# Science & Tools of Learning & Memory | Dr. David Eagleman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEULFeUVYf0

[00:00] Oftentimes people will ask me like an older person will say, "Hey, I do crossword puzzles. Is that good?"
[00:06] Yeah, it's good until you get good at it and then stop and do something that you're not good at and constantly find the next thing that's a real challenge for you.
[00:14] That's the key thing about plasticity.
[00:16] Your brain is locked in silence and darkness.
[00:18] It's trying to make a model of the outside world.
[00:20] And if you're constantly pushing and challenging it with things it doesn't understand, then it'll keep changing.
[00:26] Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
[00:36] I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
[00:40] My guest today is Dr. David Eagleman.
[00:42] Dr. David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, a best-selling author, and a longtime science public educator.
[00:49] Today we discuss several different features of brain science that impact your everyday life.
[00:55] And once you understand the mechanisms behind these features, it will position you to make better
[01:00] decisions and if you choose to rewire your brain to be a more effective learner.
[01:06] We start by discussing neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to change in response to experience or any form of deliberate learning that you are trying to impose on yourself.
[01:16] We talk about the mechanisms for it and how you can get better at learning and unlearning in the context of skills and information.
[01:22] We also discuss memory formation and the relationship between stress and time perception and why it is that people experience things in slow motion if those things are very stressful or traumatic and how that can be useful for undoing traumatic memories.
[01:37] David also takes us through the neuroscience of cultural and political polarization, something that's very timely right now, false memories, deja vu, dreams and the meaning of dreams and a lot more.
[01:48] David is an absolutely legendary science communicator.
[01:52] I say this as a fellow neuroscientist.
[01:59] He is able to embed factual information about the brain into real life stories and in doing so he's able to shed light on how we work as
[02:01] humans and how we can all improve our life experience.
[02:05] He's a true virtuoso of neuroscience and science education more generally.
[02:11] What David shares with us today will change the way that you think about thinking and your own mind and no doubt will also change the way that you view the world.
[02:17] Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.
[02:22] It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public.
[02:29] In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors.
[02:34] And now for my discussion with Dr. David Eagleman.
[02:37] Dr. David Eagleman, welcome.
[02:39] Thanks. Great to see you, Andrew.
[02:41] Man, I feel like the kid that was a freshman when you were a senior because you got into this public facing science education long before I did.
[02:48] And you've had a an amazing career also in your laboratory work.
[02:54] And today I want to talk about all of it, right?
[02:59] um by mostly listening and you doing the talking and there are so many
[03:01] topics in neuroscience that are fascinating as you know but I think perhaps the most fascinating thing about the human brain is its ability to change itself.
[03:11] Yeah.
[03:11] Plasticity.
[03:11] So I know how I think about neuroplasticity.
[03:14] I want to know how you think about neuroplasticity.
[03:16] What it is and how we should think about it and what we could possibly do with that information.
[03:23] Okay, great.
[03:23] I mean, this was mother nature's big trick with humans was figuring out how to drop a creature into the world with a halfbaked brain and then let the world wire up the rest of it.
[03:36] And so, you know, 1953, Crick and Watton, I worked with Crick at the Salt.
[03:39] They burst into the Eagle and Child pub and said, "We've discovered the secret to life."
[03:44] Because they figure out the structure of DNA.
[03:45] But that was really half the secret of life because the other half is all around us.
[03:49] It's every bit of experience that you have.
[03:52] It's your culture.
[03:54] It's your language.
[03:55] It's your neighborhood.
[03:57] All of that stuff gets absorbed by the brain and wires us up.
[04:00] And I often think about this issue
[04:02] of what if you were born 30,000 years ago exactly your DNA?
[04:05] You pop out and you look around and the question is would you be you?
[04:11] The answer is you wouldn't be.
[04:12] You'd look maybe similar because of the same genetic blueprint, but you would have a different culture and a different language and different stories and all that stuff.
[04:21] You'd be a very different kind of person.
[04:22] So, brain plasticity, for anyone who doesn't know, it's it's that the brain is constantly reconfiguring itself every second of your life.
[04:31] You got 86 billion neurons.
[04:34] And really, the way to think about it, these are like little creatures that are all crawling around and moving around.
[04:40] each one is, you know, on average contacting 10,000 of its neighbors, but it's not like a fixed thing like you might see in a textbook.
[04:46] Instead, they're, you know, plugging and unplugging and searching around and finding new places to plug in, of course, changing the strength of those connections.
[04:55] And I actually always find this weird.
[04:57] It's like having all these little creatures in your head that are slithering around, but that's what makes
[05:03] us absorb every single thing in our worlds.
[05:07] And this is what uh you know humans have that other creatures have less of.
[05:09] And that's why we've taken over every corner of the earth.
[05:15] That's why we have succeed.
[05:16] We've gotten off the planet.
[05:18] We build skyscrapers and compos symphonies and so on because each generation we land and we get to spend our first few years absorbing everything that's been discovered before us.
[05:26] And then we springboard off of that and do something new.
[05:29] Because we are able to figure out all the discoveries that have come before us because of this ability to reconfigure our own circuitry.
[05:43] And uh you know if you were a an alligator born 30,000 years ago, you'd be the same alligator.
[05:47] You know, eat, mate, swim, whatever, and you you wouldn't be meaningfully different.
[05:51] But but humans because of our flexibility, we are the the dominant species.
[06:00] Such an interesting take on time and human evolution that uh and I completely
[06:05] Agree with you.
[06:07] I just had never thought about it this way before that we land uh when we're born and we're absorbing the um the outcroppings of all the neuroplasticity that came before us.
[06:18] We often hear that, you know, that the human brain is is kind of like a macac monkey brain with a supercomputer added on top of it.
[06:26] Mostly the prefrontal cortex.
[06:28] A bit more prefrontal cortex.
[06:32] Prefrontal cortex. We actually cortex in general.
[06:33] Yeah. Interesting.
[06:34] We we have four times as much cortex as our nearest neighbors in the animal kingdom.
[06:37] And that seems to be the magical stuff.
[06:40] Not just prefrontal cortex, right?
[06:41] And for I'm sure the listenership knows this, but you know, uh the cortex is just the outer 3 millimeters of the brain.
[06:46] It's that wrinkly bit.
[06:48] And that's the magic stuff because it turns out cortex is a one-trick pony.
[06:54] The reason the cortex looks the same everywhere is because it is the same.
[06:57] It's got the same circuitry.
[06:59] It's got six little layers.
[07:00] It's doing the same algorithms and it gets defined by what you plug
[07:05] into it.
[07:08] So if you plug in a cable that's carrying visual information, then it becomes visual cortex.
[07:14] And we look at it and we say, "Oh, look, it detects the orientation of lines.
[07:17] and a detect motion, things like that.
[07:19] If you plug auditory information into it, it becomes auditory cortex and so on.
[07:23] And it turns out, you know, the way we do this in textbooks is we make a picture and we say, "Look, that's visual cortex, that's auditory, that's the metaensory."
[07:30] But all this stuff is really flexible.
[07:32] It's it's so much more interesting than the textbook model because you can take the fibers and plug them in somewhere else.
[07:39] So you may know this study in 2000 by Morgankaur at MIT where he in a farret took uh the visual information visual uh the optic nerve and he plugged it into the visual sorry into the auditory cortex and then the what would have been the auditory cortex became visually responsive and it started caring about vision.
[07:59] So what does that mean?
[08:01] It means the cortex is a onetrick pony and we got so much more of it including the prefrontal cortex.
[08:05] So that has two major
[08:08] effects.
[08:10] One is that there's a lot more room with our species in between input and output.
[08:12] So with a a squirrel or a cat or even a macac monkey, you know, you throw some food in front of it, it that that sensory cortex is right next to the motor cortex, it's going to eat the thing, but we've got all this computational real estate in between in and out.
[08:27] So we can say, well, I'm on a diet.
[08:29] I'm trying whatever you I'll eat it later.
[08:31] We've got all these other options that we can take.
[08:33] That's one thing.
[08:35] And then the other thing is exactly what you pointed to, which is the prefrontal cortex, which allows us to simulate whatifs.
[08:39] Allows us to think about possible futures, simulate things in a way that we don't have to risk our lives doing it.
[08:48] We can simulate it and say, "Oh, that would be a bad idea.
[08:50] Oh, that'd be a pretty good idea."
[08:51] And then we can take the action.
[08:54] Couple different questions.
[08:56] Um, I'm a big fan of McGranka's work, and I'm so glad you mentioned that work.
[08:58] it it really points to the fact that while there are cortical areas that are genetically devoted by virtue of wiring when we arrive in the world too auditory
[09:08] or visual that there's a lot of crossover especially in the extreme cases
[09:11] so my understanding correct me if I'm wrong is that um if somebody is blind from birth the real estate that would be allocated to vision becomes allocated to tactile sensation
[09:21] especially if they learn how to braille read um maybe auditory processing and because they rely on it more so there's really no blank real estate in the cortex it's all used.
[09:30] That is exactly right.
[09:32] So it turns out um you know right people who are born blind what we call the visual cortex at the back of the back of the head here that gets taken over.
[09:39] It's no longer visual.
[09:40] It becomes devoted to hearing to touch to memory things like this.
[09:45] And you can demonstrate that people who are born blind are better at hearing and and at touch and so on.
[09:51] They can discriminate things much more finely.
[09:54] Um same with people who go deaf that the auditory cortex all that real estate nothing lies in the brain all that gets taken over for different tasks and they can do things like see your accent you know just by lip reading they can tell
[10:09] where in the country you're from and so on.
[10:15] Um all of this demonstrates that first of all the more real estate you have the better.
[10:20] We are in a sense if you've got all your senses you uh you have to share everything and so we're pretty good at vision and hearing and touch and so on but everything has to get shared.
[10:31] But there are pretty extraordinary things that happen when people devote more real estate towards one task.
[10:35] And by the way, just as a side note, this is one hypothesis about what goes on with savantism in in autism is that somebody for whatever genetic set of reasons ends up devoting a ton of real estate to let's say the Rubik's cube or the piano or memorizing visual scenes or something and then they are absolutely superhuman at it.
[10:54] That comes at the cost of other things.
[10:57] Let's say social skills that might be needed.
[11:02] Um, but the general story is if you devote a lot of real estate towards something, you're gonna get really good at it.
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[13:28] I don't know if you saw this study that was published in science recently that explored um early specialization in sport or creative endeavor versus kids that played a bunch of different sports or involved in a bunch of different creative endeavors.
[13:42] And it turns out that um specializing too early on average doesn't play out so well in terms of um kind of uh peak of success later.
[13:51] Now there are exceptions, right?
[13:54] But um turns out that being a bit more diversified in in your uh physical activities and cognitive activities as a as a young person into the early teens even um and beyond uh is more beneficial.
[14:07] And this this to me kind of runs counter to my images of like um Tiger Woods uh putting uh golf balls
[14:16] with his uh dad when he was, you know, kind of still waddling.
[14:18] He was so little, right?
[14:20] and then he becomes Tiger Woods or um or the Williams sisters who were you know early on.
[14:25] I think that especially in the United States we have this notion that early specialization is really what sets you up to be spectacularly good later.
[14:34] So I'm curious what your general thoughts are for the the every person.
[14:38] I mean you have kids um and some of us still are kids who are listening and and we all have plasticity into adulthood.
[14:43] you know, is do you think that we come into the world with some genetic leanings toward particular activities being right for us or more right for us?
[14:52] And how do you think about it in terms of how many difficult hard to access things we do just so that we're sure that we have a full experience of life?
[15:01] Because what I hear you saying and I totally subscribe to is that our early experience becomes the funnel through which we have more or less opportunity later.
[15:08] like the kind of width of the of the funnel depends on how many things we did or didn't do early on.
[15:15] So this is really interesting because um
[15:17] first of all take somebody like the Williams sisters they got drilled on tennis from day one and this stuff can be taught and this is why they became champions and this is obvious but this is the same what you find with chess champions and golf champions like Woods and so on.
[15:33] Um you have to really spend the time doing it.
[15:36] Now I find this interesting for a few reasons.
[15:38] One is that cognitively you can understand how to you know what a forehand or a backhand you know is hit in tennis but to actually get good at it you have to burn it down into the circuitry.
[15:50] So actually let me back up for one second which is the reason that we have brain plasticity is because this is how a brain makes things that you do fast and efficient.
[15:59] So when you're doing a task a lot like you know serving tennis or something you're taking that from the software to the hardware of the brain let's say uh I'm an amateur tennis player and and there's Serena Williams I'm playing against her.
[16:17] Um it turns out
[16:19] Surprisingly when we're playing she's beaten me like crazy but my brain's the one using all the activity.
[16:26] I'm the one burning all the calories with my brain.
[16:29] Why?
[16:29] Because she has burned tennis into the hardware of the brain.
[16:32] So it's fast and efficient.
[16:34] I, on the other hand, am trying to simulate lots of things and figure out where I should go and all that.
[16:37] So the brain does this for reasons of efficiency.
[16:39] Obviously the brain's main job is to save energy because we are mobile creatures who run on batteries.
[16:46] And so um this is one of the big things about about plasticity.
[16:50] So people get extraordinarily good by doing things over and over.
[16:54] The the these these three women, the Polar sisters who are chess champions.
[16:59] They're, you know, the best to my knowledge are still the best three female chess players in the world.
[17:05] Their father from day one started teaching them how to do chess and so on and they all became uh world champions at this.
[17:13] You know, the thing about whether you need to have diversification, that's an interesting question.
[17:17] I can see why it would be
[17:21] useful because you're learning different ways, different moves about it in the same way that if you learn how to snowboard and ski, um, you know, you might you might get better at both of them.
[17:32] But I got to say, uh, when children grow up, let's say, triilingually, uh, or even bilingually, they they end up having a lower vocabulary in both languages than if they grow up monolingually.
[17:45] Really?
[17:46] Yeah. It's just because of the amount of practice you get with a language.
[17:49] Kids, still do your uh second language homework.
[17:52] In California, it's it's, you know, growing up here, it's very useful to know English and some Spanish.
[17:57] I mean, very, very useful. In fact, I wish I'd gotten better at Spanish when I was a kid.
[18:02] Uh, and my father's born and raised in Wanosirus, but we didn't speak Spanish at home, at least not very much.
[18:10] So, you know, I can tell you learn a musical instrument and learn a second language.
[18:14] a musical instrument for your own enrichment um and those around you.
[18:18] But the the second language thing I think is extremely useful at least in California
[18:22] I find it to be really useful.
[18:24] But kids are resisting this by the way now
[18:25] because they say look I can do Google translate or you know my meta sunglasses
[18:29] and so they're resisting it.
[18:30] Yeah.
[18:30] But Google translate is not Google relate.
[18:33] I totally agree.
[18:34] You know I I mean it's and I'm not I'm hardly fluent but I can get by now.
[18:38] I'm pretty good.
[18:38] But I've been practicing my Spanish more and more and just by virtue of living in Southern California, that just happens.
[18:44] But I I think knowing a second language um and being a to have that kind of face tof face conversation with someone, it's um even the struggle of it is enriching in a way because you're forcing your brain to do some work.
[18:55] My father spoke eight languages fluently without accent.
[18:58] Uh and that's because he went to medical school in Europe and did his clinical rotations in different countries and you know he was a young man.
[19:05] So everywhere he went, he got a girlfriend and then he had the incentive to learn the language.
[19:09] And by the maybe we'll come to this, but when it comes to brain plasticity, the reward systems are a big part of what makes change happen in the brain.
[19:19] Actually, let me just mention, this is tangential, but let me just mention this while it's on my mind.
[19:23] Um, you know, a lot of people really for the last 30 years, ever since the internet became a big thing, really worried about what this is going to mean for kids and education.
[19:30] I think it's terrific.
[19:33] I am very optimistic about this because what what kids started getting a few decades ago was this opportunity to learn about something right when they were curious about it.
[19:43] So they want to know how to fix the bicycle tire or what is this space physics thing or whatever and they ask the question and get the answer.
[19:51] Why does that matter?
[19:52] It's because brain plasticity really happens when you have the right cocktail of neurotransmitters present and and that cocktail happens to map on to curiosity or engagement.
[20:02] when I'm I'm slightly older than you are, but when we uh you know, when we were in school, the teacher teaches you the thing.
[20:09] They just dump everything like, "Oh, the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066 and you may or may not ever need to know that."
[20:14] But what kids get now is information right in the context of their curiosity and that makes a big difference because stuff really sticks and I have been
[20:25] extraordinarily impressed with young
[20:27] people that I meet. I meet all these
[20:28] young people who say these extraordinary
[20:29] things. I say, "Wow, how did you know
[20:31] that?" and they, you know, they've
[20:32] watched TED talks, they've asked Alexa,
[20:35] they've talked to ChatGpt and they get
[20:39] the information and and it sticks. Super
[20:42] interesting. I hadn't thought about it
[20:43] that way. I uh I guess I'm reflecting my
[20:46] age um to everyone when I say that, you
[20:48] know, I remember being interested in
[20:49] something and then having to bike or
[20:51] skateboard down to Tower Books or go to
[20:53] the library um and look things up. And I
[20:57] tell myself that the effort involved in
[20:59] going to get it actually is useful. But
[21:01] you're right, had I been able to um kind
[21:03] of look up what I was interested in and
[21:05] get it right then, I probably would have
[21:06] spent more time implementing the
[21:08] information because I was interested in
[21:10] all sorts of things that usually
[21:11] involved building something or doing
[21:13] something that was going to make a big
[21:14] mess and frustrate my parents, right?
[21:16] But I spent a lot of time searching for
[21:18] the information. Yeah. Um, plus you
[21:20] remember how dinner table conversations
[21:22] used to go, which is that everyone
[21:23] argues about something and then they
[21:25] someone says, "Well, I think it's this."
[21:26] And the other person says, "No, I think
[21:27] it's that." And then it just sort of
[21:28] stops there because no one knows the
[21:29] right answer. But now everyone whips out
[21:31] their phone, gets the answer, and then
[21:32] and then it keeps going, which is really
[21:34] terrific.
[21:34] >> Yeah. It's dissolved um some of the
[21:37] social dominance that comes about when
[21:39] one person's word is the word that
[21:41] everyone has to just kind of believe
[21:42] just because they say it with more
[21:44] certainty.
[21:44] >> They're the father or whatever. Exactly.
[21:46] >> Yeah. Or the grandfather or whoever. Or
[21:48] the grandmother. in some cases, who
[21:49] knows? Now, it gets checked against the
[21:52] internet and uh uh claude for me or chat
[21:55] GBT for for a lot of other people. I
[21:58] realize that um the question I'm about
[22:01] to ask can't be answered uh completely
[22:04] but given what you know about plasticity
[22:08] and the fact that yes you know we come
[22:12] in to the world with some
[22:13] pre-programming of our of our brain
[22:15] circuitry but we have some control over
[22:18] uh what the inputs are some depending on
[22:20] our circumstances. It depends what you
[22:21] mean by we. Uh, so as infants, of
[22:23] course, we have no control over that.
[22:24] >> As an adolescent, as a teen, as a
[22:26] 20-year-old, assuming plasticity extends
[22:29] into adulthood, still as adults,
[22:30] although it's harder, um,
[22:32] >> some control over what one learns or
[22:34] does. What do you think are um sort of
[22:36] the core elements to uh making sure you
[22:40] build a healthy, well-rounded nervous
[22:42] system? Nobody's really ever attempted
[22:45] to answer this question. you know, a
[22:47] howler monkey learns all the things that
[22:49] a howler monkey needs to do. Um, humans,
[22:52] we have, as you said, the benefit of all
[22:54] the technology that comes from the
[22:56] plasticity of those that came before us.
[22:59] And so,
[23:00] >> you know, maybe kids don't need to learn
[23:02] a second language, but what do you think
[23:03] are sort of the the essentials? I mean,
[23:05] obviously learning to communicate and
[23:07] understand, learning to move, but do we
[23:10] have some sense of of how you check off
[23:12] the like the core 10 boxes of
[23:15] neuroplasticity to make sure that by
[23:16] time you land in adulthood or even if
[23:19] you're still an adult that you're you're
[23:21] doing the
[23:22] >> quote unquote best that you can with
[23:24] your brain? This is a tough question, I
[23:25] realize.
[23:26] >> I mean, I would say two things. One is
[23:28] um you know, try to maximize along every
[23:30] axis. So try to be an athlete, try to be
[23:33] a scholar, try to be uh you know,
[23:37] somebody who's good at social life and
[23:39] has a lot of friends. All all of these
[23:41] axes of life, it's worth spending the
[23:43] time doing that. And if obviously we're
[23:45] in an era, especially now, where there
[23:47] are a million ways to waste time. I sit
[23:49] on airplanes next to people and they're
[23:50] playing Candy Crush for the whole
[23:52] flight. And I just feel like what a
[23:54] shame because there's so much you could
[23:56] be putting into your brain and making
[23:57] happen. You could be reading books, you
[23:58] could be listening to podcasts, anything
[23:59] like that. Okay. So, there's that. But
[24:02] the other half that I would say is um a
[24:06] lot of what we care to be depends a lot
[24:09] on what's going on in the future. And
[24:12] I'm fascinated by for children now in
[24:15] schools,
[24:17] what choices they should make because
[24:19] who the heck knows what careers are
[24:22] going to exist in 20 or 30 years from
[24:24] now. Therefore, the main things they can
[24:27] concentrate on, I think, are critical
[24:29] thinking and creativity. Those are the
[24:31] main things for them to figure out how
[24:33] to do. What are some good ways in your
[24:35] opinion to access critical thinking and
[24:37] creativity? I I can imagine a number of
[24:39] them.
