet new people I went to the restaurant to spend time with the person that I went to the restaurant with to have a conversation a conversation with them not to hear the conversation of the people next to me I don't know what it is about French people I've only been to France one time and I don't even know if I'm saying the right thing about French cafe style seating but y'all got to get if if you
're a restaurant tour and you are making your floor plan for how people are going to sit together do not do that crap well you get more people in I mean that is one of the reasons more dissatisfy people they're trying to make a buck which is what restaurants are one of the things restaurants are supposed to do and I know this about you and so every time we go to a restaurant there's I don't love that style of seating either like I would never choose that sty you don't love it don't you hate it t
oo I don't love it well I hate it right I'm aware of that and every time we go to a restaurant I have a like when we walk in there's a little bit of like uhoh are they going to put us at a put us besides like very close to another couple and and is R going to be okay just so you know I'm managing your anxiety when we go to restaurants I'm trying to well this was this restaurant which will remain nameless and also I will never return to again uh maybe just not on Valentine's Day maybe that specif
ically why this was the way it was I didn't like anything about it okay but the main thing I didn't like about it was they didn't just put us at French cafe seting so you got to set it up we walk in we get into the front door the outside was beautiful there was you know a host and Hostess who everybody was dressed up um why are you laughing at that really setting it up I'm trying to yeah everybody was dressed up I'm painting a picture I you know we had dressed up more than normal I think I was w
earing a dress I had on my pink and red suit yes it was Valentine's Day I actually was wearing almost red dress um and we come into the entrance they're leading us to our table you know when they're leading you to your table and you're like okay what table is it going to be what kind of seating as how am I going to feel about this table um and so we go through the front room and I'm like okay they're maybe they're taking us to like a a special table it's in towards the bat it was a special table
all right and as we approach this ta one table I'm like good thing we're not sitting there and then they turn and say you can sit here and here now let me describe this table to you picture of the biggest table that could possibly fit in a restaurant and then when I say like this is a table from like a medieval castle right this giant wooden table that's probably 20 ft long but it's also 8 feet wide like 8 feet across like I could lie on this table and not hang off it was a ridic most tables ar
e about what 30 in across I don't know you're the designer if you're if if I'm sitting on this side the person across from me is going to be around 30 in away this table not at a round table obviously it depends on the size of the table and this is way more than 30 this was this was it felt like the person was in another room yeah you were twice well okay I'm there's people on there was only one couple on the left there was openness on the right which comes into play in a second I was so close t
o this woman that anyone who walked in would assume that she was my date not the woman I'm yelling at I'm like well and it was loud we had to talk about the seating I was like I don't know about this seating arrangement I'm speaking this loud just to have a discussion with you about it we sat down for maybe like 20 seconds we were sitting sitting down for 20 seconds and we were next to a couple that was doing the same thing and I was hearing their conversation because they were also yelling at e
ach other and at this point we had a decision to make and well I don't think I made an executive decision you did make an executive decision that that's the relative uh Point here as it relates to these personality characteristics so what did so what do you how do you remember just was like look we have one opportunity to have Valentine's Day 2024 and I don't want to help this couple solve their relational problems right and I I don't want I want us to talk and this this whole meal I'm going to
be thinking about how annoyed I am with how far you are not and and it was it was dimly lit and so I couldn't even really see you very well I didn't know if it was you or not I was guessing so I got up and I went to the hostess or host and uh said this this seating arrangement isn't going to work for us I don't know how I said it no you no you're you have a way you would never say something like that you you you you probably came in softer than that I don't know what I didn't hear you cuz you we
re too far from me um and also you got up and went to the front I did but whatever you said she kind of got a little bit she had to go check with someone well and she did check with someone and then she came back and said okay and so at that point you came around and got next to me I was hoping she would take us to a different table but she didn't so she basically just said yes it's okay if you want to sit beside each other but that had an incredible effect on what would unfold from that point b
ecause after that the couple next to us saw what we did and they talked to her and then they got next to each other and then every couple that came in sat next to each other we changed the course of so many relationships you changed the course of so many relationships who knows what would have happened if you hadn't stood up and said that right other people could have fallen in love with other couples because they were closer to the other people we could have broken up relationships if you hadn'
t stepped in thanks babes and the ironic thing about this is that based on one of your scores on one of these characteristics you would not expect that you would have been the one to stand up and say something so quickly you would expected that I would have been the one to stand up before you but I didn't and that's interesting MH um and we're going to talk about that personality test these characteristics that everybody has to some degree uh in a second but before we do that I do want to remind
you about something I know I want to remind you about yes please act like you are very impr by this Jesse um beautiful this is the uh epic rap battle collection vinyl which is exclusive to third deegree mythical Society members now this thing you know probably the most popular songs we've ever written and recorded and released on the internet are these Epic Rap Battles nerd versus geek epic rap battle and manliness the original epic rap battle so they're all on here but then uh our longtime uh
friend and music producer for many things mythical throughout the years Mark buers uh actually did 224 remixes of all three so you got side a that's got the original side B that's got the remixes uh again we do a vinyl every single year over there on the society the only way to get it is to be a third degree mythical Society member you should sign up for a monthly membership before April 30th if you want to get this mythical society.com ear biscuits is supported by net Suite here's some quick ma
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financing program head to nets.com nets.com nets.com ear ear biscuit is brought to you by better help you know what it's spring now I'm thinking about getting outside more I'm thinking about being even more social but you know what you kind of got to figure out exactly how social you want to be you got to think about your social battery right because it can be easy to ignore our social battery and spread ourselves thin especially with social Gatherings picking up after the winter therapy can giv
