Re:Thinking with Adam GrantPrestigious colleges, STEM degrees, and hot takes with Zarna Garg | ReThinking
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
25 min read · 5,474 words- 0:00 – 1:01
From “yell at your son” to hidden comedic potential
- ZGZarna Garg
People pay more money to sit front row with their grown kids because they know if I ask them, like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "I'm a history major," they know I'm gonna rail right into him. Sometimes I'm like, "No, no, keep the money. It's okay. I'll do it anyway. [laughs] You want me to yell at your son? I'll do it." [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] [upbeat music] Well, Zarna, I've been excited for this conversation since before I reached out because you have been making me laugh for several years now.
- ZGZarna Garg
I am so honored. I can't even believe it. It's reaching you. It's reaching the White guy.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
Is that all, is that all I am to you, a White guy?
- ZGZarna Garg
No. You're, you're so much more than that, but the fact that it's reaching you is, is shocking to me.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] Well, it's not at all surprising to me. I think I, I actually first came across you when I read a little essay in The New York Times, uh-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... by somebody who recognized your, at the time, hidden potential as a stand-up comic.
- 1:01 – 2:16
A daughter’s diagnosis: “Mom, you should do comedy” after business failures
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah, it was my daughter. So she watched me try and fail at launching many businesses. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time. She's my oldest of three. I used to take my kids everywhere I went, even when I was pitching ideas or trying to sell a product or whatever, because I wanted them to learn. I was so sure everything I pitched was gonna be a super hit that I was like, "I want them to witness the moment." [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
Instead, what they witnessed was, like, a series of failures. [laughs] And I think it was a vegan chili place that we were trying... I was trying to pitch a vegan chili, uh, product to a steakhouse, because the vegans are always stuck at the steakhouse when we go with our loved ones. I've been in that situation. I was convinced if I made the best vegan chili, they would just add it to their menus. Uh, and, and she saw the guy buy it and throw it the minute we turned. But he spent an hour talking to us, and that's, I think, was, was one of the moments that my daughter was like, "You know, maybe it's her, her chitchat chatter, whatever this thing is that she does when she meets people." And when we came home, she goes, "You know, Mom, maybe you should do comedy." And I was like, "That's not a job."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- 2:16 – 3:27
Why being “the funny one” felt like a curse in a high-achievement family
- ZGZarna Garg
Like, who thinks comedy is a job? It's like, how am I gonna make money doing that? Already my whole life people told me I was funny, and I thought it was the biggest curse. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
Curse. Why?
- ZGZarna Garg
It's like, yeah, what do you do with funny? I mean, I... my whole family is surgeons, doctors, mathematicians. That... Those are skills. You do something with that. What do you do with a funny person? I remember my mom being absolutely traumatized when I was a kid. Somebody said, "She's so funny." My mom was horrified. She's like, "Of all the things, we didn't get the CPA, we didn't get the accountant, n- not the scientist. We got the funny one?" [laughs] What do you do with that?
- AGAdam Grant
Well, clearly, clearly she hadn't read all the research showing that humor is a sign of intelligence, and it's a way to establish warmth and kindness.
- ZGZarna Garg
[laughs] We, we're learning now. We are learning, and our all American kids are teaching us. If I did one thing right in my life, it's actually listening to my kids.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay.
- ZGZarna Garg
And my daughter specifically.
- AGAdam Grant
To that, to that point, initially you were resistant and-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... thankfully you rethought that hesitation. And I understand one of the pivotal moments was a birthday present that your daughter Zoya got you. Tell me about that.
