Jud Brewer

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Monaster Mouse.

[3] I'm so excited that you labeled your house, the Mouse House.

[4] My new house is the Mouse House.

[5] It's really exciting.

[6] It sounds so fun, like the Mickey Mouse Mouse House, Clubhouse.

[7] You're going to make it real colorful and fun in there like a mouse.

[8] I will.

[9] Oh, I also, it has been announced that I'm doing a digital show with Ellen that's going to follow the renovation for that home, that Mouse House.

[10] It's called what?

[11] Monica's new pad.

[12] Monica's new pad.

[13] Today we have a really interesting guest, Judd Brewer.

[14] Judd is an MD, a Ph .D., is an American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author.

[15] He is Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center, an associate professor and behavior on social sciences in the Brown School of Public Health, and in psychiatry at Brown's Warren Alpert Medical School.

[16] Brewer founded Dr. Judd, an app -based digital therapeutic treatment.

[17] program for anxiety, overeating, and smoking.

[18] You should check out his book, The Craving Mind, from cigarettes to smartphones to love, why we get hooked and how we can break bad habits.

[19] This was a great episode.

[20] Yeah.

[21] I learned so much.

[22] He's so smart.

[23] And anytime we can learn about the way the brain is functioning, it just gives insight to why we do all the things we do.

[24] Yeah, it really helps you work through it.

[25] You're like, oh, that's just that happening.

[26] And that's that happening.

[27] And this will pass.

[28] And I can do this.

[29] And I can do this.

[30] to combat that.

[31] Yeah.

[32] Yeah, it's great.

[33] Who doesn't have a bad habit?

[34] If you don't have bad habits, I don't even want to talk to you.

[35] I do want to talk to you.

[36] Okay, great.

[37] So you'll be able to talk to Monica and not to me. Please enjoy Judd Brewer.

[38] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad free right now.

[39] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[40] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[41] He's an armchair expert.

[42] Oh, Judd, we're so sorry.

[43] Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[44] All good.

[45] In most cases, it's Monica's fault, but in this case, it was 100%.

[46] It's never once been my fault, Judd.

[47] Don't believe that.

[48] Do you have children, Judd?

[49] I don't.

[50] You don't.

[51] Okay, okay.

[52] So I keep oscillating between maybe it's terrible to be isolated without children because you're lonely versus it must be awesome to be isolated without children.

[53] kids.

[54] Well, just so this never shows up in an audio recording.

[55] Uh -huh.

[56] Yeah.

[57] So, sir, are you in Massachusetts?

[58] Are you in Rhode Island?

[59] Where are you?

[60] I'm in Massachusetts.

[61] My wife's a professor at Holy Cross in, how do the locals pronounce it, Wusta?

[62] Ah, Wusta.

[63] Yeah, we're about 45 minutes north of Providence, where Brown is where I work.

[64] That's got to be a bit of a challenge when two professors marry one another.

[65] Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of the most ripe job to ask to be traveled somewhere, right?

[66] Yeah, yeah.

[67] So there's a whole terminology around it called the two -body problem.

[68] Have you heard of this one?

[69] Tell us.

[70] Basically, to try to get academic jobs within cities that are even remotely near each other is really challenging to do.

[71] You know, because you never know when a job's going to come up and, you know, this or that.

[72] So to both be able to live within, you know, 45 minutes of one of our, you know, like my wife drives 10 minutes to work and I drive 45 minutes.

[73] It's fabulous.

[74] You know, she, at one point, she was a professor in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

[75] She had to get an apartment because it's like a four -hour drive, you know, for us.

[76] So, and I know people who are bi -coastal or even intercontinental where, you know, there's like one of the partners has a job in France or Italy and one in New York.

[77] And they to somehow make that work with kids.

[78] Oh, boy.

[79] Long story short, it doesn't work.

[80] Yeah.

[81] You're from, we're neighbors, right?

[82] You're from Indiana?

[83] I am.

[84] Where did you grow up?

[85] Michigan.

[86] Oh, nice.

[87] And I detasseled corn in Indiana in the summers in my childhood.

[88] Dude, everybody detasseled corn in Indiana.

[89] Anybody like in the Midwest ever.

[90] And then they cow tipped at night, right?

[91] Yeah.

[92] Hold on, Monica just opened a garage band.

[93] No, I did not.

[94] I got a call.

[95] Shut up.

[96] Why is getting a call and make garage ban.

[97] I don't know how that happened.

[98] Oh, fuck me. All right.

[99] Just hold on.

[100] Okay, here we go.

[101] We're back.

[102] We're back.

[103] All right.

[104] Hold your horses.

[105] We're going to send you like a fruit cake.

[106] A care package.

[107] This is a single worst start we've ever had, but bear with us.

[108] Back to Indiana.

[109] Did you guys live in Indianapolis?

[110] In and around.

[111] So I lived in Indianapolis, Northside for a bit.

[112] And then in Zionsville, Indiana, which is a little town.

[113] just north, like, toward Purdue.

[114] Basically, literally, my whole neighborhood was surrounded by cornfields.

[115] Oh, it was.

[116] Yeah, yeah.

[117] And what did your parents do?

[118] My mom was a, what does it call it, ABD, all but dissertation?

[119] She didn't get her PhD.

[120] She dropped out of grad school when she got pregnant with my older brother.

[121] Was kind of a stay -at -home mom, taking care of four kids until my parents got divorced when I was, like, six.

[122] And then my dad became deadbeat, so nothing there.

[123] So she started as an aerobics instructor and then worked her way up to being a laboratory researcher and then went to law school at night and became a patent attorney.

[124] My mom is my hero.

[125] We have nearly the same childhood.

[126] I mean, literally.

[127] So, yeah, my dad bounced at three.

[128] My mom started as a janitor on the night shift.

[129] She ended up building this huge business by the time I graduated high school.

[130] What is it about the Midwestern upbringing that it's like single moms raising everybody?

[131] Yeah.

[132] Unfortunately, I got a hunch.

[133] It was single moms just raising everyone nationally as well, I think in the 80s, man. Now, did it give you any kind of axes to grind that became beneficial in your life?

[134] That's a good question.

[135] Well, one thing that it made me do is I'm like an Uber feminist, like a homegrown corn fed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[136] And my wife actually got me this great t -shirt that says, you can't scare me. My wife has a Ph .D. I wear that when I travel.

[137] I get so many great comments.

[138] So that's the biggest one, because my mom growing up, dealing with corporate culture as an attorney, she got harassed all the time and discriminated against.

[139] You know, there are all these white men who couldn't imagine a woman, like, smarter than they were, and they were so threatened by it.

[140] So that was the biggest acts that I think I had and still grind is all these entitled men who are insecure.

[141] Yeah.

[142] who can't handle people who are competent and smart and kick -ass.

[143] And they happen to be women.

[144] Yeah.

[145] So that's the one I grind.

[146] Okay.

[147] So you went to all the good schools.

[148] You ended up with a PhD and an MD.

[149] And you were drawn specifically to how the brain works.

[150] Yeah.

[151] Neurology and psychiatry.

[152] Yeah.

[153] Yeah, largely.

[154] And actually, I went to Princeton because my college counselor told me I'd never get in.

[155] Mm -hmm.

[156] That's good.

[157] Brilliant.

[158] You should write him a thank -you letter or a thank -you letter.

[159] When I got there, I took this freshman chemistry class where I learned about these molecules called like putrescine and cadaverine.

[160] Okay.

[161] And I was like, wow, cadavers smell like shit because of these fatty acid molecules.

[162] That's so cool.

[163] Right.

[164] And just to know that like these were the molecules of life.

[165] And so I think that's what got me fascinated about like, you know, I looked at my chemistry professor.

[166] And I was like, wow, I could just like learn my whole life and I could get paid to do it.

[167] Yeah.

[168] So that piece totally got me into that.

[169] And I thought I was going to be a chemist.

[170] I was going to be, you know, chemistry professor.

[171] I loved organic chemistry, you know, like all these molecules of life.

[172] And then I noticed my junior year, I saw these dudes that were, they were kind of pigeonholing themselves into studying tiny little molecules because they had to be a world expert to get tenure, you know.

[173] And so, you know, when somebody else is an expert here, you've got to specify more and more and more.

[174] Can I ask a quick question about that?

[175] Yeah, yeah.

[176] I guess a chicken and an egg question.

[177] So is it, there's a, there's a great responsibility to publish a ton when you're at that level, right?

[178] And it would it hold logically the more granular you get on any single thing, there's likely a hole there where a paper could be published.

[179] Is the system itself designed to end up getting that way?

[180] Yeah, unfortunately.

[181] And I think this is not, it's not a highlight of the system where, you know, it's like the publisher parish thing.

[182] Yeah.

[183] And it's novelty and new discoveries that get published.

[184] You know, it's not replication, which is actually a hallmark of science.

[185] You know, replication is really critical, but it's hard to publish a replication paper because the journal says, you know, we've already seen that.

[186] And we're like, what?

[187] It's so important.

[188] And actually, we're undergoing a replication crisis right now in science.

[189] And especially in psychology, You know, my scientific focus right now is neuroscience and, you know, cognitive neuroscience and things like that.

[190] But in the field of psychology, which is kind of adjacent and related, you know, psychology is relatively young.

[191] And a lot of colleges, you know, there could be, as a psychology professor, you'd have these huge psych 101 classes.

[192] And these classes would start, you know, the beginning of the semester, they'd give each student a stack of questionnaires.

[193] And they'd say, you know, fill this questionnaire for college, you know, for course credit.

[194] And so they'd get these a huge number of students filling out, a huge number of questionnaires.

[195] And if you just look statistically, you know, if you just analyze all those data, you're going to by chance get what are called significant findings where you like make this association with this, even though it could just be spurious.

[196] It could just be a statistical anomaly.

[197] And so this was allowed to happen for decades.

[198] And then, you know, people are claiming this and that.

[199] And, you know, when you look at it, people couldn't replicate these things because they were probably.

[200] probably just statistical flukes.

[201] So this led to this replication crisis where people were starting to question these assertions and these papers and they couldn't replicate them.

[202] And then they realized, you know, people are being a little loose and fast with their statistics.

[203] So then they started requiring people to actually, God forbid, think of a hypothesis ahead of time.

[204] And this isn't like, you know, toward all psychologists.

[205] But, you know, it's like you have to come up with an idea first.

[206] You have to pre -register that idea in a kind of an electronic vault where you say, I already came up with this idea and I'm going to test it now using these statistics.

[207] And if it comes out to be true, it shows that I didn't cherry pick.

[208] You know, it's called P hacking where you, you know, hack your P values until you find a statistically significant result.

[209] You can't P hack anymore to get published in a good journal.

[210] So it's actually cleaning up the field quite a bit simply by requiring people to, you know, do the, the scientifically responsible thing.

[211] Yeah, I don't know if there's a name for this phenomenon.

[212] I think there has to be, and you would probably know it, but our minds in general have a bias to try to make sense of things after the fact, right?

[213] Don't we have some inclination to do that?

[214] And so if you're just looking at data and then figuring out what's going on, you're going to have a heavy bias in that situation, no?

[215] Yeah, totally.

[216] Our brains are, you know, they're association machines.

[217] You could think of it that way, We love to make association between things, which gets us into trouble big time because there's this whole thing about, you know, correlation does not equal causation.

[218] My old PhD mentor used to say, true, true and unrelated.

[219] This event could happen.

[220] That could be true.

[221] This event could happen.

[222] That could be true.

[223] But you have to prove that they're actually related because more likely than not, they're going to be just true, true, and unrelated, you know, correlation, not causation.

[224] And our brains loved, you know, they're like, oh, loud bang.

[225] that equals this, where in reality, it's like, loud bang just happened.

[226] But anyone who's had any medical mystery in their life, you put on your detective hat.

[227] You know, like Monica had something.

[228] She had a seizure that was out of the blue.

[229] And you start looking for all these clues.

[230] And then anyone that seems plausible, you're going to just start doubling down on it.

[231] But I think probably the most famous case in recent times was the link between vaccines and autism.

[232] And it makes so much sense why people thought it because the signs of autism generally become obvious around the exact same time as some of these vaccines.

[233] But to your point, if you reverse it and said, I got a hunch my kid's going to get autism if I give them this vaccine, now give them the vaccine.

[234] Statistically, you find almost no one's getting that result.

[235] So it's really just only through observing my kid has autism what was new.

[236] Oh, we had this vaccine.

[237] It seems like causality.

[238] Yeah, I think that's a great example.

[239] and it also preys on people's very basic survival mechanisms, such as fear.

[240] So, you know, fear is supposed to be there to help us survive.

[241] You know, we see the saber -truth tiger on the savannah, and then we run away, and it helps us learn, oh, don't go there.

[242] You know, that's kind of dangerous.

[243] But that fear also makes us react quickly.

[244] You know, we don't have time to sit around and ponder.

[245] Hmm.

[246] Does that saber -tooth tiger have, you know, cavities?

[247] I wonder if those teeth are really sharp, you know?

[248] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[249] We're dead at that point.

[250] He looks full.

[251] I think he's already eaten.

[252] Right.

[253] Maybe I can pet him as he goes.

[254] So the idea there is, you know, you get people freaked out.

[255] And then their prefrontal cortex that thinking part of their brain is offline.

[256] And then you're like, oh, gotcha.

[257] And I can just feed shit right into your brain and be like, hey, vaccines, bad, you know, when I have an agenda against vaccines.

[258] Yes.

[259] And again, I have ultimate compassion.

[260] And anyone who's dealing with that life -altering diagnoses, you know, I get it.

[261] Well, you want an answer.

[262] This idea that, like, something exists and you don't know why.

[263] It's so unsettling for people.

[264] Well, and that piece is also fascinating from a scientific standpoint because you think of the survival brain, it's been there since the C -sluck, like the oldest known nervous systems to learn the same way that we do.

[265] On top of that, we've layered this neocortex, you know, literally new brain, which is involved in thinking and planning.

[266] And that thinking and planning piece of the brain actually needs information to think and plan for the future, you know.

[267] And so if we don't have accurate information, then we're not going to be able to think and plan.

[268] But our thinking brain is still doing stuff.

[269] And then it starts to spin out into worry.

[270] And that worry can actually spin into panic when that worry doesn't get its answers.

[271] So I think you're really touching on something important.

[272] We're seeing that now.

[273] You know, there's a ton of uncertainty.

[274] And then you go on social media.

[275] And then you get this social contagion where people are catching, you know, emotions from other people, right?

[276] Six feet does not protect against social contagion, right?

[277] That's so true.

[278] So you add that and then people start to panic and then this leads to wildly unthinking behavior.

[279] I oscillate between being an optimist and a pessimist.

[280] A very optimistic long -term view of humanity and I have a very pessimistic sometimes punctuated or short -term view of it where I just go, man, we have such bad wiring for all this.

