Nature or Nurture with Eli Manning and Dr. Angela Duckworth

Welcome to StarTalk.

Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk Sports Edition.

I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bringing to you this episode, which we’ve titled Nature vs.

Nurture.

And by the way, I hate that debate, Nature vs.

Nurture, but sometimes you have to resurrect it because you’re confronted with something you cannot otherwise explain without duking it out over whether nature or nurture matters.

Because in this episode, we are featuring my exclusive sit down interview with Eli Manning.

Eli Manning, Super Bowl winning quarterback for the New York Giants, brother of another Super Bowl winning quarterback, both of whom were sons of an NFL quarterback.

So there’s a lot going on in that family and there’s a lot to talk about in this show.

I’ve got my cohost Chuck Nice, Chuck Baby.

Hey Neil, I hate this show too.

Just hate it so much.

So yeah, so Chuck with no actual athletic experience, he’s here to bring a touch of levity if you don’t otherwise know that.

But I do have Gary O’Reilly, Gary.

Hey Neil.

All right, good, good.

I do love this show just as the illegitimate stepchild of podcasts gets some love somewhere along the line.

Yeah, yeah, former football pro baller over in the UK and it’s always great to have you.

You also serve time as an announcer there.

So we don’t just pluck you off the field.

You were honed in all the ways necessary to do what we need you to do for this show.

So it’s like, we have to ask, were the Manning brothers manufactured because of the environment in which they were raised by their father, or is there some genetic component that we need to pay attention to?

And to do this, I think we need some academic expertise.

And who do we call?

We can call, there’s only one person in the universe who can comment on this with depth and intensity and expertise, and that’s Angela Duckworth.

Angela, welcome back to StarTalk.

Hey guys, it’s great to be with you again.

I love this show already, by the way, even though-

Excellent.

Even though I’m with you, the nature of versus nurture, the only problem is the versus part.

But yeah, well, let’s get-

That’s it, that’s the versus.

Maybe that’s why I should have localized it.

Yeah, to the versus part.

And I just want you to know, Chuck, that Angela wrote the book on grit.

She actually did, lit this.

Wait a minute.

Literally.

Literally.

Look, see what happened there?

What?

Oh my-

You see what I did there?

No, man, it’s just so meta all over the place.

So she’s a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

She studies grit.

In fact, she’s largely responsible for that word being in our vocabulary in the way we use it.

Grit and self-control.

And she’s also founded the Character Lab.

This is audacious.

She’s a founder and CEO of this, the Character Lab.

It’s a not-for-profit organization to advance the science and practice of character development, something we haven’t heard much of lately.

And there it is, author of Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

And that was released five years ago, back in 2016.

And it was on the New York Times Best Sellouts for 21 weeks.

So it hit a chord with many, many people.

And so, Angela, we have you here to reflect on these clips of mine when I sat down, caught up with Eli Manning up in, where was he?

He was in Connecticut when I caught up with him.

If you came from a house where everybody’s got a win, like what does that mean in his early years?

Is this good force?

Is it a bad force?

And I want to get Angela’s reaction, Angela, after you take a listen to this clip.

So here we are, my first clip of several in conversation with Eli Manning.

The way you describe this tells me that at no time did you feel pressure, you know, that parental pressure.

That’s my boy out there.

He’s gonna check him out.

And then now you got to perform because otherwise you’ll disappoint your parents.

So what was that relationship?

You know, my dad loved for us to play sports.

He played sports and growing up, there was an important part of his life.

But more on the fact.

He was pro.

He was a pro.

He played 14 years in NFL.

He played baseball in college as well.

And so he just, you know, grew up playing sports as a young boy.

And so he just thought it built great character.

It built, you know, just a good work ethic.

It helped with, you know, teamwork and dealing with the good and the bad that happened to you in life.

And so he wanted us to play sports, but his rule was, says, you know, you had to ask me, you know, so we had to ask him to go, you know, throw the football with us or go shoot hoops with us or go, you know, make catch.

It was not the other way around.

We had to be in charge of our own athletic and your own initiative and our own initiative.

It had to start from us.

And if we asked him, you know, he would drop and go out there.

That is the complete opposite of the way most parents run that plan.

It’s like, you’re playing, we’re gonna catch today, whether you like it or not.

Get out here right now.

We gotta catch a hundred balls.

You’re gonna make a hundred free throws.

I think the fact that he, I mean, he lived his athletic career.

Like he wasn’t trying to live his sports life through us.

