Sanjay Gupta Returns

[0] This could sound like the beginning of radio lab.

[1] Oh, yeah.

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

[3] We love you, Radio Lab.

[4] We do.

[5] We wish we're as good as you.

[6] I know.

[7] We have our first three -peed today.

[8] That's right.

[9] Our Alec Baldwin.

[10] Our Alec Baldwin or our Steve Martin of S &L.

[11] I think Martin's up there in the teens.

[12] Interesting.

[13] He doesn't get as much credit as Baldwin.

[14] He doesn't.

[15] He's underappreciated.

[16] Wow.

[17] He's never bought anything on credit.

[18] What?

[19] That's true.

[20] Oh, Steve Martin's never bought anything on credit.

[21] That's one of his things?

[22] Yeah.

[23] It's cool.

[24] I almost never bought anything.

[25] I'm really mad right now that I can't say I never did.

[26] But I was a stickler for I didn't use a credit card forever and I didn't.

[27] It's actually good to use a credit card because you do need to have a good credit score.

[28] Not if you don't ever buy anything on credit.

[29] Then you don't have a good credit score.

[30] Well, you don't need one.

[31] No. Isn't it cool?

[32] Yes, more gangster did not need a good credit score.

[33] Anywho, our first three Pete, Sunjay Gupta, he is an American neurosurgeon, and he's a medical reporter and writer.

[34] You see him on CNN all the time.

[35] We've talked to him twice.

[36] Love him.

[37] We love him to death, and he has a new book called Keep Sharp, Build a Better Brain at any age.

[38] I've already started implementing some of these tools.

[39] Well, he planted a seed for me to worry about you.

[40] Remember I said, are you moving enough?

[41] This holiday break, I wanted to make sure you're moving.

[42] I wasn't.

[43] Because he said, that's the number one thing for brain.

[44] Yeah.

[45] Is moving.

[46] Keep moving, Monica.

[47] And armchair is you keep moving and enjoy Sunjay Gupta.

[48] Wonderly plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[49] Join Wonderly plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

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

[51] He's an armchair expert.

[52] You don't know that you have this distinction, but you're our first thing.

[53] Three Pete.

[54] Yeah.

[55] Is that true?

[56] Yes.

[57] You're now the record holder.

[58] I were going to wear that badge with great honor.

[59] That's fantastic.

[60] I was just saying this backdrop is just a picture for me. I'm in a windowless closet, actually, in my basement.

[61] But it got just so depressing to be there all the time.

[62] I figured at least I could see that, it would make me happier, which actually really works, I think.

[63] Now, what scares me about this image, your background you've selected, is it appears to be on the second or presumably even higher floor and there's a circular railing but there's no inlet for a staircase so I'm a little confused how people are getting up and down.

[64] You know it's so funny is that everyone asks me like where's the staircase and stuff?

[65] You're the only person who's actually come to the there is no inlet.

[66] You're absolutely right.

[67] It's a rail all the way across and it was purely decorative.

[68] It was interesting and it was my wife's idea and it was funny.

[69] We just wanted something that looked a little bit distinctive because it has no function and it's a waste of space.

[70] I mean, clearly.

[71] But it was worth it.

[72] Like, you know, typically you think of function over form, but this was clearly just form over function, which was...

[73] I like it.

[74] You got to applaud it.

[75] Yeah, yeah.

[76] But who knows?

[77] You know, maybe a bucket could be lowered down, kind of like an exhibition -style dumbwaiter.

[78] Maybe that's its design intent.

[79] If someone had to quarantine, that's a great way to bring food up and down.

[80] It really.

[81] Really would be nice.

[82] In a pandemic.

[83] Although, I don't know.

[84] The aperture may be too large and the virus could still spread through the, yeah.

[85] Thanks for saying aperture.

[86] It's not a word that's used nearly enough, I think.

[87] Not outside of the shutterbug community, no. And in the hospital.

[88] Yeah, yeah, they're talking aperture a lot in there, I bet.

[89] So the last time we talked to you, it was like really new into the pandemic, and you were so gracious to find time for us.

[90] And during that interview, I really thought, boy, I hope this.

[91] Corona doesn't take out Sanjay, and not because he's going to get it, but because the stress and hourly demand of updating America seemed like it was too much for me. I couldn't have done it, I don't think.

[92] I had no idea it was going to last this long.

[93] I was reflecting on our conversation before, and I think this is my own sort of lack of anticipation, I guess, but if you think it's like a few weeks, I mean, you sprint, right?

[94] You just go out there and you're sprinting and you're trying to just get it all in and make sure you educate people as much as possible.

[95] But, But I thought that, you know, there was a good chance it would be a couple of months.

[96] You know what I mean, the United States were the, you know, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, got this public health system.

[97] We'd been through SARS.

[98] We've been through H1N1.

[99] Here we are, you know.

[100] Yeah.

[101] 11 months.

[102] First of all, how's your hand?

[103] Because I read about that.

[104] Oh, sure.

[105] I broke all the bones in my hand at one point in quarantine.

[106] And then I broke the clavicle into four separate pieces and four ribs at another point in quarantine.

[107] So like you, the novel virus didn't almost get me, but by God, I almost got got during the whole thing.

[108] You're getting a little restless during quarantine.

[109] Is that what prompted all this?

[110] Yeah, I felt like I needed more and more off -roading and -hospital visits.

[111] Yeah.

[112] I wanted to get a firsthand look at what was happening at the hospital.

[113] But in our first conversation, I was under the belief with no data.

[114] I just was under the belief that I had had it already and that several people in my circle had had it earlier.

[115] And boy, I was convinced of that.

[116] And in fact, we all took antibody tests and I was so excited to be vindicated.

[117] And they all found out, like I took one that required three days turnaround.

[118] They took one that took, like, I don't know, a day turnaround.

[119] So I walked into the house and they had all gotten the results.

[120] And it took like about two or three hours before our friend Eric said, I don't know if you heard, but, uh, We don't have the antibodies.

[121] But we were all very scared to tell him because he was so adamant about.

[122] Oh, so embarrassing that they would have been nervous to tell me this good news that no one had ever had.

[123] Corona.

[124] You've learned so much.

[125] Do you know what I did today?

[126] I would love to find out.

[127] It's very exciting.

[128] It's very exciting.

[129] I got the first Pfizer shot.

[130] Oh, you did.

[131] I did.

[132] Oh.

[133] This is great news.

[134] Yeah, you know, so health care workers are in the first group of people, so they've been vaccinating health care workers in my hospital.

[135] And, you know, everyone sort of gets their call and says it's your turn.

[136] So I didn't hesitate at all.

[137] But, you know, it was so amazing because I've been doing this sort of medical media sort of blended life for close to 20 years now.

[138] The worlds came colliding together really today because I was getting vaccinated as a health care worker.

[139] But as a journalist, because of reporting on it, I, you know, had watched the initial development to this vaccine.

[140] I talked to the scientists at the NIH and at Pfizer as they're like figuring out how exactly this vaccine is going to roll out, talk to the FDA.

[141] So I had all this knowledge about it that I think if I wasn't a journalist, I'd know that it was safe and effective.

[142] I know that part of it, but like I have really granular knowledge about this vaccine.

[143] Yeah.

[144] And then so it was able to really apply that knowledge towards making the decision.

[145] I would have gotten it regardless.

[146] But, you know, it was really like an informed decision because of, you know, reporting.

[147] morning on it for a year.

[148] So it was kind of amazing.

[149] Okay, so I'm going to error again right now, real time.

[150] I'm going to make the same mistake twice.

[151] And I'm going to guess, I have to imagine people that have been in and out of the hospitals working for the last 10 months.

[152] The percentage of folks who have to have the antibodies is it's got to be high, right?

[153] Well, you know, they've done some studies on this.

[154] You know, it was really interesting.

[155] The Northwell medical system in the Northeast during that, you know, big April sort of surge of cases, they took care of some 70, thousand patients over there.

[156] So they had a lot of patients with COVID in the hospital inside and healthcare workers obviously taking care of them.

[157] And what they found at that point, because they did do antibody testing, surveillance testing, and they found that the incidence of COVID among their health care workers was lower than the general population at that time, despite the fact that they were indoors taking care of COVID patients.

[158] I'll tell you why, I mean, I think, is just that you can protect yourself.

[159] That's one of the great ironies.

[160] Masks and they wash their hands every five minutes.

[161] Yeah?

[162] It's really basically it.

[163] I mean, the masks work really well.

[164] It's hard to sometimes convince people.

[165] I think we even talked about this before.

[166] It's hard to convince people that something so simple would be so effective.

[167] You know, I think we're used to expecting that in order for it to work, it's got to be really complicated, it's got to be really expensive, all these things.

[168] And so I tell you masks and, you know, you think, I must be kidding, you know, how could it be that simple?

[169] This is a pandemic, you know, but the healthcare workers had a lower incidence than the general population.

[170] Well, I'm going to add a layer.

[171] You know, you're having one conversation that's very logical and backed by so much evidence that just it works.

[172] There's nothing really to talk about.

[173] It works.

[174] But that's not, I don't believe what the real conversation is, right?

[175] It represents loss of liberty to people.

[176] It represents what they perceive as a fear -based snowflake left that wants to cripple our economy.

[177] You're on the science side saying, come on this thing.

[178] works, but you're really not having the same conversation.

[179] I don't think with the people who don't want to wear a mask.

[180] Yeah.

[181] You know, I've talked to so many people this year, and, you know, it's hard to paint with a broad brush why people have made certain decisions.

[182] Sometimes I made the mistake of sort of short -cutting it, saying this is clearly a political thing, right?

[183] But there are people like you say, who say it's an individual liberty thing.

[184] There are people who say that they simply don't work.

[185] And by the way, you told us not to wear masks.

[186] in the beginning, and now you're saying, wear masks, so obviously you don't know what you're talking about.

[187] I kind of get that one.

[188] You know, people want a very, a very clear, consistent message.

[189] But, you know, and then there's other people who it did become sort of a divisive political tool.

[190] And that one's the one that shocked me, I think, because in order to get the economy open, you know, wearing masks would have actually helped, not hurt.

[191] I mean, we're not saying, not shut down.

[192] We're saying, stay open, just wear masks.

[193] So the same people who very much did not want shutdowns, which was everybody.

[194] I don't think anybody wanted a shutdown.

[195] But oftentimes they were the same people who said, I'm not going to lean into the basic sort of stuff, you know, wearing the mask.

[196] It's fascinating to me. I've learned so much this year about this.

[197] Just human behavior, how we assess risk, all this sort of stuff.

[198] Yeah, we're complex little animals, man. We got a little too much brain power at times is what it boils down to, I think.

[199] I remember when we did our first conversation and, And I think, Monica, you may have brought this up, but I was talking about this trip that I had had with chasing life, and I was really quite taken with this idea that someone had told me about reciprocal altruism, which is this idea that you do something nice for somebody without any sort of transactional quality to it.

[200] And it just feels good.

[201] It feels good to do good.

[202] And I think people sort of know that, but evolutionarily, like, why would we have selected for that trait?

[203] Like, why would I sacrifice something of mine to make someone else feel good?

[204] does that help me evolutionarily, right?

[205] I don't know.

[206] But it's true.

[207] Well, I know why, which is the odds of your survival being in a group are infinitely higher than an individual.

[208] So if you have to make certain individual concessions to remain a part of that group, you're going to pass your jeans on.

[209] Yes.

[210] If you're an indignant piece of shit, guess what?

[211] The early hominids, they're kicking your ass right up into the Savannah.

[212] And good luck.

[213] And do you think that's still, like, from an evolutionary standpoint, is that still happening?

[214] I mean, people who do not want to be part of the group, are they slowly being selected out?

[215] I mean, obviously not next year, but I'm saying over time, over hundreds of years.

[216] Well, and I think your book is going to address this explicitly, but yes, so you're not relegated to the savanna where a large predator cat is going to take you down, but you are banished to isolation.

[217] And in isolation, you're going to have very predictable, statistically relevant, declines, and all kinds of health things.

[218] So, yeah, on the surface, it doesn't carry the risk of getting eaten, but we now see the rate of addiction, the rate of all these things through isolation and lack of community, are as probably more people go down from that than ever got killed by lions.

[219] I think you're right.

[220] It took me 11 months, Decks, to sort of come to that conclusion.

[221] You got three and a half minutes.

[222] Should we co -write something together?

[223] Totally.

[224] So I don't know that I'm right on this, but I'll...

[225] Really quick.

[226] Can I pause you?

[227] You're free to be wrong here.

[228] You just got to own it.

[229] So, like, I was dead wrong about my antibody thing and then we already had it.

[230] You just got to own it.

[231] Okay, sorry, motor on.

[232] By the way, when I read another article beside your hand, it said that your wife was complaining about you being a know -it -all.

[233] So the idea that you would admit that we're wrong in any way...

[234] He's pretty good at it.

[235] To know me is to know I'm a know -it -all.

[236] So I think anyone in my life could have made that statement.

[237] No, but I just assumed that large groups of people ultimately based on, again, just the human species selection of reciprocal altruism would have been intent on wearing masks because it's actually a fairly simple thing, you know, just two ear loops.

