Mark: Alright, Michelle, quick pop quiz. You're trying to sell something. What's more effective: a big, enthusiastic smile or a completely neutral poker face? Michelle: The smile, obviously. You gotta build rapport, show you're friendly. That’s just basic human interaction. Mark: That's what our gut tells us. But a massive data analysis of nearly 100,000 sales pitches found the exact opposite. The poker face wins. And that's the rabbit hole we're going down today. Michelle: Hold on, a poker face is better for sales? That makes no sense. It feels so counterintuitive. Mark: Exactly. And that’s the entire premise of the book we're diving into today, which has been getting a lot of buzz, and some polarizing reviews. It's called Don't Trust Your Gut by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Michelle: Oh, the former Google data scientist, right? The guy who wrote Everybody Lies. I remember that one. He used anonymous search data to reveal what people are really thinking. Mark: The very same. He's got a PhD in economics from Harvard, and his whole mission with this book is to apply the 'Moneyball' playbook to our personal lives. He basically said he got tired of self-help books starting with a grand idea and then cherry-picking data to support it. He decided to reverse the process: start with the biggest datasets he could find and see where the evidence actually leads. It's a fascinating, and sometimes uncomfortable, journey. Michelle: I like that. A data-first approach to life's biggest questions. Okay, so if my gut is wrong about something as basic as smiling, what else am I messing up? I'm almost afraid to ask.

Mark: Well, let's start with one of the biggest decisions of all: finding a partner. We're all told to just "be yourself," but what does the data say "yourself" should look like on, say, a dating app? Michelle: Oh boy. I imagine it says to post photos where you look conventionally attractive, have a good job, and seem fun and agreeable. Appeal to the widest possible audience. Mark: That's the gut feeling again. But the data tells a different story. The author highlights a classic analysis from the early days of OkCupid. A mathematician named Christian Rudder sifted through tens of millions of user preferences. He found that, yes, the conventionally beautiful people—the Natalie Portmans and Brad Pitts of the world—did great. No surprise there. But he also found another group that did surprisingly well: people with extreme or unconventional looks. Michelle: Extreme? What do you mean, like people with blue hair and face tattoos? Mark: Exactly that kind of thing. The key wasn't that everyone found them attractive. In fact, most people didn't. The secret was that a small, specific group of people found them extremely attractive. Their success came from being polarizing. Michelle: So the goal isn't to get everyone to think you're a 7 out of 10. It's to get a few people to think you're a 10, even if it means most people think you're a 2. Mark: Precisely. Rudder's famous conclusion was that the best strategy is to get "lots of Yes, lots of No, but very little Meh." Being a watered-down, universally palatable version of yourself is the fastest way to be ignored. The data showed that being an extreme version of yourself could lead to 70 percent more messages. Michelle: Wow. So my secret collection of antique spoons is finally going to pay off! I should lead with that on my profile. It’s a bold strategy. Mark: The data says yes! It's a perfect example of the book's core idea. Our intuition tells us to play it safe, to fit in. But the data reveals a hidden market inefficiency. In dating, just like in baseball, there are undervalued assets. This is the whole Moneyball concept. Michelle: Right, the book by Michael Lewis about the Oakland A's. They couldn't afford the star players, so they used data to find guys other teams overlooked but who were statistically just as effective. Mark: Exactly. The scouts, with all their experience and gut feelings, were consistently wrong. They valued players who looked athletic, who had a "good face." Billy Beane and the A's ignored all that. They just looked at the numbers, like on-base percentage. They found players who drew a lot of walks—a boring but incredibly effective skill—and built a winning team on a shoestring budget. Michelle: Okay, so the book is arguing we should do that for our own lives. Find the "on-base percentage" for dating, for careers, for happiness, and ignore the flashy stuff our gut is drawn to. Mark: That's the entire framework. And it's a powerful one, because our gut is not only influenced by what we think looks good, but also by these powerful, cinematic myths about how success is supposed to happen. And that's where the data gets really interesting, especially when it comes to money.

Michelle: I can see that. When we think of success, we picture a certain story. The young, brilliant college dropout who starts a tech company in a garage and becomes a billionaire. Mark: The Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs archetype. The outsider genius who changes the world. It’s a great story. The media loves it. The only problem is, the data shows it's almost entirely a myth. Michelle: Come on, it can't be a total myth. Those people exist. Mark: They exist as outliers, as statistical anomalies that get all the attention. But when researchers analyzed the data on 2.7 million businesses in the U.S., they found a completely different picture. The average age of a successful startup founder isn't 20. It's 42. Michelle: Forty-two? That’s not a kid in a hoodie. That’s someone who’s probably been working for two decades. Mark: And it gets better. A 60-year-old founder is roughly three times more likely to build a massively successful company than a 30-year-old founder. Experience, it turns out, is a massive advantage. The book also demolishes the "outsider's edge" myth—the idea that you need fresh eyes to disrupt an industry. Michelle: Yeah, I've heard that one. That being an insider makes you blind to new possibilities. Mark: The data says the opposite. Entrepreneurs are twice as likely to build a top-tier company if they previously worked in the exact same field. The most successful founders aren't outsiders; they are the ultimate insiders who know the industry's problems, customers, and networks inside and out. Michelle: Okay, so the secret isn't to be a young, brilliant outsider, but a patient, experienced insider. That's... less cinematic. So who are these secret, middle-aged, successful people? What businesses are they in? Mark: This is my favorite part of the book. The author looks at tax data to see which fields produce the most millionaires. And it's not the "sexy" businesses we dream of. The businesses with the shortest lifespans? Record stores, hobby shops, bookstores, clothing boutiques. They're fun to imagine owning, so competition is fierce and they fold quickly. Michelle: So what are the boring businesses that actually make people rich? Mark: Think auto dealerships. Miscellaneous durable goods merchant wholesalers. Lessors of real estate. The author tells the story of a guy named Kevin Pierce, who owns a wholesale beer distribution business. His job is spreadsheets, logistics, and negotiating with suppliers. He himself says, "It's really boring. But every single day, we can make more and more money." Michelle: It’s like picking a stock. You don't go for the flashy, high-risk tech startup; you go for the boring but stable utility company that just keeps paying dividends year after year. Mark: That's the perfect analogy. These businesses thrive because they avoid two things: ruthless price competition and domination by global giants. An auto dealership has a protected territory. A local real estate business has local knowledge that a huge corporation can't easily replicate. They've found a niche where they can actually be profitable. Michelle: So the data-driven path to wealth is to be a 45-year-old who owns a string of car washes or a plumbing supply company. It completely upends the "follow your passion" narrative. Mark: It does. It suggests you should follow the data. But this logic doesn't just apply to external things like money and career. The book argues it's just as true for our internal world—for our own happiness.