He did his own.

He had 14 years in the NFL.

He was just trying to raise three boys to be good kids, do well in school and, you know, and create a, you know, make sports being positive and fun.

And that’s how I think he was raised.

And so he tried to do the same with us.

So Angela, this sounds like the ideal environment to not have the pressure, but still have the tap roots to grow.

So is this the kind of family that works for you?

I think this is not only the kind of family that raises, you know, two quarterbacks who have, you know, storied careers, but it’s just the kind of family that raises great kids.

You know, this clip reminds me of, you know, one of the core tenets of motivational psychology and also what we know about the science of parenting, which is that human beings of all ages, but especially kids, have a huge need for autonomy, the ability to make the choice, the ability to say, you know, I want to do this, not that.

And this need for autonomy is in a way, like you think, well, what’s the, well, that’s kind of obvious.

Like, you know, it’s like the opposite of tiger parenting, which is actually what a lot of people mistakenly think is that, you know, the roots of greatness is that you have some parent who’s like making you do all these hard things that, you know, 15 years later, you’re glad that they forced you to do that.

And in fact, the research is unequivocal that when you take away choices from your kids, they lose intrinsic motivation.

And, you know, you can keep them going for a while just by like browbeating them into practicing their piano or whatever, but they’ll never be great.

I think that’s, you know, one of the things that I would say also of my research, that when you look into the childhoods of people who eventually become great, it’s hard to find evidence of this kind of coercive parenting that, you know, some people call tiger parenting.

Yeah, interesting.

What if you actually recognize in your child a gift, if you want to call it that, a certain proclivity towards greatness in an area.

And you don’t want them to squander it.

And you don’t want them to squander it.

And so you’re just like, hey, man, no, you got to do this.

But then they catch on to the fact that they are great.

And then that kind of gets the ball rolling and they take over.

Yes.

How often does that happen?

Okay, so Chuck’s bringing up a really good point.

I want to actually say there’s two things.

I mean, so rule number one for parenting is respect for autonomy, right?

Respect for the autonomy of your kid.

But there’s two, I don’t know, corollaries or footnotes, asterisks, because it’s not that easy, right?

Anybody who’s been a parent knows that you have to occasionally tell your kids to do things that they don’t want to do.

So that’s, in a way, not respecting their autonomy, right?

Like, no, you can’t cross the street right now.

Like, no, you can’t take that.

But here are the two asterisks that I want to put on the need for autonomy parenting advice.

One is that once your kid is committed to football or whatever, you know, like I’m going to be on the school newspaper this year, et cetera, I do think, and this is also from my own parenting experience because I’ve got an 18 and 19 year old, two girls, right?

Like, yeah, you as a parent do have to enforce their decision, right?

Once they have said autonomously, yeah, I’m going to do track, right?

But then after the first track meet, this is what happened to my younger daughter, Lucy, she was like, oh, changed my mind, didn’t like it after all.

And I was like, no problem, there’s only a second more weeks of track season.

And then you can make another choice.

So I do think you have to enforce the commitments.

I mean, what kid really is going to say like, hey, it’s a really sunny day outside, I really want to practice this instrument, violin that I said that I wanted to practice.

So I think the first asterisk is like, yeah, parents have to help their kids meet their commitments, but the commitment comes from the kid.

And the second one is like what you just said, Chuck, right?

Like there are times where, and I think, you know, I have a research project on this right now, but there are times where our confidence falters, right?

It’s not like there’s no variation in your confidence, like every day you wake up and you’re like, I can do this.

And I absolutely think that it is an enormously important thing for a parent or anybody else, like a coach, right?

To say like, I know you don’t believe in yourself today, right?

And I know you want to quit, because you don’t think you can do this, but I’m not letting you quit on a bad day.

And so they’re a buoyant force in what’s going on.

They’re a buoyant force, especially when it comes to confidence.

And I think very often the kid is myopic, the parent can see far.

Well, let’s find out what makes Eli Manning tick.

Let’s go to my second clip.

People can’t stop wondering, was it in the water supply or in the food, in the biscuits your parents baked for your family?

You and your brother and your father, and you know there’s another sibling, right?

Our oldest brother Cooper played football, he was a receiver and then had a neck injury, he had to stop.

Oh, that’s too bad.

But nonetheless, all three of you were engaged.

Yes.

In this way.

Yes.

Is it the food?

Is it the air you breathe?

Is it, what is your analysis?

