Transcript
>> HINOJOSA: How much are we
influenced by our friends?
Can happiness, obesity, and
altruism really be socially
infectious?
A look at the surprising power
of our social networks.
Internationally renowned
physician and social scientist
Nicholas Christakis.
I'm MarÌa Hinojosa.
This is One-on-One.
Dr. Nicholas Christakis, it's so
nice to have you here on the
show.
>> CHRISTAKIS: It's nice to see you.
>> HINOJOSA: So you wrote... you
co-wrote this book.
It's called Connected: The
Surprising Power of Our Social
Networks and How They Shape
Our Lives.
And it's a fascinating book
because basically what you're
saying is something that is
really controversial, which is
why the book has gotten a lot of
attention, and therefore, you...
You're basically saying that our
small little social networks,
the personal networks, can
determine so much about the
rest of our lives.
And when so many of us, at least
in this country, are kind of
made to believe that we can do
this on our own, it's... you
know, "Pull yourself up by your
bootstraps and you can do this,"
you're basically saying it
really is true-- who you know
and how they influence you has
everything to do with what's
going to happen with your life.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, that's right, but the
first thing I would emphasize is
that people... okay, so most
people, when they hear the words
"social networks" nowadays
think, you know, online
networks like Facebook and
MySpace and Orkut, even, in
Brazil, and so forth.
But actually, the kinds of
social networks that James
Fowler, my coauthor, and I are
interested in are the real
old-fashioned social networks
that human beings have been
making actually for tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands
of years.
So I have friends, I have
relatives, I have neighbors, I
have colleagues and coworkers,
and they in turn have relatives
and friends and colleagues and
coworkers, and as a result of
that, we assemble ourselves into
these very ornate, almost
baroque structures.
They look like tangled Christmas
tree lights-- you know, these
incredibly intricate structures
where every light might be a
person and the wires represent
connections.
And we'll assemble ourselves
into these very expansive,
elaborate, and complex
structures, and then we proceed
to live out our lives embedded
in these structures, such that
I'm connected to the people I
know directly, and they are in
turn connected to still other
people, who are in turn
connected to still other people.
And as a result of this, I come
to be indirectly connected to
strangers, people I don't know,
and it turns out that because
things can spread in social
networks, I can come to be
affected by those people.
So if your friend's friend, or
your friend's friend's friend,
for example, quit smoking or
gains weight or becomes happy or
acts kindly or votes, those
types of behaviors that these
strangers to us display or
practice can ripple through the
network and come to affect us.
>> HINOJOSA: And so why is this
important?
What does it matter that we know
these things?
Because a lot of people are
probably saying... well, yeah,
there was this great shampoo
commercial on a bazillion years
ago.
>> CHRISTAKIS: That's right.
>> HINOJOSA: You know, "If you
tell two friends and then
they'll tell two friends," and
then it just kind of pops up and
the whole screen is filled with
people who are now using this
shampoo because you talked about
it.
>> CHRISTAKIS: That's right.
>> HINOJOSA: So I think this is
something that we know, but why
is it important to understand
it?
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so we know it in two
levels.
First of all, most people are...
would take it as self-evident
that we are affected by our...
the people to whom we're
directly connected, but it is
quite another thing to
demonstrate that we are also
affected by the people to whom
we're indirectly connected.
Strangers to us can affect us.
If I tell you your taste in
clothes might depend on the
taste in clothes that your
friends have, or whether you
quit smoking might be affected
by whether your best friend
quits, most people would accept
that, although it's interesting
to quantify that and to see to
what extent is that the case.
But if I were to tell you that
actually, your taste in clothes
or your propensity to quit
smoking could be affected also
by people that you don't know,
then it becomes a little bit
more interesting to be able to
demonstrate how that happens,
first and second...
>> HINOJOSA: But I'll tell you
that my immediate reaction is
just like, "I don't know how I
feel about that."
>> CHRISTAKIS: Right, okay.
>> HINOJOSA: I'm not so sure...
I mean, I like this community
feeling, but the fact that they
actually may have an influence
in determining my decisions?
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, good, so first... one
little twig, and then we'll come
back to that point.
And the second thing is
is that people are affected not
only about... not only with
respect to things like their
taste in music or fashions, or
things that people might think
of as being kind of, um,
phenomena or desires that are
affected by others, but even in
things that they might think of
as very deeply personal, like
their body size or their beliefs
or their emotional state.