[281] I'm totally with you.

[282] Maybe that's your Midwestern sensibilities.

[283] Yeah, well, so I think there could be some fun, like really broad stroke things, and you've already touched on a couple of them to help people understand how the brain works.

[284] To your point that our brain has evolved in different stages and different animals and it's just carried up the evolutionary tree and we get new layers and new layers.

[285] And it's almost shocking the thing even functions, right?

[286] What you're saying, that reptilian midbrain, the things it's designed to do, and then it's got to work in concert with this pre -final cortex, which is capable of all this crazy stuff, the fact that it even functions is almost a miracle.

[287] It really is, yeah.

[288] It would be like designing a Tesla car, but you still have a steam -powered engine component in it, you know, and a donkey involved.

[289] Yet the whole thing somehow is going to work with such different technology.

[290] So walk us through some of the things that.

[291] are counterintuitive or why we process information the way we do or some of the, you know, the pitfalls of that evolutionary ride we're on.

[292] Yeah.

[293] So it may be helpful just for folks to understand, you know, this basic learning process and how I think it's elegantly simple that Occam's Razor were the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

[294] I love that.

[295] So if you think of survival, our brains were actually set up to help us remember where food is, right?

[296] So three core elements.

[297] A trigger, a behavior, and a reward.

[298] I'll give an example.

[299] So let's say that, you know, our ancient ancestors are out there on the savannah foraging.

[300] They're in uncertain territory.

[301] Okay.

[302] So there are a couple of things going on.

[303] One is we're on high alert looking for danger because we don't know if there's danger there or not.

[304] And we're also on search mode where we're looking to see where's the food, where's the food, where's the food.

[305] As soon as we find food, so there's the trigger, we see the food.

[306] The behavior is that that we eat the food.

[307] food.

[308] And as long as it gives us some calories, the reward, and I say this broadly, because from a neuroscientific standpoint, that reward is actually this dopamine signal coming from our stomach to our brain that says, remember what you ate and where you found it.

[309] It's not necessarily a pleasant thing.

[310] It's just saying, this is a memory tool so you can remember to come back here the next day.

[311] Okay.

[312] So the danger piece comes in where we're, you know, scanning around.

[313] And if we see the saber to tiger, we run away.

[314] So the trigger is we see the danger, the behavior is that we run away.

[315] And then the reward is we get to survive to do repeat the process the next day.

[316] Right.

[317] So very, very, very basic mechanism that's, you know, even the sea slug, which only has 20 ,000 neurons, learns the same way as human.

[318] So that's how evolutionarily conserved it is.

[319] So I think that's helpful just as a framework for people to keep in mind.

[320] Now, so one aha moment that I had, I learned this in college and then quickly forgotten it when I went to medical school.

[321] You know, medical school, we have this term, it's academic bulimia where you kind of, we don't have enough space in our brains to remember everything.

[322] So it's like you binge on information and then you purge it when you come to the next subject because you can't possibly keep everything in mind.

[323] So, you know, I kind of cleared out my brain so I could learn other stuff.

[324] And then when I was working as a young addiction, it's like, hi, Trist, I was really struggling to help my patients, you know, everything from heroin to cocaine to losing weight to quitting cigarettes, you know, and what I'd learned in residency was use your willpower, you know, just.

[325] Yeah, yeah, that's, that works.

[326] Stop smoking.

[327] Right, exactly.

[328] And so, so those are the tools I was supposed to be using.

[329] And so, you know, my patients look at me like, they're like, you clearly have no idea what I'm going through telling me to quit using or quit smoking because we can't think our way out of a bad habit.

[330] We can't certainly can't think our way out of an addiction.

[331] I really want anyone listening to hear that.

[332] You will never wake up with some level of shame that will make you have a thinking episode where you get so resolute that it's never going to happen again.

[333] That is not how our brains work.

[334] That's not how behaviorally we work.

[335] You will never get so shame -filled that you will finally just decide.

[336] You will have to take action.

[337] Action can lead to new thoughts, but thinking can't lead to new thoughts.

[338] I just want that to be really clear.

[339] Okay, sorry.

[340] Yeah, thank you for emphasizing them.

[341] But just going back to, you know, when I was sitting there struggling in my, you know, helping my patients, I realized, I remember, look out the window.

[342] I was working at the VA hospital and we're on a smoke -free campus.

[343] So I look out the window, I see my patients smoking in the parking lot.

[344] And I realize, wait a minute, they don't learn to smoke in my office, right?

[345] So this habit formation is set up as a context -dependent memory process, which is just a fancy term for like, hey, remember, where you do a behavior.

[346] So people don't learn to smoke in my office.

[347] They don't learn to get anxious in my office.

[348] They don't learn to overeat my office.

[349] And I'm realizing, wait a minute, we're going about this the whole wrong way.

[350] How can I actually package my office and deliver it to them?

[351] So I started looking at, you know, what are we missing here?

[352] And I realized this thing that I learned in college around reinforcement learning, this whole positive and negative reinforcement piece that we just talked about with survival.

[353] This is key to this whole learning process.

[354] And it underlies the formation of all habits, everything from overeating to smoking, to getting addicted to our phones, to procrastination, to even shame.

[355] And I started digging through the literature, and I realized there was a whole vast array of literature from the 80s around even anxiety being a habit loop.

[356] And I was like, why didn't I learn this in residency?

[357] This is so interesting.

[358] Well, to bring it all the way back, it was novel in the 80s.

[359] And by the time you're learning, no one gives a shit, right?

[360] Yeah, exactly.

[361] It's already been published.

[362] Who cares if it might help people?

[363] Right, right.

[364] Yeah.

[365] Well, you know, I think people made the connection from a scientific standpoint, but I don't think there were clinicians in there saying, how can we actually use this?

[366] So that's one thing that we see, you know, there's this whole bench -to -bedside thing where it's like if you have a scientific discovery, how can you actually bring it into clinical practice?

[367] And there are a lot of people siloed in science.

[368] There are a lot of people siloed in clinical practice, but not many people doing translational work.

[369] And that's actually something that got me really interested in becoming a physician in the first place.

[370] You know, I loved chemistry.

[371] I love learning about how the body and the mind worked, but I also had this passion to really help people at the same time.

[372] And, you know, just studying organic chemistry wasn't going to do it for me. So that's when I decided to do this MD PhD program where it could actually combine my love of learning, my love of science with my interest in helping people.

[373] And so here I was in my office, you know, fast forward to when I was beginning as a psychiatrist struggling.

[374] And I was like, wait a minute, let's go back to the science.

[375] There's actually a lot to know here.

[376] And what we need to know is, okay, this is how habits are formed, right?

[377] And so we actually know this.

[378] The next step is how do we actually change habits?

[379] And this is where it got super interesting.

[380] Okay, it was already pretty interesting.

[381] But it got really interesting because it turns out that our brains work in a certain way, as in our brains are always comparing behaviors.

[382] Let's use an example.

[383] I like the one about broccoli and chocolate, right?

[384] So if I'm given a choice between eating broccoli and chocolate to my brain, it's a no -brainer, you know, chocolate.

[385] Yeah.

[386] And then you take the chocolate.

[387] My brain has this whole chocolate hierarchy set up.

[388] It's like milk chocolate down low on the list.

[389] Anything above 60%.

[390] Okay, now you're talking 70%, we're there, you know, sea salt, a little cayenne, maybe some, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[391] And then there's this nuance where my brain's got this whole reward value hierarchy set up.

[392] That's how our brains work.

[393] By the way, it is that dance, which is hysterical.

[394] Like, you don't even really think about it.

[395] But yeah, within your declaration that I like chocolate, there is within that a hundred other declarations.

[396] Yeah.

[397] Yeah, it's insanely complicated.

[398] Yeah, yeah.

[399] It's like fractal patterns.

[400] You can look at one inside it.

[401] inside it.

[402] So here, just knowing that was a big realization.

[403] It's like, wait a minute, this is the most powerful learning process in our brain.

[404] Why aren't we tapping into it?

[405] So I started looking to see, okay, how can we tap into it?

[406] So we set habits as a way to help our brains be efficient so they can learn new things.

[407] I think of it as set and forget.

[408] So let's say, let's go with the chocolate theme, when we're five years old and we go to our first birthday party, we learn the reward value of chocolate cake, you know, tastes good, but we also associate it with ice cream and friends and presents and play, you know, games and things like that.

[409] And then every time we go to a birthday party, we reinforce that and it gets stronger and stronger and stronger.

[410] So I think of it is set and forget.

[411] You set the reward value and you forget about the details, right?

[412] Because your brain's like, I got this.

[413] I already know it's rewarding.

[414] Boom.

[415] Let's move on.

[416] Yeah, and just to be really clear about that, right?

[417] So at that point, it's kind of moving almost into like a subconscious thing, right?

[418] Or it's just operating in the background.

[419] You're completely unaware of it, but you're responding to it despite your lack of awareness of it.

[420] Totally.

[421] Let's use another example, smoking, right?

[422] So my lab's done a bunch of research with smoking and how to help people quit smoking.

[423] The average age of the person coming into my study for smoking cessation is, I should say, the average age of when they started smoking, 13.

[424] So these are people in their middle age, they've been smoking for 30 years.

[425] They start when they're 13, right?

[426] Because they associate not the great taste of cigarettes, because actually nicotine's a toxin, right?

[427] It makes, you know, first time somebody smokes, they feel sick because there's bodies saying, dude, you're putting poison to me. Why are you doing this?

[428] And like, a very delicate little chamber with smoke.

[429] Why are you doing that?

[430] It's really delicate.

[431] I'm cool.

[432] I'm rebellying against my parents, you know, I am now acting older than my age or whatever.

[433] So, you know, this isn't about, hey, smoking's good for me. I think it's time.

[434] for me to be a mature, responsible seventh grader and start smoking for my health.

[435] So we set these habits when we're young, usually.

[436] And then we, you know, I had a patient who came to me who had been smoking 40 years.

[437] And, you know, we mapped out the number of times he'd reinforced this habit loop.

[438] Ready for this?

[439] 293 ,000.

[440] Oh, my God.

[441] He had reinforced this loop, you know, roughly 293 ,000 times.

[442] And of course, he couldn't think his way out of it.

[443] Well, by the way, and let's just compare it.

[444] So vastly more than his reward system for eating at that point.

[445] I'm sure he had not eaten 290 ,000 meals, not for sleeping, not for having sex, not for anything.

[446] It's probably the number one loop he had participated in.

[447] Yeah, yeah, 20 times a day.

[448] So we reinforce these things, and that set and forget actually frees our brain to learn new things, right?

[449] So imagine if we had to relearn everything every morning, from walking to putting on our clothes, to talking, to making food, to eating to everything.

[450] We'd be exhausted by breakfast, right?

[451] So we have to learn habits as a way to help us survive.

[452] It's a good thing in general.

[453] Yet we see all of these things, especially in modern day, where you can totally engineer things to be addictive, right?

[454] So there are these things that are food -like.

[455] I won't even call them food because they're not really food.

[456] But you can make things like the Doritos, you know, my favorite peer -review journal, The Onion.

[457] Uh -huh.

[458] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[459] They had a headline that says Dorito celebrates its one millionth ingredient, right?

[460] Ha ha ha.

[461] Oh, that's amazing.

[462] Oh, that's great.

[463] Yeah, because this thing is totally manufactured to get you addicted.

[464] Yeah.

[465] My wife and I were watching 60 Minutes about eight, nine years ago, and they had brought these food chemists to an orange grove.

[466] They were peeling the oranges and they were tasting it and they were all, and to watch them taste it, you know, it's kind of like watching semoliers or something where they were really, really good at thinking about it.

[467] breaking down the different characteristics of eating this orange.

[468] One of the guys said, so this is good, it's got this component, it's got this component.

[469] Why this is not good for us is that the taste lasts too long.

[470] So what we'd ideally like to do in the laboratory is recreate this exact hit, but make it dissipate immediately so that you'll want another bit of the product.

[471] So one of the goals in the engineering of the taste is that it goes away immediately so that you crave another one.

[472] And I was like, dude, how's a human going to compete with that?

[473] Probably one of the smartest, you know, chemical engineers in the world is figuring out how to make me eat more chips.

[474] I'm fucked.

[475] Yeah, I hope Anderson Cooper then asked him, how do you live with yourself?

[476] Well, I think we all get so myopic.

[477] He is certainly not picturing the 230 -pound eight -year -old when he makes that statement.

[478] He's just like tunnel vision on how you make this thing.

[479] Yeah.

[480] And what's rewarding is a bonus at the end of the year, you know, cash money.

[481] is cash money.

[482] Yeah.

[483] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[484] We've all been there.

[485] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[486] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[487] Like the unexplainable death of a returial.

[488] tired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[489] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[490] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[491] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[492] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[493] Prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon music.

[494] What's up guys?

[495] It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest.

[496] Okay, every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation and I don't mean just friends, I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox the list goes on.

[497] So follow watch and listen to Baby this is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[498] So anyway, I don't mean to demonize people.

[499] You know, we're all frail humans in this respect.

[500] But if you go back to this, you know, you can see how this habit formation gets, gets totally hijacked, you know, where we can now refine things, you know, like coca leaves are not addictive, but hey, cocaine.

[501] Mm -hmm.

[502] Mm -hmm.

[503] So all these things that we can actually refine and make, you know, and even technology, you where you can totally hijack this whole system by having intermittent reinforcement, which is just a fancy term for random rewards when you leave your bings and your beeps and your pings on your phone on because you never know when you're going to get one of those things.

[504] And your brain says, oh, is that food?

[505] Is that food?

[506] You know, because information is food.

[507] So all this stuff gets engineered in modern day making it really hard for us to compete with it.

[508] Yeah, the good news is this is not the end of the story.

[509] We're not all doomed.

[510] This is where I'm also a long -term optimist, but a short -term pessimist.

[511] It's like, you know, another pedestrian just got hit by a car because they forgot to look both ways because they were staring at their phone.

[512] Yeah.

[513] You know, it's like, really, we've come to this.

[514] Yeah.

[515] So here, if we understand the process, you know, we're not going to fall the victims to the tech industry or the food industry if we know how our brains work.

[516] But if we don't know how they work, you know, all bets are off.

[517] So here, just knowing these simple processes around, oh, you know, my brain learns by reinforcement learning.

[518] My brain has this reward hierarchy.

[519] This can help in very simple ways.

[520] And this is something that my lab has been studying, which is two things.

[521] One is, can we actually help people see the actual reward value right now of a behavior or a food?

[522] So for example, we have this app called Eat Right Now that teaches people to bring awareness to their eating patterns.

[523] It uses mindfulness training to really help them zoom in and pay a attention as they're eating.

