Befriending your impostor syndrome with Iceland's president Halla Tomasdottir (Transcript)

Please note the following transcript may not exactly match the final audio, as minor edits or adjustments could be made during production.

[00:00:00] Halla Tomasdottir: I don't meet many people who don't wanna live in a healthy environment, in healthy communities, in a peaceful world, in a world where you can provide for your loved ones, where you can, you know, rely on healthcare, rely on being able to educate your children if they choose to, et cetera. 

[00:00:20] Adam Grant: Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant.

Welcome back to Re:Thinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick with the TED Audio Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

My guest today is Halla Tomasdottir, the president of Iceland. Earlier in her career, she co-founded Reykjavik University and an investment firm that she led successfully through the financial crisis. Then she was the CEO of the B Team, a nonprofit that brings business and civic leaders together to make business better for people and the planet.

Halla ran for president in 2016 and lost, and this year she wasn't sure if she wanted to run again. 

[00:01:04] Halla Tomasdottir: Leadership ultimately comes down to asking yourself the question, who am I not to offer myself up to do something? 

[00:01:12] Adam Grant: Having known Halla for a decade, I've been consistently impressed with her character and her commitment to public service.

I'm excited to dig into those topics with her today.

[00:01:25] Halla Tomasdottir: Hello, my favorite professor. 

[00:01:29] Adam Grant: Hello, my favorite president. So glad to have you here, Halla. Welcome. 

[00:01:33] Halla Tomasdottir: Thank you. It's really my pleasure. 

[00:01:36] Adam Grant: Well, this has been a long time coming. I want to take you back to the first moment that someone encouraged you to run for the presidency. Uh, tell me the story. 

[00:01:45] Halla Tomasdottir: My first reaction was, who am I to run for president?

And I almost think that's the normal reaction. It's far more normal, I think, to have sincere doubts when someone asks something that big. And it's also evidence of what I've always, always dealt with, which is uh, what I now consider a healthy dose of imposter thoughts and self-doubts. I have learned to befriend them throughout life and not let them prevent me from taking on challenges. And I think all of us, uh, at least all of us who are trying to do something in this world, know those self limiting thoughts. 

[00:02:27] Adam Grant: I wanna know what it looks like to be, to befriend your imposter syndrome. Like I, I, I, I get accepting it, but befriending it is a strong statement. 

[00:02:37] Halla Tomasdottir: Yeah, befriending it is a strong statement, but I mean it, because you could try to fight it or you can befriend it and think about it almost like this very critical roommate or friend who really asks you all the hard questions that one should always ask of themselves. Hubris syndrome, thinking that you know it all or you have all the answers... I think Hubris Syndrome is far more dangerous in leadership than, than a healthy dose of self-doubt and imposter thoughts. 

[00:03:06] Adam Grant: I, I think you're highlighting something that many people overlook, which is the impulse when you feel like an imposter is to say, I don't know what I'm doing, and it's only a matter of minutes until everyone finds out. And what you're suggesting is instead to adopt a growth mindset and say, I don't know what I'm doing yet, and it's only a matter of time until I figure it out. 

[00:03:27] Halla Tomasdottir: Hmm. When I was younger, if I'm very honest, it was more paralyzing, these kind of self-doubts and thoughts.

But experience has taught me that if I wait until I'm confident to do something, I'm unlikely to take big risks or take big leaps, and I've learned that the lack of confidence or the self-doubt often recites in my head. That's where the critical roommate lives, and if I'm able to just take a moment, when in doubt, when facing big challenges, and drop from my head to my heart a little more.

And find some of the wisdom that I think we sometimes ignore. Like, what do I really care about? What do I sincerely think? What truly matters to me more than my fear? Where can I find enough courage to work through my fears about the state of the world or about what I'm about to do? And I think that's in my heart.

And I know my dear friend, that you are so good at the, uh, rational organizational analysis and I think that there is so much room for that. But I think maybe in school we are trained way more in using our rational capacities than what I consider our emotional gifts. Sort of the inner knowing when something is right or wrong, the inner knowing that we care about something or, or the inner knowing that we too have a voice and value that is worth something to the world. And I believe this to be true about every single one of us because in a world where we face so many fears, so much anger, so much hate, so much division, so many complex challenges and questions, I actually think we have to really draw on our full mental and emotional capacities to meet this moment.