[238] And then the messaging is, you know, you can be part of a movement that can save tens of thousands of people if you just put on two ear loops when you go outside.

[239] And so many people said, you know what, I'll pass.

[240] I ain't going to do it.

[241] I don't even know what to make of it.

[242] I was surprised by that because I always felt like we would pivot towards reciprocal altruism in the face of some sort of, you know, universal threat, like a pandemic.

[243] I have an armchair theory.

[244] So I do think that, you know, we live in the least regulated capitalist experiment of all time.

[245] And in this capitalist society that we live in, through advertising, we learn that the individual is celebrated, the pioneer, the brave explorer.

[246] explore.

[247] These are the archetypes that this system really celebrates and loves.

[248] By the way, I'm a victim to it all the time.

[249] We just took this weird test to see what Hogwarts school you'd be.

[250] And one of the things was like, what would you want people to say about you after you died?

[251] And I chose bold.

[252] So like, it's bull's -eyed me, right?

[253] I want to be seen as bold and fearless and all this shit.

[254] So I think that's got to play a role in like, well, when I don't put these two loops around my ear.

[255] When I'm telling the world is, I'm not afraid.

[256] And by the way, I have great compassion for a lot of people who want to send the message.

[257] I'm not afraid because I think a lot of those people were victimized in childhood.

[258] Please don't try to hurt me because I will hurt you back.

[259] That helps me sort of have a little bit of an understanding of why people might behave that way.

[260] But the idea of rugged individualism, right, which I think you're sort of talking about and how that was celebrated and, you know, even ads on television and all that.

[261] Like, I guess I never thought that it was at total odds with the idea of still being altruistic.

[262] Like, can't you be individualistic and altruistic at the same time?

[263] Are they properties that cancel one each other out?

[264] And it's a contagious disease as well, right?

[265] So I'm willing to take the risk.

[266] Well, you're not just taking the risk for you.

[267] You know, you're taking it for your spouse, your loved ones, your community, whatever.

[268] I mean, people fundamentally get that, right?

[269] When they say I'm being brave, being brave by potentially carrying a contagious disease and spreading it to others?

[270] How do you justify that?

[271] I totally agree, but I saw people interviewed at Walter Reed standing outside to show support.

[272] And in this interview line, a person wasn't wearing a mask and they said this and then they said, do you have anyone in your life?

[273] And he said, yeah, my grandparents, who I love.

[274] And I got to tell you, I saw it real time click to that person.

[275] So I actually don't know that a lot of people have taken it beyond their bubble of their identity and realize, no, no, I'm being brave on the back of my grandpa or my grandma.

[276] Right.

[277] Yeah.

[278] I think you're right.

[279] And I think it's not as binary.

[280] You know, like, I think we want to, like, sort of have the easy way of framing it.

[281] But like, I think that there's a lot of people who, I mean, they totally believe this pandemic was real.

[282] It wasn't like they thought it was a hoax or anything.

[283] But statistically, they thought, you know what, I'll be okay.

[284] It's not going to hit me. And it's more like that, which I think maybe it's just how we assess risk in general, will be okay.

[285] You know, myself, my grandparents, you know, whoever it may be, but that was the case with everybody who got sick, right?

[286] I talked to so many patients and I talked to family members of people who had died and it was always like, they weren't deniers, not the ones that I talked to.

[287] Yeah.

[288] But then, you know, somebody got a few symptoms one day and then the symptoms got worse and then they needed to be hospitalized and then they embarked on the worst days of their life.

[289] And it just happened so quickly and they were shocked.

[290] and, you know, I don't know how that changes their behavior going forward, you know, who knows?

[291] But I think it was a genuine surprise to people.

[292] And right now there's hundreds of thousands of people, maybe, if you look at the models who are just fine.

[293] They are totally fine right now.

[294] And they're looking at this in the rearview mirror because they're hearing about the vaccine and all that.

[295] And they're like, we're done.

[296] You know, 2020, goodbye and we're done.

[297] Yeah.

[298] And they're going to get up.

[299] I mean, there's no question that there's going to be so many more people still affected.

[300] And I mean, it really, I've learned as much about the science here.

[301] I had the psychology.

[302] Let's talk about the brain, because that's actually what you have dedicated your life to, and you've written a new book called Keep Sharp.

[303] And I think I want to start with a kind of a misunderstanding I personally have, which is if I recall my biology class, I remember there being somatic cells, and those cells go through mitosis.

[304] They can replicate, they can repair themselves, but that our brain cells are not somatic.

[305] So they can't go through cell reproduction or copying themselves.

[306] So the ones you're born with, that's what you get.

[307] And when they go away, that's that.

[308] That was my understanding of it.

[309] That's flawed, yeah?

[310] Is that right or wrong?

[311] Well, as it turns out, it's wrong.

[312] But this is a relatively new discovery.

[313] So I don't want to say it's wrong in the sense that, you know, we've known this for a long time.

[314] The idea of neurogenesis or any kind of cell genesis and stuff like that and how you think about it, I mean, it's still evolving.

[315] We used to study, you know, for the most part, in terms of why we thought about this incorrectly for so long, is that we studied diseased organs.

[316] You studied a diseased or traumatized spinal cord, for example, and you're looking for evidence of new neural development, new neural cells, neurogenesis, whatever it may be, but oftentimes it wasn't happening because it was traumatized or same thing with the brain.

[317] When you started to look at healthy spinal cords and brain, because we had better techniques to actually study this, you realize that there are neural stem cells, just like there are stem cells and other parts of the body, and they can basically stimulate the production of new cells, neurogenesis in areas of the brain that kind of need them or are being recruited there because of the activity of the brain there.

[318] So it's a relatively new thing, and it's pretty clear it can happen throughout your life.

[319] That is so comforting because I remember thinking, whoa, man, I blew a bunch out at many different times in my life.

[320] and fuck, I'm just taking money out of the principle, you know?

[321] I drained the cash of cells.

[322] That was sort of the thinking, right?

[323] You know, you can have this negative impact on your brain through various things.

[324] There's no question about it.

[325] But the idea that it can heal and repair itself or in someone who has a healthy brain continue to be optimized, I find really exciting.

[326] I mean, that was probably the biggest sort of driver.

[327] There was two things that really drove me. around this.

[328] Well, really three things.

[329] One is that I've had a longstanding love affair with the brain.

[330] I just love the brain.

[331] I love the fact that you look at three and a half pounds of tissue and that memories live there and your pain lives there and your joy.

[332] And I don't want to sound reductionist, but this idea that those things that make you, you are contained within this tissue still.

[333] Consciousness is probably a locally contained phenomenon within the brain.

[334] Some would argue with that.

[335] But nevertheless, it's got a lot going on there, right?

[336] It's the whole thing.

[337] all the other shit is in support of it, really?

[338] I think so.

[339] And in order to improve anything else in your body or in your life, really, you've got to get the brain right.

[340] That was another big thing.

[341] In order to best heal the body, you've got to heal the mind, which I thought was fascinating.

[342] That's what I was going to ask you.

[343] But first I just wanted to say that, yeah, you start with the notion that cognitive decline is not inevitable, and it's never too early or too late to start taking care of your brain, which is what we just talked at, which is it's not written in stone.

[344] It can be nurtured.

[345] It can be pathologized.

[346] You have a role in this, which is very encouraging, I think.

[347] And then, yeah, next, I guess if I ask people to rank which organ they should prioritize for their health, I have to imagine the vast majority of people say heart.

[348] That's where all of us would start, yeah?

[349] I think so.

[350] You know, and I think there's been a real medicalization of heart disease.

[351] It is an accessible organ.

[352] You can see it.

[353] And you can see We show you the blockages that occur in the blood vessels.

[354] My father had that operation.

[355] I just had it.

[356] I just had the CT scan with the dye, and they give you a percentage in every artery of plaque.

[357] Your calcium score.

[358] Yes, it's crazy.

[359] I was zero.

[360] I was shocked.

[361] I couldn't believe it.

[362] My only explanation is exercise.

[363] I don't know what else to say.

[364] Is your diet good?

[365] Your diet's good, right?

[366] It's fair.

[367] I eat too much meat.

[368] I'll tell you that.

[369] Really?

[370] And my dad had heart disease.

[371] Your dad had heart disease.

[372] Well, if you have zero calcium score, I mean, that is a really, really good thing.

[373] You know that already.

[374] But in terms of being predictive of the likelihood of having some sort of coronary event, Dr. Agatston, South Beach Diet, you've heard of that?

[375] He's a cardiologist, and he's big on these coronary CT scans, had a long conversation about it.

[376] He basically said if you have a 0 % calcium score, you're basically heart attack proof for at least four to five years.

[377] You'll be heart attack proof a lot longer than that, but you'll get a lot.

[378] another scan.

[379] You know, it's kind of interesting to be able to look at a particular scan and say your likelihood of now having a cardiac event is X. And in your case, it's basically zero.

[380] I can't tell you the peace of mind it gave me. I think anyone who's in a position to get one, I can't think of a better $1 ,000 I've ever spent my life.

[381] I just, to your point, for the next four years, I'm like free of that.

[382] Concern.

[383] I mean, I'm not going to go to Sizzler and put a tent up there.

[384] But you know what I'm saying.

[385] It might be a fun experiment to see how unhealthy you can get quickly.

[386] See how you can get that score.

[387] See how you can get that score.

[388] Race to 40 % blockage.

[389] No, but you know, it's interesting.

[390] So, Monica, I had this test done too.

[391] I'm 51 now.

[392] You're, I think, mid -40s.

[393] By the time this airs, I'll have just turned 46.

[394] Good for you.

[395] Fingers crossed.

[396] Oh, geez.

[397] I have full faith, given your 0 % calcium channel.

[398] But, you know, so I like to run.

[399] And every now and then, I would have.

[400] some sort of pain in, you know, my chest.

[401] And it could have just been, frankly, reflux.

[402] It could have just been that I was, had been lifting some weights.

[403] So I was having some muscle pain there as a result.

[404] But my father had cardiac bypass surgery at 847.

[405] His father, my grandfather died at 50 of a heart attack.

[406] So it's always like in the back of the mind.

[407] So I got a zero percent tube back like when I was around, yeah, mid -40s, 45 or so.

[408] We need a club, you and I. We need the zero percent club.

[409] The outlaw bikers think they're cool because they're one percenters.

[410] We'd be zero percenters.

[411] That's what you got to aspire to.

[412] But it did give me that peace of mind that, you know, I wasn't having a heart problem in the middle of a run.

[413] It was something else.

[414] It was interesting.

[415] But I want to say something because this might actually get at what you're talking about with the heart versus the brain.

[416] You know, we think of optimizing the heart.

[417] You just said you wouldn't automatically think of the brain.

[418] And this is really interesting.

[419] This was the second thing that really inspired me on this book.

[420] And that is that things that are measurable take on an added degree of importance because they are measurable, right?

[421] So you did the Framingham study and you found cholesterol and lipids and all these sorts of things were associated with heart disease.

[422] And all of a sudden, they became these huge things to aspire to, lower your cholesterol, lower your lipids, lower your blood pressure and all that.

[423] And all of that's very important.

[424] But if I told you, for example, stress, was a bigger predictor of having a heart event.

[425] Now, people are like, well, that's kind of nebulous, soft, squishy around the edges.

[426] What does that really mean?

[427] Yeah, how do you quantify stress?

[428] That's the problem.

[429] So that is the problem, but it makes it no less important, right?

[430] Things that are measurable shouldn't be more important by virtue of the fact that they are measurable.

[431] They should be important because they are so associated with something like this.

[432] And that's why, again, with this book, it was all these things, people think of the brain as this black box, impenetrable, immutable, not changeable, as we were just saying, encased by this skull of hard bone, and therefore you can't do anything to improve it.

[433] You can't prevent disease.

[434] It's all sort of preordained when it comes to things up there.

[435] And a lot of it's because it's hard to measure.

[436] If I had a coronary CT scan of the brain, like we were just talking about for the heart, and I could tell you now your brain is optimized at this level, or here are the things you need to do.

[437] That'd be pretty incredible, right?

[438] But we don't really have that.

[439] People do have that, and they've been working on it.

[440] Some of these scientists that I interviewed for the book, and yet it's hard to get this stuff published because they don't have the cholesterol below 200.

[441] You know, that's an easy paper to write.

[442] But if I tell you that you need to have three friends, you need to be hanging out with them for this long, and it's going to do this to your brain objectively.

[443] Yeah.

[444] It's harder evidence to collect, but it makes it no less true or no less important.

[445] Yeah, I mean, our best diagnostic tool, to my knowledge is the DSM in psychiatry, right?

[446] And so it's the best we can do.

[447] And there's no numbers given.

[448] You know, they might say you're bipolar, but at what level are you 40?

[449] Are you 100?

[450] Is your cholesterol 300?

[451] You know.

[452] Right.

[453] And then the distinction between pathology and healthy and optimization.

[454] Like, if I told you, you could be optimized.

[455] Like, I'm not thinking you have any kind of, you know, there's nothing medically wrong or there's not a diagnosis here.