[24:39] >> Yeah. Here's something I find very
[24:40] optimistic about AI in the realm of
[24:42] education. Um,
[24:45] you know, in any classroom, it's going
[24:47] too fast for half the kids and too slow
[24:48] for the other half of the kids. What we
[24:50] now have the opportunity for is really
[24:52] individualized education. One way this
[24:55] could be implemented is AI debate. So
[24:57] you take any hot button issue, abortion,
[25:00] gun control, whatever you want, and you
[25:01] debate with the AI and you get graded
[25:04] based on the quality of your arguments
[25:06] and then you switch sides and you take
[25:08] the other side and you argue again. This
[25:10] is the kind of thing you could never
[25:11] have enough teachers for. They would
[25:12] never have enough patience for. AI is
[25:14] terrific at this. And by the way, it's
[25:16] really important so that students get a
[25:17] 360 view of issues instead of
[25:20] ideological capture. So this is a
[25:23] terrific way to teach critical thinking
[25:25] to every student, not just the kids on
[25:27] the speech and debate team. Okay.
[25:29] Creativity, that's easy. That has to do
[25:31] with learning the foundational stuff and
[25:34] then doing remixes, bending, breaking,
[25:37] blending, doing new versions of it. And
[25:39] I think schools can implement this
[25:42] easily and without any extra expense
[25:44] which is you have to teach the
[25:46] foundational stuff but you compress that
[25:49] so you have one extra week at the end of
[25:52] each semester and then that last week
[25:54] you say great take everything you've
[25:55] learned and now make your own thing with
[25:57] it using all the elements that we've
[25:58] learned bend it break it blend it make
[26:00] your own version of this. That kind of
[26:04] exercise is that is creativity. That's
[26:06] all creativity is is taking your
[26:08] storehouse of knowledge and doing
[26:11] remixes.
[26:12] >> We should be teaching that.
[26:13] >> So critical thinking and uh creativity.
[26:16] Gerta the the German philosopher had
[26:19] said uh there are two uh bequests that a
[26:22] that a parent can give a child. One is
[26:25] roots and one is wings. And my
[26:27] interpretation of that has always been
[26:29] critical thinking and creativity. Love
[26:31] that and thank you for making it
[26:33] practical. That's something I think any
[26:35] and all of us could invest some more
[26:37] time in. I also agree it's very easy to
[26:39] waste time on on uh on the internet. Uh
[26:42] I have a separate phone for social
[26:43] media.
[26:44] >> Oh, great.
[26:44] >> That solved a lot of issues. Not that it
[26:46] was really contaminating my life that
[26:48] much. I like social media. I like
[26:50] teaching and learning there and some
[26:51] entertainment there. But by putting it
[26:53] on an old phone, so X and Instagram are
[26:56] just on that phone. It's amaz people
[26:57] send me things by text and I I have to
[27:00] transfer them over. Sometimes I see
[27:01] them, sometimes I don't. My default
[27:04] setting is no longer to just look at my
[27:05] phone and look at social media.
[27:06] >> Yes,
[27:07] >> it has increased my productivity and
[27:09] just my happiness and my level of
[27:10] attention. Also, when I do social media,
[27:12] that's I'm doing like a like a
[27:14] purposeful like watching a show or doing
[27:16] something that I would devote time for
[27:17] is to not always just scrolling in the
[27:19] background.
[27:20] >> Do you find yourself picking up that
[27:21] phone sometimes? Actually,
[27:22] >> no. If I do, if I find myself doing that
[27:24] reflexively, I have a uh what I call a
[27:26] supermax prison lock box, which you
[27:28] can't code out of. And the fun for me,
[27:30] and get this, this is like really weird.
[27:32] I don't know what this says about my
[27:33] psychology. I'll put it in there and
[27:35] I'll dial in, you know, okay, like 4
[27:37] hours, and then I hit the supermax
[27:39] button, and then there's this 15-second
[27:40] countdown, and then I'll go 5, six,
[27:42] seven, eight, nine hours. And I go,
[27:43] okay, cool. Like 9 hours. So, there's
[27:45] this weird thing where you don't want to
[27:47] let it go, but then you
[27:49] >> I really enjoy the freedom from it. so
[27:52] much that the extra hours that I add on
[27:55] and that last thing it feels like a gift
[27:56] to myself and then I'm like I'm going to
[27:58] have a great day and then when I get
[27:59] back on it certainly there's this
[28:01] dopamine dynamics thing where you go oh
[28:04] this is a lot of fun but you have to be
[28:05] super careful
[28:06] >> because it'll suck you in. I'm just
[28:08] amazed at how fast time goes which we're
[28:10] going to talk about time perception. I
[28:12] before we do that though, I I have a
[28:13] question about plasticity that I've been
[28:15] waiting to ask you and only you because
[28:18] we have a lot of friends that are
[28:19] neuroscientists, but I have a feeling
[28:20] you've thought about this more than
[28:22] anyone, which is are there any things
[28:26] that we can do to extend the window of
[28:30] plasticity? Or are there activities like
[28:33] learning an instrument or or some sort
[28:36] of game who knows that gives us our
[28:40] capacity for plasticity uh more height,
[28:43] more width um as opposed to just you
[28:45] know the same principles. You need to
[28:46] focus on the thing then you need to make
[28:48] errors then you need to do some error
[28:49] correction. You get to sleep that night
[28:50] you rewire you trial and error. I mean,
[28:52] we know that the basics now. I think
[28:54] most people have heard them. But what
[28:56] can we do to broaden our ability or
[28:59] heighten our ability to get uh
[29:01] plasticity?
[29:02] >> Two words, seek novelty. That's the
[29:04] whole game is you got to continually
[29:06] challenge the brain. And this is
[29:08] something that as we get older is more
[29:10] important than ever. It's finding new
[29:13] things that we haven't done before. You
[29:16] always have to keep yourself between the
[29:17] levels of frustrating but achievable.
[29:21] And as long as you're trying new things,
[29:23] so yes, a new instrument is great.
[29:25] Speaking a new language is great. Um,
[29:27] you know, obviously we're in a world
[29:28] that's moving very fast. So just keeping
[29:30] up with the technology and figuring out,
[29:32] wow, there's this new opportunity here
[29:33] with this piece of software, whatever.
[29:35] All that stuff is great. This is the
[29:37] critically important part. Um, you may
[29:39] know these studies. There's been this
[29:41] this study going on for decades now
[29:44] called the the what is it? religious
[29:45] orders study uh up in Chicago area where
[29:49] there's a whole bunch of nuns and
[29:51] priests that agreed to donate their
[29:53] brains when they passed away. And then
[29:55] when they donate their brains, the
[29:57] researchers uh you know examine them, do
[29:59] autopsies on them. What the researchers
[30:01] found is that some fraction of these
[30:02] nuns had Alzheimer's disease, but nobody
[30:06] knew it when they were alive. Nobody saw
[30:09] any cognitive deficits. Why? It's
[30:11] because these these women died in their
[30:13] 90s.
[30:14] And to the day they died, they lived in
[30:16] these convents. And in the convents,
[30:19] they had social responsibilities. They
[30:21] had chores. They were fighting with
[30:23] their sisters. They were playing games
[30:24] with their fellow sisters. They were
[30:26] singing songs. They were doing things
[30:28] all the time. So they kept their brain
[30:30] active. So even as their brain was
[30:31] physically degenerating with Alzheimer's
[30:34] disease, they were building new
[30:35] roadways. They were building new bridges
[30:37] over these areas. This is one of the big
[30:40] things that tells us that uh you know
[30:43] contrast this with with people who
[30:44] retire at 65 and they go home and they
[30:49] sit on a couch and watch the television.
[30:52] They don't have as good an outcome
[30:53] because they're not challenging their
[30:55] brain anymore. Um so it is so important
[30:59] to be doing things. You know I once
[31:02] heard the expression that there's
[31:03] nothing as hard that the brain does than
[31:05] other people. And so for these for these
[31:08] women living in convents, they were
[31:09] constantly dealing with because you
[31:11] never know what somebody's going to say
[31:12] or how they're going to react or what
[31:13] they're going to do. So this is great
[31:15] challenge opportunity for the brain.
[31:17] Anyway, the point is we need to always
[31:19] find that with ourselves. Often times
[31:21] people will ask me uh like an older
[31:23] person will say, "Hey, I do cross word
[31:24] puzzles. Is that good?" Yeah, it's good
[31:27] until you get good at it and then stop
[31:28] and do something that you're not good at
[31:30] and constantly find the next thing
[31:32] that's a real challenge for you. That's
[31:35] the key thing about plasticity.
[31:37] Essentially, the backstory is this. As
[31:40] you well know, your brain is locked in
[31:42] silence and darkness. It's trying to
[31:43] make a model of the outside world. And
[31:46] its whole goal is to make a successful
[31:48] model. And when it succeeds at that and
[31:52] says, "Oh, okay, wait. I I've got good
[31:54] predictions about what's going on." Then
[31:55] it stops changing. I That's its goal is
[31:57] to stop changing. And if you're
[31:59] constantly pushing and challenging it
[32:01] with things it doesn't understand, then
[32:02] it'll keep changing. Amen to that. I I
[32:05] been trying to beat the drum that the
[32:07] agitation that one feels when trying to
[32:09] learn something new, it's actually a
[32:11] reflection in in part of the
[32:12] catakolamines, right? Like adrenaline
[32:14] and norepinephrine, the frustration and
[32:16] the agitation that we feel.
[32:18] >> That's the feedback signal to the brain
[32:20] that hey, this is different than the
[32:21] stuff you know how to do. I mean,
[32:23] because the neurons are not thinking,
[32:24] they're firing, right? And so and so
[32:27] that neurochemical millu associated with
[32:29] frustration is one of the triggers that
[32:33] uh generates plasticity which actually
[32:35] you can resolve this question for me.
[32:36] I'm struck by the fact that there's so
[32:38] many studies showing that the adult
[32:40] brain can change.
[32:41] >> Yes.
[32:42] >> And some of the more interesting ones um
[32:44] involve boosting the levels of some
[32:46] neurom modulator dopamine or
[32:48] acetylcholine or norepinephrine or
[32:51] epinephrine serotonin. But what's so
[32:54] interesting to me is that seems like you
[32:56] can boost the levels of any of those and
[32:59] get plasticity. It's not like one neurom
[33:01] modulator gives you uh the opportunity
[33:04] for for plasticity. So many of the
[33:06] interesting studies on psychedelics are
[33:08] using psychedelics that are
[33:09] >> kind of like serotonin. I mean they act
[33:11] on different receptors, but they're very
[33:13] serotonic. I I remind people of this
[33:16] because people really like to um beat up
[33:18] on SSRIs. And I agree they have their
[33:20] problems and side effects, but they've
[33:22] also helped a great number of people.
[33:23] But whether it's SSRIs or psilocybin,
[33:26] they're both just tools for plasticity
[33:28] that drive serotonin. But we know you
[33:31] can amplify acetylcholine, get a window
[33:33] of plasticity. This is a speculative
[33:34] question, but why do you think it is
[33:36] that there's this sort of equip
[33:37] potential of neuromodulators where
[33:39] boosting any one of them can open
[33:41] plasticity or the window or the
[33:43] opportunity for plasticity?
[33:45] >> Okay, a few things on this. as as you
[33:46] well know you know all the neurom
[33:48] modulators exist in a dance with each
[33:50] other and and fundamentally I think
[33:52] we're going to come to understand this
[33:54] in 50 years as you know sort of
[33:56] combination locks of things and the way
[33:59] we keep looking at it in science
[34:00] currently is ah here's acetylcholine or
[34:02] here's serotonin or so and it's probably
[34:04] not the right way to look certainly not
[34:05] how the neurons are looking at it okay
[34:08] that said acetylcholine really feels to
[34:10] me like the main one involved in
[34:12] plasticity when you are a Maybe you've
[34:16] got acetylcholine going everywhere
[34:18] whenever you're trying to figure out the
[34:20] world. Whenever something's not matching
[34:21] a prediction and you've got
[34:23] acetylcholine going everywhere that
[34:24] says, "Hey, I got to figure out what
[34:27] just happened and how to link this with
[34:28] what I did and so on." As you get older,
[34:31] it's more like, you know, a pointalist
[34:34] artist who just dabs things here or
[34:36] there. You get to see the colon release
[34:38] very locally in very in small places and
[34:40] that's where you make changes. Why?
[34:42] That's because as you get to be an
[34:44] adult, you've got a better and better
[34:45] model of the world. You don't want to
[34:46] change everything. You just change like,
[34:47] "Oh, I didn't realize there was that
[34:49] button on the coffee machine that did
[34:50] this new thing or whatever." So, you
[34:52] just change little bits at a time here.
[34:55] We're in this really interesting
[34:56] situation in in the history of our
[34:58] species where now we can do things like,
[35:00] "Hey, what if we just crank up
[35:01] acetylcholine or, you know, obviously
[35:03] we've done lots of things with with
[35:04] dopamine." Um, we always find when we
[35:08] tweak these things that it's
[35:10] complicated. Just as one example, you
[35:13] know, with Parkinson's, people get have
[35:15] less dopamine and so the medications are
[35:18] to crank up the dopamine. What that led
[35:20] to, you may know this fascinating story,
[35:22] this probably 25 years ago now, where
[35:25] you know, observant clinicians noted
[35:28] that people on these Parkinson's
[35:30] medications were becoming
[35:31] hypercompulsive gamblers. They were
[35:33] blowing their family's fortune on online
[35:35] gambling and Las Vegas and so on. And
[35:37] and what they realized is when you crank
[35:38] up the dopamine that changes your risk
[35:41] aversion such that people are taking. So
[35:43] now it's a it's a contra indication
[35:44] that's listed on the bottle. You know if
[35:46] you notice gambling turn down the the
[35:48] the the amount here. So anyway whenever
[35:52] we whenever we start dialing these
[35:53] around we always find things that are a
[35:55] little bit out of our predictive realm.
[35:58] Um, but uh the general story is that
[36:02] your brain's trying to put together this
[36:04] model of what's going on and as it gets
[36:05] better and better, it's doing less and
[36:07] less plasticity. I do want to point out
[36:09] though that parts of the brain become
[36:12] less plastic and others stay plastic
[36:15] your whole life. As an example, your
[36:18] primary visual cortex at the back of the
[36:20] head that locks down early. You really
[36:22] can't do much to change that. And um you
[36:25] know there were studies by Logitus' lab
[36:27] years ago where they looked at changes
[36:29] to let's say the retina in an adult
[36:31] monkey and they expected to see changes
[36:33] in the visual cortex of the monkey and
[36:35] they didn't see any changes at all and
[36:37] that surprised them given all the
[36:38] plasticity literature. But it's because
[36:40] the visual cortex locks down. In
[36:43] contrast, these downstream areas from
[36:45] the visual cortex that care about things
[36:47] like recognizing faces or new brands of
[36:51] fast food restaurants or whatever it is,
[36:53] those stay plastic your whole life
[36:54] because there's constantly new data
[36:56] coming in on those. So the general story
[36:58] is the primary areas are like the I
[37:01] think about it like the the software
[37:04] kernels where you know if you're at
[37:06] Microsoft for example there's parts of
[37:08] the code that no one ever touches
[37:10] because that's like how to add two
[37:12] numbers and multiply whatever that's the
[37:14] kernel of the code you never touch that
[37:16] but you get these higher and higher
[37:17] application layers on top of that and
[37:19] that's essentially how to think about
[37:21] primary sensory cortices and then all
[37:23] the stuff downstream from there
[37:25] >> perfect analogy I um for people to
[37:27] understand, you know, how how much
[37:29] challenge to embrace. I mean, you're not
[37:30] trying to um, you know, defrag the whole
[37:33] system, you know, and and and I
[37:36] mentioned psychedelics. I, you know, I
[37:37] do think they have some interesting
[37:38] therapeutic potential. I I also worry
[37:40] about and I can tell you examples of
[37:42] people that got I guess now they
[37:44] nowadays they call it one-shotted. They
[37:46] take Iawaska a couple times and they are
[37:49] forever different in ways that does not
[37:51] serve them. those examples don't get
[37:53] talked about quite as often as the also
[37:55] many people who you know um seem to
[37:58] benefit from these things. So um
[38:01] plasticity it seems is not the goal.
[38:04] Directed plasticity is the goal. That's
[38:06] right. And it's very hard to direct. So
[38:08] I feel like you know let's imagine you
[38:11] could take some cocktail of
[38:12] neurotransmitters and get total
[38:15] plasticity of your brain. I don't think
[38:16] you'd want that. You wouldn't be you
[38:18] anymore.
[38:19] who we are is the sum of our memories
[38:22] and the sum of our skills that we've
[38:23] built and you know that keeps changing.
[38:26] We're always a moving target. Um and who
[38:28] you will be in five or 10 years will be
[38:30] different. But I don't think we'd want
[38:33] the plasticity of an infant even though
[38:35] when you're doing let's say language
[38:36] learning you say I wish I could learn
[38:38] this as well as I did when I was seven.
[38:39] But uh generally it's not a state that
[38:42] you would desire. I think
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[39:34] to get started today. You've mentioned a
[39:36] few times future self. I think uh all of
[39:39] us are inherently interested in our
[39:41] future selves and whether the things of
[39:44] our past, present, uh and what we have
[39:47] control over going forward is going to
[39:48] put us in the best future self possible.
[39:51] Right? Humans love to optimize or
[39:53] fantasize about optimal. But how should
[39:56] we think about thinking about our future
[39:59] self? Or should we not do that? Right?
[40:01] Should we should we should we just avoid
[40:02] that loop-de-loop and um and uh get real
[40:05] stoic about it and just live in
[40:08] 10-minute time blocks or one minute time
[40:10] blocks? It raises a really interesting
[40:12] question, I think, of where should we
[40:14] set our time horizon
[40:15] >> to not just feel the best, but to be our
[40:19] best and to feel our best going forward.
[40:21] >> Yeah. Our capacity to think about our
[40:24] future selves is the most special part
[40:26] of being humans. And you if we didn't do
[40:28] it, if we said, "I'm gonna be stoked
[40:29] about it." Yeah. You'd eat the the
[40:31] cupcake and you do what? Like all the
[40:34] things that wouldn't serve your future
[40:35] self.
[40:36] >> Never eat the cupcake like a real stoic
[40:37] and then starve to death, right? Even if
[40:39] the cupcake were the only thing,
[40:41] [laughter] right? What would the stoic
[40:42] do?
[40:43] >> That's right. So, um, yeah, we actually
[40:46] spend most of our time not in the here
[40:48] and now. We're reminiscing about the
[40:50] past and we're simulating possible
[40:52] futures. Your your mind is a movie
[40:54] theater. We're constantly thinking about
[40:55] where things are going. But this is
[40:56] great. This is what makes us able to do
[40:59] all the things that that humans do
[41:01] successfully. And in our own lives, this
[41:04] matters so much because we're able to
[41:07] think about who do I want to be? Now, as
[41:09] you know, we've got this rivalry in the
[41:10] brain. You've got all these voices going
[41:13] on at the same time, all these different
[41:14] networks running. So, for example, if I
[41:17] put the cupcake down in front of you,
[41:19] um, you know, part of your brain wants
[41:21] to eat that. It's delicious. It's a rich
[41:22] energy source. Part of your brain says,
[41:23] "Don't eat it. You know, I I want to
[41:26] stay fit." And so, part of your brain
[41:27] says, "Okay, maybe I'll eat part of it.
[41:28] Uh, but I'll go to the gym later." Or,
[41:30] you know, I promise my girlfriend that
[41:32] I'll go do this thing. What? Like, we've
[41:35] got all these voices. You can cuss at
[41:38] yourself. You can cajol yourself. You
[41:39] can contract with yourself. And the
[41:41] question is, who's talking to whom? It's
[41:43] all you, but it's parts of you that have
[41:45] these different drives. Now, the part
[41:47] that's really amazing about us is we got
[41:49] lots of short-term drives, but we also
[41:51] have this capacity to look into the
[41:52] future and think about who we want to
[41:55] be. And that is essentially subserved by
[41:57] our prefrontal cortex, which as we
[41:59] mentioned earlier is something that is
[42:01] a, you know, the size of it is unique to
[42:04] humans. All of our closest cousins in
[42:06] the animal kingdom don't have a
[42:07] prefrontal cortex that's a fraction of
[42:10] what we have. That's what allows us to
[42:12] unhook from the here and now. Okay. Now,
[42:14] here's the thing. I have been fascinated
[42:17] by this for a long time about how we
[42:21] sometimes know, okay, my future self is
[42:23] going to act badly in this situation.
[42:26] So, I'm going to do something now so
[42:29] that my future self can't act badly. So,
[42:32] this is the topic of my next book. It's
[42:33] called the Ulisses Contract. And where
[42:35] this term comes from is in the Odyssey,
[42:39] Odysius, otherwise known as Ulisses, is
[42:42] coming home from the Trojan War. And he
[42:44] realizes that way up ahead, he's going
[42:46] to pass the island of the sirens where
[42:48] you've got these beautiful female
[42:50] creatures who sing these songs that are
[42:52] so beautiful it beggars the mind of the
[42:54] sailors and and everyone crashes into
[42:57] the rocks and dies. Ulisses really wants
[43:00] to hear the song, but he knows like any
[43:02] mortal man, he's going to fall for this
[43:04] and crash the rocks. So what does he do?
[43:06] He has his men lash him to the mass. So
[43:08] he can't move. He has them put beeswax
[43:10] in their ears so they can't do anything.