You know what, I think it’s just a sense of, some people, you know, like I talked about earlier, some people can just, they can get a ball and they can say, I’m gonna throw it and hit that tree.

And for whatever reason, without thinking about it, your body just, you know, moves and you create torque and you get arm angle and it all just flows.

And if you had to, if I had to think about how to throw a football, like, what do your hips do?

And what does your shoulder do?

I would have no idea.

It’s like, if I had to think about it, I might not be able to throw it.

So I just, you know, you just, you can just, it’s just a natural motion that we could do and it just made sense to us.

And then we also enjoyed, you know, kind of learning about the game of football and learning, hey, why are defenses playing this, you know, this style of defense?

Why, what’s this coverage?

What are good plays that go against this coverage?

It’s kind of, you’re figuring out the equations, like a math equation, you’re figuring out the answer.

Hey, they play this defense, we run this play, we’ll have success.

We’ll create that touchdown, which is kind of the final answer.

So he’s got a, he came at this by saying, oh, I did this and it felt natural.

And then he pursued what he would then call his natural proclivity, his natural ability.

So Angela, is there, is it fair to say that some people have a natural ability?

Because I can practice at something and get better at it and no one is gonna call it natural if I practice at it, but if the end result is the same, why are we even distinguishing between the two?

I think there’s such a, you know, reflexive, you know, is it innate talent or is it something that you can practice?

I mean, you know, very similar to the, is it nature or is it nurture dichotomy?

When the messy truth is that it’s almost got to be both, right?

So what we know from behavioral genetics is there’s nothing about us, you know, our ability to throw a football the first time that we get one in our hands or, you know, a math equation or, you know, to like sing a song or to be extroverted.

Like literally everything about us has some genetic influence.

The DNA that cuts shuffled and that we inherited from our mom, biological mom and our biological dad, like it influences everything about us.

So there’s got to be an extent to which you can say that the Mannings have a gene pool that inclines them toward that multifaceted ability that adds up to being a great quarterback or a great athlete.

At the same time, every single one of those things that I mentioned, being extroverted, being able to throw a football, the first time you get a chance to sing, like what happens.

Those things are all malleable and they are practicable.

And so if we could get people to, out of this conversation, Neil, get out of the kind of either or thinking, when it comes to their own kids or themselves, into both and thinking, yeah, there’s both some genetic influence and there’s a hell of a lot I can do to actually change things.

So when he talks about his younger days, sorry, Neil, when he talks about his younger days, and obviously the physical aspect of him being able to throw intuitively is there, but he talks about his enjoyments of problem solving as a quarterback.

Is this him really beginning to unlock his true potential?

Gary, I’m so glad you brought that up.

I noted that as well.

And by the way, enjoying running around, enjoying athletic activity, enjoying what some psychologists just like kinesthetic intelligence, right?

Where my body is in space, like where everybody else’s body is in space, that kind of thing, that is also both nature and nurture, right?

So absolutely some kids are born enjoying that more or enjoying music more or whatever.

At the same time, experience matters.

What the Manning family story reminds me of is this fantastic study by Benjamin Bloom at University of Chicago.

Angela, we don’t have time to hear that study in this segment, but if our audience can hang on, and if so can you, when we come back, we’ll pick up that story on what research has to say about what’s going on in the Manning family of StarTalk.

We’re back to StarTalk Sports Edition.

I got Chuck and Gary with me, of course, my co-host, intrepid co-host, and we’ve got Angela Duckworth to help us understand and interpret and analyze my exclusive interview with NFL football great Eli Manning.

And Angela, you were saying, after we heard those first two clips, that it reminded you of some research that you’re about to quote.

Tell us what’s going on there.

When you ask a great performer why it is that they’re great, they usually say something about enjoying learning about what they’re doing.

I mean, they just really enjoy music or football, whatever it is.

Now this research that I was getting into was done by Benjamin Bloom at University of Chicago.

He looked at 120 world-class performers, swimming, neuroscience, sculpture, piano, tennis.

People top of their game.

At the very top of their game.

And he actually interviewed people, like typically, for example, when they were so far into their careers that everybody knew they were great, but that their parents and their coaches were still alive to also be interviewed.

And one of the things that came out is that when you talk about cultivating an enjoyment of a craft, which like everything else we’re talking about today is not only nature, but also nurture, like what is that nurture part?

I think there’s two things.

One is that somebody in that young kid’s life is actually modeling, enjoying that craft and very often it was their parents.

