Dr. Ellen Langer: Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.660 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.280 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.380 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.440 | My guest today is Dr. Ellen Langer.

00:00:17.780 | Dr. Ellen Langer is a professor of psychology

00:00:20.080 | at Harvard University,

00:00:21.400 | and one of the world's leading pioneers

00:00:23.320 | in the mind-body connection.

00:00:25.200 | More specifically, how our thoughts impact our health.

00:00:28.560 | Dr. Ellen Langer was one of the first people

00:00:31.000 | to systematically explore the mind-body connection

00:00:33.560 | with scientific rigor.

00:00:34.840 | Her laboratories made a large number

00:00:36.480 | of truly fascinating findings.

00:00:39.000 | For instance, today you'll learn about a study

00:00:41.060 | that Dr. Langer did,

00:00:42.480 | in which she brought quite old people into her laboratory,

00:00:45.640 | or rather she designed a laboratory

00:00:47.720 | such that people lived in this laboratory,

00:00:50.760 | but the laboratory itself was designed

00:00:53.200 | to resemble the environment,

00:00:54.920 | everything from the types of furniture,

00:00:56.880 | the types of dishes, the types of music, et cetera,

00:00:59.660 | that those people had lived in 20 years prior.

00:01:02.760 | When those subjects lived in that laboratory

00:01:04.520 | for less than one week,

00:01:06.300 | the change in the environment

00:01:07.640 | and their interaction with that environment

00:01:09.920 | led them to have far more mobility,

00:01:12.760 | better cognitive function,

00:01:14.280 | and a large number of other markers

00:01:16.360 | of biological aging reversed,

00:01:18.360 | which is absolutely remarkable

00:01:20.040 | and speaks to the incredible power

00:01:21.920 | that the mind has over our biology.

00:01:24.440 | That's just one example of the sorts of experiments

00:01:26.460 | that Dr. Langer has done, again,

00:01:28.040 | with a tremendous amount of scientific rigor.

00:01:30.140 | So today Dr. Langer and I talk about

00:01:31.920 | how the acquisition of knowledge,

00:01:33.760 | just simply learning about certain biological mechanisms,

00:01:36.680 | as well as your mindset about various aspects

00:01:39.280 | of your health and wellbeing,

00:01:40.880 | can powerfully dictate your health and wellbeing.

00:01:44.180 | We talk about longevity,

00:01:45.680 | we talk about exercise and weight loss,

00:01:47.880 | we talk about infectious disease.

00:01:49.540 | In fact, we also talk about how mindset

00:01:51.960 | can impact cancer outcomes,

00:01:54.000 | or rather overcoming cancer.

00:01:56.160 | We discuss examples, mechanisms,

00:01:58.380 | and practical application of those mechanisms.

00:02:01.580 | By the end of today's episode,

00:02:03.440 | I assure you that Dr. Ellen Langer

00:02:05.480 | will change the way that you think

00:02:07.040 | about the mind-body connection,

00:02:08.460 | the way you think about your health,

00:02:10.280 | and I assure you it's not all just about positive thinking.

00:02:13.740 | In fact, Dr. Ellen Langer gets us to think differently

00:02:17.160 | about scientific questions, our health,

00:02:19.760 | and just about everything else in the world.

00:02:22.280 | You'll soon see she has a quite unique way of thinking,

00:02:24.840 | not just about science and health,

00:02:26.600 | but also about life in general,

00:02:28.680 | and what makes for a truly good life.

00:02:30.920 | Dr. Ellen Langer is a true luminary and pioneer

00:02:34.240 | in this area of mind-body health,

00:02:36.240 | and she's a fabulous teacher as well.

00:02:38.500 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:41.340 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:44.000 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:46.120 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:02:48.140 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:49.880 | to the general public.

00:02:51.240 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:52.520 | this episode does include sponsors.

00:02:54.880 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer.

00:02:58.040 | Dr. Ellen Langer, welcome.

00:03:00.200 | - Thank you, Andrew.

00:03:01.360 | - So great to have you here.

00:03:02.480 | There's so many topics that you've worked on

00:03:04.440 | and shed light on that impact our daily lives

00:03:07.700 | and our internal world and our external world

00:03:10.440 | and how they interact.

00:03:11.680 | I want to know your definition of mindfulness,

00:03:16.940 | and it could take on practical forms, theoretical forms.

00:03:21.360 | - I'll make it very simple.

00:03:23.240 | When most people hear the word mindful,

00:03:25.160 | sadly, they think of meditation.

00:03:27.400 | Meditation is great, but it's not mindful.

00:03:29.720 | You meditate in order to result

00:03:32.400 | in post-meditative mindfulness, okay?

00:03:35.600 | So it's a practice.

00:03:36.960 | Mindfulness, as I study it, is a way of being.

00:03:39.560 | It's not a practice.

00:03:41.000 | It's the simple process of noticing.

00:03:43.680 | Now, you can get there in one of two ways.

00:03:46.440 | Bottom up, actively notice three new things

00:03:49.680 | about the person you live with.

00:03:51.880 | Walk outside, notice three new things.

00:03:54.240 | Each time you do this, you see that you didn't know

00:03:57.680 | the thing you thought you knew

00:03:58.840 | as well as you thought you knew it.

00:04:00.760 | But you can also do it top down.

00:04:03.440 | Top down is recognize that everything is always changing.

00:04:08.440 | Everything looks different from different perspectives.

00:04:11.400 | Uncertainty is the rule.

00:04:13.040 | It's not the exception.

00:04:14.760 | So when you know you don't know, then you naturally tune in.

00:04:18.280 | So one of the things, I've said this so many times,

00:04:20.560 | maybe this will be the last,

00:04:22.800 | one of the things we think we know best

00:04:24.640 | is how much is one plus one, Andrew?

00:04:27.600 | - I'm gonna assume it's still two.

00:04:29.080 | - Two.

00:04:29.920 | Not always.

00:04:31.080 | If you add one watt of chewing gum

00:04:32.960 | to one watt of chewing gum, one plus one is one.

00:04:35.480 | You add one cloud to one cloud, one plus one is one.

00:04:38.600 | This is interesting.

00:04:41.000 | Somebody sent this to me the other day.

00:04:42.720 | You take one pizza and you add one pizza,

00:04:44.960 | one plus one is two.

00:04:46.400 | You take one lasagna and you add one lasagna,

00:04:49.840 | one plus one is one.

00:04:50.960 | It's just a bigger lasagna, right?

00:04:53.320 | You take one puddle and you add,

00:04:57.360 | let's say I have two puddles there,

00:04:58.920 | and you add some water in between.

00:05:01.080 | Now you have one plus one plus one is one.

00:05:04.760 | Okay, so the point of it is that in the real world,

00:05:07.920 | one plus one probably doesn't equal two

00:05:10.560 | as I'm more often as it does.

00:05:12.040 | And since you're an educated individual,

00:05:14.800 | you might know that one plus one equals two

00:05:18.080 | if you're using a base 10 number system.

00:05:20.560 | If you're using a base two number system,

00:05:22.400 | one plus one is written as 10.

00:05:23.960 | Oh my goodness.

00:05:25.200 | Somebody asks you how much is one plus one?

00:05:27.760 | Should you say one, two, 10?

00:05:30.560 | And the point is that when you know you don't know,

00:05:35.320 | then you pay attention.

00:05:36.800 | In this context, let me see.

00:05:38.640 | I'll be a smart ass and I'll say one.

00:05:42.080 | Or in this context, I know the person wants me

00:05:44.960 | to be obedient and I'll say two, so on and so forth.

00:05:48.840 | So when you don't know, you pay attention.

00:05:52.360 | When you pay attention, you have choices

00:05:54.520 | that otherwise you're blind to.

00:05:57.560 | It makes a very big difference.

00:05:58.920 | So when you're mindful, you don't know,

00:06:01.560 | you actively notice.

00:06:03.280 | As you're noticing, the neurons are firing,

00:06:05.960 | and 50 years of research has shown

00:06:08.160 | that it's literally and figuratively enlightening.

00:06:11.560 | And if you're gonna do something, show up for it.

00:06:14.540 | Now the problem is that most people are mindless

00:06:17.600 | almost all the time and they're totally oblivious to it.

00:06:21.000 | When you're not there, you're not there

00:06:22.760 | to know you're not there.

00:06:24.600 | And most people are just not there.

00:06:26.780 | Now you wanna ask me how does that happen?

00:06:29.240 | Well, we're taught that.

00:06:31.280 | Schools, I think, are the biggest culprits.

00:06:33.880 | Schools are teaching us absolute answers.

00:06:36.360 | One plus one is two.

00:06:38.120 | Virtually everything that we're taught

00:06:40.480 | is as if the world is constant and going to stay that way.

00:06:44.920 | And the answer today is going to be

00:06:46.480 | the same answer as tomorrow.

00:06:48.320 | And so that certainty leads us not to notice.

00:06:53.220 | How did you come to realize this thing

00:06:55.880 | that we call mindfulness?

00:06:58.040 | I mean, certainly in the last 20 years,

00:07:01.600 | the notion of meditation as a valuable practice

00:07:04.000 | has become pretty common.

00:07:06.800 | Sure.

00:07:08.200 | And prior to that, it was considered a little bit

00:07:11.200 | alternative hippie-dibbie.

00:07:13.560 | Let me answer it.

00:07:14.400 | Okay, so it's very funny.

00:07:16.800 | I'm glad in some ways I don't remember who this person was,

00:07:20.120 | but I started studying mindlessness

00:07:23.040 | and I found myself, I'd walk into a mannequin,

00:07:25.920 | I'd apologize, you know, all sorts of things like that.

00:07:28.800 | And I'd say, well, this is kind of interesting to me.

00:07:31.480 | I'm speaking to somebody,

00:07:33.320 | we don't know who it was anymore,

00:07:35.380 | who said to me, you know, you are what you study.

00:07:37.760 | I said, okay.

00:07:38.600 | So then I switched it around

00:07:39.440 | from being mindless to being mindful.

00:07:41.560 | At that point, then I found out about meditation

00:07:46.120 | and Buddhism and all of this

00:07:48.160 | and started to learn about another way of being.

00:07:51.380 | What was exciting to me was that

00:07:54.280 | I had gotten through this Western scientific mold,

00:07:57.800 | so to speak, to many of the same consequences

00:08:02.400 | as the Buddhists had talked about for thousands of years.

00:08:05.860 | - It's interesting how now in Western society,

00:08:11.500 | we embrace this idea of presence,

00:08:13.640 | but it gets merged with these kind of more rigid terms

00:08:17.820 | like focus and attention.

00:08:19.860 | - Yeah, and a focus is actually mindless, you know.

00:08:23.780 | So it's interesting, focus on your finger.

00:08:26.840 | Now, if you're concentrating, focusing,

00:08:30.500 | what you're gonna notice is that your fingers,

00:08:34.340 | the image is moving around, right?

00:08:37.860 | And so when we try to hold something still,

00:08:41.540 | that's the wrong thing.

