12. Who You Think With

In March of 2020, Dave and I were on stage at a big event in Portland when the governor shut down the state. Our speaking business—the life we had just rebuilt ourselves around—ended somewhere in the middle of that talk. I remember the airport that night, empty around us like a set after the crew has gone home. It was deeply weird and we had no idea how weird it was about to get. None of us did.

Our lockdown was more locked than most. Dave had just been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and started on immune suppressants, so caution wasn't optional, and three teenage-and-nearly-grown daughters were suddenly home with us, all day, every day. The world got very small and very close.

Somewhere in those weeks, a blog I trust pointed me at its go-to book for understanding humans: The Knowledge Illusion, by the cognitive scientist Steven Sloman—yes, the Steve you met at the start of this book, though back then he was just a name on a cover—and his colleague Philip Fernbach. I read it inside that shrunken world, and when I finished it I said: Dave, I want a summer of sabbatical. What I actually meant, though I couldn't have said it yet, was that I'd found the question I wanted to spend a good chunk of my working life on.