So there are two moves here.
First, we're saying that it's
not just that you're affected by
the people to whom you're
directly connected, you're also
affected by these other people
that are strangers.
And second, you're not just
affected by these kind of
routine things-- you think, "Oh,
what music I listen to"-- you're
even affected when it comes to
things like your emotions or
your body size or things like
that.
And the reason that that's
interesting, among several
reasons that that's interesting,
is, as you're suggesting, it's a
little creepy.
It suggests that, you know...
>> HINOJOSA: So you recognize
the creepiness of it.
>> CHRISTAKIS: I do recognize the
creepiness, but I also want to
say that it's not... we don't
want to set up a kind of false
dichotomy, like either we have
free will or there's destiny,
and, like, you know, we have no
control over our lives.
Both are the case.
And many people have read our
work and said that it delivers a
kind of whack to free will, that
what our work does is it
suggests that actually people
are less in control of their own
lives than they think.
We're all part of this human
superorganism-- part of this
creature that is social
networks-- and, as a result, we
have less agency.
We have less ability to
determine our own destiny.
And that's true.
It's true that our work supports
that claim, but equally it's
true that our work lifts up the
notion of free will, because
what our work shows is that when
you make a positive change in
your life-- when you lose 20
pounds or you quit smoking or
you become happy or you act
kindly-- it doesn't just benefit
you, and in fact, it doesn't
just affect your friends, it
affects dozens, hundreds,
sometimes thousands of other
people.
So these ripple effects go both
ways; not only are you affected
by others, but you affect
others.
>> HINOJOSA: So does that mean
that, essentially, all of us
have the capacity to be leaders?
Because, you know, for example,
I go out and I do a lot of
public speaking, and people who
come then say, "Wow, that's a
fascinating story.
I feel inspired."
And one of the reasons why I
love doing this is because when
you know that you have actually
inspired someone, another human
being, to perhaps believe in
themselves, it's an
extraordinary thing.
And what I like to say is that
that means that everybody has
the capacity to do that to
somebody else.
So, in a sense, you have the
capacity to be a leader because
you don't realize that if you
do lose weight or you do quit
smoking or you decide to run
every day, that somewhere out
there, somebody is going to feel
that positive vibe and do the
same thing.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so I think it's
important that we distinguish
different kinds of leadership
and influence.
So the kind of influence that
someone that is a public figure
might have, or that gives a
speech might have, is rather
different than the kind of
personal, interpersonal
influence that we were talking
about right now.
So I might, for example, make a
pronouncement or lecture to my
students or write an article
that is read widely in the
newspaper, or send a tweet out
to Twitter followers, for
example.
>> HINOJOSA: Because you do...
you tweet, you twitter.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Well, we tweet from the book,
"connected_book" is our tweet
handle, but I don't personally
tweet.
I mean, I tweet, but I don't
have, like, a Nicholas
Christakis account.
James and I share that account.
But my point is that that's a
different kind of interpersonal
influence than the kind we're
speaking about right now.
So the kind that I'm interested
in is the kind of face-to-face
kind of way in which we affect
each other.
So it's the difference between
the effect that, sort of,
President Obama has on his
daughters versus the effect
President Obama has on all kids
in the country, right?
So the president can get up and
everyone will pay attention to
him and he'll make some kind of
pronouncement.
He might have a weak effect over
hundreds of thousands of people,
or he could have a very strong,
powerful, direct effect over
someone he knows personally,
face-to-face.
And so both are important, but,
um... I can actually illustrate
this with a little analogy,
okay?
Okay, so people have asked us
how it is the case that there
is... how there can be a kind of
interpersonal influence when it
comes to weight gain and
obesity, for example, even
though the models on the covers
of magazines are as thin as they
ever were.
And that illustrates the
difference between the two.
So on the one hand, the thin
model on the cover of a magazine
has some kind of influence on
us, but it's totally swamped by
the weight gain amongst the
people that we're directly
connected to.
So if all your friends are
gaining weight, even if the
ideal, let's say, as
characterized by the, you know,
cover models, is thin, still,
that's not as powerful as the
personal influence we experience
by the people we know directly.
>> HINOJOSA: So if somebody
around you-- for example, a
coworker or two coworkers--
suddenly kind of go up in
weight, like maybe ten or 15
pounds, you look at yourself and
you're like, "Hmm..."
>> CHRISTAKIS: It's not so bad, right, it
changes your ideas...
