Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
Itching for a fight? Hold your fire.
When unexpected laryngitis strikes podcast host Annie McCubbin, her husband David steps into the spotlight, offering a refreshingly candid look at relationship dynamics and the unnecessary drama we create. Drawing from their 30+ years of marriage and careers as actors and corporate facilitators, David unveils the fascinating mechanics behind interpersonal conflicts.
Check out the Status Bias Survey! - https://coup.co/your-status-bias/
Proudly sponsored by COUP — helping brands cut through the noise with bold, smart marketing. Visit the http://coup.co website or book a meeting with us at. https://go.oncehub.com/RequestMeeting
Yesterday Annie croaked to me. She said David you're going to have to do the podcast. And I said I can't do the podcast. I'm only good at chipping in.
Speaker 3:You are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him. Not my husband. I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be, aboriginal land.
Speaker 1:Well, hello smart women and welcome back to the Smart Women podcast. And no, you don't need to adjust your dial. This isn't the voice of Annie McCubbin. Actually, this is the voice of Annie McCubbin. Good morning Annie.
Speaker 1:Hi Hi Hi David, no, don't laugh, It'll make you cough again. Yes, the wild weather last week created a little bit of an allergy and some bugs got in and it's got into Annie's throat and it's not working well today. So yesterday Annie croaked to me. She said David, you're going to have to do the podcast and I said I can't do the podcast. And I said I can't do the podcast, I'm only good at chipping in. I can't. I can't sustain an entire conversation.
Speaker 2:But she said you have to you have to, yeah so.
Speaker 1:So here we are. Good morning, um and uh, and annie is sitting next to me. Just to make sure that I don't say anything that is either inappropriate or boring me, just to make sure that I don't say anything that is either inappropriate or boring. That's my constant feedback. You know, david, that wasn't interesting enough. I'm worried that we're boring them to death.
Speaker 2:But look, I do have a couple of stories to tell.
Speaker 1:Don't yell. Okay, I won't yell, harry, could you also make sure that I don't yell? Okay, I won't yell, harry, could you also make sure that I don't yell into the microphone? But look, it was a funny old day. Yesterday. Annie and I went down to the medical center. We were there at 8 o'clock in the morning when it opened and there was a queue of 20 people who were already there and Annie really wanted to find out whether it was viral or bacterial. Should she take antibiotics, etc. Etc. Also my eyes oh, that's right, conjunctivitis, she couldn't open her eyes yesterday it's disgusting terrible, um.
Speaker 1:So there were a whole lot of things that, uh, that needed to be seen to and, yes, great long queue in front. But by the time we got to the lady at reception lovely lady, one of those sort of medical centre receptionists that doesn't take any nonsense from anybody, very, very definite looked up with the steely eyes of a goanna giving no quarter and you know, she seemed to be sort of naturally disappointed that we'd never been there before and we hadn't been on file and I thought, oh, here we go, this is going to take a long time. She said, ok, look, I'll put your details in. What's your birth date? And Annie gave her birth date and it was a day in January and that sparked a little interest from the lady. She said, oh, you're a Capricorn. Now, normally, you know the discussion of astrology, you know Annie gets her back up and I don't get my back up.
Speaker 2:Well, you don't, you don't, but I just think it's nonsense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you think it's absolute nonsense. But Annie did not roll her eyes yesterday, she didn't snort, she could see the bigger picture and decided that a correction, that a dispelling of the nonsense was not necessary at this moment. And her sort of face lit up and she croaked yes, I am a Capricorn. And the lady behind the reception said, yes, I'm a Capricorn too. And it's like oh well, then we're very nice people. And suddenly, suddenly, they were best friends and he volunteered that I was also a Capricorn, to which the now warming up Goanna behind the desk said well, that's good, you two will get on well together, you know, not like a Sagittarius or something like that.
Speaker 2:She's married too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know, and Annie, actually, you know, indulged a good minute of astrological insight into combinations and things like this Shush yo-yo. And yeah, it's a shame yo-yo doesn't have a sore throat this morning. And then the lady bumped Annie up to, you know, Second, Second from the top of the list.
Speaker 2:I was at 24th.
Speaker 1:And so there you go.
Speaker 2:Tell them what number I was.
Speaker 1:You were number two.
Speaker 2:I could have been number.