[456] It's just that I'm going to increase the reserve in your brain so that when you encounter a problem, you're going to be able to tackle that problem in different ways than you otherwise would have, that you're going to connect patterns that you would have otherwise missed.

[457] You're going to be resilient to something, meaning like a muscle, when I work it out, it gets stronger as opposed to getting crushed.

[458] Daily events right now are crushing so many people mentally.

[459] But if they have greater resiliency than that actually can be turned into an attribute in the sense that it's almost becomes like a workout.

[460] I'm not saying that any of this is good that's happening to us, but what it does to us in the long run in terms of our brain health is very much dependent on how we treat.

[461] Are we treating it like a workout or are we treating it like a crushing event?

[462] And some of that has to do with just how resilient you are in the first place.

[463] And that is a buildable thing.

[464] That is probably the core of it to build that resiliency.

[465] Well, also you point out, which is really plainly logical, which is if you have any hope of having a healthy heart, the best thing to start with is if you have a healthy brain and you have some of the things you just listed, you know, if you feel flexible and you feel not overwhelmed and you feel optimistic, all these little things, they actually will lead to you making the time to go get the heart CT scan.

[466] Maybe they help you make a better food choice.

[467] Like you can't be in abject depression and then make a great food choice.

[468] in general.

[469] You know, you're probably caught in a spiral of feeling terrible, trying to get a bump from something bad.

[470] So, yeah, starting at the top and having a like a trickle -down approach to everything else makes a ton of sense to me. It all starts, in my opinion, and I think I'm obviously I'm biased.

[471] I'm a brain surgeon, but everything starts with the brain.

[472] The same activity that you do when you're not in a good headspace or whatever you want to call it is not going to have as much of an impact on you.

[473] But, you know, one thing I want to say, because I, and again, I think you'll understand this is that when you create resiliency and redundancy or reserve in your brain, whatever you want to call it.

[474] And I can tell you how I think that can best be done.

[475] But when you do that, I find it to be a very joyous experience because what happens, even for you guys who live this very interesting life because you do this podcast, you talk to interesting people, you have to learn, you're reading new things, which is fantastic.

[476] The medical term is spoiled.

[477] Yeah, I mean, look, what a privilege, right?

[478] Yes, we're fucking spoiled.

[479] You can just say it.

[480] I mean, you would do this for, I mean, just to do it, right?

[481] Oh, for sure.

[482] We'd pay to do it.

[483] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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

[485] What's up, guys, this is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[486] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[487] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment.

[488] Jamon's best and brightest, okay?

[489] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[490] And I don't mean just friends.

[491] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[492] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[493] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[494] We've all been there.

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

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

[497] Like the unexplainable death of a retired 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.

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

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

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

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

[502] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[503] You guys go deep.

[504] I think for someone like me, you know, just why I love doing your podcast is because there's only so much you can really convey in the public discourse, I think.

[505] People's attention spans are short, and they want the crisp headline, you know?

[506] Yeah.

[507] And sometimes everything lives in the nuance.

[508] Everything lives there.

[509] I can give you a crisp headline, you know, and I can give you the five things you should do to improve your brain, and I will.

[510] Yeah.

[511] But the why besides the what?

[512] You're exactly right, because I love what you just said, which is I'm actually promising you not just maintenance of status quo.

[513] It's hard to motivate people to prevent their body from deteriorating.

[514] That's not a very incentivized approach, But the notion of joy, the notion of optimization.

[515] 100%.

[516] That is a life lesson for me. I think even as a doc, I mean, we inspire through fear.

[517] I think in general, you know, if you eat that cheeseburger, you will have a heart attack.

[518] You know, smoke that cigarette.

[519] You will get lung cancer.

[520] And you invoke this very, very hot response in the brain and the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain, which is an immediate hot, you know, fiery response.

[521] The problem is that it's not very coordinated response.

[522] It doesn't go through the frontal lobes.

[523] So you get somebody in response to being told they may have a heart attack who does a week of intense dieting and then stops.

[524] Because the amygdala now is not as fired up and they didn't really have a plan.

[525] They just reacted out of fear.

[526] But when it comes to the brain, what is so interesting, so a headline would be do something that scares you every day.

[527] Get outside your comfort zone in some way every day.

[528] And you say, well, why is that?

[529] Well, because I could show you your brain, I could surface map it, and I could show you that you have a million roads in your brain, and you're using 100 ,000 of them really, really well all the time.

[530] And those 100 ,000 roads are great.

[531] They're going from your thalamus over here to your occipital lobe, and they're coming over here to your temporal lobe, so that's why you can remember songs and you can sing them, whatever it may be.

[532] But the other 900 ,000 roads are there.

[533] They're not getting used as much.

[534] And when I start to get you outside your comfort zone, you automatically start recruiting new neurons, neurogenesis, you start using new roads.

[535] And that sort of reserve means when the roads that you use all the time start to get blocked or, you know, need construction, which happens, you already have all these other roads there.

[536] That is sort of what reserve means.

[537] And I think that the idea that you can build it now, just by thinking about something you don't typically think about and being vulnerable about it is really fascinating in terms of how it serves you now.

[538] You'll think about things differently automatically.

[539] And I find that quite joyous to find patterns that I, whoa, I just saw a pattern there that everyone else missed.

[540] And it can help buffer you as you get older from, you know, the medical things that people worry about, such as dementia.

[541] Well, not to fear or motivate, but it does atrophy in some sense, right?

[542] If you're not using the other 900 ,000 pathways, it kind of atrophies.

[543] Use it or lose it, but practice makes perfect, which is true because the roads you are using will be really, really smooth running roads, but change builds resilience.

[544] And I think that that's sort of the key for me. I got to tell you something, though, just real quick on atrophy.

[545] Quick story, it's about a year ago.

[546] I was in the operating room and I was on call.

[547] And what happens a lot of times is they say somebody is coming to the emergency room and here's a story and they'll show you the scans.

[548] And it was a 93 -year -old guy.

[549] Okay?

[550] So they say 93 -year -old person who had a blood collection on his head.

[551] So right away, I think 93 -year -old person like this, is this somebody who we're going to operate on?

[552] I mean, is this, it's a big deal.

[553] And, you know, if I want to be strategic and be thoughtful in terms of how I'm approaching this.

[554] They said, well, they say he's very high -functioning guy and all this sort of stuff.

[555] And so give me the story.

[556] Turns out he had been on his roof of his house with a leaf blower blowing leaves off of his roof, okay?

[557] And he fell, and he got injured.

[558] He had a subdural hematoma.

[559] He came in to the hospital, and he was still with it at this point.

[560] The blood collection was growing, but he was with it, so I went to go talk to him.

[561] And when I went to go talk to him, I'll never forget.

[562] He was looking at his iPhone or whatever.

[563] You know, it was interesting because he didn't have reading glasses on, and I thought, I need reading glasses.

[564] I don't look at this thing.

[565] And I say, hey, so, you know, what's going on?

[566] He's like, oh, you know, he fell off my roof, you know, whatever.

[567] And I said, what are you reading.

[568] He's like, oh, these elections are happening in East Africa.

[569] I'm just been following them.

[570] Oh, wow.

[571] So he's obviously a high functioning guy, like they said.

[572] So we take him to the operating room.

[573] He's got a subdural blood collection.

[574] So that's blood that's just underneath the outer layer of the brain called the dura.

[575] You remove that.

[576] You stop whatever little bleeding there is.

[577] And for a little bit of time, you're looking at the brain because you've taken the blood off the brain.

[578] So 93 -year -old guy, this gets back to your point about atrophy.

[579] What do you think I saw in this 93 -year -old, really high -functioning guy's brain.

[580] What I saw was a very shriveled up brain that looked like it belonged to a 93 -year -old.

[581] Oh, really?

[582] Yeah.

[583] It had aged just like you expected it would age, but it had almost no correlation to his function.

[584] And that was the thing that really stuck with me. He was sharp.

[585] In fact, I went to his room after the operation and he we're having this conversation and I said so what you know this is quite an experience I mean you fell you almost die and how you doing and he said well he goes I guess the thing I've learned in all this is probably shouldn't be blowing leaves off the roof just just this just really comical thoughtful 93 year old guy whose brain was a 93 year old brain but the function was remarkable we think of our organs having this natural deterioration and They do, but it doesn't mean they can't function like they did when, you know, you're much younger.

[586] Well, it makes me think of two things that people, like, commonly know, right?

[587] And it doesn't really even matter if the numbers are right.

[588] But they say, you know, like, you only use 10 % of your brain or 20 % your brain.

[589] But forget that.

[590] The notion that you can have a stroke and they can actually take your motor control and move it to another area of your brain.

[591] Am I right in that that's how it works?

[592] Like, they just basically force another area of your brain to do the job that another area was doing.

[593] Yeah.

[594] I mean, you do it.

[595] You basically are recruiting other areas of your brain.

[596] They can, through therapy and things like that, they can basically start creating these changes in your cortex, you know, where the motor areas are, the brain, and create new areas around that to actually help you move again.

[597] But you're the one doing it.

[598] Your brain is capable of doing it.

[599] You know, it's not like they're going in and sticking new motor neurons in this area.

[600] It is accelerating a process that might happen anyway, right?

[601] If you kept, you didn't, I didn't even know I had a stroke.

[602] I just kept, trying to move.

[603] And then eventually you started moving again.

[604] If someone told you had a stroke, you're like, well, I can't move.

[605] What that tells me, you can't take one of the four chambers of the heart and then just jettison one of them and have one of the other ones do the job of that, right?

[606] Because it operates virtually at capacity.

[607] But what that tells me about the brain is that there's so much untapped potential just sitting there.

[608] There is so much untapped potential.

[609] And if you build that reserve, which I'm fascinated by this idea of cognitive reserve, then that potential is even greater and can come into play more easily if you start to develop any problems.

[610] I don't know if you caught the HBO Real Sports story they ran a couple weeks ago on CTE patients that have gone and done ayahuasca or psilocybin mushrooms or ecstasy.

[611] And the way the neurologist in that segment described it is that the guys with CTE, their brain is so unflexible.

[612] and that the pathways are so, how do I say it, just it's all they're using and it's part of the condition and that when they kind of explode their brain with these different drugs and they show them in it, whatever scan that is, it's not an MRI, but they show their brain and the activities off the charts, right?

[613] It's just an electrical storm on these drugs.

[614] And then when the brain is trying to reprocess and bring them back down to reality, in that they end up forging new highways.

[615] That's how I understood it.

[616] And I was just curious if you knew about that research and could it be that promising and it's very exciting.

[617] I followed the psilocybin research pretty closely.

[618] I mean, I think that the idea, with CTE, first of all, you know, the idea that you develop similar sort of plaques and tangles that people see in Alzheimer's disease, which leads to interference with these pathways, I think, is real.

[619] And there's very classic sort of symptoms as a result of that.

[620] with the psilocybin, the thing that struck me the most was that they were giving people who, not necessarily CTE, but had refractory depression or anxiety for a particular reason.

[621] In the case of the early trials, it was because these people had a terminal diagnosis.

[622] It wasn't just that they were old, you know, people had a incurable cancer, whatever it may be.

[623] And they were super depressed about it, understandably.

[624] But they also weren't responding to any kinds of the therapies.

[625] And they would go through generations of these antidepressants and anti -anxiety meds.

[626] And they were incorrigible to the point where they were suicidal despite the fact that they only had months to live.

[627] I mean, it was really, you know, I don't know if you've read any of these studies.

[628] There was one out of NYU and then Hopkins.

[629] And now at UCLA, they've added another trial site.

[630] I only know it by way of the pollen book, which, yeah, talks about the active psilocybin actually reduces your connection with your sense of identity.

[631] where you're formulating identity and that it allows you to feel connected in a way that you otherwise can't.

[632] And that connection to the rest of the world seem to be very helpful to those people.

[633] Paul and, you know, he had a article in The New Yorker before he wrote his book, How to Change Your Mind, called The Trip Treatment.

[634] And it was based on that exact thing.

[635] When you talk to those NYU researchers, I'll just tell you this really quickly because it, I think, feeds into what you're saying.

[636] they had remarkable results, as you know, that's why it got such attention.

[637] These people who did not respond to existing therapies, they took a single dose of psilocybin in a cognitively controlled setting.

[638] So they were in a hospital, and they had a cognitive therapist.

[639] Terrible place for a trip, I would imagine, but continue.

[640] Well, you know, it was fascinating.

[641] They showed me the room.

[642] You put on this eye patch.

[643] You had the headphones.

[644] And for a lot of people, it was, I've never done psilocybin.

[645] I have nothing against it.

[646] I've never done it.

[647] Oh, Sanjay, you have to.

[648] I forced Monica.

[649] You know, I'm sober, but I used to do them.

[650] 16 years ago, I did them all the time.

[651] I forced Monica.

[652] I was really against it for a long time.

[653] What did that entail forcing you?

[654] I put together a beautiful group of people.

[655] I was in charge of administering it.

[656] I was there sober in case anyone got scared.

[657] Which happened.

[658] Yeah.

[659] Was it frightening, Monica?