>> HINOJOSA: "Maybe it's not so
bad, I could maybe do this."
>> CHRISTAKIS: That's right, or the same
kind of thing might happen...
this is a bit more of an extreme
example, but if you think about
the behavior of people who are
responsible for the care of
prisoners.
So we might have an ideal in
this country that says we take
care of prisoners, and we have a
Bill of Rights, and we have
habeas corpus, and we don't
abuse prisoners.
But if you're a prison guard and
all the guards around you are
abusing prisoners, even if you
know the ideal, even if there
are public figures that are
making pronouncements, you're
more affected by these personal
connections than these abstract
ideals.
So both are important, but
they're different phenomena.
The public figure making a
pronouncement can have some
effect, maybe a weak effect over
many people, but for a given
individual, we're much more
affected by these face-to-face
interactions.
And this is what I meant earlier
when we said that we live out
our lives in these complex
structures.
To me, it's nothing short of
amazing.
We form, actually, something
like ant colonies, but on a
phenomenal scale.
We have these little
relationships and we make this
very intricate pattern of ties,
that as a result of that
connects us to all these people
we don't know personally and who
nevertheless affect us.
And James and I don't think it's
a coincidence.
We think that we as a species
have actually evolved to do
this, have evolved to have
social networks, and have
evolved to have particular kinds
of social networks.
>> HINOJOSA: All right, so a
couple of things, because you
brought up the issue of guards,
and it's one that I've been
looking actually very closely
at, the issue of guards and
people in detention.
And you do say that what can
happen is that there can be
this, and I find you to be this
eternal optimist.
>> CHRISTAKIS: (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> HINOJOSA: We're happy for
optimists, we're happy they're
out there.
But you also say, you know,
other things that can spread in
these social networks can be
anger...
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yes.
Fascism.
>> HINOJOSA: Fascism.
Fear.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: Violence.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: Suicide.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yes.
>> HINOJOSA: So help us out
here.
How do we... how do we go to the
altruism, the losing weight, the
quitting cigarettes, and that's
what takes over all of this
other negative stuff?
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so the crucial thing to
understand... there are a couple
of crucial ideas here.
The first idea is that, um,
networks are agnostic.
They will magnify whatever they
are seeded with.
The network itself doesn't give
rise to these phenomena.
The network is like a magnifying
glass: something else impinges
on the system and causes
people... causes this thing to
take off, and the network then
magnifies it.
So if you can imagine, for
instance, that there's a
person... a group of people on
an isolated island in the
Pacific, there are 100 people,
and they're all disconnected
from each other, they're all
living as hermits, and then all
of a sudden a sailor washes up
on the shore and he has an
infection.
If he interacts with the first
person on the island, if the
people on the island aren't
interconnected, that first
person gets sick and there's no
epidemic.
But if the people are
interconnected into a network,
all 100 of them will get sick.
But if the sailor hadn't washed
up on the shore, nobody would
have gotten sick.
The network doesn't give rise to
the epidemic.
Something seeds the network, and
then because of the connections,
instead of one person getting
sick, 100 get sick.
First point.
Second point, networks will
magnify both good and bad
things.
So they will magnify fascism or
drug use or deadly germs, but
equally, they will magnify
happiness or altruism or love
and so forth.
And the argument we make in the
book is that on balance, the
benefits of a connected life
outweigh the costs.
In fact, what happens as humans
is that we pay a price for our
interconnection.
By being connected to you, I am
subject to you potentially being
violent, you infecting me with a
germ, you making me unhappy.
But also, simultaneously, I get
all these benefits.
And the argument is that
overall, the benefits of
interconnection outweigh the
costs.
>> HINOJOSA: So when you talk
about living a connected life...
you know, I feel like there's an
increasing movement to want to
be disconnected, but
disconnected from our computers,
disconnected from those, you
know, thousands of friends and
followers on Twitter and all
that stuff.
But to actually be
disconnected... but you're
saying it's okay to
disconnect from those social
networks on the Internet.
What you really want to focus on
is on your social networks that
are this, this...
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so...
>> HINOJOSA: I mean, everybody
thinks, like, "I'm so
connected," right?
"I've got friends all over the
world, I've got people
following me, that's
important."
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so I want to draw,
again, a distinction between
these online interactions and
the face-to-face interactions,
and it's the latter that I'm
especially interested in.
And I also want to make sure
that we don't confuse...