[524] And we can actually model this out mathematically.

[525] We don't need to go into all the details, but there are these models where you can actually look at the reward value of a certain food.

[526] And so we have people pay attention as they eat.

[527] And then we ask them right afterwards, how satisfying or actually how content do you feel?

[528] So if they overeat or if they eat junk food when they're not actually hungry and they really pay attention afterwards, it doesn't feel that good.

[529] Right.

[530] Same for smoking a cigarette.

[531] People realize, oh, it tastes like shit.

[532] Oh, not very good.

[533] Within 10 times of people doing this, we can watch the reward value go from very high to virtually zero.

[534] Virtually zero.

[535] So it doesn't take a lot of paying attention.

[536] It simply takes really paying attention and being curious.

[537] Like, oh, what am I actually getting from this?

[538] Oh, you know, eating three pieces of cake doesn't actually feel very good.

[539] Right, right.

[540] So that helps to reduce the reward value of an old behavior so that set and forget that we set when we were five or when we were 13 gets updated in modern day, where we can see, oh, this isn't actually that rewarding.

[541] I actually put a short animation together on my YouTube channel that actually explain this a little bit if folks are interested.

[542] But basically, within 10 times we see this reduce, which then opens up the window for what I think of as the BBO, the bigger, better offer.

[543] Okay?

[544] So what we can then do is say, okay, well, if eating three pieces of cake isn't that great, or smoking a cigarette isn't that great, our brains are actually going to go back and keep doing it unless we give them something better.

[545] So here, I think of where can we find something that's not just a substitution?

[546] You know, it's like I have a lot of patients who will, you know, they quit cocaine and then they get addicted to exercise.

[547] Granted, exercise is good, but if you're addicted to exercise, you're more likely to get injured and you're not going to find it pleasurable because you're feeling, you know, that drive to exercise as compared to just enjoying it, all these things.

[548] So, you know, can we not just bring in a substitution behavior, but can we bring something in that's intrinsically rewarding and something that we all have, something you don't have to go and buy?

[549] Well, really quick, the fact that you're even designing the question to analyze contentment versus satisfying.

[550] Those are very, very specific words with very different specific meanings, and I think it's intentional.

[551] So, and again, just because I happen to be sober, I weirdly strive for contentment, which is not a sexy proposition when you're telling people.

[552] And I think it's worth just delineating those two things.

[553] So they're drastically different to you because I think you've got the wisdom of lived experience.

[554] It's so interesting that you pick that up because a lot of people just blow by that.

[555] And they're like, yeah, whatever, sounds good.

[556] So I'm curious, what's your experience, the difference between contentment and even satisfaction?

[557] But let's make it even easier for folks.

[558] Excitement.

[559] So I'll start with excitement and then let's get into the satisfaction versus contentment.

[560] Because we actually did some pilot studies to pick these words specifically.

[561] So excitement is something that I think modern day has gotten us all addicted to where it is it has gotten us to think that excitement equals happiness, right?

[562] Right, right.

[563] I was able to trace this back somewhere to experience time.

[564] where that it moved from things like eudaimonia, which is a contentment as happiness, to excitement -driven happiness and excitement gets us to buy things, you know?

[565] And so this is the basis for our consumer economies and societies.

[566] And physiological level, excitement lives in the mid -brain, right?

[567] And contentment lives in the front brain.

[568] Yeah.

[569] Right about that.

[570] So that excitement piece is actually there to get us to eat food.

[571] So let's go back to the dopamine firing, and then we'll talk about excitement versus.

[572] happiness.

[573] So dopamine fires when we get an unexpected reward, right?

[574] You're on the Savannah, you find food, bam, dopamine fires and says, remember where this was.

[575] It's not firing randomly.

[576] It's only firing when you find food.

[577] But if you keep going back to that spot, it's not going to keep firing when you get the food.

[578] It's going to start firing in anticipation of doing it.

[579] And that's where craving comes in.

[580] It says, go get the food, go get the food, go get the food.

[581] So we start, we think about, oh, you know, cake.

[582] And then that dopamine starts firing and says, well, dude, what are you doing sitting on the couch?

[583] The cake is in the kitchen.

[584] And so we get ants in our pants to get up.

[585] We get restless.

[586] We get that urge to go eat the cake.

[587] So it's also true for drinking for any other type of addiction, right?

[588] Yeah.

[589] We hear something.

[590] We see something.

[591] We smell something.

[592] We even have a thought that can trigger that craving that makes us go out and consume food to alcohol to anything else.

[593] So that is there to get us not content.

[594] but to get us to theoretically survive.

[595] Now, when it's co -opted by something that's anti -survivial, that's when we get into trouble.

[596] That's where addiction comes from.

[597] But it was set up as a survival mechanism.

[598] What we've done in modern day is that people equate excitement and that lack with getting us to get up off the couch and do something.

[599] So you see billboards that say, oh, you could have this car.

[600] You're only driving this car.

[601] So we have this urge.

[602] We're like, oh, I'm not good enough.

[603] I need to go earn money to buy that car, or I need to go buy that, you know, those clothes, or I need to eat that food, or I need to date that person, and then I'll be happy.

[604] So we're constantly driven in this hamster wheel of excitement -driven, must -get -this, must -get -this.

[605] The ancient Buddhist psychologists actually describe this in terms of a hungry ghost.

[606] Have you heard this?

[607] No. Okay.

[608] So picture a ghost.

[609] The ghost isn't as important as the anatomy of this ghost.

[610] So it's got a big mouth, a tiny narrow long esophagus, and a huge stomach.

[611] So it can try to shove as much food in as it can, but that belly is never going to be full.

[612] Can you relate to this?

[613] Oh, God, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[614] So that feeling of never good enough is what we're literally fed in like, well, just get more, just get more, just get more.

[615] Even with money, I think it was John D. Rockefeller who was quoted as saying, you know, somebody asked him how much money is enough?

[616] And he said, just a little bit more.

[617] Yeah, yeah, enough is a little bit more.

[618] Yeah.

[619] It's a pretty common AA saying, yeah.

[620] Yeah, he was one of the richest dudes in America, you know, at his time.

[621] So here, you know, we're being fed that excitement equals happiness.

[622] But when we really look at it carefully, it's anti -happiness because we're constantly restless being urged to do stuff to make ourselves happy.

[623] And then we're on this treadmill forever.

[624] It just elicits more and more craving.

[625] Yes, excitement elicits craving, and excitement and craving have very similar characteristics in the sense of they have that restless drive.

[626] There's like an adrenal component to it, right?

[627] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[628] So there's excitement.

[629] That's kind of a clear end of the spectrum.

[630] But I want to state that clearly because a lot of people don't realize that excitement isn't actually that great.

[631] It doesn't feel that great.

[632] It's just exciting.

[633] Right, right, right.

[634] Yeah.

[635] But again, so many of our favorite memories involve that state of being, right?

[636] So going to an amusement park when you're little.

[637] You're looking forward to writing your BMX bike on this track.

[638] All these things are like, you know, for me, I was an excitement junkie.

[639] So for me, you know, and I wrote a whole chapter in my book about this, I was addicted to romantic love.

[640] You know, that was my thing in college.

[641] It was like, how can we have more romance?

[642] How can we make this date even more romantic?

[643] And just think of all the different songs that are written about love.

[644] And, you know, what's, who is it, love hurts, love burns?

[645] Love hurts.

[646] Was that, you, you sang it perfectly.

[647] Oh, boy.

[648] Oh, Monica, looks like I got a new cohort.

[649] Oh, no. He'll never hear me say that.

[650] So, yeah.

[651] She has no craving for my singing.

[652] Wait, I do have a question about this relationship -based.

[653] Because I do think people feel when they're in a new relationship or they've gone on a date, they're always evaluating.

[654] Does that person make me excited?

[655] Am I excited to talk to that person?

[656] Well, butterflies.

[657] Butterflies are like nerve.

[658] Yeah, their anxiety, right?

[659] Like, it's actually just that you feel anxious that you're unsafe because you don't know what they're going to do or how it's going to be.

[660] If they love you or not.

[661] Yeah, and it translates into excitement, which people chase, but actually is negative.

[662] Absolutely.

[663] Absolutely.

[664] And there's actually some good neuroimaging research.

[665] around that, showing that in early romantic love relationships, like when people are right at the beginning of a relationship, it activates their reward pathways in their brain, this brain part called the ventral tegmental area, which produces dopamine.

[666] It gets activated.

[667] And it also activates a part of their brain called the posterior singular cortex, which is a self -referential part of the brain.

[668] You know, because the early stages of romantic love, it's not about the connection.

[669] It's about me, you know, am I going to get that kiss?

[670] Is this person going to like me?

[671] You know, it's me, me, me, me, me, me. My labs actually studied this a bit serendipitously because we found that that's the same brain region that quietes down when people are meditating.

[672] And in particular, it quietes down when people are doing a type of meditation called loving kindness, which is related to love, but it's a selfless quality of love.

[673] The Greeks called this agape, right?

[674] It's the love toward humankind as compared to the eros, which is romantic love.

[675] So it's really interesting to see that these things line up where the selfish type of love, the me type of love, activates the self -referential network.

[676] It activates these reward centers, whereas self -less love deactivates them.

[677] And funny aside, my mom, when I would start a new romantic relationship, my mom would say, don't tell me her name for three months.

[678] because you're just in the infatuation stage.

[679] And she's like, if it lasts more than three months, then tell me her name because it's outlasted the me phase.

[680] Yeah, right, right, right.

[681] But then, okay, so if contentment, which is essentially safety at some point, well, I'm sure we'll get there.

[682] But in a relationship, it's once you hit the point where you feel safe with each other, why do people, once they get there, like, have affairs, go back to wanting the excitement.

[683] Yeah, I think, so there's no one answer to this, but one of the answers to this is that they're probably lacking something.

[684] And whether it's a feeling of connection or there's a lot of insecurity that often comes in when people are chasing affairs and things like that, where they're looking to feel alive, you know, and there's this, there's this exciting quality of the chase of the forbidden and all this stuff where they're lacking something fundamental.

[685] in their relationship.

[686] And often it's because of them.

[687] There are lots of things that go into this, but maybe they're feeling insecure or they're feeling, you know, there could be a gazillion things that are making them feel this lack.

[688] Whereas if they actually look at that relationship and look at what it feels like to be truly connected with somebody in a truly selfless way, if we just look at what it feels like when we're constantly trying to hold on to things versus when we're just being generous, like generosity itself feels so much better, and it gets us into contentment land.

[689] We're like, oh, when I'm when I give, I'm not expecting anything in return, like when we're truly generous, that puts us into this open, connected quality with others, whereas when we're constantly worrying about, am I getting enough love, there's this holding on, this contracted quality to that that actually doesn't feel very good.

[690] And so, of course, our brain says, oh, that doesn't feel good.

[691] do something to make yourself feel better.

[692] And interestingly, that lack, that restless quality says, oh, wait a minute, what does this share?

[693] Oh, excitement has a similar quality.

[694] Let me go find excitement.

[695] And so we might actually fall into that simply by our brain trying to help us survive, so to speak.

[696] Interesting.

[697] It's so fascinating to hear you say that.

[698] And of course, then just while you're talking, kind of evaluate my 13 -year relationship.

[699] And I guess if there's a side of the equation that, yes, I can.

[700] could be way better at, and probably many of us could be, is building the time to be mindful and aware of what you're actually getting out of it.

[701] Because it just becomes such a habitual pattern in this working machine.

[702] And if you have kids, that only exacerbates that.

[703] You could really miss the moment where you're like, wait, what am I getting out of this whole thing?

[704] Let's try to focus and be aware of and feel and experience the rewards because they can kind of get pretty quiet on the volume side, you know?

[705] They can.

[706] And interestingly, our brains are pretty good at turning up that amp game where we can actually pick these up moment to moment.

[707] It's just that we pass them by.

[708] Yeah.

[709] It kind of also dovetails into what you were saying earlier, which is the relationship itself, to be efficient, gets filed into that subconscious almost.

[710] Like the relationship itself is a habit and requires no thought.

[711] And it's quite easy to just be on the road of like, okay, that's sort of, this is a system that is now function.

[712] And now I can concentrate on something else.

[713] Yeah.

[714] And I think, Monica, you might have even mentioned this.

[715] That safety piece becomes familiar and comfortable.

[716] And so we take it for granted.

[717] Whereas we could be looking at our relationships every day and just even a moment of touch or even a moment where our partner has thought about us or said something nice.

[718] Instead of just letting that pass by, just take a moment to reflect on that and revel in that, savor it.

[719] where it's like, oh, what's this feel like?

[720] It feels pretty good.

[721] We add up those short moments throughout the day and then we're realizing, wow, this is a very rich, wonderful relationship without having to like go to the extremes and have, you know, these extravagant date nights or whatnot, which we can certainly do on top of it.

[722] Yeah.

[723] But it's what happens every day.

[724] If we just take a moment to be aware of that, we can see that this is, you know, what I think of as the bigger, better offer.

[725] Yeah.

[726] One thing I had to do, And the only reason I did it because it was life or death for me. But for the last 15 years, when I wake up, I have a ritual I do.

[727] I have to daily wake up and remind myself I'm an addict that I will never ever have a beer and it'll be normal for me. And I learned the hard way through many, many relapses that I can't take that for granted.

[728] I have to daily remember that's the condition I have.

[729] And I have to put a few minutes into it.

[730] Not a ton, but I have to every morning remember as I start my day, hey, you're an addict.

[731] So I'm recognizing my guilt in that I never wake up and go like, oh, you have this relationship and it needs to be on the forefront of your mind because it has all this value to your life and you need to, you know, it's interesting.

[732] I certainly don't treat my relationship like I do my addiction.

[733] So it might be something to explore even, and it's not like it has to become a ritual, although rituals can be really helpful for setting anything as a habit like you're talking about.

[734] But even as you go throughout the day, you could just keep in the back of your head.

[735] let me just keep my eyes open for, you know, something sweet that's small that's happened in our relationship.

[736] You know, some people practice this at night where they reflect back on their day.

[737] They do a little bit of gratitude practice as a way to help remember some of these moments.

[738] But even as we go through the day, it doesn't take any extra time to simply just, oh, well, that was a nice thing.

[739] You know, or, oh, we just stood together and looked into each other's eyes for a moment as we made coffee.

[740] You know, the coffee, we're waiting for it to pour anyway.

[741] So, you know, there it is.

[742] Oh, wow.

[743] And then they start adding up in a way that doesn't take much effort feels great and helps us really set that really nice, solid foundation of connected contentment.

[744] Uh -huh.

[745] Okay, so now contentment.

[746] So for me, I would define contentment is basically just the absence of craving, just being fine, not insatiable desire.

[747] thought frame.

[748] Yeah.