e you the self-awareness to build a social life that doesn't drain your battery now you know we're huge Advocates of therapy here on earbiscuits and we want it to be accessible to everybody so if you're thinking of starting therapy give better help a try it's entirely online designed to be convenient flexible and suited to your schedule just fill out a brief questionnaire to get match with a licensed therapist and switch therapist anytime for no additional charge find your social sweet spot with
better help visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month that's betterhelp hp.com um why do you think that you are so interested in personality tests it's a great question I we were talking about this a little bit yesterday I don't I don't really know exactly why I think I'm fascinated by people there was a time actually where I considered I thought I might go back to school to be a therapist uh but that didn't happen we'll see I mean I guess it could still happen um but I like ta
lking to people I like hearing people's stories I like talking myself which maybe that's not a great idea if you're a therapist um to be a super talkative therapist um but yeah I don't know I think people are like Puzzles um little things to kind of solve which maybe that's not a great way to think about people um but I like knowing what makes people tick well I I think I'm into them I'm not as into them as you are you're not I'm interested in them mhm um and I think that you know obviously we'v
e talked about the indogram quite a bit on this podcast and I know that it's just very polarizing because first of all there's a lot of people who just don't people just hear the name and think it's just like astrology or something you know um and then it's not and but it is a you know it is based on observations about people and I do think that it has some really powerful benefits yeah I mean for me I think it has helped me most just to understand myself parts of myself that I would be kind of
blind to and to understand how I relate to other people and other people why other people relate in the way that they do well to me the thing that's useful about some of these personality tests that are not scientific meaning that they don't really they're a framework right it's a framework to kind of understand people but the the mistake or the one potential Pitfall of traditional personality tests like the inogram uh Myers Briggs um strength finder is that it puts you as an individual into a c
ategory it gives you a number and then you start thinking I am that number or I am this this collection of four uh you know letters that represent these things and it can begin to I don't know you can take it a little too personally you can shape things a little too much but there is one personality test that scientists have observed is it's essentially a measurement of five different personality characteristics or attributes that everyone has to some degree like if you were to take any one of t
hese characteristics there would be a bell curve there would be a distribution of the population and what it does is through a series of questions it places you on that bell curve for each one of these personality characteristics so you kind of see how you compare to the average in this one area and then what your score in that area might suggest like what kind of observations have been made about people because there's been all these meta analysis and um you know all all these studies observati
onal studies that have been done based on all this data that's been collected where people are like oh if you score high in this it actually correlates to this thing scientifically so we're going to talk about uh well we we both took the test at Truity truity.com not a sponsor but they have like every one of the personality tests and if you you want your full report you have to pay for it um so that's up to you there might be a place to take this there's lots of places I've taken it multiple pla
ces um there are lots of places you can take it for free of course I wanted to get the most information I could um about it so you know I did pay for the full report I'm sorry to admit um but yeah I think it's interesting like scientist these this idea of traits um these person ity traits that are present across the board and people has scientists have been looking at that since like I think it was the 1940s that it start they started kind of it's been a long time and then in the 80s they really
kind of drilled down and realize that even across cultures these five personality traits seem to be enduring so why don't you tell us about the five uh traits I will tell yall and you know I'm just going to read straight from my report because I can't say it better than they did um so there's two different uh acronyms that you can use to remember the five traits either Ocean or canoe whichever you prefer I'm going to go with ocean because that's yep that's the order that I got that's the order
that uh Truity puts it in okay so the first one is openness um openness describes an individual's tendency to think complex abstract ways so people high in openness are abstract thinkers um but people who are lower in openness are going to be more concrete thinkers MH um all right next we have got conscientiousness conscientiousness that's that's a little tough to say conscientiousness well you did it thanks this one is the one that's a little misleading because you might think you know what it
means but the way that they're talking about it it means something a little more specific yeah I definitely was surprised by their definition of conscientiousness and each each category there are really subcategories that they use to come to um that are underneath this overarching main category so there'll be a few different traits that go into the overall trait of conscientiousness um and that's just the a person's tendency to be persistent and determined in achieving their goals so so these pe
ople tend to work hard to put their plans into action you know they're not going to be procrastinators um people who don't have this quality might tend to get distracted easily okay uh the next one is extraversion this is what you think it is yes it well I think it's a little bit more complex than that because it's not just are you energized by people um I think yes that's part of it but it's also like your energy level um which is something I don't think about a lot but that does make sense tha
t introverts tend to have tend to sometimes be lower in energy be calmer uh not lower in energy not being a negative thing but they just present as a more calm reserved person than somebody who is extroverted and and wanting to meet people and talk to people yep social butterfly versus Wallflower that's right uh the next one is agreeableness uh so agreeableness describes an individual's Tendencies to put the needs of others ahead of their own needs sometimes they may say that altruism uh self-sa
crifice is being helpful accommodating sympathetic so empathy is a big part of of uh agreeableness okay um and the final one is going to be neuroticism uh neuroticism I like how you're saying it's going to be cuz that's how have you noticed um have you noticed that's what waiters do now uh if you go to a nice restaurant they tell you that it's like I say tell me about the um tell me about the mahi mahi and they say well that's going to be a SE they do because you're not eating the mahi mahi yet