Speaker 1:You could have been number 22. And so you know, saved a long time by choosing not to engage in unnecessary drama and correction. Of course, that instinct wasn't very much in play later in the day and I did walk down to lovely DY Beach in the sun and I saw Annie's body sort of convulse with derision when she saw the Forest of the Fallen. Now the Forest of the Fallen is a sort of a piece of outdoor theatre. It's an installation that the people who are behind the Forest of the Fallen set up, and he refers to them as cookers because they are conspiracy theorists. They're cooked, they're cooked. They are conspiracy theorists who will maintain that, on balance, a great disservice was done to the Australian population who were made to take vaccines during the COVID epidemic, and they've got fake dead people and well, I mean, the reality of the situation is that some people did have a bad reaction to the vaccine vaccine.
Speaker 1:On balance, that was a drop in the ocean compared to the number of lives saved by all the work that was being done with vaccines at the time. There is something that happens with critical thinking, and that is that if you get one or two really bad outcomes, particularly if they are people who are known to you, then you will inflate those numbers and then say that overall, this is a bad thing. Okay, so anyway, I'll just go back to the beach. I'll go back to the beach.
Speaker 2:Fake forest of the fallen.
Speaker 1:Annie was very, very cross about this, because we have a group of people who, whatever they've drunk the Kool-Aid and they actually believe that they are telling the truth, the fact is that they're not and their activity undermines the great work that is being done by our public health system. The great work that is being done, evidence to both Annie and myself on that very morning, when we literally went across the road to a medical centre and Annie was seen Paid nothing. Paid nothing to have an expert check her.
Speaker 2:Swabbed.
Speaker 1:She was swabbed, she had samples taken. And there you go, there you go.
Speaker 2:No, you didn't explain the Forest of the Fallen very well. They've got sticks in the ground with pictures on them.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the Forest of the Fallen. They put sticks into the ground and then each of the sticks carries a laminated A4 page that has the photograph and a tragic story of someone who was either killed or their life was ruined by taking the vaccine. Now, the truth is that so many of these people are actually still alive. They weren't killed, they weren't that badly damaged. Some of them don't even exist.
Speaker 2:Well, no, some of them. For instance, you know they had the vaccine. Then they died in a car crash. It's got nothing to do with the vaccine.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's right. As we know, there are many reasons why people die, and sometimes it is a heart attack, or sometimes it is a car accident, or sometimes it is other complications. And so many of these stories attributed the tragic event to the vaccine, when it's actually not true. And what's the name of the gherkin? So then what's the name of the gherkin?
Speaker 2:The snarky gherkin Okay so the snarky gherkin.
Speaker 1:The snarky gherkin is a fantastic online character who has taken these people on and basically works to undermine their undermining of the public health system. And Annie actually took a photograph and sent it to the snarky gherkin which she used in a post.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I also had a go at them, but I couldn't say much because my voice was gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I was actually kind of a bit relieved that Annie didn't make a big scene on DY Beach, but I'm sure her voice will come back and she'll have her opportunity to do that at another time.
Speaker 2:Also, I saw John, the Neighbour this morning and he said to me oh gee, david must be pleased you've lost your voice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also saw John the Neighbour and he said exactly the same thing to me. He said you know, you're sitting pretty at the moment. You don't have to listen to your wife, um, at your nap. What I don't understand john must have powers of telepathy or something like that. He could have no idea how much you nag me unnecessarily, but still, you know, I guess it's one of those, one of those tropes, one of those memetic jokes that works for everybody. It's not unexpected, it may not have been shared in one of the previous podcasts, but Annie and I do a lot of work together. We work together. We're essentially partners in our professional services firm. We train together, we facilitate together, we do creative development together. We work together a lot. In fact, I was thinking about it right back at the very, very beginning. Within three months of us getting together, we were working together in the theater. We did a fantastic production of Henry V with only five of us, and we've got some funny stories about that which we're not going to bore you with at the moment.
Speaker 2:Come no more for Harold Gentle.
Speaker 1:Ransom Come no more for Harold Gentle Ransom. Oh look, you do a matinee, you do the show again. Occasionally you get a couple of the words mixed up, but you did say that. My line was come no more for Rans herald, that's henry, to the, the french uh ambassador and I was the ambassador you were the ambassador and in that moment, I don't know what swept me away.