[749] I think that's a beautiful definition.

[750] And it's subtly different than satisfaction, right?

[751] And so how would you describe satisfaction?

[752] Well, satisfaction to me would be, ooh, I don't need any more.

[753] I don't need any more.

[754] I can almost only achieve it with food.

[755] Yeah.

[756] That's one of the only times where it's like I just go, go, go, and tell I'm like, okay, I don't think I could eat any more.

[757] so it's so interesting that you used food as an example because that is what we specifically studied we were setting up this craving tool for our eat right now app and we were choosing between the words satisfied and content and we did some pilot testing and what we found was exactly what you're describing which is we can eat a bunch of food until we're satisfied i can't eat any more but we don't necessarily feel content when we're satisfied right Oh, yeah, quite often, when I have the feeling of satisfaction, I know I've probably done something that was off of my goal.

[758] Yeah.

[759] Whereas contentment says, you know, I don't need this to be happy.

[760] I don't need to eat more to be happy.

[761] Yeah, the Swedes have a word for this.

[762] They have this word that they really value in Sweden, which is not too much, not too little.

[763] As a culture, they're aiming at this precise moment between not too much, not too little.

[764] which I just think, what a great cultural aspiration.

[765] Yeah, as compared to more, more, more, more.

[766] Yeah, yeah.

[767] Here it's more, more, more, more, more.

[768] Yeah, how much is enough?

[769] Just a little bit more.

[770] That sounds like a great thing.

[771] And it reminds me of balance.

[772] You know, not too much, not too little.

[773] It's like you're right on this balance point where you're not either, you know, trying to run away from things that are unpleasant or hold on to things that are pleasant, which is where these basic learning mechanisms come in.

[774] You know, something's pleasant.

[775] We want more of it.

[776] Something's unpleasant.

[777] We want less of it.

[778] Can we actually find this balance where we're content without needing more or needing to get away from things that are unpleasant?

[779] So how do you, as someone who designs apps and stuff, how do you incentivize contentment?

[780] Because, again, it's only something that was a byproduct of this other way of life I had to adopt for survival.

[781] and then only through experiencing did I recognize the sublime nature of it.

[782] But I don't think anyone could have sold me. I'm like, you're not going to feel anything.

[783] You're not going to want anything more.

[784] You know, it's a hard thing to incentivize, no?

[785] It is.

[786] And I don't think you can incentivize it in a way that the typical gamification industry does.

[787] So gamification is about lack.

[788] It's about trying to jack the dopamine system.

[789] It's about novelty.

[790] You know, it's about all these things.

[791] That's why there are levels in games.

[792] That's where they're surprise.

[793] You know, all these things are set up to jack the dopamine system.

[794] When you're in dopaminergic mode, you're never going to be content because dopamine is not about contentment.

[795] It's about drive to do things, right?

[796] So when we looked at that, our aim was not to try to incentivize things, but to help people find their natural rewards.

[797] And what we've found, and we're still studying this.

[798] Okay, you ready to do an experiment?

[799] Let's do a sort of experiment together.

[800] Okay, so I'm going to start with two categories and then we're going to get to the reward piece.

[801] So start with, let's use fear or anxiety.

[802] So pick one of those and tell me if it feels more closed or more open.

[803] So both of you.

[804] Closed.

[805] Yeah, restrictive, closed, yeah.

[806] Close, yeah.

[807] How about joy?

[808] Open for me. Yeah, yeah.

[809] How about connection?

[810] Yeah, endless to me. Oh, this is a great one, because this is where Monica and I a little bit differ.

[811] I guess if I'm being really honest with myself, I do feel, I feel closed, like, encapsulated.

[812] Encapsulated?

[813] How about, because often encapsulated to me signifies safety.

[814] Correct.

[815] How does safety feel, closed or open?

[816] Safety feels closed to me. Okay.

[817] So, like swaddled, cups.

[818] Huddled.

[819] Yes.

[820] Cozy?

[821] Okay.

[822] How about curiosity, closed or open, for both of you?

[823] Open.

[824] Open, yeah.

[825] Okay.

[826] So let's just use the simple ones like curiosity.

[827] How about kindness?

[828] Does it feel closed or open?

[829] Open.

[830] Closed.

[831] Really?

[832] Yeah, so here's where you and I. Kindness feels closed.

[833] Yeah.

[834] I have this weird.

[835] Yeah, it doesn't feel bottomless.

[836] Okay.

[837] So let's pick some of the simple.

[838] category.

[839] So I heard anxiety and fear both felt close to you both.

[840] And then curiosity and joy, both felt open.

[841] Oh, yeah.

[842] Okay.

[843] So now let's put this in simple reward terms.

[844] Which one would you rather have?

[845] Just the category of closed versus open.

[846] Open.

[847] Open.

[848] Okay.

[849] So there's that without even defining these things.

[850] Notice how I specifically didn't define them.

[851] But you kind of knew this intuitively from your own experience, things that feel open are more rewarding.

[852] You see the difference?

[853] Like, I'd rather have something that's more open, signifying that it's more rewarding.

[854] So to our brains, there's an intrinsic reward value hierarchy, kind of like that chocolate hierarchy, that's already set up.

[855] Things that are more closed don't actually feel as good as things that are more open.

[856] So here, we don't have to incentivize people toward open because, you know, the incentive structure is already set up in our brains.

[857] And fortunately, although long -term optimism, short -term pessimism, cooperativity is something that seems to be in our DNA.

[858] Even Darwin wrote about this before DNA was even discovered.

[859] Paul Ekman, famous Emotions researcher has talked about this as well, where cooperativity is something that we all kind of have in us, And it feels better, you know, like when we're working as a team as compared to when we're trying to just, you know, beat everybody else out as an individual feels better.

[860] Right.

[861] So this is something we have.

[862] We don't have to incentivize.

[863] All we have to do is give people the tools to learn to become more aware of how rewarding one is versus another.

[864] So as an example, with our Eat Right Now app, we simply have people pay attention when they eat and they see how unrewarding it is when they eat.

[865] because of anxiety or stress.

[866] And they see how rewarding it is to stop eating when they're full.

[867] And also they find types of food to be more rewarding.

[868] So for me, I lost all interest in eating gummy worms because when I paid attention, they just, they taste kind of like this petroleum product.

[869] And then I started really paying attention to things like blueberries.

[870] And blueberries just have this natural goodness to them.

[871] It's like this perfect balance of sweetness and, you know, not urging me to eat more.

[872] Uh -huh.

[873] Yeah, so there, you know, just like that orange researcher, you pointed out, you know, it's like, this is actually pretty good because it doesn't make us want to crave more.

[874] So we don't have to actually design this into our apps.

[875] All we need to design into the apps is train people to become aware.

[876] But isn't there just structurally?

[877] So that midbrain is very immediate focused and the frontal cortex is long -term.

[878] Right?

[879] So even when you say, like, if you're curious about it, the reward is that you don't feel good after you eat a bunch of gummy worms, but you do feel good if you eat a bunch of blueberries.

[880] Isn't that an issue of time horizon when you're evaluating it?

[881] Like, forcing the evaluation to be something that's 20 minutes from now as opposed to right now.

[882] I would say yes to both.

[883] So let's unpack that a little bit more.

[884] There's a thing called delayed discounting.

[885] where so on the y axis is reward value and on the x axis uh is time so over time we're more likely to discount things that are more rewarding you know it's like we'll we'll give up a greater reward in the future for a smaller reward immediately and the classic studies around this are you know i'll give you a hundred and twenty dollars in a week versus i'll give you a hundred dollars right now And they, you know, we're like, well, I don't know if I'll ever see you again.

[886] So I want the hundred bucks now.

[887] Even though $120 in a week, you know, it's a pretty good interest rate.

[888] Yes, yes.

[889] So we'd rather have, you know, that's the bird in hand versus, you know, two in the bush thing.

[890] Our brains are set up for immediate rewards because we don't know if we're going to be alive tomorrow, basically, from a survival standpoint.

[891] Right.

[892] So we will favor immediate rewards, like you're saying.

[893] And if we pay attention, let's.

[894] use the blueberry versus gummy worm, if we pay attention right now, we can actually start to see that there is a difference in the reward value.

[895] And this is where it gets to, you know, the gummy worms have this, for me, have this uber sickly sweet quality to them that makes me want to eat more.

[896] I couldn't actually have gummy worms in the house because I would eat the whole bag in one sitting.

[897] The idea is, you know, for me, I would just eat the whole thing and I'd be like, well, at least they're out of the house.

[898] And it wasn't actually that pleasant, but it was a driven type of eating, which doesn't actually feel that good.

[899] So it didn't taste that good.

[900] It didn't feel that good.

[901] And it was driven.

[902] It was more of an addictive thing.

[903] Whereas with blueberries, I have blueberries in my refrigerator right now because I don't eat them all in one sitting.

[904] I can eat a handful and be pretty content.

[905] So the immediate reward when I pay attention to it is actually there.

[906] Blueberries are actually more rewarding in the moment than gummy worms are.

[907] in a number of factors, it's only when I pay attention to those rewards that I actually start to see it as compared to that zombie -like driven quality of just eating the whole bag of gummy worms.

[908] Yeah.

[909] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[910] Yeah, even as you're saying it just, for me it's not gummy worms, but let's say it was Oreos.

[911] Yeah, just in my mind, I'd have to really be aware of why the blueberry was as well.

[912] good as the Oreo, because it just, on the surface, right, Monica, there's just no comparison, right?

[913] Yeah, it requires so much awareness, yeah.

[914] Okay, so the primary hack for you, right, is mindfulness.

[915] Is that our way out of all this stuff?

[916] Yes.

[917] So mindfulness actually trains us to pay attention.

[918] You know, that's its primary goal is to help us pay attention.

[919] And to focus it.

[920] I was just going to say, I think of mindfulness as, you know, we're walking around our entire our lives not knowing how our minds work.

[921] And then mindfulness helps us learn how our minds work so we can see these patterns.

[922] So we can see these cause and effect relationship so we can see when we're being pushed or pulled.

[923] And so you've picked a perfect time to be in the field you are in because we have fMRI machines now, right?

[924] Like everything prior, as you said, psychiatry and psychology is a very new science.

[925] And for so much of that time, a blind one.

[926] We can't observe anything that's actually happening in the mind.

[927] But now we're in this era where we're starting to really see what's happening in the mind.

[928] So what's happening with meditation?

[929] Why is it actually good for us physically?

[930] Well, we could we could spend hours talking about this.

[931] So I'll focus on some of the things related to habits and our brains.

[932] Yeah.

[933] Because those are some of the things that my lab has studied.

[934] My first studies were actually with addictions.

[935] So with alcohol and cocaine use disorders.

[936] And I was just looking to see, you know, can mindfulness training actually help with hardcore addictions.

[937] And our first study, we found that it was as good as gold standard treatment in helping people not relapse to alcohol or cocaine use disorder.

[938] It was a small pilot study, so we did our next study where we did this larger randomized control trial for smoking cessation.

[939] We found that it was five times better, five times better than gold standard treatment at helping people quit.

[940] What was the gold standard treatment for smoking cessation at that time?

[941] It was, the American Lung Association has a program called Freedom from Smoking.

[942] Okay.

[943] And it's still used.

[944] It's still probably one of the more widely used programs.

[945] But we found that mindfulness training could actually help people more than that.

[946] And mechanistically, we figured out that it was actually decoupling that urge from action.

[947] So people could learn to be with their craving.

[948] That's what mindfulness helps people do.

[949] It's like, oh, here's a craving.

[950] I can be with this rather than habitually act on it.

[951] So when we saw those significant results, we started asking, you know, what's going on in the brain?

[952] And I started by studying experienced meditators, people who had been meditating a long time and comparing them to people we taught to meditate, you know, that morning that we were scanning their brains.

[953] This is where we've stumbled it onto the default mode network, which is that, you know, the post -year singular that we talked about earlier, is this hub of the default mode network, which is involved in self -referential processing, basically the me, part of the brain.

[954] The ego, right?

[955] Yeah, you could think of it that way.

[956] I am this thing that's an individual from everything else.

[957] Yeah, and there's a conceptual component.

[958] Like, I could wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, oh, yep, that's Judd.

[959] You know, this is where we can look at this at ourselves and see conceptually, this is who I am.

[960] But there's another component, which is the experiential self.

[961] And so getting back to that close versus open thing that we played with earlier, when we're closed down or contracted, that's actually a marker that says, this is where I am, because we feel, you know, this is me, and this creates this boundary or this barrier between myself and the rest of the world.

[962] So I'm here, the rest of the world's out there.

[963] So this network, the default one network, gets activated when basically whenever we get caught up in our experience, when we get caught up in a craving, when we get caught up in worry, when we get caught up in shame.

[964] So talking about shame spirals, shame is when we feel, oh, I'm a bad person, and that doesn't feel expanded.

[965] It feels contracted.

[966] You know, it feels closed down.

[967] Yeah, we feel very isolated in our shame, right?

[968] Yeah.

[969] We're certainly not sharing it with everyone else.

[970] Right.

[971] So this network gets activated with all of these contracted qualities of experience.

[972] In fact, it gets really quiet.

[973] It gets deactivated when people are meditating, whether it's just basic breath awareness, meditation, which is a common mindfulness practice, whether it's this loving kindness practice where one is kind of touching into this feeling of warmth and well -wishing towards oneself and others, or even some of these practices we call choiceless awareness, where somebody is just being aware of whatever's arising in their awareness, seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, all those things.

[974] This network gets really quiet and experienced meditators.

[975] We even had Anderson Cooper from 60 Minutes when he was doing a show on meditation.

[976] he came into our lab where we hooked him up.

[977] We had this EEG neurofeedback rig in our lab where we could actually give people feedback from their own brains in real time while they're meditating.

[978] Yeah.

[979] So he did this on camera.

[980] And first, you know, we said, okay, think of a time when you're anxious.

[981] It actually went off the charts.

[982] Sure, sure.

[983] Well, he's a type A motherfucker.

[984] I'm sure the thing is a very sharp arrow in his quiver.

[985] Yeah, yeah.

[986] So he was pretty familiar with that territory.

[987] And then he started meditating.

[988] And he'd been meditating for the last month like he was on fire.

[989] You know, he's meditating.

[990] He's like, I get in a cab, I meditate, get him playing on meditate.

[991] He was just on fire with it.

[992] And so he started meditating and that brain regions got really, really quiet.

[993] You can actually see this on film on 60 minutes.

[994] So here, we could precisely line up this brain regional activity with this self -referential part of the brain gets activated when we get caught up in our experience.

[995] It gets deactivated when meditating.

[996] Also on mushrooms, right?

[997] This is Michael Pollan's big.

[998] Yes.

[999] Yeah.

[1000] It kind of destroys.

[1001] the sense of self in a helpful way.