but you put somebody somewhere came up with that's what y'all should do you don't have to tell me it's going to be I know that I'm about to eat it and first of all depending on what you say I might not eat it did I offend you by saying that the fifth one is going to be neuroticism I'm sorry the fifth one is present tense neuroticism we keep do and linkx not here uh he's the one who likes to make a big deal about which camera we look into you're doing the same thing that I do which is I often loo
k at this camera for emphasis when but at some point during right after the intro we start talking to these cameras and so I'm reminding myself so if you want to say something like the fifth you look at that camera is no you don't need to look at the camera I'm just saying if you say something for uh emphasis also talk to your microphone we're going have to put a gar Brook's mic on this girl so she can just stick with her the fifth trait too too close neuroticism which neither of us have you wan
t to hear what what neuroticism is what it is yeah uh it can be thought of as the alarm system of the brain um it's it's negative emotions your your response to stress so throughout the day how many negative emotions do you feel if something stressful happens how do you deal with that anxiety depression anger yes yeah people low in neuroticism resist stress they tend not to experience many negative emotions okay so let's get into some of our scores uh we're going to talk about our scores we're g
oing to kind of go through uh maybe where we're the same where we're different and then uh one of the most interesting things we're going to do is talk about these very specific observations that have been made from people who score really high in this area oh it turns out that there this is tends to be true about them which is kind of fascinating and again this is a measurement of you against the average to sort of on a bell curve right so like around 50 would be kind of in the middle it's not
low 50 is average yeah well and they kind of give you the specific average score that score kind of changes over time because as you'll see like some averages are 58 some are 55 you know some are 51 but anyway let's start with openness because this is we're a bit of an outlier both of us my score on the openness scale isn't 98 what is yours 98 oh look at that Jesse so I think it could potentially be a hundred maybe I don't know maybe I was a on one test I took I was a 100 but that seems ridiculo
us I'm clearly not 100% open so I went with the 98 um we are you know there's good and here's the thing there's there's good and there's bad in each one of these things course well and that is you know these well yes you can make extrapolations these are not supposed to be positive and negative there's not like a value judgment this isn't a score and I have to remind myself of that as a competitive person it's like I got a 98 on the first one not necessarily a good thing but uh if you want to ch
aracterize it in a way that sounds positive uh people who are high in openness are comfortable with abstract ideas they enjoy talking and thinking about theories and Concepts even if the concepts are unproven m um now when I think that this wouldn't this is not surprising to either one of us that we scored high in the openness category yes uh it's about the networking of the brain and how connected ideas are and you know this is something very uh interesting as it relates to ADHD um which I defi
nitely have my therapist has said I absolutely have it am not medicated for it you do not have it um but I have described you know a lot of times people will talk about brains like this that are more like spaghetti because uh every idea is connected to another idea um and that's why sometimes you might I might have trouble telling a story because like like this this is not really about ADHD openness has nothing to do is not about ADHD but in my mind they're connected wow well my the way that I r
elate to this is that one of the things that openness sort of represents is this tendency to accept a new idea yeah and kind of and so i' I've noticed this um this tendency in in in myself that when I read a book like a non-fiction book that's about something and author has a certain perspective the way that I explore that perspective is while I'm reading the book for all intents and purposes I just just adopt the perspective like I don't approach this case that this person is making for this th
ing even if it's something that I initially disagree with right I um like for instance I'm reading a book about the the the resurrection of Jesus Christ which I do not you are that's surprising which which I do not I I do not believe happened right right um and I'm pretty I have pretty strong convictions about that however the guy writing the book because I like to read people who think differently does believe it happened and so as I'm reading it I am giving him all the benefit of the doubt and
I'm like my mind becomes a person who believes in the resurrection while I'm reading the book like I don't I've just noticed and I'm not trying to do that it's not an intentional thing it's just something about my brain is I don't when you give me a new idea I don't immediately become skeptical and try to take it down I'm sort of like all right let's see where you're going with this um and then that doesn't mean that at the end of the book I will I'll kind of come out of it and then be like oka
y what do I actually think about this but I'm just saying the way new ideas go into my brain is that there's a receptivity to them yeah and you can see how that could be to your detriment at the same time right it's it's interesting there's a benefit to it but there could be a detriment to it at the same time yeah you don't approach the world with skepticism which is absolutely I'm the same in that like skepticism or suspicion um and so whether it's reading a book whether it's thinking about a n
ew idea this trait is also really related to creativity and um I think a an ability for art and music writing that kind of thing to really affect you I think one of the questions on one of the many tests that I took was how do you feel when you go into a museum and you look at a piece of art uh so yeah it is I think it is an openness to to new ideas and openness to original thought not having to follow a tradition is can be kind of connected to this um yeah I'm trying to think of of I think for
me I am working on being more suspicious um because it can be dangerous it can lead to tr trusting people like I I tend to have this like somebody comes in and they're a little bit weird or something and it's just interesting to me rather then like the the alarms go off right Y and so you can be taken advantage of yeah in that way yes like people who have or highend openness probably wouldn't be good at um securing a movie theater so that all of the exits are in the right place in case something
bad happen happened you know what I mean people who are low in in openness are more likely to be concerned about what could go wrong and this is probably why it's good that I'm not an engineer right so I I tend to be um it's weird because I've got there is some like there's a lot of systematic thinking and which we'll get to in a second but like I think that you want your you want the person building your bridge out of concrete to have concrete thinking true you know not to be not to be too ope
n I'm not trying to make a uh architectural statement with this bridge as much as I'm trying to make sure you know there has to be people who are there there's the artistic side there's the the designer side and then there's the engineer side to make that bridge serve Humanity well right well we're going to come back to how those really really high scores in openness with some other things they might mean so let's just let's kind of get through our scores that one we spent a lot of time on just