- 3:27 – 5:57
The birthday “memory jar” that proved her impact—yet she still resisted
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah. So she knew that I wasn't taking this funny thing seriously, but she started becoming adamant, as kids do, and as, you know, you're... You dig in your heels, as they say in America. I remember she was in ninth grade, I think. She would sit on her computer for hours and, like, be f- on Facebook. And I would say, "What are you doing on Facebook?" And she was reaching out to everybody from my past, my childhood friends, my, you know, my relatives, people I worked with 20 years ago, and she asked them all to write notes about a memory with me, whatever stood out. I've been doing funny speeches my whole life. Now I know it's a comedy set, but we never thought of it that way.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
I was the person who I walked into a wedding and somebody would hike- hi- hand, hand me a mic for no reason. They would just be like, "Make a funny speech." And I would sit there and be like, "Oh, well, did you see this outfit and what do you think about this piece of dessert or whatever?" and try to make it funny. So the, the, the water dispenser was filled with all those notes, and I was really shocked. I was blown away, honestly. Because it never occurred to me that I had impacted people in that way, in a way that they would remember 20, 30 years later. I mean, a lot of them I haven't even seen or heard from in decades. So even the emotional impact of that was, was very, like, was quite big on my heart.
- AGAdam Grant
Wow. Okay. And what happened then? Did you immediately change your mind and go do-
- ZGZarna Garg
No
- AGAdam Grant
... your first set?
- ZGZarna Garg
No, of course not.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
No. I thought my kid has gone completely crazy. I got mad at her because she was in high school, and she should've been studying for the SATs. I was very upset that she was wasting time on doing all this stuff that was not her responsibility, and she was equally, like, insistent that this was a path that I had to explore. So then she recruited her brothers to push me in this comedy direction, and I made a pact with them that I will go s- wherever this comedy thing is and see what it's about. 'Cause I had never stepped foot in a comedy club until that point. So I didn't even know where I was gonna go. But I agreed to look into it and, um, and take a selfie so I can prove to them that I went, and then we can move on past this. There was no plan to, like, actually make a joke or write a joke or any of... I didn't even know that was a thing.
- AGAdam Grant
All right. So what happened on the first set? I think pretty much every comedian I know bombed the first time they got on stage.
- 5:57 – 8:10
Accidental first set: open mic in a Mexican restaurant basement
- ZGZarna Garg
My plan was I will go and take a selfie. That was the whole plan, just to shut my kids up so I could go back to doing other real things, in my mind. So a mom friend of mine had told me that her friend was running something called an open mic in what looks to be a comedy club, which is a basement of a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan. And she said, "Why don't you go talk to this mom because maybe she knows where you do this comedy thing?" It was a Wednesday afternoon, I believe, at noon, and I remember thinking, "Who are all these people down here? Like, don't they all have jobs?" And then as the open mic progressed, I was like, "Oh, I see. They're making jokes, and they're testing jokes with each other. Okay, fine." I, I took my selfies. I remember taking a photo of myself and, and I was about to exit, and the mom who was running the club said, "You're already here. Why don't you do five minutes?" And I was like, "Five minutes of what?" And she said, "Just go on stage and talk about whatever you think is funny." And I was like, "Anything?" And she goes, "Yeah, just whatever you want." And so I got up on stage, and I just started trashing my mother-in-law. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
I mean, who doesn't think that's funny? [laughs] You know? And I just... I don't know. I just sta- like, d- talking about all the things that irritate me about life in the West. I remember being very-- having a whole bit about high heels and how annoying high heels are and, uh, whatever. I, I was just ranting. There was no set. And the more I did, the... I could just see the, the other comics dying. Now, you have to understand what I know today. Open mics are notoriously hard places to make somebody laugh 'cause every comic there is concerned with their set. And I remember when I was about to get off, one of the comics like, "No, do more, do more." Um, and I was shocked. I didn't think anybody would care about me and my stories, especially the world that I came from, where, like, my stories felt so, um, so specific to my life. You know? Why would anybody care?
- AGAdam Grant
And yet they turn out to be universally relevant.