[660] Yes, at first, at first, because my hands turned into grandma hands, and I was not prepared for that.

[661] And also not to make it personal, but Dax was there to protect us and he went into the other room to watch TV.

[662] Because he said she wasn't feeling it.

[663] And they were all getting annoying.

[664] Like they were evaluating whether they were high or not.

[665] I forgot how annoying that part of it is.

[666] Oh my God, yeah.

[667] Can you look at those bushes?

[668] Are you feeling anything?

[669] Yeah.

[670] So I bounced into the other room hoping that when it came on, I would get involved.

[671] But I missed my window.

[672] Yes, I did.

[673] And my hands turned to grab my hands and I started to panic.

[674] Because I was really scared to do it.

[675] I didn't want to do it forever.

[676] And he had been saying, you should do it.

[677] It'll make you more creative, you know, peer pressuring me, which I generally cannot be peer pressured.

[678] And I thought, okay, I guess I'll try it.

[679] Also, we went there with the intention of microdosing.

[680] Which is a waste of time, I said.

[681] Which then we didn't do it.

[682] I had a full dose.

[683] No, you guys did microdose.

[684] And everyone's like, why the fuck are we doing this?

[685] Nothing's happening.

[686] And then everyone decided to have a real trip.

[687] And I said, okay, well, then it's going to be this amount.

[688] Okay.

[689] Yeah, so anyway, it just really caught me up guard.

[690] Then I started panicking and having a real panic attack.

[691] And by then, Dax came out.

[692] Also, everyone looked like a cartoon, but then Dax came out and then we took a walk.

[693] I took Monica on a walk.

[694] We slowed down.

[695] We talked.

[696] I said, look at that house.

[697] Doesn't it look like it's a movie set?

[698] So what was really funny is she started getting convinced I was on them too because how on earth would I know it looks like a movie set?

[699] And I'm like, Monica, I've done this 300 times.

[700] Are you in my head?

[701] Are you even really?

[702] real.

[703] But then he said a really wonderful thing, which was you have the capacity to decide whether this is enjoyable or not.

[704] You can pick.

[705] So then I turned.

[706] I turned around.

[707] And it was really, really life -changing.

[708] Sanjay, please don't leave planet Earth without doing it.

[709] It would be a big mistake.

[710] You're not an addict, right?

[711] You have no addictive.

[712] You're not battling an alcoholism.

[713] But, you know, it's interesting because I hear this story exactly, Monica, what you just said.

[714] And I think I'm a bit of a control person.

[715] You can't be more of a control freak than Monica.

[716] Right.

[717] So that part worries me, like, to pay the price to get there by what you, the grandma hands and all that and having the hallucinations.

[718] Like, I think it would be hard.

[719] I won't leave your side.

[720] I learned from this.

[721] Okay.

[722] So I will give it to you and then I'll just hang with you the whole time.

[723] Okay.

[724] All right.

[725] Also, if you know going in.

[726] Oh, there's going to be physical changes maybe or, you know, I just had no idea.

[727] And I thought I was only doing a tiny amount.

[728] So I thought colors were just going to get a little brighter.

[729] It was so much more extreme than that.

[730] So I think expectation is a big factor.

[731] So I'll tell you, when I read the article that the pollen book was ultimately based on and then went back and looked at the research, people in that trial who had these refractory, depression, and anxiety, their scores improved and lasted for months.

[732] I mean, up to six months in certain cases.

[733] So it was a really profound experience for them.

[734] I mean, people who are atheists were writing things about their experience.

[735] Like, I'm an atheist, but the only way to describe this is I felt like I was bathed in God's love.

[736] And that was quite interesting to me to sort of read people's firsthand perspectives on going through this.

[737] And also from a medical standpoint, you know, like it, so you give an antidepressant every day has all these side effects, give a single dose of something like a psilocybin in a cognitively controlled setting, it may be, and it can have really long -lasting effects.

[738] I mean, it's a whole other discussion, but, you know, I did a whole bunch of reporting on cannabis a few years ago in this whole inflection point between Overton's window.

[739] Are you familiar with Overton's window?

[740] No, I love new terms.

[741] Tell me that.

[742] So Overton's window, and I'll probably get it wrong, so I'll just be humble about this, but Overton's window fundamentally is a concept of a window through which everything that is acceptable societally can pass through at any given time.

[743] And as you might imagine, it shrinks and it expands and it moves all the time.

[744] And cannabis, like cannabis was not something that went through Overton's window 15, 20 years ago.

[745] It was not allowed to pass through.

[746] And then now, obviously, it's changed tremendously.

[747] But those inflection points between what is acceptable and what is actually helpful to people.

[748] Because it's not acceptable, we say it's not helpful.

[749] Like cannabis can actually be helpful.

[750] I became convinced to that, did these documentaries on people with refractory epilepsy and things like that, kids, you know, again, who weren't responding to conventional treatments.

[751] Not only did it work for them, for some of them, it was the only thing that worked.

[752] Yeah.

[753] So it became as much of a moral issue as it did a medical issue.

[754] And I do think things like psilocybin for depression, MDMA for post -traumatic stress.

[755] I'm not as familiar with the applications of ayahuasca, although, you know, I just haven't read as much about it.

[756] it, but obviously it's gaining more and more.

[757] They're doing more trials around this.

[758] It'd have to be really effective because it's almost guaranteed you sheet your pants.

[759] So for me, that's a big barrier of entry.

[760] I better have some real, real positive outcome.

[761] Is that a metaphor?

[762] Or is it?

[763] No, no, no, no. You actually do.

[764] When you do it, there's a bucket at the front of your bed and there's toilets everywhere.

[765] Yeah, it really messes up the G. Just like hits the GI system?

[766] Yeah, hits it hard.

[767] I'm never doing this.

[768] Just so you know.

[769] Yeah.

[770] That's a little bit of a deal breaker for me. Also, I don't want to be your guide.

[771] Like, I'll guide you through a shrooms event, but not that.

[772] I don't want to deal with that.

[773] You need a true shaman for that, huh?

[774] Okay, so one thing I love about your book is that it reinforces something that I believe the most.

[775] If I have any conviction, it's, you know, if I had to give up things that helped me in order the very last thing I would ever give up, I would leave AA before I would stop exercising.

[776] So tell me about the power of exercise on your brain.

[777] First of all, it's the only thing that we've actually been able to really gather the evidence around with regard to brain health.

[778] And, you know, again, there's a lot of other things that are helpful.

[779] An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[780] But the thing you're going to hear from neuroscientists and stuff, they're always going to talk about physical exercise, A, because it works, B, because it's measurable, and C, because we've been able to collect real evidence around it.

[781] So people who are in motion, and I'll just use that term for now, and I can define that, but people who are more active tend to have brains that are going to have a lot more of these same qualities that we're talking about.

[782] More reserve, more resiliency.

[783] BDNF is something that people will often refer to, which stands for brain -derived neurotrophic factor.

[784] BDNF.

[785] You want BDNF.

[786] I can't give it to you in a shot or a pill or anything like that, but your body can make it.

[787] It's like miracle growth for the brain, and it'll actually spray into the brain in response to movement, which is a really interesting thing.

[788] And again, it's the only predictable way to increase these neurotrophic factors, which will enable the neurogenesis that we're talking about, all these other things in a very predictable way.

[789] So movement is really key.

[790] When I started to think about this book, I had been traveling around the world and looking at all these various cultures where dementia was very rare.

[791] And a lot of these cultures, they had a lot of healthy habits.

[792] But one thing that you noticed was that there was a lot of movement in these cultures.

[793] They hardly ever sat.

[794] They were either lying when they slept or they were standing and walking, usually walking, frankly, not even running, when they were upright.

[795] And that was it.

[796] And, you know, you start to talk to these evolutionary biologists about this and you say, you know, people, human beings really only sat when they got old.

[797] You know, it was almost like it was teleological in the sense that, you know, you know, You started to sit a lot when you got old, and it signaled these things to your body, like, hey, I'm old.

[798] And some of your body's self -defense mechanisms started to decrease.

[799] Your immune system started to taper a bit.

[800] All these things that basically allowed you to come to a natural biological end, which happens to all of us.

[801] But it was almost like the sitting was triggering that as opposed to the other way around.

[802] Now, obviously, you fast forward to now, and, you know, we sit all the time.

[803] So in some ways, we're always sending these signals to our bodies that you go ahead, shut down the perimeter defenses.

[804] You know, I'm ready to go.

[805] My body must think I'm 200 years old.

[806] I mean, I sit in this lazy boy half the day.

[807] Yeah, but you're an active guy as well.

[808] You know, I mean, there is something to be said for natural, consistent movement throughout the day.

[809] But you're an active person, I think, you know, and I think it makes a huge difference.

[810] But it's really the only proven, evidence -based way to really improve brain health.

[811] Increase blood flow, increase BDNF, create that.

[812] that reserve, that resiliency, all that sort of stuff.

[813] So for me, you know, a body in motion stays in motion.

[814] I think of activity, not so much as the cure to things, as inactivity is the disease.

[815] So what does that mean?

[816] That whenever I'm about to sit, I do ask myself if I could be standing instead.

[817] Do I really need to sit?

[818] You know, whatever it may be, however you incorporate that into your life, can make a huge difference, you know, just overall in terms of brain health.

[819] I think much more so than crossword puzzles or particular brain training exercises.

[820] It's like you're signaling to the body that I'm here.

[821] You're signaling to the brain that I want to stay.

[822] Yeah, I need to be in a condition to respond.

[823] Yeah, exactly.

[824] I want to be engaged with this world.

[825] So keep me as healthy as possible, thinking as clearly as possible, all those sorts of things.

[826] You also bust some myths in this book.

[827] Here's one I wasn't shocked by.

[828] Supplements won't keep your brain sharp.

[829] Supplements are a big topic, and I will tell you that there are some really good supplement makers out there.

[830] But the reason, when I looked at this, talked to a lot of people who have done these trials around supplements, a few things sort of jumped out.

[831] One is that it's hard to get the good stuff out of food and put it in a pill.

[832] No lack of trying here.

[833] I mean, this isn't to malign some of these really good supplement makers.

[834] It's just a hard thing.

[835] There is this notion that you may have heard of called the entourage.

[836] effect, which basically means that when you eat food, you're getting your lycopenes, yes, you know, whatever it may be, but you're getting lots of other micronutrients that in conjunction with the biggest active ingredient are really important for letting that active ingredient work in your body.

[837] They open certain receptors, you know, they allow the lycopenes, whatever the most active ingredient is, to work best.

[838] It's hard to do that when you put it in a pill form because you're losing the entourage of micronutrients around it.

[839] So that's number one.

[840] Number two is it just a really unregulated business in this country, you know, which is too bad because, again, there's some really good supplement makers out there.

[841] But because of lack of regulation, you get a lot of bad actors as well.

[842] They're not as diligent about what it is that they're putting into their pills.

[843] Either it's not what they say it is, it's too much of what they say it is, and in some case, it's even harmful.

[844] So we don't have a regulated industry, and that, you know, that's a problem.

[845] And one thing I'll tell you is that there are.

[846] supplement makers that have been around for a few decades.

[847] And that's something that I immediately gravitate toward because there are these fly -by -night operations.

[848] It's such a big business, right?

[849] Billions of dollars are spent on this.

[850] So these fly -by -night operations, they come in with these grand promises, and they sell a bunch of supplements for several months or a couple years, and then they're gone.

[851] And they're not in service to the customer.

[852] They're in service to just making a lot of money.

[853] On the other hand, you do have, and I'll send you some of these names that have been around a long time and you spend time with these supplement makers.

[854] They still are at risk of having the same problem of not being able to create the entourage effect in pills.

[855] But they do a pretty good job.

[856] They can help overcome deficiencies.

[857] People who have true deficiencies of a particular thing.

[858] But overall, for your brain, eating it versus trying to take it in a pill, I think makes a world a difference.

[859] Okay.

[860] And that brings me to another one, which this is one I was kind of shocked by, which is brain superfoods are a myth.

[861] Superfood is an advertising sort of term that people can get easily behind, just like we were saying, they want the crisp headline.

[862] This is a superfood.

[863] There's almost nothing that is a true superfood.

[864] And it should surprise no one that when you've got seven billion people on the planet, that everyone's brains and what they respond to or what they best respond to is going to be a little bit different, you know?

[865] Yeah.

[866] I mean, we want the sort of universal rules.

[867] as part of this book, one of the things I did, someone kept telling me to do it, and I never done it, but I decided for the book I would do it, which was I was really diligent about keeping a food journal.

[868] And you write down what you eat, and then you spend time, you know, an hour later, two hours later, wherever, just writing down how you're doing.

[869] And maybe you have your own sort of way of grading yourself.

[870] Like, I feel very creative right now, or I feel like I need a nap right now, or I couldn't possibly do a challenging task right now, or this is the best I've ever felt.

[871] And you will find your, quote -unquote superfoods.

[872] For me, it was interesting, I all of a sudden found that fermented foods like pickles were a secret weapon for me. When I'm going to sit down and write or do something that's, you know, I think it's going to be challenging, it's going to require different parts of my brain.