So in the way that perhaps Archie Manning was just demonstrating, just as a personal example, like how wonderful sports was, like how terrific it is.

Archie Manning, the father, the father of this.

Exactly, of the two boys, right, who would grow up.

So that happened over and over again in these stories of 120 world-class performers.

Doesn’t mean that if your mom or dad isn’t already like the thing that you’re going to grow up to be, that you’ll never love it, but it does actually make it more likely.

And I happen to think that, you know, a parent who models passion for something is also, you know, a powerful role model.

Just that you’re really into something and your kids should watch that and appreciate that.

And then the second thing I’ll just say about this Benjamin Bloom study is, at the same time, they always do respect that kid’s autonomy, right?

So it’s not forcing your kids to go into the thing that you love, but modeling that you do love it and encouraging them.

And you know, just like Eli Manning said, you have to ask me, but if you do ask me, yeah, I’m going to go throw the ball around with you.

Well, in my interview, I did ask him directly what he thought about the nature versus nurture question in his own life.

Let’s check it out.

Can anybody become you?

What does that mean?

Are we talking like clones here?

Where are we going with this?

You know, if I want to be a football star and let’s say I’m in middle school or high school, if I just worked hard at it, can I become you?

Or do you think there might have been some genetic profile that you came out of your mother with where you were just ready and born for it?

No, I definitely think there is some sort of like, you’re born with a certain skill set.

And some people, you know, whether it’s throwing a ball, throwing a football, shooting a basket, it just makes sense to them.

And I relate it to golf.

You know, I think there’s some people that can just hit a golf ball.

They get up there and this, the hips and the arms and everything is in sync.

And for me, I’ve played so much golf and it’s, I mean, I’m okay, but I’ll never be able to get to that professional level.

I mean, I could get a coach and I could practice every single day.

And I’ve kind of, I’m just limited in certain things.

And I think that’s just the way it is in certain sports.

You can improve and you can get better, but there’s gonna be some limitations that if you don’t have these certain skill sets or don’t have the skill sets or have this certain mobility that you can’t create that to get to the top of the top level.

So Angela, would you say that maybe what people should do is explore everything they could be good at and then make a list of that and then find out of what you could be good at, what you enjoy doing most.

And then this filters down to just what we need, how this filters down to how we should perhaps be investing our time and energy?

There have got to be some genetic limits.

For example, height, right?

I mean, you know, you look at the Olympics and it’s like, wow, none of these gymnasts are six foot six, right?

And yeah, it turns out none of the basketball players are five foot one, right?

But you know, that’s just one example, right?

There have to be some genetic limits and also just some genetic weightings, right?

Some things where it’s like, well, yeah, you can climb that slope, but it’s going to be really steep for you.

But for this other person, it’s going to be easy downhill walking.

So they’ve got to be, you know.

Wait, wait, so is Chuck genetically funny?

Well, I have thought about humor actually, which is really, you know, the same thing to me as like, you know, sports or chess or astrophysics, right?

Okay, all right, all right.

Like it’s a skill, it’s a craft, it’s a love, it’s a passion, you know, you get better at it.

I think Chuck, right?

Like I think you could argue that you.

The only difference is you certainly don’t want to model passion for it in front of your children because you don’t want them to become comedians.

You’re like, whatever you do, don’t do this.

Well, that may be the only exception, right?

Because everything else I think applies.

And you know, when Eli talks about being born with a certain skill set, I mean, it’s an interesting choice of words because I don’t know that, you know, the human brain is not born actually, like, pre-wired with, like, you know, how to throw a long pass, right?

Like, that’s…

Angela, let me ask you this question.

Right?

There are those athletes that don’t match the physical perfection of their event, but they still make it.

They’re still successful.

So what’s their pathway in looking at what they don’t have and making up in other ways to achieve the goal they’ve set out?

Some of the greatest basketball players alive today aren’t the tallest ones on the team.

That just wouldn’t be something that you would expect.

Some of them are like, so that would be an example, right, Gary?

I think I’m just saying that there are obviously some things which do make it harder, or even in some sports you could argue like just impossible, right?

There are certain like very extreme things where you’re like, that’s…

I will say that…

Just to be clear, Michael Jordan was 6’6, I think.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

He was 6’5, he was not like amazingly tall.

That’s about average.

Not especially tall.

And given the choice of, given a magic wand, these players may be like, yeah, give me the other inch, like give me the five inches, right?