Speaker 1:Maybe it was, you know, annie's beauty sparkling in the light. I said come no more for herald the gentle ransom, which doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Um, but the thing about shakespeare is, most of the audience don't understand the words anyway, so it really shouldn't have mattered what did I do? Well, working with a professional, you'd expect that they would just kind of incorporate that. And then you know, do what they need to do, and and the reality of the play continues. What did you do?
Speaker 2:you stopped.
Speaker 1:You just walked off. Here am I, I'm the king, and the ambassador laughs at me and then just walks off, which in some theatrical relationships probably could have caused a bit of drama. When Annie and I facilitate, it sometimes takes the group a while to work out that actually we're married. I mean, look, I don't mind saying that we've got a brilliant, you know, joint facilitation style. It's really fluid, it's really live, it's pretty funny and what we do is we kind of slip in and out of dramatizations in order to bring certain ideas to life.
Speaker 1:So you know, our kind of stock in trade is sort of relationship and performance. You know leadership, communication, how you, you know how you get the best out of people and sometimes it's good to be able to show, you know, drama that gets in the way of that and also drama that helps and people. You know sometimes, you know they're quite taken aback when they actually find out that Annie and I are married and we've raised children together and dogs and all of that kind of stuff, and people's surprise then translates into interest. You know they say, oh, I'd love to be able to fly on the wall with you two at home, Because they think that our life will just be drama, drama, drama, drama, because we're actors and because they see us doing drama in front of the room.
Speaker 1:They see us doing drama in front of the room and they think that that's the way that it always is, when actually it is quite the opposite. The simple truth is that, yes, annie and I deeply understand drama. We know how drama is created and, critically, we know how drama can be resolved or avoided entirely, and I think that that, probably well as much as anything else, is kind of like the secret to our success. We've been married for over 30 years now.
Speaker 2:I should hope so, our son's 31.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. Oh no, You're getting your voice back, Okay. So we've been married a great deal of time and, yes, indeed, working together, working together in the theatre, working together in corporate, doing what we do. You know there's pressures on that. We had lots of dramas during pregnancy and, as everybody does, raising children and managing teenagers and releasing our wonderful adult children into the world. So we've had a lot of drama along the way. But I think our capacity to see what creates drama and also to distinguish between the dramas that are helpful and the dramas that are not helpful is, I think, the secret to our longevity and the harmony that we pretty much enjoy.
Speaker 3:We're just pausing for a minute to hear a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1:The why Smart Women podcast is brought to you by Coup, a boutique training, coaching and media production company. A Coup, spelt C-O-U-P, is a decisive act of leadership, and decisive leadership requires critical thinking. So well done you for investing time to think about your thinking, if your leadership or relationships would benefit from some grounded and creative support. If you want team training or a conference presentation, reach out for a confidential one-on-one conversation using the link in the description or go to coupco. Drama definitely arises when there are different realities or narratives, when people are convinced that the way that they see the world is the way that it is, when it actually there's another, you know, entirely legitimate reality. That creates drama and it can do that in a funny way, like Gogol's the Government Inspector. It's an old Russian play where a fool arrives in town but everybody thinks he's the government inspector. And because there are these two sort of competing realities, there's a comic drama that arises from that. When you look at a simple conversation, you can see that drama is created by pace. It's like when the cadence of the drama picks up, when there are no gaps, when there are no pauses, like if I'm directing a play and I think that the scene is pretty boring. What I will do is I will tell the actors just to pick up your cues. What I will do is I will tell the actors just to pick up your cues, and just that simple decision to pick up the cues. That starts to create drama.
Speaker 1:We see this in non-theatrical settings. One of the things that we sometimes do is we help expert witnesses prepare for court. The opposing barrister will sometimes come in with a barrage of questions, you know, rapid fire, and what they will be doing is they will be undermining the credibility and the stability of the person that they are seeking to dismantle in front of the court and in those instances, that doesn't serve that witness or their case in any way. So being able to see what creates these dramas, that puts us in a position to make decisions around how you de-escalate the drama. So when you've got those competing priorities, what you can do is you can shift one's perspective in order to understand the other person's point of view so, if you take the example of yesterday, that's right yeah they're at the beach and they've got their stupid sticks in the sand with the fake dead people on it, right.
Speaker 1:Right, yes.
Speaker 2:And they're wanting to get across their deluded point of view that vaccines kill and we shouldn't take them.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And then I walk into that fray and go. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. That achieves absolutely nothing, does it?