[43:13] And and he tells them, "No matter what I
[43:14] do, no matter how much I'm screaming,
[43:16] just keep going. Just keep sailing."
[43:18] >> Smart,
[43:19] >> right? It's smart because what is
[43:20] happening is the Ulisses of sound mind
[43:23] is making a contract for the future
[43:25] Ulisses who he knows is going to behave
[43:27] badly. So he's lashing him to the mass.
[43:30] And what I've been fascinated by is the
[43:32] ways that we do this in our lives all
[43:34] the time. So the example you gave a few
[43:37] minutes ago about locking up your phone
[43:38] in one of these lock boxes is a perfect
[43:40] example because what you're making sure
[43:43] is that the Andrew of two hours from now
[43:46] can't do the wrong thing because you
[43:47] know he might you know he's going to be
[43:49] tempted. So you take away that
[43:51] temptation. By the way, I recently met
[43:53] uh an older gentleman who told me about
[43:55] an older woman that he'd met years ago
[43:57] who used to take her money, her cash,
[44:01] and freeze it in a block of ice in the
[44:03] freezer so that she couldn't spend the
[44:05] money until she really needed it.
[44:07] >> Yeah. I don't have a money spending
[44:08] thing. And I actually have pretty good
[44:10] control uh with with the phone and with
[44:12] social media.
[44:13] >> For me, there's also a I don't want to
[44:15] call it a sick pleasure. There's a uh a
[44:17] bit of a pleasure in knowing that it's
[44:19] completely off limits
[44:21] >> because it means I can't even look at it
[44:23] for 10 seconds. I don't know. I think it
[44:25] involves something over control of of
[44:27] things that I feel like are trying to
[44:29] control me.
[44:30] >> Yeah. Exactly.
[44:30] >> Which I do not like.
[44:31] >> Exactly. Because you care about your
[44:33] future self and you want future Andrew
[44:35] to do the right thing.
[44:37] >> So there are a million ways to make
[44:38] these Ulyses contracts and I've been
[44:40] studying this for years and I Yeah.
[44:42] Anyway, so I decided to to write a book
[44:44] on this because the way that we deal
[44:46] with our future selves is just this
[44:48] fascinating thing because your future
[44:50] self is a little different than who you
[44:52] are now. But with time, we come to
[44:55] understand that our future self will
[44:57] behave badly in different situations.
[44:59] And so we just try to to cut those off.
[45:01] I I'll give I'll give a couple examples.
[45:03] One is it's super useful to get um
[45:07] social pressure involved. So, for
[45:09] example, I'm guessing you and I both do
[45:12] this. You know, going to the gym is
[45:14] something we enjoy, but it's really
[45:16] useful to have a buddy where you say,
[45:17] "Hey, I'll meet you at the gym at 8
[45:19] tomorrow morning." And then even if you
[45:20] wake up, you're a little tired, your
[45:22] shoulder hurts, or whatever, you got to
[45:23] go because he's going to be there. So,
[45:25] getting social pressure involves a good
[45:26] idea. I I I found this thing where it's
[45:28] a a boot camp where you sign up for it
[45:31] and every morning, you know, go jogging
[45:33] together and do push-ups, whatever. But
[45:35] if you don't show up, the group jogs to
[45:37] your house and they stand on your front
[45:39] lawn and they do jumping jack jumping
[45:41] jacks and they scream your name until
[45:42] you come out.
[45:43] >> Amazing.
[45:44] >> Yeah, it's really good to get that to
[45:46] commit to that sort of thing so that
[45:48] you're really going to show up. Um there
[45:50] are ways to do this where you put money
[45:52] on the line. So you can say, for
[45:55] example, there was a woman who was
[45:57] trying to quit smoking and she tried for
[45:58] years to quit smoking. So, what she did
[46:01] is she wrote a $10,000 check and gave it
[46:04] to her friend and said, "If you catch me
[46:06] smoking, I want you to donate this check
[46:08] to the KKK, which to her was the most
[46:10] aversive thing that could ever happen
[46:12] with her money." And that's what
[46:14] prevented her from smoking because the
[46:16] sting of knowing that she gave her money
[46:18] to the KKK was the worst thing that she
[46:20] could imagine. So, there are a million
[46:21] ways to do these Ulisses contracts, but
[46:23] what they have in common is how do you
[46:26] lash yourself to the mass so you'll keep
[46:27] the good behavior you want?
[46:29] Yeah, the example of this woman writing
[46:32] the check is interesting because um
[46:35] I could ask why couldn't she access her
[46:39] inner clearly has a lot of inner fight
[46:41] right like she really stands so strongly
[46:43] on one camp which um I agree the KKK
[46:47] horrible organization would never want
[46:49] to support them in any way uh whatsoever
[46:53] and um and yet she needed to do that
[46:56] right she needed a punishment a
[46:57] potential punishment
[46:59] And so it speaks to how even if we know
[47:02] something and feel something so strongly
[47:04] in the present,
[47:05] >> yes,
[47:05] >> it still becomes very hard to um to
[47:08] access our best choices.
[47:10] >> Yeah.
[47:10] >> Um but there's something about the
[47:12] future self that we're not even in yet
[47:15] that we fear our future self so much
[47:18] more than than we uh can't handle the
[47:21] the discomfort of our present self. It's
[47:23] almost like and so we tether those in
[47:25] this Ulyses contract.
[47:26] >> Yeah. It's a kind of wisdom that we come
[47:28] to understand how we will behave when
[47:31] we're not in our present, you know,
[47:33] sober, rational moment. Um, we come to
[47:36] understand, for example, people who are
[47:38] trying who are alcoholics and they're
[47:39] trying to break that. The first thing
[47:42] they're told at, um, Alcoholics
[47:44] Anonymous is clear all the alcohol out
[47:46] of your house. Because you might think,
[47:48] okay, I'm done. I'm firmly going to not
[47:50] drink anymore. So, you put the alcohol
[47:51] away up in a high shelf. But on a
[47:54] festive Friday night or a lonely Sunday
[47:57] night or something, you might go up
[47:58] there. Your future self might do that.
[48:01] So what you do is you get rid of the
[48:02] temptation. Same thing with people who
[48:04] are trying to battle drug addictions.
[48:06] They're told, "Never carry more than $20
[48:08] of cash in your pocket because at some
[48:10] point you're going to run into some guy
[48:11] who's trying to sell you drugs and if
[48:12] you got the money, it's burning a hole
[48:13] in your pocket. You buy the drugs." I
[48:15] don't think we can trust our future
[48:17] selves. When we're in a moment of
[48:18] reflection and we can think about who we
[48:20] want to be, it's worth setting into
[48:22] place some walls.
[48:24] >> So that's about avoiding uh bad
[48:26] behaviors. Um what about building toward
[48:30] future self where we're trying to
[48:31] envision a better version of ourselves
[48:33] that involves actively doing things. So
[48:36] there's always dos and don'ts in order
[48:38] to become our better self. Um, how does
[48:40] Ulys's contract play in when it's not
[48:42] about the sirens? When it's about um
[48:45] knowing that we want to be
[48:49] this person or have these attributes or
[48:50] having done something and trying to tie
[48:53] our future self to our present behavior,
[48:55] how good are we at that? Um, in general,
[48:58] >> yeah,
[48:59] >> better or worse than avoiding bad
[49:00] behavior?
[49:01] >> Oh, we're terrible at all this stuff. I
[49:02] mean, take New Year's resolutions. I
[49:05] mean, everybody makes New Year's
[49:06] resolutions. they rarely last a week or
[49:08] two before they drop off. People get
[49:09] busy, people get tired or whatever. Um,
[49:12] so it's just as important with the
[49:14] positive things to hook things to that.
[49:17] Um, for example, this idea of putting
[49:19] money on the line. There are various
[49:21] websites where you can do this. You say,
[49:22] "Okay, look, I'm going to put, you know,
[49:25] 50 bucks on the line that I want to be
[49:27] able to bench 250 by this date or
[49:29] something like that." Um, and then
[49:31] you've given your money to this company
[49:33] and you have to get to that point. So,
[49:36] you get your money back. Um, there are
[49:38] lots of ways to do this. Um, you know,
[49:41] obviously putting, you know, I think you
[49:44] had James Clear on a little while ago
[49:46] and and there there's all kinds of good
[49:48] uh ideas that he's got about, you know,
[49:51] put your running shoes near the door or
[49:52] whatever so that it's easy. You get the
[49:54] you get rid of the friction to go do
[49:56] things like that. But all of those moves
[49:58] are for your future self. When you put
[50:00] your shoes near the door before you go
[50:02] to sleep that night, you are doing
[50:04] something because you know your future
[50:05] self's going to be a little bit lazy and
[50:06] tired.
[50:08] >> I have friends that are uh I'll just
[50:10] call them what what I would call them to
[50:12] their face because it's a friendly
[50:13] exchange. Are are kind of neurotic,
[50:15] right? They tend to overthink things. If
[50:17] they're going to go running at 8 a.m.
[50:18] and it's 8:02, they're like, "I can't go
[50:20] because it's 8:02, not 8. I'll go at
[50:22] 9:00. Got to do it on the hour." This
[50:23] kind of thing. And then I know people
[50:25] who are like you just do things and you
[50:27] don't think about it as much and they're
[50:29] good at suppressing that voice. Um I
[50:31] think we assume that the the chatter the
[50:33] the neurosis doesn't exist for them but
[50:36] I think um I think it does. They're just
[50:38] better at saying like like ignoring that
[50:40] inner voice. Um
[50:43] >> we're never trained how to do this.
[50:44] We're never taught as kids here's when
[50:47] you need to really think and deliberate
[50:49] and here's when you just need to just do
[50:51] it.
[50:51] >> Yeah. And it's interesting to think
[50:53] about, okay, different career paths,
[50:54] different life requirements, and so
[50:56] forth. But, um, I feel like people fall
[50:58] into kind of two camps with this. Some
[51:01] people need to think and analyze less
[51:04] and do more. And some people actually
[51:06] need to, you know, probably still do,
[51:08] but maybe think a little bit more about
[51:10] their behavior and reflect a bit more.
[51:12] And they would probably both say, "I'm
[51:14] crazy about this." Um, I won't tell you
[51:16] where I land. I think I'm kind of in the
[51:17] middle. No, I'm just kidding. Um,
[51:19] [laughter] it depends on on what's at
[51:20] hand. Yeah.
[51:22] >> for most people I think. Um
[51:24] >> what do you think that's about the
[51:25] ability to suppress the various versions
[51:28] of oneself or not?
[51:31] >> The inner voice.
[51:32] >> Yeah. You know, I would say one of the
[51:34] most fascinating things we've discovered
[51:36] in neuroscience to for my money is is
[51:38] just this issue that along anything we
[51:40] measure there's a spectrum. So just take
[51:42] something like the internal voice. Uh
[51:44] for my wife for example, she describes
[51:46] it as her inner radio. She's always
[51:48] hearing her inner voice. I I don't
[51:50] really have one. I just never hear that.
[51:52] So, we're on opposite ends of the
[51:54] spectrum that way. But, you know, one of
[51:55] the things I've studied is um aphantasia
[51:58] all the way to hyperfantasia. That means
[52:00] when you know, if I ask you to visualize
[52:03] an ant crawling on a tablecloth towards
[52:05] a jar of purple jelly, some people see
[52:07] it like a movie in their head. That's
[52:09] called hyperfantasia. Some people have
[52:11] no picture at all in their head. That's
[52:12] called aphantasia. And everywhere is
[52:14] everyone is somewhere in between on the
[52:16] spectrum.
[52:16] >> What does the middle look like? So, if I
[52:18] do that, if I maybe everyone can do this
[52:19] right now. It's a a fun experiment. If
[52:21] you're driving, don't close your eyes.
[52:23] Um [laughter]
[52:24] >> uh
[52:25] >> picture sun coming over the mountain and
[52:27] the rays of the sun poking through the
[52:30] clouds
[52:31] >> and then it starts raining and rains
[52:33] coming down.
[52:34] >> Mhm.
[52:35] >> So, the question is, do you see it as
[52:37] clearly as a movie or do you have really
[52:39] no visual anything in your head or are
[52:41] you somewhere in between? Typically,
[52:43] this is judged on a scale from one to
[52:44] five where five is a movie, one is no
[52:46] visual at all and, you know, three is in
[52:48] between. Where where do you stand on
[52:50] that?
[52:50] >> I feel like I can see it quote unquote
[52:52] um in my mind's eye, but um it's almost
[52:55] like I'm looking at a silhouette of it.
[52:57] So, even though I want to see bright,
[52:59] you know, rays of sun, sunshine, one of
[53:01] my favorite things in life. I know
[53:03] they're there, but they're actually pale
[53:04] pale yellow, it's almost as if it's more
[53:06] opaque than it would be in real life.
[53:08] >> Yeah. You're saying people with it with
[53:09] hyper hyperfantasia see it as a same way
[53:13] I would on a on my phone
[53:15] >> essentially. Yes. They're seeing it like
[53:16] like vision. Now I happen to be
[53:18] aphantasia. So it's very hard. You know
[53:20] I've studied this for years. I've
[53:21] interviewed hundreds of people on this
[53:22] and so I get their description but I
[53:25] can't I can't picture that myself. By
[53:27] the way it's an interesting quick
[53:28] tangent. Um for years I've talked with
[53:31] Ed Catmol about this. Ed Catmull is the
[53:33] guy who started Pixar. Pixar with all
[53:36] these terrific animated films and so on.
[53:38] Um Ed has all these patents on like how
[53:41] to do ray tracing to get the you know to
[53:44] get these animated characters looking as
[53:46] amazing as they do. He was surprised
[53:48] when he discovered that he was
[53:49] afantasic. He doesn't picture anything
[53:51] in his head. So he ended up giving this
[53:53] questionnaire to everybody at Pixar. And
[53:55] it turns out most of his best directors
[53:58] and animators are aphantasic. They don't
[54:01] see anything in their head. And nobody I
[54:03] think would have predicted that because
[54:05] it seems so strange this visual,
[54:08] you know, magisterium of of Pixar. But I
[54:11] I have a hypothesis about why this is.
[54:13] It's because the kid who grows up who's
[54:15] aphantasic,
[54:16] when they're asked, "Okay, draw a
[54:18] horse." You know, the kid sitting next
[54:19] to them who's hyper fantasic says, "Oh,
[54:21] I know what a horse looks like." And
[54:22] just draws it. But the poor aphantasia
[54:24] kid has to really stare and figure out
[54:26] like that, okay, how does that work? And
[54:28] so on and and they get better at drawing
[54:30] as a result. That's why all his best
[54:32] animators and drawers are people who
[54:34] grew up a fantasic.
[54:36] >> Interesting. I'm just uh thinking about
[54:38] that movie. Have you seen that movie Bow
[54:40] Finger?
[54:40] >> No.
[54:40] >> With with Steve Martin and uh Eddie
[54:42] Murphy, which is Bowfinger is the you
[54:44] know, for those just listening, it's
[54:45] where you put kind of make two uh you
[54:47] know L an L and and a sort of reverse L.
[54:50] And it's like how you know it's about
[54:52] making a movie in LA and uh it's it's
[54:54] hilarious. It's it's spectacularly
[54:56] funny. It's got those two folks I just
[54:58] mentioned, Heather Graham, a bunch of
[54:59] other people, but but he's constantly
[55:00] going around and kind of envisioning,
[55:02] you know, that this is the movie. This
[55:04] is the movie. Exactly. And so I always
[55:06] thought people that make movies are
[55:07] going through life thinking, okay, like
[55:09] there's the shot and there's the shot.
[55:10] But I think what you're saying is that
[55:12] there's somewhere in between where
[55:14] people have this kind of fantasy life of
[55:15] like, okay, here's this um here's the
[55:18] script and then um they can't really
[55:22] imagine it and so they have to put more
[55:24] work into uh materializing it.
[55:28] >> Yeah.
[55:28] >> Okay. Well, they have a dialogue with
[55:30] the page. So, if you're a guy drawing
[55:32] and you know you're looking at the horse
[55:33] or you're picturing what you know, Ariel
[55:35] the mermaid looks like or whatever,
[55:37] you're you're trying lines and
[55:39] scratching and doing things, you don't
[55:40] come to the table always saying, "Oh, I
[55:42] know what a mermaid looks like." And you
[55:43] draw it. Um, so they just end up getting
[55:45] more practice and they get better at it.
[55:47] >> I love this stuff because what we're
[55:49] really getting at here is um, you know,
[55:52] I think as you mentioned, everyone has
[55:53] kind of individualized hardware and
[55:55] software, but there are some
[55:56] commonalities. And you know, wouldn't it
[55:59] be spectacular if we knew, you know,
[56:01] which you know, just like we learned,
[56:04] okay, here are the macronutrients and
[56:05] you perhaps want them in different
[56:07] proportions depending on who you are and
[56:08] what you need and, you know, and uh you
[56:10] need to, as a kid, you should probably
[56:11] learn how to like climb and run and, you
[56:14] know, and assuming you have access to
[56:16] all of that, you know, and um and jump a
[56:18] little bit, but you know, maybe you
[56:19] won't be an athlete, but you need to
[56:21] like be active at some point and then
[56:23] you be and we tend to figure out what
[56:25] we're good at and then really lean into
[56:27] those trenches and then by then we're
[56:29] getting evaluated for it and the way
[56:32] we're evaluated puts us on a career
[56:33] track and there's very little
[56:35] opportunity to go back and kind of fill
[56:37] in blanks. Um, right there's, you know,
[56:40] I I'm never going to be a musician in
[56:42] part because I'm just not willing to put
[56:45] in the work because there are other
[56:46] things I'd rather do with my plasticity.
[56:48] Right? So, um, and maybe that's best.
[56:51] So, big big picture question. Um do you
[56:55] think that
[56:57] human evolution and the progress of
[56:59] building technologies
[57:00] um reflects the fact that people get
[57:03] siloed into um different tracks and on
[57:08] the whole that's advancing our species
[57:11] right you've got people that are hunter
[57:12] gatherers still very good at that and
[57:14] building and other people building
[57:15] weaponry and other people building AI
[57:16] technologies and that that it would be
[57:20] uh detrimental to our species if
[57:22] everybody got sort of core
[57:23] neuroplasticity training, learning how
[57:25] to do a little bit of everything, right?
[57:27] Um, or is that the the what we see as
[57:30] chance actually part of the reasons why
[57:32] humans are the curators of the earth?
[57:34] Not just the prefrontal cortex, not just
[57:36] the extended window of plasticity, but
[57:38] how we are afforded different
[57:39] opportunities to work with that
[57:41] plasticity.
[57:42] >> Yeah, I'd say a couple things. One is
[57:44] we're clearly predisposed to particular
[57:46] things. And so, for example, I'd like to
[57:48] be a swimmer as good as Michael Phelps,
[57:50] but I just don't have the wingspan that
[57:52] he does. is he's got like I don't know
[57:53] seven feet between his fingertips or
[57:55] something. Gez, there's no way I'm going
[57:56] to be able to be as good as he is. Um
[57:59] that's a genetic thing that he drops in
[58:01] the world with that I don't fine. Um so
[58:04] given that people are off on different
[58:05] trajectories anyway, the way I think
[58:08] about this, I don't know how this will
[58:09] translate just in terms of audio, but
[58:11] like a space-time cone in physics is
[58:14] where you start in one spot and then
[58:16] there are all these different
[58:17] trajectories you can take into the
[58:18] future. Picture this like you're
[58:19] starting at the bottom of the ice cream
[58:20] cone and you can you you can take any
[58:23] different trajectory as long as it still
[58:25] exists within the ice cream cone. Okay.
[58:27] So, um you know, we drop into the world
[58:30] with our genetic skills and
[58:32] predispositions. We have childhoods that
[58:35] we don't choose. We're born into a
[58:37] cultural language and era that we don't
[58:38] choose. And that defines the limits of
[58:41] the ice cream cone about where we can go
[58:43] with that. As far as specialization
[58:46] goes, you know, economists will argue
[58:48] this is part of what makes a very
[58:50] healthy society is that, you know, some
[58:52] people become the lumberjacks and some
[58:54] the lawyers and some the accountants and
[58:56] whatever. Um, you know, I do feel like
[59:00] we're in a really great era though in
[59:03] general in humankind where kids do get
[59:05] very broad educations and they're sort
[59:07] of encouraged to try everything and
[59:09] spend a few years in karate and in
[59:11] soccer and in piano lessons and so on.
[59:13] That's wonderful. So the my father was a
[59:16] psychiatrist and he always said really
[59:18] the whole job of a parent is just to
[59:20] open doors for the child. That's it. So
[59:22] you give the child all these lessons,
[59:24] you open all these doors and then the
[59:26] kid takes their own path depending on
[59:28] you know this extraordinarily
[59:30] complicated formula of things that we'll
[59:31] never understand but they go through one
[59:33] door and not the others. Kirkagard said
[59:37] every man starts as a thousand men and
[59:40] dies as one. And what he meant, of
[59:44] course, was that you start with all this
[59:45] potential. You could do all you could
[59:47] have been a great saxoponist or
[59:48] whatever, but you're going to die having
[59:50] done exactly what you did and and not
[59:52] the other path. So, what's weird about
[59:54] life is that yeah, every door that you
[59:56] choose, some others close as a result.
[59:58] >> Kirkard uh seemingly understood that the
[01:00:01] nervous system starts out hyperwired and
[01:00:04] then a lot of learning is the pruning
[01:00:06] back of connections and strengthening of
[01:00:08] the remaining ones.