I wish we could start helping people a little more, particularly our young people, who I think are generally suffering from poor mental health, to learn how to have that inner compass in addition to all of the, their mental capacities. 

[00:05:31] Adam Grant: You ran for the presidency the first time. You didn't win, but you did much better than anyone expected.

And I think you, you smashed your own expectations as well. And now here you are again with people saying, Halla, you should run for the presidency. And you saying, but who am I to run? And I remember you shifting to who am I not to run? And I wonder if you could talk to me about that shift. 

[00:05:57] Halla Tomasdottir: I, I felt so good about how things went in 2016.

I didn't become president, but I was in my dream job. Life was good. I wasn't really looking to repeat what is inevitably a very big challenge, to run for office anywhere or to offer yourself up for leadership in these critical times, during harsh social media. It's, it's, it's a difficult time in the world and it's difficult to be a, a public figure, so I had a lot of doubt about wanting to go through that again.

And I really needed to think hard about it. But what I really feel like happened in 2016 is I became president of my own life. And I wanna emphasize this because you may not win the race you offer yourself into or the job that you go after, but if you do it with a clear vision for why you do it and how you want to do it, there is every chance that you will come out as a winner because you will grow a lot. This time, it wasn't about other people telling me that they thought I should run. It really was about me taking the time to sit well in my own skin. I care deeply about Iceland and Icelanders, and I think I ended up thinking that I would probably regret not running more than actually going for it again, because I sincerely care about the future that awaits Iceland and the world. And if you ask yourself all the time, knowing that the world is not in its best place, if you ask others, uh, to do something about that, that's not really good leadership, is it? It was not an easy decision.

It would've been easier to not do it, to be honest, but it was a decision that just felt like one I couldn't look back and and regret. And I thought a lot about comfort, Adam, because to be honest, it's not a comfortable decision to be in leadership today, and it just didn't sit right with me to choose comfort over catalyzing the changes that I think are needed.

But this time we, we made it on June 1st as the winner of the election, and now I'm about three months into a new role and a new life. And it is hard and it is challenging, but I have no regrets. 

[00:08:07] Adam Grant: I read a report recently that half of Americans don't want a promotion at work, and I've seen that around the world, young people don't wanna lead to the same degree that they used to. I think a lot of people look at leadership roles now and say, that is a tremendous burden. I don't want the responsibility. I don't wanna sacrifice my privacy. Why would anyone want this job? Why would you want this job? 

[00:08:31] Halla Tomasdottir: I think one of the challenges we need to come to terms with in this world today if we want good leadership, is to have the honest conversations about the toll and the taxes that leadership puts on human beings that are trying to serve and do good, which I believe most people are trying to do.

And when it comes to women in leadership, I think those taxes and tolls are higher. What we wear, uh, you know, gets far more attention sometimes than what we say. We're more sensitive to attacks on our family and in particular on our children. Most leaders I know, they find it very difficult not just to be attacked themselves, but to live in a world where women and children are dying for what seems like meaningless reasons, where there is inequality at levels that seem unsustainable and where there are consequences of climate and environmental crisis that's robbing people of their homes and security. I think there's so many reasons for why it gives you a heartache to be in that world. But here's the choice as I see it. You either say, this is the world we live in and I'm gonna self preserve, which to me is not an option because we have every reason to be able to design and, and deliver a better world, but only if we choose to be part of that delivery. But then I also think we need to rethink leadership as not something that sits in the few and far between presidence and CEOs and people in big positions of power, and, and we need to think about leadership as something that is truly given to each and every one of us.

And there is something that each and every one of us can do to help deliver the world we want. And I choose to do it from this post. I have a lot of respect for people who, who don't want to do it from such a visible post, but I think all of us have a reason to ask ourselves, how can I serve? So I think we have far more shared dreams than we know, but we have so many shared fears right now that they are holding us back from truly leaning into coming together for the world we both want and need.

[00:10:39] Adam Grant: Agreed. I thought you had a, a fascinating symbol of that recently in Iceland. Tell me about the scarf revolution. 