because our scores were so high but uh tell me about your conscientiousness score so this one hurt me a little bit it like hurt my heart okay because I tend to think of myself as a conscientious person like I care about what how my actions affect other people but that's not really what this is a measure of it's not it's not um so I was 44 in conscientiousness so I was below below average oh and I didn't say with the the average of uh openness is 58 okay so the average average of conscientiousnes
s uh across everyone who's ever been analyzed 55 and you're what 44 okay and I'm a 62 and a half so this is like moderate we're both kind of moderate like does it call yours moderate because it says I know I think it calls me low in conscientiousness yeah my I'm moderate in conscientiousness and this is uh related to your prefrontal Vex or your PFC as uh we like to say um what's your impulse control do you have good impulse control so like the test what was the the the gummy bear Eminem test wha
t was the piece of candy when you just sit a kid in a room with a piece of candy whatever um that would be related to conscientiousness can you look forward and plan for something way down the road can you uh choose to not engage in things that do not move you towards that final goal and this is you know I think that you thought that I might score higher on this than I did um I was really doing my best to be honest in the answers and not to try to like shape you know like what I wanted the resul
ts to be um and I think that the reality of is that I I feel like there are two people inside of me there's one very driven very systematic really cares about order and like I'm super driven you know and people who are ambition is one of these things so I have this like high level of ambition I'm very driven self-motivated but then I'm also easily distracted and if I were to say that if I were to say that I wasn't e easily distracted I would be lying so I think that I'll sit down to work on some
thing and to write something and then I kind of just find myself all of a sudden and again I realized that that's could be like a symptom of of some sort of ADHD or whatever you don't think that I have that I think I I don't know I've never been diagnosed um I'm able to usually get back to to the task at hand but I get I I do get kind of bored with kind of zeroing in on one thing and I get my interest takes me to a different place and so my conscience can only I also cannot say the word can only
be so high because of that tendency to kind of get distracted and also this is like people who are super organized I I'm not I'll make a lot of lists and if you ask me to like come up with an outline for something or come up with a strategy for something I'll spend a lot of time coming up with really really developed strategy for things I can do that kind of thing but if you ask me to organize a drawer it's the I hate it it's I so and I think you're the same way I don't I actually I don't mind
organizing a drawer I think I am very easily distracted I I don't think my ambition is low and I think most of my most people who know me would consider me Dependable but I do think like I can I can be disorganized it's not something I'm interested in like where did that receipt go I have no idea and that's one of the reasons that when I started my business I knew the first thing I had to do was hire somebody who could help me out with administrative stuff which that that's why you know I hired
Lindsay if something is important to me I will be Dependable I will be determined but I think things that in my heart I haven't like really committed to it's a little bit harder for me to make them happen yeah okay let's get to one that we have a pretty Stark difference in extra version mine's really low right mine is a 44 uh the average is a 51 yeah I think that's something that people are usually surprised about surprised about you by um because of your GMM Persona um is gregarious is boistero
us does seem to be extroverted uh but in reality interpersonally you tend to be more reserved MH and you know I have met definitely met comedians who as soon as you meet them they're cracking jokes and you can't get a sentence out without them saying something funny which can be good or bad and and that is not how how I interact socially I I don't I've thought a lot about this well first of all what's your score my score is 92 oh dang girl dang it I'm not surprised so I've thought a lot about th
is tendency and this is this makes this test kind of difficult for me because it's do you like being the center of attention is like one of the qu there was a question that kind of got at that and this is so this is such a complex question to me because um professionally yes and socially no like I don't like like if I go to a party like I kind of Fade Into the background a little bit I'm not I don't try to be the life of the party I am not the life of the party but I am drawing attention to myse
lf for a living I don't have a problem with getting up in front of a large crowd and trying be funny and I don't have a like you know obviously link and I have done that together for a really long time but I don't have a problem with doing that by myself like right I I love doing it with link I love doing it by myself whatever um and it was funny the way you described it when we were talking about this on our walk the other night you were like you like being the center of attention on your own t
erms and that's true that was insightful of me um like if you give me a second to like if it's one of those things where even if it's something as simple as it's Thanksgiving Day and and everybody's like we're going to go around and everyone say what they're thankful for it's like I tense up a I mean I think the average person probably tenses up a little bit I you me who can get up in front of a couple thousand people and be funny and not have a care in the world get nervous about saying what I'
m thankful for in front of 12 people on Thanksgiving I don't I'm still trying to get to the bottom of what what that is um but interesting because it feels like it's not like well I you know somebody else came up with this idea and I'm having to respond to it and I'm having to say something in this moment versus I'm going off into a corner and writing this routine and like having this idea of what I'm doing I love giving a speech you know because I can like plan it and and I can I know like you'
re supposed to be paying attention to me right now I'm not vying for your attention when I have to VI for attention there's something that breaks down funny because I wouldn't think of it as vying for attention as much as I would more of an interpersonal nature to that like if you're standing in a small group you're kind of welcoming feedback um you're looking directly at facial expressions not that you're not doing that I guess from stage but it does feel much more interpersonal um in a small g
roup than it does if you're performing less performative and more inter personal but you I think there's a big one of the things that illustrates the Stark difference here is the way we interact with an Uber driver okay so if I'm you about to throw me under the Uber no and it it can be a wonderful thing um I uh I do not like to talk to the Uber driver you know if they start talking to me I'm like I'm I'm nice I I'm not an to them but I kind of don't want and I know you can like set that conversa
