#792 Can Personalities Change? - Olga Khazan
Mental Illness Happy Hour
Paul Gilmartin
4.8 • 6.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Olga Khazan is an author and staff writer for The Atlantic. Today she talks about the experiments she undertook to change her own personality traits over the course of a year, which inspired her new book, Me, But Better. She also shares her good and bad experiences with anxiety--and why she has an attachment to the condition.
More about Olga Khazan:
Her Substack writing: https://olgakhazan.substack.com/
Her IG. www.Instagram.com/olganator
Her book/website: www.OlgaKhazan.com
This episode is sponsored Quince. Go to www.Quince.com/mental for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.
This episode is sponsored by Alma. Search their directory of over 20,000 therapists with different specialities, life experiences, and identities, and 99% of them take insurance. Go to www.HelloAlma.com/happyhour
This episode is sponsored by The Jordan Harbinger Show. Learn more about the world, improve your critical thinking skills and be entertained! Listen or subscribe here:
- jordanharbinger.com/subscribe
- Apple Podcasts: jordanharbinger.com/itunes
- Spotify: jordanharbinger.com/spotify
Here are the two episodes Paul recommended.
And
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Episode 791 with my guest Olga Hazan. I'm Paul Gilmartin. You're listening to |
| 0:06.8 | the Mental Illness Happy Hour, a place for honesty about all the battles in our heads, |
| 0:12.0 | from medically diagnosed conditions, past traumas, and sexual dysfunction, to everyday |
| 0:17.6 | compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. |
| 0:23.4 | I'm not a therapist. |
| 0:25.2 | Think of it as a hang where all the misfits from school or work or wherever you didn't fit in. |
| 0:36.9 | I don't want to talk about. |
| 0:38.2 | Let's just, I'm going to get into some surveys. |
| 0:41.6 | This is from the, and apologize for my voice. |
| 0:46.4 | I don't know if this is a cold or if it's a bronchial infection, but it's driving me crazy. |
| 0:53.5 | I can't imagine how crazy it's driving Christina with me coughing in the middle of the night. |
| 0:59.2 | She's got to get up in two hours. |
| 1:03.0 | This is from the struggle in a sentence survey, and this is filled out by a guy who calls |
| 1:08.6 | himself problematic goldfish. And for anybody who's new, surveys are a big |
| 1:13.2 | part of the podcast. We usually do a chunk of surveys. Then we have the interview with our guest |
| 1:19.9 | and then a chunk of the anonymous surveys after the interview. And these are all filled out |
| 1:25.9 | online anonymously by people who go to our website, |
| 1:29.2 | Metelpod.com. There's about a dozen different surveys that you can fill out, |
| 1:35.0 | and they're completely confidential. We don't even get your IP address. |
| 1:42.0 | I've learned so much reading the, I've probably read 15,000 surveys in the 15 years. |
| 1:50.8 | I've been doing the podcast. |
| 1:52.4 | But anyway, as I said, this is from the struggle and a sentence survey filled out by a guy who calls himself problematic goldfish and about his anxiety. |
... |
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