When I was 12 years old,

I fractured my foot playing soccer.

I didn't tell my parents when I got home that night,

because the next day, my dad was taking me to see a movie,

a soccer movie.

I worried that if I told my parents about the foot,

they would take me to see a doctor.

I didn't want to see a doctor,

I wanted to see the movie.

The next morning, my dad goes,

"It's nice out. Why don't we walk to the theater."

(Laughter)

It was a mile away.

As we go, he says,

"Why are you limping?"

I tell him I have something in my shoe.

The movie was spectacular.

It told the story of some of soccer's greatest stars,

great Brazilian players.

I was ecstatic.

At the end of the movie, I told my dad about the foot;

he took me to see an orthopedic doctor,

who put my foot in a cast for three weeks.

I tell you the story today, because four decades later,

I don't really consider myself a soccer fan anymore.

Today, my sports fandom is tuned to another kind of football.

Now my 12-year-old self wouldn't just find this incomprehensible.

My 12-year-old self would see this as a betrayal.

Now you might say we all change from the time we are 12,

so let me fast-forward a decade.

When I was 22,

I was a freshly minted electronics engineer in southern India.

I had no idea that three decades later, I would be living in the United States,

that I would be a journalist,

and that I would be the host of a podcast called "Hidden Brain."

It's a show about human behavior

and how to apply psychological science to our lives.

Now we didn’t have podcasts when I graduated from college.

We didn’t walk around with smartphones in our pockets.