Welcome to the first episode of the Meaningness podcast! It is about how to learn to be kind. I want to be kinder than I am. Maybe you do too. Good intentions are not enough, I think. My spouse Charlie Awbery offers suggestions. Charlie will teach some methods relevant to this podcast in a workshop in New York City, April 22nd–25th; you can read more and reserve a place here. The making of This is the first serious joint recording by Charlie and me. For years, we had repeatedly agreed to podcast, and occasionally made half-baked attempts which didn’t quite work. This time we prepared, used proper equipment, and it came out well. We thought a spontaneous, natural-sounding conversation would be better than a scripted one. We each wrote bullet points before starting, and deliberately didn’t share them with each other. The conversation is fluid and fun. However, we circled around the topic, and perhaps never quite hit the mark. Next time, we’ll merge our lists of bullet points and put them into a coherent overall plan before starting. Something I forgot to explain: what the guy in the elevator said was a humorous and insightful comment on the situation itself. It was neither self-deprecating, nor at his companion’s expense. It was friendly and droll. Humor, both in the sense of pointing out a funny aspect of a situation and in the sense of “good humor,” is often a skillful form of kindness. Image: (CC) a4gpa The Black Goat podcast episode “Kindness in Academia,” which we discuss, is here. The bit about introversion being an obstacle to kindness starts at 33:20. Transcript David: I suggested this topic because I feel like I would like to be kinder than I am, and I find being kind sometimes difficult, and I think there’s a number of reasons I find it difficult. And I suspect that there’s a meaningful number of listeners who find themselves in this same position.  Charlie: Hmm. That is really interesting for me to know. I didn’t know that.  David: About me?  Charlie: Yeah.  David: Oh.  Charlie: I didn’t know that you find being kind difficult, and it’s kind of funny because when I was making a few bullet points for this conversation— I’ll read the very first thing that I wrote. You’re going to laugh. “There’s an idea that kindness is difficult, that it’s something you have to work hard at. I think that’s wrong.”  David: Right. Well, I think this may contradict the lived experience of many people, including me.  Charlie: Hmm. Well, so do you want to say [00:01:00] more about what it is that you find difficult? What goes wrong? Why is it difficult?  David: Well, there’s a podcast I re-listened to this morning with Simine Vazire, who is one of my heroes. She’s a leader of the academic psychology reform movement, which was in response to the replication crisis, but also in response to lots of other problems. And the title of the podcast is “Kindness in Academia,” and she and the other discussants are talking about ways that one can be kind in academia, but there’s this short section that I find really touching, that is quite raw on her part, where she says I would like to be much more kind than I am. And the obstacle for me, [00:02:00] she says, is that I’m so introverted. And, in order to be kind, you often have to break through a, maybe even extremely thin, but a slight layer of interactional business as usual. And so she says she’s constantly buying gifts for people because, you know, “Oh, yes, so-and-so would really like this,” and then she doesn’t give it to them because it might be awkward for them because they might feel obligated or, giving somebody a compliment, like they could take it the wrong way. Charlie: Goodness.  David: And I feel that way too, maybe not quite as extremely as she does. Charlie: Do you have something similar going on? Do you want to buy gifts for people or buy gifts and then not give them?  David: No, but there’s ti