#130: How to Adapt When Everything Changes

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In this episode, Drs. Derek and Laura Cabrera of Cabrera Research Lab explore what really happens when we go through change.

Using their move to Montana and the new podcast studio as a starting point, they unpack the difference between change itself and the transition into a new reality. They explain why change often feels stressful—not because the change is “bad,” but because our old mental models no longer match the new situation we are living in.

The conversation explores expectations, adaptation, identity, perspective shifts, parenting, major life transitions, and the Love Reality Loop. They also discuss why humans often cling to old mental models, how expectations can distance us from reality, and why identity can feel unstable when our roles, environments, or relationships change.

If you are starting a new job, moving, sending a child to college, becoming a parent, entering a new life stage, or simply trying to adapt to a changing reality, this episode gives you a systems thinking framework for navigating transition with more clarity, agency, and self-awareness.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Cabrera Lab podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:07

I'm doing fantabulous.

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Ooh, I like that fantabulous.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

The port montou of fantastic and fabulous.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Fantabulous. See? Every time we start with a new work. Hey, people might be noticing. We're in the new studio.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Which is great.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

We're pretty excited about. New wall.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

New wall. All of it.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

It's all new.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

So that is the reason, or that's exactly how I thought about something I wanted to talk to you about today. I've been thinking a little bit about change. And in particular, transitioning to change, like dealing with change, right? And it occurred to me. There's a difference between change. Change is a thing that sort of happens, right? I I have a new job, I have a new child, I have a this, I have a that.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

The state, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yeah. And the transition to that change. To me, the transition seems more of like a cognitive act where we probably have to rethink a lot of things, build new mental models. I don't know. I thought it would be fun to talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah, I mean, all of it comes down to like the relationship, right? It's all sort of between two states is the change.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

And the transition is so all of that, the transition, the change, all of that is happening in the relationship between two states. Sometimes like in science we call that a phase transition or something like that, or that you're changing phase. So in you know m water changing to a boil, you know, to steam or to freezing to ice. Yep. Those are phase transitions.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Yes. And humans go through those.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

A magnet to a unmagnetized or something like that. And what the humans humans. Yeah, humans also.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Humans go through transitions, space transitions, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

You know.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

And this is a uh yeah, this is a time of transition for sure, because we're moving, we've moved now now that change has happened, but it's a transition. Lots of young people are preparing to go to college, you know, or to high school or to some new new school, new year.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

All transitions.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

There probably a lot of people are chang changing to a new job, a new project.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Maybe they're getting married. Whatever.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

All kinds of things.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

I think that sometimes when we're we're thinking about things or we're feeling things, we tend to place the blame on the change.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Right?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Which is, oh, this change is just terrible. It's making my life difficult.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

But the truth of the matter is that's kind of the wrong unit of analysis because it's really your adjustment or your transition to that change.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

To a new reality. So it has a lot to do with the love reality loop as well. Like that you have a mental model in your old state, and now you have a new state, and you have to kind of rebuild your mental model. Yeah, like when you're moving, for example, things, just little things that you're used to being in one place are now in a you know, a different place in the house, or a different place in the drawer, or different you know, or a different drawer. Everything's different, right? So you have to you have to adjust to that difference. You have to change your mental model. So your reality has changed, but your mental model hasn't changed yet.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

But there's and I think the fear that goes with change, because a lot a lot of folks are afraid of change, or you know, the change is scary or whatever, but the but as the saying goes, change is the only constant.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Which means like, you know, life is constantly changing, and being good at it is what we mean when we say adaptive. To be adaptive is to be good at change.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

We want everyone in the world on the path to pro. White belt, yellow belt, blue belt, landing in the PST credential.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

The professional systems thinker credential. And that's not just personal, it's also part of a wider vision of eight billion systems thinkers above the standard, which is the professional systems thinker or PST. Count yourself into it and let's change ourselves. And when we change ourselves, we change the world.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Right. And it sounds like what what we're talking about is to be good at change is to be conscious of the fact that you need to build new mental models against your new reality.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

And test them and test them. You know, like I went to get something in the cabinet the other day and it was not there because it was a different cabinet.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

A different cabinet. In a different state, in a different house. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Well, but if you multiply that by a thousand things, like where's my toothbrush, where's my sneakers? It gets stressful because I don't I don't have that foundational understanding of my new space, my new reality.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah, the question is almost uh more of a distinction question, is is not, is when you say it gets stressful. Well you have to ask yourself is what is it? Is it you and are you getting stressed? And do you have a choice over that? Because it I don't know, what gets stressful? The change? The change isn't stressed. No, it's the transition isn't stressed. It's the it's it's your response.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