[00:10:46] Halla Tomasdottir: Ha. The day of the first debate, when I was not polling very high, ranging between 4 and 6% in the polls, and I was getting the questions of if I was going to quit, that was the first question from every media outlet,

I found myself not very well. And I went on TV with, uh, a scarf around my neck and wearing a pink jacket, and apparently was told that I did well in the debates, but everybody had an opinion about the scarf that I was wearing. You know, I shouldn't wear a scarf or, it was a great scarf. People loved it or hated it, and there were more scarf comments and jacket comments than about what I said.

Even if polls showed that I had done best in the debate. So I ranted a bit on an event two days later and something, one thing led to another, young women started wearing pink jackets and scarves. Then young men started doing it. Then old people started doing it. Then the dogs joined, and somehow we created this sense of a, a community somewhat accidentally.

And so the scarf revolution became a bit of a symbol, something that people started putting up in solidarity for a way forward and, and maybe a solidarity for us all being in this together. I can't fully explain what happened, but it took off and it gave me a lot of energy to find all of that symbolic support and I think symbols can really matter. In the political sphere in leadership, still people visit me now that I'm president and they visit me here at the residence with scarves around their neck to, to sort of show solidarity. 

[00:12:16] Adam Grant: In 2016 and again in 2024, you did something that was even more revolutionary from my perspective, which is you said, I'm gonna run a positive campaign.

I'm not gonna lead with fear or anger. I'm going to ground my candidacy in hope and inspiration. Talk to me about that, and I want to hear how you did it in Iceland. Is that possible in a country like the United States? 

[00:12:41] Halla Tomasdottir: I worry how we build trust in a world that already has low trust when we have nothing that we can collectively agree on as truth.

There just seems to be all kinds of versions of truth being pushed, and echo chambers, and people increasingly believe in, uh, what they see in their echo chamber and have so few bridges into other echo chambers. So I think we're all developing blind spots. I think we're all increasingly, uh, finding ourselves in, um, well designed and very toxic echo chambers that have robbed us slowly of our humanity, of our sanity.

So I, I wanna recognize that context, but in that context, I find for myself, and I certainly found in both campaigns, that you can't meet fear, hate, and violence with more of that. That, that has disaster written all over it. It's scary for all of us in this hard world of ours to talk about things like love, but I just think those are the only energies that can beat out the other energies that seem to have occupied too much of our mind.

If we are invited into something better, something that is hopeful, inspirational, joyful. Makes us feel good, if we are invited into something where we feel seen, heard and valued, I actually think there's a huge appetite for it, but very little supply. And I don't have all the answers, and I never told a single voter that I knew exactly what to do about all those challenges, but I told every voter that would listen that I was willing to have more compassion for everyone in our country, in our world, that I was willing to have more conversations, because I think they're needed, and that I was willing to collaborate more deeply on coming up with multi-stakeholder solutions to these multiple and complex challenges that we're facing. I really think sincerity is in high demand, but short supply when it comes to politics everywhere, but I highly recommend it.

I really feel that voters, they recognize sincerity. 

[00:15:00] Adam Grant: I would add to that, that I thought you really modeled confident humility. Uh, I think we, we've seen so many narcissists and arrogant people rise into leadership roles. To see you say, my goal is not to be a president with all the answers, I want to be a president that asks the right questions, was incredibly refreshing, and I'd love to hear what are those right questions?

Like, what questions are you asking now? 

[00:15:28] Halla Tomasdottir: The first and most important one I think is towards each one of us as individuals. It's the question I often ask myself and others, and I ask myself when I was encouraged to run, is, who are you going to choose to be at a time like no other for humanity? I think a lot about, how do we bridge the gender gaps?

But I also mean, what does the gender gap mean for boys and men? I increasingly think about that. We can maybe come back to that. How do we bridge the generational gap? Because there's a real gap between how young people are seeing and thinking about the world and operating in the world, and those who currently sit in power.

So there's sort of a struggle between old power and new power right now, and different values systems. How do we bridge the gaps across the globe? Because there's increasingly distrust from the global south, global east to the global west, and this is incredibly complicated in today's world. We have such large challenges to tackle, and I don't think business alone has the answers or activists alone have the answers or the third sector.

I really think we need to find sort of a very new way to do leadership, where we come together across these gaps, build bridges, listen more, learn more, and co-create more with compassion for the things that matter to all of us. 

[00:16:47] Adam Grant: This listening theme is so interesting to me, Halla. I think, you know, at some level, you rise to leadership by being a great talker, but you succeed at leadership by being a great listener. And that paradox is complicated for a lot of people.