>> HINOJOSA: I know you're
interested in it, but you have
to know, Nicholas, there are a
lot of people who think, like,
"Look, what matters now is
exactly that.
What's happening on your social
media?
I don't care about your friends
at home, what's your social
media?"
>> CHRISTAKIS: First of all, these people
are not your friends, okay?
So these hundreds of friends...
>> HINOJOSA: (laughs) Oh, my
God!
>> CHRISTAKIS: They're not.
At best, they're your
acquaintances.
And, in fact, I kind of resent
the way Facebook has co-opted
this word "friend" and applied
it to all of these individuals
who are actually not your
friends.
And, in fact, we've done some
studies that show that amongst
the, on average, 150 friends
that people have on Facebook,
across the half billion people
that are on Facebook, actually
only about five or six of them
are your real friends.
Most of these people are not
your friends any more than you
might have a couple of real
neighbors where you live, but
you have many "neighbors" in
your community, and those other
neighbors don't really affect
you, but your immediate
neighbors, or your real
neighbors, might.
Now, I think that it's really
important to understand the
difference between these
tenuous online interactions and
the face-to-face interactions,
first point.
And second point, I think it's
very important to, um,
understand that the medium is
not the relationship.
So let me give you an example
by this.
If I could interview my
great-grandmother and ask her,
when she was a little girl in
Greece, when she was eight or
ten, how many friends she had,
she would say, "I had one best
friend," you know, "Maria.
And there were four or five of
us girls that were a really
tight community of girls.
We always played together.
I remember them really well,"
she would say to me.
And if I could talk to my
current daughter, who is 13, as
I have, and ask her, "Lena, tell
me about your friendships?"
She would say, "I have my best
friend, Takina, and I have two
or three other girls, Jessie and
Claire and Suzie, that are my
friends," okay?
So here we have my daughter, who
has a cell phone in her pocket,
who can Skype with her friends
at night, who has all this
technology, and yet something
very fundamental hasn't changed.
She has the same sense of a best
friend and the same sense of a
close set of friends.
So the technology has evolved
hugely in 100 years, but the
human spirit hasn't changed.
In fact, what we're arguing in
the book is that there's
something very deeply
fundamental about human
connection and about human
influence that is so deep
and fundamental that we can
study it scientifically, that we
can understand things about it
that are not obvious, and that
these things are not...
do not change just because we
have new technologies.
>> HINOJOSA: So does that mean
that, for example, across the
world, it's the same kind of
thing?
You know, that suddenly, you
know, the group of Bangladeshi
girls who maybe are quite poor,
but they go to school, they have
the same thing.
They have this friend and these,
you know... and do you see that
actually replicated across the
world?
>> CHRISTAKIS: There are... there's no doubt
that human beings, I mean, vary
cross-culturally tremendously,
in all kinds of ways-- the way
we dress, the languages we
speak, the beliefs that we have,
and so forth.
But there are other aspects of
our humanity that tend not to
vary so much.
And one of the things that James
Fowler and I are so interested
in is the very deep and
fundamental way that social
network interactions and social
influence is encoded.
The sense in which there's
something so fundamental about
our social relationships that,
even though the details will
vary from place to place,
actually the fundamental reality
doesn't change.
And, in fact, as we show in the
book and as we argue elsewhere
in other work we've done,
there's a very fundamental...
actually, there are sort of
mathematical rules that describe
how human beings interact, and
these rules, these mathematical
descriptions, don't change much
from place to place.
It's true that if you go to some
places, people will have
slightly more friends than other
places.
It's true that in some places,
people's friends will be more
likely to know each other than
in other places.
It's true if you go to some
countries, intergender
friendships are not permitted.
You know, in Saudi Arabia, it
would be very uncommon for a
male to identify an unrelated
female as a personal friend,
something which we wouldn't
think of as so weird in our
country, for example.
So there's variation, there's no
doubt, but we are much more
united in our common humanity in
this fact of having friends and
in this fact of affecting each
other than we are divided by the
details and how these inter...
these phenomena vary from place
to place.
>> HINOJOSA: All right, so if
you are a very outgoing person
and you enjoy the face-to-face
and you do it well, then that's
one particular kind of person.
But what about those people who,
you know, they have a hard time
interacting, and face-to-face is
just difficult?
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yes, yes, that's right.