tional preference but because I'm a people pleaser I don't set the conversational preference like I I don't say no conversation because I think maybe I'll get a bad rating and I'm always competing so then I just don't talk but you Jesse you make like a lifetime connection with somebody like we know everything about this person and they know a lot about you by the time we get to wherever we're going not always but I would say most of the time I think there's some it's just like if there's a perso
n a whole ass human being sitting there driving the car that I'm putting my body into then it seems like I should acknowledge them and interact with them and and that there might be something like ultimately selfish about that maybe they don't want to be interacted with no I think I mean in my experience they do they love you and and if if we're at a party of people that we don't know and we'll often not you know we'll not stay together the whole time we're at a party right and um I will see tha
t you're talking to somebody and I'll go up and and like I feel like I've only been away from you for like 8 minutes and the thing that you were talking about when I get to this conversation is like she's already talking about that she's already talking about her you know deconstruction or what you know which something kind of heavy or the person and more often than not is like open this is why you could have been and maybe should have been and maybe will be at some point a therapist because the
se people just open up to you and just and talking about I'm like wow y'all already talking about that and I'm getting caught up and then she's like I already told her that I already told her that she already knows about your story and I'm like well first of all play it a little closer to the CH best baby I don't know if we should trust this person but that combination of openness and extroversion means that you go for it in those conversations yeah and you know that again not always healthy lik
e clearly I you can't trust everybody you can't everybody doesn't need to know your life story and one thing I really am trying to be like you you and I are um in some ways so entangled is not the right word and in mesed is also not the right word connected I'm fine with that I'm fine with being IM mesed with you um that you know I I think I pretty much know what I can share and what I can't share but like even with our kids I'm trying to really really be very careful about okay is this yours to
share and I think I'm I do um keep confidences and that kind of thing but just in general I'm trying to like why do I need I've talked about this in therapy why do I need to immediately start sharing my life story with somebody like what what is that about is that a need for affirmation is that I need like what am I looking for there and maybe it's just a really desperate need for connection I don't know I feel very connected I think I have a rich uh life in terms of friendships and connection
and that kind of thing but I do I do I do like to connect you do and you know what it's I feel like I benefit from this oh quite a bit I I've been in you know I benefit from I benefit from your extroversion and I benefit from Link's extraversion as well like in Social settings and I take and I take full advantage of those things it's like well I don't want to start a conversation but they will so I just kind of come up and join and then decide if I want to leave it's quite I have quite a system
um so yeah I mean like just recently I saw link was talking to quo uh at a at a an event and I was like well I'll go up and see what he talking to quo about and literally as I arrived at the conversation he was like so what kind of pillow do you use and quo looked at him like who is this gu no but then he he he answered right or no he basically said whatever pillow is there the same answer that I have and Link was like well I travel with my own pillow it's a cylindrical pillow that's got buckwee
d in that doesn't sound like link well that's what he's sounded like to quo Trust anyway uh but again I'm not going to go up to quo I because I don't like I don't know what to say like hey like I don't like like what do you you also don't you don't want to be an imposition what do you say to I don't know how to start a conversation with somebody it it definitely isn't he hey that sometimes that's the only thing I can think of I know you can go up with a question but again I don't I haven't had t
o develop the skill because the people that I am closest with in all my social situations are always there to start conversations well maybe the next party we go to I should purposefully on my own shut my mouth no I'll just be walking out to people saying hey hey now once the conversation gets going I'm good yeah you are you know what I'm saying you are it's like I can have a conversation with anybody I'm interested in a lot of things I know a little bit about a lot of things I don't know a lot
about many things but I know a little bit about a lot of things enough to have a good conversation and but that initial sort of like the social awkwardness or whatever so I appreciate that I mean that is it's I don't when I'm doing that I don't ever feel rarely do I feel super confident in that moment but it's just kind of like if I want to talk to this person this intro part is something I got to get through so I just kind of well you do a good job of it okay let's let's move on because there's
so many things to talk about about these correlations but let's get through these last two okay uh agreeableness again so this is basically um how is this described again it's an individual's need to put the Tendencies of others ahead of their the tendency to put the needs of others ahead of themselves okay um the average of this is 63 so most people are pretty high in agreeableness I'm a 54 explains a lot I am considered low and agreeableness no I was actually shocked by you being lower in agr
eeableness because I think of you as an agreeable person I don't I don't feel like if I come up with an idea or I'm like hey let's go do this tonight usually your first response is going to be okay that sounds good I don't I don't experience you as somebody who is constantly looking for an opportunity to disagree well let's hear what are you I am an 85 yeah that's high that's high and okay so I don't know how again I this is I'm trying to look at some of this information here it's like agreeable
ness is very closely related to empathy yeah or the ability to understand and feel another person's emotions uh highly agree people highly agree people are highly empathetic which you're highly empathetic um and I have to focus on empathy to be empathetic and I think there's there's you know there is a um this is one of those things where I feel like I've got two people in me I've got this person that is kind of prioritizing themselves in their own needs and like the things that I have to do lik
e one of the questions in it was do you often stop what you're doing to help other people and I think I put a slight disagreement with that because I'm just trying to be as honest as I can be and that's the kind of thing that like if a friend comes to me and is like I have this need I do drop everything SE I help in whatever way I can and I kind of put that into action but like if they don't come to me and I just know about something that somebody's going through but they haven't asked me my ten