One of my, one of my favorite research findings in my career was when colleagues and I discovered that if you had a proactive team around you, who was bringing lots of ideas and suggestions to the table, you were actually more effective as an introvert than an extrovert in a leadership role. Both because you made people feel heard, and also because you got better ideas and suggestions by listening.

It's easy to give lip service to that and say, as you did, listening is a weakness of mine. I wanna work on it. I think the hard part is actually putting it into practice. I'd be very curious to hear, given that your goal is to be a better listener, how are you trying to accomplish that? What does that look like day to day for you as president?

[00:17:43] Halla Tomasdottir: I am trying to hold fewer speeches and host more conversations. Presidence are asked to give speeches all the time, and I'm increasingly saying no thanks, but if you want me to come and be in a dialogue with, uh, someone from your organization or your event and then invite the audience into a dialogue, then I'm interested because I actually find that the conversation format is far more engaging when we allow ourselves to authentically rumble with the challenges and opportunities that are in front of us. And when we invite questions, it's just much more of a sincere format to me than prepared keynotes and speeches. So this is a very concrete way that I'm starting the conversation trend and and prioritizing that over one directional talking at people. And I've actually had interesting comments from people, because we all have these ideas in our heads what presidence should do. Some people said, oh, should the president be asking questions? Shouldn't the president be bringing the answers?

And so I'm really very deliberately pushing the boundaries on this. I am reducing the number of large events that I host at the residence and trying to get most of them down to groups of 25 to 30. And we sit in circles where I throw out one question depending on what the audience is, and listen to everyone in the circle and allow us to have more of a conversation and a co-creation process, and I'm trying to do this very deliberately across generations. I try very deliberately to curate as many spaces as possible where we have truly this intergenerational dialogue, and almost brainstorm as to how to deal with some of the tensions and challenges that are very real in Iceland, as everywhere else. And I find that after such meetings, and they don't need to necessarily be that long, even an hour long meeting in a conversation like that makes everybody leave having learned something, having maybe changed their mind about something, having made a new connection to somebody.

And I find that it, it's borderline therapeutic for people to be invited into spaces like that. 

[00:19:52] Adam Grant: It's almost appalling to me that someone would ask, should a president be asking questions? How else do you learn? 

[00:19:59] Halla Tomasdottir: Exactly. I think questions are far more important than the answers, Adam. And I have far more questions than answers. And one of the questions I ask, because you ask me if it's possible to run a campaign or, or be a leader that focuses on hope and inspiration.

And my question back on that one, is it possible to be a leader that doesn't give hope or inspiration? Is that leadership? If you are a leader that takes advantage of the fear, the hate, and the division to your benefit, to your short term gain, is that leadership? I guess my conclusion is, I doubt it. It might get you somewhere in the short term, but it certainly isn't helping to catalyze the transition, the leadership, the solidarity that is needed to dream of and design a world that works better than the world we have right now. 

[00:20:59] Adam Grant: You're reminding me of Nancy Duarte's analysis of Martin Luther King Jr's I Have A Dream speech, where she points out that we think of it as a speech that was all about hope.

But if you look at the first 11 of the 16 or 17 minutes that he spoke, um, he was talking about the pain of the present. To acknowledge the reality people were facing and then say, this is what is, but I also want you to consider what could be. And I think that skill of toggling back and forth between the pain of the present and the hope for the future, the acknowledging what is and how the status quo might be unacceptable, but also giving people a clear sense that something better is possible tomorrow, even if today is undesirable, that toggling back and forth between what is and what could be, seems like a vital skill of leadership. 

[00:21:51] Halla Tomasdottir: The fact of the matter is there is a lot of pain. There is a lot of anger. There is a lot of, there are a lot of people who don't feel well today. We've sort of left groups and society, and particularly I think the next generation's left without hope and inspiration, with systems that don't seem to be serving many people well, and I think that comes down to really the word inequality.

I think we have had unsustainable levels of inequality within countries and within the world, and the anger that's left people with is understandable. I don't wanna make little out of that pain or the anger or the poor mental health and wellbeing we're seeing all over the world. Uh, the numbers are very clear here.