- 8:10 – 9:03
Universality of “specific” immigrant stories (and the arranged-marriage ‘I love you’ bit)
- ZGZarna Garg
It, it still is shocking to this day to me. I mean, my biggest-- One of my most viral bit was I've never said I love you to my husband, and I really thought when I wrote that joke that I must be the only person in the world who's in a very loving marriage but has never said the words.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
Because if you look around you in pop culture, you feel like everybody is always saying I love you to everybody at all times. And then millions of people from all over the world were like, "We don't say it either." It's a big country for arranged marriages, so you don't really sit there and think, "Do you love this person?" No. You're like, "This is a good match. The families like each other." [laughs] Uh, we- we're also not a very sexed up culture. Like, no Indian I know has ever had sex. [laughs] See, how we became a billion people is beyond me.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
We're all confused by it.
- 9:03 – 10:11
The craft behind the “rant”: tape review, crowd emotion, and engineered simplicity
- AGAdam Grant
So one of the things that, that I find really interesting about your approach to comedy is something you alluded to, which is you rant a lot.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And most people's rants are annoying. There's something different about the way you rant that opens people up instead of-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... pushing them away. What do you think that is?
- ZGZarna Garg
Uh, I know what it is. It's, it's a well-crafted joke. It's, it's, it's delivered as a rant, but you can't just rant. I mean, once I got into the business, I learned everything about it. I audiotape almost every show that I do, so I can hear why the audience is laughing. Is the audience embarrassed? Is the audience with me? Are they nervous? Am I creating anxiety? I treat... I have a very science-backed approach to what I do, and I'm very proud of it. I like producing good quality work. But it, it... the delivery of it feels like it's your mom just saying it off the cuff.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
But isn't that the challenge, is to make complicated things look and feel simple?
- AGAdam Grant
I'm so curious about what you learned from listening to your early jokes.
- 10:11 – 10:47
Choosing lightness over trauma: what she learned from early silence
- ZGZarna Garg
Um, I used to do a lot of jokes about my own life in India, which has a lot of sadness and heaviness to it, and it made the audience very uncomfortable. And I decided early on not to go down that road because I, I don't want to do that. I... If you're paying ticket money to come see me, all I want is for you to feel light and happy, like you leave walking on a cloud. I don't need to change your mind. I'm also-- That's also the advantage of coming to something later in life. You're, you're done trying to change people's minds, you know? So, uh, I-
- AGAdam Grant
Well, I'm not. That's what I do for a living.
- ZGZarna Garg
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
But keep going.
- 10:47 – 14:46
Why mother-in-law jokes soar and father-in-law jokes die: gender, stereotypes, and permission
- ZGZarna Garg
When I first started, any silence made me very, me very anxious. Like, "Oh my God, my career is gonna end if there's a 30-second silence." Now, I can even through the voice tell if the audience was on its edge or were they checked out, you know? Like, I'll give you an example. I make mother-in-law jokes. I just have to say the words mother-in-law, everybody is, like, sitting up. If I say, "And do you wanna hear about my father-in-law?" Dead. Lead balloon. Nothing.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
Nothing. [laughs] Nobody wants to hear. It's like the person doesn't exist, and you can hear the energy shift in the tape, that it's like-
- AGAdam Grant
Wow
- ZGZarna Garg
... they just don't wanna hear it. And my father-in-law is a hysterical character. He really... He's, he's proud of things I never thought you could be proud of. He loves to say, "No Garg will ever wear glasses," because he thinks it's his genetics, and meanwhile, he walks into the wall every day. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
But people don't wanna hear it, so it's out.
- AGAdam Grant
Why?
- ZGZarna Garg
It, it's... I don't know why. It's a mystery to me. But the father-in-law, not interesting. Mother-in-law-- Sister-in-law is another character I'm working on. Very interesting. People sit up, but father-in-law, dead. There's few topics I've found where I'm like, "This just doesn't track at all."
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. So I, I have a couple theories about why that might be. Tell me what you think.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah, yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
The first one is that I think people run into more problems with their mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law because when, when somebody in that role is assertive, it violates a, a gender stereotype. ... that, you know, a, a strong father-in-law-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... or a brother-in-law doesn't as much. It's okay for him to, you know, be a little bit overbearing, but her?