[873] I'm going to have to do novel thinking.

[874] I'm not just regurgitating things, but the novel thinking part of my day.

[875] That's the fun part, but it's the challenging part.

[876] Pickles, you know?

[877] Wow.

[878] And I got it that through food journaling.

[879] And people may have different sort of superfoods for them, and you can figure it out.

[880] You can individualize your optimization.

[881] Here comes my crossfire journalism.

[882] Isn't it true, Sanjay, that you have a large holding of pickle futures, cucumber futures?

[883] I thought that was totally private.

[884] Everyone go out and buy pickles.

[885] Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

[886] If you dare.

[887] And how about crossword puzzles?

[888] We always hear that crossword puzzles are like doing sit -ups for your brain.

[889] Yeah, cross -word puzzles are good for developing things like fluency of your brain, word -finding, using words, you know, more quickly.

[890] And those are great.

[891] But maybe sit -ups is the right analogy.

[892] If you just did sit -ups and nothing else, I don't know how good that would be.

[893] It wouldn't be bad.

[894] But, you know, if I tell you, I want to give you a whole body workout and I'm going to focus on your diet and I'm going to focus on all these other things, it would look different than just crossword puzzles.

[895] Crossword puzzles are great, but they've become a substitute for everything else that you should be doing for your brain.

[896] I love the one thing you wrote.

[897] Finishing a crossword puzzle on your own isn't nearly as impactful in boosting brain function as having a face -to -face interaction with a friend.

[898] Oh, I like that.

[899] Studies show that having a diverse social network can improve brain plasticity and help preserve cognitive ability.

[900] So yeah, everyone would assume doing two hours of crossword puzzle would be better for your brain than shooting the shit with a buddy.

[901] Right.

[902] I think most people would think that and what you find again and it won't surprise neuroscientists is that when you are shooting the shit with a buddy all the various things that are happening in your brain as a result, the friendship, the content that you're talking about, whatever it may be, getting yourself outside your comfort zone, challenging each other a little bit, whatever it may be, those things end up being much better for harnessing and recruiting all these different areas of the brain.

[903] If that is the, the goal to always be recruiting new areas of your brain, then it starts to make sense why certain activities are better than other activities.

[904] It's not that the other activities are bad, but if I had to put it all together, if you said, okay, what is the best thing to do for your brain?

[905] Just give me a couple examples.

[906] I would say, take a brisk walk with a close friend and discuss your problems.

[907] Uh -huh.

[908] That kind of gets at all these things, you know, the brisk walk, obviously, just in terms of the movement, but having the real social connection with somebody, you know, and how do you determine that it's a close connection because you feel like you can actually talk about your problems?

[909] You can't do that with everybody.

[910] So I found that really, you know, quite compelling and easy to digest, and I've started using it in my own life.

[911] I haven't been able to see my parents, obviously, in a long time because of this pandemic.

[912] But when, I call them, I would typically say, hey, how you doing?

[913] And they would typically say, hey, we're doing, we're doing fine, you know, and it was very cursory.

[914] When I started having a more purpose -driven conversation with them, and this loneliness expert taught me this, asking them for help in some way, could be something simple.

[915] All of a sudden, it completely changed the purpose and intent of our conversations.

[916] So my parents are both engineers, as you know, you know, Michigan background, And one day my wife came home and her car had smoke coming out of the hood.

[917] And, you know, she's like, honey, take a look.

[918] Okay, so I popped the hood and it's all, you know, I mean, you've seen these engines nowadays.

[919] I don't know where to begin.

[920] And I face -time my parents and showed them the thing.

[921] And, you know, dad, I got this problem.

[922] Mom, I got this problem.

[923] And they were so into it the next morning.

[924] My mom is sending me these diagrams of the engine and here.

[925] Did you look over here?

[926] And it was a wonderful sort of interaction with my parents.

[927] It was revolving around something that was just so purposeful And I just felt good First of all I learned something Just about engines But you know like the number of like Really meaningful conversations That I've had Even with my family I do have meaningful conversations with them But you can get so procedural In your life And to say I'm going to create A purpose driven conversation Again you guys are privileged Because you get to do this Through this podcast And other things all the time So maybe this sounds so obvious to you.

[928] I don't think so, Sanjay.

[929] I think everyone's life is a broken record.

[930] Like, once you go home from work, it's like we got to get some food on the table.

[931] We got to get these little jerks to brush their teeth.

[932] It's almost impossible.

[933] You know, the steps are so repetitive that, of course, then the dialogue ends up being informed by the action in a weird way, you know?

[934] Look, I'm guilty of that as well.

[935] I mean, I'm not preaching here.

[936] But if you can be vulnerable to somebody, and that means asking for help, then it gets at so many of the concepts in this book because it does harness the new areas of the brain.

[937] It creates an emotional attachment that really fires up your amygdala.

[938] The memories are stronger of those types of interactions because you have more of these neurotransmitters that are actually impregnating these memories more strongly into your hippocampus.

[939] There's a physiology behind all this.

[940] There's a why behind all this, but the what, which is what you should do, is to me very simple and it makes sense to me. This makes me want to tell you a two -second story, which is on a movie set or a TV set, the people that have to most memorize names probably are the camera operators because they're so often saying, Jennifer, will you step to your left or whatever?

[941] You know, they can't just say like, hey, guy in the red shirt.

[942] So they, more than anyone, have to really learn everyone's names.

[943] and there's this great guy on Parenthood, Scipio Africano, perfect name for him.

[944] His trick that he taught me was he hung out in the morning at the craft service area where people get their coffee and their snack.

[945] And when he would see a new actor that was just there for the day or a background player or anyone he would have to talk to, he would ask them to hand him something.

[946] And he said that he had learned this trick that if you need something from somebody, you will remember their name.

[947] name.

[948] And I tried that trick in real life.

[949] And I also just went through historically when I'm there as an actor, I actually don't need anything from anybody.

[950] But when I've been directing things, I need the costumers to do this.

[951] I need the hair people to do that.

[952] I'm so good.

[953] I've memorized 120 people's names on my crew because I need something from all them.

[954] So interesting.

[955] But when I'm there as an actor, I mean, I don't know anyone's fucking name.

[956] And I was like, God, there's something to what he said here.

[957] How do you create a purpose around that interaction?

[958] Because then it helps you remember.

[959] Yeah.

[960] You had an experience.

[961] And asking for help, there's a little bit of a vulnerability there, which I think is maybe the key.

[962] I mean, I'm not sure that that's the key, to be honest, but whatever it is, you tend to remember that.

[963] Maybe it's because you have this instinctive gratitude, because they just helped you in some way, whatever it may be, just asking someone's name, and they tell you, there's nothing to associate that with.

[964] I mean, you know, your Dax, you're Monica.

[965] I would not have been able to guess your names just by looking at you.

[966] Sure, sure.

[967] It's very arbitrary.

[968] Yeah, I mean, it's totally, you know, if I got to know your mom or your parents, maybe it would make sense.

[969] You know, there'd be some story there.

[970] But yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

[971] How we remember.

[972] By the way, you can remember too much, you know, going back to the MDMA.

[973] You know, when you talk about post -traumatic stress, one of the things that they were studying as part of these MDMA trials was to give people these beta blockers right after a traumatic experience.

[974] you know, basically bringing down the level of stress hormones because stress hormones cause you to really impregnate these memories even stronger under your hippocampus.

[975] So if somebody's had a terrible accident or some terrible trauma, in addition, everything else, give them some beta blockers and they'll be less likely to have PTSD later on.

[976] Sort of fascinating, but it's the same thing, except in reverse.

[977] Evolutionarily, if you find that when you drink from this certain waterhole, a crocodile comes out at you, this is very pertinent information to remember.

[978] It's not hard to understand why we're so good at remembering life -threatening things.

[979] Exactly, exactly.

[980] Okay, so we hit Move.

[981] So, Sunjay's five pillars of brain health, we hit Move, and we just talked about Connect, but I would like to talk about Discover, Relax, and Nourish, because, again, some of these are counterintuitive.

[982] Well, with Nourish, you know, I think that there are a couple of basic rules that do apply, which is one of the things that what is good for the heart is.

[983] good for the brain.

[984] I do think that is true just fundamentally because these are both highly demanding vascular structures.

[985] The brain is 2 % of your body weight.

[986] It takes 20 % of your blood flow.

[987] What you have in your blood in terms of nutrients and how you're feeding yourself is obviously going to make a difference.

[988] But what I think is different about the brain versus the heart, for example, is that nourishing the brain comes not just in the form of food, but in terms of every sensation you have.

[989] Every experience you have is nourishing your brain in some way.

[990] Every sensation you take in visual, any kind of sensory stimulation is nourishing your brain.

[991] So how do you think about nourishing your brain from an experience standpoint?

[992] Being out in nature, for example, you know, when you're out in nature, you're breathing in these things called phytonsides, which are nature's own stress -relieving chemicals.

[993] That's how nature sort of busts stress or wards off potential threats.

[994] We have receptors for these fights and sides.

[995] So that's a sensation or a nourishment that you can give to your brain as well.

[996] So, you know, you really think about nourishment from a dietary standpoint, understand what is good for your heart is also good for your brain.

[997] Find your superfoods like I did.

[998] And think about nourishing your brain in terms of all these various experiences.

[999] Sleep and rest.

[1000] They're both important.

[1001] I think with sleep, you know, we think about just the body is shutting down and you think the brain is sort of sleeping as well, and it's not.

[1002] The brain is actually quite active during most parts of your sleep cycle.

[1003] And you are actually then consolidating a lot of memories during that time.

[1004] So if you get joy out of having these great experiences, presumably you have joy out of remembering them.

[1005] If you are consolidating those memories well through good sleep, it's a joyful thing, you know?

[1006] That's the incentive.

[1007] It's not just to tell you that you will live longer, it's that you will have a more joyous life now.

[1008] Why?

[1009] Because you're consolidating wonderful memories that you had before, and that's a good thing.

[1010] You want to remember your life.

[1011] But it also serves a pragmatic purpose of almost creating this rinse cycle in your brain at night.

[1012] There's various debris and waste that occurs just from natural cellular processes.

[1013] You want to be able to sort of flush that away.

[1014] And again, this is relatively new science, but almost like the lymphatic system that takes waste away in your body, the brain has its own sort of lymphatic system, which is far more active during sleep.

[1015] So whatever it takes to convince people to do this, you know, it's super important.

[1016] Did you read Why We Sleep?

[1017] Yes.

[1018] Oh, my God.

[1019] It's fantastic.

[1020] Oh, it's mind -blowing.

[1021] It's mind -blowing.

[1022] And, you know, like, I think the what and the why, right?

[1023] Like, I could tell you what to do, but I do think, like, in why we sleep, understanding why you do it, I think it's a really good way to learn, and then people will follow it because, oh, that's why I'm doing this.

[1024] It makes sense to me now.

[1025] It sticks with you.

[1026] You're more likely to share it with your, you know, your friends, your family.

[1027] And on a personal level, while I was relapsing this year and abusing opiates, what I realize is I either wasn't dreaming or if I was, I certainly didn't remember it.

[1028] And then I read that book and I thought, oh, I was probably robbing myself of all this time where I processed my fears.

[1029] I process my memories.

[1030] I store those here.

[1031] I get rid of that.

[1032] I don't need it.

[1033] It's like, well, that could be an unintended collateral effect of that that I would have never even considered.

[1034] Right.

[1035] By the way, I didn't know about the relapse.

[1036] Oh, well, everyone listening knows, so don't.

[1037] I apologize.

[1038] I should know.

[1039] I've been so head down in COVID, so I apologize.

[1040] No, you have no obligation to follow my, uh, are you, Yes, I'm totally okay.

[1041] I'm three months clean.

[1042] I had all those surgeries and then I decided I would just stay right on those opiates.

[1043] Well, more complicated than that, but that was certainly probably what got me to critical mass. Yeah.

[1044] I'm sorry.

[1045] You're my friend.

[1046] I feel like I should know these things.

[1047] No, no, no, no. I didn't say it to be a downer.

[1048] I just was putting that piece together while reading why we sleep.

[1049] I just thought, oh, this is something probably no one even thinks about with different addictions.

[1050] Alcohol.

[1051] People who are alcoholics, we know.

[1052] We know.

[1053] it affects your sleep tremendously.

[1054] We know that it robs you of rim.

[1055] We know it robs you of this.

[1056] So that's just, again, when you learn of the function of sleep and how important it is, that then too has to be a factor you consider.

[1057] It's not just your liver.

[1058] It's not just, you know, your marriage.

[1059] You know, there's a lot of stuff.

[1060] You know, going back to the brain, you know, to the extent that you think of the brain when you think of sleep, the liver you measure your liver function tests.

[1061] And it's, again, the subjective measure.

[1062] With your brain, you know, I'm telling you You're not thinking as well as you normally do.

[1063] You're not remembering as well as you normally do.

[1064] You've lost your energy.

[1065] You know, there's all these sort of vague, nebulous ways of describing it, but it makes it no less important.

[1066] And in fact, it's the most important stuff for how someone thinks about their life, you know, how they define their lives.