[01:00:09] >> That's exactly right. Exactly right. You
[01:00:10] know, so as you of course know, the the
[01:00:13] brain starts out, you got essentially a
[01:00:15] fixed number of neurons. There's some
[01:00:16] debate about whether there's a few new
[01:00:18] neurons born in humans or not. Put that
[01:00:19] aside. What happens is over the first
[01:00:23] two years, those neurons connect more
[01:00:24] and more and more and more. And what you
[01:00:25] end up getting is this hyperconnection
[01:00:28] by the time you're two years old. And
[01:00:29] from there, it's just a matter of
[01:00:31] pruning an overgrown garden. And that's
[01:00:33] all that's happening. And and the way
[01:00:35] the pruning happens is based on what
[01:00:37] you're experiencing in the world. the
[01:00:40] world is what prunes your garden and and
[01:00:42] strengthens particular paths and lets
[01:00:43] other paths go
[01:00:45] >> as a bridge perhaps between plasticity
[01:00:48] and time perception which we've been
[01:00:49] sort of doing already. Uh I have this um
[01:00:52] practice that I've been doing for a few
[01:00:54] years um in hopes that it's beneficial
[01:00:57] for something and I I just like your
[01:00:59] thoughts on it. Um I'm not looking for
[01:01:01] approval here uh truly but here's the
[01:01:04] idea. I was struck by the somewhat
[01:01:07] obvious thing that, you know, we can
[01:01:08] close our eyes, uh, focus on our
[01:01:11] interosception, our skin, our breathing.
[01:01:13] We can meditate, bring our awareness,
[01:01:15] you know, into the quoteunquote present.
[01:01:17] The breathing is seems like a good way
[01:01:19] to do that. Um, or we can open our eyes
[01:01:22] and we can focus on something some
[01:01:23] distance away. Or we can imagine the
[01:01:25] pale blue dot and we're just this little
[01:01:27] thing running around on this pale blue
[01:01:28] dot. And you know when we move through
[01:01:30] those different uh realms of space, not
[01:01:34] just outer space, but from body to out
[01:01:36] of outside our body to outer space,
[01:01:39] there's a different time association
[01:01:40] with each of those. And I' I'd like your
[01:01:42] thoughts on that. And I I just started
[01:01:44] devoting a little bit of time to
[01:01:46] stepping from one of these to another
[01:01:48] and just spending some time trying to uh
[01:01:51] think and exist in the different time
[01:01:53] domains um in my head. And so I'll do
[01:01:56] that maybe for 2, three minutes or four
[01:01:57] minutes or five minutes. And I told
[01:01:59] myself, and I still tell myself, that it
[01:02:00] affords me some flexibility when
[01:02:02] something's happening in the moment and
[01:02:04] you want to get perspective. It's about
[01:02:05] getting out of that time domain and
[01:02:07] realizing this isn't going to go on
[01:02:08] forever even though it feels like it.
[01:02:10] So, I developed this as a bit of a
[01:02:11] practice for myself.
[01:02:13] >> Um,
[01:02:14] >> because I I felt like it's just a it's
[01:02:15] not a meditation. It's a perceptual
[01:02:17] exercise. Um, so what I'm curious about
[01:02:21] is the relationship between time
[01:02:24] perception and where we place our
[01:02:27] attention. That's the first question.
[01:02:30] And then you know maybe what we can do
[01:02:32] with this or or could we evolve this uh
[01:02:34] perceptual exercise so that um I and and
[01:02:37] others perhaps if they want to can start
[01:02:39] to access different um space-time
[01:02:44] representations which sounds so fancy
[01:02:45] but it's really just a way of like
[01:02:47] getting outside yourself or getting
[01:02:48] within yourself. Sorry if I'm being um
[01:02:50] choppy here but but this is something
[01:02:52] that feels very important.
[01:02:54] >> I I love that. I think that's brilliant.
[01:02:55] Um, one of the things that is so
[01:02:59] striking about time perception is that
[01:03:01] you don't have a single part of the
[01:03:02] brain that deals with that. You actually
[01:03:04] have different mechanisms that deal with
[01:03:06] thinking about long eras of time and
[01:03:10] seconds and subseconds. Um, totally
[01:03:12] different mechanisms going on here. Uh,
[01:03:15] and and we can demonstrate this in the
[01:03:16] laboratory. So, time perception is
[01:03:17] something I've been studying since
[01:03:19] graduate school. And um you know I'm
[01:03:22] happy to say I've got papers in science
[01:03:24] and nature and you know the top journals
[01:03:26] on this topic. Why? Because it's such a
[01:03:28] weird thing that's so understudied about
[01:03:31] how why why we perceive time the way we
[01:03:34] do. So um let me say a few things about
[01:03:37] it. One is that it is a these longer
[01:03:39] time scales what you're referring to
[01:03:41] thinking about being uh far away in
[01:03:44] space and time. This is a cognitive
[01:03:46] development. children can't do this well
[01:03:49] and they learn better and better. So,
[01:03:50] for example, if you talk to a a seventh
[01:03:53] grader and you talk about the Roman
[01:03:54] Empire and what was happening 2,200
[01:03:57] years ago, it's re it doesn't mean
[01:03:59] anything to, you know, it's like, okay,
[01:04:00] so that's the past and whatever. But as
[01:04:02] you get older, if you become, let's say,
[01:04:03] a professional historian, you get better
[01:04:05] and better at understanding that. Why?
[01:04:07] because you've lived decades and so now
[01:04:09] you can sort of think you can sort of
[01:04:11] feel what a century might look like and
[01:04:13] you can sort of with practice get better
[01:04:15] at at these things. But the point is
[01:04:18] that is something we learn how to do
[01:04:20] both in space and time. Obviously when
[01:04:21] you're an infant in the crib, space is
[01:04:23] just a really close thing and eventually
[01:04:25] >> it's your whole world.
[01:04:26] >> It's your whole world and eventually you
[01:04:27] get outside and you look down long
[01:04:29] highways in Utah and you you you really
[01:04:32] start getting a better sense of this.
[01:04:34] Um,
[01:04:36] I I to my knowledge there's no data on
[01:04:39] on what it would be to to sort of throw
[01:04:42] yourself back and forth between these
[01:04:43] different space-time uh scales. I love
[01:04:46] it though. One of the classes I teach at
[01:04:48] Stanford is called the brain and
[01:04:49] literature. Uh, I've always been a lover
[01:04:52] of literature and one of the things that
[01:04:55] I love is when authors do exactly this
[01:04:58] where they they zoom in on something
[01:05:00] really tight and they're really paying
[01:05:01] attention and then they zoom way out.
[01:05:04] That is the most extraordinary sort of
[01:05:06] feeling. Um, so anyway, I commend you on
[01:05:09] coming up with that version of
[01:05:11] space-time meditation or whatever it is.
[01:05:13] That's very smart. Yeah, it was um it
[01:05:15] was born out of this thing, you know,
[01:05:16] the the Victor Frankle thing like
[01:05:18] between stimulus and response, you know,
[01:05:19] and but there's something about the
[01:05:21] autonomic nervous system like when we're
[01:05:22] in a heightened state of stress. Um
[01:05:24] we're not good at getting outside of the
[01:05:26] moment, you know, people like take 10
[01:05:28] breaths or whatever and it wasn't that I
[01:05:29] was having struggles with that. I just
[01:05:31] thought so interesting like you watch a
[01:05:32] movie and it seems to be placed in a
[01:05:34] different time domain in each scene or
[01:05:38] um and you know then you go for a walk
[01:05:39] or a hike and I I have this obsession
[01:05:42] with the idea that when we see horizons
[01:05:44] we have a different time perception than
[01:05:46] when we uh can't see horizons um and
[01:05:49] there's too many variables to do this
[01:05:51] right you could do it in VR in a VR
[01:05:53] experiment but um because when there are
[01:05:56] close walls you have claustrophobia but
[01:05:58] there there ways to do this correctly
[01:05:59] how you change your your your vision or
[01:06:02] visualization changes your time
[01:06:03] perception. So, I don't know. I just
[01:06:05] look at it as a flexibility exercise.
[01:06:07] And um and I'm a scientist and a weirdo,
[01:06:09] so I I I do these things. Um but uh
[01:06:12] you're the expert in time perception.
[01:06:13] So, I wanted to ask um and I also want
[01:06:16] to ask about time perception. Um how
[01:06:18] good are people at perceiving time? And
[01:06:21] um why am I always late? [laughter]
[01:06:25] >> The why are you always late? That has to
[01:06:26] do with Ulys's contract thing, which is
[01:06:28] just it it requires a commitment to say,
[01:06:30] I'm going to be the kind of guy who's
[01:06:31] always on time. And the way to do that
[01:06:33] is to say, I'm going to commit to always
[01:06:35] being five minutes early. So, you get to
[01:06:36] a place early and you just hang out in
[01:06:38] your car and you, you know, take care of
[01:06:40] some texts or whatever. That's the way
[01:06:41] to be always on time. Okay. But are
[01:06:44] people good at perceiving time? No.
[01:06:47] We're actually quite terrible at it. Um,
[01:06:49] and some people are better than others.
[01:06:50] But one of the lessons that's emerged
[01:06:53] from my research on this stuff is that a
[01:06:56] lot of time is is illusory. Um, so you
[01:06:59] you may know I did this experiment years
[01:07:01] ago. I was very interested in this
[01:07:03] question of does time run in slow motion
[01:07:05] when you're in fear for your life?
[01:07:06] Because when I was a child, I fell off
[01:07:08] of a roof of a house. I almost died. I
[01:07:10] landed on my I landed in a push-up
[01:07:12] position and busted my nose so badly
[01:07:14] that they had to remove all the
[01:07:16] cartilage and so on. And I've had a
[01:07:17] terrible sense of smell ever since
[01:07:19] because I busted the cri cribopform
[01:07:20] plate and everything. But the part that
[01:07:23] interested me even as a child was that
[01:07:24] the whole fall seemed to take so long.
[01:07:26] It felt like, oh my god, that was this
[01:07:27] really long thing. Obviously, I was
[01:07:29] totally calm during it. I was thinking
[01:07:31] about Alice in Wonderland as I was
[01:07:33] falling and how this must have been what
[01:07:34] it was like for her to fall down the
[01:07:35] rabbit hole. Um, this is typical. I was
[01:07:38] 8 years old.
[01:07:39] >> Wow. And this is typical when people are
[01:07:40] in life-threatening situations is that
[01:07:42] there's a sense of total calmness and
[01:07:44] bizarre thought, but also it seems to
[01:07:46] have taken a long time. You know, people
[01:07:48] report this all the time when they're in
[01:07:50] car accidents. They say, "Oh, I I
[01:07:52] watched the hood crumple and the
[01:07:53] rearview mirror fall off and I was
[01:07:55] looking at the face of the other guy and
[01:07:57] whatever." People experience this in
[01:07:59] gunfights like police officers and so
[01:08:01] on. Everything seems to take a longer
[01:08:02] time. What happened is when I grew up
[01:08:04] and became a neuroscientist, I realized
[01:08:05] no one had ever studied that. And I got
[01:08:08] really curious about is it the case that
[01:08:11] time seems to run in slow motion while
[01:08:14] you're experiencing it or is it a trick
[01:08:16] of memory somehow? So I ran what to my
[01:08:20] knowledge are still the only experiments
[01:08:21] that have ever been done on this. Do you
[01:08:23] know about this? So
[01:08:24] >> yes and no. Yes, I'm familiar with the
[01:08:27] paper. No, I've never heard it this way.
[01:08:29] So keep going.
[01:08:29] >> Okay, great. So what I did is I rounded
[01:08:32] up 23 volunteer subjects and I dropped
[01:08:35] them from 150ft tall tower in freefall
[01:08:38] backwards and they're caught by a net
[01:08:40] below going 70 m an hour. I want to be
[01:08:42] in your experiment.
[01:08:43] >> Yeah, you you would have loved this.
[01:08:44] It's a re but it's terrif I did it
[01:08:46] myself three times first to make sure it
[01:08:48] was all running and it's equally
[01:08:49] terrifying all three times because
[01:08:50] you're falling backwards. Okay. What I
[01:08:53] did is I then built a device. My
[01:08:55] students, I built this device. It fits
[01:08:56] on people's wrist and it flashes
[01:08:58] information at them in such a way that
[01:09:00] we could measure the speed at which
[01:09:02] they're taking in information.
[01:09:03] Essentially, we're taking uh we're
[01:09:05] taking advantage of what's called
[01:09:06] flicker fusion frequency where we're
[01:09:07] flashing lights really quickly and you
[01:09:10] can see that at a certain rate of
[01:09:12] lights, you can see exactly what's going
[01:09:14] on. And just faster than that
[01:09:15] alternation rate, you can't see
[01:09:16] anything. Okay. So we draw people, we
[01:09:20] had them read the numbers on the
[01:09:21] wristband and we're finding out are
[01:09:24] people actually seeing in slow motion
[01:09:26] during a life-threatening situation.
[01:09:28] This is on 23 people, the results are
[01:09:31] very clear. People do not see any faster
[01:09:34] in a life-threatening situation. And yet
[01:09:37] when we ask people retrospectively with
[01:09:39] a stopwatch to judge how long their fall
[01:09:41] was versus watching someone else do the
[01:09:43] fall, their own fall felt much longer to
[01:09:46] them. Okay, turns out this is all a
[01:09:49] trick of memory, which is to say when
[01:09:51] you're in a life-threatening situation,
[01:09:53] you recruit not just your hippocampus
[01:09:56] for laying down memory, but a a
[01:09:58] secondary memory track mediated by the
[01:10:00] amydala, you're you've got this
[01:10:02] emergency control center, and you're
[01:10:04] writing down memories in this other
[01:10:06] secondary track. When you read that back
[01:10:09] out, you say, "What just happened? What
[01:10:11] just happened?" You've got all this
[01:10:13] density of memory that you don't
[01:10:14] normally have because you've written
[01:10:15] down every detail. So your brain says,
[01:10:17] "Oh my gosh, this is what happened and
[01:10:19] the hood crumpled and so on." Um, but
[01:10:22] it's because all we're ever conscious of
[01:10:24] is our memory of an event, as in what
[01:10:27] happened during the event. So when
[01:10:30] you're in a life-threatening situation,
[01:10:31] you write more down. You think it took
[01:10:33] longer um to uh to transpire. And by the
[01:10:38] way, this issue about memory equals time
[01:10:42] explains a lot of things. For example,
[01:10:44] the issue of when you're a child and a
[01:10:47] summertime seems to take forever and
[01:10:49] then by the time you're our age,
[01:10:50] summertime seems to disappear. It's
[01:10:52] because as a child, you're figuring out
[01:10:54] the world. You're writing down lots and
[01:10:55] lots of memory during that summer. Oh,
[01:10:56] this is the first time I ever saw a
[01:10:58] waterfall and went hiking here and did
[01:10:59] this thing. But by the time you're our
[01:11:01] age, you've sort of seen all the
[01:11:02] patterns before. And so what we're, you
[01:11:05] know, when we look back at a summer, we
[01:11:06] don't have much new footage to sort of
[01:11:09] anchor on. So we say, "Oh, well was the
[01:11:11] winter, now it's the fall. Okay, fine. I
[01:11:13] guess that was really fast.
[01:11:14] >> Amazing.
[01:11:15] >> So, this is why time speeds up as we as
[01:11:17] we grow older.
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[01:11:27] cells, especially our brain cells.
[01:11:29] Glucose directly impacts our brain
[01:11:31] function, mood, and energy levels. And
[01:11:33] it may even affect our levels of
[01:11:34] tenacity and willpower. This is why I
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[01:12:48] I mean, I feel like these are what
[01:12:50] you're covering today is uh like the the
[01:12:53] most interesting things about life and
[01:12:55] experience. I have a question about um
[01:12:58] the fall experiment.
[01:12:59] >> Yeah. Is it accurate to say that
[01:13:04] your perceptual frame rate during a
[01:13:06] highly stressful experience is not
[01:13:08] different?
[01:13:09] >> Is no different.
[01:13:09] >> You're not taking uh a um higher frame
[01:13:13] rate movie. Yeah.
[01:13:14] >> Okay. Which is more frame rate is how
[01:13:16] they generate slow motion for instance.
[01:13:17] Makes sense. Like as opposed to strobe
[01:13:19] frame rate or you know just right. Um
[01:13:22] but that in some sense your unconscious
[01:13:26] frame rate is because the amydala is
[01:13:28] tracking more information than you
[01:13:31] normally would have have access to in
[01:13:33] say a calm everyday experience and so
[01:13:35] the memory is higher frame rate but the
[01:13:38] experience is not you know yeah it's
[01:13:40] really close I wouldn't say I wouldn't
[01:13:41] use the term frame rate in there it's
[01:13:43] just that you have under normal
[01:13:45] circumstances you write down almost
[01:13:46] nothing you just everything's passing
[01:13:48] through you're not really remembering
[01:13:50] much but in an emergency situation, your
[01:13:52] amydala being the emergency control
[01:13:54] center says, "Everybody stop what you're
[01:13:56] doing. This is the most important thing
[01:13:58] going on. Everyone pay attention to
[01:14:00] this." So, you're noticing every detail
[01:14:03] and you're not used to that. So, just
[01:14:05] for anyone who knows what I'm referring
[01:14:06] to here as a basian issue, um you know,
[01:14:10] you you your brain thinks, "Okay, a
[01:14:12] certain amount of memory must equal a
[01:14:14] certain amount of time." Now, you've got
[01:14:15] just a lot more detail. And so, it says,
[01:14:17] "Oh, well, that must have been, you
[01:14:19] know, six seconds or something." I what
[01:14:21] I did by the way I collected hundreds
[01:14:23] and hundreds of subjective reports from
[01:14:24] people who had been in accidents of
[01:14:26] various sorts. You this guy got in a
[01:14:27] motorcycle accident and had you know
[01:14:30] come off the motorcycle and had turned
[01:14:31] over and over and over on the road and
[01:14:33] he said as he was rolling over and over
[01:14:35] he was like composing a little diddy in
[01:14:37] his head like a little song to the sound
[01:14:39] of his helmet hitting the road and so on
[01:14:41] because this is the kind of bizarre
[01:14:42] thought that people have. But it seemed
[01:14:44] to have taken a long time and when he
[01:14:45] saw footage of it afterwards, you know,
[01:14:46] the whole thing took whatever a second
[01:14:48] or two, but it seemed to him to have
[01:14:50] taken six seconds. But again, it's in
[01:14:52] retrospect when he's thinking, what what
[01:14:54] happened? What was the event like? Um,
[01:14:57] by the way, I'll just mention after I
[01:14:59] published this paper, sometimes people
[01:15:01] would come up to me after a talk and
[01:15:02] say, I know that's not true because I
[01:15:05] was in a car accident. I know it took a
[01:15:07] long time. And I said, "Okay, look, the
[01:15:08] the person on the passenger seat next to
[01:15:10] you who was screaming no, did they did
[01:15:12] it actually sound like they were saying
[01:15:14] no?" Because if time were running in
[01:15:16] slow motion, that has to be the
[01:15:18] consequence that everything is spread
[01:15:19] out. And they had a allow that it didn't
[01:15:23] sound like sounds were distorted and so
[01:15:25] on. So um it is really about having more
[01:15:30] higher density of memory.
[01:15:31] >> Super interesting. What about for
[01:15:34] nonstressful, non life-threatening
[01:15:37] circumstances like let's pick a a purely
[01:15:40] happy event?
[01:15:40] >> Yes. Yes.
[01:15:41] >> One would hope day of one's wedding. Um
[01:15:44] >> yeah,
[01:15:45] >> you know, I was about to say birth of a
[01:15:46] child, but depending on how you know
[01:15:48] who's doing the majority of the work and
[01:15:49] how stressful it was, I mean, of course,
[01:15:51] the birth of a healthy child is a super
[01:15:53] wonderful event, but it can be very
[01:15:56] stressful, too, under certain
[01:15:57] circumstances. So, let's pick something
[01:15:59] purely happy, right? uh a terrific
[01:16:02] wedding, a great party, maybe a vacation
[01:16:04] with your spouse or family where it just
[01:16:06] is like bliss day.
[01:16:08] >> Yeah.
[01:16:09] >> Are you clocking more experiences? So,
[01:16:12] anytime you're doing something novel,
[01:16:14] and this actually ties back to the
[01:16:15] conversation we had before about seeking
[01:16:16] novelty, whenever you're doing something
[01:16:18] novel, you're writing down more memory.
[01:16:20] And that's the whole key. So, for
[01:16:22] example, if you spent your last weekend
[01:16:25] going off and doing something wacky
[01:16:26] you've never done before, parasailing
[01:16:28] and over sharks or whatever the thing
[01:16:30] is, you'd come back and you think, "Wow,
[01:16:32] it seems like it was so long since
[01:16:33] Friday. Now it's Monday. It's been
[01:16:35] forever since I was back in the studio."
[01:16:36] But if you have a normal weekend, we're
[01:16:38] not doing much of anything but surfing
[01:16:39] Instagram or something. Then you come
[01:16:41] back and you think, "God, it was just
[01:16:42] Friday."