00:08:42.380 | You shouldn't tell people to focus.

00:08:43.720 | Now, instead of focus, look at your finger mindfully.

00:08:47.300 | That means you're gonna notice new things.

00:08:48.740 | That's an ugly little finger,

00:08:50.220 | and what is that line there?

00:08:51.900 | Why is this red?

00:08:53.360 | And when you're doing that,

00:08:54.420 | when you're actively noticing, the image stays still.

00:08:59.100 | So when we give people instructions in school in focus,

00:09:04.020 | they think as a camera, hold it still.

00:09:06.460 | And whenever we're trying to hold ourselves,

00:09:08.380 | the image, anything still,

00:09:10.300 | we're going to be performing sub-optimally.

00:09:13.020 | Need to let things vary.

00:09:15.620 | Things are always changing.

00:09:17.420 | So what happens is we confuse the stability of our mindsets,

00:09:21.940 | we're holding something still in our heads,

00:09:24.140 | with the stability of the underlying phenomena.

00:09:27.260 | - So mindfulness as a practice of exploration,

00:09:30.260 | presence and exploration,

00:09:31.740 | is perhaps a slightly better, perhaps,

00:09:34.860 | way to think about it?

00:09:35.700 | - Yeah, but it's not a practice.

00:09:36.540 | You see, once you accept that everything is uncertain,

00:09:41.060 | then you just tune in.

00:09:43.340 | You only don't tune in when you think you know.

00:09:46.020 | So if you were gonna come visit me in Cambridge,

00:09:50.300 | you've never been to my house,

00:09:51.640 | you don't have to practice anything.

00:09:52.860 | You walk in, you'll notice things.

00:09:55.060 | Did she do that painting?

00:09:55.980 | What is that?

00:09:57.780 | Oh, look what she's reading.

00:09:59.140 | - There's two dogs here.

00:10:00.340 | - Exactly, exactly.

00:10:01.940 | You'll notice without having to do any work.

00:10:05.100 | And that's the important thing,

00:10:06.380 | because in the way I keep differentiating

00:10:08.740 | mindfulness as I study it with meditation,

00:10:12.280 | meditation is a practice.

00:10:14.100 | For some people to sit still 20 minutes twice a day is work.

00:10:18.140 | Mindfulness, as I study it,

00:10:20.100 | is what you're doing when you're having fun.

00:10:22.220 | You can't have fun unless you're actively noticing.

00:10:25.860 | So in fact, this act of noticing

00:10:30.180 | is energy begetting, not consuming.

00:10:34.020 | So it feels good.

00:10:35.860 | It's the essence of what you're doing

00:10:37.340 | when you're having the most fun.

00:10:39.060 | It's good for you, and it's so easy

00:10:41.980 | that I can't see any reason why anybody wouldn't embrace it.

00:10:49.140 | That it's good for you.

00:10:52.460 | When you're mindful,

00:10:53.620 | people find you more appealing, charismatic.

00:10:56.620 | When you're mindful, the products you produce are enhanced,

00:11:00.440 | and it's healthier.

00:11:03.620 | I'd like to take a quick break

00:11:04.820 | and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp.

00:11:07.180 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:11:08.940 | with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

00:11:12.620 | Now, I personally have been doing therapy weekly

00:11:14.460 | for well over 30 years.

00:11:16.060 | Initially, I didn't have a choice.

00:11:17.340 | It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school,

00:11:19.700 | but pretty soon I realized

00:11:20.740 | that therapy is an extremely important component

00:11:22.960 | to one's overall health.

00:11:24.460 | In fact, I consider doing regular therapy

00:11:26.300 | just as important as getting regular exercise,

00:11:28.700 | which of course I also do every week.

00:11:30.780 | There are essentially three things

00:11:31.980 | that great therapy provides.

00:11:33.140 | First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody

00:11:35.780 | that you can trust and talk to

00:11:37.340 | about pretty much any issue with.

00:11:39.020 | Second of all, it can provide support

00:11:41.060 | in the form of emotional support and directed guidance.

00:11:44.100 | And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights,

00:11:47.380 | insights that allow you to better

00:11:48.900 | not just your emotional life and your relationship life,

00:11:51.500 | but of course, also the relationship to yourself

00:11:53.820 | and your professional life and to all sorts of goals.

00:11:56.620 | BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist

00:11:59.180 | with whom you resonate with,

00:12:00.380 | and that can provide you those three benefits

00:12:02.380 | that come from effective therapy.

00:12:03.980 | Also, because BetterHelp allows for therapy

00:12:05.860 | to be done entirely online,

00:12:07.740 | it's super time-efficient

00:12:08.900 | and easy to fit into a busy schedule.

00:12:10.980 | If you'd like to try BetterHelp,

00:12:12.300 | you can go to betterhelp.com/huberman

00:12:15.300 | to get 10% off your first month.

00:12:17.180 | Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman.

00:12:20.380 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.

00:12:23.300 | Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows

00:12:25.040 | that are customized to your unique sleep needs.

00:12:27.700 | Now, I've spoken many times before

00:12:29.140 | on the Huberman Lab Podcast and elsewhere

00:12:31.620 | about the fact that getting a great night's sleep

00:12:33.460 | is the foundation of mental health,

00:12:35.020 | physical health, and performance.

00:12:36.560 | Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference

00:12:39.180 | in terms of the quality of sleep that you get each night,

00:12:41.500 | how soft it is, how firm it is, how breathable it is,

00:12:43.980 | the temperature, all play into your comfort

00:12:46.220 | and needs to be tailored to your unique sleep needs.

00:12:49.020 | If you go to the Helix website,

00:12:50.500 | you'll take a brief two-minute quiz

00:12:51.780 | and it will ask you questions such as,

00:12:53.620 | do you tend to sleep on your back, your side of your stomach?

00:12:55.780 | It will also ask you, do you tend to run hot

00:12:57.500 | or cold during the night

00:12:58.380 | or the early part of the night, et cetera,

00:13:00.380 | things of that sort.

00:13:01.820 | Maybe you know the answers to those questions,

00:13:03.540 | maybe you don't, but either way,

00:13:05.220 | Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you.

00:13:08.120 | For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K.

00:13:10.980 | I started sleeping on the Dusk mattress

00:13:12.660 | about three and a half years ago,

00:13:14.060 | and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had.

00:13:17.200 | It's absolutely clear to me that having a mattress

00:13:19.140 | that's right for you does improve one's sleep.

00:13:22.160 | If you'd like to try Helix,

00:13:23.380 | you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman,

00:13:26.260 | take that two-minute sleep quiz,

00:13:27.780 | and Helix will match you to a mattress

00:13:29.460 | that is customized for your unique sleep needs.

00:13:32.060 | Right now, Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders.

00:13:35.940 | Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to get up to 25% off.

00:13:41.460 | I think for a lot of people,

00:13:43.100 | a practice of meditation feels like the best

00:13:48.100 | or most obvious gateway

00:13:52.340 | into this thing that we're calling mindfulness.

00:13:54.500 | It's one way, and I'm not demeaning,

00:13:56.620 | I did some research in the '80s on meditation.

00:13:59.620 | It's wonderful, it's just different.

00:14:02.380 | And they're not mutually exclusive, you can do both.

00:14:05.620 | And part of the advantage of meditating

00:14:09.940 | possibly has nothing to do with the meditation.

00:14:13.100 | Why are you gonna meditate?

00:14:14.260 | You say you wanna be a kinder, nicer person.

00:14:16.740 | You can just be kinder or nicer,

00:14:18.460 | but now if you're gonna go to this trouble,

00:14:20.460 | 20 minutes twice a day, you're gonna sit up and take notice

00:14:24.100 | and be a kinder, nicer person.

00:14:26.100 | So maybe it's the time investment

00:14:27.820 | as opposed to something specific

00:14:30.220 | about the meditation practice.

00:14:32.060 | That's a heretical idea in the world of wellness.

00:14:36.420 | But of course-

00:14:37.260 | But they're not mutually exclusive.

00:14:39.380 | So I'm not denying some of the more inherent properties,

00:14:43.940 | let's say, but there's this other piece to it.

00:14:47.500 | I love the way that you look at things

00:14:49.060 | that we take for granted as operating one way

00:14:51.940 | through this different perspective.

00:14:54.260 | Our mutual friend, Allie Crump, told me the story

00:14:56.860 | that at one point she was in a conversation with you

00:15:00.740 | and you said, well, maybe exercise

00:15:02.500 | and all its effects on our health is just an epiphenomenon.

00:15:05.820 | Could you talk a little bit more about that?

00:15:07.340 | I think, first of all, I don't think most people

00:15:09.180 | are familiar with what epiphenomena are,

00:15:11.780 | but this idea of looking at things

00:15:13.660 | through a different portal seems so valuable

00:15:16.660 | regardless of what the experimental outcome turned out to be.

00:15:19.140 | And perhaps we should touch on that experimental outcome

00:15:21.420 | about labor versus non-labor.

00:15:25.540 | - There's so much there.

00:15:27.700 | I don't know where to go.

00:15:29.660 | I mean, we wanna talk about that, the research.

00:15:32.420 | - Let's talk about the study.

00:15:33.500 | - But before we go to the study,

00:15:35.300 | let's go to the reason for the study, way back when.

00:15:38.940 | All right, so there's so many paths I can take here.

00:15:43.940 | - Let's take them all.

00:15:44.980 | - Okay, we'll start with one.

00:15:46.340 | So I did some research back in the '70s

00:15:49.460 | with people in nursing homes.

00:15:51.900 | And why did I do that?

00:15:53.220 | Because I had somebody in the family

00:15:55.820 | who was in a nursing home.

00:15:56.860 | It was very distressing to see people

00:15:59.140 | just sitting there doing nothing and barely existing.

00:16:04.180 | And so we had the idea that if we gave people choices

00:16:08.460 | that might get them more engaged in their living.

00:16:12.780 | And so we did that.

00:16:13.740 | We gave people encouragement to decide where to see people,

00:16:18.700 | whether to visit them in your room, in the lounge.

00:16:21.180 | You have to remember,

00:16:22.180 | you can't go into an establishment, a business,

00:16:25.260 | and turn the whole power structure around.

00:16:27.340 | But so within reason,

00:16:29.700 | we came up with choices people could make.

00:16:32.060 | We gave them an opportunity to see a movie.

00:16:34.620 | You could see it on Tuesday or Thursday.

00:16:36.820 | We gave them a plant to take care of.

00:16:39.380 | All right, so comparison group,

00:16:41.140 | the tender, loving care group,

00:16:43.500 | we told them people will be visiting you

00:16:46.100 | and we'll set it up so you'll be visiting in the lounge.

00:16:50.900 | Everything was controlled in that way.

00:16:52.300 | You can see a movie and we'll let you know

00:16:55.300 | if you're gonna see it on Tuesday or Thursday.

00:16:57.580 | Here's a plant and the nurses will care for it for you.

00:17:02.180 | All right, so we do this.