[1067] And yet because we don't have a precise measure of that, it's been hard.

[1068] You know, that's, again, what I really wanted to get at in this book.

[1069] I'm very careful not to be too audacious in terms of how I present this, because I want it to be something that people are really going to believe in.

[1070] I'm not out there sort of making these wild conclusions, but there are several things we know to be true in terms of how we can best take care of the brain.

[1071] And I believe there is a best way to take care of the brain for everyone.

[1072] If you believe that, that there is a best way to do this for you.

[1073] If you start with that premise, then I can help, anybody can help really get you there.

[1074] Yeah, and I don't think these are big asks.

[1075] You know, it's not like Atkins diet where you can't eat more than 30 grams of carbohydrates in a day.

[1076] That is very hard to achieve.

[1077] But taking a walk every day is doable.

[1078] You know, getting the right amount of sleep is doable.

[1079] Connecting with people you love is doable.

[1080] None of these things are painful really asks.

[1081] And so I think it's very approachable in that way.

[1082] Yeah.

[1083] I mean, I think the reason people don't do them is almost for the opposite reason.

[1084] You know, in some ways they're too simple so they don't believe it could actually have an impact.

[1085] Or two, it's always the first thing to drop off your schedule.

[1086] You got a busy day.

[1087] So, you know, you were going to get together and do that walk with your buddy and talk about your problems.

[1088] And that fell off the schedule quickly because how important could that be?

[1089] So unlike other things, which are actually hard to do and you're like, I, you know, I just, I can't do it.

[1090] It's too hard.

[1091] It's almost like with these things, because they're too easy, they don't seem like they have the same level of importance.

[1092] I've struggled with that, even in this book, like how to convey that to people, because I write a book like this as a brain surgeon, as someone who has studied the brain for a quarter century, and people will say, well, are these books too soft?

[1093] Are they too vague?

[1094] Are they too nebulous?

[1095] And what I say is, look, I think that if it's objective measures that you want, we'll catch up.

[1096] We'll figure that out.

[1097] We're going to figure out how to test differently, how to measure differently, and all that, and we'll have these paradigms.

[1098] You have to have a 95 score on X, you know?

[1099] Yeah.

[1100] But until then, Don't we still want to use common sense and understand societies around the world that have hardly any dementia and learn from them in some way?

[1101] Don't we want to pay attention to things that we know must be true?

[1102] Are we going to wait 100 years for the evidence to do things that can help us now?

[1103] It's a fundamental debate that's always happening in the scientific world.

[1104] And frankly, part of the reason I got into journalism, because sometimes things move too slow.

[1105] You're going to wait for a New England Journal of Medicine article, which will take 10 years from some idea and some scientific.

[1106] smart person's head to the time that it's published, or are you going to start doing things now that aren't that hard to do, like you just said, and can make a huge difference.

[1107] That's really what it's about.

[1108] Yeah, we can't quantify pain, actually.

[1109] We try with this one out of ten thing.

[1110] It's total, what the fuck is Monica's nine versus my six, but I'm not going to drop a brick on my foot every day until I have that number.

[1111] Right.

[1112] You know, and by the way, measurements are a little bit, you know, seven billion people on the planet, just like with pain, frankly, with everything.

[1113] My cholesterol of whatever the number is may not have the same impact on my heart as your cholesterol of the same number.

[1114] We make shortcuts.

[1115] Yeah, my favorite from anthropology was just Inuits were living on a generally a diet of like 5 ,000 calories a day of whale blubber.

[1116] That's virtually all they ate.

[1117] They don't have coronary disease.

[1118] So you just look at the extreme latitude of how humans have lived, how they've thrived, and yes, we're so variant.

[1119] You talk about a fatty diet, right, being a bad thing.

[1120] Everyone would say that.

[1121] Yeah.

[1122] And yet, we know that, I think we talked about this two conversations ago, about sugar, you know, and sugar became the substitute for fat because we were a low -fat country and low -fat food tasted terrible, so you replaced it with sugar, and that was actually considered health foods.

[1123] Yeah.

[1124] I mean, these were terrible decisions.

[1125] Cardiac disease became the number one killer of men and women alike.

[1126] We obviously half the country is either pre -diabetic or diabetic, and we are a country that follows a low -fat diet.

[1127] We don't really, but my point is that that became the enemy, sugar became the friend, and where did it get us?

[1128] So having measurables that way can actually be to our peril as well.

[1129] We know fundamentally what's right, and that's what Keep Sharp was really all about, was in some ways codifying the things because it needs to be codified in some way.

[1130] Maybe I'm a good person to do it.

[1131] I don't know.

[1132] We'll see.

[1133] But to be able to take this journey and say, okay, you know what?

[1134] I believe this stuff.

[1135] I've spent enough time with these neuroscientists.

[1136] I'll give you the what and the why to explain why these things work and then do with it what you will.

[1137] But if you do it right, you're probably going to have a better, more joyous, brainful of more resilience and reserve.

[1138] You'll have that life if you do these very simple things.

[1139] Yeah, because your body's going to physically let you down.

[1140] Like I, too, am going to fall off a roof with a leaf blower.

[1141] 93.

[1142] I guarantee that.

[1143] So, you know, let's hope the one thing you want the most in these latter years is still high functioning.

[1144] I hope everybody buys Keep Sharp so that we can buy Sanjay a staircase for this mysterious circle behind him.

[1145] I'm definitely doing that now.

[1146] I'm telling Rebecca, we're putting a staircase in.

[1147] And listen, you were a three -pe, but I think you should go for the Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, S &L numbers on here.

[1148] I'd like to talk to you every A bi -annually, I'd say.

[1149] I agree.

[1150] No, semi -annually, I'd like to talk.

[1151] Like, every day.

[1152] I really love it.

[1153] I really do.

[1154] I don't get the connection so much, especially nowadays.

[1155] We can dig deep, you know?

[1156] I mean, sometimes I just feel like life gets a little cursory, you know, and sometimes I just want to lean in with some of my friends and have the deeper conversations.

[1157] And, you know, sometimes they don't, and you've got to, like, get the bandwidth right?

[1158] Because if you want to have a deep conversation, they don't.

[1159] That's the worst.

[1160] Right?

[1161] I mean, that is the worst.

[1162] And yet you guys, you are such curious people, and I mean, I just really enjoy it.

[1163] Well, we hope we're part of the antidote to the Twitter.

[1164] Yes.

[1165] The 127 characters or whatever.

[1166] Mark Twain said, what was it?

[1167] Would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time.

[1168] You ever hear that?

[1169] Yeah, I just heard it for the first time the other day.

[1170] It's a quote from someone funny.

[1171] Did you say, who's it from?

[1172] I think, you know, Mark Twain gets credit for everything, so I'm not actually sure it's him.

[1173] And he's in clever, yeah.

[1174] I heard that and fuck it was in reference to something else really funny what were you going to say Monica I just never get a chance to talk to neurosurgeons often and I have you here so I'm going to so I think last time we recorded this was like days after I had a seizure so I then has been diagnosed with epilepsy and I don't know what it is exactly like what is happening in my brain when that's happening.

[1175] So, you know, I didn't know this.

[1176] So this is after the time that we just spoke in March, you had just had a seizure?

[1177] Yeah, I had just had one like probably a week or two before.

[1178] Jesus, Sanjay, I'm on pills.

[1179] She's having seizures.

[1180] Where are you?

[1181] Goodness, I need to do, I need to be doing these more often.

[1182] Three Pete's not enough.

[1183] She's flopping around on the ground.

[1184] I'm eating them like Pez.

[1185] What the fuck?

[1186] But they were both at night.

[1187] I've had two only, I think.

[1188] But they were both nocturnal.

[1189] there were a year apart.

[1190] The only reason we knew the second one was a seizure.

[1191] Like, I had a seizure, and I didn't know it because it was at night.

[1192] And I woke up and I had like disorientation and I had peed in the bed.

[1193] And my back was killing me. And then I went to the doctor that day.

[1194] And they just did like a, you know, a urine test to check my kidney functioning and stuff.

[1195] And they were like, you're fine.

[1196] Another famous moment I was wrong.

[1197] I was like, you're fine.

[1198] Oh, true.

[1199] That's like, you just peed.

[1200] Who cares?

[1201] People be the bed.

[1202] Get over it.

[1203] And I was like, I don't think it's normal.

[1204] And then a year passed, and I had one in February in New York, and I was in a hotel room with three friends, so they saw it.

[1205] So that's how we knew.

[1206] That one was witnessed.

[1207] Yes, thank God.

[1208] So, I mean, I always try to be very humble.

[1209] I don't want to diagnose from afar, but I imagine you had a workup with scans, and did you have an EEG as well?

[1210] We didn't end up doing an EEG because my neurologist, too, I love, was just like, I don't think we're going to find.

[1211] especially because yours were so far apart, and it just doesn't seem...

[1212] I offered to do a mammogram, and she didn't think that had anything to do with...

[1213] Yeah, not the most diagnostic in this case.

[1214] Induce a seizure, maybe, but...

[1215] Exactly.

[1216] So, and there was nothing else that can...

[1217] And just those two points in time.

[1218] Was there anything else that was similar about those two points in time?

[1219] And not that I can say.

[1220] I mean, it's hard because of the first one, I didn't do very good documents.

[1221] documentation because it got written off very quickly.

[1222] But I don't think so.

[1223] It's also tricky because they're happening or they happened at night.

[1224] So I don't know if I'm on medication now.

[1225] I've been on medication since February.

[1226] But I don't know if they're still happening.

[1227] You know, I sleep by myself.

[1228] So it's a weird thing.

[1229] Well, I agree.

[1230] It's hard to pick these things up on EEG.

[1231] But if you are on medication, you know, one thing you can do is you can do a EEG on and off to see if you're, you know, At some point, I'm sure they're going to think about weaning you off the, whatever it is, the capra.

[1232] Kepra, yeah.

[1233] Yeah, and being able to compare it to see if you're even having anything micro subclinical at that point.

[1234] It's good that the scan was normal.

[1235] MRI scan.

[1236] You did that with contrast.

[1237] They put an IV in and use contrast?

[1238] No. I don't think so.

[1239] We did all the tests that day.

[1240] Like that next day, I went to the hospital.

[1241] They did all those tests and they said everything was good.

[1242] They thought they were very comfortable with the scan sounds like that.

[1243] About a third of seizures are, you know, they're sort of idiopathic.

[1244] They never really figure out what caused it.

[1245] You know, it could be an electrolyte imbalance.

[1246] It could be some sort of sometimes a medicine that you've interacted with for some reason or whatever it is, a substance.

[1247] I've had friends that said they were on a birth control and they had them and then they went off and they never had one again.

[1248] Is that erroneous?

[1249] I hadn't heard that, you know, specifically with progesterone.

[1250] But, you know, who knows?

[1251] I mean, you know, if a third of these things are idiopathic, there's got to be some other drivers.

[1252] But as a neurosurgeon, you know, we always worry that in an adult who has a new onset seizure, that it's something organic in the brain, you know, something structural in the brain.

[1253] And if it's not that, then it's good news, obviously.

[1254] And two is that they're much more likely to resolve.

[1255] You know, so, you know, I'm sure your neurologist's good.

[1256] But, you know, thinking about getting a EEG while on and then off to see if it changes at all, might be worth it.

[1257] Yeah.

[1258] And I'm sure they checked all your labs, your sodium and all that at that.

[1259] Yeah.

[1260] Yeah.

[1261] pretty, I'm sure they were diligent.

[1262] Probably just a mammogram to be double -safe too.

[1263] Yeah, sure, sure.

[1264] Just be triple -saint.

[1265] You know, I would listen to Dax.

[1266] Last time we talked to you was going to land a plane or something, I think.

[1267] I think of myself as her primary care position.

[1268] And a pilot.

[1269] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1270] I think you're trying to convince me that you should land a plane that I was on.

[1271] I wasn't sure I was buying it.

[1272] Oh, that started.

[1273] That debate has yet to end, by the way.

[1274] And we've even had a pilot say that he thinks I'd be a good candidate, just because I'm so arrogant.

[1275] Yeah, that you really need to believe you.

[1276] can do it, that's probably the most important thing.

[1277] All right.

[1278] Well, great luck with the book.

[1279] Everyone should.

[1280] I really appreciate it.

[1281] Bye and read, keep sharp.

[1282] And we will talk to you again shortly.

[1283] I guarantee it.

[1284] Poor Pete.

[1285] All right.

[1286] Bye.

[1287] Take care, guys.

[1288] Thank you.

[1289] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

[1290] Oh, you have a, now you have a second diary of you.

[1291] facts.

[1292] I have lots of notebooks.

[1293] Oh my gosh.

[1294] For facts.

[1295] You probably pick a bunch out because they're stylish.

[1296] Wish I did.

[1297] Actually, most of them are given to me. Oh, gifts.

[1298] This was a gift from Amy Hanson and it has a phrase on it.

[1299] Okay, tell us.

[1300] Well, behaved women seldom make history.

[1301] Oh, that's true.

[1302] That's true.

[1303] I don't like this book's planning a bad seed for you.