And that response is a reaction to the action of change, and you have some agency over that reaction, which means you have power, you have empowerment, you have agency over that reaction. So if you can kind of um be aware, more aware, more metacognitive, and this comes down to like, you know, why metacognition is so important for all people, because if you can be metacognitive in that moment, you can be like, oh, okay, so the change itself isn't the thing, the the thing that's stressing. I'm stressing about the change. I'm reacting to the change in a in a reactionary way.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I think that's right. I also think we're not very, we're not very kind to ourselves. So when I say it gets stressful, one way to think about it is I could say this is different. And I am adjusting to difference.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

And I need to give myself a little grace in my adjustment.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Go with the flow, take a moment.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

And and maybe think it's funny that I can't find five hundred things in a given day. Right? Right. But I think we tend to be a little too harsh with ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

Yeah, because because our expectations get in the way, right? Our we expect it's like literally the state has changed, the the the phase state or whatever, the state of things has changed, but we expect it to be the same. So it's a weird mental model that when something has changed, we expect it to be the same. We expect our previous mental models to work in this new world.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

But this new world is different. And so why would why would they work? We we should it's a weird thing that we do to expect expectations, you know. My mom used to say expectations killed the cat. I'm not sure what that ever meant. I think it is, but she used to say expectations killed the cat. And I think she was making a joke, like some kind of Bostonian joke, about about uh like she was playing off of that curiosity killed again, but it wasn't curiosity, it was expectations. And I totally didn't fully understand it until now, like and when I'm older, that she was kind of making like a play on that concept to to sort of shift the perspective to the thing that kills us all the time is expectations. Right. Which in if you think about it are just like past projections on pr on present or future events, you know, like we're we're we're taking something from one moment in time and expecting it to be the same in another, or we're expecting it to be a certain way when it isn't.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Right? We're so we're we're like distancing ourselves from reality.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah, and you're also you're not you're not seeing reality in that present moment as it is because you've brought old stuff to you.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, you're just bringing an old baggage.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Which means you have a recipe for being unhappy, right? Totally. Because you're saying this didn't meet my expectations, this isn't the way it used to be, blah, blah, blah, blah. When when in reality, you can step into that new space and say, okay, let me take this in.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

As it is.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

And appreciate the reality that you're in and and be appreciative of it. Like, hey, we're, you know, this is new. That's cool. It's new, everything's new.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Embrace the difference.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah. I think we did. Didn't we do a podcast on um the Norman Rockwell painting effect? Like, if you you know, there's this almost almost expectations are like a painting we create of how reality should be, and when it doesn't match the painting, we don't like reality instead of not liking the painting. That's what the love reality loop is about, is don't love the painting more than the reality. Because reality is the ultimate form of artwork. And so if if you if you have like a Norman Rockwell version of Thanksgiving, and then you get to your Thanksgiving and it's not quite like Norman Rockwell painted it.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

It never is.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

And it never is, then you're gonna be like disappointed in reality rather than the painting. That's loving your mental model more than reality, rather than loving reality more than your mental model.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

Yeah, yeah. It was in our holiday episode.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

That's because we were talking about the holiday.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

But it doesn't just take the holidays, right? It when we're doing this all the time, and we especially do this in transitions. All these phase transitions in life, you know, things are different, and so and we lament them rather than to embrace them and just be like, oh, yeah, it's part of the difference.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

But do we do them more in transitions because our brain craves or seeks out or tries to have a predictive order to it? We want to predict it. Just like driving to work the same way every day. Yeah. It it I don't want to say, I guess in my it seems to take less active cognition to go the same route every day. So your brain craves that sort of convenience and predictability. And so when you get into a big change, all bets are off.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

And your brain has to sort of re reprocess, rewind.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

All those mental models have to be reformed, reshaped.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Right? Because I mean, in a lot of ways, it's just a huge perspective shift.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Which means all of the distinctions are shifting, all of the way things are grouped.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