[01:16:43] The difference is just how much memory
[01:16:45] you clocked and therefore
[01:16:48] what you can draw on in terms of
[01:16:50] footage. Um I I actually think this
[01:16:53] happens with drugs where people, you
[01:16:55] know, people sometimes have the
[01:16:56] experience on marijuana where they
[01:16:58] think, "Wow, I've been standing here
[01:16:59] forever." And it's because they're
[01:17:00] having a hard time anchoring down on
[01:17:04] footage about like when did I arrive to
[01:17:06] the kitchen and when what happened since
[01:17:08] I've been here and so they just they
[01:17:09] don't know. But uh anyway, the point is
[01:17:12] sometimes people have this idea about
[01:17:14] time speeding up as you get older. They
[01:17:16] say, "Well, you know, to an to an
[01:17:18] eight-year-old, a summer is this fra big
[01:17:20] fraction of their life, but to a
[01:17:22] 50-year-old, it's a it's a smaller
[01:17:23] fraction." But I don't think that's it
[01:17:25] at all. It's that it's it's what you did
[01:17:28] this past weekend can make the weekend
[01:17:31] seem longer. When it comes to some great
[01:17:33] new event like the birth of a child or a
[01:17:35] wedding or whatever it is, it has to do
[01:17:37] with how much attention you're paying
[01:17:39] and how much memory you're writing down.
[01:17:41] And that means it is to some degree in
[01:17:43] our control. If we really attend to
[01:17:45] things and write down memories instead
[01:17:47] of letting life just wash over us,
[01:17:51] we can seem as though we've lived
[01:17:52] longer. I'm not talking about longevity.
[01:17:54] I'm just talking seeming as though
[01:17:55] you've lived longer, which is look,
[01:17:57] here's here's something that I try to do
[01:17:59] all the time is just switch stuff up.
[01:18:01] For example, brushing your teeth with
[01:18:03] your other hand. Not hard to do, but
[01:18:06] it's just one of a million ways of
[01:18:08] knocking yourself off a path. One thing
[01:18:10] I try to do every time I drive home from
[01:18:12] Stanford is I try to take a different
[01:18:13] drive home, a different route home. You
[01:18:16] know, waste an extra minute, whatever.
[01:18:19] But it's I'm seeing new things. I'm
[01:18:21] observing new things about the
[01:18:22] neighborhood or whatever that I hadn't
[01:18:23] noticed before. One thing that's very
[01:18:25] easy to do is just rearrange your
[01:18:27] office. like push your desk over here,
[01:18:29] take two paintings and just swap them on
[01:18:31] the wall. All this stuff is super easy,
[01:18:33] but it really matters. It's important
[01:18:35] because what it's doing is enhancing
[01:18:39] brain plasticity in the sense of just
[01:18:40] challenging, you know, your your
[01:18:42] internal model says, "Okay, I've got
[01:18:43] I've got this world." And then suddenly
[01:18:44] says, "Oh, there's something new.
[01:18:45] There's something interesting going on
[01:18:46] in this world." And it makes it seem as
[01:18:48] though you've lived longer because
[01:18:50] you're writing down more memories about
[01:18:51] everything.
[01:18:52] >> Gosh. Uh this time perception thing, uh
[01:18:54] I spend way too much time thinking about
[01:18:56] it. And um and I'm still trying to wrap
[01:18:58] my my head around how much time we
[01:19:03] should spend trying to be present. So I
[01:19:06] have a and this is not an official
[01:19:08] definition but my kind of um
[01:19:11] understanding of the dopamine system and
[01:19:13] addiction as I say uh and people have
[01:19:15] heard me say before you know an
[01:19:17] addiction is an progressive narrowing of
[01:19:19] the things that bring you pleasure. It
[01:19:21] also involves continued use or uh or
[01:19:24] behavior despite negative consequences.
[01:19:26] But but but I mentioned the other
[01:19:29] definition of addiction uh progressive
[01:19:31] narrowing of the things that bring you
[01:19:32] pleasure because I was trying to come up
[01:19:34] with some um at least semi at least
[01:19:37] accurate if not but not exhaustive
[01:19:39] definition of kind of like enlightenment
[01:19:41] when people talk about enlightenment
[01:19:42] right all these monks who are so get so
[01:19:44] present through all this meditation or
[01:19:46] people go to big su and they get you
[01:19:47] know they're so present present present
[01:19:49] enlightenment I think of one definition
[01:19:51] might be okay I'm not the authority on
[01:19:53] this but might be a progressive of
[01:19:55] expansion of the things that bring you
[01:19:58] pleasure. But to really get pleasure out
[01:20:00] of a sip of water. I'm not terribly
[01:20:02] thirsty right now. If I take a sip of
[01:20:03] water, it doesn't taste anything like if
[01:20:04] I were very thirsty. But we need to pay
[01:20:07] attention. We need to be in the pre what
[01:20:08] is paying attention? It's being
[01:20:10] >> most of the time in the present, right?
[01:20:12] Paying attention to these things. But if
[01:20:15] we spend all our time in the present, we
[01:20:18] um we eliminate Ulyses contract.
[01:20:21] >> Yeah.
[01:20:22] >> So the extremes can't be good. But I
[01:20:24] think it examining the extremes like the
[01:20:26] freef fall experiment, they're useful uh
[01:20:28] windows into time perception and how and
[01:20:30] how we measure life. It could be that by
[01:20:33] establishing Ulys's contracts in many
[01:20:35] aspects of our lives, we get more of an
[01:20:37] opportunity to be in the present because
[01:20:39] we know, look, I don't have to worry
[01:20:40] about my future self. I'm not going to
[01:20:41] eat that cookie. I am going to go to the
[01:20:42] gym, whatever, because I've already set
[01:20:43] up these contracts. I don't have any
[01:20:46] cookies in my house. I'm meeting my
[01:20:47] buddy at the gym. Whatever. Then you
[01:20:49] have more of an opportunity to be in the
[01:20:51] present. Um, you don't have to simulate
[01:20:54] all kinds of futures. Um, yeah, I think
[01:20:57] paying attention to things matters a
[01:20:59] lot, but we have to be smart about what
[01:21:00] we pay attention to. I mean, it might be
[01:21:02] lovely to really love the water and so
[01:21:04] on, but not, you know, your Instagram
[01:21:07] feed or something. So, it's just a
[01:21:09] matter of uh of thinking clearly about
[01:21:13] what you want to pay attention to and
[01:21:15] devote your memories to. And this this
[01:21:17] translates into what you set up. Like,
[01:21:19] I'm going to set up a dinner at my
[01:21:21] house. So, I'm going to invite my close
[01:21:22] friends and I'm going to have this
[01:21:24] dinner and pay 100% attention to this
[01:21:26] dinner. I'm going to be present at this
[01:21:27] thing because that's the stuff of life.
[01:21:30] >> Where I'm getting to with this is that
[01:21:32] there's um beauty and there's tragedy at
[01:21:35] every spatial scale and every temporal
[01:21:37] scale, right? I unfortunately in my
[01:21:40] neighborhood, you know, this issue has
[01:21:41] not been resolved. Um, in many places,
[01:21:43] you know, we have a we have a
[01:21:46] homelessness and drugaddicted and mental
[01:21:49] illness population and those intersect
[01:21:51] in very complicated ways that is so
[01:21:54] extreme that you can see people who are
[01:21:57] um paying immense amount of attention to
[01:21:59] what anyone else would consider trivial
[01:22:01] like the the you know bits of dirt in
[01:22:04] the on the sidewalk and so and we and
[01:22:06] it's so tragic, right? We can see that
[01:22:08] that's not a a good use of one's time,
[01:22:10] attention and focus, right? But there's
[01:22:11] also beauty at all sorts of scales,
[01:22:13] right? I think one of the obsessions
[01:22:16] that people have with like fractals and
[01:22:18] you know these um organization at very
[01:22:22] small scales all the way up to very
[01:22:23] large scales is it it brings us to this
[01:22:25] like relationship with life like there's
[01:22:27] all this stuff we can't see and it's
[01:22:28] beauty at every scale, tragedy at every
[01:22:31] scale, right? I mean there I don't even
[01:22:33] have to mention a tragedy at massive
[01:22:35] scale because they're all over the world
[01:22:36] and they have been throughout human
[01:22:37] history frankly. By the way, I was just
[01:22:39] I was just in Las Vegas at CES uh giving
[01:22:42] a talk yesterday and as I was leaving, I
[01:22:44] looked out the window and there was, you
[01:22:46] know, this uh Chinese lion statue and
[01:22:50] there was this homeless woman smoking a
[01:22:51] cigarette and she was rubbing this thing
[01:22:53] very vigorously and the guy driving the
[01:22:54] car told me, "Oh, that's good luck if
[01:22:56] you rub the statue," which is of course
[01:22:57] ridiculous. But the woman was rubbing
[01:22:59] and rubbing and that we're at a red
[01:23:00] light and I watched her for, you know,
[01:23:02] like 60 seconds doing this. And yeah,
[01:23:05] and it was tragic to me because her
[01:23:07] brain has set up an association which is
[01:23:09] if I do this action, there will be this
[01:23:11] result. That's what her future
[01:23:12] simulation is telling her. And as far as
[01:23:15] we can tell, that's not true that she'll
[01:23:17] have good luck from doing that. But
[01:23:19] yeah, that was an example of tragedy.
[01:23:21] Yeah, it's almost like the the uh the
[01:23:23] worst thing for any human uh suffering
[01:23:25] from mental illness or not is to
[01:23:28] proverate on one spatial or time scale
[01:23:31] to like get in the tunnel of the thing
[01:23:34] that's right in front of you or to be
[01:23:35] lost out. You know, you we see people
[01:23:37] and and we even know some people are
[01:23:40] arguably a little bit strange and they
[01:23:41] don't not maybe perhaps to the extent of
[01:23:44] full pathology, but they got their head
[01:23:46] in the clouds all the time. You can't
[01:23:48] really function in life. They need
[01:23:49] handlers, right? I know some creative
[01:23:51] people like this. The only reason why
[01:23:53] they are not like the first person I
[01:23:55] described is because they have handlers
[01:23:56] to handle all the stuff that's at closer
[01:23:58] spatial scale. Get the get organized.
[01:24:00] Get you know and but uh actually a good
[01:24:03] examp I'll just give a concrete example
[01:24:04] because he was so awesome. I didn't know
[01:24:06] him personally but Shane McGawan the
[01:24:07] singer for the Poges
[01:24:09] >> who had severe this is not a secret had
[01:24:11] severe issues with alcohol. Um all his
[01:24:15] teeth had rotted out. Later in life they
[01:24:17] gave him teeth. I was once going to see
[01:24:19] the Pogues in San Francisco. I love the
[01:24:20] Pogues. And that day I got I got to the
[01:24:22] city early. I brought my work up there
[01:24:23] and I see this guy walking along Giri. I
[01:24:26] didn't know who it was at the time. He's
[01:24:28] got like this really nice like it looked
[01:24:30] like almost like a silk shirt and the
[01:24:31] tag is still on it and he's just
[01:24:32] shuffling out into traffic and I'm like,
[01:24:34] "Oh my god, this guy's going to get
[01:24:35] killed." So I get out. It's Shane
[01:24:36] McGowan. And then his team comes running
[01:24:38] over like, "Oh, we got to get him back."
[01:24:40] And he was so blasted he didn't even
[01:24:43] know where he was. And apparently that's
[01:24:45] how he was much of his life.
[01:24:48] that evening he got on stage, barely
[01:24:51] made it to the microphone and gave a
[01:24:53] legendary one of many legendary Pogue
[01:24:56] shows, right? I mean, it's just um and
[01:24:58] for those that don't know the Pogues,
[01:24:59] you should look it up. And if you do, I
[01:25:01] mean, they there tons of movies and the
[01:25:04] Love You Till the End song that's in
[01:25:05] every romantic comedy, that's them. And
[01:25:07] you know, it's just so there are people
[01:25:09] like that. And oftentimes that ultra
[01:25:11] creatives they're they're a drift but
[01:25:15] you can in it seems to I'm not
[01:25:17] suggesting the alcohol but they but to
[01:25:19] be able to kind of pull all that into
[01:25:22] the moment seems to be their super
[01:25:23] skill. Most people it seems and I I
[01:25:25] wonder if you think a definition of
[01:25:27] mental health is the ability to switch
[01:25:29] out from these different time domains
[01:25:31] because you also don't want to be in a
[01:25:32] watchmaker mode all the time. That
[01:25:34] watchmaker needs to pay attention to his
[01:25:36] or her kids. Well, I tell you, Albert
[01:25:38] Einstein said that he really enjoyed
[01:25:40] tasks like fixing a doorork knob in his
[01:25:42] house or something. And I knew that all
[01:25:44] the time. I did lots of I live in this
[01:25:45] very old house and I'm doing lots of
[01:25:48] little dinky repairs all the time. And I
[01:25:49] love that just crossing these scales.
[01:25:52] But I do want to say something about
[01:25:53] addiction because I think this is an
[01:25:55] awesome example about brain plasticity
[01:25:57] and something that I wrote about in in
[01:25:59] my book Livewired about this, which is
[01:26:03] addiction is all about brain plasticity.
[01:26:05] put a certain drug in your system and
[01:26:07] what your brain does is it upregulates
[01:26:09] the receptors for that drug which is its
[01:26:12] way of saying oh I didn't know the world
[01:26:14] consisted of this stuff good I'm going
[01:26:15] to prepare for this now and I expect
[01:26:17] more of it so then you give it more and
[01:26:19] this is great I'm going to upregulate
[01:26:20] the receptors again and it comes to
[01:26:23] expect that this is in the world and
[01:26:25] then if you stop you have these awful
[01:26:28] drug withdrawal symptoms precisely
[01:26:30] because you've changed your system now
[01:26:33] it's expecting the world to have that.
[01:26:35] So I draw an analogy between that and
[01:26:38] heartbreak because when somebody that
[01:26:40] you love let's say dies or leaves town
[01:26:42] or whatever the thing is um your brain
[01:26:46] has come to expect the presence of that
[01:26:49] person in your world has thought okay
[01:26:52] the world consists of this and now that
[01:26:54] person is gone and heartbreak is a
[01:26:57] really painful physiological thing that
[01:26:59] you have to go through as your brain
[01:27:00] readjusts to the world without that
[01:27:04] something that uh I would hope no one
[01:27:07] would have to experience, but everyone
[01:27:08] loses people uh at some point um or or a
[01:27:12] pet or or both. Um, do you think that uh
[01:27:15] constant engagement in um, let's just
[01:27:18] say like Tik Tok type social media with
[01:27:21] it um, upregulates the quote unquote
[01:27:24] receptors or of expectation for it that
[01:27:27] make it harder for people to to stop
[01:27:28] using it because the drug an addiction
[01:27:31] definition you gave, which I love, um,
[01:27:33] you know, dopamine receptors for
[01:27:34] methamphetamine or for cocaine or and so
[01:27:37] on, but uh, for an experience, for
[01:27:40] gambling, for social media, um, the the
[01:27:43] receptors there's become more like
[01:27:44] circuit activations or like the circuits
[01:27:47] of the brain anticipate it and if they
[01:27:48] don't get it, do you think that there's
[01:27:50] a kind of a withdrawal like effect?
[01:27:53] >> I don't know how I feel about this. I
[01:27:55] wonder when we were growing up, people
[01:27:57] said, "Oh, it's the television. It's the
[01:27:59] television is ruining everyone's
[01:28:00] attention span."
[01:28:01] >> It'll rot your brain. I remember your
[01:28:02] brain.
[01:28:03] >> My mom would kick us out.
[01:28:04] >> This was very common. She'd say, "You
[01:28:06] got to go outside." She would lock us
[01:28:07] out of the house. We weren't allowed
[01:28:09] back in. She said, "Don't come back
[01:28:10] until until dark."
[01:28:11] >> Yes. Exactly. We we did not have the
[01:28:13] option to watch cartoons or for more
[01:28:15] than a couple minutes after school. We
[01:28:17] were forbidden so she could get peace
[01:28:19] and we could get activity.
[01:28:20] >> Exactly. And younger people might not
[01:28:21] know the telder was called the boob tube
[01:28:23] where a boob was like an idiot and that
[01:28:25] was the idea. That's where the term
[01:28:27] YouTube you know was a funny derivation
[01:28:29] of that. But the um right so now what
[01:28:32] kids are watching is lots of content. I
[01:28:34] mean we're all watching lots of content
[01:28:36] on Instagram, Tik Tok, much of which is
[01:28:38] great. It's well produced. It's matched
[01:28:40] to our interests. And so I don't, you
[01:28:44] know, are we addicted? Yes. Is it an
[01:28:47] addiction because it's offering better
[01:28:49] content than many other things in our
[01:28:52] life? In some sense, yes. So, I'm a
[01:28:54] little torn on it. The other thing that
[01:28:56] we've all noticed though is that people
[01:28:58] don't seem to be happy when they spend
[01:29:00] time scrolling on it. They're kind of
[01:29:02] tempted to do it, but when they finish,
[01:29:04] they never feel like, "Wow, that was
[01:29:05] really a great experience." Um, they're
[01:29:07] kind of drained from it. So, in that
[01:29:09] sense, it has the characteristics of an
[01:29:11] addiction where you keep going back to
[01:29:12] it, even though you're not getting the
[01:29:14] high from it that you did the first
[01:29:15] time.
[01:29:15] >> I will say, um, as long as I use it
[01:29:18] properly, I I love social media and
[01:29:20] YouTube. I'm not just saying that as a
[01:29:22] political statement. Got to teach on
[01:29:24] YouTube. I learned from you, I learned
[01:29:25] from others. Like the other day, I
[01:29:26] wanted to um learn about architecture.
[01:29:28] It's not like during my workout, I put
[01:29:30] on a YouTube thing and just listen to
[01:29:32] it. Uh, like a basic history of certain
[01:29:35] architects in the United States. was
[01:29:37] like, I learned so much. Like, we
[01:29:38] couldn't do that when we were kids. It's
[01:29:40] awesome. It's just awesome. And then
[01:29:42] that set off in the algorithm some
[01:29:44] really good suggestions of some other
[01:29:46] things.
[01:29:46] >> And then when I didn't watch those, it
[01:29:48] offered some other and I'm like down the
[01:29:50] rabbit hole of stuff that I never ever
[01:29:52] ever would have encountered. It's really
[01:29:54] cool.
[01:29:54] >> This is precisely why all these kids
[01:29:56] have the opportunity, I think, to be so
[01:29:58] much smarter than we were. Yeah. I'm
[01:30:00] just I'm just super enthusiastic about
[01:30:02] it. And now with AI, it can be even a
[01:30:04] whole different level. I mentioned this
[01:30:06] thing before about, you know, using AI
[01:30:07] to debate, but just even in general,
[01:30:10] just saying, "Hey, I'm curious about
[01:30:11] this." How does this, you know, how does
[01:30:13] a flying buttress work or something?
[01:30:15] Hey, chat GPT. Hey, Clyde, blah blah.
[01:30:16] And you get the answer. Wow, what a
[01:30:18] great what a great opportunity for kids
[01:30:20] growing up.
[01:30:22] >> Are you using YouTube to try and help uh
[01:30:24] you you fix up these uh things in your
[01:30:27] house?
[01:30:27] >> Oh, sure. Everything I fix, I learn how
[01:30:29] to do it on YouTube first. Yeah.
[01:30:31] >> Very cool.
[01:30:31] >> Now I'm using AI to do it. I I've got
[01:30:33] this lighting thing and I couldn't
[01:30:35] figure out. So, I took pictures and I
[01:30:37] said, "What am I looking at here and
[01:30:38] where's the box and the transformer or
[01:30:40] whatever?" And it was pretty good at at
[01:30:41] telling me what what to do next.
[01:30:43] >> That's awesome. Um, you have a company.
[01:30:46] This is not a promotional anytime you
[01:30:48] mention.
[01:30:48] >> Actually, wait, can I pause? Yeah.
[01:30:50] Neoensory I actually sold six months
[01:30:51] ago, so I don't have it anymore. Just
[01:30:53] >> Yeah. All right.
[01:30:54] >> So, had a company. Yeah.
[01:30:55] >> Congratulations.
[01:30:56] >> Thank you.
[01:30:56] >> But Neoensory was a really neat idea of
[01:30:58] combining different senses. um people
[01:31:00] wearing bracelets so they could feel
[01:31:02] sounds and um and so forth. Um can
[01:31:06] anyone do this even if they're not
[01:31:07] deficient in vision or in hearing um or
[01:31:10] in some other modality?
[01:31:11] >> Yeah. So I got I just got really
[01:31:13] interested in this topic about pushing
[01:31:14] information into the brain via unusual
[01:31:16] sensory channels. So for example, as you
[01:31:19] referenced, I you know I built a
[01:31:21] wristband that captures sound and turns
[01:31:24] sound into patterns of vibration on the
[01:31:25] skin. This is for people who are deaf
[01:31:28] and deaf people could learn how to hear
[01:31:31] that way. Why? Because this is the same
[01:31:33] thing that your inner ear, your coia
[01:31:34] does. It's just capturing vibrations on
[01:31:37] the eardrum and translate breaking that
[01:31:38] up into different frequencies, shipping
[01:31:40] that off to the brain in terms of
[01:31:42] spikes, just these, you know, voltage
[01:31:44] spikes along nerves. Um, we're doing the
[01:31:47] same thing except we're pushing it in
[01:31:48] through the skin. It goes up the spinal
[01:31:50] cord to a different part of the brain.
[01:31:52] But the brain can figure that out. How?