[1304] To be badly behaved?

[1305] Yeah.

[1306] No, I like it.

[1307] You know what it means.

[1308] Of course.

[1309] They're subjugated.

[1310] Yeah.

[1311] We're just talking about subjugation.

[1312] We were?

[1313] I was saying when people are subjugated, they will act out.

[1314] I don't believe any person can just shoulder being subjugated and not act out.

[1315] Right, right, right.

[1316] And there's a million different ways to act out, but I just believe there's a limit to human capacity of being fucking ruled over in that you then you do stuff.

[1317] Yeah.

[1318] That's probably true.

[1319] You'd find an outlet.

[1320] Came up because we were speaking of a certain married couple where one member of the relationship rules with an iron fucking fist.

[1321] It's just barking orders all day long at this other person.

[1322] And then I theorize that that other person must have something going on to get through it.

[1323] Yeah, yeah, just to get through it.

[1324] Now, I don't know what the thing is on the side, but I just think there's no way this person is just taking it up to caboose all day long.

[1325] than not acting out in some way.

[1326] Well, let's be a little more specific.

[1327] You had decided that this person was having affairs.

[1328] I don't think, based on what I know, that this person is having affairs, but this person probably does have avenues to channel their frustration or miserability.

[1329] Yeah, miserability.

[1330] It's really good.

[1331] Well, that's you being bad behavior.

[1332] You just made history.

[1333] Oh, my God.

[1334] That was good behavior, though.

[1335] To make up, to break with English decorum, English language, you just, like, broke the rules of English.

[1336] Yeah, it's bad behavior.

[1337] And then you made history because of it.

[1338] I sure did.

[1339] Memorabilia.

[1340] What did you say it was?

[1341] Miserability.

[1342] Miserability.

[1343] Miserability.

[1344] Miserability.

[1345] You can collect memorabilia.

[1346] Bealia?

[1347] Yeah.

[1348] What I say?

[1349] Memorability.

[1350] Well, that's if you have a high ability for memory.

[1351] Okay.

[1352] Memorability.

[1353] Or someone could have, like, a high level of memorability.

[1354] like you'll always remember meeting that person.

[1355] Oh, okay.

[1356] All right.

[1357] Oh, my God.

[1358] So many new words for 2021.

[1359] Anyway, I just, I do think you tend to believe that the avenue is often sexual.

[1360] Right.

[1361] And that doesn't mean they're out banging someone, but that means they're watching dirty porn to get even or they're in weird chat rooms to get even.

[1362] But you know, there's all these little sneaky avenues for folks to.

[1363] to be naughty without really, like, having an affair.

[1364] You think it's about getting even, but I don't.

[1365] I think it's about them filling the void.

[1366] No, I think it's about reclaiming your autonomy.

[1367] So this person has taken your autonomy.

[1368] You're no longer in charge of when you go here or there or when you eat or, you know, the R. Kelly shit.

[1369] And so you need a little something to reclaim your autonomy.

[1370] And it's best reclaimed if it's in opposition to your.

[1371] oppressor.

[1372] So you kind of subconsciously know what thing would, they would never allow and you do that thing because that's the like clearest expression of your autonomy back.

[1373] Because you're doing something that that person would forbid.

[1374] Yeah.

[1375] Forbade?

[1376] Forbid.

[1377] Okay.

[1378] It could be the subjugator could be like a health nut.

[1379] Okay.

[1380] And they control the diet of the other one.

[1381] And then their thing would be to like go to Krispy Kram and fucking get in a car and fucking eat.

[1382] We ordered crispy cream the other day.

[1383] They were so good.

[1384] Yeah, but that's not this part.

[1385] Just saying.

[1386] And they would eat like 16 crispy cream.

[1387] I'll fucking eat whatever the fuck I want.

[1388] You know what I'm saying?

[1389] Yeah, maybe.

[1390] Yeah.

[1391] Did we get anywhere?

[1392] Nope.

[1393] Okay.

[1394] We still don't agree.

[1395] Well, no. We kind of agree.

[1396] But I just...

[1397] You think I always generally think it's going to be sexual.

[1398] Yes.

[1399] And I also think you think it's always.

[1400] No, no, no. I don't think it's always.

[1401] Okay.

[1402] But I think it's very...

[1403] common because the most threatening thing to partners in general is fidelity.

[1404] Right.

[1405] So it's like on some level, some subconscious level they know it's the nuclear option.

[1406] Yeah.

[1407] Well, in this particular couple, the person who is subjugated?

[1408] Yes.

[1409] Has also has a past of adultery.

[1410] Which, funny enough, you guys think excludes him from that possibility.

[1411] Well, it ruined this person's life majorly.

[1412] It ruined their life.

[1413] It ruined this person's life.

[1414] Well, not in a funny way either.

[1415] We're not laughing because of the life ruining, but because we're trying to keep a gender neutral.

[1416] And I keep adding.

[1417] I've obviously added the parts out that I've said the gender.

[1418] So we can't stop laughing.

[1419] But this doctor's life was ruined by the infidelity.

[1420] Yes.

[1421] And I do believe people learn from misconduct.

[1422] mistakes you have.

[1423] I think people repeat their mistakes.

[1424] Generally speaking, people are in a pattern of repeating the exact same mistakes over and over again their whole life.

[1425] I think that's actually very doomsday.

[1426] Well, I think that's the norm.

[1427] Like, I think when most people look at their life objectively, they can see that they've just, they just keep doing the same thing.

[1428] They keep making the same stupid decision.

[1429] They keep dating the same woman or man. They keep having the same blow up at their job that they always have like you know anyway um we really got off the rail yeah we did we did okay so get into your naughty behavior book okay yeah sanjay i'm gonna change i'm gonna come up with my own saying and it's gonna say historical women are seldomly well behaved why i just flipped it but now i own now it's yours now i own my own saying oh my god that's So manly of you.

[1430] Yeah.

[1431] To take something to appropriate a woman's invention.

[1432] Yeah.

[1433] Speaking of that, ding, ding, ding.

[1434] Oh, Pringles.

[1435] Did Mark Twain say I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time?

[1436] It's actually a French philosopher and mathematician.

[1437] Blaise, it's definitely not Blaise because it's French.

[1438] B -L -A -I -S -E.

[1439] What do you think that is?

[1440] Blaise.

[1441] Blaise.

[1442] Okay.

[1443] That was kind of Italian, but...

[1444] Pascal.

[1445] Pascal.

[1446] Blaza, Pascal.

[1447] Okay, great.

[1448] He wrote, I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

[1449] Wait, but then another source says, Oh, Mark Twain once says, I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.

[1450] Blaise Pascal wrote a version of this saying in French, and it quickly moved into the English language.

[1451] Sounds like Mark Twain fucking appropriated it.

[1452] Well, this is saying, the second version is saying Mark Twain said, I don't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.

[1453] And then Blase, after the fact.

[1454] After the fact, took that, changed it to, I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time.

[1455] He wrote that in French, then it got translated to English.

[1456] Lots going on.

[1457] So much.

[1458] Do we know chronologically who did it first?

[1459] Now we don't know.

[1460] We don't know.

[1461] Two sources.

[1462] I like the French guy's version better, just for starters.

[1463] Also, I'm immediately concerned that had that sentence been written in the age of Twitter, it'll just gone in the waistbasket with every other thing.

[1464] Like, can you write a sentence like that that's going to be repeated 200 years later at this point?

[1465] Well, Michelle Obama said when they go low, we go high.

[1466] But she said it in a speech.

[1467] I'm saying could you write a line of text that will withstand 200 years of history?

[1468] I don't think because of the volume of small text being written that anything can stand out.

[1469] That's interesting.

[1470] Like, there's probably a billion tweets of that merit.

[1471] Yeah.

[1472] Oh, man. I don't know.

[1473] Is that positive or negative?

[1474] It's negative, right?

[1475] It's fine.

[1476] It is.

[1477] I think it's fine.

[1478] It is what it is.

[1479] Do you think that was a tweet originally?

[1480] It is what it is?

[1481] It is what it is.

[1482] I want to make up a phrase that's.

[1483] No, that will last.

[1484] Well, I want to say I have.

[1485] Like what?

[1486] Well, just I've made up some words and stuff.

[1487] My brother and I made up Bungi when we were a little.

[1488] Oh, I guess if we're just doing words, I mean, memorability.

[1489] I mean, what did I say?

[1490] Oh, yeah, you didn't want today.

[1491] Mine wasn't memorability.

[1492] Mine was.

[1493] No, meanability.

[1494] I already forgot.

[1495] It's not, it's not memorable.

[1496] Oh, no. It's low on the memorability.

[1497] Yes.

[1498] Oh, I just wanted to clarify.

[1499] He said, I got the first Pfizer shot.

[1500] I want to clarify, because at first when he said it, I thought he was the first person to get the Pfizer shot.

[1501] Oh, right.

[1502] But no. There's two shots.

[1503] He got the first of two Pfizer shots.

[1504] Okay, we didn't talk about this on Monday, but we were planning on talking about it on Monday.

[1505] I hesitate to even bring it back up, to be honest.

[1506] But it did come up in this episode, so I feel that I should the Hogwarts quiz.

[1507] Oh, right.

[1508] I want to address it.

[1509] Uh -huh.

[1510] Although now I'm not sure that I do.

[1511] The muggle in the room.

[1512] So.

[1513] Can I address it for you?

[1514] Well, no. I mean, I want you to be a part of it.

[1515] Oh, okay.

[1516] Thanks for inviting me. Obviously.

[1517] But I'm the one who really suffered the consequences of saying that.

[1518] This is where my ignorance saved me. Like I said stupid things, but everyone knew I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about.

[1519] And I was in a position of power there.

[1520] And yes.

[1521] And I guess I abused it.

[1522] You were in an expert position.

[1523] I said some disparaging things about Hufflepuff.

[1524] Hufflepuff.

[1525] Yeah.

[1526] There's a lot of hurt Hufflepuffs out there.

[1527] There was a lot.

[1528] There was a lot.

[1529] And I took a few things from this.

[1530] One, J .K. Rowling.

[1531] Uh -huh.

[1532] Good for you.

[1533] Look at what you've done.

[1534] Uh -huh.

[1535] You've created a world that people buy into so deeply that their identity is tied to it.

[1536] Yep.

[1537] A fictional world that human, real humans on earth have tied their identity to.

[1538] And that's kind of a beautiful thing that there are so many people who love it and care that much.

[1539] And identify that much and relate.

[1540] Absolutely.

[1541] I love that.

[1542] And I feel bad.

[1543] I apologize.

[1544] You felt really bad.

[1545] Yes.

[1546] I talked to you that day.

[1547] You had a rough day that day.

[1548] Yeah.

[1549] Because people really came after you.

[1550] Yeah.

[1551] And what you wanted to say, which you can't say, because you're not.

[1552] allowed to defend yourself ever because it makes you look defensive and worse is guys I was just joking I don't really have a negative opinion about hufflepuffs exactly and or muffleduffs and I don't I'm just having fun and I wasn't really attacking you but you're not allowed to say that so that's why I said can I thank you yes and then the other thing I wanted to say that you can't say but I can say because I didn't hurt their feelings is if ever there was just like you said an example of a identity gone awry, which is these things don't even exist.

[1553] And here was my analogy.

[1554] If you got 10 ,000 people together and had everyone count to four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, down the whole line, you said, one stand over there, two, stand over there, three stand over there, fours, you're over there.

[1555] And then I go, twos are dumb and lazy.

[1556] If those people were like, don't you talk about twos that way, you'd be like, what are you talking about?

[1557] I gave you this identity 12 seconds ago.

[1558] Exactly.

[1559] Yeah.

[1560] So that was kind of my thing was like, guys, this isn't even a thing that you can.

[1561] Yeah.

[1562] But when people's feelings are hurt, you don't want to hurt people's feelings.

[1563] That is my whole sadness that came with it is I am not in the market of hurting people's feelings.

[1564] And I'm very, very sorry if your feelings were hurt by that.

[1565] And we're all of those things.

[1566] Like we're so drawn to putting ourselves in boxes because I think it's a. control thing.

[1567] Like we like to know things.

[1568] We like to know our astrology, our zodiac sign.

[1569] We like to know our enneagrams.

[1570] All of these things we like to like attach ourselves to.

[1571] Exactly.

[1572] And the real truth is we have pieces of all of the things.

[1573] Yeah.

[1574] I also, you know, when I really was thinking about this a lot, I was like, it's to our detriment.

[1575] Because one person, I'm sure a very beautiful, wonderful person.

[1576] Mm -hmm.

[1577] A muggle borg?

[1578] No, actually, no. Oh, scathean?

[1579] There was a comment that their daughter had just been sorted into Hufflepuff.

[1580] Okay.

[1581] But made really good grades and was X, Y, and Z. So kind of like, how dare you say that?

[1582] Uh -huh.

[1583] My daughter was just sorted into Hufflepuffel Puff.

[1584] Oh, my goodness.

[1585] And I really...

[1586] I'm sorry.

[1587] I really was taking a bad.

[1588] by that comment.