>> HINOJOSA: And I feel like,
you know, in your work you're
saying, "Look, if you're able to
go and network with people, be
face-to-face, which is so
important in terms of the
professional world"... what
about the people who have a hard
time just doing that?
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so that's... so that's
very important to emphasize as
well, and what's fascinating to
us is that, as you describe,
people vary in their interest
and ability to have social
interactions, which also is very
fascinating.
We all have evolved to have what
is known as genetic fixation.
We have particular traits that
we all have.
Two eyes, to pick a trivial
example, for instance.
We don't vary in the number of
eyes we have-- that's a cartoon
example, but just to pick one--
but we vary in how many friends
we have, and we vary in our
height, for instance.
Some people are shorter, some
people are taller.
And this variation, how many
friends we have, we also believe
has significance.
We've quantified this a little
bit.
So, for instance, if you look at
a random sample of Americans and
you ask them two very basic
questions, "Who do you spend
free time with?" and "Who do you
discuss important matters
with?"-- which are standard, old
questions that are asked in this
field to identify who their
social contacts are-- on
average, people identify four-
and-a-half such people.
>> HINOJOSA: Is that good?
Is that normal?
>> CHRISTAKIS: That's typical.
>> HINOJOSA: It's kind of stayed
the same in terms of the United
States?
>> CHRISTAKIS: It has stayed the same across
time.
It tends not to vary
cross-culturally.
People, on average, have about
four-and-a-half personal
connections, people that they
identify when you ask questions
like this.
And this would include their
spouse, if they're married,
or their significant other,
a couple of... a best friend,
a couple other friends, maybe
a coworker, a minister... their
personal connections.
But it varies even in our
country.
So about five percent have
nobody.
Five percent of Americans will
say there's nobody with whom
they can discuss intimate or
important matters with or spend
free time with.
And at the other tail of the
distribution, about, I can't
remember now, five or ten
percent have eight people, so it
varies.
Now, some of it is by choice.
Some of us are shy, we're not
interested in interacting with
others.
Some of us are gregarious, as
you mentioned, we have social
butterflies who interact with
lots of people, but on average
it's about four and a half.
And actually, we've done some
work looking at this
cross-culturally from place to
place, and this is pretty
consistent, actually, which also
says something, I think,
fundamental about human beings.
>> HINOJOSA: What about
inequality?
Okay, I mean, it's a big issue,
but if we're all kind of
connected, then shouldn't we...
shouldn't questions of poverty
already have kind of been, you
know, alleviated a little bit
because we all know someone and
we want to help uplift people?
I mean...
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, so I would have two
answers to that question.
First of all, Muhammad Yunus won
the Nobel Prize for
microfinance, this idea that we
can make small loans to people
in very poor countries and kind
of improve their well-being, and
one of his key insights was that
even poor people have friends,
and in fact, those friends...
>> HINOJOSA: Which was like,
amazing, that's it's like a key
insight that even poor people
have friends.
>> CHRISTAKIS: That's right.
>> HINOJOSA: And actually... and
poor people will pay you back.
>> CHRISTAKIS: That's right, and that the
friendship connections have
value.
They're a kind of collateral.
So you can monetize that
collateral.
So what you do is, you form a
little consortium of people
who come, let's say, with their
friends, and you say, "You are
all jointly responsible for the
repayment of this loan."
So the first point is that
everybody has friends, even the
poorest person has friends, and
that also is kind of
fascinating, and again, it goes
back to the point we were
discussing earlier about our
common humanity.
Second, however, sort of as a
related idea and in some ways
opposite to what we just said,
is this notion of inequality
that you mentioned.
So on the one hand, yes, it's
true everyone has friends;
on the other hand, we're
accustomed in our society to
thinking about inequality in
terms of race, for example,
black and white, or wealth, you
know, rich and poor, or where
you're located, urban or rural,
for example.
But when you take social
networks seriously, you can
begin to think about other kinds
of inequality.
For instance, who's in the
middle of the network and who's
on the edge of the network?
Who has many friends and who has
few friends?
Who belongs to what clique?
What region of the network are
you a part of, and how does that
place you at risk for certain
outcomes regardless of your own
personal attributes?
So, for instance, let's say
you're a person that's situated
in a network surrounded by
unhappy people.
Maybe your friends are happy,
but maybe their friends are
unhappy, so you've got this
shell of unhappy people that's
around you.
It might be the case that this
puts you at risk for becoming
unhappy in the future, and that
this is a kind of inequality
compared to someone else that's
located somewhere else in the
network.