[1002] Yeah, I think of it as throwing a hand grenade in the brain where it blows up the self.

[1003] And this is actually how Michael and I became friends was he was starting to write about this when he was doing early research for his book.

[1004] And then he came and visited my lab and actually we hooked him up to the same feedback machinery that we had hooked Anderson Cooper up to.

[1005] He writes a little bit about this in the book.

[1006] I don't want to give a spoiler alert about the book too much, but basically even recalling experiences when he, he had been on shrooms, could bring back that feeling of open expansion and deactivate his brain activity without him even needing to be on the mushrooms themselves.

[1007] Yeah.

[1008] And there's great bliss in the destruction of those barriers, right?

[1009] Between ourselves and nature and our environment and our friends and family, right?

[1010] There's joy there.

[1011] Would you say it is rewarding?

[1012] I would.

[1013] And I'd say it's the ultimate version of open, right?

[1014] Is that I'm just bleeding out into everything else.

[1015] Yeah, it's the kind of the apex of openness, I would say.

[1016] I totally agree.

[1017] There's actually a concept, you're both probably familiar with it, called Flow.

[1018] Mehi, Chicks, and Mahi.

[1019] Oh, yeah.

[1020] Oh, yeah.

[1021] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1022] I chase states of flow.

[1023] And quite often this show for us is a state of flow, which is what I love it.

[1024] Yeah.

[1025] So just as an example, when you're, totally ingressed in a conversation, lose all sense of time, we lose all self -consciousness because we're not worried about, oh, what am I going to say?

[1026] We're just like, oh, this is so fun, this is exciting.

[1027] This is fascinating.

[1028] I wouldn't even say it's exciting.

[1029] I would say it's fascinating.

[1030] We're totally in the flow.

[1031] Yes, curious.

[1032] So we actually had people get in our fMRI scanner, and we had one person report that she got into a state of flow simply by paying attention to our breath.

[1033] And her posterior singular activity bottomed out.

[1034] watch this, you know, in real time.

[1035] So here, we can even line this up in, you know, this state of flow in real time with brain activity and it fits perfectly, right?

[1036] So Chicks on Mahai talks about flow as if being selfless, right?

[1037] So if you move from the contracted quality of experience and you start expanding and expanding, well, at some point, you lose a sense of where you end and the rest of the world begins.

[1038] Yeah.

[1039] So you can actually start to notice that, oh, you know, here's contraction, here's expansion.

[1040] The expansion feels better.

[1041] So when we can start to find the conditions that support flow, we can start to support those more and more.

[1042] And curiosity is one of my favorite ones there.

[1043] It's a, I think of it as a superpower.

[1044] Yeah.

[1045] In fact, last fall I was leading a retreat with the women's Olympic water polo team.

[1046] And this is their first, you know, week -long, silent retreat that they'd ever done.

[1047] and their coach was really thoughtful.

[1048] He wanted to help them with mental training.

[1049] You know, they'd just won the Olympic gold medal.

[1050] They'd won the Pan Am games like two weeks before we went on retreat.

[1051] So they're, you know, and they've won the world championships as well.

[1052] They're doing all right, let's say.

[1053] Yeah.

[1054] But he wanted to really help them develop, you know, and learn more about their minds.

[1055] And so we were teaching them.

[1056] I had a co -leader, Dr. Robin Baudet, and I were teaching them these concepts around curiosity, where they can bring curiosity into the moment when they're starting to feel closed or contracted, like if they're behind a couple of points in a game instead of worrying, oh, no, are we going to lose?

[1057] They could get curious, like, oh, what's going on?

[1058] How do we need to, you know, change up our strategy or whatever?

[1059] So they can get into this space of flow as compared to worrying, which is going to move them in the opposite direction.

[1060] Yeah, it's almost like curiosity is also synonymous with solution.

[1061] Wow, that's so interesting.

[1062] You know, because if you start focusing on like, we're losing fuck, we're fuck, now you're really focusing on the mistakes.

[1063] Those are in the past.

[1064] But if you have this curiosity about what we could be doing better, it just, I think, lends itself to solution.

[1065] You know, and that also points to the difference between the destination versus the journey.

[1066] Right.

[1067] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1068] So the team made this really interesting comment.

[1069] They were talking about, I think this is the Pan Am game.

[1070] and a couple of the athletes had gotten rotavirus or some stomach flu on the way down.

[1071] And so they had to basically quarantine them so the rest of the team didn't get sick.

[1072] We were asking, so what was most rewarding?

[1073] And they said, well, it wasn't winning the medals.

[1074] It was actually the journey, the struggle that we all went on together as a team.

[1075] That's what's most rewarding to me, as they were saying.

[1076] You know, and so it's really focusing on the journey as the destination, right?

[1077] It's not like I have to win Olympic gold medal.

[1078] It's, wow, this feels really good striving together.

[1079] And that's really what flow is.

[1080] That's, you know, finding the solution in the process.

[1081] It's like, oh, I'm not worried about what's going to happen.

[1082] I'm just focusing on what's happening right now.

[1083] Let's follow this journey of discovery.

[1084] And that journey of discovery becomes the solution every moment.

[1085] Well, and in so many ways, as we're saying, you have to kind of transcend some of this evolutionary hardware, but then you also have to transcend our culture, right, which is a capitalistic, individualistic gold metal culture, which is a layer that's just as powerful as the biological layer, and it too needs transcending, right?

[1086] And it too needs to be fought against.

[1087] It does.

[1088] It does.

[1089] And here, it's interesting you use the word fought against.

[1090] Because it's grammatically incorrect or because No. No, no, no. Because that is our, even that's our capitalistic notion, which is, you know, just push harder.

[1091] And, you know, this goes back to the, we can't think our way out of bad habits.

[1092] We can't think our way into happiness.

[1093] Here, it's like, oh, we need to fight against this because that's the culture.

[1094] Yeah.

[1095] So even the culture is inculturated here.

[1096] Yeah.

[1097] So we can ask ourselves, well, what feels better than fighting against capitalistic culture.

[1098] Well, what's it feel like to be content?

[1099] What's it feel like to be generous?

[1100] And even tapping into those and bringing awareness to those helps us find those as the bigger, better offer, that we naturally inclined toward without having to fight.

[1101] You're right, you're right.

[1102] And I just think the nature of human motivation is such that, yeah, you'd have to present an option that's actually better than the gold medal ceremony in the commercial.

[1103] And for me, I more and more believe the people.

[1104] And in my own life, I've experienced, like, I say this regularly is like, on my deathbed, am I going to think about the movie poster in the opening weekend?

[1105] Or am I going to think about the four months with this group of 100 people that resulted in that?

[1106] And shifting that thought, for me is challenging.

[1107] I don't know how challenging it is for other people, but for me, I am so reward -based in a reward -chaser that I have to, like, hourly remind myself, No, no, no, no. The ride is the, is the reward.

[1108] And it's easier and easier to remind ourselves of that when we just reflect on it and say, well, what did it feel like to work together on this film?

[1109] You know, oh, how'd that feel?

[1110] And just kind of savoring that journey helps it become more and more in the forefront of our minds so that we're not looking at the poster.

[1111] We're looking at, well, wait a minute, who cares about it.

[1112] It's a poster.

[1113] Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1114] oh, this is the meaningful part.

[1115] And just that reflection helps it stick in our minds more.

[1116] It's like, oh, this is the juice here.

[1117] This is the best part of life.

[1118] Yeah, and I think it applies to every single field.

[1119] It's like there are a lot of people living their lives, which is I'm going to suck this up and eat shit for the next year so that I could get the management job that will then liberate me. And then they'll only land there to find out there's yet a CEO position that you could covet.

[1120] And then you'll eat shit and not enjoy any of that.

[1121] that until you end up there and then bad news you're on you're on your deathbed and you know it's too late and so here's the irony is that the more we try to crawl over everybody else and step on everybody else to get there the harder it is to get there but when we just sit back and enjoy the ride we actually find that we become more creative we become more productive we're less burned out we're more resilient because we're actually enjoying this we don't have to eat shit Yeah, yeah, our values rising as we enjoy the process, which is counterintuitive maybe.

[1122] Okay, fantastic.

[1123] Sorry, I have one more question.

[1124] I just want to get out because we don't really have many neuroscientists on here.

[1125] Okay.

[1126] And I feel that in the field of neuroscience, it could lend itself to feeling like people don't have free will because we're just like chemicals firing.

[1127] You must know Sam Harris, if you're just into meditating.

[1128] Right, right.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] Ham, obviously, is kind of a proponent of this theory.

[1131] Yeah, except he's also really into meditating.

[1132] So that's kind of interesting as well, because I wonder if do you feel like the only way to have any control is awareness?

[1133] Because otherwise, we're just chemicals firing if we're not paying attention.

[1134] Or responding to all these, yeah, reacting.

[1135] Yeah.

[1136] Yeah.

[1137] And short answer is yes.

[1138] Without awareness, we're basically just automaton's where it's, you know, ones and zero is pleasant, pleasant, unpleasant, pleasant, pleasant.

[1139] pleasant, unpleasant.

[1140] So awareness is what helps us start to get back into the driver's seat.

[1141] Yeah.

[1142] Cool.

[1143] That was a great question.

[1144] Free will.

[1145] I am curious because the world we're living in is so dramatically different than the one we were designed to live in.

[1146] And there are some limits I'd assumed to how much we can combat that with mindfulness and stuff.

[1147] And I do wonder if our future, because it ain't going anywhere, the trajectory of technology is not slowing.

[1148] We're not going banish it.

[1149] Will we start augmenting?

[1150] Will we update this hardware with auxiliary things to help us deal with all these new challenges of this very frenetic world where we're no longer in a group of 100 people?

[1151] We're in a group of 7 billion.

[1152] We're aware of the 7 billion.

[1153] We're dealing with their ups and down.

[1154] There's just so many crazy things that I do wonder if we are going to eventually accept the notion of some kind of auxiliary help with our brains.

[1155] Do you think that is the future?

[1156] Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting.

[1157] I think there's a combination of this where there are probably places where machines will maybe never be able to approximate humans.

[1158] If you look at the chess machines, they're really good at, you know, kind of simulating a gazillion moves at once.

[1159] And so, you know, they beat the was a deep blue that beat Kaspirov or whatever.

[1160] But then when they started doing these tournaments where you could combine humans.

[1161] with machines, humans are much better at strategy than machines.

[1162] And then they start to beat the pants off machines.

[1163] So here, I think we can augment things where when we need simulations, where you can simulate things, the machines are going to be really helpful.

[1164] We can augment things that way.

[1165] But at the same time, I don't know if we'll ever be able to approximate the human experience, at least in our lifetimes, around the long term thinking, the broad picture, the strategy move.

[1166] And I think that's what really makes us human.

[1167] That's where creativity comes in.

[1168] You know, that's where kindness comes in, you know, all these things.

[1169] What was the movie Ex Machina, where, you know, talk about, you know, I won't spoil the end, but, you know, it's a great example of where, you know, if you just feed us into an, into an learning algorithm, we're going to miss some things that are really, really important.

[1170] Yeah.

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] Okay, so Dr. Brewer, where would people go to find your apps to help them curate mindfulness and start practicing these kinds of things?

[1173] Yeah, so I have a website called Dr. Judd .com, DRJUD.

[1174] I also have a YouTube channel of the same name.

[1175] And on the website, people can find our apps, you know, this anxiety app called unwinding anxiety.

[1176] We have an eating app.

[1177] Feels very appropriate right now, I bet, for people.

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] Yeah, totally.

[1180] So people can find that.

[1181] They can find my book.

[1182] on the website.

[1183] So Dr .JUD .com is probably the easiest.

[1184] They can follow me on Twitter at Judd Brewer, J -U -D, B -R -U -W -E -R.

[1185] Those are probably the easiest places to find me. It's so great to talk to you.

[1186] Thanks for taking the time.

[1187] And such exciting work, I can't wait to follow you and all the developments that are coming our way.

[1188] Thank you.

[1189] It's my pleasure.

[1190] Okay, be safe.

[1191] You too.

[1192] Bye.

[1193] Bye.

[1194] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1195] Judd Brewer Judd Brewer Can you even think of another Judd?

[1196] Apatow.

[1197] Yep.

[1198] I'm glad we had a neurologist on.

[1199] Yeah, well.

[1200] A neuroscientist.

[1201] Very good timing for you and all your thoughts of neural pathways and transmission.

[1202] I didn't get to ask him all the questions I wanted about your ailment.

[1203] Yeah.

[1204] I thought maybe that would not be productive for us, but I had questions.

[1205] We should get an arthritis doctor on here so I can really purve out.

[1206] So you're allowed, but I'm not.

[1207] No, you are.

[1208] I'm just saying I'm surprised we haven't gotten an arthritis doctor that I can basically just treat me real time in the interview.

[1209] I know.

[1210] Okay.

[1211] So Judd.

[1212] He talks about the two -body problem, which is a dilemma for life partners in academia, relating to the difficulty of both spouses obtaining jobs at the same university or within a reasonable commuting distance from each other.

[1213] That would be very hard.

[1214] It's like acting, I guess.

[1215] And I really like the idea of professors being married for some weird reason.

[1216] I don't know why.

[1217] I don't care if machinists are married to one another.

[1218] Me too.

[1219] I guess I want doctors to be married to.

[1220] Really?

[1221] Yeah, because I imagine their work is so esoteric would take another doctor to really geek out on what they're interested in.

[1222] Oh, interesting.

[1223] I like the idea of a doctor with someone who doesn't know anything about medicine so they can help.

[1224] Benefit.

[1225] Yeah, exactly.

[1226] You only need one doctor in the pair.

[1227] Well, that's John and Joya.

[1228] John Favreau.

[1229] He's a genius because he went out and got himself Joya, who is an emergency room doctor.

[1230] And I would watch them raise kids.

[1231] And I thought, anything can happen.

[1232] They could let anything happen because Joy is here.

[1233] I know.

[1234] She could just fix everyone right out.

[1235] That's what I want.

[1236] I always felt so safe knowing she's around.

[1237] I can go into cardiac arrest.

[1238] You'll handle it.

[1239] Anything.

[1240] Yeah.

[1241] It's about the best person to have around.

[1242] We were just talking about that the other day, my friend Laura.

[1243] Yeah.

[1244] And I, because, you know, we're in this group of all of our friends.

[1245] and we're a single, although now she has a quarantine boyfriend.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] Don't put her on blast.

[1248] She might still have some lures in the water.

[1249] You're making her Facebook, what's the term?

[1250] Official.

[1251] No, their Facebook official, she posted something the other day about him.

[1252] Oh.

[1253] Oh, great, great.

[1254] But, anywho, generally, we're the single ones.

[1255] We were saying, who should we date who's going to add something new to the group?