[1589] You as the parent are there to explain to your child that there's no such thing and you cannot possibly hang your emotions on this thing that J .K. Rowling invented in her bathrobe.

[1590] You're putting yourself in way too vulnerable positions.

[1591] Like I don't understand the kids writing you that, but the parent?

[1592] I know.

[1593] Come on.

[1594] And I started to feel sad that like, well, you're boxing your child in right now.

[1595] You're saying your child has this trait and this.

[1596] trade and this trade.

[1597] And, you know, again, the very superficial traits that come from a children's book.

[1598] Yeah.

[1599] And I'm like, that's not really fair to that kid.

[1600] She's walking through life saying, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this.

[1601] Like, it's going to be a self -fulfilling prophecy in the good ways, I'm sure.

[1602] But in the bad ways, too.

[1603] Like, I don't think you should lock yourself into this identity in such a extreme way.

[1604] Don't hit your train to the Muggledorfs or the Skadians or the Rump stillskins or any of them.

[1605] I'm going to exploit this topic now to say one of my pet peeves.

[1606] I've been trying to find time to air this.

[1607] Oh, great.

[1608] Another grievance?

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] Okay.

[1611] Putting on your Twitter or Instagram profile that you're a Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative, to me, you couldn't pick something that says less about you.

[1612] It is 50 -50.

[1613] You're claiming what's unique about you is something that 50 % of the people in the country are.

[1614] It like, what could be less unique.

[1615] Well, there might not be saying that's why they're unique.

[1616] But what I'm saying, this is an opportunity for you to tell people about yourself.

[1617] And if the one thing you choose to tell people about yourself is, I'm just like 175 other million Americans.

[1618] There's nothing there.

[1619] That's like saying you're, your mail.

[1620] Or if you write on there, over five, four.

[1621] Okay, great.

[1622] So you can cut this country into two people, all those over five, four and all those under.

[1623] That doesn't tell me a goddamn thing about you.

[1624] I see what you're saying.

[1625] And also, I don't know that people are using the like bio line as to really be like this is who I am like yours.

[1626] I'm just saying when you declare you're a liberal, congrats.

[1627] You're just like 175 million other people.

[1628] And if you're declaring yourself a conservative like cool, you're in the other half.

[1629] Yeah.

[1630] It's just not what it's, let me ask you, would you think it's crazy if people wrote mail?

[1631] No, I actually wouldn't.

[1632] I, whatever people want to write on their bio.

[1633] Proud, proud mail.

[1634] Proud female?

[1635] Proud female, I think, is great.

[1636] Well, that's a separate thing, which is they've been subjugated.

[1637] So that's one thing.

[1638] But to say proud 5 -8, it's like, do you mean proud conservative, proud liberal?

[1639] How can you be proud of something that everyone is?

[1640] There's nothing there we disagree.

[1641] I respectfully disagree with you.

[1642] Yes, I think politics, unfortunately, it does tell people, like, if someone says Republican and someone says liberal, I do know some stuff about them already.

[1643] I do.

[1644] It is telling me something.

[1645] It's not like they're writing the word purple.

[1646] Like, it means something.

[1647] So what all of us in our group share in common is liberal.

[1648] So if we've all written liberal on our thing, it hasn't told you one thing about me. All it's told me is that I'm the same as you or I'm the same as Ryan or I'm the same as Charlie.

[1649] That's actually a very poor distinguisher of, you didn't really actually tell you anything about me. It tells you can say that about our whole group and look at the difference in our group.

[1650] But again, I don't think this isn't like a dating profile.

[1651] It's just like a two -line quick thing.

[1652] I think people aren't like, I got to pick the perfect sentence that 100 % encapsulates my personality.

[1653] Like, I don't think that's happening.

[1654] So they're just kind of picking generic things if they want.

[1655] I mean, most people just put like a joke there.

[1656] Yeah, I guess I just, the last thing I would do is in my bio tell you something that almost every single other person on the planet is like four chambered heart oh great yeah everyone's got a four chambered heart yeah i mean again i think that it tells you a lot about it it tells you something and and some people are more connected to those beliefs than others you're more centered well i was going to say i think there's the same amount of difference among liberals as there is difference between liberals and conservatives and i think there's as much difference between conservatives as there are both like i don't actually think they really tell you anything.

[1657] If any category that can be divided and there's only two options, clearly doesn't tell you much.

[1658] It's too broad.

[1659] Right.

[1660] If it's blanketing half of the population, thanks for let me air that.

[1661] You're welcome.

[1662] Yeah.

[1663] We didn't come to an agreement, but that's okay.

[1664] That's okay.

[1665] We rarely do.

[1666] Anyways, I'm sorry, Hufflepuffs.

[1667] I really am.

[1668] And I love Harry Potter and I wanted to bring joy to everyone.

[1669] And I love all the houses.

[1670] That's my last note to people.

[1671] If we're talking about a fake world of magicians, we're probably not really being super.

[1672] Yeah, they're not magicians.

[1673] No, they're wizards.

[1674] They're wizards.

[1675] Okay.

[1676] Okay, so Overton's window.

[1677] He was right, of course.

[1678] The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the, ding, ding, dang, nay.

[1679] Oh, my God.

[1680] To the mainstream population at a given time.

[1681] It is also known as the window of discourse.

[1682] The Overton window is a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics.

[1683] The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support.

[1684] They generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options.

[1685] These policies lie inside the Overton window.

[1686] Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas.

[1687] These policies lie outside Overton window.

[1688] Well, that just goes to show.

[1689] That's why art has to move culture and society and politicians can't.

[1690] Yeah.

[1691] They really can't.

[1692] Yeah.

[1693] So, yeah.

[1694] Movies and TV and books and literature, that all has to move us along.

[1695] Yeah, I agree.

[1696] I love that because I never heard it.

[1697] We learned something new.

[1698] I haven't either.

[1699] That's great.

[1700] We also learned the Mandela effect last night watching a show.

[1701] Right.

[1702] It was so funny.

[1703] which is well the examples that this person gave well it's called the mandela effect because for a period of time many many people on plant earth had heard that mandela had died in prison and then eight years later all of a sudden he's released and everyone was like wait like a significant proportion of the population believed he was dead and then all of a sudden there he was yeah so their memory doesn't jive with the reality yep and they have explanations for why that is but the one that many of us identified with was stover stove top stuffing, which is not a thing.

[1704] No. There's no such thing as stover stove top stuffing, nor has there ever been.

[1705] And you know why I know there's not.

[1706] You can't even say it.

[1707] Stover, stove top stuffing.

[1708] You get me. You're having a hard time.

[1709] Well, I'm impaired.

[1710] No. No one can say it because it's not real.

[1711] Come to my house.

[1712] We're having stover, stove, stop stuffing.

[1713] Nope.

[1714] Right.

[1715] It is hard.

[1716] Another funny one was people think Fabriz has two ease in the middle and people are like no it had and another great one was sex sex and the city yes and a lot of people think it's sex in the city and they like believe it they're like oh no something changed now they're making us think it was always sex and the city but it it wasn't it was sex in the city and really these people are just so convicted in their beliefs the idea that they could just be wrong is not an option.

[1717] It's unsettling.

[1718] They've come up with all these theories.

[1719] Yeah.

[1720] Like multi -universe theories.

[1721] Yeah.

[1722] Because they can't accept that they perhaps are just wrong.

[1723] Now, what I was more interested in is not writing either side off.

[1724] So the one that I really identified with, besides stove for stove top stuffing, was whether or not the sunshine on the box of Razenbrand had sunglasses on it.

[1725] Everyone, well, not everyone.

[1726] Many people think that it has sunglasses on it.

[1727] And they're like, when they take the sunglasses off?

[1728] And then come to find out, it's never ever had sunglasses on it.

[1729] So what immediately interested me is like, oh, I bet it was herded on the grapevine, that campaign they had for raisins in the sun during a raisin brand campaign.

[1730] And I think they pop sunglasses probably on the sun for that commercial, but never on the box.

[1731] So I'm really interested in like how there's no way it's a coincidence this many people have it wrong.

[1732] There has to be an explanation.

[1733] And I want the real explanation.

[1734] But they think that explanation is the multiverse, which I don't.

[1735] Right.

[1736] And I think our brains are more similar than we want to give credit and make similar mistakes.

[1737] So I don't know about the Ray's and brand thing.

[1738] Yeah.

[1739] I think part of it is it's a sun.

[1740] Yeah.

[1741] And our brains associate sunglasses with sun.

[1742] So when we see it like that, we're like, oh, yeah, it should be.

[1743] Uh -huh.

[1744] And really, it's just, our brains are just creating the same patterns.

[1745] There's something with the dash and Coca -Cola, too, whether it has always had a dash or doesn't have a dash.

[1746] It was really funny.

[1747] It's funny.

[1748] It's, what's it called?

[1749] John something.

[1750] Oh, it's how -to with John Wilson.

[1751] There you go.

[1752] Yeah, the show's called How To with John Wilson.

[1753] And it's very peculiar and I like it.

[1754] I do, too.

[1755] It's not like anything else that's really on.

[1756] Right?

[1757] Yeah.

[1758] Yeah, I totally agree.

[1759] Yeah, it was getting you.

[1760] I was very conflicted in that one, though.

[1761] It was making me really anxious that people can't accept that they're wrong.

[1762] Failable.

[1763] Yeah.

[1764] Yeah, that one had you hot under the collar.

[1765] It did.

[1766] Let's see here.

[1767] Do we use 10 % of our brains?

[1768] No. That's a myth.

[1769] Okay.

[1770] That's a myth.

[1771] Just, that's a myth.

[1772] It's myth, myth, myth, myth, myth, myth.

[1773] Okay, just real quick, the Inuit diet that you were talking about, you said they mainly eat whale blubber.

[1774] It's called mucktuck, traditional Inuit and Chukchi meal of frozen whale skin and blubber.

[1775] Mucktuck is most often made from the skin and blubber of the bowhead whale, although the beluga and the gnar wall are also used.

[1776] Usually eaten raw, today it is occasionally finely diced, breaded, deep fried, and then serve with soil.

[1777] sauce.

[1778] One thing I left out when I was talking about that is I want to say they ate 10 ,000 calories of it a day because they had to burn so many calories staying warm in that environment.

[1779] You said 5 ,000.

[1780] I think it might have been 10 ,000.

[1781] It's something crazy.

[1782] It said here, the fat, not the protein from animal foods, provided most of the 3 ,100 calories required daily for these active people.

[1783] That's what this article said.

[1784] Okay.

[1785] When we were in Alaska, so I had learned that they were called.

[1786] Inuit in anthropology, but also they're called Anupi.

[1787] Oh.

[1788] Yeah.

[1789] And I don't know.

[1790] I wish I knew more.

[1791] I don't know if the Inuit called themselves Anupi or what it was, but I just kept hearing Anupi up there.

[1792] And I was like, well, but I thought it was Inuit.

[1793] Wow.

[1794] And you never figured.

[1795] Question mark.

[1796] Big question mark still.

[1797] I have an excuse to go back to Alaska now.

[1798] Ooh.

[1799] Because I don't have Google.

[1800] I have no other choice but to fly to.

[1801] Alaska.

[1802] Remember, I suggested we take a family trip to see the Northern Lights somewhere.

[1803] I'd like to do that, whether that's Sweden, Norway, Finvan, Ruska, or Alaska, or probably parts of Northern Canada, I would imagine.

[1804] I would love to do that.

[1805] It would be really fun, wouldn't it?

[1806] Yeah.

[1807] And the only goal is just sit outside and eat whale blubber to stay warm.

[1808] Soy sauce.

[1809] And then watch the Northern Lights dance around.

[1810] Do you think it's underwhelming?

[1811] No, because I told you they one time were visible in Detroit when I was in high school.

[1812] And, like, I heard all my neighbors outside going, what?

[1813] Like, people thought, many people thought there was a nuclear bomb.

[1814] Because the whole sky was green and it was awesome.

[1815] That's crazy.

[1816] And it was awesome even with a dose of fear that it might be nuclear fallout.

[1817] So I imagine just take that away and you know you're safe.

[1818] That's cool.

[1819] It would be even better.

[1820] How often does it happen in Sweden?

[1821] Yeah, like I want to say in the winter months, when it's dark, very often.

[1822] Really?

[1823] Cool.

[1824] Yeah.

[1825] I guess I could, well, I don't have Google.

[1826] But I think you could probably Google how many nights a year are the Northern Lights visible.

[1827] Yeah.

[1828] I'm excited for that and I'm afraid of being really cold.

[1829] We'll get you like a real nice north -facing type, like Climb Everest outfit.

[1830] Okay.

[1831] Today, when I got in the shower, I was like, man, do I hate being cold?

[1832] Yeah.

[1833] I really hate it.

[1834] Well, by my calculations, you have double whammy reasons.

[1835] Because my Indian culture.

[1836] And Georgia.

[1837] And grew up in a very warm climate.

[1838] Yeah.

[1839] Nature and nurture, I think.

[1840] Oof.

[1841] That's a double whammy.

[1842] Yeah.

[1843] All right.

[1844] All right.

[1845] Love you.

[1846] Love you.

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