00:17:04.820 | We come back, I think it was three weeks.

00:17:09.100 | Actually, I don't remember.

00:17:10.100 | It's been so long.

00:17:11.900 | 18 months later, first we took initial measures.

00:17:14.780 | Come back 18 months later,

00:17:16.540 | those people who were given these choices live longer.

00:17:25.380 | And that was the beginning of all of my work

00:17:29.500 | on health in some sense.

00:17:31.340 | How could it be that making choices

00:17:35.260 | results in a longer life?

00:17:38.180 | All right, so what is there about choice-making?

00:17:40.580 | And then the choices were Mickey Mouse choices.

00:17:44.220 | You can, you always have choice available too.

00:17:48.140 | You can turn on a light switch.

00:17:49.580 | You can do it with your right hand,

00:17:51.700 | your right hand, your left hand,

00:17:53.460 | one finger, three fingers, lift your foot.

00:17:56.340 | So many choices that you can bring to the table.

00:17:59.420 | If choice-making is good for you,

00:18:01.220 | why don't people do this?

00:18:03.260 | And that got me more into the mindlessness

00:18:07.460 | and mindfulness work now.

00:18:08.940 | Okay, so we have people living longer.

00:18:11.980 | How can it be that you're making choices,

00:18:15.540 | your mind is active and your body complies?

00:18:20.660 | And so then I thought about it, not in one fell swoop,

00:18:24.500 | but realized that this whole notion of mind and body,

00:18:30.020 | these are just words.

00:18:31.620 | We come together, here I am, all of me,

00:18:35.140 | my fingers, my shoulders, my thoughts as one thing.

00:18:40.140 | And if we put the mind and body back together,

00:18:44.100 | then the amount of control we have is enormous, right?

00:18:48.420 | Wherever I put my mind, I'm also putting my body.

00:18:52.300 | So in the "Mindful Body," which started off as a memoir,

00:18:56.860 | I have lots of stories that show leading up to this idea.

00:19:01.380 | Let me just tell you two very quickly.

00:19:03.780 | One was I got married.

00:19:05.420 | Andrew, you won't believe it.

00:19:06.420 | I was obscenely young.

00:19:08.740 | And you'll find that if you read the book,

00:19:10.580 | I was even younger then, admitted,

00:19:13.140 | 'cause I was secretly married years before that.

00:19:15.740 | Okay, so I go, I'm 19 years old, I think.

00:19:18.100 | I go to Paris on my honeymoon.

00:19:21.060 | We go into this restaurant, I order a mixed grill.

00:19:24.300 | One of the foods there was a pancreas.

00:19:27.100 | My then husband, who was more sophisticated than I,

00:19:29.820 | more worldly, I said, "Which of these is the pancreas?"

00:19:32.300 | He says, "That."

00:19:33.340 | I said, "So I eat everything, I'm a big eater."

00:19:35.980 | Now comes the moment of truth.

00:19:38.340 | Can I eat the pancreas?

00:19:40.300 | Why I thought that being married meant

00:19:42.980 | I had to eat the pancreas, I still haven't figured out.

00:19:45.860 | But anyway, I start eating it, and he starts laughing.

00:19:50.060 | Not good for newlyweds.

00:19:51.860 | And I ask him, "Why are you laughing?"

00:19:53.940 | He said, "'Cause that's chicken.

00:19:55.620 | "You ate the pancreas a long time ago."

00:19:58.260 | So I made myself sick, okay.

00:20:01.940 | The other side of that, my mother had breast cancer

00:20:05.340 | that had metastasized to her pancreas.

00:20:08.620 | And then magically, it was gone.

00:20:11.460 | Somehow, she had made herself well.

00:20:14.940 | So I had many of these sorts of experiences.

00:20:17.220 | And talk about mind, I've been talking about this since,

00:20:21.420 | gosh, when did we first, since '79.

00:20:25.820 | So now people are talking about mind-body connection.

00:20:28.900 | It's not a connection.

00:20:30.900 | If you're talking about a connection between two things

00:20:33.780 | that says they're separate, and you still have to deal with

00:20:36.740 | what's connecting them, and you've put them back together,

00:20:39.500 | it's one thing, you don't have to deal with that mediator.

00:20:45.500 | And so the study you're asking me about,

00:20:48.340 | which I'm surprised, I'm having a junior moment,

00:20:50.940 | but I actually remembered the question you asked,

00:20:53.660 | rather than a senior moment,

00:20:55.300 | that before I tell you about the study with Allie,

00:20:59.660 | the first study we did testing this mind-body unity

00:21:03.420 | was a counterclockwise study.

00:21:05.500 | So here what we did was we took elderly men,

00:21:07.940 | we were going to have them live in a retreat

00:21:10.100 | that had been retrofitted to 20 years earlier,

00:21:12.940 | and had them live there as if they were their younger selves.

00:21:15.940 | So they talked about things from the past

00:21:17.900 | as if they were just unfolding.

00:21:20.020 | The results were incredible.

00:21:21.980 | Their vision improved, their hearing improved,

00:21:24.660 | their memory, their strength,

00:21:26.060 | and they looked noticeably younger.

00:21:28.260 | So that was very exciting,

00:21:30.660 | and began all this mind-body unity work.

00:21:33.980 | Now comes the study that you're talking about with Allie,

00:21:37.000 | where in the conversation that she and I had,

00:21:42.660 | she was my student,

00:21:44.000 | and she made proclamations about exercise,

00:21:47.860 | and any proclamation,

00:21:49.580 | this is the short answer to your question,

00:21:51.660 | anybody proclaims anything, my mind immediately goes,

00:21:54.340 | so when might not that be true?

00:21:56.180 | I'm starting to pick up on that.

00:21:57.780 | It's a gimmick, I guess.

00:22:00.300 | It's a gift, is what it is, yeah.

00:22:02.980 | And so the question was that how important

00:22:08.500 | was the understanding of exercise

00:22:11.940 | to the effects of exercise?

00:22:13.920 | So we take chambermaids,

00:22:15.660 | and interestingly, the first question we ask

00:22:18.340 | is how much exercise do you get?

00:22:20.340 | And they say they don't get very much exercise

00:22:22.740 | because to them, exercise is what you do after work,

00:22:26.660 | 'cause that's what the Surgeon General

00:22:28.020 | who sits behind a desk all day says.

00:22:30.020 | So you would imagine whether they realized

00:22:33.900 | they were getting exercise or not,

00:22:35.740 | since they're getting so much exercise,

00:22:38.340 | that they're going to be healthier than other people

00:22:40.740 | who are not getting them, and they weren't.

00:22:42.860 | That's interesting.

00:22:43.700 | So now we divide them into two groups, very simple study.

00:22:47.380 | Randomly divide them into two groups.

00:22:49.140 | In one group, we simply teach them their work is exercise.

00:22:52.740 | Making a bed is like working in this machine at the gym,

00:22:56.720 | doing the windows, whatever.

00:22:58.940 | So you have two groups,

00:22:59.760 | one who thinks their work is exercise,

00:23:02.080 | one who doesn't realize.

00:23:03.720 | We take many, many measures,

00:23:07.540 | and they're not eating any differently,

00:23:09.980 | one group from the other.

00:23:11.460 | They're not working any harder.

00:23:13.580 | Nevertheless, the group that changed their mind

00:23:16.740 | and now saw their work as exercise lost weight,

00:23:20.060 | there was a change in waist to hip ratio,

00:23:22.300 | body mass index, and their blood pressure came down.

00:23:25.580 | Remarkable.

00:23:26.420 | Yeah, yeah.

00:23:27.460 | And what I don't usually talk about

00:23:30.460 | when I start talking about this

00:23:31.940 | is that this was a test of the nocebo effect.

00:23:35.380 | Most people know what a placebo is.

00:23:37.420 | You take something that's nothing,

00:23:39.340 | and it has the effect as if it's something.

00:23:41.380 | You take a sugar pill thinking it's strong medication,

00:23:44.820 | and it plays out as if it was.

00:23:47.700 | A nocebo is the reverse.

00:23:49.140 | You're taking something,

00:23:50.900 | so here you're doing the exercise,

00:23:52.860 | but you don't realize it,

00:23:54.500 | and it gets rid of the effect.

00:23:56.700 | An early study on this was,

00:23:59.420 | I don't remember who did it,

00:24:00.260 | and that was a senior moment,

00:24:02.660 | people were given Ipecac,

00:24:04.620 | and Ipecac is supposed to make you vomit.

00:24:06.740 | So if you accidentally had poison or whatever,

00:24:09.820 | you'd take Ipecac and vomit.

00:24:11.620 | So people are given Ipecac.

00:24:13.540 | People have a problem vomiting,

00:24:15.900 | and they're told the Ipecac will stop their vomiting,

00:24:19.300 | and it stops their vomiting.

00:24:21.660 | So many placebo studies where you take people,

00:24:25.500 | they're rubbed with a leaf that they think is poison ivy.

00:24:29.460 | So it either is poison ivy or it's not poison ivy.

00:24:33.180 | You think it's poison ivy,

00:24:34.780 | or you don't think it's poison ivy,

00:24:36.820 | and your body reacts to your thoughts.

00:24:39.740 | If you think it's not poison ivy,

00:24:42.260 | you don't get the rash.

00:24:43.420 | If you think it is poison ivy, you do.

00:24:46.140 | - Spectacular.

00:24:46.980 | - Yeah, and so we've been studying this for forever.

00:24:50.140 | I think that placebos are probably

00:24:52.980 | our very strongest medicine,

00:24:55.020 | although it's interesting that

00:24:58.020 | when people think that they were given a placebo,

00:25:02.780 | they get very upset.

00:25:04.780 | You know, they should be excited

00:25:07.060 | because if the placebo didn't cure you,

00:25:09.740 | who cured you?

00:25:10.580 | You did it yourself.

00:25:12.460 | But placebos have gotten a bad rap,

00:25:15.580 | I think primarily because of the pharmaceutical companies.

00:25:19.460 | You want to bring a drug to market.

00:25:21.740 | The way you do that is you have to run an experiment

00:25:26.140 | where the drug outperforms the placebo,

00:25:29.860 | and when it doesn't,

00:25:31.020 | damn it, I can't make all those billions of dollars

00:25:33.940 | without saying, wow, this sugar pill is mighty, mighty strong.

00:25:38.940 | - I want to talk about three themes that you raised.

00:25:42.620 | The first one is this mind-body notion,

00:25:45.060 | and now, even as I say it, mind-body,

00:25:47.540 | I feel like a hint of guilt

00:25:49.340 | because I completely agree

00:25:51.900 | that the division of mind and body

00:25:54.300 | is one of the greatest mistakes of thinking in psychology

00:25:59.020 | and Western medicine that ever existed.

00:26:01.340 | In fact, a lot of my secret mission in this podcast

00:26:05.420 | is to remind people every single episode, it seems,

00:26:08.940 | that the brain and body are connected bidirectionally

00:26:12.380 | through the nervous system, but other systems too.