[1256] And what are the categories?

[1257] I'm really glad you guys are.

[1258] thinking that way to make it productive yeah we're trying to be i think you need an er doctor that way i can like fuck around on these vacations and not even worry about it well i have been saying that i i like a doctor in the group for sure especially people are doing backflops and stuff off the house into the pool yeah yeah yeah we need a doctor there and somebody said this was on a girl's marco polo marco polo if you're listening i'd love some free i think it's trying to make me pay now oh It's not letting me do two times and it's a problem.

[1259] Wow.

[1260] So that, by the way, what a great way to monetize that because you got to go two times.

[1261] Once you're used to going two times, going back is miserable.

[1262] By the way, we mean double speed.

[1263] Yeah.

[1264] So if you use Marco Polo, it's a fantastic app.

[1265] It is really is phenomenal.

[1266] But you'll become immediately aware of how fucking slow everyone gets their thoughts out.

[1267] It's maddening.

[1268] Yes.

[1269] They need a quadruple speed to be honest.

[1270] I think they do have a triple in this payment package.

[1271] Ah, worth it.

[1272] It probably is.

[1273] I should just buy it for you.

[1274] Well, your birthday's around the corner.

[1275] Let me buy a year worth of fast forwarding through all your friends.

[1276] Oh, how sweet.

[1277] I'd be happy to buy that for you.

[1278] Should I buy that for Kristen?

[1279] For her upcoming.

[1280] I don't think you need to buy that as her birthday.

[1281] Nobody would be just be thoughtful.

[1282] I'm so fucked.

[1283] This birthday is knocking on the back door.

[1284] I thought about this idea.

[1285] What do you think about this idea?

[1286] I mean, we shouldn't be doing it on here.

[1287] I'll cut it.

[1288] I'll cut it.

[1289] Maybe the viewers will text us ideas.

[1290] Okay, go on.

[1291] They're listeners, not viewers, Decks.

[1292] So here's what I thought the other day.

[1293] What would you think about this?

[1294] I'll book like five bedrooms at a hotel and I'll get a babysitter.

[1295] Get on the same floor of like a nice hotel here in the city, maybe the peninsula or something.

[1296] It'll be like the Richardson's, the Hanson's, you.

[1297] And we'll just all wear like bathrobes and we'll get room service and we'll lay in bed.

[1298] And maybe we'll go out on the pool.

[1299] Maybe we won't.

[1300] Yeah.

[1301] That sounds like a good.

[1302] lovely.

[1303] Doesn't that what she would want just to be able to lay in bed for seven hours and read her knit and do all that shit?

[1304] And then she could check in and out with you guys.

[1305] If she wanted to be social, she could, if she didn't.

[1306] Right.

[1307] I think that's good.

[1308] Yeah.

[1309] I think she wants some just peace.

[1310] Yeah.

[1311] Yeah.

[1312] So that sounds wonderful.

[1313] I like that idea.

[1314] Okay.

[1315] All right.

[1316] I'm going to pursue it a little further.

[1317] Okay.

[1318] All right.

[1319] And I have an idea.

[1320] I'm scared to say it.

[1321] Okay.

[1322] But I'll say it maybe because maybe some, you're right.

[1323] Maybe someone could help.

[1324] Yeah.

[1325] Again, she's not going to hear this.

[1326] What if someone like DMs or something in his spoils?

[1327] Well, don't be a dick.

[1328] How about this?

[1329] If you're out there, don't be a fucking dick.

[1330] Well, okay, she doesn't read her DMs.

[1331] So I guess I'm not worried about that.

[1332] It's just if you know her if we're all friends.

[1333] Don't fuck this up.

[1334] Yeah, so when she was in Paris over a year, about a year ago.

[1335] And there was this chandelier that she wanted very badly.

[1336] It was really on the fence about what should I get it?

[1337] Should I not?

[1338] Too expensive.

[1339] She thought it was too expensive.

[1340] That's why I like her.

[1341] She's frugal.

[1342] And she did not end up getting it.

[1343] And since we've had so many conversations, she regrets it.

[1344] And it was at a, it's a vintage chandelier.

[1345] It's going to be.

[1346] At a pawn shop in Paris.

[1347] It's going to be hard to track down, but I'm going to do it.

[1348] Oh, you're saving the day.

[1349] And we're going to get it.

[1350] I really hope it's still available.

[1351] That's my, I'm worried it got bought.

[1352] If you bought it, if you're a listener and you bought it, can you give it to us because it's her birthday.

[1353] This is the exact kind of challenge for you, though.

[1354] I love it.

[1355] Yeah, this is your sweet spot.

[1356] I really want this to work.

[1357] Tracking something down, sleuthing, gum -shoeing.

[1358] Veronica Marsing.

[1359] Veronica Marsing, yeah.

[1360] It would only be appropriate that Ron Mars would get something that had to be Ron Marsed for her birthday.

[1361] I really hope it works out.

[1362] It doesn't work out.

[1363] She'll divorce us.

[1364] I guarantee I'm going to hate it because if...

[1365] You're not going to like the low.

[1366] of it.

[1367] Yeah, I already know that.

[1368] I already know that she made the right decision and didn't buy it.

[1369] No. Why?

[1370] I just know.

[1371] I can tell.

[1372] She buys things if...

[1373] No. No?

[1374] She wants it.

[1375] She has said it so many times.

[1376] Where is it going?

[1377] I think it should go in your bathroom.

[1378] Oh.

[1379] And I won't like it.

[1380] So I'll have to see it all.

[1381] But it'll be over the tub.

[1382] It'll be...

[1383] I just won't look up.

[1384] It's beautiful.

[1385] All right.

[1386] I won't look up.

[1387] You've seen it and you like it?

[1388] I can't remember if I like it.

[1389] she likes it and that's all it matters okay he said that his dad was a dead beat okay and then i kind of got interested in where that phrase came from oh yeah ooh i didn't really find it oh shit okay because i wanted to guess well yeah let's guess i think it's a newspaper term i think it's people who got assigned beats you know they call that in journalism like you have the science beat you have the financial beat I think it's a beat that doesn't generate any stories.

[1390] Like, you've been given this completely dead beat.

[1391] Oh.

[1392] And then that just ended up because newspaper writers affect our colloquials that it just emanated from there, as if it emanated from sports.

[1393] Huh.

[1394] You know, so many of our sayings are like, they're sports related.

[1395] Sure.

[1396] Don't strike out.

[1397] Right.

[1398] Yeah.

[1399] I'm guessing it's coming from the newspaper world.

[1400] Interesting.

[1401] But how does it equate to a deadbeat parent?

[1402] Well, just people probably were using it.

[1403] Well, that's a dead beat.

[1404] That's a dead beat.

[1405] You know it's something useless.

[1406] Oh.

[1407] And then it just got transferred to deadbeat pair of, deadbeat thing.

[1408] That or the only other thing I can think of that has beats.

[1409] Well, there's two.

[1410] Well, okay, two more.

[1411] There's beats in cop patrols.

[1412] You have different beats.

[1413] You could have a dead beat.

[1414] Like, there's nothing going on.

[1415] So similar.

[1416] Similar.

[1417] Yeah.

[1418] And then I guess you could say musically, like, that's a dead beat.

[1419] It doesn't add anything to the song.

[1420] I'm going with the newspaper guess.

[1421] I like the newspaper guests.

[1422] When I hear Deadbeat, just the sound of it, I hear, like, physical abuse.

[1423] Oh, no, Deadbeat Dad.

[1424] Doesn't mean that.

[1425] No, I know that.

[1426] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1427] I know it doesn't mean that at all.

[1428] You're absent.

[1429] Exactly.

[1430] But when I hear the words dead and beat, it sounds to me like violent and somebody was beaten to death.

[1431] Well, then, right.

[1432] That would be, let's see, so deadbeat, it would be beat dead.

[1433] That's the phrase you're afraid of.

[1434] This is the person was beat dead.

[1435] Well, sure.

[1436] I don't like that.

[1437] I don't like that.

[1438] Yeah, we flip it.

[1439] Okay, the legal definition defines deadbeat parents as, yeah, I like that it's parents.

[1440] It's not really fair for us to say deadbeat dad, even though that's fair.

[1441] Okay.

[1442] It's 100 % fair.

[1443] Well, in his case, it was that.

[1444] And, yeah.

[1445] Yeah.

[1446] Okay, the legal definition defines deadbeat parents as parents of either gender who have freely chosen not to be supportive parents or who do not pay their child's support obligations.

[1447] However, the label has become so generalized that the freely chosen aspect is too often forgotten.

[1448] Most of the fathers lumped in as deadbeat dads are not dads unwilling to support their children.

[1449] They are simply unable to afford the child's support.

[1450] Yeah.

[1451] When 66 % of all child's support not paid by fathers is due to an inability to come up with the money.

[1452] Calling all the dads who miss payments deadbeats is painting with far too broad of a brush.

[1453] Mm -hmm.

[1454] Interesting.

[1455] My father never paid child support.

[1456] So he was...

[1457] And he drove a corvette.

[1458] And he had a lot of money.

[1459] So he was technically a deadbeat dad.

[1460] I hate to say that out loud.

[1461] But it is the truth.

[1462] That's where a lot of my irons...

[1463] That's the thing I can't make peace with it.

[1464] He was lovely.

[1465] He was sweet to me. Yeah.

[1466] And then he was also...

[1467] He loved you.

[1468] Yeah, he did.

[1469] He loved me. But it's hard for me to reconcile the fact that he didn't fucking pay child support.

[1470] Is it because he was always on the verge of not having any money?

[1471] You just spent it all on a lot of money.

[1472] I had always, as a rule of thumb, if he had written a book on finance, it would have been spend 170 % of what you make.

[1473] That was his, so there were periods of his life where he actually made a ton of money.

[1474] Like, I think he made almost a million dollars a year in Michigan and like 98.

[1475] Wow.

[1476] But he went and immediately bought a million dollar house, a Jaguar, two Harleys, blah, blah, blah.

[1477] He spent more than money.

[1478] He had this gangster apartment in Chicago overlooking the river that he would do.

[1479] How can he not be forced to pay?

[1480] That's what I have...

[1481] My mother never took him to court.

[1482] That's what would have happened.

[1483] She could have taken him to court for not paying child support.

[1484] She could have reported him.

[1485] Right.

[1486] And she just never did.

[1487] Okay.

[1488] Well, speaking up, in the 80s, how many single moms?

[1489] Okay, by 1980, the number of single parent families stood at 5 .9 million, which represented an increase of 71 % during the 70s.

[1490] The rate of increase slowed significantly during the 80s, although the number of one -parent families continued to increase.

[1491] Well, my parents got divorced in 1978.

[1492] Oh, so they were part of this group.

[1493] Mm -hmm.

[1494] I was still one of very few.

[1495] I think we were the only family on our block.

[1496] Really?

[1497] That had a single parent, yeah.

[1498] It's so amazing how it's changed.

[1499] But it was really segregated economically.

[1500] So, Oxford Acres was pretty nice.

[1501] It was like middle class and everyone was married.

[1502] But then all my friends who I liked hanging out with the poor kids from LaSalle Gardens and all these different mobile home parks, all those people's parents were divorced.

[1503] Well, it makes sense, right?

[1504] If you only have one income coming in, you're most likely going to have less money.

[1505] That's true.

[1506] And I think there's other factors, but yeah.

[1507] I think the alcoholism rate is higher.

[1508] I think the domestic disturbance.

[1509] You know, there's a lot of things inextricably married to low income.

[1510] That's unfortunate.

[1511] Right.

[1512] But it's all connected, right?

[1513] Maybe.

[1514] Like, if you're by yourself, If you're raising three kids, that's maybe a little miserable.

[1515] And you have one job.

[1516] You don't have very much money.

[1517] Like maybe you're more willing to drink.

[1518] And then it's a spiral.

[1519] But I have to imagine there's a really high correlation between low income and unwanted pregnancies.

[1520] For sure.

[1521] I don't think rich kids have nearly as many unwanted babies.

[1522] Yeah, well, exactly.

[1523] Yeah.

[1524] So it all feeds into itself.

[1525] Well, and again, like health care, like rich kids get on birth.

[1526] control or have abortions.

[1527] And there was just yesterday the Supreme Court, the Louisiana abortion case.

[1528] There's a bunch of horseshit.

[1529] These trap laws where they say like you have to have.

[1530] The one of them was the hallways had to be long and are wide enough to support two hospital beds passing each other at speed.

[1531] Exactly.

[1532] Like something that would never happen at a. Any place.

[1533] Yeah.

[1534] And this one specifically was there had to be another type of hospital.

[1535] hospital within some range of the clinic in case something went wrong yes and then i also think maybe that those doctors also had to be resident doctors at other hospitals which is just insane yeah yeah yeah but it was another positive supreme court ruling there's been three is it roberts he voted and his real allegiance which is very admirable is precedent that's his thing it's like he won't let his opinion override precedent like he was basically deciding no we've decided this case, it was Roe v. Wade.

[1536] Right.

[1537] And this is in opposition to Roe v. Wade.

[1538] Well, there was a case in Texas, I think.

[1539] Oh, more specific one.

[1540] That was very, it was this exact thing.

[1541] Oh, okay.

[1542] I think Roe v. Wade is still, like, quote on the table.

[1543] Shopping block.

[1544] Yeah, which, oh, my God.

[1545] Yeah, anyway, so that was good.

[1546] But, you know, it's just, you see how it all ties together, right?

[1547] So if the clinic can't be in a rural area, then people who are in poor areas can't get abortions.

[1548] And then it's just this cycle.

[1549] It's all part of the same conversation we're having over and over again, where especially like black people are again in these positions like that they can't get out of.

[1550] So this was good.

[1551] This was a good news for the Supreme Court.

[1552] Well, as that systems guy told us, whatever result you're seeing is a perfectly designed system to create that result.

[1553] Yeah.

[1554] So if you don't like the results, you can't just wish the results are different.

[1555] different.

[1556] The system is creating them perfectly.

[1557] Yeah.

[1558] The meme that, you know, has been going around is the system is not broken.

[1559] It was built this way.

[1560] Right, right, right, right, right, right.

[1561] Yeah.

[1562] It works perfectly.

[1563] Yeah.

[1564] To get the result that we're getting.

[1565] Oh, yeah.

[1566] So you talked about the 60 Minutes food chemist.

[1567] And I read this article and, oh, it is, yeah, they just actively make an addiction.

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] And I'm going to say, I'm not, I would say, I'm not as cuckoo about food is.

[1570] I think a lot of my friends are.

[1571] Yeah.

[1572] I'm not like...

[1573] But you...

[1574] You were vegan for a bit.

[1575] You've done no sugar.

[1576] I've tried things to feel good, for sure.

[1577] I guess what I'm saying is it's not my cause per se.

