Maya Shankar

"I didn't know cognitive science was a field, it would never even have occurred to me until I looked in the Yale course book and saw like, oh, this is a major."

"And so then the thought experiment becomes through what other outlets could I express this why?"

"This is where some more foundational psychological distancing strategies can be very, very helpful. So my favorite one that I've been using a lot recently because of the sort of the feeling that we are in an unprecedented state on a societal level is mental time travel."

"another technique which is very very simple and it almost sounds a little gimmicky but it's very effective is to talk to yourself in the third person. So rather than saying, 'Oh my god, I need to get a grip.' You say, 'Maya, you need to get a grip.'"

"And it was during that period that I read the Steven Pinker book."