Speaker 1:But I felt better for saying it. Well, no, look, I'm not saying that drama is.
Speaker 2:But it was pointless Me saying, that was pointless.
Speaker 1:It was pointless.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah they just looked at me with sort of the dead eyes of the walking dead.
Speaker 1:Yes. So with some perspective, you know, you might accept the reality that you weren't going to achieve much with those people yesterday, that's right, but somebody heard me say it yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we're not saying that drama is necessarily always bad. Sometimes we definitely do need drama. Sometimes we need to create drama in order to bring people's attention to something that is, you know, that should be stopped. Sometimes, drama actually creates a sense of, you know, excitement and purpose in a team, and that's great If you, you know, it's actually easy to create those kinds of dramas.
Speaker 2:And if you think about the cookers, the anti-vaxxers, they get a true sense of identity because they belong to something yeah that's right, and saying no to something gives people a sense of power.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, and so this is why they would be quite emotional if you completely undermine their legitimacy, because you're not just attacking their argument, you are attacking their self-identity. Yeah, you know, you're attacking their source of power.
Speaker 1:Identity to the identity protective cognition, yeah well identity protective cognition is a phenomenon that has been described by psychologists, who are able to test and observe that people will sometimes have their intelligence co-opted by the need to fulfill a certain identity, like the cookers. Like the cookers, you know sometimes, and what's interesting about this is that we might say well, you know they're pretty dull, you know they're not very intelligent. This is the way that they have to get their power in the world, and then you know they're not very smart. But that's not true. The way that they have to get their power in the world and then you know they're not very smart. But that's not true. That sometime. Identity protective cognition it doesn't matter how smart you are. If a certain reality challenges your sense of identity, the human brain is prone to d. Let's see um discounting that particular perspective so that you get to retain your identity.
Speaker 2:So if you've got an identity and something challenges it, so you're going to discount that challenge.
Speaker 1:That's the point of it, isn't it yeah?
Speaker 2:And this happens like this is what happens in the internet, isn't it? With bubbles? Internet bubbles, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, the whole phenomena of internet bubbles is fueled by so many factors. It's not just that you only see posts that subscribe to what your preferences appear to be. Confirmation bias.
Speaker 1:But the human element of that is that. So it's not just the algorithm. The human factor is that you get a dopamine reward when you see something that aligns, that corresponds, that maps onto the beliefs that you already have, and so you get an even stronger sense of who you are. And let's just consider the power of really getting a really strong sense of self. A strong sense of self is the anchor that helps people to manage a whole lot of challenges of life, and so it's understandable that people would want to be exposed to things that increase their sense of self.
Speaker 1:The danger is that if you increase your sense of self by subscribing to absolute nonsense, then your life goes in a less fruitful direction. But just on the theme of being able to de-escalate drama when you know that it's not actually helping you, Look, one of the things that you can do is to shift your perspective, to understand where other people are coming from. Sometimes the dramas that we escalate, you know the truth is that they don't help us, you know move in the direction that we want to. You know, sometimes they do create feuds and they do create distractions that come back and haunt you and give you things that you need to deal with in the future.
Speaker 2:They can create great silences between partners right Married partners, because no one knows how to resolve it right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%. And so you know the potholes, you know the traps that drama creates, you know they are numerous and if you want to, if you want to avoid those, you know if you get the sense that you are engaging in a conversation or a debate or even an argument in order to win, then maybe that's the moment to step back and bring the temperature down a little bit. So you know, when you've got competing priorities and that's causing the drama, you know the thing that you can choose to do would be to shift your perspective and try to demonstrate that you understand where the other person is coming from. It doesn't mean you need to hold their perspective. I mean she could just go and she could call them cookers and you could say you know you should be ashamed of yourself. You know you're undermining the health system. You know you're only doing it for your egoic value.
Speaker 1:Very easy to create the drama. So let's imagine she didn't want to create drama. She wanted to have a conversation. She could shift the perspective to understand their viewpoint. You know why are you here, why have you given your Sunday? To make this protest? She could connect to the higher value or the common goal we really want to keep everybody safe. Isn't that right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. You could clarify? You know what their story is. So you just want people to make informed decisions? Okay, that's right. And I tell you one thing that will help to de-escalate the drama is to simply slow down the conversation, give people time to think, formulate a point of view and share that point of view without interruption.