dency to focus on my own stuff sort of prevails and I think that's one of the reasons why I got kind of a low score here and also you know I'm sort of at this point publicly known as the guy who rejected the religion of his Youth and talked about it on the internet which is not a particularly agreeable thing to do now you also you also do that I do that and I have it's funny because I think there have been moments in my life I mean I one that I thought of when I was very uh when I was the opposi
te of agreeable which is kind of a this is some personal lore of mine do we have time for me to tell this yeah baby um was my between my I guess between my junior sophomore and junior year uh there was a some program they do this in North Carolina I don't know if they do it in other states I'm sure there's something similar called Governor school and so you had to audition to get into this program and it was kind of like a mini college experience so you go in a specific area mine was like uh Cor
al performance so uh I was with about 50 other kids in choir for the summer but then you take classes in philosophy and uh a few other things so our one of the songs that our choir was supposed to sing was Imagine by John lennen and I felt which it's a great song Can't I mean can't we all agree it says imagine there's no Heaven it does it says imagine there's no Heaven it's easy if you try no hell below below us above us only Sky um you know and I felt like if I were to get up there and sing thi
s so interesting that I would be basically lying about what I actually believed which was there is a heaven and there is a hell and I don't want to imagine right so I got up in front of the 50 students in my choir and gave an impassioned speech about how I could not deny My Savior by singing imagine and looking back I mean I'm embarrassed but well I'm Al that was who I was you stood up for what you believed in I did I did and so there is while I am 85% agreeable sometimes I will strongly disagre
e if I feel like it is a counter to who I am and I so yeah actually and we didn't end up myself and a group of other kids sat out of imagine yes and it was a huge thing they wrote an article in the governor School paper about it well mission accomplished took a stand for the Lord and you got notice for it but I think that to me I think about agreeableness is more on the interpersonal level less than the like going to take a stand based on principles because you've always been a very principled p
erson okay uh very Justice oriented person um and so I think that sometimes your sort of moral compass and your Justice meter are so active that you end up being I'm going to make myself uncomfortable and I'm going to make these people feel uncomfortable but when it comes to the way you interact with individuals like you you you are so conscious of other people's needs and their comfort that that's why you score high in this area and that's why I don't score very high because like I have to be k
ind of told you know I I feel like not that I don't have the ability to recognize someone's needs but there's a part of me that's sort of like well just tell me until you tell me I'm just going to assume you're all right uh which is wrong um but anyway now let's move to the last one because again like I said there's these correlations that they've observed about these things that are even more interesting than everything we're talking about right now um neuroticism the average is 54 so um which
makes sense I'm a 50 so slightly below average M what you what are you I scored 33 wow yeah I was actually shocked by that um maybe it's because I'm medicated maybe the Zoloft is doing some heavy lifting on that 33 um but it is it's there's neurotic people are susceptible to anxiety depression anger and other negative emotions when subjected to stressful conditions um and something you know with my I don't I don't know if I guess there wouldn't have been a time when I would have talked about it
you wrote a song about OCD um and some people got mad at you but your wife you've you've dealt with OCD you got the views a lot so you know if anybody knows about dealing with uh and you know what you're really good at dealing with OCD I I I like you actually helped me a lot by being funny about it by not taking anything I said seriously I mean I think the last thing an OCD person wants is for you to actually believe all their compulsions and obsessions and to tell them that they've got a good p
oint right I mean maybe they think they want that but ultimately that's not what's best for them so anyway yeah I guess I I don't I don't think I struggle with negative emotions as much I definitely have them um but I can often kind of talk myself out of it which can be can means that I need to make sure I am actually feeling my feelings I I to me this is a testimony to a combination of therapy and medication being very beneficial to youh yeah I mean I know that you're a strong proponent of both
of those things for people who legitimately need them and you know and the net result is your neuroticism is lower than mine um this is one of those things where as I recently said on the podcast I I'm getting more in touch with my anxiety um but at the same time you know I'm stable I am resilient I have a lot of self-confidence I'm optimistic I'm not a pessimistic person in fact my optimism is often what is the way that I internally answer the anxiety um and so I think that that like again it'
s these two ve feel like very strong forces like my anxiety in certain situations feels very strong but my sort of optimism and self-confidence and resilience feels very strong at the same time and I think the net result is is you end up somewhere in the middle yeah something that I thought was really interesting on uh one of the podcasts that I listen to that I'll wreck at the end about the big five is that lots of people I think 70% of people don't like one of their scores don't are are ashame
d it's like yeah I'm I'm a little bit ashamed of my conscientiousness score um but does that mean okay you're stuck with this this is who you are for ever and the the good news is that you can change your scores if there is and this involves I mean if you were going to do it really aggressively I think it would be type of like cognitive behavioral therapy uh but even making small decisions to do something that is different than what you would normally do can change so even as you're dealing with
your anxiety I think recognizing your anxiety seeing it for what it is uh and then deciding you know what what am I going to do what's my answer to that anxiety extrav version isn't like at at the next party that's a big one yeah maybe I should make you go up to people if you want to but maybe you're happy with your extra version score no I'd like to be better at it um okay let's talk about some of these observations that have been made uh um just start with a weird one um a preference for bitt
er tastes uh this is people with high openness an interesting and somewhat unexpected correlation has been found between High openness and a preference for bitter taste including black coffee and dark chocolate wow um the preference contrast with more universally pable taste and might reflect a broader openness to wide variety of sensory experiences I love black licorice you do I do I love um you know people know the weird stuff that that I like things that taste weird and taste challenging is t
he way that I would describe them or challenging unusual taste like olives is not really that challenging unless you're link um but there's a lot of people who don't like it right because it's it's only thing that tastes it's the only thing that tastes like that and I think that this must be it just totally tracks M and you don't like black licorice but you like basically everything I do now I mean another interesting thing I've said interesting fascinating yes thing is that uh you can with age