[01:31:53] Because it's doing correlations. it sees
[01:31:55] somebody's mouth move. It's feeling the
[01:31:57] sound and it figures out how to hear
[01:32:00] that way. Now, this idea of sensory
[01:32:03] substitution,
[01:32:04] um I, you know, I wish I'd invented
[01:32:06] that, but it actually has a long
[01:32:07] history. The more I research, I found
[01:32:09] out it goes back to the 1800s, um when
[01:32:11] people first started asking, hey, can
[01:32:13] you push information into the brain in a
[01:32:15] weird way? So, the very first one was in
[01:32:17] the 1880s. Um they had a little uh a
[01:32:21] little camera lens that would just
[01:32:22] detect light and dark and it would get
[01:32:24] translated into a buzzing on your
[01:32:26] forehead and um for people who were
[01:32:29] blind they could tell you know okay well
[01:32:31] there's there's a wall over here and
[01:32:33] then there's an opening over here and so
[01:32:34] on and then people worked on this. The
[01:32:36] first major paper was in 1969 in nature.
[01:32:39] A guy named Paul Bockyita took blind
[01:32:42] people and he put them in a dental chair
[01:32:44] and he had this thing that would poke
[01:32:46] them in the back. A grid of 40x40 little
[01:32:49] solenoids that would poke you in the
[01:32:50] back and he set up a video camera.
[01:32:52] Whatever the camera saw, you would feel
[01:32:54] that in your back. So if it's looking at
[01:32:56] a triangle, you feel that triangle poked
[01:32:58] in your back. If it's looking at a face,
[01:32:59] you feel the face by. So blind people
[01:33:02] got pretty good at doing this,
[01:33:03] especially once he let them control the
[01:33:05] camera. So they could move the camera
[01:33:07] any way they wanted. People got really
[01:33:09] good at being able to tell what was
[01:33:10] going on.
[01:33:11] >> So it was following them around as they
[01:33:13] move through the world.
[01:33:13] >> No, they were sitting in this dental
[01:33:15] chair. Um and and that's exactly it. In
[01:33:18] 1969, the technology was really clunky
[01:33:20] and heavy and got hot and whatever and
[01:33:22] there was no way to make it portable in
[01:33:23] a meaningful way. But as time has gone
[01:33:26] on, we've been able to do that now. And
[01:33:28] so Paul Bakyita's research, he passed
[01:33:30] away some years ago, but his research
[01:33:32] has continued with something called the
[01:33:35] brainport, which is again for blind
[01:33:37] people. So with the brain port, the way
[01:33:39] this works is you're wearing this little
[01:33:40] camera on your head on glasses. And
[01:33:42] you've got this uh little electrical
[01:33:44] grid on your tongue. And so whatever the
[01:33:46] camera is seeing, you feel that on your
[01:33:49] tongue. It feels like pop rocks. So if
[01:33:51] I'm looking at the coffee cup in front
[01:33:52] of me, I'm feeling the outline of the
[01:33:54] coffee cup. And blind people can get so
[01:33:56] good at this, they can do things like,
[01:33:57] you know, throw a ball into a basket or
[01:33:59] navigate a complex obstacle course.
[01:34:01] >> Whoa.
[01:34:02] >> It sounds crazy, but the thing to
[01:34:03] remember is the way you normally see is
[01:34:06] your eyeballs are, you know, these these
[01:34:09] devices embedded in your skull here that
[01:34:11] are capturing photons and turning that
[01:34:13] into spikes that race into the darkness
[01:34:15] of your brain. Electrical signals.
[01:34:17] Exactly. And so this is just turning
[01:34:20] what your tongue is feeling into spikes,
[01:34:22] these electrical signals that race into
[01:34:24] the darkness of your brain. And you can
[01:34:26] figure it out. You can learn how to see
[01:34:27] that way. And again, it's with
[01:34:28] correlation because you feel something
[01:34:30] with your fingers. Maybe you hear
[01:34:32] something also. And so you're putting
[01:34:34] that together and your brain says, "Oh,
[01:34:35] okay. I got it. There's a visual thing
[01:34:37] out there in the world." And the really
[01:34:39] wacky part I'll just mention is that
[01:34:41] people using the brain port who let's
[01:34:43] say used to have sight and lost it they
[01:34:45] will report it is like sight. They say I
[01:34:49] remember seeing and this is like seeing
[01:34:51] even though it's coming through their
[01:34:52] tongue and with the neoensory wristband
[01:34:54] that we built um you know I interviewed
[01:34:56] a guy after he'd been wearing about six
[01:34:59] months and I said look when you hear a
[01:35:00] dog bark do you feel the buzzing on your
[01:35:02] wrist and then you think okay that must
[01:35:04] be a dog bark. He said, "No, no, I hear
[01:35:06] the dog bark out there." Which sounds
[01:35:08] crazy, but obviously that's the same
[01:35:09] crazy thing happening with our ears. You
[01:35:11] know, we've got this whole mechanism
[01:35:13] going on that we're very used to. And
[01:35:15] so, we say, "Oh, of course the dog is
[01:35:16] out there." But in fact, it's all
[01:35:17] happening in here in the darkness of the
[01:35:19] skull. I'd like to take a quick break
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[01:37:06] to get early access to Function.
[01:37:08] Recently, I've been um listening to a
[01:37:10] book that I read previously, which uh I
[01:37:12] love, by the way. I love Livewire. Thank
[01:37:14] you. I'm not just saying I've read it
[01:37:16] like three times um when it came out. I
[01:37:18] need to revisit it. I like to reread
[01:37:19] books. Yeah. I believe in rereading
[01:37:21] books. Um Ed Young uh wrote a book
[01:37:24] called An Immense World. Um he's not a
[01:37:27] scientist, but he's a science writer,
[01:37:28] and it's about different um sensory
[01:37:31] modalities that different animals use.
[01:37:33] >> Yeah.
[01:37:33] >> And for an animal lover like me, it's I
[01:37:35] found it really spectacular. But he he
[01:37:38] says something that I totally agree
[01:37:39] with, which is that we shouldn't think
[01:37:41] so much about whether or not um a given
[01:37:44] animal is good at smell and bad at
[01:37:47] vision or really good hearing or the
[01:37:50] valuations of these things are really
[01:37:51] tough. With visual acuity, we can do it
[01:37:54] like you know an eagle eagle resolution
[01:37:56] and you know versus human resolution.
[01:37:58] But when it comes to things like smell
[01:38:00] or touch, the better question uh he says
[01:38:03] and I agree is um how much does a given
[01:38:07] organism or person rely on a given sense
[01:38:10] will tell you sort of their abilities
[01:38:12] with that sense.
[01:38:13] >> I mean there's some bounds on that,
[01:38:15] right? I I can't echolocate like a bat,
[01:38:18] but
[01:38:19] >> I'm guessing that if I had to in order
[01:38:21] to navigate an environment, I could
[01:38:23] learn to echolocate. And I think there
[01:38:24] are there are individuals who have
[01:38:26] learned to echoloccate.
[01:38:27] >> Exactly. In fact, the term was coined in
[01:38:29] 1930 in a science paper this gentleman
[01:38:32] wrote called echolocation in bats and
[01:38:35] blind men. And uh blind people since at
[01:38:40] least almost a hundred years now can do
[01:38:43] this thing where they use clicks of
[01:38:44] their tongue or the tap of their cane or
[01:38:46] any kind of sound that they make and
[01:38:48] they listen very carefully for what's
[01:38:49] bouncing back to them and they can
[01:38:50] echolocate. It also turns out that
[01:38:52] seeing people can echolocate if it is
[01:38:55] relevant to them. you know, if you
[01:38:57] really want to put the effort into it,
[01:38:58] you can learn how to do it. Again, this
[01:39:00] just points to the plasticity of the
[01:39:02] brain, how how good it is at doing this.
[01:39:05] Some years ago, I suggested this Mr.
[01:39:07] Potato Head theory about thinking about
[01:39:09] the brain, which is whatever senses you
[01:39:12] plug in to a brain, it'll figure out
[01:39:15] what to do with that information. And
[01:39:17] so, when we look across the animal
[01:39:18] kingdom, we find all kinds of very weird
[01:39:21] stuff. Not only you know eagle eyes and
[01:39:24] so on but we find um you know many
[01:39:28] animals like let's say snakes they pick
[01:39:30] up on infrared range of vision which
[01:39:32] which is invisible to us. Um you've got
[01:39:35] lots of fish that pick up on
[01:39:37] perturbations and electrical fields.
[01:39:39] They have electro reception. Um you have
[01:39:41] this animal called the starnosed mole
[01:39:43] which has this nose with 22 fingers on
[01:39:46] it. It feels its way through these
[01:39:47] tunnels with like these 22 fingers. this
[01:39:49] weird thing. Lots of birds and animals
[01:39:51] and in uh birds and cows and insects
[01:39:54] have um magneto reception so they can
[01:39:57] pick up on the magnetic field of the
[01:39:59] earth and they can navigate that way.
[01:40:01] For years I was staring at this stuff
[01:40:02] and figuring out how in the world does
[01:40:05] evolution happen so quickly that you can
[01:40:06] do all this. And this is what led me to
[01:40:08] this theory that mother nature really
[01:40:10] only had to invent the brain once.
[01:40:12] Figure out the principles of brain
[01:40:13] operation. And after that, she could
[01:40:17] spend all of her time tweaking the
[01:40:18] genetics to make all these weird
[01:40:20] peripheral devices that you plug in. And
[01:40:22] it's all plug-andplay. Whatever weird
[01:40:25] thing you come up with, you just say,
[01:40:26] "Okay, cool. I'm going to plug this in."
[01:40:27] And I and I'm sure the brain will figure
[01:40:29] this out. And it always does. And that's
[01:40:31] exactly why we can do sensory
[01:40:33] substitution. And by the way, sensory
[01:40:35] enhancement or sensory addition where
[01:40:38] you can add completely new senses. One
[01:40:40] example is uh my colleagues at Ozna
[01:40:43] Brookke built this this belt that you
[01:40:45] wear that's got vibratory motors all
[01:40:47] around it and this is a little digital
[01:40:49] compass on it so it can tell where north
[01:40:51] is. So whenever you're you know
[01:40:53] whichever direction north is on your
[01:40:55] body you feel that motor buzzing. So it
[01:40:57] might be on my left hip if north is that
[01:40:59] way but if I turn around I'll feel that
[01:41:01] on my right hip and so on. And people
[01:41:03] get really good at being able to detect
[01:41:05] which way north is. Just as one example,
[01:41:07] it's really easy to add new senses like
[01:41:10] magneto reception in this case. And
[01:41:12] people can figure this stuff out.
[01:41:14] >> So cool. Uh as a fan of the X-Men in
[01:41:17] particular, I mean, you mentioned
[01:41:18] Magneto, but that's uh but in general, I
[01:41:20] mean, yeah, different mutations give
[01:41:22] rise to different abilities, and that
[01:41:23] whole series of the X-Men is really
[01:41:25] about kind of extremes of genetic
[01:41:27] mutations giving abilities. And and
[01:41:29] there's some social discussion in there,
[01:41:30] too. But um let's talk about dreaming
[01:41:33] because you mentioned that um you know
[01:41:36] everything that we perceive as out there
[01:41:39] uh beyond our reach um is occurring by
[01:41:42] virtue of electrical and chemical events
[01:41:44] in our brain. It's all vaulted in in
[01:41:46] there. Um dreams are are a unique
[01:41:50] situation where typically people's eyes
[01:41:53] are closed when they sleep and um
[01:41:56] they're often paralyzed during REM
[01:41:58] sleep. Um, and yet we have very visual
[01:42:01] dreams. I know you talked about this in
[01:42:03] LiveWire, but please share with us what
[01:42:05] you think is the origin of the the
[01:42:07] visual component of dreams, and I'm
[01:42:09] curious if it relates back to the um uh
[01:42:13] the visual imagery um continuum that you
[01:42:16] mentioned earlier. Do some people just
[01:42:18] tend to have more visual dreams and
[01:42:20] other people don't?
[01:42:21] >> Let me answer that second part first.
[01:42:23] We're not sure about that. I ask people
[01:42:24] all the time who are aphantasic oric,
[01:42:26] hyperfantasic about their dreams. It's
[01:42:28] hard to tell. I don't see something
[01:42:30] obvious there, which is to say when
[01:42:32] there's dreams, you're getting this
[01:42:33] activity blasted into your visual
[01:42:35] cortex. So, it's like vision. So, so let
[01:42:38] me back up to answer the question about
[01:42:40] uh my my new theory about why we dream
[01:42:45] because this has everything to do with
[01:42:46] brain plasticity. So, here's where this
[01:42:50] got started. Um, by about 2013, some of
[01:42:53] our colleagues at Harvard did this
[01:42:55] experiment where they put people on the
[01:42:56] scanner and they blindfolded them
[01:42:58] tightly and they were looking at what
[01:43:01] was going on in the brain and um, you
[01:43:03] know, with with touch and with sounds.
[01:43:05] And it turns out that if you're
[01:43:07] blindfolded after about an hour, you
[01:43:10] start seeing a little bit of activity in
[01:43:12] the visual cortex when you are touched
[01:43:15] or when you uh, hear something. Now,
[01:43:18] this was crazy because we know that if
[01:43:20] somebody goes blind, you know, hearing
[01:43:22] and touch will take over that territory.
[01:43:24] But we thought that was on the scale of
[01:43:26] years. And and here what they were
[01:43:28] demonstrating is that within 60 to 90
[01:43:31] minutes, you start seeing little blips
[01:43:32] of activity. Why? It's because you've
[01:43:35] got all this crossmodal wiring. In other
[01:43:37] words, you've got neurons, let's say, in
[01:43:38] the auditory cortex that actually reach
[01:43:40] all the way over to the visual cortex.
[01:43:41] And same with touch neurons and so on.
[01:43:44] These are normally silent. They don't
[01:43:45] normally do anything, but they are
[01:43:47] ready. They're like silent sentinels
[01:43:49] that say, "Hey, just in case this
[01:43:50] territory stops getting used, I'm taking
[01:43:52] over." Okay, so here's what my student
[01:43:55] and I realized is that because we live
[01:43:58] on a planet that rotates into darkness
[01:44:01] every night, the visual system is at a
[01:44:04] unique disadvantage. Because when it's
[01:44:07] dark, you can still hear and smell and
[01:44:08] touch and taste, but you can't see. And
[01:44:10] obviously I'm talking about evolutionary
[01:44:12] time before the invention of lights
[01:44:13] which was the last nanocond of
[01:44:15] evolutionary history. Um it was really
[01:44:17] dark at night and you can't see and so
[01:44:20] you know you'd go into the corner of a
[01:44:21] cave and curl up and go to sleep. But
[01:44:23] the key is that the visual system was in
[01:44:26] danger of getting taken over during this
[01:44:28] long extended period of darkness. So
[01:44:31] what we hypothesize is that dreams are
[01:44:33] the brain's way of defending the visual
[01:44:36] cortex against takeover from the other
[01:44:38] senses. And when you look at the
[01:44:40] circuitry, it's this very specific
[01:44:41] circuitry. Starts in the midbrain, goes
[01:44:43] to an area called the lateral geniculate
[01:44:45] nucleus, and plugs straight into the
[01:44:48] primary visual cortex. And that's it.
[01:44:50] Every 90 minutes, you have this volley
[01:44:52] of activity that just slams into the
[01:44:54] primary visual cortex. It doesn't go
[01:44:55] anywhere else in the brain. And so every
[01:44:58] 90 minutes, you've got this automated
[01:45:00] way of making activity happen there. And
[01:45:02] because we are visual creatures, we see
[01:45:04] that as a dream. We see a whole story.
[01:45:08] And because the brain is a, you know, a
[01:45:10] storyteller, we impose plot, meaning,
[01:45:12] and we have emotion that goes with that.
[01:45:14] Um, but the key is this is the brain's
[01:45:16] way of defending territory in the dark.
[01:45:20] And so what we did then is we examined
[01:45:24] very carefully 25 species of primates
[01:45:26] and looked at their brain plasticity. Um
[01:45:30] and you can measure this with different
[01:45:32] proxies like you know when they start to
[01:45:34] walk and when they get to reproduction
[01:45:36] age and so on and um you know some
[01:45:38] creatures like the grey mouse lemur
[01:45:40] which is a type of monkey um you know he
[01:45:43] uh they are born let's just say
[01:45:46] pre-programmed you know they they pop
[01:45:48] out they're really quick to stop you
[01:45:50] know to to wean and uh and and reach
[01:45:53] juvenile age and reproduce and so on.
[01:45:55] Whereas you look at homo sapiens we're
[01:45:57] super slow. We've got these extended
[01:45:58] infies and we take a long time to learn
[01:46:01] how to walk and so on. Okay, because
[01:46:03] we're very plastic, we end up in the
[01:46:05] world halfbaked. Okay, well it turns out
[01:46:07] if you plot how much REM sleep each of
[01:46:09] these animals get, the more plastic the
[01:46:12] animal, like homo sapiens, we've got
[01:46:13] tons of REM sleep. And by the way, this
[01:46:15] is mostly in infancy. Infants spend 50%
[01:46:17] of their time in REM sleep. As you get
[01:46:20] older and your brain becomes less
[01:46:22] plastic, you have a drop off in REM
[01:46:24] sleep.
[01:46:25] And by the way, when you look across
[01:46:27] animal species of all types, you find
[01:46:29] that the animals that are born with
[01:46:32] extended infies and need to figure out
[01:46:33] how to do stuff in the world, um they
[01:46:37] all have much more REM sleep, like eight
[01:46:38] times more REM sleep than animals that
[01:46:41] are born essentially mature, like you
[01:46:43] know, cows and giraffes and zebras and
[01:46:46] whatever. You know, they show up, they
[01:46:48] start walking in 40 minutes and so on.
[01:46:50] Um they have much less REM sleep than we
[01:46:52] do. So anyway, this is our hypothesis
[01:46:55] about why we dream and it's the only
[01:46:57] hypothesis that makes quantitative
[01:46:59] predictions across species.
[01:47:01] >> Super interesting. Um and we know that
[01:47:04] REM associated dreams are much more uh
[01:47:06] elaborate
[01:47:08] than deep sleep dreams.
[01:47:10] >> Yeah. And the important part here of
[01:47:11] course is they're more visually
[01:47:12] elaborate. Um you know there there are
[01:47:14] dreams that people can have in deep
[01:47:16] sleep. Obviously, the way that this gets
[01:47:19] studied is, you know, is you rouse the
[01:47:21] sleeper and you say, "Hey, what were you
[01:47:22] just dreaming about? What were you just
[01:47:23] thinking about?" And so, if you do that
[01:47:25] during REM sleep where their eyes are
[01:47:26] moving around, uh they'll say, "Whoa, I
[01:47:28] was just, you know, riding across a
[01:47:29] meadow on a camel and this was what was
[01:47:31] going on." If you wake somebody during
[01:47:33] other stages of sleep, deep sleep,
[01:47:35] they'll, you know, they sometimes have
[01:47:36] something like, "I was just considering
[01:47:39] this feeling I had of whatever, but it's
[01:47:41] not as visual.
[01:47:42] >> It's not as rich." By the way, people
[01:47:44] who are blind still have dreams, but
[01:47:48] their dreams are not visual. They have a
[01:47:50] dream like, "Oh, I was, you know,
[01:47:52] feeling my way around the living room,
[01:47:54] but all the furniture was rearranged and
[01:47:56] then I felt in the corner and it was a
[01:47:58] jaguar and the jaguar started chasing me
[01:48:00] and I was trying to get away from it and
[01:48:01] so on." But it's sound, it's touch, it's
[01:48:04] things like that. Why? Because their
[01:48:06] occipital lobe at the back of their head
[01:48:08] is not visual. It's coming for these
[01:48:10] other things. So the dreaming circuitry
[01:48:12] which is very ancient is just blasting
[01:48:14] activity into that area of the occipital
[01:48:16] lobe and so they experience whatever
[01:48:18] that correlates with.
[01:48:19] >> So cool. Um I want to move on to uh
[01:48:24] questions that I have about science and
[01:48:26] the law. But before I do, I just um I
[01:48:29] was told by a a very very talented m um
[01:48:33] magician uh mentalist recently that
[01:48:36] there's a guy down in Brazil who does um
[01:48:40] magic tricks for blind people using only
[01:48:43] the auditory domain.
[01:48:45] >> And um apparently if you blindfold
[01:48:49] yourself and you spend a bit of time
[01:48:50] around him, you can start to uh hear
[01:48:53] these magic tricks. And they're not just
[01:48:56] illusions of of like sound leaping. Uh
[01:48:59] and so I said, "Well, give me an
[01:49:00] example." He said, "You have to just
[01:49:02] experience this. This is something we
[01:49:03] should we should meet this person. We
[01:49:06] should meet this person." Um just a
[01:49:08] complete perceptual bend to try and get
[01:49:11] one's head around that. By the way,
[01:49:12] counselors who are at these who who deal
[01:49:15] with these uh blind students at these
[01:49:17] blind schools, they're generally
[01:49:19] encouraged to blindfold themselves for
[01:49:21] like seven days and they absolutely
[01:49:23] start having totally different
[01:49:24] experiences. Their brain starts, you
[01:49:27] know, changing.
[01:49:28] >> I still won't do one of those darkness
[01:49:30] cave retreats. People have tried to
[01:49:32] persuade me to do those. I have no
[01:49:33] interest. Um I love sunlight. I want to
[01:49:36] keep my circadian rhythm entrainment
[01:49:38] intact. I I uh you know if that's what
[01:49:41] people want to do. Also I heard about
[01:49:42] someone going to do it and then they
[01:49:44] flipped on the lights at the end. They
[01:49:45] went back into seed and the place was
[01:49:46] covered with spiders. So clean the place
[01:49:49] up. Um science and the law. Earlier we
[01:49:54] were talking about how under stressful
[01:49:56] circumstances frame rate of perception
[01:49:59] is not increased but memory density is
[01:50:01] higher.