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
Not okay.
- ZGZarna Garg
Not, not okay. Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
And then I also wonder if, uh, if the source matters here. So is it more legit for you to make fun of a woman than a man?
- ZGZarna Garg
For sure. I think the men don't like it when, as a woman, I make fun of men. Although, I will tell you that I've seen a noticeable change in the audience. When I first started, it was all women coming with their women friends. Now, it's close to 50/50, but a lot of guys are dying. I mean, they-- If I make an Indian uncle joke, they love it. Love it. I like, you know, I'll tell-- I mean, I did a lot of Zoom shows, I remember back during COVID, I was one of the earliest adapters on Zoom, and I would have to do shows, you know, with the chat that's running through the Zoom, and uncles are merciless, Adam. Any joke that, "That wasn't funny." As we're all reading the chat, as my set is progressing, "That wasn't funny. Okay, she's a little funny. Ha ha." [laughs] So when I make jokes about Indian uncles, they're fine with it now, but it's been, it's been a little bit of a journey, and I think you're onto something there.
- AGAdam Grant
That's so interesting. So you have to bring the audience with you in order to get the license to be able to make fun of men.
- ZGZarna Garg
I think so. I think otherwise, you're like this, in their perception, otherwise in their mind, you're this rage-filled, you know, anti-man, anti-patriarchy woman who's, like, a little hysterical, and I already have a little hysterical energy around me when I'm on stage, [laughs] so, so I don't need any more. The thing is that I-- it's not an act. Sometimes people think it's an act. It's like, I, after doing as many shows as I've done and I continue to do, when I get on stage, I just, I can't believe I found the thing.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, that, that's one of the things that I find so endearing about your performances is, is the authenticity.
- ZGZarna Garg
And people pay me for it. It's shocking. Sometimes I'm like, "No, no, keep the money. It's okay. I'll do it anyway." [laughs] "You want me to yell at your son? I'll do it." [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
People pay more money to sit front row with their grown kids because they know if I ask them like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "I'm a history major," they know I'm gonna rail right into him.
- 14:46 – 16:57
The college major showdown: expensive degrees, STEM as insurance, and Adam’s data
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. So I'm glad you brought this up, Zarna, 'cause I wanna fight with you about your stance on-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... on majors and careers.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, give me, give me your rant first.
- ZGZarna Garg
Y- well, listen, I'm not against-- So to be clear, I'm not against the humanities, I'm not against any of those careers. But to go to college and have a half a million dollar degree, which is where we are right now in America, at least where I was with my kids, for a degree that has no clear p- strategy on how you're gonna recover the cost of it, you cannot do it alone. I told my daughter, my daughter is like, she's a, a good writer. She's published in The New York Times now multiple times. And, uh, the, you know, at Stanford, her teachers were like, "You're a good writer. Don't do computer science. You stay with the writing." And I was like, "Absolutely not. You wanna write, you can sit at home and write, or you go to Stanford and you get a computer degree, please, for God's sake."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
"Every computer secret out there needs to be in your pocket." So we reached an agreement, and she did both, which is what a lot of South Asian kids do today, because the parents will not fund that whole experience, which scares us.
- AGAdam Grant
Okay. And what do you, what is your fear exactly?
- ZGZarna Garg
My fear is that she's gonna end up spending all this money on a degree that she's not gonna know how to recover the cost of. That's what it is. If, if money was not an object, sure, go study whatever, 'cause my kids, for example, I believe my kids are very hardworking, resilient kids. They're gonna be fine no matter what they do, right? I know that.
- AGAdam Grant
All right. So here's your invitation to rethink this, this rant-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yes
- AGAdam Grant
... a little bit.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
Uh, if you look at the data, you are right that humanities and social science majors earn less money in their first job than STEM majors.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yes.
