4.6 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2025
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Can people actually change or are we just stuck with who we are? In this episode, author and journalist Olga Khazan joins Ryan to unpack the age-old debate: are personality traits fixed or can we reshape them over time? Olga shares what happened when she tried to change her own personality over the course of a year and what science says about whether that’s even possible.
Olga Khazan is a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Me, But Better. You can follow Olga on Instagram and X @Olganator and read more of her work on Substack: https://olgakhazan.substack.com/
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1:12.5 | What would the Stoics think of therapy? |
1:15.8 | I don't know, maybe some of them might have been closed-minded about it, but I'd like to think |
1:19.7 | that they'd be open-minded to any tool, any strategy, any way of thinking that helps make you |
1:25.6 | better, that helps you look in the mirror, that helps you explore what's holding you back, how you're getting in your own way, that |
1:31.8 | helps you get over trauma, that helps you see life and situations more clearly. And that's |
1:37.3 | where today's sponsor comes in. I myself have found therapy to be very beneficial, to help me |
1:42.9 | be a better parent, a better husband, |
1:44.4 | a better leader, and any way that helps you do something like that quicker, cheaper, and easier |
... |
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