How To Be a Badass On and Off the Court
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Juliet knows she's one of the best tennis players in her community league, but whenever she gets on the court, she's paralyzed by self-consciousness. Did the crowd notice how bad that shot was? With all eyes on her, Juliet keeps bungling big points and losing matches she should win. On this episode of How To!, new host David Epstein brings on Sian Beilock, president of Barnard College and the author of Choke, to walk us through the science of why sometimes we play our worst when it matters the most. For Juliet to ace her game, Sian says, she needs to practice being self-conscious and then learn to push past it. It's all too common for women to shy away from natural competition for fear of "not being nice," but playing to win doesn't mean you have to be a jerk—advice that applies to Juliet's life off the court as well.
If you liked this episode, check out "How To Perform Under Pressure."
Do you have a seemingly impossible problem? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius. |
| 0:22.6 | Talk about generational talent. |
| 0:23.7 | Coming to headphones near you on |
| 0:25.0 | April 17th with a first guest you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:30.8 | Welcome to how to. I'm Charles Duhigg. And I'm David Epstein. Oh, hey David. How are you? |
| 0:36.6 | Hey, Charles. All right. How are you? |
| 0:38.2 | I'm good. I'm good. What's going on? |
| 0:41.1 | Well, you know, I'm one of your listeners, and I had a question. I was wondering how to take over your podcast. |
| 0:48.0 | I'm glad you're asking that question because we have some big news for all of the how to listeners, which is, I have loved hosting |
| 0:55.8 | this show. It has been such an honor and a privilege to learn from so many experts and to get |
| 1:00.2 | to talk with so many of you, but I have to go write a new book. And so we thought that it was |
| 1:04.7 | time to hand over the show to a new host with new ideas and a new approach, and I could not be more overjoyed to introduce |
| 1:12.6 | you to the new host of how to David Epstein. And David, tell us a little bit about yourself. |
| 1:18.8 | Well, Charles, you know, I think I'm a lot like you in certain ways. I've been a science writer, |
| 1:22.8 | an investigative reporter. At one point, I actually thought I was going to be a scientist. I |
| 1:26.9 | lived in a tent in the |
| 1:28.3 | Arctic and on a ship in the Pacific Ocean doing research, but realized that science writing was a |
| 1:33.0 | better fit for my curiosity. And so then I got into journalism, had a series of odd jobs, including |
| 1:37.9 | as an overnight crime reporter at the New York Daily News. And I went on to become the science |
| 1:42.2 | writer at Sports Illustrated and an investigative reporter at ProPublica. |
| 1:46.4 | And for those of you who don't know, David also is a bestselling author. He's written some of my |
| 1:50.8 | favorite books. He wrote a book called The Sports Gene, which is about why elite athletes become |
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