A Slight Change of Plans

Michael Lewis and Maya Talk “The Other Side of Change”

January 27, 2026

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  • The central theme of Maya's work, spanning her podcast *A Slight Change of Plans* and her book *The Other Side of Change*, is that significant life changes are fundamentally about the threat to one's identity, not just the external event itself. 
  • Personal change, even catastrophic change like Olivia's locked-in syndrome or Ingrid's amnesia, often fails to immediately strip away pre-existing human tendencies like people-pleasing or the need for a belief in a just world. 
  • A major benefit of writing *The Other Side of Change* was the luxury of time and space to explore the interior lives of subjects deeply, allowing for the discovery of universal psychological lessons that might be missed in the shorter format of a podcast interview. 
  • The self-affirmation exercise, which involves focusing on life aspects not threatened by a current change, helped Maya realize her identity was not solely tied to becoming a mother, countering her prior tunnel vision. 
  • The word 'apocalypse,' derived from the Greek word for 'revelation,' instructs that significant negative change can reveal underlying truths, such as an unhealthy attachment to a specific life goal like motherhood. 
  • Despite intense personal loss related to starting a family, Maya found that embracing the change ultimately led her to become the happiest and most peaceful version of herself, a transformation she did not foresee. 

Segments

Introduction and Book Launch Context
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(00:02:01)
  • Key Takeaway: The launch of Maya’s book, The Other Side of Change, featured an interview conducted by Michael Lewis in front of a live San Francisco audience.
  • Summary: Maya introduced the event, noting that Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, interviewed her about her new book. The conversation format defaulted to their familiar dynamic of joking and going deep. Topics covered included writing The Other Side of Change, starting the podcast, and navigating life’s hardest moments.
Michael Lewis’s History with Maya
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(00:03:00)
  • Key Takeaway: Michael Lewis met Maya over a decade ago at the Kennedy School while working on The Undoing Project and observed her evolution through various professional iterations.
  • Summary: Lewis recalled meeting Maya when she was a Behavioral Scientist working in the White House. He humorously tracked her professional evolution from ‘White House Maya’ to ‘Google Maya,’ ‘podcast Maya,’ and finally ‘author Maya.’ Lewis set the stage by stating the conversation would focus on Maya’s interest in change before discussing the book.
Genesis of Interest in Change
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(00:04:43)
  • Key Takeaway: Maya’s initial deep interest in change stemmed from the shattering of her dream to become a mother following a miscarriage in early 2020, which forced her to confront the limits of her control.
  • Summary: The personal catalyst for her focus on change was a miscarriage experienced with her husband, Jimmy, early in 2020. This event made her reel, as her usual strategy of hustling through obstacles was useless against the indifference of fertility outcomes. This struggle with powerlessness introduced her to the broader world of change.
Early Life Change: Losing the Violin
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(00:05:07)
  • Key Takeaway: Losing her ability to play the violin at age 15 due to a hand injury was a formative experience that felt like the loss of self, as her identity was deeply entangled with the craft.
  • Summary: From age nine, Maya studied violin at Juilliard and later became Itzof Perlman’s private student, orienting her life around the instrument. The injury ended her professional dreams, leading to grief over the loss of the identity that made her feel special and capable. Her initial coping mechanism was poor, involving stubborn persistence through pain and subsequent MTV watching.
Transition to Cognitive Science Major
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(00:07:54)
  • Key Takeaway: Following the violin loss, Maya’s father advised her to explore interests without a specific goal, leading her to read Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct and discover cognitive science.
  • Summary: Facing imposter syndrome before college, Maya followed her father’s advice to explore without a concrete major goal. Reading Pinker’s book captivated her with the brain’s sophisticated machinery for language acquisition. This led her to the interdisciplinary cognitive science major, combining philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and biology.
Podcast Origin and Early Focus
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(00:13:02)
  • Key Takeaway: The A Slight Change of Plans podcast began as a low-stakes recording about career changes, but quickly pivoted to focus on profound personal life changes after early feedback deemed the initial concept boring.
  • Summary: The podcast idea emerged while brainstorming with a friend after the miscarriage. An initial recording interviewing her husband, Jimmy, about career shifts was deemed ‘boring’ because the stakes felt too low. The show then shifted to focus on unbelievable changes in people’s personal lives, exemplified by interviewing Daryl Davis, who convinced KKK members to leave the organization.
Book Structure and Universal Psychology
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(00:19:04)
  • Key Takeaway: The book The Other Side of Change argues that people undergoing vastly different surface-level changes (e.g., divorce vs. illness) share common psychological struggles and solution sets.
  • Summary: Maya observed that shared psychology, such as grappling with betrayal or unfairness, connects disparate experiences more strongly than shared external circumstances. These universal struggles include bristling at unfairness, anxiety about uncertainty, grieving lost identity, and catastrophizing the future. The book aims to provide resonance through unexpected stories that illuminate these common psychological states.
Olivia’s Locked-In Syndrome Story