a lot of these typic a lot of these characteristics typically shift in people so I think people uh become more conscientious it's like and that is just brain science like your prefrontal cortex comes online uh as you age people become more conscientious I think uh people become less open so I do feel like I have become more open to different tastes I actually crave different tastes now I kind of like oh get sick of the same taste um so yeah um cryptocurrency investment some research suggest that
people high in openness may be more inclined to invest in [Music] cryptocurrencies uh their attraction to novel and Innovative Financial products can be seen as an extension of their General openness um well their openness to new ideas and Technologies despite the risks so this is this is pretty funny because I don't uh thankfully at this point I'm not very like day-to-day involved when it comes to my finances right um but when everybody started talking about crypto a couple years ago I felt th
is compulsion to be like I need to understand this and if I and I need to get in on this and because that is on me to do and the people and like the you know the people who help me with my finances are like really fiscally conservative people who like when I asked them a question about it they were like you know we may invest in some uh cryptocurrency um technologies that help you know on the investment side but in terms of just buying individual different cryptocurrencies like if you want to do
that that's something you need to do on your own and because for for my own sanity and also because of the things I want to actually spend my time on that is a big barrier for me to be like I'm going to be on my phone on some app or whatever but I did figure it out but I figured it out so late that it was like one month before it all the bottom completely fell out so it didn't go well for me but that was that was yeah there it's funny because I don't I think it's good to know these things about
yourself because it's just like a new shiny idea like okay AI starts getting pretty scary and everybody starts talking about it and then immediately I have this tendency to want to well where can I use this in my life what do I need to do about this like I just have a receptivity to it is my first instinct versus a skepticism and a sort of an alienation um but this also relates to uh values and beliefs which this might explain one particular event in our lives um individuals with high levels of
openness often hold unconventional beliefs and values they might be more questioning of traditional norms and more receptive to new and diverse ideologies this can extend to religion politics and personal values so again the way that I often like retrospectively tell the story of my deconstruction and deconversion uh is that like okay it was and I and I don't try to over I try not to oversimplify it but it was like it's characterized by primarily a search for the truth and the discovery of you
think's not being true which I still believe to be mostly the case but I also am more willing to admit that like our brains are limited in their capacity to determine truth you know but I can definitely see that like this tendency to be open like I was obviously open to the idea that what we had sort of gone so hard at for so long and given ourselves so fully to might be wrong yeah I mean I think it explains a lot of the cognitive dissonance I felt uh as I would lay in bed from a very early age
trying to wrap my head around the problem of evil or how God could send most of the world to hell um and I knew what I had to believe what I was supposed to believe and I kept trying to make myself believe it and I think I I had convinced myself that I did believe it um but in the same way looking back again hindsight is 2020 but looking back in the same way that my OCD always felt like it was almost something outside of me didn't really feel like me it was like a a voice that I had to listen to
even though it didn't feel like it was authentically me I think some of those uh the more stringent or more uh the ultra traditional conservative aspects of our faith caused me a lot of Anguish mental anguish because that's not how I was not I did not come into the world wired to look at the world that way right so there are personality types personality type personality types that gravitate towards systematic sort of traditional systems that are unchanging right one of the things that makes re
ligion traditional religion what it is is this this idea that God has settled all these issues right there's no new information right it was all revealed through Jesus Through the Bible if you're a Christian and we that we need to keep going back to those traditional ideas and those the things that God revealed versus a tendency to want to believe that there is there in there's information and truth that's yet to be revealed there's sort of a Evolution that is happening and we're headed towards
some new future and it's funny because my personality was always was thinking that however it was happening very much like in the context of just within the church and so it would be like I think that's why I got so into this idea of relational evangelism in the late 90s and then decided to go into doing this full-time and teaching people about it right because relational evangelism or friendship evang ISM the idea that you actually become connected to people versus like create a series of publi
c events or go out on the street corner and tell people about Jesus or go on a college campus and argue with people in The Brickyard um I hated that type of evangelism it seemed confrontational and that felt like a new idea right when like a speaker would talk about it at Christmas conference I was like or had a new book I'd be like oh this is I like this this is a new idea those new ideas lived within the context of this sort of unchanging religion but eventually that tendency to want there to
be something new kind of just like the system couldn't hold anymore if that makes sense um okay this is a funny one an intriguing study found that people who are more conscientious and open to experiences tend to walk faster now walking speed is a point of contention in our relationship why don't you to tell us your perspective on that Jesse well why don't you tell the people how tall you are r that might help I know you've never you've never mentioned that before it's actually 66 and 3/4 it's l
isted 67 some places 66 2 me how tall how tall is the wife that you love and married the Bri the wife of your youth your bride who's sitting across besid you she's not very tall mhm I'd say 53 mhm 53 five in between 53 and 5'4 oh what's say 54 okay 54 it's better to my point for me to be 53 okay so inherently in our Heights there's going to be a difference in how fast we walk because your legs are longer and you can cover more ground even though for somebody who loves science you refuse to admit
that truth um I I don't know what the studies show about tallness and and speed of walking but I tend to think that a lot of tall guys while they are tall they sort of move like gentle Giants and so it all comes out in the wash like I think if you go to an airport and you just independently observe people walking I don't think all the tall people will be walking faster I just don't believe it no but they are covering I understand they have the capacity to go faster but think about it the fat fa