So I do think there are advantages and disadvantages.

I wouldn’t call them skill sets because the human brain is actually plastic.

And so it is what some scientists would call experience dependent and experience expectant.

So there might be like proclivities, right?

Like, you know, like it’s prepared, you know, but it’s not like you’re born with a kid who actually knows how to do anything, right?

Like think of babies, like they don’t have to talk, but they are born like prepared to learn how to talk.

So there’s got Angela, I thought our brains were made of organic matter and not plastic.

So this is a metaphorically metaphorically.

I don’t know why we say that, because I don’t even know if plastic is that plastic.

It’s not even stretchable, right, right, it’s not plastic doesn’t stretch.

Malleable, malleable.

There you go.

So we got to get to our next clip.

The next clip, Eli Manning comments on the value of being at the right place, even at the right time.

Check it out.

When you realize you could throw a ball and hit the tree, that’s good.

But clearly, you would have to further refine that to win championships either in high school or in college or in the NFL.

So wherever you began, how far did you train yourself relative to where you sort of walked in the door?

How about that?

That’s the question.

Yeah, no.

I mean, it took a lot of training and a lot of work and I mean, I think it does go back to, you know, those times when you’re in grade school and you’re out for recess with the kids and you’re playing pick up games and, you know, I played quarterback and, you know, our team, whatever team I was on, we would usually win because I was a better quarterback than the other team.

So then they made me permanent quarterback.

I was on both sides to kind of create an equal game for everybody else.

But I think those added…

It was so uneven when you’re on one side.

They had to share you.

They had to share me.

But I think all those throws add up.

I wasn’t practicing right there.

I wasn’t practicing to become an NFL player, but those added up.

So by the time I got to high school, I remember high school, I would go…

I remember I used to work out with a guy named Tom Shaw.

He was a speed specialist and he worked with a lot of college guys and NFL players.

I lived in New Orleans with the New Orleans Saints.

And so he was training a lot of NFL players and they wanted to throw routes afterwards and they didn’t have a quarterback to train with them.

So in high school he asked if I would go and he would train me on running, but if I would throw to his receivers.

So in high school in the summer, I’m throwing the college and NFL receivers all summer.

And so like all those things, all of a sudden at that point, now you’re training.

Now you’re practicing.

This isn’t recess.

This is like, hey, I’m learning from these receivers how to throw these routes and how to throw 20 yard comebacks and go routes.

And I’m like, I don’t want to throw an incompletion because I don’t want this 10 year NFL vet yelling at me for throwing a bad route.

And so, you know, it’s just, you know, the training started there and all those throws add up.

So, Angela, is this just another way to say he spent 10,000 hours honing his craft?

The research on deliberate practice, the kind of practice that experts like the Mannings exemplify, which, by the way, as you know, all of you know, it’s not exactly 10,000 hours, but it is true that across every domain that’s been studied, you know, every one, it’s always thousands of hours.

I mean, just gives you a sense of the magnitude of like how long it takes to become really world class at whatever you do.

Yes, what he’s talking about when he said, oh, this wasn’t just playing.

This was now trying to become better at this thing that I’m doing.

That is where you cross the line.

And going back to Benjamin Bloom, the University of Chicago scientist who studied the world class performers, there was what he called the early years, the middle years, and then the later years.

And the early years are a play.

It’s like, oh, it’s just fun.

And, you know, it was like recess and then like turns out.

And then you cross this line and you enter the middle years.

And that’s when you start doing deliberate practice.

And the motivation, I think, then becomes like to get better.

And I think the thing that I note about the world class achievers that I’ve studied is that they love to one up.

Well, other people, especially if they’re athletes, but they love to one up themselves.

So that motivation to get better at what you’re doing just turns on in the middle years.

So a personal best is a driver.

Yeah.

So what happens then, Angela, when you put someone like Eli Manning and you hot house him as a high school student with NFL players?

And then what’s the burn rate for these young athletes or even younger than high school?

A burnout.

Burnout rate.

Yes, yes.

So what is that and the psychological damage that you can put into a young person’s mind?

I think the chief error that Benjamin Bloom also studied was when you skip the early years, right?

The kind of intrinsic motivation, like, I choose to do this.

This is so fun.

Of all the things I could do, I really want to do this, Mom and Dad.

Then when you pass into the middle years, you have a foundation of love for the sport.

And you don’t really necessarily lose that.

It’s just that you’re now adding on this need for challenge, this need for improvement.