[1578] I'm not someone who's like anti -GMO and all these different things.

[1579] But when I saw that, I did think...

[1580] Like, I guess, let me back up.

[1581] If people want to fucking eat McDonald's, go get them.

[1582] I guess that's what I'm saying.

[1583] I have friends that probably want to make that illegal.

[1584] Right, right, right, right.

[1585] So I'm like, go get them, get fat, die, whatever.

[1586] You know, that part of me is a libertarian.

[1587] Don't die.

[1588] Now, but don't die.

[1589] But, you know, but it is your right to.

[1590] With that said, I'm watching that.

[1591] It's not unlike the technology in our apps where I was watching that and I realized we are defenseless.

[1592] There are people that are much smarter than us and have a much better plan to trick your body that anyone would be powerless over.

[1593] If they make the taste disappear immediately, I mean, you can't compete with that.

[1594] No. And it was like, how can an individual compete with billions of dollars being spent to make you do this?

[1595] And that's where we get into this huge ethical question.

[1596] And it correlates currently to masks, right?

[1597] Yes, everyone technically has the right to commit suicide.

[1598] To die, to kill themselves.

[1599] But you do not have the right to kill somebody else.

[1600] Yeah, it's true.

[1601] It's true.

[1602] Again, and I just want to be on record as saying, look, I am way further on the right side of the spectrum.

[1603] about Corona than all my friends.

[1604] I've been wrong several times already, which I've admitted to.

[1605] But I still am like, there ain't no stopping it.

[1606] Unless the hospitals are overrun, let's just get this thing going.

[1607] Protect the old people, old people.

[1608] It's on you.

[1609] Hospitals are starting to get really crazy here.

[1610] They just sent out like a big thing yesterday.

[1611] They're getting worse.

[1612] Yeah.

[1613] You know, part of me, again, the libertarian part of me is like, you know, old people are drastically outpacing the rest of the population for dying of this.

[1614] And I'm sorry, I love my, well, I've lost my last grandparent recently, but I love, I loved my grandparents.

[1615] It's on them to protect themselves.

[1616] I'm sorry, it's, I, part of me is like, you're the one that's at high risk, so you got to have your shit buttoned up.

[1617] You got to not interact with people without masks.

[1618] You got to, let me just, okay, that's, I'm just telling you, my position but I still have to do the right thing ethically even though I feel that way emotionally about it I have to do the safest thing possible yeah I have to do everything I can because some of those old people aren't going to do it and they're stubborn and they have this is that another reason and I I should be benevolent enough to help and I'm going to do that I'm going to against what my instinct is to do.

[1619] And there's no arguing that if both people have masks on, you're in the single digit percentage of transmission.

[1620] As opposed to 70%.

[1621] I guess here's my thing.

[1622] It's like, oh, God, I always use this.

[1623] No wonder they hate me. If you're diabetic and you don't have insulin on you and you can't eat a bunch of carbs right now, it's not my job to fucking take all the carbs out of the restaurant or not eat carbs in front of you.

[1624] It's your job.

[1625] to monitor your blood sugar.

[1626] So if you are susceptible to this disease, you've got to protect yourself.

[1627] That's not my job.

[1628] But older people generally are the ones that need a little more help, right?

[1629] You're right, you're right.

[1630] If I need to help my grandma, if I'm the one in charge of taking care of her, and I have to go to the grocery store to buy us groceries, and no one there is wearing a mask, and now I am totally susceptible, and I bring that to them.

[1631] They're being careful.

[1632] That's the best case scenario.

[1633] But I could bring it to them.

[1634] But again, and not to be a dick, but you know, you shouldn't hang with your grandparents until there's a vaccine then.

[1635] But what if they can't feed themselves?

[1636] Oh, well, then you can drop shit off at their door.

[1637] I mean, you don't have to interact with them.

[1638] But older people need more help.

[1639] They just need more help.

[1640] Like my mom's sister is living with my grandparents right now.

[1641] And that needs to happen.

[1642] That's not like she just wants to that that needs to happen.

[1643] And so if my aunt gets it, yes, she'll probably be fine, but they will not be fine.

[1644] And it's not a choice for a lot of people.

[1645] And a lot of people live, you know, we're privileged.

[1646] We can be distant and we can do that.

[1647] A lot of people don't have that luxury.

[1648] They're a big family living in one house and you can't separate, you know.

[1649] So it is up to us to have some social responsibility.

[1650] to help the people who are not in the positions we're in.

[1651] Yeah.

[1652] You know, my friend has it right now.

[1653] I told you this whole story.

[1654] No. We were supposed to go off -roading.

[1655] Uh -huh.

[1656] So my friend is a music producer, and he and I were supposed to go off -roading, and it was all set, and then he called me the day before he was like, I'm so sorry, but I have to fly to Miami.

[1657] Some big hip -hop artists wanted him to come record the next morning.

[1658] So he went, and he was there for a few days, and then he came back, and when he got back, he goes, yo, they do not.

[1659] give a fuck about Corona down there.

[1660] No one had blank blah, blah, blah, blah.

[1661] And then he got it.

[1662] He got it while he's there.

[1663] So he has it right now.

[1664] And I've been checking in with him to see like, you know, how's he's like, it's good.

[1665] You know, my breathing hasn't been affected, which is good.

[1666] But he says that the day before he was so fucked up that his wife was talking to him and he couldn't.

[1667] He's like, I couldn't.

[1668] I thought she was speaking another language.

[1669] And I was like, oh, my God, I'm going downhill.

[1670] Went to bed, woke up the next morning and was like, oh, it passed.

[1671] I feel back to normal He's excited His wife makes him his favorite meal Pork chops with this mushroom gravy And he goes Honey Do you change the recipe?

[1672] No And she's like no He's like yeah you did What would you do different She's like honey I didn't do anything different He's like oh my god It tastes different He can't taste anything He's like bring me a strawberry She brought him a strawberry He nothing He has no smell And no taste as of yesterday Now, hopefully that'll return.

[1673] See, that's freaky.

[1674] This is, we don't know all the things yet.

[1675] I'm sure it'll return, he'll be fine.

[1676] But, well, that's scary.

[1677] I hope he feels better.

[1678] Well, anyway, it's important to have social responsibility.

[1679] Well, again, that's the whole reason I laid out my whole thing is I'm telling you what I would want to do.

[1680] Yeah.

[1681] But I am saying there is a time for individual rights and there is a time to get over that.

[1682] Yeah.

[1683] You know?

[1684] And it's going to be a year out of your life.

[1685] Yeah.

[1686] It's going to be a fucking year of your life of 80 years, hopefully.

[1687] Yeah.

[1688] That you had to wear mask when you left the house.

[1689] At the risk of getting into a fight with you, which we're going to avoid.

[1690] But I also, you do have to weigh the economy.

[1691] You have to weigh what percentage of GDP drop will result in which amount of death.

[1692] And then compare that potential collateral death against what the deaths would have been from Corona.

[1693] That you just responsibly, you have to think of that.

[1694] If the cure is worse than the disease, if we end up killing people because people aren't getting screen for cancer and they're not getting their vaccines on time and all these other things, if that number ends up being worse than Corona, then logic would tell us we got to just eat Corona and not because it'll be a net smaller death.

[1695] Okay.

[1696] With all that said, even if that was true, you wearing your mask to places has no impact on any of that.

[1697] Yeah.

[1698] You know, it just doesn't.

[1699] Yeah.

[1700] Yeah.

[1701] I mean, again, it's a little more complicated than that.

[1702] It's like it's, it's disproportionately affecting one community.

[1703] And if we just let those people die, that's not okay.

[1704] You're speaking of the black and Latino.

[1705] Yep.

[1706] Yeah.

[1707] Rich people fare better.

[1708] Like, that's true and not fair.

[1709] It's how it should be.

[1710] It's how it should be.

[1711] Like the guy who owned the Clippers.

[1712] Sterling.

[1713] Donald Sterling.

[1714] Yeah, Donald Sterling.

[1715] Oh, yeah.

[1716] He was a great guy.

[1717] He's a better person.

[1718] Um, okay, the Swedish word for not too much, not too little, legume.

[1719] Legum.

[1720] Just the right amount.

[1721] Ooh.

[1722] Okay.

[1723] And then we talk a little about shrooms on this podcast.

[1724] And it seems apropos for me to say, since we recorded this, I have tried them.

[1725] Yes.

[1726] You tried them.

[1727] And I didn't even instigate it.

[1728] You did not even instigate it.

[1729] But I volunteered to be a. part of it.

[1730] Yes, and to be a babysitter.

[1731] Yes, the sober, a sober companion.

[1732] And I'm very grateful that there was a sober companion there.

[1733] It was everything you said it was going to be.

[1734] You were right.

[1735] I'll say it again.

[1736] I've said it a lot of times, but I'll say it again.

[1737] I was wrong about Corona, but I was right about mushrooms.

[1738] You were right.

[1739] It was a lovely experience and it was really cool to see the world in a brand new way.

[1740] Yeah.

[1741] It's best to take your steward.

[1742] standard world you've seen all the time that you're familiar with and recognize how much your brain is in charge of assembling these photons in a way that you call reality.

[1743] Yeah.

[1744] And then all of a sudden your brain starts assembling them in a different way.

[1745] Yeah.

[1746] And it is a different reality.

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] And it cannot be experienced without that.

[1749] Yeah.

[1750] I mean, maybe some meditators can or something.

[1751] But to walk down a street that you've walked down before.

[1752] I know.

[1753] That was such a big takeover.

[1754] way for me is I just kept thinking, I'm taking everything for granted.

[1755] Yeah.

[1756] Like, this is beautiful.

[1757] I walk down this street every, not, you know, a lot.

[1758] And I'm missing it.

[1759] I'm missing it every time.

[1760] I think what happens, like the best way to explain it, and we've had a lot of experts on here, talk about how your brain is fantastic at filing things into the subconscious.

[1761] So operating the car, you're not thinking about driving the car.

[1762] You just drive the car because the whole program is.

[1763] running in the subconscious.

[1764] Yeah.

[1765] And we're also great at getting rid of distraction so we can focus on the things we want, which means filing everything else into that white noise category.

[1766] And when you get on shrooms, it's no longer white noise.

[1767] It's all right there.

[1768] All these things that you've learned to ignore.

[1769] Yeah.

[1770] Through design, you now can see.

[1771] And I think probably for different people, there's a different level of that, right?

[1772] Because we talked about this on a couple episodes ago, I feel that I'm in my head all the time.

[1773] And you feel that way, too.

[1774] I'm in my head so much that I'm not paying attention to the physical world around me very often.

[1775] And, yeah, so this was such a different reality for me, whereas for some other people, I think it wasn't as extreme.

[1776] Right.

[1777] It's not as big of a difference.

[1778] Yeah.

[1779] The other thing that's great at doing, and this is well documented in what's his name's book.

[1780] Michael Pollan's book.

[1781] Yep, Michael Pollan's book, is your brain's really, really good at comprehending you as an individual and then the world separate from you and around you.

[1782] Yeah.

[1783] And Shrooms breaks down the barriers a bit of your sense of individualness and your sense of detachment.

[1784] And you feel like when you touch the pavement and you touch the flower that you're really interacting with it, Like in a way that is not, I'm this and that's that.

[1785] It's like, oh, we're this thing.

[1786] And I don't know.

[1787] That's the thing I also like about it is how it kind of shatters this obsession of your identity.

[1788] Yeah.

[1789] I guess, well, so I had a tough start.

[1790] Uh -huh.

[1791] I got really scared.

[1792] Everyone who I trusted looked bizarre.

[1793] So everyone's getting high, and I had completely forgotten the most annoying part about doing drugs was that everyone just monitors how high they are for the first hour.

[1794] Yeah.

[1795] Are you, I'm at the three.

[1796] Are you two?

[1797] I don't want.

[1798] Well, look at those trees.

[1799] Let's look at those trees.

[1800] Yeah.

[1801] Does that leave doing that?

[1802] No, this leaves not doing this.

[1803] Is that leave doing this?

[1804] No, I can't feel anything.

[1805] I'm too high.

[1806] The whole thing.

[1807] Yeah.

[1808] I was like, I need to step out until everyone just feels high.

[1809] Right.

[1810] So I went inside and I started playing words with friends.

[1811] Yeah.

[1812] I was gone for 20 minutes.

[1813] And then it really hit you in that 20 minutes.

[1814] Yes.

[1815] And you were like, what the fuck?

[1816] You told me you were going to help me and you've abandoned me. Yeah.

[1817] I felt like you gave me drugs.

[1818] Well, a lot.

[1819] I felt like we've been talking about this for years.

[1820] You've been trying to get me to do this for years.

[1821] And then you left.

[1822] Yes, which I did.

[1823] I was very regrettable.

[1824] But of all the people that were doing it, you were zero percent high.

[1825] You were saying.

[1826] I was.

[1827] And I was like, oh, she's not even high.

[1828] and this conversation is annoying, I'm going to go inside.

[1829] I wasn't high, and then all of a sudden I looked down at my hands, because you had said that when you do shrooms, you look at your hands a lot.

[1830] So I was kind of checking in with my hands to see.

[1831] And they were normal.

[1832] And then all of a sudden I looked, and then they shriveled up into grandma hands right in front of my eyes.

[1833] And it was so startling and scary.

[1834] And I thought, am I a grandma now?

[1835] Well, like, I didn't know what was happening and...

[1836] Am I a grandma now?

[1837] And then immediately I felt really unsafe and then abandoned.

[1838] Yeah.

[1839] And again, there's like layers of real life.

[1840] This is why they're therapeutic.

[1841] It's like, whatever thing you really fear, it is going to be the loudest thing that, if it goes wrong, it'll be the first thing that comes out.

[1842] So it's like, in real life, you're so linked to my train and Kristen's train.

[1843] and there's a certain amount of powerlessness in that.

[1844] Yeah.

[1845] And what if we just disappear?

[1846] And you're so linked to it.

[1847] And then I just disappeared.

[1848] Like it happened.

[1849] I know.

[1850] It was bad.

[1851] And I was crying, which was, I think, a bummer for everyone.

[1852] And then you came out.

[1853] You came out to check on us.

[1854] Well, I was like, oh, he's coming back.

[1855] And then you came back.

[1856] and then you looked fuzzy.

[1857] Uh -huh.

[1858] You didn't know if I was real.

[1859] By the way, when I did come outside, you were crying and you were also laughing.

[1860] You know that?

[1861] Yes, because.

[1862] You were like, you were bouncing back and forth between crying and laughing.

[1863] Because we were telling the story about Ryan's dad calling.

[1864] Uh -huh.

[1865] And I was crying during that because I was not literally paying attention to start.

[1866] I was crying, but then Ryan was like, Monica hates this story.