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(00:24:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Olivia’s realization of being locked-in was triggered not by the stroke itself, but by the inability to curate an image for her boyfriend’s family, revealing the persistence of people-pleasing even in catastrophic circumstances.
  • Summary: Olivia contacted Maya via Instagram after suffering a severe brain stem stroke leading to locked-in syndrome, where only eye movement is voluntary. Maya initially expected a story of physical recovery, but Olivia’s true reckoning came when she realized she could not perform for her boyfriend’s judgmental family. Her chapter explores relinquishing people-pleasing tendencies and becoming comfortable with vulnerability.
Ingrid’s Amnesia and Belief Revision
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(00:29:31)
  • Key Takeaway: Ingrid’s retrograde amnesia brought euphoric lightness by wiping the slate clean, allowing her to re-evaluate her inherited belief that her indigenous heritage was shameful, ultimately leading to a renewed appreciation for her family’s spiritual traditions.
  • Summary: Ingrid, who was taught to hide her family’s indigenous background, developed amnesia after a biking accident, initially feeling unburdened joy. She covered mirrors to preserve this lightness, but when memories returned, she embraced her family’s history as beautiful, contradicting her upbringing. This story illustrates that change can serve as a revelation, allowing one to interrogate and revise long-held, flimsy beliefs.
The Value of Writing the Book
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(00:42:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Writing The Other Side of Change was the hardest intellectual endeavor Maya undertook, but it provided the necessary space to explore deep narrative alleys and make connections impossible in the faster pace of podcasting.
  • Summary: Maya found writing the book to be the most challenging yet most rewarding intellectual task of her life. The process allowed her the luxury of time to explore every nook and cranny of the subjects’ stories. This depth enabled her to discover pivotal turning points and connections she would never have found through shorter podcast interviews.
Advice on Navigating Future Change
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(00:44:31)
  • Key Takeaway: Humility about future feelings is crucial because humans suffer from the ’end of history illusion,’ falsely believing they will stop changing, while in reality, major changes lead to lasting psychological adaptation.
  • Summary: Humans are poor affective forecasters, meaning they cannot accurately predict how they will feel after a major event. The ’end of history illusion’ causes people to believe they are done changing, ignoring that they will be different people when they reach the moment of change. Psychological resilience and adaptation are inherent human traits that will eventually take over.
Challenging Core Beliefs
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(00:49:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Foundational beliefs, such as the idea that the world is just (‘good things happen to good people’), can be so rigid that people engage in mental gymnastics to justify tragedy rather than revise the core belief.
  • Summary: One subject, Marianne, believed strongly in a just world until she accidentally killed a child while driving, which threatened her entire worldview. To protect this core belief, she internalized the narrative that she was dangerous and needed to hide from others. This demonstrates how deeply cemented beliefs can lead to self-destructive narratives when confronted with random, cruel events.
Gratitude Exercise After Loss
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(00:53:35)
  • Key Takeaway: Initial resistance to gratitude exercises during acute grief can yield unexpected benefits by shifting focus away from the immediate loss.
  • Summary: Following a second miscarriage, the speaker initially rejected her husband Jimmy’s suggestion to list things they were grateful for, labeling it ’toxic positivity.’ Upon compliance, her list flowed, including gratitude for nieces/nephews, Zoom workouts, long-term colleagues, and the podcast itself. Engaging in this exercise provided immediate emotional relief, making her feel ‘a bit more whole’ that night.
Self-Affirmation and Identity
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(00:56:01)
  • Key Takeaway: The self-affirmation exercise identifies life meanings independent of the current crisis, preventing identity loss by zooming out the perspective.
  • Summary: The self-affirmation exercise, which the speaker’s software engineer husband performed unknowingly, involves focusing on life meanings and purpose that are not threatened by the change being experienced. This practice allowed the speaker to zoom out from the ‘blurry’ focus on becoming a mother and recognize the richness and joy already present in her life. This realization confirmed that her entire identity had not been threatened by the pregnancy losses.
Change as Revelation
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(00:57:17)
  • Key Takeaway: The etymology of ‘apocalypse’ as ‘revelation’ underscores that negative change can expose unhealthy self-worth placements, such as over-identifying with motherhood.
  • Summary: The speaker discusses change as revelation, noting that ‘apocalypse’ means revelation in Greek, suggesting negative events can expose truths. The pregnancy losses revealed that she had placed too much self-worth in becoming a mother, driven partly by cultural forces suggesting child-free women lack meaning. Despite believing fulfillment was impossible without children, she later found herself the happiest version of herself years later.
Podcast Wrap-up and Promotion
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(01:00:06)
  • Key Takeaway: The Other Side of Change achieved instant New York Times bestseller status, and new listeners are directed to a ‘starter pack’ of favorite episodes.
  • Summary: The host concludes the episode by promoting her book, The Other Side of Change, noting its success as an instant New York Times bestseller. New listeners are encouraged to start with a curated ‘Slight Change of Plans starter pack’ linked in the show notes. The episode credits the production team, including writer/executive producer Maya Schunker and Pushkin Industries.