Michelle: Okay, this is where I might get skeptical again. So data can help you find a partner and maybe get rich in a boring way. But what about happiness? That feels so personal, so subjective. Surely data can't tell me how to be happy. Mark: You'd think so. But our gut is a terrible predictor of our own happiness. The book cites studies showing that we consistently misjudge how we'll feel. Assistant professors think getting tenure will make them ecstatic for years; a year later, the tenured and non-tenured are equally happy. We think a breakup will devastate us, but we bounce back much faster than we predict. Michelle: I know that feeling. The "affective forecasting" error, right? We're bad at predicting our future emotions. Mark: Terribly bad. And we're also bad at remembering what made us happy. Our memory is distorted by things like the "peak-end rule," where we only remember the most intense moment and the very end of an experience. So, how do we get around our faulty brains? With data. The author points to a massive project called "Mappiness." Michelle: Mappiness? Sounds cute. What is it? Mark: Researchers used an app to ping tens of thousands of people at random times throughout the day. They'd ask three simple things: What are you doing? Who are you with? And how happy are you, right now? They gathered over 3 million of these real-time data points. It's an unprecedented look into what actually generates happiness, moment to moment. Michelle: That's incredible. So what did they find? What's the number one happiness-inducing activity? Mark: The top of the chart is intimacy and making love, which gives a huge happiness boost. But right behind that are things like going to a theater, a museum, or a concert. Playing sports. Gardening. Being in nature. Michelle: Okay, active, engaging things. What's at the bottom? What makes us most miserable? Mark: The absolute bottom is being sick in bed. But second-to-last, generating almost as much misery? Work. Michelle: (Sighs) I felt that in my soul. But what about the things we think make us happy? Like just chilling out. The comedian Larry David has that famous bit about how the best feeling in the world is when someone cancels plans on you. You get to stay home, watch TV, and just relax. Mark: I love that bit, and my gut completely agrees with it. But the Mappiness data says Larry David—and our intuition—is dead wrong. Watching TV and browsing the internet are near the bottom of the happiness list. They don't make us miserable, but they offer a tiny, tiny blip of pleasure. We consistently choose these low-reward activities over high-reward ones like seeing friends or going for a walk. Michelle: Wow. So that feeling of relief when someone cancels is actually my brain tricking me into choosing a low-happiness activity. That's infuriating! My own brain is sabotaging my well-being. Mark: It's a modern trap. We're wired to conserve energy, so the couch looks appealing. But the data is crystal clear: leaving the couch is one of the most powerful things you can do for your happiness. And there's one more finding about work that's just fascinating. Work itself is miserable, but there's one variable that can completely flip the script. Michelle: What is it? A bigger paycheck? A corner office? Mark: Nope. Working with friends. The data shows that being at work with people you consider friends provides a massive happiness boost, enough to make work feel as good as some leisure activities. The author tells this wonderful modern parable of Sisyphus, the guy condemned to roll a boulder up a hill forever. Camus famously said, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." The data says, no, Sisyphus is miserable. But if he had his best friend, Sisyphas, pushing the boulder with him, laughing and complaining together? Then, you can imagine Sisyphus happy.

Michelle: That's such a powerful image. It really ties everything together. Mark: It does. Because whether we're talking about love, money, or happiness, the pattern the data reveals is the same. Our intuition, which is shaped by these dramatic media stories, cultural myths, and our own faulty cognitive biases, consistently points us in the wrong direction. It tells us to be agreeable, to chase the sexy career, to stay on the couch. Michelle: But the data reveals a quieter, often more 'boring,' but far more effective path. Be polarizing to find your true match. Choose the unglamorous but stable business. And get off the couch and connect with friends, even when you don't feel like it. Mark: Exactly. It's about running the numbers on your own life. It's not about eliminating intuition entirely, but about knowing when it's likely to lead you astray and having the courage to trust the evidence instead. The book got mixed reviews because, I think, that's a hard pill to swallow. It feels cold to apply data to something as warm and human as life. Michelle: It does, but it's also incredibly empowering. It feels like being given a cheat sheet. It's a real wake-up call. It makes you question how many of your daily choices are based on what you think will make you happy versus what actually does. It leaves me with a big question: What's one 'gut feeling' you've always followed that this makes you reconsider? Mark: That's a great question for our listeners. Think about a major life decision you made based on a gut feeling. Knowing what you know now from the data, would you have done it differently? Let us know what you think. We'd love to hear your stories of trusting—or not trusting—your gut. Michelle: It’s a challenge to us all. To be a little more of a data scientist in our own lives. Mark: A challenge worth taking. This is Aibrary, signing off.