[1867] And then I started laughing because obviously I was not thinking about.

[1868] about the story, but that was like a funny thing to say, but I was still crying.

[1869] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1870] And then when I got very involved, you were, you were thinking you couldn't breathe.

[1871] Yeah.

[1872] And then you were really scared.

[1873] And then I was like, okay, we need to reset.

[1874] Let's go out on the street and let's take a little walk and no one's ever stop breathing untrimms.

[1875] And your body knows how to breathe.

[1876] You don't have to think about breathing.

[1877] Yeah.

[1878] And then you came back.

[1879] I did.

[1880] And it was so impressive because when I saw you, I was like, oh, fuck, man. I told her to do this.

[1881] it's gone south.

[1882] Yeah.

[1883] Generally, when it goes south, it stays south.

[1884] Yeah.

[1885] Fuck.

[1886] Yeah.

[1887] I really kind of misled you.

[1888] And I was very pessimistic and bombed.

[1889] And then 15 minutes into the walk, things started changing.

[1890] And then you just had this very beautiful ride.

[1891] I did.

[1892] It was so sweet.

[1893] Well, you said, listen, you can choose.

[1894] For the next three hours, things are going to be fucked up looking.

[1895] Yeah.

[1896] And you get to decide how you say.

[1897] see it.

[1898] So I chose to enjoy it and find it beautiful.

[1899] And I did it.

[1900] And it was, it was really spectacular.

[1901] Yeah.

[1902] It was really cool.

[1903] I was so happy on the ride home in the minivan, Chrysler Pacifica.

[1904] No better vehicle to have someone on Shrooms.

[1905] Okay.

[1906] We don't need.

[1907] No, I love it.

[1908] I love it.

[1909] I love it.

[1910] I love it.

[1911] I love it.

[1912] I just go, you were right.

[1913] This isn't to be missed on planet Earth.

[1914] And I was like, oh, thank God.

[1915] Yeah.

[1916] I feel that.

[1917] I feel that.

[1918] Yeah, it was real nice.

[1919] Yeah, it was real.

[1920] I was like, man, I fucking, I would have put that on like, if that hadn't gotten turned around, that would have been as bad as if you didn't end up getting your house after I said you're going to get the house.

[1921] It was that level or worse.

[1922] You put a lot of pressure on yourself, which you shouldn't have, but it.

[1923] No, it was dumb that I split.

[1924] But again, you really weren't high at all.

[1925] Everyone else was a little high and you simply weren't.

[1926] I was like, who knows?

[1927] It hits so fast.

[1928] In my opinion, maybe not.

[1929] Maybe it was more slow than I thought.

[1930] Well, that's another thing that just is relevant is that the initial idea was that people were going to microdose, which I was against.

[1931] I was like, there's really no point in microdosing, in my opinion.

[1932] Now, it might be great for people with like severe depression and they can do it and still work.

[1933] I have no opinion on that.

[1934] But for the experience, I wanted you to have, microdosing isn't it.

[1935] So it started as a microdosing experiment.

[1936] Yes.

[1937] Quickly, no one felt anything.

[1938] So then you guys doubled the microdose dose, which still I was like to do what I know you should do.

[1939] Yeah.

[1940] Which is like, have a cap and a stem and fucking let's see what happens.

[1941] Yeah.

[1942] So after this is what else made it really tricky for me to help navigate you guys is like, you guys took the one pill.

[1943] Then you, 25 minutes later you took another pill.

[1944] And then I go.

[1945] Some people had chocolate.

[1946] Then I go get real shrooms and bring, yeah, someone's eating chocolate.

[1947] I'm like, who even makes this chocolate?

[1948] You guys, that could have 10 ,000 milligrams of psilocybin or one.

[1949] What do you know?

[1950] So then real mushrooms were procured in real form that I knew about, caps and stems.

[1951] But at this point, that's now 75 minutes from when you guys took the first.

[1952] And I'm like, you guys, fuck this whole thing.

[1953] You should have just done a cap and stem at the beginning, like I said.

[1954] Now, God knows, I think this would be good for you.

[1955] But anyways, it was left to me to basically dose you guys.

[1956] Yeah, yeah.

[1957] So I picked for everyone what they should have.

[1958] And for the most part, I did a good job.

[1959] Yeah, and that was another part I'm remembering now.

[1960] So, okay, first of all, yes, I went in thinking this is going to be a microdose situation that maybe some colors are going to be a little brighter than normal.

[1961] Yeah.

[1962] So my expectations were not set correctly.

[1963] And then they didn't catch up to when we...

[1964] But you kept changing your opinion, too.

[1965] Like, I want more.

[1966] Like, I'd feel nothing.

[1967] Well, well.

[1968] I was like, now that I've done this, I better feel something.

[1969] Now, I did not want to feel like my hands were grandma hands.

[1970] I just wanted what I was promised, which was that the world was going to be a little brighter and sparklier or something.

[1971] Which you had been told from other friends who had microdose.

[1972] Correct.

[1973] So I was like, let's take a more, but I was not in the headspace that I was going to like take a full dose.

[1974] Yeah.

[1975] So anyway, so when you were dosing us, you said to me, I think you should take this.

[1976] And I said, really?

[1977] And you didn't like that I said that.

[1978] I didn't.

[1979] Because in my defense, I had lost complete control.

[1980] Like you guys had taken the one pill, then the second pill.

[1981] And at this point, I was like, if you want me involved, let me do this.

[1982] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1983] I understand your point of view.

[1984] Like I already said, don't do that.

[1985] Now we're here.

[1986] And now it's time for you to listen to me. So I was losing patience.

[1987] Totally.

[1988] I understand that.

[1989] And I was scared.

[1990] Shocked, yes.

[1991] I was scared and I was just like, are you like this seems like a lot.

[1992] Yeah, yeah.

[1993] And in my defense, I was right.

[1994] Like that, that wasn't a micro dose.

[1995] Exactly.

[1996] It was like, this is what I'm doing now.

[1997] But I was skeptical and you didn't like it.

[1998] And then I felt like, okay, now he's bad at me about that.

[1999] But you weren't the only person arguing with me if you recall.

[2000] Yeah, but you.

[2001] You snapped at me. Of course I did.

[2002] I know, exactly.

[2003] So I...

[2004] And you know why?

[2005] It's actually probably not that we disagreed about that.

[2006] It's the I want you to trust me and I'm pissed you don't trust me because I would never not take care of you, although 20 minutes later I did not take care of it.

[2007] Well, that was part of it.

[2008] That was part of it.

[2009] So I said, okay, okay, okay.

[2010] And then I did it.

[2011] And then I was like, are you serious?

[2012] You got mad at me when I pushed back.

[2013] Then I said, okay.

[2014] And now you're gone.

[2015] Yeah, you had big grievance.

[2016] You had a legitimate grievance.

[2017] Oh, boy.

[2018] But it all worked out.

[2019] It all worked out.

[2020] It all worked out.

[2021] And it was lovely.

[2022] And I'm very grateful for you.

[2023] And I'm very grateful you were there.

[2024] And I would not have been able to turn around if you weren't there.

[2025] Oh.

[2026] Well, it made me so happy that you guys had such a sweet night.

[2027] Yeah.

[2028] It was really funny, too, because of the, I'd say the success of the evening.

[2029] Yeah.

[2030] And it's kind of dissipated through our friendship circle.

[2031] A couple different people told me like, I'm going to do it.

[2032] I'm going to do it.

[2033] I'm going to go with my girlfriend and we're going to do it.

[2034] I forget where.

[2035] And I was like, cool.

[2036] And your girlfriend's done it.

[2037] And she's like, no. And I'm like, no. I'm like, you can't go to a new.

[2038] They're going to go to some place they've never been.

[2039] No. Neither person have done it.

[2040] I'm like, I'm telling you, you will convince yourself that you've got the one bad batch of mushrooms and you're going to die.

[2041] That's what's going to happen if there's not someone there who's either done it a bunch or is sober like I am.

[2042] Totally.

[2043] To go, everything's chill.

[2044] No one's ever been hurt.

[2045] Let's start thinking about this.

[2046] I agree.

[2047] Yeah, I would not recommend two people on their own experiment.

[2048] My friend Greg introduced me to it.

[2049] I'll never forget.

[2050] What a fucking day.

[2051] I think I was about 18.

[2052] I was out of high school and I was just like living in Detroit and working for my mom.

[2053] And I worked with this guy Greg Who I fucking love so much And he had this big jar shrooms He's like, yeah, if you ever want to do him And he was a normal guy, he wasn't a druggie.

[2054] Yeah.

[2055] Like if he had been like a druggie type, I wouldn't have trusted him, but he's a pretty straight -laced dude Who believed in Solisibum's at a young age.

[2056] Yeah.

[2057] He came over and four of us did him at my mom's house And then we wandered into Camp Dearborn Which I had been in a million times.

[2058] I knew what was supposed to look like.

[2059] Yeah.

[2060] And we wandered around the toboggin hills And I found a bulldozer that had the key in it and I drove a bulldozer.

[2061] Okay, I don't love that part.

[2062] But it was such an incredible time.

[2063] Yeah.

[2064] It really was.

[2065] And there's nothing grimy about it.

[2066] Like, if you do Coke, you get fucking gross.

[2067] If you do ecstasy, you get pretty gross.

[2068] You do meth, you get gross.

[2069] A lot of these drugs, they, you know, they bring out the pleasure center of your brain.

[2070] And the shrooms is not that at all.

[2071] Shrooms is, there's nothing grody about it.

[2072] No. Also, for anyone who would want to sue me in the future, because I told you to do it.

[2073] I'm telling you not to do it.

[2074] Don't ever do shroom.

[2075] Yeah, don't do it.

[2076] I am not condoning anyone to do shrooms.

[2077] You're not allowed to do it.

[2078] I'm not encouraging anyone to and I'm not liable.

[2079] But my experience with shrooms was this and yours was that.

[2080] Yeah.

[2081] Just be very clear.

[2082] Yes.

[2083] Some arm cherry gets looped up and rides a bicycle off a bridge.

[2084] I don't want anything to do with that.

[2085] No, no, no. We're not.

[2086] Advocating.

[2087] No, this is our experience that we're sharing.

[2088] Yeah.

[2089] We had a really funny moment where I kept pointing things out to Monica, again, because I've done them a hundred times and I know what things are going to look cool on it, what aren't.

[2090] So I'm like, oh, Monica, look at the wood here.

[2091] Look at all the grain in the wood.

[2092] And I'm like, look at that house.

[2093] You think there's a sitcom going on in there or a drama?

[2094] And then you go, how do you know that?

[2095] Are you on it?

[2096] Are you making me think that?

[2097] Or do I think that?

[2098] And you also, like, it was so funny.

[2099] And then I thought you weren't real because I thought maybe you were just in my brain somehow.

[2100] And you were out on your own walk, maybe.

[2101] Yeah, I did.

[2102] Because I was like, oh, my God, you know everything I'm thinking.

[2103] Which can't be.

[2104] You must be in my brain, which means you're not real.

[2105] That was another big takeaway was, which, you know, I think we know this in life, but it was so apparent how affected we are by other people and other people's energy.

[2106] So when I say I bummed everyone out, I think that's for real.

[2107] Like, I'm really glad you pulled me out quick because everyone probably would have started getting really sad, really quick.

[2108] Because your energy is so infectious.

[2109] And if you point something out and it looks weird, like a grandma hand, when I saw it first, I was like, and one of the other people, yes, was like, I know, I know, I know.

[2110] Yeah.

[2111] And then we both were kind of feeding off of like, oh, that got really scary real quick.

[2112] Okay, okay.

[2113] Yeah.

[2114] But then later, when another participant was looking at hands, she was like, isn't it cool?

[2115] Yeah.

[2116] And then I was like, it is cool.

[2117] To look down at your own hands that you've been staring at your whole lifetime.

[2118] And for them to be different is awesome.

[2119] It is.

[2120] But you can choose.

[2121] You either can see it.

[2122] Look, both things are true.

[2123] It is scary.

[2124] Uh -huh.

[2125] To see something you know to be real and substantial in front of you.

[2126] not be that.

[2127] And it's also cool.

[2128] So whatever you say can have such a big impact on the people around you.

[2129] And that's just like so true about life.

[2130] Your energy and what you say.

[2131] But again, it does go to that thing I was saying where it's kind of eroding these walls between us where it's like it is so transmissible.

[2132] It loves more transmissible.

[2133] Fear is more transmissible.

[2134] It's all more transmissible.

[2135] But the thing is, I don't know that it's more.

[2136] I think it's the same.

[2137] I think it's the amount as what we're doing day to day.

[2138] We're just not as aware of it.

[2139] Our energy does that on a daily basis.

[2140] I don't agree, though, because the participant you're talking about, in general life, that person could make an observation.

[2141] You would go, well, yeah, of course she sees it that way, because she's this.

[2142] She's this thing.

[2143] She's this thing.

[2144] She's that thing.

[2145] But I'm this thing, that thing, and this thing.

[2146] So it's not the same for me. I go, of course that guy thinks that.

[2147] I always do this.

[2148] Like, anytime I have a disagreement with someone's perspective, I immediately try to figure out why their perspective's different.

[2149] I don't assume that their perspective is correct.

[2150] That's true.

[2151] I think of the reasons why we have different one.

[2152] But you can really share perspective in a way on shrooms that it's hard to share.

[2153] I guess I mainly mean more energy -wise.

[2154] Like, if people are happy, you can borrow that energy.

[2155] But if someone is sad around you, that has an impact.

[2156] Whether you can logically be like, that's separate from me. It is seeping in.

[2157] Oh, yeah.

[2158] Well, anyone who has a partner who has depression has experienced that.

[2159] Yeah.

[2160] So it's, again, social responsibility.

[2161] You got to take care of yourself so that you can take care of people around you.

[2162] Yeah.

[2163] When are you going to do it again?

[2164] Not in a rush to do it again.

[2165] It was wonderful, but I definitely don't feel like I got to do that next weekend.

[2166] Again, that's the thing I'm talking.

[2167] It's not like getting drunk or it's like, that was fun.

[2168] I don't want to get fucked up tonight.

[2169] Yeah.

[2170] There's something, it's a little exhausting.

[2171] Yeah.

[2172] Like the next couple of days, you're aware that you went through this thing.

[2173] For sure.

[2174] In a nice way, though, and it's like you're tapped into some emotion.

[2175] Yeah.

[2176] That's sweet.

[2177] Yes.

[2178] And you can feel it.

[2179] And you're not anxious to get back in the fire because you're processing it.

[2180] Right.

[2181] And trying to understand it all.

[2182] Right.

[2183] Don't do it.

[2184] Don't do it.

[2185] Don't do it.

[2186] Don't do it.

[2187] I love you.

[2188] I love you.

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