00:26:14.300 | Like, there's no single system,

00:26:16.860 | hormone system, nervous system, immune system-

00:26:19.180 | - Right, it's all one, right.

00:26:20.540 | - That doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier

00:26:23.460 | and go back and forth.

00:26:24.300 | - It's all because of Descartes.

00:26:25.340 | You know, Descartes was out to dinner,

00:26:27.580 | and the waitress asked him if he wanted a salad,

00:26:30.740 | and he said, "I think not," and he disappeared.

00:26:33.080 | I think I am, therefore I am.

00:26:36.420 | - I was about to ask, I was like, "How was it that you-

00:26:38.500 | - And after that, Andrew, I say this is not my day job,

00:26:40.900 | so I don't have to be funny.

00:26:42.220 | - I love it, I love it.

00:26:43.640 | I've spent a lot of time

00:26:46.580 | trying to learn the history of medicine

00:26:48.180 | and the merge of philosophy and medicine.

00:26:50.260 | There's a wonderful book

00:26:51.100 | that if anyone is suffering from insomnia,

00:26:53.260 | they should check out

00:26:54.100 | because it's extremely detailed

00:26:55.580 | and difficult to listen to or read,

00:26:57.420 | but it's called "The Prince of Medicine,"

00:26:58.620 | which basically details all the reasons

00:27:00.900 | why we are so confused

00:27:02.060 | about how medicine is done and should be done.

00:27:04.220 | And it has to do with rules and restrictions

00:27:05.900 | and cultural conventions,

00:27:07.020 | and it's a whole barbed wire mess, basically,

00:27:10.500 | but it includes this mess that was created for us,

00:27:13.900 | which is this idea that somehow,

00:27:16.420 | because the brain is perhaps the seat of our consciousness,

00:27:20.940 | to many people, they believe that,

00:27:23.260 | but certainly, you know, like if I were to lose

00:27:25.980 | a few fingers on my left hand,

00:27:27.860 | I'm not sure I would fundamentally be a different person,

00:27:31.680 | but if I lost a few millimeters,

00:27:33.820 | or the equivalent amount of real estate in my brain,

00:27:36.940 | my personality could very well change,

00:27:38.740 | perhaps for the better, some would say,

00:27:42.180 | and I'm probably not hoping for that event.

00:27:44.540 | But all kidding aside, you know,

00:27:47.060 | I think the mind-body distinction has really poisoned

00:27:50.500 | our thinking about what's possible,

00:27:52.780 | and the other experiments that you described,

00:27:55.460 | you know, point to what's possible,

00:27:56.980 | and I wanna talk about those,

00:27:58.140 | but maybe if we could just hover on this notion

00:28:00.100 | of mind and body as a single thing,

00:28:03.460 | that there's an us,

00:28:04.500 | I don't wanna get too philosophical here,

00:28:06.020 | but that there's an us,

00:28:07.140 | and our body carries us forward in motor behavior,

00:28:11.460 | but like, how should we conceptualize the self

00:28:14.140 | if we don't have a mind-body distinction?

00:28:16.660 | - I don't know why that's a problem.

00:28:19.420 | - Well, I think- - Why, you know,

00:28:21.460 | I am who I am, period, right?

00:28:25.740 | How does that change whether we wanna see me

00:28:27.940 | as having a mind-body and elbows?

00:28:30.220 | So explain to me, and then I will explain to you.

00:28:35.100 | - Yeah, well, what I love is,

00:28:36.980 | I'm gonna first reflect,

00:28:38.780 | what I love is the flexibility

00:28:40.940 | of your thinking around these things.

00:28:42.340 | Again, it's like maybe exercise,

00:28:44.020 | the effects of exercise are epiphenomena,

00:28:46.020 | or, you know, so in thinking about mind-body,

00:28:49.700 | I can't get my, no pun intended,

00:28:52.540 | my head around this distinction

00:28:55.420 | that if I lose a certain piece of my body,

00:28:57.500 | I'm not fundamentally changed,

00:28:59.420 | but if I lose a piece of neural real estate,

00:29:01.620 | I'm fundamentally different.

00:29:03.100 | That's the only thing that anchors me

00:29:04.340 | to the idea that they're separate.

00:29:05.180 | - Yeah, but that's not, why is that true?

00:29:06.500 | I mean, if, you know, let's say you're an athlete,

00:29:10.100 | and you lose two of your fingers,

00:29:12.580 | you're not going to be performing in the same way

00:29:14.860 | that you performed in the past,

00:29:16.220 | and surely you'd end up different.

00:29:18.140 | - Yeah, that's it, I'll buy that explanation.

00:29:20.460 | Yeah, I mean, I'm just trying to probe this

00:29:22.460 | because I think nowadays people think,

00:29:25.260 | oh, you know, if I breathe in a certain way,

00:29:27.420 | I'll change my state of mind, which is true.

00:29:30.340 | If I think differently, get stressed or relaxed,

00:29:33.620 | I'll change the way that I breathe.

00:29:34.900 | I mean, I think that we're starting to understand

00:29:36.500 | the bi-directionality of these things.

00:29:38.380 | - I think some of the, even the work with the brain,

00:29:42.140 | where to assess this neuroscience now is crazy with FMRIs.

00:29:48.140 | And we want, no matter what happens,

00:29:50.460 | you want to see what's going on in the brain.

00:29:52.660 | And I think that implicitly, in a backwards way,

00:29:57.660 | that leads people away from realizing

00:30:01.020 | that whatever you're looking for

00:30:02.900 | is probably manifested every place.

00:30:05.660 | You know, I had this experience.

00:30:08.180 | I like doing strange things, and I was out in Kansas City.

00:30:14.020 | And so somebody said there's an iridologist.

00:30:17.060 | What is an iridologist?

00:30:18.260 | Sure, for fun, we'll go to the iridologist.

00:30:21.100 | So this person is looking in my eye, my iris.

00:30:24.340 | That's the iridologist part.

00:30:26.700 | And she said, "You have a problem with your gallbladder."

00:30:31.060 | I thought, okay, that's great, we leave and have my time.

00:30:36.980 | I go back home and I had a problem with my gallbladder.

00:30:41.980 | - Really?

00:30:42.900 | - Everything is everywhere.

00:30:44.340 | The problem is, we don't have the technology to notice it.

00:30:48.460 | You know, so when you're happy,

00:30:50.620 | your skin is different from when you're not happy.

00:30:53.900 | But who can see such small distinctions?

00:30:56.780 | But it's there.

00:30:57.980 | All we do is look to see where the brain is different.

00:31:01.460 | It's all one.

00:31:02.540 | Anything, I believe, anything that's happening on any level

00:31:07.060 | is simultaneously, simultaneously, not sequentially,

00:31:10.580 | more or less happening on every level.

00:31:14.020 | So a teardrop of sadness, biochemically,

00:31:17.580 | is different from a teardrop of joy.

00:31:20.540 | And so it's all there.

00:31:23.460 | We just have to notice.

00:31:24.980 | I have no memory now of what it was you said

00:31:28.260 | that led to that on my part, but I'm glad I said it anyway.

00:31:31.860 | - Well, we're probing mind, body,

00:31:33.220 | and their interconnectedness.

00:31:34.700 | And so this iridologist, I've never heard that term before,

00:31:38.820 | this iridologist, it could be,

00:31:41.820 | based on what we were discussing a few moments ago,

00:31:44.540 | it could be that the suggestion

00:31:46.460 | that there was a problem with your gallbladder

00:31:48.060 | led to a problem with your gallbladder,

00:31:50.060 | or do you think that she had some,

00:31:52.340 | or he had some diagnostic knowledge?

00:31:56.580 | - I hadn't even considered the former,

00:31:58.540 | which is strange to me.

00:31:59.860 | No, I just assumed that she was seeing something.

00:32:04.900 | And I don't know, but your idea,

00:32:07.660 | but either way is fascinating, right?

00:32:10.460 | Somehow, you know, by somebody suggesting

00:32:12.380 | you have a gallbladder problem

00:32:13.700 | to have a gallbladder problem, yeah.

00:32:16.540 | - What are your thoughts on things like acupuncture

00:32:18.580 | and like, and when I think about acupuncture,

00:32:21.060 | I'm not just thinking about the needles,

00:32:22.580 | the few times I've been to an acupuncturist,

00:32:25.180 | the first thing they do is they ask you

00:32:26.460 | to stick out your tongue.

00:32:27.300 | They are able to diagnose tongue texture and color,

00:32:30.820 | and maybe they're-

00:32:31.940 | - I think everything is everywhere,

00:32:34.060 | although there's, you know,

00:32:35.340 | I teach health psych at Harvard,

00:32:38.140 | and there's some data on it being mostly placebo.

00:32:41.860 | But, you know, and that sounds like a downer,

00:32:44.260 | but most of everything is placebo.

00:32:47.380 | What does that mean?

00:32:48.340 | That virtually everything is controlled by our thoughts,

00:32:51.700 | and we need to embrace that

00:32:54.660 | to make the changes that most of us desire.

00:32:58.580 | So in other words, so going to an acupuncturist

00:33:02.460 | itself means I want to find the answers

00:33:06.580 | and seek and you are more likely to find,

00:33:09.900 | and then you're in a position to improve.

00:33:14.620 | - Might I ask what happened with your mom's mindset

00:33:18.860 | or life or psychological life that you think led to the-

00:33:21.740 | - No, there's, you know, it's an N of one,

00:33:24.980 | you know, it's very hard to know.

00:33:27.260 | I knew that when she got sick,

00:33:30.420 | I believed at that point that being anything negative

00:33:36.140 | was going to work in the opposite direction.

00:33:41.060 | And so I wouldn't let anybody in to see her.

00:33:44.180 | It wasn't uplifting, you know, that was,

00:33:47.580 | I don't, there's no way of knowing

00:33:49.220 | if any of that mattered or not.

00:33:51.020 | I went and got her a very expensive set of golf clubs.

00:33:54.980 | She wasn't a big golfer, but, you know,

00:33:58.060 | my reasoning was that, you know,

00:34:00.380 | I must believe she's going to be better

00:34:02.580 | or why would I have spent the money?

00:34:04.900 | Her reasoning was my reasoning must be that if I get these,

00:34:08.940 | she'll think that, you know, so it didn't work.

00:34:12.380 | We had these golf clubs that were never used.

00:34:14.620 | You know, I don't know.

00:34:16.980 | I believe that we have more control.

00:34:23.180 | At that point, I hadn't done all of these experiments

00:34:28.060 | that might've led me to push even harder.

00:34:30.780 | It was kind of funny though,

00:34:32.060 | because the way I had cognized everything back then

00:34:35.340 | was the importance of perceived control.

00:34:38.220 | And so I had these data people living longer and so on.

00:34:41.620 | And yet mindlessly, I, you know,

00:34:44.420 | virtually took over her life, you know,

00:34:46.780 | deciding who can see or what she can do.

00:34:48.900 | But I don't know.