I think where you get burnout is when you skip the early years and you forget how important it is that the kid actually chose this to begin with.

Not to say that it’s the only problem.

Obviously, you can train to exhaustion, you can overtrain, et cetera.

And I think it’s always helpful to remember that in this research, where you have different motivations at different stages, and by the way, different coaches at different stages who really understand that aspect of the game, the ideal performer never loses the motivation of the earlier stages.

So the first stage is like, this is fun.

The second stage is, I can get better.

And by the way, the third stage is to have a sense of purpose.

I have a sense that what you’re doing is beyond the self.

And so ideally, when you get to that third stage, you still have that kind of, you know, this is fun and you still have the like, wow, I can get better.

The great thing is you see that when you look at elite players, and by that, I mean anybody on a professional level, they are deadly serious during the execution of whatever the sport might be.

But their deadly seriousness always erupts into childlike joy when they have an achievement.

And so it’s like, here are these guys battling it out, all the way down the field, and then they make a touchdown, and it’s like, and they’re shaking their butts.

That’s my favorite part of the game.

Exactly.

And they’re like eight years old again.

It’s like in baseball, if someone gets a walk off hit or a home run, then they come around the base of people jumping up and down and dumping data right on each other.

That’ll be the wind bonus, Neil.

Well, that’ll be the touchdown bonus that every athlete gets.

We got to take another break.

When we come back, Angela, if you can stay with us for that one last segment, we got more for you.

And plus, we’re going to find out, forget Angela, we’re going to find out what Eli thinks can make you successful.

We’re back, StarTalk Sports Edition, featuring my interview, sit-down, exclusive interview with Super Bowl great, New York giant great, Eli Manning.

And for this next time, Chuck is from Philadelphia, okay.

It took this long.

You held it in very long.

I couldn’t take it anymore.

Congratulations.

So let’s go straight to this next clip where Eli Manning has a checklist of what it takes to be success.

Because forget anything that Angela just told you.

We’re gonna get it from Eli Manning himself.

There’s some families that have a really great athlete among the siblings and the rest are not.

So it’s not a given that some genetic profile out of a family, it doesn’t guarantee that everybody becomes successful.

So do you have any bits of wisdom you can put out there that other people can absorb in their ambitions?

Yeah, I mean, I think a strong work ethic, I think a strong mental mindset and just being driven, kind of the power of the will is much more important than the natural talents.

And so you see people who are just determined are the ones that go out there and are successful.

And those are the guys you can count on.

They’re the best teammates, because you know they’re doing everything possible for the betterment of the team.

And so there’s, I would challenge people, and not just sports, but in science and in school work, it’s the people that are driven, that work harder, and that, you know, in a lot of cases, kind of maybe doing it, not only for themselves, but doing it for someone else, that get the most out of it and become successful.

Okay, so Eli had his own ideas.

I think, actually, I prefer what Angela has shared with us.

I’m just like, that guy doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

Let’s get back to Angela quick on that one.

Look, you can get back to both of us because I think we’re violently agreeing, right?

Yeah, that’s the way I felt.

Right?

I mean, he talked about this mental mindset, the people who are really determined.

You know you can count on them.

You know you don’t even have to be watching what they’re doing all the time because when nobody’s watching, they’re practicing.

And I think when he says in his own rank ordering, this is Eli’s, not mine, that he would put that above natural talent, well, I would choose the same rank ordering.

But here’s the thing I also want to underline.

You know, he said when you really look into what these people are doing, it’s like they’re doing it not just for themselves, right?

Like they have a sense of purpose, which is greater than themselves.

And I’ve been shocked, actually, to find that it’s not only athletes in team sports, like football, where that might be, understand, or basketball, right, baseball, but also individual sports, like downhill skiing, or like where there is a sense of beyond the self motivation.

And I just don’t think people get up out of the morning, you know, in the morning, out of bed, at like five in the morning, whatever it is, when it’s only for themselves.

I think there’s something deeply human about the need to serve other people.

Well, and team sports can inculcate that very, very easily.

So I want to make sure we have time for this final clip.

So I’m going to go to it right now.

And it’s, Eli brings up the topic, which has been in all the news as the mental health and wellbeing of professional athletes, especially those that are performing in very, very public settings.

And he decided to take control of his own mental health.

Let’s check it out.

So at what point did you realize, if ever, that your mind had to be a part of that effort?

Because we are sensitized in recent months and years to high performance, high profile athletes who’ve stepped out of the big game or the big contest because they needed some mental time.