- AGAdam Grant
But they catch up over time.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah. I-
- AGAdam Grant
And I think the reason for that is technical skills become obsolete very quickly, whereas what you learn in English, history, classics, psychology, sociology, anthropology are critical thinking and problem-solving skills, communication and collaboration skills, and those become increasingly valuable as your career advances. So shouldn't you be prioritizing those skills?
- ZGZarna Garg
No.
- AGAdam Grant
Especially in a world where we can automate or outsource more and more of the technical skills.
- 16:57 – 20:41
Toward a hybrid model—and the hidden cost of double majors: misery and missed joy
- ZGZarna Garg
No, we shouldn't be prioritizing them. I think you need both. This is what I'm advocating for. I, I'm not, I, I-- By the way, I did a deep dive on your entire social media and I saw that and I agree with it. I think saying you can automate your way out is a little naive. You still have to have a working understanding of technology. Otherwise, you're terrified. You're gonna ender- end up entering this new age of ours absolutely, like, horrified of tech. You don't need to be that. I, I don't think my daughter will ever be an A+ coder. She, she's just not, her heart is not in it. It's very obvious. She'll tell you herself. But she's not frightened of it. We're using every AI tool known to man, every AI thing, but she figures it out because she has, she has enough of a fluency that she's not nervous about it, which is what I advocate, and I think you need both.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah. I think, I think those are fair points. I think where I might push back a little bit is to say the, a lot of the STEM learning has happened throughout school, right? [laughs] So from, you know, pre-kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school, you've had a ton of exposure to math and science and increasingly computer science. And by the way-
- ZGZarna Garg
Mm
- AGAdam Grant
... most of, most of our students come to Penn knowing how to code. Um, they're all using AI very avidly. You don't need to take a class to build those skills. And by contrast, I think about the research on where you actually learn how to be a good critical thinker, and it is mostly in the social sciences and humanities where instead of having laws of chemistry or rules of-
- ZGZarna Garg
Mm
- AGAdam Grant
... code, you have to think in contingencies and probabilities and understand how to see multiple sides of an argument. And ultimately, that's what really sharpens your ability to think, doesn't it, Zarna?
- ZGZarna Garg
No, you're not wrong. But, uh, my pushback to you is just it's so expensive that please, please get some kind of STEM degree as a backup because life is very uncertain. The movie I made- My director loves directing movies. He's now an author. He's, he's, uh, put out, um, a TV series. He's a creator of The Resident on FX, and then he wrote this movie, and I mean, he directed this movie. But he also on the side is a cancer surgeon. And his mom will not let him quit.
- AGAdam Grant
This is your dream son-in-law.
- ZGZarna Garg
This is my dream son-in-law. The, I d- I would, I didn't wanna do a movie because I didn't think anything would come out of it for me. I was like, "Why am I wasting my time? I don't wanna do this." But when I met him, and he's like, "My mom won't let me stop practicing medicine." He's a legitimate Hollywood director, but three months of every year, he has to stop what he's doing and go be the cancer doctor that he is because his mom won't let him. I believe his mom's words, even though he's one of the most sought after directors in Hollywood, were, "I don't believe in this Hollywood thing."
- AGAdam Grant
Um, you know, we're, we're almost in alignment here.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
I think the one, the one thing I, I struggle with a little bit on this is I, I look at the students who are doing double majors like-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah
- AGAdam Grant
... you're advising, and I think you're right. They are, they're basically future-proofing themselves career-wise.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
But they're miserable. They miss out on-
- ZGZarna Garg
Of course
- AGAdam Grant
... the joy of college because they're taking too many classes. They have too much homework. They're very stressed. Um, they're not building the kinds of relationships that ultimately help both drive happiness and resilience. And I worry a lot about them, and I, I think I would feel a little better with a STEM minor or some STEM hobbies.
- ZGZarna Garg
No, no, no. You're, you're misinterpreting the situation. They're miserable, yes, but we like that. [laughs] That is our wheelhouse. We're Indian people. We don't believe in fun.
- 20:41 – 23:54
Lightning round: the 1997 internet marriage ad (tax returns required)
- AGAdam Grant
I would love to go to a lightning round.