The relationships, I mean, there's a ton of relationships, internal and external.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah. That's it's that's something that's interesting. Like people don't people think, oh, perspective shift. Oh, we just have a different perspective, like uh, like we see something different, right? And and we kind of stop there. But what I what fascinates me is that what does it mean to actually have a different perspective? It means that you're making you're you and I are if we have a different perspective, we're we're distinguishing the same things differently. Right? We're highlighting certain things and lowlighting others. We're we're drawing the boundaries in different places. We're seeing or not seeing certain relationships, you know, like so we're our the relationships we're seeing or not seeing are different. That's right. Or we're grouping part whole grouping things differently. So you're creating different groupings than I am based on those relationships.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

So a different perspective isn't just like, oh, we have a different point of view.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

No.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

It's like we're seeing the view, we're carving up the view differently.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Entirely differently.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Entirely differently. And and what DSRP does is kind of tell you all the different ways that you're you might be carving up the view differently than me.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Right. So what's interesting is it is a perspective shift. And what that does, it kind of takes all of your mental models and you toss the dice, and they all have to be reshuffled, reformed, adjusted to the new reality. And that's what's there's some difference in there, but there's also some commonality in the transition process itself for each, in this case, human. Right. So we can in in other words, we can empathize with one another that we're both going through a transition. We can empathize with our son who's going through a transition as his starting call.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

So there's this commonality to the process, but the specificity of the things we're thinking about is different.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Yeah, and there's an interesting thing that happens there, right? Because the more we're challenged, like it's easy to have empathy when you're not challenged, right? It's relatively easier.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

But if you're in a challenge state, then it's more difficult to find that empathy for others that are also in that same challenge state, right? So so being able to sort of have that awareness of, hey, you know, it's just that my mental model is not matching up with reality for the first time in a long time. Uh, you know, in even the most basic things like brushing your teeth or finding your toothbrush or whatever. And and that's happening for other people too. But it's difficult to, in that moment when you're challenged, to also, that's why, you know, mountaineering and things like that in groups is so powerful because everybody's being challenged and you get to see how people interact when they're challenged. Do they take care of each other or do they leave each other leave the other behind? You know, do they do they choose to to help or do they just focus on themselves?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah, you learn a lot.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

You know, so you learn a lot about people's character and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Because of who we are and what we study and all of those things, I think we have those moments where if if somebody is saying, Oh, I'm struggling with XYZ, instead of me reacting to the XYZ, I can be like, Oh, I am struggling struggling with PDQ. So I can commute I can communicate around the struggle without worrying about the details of the struggle, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

100%.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

You know, I can say, I know how you feel, I am struggling.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

And I could be in that moment, put mine aside for a minute, but connect in that, I don't know, there's something about that sort of universal underlying process that all I'm going through.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

Or that anybody's going through.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

That's the to me, that's what's so powerful about like when we say m equals IO and R equals IO, that sounds so like abstract. And then we say you got the love reality loop, you know, where you're matching this. And and if you understand that, you and you literally said like you have two people, and this person is focused on PDQ, where that's the information. And this person is focused on, you said XYZ, and that's the information.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Right? And they're trying to match that up with uh, you know, XYZ prime, like a different XYZ, and this person's trying to do PDQ prime. Maybe that's too much.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

But what you're trying is what you're saying is each person is trying to get their mental model, their mental models are butting up against reality, even though their mental models are about different informations.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Different things. They're focused on different things, they're concerned with different things. But then you realize, like, even though the information is different, the structural pattern, this structural pattern of a state that's made up of a bunch of parts and and and a shift, a change, a relational change, and a new state and MIO, that all the structure is exactly the same. But the information couldn't be more different. Like, you know, like our son might be transitioning around college or whatever, and we're like a new new home, new house, new things, you know, new complexities. But it's the same structure underneath. So those two things are not comparative at the informational level.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

But at the O level, at the organ how they're organized, they're organized almost exactly the same structure.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

And that can happen across, you know, businesses, across, you know, all the different parts of personal and professional life. We see repeating structures with wildly different information.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Right? And then we make the mistake that because it's different information, it's it's just different. And it's not. Like life is a lot of repeating patterns. So if you can see the underlying structure, it just gives you like this incredible tool, this incredible access to clarity that you otherwise miss in the differences of information.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

And we're such an information-focused society. Like if you look at the fundamental thing that we're doing wrong in schools is we're just completely information focused.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

The fundamental thing we're doing wrong in technology is we're just completely information focused. AI is completely information focused.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Right?