00:34:52.540 | And I don't think there would have been

00:34:54.660 | with just one person, any way of knowing

00:34:57.540 | what led to the disease going away.

00:35:01.700 | But the fact that it went away was crucial to me.

00:35:04.500 | You know, I think that we have to talk

00:35:09.500 | about the myths in medicine.

00:35:13.220 | That what people need to understand

00:35:15.500 | is that all science are probabilities.

00:35:18.820 | An experiment doesn't give you absolute facts.

00:35:21.980 | And we teach these probabilities as if they're absolute

00:35:26.660 | and give up a great deal of control by doing so.

00:35:31.100 | Now, you asked me before

00:35:34.260 | about how I came to certain things.

00:35:36.020 | Let me go back to an answer I should have given you.

00:35:40.500 | Many years ago, I was at a horse event

00:35:44.580 | and this man asked me would I watch his horse for him

00:35:47.100 | because he wants to get his horse a hot dog.

00:35:49.500 | Hot dog, I'm a straight A student.

00:35:51.260 | What is it, crazy?

00:35:52.460 | Horses don't eat meat.

00:35:54.300 | Sure, I'll watch your horse.

00:35:55.900 | He comes back with the hot dog and the horse ate it.

00:35:59.860 | And that's when I realized

00:36:01.500 | everything I thought I knew could be wrong.

00:36:04.340 | And I thought, what does it mean horses don't eat meat?

00:36:06.500 | How many horses were tested?

00:36:08.340 | And what were they tested with?

00:36:10.020 | How much meat mixed with how much grain

00:36:12.140 | and what kind of grain?

00:36:13.620 | And how big are these horses?

00:36:15.180 | And when was the last, you know, and so on.

00:36:16.740 | And it all opened up and I said,

00:36:18.380 | how could we make such a statement, horses don't eat meat?

00:36:21.380 | But when you think about science,

00:36:23.740 | that imagine if you did the experiment

00:36:26.260 | and you're trying to teach somebody what you found,

00:36:28.380 | you say, these particular horses

00:36:31.060 | who hadn't eaten for three days were given this grain.

00:36:35.340 | And under those circumstances,

00:36:37.100 | 80% of them didn't eat meat.

00:36:39.020 | That's a mouthful, right?

00:36:40.780 | You can't communicate that way.

00:36:44.020 | So you abbreviate it, horses don't eat meat.

00:36:47.220 | So it's not in the telling that's the problem.

00:36:49.660 | It's in the receiving of the information.

00:36:52.300 | We have to know that these things are, you know,

00:36:55.740 | are just not true to the one.

00:36:58.020 | But it's very important because

00:37:00.020 | every time you're given a diagnosis,

00:37:03.060 | you take the diagnosis as real.

00:37:05.140 | Well, it's not the case that they can be sure

00:37:08.340 | that all of these symptoms mean you have this disease.

00:37:12.180 | And if you have, quote, this disease,

00:37:14.740 | we don't know that all of the people who have it

00:37:17.220 | are going to follow.

00:37:18.060 | And it becomes very unlikely

00:37:20.540 | when you turn it all inside out that way.

00:37:23.780 | And so another part of this that we can get into or not

00:37:28.780 | is people's understanding probabilities in general,

00:37:33.380 | and that you can't predict.

00:37:36.220 | Now, people ask for answers all the time.

00:37:39.780 | You know, even the how much is one in one.

00:37:41.980 | You know, should I have the surgery?

00:37:45.500 | What is the disease that I have?

00:37:48.020 | And by recognizing that all information

00:37:52.700 | that's given is for the group, not for the individual.

00:37:57.380 | A few examples of this is kind of funny.

00:38:01.300 | I say, so Michael Jordan and I

00:38:04.740 | are gonna have a foul shooting contest.

00:38:06.580 | We each get to shoot one basket.

00:38:08.420 | Who's gonna win?

00:38:10.220 | Well, most people are just gonna quickly say Michael Jordan.

00:38:14.420 | How much money are you willing to bet on this?

00:38:16.780 | One shot each.

00:38:18.900 | Million dollars.

00:38:19.820 | I'll give you a million dollars if Ellen Langer wins.

00:38:23.660 | You give me, or I'll give you a million dollars

00:38:26.940 | if Michael Jordan wins.

00:38:28.100 | You give me half a million dollars if Ellen Langer wins.

00:38:32.140 | First, you think he'll take the bet.

00:38:33.540 | But when you think about it, no, he sometimes misses.

00:38:36.220 | She sometimes makes the basket.

00:38:38.340 | Maybe had a fight with his wife.

00:38:41.740 | Didn't sleep well.

00:38:43.620 | You know, maybe she is in top form

00:38:45.580 | and this is now the moment she's going to make that basket.

00:38:48.580 | Or make it simple.

00:38:50.380 | He said to himself, let the older woman win.

00:38:52.980 | Why not?

00:38:54.300 | Really?

00:38:55.460 | And when you think of all the reasons

00:38:57.140 | why it could be the case that I could win,

00:38:59.660 | all of a sudden you become less certain.

00:39:02.380 | Now, certainly if we were shooting 100 baskets,

00:39:06.820 | he would win.

00:39:07.900 | Let me give you another example I use too often

00:39:10.380 | 'cause I don't know which of these will feel right.

00:39:13.400 | You go to a Mercedes parking lot.

00:39:18.100 | Now, pick your favorite car.

00:39:19.940 | And I'm gonna say there are 100 cars there.

00:39:21.980 | You choose one.

00:39:23.780 | And if it starts, I will give you a million dollars.

00:39:27.680 | If it doesn't start, you give me your full life savings,

00:39:33.340 | assuming it's under a million.

00:39:35.040 | Capped at a million, all right?

00:39:38.460 | Now, Mercedes are wonderful cars.

00:39:40.860 | Nobody is gonna take that bet.

00:39:43.300 | Everybody knows, you know, sometimes it doesn't work.

00:39:46.340 | You know, sometimes the genius gets something wrong.

00:39:49.060 | Sometimes a car is a lemon and so on.

00:39:52.260 | So what we mean when we say,

00:39:54.700 | you know, if you were gonna start 100 cars,

00:39:56.980 | most of them are going to start.

00:39:59.300 | But you can't predict which one isn't going to.

00:40:02.140 | Well, in life, I'm happy if an operation

00:40:05.420 | is good for most people.

00:40:07.220 | I wanna know, is it going to work for me?

00:40:09.820 | And there's no way to know that.

00:40:12.160 | You can never predict the individual case.

00:40:14.800 | But, Andrew, we don't have to worry about that

00:40:18.460 | because you can always predict or control your reaction

00:40:22.660 | to whatever is happening.

00:40:24.180 | So it doesn't matter as much.

00:40:28.180 | You see, if I can be happy,

00:40:30.300 | whether this occurs or the opposite occurs,

00:40:33.780 | I care less about which way it turns out.

00:40:37.400 | But right now, we're all brought up in a world

00:40:39.740 | where we have these good things, we have these bad things.

00:40:42.500 | You've gotta kill yourself to get the good things.

00:40:44.540 | Step over whoever you can to avoid the bad things.

00:40:47.440 | Once you recognize that's all in your head,

00:40:50.920 | then just be still.

00:40:52.880 | My favorite example, this is so, for me, was so funny.

00:40:56.200 | I'm doing one of these podcasts over Zoom,

00:40:59.240 | and I'm trying to explain that evaluation is in your head,

00:41:04.240 | not in the things you're evaluating.

00:41:07.680 | I say, as an example,

00:41:09.200 | so if the internet went out right now,

00:41:12.440 | wouldn't be terrible, I'd go have lunch.

00:41:15.060 | The internet went out just at that moment,

00:41:17.780 | and I did have lunch

00:41:18.900 | because I had put the suggestion in my mind.

00:41:22.260 | Most things don't matter.

00:41:24.380 | We don't recognize that, and I think,

00:41:26.560 | I have a few one-liners that if people understand

00:41:30.400 | or care about nothing else that I've said,

00:41:32.520 | take this to heart, that next time you're stressed,

00:41:36.200 | ask yourself, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?

00:41:40.160 | It's almost never a tragedy,

00:41:42.540 | and so then you breathe, I failed the test.

00:41:46.740 | I got dented the car.

00:41:48.900 | I missed the bus.

00:41:49.980 | Whatever it is, so what?

00:41:51.960 | And so you take a deep breath and come back to yourself

00:41:57.360 | and realize that most of the things

00:42:00.340 | that make us crazed are unnecessary.

00:42:04.380 | You get a lot of this as you get older,

00:42:06.360 | but I teach my students this early on.

00:42:09.780 | Why wait?

00:42:11.180 | You know, why wait to recognize that you're the one

00:42:14.600 | who's almost always your worst enemy?

00:42:17.520 | - I'd like to take a quick break

00:42:20.220 | and thank our sponsor, AG1.

00:42:22.420 | AG1 is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink

00:42:25.780 | with adaptogens.

00:42:27.200 | I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012,

00:42:30.080 | so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast.

00:42:32.580 | The reason I started taking AG1

00:42:34.300 | and the reason I still take AG1

00:42:36.020 | is because it is the highest quality

00:42:37.520 | and most complete foundational nutritional supplement.

00:42:40.420 | What that means is that AG1 ensures

00:42:42.420 | that you're getting all the necessary vitamins,

00:42:44.660 | minerals, and other micronutrients

00:42:46.500 | to form a strong foundation for your daily health.

00:42:49.220 | AG1 also has probiotics and prebiotics

00:42:51.860 | that support a healthy gut microbiome.

00:42:53.780 | Your gut microbiome consists of trillions

00:42:55.660 | of microorganisms that line your digestive tract

00:42:58.500 | and impact things such as your immune system status,

00:43:01.020 | your metabolic health, your hormone health, and much more.

00:43:03.980 | So I've consistently found that when I take AG1 daily,

00:43:07.000 | my digestion is improved, my immune system is more robust,

00:43:10.180 | and my mood and mental focus are at their best.

00:43:12.780 | In fact, if I could take just one supplement,

00:43:14.980 | that supplement would be AG1.

00:43:17.180 | If you'd like to try AG1,

00:43:18.580 | you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman

00:43:21.820 | to claim a special offer.

00:43:23.060 | They'll give you five free travel packs

00:43:24.780 | plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2

00:43:27.700 | with your order of AG1.

00:43:29.260 | Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman

00:43:32.580 | to claim this special offer.

00:43:34.420 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve.

00:43:37.540 | Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices.

00:43:40.840 | Now, if there's one thing

00:43:41.680 | that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast,

00:43:44.220 | it is the incredible impact

00:43:45.680 | that light can have on our biology.

00:43:47.720 | Now, in addition to sunlight,

00:43:48.960 | red light and near infrared light sources

00:43:51.280 | have been shown to have positive effects

00:43:53.120 | on improving numerous aspects of cellar and organ health,

00:43:55.880 | including faster muscle recovery,

00:43:57.760 | improved skin health and wound healing,

00:43:59.920 | improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation,

00:44:03.120 | even mitochondrial function and improving vision itself.

