Fail Better with David Duchovny

Check it Out: “How to Succeed at Failing, Part 1: The Chain of Events”

This week I’m sharing a neat episode of <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519">Freakonomics Radio</a>, hosted by past guest Stephen Dubner. His acclaimed podcast recently put out a series that really resonated with me — a series about failure, which is part of why I was so excited to talk with Stephen in the first place. You get to hear the first episode of that series, How to Succeed at Failing, right now. I think you'll enjoy it. We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad decisions. Can this pattern be reversed? We try — with stories about wildfires, school shootings, and love.See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

To be human is to fail – period. And not just to fail once, but to fail a lot. As the author Samuel Beckett said: “Fail again. Fail better.” This saying means a lot to me and my family – so much so that my daughter got a tattoo of it. Why are we, and so many others, so deeply concerned by failure? And if it’s something we all do so often, why are we so afraid of it – especially those of us here in win-at-all-costs America? In this podcast, I sit down with successful, thoughtful people like Ben Stiller, Bette Midler, Sean Penn and more to talk about failure – or what they labeled “failure,” but what was really an unparalleled opportunity for growth and revelation. I even want to delve into my own hardest moments, when I wrestled with setbacks, shame, and fear. We’ll still fail again. And again. But maybe if we fail better, we’ll feel better -- and maybe if we can all laugh together in failure, that's a start.