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah.
- AGAdam Grant
This is one of my favorite parts of the show.
- ZGZarna Garg
Let's share.
- AGAdam Grant
I have to ask, how did you meet your husband?
- ZGZarna Garg
Online.
- AGAdam Grant
More specifically-
- ZGZarna Garg
[laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
... what, what was the ad that you placed?
- ZGZarna Garg
You, do you want me to read it? I have it. I have to-
- AGAdam Grant
Yes
- ZGZarna Garg
... look here, so, okay. Hold on. So in 1997, I was a student in Cleveland, Ohio, a final year law student. I really wanted to meet somebody, but there weren't so many Indians around me. But at the time, the internet was very new. Uh, I remember seeing the first ever classifieds. I decided, I was like, "You know what? Why don't I look for somebody out on the internet? Because where else am I gonna find them?" And I put this ad out, and I can read it if you want.
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, please.
- ZGZarna Garg
Okay. "To some, I am too short or too plump, too dark or too argumentative. But enough about me. This is what I need from you. A husband and a partner, somebody who is ambitious but not ruthless, confident but not arrogant, and humble but not timid. Most of all, he is honest. I am on a mission to build a very successful life, and you must be ready to go with me. Only contact me if you want to get married. No friends," all capitals with exclamation. "Kindly include your most recent tax returns and medical records."
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] What were you thinking when you wrote that?
- ZGZarna Garg
[laughs] I don't know what I was thinking. In hindsight, it sounds so crazy, but I didn't think it was crazy at the time. I came from a world of arranged marriages. Do you know how arranged marriages work? The parents will sit there and be like, "Well, he's wearing glasses, but she's short, so this is a match." These are the things. So I really thought I was being so, you know, practical in putting my truth out there.
- AGAdam Grant
So how many people answered that ad?
- ZGZarna Garg
H- hundreds.
- AGAdam Grant
Hundreds?
- ZGZarna Garg
Hundreds from all over the world, yeah. Lot- But my husband famously did not respond to my ad in the way that... He, he didn't think he was getting married. Him and his friends found my ad while they were goofing around the internet in Switzerland. They were doing an engineering, um, internship in Switzerland at the time, and they found my ad, and they were like, "Is this real?" Because they thought the ad was obnoxious, and I was like, "It's, uh, very real. In fact, I have all these responses," and, "Why are you wasting my time?" I was annoyed. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
And what happened then?
- ZGZarna Garg
He was a little upset that I wasn't blown away by his credentials [laughs] because I just didn't know. I mean, at the time, I didn't know what a big deal IIT was, and he was like, "You know, I went to IIT." I was like, "Okay." The third time he said it, I was like, "Uh, am I supposed to do something with this?" And he's like, "It's a big deal." I said, "Okay, I take your word for it." You know? Like, I didn't, I didn't have any reason to push back.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, I, I'm struck by the way that you j- you just, you just put yourself out there. Like, "This is who I am. This is what I'm looking for." I realize that's not gonna be for everyone.
- ZGZarna Garg
It's gonna not be for most people, but you only need one.
- 23:54 – 29:15
Hot takes and hard-won advice: switching careers, kids in comedy, and humor as weapon
- AGAdam Grant
What is something you've changed your mind about lately?
- ZGZarna Garg
I could give you another hot take here, but I'd-
- AGAdam Grant
Yeah, do it
- ZGZarna Garg
... get flamed for it. Oh my God. I'm all about the Indian kids not marrying Indian people. I'm done. I'm so done. And we seem to act better when we mix with other cultures. We really do. And maybe this is the future. Maybe this is the way we all evolve, you know? I already know my grandkids are gonna be Cameron, Lincoln, Julia. [laughs]
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
There's not gonna be a Puja, Sunil in my chi- in my future.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs] All right. What is, what is your best advice for people who are thinking about a mid-career or late career switch?