[01:50:02] >> Yes. Can I therefore take the leap that
[01:50:05] let's just let's just say um and these
[01:50:07] are usually tragic circumstances. If
[01:50:10] there are two individuals, it's limited
[01:50:12] to two for sake of example in a high
[01:50:15] stress, highly traumatic interaction,
[01:50:17] but one is more stressed than the other.
[01:50:20] maybe they're the victim in that case
[01:50:23] that their density of memory is higher
[01:50:26] and therefore even though there's a
[01:50:28] perceptual difference um perhaps more
[01:50:30] accurate than uh for the person who was
[01:50:33] calmer or is there a threshold at which
[01:50:36] stress limits memory and therefore the
[01:50:38] person who is calmer has a more accurate
[01:50:40] memory?
[01:50:41] >> Great question. Well, it turns out first
[01:50:42] of all what victims often have is what's
[01:50:45] called weapon focus. So if the other
[01:50:47] person has a knife or a gun, that's all
[01:50:50] they remember. They, you know, describe
[01:50:51] the guy's face. I don't remember the
[01:50:52] guy's face because I was staring at the
[01:50:54] gun. So it turns out that what they pay
[01:50:56] attention to is sort of the wrong thing
[01:50:58] for forensics purposes. Um, that's
[01:51:00] number one. But number two is this much
[01:51:02] deeper issue that even amygdala memories
[01:51:06] are not necessarily accurate. So um you
[01:51:10] know our colleague Elizabeth Phelps um
[01:51:13] did this experiment right after 911 in
[01:51:16] 2001 shortly after the event happened.
[01:51:19] She went and interviewed lots of people
[01:51:21] in downtown and Midtown New York about
[01:51:25] what they saw on September 11th and she
[01:51:28] was smart enough to interview them also
[01:51:29] about what they remembered from
[01:51:31] September 10th. You know what they ate
[01:51:32] for breakfast the day and so on. Okay.
[01:51:34] She then found them three months later.
[01:51:36] She followed up a year later. She ended
[01:51:37] up doing that 10 years later as well.
[01:51:39] What they found is that the traumatic
[01:51:43] memories of 9/11, even though those are
[01:51:45] amigdula memories, they drifted just as
[01:51:48] much as the memories of, you know, what
[01:51:50] they ate for lunch on September 10th.
[01:51:53] Um, and so an unfortunate fact for the
[01:51:57] law is that memories are not accurate.
[01:51:59] They drift. Every time we check in on
[01:52:02] memories, we're changing them. And it
[01:52:04] becomes kind of like the operator game
[01:52:05] where one person says something next in
[01:52:07] the other person's ear and the next
[01:52:09] person repeats that next person repeats
[01:52:10] that. There's a sense in which we're
[01:52:12] always playing the operator game with
[01:52:13] ourselves. You know, each time we pull
[01:52:15] up a memory, it's changing and it gets
[01:52:18] modified and colored by new information
[01:52:20] that we have. So that's the bad news for
[01:52:23] the legal system. And so the legal
[01:52:25] system has gotten really smart about
[01:52:27] this over the last 30 years and tried to
[01:52:29] make sure that they take care of things
[01:52:31] that happen, let's say, with eyewitness
[01:52:33] identification. So one thing is, you
[01:52:35] know, police suggestability. So if I if
[01:52:39] I'm looking at a lineup and I say, gosh,
[01:52:41] you know, I think that's the guy, and
[01:52:42] the police officer says, yeah, I think
[01:52:44] that's the guy, you know, I agree with
[01:52:45] you on that. Then what happens is when I
[01:52:48] go to court three months later, I I say
[01:52:50] to the judge, "Yeah, I'm 100%
[01:52:52] confident." Even though at the time of
[01:52:53] the lineup, I wasn't confident at all,
[01:52:56] but I come to think I am. There are many
[01:52:58] many ways uh that things get implemented
[01:53:01] so that we can try to work around uh how
[01:53:04] lousy our memories are. One thing is
[01:53:06] separating witnesses right away because
[01:53:08] if you and I witness a crime and then
[01:53:11] you say, "Oh my god, you know, I think
[01:53:12] the guy had long hair." and I say, "No,
[01:53:14] no, I think it was uh short hair or
[01:53:16] whatever." We're influencing each
[01:53:17] other's memory. And things that we say
[01:53:20] end up changing what the other believes
[01:53:22] to be true. One of the classes I teach
[01:53:24] is uh the brain and the law. And I do
[01:53:27] this thing every year. I sort of hate to
[01:53:29] give this away on a podcast, but here
[01:53:30] here's what I do. I'm teaching the class
[01:53:33] and a woman busts into the back of the
[01:53:35] classroom, starts screaming at me, says,
[01:53:37] "Are you Dr. Eagleman?" I say, "Yeah." I
[01:53:38] say, "Excuse me, I'm teaching a class."
[01:53:40] She says, "I've been sending you emails
[01:53:41] and you haven't written back and blah
[01:53:43] blah." I say, "Excuse me. I am teaching
[01:53:44] a class. I'm happy to talk to you
[01:53:46] afterwards. I'm sorry I don't get to all
[01:53:47] my emails." And she says, "Well, I'm
[01:53:49] going to wait for you." Okay. So, then I
[01:53:51] keep teaching the class. And then after,
[01:53:52] you know, 20 minutes or so, I say to the
[01:53:54] class, "Look, I'm going to call
[01:53:55] security, but I don't know what she
[01:53:58] looked like. I need you guys to write
[01:54:00] down what you remember about her." I
[01:54:02] said, "All I remember is that she had a
[01:54:03] big mole on her left cheek, and uh, you
[01:54:06] know, that's all I was able to really
[01:54:07] see." And so everyone writes down their
[01:54:09] stuff. Now, not surprisingly, eyewitness
[01:54:12] identification is terrible. Everyone
[01:54:13] comes up with extraordinarily different
[01:54:16] descriptions of what the woman looked
[01:54:17] like. One thing they tend to have in
[01:54:19] common is this mole on left cheek, which
[01:54:21] I made up. The woman doesn't have that,
[01:54:23] but it's a demonstration that um
[01:54:26] planting something even accidentally, in
[01:54:28] my case, on purpose, will influence your
[01:54:31] memory of what you think happened.
[01:54:32] Obviously, it's a it's an actor that I
[01:54:34] hire every year, but it demonstrates how
[01:54:36] how poorly we remember things.
[01:54:39] >> How does the legal system deal with re
[01:54:42] forget eyewitness account just uh of uh
[01:54:46] potential perpetrators, but just like
[01:54:48] recollection in general?
[01:54:50] >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, this spent all the way
[01:54:51] up to the Supreme Court because some guy
[01:54:53] some guy was accused from a, you know,
[01:54:56] he got sent to jail based on the
[01:54:57] eyewitness testimony of a woman who was
[01:55:00] up on the second floor seeing him from
[01:55:03] there and it was dark out and he said,
[01:55:05] "Look, that can't be reliable eyewitness
[01:55:07] testimony." So this went to the Supreme
[01:55:08] Court and they said, "Look, sorry, but
[01:55:11] we can't guarantee uh reliable
[01:55:13] eyewitness testimony and if we were to
[01:55:16] ever try to legislate that, that would
[01:55:18] ruin most court cases because most
[01:55:20] things are predicated on eyewitness
[01:55:21] testimony. So what the legal system
[01:55:23] tries to do is just educate jurors about
[01:55:25] this, about how seriously to take it
[01:55:28] because um and by the way, I should
[01:55:30] mention
[01:55:32] unfortunately people are very swayed by
[01:55:34] this. jurors are meaning you know a
[01:55:36] scientist might get up and say look
[01:55:37] there's this information or that but
[01:55:39] then some some I would assess you know I
[01:55:41] witness comes up on the stand and says
[01:55:44] look I don't know about all that science
[01:55:45] stuff but I know what I saw and the jury
[01:55:47] is swayed by that um so it's not easy to
[01:55:51] educate jurors on this because people
[01:55:53] fundamentally even after education feel
[01:55:54] like okay but I know that my memory is
[01:55:56] like a video camera um so anyway but
[01:56:00] that's that's one thing that the legal
[01:56:01] system tries to do and tries not to take
[01:56:03] it as as gospel.
[01:56:06] >> Are kids versus adults more prone to
[01:56:11] making up stories under these
[01:56:12] circumstances? Exactly. I I think that I
[01:56:15] like most per I'm not going to speak for
[01:56:17] most people. I assume that kids tell the
[01:56:19] truth. I mean, kids don't always tell
[01:56:20] the truth, but that they don't
[01:56:22] understand all the incentives systems
[01:56:24] around lying that some adults do. And
[01:56:28] so, I think we tend to believe what kids
[01:56:30] say. Oh, but kids are actually more
[01:56:32] susceptible to memory manipulation. So,
[01:56:34] Elizabeth Loftess at Irvine ran these
[01:56:36] studies years ago where um she uh well,
[01:56:41] here's sorry, this is slightly
[01:56:42] different, but what she's doing in these
[01:56:44] cases is she says to someone, "Hey, I
[01:56:46] talked to your parents." She she
[01:56:47] actually did talk to the person and she
[01:56:49] says, "I found out a story from when you
[01:56:51] were younger about the time you got lost
[01:56:53] in the mall and you were uh found by
[01:56:56] this woman in a red hat who then, you
[01:56:58] know, found your parents and so on." And
[01:57:00] it turns out she can make these stories
[01:57:01] completely up and people will come to
[01:57:04] believe these. And when she interviews
[01:57:05] them a week later, they that is just
[01:57:06] part of the fact of their life resume is
[01:57:08] that they were lost in the mall and
[01:57:10] found this woman in the red hat and so
[01:57:11] on.
[01:57:11] >> I mean, that has huge implications for
[01:57:13] therapy to unear, you know, repressed
[01:57:16] memories and um so-called repressed
[01:57:18] memories. Exactly. Maybe we need dogs to
[01:57:21] just uh you know who are completely
[01:57:23] unbiased to uh evaluate um the uh
[01:57:28] veracity of some of these claims.
[01:57:29] >> Well, here's what I think. Look, you and
[01:57:31] I grew up in a slightly different world
[01:57:33] where if I count the number of childhood
[01:57:35] photos that I have that I see, you know,
[01:57:37] I've got like little landmarks every
[01:57:39] couple of years. Oh, that was me at 8
[01:57:41] years old standing in front of my house
[01:57:42] in Albuquerque and that was me at 10
[01:57:44] years old and so on. But now, you know,
[01:57:46] we have an Alexa in our kitchen and it's
[01:57:48] constantly cycling through the pictures
[01:57:50] of my kids who see that every day. They
[01:57:51] say, "Oh, that was me a few years ago.
[01:57:52] That was me last month." And so on. I
[01:57:54] think kids are now much more tightly
[01:57:56] tied to their memory in a way that might
[01:57:58] prove very useful. Unuseful in the sense
[01:58:01] that maybe you can't get away from your
[01:58:03] childhood, but useful in the sense that
[01:58:05] at least your memor is going to be
[01:58:06] slightly more accurate because you're
[01:58:07] getting, you know, uh, repetition.
[01:58:09] You're getting space repetition on it. a
[01:58:12] previous guest hypothesized, I don't
[01:58:13] think this was based on real data,
[01:58:15] hypothesized that, you know, like if you
[01:58:17] go to a concert now, everyone's taking
[01:58:19] photos of the concert. Yeah. Um, as
[01:58:20] opposed to just experiencing the
[01:58:22] concert, they hypothesized that, uh,
[01:58:24] perhaps people have more memory of the
[01:58:27] photo taking experience and the photo
[01:58:29] than the actual experience, which is a
[01:58:31] kind of an interesting divergence like
[01:58:33] of of like the perceptual window that
[01:58:34] you're taking in information through.
[01:58:37] I'm not telling people not to take
[01:58:38] photos, but it is or videos, but it is
[01:58:40] sort of interesting that you're at a
[01:58:42] concert that, you know, thousands of
[01:58:44] people are at. Um, and everyone's taping
[01:58:47] it and projecting them. Maybe it's
[01:58:49] because people want to project
[01:58:50] themselves into the the concert for
[01:58:52] their friends and followers to see.
[01:58:54] >> I suspect it's a social issue. Yeah.
[01:58:56] Everyone wants to prove that they were
[01:58:57] there. You know, I went and saw the Mona
[01:58:59] Lisa at the Louv recently and every
[01:59:01] person there was just taking a picture
[01:59:03] of it instead of standing there looking
[01:59:04] at the damn Mona Lisa. But here's my
[01:59:07] suspicion is that they might have a
[01:59:09] slightly less present experience at the
[01:59:13] moment, but maybe it also lasts longer
[01:59:15] in the sense that every once in a while
[01:59:16] they're they they see that picture of
[01:59:18] themselves at the concert and they
[01:59:19] remember it. So maybe the area under the
[01:59:21] curve is the same.
[01:59:23] >> We live in a um polarized uh world right
[01:59:27] now. Uh I think it was always polarized,
[01:59:29] but it seems increasingly so. Um is it
[01:59:33] more polarized? and you've done some
[01:59:35] interesting work on um the neuroscience
[01:59:38] around polarization and uh I think it's
[01:59:41] just important for us to be aware of the
[01:59:44] fact that we're all prone to this.
[01:59:46] >> Yeah.
[01:59:46] >> And perhaps also I would hope to also
[01:59:49] push back on it.
[01:59:51] >> I also feel like people like to be in
[01:59:54] the echo chamber that there might be
[01:59:56] some uh dopamine reward or other neurom
[01:59:59] modulator reward for kind of verifying
[02:00:02] what we think to be true. I also think
[02:00:04] this is a social thing. I think you
[02:00:05] can't even talk about beliefs that we
[02:00:08] hold without talking about what that
[02:00:10] means for our identity and for what team
[02:00:12] we're on.
[02:00:14] >> Okay, so let me back up. I think we're
[02:00:16] not any more polarized than ever before.
[02:00:19] Just as an example, look at the 20th
[02:00:21] century. You've got, you know, if you
[02:00:22] look really what happened with Nazism in
[02:00:25] Europe or in Germany or or fascism in
[02:00:27] Italy or what happened in Cambodia with
[02:00:29] Paul Potter or in Rwanda or the Chinese
[02:00:31] and com the Chinese and Russian
[02:00:34] communist revolutions. All these things
[02:00:36] were extraordinarily polarized moments
[02:00:38] where people took up arms and killed
[02:00:39] their neighbors. Um, and that was all
[02:00:41] pre-ocial media. So, I don't think that
[02:00:42] has much to do with it except that I do
[02:00:44] think maybe we're more aware because it
[02:00:47] used to be that everyone was in their
[02:00:49] echo chambers. also nothing new there
[02:00:51] but you know all of your friends and
[02:00:53] neighbors and whatever all believed in
[02:00:55] whatever and so you didn't realize there
[02:00:57] were other people who believed other
[02:00:59] things but I think now we're just more
[02:01:00] much more exposed to that okay so
[02:01:03] polarization nothing really knew about
[02:01:05] that but it's very important for us to
[02:01:07] understand this so um one of the
[02:01:10] experiments we did in my lab was the
[02:01:11] following we put people in the brain
[02:01:14] scanner fMRI they see six hands on the
[02:01:17] screen all the hands look pretty much
[02:01:18] alike and The computer goes around doot
[02:01:21] and it picks one of the hands and then
[02:01:23] you see that hand get stabbed with a
[02:01:25] syringe needle. What happens is you have
[02:01:28] this empathic response specifically this
[02:01:30] uh network of areas that we summarize as
[02:01:32] the pain matrix comes online. It's not
[02:01:35] your hand getting stabbed. Nonetheless,
[02:01:37] you're watching a hand getting stabbed
[02:01:38] and you this is the neural basis of
[02:01:40] empathy. You're feeling what would it
[02:01:43] feel like if that were my hand? Great.
[02:01:45] Okay. Now, what we do is we put a
[02:01:47] one-word label on each hand. Christian,
[02:01:50] Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, Hindu,
[02:01:52] atheist. Computer goes around, picks a
[02:01:54] hand, you see that hand get stabbed. And
[02:01:56] the question is, does your brain care as
[02:01:58] much if it's a member of one of your
[02:02:01] outroups versus your in-group? Turns out
[02:02:04] the answer, depressingly, is that your
[02:02:05] brain cares much less? So, the size of
[02:02:08] the empathic response, if it's your
[02:02:10] in-group, is enhanced from what it was.
[02:02:12] And if it's any one of your outroups,
[02:02:14] it's diminished. By the way, this is not
[02:02:16] a criticism of religion because we find
[02:02:17] exactly the same thing with atheists.
[02:02:19] People who profess themselves as
[02:02:20] atheists really care when they see the
[02:02:21] atheist handstep.
[02:02:23] >> Yeah. It's everything about in-groups
[02:02:24] and outroups.
[02:02:26] >> So, it turns out this is such a
[02:02:28] low-level response. Now, happily, this
[02:02:30] doesn't necessarily map on to how you
[02:02:32] act as a person. This is just your first
[02:02:33] response. You care more about your
[02:02:35] inroups. Other labs like Tanya Singer
[02:02:38] and others have shown very similar
[02:02:40] versions of this with even things like
[02:02:42] sports teams. In fact, one of the
[02:02:44] experiments we did was um we brought
[02:02:47] fresh people in and we said, "Hey, I
[02:02:49] want you to toss a coin. If it's heads,
[02:02:51] you're a Justinian. If it's tails,
[02:02:53] you're an Augustinian." So, they toss
[02:02:54] the coin. They find out what they are.
[02:02:56] We give them a wristband that reminds
[02:02:57] them that they're Justinian or
[02:02:58] Augustinian. Then, they go in the
[02:03:00] scanner and they see Justinian or
[02:03:01] Augustinian hands getting stabbed. And
[02:03:03] it turns out they have a bigger response
[02:03:06] predicated on their team. Completely
[02:03:08] arbitrary label that doesn't mean
[02:03:09] anything. But this is how we are wired.
[02:03:13] very much very strongly for in-groups
[02:03:14] and outgroups. Obviously, this is a real
[02:03:16] problem for everything we're witnessing
[02:03:19] around us. Um,
[02:03:20] >> can I ask you a question? Um, I have a a
[02:03:23] theory unsubstantiated by any laboratory
[02:03:26] data that uh we all naturally feel some
[02:03:30] degree of empathy for both inroup or
[02:03:33] common group and other group except for
[02:03:35] groups that we really despise. Okay. I
[02:03:38] think there are some people who don't
[02:03:40] provided that the other person isn't
[02:03:41] being tortured or killed, they're sort
[02:03:42] of like, oh well, dislike them anyway.
[02:03:45] But I think we tend to feel um we know
[02:03:48] how we feel about someone or a group
[02:03:51] when something good happens for them. To
[02:03:53] me, it's a much stronger indicator. So,
[02:03:54] is the reverse experiment ever been done
[02:03:57] where instead of the hand getting
[02:03:58] stabbed with a syringe, um the person of
[02:04:01] same group or outside group is being
[02:04:04] given something that is of of value. Um,
[02:04:07] >> that's interesting. I don't know. I I
[02:04:08] don't think anyone's run that experiment
[02:04:10] to my knowledge
[02:04:10] >> because if I tell you like, okay, if I
[02:04:12] if I were to have access to your uh your
[02:04:14] thoughts and I could find like a hundred
[02:04:16] people that you uh like on and arrange
[02:04:19] that you know in your mind and arrange
[02:04:21] them on the continuum of really really
[02:04:22] adore this person all the way to like
[02:04:24] actually really I'm not going to use the
[02:04:25] word hate, but like really really
[02:04:26] dislike this person. And I tell you, you
[02:04:29] know, um and give any one of them uh
[02:04:31] stage three pancreatic cancer. I imagine
[02:04:34] as an empathic person, you're gonna be
[02:04:35] like, "Ah, that sucks." But if I instead
[02:04:37] flip it and say, "Okay, you know, this
[02:04:40] person you really you really like, um,
[02:04:42] they had something spectacular happened
[02:04:44] to them versus somebody that you
[02:04:45] dislike, something spect there's a
[02:04:47] there's a there's a little bit of a of a
[02:04:49] of a twist on the feeling of happiness
[02:04:51] for somebody that you don't like
[02:04:53] receiving something that maybe you think
[02:04:55] they didn't deserve or and I think we
[02:04:57] are all wired this way to some extent."
[02:04:59] >> Yeah, that's a really interesting point.
[02:05:01] To my knowledge, no one has done that
[02:05:02] experiment. And it's in a sense, it's
[02:05:04] because this issue of when something bad
[02:05:07] happens to someone, we naturally have an
[02:05:09] empathic response if it's a stranger.
[02:05:11] Look at the issue of, I don't know,
[02:05:13] let's say some older gentleman gets, you
[02:05:16] know, his nose broken because someone
[02:05:18] attacks him at outdoors at a park. You
[02:05:21] would feel empathy for that. But now if
[02:05:23] I tell you, oh look, he was at a a
[02:05:25] Democrat rally or a Republican rally,
[02:05:28] depending on your perspective on the
[02:05:30] world, you might have differential
[02:05:32] empathy uh predicated on on, you know,
[02:05:34] how strongly you feel on one team or the
[02:05:36] other. Um,
[02:05:38] here's the thing. Even with pancreatic
[02:05:40] cancer, there's a whole lot of
[02:05:42] experiments from my lab and other labs
[02:05:44] that shows that sometimes when something
[02:05:47] happens to someone that we don't like,
[02:05:49] the reward system actually comes on.