Speaker 1:Now, if you have a strong feeling that they are frauds, that they're idiots, that's going to be really, really difficult. So this is when we have to apply a little bit of self-direction, which is built on self-awareness. Okay. So here's the complication Most people in our experience actually don't know what they are most likely to do when they are faced with a dramatic situation. You know that implicit competition of ideas, a contest of outcomes, and there's a way that we actually describe the preferences that people have. We talk about status. Okay, we don't talk about status, you know. Just, you know in terms of. You know, there are some people who drive big cars and have a lot of money and, you know, are genetic celebrities and those sorts of things. We look at status very much in terms of what's in terms of power?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, that's it. Status is a way of describing interpersonal power, um, that that if I have status in the relationship, then I'm actually going to be controlling the outcome. If you have a status in this relationship, you are going to be controlling the outcome, and it stands to reason that a functional relationship, that status, that power, moves backwards and forwards. You know, I might be saying to Annie listen, I don't think that you should take the cookers on today, right, I don't think it's good, you'll just get upset. You've got a sore throat, you should be resting yourself. Don't invite an argument that you don't want. Now that's me trying to exert status over Annie's behavior. Annie gets a steely look on her eye and she says I'm going to do it anyway. And so Annie then takes status, so she basically wins that little competition. That's what we're talking about. Functional relationships status moves backwards and forwards. Dysfunctional relationships we kind of get stuck where one of the partners is always in control and the other one is always taking orders, and that's where domestic violence starts too.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So just to touch on this lightly, if anyone's kind of interested in exploring this dimension further, annie and I have created a status bias diagnostic that is specifically designed to address this blind spot. It helps you to see how you instinctively respond with power and status when you're under pressure. Yeah, when you're under pressure. And look, why would you want to do that? Well, it equips you to be able to steer away from unnecessary drama. It may be that you decide I want to create some drama here. Well, that's when you'd lean into holding status. It may be that you don't want to create any drama, so you would relinquish status. Now, if you think about the thousands of transactions that you have every day with your partner, with your children, with your friends, with the people that you work with, with the other drivers in the street, you are engaged in little status calculations, battles and dramas all the time, and you will have developed a pattern. Is the pattern that you have developed the pattern that creates your presence in the world? Is that working for you as well as it possibly could? Or, with some self-awareness and some self-direction, would you make a different choice? Would you make a different choice? Would you make a different choice.
Speaker 1:The status bias survey is at cooco. Stroke your status bias? I don't know. We'll put it in the show notes, won't we? Yeah, so we'll put the link in the show notes. If you're interested in working out what your relationship is to this concept of status and if you'd like to have a chat with Annie or I about it, take the survey. You'll be given a report sent to your inbox, and there'll also be a link there if you'd like to book a half-hour entirely complimentary conversation with either Annie or myself to help you unpack it A half hour free consultation, largely because we want to see how this diagnostic actually works and whether it does create meaning for people.
Speaker 1:We've tested it with a few people and they've been absolutely delighted of, you know, delighted and surprised and um and and glad that they're. You know that they've taken that conversation. So, um, yeah, that's the, that's, that's the status bias diagnostic, and he's giving me the big wind up at the moment. Well, you've got a meeting. I'm going to go take a meeting. Hey, listen, thank you very much for for staying with me for this. Well, you don't know they have for this okay, thank you for reminding me.
Speaker 1:Oh, here's just my one last thing. If you want to avoid unnecessary status dramas with your spouse, the one piece of advice don't keep score. Don't keep score on anything you know. Don't do the oh look, I worked really hard today and therefore I deserve to have dinner cooked for me, or I've emptied the dishwasher three times this week. I deserve to have a day off. That kind of thought process often creates drama because it creates a score which creates resentment. So that's my sign off.
Speaker 2:So you can now say good afternoon everybody. Hope you have a nice day.
Speaker 1:Good afternoon everybody. I hope you have a really nice day. The sun's shining here in Sydney and Stay safe. Stay safe.
Speaker 2:Keep your critical hat on. Keep your critical thinking hat on.
Speaker 1:And don't create drama when your wife is telling you exactly what you should be saying Okay, bye for now.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 3:Thanks for tuning in to why Smart Women me, annie mccubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day. Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, in a car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies. Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later.
Speaker 3:This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, Annie McCubbin.