- ZGZarna Garg
Um, you can't afford not to. If you're thinking about it, there's a reason you're thinking about it. You can't afford not to take that chance. You need to roll up your sleeves, get in there. St- If the fear of what people think is stopping you, let me just reassure you that nobody cares. Absolutely nobody cares. Whether you succeed or fail, nobody has time. So use that to liberate yourself, but we need you involved. If you're thinking about it, there's a reason that you're at that crossroad. And if you're a person with good intentions, you're not out there killing somebody or causing other people to be killed, get involved now. Get invol- I'm being mom, I'm being auntie, and I'm saying we, we need you on our team. We need you in this world. Just sitting there and overthinking and overanalyzing is not helping anybody. It's your obligation if you're living in this world.
- AGAdam Grant
Well, I love how you just, you just nailed the psychology of both the spotlight effect and the overblown implications effect.
- ZGZarna Garg
Did I?
- AGAdam Grant
Spotlight effect, people are not paying as much attention to you as you think they are. And overblown implications effect, people judge your competence much more by your successes than your failures. And I think that for me, to your point about that being liberating, it says nobody actually judges you that much if you screw up or if you try something new.
- ZGZarna Garg
The thing is that the people who judge you are probably not doing anything. Anybody who's done anything real will not judge you harshly because they too have fallen and gotten up.
- AGAdam Grant
If one of your kids said they wanted to be a comedian-
- ZGZarna Garg
Yeah. No
- AGAdam Grant
... professionally.
- ZGZarna Garg
No, no, no, no, no, no.
- AGAdam Grant
You're not okay with it?
- ZGZarna Garg
No, no. Oh, no, no, no. You do the... Uh, it, it's been said. My, my, uh, older son, the older of the two boys, has alluded to it. And I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no." Uh, i- it is not a good lifestyle choice, first of all. Very, very toxic lifestyle. You're out nights and weekends. You get paid in drink tickets for years. I think there's easier ways to make money. I think do comedy for fun. Don't become a comedian, but do comedy for fun. I actually think comedy skills are highly transferable to every business and job. So a lot of people who take classes at the school that I help run on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, they are like corporate people. They're entrepreneurs. They wanna learn how to be better in social situations. I highly recommend that. But comedy as a business, no, no, no. No, no my kids are not allowed. Absolutely not.
- AGAdam Grant
I actually think that's great advice. Do it as a, as a hobby until you prove that it could become a career. All right. And then the last question for you is, do you still think your humor is a curse?
- ZGZarna Garg
I think my humor is a curse and a weapon. It, it has to be used correctly. It's very addictive to be on stage and have people laugh and clap. It's a very addictive feeling, and I, I've seen it with other comics and other performers. You can get addicted to that, that feeling. You start believing you know better than others. All that is a curse to me, but it is a weapon if used correctly. I like to use it to diffuse situations. I walk into complicated situations every day. Somebody's mad at something, and I use it tactically to diffuse things. I use it for a purpose that I believe is for the higher good, but it can very much be a curse. If you, if you buy into the hype around it, there are comics out there who think they're rock stars. Like, you're not a rock star. I'm sorry to break it to you. And, and I'm mindful of it. Again, also, um, blessed to have a husband who's very honest [laughs] and will remind me of the real state of affairs every day.
- AGAdam Grant
Zarna, you are such a breath of fresh air. What a privilege and a joy it is to meet you. Thank you for coming on ReThinking.
- ZGZarna Garg
Thank you, Adam. And if you ever... I'm gonna put this out there into the universe. If you ever one day are like, "What more could I do with my life?" And you wanna take the MCAT, I'll take it with you.
- AGAdam Grant
[laughs]
- ZGZarna Garg
We'll go down the journey of prepping for it just for the fun of it. That's-
- AGAdam Grant
That sounds like torture.
- ZGZarna Garg
No, it's gonna be so fun. [laughs] I'll do it with you. [outro music]
Episode duration: 29:16
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Transcript of episode j8eHzTd8B58