stest people in the world you go to like the 100 meter dash it's not a bunch of 6' s people maybe it should be I mean Usain Bol was actually really tall for a sprinter so anyway you can see this is a point of contention because I walk faster than my wife and I it's not my height it's the fact that we're both open to experiences but I'm a little bit more conscientious than you well win that's congratulations you get the fast Walker prize I think that there should be what we should do is we should
start our own test and it's just the walking speed test and all you got to do is you just press a button on your phone and then you walk and then it tells you how fast you're walking and then where you land in the average and I know that you're like in the like single digits I don't okay if I go to the airport with link he's walking faster than me I like if I have to keep up like I have to keep up with him he I feel like I'm kind of ambling and I'm like oh he's really he's going for it and so I
like try to catch up with him if I go to the airport with you I feel like I have to stop Look Backwards I sometime sometimes I have to walk backwards what kind of shoes are you wearing because I'm not always while I'm not wearing like stilettos I'm not always wearing shoes that are conducive to fast Pace walking yeah I agree with that but sometimes you're in your tennis shoes and you're going slow well I'm just saying now we know why I'm right yes and if I could just be more agreeable it's beca
use you're more neurotic is that right I'll be more I'll be more agreeable and empathetic and just walk slower I guess I like that which I have been doing I don't like leave you I've never left you I mean sometimes I forget that you're there and I and I don't look back and then you're gone but that's very rare I would say 70% of the time you walk ahead of me and you know what I prot you I I realized you are like preparing the way who knows what we're going to run into you don't know that you're
doing it and I'm a b man I'm like a shield and that is something that I have I have decided is not the hill I want to die on in our relationship okay maybe we should get a harness that connects us side by side we'll sell that on our walking speed web listen don't make a promise you can't keep well we do that all the time we also make a we make websites we have to buy that's why I'm not coming up with a do com don't do it because we have to buy it um this is interesting this can to be our last li
ttle thing okay and then we'll go on about our day pet preference um study shows that dog people are about 15% more extroverted and 133% more agreeable than cat people so you are extremely high in both of these and you are a really really big dog person I am I am I I love the little doggies I love my little Barbara and Sean and EV and other people's dogs as well I love your dog but this is this is the problem I am low on extroversion and low on agreeableness which means that scientifically speak
ing I'm a cat person I'm actually supposed to be a cat person this is this is like Paradigm shifting groundbreaking stuff you're gonna have to sit with that but I'm kind I'm I'm allergic I can't sit with a cat I'm allergic to it that's true maybe we need more cat art in our house or maybe you need we need to visit a cat cafe well here's the thing I'm not as against cats as my internet Persona would have you believe right I also don't like beans as much as my internet Persona would have you belie
ve I really like beans you like beans I really I like beans a lot more than the average person but you would think that there's always a bean in my mouth based on the way that people talk about it there's there's always beans in your house there's not a bean in my mouth right and I don't really hate cats I just prefer dogs because I like because I'm I have pets not for them I have pets for me right I have pets for what they do for me emotionally but you were all about those kittens when we were
in North Carolina and we went to that sofa store and kittens not sofa manufacturer and they happened to have a stray cat who had had a a uh little what's a litter thank you yeah are just trash I'm kidding I love k I love kittens I love kittens the delayed response I love kittens yeah they had a litter of kittens and you were picking up those kittens I made gentle giant that you were I made an overture is that the right word uh I extended an olive branch to a cat in our neighborhood and then he d
ied well he went missing we don't know if he died he became a meal for a coyote that little orange cat that would come out he would greet us and I would pet him I love that cat so I think that maybe that's maybe that's where I'm heading maybe I'm heading to be a person that can start conversations I'm heading to be a person who walks slowly has a cat but the the allergy thing is a is a real problem though it is it is yeah you can't there's nothing you can do about that it's not like an intense a
llergy well our son has an intense cat allergy he does so there you go you're off the hook babes okay and I'm I'm headed towards being a person who is uh more organized who plans ahead who is super super driven and like you said that is one of the things that um has been observed about all of these traits is that you can change them it takes intention yeah uh so answering you know going to one of these sites taking the Big Five personality test being as honest as you can and then taking a look a
t the scores it just lets you I think anything that gives you this sort of sense of who you are and who you are in comparison to other people not to like compete but to kind of know like from a self-awareness standpoint like this is how I show up for people I may not realize that this is how I'm showing growing up for people uh for me I would have always said to you probably up until my like late 20s that I was extroverted because I was kind of like always like signing up for stuff and I I I'll
lead this or I'll do that and without any hesitation but I wasn't really stopping to think about the way I actually was interacting with people socially um so you you can learn stuff about yourself and then you can make you can have an intention to change it if you so choose do you have a wreck for us oh yeah the podcast that uh one of the podcasts I listened to uh that was one of the initial reasons I wanted to talk about this today it was science versus they have an episode on uh personality t
est but they focus on the big five a lot and there's lots of they they're always great about citing their sources is that the one where they talk about like the origin of Myers Briggs and how it's not scientific and like how it they came up with it I think they they talk about some of the uh frustrations people have or reasons that some of these other personality tests are not as scientifically rigorous or scientifically rigorous at all as the big five that was a great podcast in general it is a
bout any subject that you might be interested in they probably have talked about it well thank you for joining me Jess thanks for inviting me R I like being this close to you and not having to shout at you across the table Yeah but but next time let's do it without microphones no we're going to get you a Garth Brooks mic so you can do whatever you want you can go wherever you want uh thanks for listening um remember we want you to be a part of the conversation you can call us at 1888 earpod one
and we appreciate it if you enjoy this podcast it helps a lot if you go and rate it and review it wherever you listen to this podcast well we'll talk to you next week hey R and Link uh new fan here somebody really great uh turned me on to you guys and I listen to you every single day the good thing about being a late to the game fan is that I've got like years and years of content to get caught up on and I just love it
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