[02:05:50] This was Tanya Singh had a nature paper
[02:05:52] on this um showing that you actually
[02:05:54] show reward system activation when
[02:05:56] something happens uh which is awful but
[02:06:00] um one thing I have always noticed in
[02:06:02] the movies is that you're watching the
[02:06:04] James Bond movie or whatever and the bad
[02:06:07] guy you know falls from a 500 foot
[02:06:10] building and splats on the ground and
[02:06:12] and you like you know eat your popcorn
[02:06:13] you don't care at all that something
[02:06:15] awful happened to somebody whereas if
[02:06:16] James Bond you know gets grazed by a
[02:06:18] bullet if YOU'RE LIKE OH OW poor guy
[02:06:20] it's weird how much we can dial this
[02:06:23] around where we simply don't care when
[02:06:24] bad things happen to other people. I
[02:06:26] >> what you're describing provides a very
[02:06:28] useful filter for what we see out there
[02:06:30] in the media and you know just recently
[02:06:32] there was this event that's being
[02:06:33] debated very uh intensely from both
[02:06:36] sides. Someone was shot, whose fault was
[02:06:37] it? What were they were in their rights
[02:06:39] to shoot her? etc. I mean it's it's like
[02:06:41] it's this immediate polarization around
[02:06:44] that you know
[02:06:46] >> same collection of videos two totally
[02:06:48] different interpretations
[02:06:50] >> right because was that woman your
[02:06:52] protagonist or your antagonist and just
[02:06:54] like in the movies we have a completely
[02:06:56] different uh empathic response based on
[02:06:59] that
[02:07:00] >> in the um sort of hypothetical example
[02:07:02] of an experiment where people that are
[02:07:04] either same group or different group are
[02:07:05] rewarded I feel like it gets to an issue
[02:07:08] that's a little bit more subtle than
[02:07:09] when people are harmed. Um because it
[02:07:11] gets to this zero this notion of zero
[02:07:13] sum like if somebody else gets something
[02:07:14] does that mean anything was taken from
[02:07:16] you? Not necessarily, right? But there
[02:07:18] are some people who go through life
[02:07:20] seeing people get things and they feel
[02:07:22] the pain of what they didn't get by
[02:07:23] virtue of someone else getting
[02:07:25] something. And um it's got to be a very
[02:07:27] difficult place to live. And yet I've
[02:07:29] known people like that. Um they they you
[02:07:32] know there are people who hate rich
[02:07:33] people.
[02:07:34] >> Yeah.
[02:07:34] >> Um if and they hate them for a number of
[02:07:38] reasons. maybe they were treated poorly
[02:07:39] etc. Um they hate famous people, they
[02:07:43] hate beautiful people, they hate you can
[02:07:45] see this, right? And what aspect of of
[02:07:49] self other in-group outgroup does that
[02:07:50] relate to because it gets to this notion
[02:07:52] of how much resource there is to go
[02:07:55] around something for someone else is
[02:07:57] something taken from us is a very
[02:07:59] different perspective.
[02:08:00] >> Yeah, that's right. I don't know the
[02:08:02] answer to that except that people
[02:08:03] clearly are wired differently on that in
[02:08:05] terms of whether they think it's a zero-
[02:08:06] sum game or there's you know infinite
[02:08:08] resources.
[02:08:08] >> Do we see it in animals?
[02:08:09] >> Yes, actually there are experiments on
[02:08:11] on capuchin monkeys where um the monkey
[02:08:14] does something and then gets a piece of
[02:08:17] banana and then uh the other monkey does
[02:08:20] something in the neighboring cage and
[02:08:21] gets a piece of banana. And so they're
[02:08:22] they're doing this but then the other
[02:08:24] monkey doing it gets a grape which is a
[02:08:26] big treat for the monkey. And the first
[02:08:28] monkey goes nuts and is shaking the bar.
[02:08:30] he's so angry that the other monkey got
[02:08:32] a better reward. Um, we there's this
[02:08:35] sense of fairness that's actually quite
[02:08:36] deep in our evolution about what's
[02:08:38] unfair and so on. But I want to come
[02:08:40] back to this issue about rewarding
[02:08:42] people versus punishing. To my mind, the
[02:08:44] reason I care so much about this issue
[02:08:46] of harm happening to people and when we
[02:08:48] don't care
[02:08:50] >> is because of when we look at what
[02:08:52] happens around the world, I'm not even
[02:08:53] talking right now. Let's just take the
[02:08:54] 20th century. Um,
[02:08:57] we constantly see people murdering their
[02:09:00] neighbors for all kinds of reasons, for
[02:09:03] religious reasons, for atheist,
[02:09:05] communist, you know, uh, secular
[02:09:07] reasons, for all kinds of reasons.
[02:09:08] People are perfectly willing to take
[02:09:10] their friends and neighbors. Look at the
[02:09:12] Hoouu and Tootsie in Rwanda. They had
[02:09:14] lived together. They were friends. There
[02:09:15] was inner marriage. And then the Hutu,
[02:09:18] you know, uh, you know, raised up their
[02:09:20] machetes and slaughtered Tootszie at a
[02:09:23] rate faster than the Germans were able
[02:09:25] to do with gas chambers and Jews. Um,
[02:09:29] how these things happen. It's so
[02:09:31] important for us to understand what are
[02:09:33] the elements that lead to in-roup and
[02:09:35] outgroup stuff. One of the things I've
[02:09:37] been very interested in is propaganda.
[02:09:39] And it turns out across place and time,
[02:09:42] all governments do propaganda in exactly
[02:09:44] the same way, which is you simply
[02:09:47] dehumanize the other group by calling
[02:09:49] them an animal or or any like a virus,
[02:09:52] you know, a pestilence. Uh rats
[02:09:55] nowadays, you can even call them robots,
[02:09:56] whatever. Anything that's not human that
[02:09:59] turns off these networks that we have in
[02:10:01] the prefrontal lobe that care about
[02:10:03] other humans and how to interact with
[02:10:05] other humans. Our colleague Lana Harris
[02:10:07] has studied this stuff. And what happens
[02:10:09] is when you're dealing with an object
[02:10:11] now like oh the Tootsie the the famous
[02:10:13] thing that happened in Rwanda is the
[02:10:15] Tootsie were described as cockroaches
[02:10:17] and the radio was blaring that all the
[02:10:19] time the Tootsie are cockroaches. So you
[02:10:20] know killing a cockroach isn't so hard
[02:10:22] to do. So you grab your machete and you
[02:10:24] go do that. And that's the kind of thing
[02:10:27] I am essentially dedicating my life to
[02:10:30] this kind of thing is an education
[02:10:34] about this such that when the next
[02:10:36] generation hears propaganda about any
[02:10:38] group, they say, "Wait a minute. I've
[02:10:40] heard that trick before. I know what
[02:10:42] this is. This is just calling the other
[02:10:43] group. Oh, they're not like us. They're
[02:10:45] not human." And so I'm dialing down
[02:10:47] these networks that care about other
[02:10:48] humans. Therefore, I don't care about
[02:10:50] them as much. I don't have empathy for
[02:10:52] them as much. I'm only to take up arms
[02:10:53] against them.
[02:10:54] >> Many years ago, um I was at a meeting
[02:10:56] and one of our colleagues, I'll let them
[02:10:59] remain anonymous for soon to be obvious
[02:11:01] reasons, um made stood up and made a
[02:11:04] really strong case for not referring to
[02:11:06] um the mice. And at that time,
[02:11:09] experiments were still done on on cats
[02:11:11] and um and non-human primates. I mean,
[02:11:15] those are still used, but to a lesser
[02:11:17] extent now, but still um to not refer to
[02:11:20] them as animal models. um because he
[02:11:24] felt that it was de not dehumanizing
[02:11:26] them, it was it was um removing the
[02:11:28] sense that they were real beings and um
[02:11:32] you know uh as someone who has worked on
[02:11:34] a number of species including humans um
[02:11:37] and and frankly I'm I'll say this
[02:11:38] proudly. I'm relieved to not do
[02:11:40] experiments on animals anymore. I really
[02:11:41] did not like that aspect. I I did like
[02:11:44] working with humans we say not on humans
[02:11:47] um because they can sign up and uh
[02:11:49] consent and that sort of thing. I think
[02:11:51] every uh profession has this, you know,
[02:11:54] they uh my friends who are
[02:11:56] psychologists, you said your dad was a
[02:11:57] psychiatrist. I always ask people
[02:11:59] psychologists and psych, do you refer to
[02:12:00] your uh um the people that you treat as
[02:12:03] clients or as patients? like the the
[02:12:05] language doesn't always matter so much,
[02:12:08] but I think when it comes to animal
[02:12:10] experimentation, when it comes to um
[02:12:14] people and professional relationships,
[02:12:15] it actually does matter because I think
[02:12:18] as you pointed out, certain circuits in
[02:12:20] the brain get turned off or on depending
[02:12:22] on how we refer to people.
[02:12:24] >> Yeah. Exactly.
[02:12:25] >> Yeah. I know it's I'm starting to sound
[02:12:26] a little bit like like this is some like
[02:12:28] political statement, but it's not. It's
[02:12:30] just like I think that words matter.
[02:12:32] They they really do.
[02:12:34] >> Yeah. Oh, I totally agree. I think this
[02:12:36] political statement does matter because
[02:12:39] when the society reaches a point where
[02:12:42] some group of people is referred to
[02:12:44] essentially as nonhuman,
[02:12:46] um that's when things get really
[02:12:48] dangerous really fast. The Tootsie as
[02:12:50] cockroaches, the Jews as pestilence in
[02:12:52] Germany and what you know um all these
[02:12:56] things make a difference. And by the
[02:12:57] way, you know, in Germany in the rich in
[02:12:59] 1934,
[02:13:01] all the people elected to the rich year
[02:13:03] were either far-right Nazi party or
[02:13:05] far-left communist party. It was like a
[02:13:07] really polarized time. And the part
[02:13:09] that's so scary about polarization of
[02:13:11] that extreme is that it just takes a
[02:13:13] moment for one party to eat the other.
[02:13:15] It just it goes really fast. And um
[02:13:18] suddenly you know when Hitler took power
[02:13:20] when the president von Hindenberg died
[02:13:22] Hitler just declared himself the furer
[02:13:24] and rounded up all the communists and
[02:13:25] put him in jail in concentration camps
[02:13:27] right away and um so that's why
[02:13:31] polarization if there are things we can
[02:13:33] do as a society to work on that to try
[02:13:35] to get better models of the other person
[02:13:38] to have meaningful debates and listen to
[02:13:41] the other side it doesn't mean coming to
[02:13:43] agree with them or whatever but it means
[02:13:44] saying okay I'm going to assume assume
[02:13:47] the other person is speaking genuinely.
[02:13:49] What is their reason for holding this
[02:13:50] political position also by the way
[02:13:53] having a better notion of our own
[02:13:54] internal models which is that we are
[02:13:57] extraordinarily limited. This is
[02:13:58] actually what my next next book is
[02:14:00] about. It's called Empire of the
[02:14:01] Invisible and it's about why we all
[02:14:03] believe our own internal models. We've
[02:14:05] all taken very thin trajectories through
[02:14:07] space and time and we've collected up
[02:14:10] our little scraps of data and we think,
[02:14:11] "Oh, I know the truth. I know how to
[02:14:13] think about the world and these
[02:14:14] political issues." And if I could just
[02:14:17] shout in all capital letters on X loudly
[02:14:20] enough, everyone would come to agree
[02:14:22] with me. Essentially, everyone thinks
[02:14:24] this deep down irrespective of what
[02:14:25] their political position is. And that's
[02:14:28] weird that we can't see the fence lines
[02:14:30] of our own internal models. So I think
[02:14:33] it's really important that this gets
[02:14:35] built all the way down into our
[02:14:37] education system at at the high school
[02:14:38] level, maybe even junior high, where we
[02:14:40] understand the limitations of our own
[02:14:42] model. We understand how to try to
[02:14:44] understand other people's models. We
[02:14:46] understand when it's appropriate to
[02:14:48] blind our biases um at you know in the
[02:14:51] way that for example symphony orchestras
[02:14:53] have been doing this for decades now
[02:14:55] where they do a a blind audition of
[02:14:58] musician behind a curtain. So you you
[02:15:00] can't have the opportunity for
[02:15:02] discrimination based on gender or race
[02:15:04] or anything else. You're just hearing oh
[02:15:05] that was a great obo player and so you
[02:15:07] um things like that. Um, and I also
[02:15:11] think that there's another technique
[02:15:13] that might be super useful here, which
[02:15:14] is, and and this is I've been exploring
[02:15:17] this a lot lately, what I'm calling the
[02:15:18] complexification of relationships.
[02:15:20] meaning um
[02:15:23] if you have something in common with
[02:15:25] someone and and then you find out later
[02:15:28] that that person has a very different
[02:15:29] opinion than you do on some hot button
[02:15:31] political issue, you're more willing to
[02:15:33] listen to them because you're already
[02:15:34] pals on, you know, you go surfing
[02:15:36] together, you whatever, you like the
[02:15:38] same sports team or whatever, you're
[02:15:39] more willing to listen. Um my example
[02:15:41] for this is the Iricquay Native
[02:15:43] Americans who were up in sort of
[02:15:45] northern Wisconsin area, five tribes,
[02:15:47] they all killed each other for years and
[02:15:49] years. They had a new leader come in.
[02:15:51] This guy uh Dana Gawada who came to be
[02:15:54] known as the great peacemaker. What he
[02:15:55] did is he said, "Look, you've got these
[02:15:57] five tribes. I'm going to assign each
[02:15:59] person membership in a in a clan." So,
[02:16:04] uh let's say we're in the same tribe,
[02:16:05] but you're a member of the Beaver Clan.
[02:16:07] I'm a member of the Eagle Clan and so
[02:16:09] on. And and these clan memberships are
[02:16:12] crosscutting such that now you say,
[02:16:15] "Hey, let's go invade that tribe over
[02:16:16] the hill." And I say, "Oh, you know, I
[02:16:18] don't know. that guy's a member of the
[02:16:19] Eagle Clan and so am I. You know, I've
[02:16:21] got these crosscutting relationships now
[02:16:23] and I'm less likely, I'm less willing to
[02:16:25] do that. And this ties back to the
[02:16:28] experiments we did that I mentioned with
[02:16:29] the handstabbing. What we now do is we
[02:16:32] say the year is 2029 and these three
[02:16:35] religions have teamed up against these
[02:16:37] three religions. And now you see the
[02:16:39] different hands get stabbed. But the
[02:16:42] ones who I just told you in one sentence
[02:16:43] are are your allies now. You care more
[02:16:45] about them. just because I arbitrarily
[02:16:47] told you that they're your allies. And
[02:16:50] so when things get complexified like
[02:16:52] this, we suddenly care more about
[02:16:53] certain groups and so on. Anyway, I
[02:16:55] think this is a really important thing
[02:16:56] to do. So I've patented a new social
[02:16:58] media algorithm which essentially works
[02:17:01] simply by
[02:17:03] surfacing what people have in common. So
[02:17:05] if you and I are both on this algorithm,
[02:17:06] it oh, we've got this in common, that in
[02:17:08] common, and and all those things get
[02:17:10] surfaced and we come to know each other
[02:17:12] and like each other. And only later,
[02:17:14] temporally down the line, do we hear,
[02:17:17] "Oh, wow. I didn't I didn't realize you
[02:17:18] felt so differently about gun control or
[02:17:20] abortion or whatever." We learn that
[02:17:21] later. And and then we're more willing
[02:17:23] to lean in and talk.
[02:17:25] >> Fascinating. I I thought for a while
[02:17:28] that the solution to polarization was
[02:17:30] going to be um it sounds like an
[02:17:32] laboratory experiment, but the the
[02:17:34] interbreeding across um you know
[02:17:38] first genetic but also um and geographic
[02:17:41] but also you know racial and cultural
[02:17:43] and and ethnic boundaries, right? And
[02:17:44] when you have people mixing and having
[02:17:46] children that are mixed, you can no
[02:17:48] longer assign identity in a way that um
[02:17:51] that allows people to continue to uh
[02:17:54] hurt and harm one another. Because I do
[02:17:56] think that the one thing that runs very
[02:17:58] deep in our species is this evolutionary
[02:18:00] drive. And there are other sources of
[02:18:03] this, of course, but to make more of
[02:18:05] ourselves and to protect our young. And
[02:18:07] if those young are are uh you know of of
[02:18:11] several different races or religions etc
[02:18:14] you know then you really don't have any
[02:18:16] uh anywhere to go
[02:18:18] >> you know in terms of violence and and
[02:18:20] and and of course I started thinking
[02:18:22] about this in the way that when I grew
[02:18:23] up it wasn't that long ago I was born in
[02:18:26] 75 um but it was 50 years ago that you
[02:18:29] saw less in marriage across races you
[02:18:32] just did right you it was it happened
[02:18:34] but far less frequently than it does now
[02:18:36] across religions even across cultures
[02:18:40] and um and now things are quite
[02:18:42] different but the polarization
[02:18:43] continues.
[02:18:45] >> Yeah, I I wish I shared that optimism on
[02:18:47] that on that front but you know the fact
[02:18:49] is in Rwanda Hutu and Tootsie had been
[02:18:52] intermaring for a long time. In Germany,
[02:18:55] Jews and Christians had been intermaring
[02:18:57] there for a long time. But when stuff
[02:19:00] hits the fan, none of that matters. And
[02:19:02] people will still make dividing lines
[02:19:03] and say, "Hey, if you've got some of
[02:19:06] this in you, you're on the other side."
[02:19:09] >> I wish I had a more optimistic note
[02:19:11] there, but
[02:19:11] >> No, I think Well, it sounds like that
[02:19:13] the projects you're involved in to try
[02:19:14] and reduce polarization are are Well,
[02:19:17] I'll say certainly they're very
[02:19:18] important and and they sound very
[02:19:20] promising. Um, look, you're I feel like
[02:19:24] we could go another six hours. We have
[02:19:27] to have you back. Of course, you have
[02:19:28] your own podcast, amazing podcast. Uh so
[02:19:31] tell us about just um for folks we'll
[02:19:33] put links in the uh show note captions
[02:19:34] but um you're write you're writing what
[02:19:37] 10 books now you got a podcast you're
[02:19:38] involved in movie movie movie scripts
[02:19:40] but give us the highlights of what are
[02:19:42] you up to these days when you're not
[02:19:44] teaching three different classes at
[02:19:45] Stanford
[02:19:46] >> so I'm writing the podcast inner cosmos
[02:19:48] which is
[02:19:48] >> awesome podcast I listen to it
[02:19:50] >> thank you thanks and that's that's a
[02:19:52] really wonderful way for me to put out
[02:19:54] lots of ideas often I do you know mostly
[02:19:56] it's monologue um but I do have guests
[02:19:59] as well Um, and I get to just tackle big
[02:20:02] philosophical questions about time,
[02:20:04] about polarization, about whatever. Um,
[02:20:06] I just signed my next two books. One is
[02:20:08] the Ulyses contract, and one I mentioned
[02:20:10] is called Empire of the Invisible. Um,
[02:20:12] and then, yeah, I'm also doing a lot in
[02:20:14] the realm of movie production stuff. Um,
[02:20:16] we're making a documentary film right
[02:20:18] now with the comedian Craig Ferguson
[02:20:21] where we're asking the question, can AI
[02:20:25] be funny? So, we've built a robot that
[02:20:27] Craig is going to go on the road with
[02:20:28] and do this comedy with, you know, like
[02:20:31] in the middle of the country. And the
[02:20:33] reason we're starting there is because
[02:20:35] that allows us to ask all these deeper
[02:20:37] questions about AI, but in a way that
[02:20:40] draws people into the movie because you
[02:20:41] can't just make like a doomy gloomy
[02:20:43] movie about AI and expect anybody to
[02:20:45] watch it. But, but this is sort of a
[02:20:46] really fun funny movie that allows us to
[02:20:49] really ask what's it going to mean for
[02:20:50] our lives.
[02:20:51] >> Awesome. And when you're not doing that,
[02:20:52] you're fixing doorork knobs and stuff in
[02:20:54] your in your home.
[02:20:55] >> Yes. and raising a family.
[02:20:56] >> Uh David, thanks so much for coming here
[02:20:59] today.
[02:20:59] >> Great to see you, Andrew.
[02:21:00] >> As everyone now sees, and many already
[02:21:03] knew coming into this, you're a
[02:21:04] worldclass educator and uh storyteller
[02:21:07] and most importantly a scientist um who
[02:21:10] ran experiments. I think it really helps
[02:21:12] to have, you know, no diss on science
[02:21:14] communicators that haven't run labs and
[02:21:16] things like that, but I think when one
[02:21:18] has done experiments, you get a a real
[02:21:20] deep sense for how data comes together
[02:21:22] and what it does and doesn't mean.
[02:21:24] um you're a virtuoso. So, um thanks for
[02:21:27] coming here today and and sharing just
[02:21:29] so many pearls of wisdom and some
[02:21:31] practical takeaways uh that I know
[02:21:33] myself and other people are really going
[02:21:34] to uh going to work with.
[02:21:36] >> Great. Thanks, Andrew. It's a blast
[02:21:37] being here.
[02:21:38] >> Awesome. Come back. Thank you for
[02:21:39] joining me for today's discussion with
[02:21:41] Dr. David Eagleman. To learn more about
[02:21:43] his work and to find links to his
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[02:23:58] Thank you once again for joining me for
[02:24:00] today's discussion with Dr. David
[02:24:02] Eagleman. And last, but certainly not
[02:24:04] least, thank you for [music] your
[02:24:05] interest in science.