But I know in my own life that I have never really made great progress in anything I've done without going through a bit of a dark alley before. When you're in that dark alley, it's when you figure out what you're made of, and it's from there that you leap forward.

[00:22:56] Adam Grant: Well, I'm gonna leap forward now to a lightning round. What's the worst leadership advice you've ever gotten? 

[00:23:03] Halla Tomasdottir: Act like a man. 

[00:23:06] Adam Grant: Best advice? 

[00:23:08] Halla Tomasdottir: Be you. 

[00:23:09] Adam Grant: What is something you've rethought lately? 

[00:23:12] Halla Tomasdottir: Boys and men. I have been a long standing champion for more women and girls in leadership and power and managing money and everything, and I know it matters, but I feel like in the gender revolution we have failed to see the red flags with boys and men, and the consequences of that are hitting our societies in a way where I think we need to really see the next gender frontier, um, as fully inclusive of the full gender spectrum, including boys and men and, and any other identification people choose. But we cannot just focus on, even if we still need to, empowering women and girls. We have to do that because we have a way to go. But boys and men are feeling lonely, isolated, looking for a way to belong and finding it in, in not the best ways.

So we need to invite them into healthy masculinity. 

[00:24:04] Adam Grant: I was thinking a little bit about Icelandic lessons for the rest of the world, and I think my favorite Icelandic saying is that I'd rather go barefoot than without books. 

[00:24:15] Halla Tomasdottir: I love that one. 

[00:24:15] Adam Grant: What's yours? 

[00:24:16] Halla Tomasdottir: I think there are many lessons from Iceland. Maybe the most profound one is that we are incredibly creative in Iceland. Even Mother Nature is still creating new land here through series of eruptions. I mean, so we are just a creative nation. We've sort of been way ahead of the rest of the world in creating solutions to challenges. We went through the geothermal energy revolution and even the gender revolution, and one of our challenges was in order to be a progressive nation, we needed heating for our houses, and we discovered geothermal, which now could solve a lot of the energy crisis around the world. And, and yet very few have have done it for so many decades as we have. And we also discovered that the world doesn't work when women are not at work, when women on Iceland went on a strike back in 1975 and paralyzed the country for a day and helped all of us understand that we're stronger when we are all at work and, and everybody in this small country gets to, uh, contribute its value. We even hosted a peace talk back in 1986 when Reagan and Gorbachev met in Iceland to begin the conversation that ended the Cold War.

So I guess I dare to say that Iceland, maybe together with the Nordics, can be a lighthouse for the creative solutions that we need with two challenging problems, particularly along the lines of sustainability, a fully gender inclusive societies where human rights and democracy thrive because we choose to be peaceful societies that stand for a peaceful world. And small might have become beautiful. Being small is not a disadvantage, but a huge advantage because I think the big countries, the big companies, so many of the big are struggling with leading with a moral compass today. Even if each of our countries is small, the wellbeing of people and the environment and of our communities is, is greater than in many other places. Not without problems, but we seem to have figured out how to, how to do capitalism with care and compassion. 

[00:26:20] Adam Grant: You're making me think of a, a classic Hal Levitt article. Uh, he was a Stanford professor who spent his whole career studying hierarchy, and at the very end of his career he wrote this piece called Large Organizations are Unhealthy Environments for Human Beings.

And made a case that, to your point, small is beautiful when it comes to workplaces, and I think you're suggesting that might be true for countries too. 

[00:26:43] Halla Tomasdottir: It's interesting because I've been an entrepreneur, I've also worked in corporate America, I run nonprofits, and I have learned that organizational culture is both an incredibly powerful force that you can either consciously lead with or you will be led with if you don't consciously do it, and it becomes so enormously difficult in big organizations and big countries if you need to pivot or change those cultures. And right now the world is serving as one challenge on top of another, so you need quite a lot of resilience, quite a lot of agility. Having said that, I think partnership is maybe the word right now because I don't think one country acting alone will catalyze the scale and speed of change we need. But I think one country acting alone can be a lighthouse, but if it partners with few more small countries that feel small by themselves but can feel stronger and bolder together with others, can start to catalyze meaningful and transformational change.

And there is a possibility to think of ways to go forward, dream of ways to go forward, with new metrics, uh, like wellbeing being as important as GDP growth. There is, um, an opportunity to think of new business models and economic models that measure more than financial profit for the short term for shareholders. Sometimes people need to see the alternative in order to get psychological safety to leave what they've always known. 