00:44:06.380 | What sets Juve lights apart

00:44:07.700 | and why they're my preferred red light therapy device

00:44:10.280 | is that they use clinically proven wavelengths,

00:44:12.320 | meaning specific wavelengths of red light

00:44:14.560 | and near infrared light in combination

00:44:16.780 | to trigger the optimal cellar adaptations.

00:44:19.560 | Personally, I use the Juve whole body panel

00:44:21.720 | about three to four times a week,

00:44:23.280 | and I use the Juve handheld light

00:44:25.140 | both at home and when I travel.

00:44:27.320 | If you'd like to try Juve,

00:44:28.400 | you can go to juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman.

00:44:33.240 | Juve is offering an exclusive discount

00:44:35.120 | to all Huberman Lab listeners

00:44:36.780 | with up to $400 off Juve products.

00:44:39.380 | Again, that's Juve spelled J-O-O-V-V.com/huberman

00:44:43.880 | to get up to $400 off.

00:44:46.240 | So much of our developmental wiring

00:44:48.280 | is based on learning how to predict

00:44:51.000 | what's going to happen next.

00:44:52.200 | I mean, you think about object constancy

00:44:54.560 | that kids of a certain age,

00:44:56.000 | you put a ball behind your back,

00:44:57.400 | they think it disappeared.

00:44:58.360 | Eventually they realize just because you moved your arm

00:45:00.760 | and the ball behind your back

00:45:01.640 | doesn't mean that the ball is gone, this kind of thing.

00:45:04.960 | - Sadly though, then they believe the ball is still there

00:45:09.960 | when in fact the ball may be gone.

00:45:12.760 | - True, right.

00:45:14.120 | There's always a portal to a different outcome.

00:45:17.920 | And I'm catching on to your mode of thinking here.

00:45:19.680 | This is actually what I'm trying to do

00:45:22.140 | because I think the brain is a prediction making machine

00:45:25.760 | in addition to doing other things.

00:45:27.040 | It regulates heartbeat, all the autonomic stuff, right?

00:45:29.440 | Heartbeat, digestion, et cetera.

00:45:31.180 | It remembers things and it's a prediction making machine.

00:45:34.300 | At least those three things.

00:45:36.360 | I feel like the prediction making aspect

00:45:38.800 | of our neural circuitry is what leads us to this notion

00:45:43.240 | of having control or wanting control.

00:45:46.920 | Because I think a lot of what's happening

00:45:48.720 | in our conversation in the backdrop of these experiments

00:45:52.040 | is to what extent do we have control over outcomes?

00:45:56.820 | - Well, it's interesting because our mindlessness,

00:46:00.800 | which results I think in part to hold onto things,

00:46:05.000 | to have control, is the very thing

00:46:07.280 | that deprives us of control.

00:46:09.480 | Because again, things are changing.

00:46:11.160 | You're holding it still in your mind.

00:46:13.680 | And so you're living with somebody or you meet somebody

00:46:17.600 | and right away you decide what size that person up.

00:46:22.600 | So now you can control your interactions with them.

00:46:26.920 | But what you're doing is ignoring all the times

00:46:29.880 | the person is not like that and all the ways

00:46:34.480 | that the relationship could have otherwise grown.

00:46:38.740 | In general, and this is, you know,

00:46:43.000 | I have a psychological treatment for chronic illness.

00:46:47.000 | It's all based on the same idea of change.

00:46:50.220 | Things are changing, we're always holding it still.

00:46:53.560 | And so you have the illusion that you're controlling things.

00:46:58.360 | But in fact, you're giving up control

00:47:04.080 | by not recognizing for yourself or somebody else.

00:47:07.960 | You know, all of our statements of we can't do

00:47:11.080 | or we can do, you can't know whether you can or you can't.

00:47:13.620 | The fact that you did it doesn't mean

00:47:15.360 | that you can do it again.

00:47:16.440 | The fact that you couldn't do it

00:47:17.520 | doesn't mean you couldn't do it in the future.

00:47:20.000 | - I feel like close to the end of each year,

00:47:21.840 | which we just, you know, passed recently,

00:47:24.080 | these lists come out.

00:47:26.120 | - Oh, these resolutions are so mindless.

00:47:29.000 | And, but they're more than just mindless.

00:47:32.700 | They deny that what we did made sense

00:47:37.480 | or else we wouldn't have done it.

00:47:38.920 | That one thing that I told you is more important to me

00:47:42.120 | than anything else that I came to

00:47:44.080 | over all these years of study.

00:47:45.940 | You know, so you're going to resolve

00:47:49.040 | that you're going to, I don't know, stop drinking.

00:47:51.920 | You're gonna go to the gym,

00:47:53.920 | whatever these new year's resolutions are,

00:47:57.000 | suggests that what you were doing

00:48:00.080 | instead of that thing you think you should be doing

00:48:03.040 | was not something you should have been doing.

00:48:06.040 | And I think that's never the case.

00:48:09.800 | - I woke up early this morning

00:48:11.360 | and my first thoughts of the day,

00:48:13.160 | I like to think have some importance for something.

00:48:17.480 | Who knows, it's when my mind,

00:48:18.960 | it seems clearest for at least a nanosecond.

00:48:21.160 | And my first thought was that the pattern

00:48:25.120 | that I seem to be perpetually in

00:48:26.800 | is one of whatever I'm doing,

00:48:28.400 | unless I'm podcasting or reading a research paper,

00:48:32.340 | that my mind is constantly flitting to the other things

00:48:36.280 | that I think I should be doing.

00:48:37.840 | - Yeah, that's sad.

00:48:38.680 | - It's sad and it's something I've been working on

00:48:41.360 | for a very long time.

00:48:42.520 | And I'm able to hold my, for lack of a better word,

00:48:45.020 | attention on things to accomplish tasks

00:48:47.340 | and in my life and to be present with people as it were.

00:48:50.900 | But I thought--

00:48:52.440 | - No, no, no, let's go back a step

00:48:54.160 | 'cause we both said it was sad.

00:48:55.440 | Why is it sad?

00:48:56.440 | I'm reconsidering that too,

00:49:00.320 | to be able to think of five different things

00:49:02.640 | instead of one could be an asset.

00:49:06.200 | - Right, it could be an asset.

00:49:07.180 | I think that for me, what I realize is

00:49:10.040 | most of the shoulds are just total lies.

00:49:12.880 | They don't, and also they don't, they're just lies.

00:49:15.800 | They're not actually coming from a script.

00:49:18.120 | I'm not hearing other people's voices in my head.

00:49:20.760 | Yeah, you should do this.

00:49:21.800 | It's not parental narrative or anything.

00:49:24.560 | It's just contamination of a useless type.

00:49:29.560 | It's not like listening to the radio.

00:49:33.480 | I used to listen to the radio

00:49:34.400 | while I'd like make dinner or something.

00:49:35.720 | And it was so pleasant, right?

00:49:37.040 | I'd hear an evening discussion about the news

00:49:39.480 | or talk show or whatever on the radio while cooking.

00:49:43.360 | And so that kind of "distraction" felt really meaningful.

00:49:46.880 | I felt like when I lived alone

00:49:48.680 | that I had other people in the room with me.

00:49:50.220 | This is different.

00:49:51.460 | This is, it feels as if it detracts

00:49:53.840 | from some essence of the behavior that I'm in,

00:49:57.180 | even if the behavior is just getting out of bed

00:49:59.320 | in the morning.

00:50:00.160 | - Wait, so let me be clear.

00:50:02.020 | You get out of bed or start to get out of bed

00:50:04.520 | and you have several thoughts.

00:50:05.920 | - Yep.

00:50:06.760 | - And those thoughts bother you?

00:50:08.400 | Do they prevent you from getting out of bed?

00:50:12.920 | - No, but they feel intrusive.

00:50:15.120 | They don't feel welcome.

00:50:17.060 | Because I know what I'm gonna do each day.

00:50:20.440 | I have a policy for myself of doing one work thing each day,

00:50:24.720 | maybe in one or two blocks.

00:50:25.900 | And I try and really put everything I have into those.

00:50:28.520 | It's kind of a recent evolution

00:50:30.120 | of not trying to do three things in a day.

00:50:32.320 | Maybe it's a function of getting older,

00:50:34.780 | but I get so much more satisfaction

00:50:36.880 | and get truly so much more done

00:50:38.880 | from just doing one thing in my work life each day.

00:50:40.880 | - I don't even understand the one thing idea,

00:50:43.800 | that people talk about multitasking,

00:50:47.200 | which is what you're saying.

00:50:48.120 | And you're better not to multitask,

00:50:50.240 | but you're always multitasking, right?

00:50:52.720 | I mean, I'm moving my hands while I'm talking to you

00:50:55.520 | and I'm sort of thinking and fixing my back.

00:50:59.640 | There are always lots of things going on.

00:51:02.900 | And I think that also tasks.

00:51:07.880 | So let's say you're a kid

00:51:09.440 | and you're doing your social studies homework.

00:51:12.280 | And then you're doing your math homework.

00:51:15.960 | And you go back and forth.

00:51:18.260 | So are you multitasking?

00:51:20.200 | It depends.

00:51:21.040 | If you see yourself as multitasking,

00:51:23.120 | then you're drawing boundaries

00:51:24.680 | between your math and your social studies.

00:51:27.840 | If you see yourself as doing homework,

00:51:30.380 | it's all part of the same thing.

00:51:33.020 | And so there's always a way that the task can be grouped

00:51:37.660 | as a single unit, or you can see anything as multitasking.

00:51:41.640 | When you see it as multitasking,

00:51:43.420 | you're suggesting to yourself

00:51:45.240 | that there's going to be some conflict.

00:51:47.880 | There's some reason I'm leaving this to go to this.

00:51:50.700 | - Well, maybe I'm running the script backwards.

00:51:54.960 | Let me put it differently.

00:51:57.280 | The level of satisfaction that I feel

00:52:02.200 | from having, say, worked on a chapter of my book

00:52:05.200 | for a couple of hours, or even 45 minutes,

00:52:08.040 | or from going for a run without my phone

00:52:11.580 | and just enjoying the run,

00:52:13.140 | it still blows me away how much I enjoy things

00:52:19.220 | that would fall under the category of simple things,

00:52:24.000 | or things that I experience in isolation,

00:52:27.260 | as compared to how little I enjoy,

00:52:31.180 | and sometimes reflect on how punishing

00:52:34.600 | quote, unquote, multitasking is,

00:52:37.700 | like being in a text conversation

00:52:40.220 | while I'm walking on the beach.

00:52:41.560 | - No, no, but when you're texting while you're on the beach,

00:52:44.260 | probably it's some kind of work text, right?

00:52:48.660 | There's something about it,

00:52:51.180 | and why are you doing it when you're on the beach?

00:52:53.860 | Because I can easily imagine,

00:52:55.660 | oh, I'm on the beach, it's wonderful.