This is a kind of network
inequality, a positional
inequality, that has previously
not gotten a lot of attention,
but we think it's important.
>> HINOJOSA: All right, so can I
change my life if I decide...
if I change my social network?
If I basically say, "You know
what?
I'm going to move away from all
of these really depressed,
overweight people."
>> CHRISTAKIS: So no, wait, that's not what
we're recommending, to be very,
very clear.
>> HINOJOSA: No, no.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Okay, and so we've looked at
this a little bit.
Okay, so this is a little
complicated, but the gist of it
is this... here's the way to
encapsulate that idea.
Let's say for the sake of
argument... okay, so there are
two things happening in
networks.
One is this notion of
connection, how we're connected
to other people, and the other
is the notion of contagion,
what's flowing through the
network.
Two distinct phenomena.
What's the architecture of the
ties around you, and then, given
those ties, what kinds of things
are moving through the network?
You could have many friends or
few friends, for instance, or
you could have many friends who
are infected with a germ, and
the germ is spreading towards
you, or many friends who are not
infected with a germ, and the
germ isn't spreading towards
you.
>> HINOJOSA: Okay.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Two different ideas: what's
the pattern of ties and what's
flowing across them?
In the case that you put on the
table, for instance, of obesity,
you might think that it might be
beneficial to you to cut the tie
to someone that's gaining
weight, and it might interrupt
some kind of input...
>> HINOJOSA: Sounds brutal.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yeah, it sounds brutal and it
is brutal, because any benefit
that accrued to you from cutting
this tie would be counteracted
by the cost you paid in losing a
friend.
So any benefit that accrued to
you from interrupting the
contagion is counteracted by the
cost you pay by interrupting the
connection.
So these are distinct phenomena,
so it's not always obvious what
might happen.
Now, if all your friends are
armed robbers, I think I can
recommend you should disconnect
from them, but it's not so
simple as this, first point.
Second point, this... in some
way, what James and I are
arguing is that there's
something so fundamental about
human social networks and so
deeply embedded in us as a
species and as individuals, that
we cannot by sheer strength of
will just change our networks.
You know, we live out our... any
more than I could suddenly wake
up and decide, "You know what?
I'm going to be a Brazilian from
now on.
I'm going to move to Sao Paulo
and that's where I'm going to
live for the rest of my life."
>> HINOJOSA: The economy's
growing.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yeah, exactly, "And I'm just
going to have new friends
there, I'm going to get a new
house, I'm just going to move my
life."
No, I'm embedded, right, in a
community, in a society, in a
location.
I have a home and I have
connections and I have work and
so forth.
It's not easy to pick up and
move, and it's the same with
networks.
You can't just suddenly remove
yourself from these social ties
and teleport yourself to another
part of the network, because
you're embedded, and this
embeddedness matters.
>> HINOJOSA: All right, well,
let's stay with the
embeddedness, and the final
thing that we're going to leave
our viewers with is... so, what
do we do?
So what does one do?
Like, what... if one wants to
improve one's life...
>> CHRISTAKIS: Right.
>> HINOJOSA: Have more
networking possibilities,
improve your profession, improve
your career, or improve your
social life.
Because I kind of feel like...
I'm like, you can do certain
things but you can't do certain
things.
So what do you want our audience
to say?
>> CHRISTAKIS: All right, so I would turn
that on its head and I would
quote John F. Kennedy and I
would say, "Ask not what your
country can do for you-- ask
what you can do for your
country."
So instead of saying,
"How can I," you know, um...
>> HINOJOSA: Benefit.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Yeah, benefit from it,
instead say to myself, "Oh, my
goodness, if I make a positive
change in my life, if I'm kind
to others, if I quit smoking, if
I make an effort to be a happier
person, this doesn't just have
benefits for me.
It can benefit the people that I
love and that I'm connected to
and the people to whom they're
connected to, and dozens,
hundreds, sometimes thousands of
other people can come to be
affected by the changes that we
make."
>> HINOJOSA: I'm going to go
home and be really happy.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Excellent, me too.
>> HINOJOSA: And it's going to
infect everybody.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Excellent, me too.
>> HINOJOSA: Dr. Nicholas
Christakis, thank you so much
for being here.
>> CHRISTAKIS: Thank you, Maria.
Thank you for having me.
>> HINOJOSA: Continue the
conversation at
wgbh.org/oneonone
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