Leslie John (on the power of oversharing)

Episode overview

Leslie John (Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing) is a behavioral scientist, Harvard Business School professor, and expert on privacy, self-disclosure, and decision-making. Leslie joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in Waterloo, Canada, training professionally in ballet as a child, and how her family’s irrational penny-pinching sparked her fascination with human behavior. Leslie and Dax talk about why people are more open to revealing their dark secrets on a sketchy-looking website over a more official looking one, how one mortifying overshare helped her find lifelong mentors, and what parasocial relationships reveal about modern intimacy. Leslie explains why secrets take up cognitive space, how vulnerability creates trust through social risk, and why we may be better off sharing a little more than we think we should.

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Short transcript highlights

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1. 0:00Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on expert.
2. 46:05I have become like just, I can't stop listening every single night to his stuff.
3. 1:44:51information or something. Funny. All right. Well, that's it for Leslie. Love you. Love you. Love you.