00:52:57.780 | Let me text Andrew and say,

00:52:59.780 | "Andrew, you're right, this time on the beach is wonderful,"

00:53:02.980 | and texting wouldn't take away from it.

00:53:05.540 | My life is much simpler.

00:53:09.060 | To me, all you have are moments, that's it,

00:53:12.540 | and if you make the moment matter, then the moment matters,

00:53:15.420 | and you can't make it matter more.

00:53:17.380 | It matters or it doesn't matter,

00:53:19.740 | and so the question, when you're lost doing,

00:53:23.380 | or found, really, I don't wanna say lost when we're writing.

00:53:26.420 | I find myself while I'm writing,

00:53:28.480 | but when you're engaged in an activity,

00:53:31.600 | you're making each of those moments matter,

00:53:35.820 | but they should matter as much.

00:53:39.900 | I had this thought that I would help people who were stressed

00:53:43.740 | and I would say to them,

00:53:44.780 | okay, so assuming that their vision is reasonable,

00:53:49.340 | just thread a needle, threading the needle,

00:53:53.700 | and then I'd ask them how they felt,

00:53:56.020 | and everybody's gonna feel fine.

00:53:58.520 | Because you're actively engaged and doing something.

00:54:02.200 | You're not engaged in what people call monkey brain

00:54:05.300 | or whatever, worrying about tomorrow,

00:54:07.640 | worrying about so on.

00:54:10.260 | So to go back to your three things,

00:54:14.860 | it's like the text on the beach is not an I love you text,

00:54:21.200 | 'cause I don't see why that would distract you.

00:54:24.960 | I could imagine being anywhere doing multiple things

00:54:28.160 | where I'm sharing what I'm doing,

00:54:30.200 | but I'm not seeing them.

00:54:31.700 | Oh, I have to do this work thing.

00:54:34.580 | And then the question is, why see the work thing that way,

00:54:39.040 | and especially someone like you

00:54:41.160 | where you don't need any of this anymore anyway.

00:54:44.100 | - Yeah, that's a discussion unto itself.

00:54:47.240 | - But no, but it's important.

00:54:50.000 | And so that if it's all fun, it doesn't matter.

00:54:53.560 | I was on this panel in Australia.

00:54:56.120 | Well, first, each of us gave a talk, some big shots.

00:54:58.960 | And then unbeknownst to us, they brought us all out.

00:55:02.240 | And so we're sitting there,

00:55:03.820 | and I'm the last one to be asked.

00:55:06.360 | And the question was, what's on your bucket list?

00:55:09.840 | And so the first person answers what's on the next person,

00:55:13.280 | and we get five.

00:55:14.320 | Now it's my turn.

00:55:15.520 | So I've had some time to think about this.

00:55:17.560 | My first thought, I don't have a bucket list.

00:55:21.280 | But of course, you know that I'm gonna say,

00:55:22.900 | well, it's good not to have a bucket list,

00:55:24.560 | or else I'd have a bucket list.

00:55:26.240 | So then I'm able to say why I don't have a bucket list.

00:55:30.280 | If you imagine you're like a glass,

00:55:33.440 | and the water is full, or whatever,

00:55:37.720 | vodka in this case, that it's full, it's full.

00:55:41.000 | You can't do more than that.

00:55:43.080 | And so if the moment is meaningful,

00:55:46.220 | you don't have to be writing that book,

00:55:48.640 | being in love, on a vacation in Paris.

00:55:52.780 | And so I think we have all these crazy notions,

00:55:59.560 | even the idea of, and I've talked about this before,

00:56:02.540 | work-life balance.

00:56:04.220 | Ooh, that's scary to me.

00:56:06.400 | What that says, what life really means is some joy, right?

00:56:11.400 | Other than just doing work 24/7,

00:56:15.940 | or however long people work, not 24/7.

00:56:18.740 | What is it, three and a half hours?

00:56:21.820 | Anyway, that it suggests that we,

00:56:26.820 | the work that we're doing has to be aversive.

00:56:31.300 | And because it's aversive, the only way to have a good life

00:56:35.500 | is to add this fun time.

00:56:38.360 | And I think that's sad.

00:56:40.140 | I think it's sad that people think life has to be stressful,

00:56:44.120 | that work has to be unpleasant,

00:56:46.320 | that no matter what you're doing,

00:56:50.920 | I believe there's a way of doing it so that it's fun.

00:56:54.880 | - Well, I love that notion.

00:56:56.200 | I mean, I will routinely find these articles

00:57:00.360 | just get served up to me in my Google feed or something.

00:57:03.760 | Like the five things that people regret most

00:57:05.960 | on their deathbed.

00:57:07.060 | I think these lists are terrible.

00:57:08.320 | - I do too.

00:57:09.160 | - I think they're terrible because without fail,

00:57:12.160 | the number one, two, or three is always,

00:57:14.560 | I wish I hadn't worked as much.

00:57:16.600 | I've derived tremendous pleasure from my work,

00:57:19.760 | but also tremendous relationships,

00:57:21.720 | tremendous levels of insight

00:57:24.760 | into what I think are insights anyway.

00:57:27.080 | - Well, Claire, you wouldn't be having the experience now.

00:57:29.760 | - Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:57:31.440 | I mean, I'm constantly in pinch me moments.

00:57:34.880 | With the podcast, that was also true

00:57:36.520 | when I was running my lab,

00:57:38.000 | and then I decided to transition more to this

00:57:39.800 | and other things.

00:57:40.640 | But I mean, this notion that one wishes they'd worked less,

00:57:45.360 | it's such a sad thing to even think about,

00:57:48.840 | but it also implies that somebody who enjoys their work

00:57:52.760 | doesn't enjoy their family or their relationships.

00:57:54.880 | And that certainly isn't true either.

00:57:56.920 | So there are all these assumptions

00:57:58.560 | that are written into these lists.

00:57:59.660 | I'm actually quite opposed to lists of that sort

00:58:03.640 | in a short media article form,

00:58:05.800 | because I think A, it clearly doesn't change behavior.

00:58:09.720 | I mean, people have been talking about drink lists.

00:58:12.000 | Well, smoking was eradicated mostly from this country

00:58:14.960 | through different mechanisms,

00:58:16.000 | but sleep more, stress less.

00:58:20.320 | I mean, these lists come out

00:58:22.440 | and they don't change behavior at all.

00:58:24.280 | - Not only that, but even a discussion about,

00:58:26.680 | let's say something like sleep,

00:58:28.840 | I find it outrageous.

00:58:30.980 | We might even disagree on this here,

00:58:34.520 | but when people say how much sleep you need.

00:58:38.480 | Now, to me, if I just ran a marathon,

00:58:41.800 | that night, I probably need a different amount of sleep

00:58:46.320 | than if I stayed in bed, eating candy,

00:58:48.800 | watching movies all day.

00:58:50.280 | And my age, everything should play a part in this.

00:58:56.760 | - If I relax in the two or three hours

00:59:00.000 | before going to sleep, especially if I dim the lights,

00:59:03.320 | I actually require a full two to three hours less of sleep

00:59:07.000 | to wake up feeling refreshed.

00:59:08.680 | My criteria is what does it take

00:59:10.440 | to wake up feeling reasonably refreshed?

00:59:12.800 | - So to go back to the mind-body unity studies,

00:59:15.340 | we have a study where we have people in a sleep lab,

00:59:18.320 | they wake up and the clock tells them

00:59:21.160 | they got two hours more sleep than they actually got,

00:59:24.120 | two hours fewer, or the amount of sleep they got.

00:59:27.280 | Biological and cognitive functioning

00:59:30.080 | follow perceived amount of sleep.

00:59:31.960 | - Yeah, this is such an important study.

00:59:33.320 | I was gonna bring it up later,

00:59:34.320 | but I'm so glad you brought it up now.

00:59:36.320 | These days, a tremendous number of people

00:59:38.200 | are tracking their sleep.

00:59:39.440 | I do it through my sleep mattress cover.

00:59:41.720 | I love getting my sleep score.

00:59:43.280 | I like to see what I got.

00:59:44.840 | People do with the Oura Ring or the Woot Band

00:59:47.880 | or pick your favorite technology nowadays

00:59:50.200 | or Apple Watch, whatever.

00:59:51.520 | If I understand this study correctly,

00:59:54.680 | the perception of how much sleep people got

00:59:58.760 | based on their knowledge of a number, a score, et cetera,

01:00:02.440 | dictates their cognitive performance

01:00:04.720 | and their physical wellbeing.

01:00:06.280 | I mean, this runs counter-current

01:00:08.360 | to everything in the wellness biohacking movement.

01:00:12.400 | It jibes, however, with the data that I'm aware of.

01:00:15.560 | I think it was a sleep lab at Stanford that, for instance,

01:00:19.680 | positive anticipation of next day events

01:00:22.560 | reduces your sleep need

01:00:24.520 | and improves the quality of your sleep.

01:00:26.560 | Just being excited for the next day

01:00:28.600 | can make it such that the five hours you got is sufficient.

01:00:31.200 | - The funniest thing is that if you have to wake up

01:00:34.560 | early in the morning to make a flight,

01:00:36.720 | okay, so you have to get up at 4.30 in the morning

01:00:39.080 | to make a flight,

01:00:40.120 | what most people will do is go to sleep early

01:00:43.440 | the night before so they can wake up early,

01:00:47.480 | but they're not gonna be able to fall asleep

01:00:49.200 | because the amount of sleep they need

01:00:50.880 | is dictated by the day before, not the day to come.

01:00:54.320 | - Well, I do think that there was a

01:00:57.080 | I'll sleep when I'm dead mindset

01:00:58.600 | that was diminishing people's health for a while.

01:01:01.080 | I do think it's great that books like Matt Walker's,

01:01:04.560 | you know, "Why We Sleep," et cetera, came out.

01:01:06.760 | Although that book focused more on the bad things

01:01:09.640 | that happen if you don't sleep enough.

01:01:11.360 | And I think Matt, who's done a series on here about sleep,

01:01:13.880 | would now say, you know,

01:01:15.120 | it's great that we're now focused largely on the things

01:01:17.840 | that one can do to get agency over one's sleep.

01:01:20.360 | But I think that there's such a thing

01:01:21.960 | as creating a sleep need anxiety,

01:01:25.360 | and then people, you know-

01:01:27.080 | - Can't sleep.

01:01:27.920 | - Yeah, we're not gonna dissolve into a puddle

01:01:29.040 | of our own tears on one poor night's sleep.

01:01:30.760 | - Yeah, no, but it's also that if you can't,

01:01:34.920 | if you're not sleeping, what is the reason for that?

01:01:38.480 | And if you're stressed, you know,

01:01:40.800 | obviously it's the stress that's the problem,

01:01:43.360 | not the number of hours sleep you're getting.

01:01:45.480 | - Well, I always say, if you're gonna get less

01:01:47.480 | than your typical or required night's sleep,

01:01:50.600 | hopefully it's for good reasons.

01:01:51.800 | Hopefully you're having a good time.