[00:28:30] Adam Grant: In the spirit of practicing your listening and question asking skills, what's a question you have for me? 

[00:28:36] Halla Tomasdottir: I would love to ask you, my favorite professor, how do we help people navigate times with so much uncertainty, fear, anger, and hate?

I'm still looking for answers to that, because my single biggest fear, Adam, is the loss of hope or the hopelessness that I'm starting to sense, in particular from young people, that a better world awaits them. And that in and of itself can paralyze us from catalyzing the world we want. So, so how do we, give me some good advice here.

How do we help people navigate this harsh reality, and yet help them find hope and resilience in the face of it? 

[00:29:19] Adam Grant: I think one of the mistakes that I, I see a lot of leaders make, is they're just obsessed with finding and solving problems. And I don't wanna suggest that we should ever stop doing that, but I am intrigued by what David Cooperrider has called Appreciative Inquiry, which is the idea of walking into a community or a workplace or a country, and in addition to asking what's broken, also asking what's working. And how do we build on that? And there's a, a great book that Chip and Dan Heath wrote called Switch, where they recommend a version of this and they call it Find the Bright Spots. And they say the, the virtue of being in a, a group that's hundreds or thousands, or tens or hundreds of thousands of people is there are lots of pockets of excellence.

Um, there are versions of the future happening in local communities, in small teams that you wanna see. And so your challenge is to find those and then draw attention to them, study them, learn from them, and then scale and spread what's working for them. And so I think what you've outlined for us today is that Iceland is a bright spot in many ways, um, in dark times.

And we ought to look to what's working in Iceland, uh, and then learn from that and bring it to the rest of the world. But I would say you can do the same within Iceland. 

[00:30:36] Halla Tomasdottir: Hmm. Absolutely. 

[00:30:37] Adam Grant: And I'd be curious about where those bright spots are. 

[00:30:40] Halla Tomasdottir: Oh, I love that. And I'm such a fan and a friend of David Cooperrider, and we've actually done some appreciative inquiries together.

[00:30:46] Adam Grant: Of course you have!

[00:30:47] Halla Tomasdottir: The fact that I ask questions that start with how might we, is actually from him. And one of the quotes he always says, which I think is relevant for what we're talking about, he always says hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. And what he means there, as I interpret it, is it's not enough to give people hope and inspiration, which I do try to do.

You also need to give them a seat at the table, an opportunity to be part of building on the strengths, co-creating the new. That work can then be, with good storytelling, spread to come to scale. And I think we have many of those in Iceland. I think we have many of those around the world, including within United States.

Even if I know, um, the United States definitely feels more divided than it has. We created this world. We can just as well create one that works better than we currently seem to be working. 

[00:31:42] Adam Grant: I, I love that. I think we need more President Tomasdottirs in the world. 

[00:31:46] Halla Tomasdottir: Ah, thank you, Adam. That means the world to me.

Well, we also need more Professor Adam Grants, you know, and you should know that in Iceland, you're held in great regard. So next time you visit me in Iceland, you'll need to come and share some of your inspiration with Icelanders. 

[00:32:02] Adam Grant: Well, that would be an honor, and I will say it's much easier to write about it than it is to do it.

And I admire your role modeling of the leadership we need in the world. Thank you, Halla. 

[00:32:12] Halla Tomasdottir: Thank you so much, Adam. It's been such a pleasure.

[00:32:19] Adam Grant: I am really struck by Hadler's approach to listening as a leader. There's research by Avi Kluger and colleagues, which shows that listening might be the most underrated of all leadership skills, and I think Halla reminds us that listening well is not just talking less, it's asking thoughtful questions and responding in a way that shows people they're being heard, that you're not just trying to judge their intellect or their status, but you're actually trying to understand their interests and learn from them. And being a great listener is not only one of the best ways for a leader to learn, it's also an effective way to help other people clarify their own thinking.

Re:Thinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective, and this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley Ma and Aja Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hans Dale Sue and Allison Layton Brown.

Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Hai Lash, Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. 

Allison and our kids got such a kick out of your, your quip about what I was known for and not known for in Iceland. Do you remember it? In Iceland, Adam Grant is known for his books, not his looks.