The overconfidence that many of us have when we put ourselves or walk a mile in other people's

shoes or assume that we understand them actually flies in the face of that true connection.

It's a false sense of connection.

It's a false sense almost of superiority that this other person can't possibly understand

me.

I'm too complex.

I'm too subtle.

There's too much going on inside me,

but that other person, very easy to understand. We're just projecting. You're projecting the

post-it stamp understanding you have on an enormous world and universe within somebody else and going,

well, of course I get it. I would go as far as to say, it's a soft form of dehumanization.

Welcome back, everybody. I'm your host, Greg McKeown.

And I'm here with somebody I've invited very particularly with intention, a godfather of modern empathy,

someone who in rapid speed has gone deeper and more precise about empathy, about connection,

what connects us, why we can't connect anymore, what we can do to connect better.

He also is a professor of psychology at Stanford University.

He directs the Stanford Social Neuroscience Laboratory.

So whereas in, maybe the rest of us are guessing at what works and what doesn't,

in interaction with people in relationships.

Professor Zach is out there really trying to get it precise so that we can learn, let's say,

on the cheap, how to avoid some of the blunders that we unintentionally make in our insecure overachiever ways.

He spent his career in that world, but puts out there that he also has a past life as a frustrated novelist.

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