SPEAKER_01 17:14

The I in AI should just be information, not intelligence. That information focus is the problem. Because when we focus on the information, we only see the difference.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Right. Meaning I could engage in an argument about XYZ versus PDQ.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

And we would completely miss each other. We we completely miss that we're going through the same thing, just thinking about things differently in that sense.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

Aaron Powell Yeah, it's it's the equivalent, it's almost comical if you actually understand what's really happening. It's like it's the equivalent of not understanding that when one person talks about their car or their house and you talk about your car and your house, that because they're not the same car or house, you make no connection between them. Like it's hard to even imagine a world where you do that, right? But that's what we're doing all the time in this in these mental models, is we're saying, well, because they're concerned with XYZ and I'm concerned with PDQ, there's no similarity.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

But there's actual like 90% similarity. Everything is similar except for the information, except for the words that we're using to describe it or things like that.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

There's one more piece of this I want to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

That I think is fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And it it it sort of has um become apparent as we watch our our son transition into the college years and watch ourselves transition into where we are, is the intersection of this transition and our own sense of our own identity. Right. So you imagine when you have a baby, your entire identity shifts to parent. It's like you reshuffle all the cards on the table because now everything feels different.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

You're the same person, yes, but it challenges your identity, right? It changes who you are in that like you've you let me put it this way, you experience that who you are has changed.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Does that make sense? So I don't know. I just thought that was interesting to talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

It's incredibly interesting, and it and it both has real, true structure involved in it, and it also has some some um, you know, um, for lack of a better word, like dangers associated with it, right? So when we look at all distinctions are made up of identity and other. And so what we know is like you can take that identity and put it in a different other, and you have kind of a different interaction effect, and so it affects the identity. That sounds very abstract, so let's put it in a real term. If you, you know, are with your family, your your current primary family, and then you go home for Thanksgiving with your brothers and sisters and your aunts and uncles and all that, you're the same person, but your identity shifts because you're around all these others who think of you differently and remember you when you were, you know, this and that and the other. So or or you go to work and you're uh you know part of a team, your identity shifts a little bit because not because your identity changed, but because who your other is, who you're with.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Changed. Right. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

I'm defining myself in relation to the others around me at work.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Not just that you're defining yourself. There's literally an interaction effect that the identity is in a different context. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Right, because the others are defined.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yes. And this is true all the time. Like if I put red with a bunch of other reds, it's gonna look different than if I put red with a bunch of grays.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Right? It's it's just gonna look different. The red hasn't changed. The red is the red is the red.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

But when I put it in the context of other reds, it's gonna look different than if I put it in the context of other grays or other blues or other greens.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Right? So this is something that's universal across the landscape of things. So that that's just the case. This is true about the universe. But we also want to be careful about tying our identity to things too much. You know, so if our identity is too tied up in our politics, if our identity is too tied up in our job, if it's too tied up in things, it makes us less resilient and less sort of adaptive because we hold on so tightly to that thing, and we can't be open to anything that challenges that thing. Right. So we want to be careful about how you know how we define our identity extrinsically, whether whether we define our identity intrinsically as like, hey, you know, like I'm I'm trying to be a good person, have good character, have integrity, those kinds of things. And it doesn't really matter what environment I'm in, I'm gonna try to be that person.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Right?

SPEAKER_02 21:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Versus, you know, I am defined by my job.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

It's not that your job is. Isn't going to have an interaction effect with your identity. But if if if it's all tied up with what the identity actually is, that creates all kinds of problems in life.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

It does. But on the flip side to what you were just saying, the whole job of parenting is to instill in your children those intrinsic values and motivations and things that they will rely on no matter what they're in the situation they're in, good or bad. You want them to have character. You want them to stand up for others. You want them to, you know, respect themselves, whatever the list is.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah, you want them to be situationally adaptive, but not situationally sort of character-based. Right? You want certain intrinsic qualities to stay the same no matter where they are. And that's where identity truly comes from. And then you want them to be able to adapt to different environments, but you're not adapting those fundamental things. So if you change your job, does it really change your identity? Well, it can. But if it does, you should pay attention to that. If if if you can't be you without some label, you know, you should think about why that label is so important.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

But I'm thinking about people that we've known, for example, who were accountants or lawyers or doctors for 25 or 30 years, and then finally had the moment where they became a musician or an artist. And so in many ways, they more their identity became more of themselves because they were in a job that they thought they had to be in.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

You know, for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Or if you're in a job where you just you absolutely loved it, and then for whatever reason in life you you're you transition into some new thing.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Or you're a parent and it's all about being a parent.

unknown 23:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

And then your kids, you know, empty nest, and you're like, what am I now? You know? Yeah. And and that those are good struggles to go through because the what am I now, you were always that. But that's really getting at what you are. You know, the this is the other things are roles that you played, but they're not the same thing as your who you are.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

So identity, when when we s study deeply identity, other and the formation of distinction, we learn so much about the deep structure of the universe, but also the deep structure of ourselves. I know it sounds super esoteric that a distinction is, you know, made up of an identity and the interaction of other, but those simple things give you this really beautiful, rich place to learn and continually learn about very, very basal universal things. Like who am I?

