Every Fourth of July, millions of Americans tune in to watch the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.
If you’ve somehow never seen it before, here’s the premise:
A group of competitors stand shoulder to shoulder on a stage. They have ten minutes to eat as many hot dogs and buns as possible. Whoever eats the most wins.
This year, Joey Chestnut ate 66 hot dogs (and buns) in 10 minutes.
Just to put that in perspective, it’s:
- Roughly 20,000 calories
- Nearly 400 grams of saturated fat
- Over 31,000 milligrams of sodium
That’s 10–14 times the recommended daily limit. Think about that. It’s enough food to sustain one person for roughly two weeks, consumed in about the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.
I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that this is such a strange thing for so many of us to gather around and celebrate. And yet, more than 1.5 million people tune in to watch every year.
For years, I assumed what unsettled me was how obviously unhealthy it was. But over time, I’ve realized that isn’t really what captures my attention.
The eating isn’t what interests me. It’s what our fascination with the spectacle reveals.
How much our brains are captivated by the exceptional.
Inspiration Has a Downside
Once I paused and truly thought about it, I realized this contest isn’t unusual at all… It’s just one of the clearest examples of exceptional human feats.
We don’t just gather to watch people eat extraordinary amounts of food.
We gather to watch people do all sorts of extraordinary things.
Every two years, billions of us watch the Olympics because we’re captivated by the outer limits of human performance.
We’re drawn to stories about founders who build world-changing companies, endurance athletes who accomplish what seems beyond human physical and mental capacity, musicians who fill stadiums, and explorers who push beyond known boundaries.
Our social media feeds are filled with elaborate morning routines, dramatic transformations, and lives that seem impossible to replicate. These stories spread specifically because they’re exceptional, because they expand our sense of what’s possible.
And that’s one of the most beautiful parts of being human: we don’t just learn from each other, we inspire each other.
But inspiration has a downside: it can slowly distort what we think success requires.
Over time, we absorb the message that extraordinary outcomes require extraordinary behaviors.
- If you want to build a great company, work 120-hour weeks.
- If you want to become resilient, run ultramarathons.
- If you want to be healthy, optimize every minute of your day.
And if you can’t… well… success is likely out of your reach.
But why do our brains make that leap?
An Ancient Instinct
For most of human history, the people we learned from weren’t celebrities, they were the people around us:
- The best hunter in the village.
- The wisest elder.
- The strongest runner.
- The most skilled craftsperson.
Our brains evolved to watch the people in our tribe who seemed especially successful and then ask a simple question:
“What can I learn from them?”
Long before books, podcasts, or YouTube, observation was one of our greatest teachers. Paying attention to exceptional people wasn’t just interesting, it was adaptive.
But today, our tribe looks very different. Now our comparison set includes…
- Taylor Swift.
- Lionel Messi.
- Olympic athletes.
- MrBeast.
- Joey Chestnut.
The most exceptional people on the planet are no longer stories we hear once in a lifetime. They’re in our pockets. Every day.
And this feature of our modern environment creates a challenging mismatch:
Our brains evolved to learn from the best people in our tribe.
But today, we’re constantly observing the most exceptional people on Earth.
Importantly, there’s nothing wrong with learning from exceptional people, it’s one of the reasons humans have accomplished so much. The problem is when we assume their behaviors are the price of admission:
- You can’t build a great company, unless you work 120-hour weeks.
- You can’t become mentally tough, unless you run ultramarathons.
- You can’t be healthy, unless optimize every minute of your day.
Psychologists call this prestige bias - we naturally pay closer attention to people who appear successful or extraordinary, and we tend to assume their behaviors are worth copying. Sometimes they are.
But while success indeed leaves clues, it also leaves distractions.
The Things We Don’t See
And we often ignore the most important clues, because they are rarely the most visible and exciting:
- We remember founders sleeping on the factory floor, not the thousands of ordinary decisions that built the company.
- We remember dramatic weight loss transformations, not the years of ordinary meals that preceded the change.
- We remember Olympic gold medals, not decades of simply showing up for practice and training.
Our brains naturally remember remarkable examples and events. That doesn’t necessarily make them representative or achievable.
And when you actually study the things that predict better health, stronger relationships, greater resilience, or long-term success… they’re almost never spectacular.
Walking.
Sleeping.
Cooking.
Reading.
Time outside.
Meaningful conversations.
Showing up again tomorrow.
None of those behaviors are exceptional…. but they are repeatable.
Our brains evolved to learn from exceptional people.
But our lives are changed by repetition.
And yet repetition, consistency, routine tend to elude so many of us.
Why This Feels So Hard
If consistency is so powerful… why is it so difficult to value? Why don’t we tell tales of the people who get to bed on time every night? Why doesn’t walking outside 30 minutes a day (even if it’s raining) go viral? Why won’t ordering the salad - even when the burger looks so much better - increase social followers?
Why don’t we get absolutely thrilled about doing the small, impactful things again and again, day over day?
Part of the answer lies in how our brains respond to novelty. New plans feel exciting. New diets feel exciting. New routines. New books. New gear. New possibilities.
Our reward system loves the feeling that something new might change everything.
But routine doesn’t create that same excitement, and that’s exactly what makes it so easy to underestimate. The habits most likely to change your life often don’t feel extraordinary while you’re doing them. They just slowly compound in the background.
So we devalue them, don’t repeat them, and wonder why change, success, achievement is so hard.
Coming Full Circle
I still don’t think I’ll ever become a fan of the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, but I think I finally understand why millions of people watch it.
It isn’t really about hot dogs.
It’s about one of the oldest instincts our species has.
We are fascinated by exceptional people, we always have been.
The challenge isn’t resisting that instinct, but recognizing it’s role in our lives… these people can (and should) inspire us, but at the same time we need to remember that the behaviors most worth repeating are rarely the ones most worth watching.
Getting enough sleep won’t go viral.
Eating a healthy lunch won’t earn millions of views.
A quiet conversation with someone you love won’t become a headline.
But those ordinary moments are the ones that slowly shape our lives.
~ Jamey
Your Friendly Next Door Neuroscientist
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