Yeah, I think in 2007, so my fourth year in the NFL is when I reached out and got a sports psychiatrist to start working with.

And that’s when I just kind of realized that you lift weights, you study film, you practice, and yet there was this one thing out, you kind of left out the middle approach to it.

And your mind, if your mind’s on the right spot, if you’re not thinking positively, if you’re not prepared to go out there and be your best, then it’s not gonna happen.

Whatever the mind thinks, it’s usually what the body’s gonna have.

And so, and then, you know, that year went on to win a Super Bowl and had success.

And so I just, you know, I think it is so important.

And like you said, you see it now with some athletes in the Olympics and in tennis and other sports, you know, just, you know, kind of not be able to handle some of those circumstances.

And so you, you know, understand that the mind is so important and you can do it, you know, you kind of learn that.

I remember in 2007 just doing a lot of visualizations.

And all of a sudden, you’re like sitting there in a chair like this, thinking about a two minute drive in the game and you’re having this, you’re smelling the smell of the stadium.

You’re hearing the crowds, you’re running the plays and you’re sweating.

I mean, it’s 65 degrees in the room and you’re in a full sweat.

And so you realize the power of the mind, what it can create.

So maybe it’s been long overdue where we would fully accept if you had an elbow injury or a knee injury, of course you’re gonna miss a few games.

So maybe the time has come where someone needs some mental recovery time, that that’s no different in the total package that an athlete represents.

Yeah, I think it’s just, it is harder to accept, I think.

As you can see, you can feel your knees pain.

A doctor says, boom, your knee is hurt, here’s an MRI.

Hey, your bone is broken, here’s an X-ray.

It’s hard to look into the mind and to just the mental state of someone.

You’d think that, well, that’s easy to fix.

And it’s not.

I mean, you can definitely get in that bad, be in a bad place, in a bad position and be thinking negative thoughts.

And I think people would say, well, you just gotta find a way to work through that and grind through it and go out there for your teammates.

And so it is a tough battle, but having been in those, kind of in that position, I just understand that the mind is powerful.

And if it’s not in the right place, you’re not gonna be able to go out there and perform very well.

So Angela, and again, I’ve been hogging all these questions.

I wanna make sure Chuck and Gary have their say in this.

But I wanna sort of take what Eli just shared with us and ask you, isn’t there a day when we would have just said, just suck it up and get on with it?

That was today.

That was early this morning.

That’s when that was.

That was early this morning.

That was hours ago.

So let’s assume that that might even be possible, but it’s not always in the best long-term interest of the person’s mental health.

But it is true that people have been injured physically and the coach or they themselves says, I’m just gonna suck it up.

Okay, we had Lindsay Vaughn on this podcast talk to us about getting injured on some downhill slope, get airlifted out, and then she’s back competing the next day because she didn’t wanna lose a beat.

And meanwhile, she’s like bandaged and chewing gum and bailing wire to just to continue.

So here she is sucking it up and getting on with it.

So where do you, what do you advise in terms of people’s mental health with regard to taking the time off or not or just sucking it up?

Lindsay’s my girl.

So now we’re talking.

I love Lindsay.

We’re pretty good friends.

And I have thought a lot about like her mental toughness and then the mental toughness of people like Eli Manning.

I think we’re in the middle of a revolution, honestly.

I mean, it’s not the case that today people would say like you literally just have to suck it up or there’s nothing that like, for example, a performance psychologist or even I think Manning said like performance psychiatrist.

I’m not sure, you know, whether like he meant exactly that.

But that, yeah, you can get somebody to help you with your mind just the way you would get somebody to help you with your knee or your hip.

And that revolution.

So the stigma has changed you’re saying because we talk about the macho sport of American football.

You can’t go on the sidelines and start crying because you don’t feel good that day.

That doesn’t play.

But you’re saying we’re undergoing a shift.

I think it’s a cultural revolution.

I think the fact that you’re seeing it in a macho sport like football is just an indicator that the whole world must be changing.

The memoir that Lindsay just wrote, she talks very honestly, right, also about depression and about having to manage that, learn from that.

And I think what we’re seeing now is that these high performers are human beings.

And as human beings, they sometimes need help from other people.

They can work on things like their emotions and they have emotions.

But Angela, you’re wrong.

They’re not human beings.

They’re superheroes.

Well, they’re super human beings.

I don’t want to walk down the street and find Superman crying in a phone booth because he can’t handle it.