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

That's interesting. What is a sandwich?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

I think we started on that.

unknown 24:57

Cabrera.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Is a hot dog a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

You did that last time we were on stage, you brought that up again. I got all irritated again. I know, it bugs up. Hot dogs are not sandwiches.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

They are.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

They're really not. They're not called sandwiches or called hot dogs. We've had this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Yeah, but that that's getting that's getting lost in the d in the in the language of things. Structurally, a hot dog's a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Structurally, a hot dog is a hot dog. No, it is a hot dog, but it's a different group of things called sandwiches. No, there's not two pieces of bread with filling in the middle. That's a sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

So you just described a hot dog.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

No, a hot dog is a piece of bread with a hinge and one filling, which is a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

So you're saying if I just break the hinge, it suddenly transitions from being a hot dog to a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

I think if you break the hinge and you add a- Because the hinge breaks a lot of times on its own. If you break the hinge and you add a a lot of other toppings, and you say, here's your hot dog sandwich, then it's a sandwich. Like the other day we didn't have hot dog buns. One of the kids split a hot dog, cut it in half, and put it on a bun and called it a hot dog burger. Because it was on a burger bun.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

But it wasn't a sandwich, it was a hot dog burger.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

But a burger is a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

No, a burger's burger.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

They're all sandwiches. You know what they're doing. There's something sandwiched between something.

SPEAKER_00 26:20

No, because it's the bread. So you say a submarine or a hoagie is a sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

But it's a very particular type of sandwich because of the type of it's the bread that's the arbiter of it all. I'm glad we've had this.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

But hypothetically, I could take two pieces of lettuce, put a piece of meat between them.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

That's a lettuce wand. That would be a lettuce sandwich. It's a lettuce wrap. It has a name. The names have meaning.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

But if I don't wrap it, if I just sandwich it. Distinction.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

They are distinctions.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

I think we've outtaught ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

We've done it.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Because we ended on the great debate.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

We done did it. The great debate of what is and is not a sandwich. We should start a website or something. Well, the point, the the point is the reason I always bring up what is and is not a sandwich is that is is not list is the move that we do to understand distinctions. You know, at a simple level. And the complexity that is involved in figuring out what is and is not a sandwich, which is surprising because we think, oh, I know what a sandwich is. But then when you get into it, you're like, really? Do we? Like, you know, there's some there's some gray zones that are right on the edge of being a sandwich. And those are the most interesting places, is those edge cases. Like a hot dog. And every other definition is like that. The definition of a project at work, the definition of what makes good parenting, the definite, you know, the definition of all of these words we use are no different than the word sandwich. That's true. There's a rich mental model that underlies it that that the word doesn't capture.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

That is true.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

And that's that's why I bring up the sandwich thing and why it's so interesting. Because you'd think everybody knows what a sandwich is. No, you bring up the sandwich thing to get me all but there's a great sandwich st place here in Montana called the Staggering Ox.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

And they wonderful sandwiches. And for years, they've been making a sandwich in bread that is made in a coffee can.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

So by your definition.

SPEAKER_01 28:24

So it's a coffee can-shaped bread. And it's absolutely a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

You're saying a sandwich because there's bread in fillings.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

It's delicious.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

They're great sandwiches.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

They're great sandwiches.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

But they don't really uh follow your definition of two pieces of bread. It's one piece of bread.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Yeah, but the but it yeah, I'm not saying it's a definition of one two pieces of bread. It's it is sandwiched.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

When you squeeze it and eat it.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

No, there's stump something in between.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Which is also why if I if I put you between if I took you and put you between two sleeping bags, I would say you're sandwiched. You know, like that's where it's coming from. To sandwich. I'd be like a you sleeping bag sandwich. But a hot dog is a sandwich.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

It's one thing.

SPEAKER_01 29:14

Sandwiched.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

No. It's enveloped. It's on sandwich.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

So it's just putting a lot of work on the hinge. It's putting a lot of emphasis. Advice. Like it. I think we should end on that.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

I definitely do.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

That's a wrap.