What if Superman’s having a bad day?

By the way, that’s Batman’s job, crying.

So, here’s the deal.

You walk into the stadium, right, from the parking lot.

And as the coach, and I’m looking at you, can I tell whether or not you’re game ready or you’re half-baked and you’re not going to be performing?

Now, you can.

There’s certain tells in the body language.

But if you’re one of those people that covers that up, I can’t tell what’s going off in here.

So we need to have…

In here, in your mind.

In my mind, yeah.

So it’s one of those things that now I see it, because the way it used to be is blindfold that guy, push him into a dark room, and let’s see if he gets out the other side.

And you would fumble your way through this.

Now we have so much more understanding of, you know what, this is a package.

It’s holistic.

It’s body and mind.

Don’t just expect one thing and one thing alone to carry this out.

So Gary, would you just ask now?

Whereas before, you would just like, shove them into it and see what happens.

I mean, I feel like there would be a conversation, you know, whereas, you know, 20 years ago there wouldn’t be.

Yeah, 20 years ago, 20 years ago, we had a lot more anger to feed our performance.

All of these sports were driven by anger.

All of the time that you spent becoming what you were becoming, the fact that this other guy was on the other side of you, it was like, I’m going to kill you.

That was the game.

What is it now?

Wait, what is it now, Chuck?

Wait, wait, wait, Angela, as you can see, Chuck still needs therapy.

No, now it’s about performance.

It’s about competitiveness.

It’s about achieving excellence.

You’re fueled by something different from the inside.

When you look at guys like Jack Lambert and Ronnie Lott, these guys wanted to kill you.

They wanted to kill you.

They would do things like you’d be at the bottom of a pile and they would bite you.

What does that have to do with football?

That doesn’t have anything to do with football.

All right, guys, we’ve got to try to land this plane here.

Angela, do you have any sort of final reflections on, or nothing is final.

Do you have any timely reflections on where society is now and also informed by what we’ve learned from Eli today?

You know, a lot of people like me don’t know a lot about football, but we nevertheless admire the Mannings, all of them, right?

And I think it’s because they are people of character, right?

Like, they have work ethic, yeah, they have grit, they love something.

They’re also honest people who are fairly brave, I think, about things that have gone well for them and especially about the things that haven’t gone well.

So, you know, I love that we have some heroes left.

Some days I wake up and wonder if we are going to have any left since there’s a lot to be disappointed about in the world.

So anyway, I have really appreciated listening to something like that, not only because of, you know, athletic accomplishments, but because of character and the role model that these people are.

And what didn’t make these clips, but I’ll share with you now, I didn’t follow every game he ever played in, so I had to ask him, I said, Eli, did you ever play as quarterback directly against your brother?

And if so, how did you do?

And he says, let’s not talk about that.

I said, OK, shut off the cameras now.

So I actually don’t know how he did, but he was very funny about it.

I think we can guess.

You can guess from that?

I don’t know.

I don’t know if I can guess.

So let me see.

Let me give the bard the last reflection here.

I think it’s from the 12th night.

And Angela, you tell me how often I think he’s right on the money here when he says, this is from the 12th night.

It says some people are born great, some people achieve greatness, and some people have greatness thrust upon them.

That kind of covers all the angles there, I think.

I’m going to disagree politely with the bard and say, yeah, well, you know, the bard’s not here to defend himself.

So I think that people who are great are born with a certain lucky combination of qualities and they achieve it, and circumstances enable them to do it.

So I think also it’s not war.

It’s not a bunch of wars.

I think it’s and, and, and, you know, the bard will have to come on and talk about how I’m wrong.

We’ll get him on our next episode.

It’ll be a great interview.

So, Angela, I own a copy of your book.

And if we’re ever in person, I’m going to get you to sign it.

And it’s an important book on the landscape of how we can all be all that we can be.

So thanks for writing that book.

Thanks for being you.

And thanks for sharing your expertise with us here on StarTalk Sports Edition.

And do you have a social media platform that we can find?

I would like people to go to characterlab.org.

And that is a nonprofit website where we give science away for parents and teachers.

Excellent.

And some percent of the people who visit that will also give you money to do that because it’s a nonprofit.

That would be great, too.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Gary, Chuck, always good to have you here, man.

Pleasure.

Pleasure.

All right.

This has been StarTalk Sports Edition featuring the Eli Manning interview, Nature vs.

Nurture.

I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal natural physicist.