01:01:52.960 | It's when you get a fire alarm in the middle of the night

01:01:55.800 | that it becomes, as you said, stressful.

01:01:58.640 | I'd like to just briefly go back

01:02:00.760 | to the counter-clockwise study.

01:02:03.440 | Could you describe a little bit more

01:02:04.680 | about the practical aspects of that study?

01:02:08.160 | So these were people who, let's say,

01:02:11.000 | were on average, how old?

01:02:12.600 | Was it somewhere between like 30 and 50?

01:02:14.440 | - No, no, no, no, no.

01:02:15.920 | Counter-clockwise, no, these were people who were 80.

01:02:19.000 | - Oh, 80, okay, excuse me.

01:02:20.720 | - But also that was when 80 was 80, not the new 60.

01:02:25.720 | They were old.

01:02:26.880 | In fact, I remember when we were interviewing,

01:02:29.480 | I was interviewing people

01:02:30.640 | to see if they could be in the study.

01:02:31.960 | So they're down the hall, I'm in my office,

01:02:35.280 | and I see them, and they look like

01:02:39.560 | they're not gonna make it down the hall to the office.

01:02:42.080 | And I'm saying to myself, why am I doing this?

01:02:45.280 | That I'm taking on too much.

01:02:47.160 | I, in fact, had I realized all the responsibility

01:02:50.840 | at that point that I was actually assuming,

01:02:53.720 | I probably wouldn't have done it.

01:02:54.800 | I mean, I was in charge of these people's lives,

01:02:57.040 | everything about them for this five days

01:03:00.360 | without knowing these people,

01:03:01.600 | without a full medical support system or whatever.

01:03:04.840 | - Yeah, if one or two of them had died,

01:03:06.000 | you could end up in a mess.

01:03:07.440 | - Yeah, so I was fortunate that none of that happened.

01:03:10.600 | But no, so they were old.

01:03:12.320 | And it was interesting because they show up

01:03:16.840 | and they look really, now it'd probably be somebody 105.

01:03:23.120 | - Wow. - That's the way

01:03:23.960 | they present it.

01:03:25.400 | And you'd have, you'd speak to the person

01:03:28.400 | and usually the adult daughter would do the answering

01:03:31.640 | rather than, so they were coddled,

01:03:34.600 | they were presumed to have all sorts of problems and so on.

01:03:39.600 | Almost instantly when they got there, they changed.

01:03:45.280 | The feeling was almost palpable.

01:03:47.640 | Now I did this thing, it wasn't good science,

01:03:50.360 | but so the first group that we took there

01:03:54.520 | was the reminiscent group.

01:03:56.520 | This was a group where they were going

01:03:58.920 | to reminisce for that week.

01:04:01.400 | So they always knew now was now and then was then, right?

01:04:05.280 | That was a control group.

01:04:07.560 | We get to the retreat and I'm in this van.

01:04:11.120 | Oh, people need to understand,

01:04:13.520 | the study was back before Google,

01:04:17.280 | before we had the internet.

01:04:19.560 | So when I am playing music in the van going to the event,

01:04:24.560 | music from the past, this was a major thing to find this.

01:04:28.240 | Now it takes two minutes, you ask Chad lately.

01:04:31.960 | Give me the 10 best songs back 20 years ago.

01:04:35.480 | At any rate, so I'm on the bus with them,

01:04:40.480 | music playing from the past playing.

01:04:43.160 | We get very close to the retreat

01:04:44.960 | and all of a sudden I realize that I was sexist at the time,

01:04:49.320 | oblivious, that none of my male graduate students

01:04:54.320 | were with me.

01:04:56.000 | That meant I had seven old men

01:04:58.520 | and at least seven heavy suitcases.

01:05:00.880 | There was no way I was going to carry

01:05:04.440 | their suitcases upstairs.

01:05:06.400 | So unplanned for, we get off the bus and I say,

01:05:11.400 | you're in charge of your own suitcase.

01:05:13.600 | I don't care if you move it an inch at a time

01:05:16.600 | to get it to your room or you unpack it here

01:05:19.480 | a shirt at a time, however you want to do it.

01:05:22.120 | Now imagine nothing else, the difference

01:05:25.240 | between somebody who's cuddled,

01:05:27.360 | who is not even thought to be able to respond to a question

01:05:30.880 | where the daughter or son would answer for them

01:05:34.960 | to now they're in charge of their whole lives.

01:05:38.800 | And that meant that even the comparison group

01:05:43.360 | was going to do well, which they did,

01:05:45.800 | just not quite as well as the other group.

01:05:48.240 | And for me, that was fine because as you mentioned before,

01:05:51.400 | my work is all about possibility.

01:05:53.520 | I'm not interested in describing what is.

01:05:56.320 | I'm interested in seeing what may be.

01:06:00.240 | So if I got one monkey to say,

01:06:05.240 | "Hey, Ellen, that's nonsense."

01:06:07.880 | That would be fine if we couldn't train the rest of them.

01:06:11.640 | But it would lead us to different views of language.

01:06:15.040 | - I love this approach to science of seeing what may be.

01:06:18.520 | I have to say, there's this little script running

01:06:20.480 | in the back of my mind and now I'm not gonna judge it.

01:06:23.240 | The sorts of experiments and the general line of inquiry

01:06:27.200 | that you've been involved in for some time now

01:06:30.640 | to me runs countercurrent to my perception of,

01:06:36.280 | I'm just gonna be honest 'cause I'm a West Coast guy,

01:06:38.560 | the Harvard campus and the idea

01:06:41.880 | that science is done in a particular way.

01:06:44.080 | A very brief anecdote, the folks that founded

01:06:48.920 | at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur

01:06:51.760 | were at Stanford at one point, they weren't professors,

01:06:54.320 | but there's a story and I believe the story

01:06:56.800 | that they had proposed at that time,

01:06:59.160 | a class on mindfulness and breathing

01:07:01.760 | to bring Stan Graf through and some other people.

01:07:05.000 | And this was probably the late '70s, early '80s.

01:07:08.360 | And whatever the cultural norms were

01:07:11.680 | at Stanford at that time,

01:07:13.480 | they claim they were basically run off campus,

01:07:15.680 | went and started Esalen.

01:07:16.920 | I don't know if it's a true story,

01:07:18.000 | but I like the story anyway.

01:07:19.400 | My lab at Stanford ran a study on particular patterns

01:07:24.000 | of breathing along with David Spiegel

01:07:25.520 | and how it can be used to self adjust stress levels

01:07:29.640 | and reduce stress levels.

01:07:30.520 | Okay, and nowadays there's grants given

01:07:32.680 | for this kind of stuff and meditation.

01:07:34.600 | So there's been a huge shift

01:07:36.080 | in the academic cultural milieu.

01:07:39.000 | But given that you've been running these sorts of,

01:07:43.080 | seeing what may be types of studies for a number of years

01:07:46.040 | at a campus that I consider is more kind of like

01:07:49.280 | East Coast dyed in the wool notions of how science is done.

01:07:52.680 | I wanna know, A, how was it received early on?

01:07:57.320 | B, did you care?

01:07:59.400 | C, is it in your nature and has it always been

01:08:02.680 | in your nature to kind of test the elements?

01:08:05.600 | Because I sense, but I could be completely wrong

01:08:07.840 | because I'm not a psychologist,

01:08:09.600 | that you delight in kind of not poking the bear,

01:08:14.440 | but playing with ideas that are kind of heretical.

01:08:18.240 | Well, I would use the methods of the field.

01:08:21.720 | It was just the questions that were different.

01:08:23.800 | So they weren't seen to be quite as different

01:08:27.600 | as you're suggesting.

01:08:29.560 | Did any of your colleagues think like-

01:08:31.480 | No.

01:08:32.400 | Great, okay.

01:08:33.240 | No.

01:08:34.080 | I love hearing that 'cause it shatters my notions

01:08:35.920 | of kind of East Coast Ivy League academia.

01:08:38.360 | To me, I mean, perhaps behind my back, but-

01:08:40.600 | Well, clearly it's worked out.

01:08:41.840 | And nowadays, there are multiple labs at Harvard

01:08:44.280 | working on happiness, working on mindfulness.

01:08:47.080 | And I mean, you've pioneered an entire field in a way.

01:08:50.160 | But I'm more interested in the way of thinking

01:08:53.160 | that was it-

01:08:54.200 | Well, so it's interesting.

01:08:56.040 | Eight year old Ellen Langer, like,

01:08:57.880 | well, maybe cookies are the nutritious stuff.

01:09:01.360 | No, I understand.

01:09:02.320 | So I seem to be, you know,

01:09:05.680 | come hell or high water, I'm gonna do it.

01:09:07.240 | I'm not like that at all.

01:09:08.640 | Interesting.

01:09:09.480 | More now that I'm older.

01:09:10.840 | But I tell a story.

01:09:12.840 | I don't remember what the point of it,

01:09:14.360 | the exact point was in the mindful body

01:09:17.760 | where I'm at the dentist.

01:09:19.520 | I'm a little kid.

01:09:20.360 | I don't remember how old.

01:09:21.640 | And I remember my mother came in

01:09:23.720 | and the dentist told my mother what a good patient I was.

01:09:27.000 | And all I remember was my saying,

01:09:29.120 | "What were the other kids doing?"

01:09:31.520 | You know, so it wasn't as if I made a choice.

01:09:34.480 | I could do this or I could do, you know,

01:09:36.120 | it never occurred to me.

01:09:37.840 | And so lots of these ideas, you know,

01:09:41.200 | are not against or what, you know,

01:09:43.960 | I don't know where they come from.

01:09:45.200 | I know Lee Ross when, you know,

01:09:47.120 | so Lee was a professor at Stanford.

01:09:49.680 | And I remember having a conversation where he said,

01:09:52.040 | "Ellen, you know, you're from Mars."

01:09:54.760 | And I said, "I'm not so different."

01:09:56.920 | He says, "Okay, so you're a normal,

01:09:59.160 | not an exceptional Martian, but you're still a Martian."

01:10:02.400 | And then a colleague had a conversation with,

01:10:07.320 | and I was flattered by this,

01:10:08.700 | but I think it wasn't meant to be flattering

01:10:11.200 | 'cause they were worried what my reaction was,

01:10:13.360 | was that, you know, I'm from a different time.

01:10:17.000 | And, you know, so that plays differently if you're aware.

01:10:22.920 | You know, so like when I started painting,

01:10:26.960 | you know, I was breaking the rules to some people's minds,

01:10:30.920 | but no, I didn't know the rule.

01:10:33.480 | And so I was just doing what felt natural.

01:10:36.640 | - Well, I have to introduce you to my good friend,

01:10:39.600 | Rick Rubin, who's been on this podcast a few times

01:10:41.960 | because he wrote "The Creative Act."

01:10:43.840 | He's basically, his life has been spent, you know,

01:10:46.600 | trying to pull out the best creative works from musicians

01:10:49.440 | and he's been involved in other things too.

01:10:50.960 | And he's just as a, you know,

01:10:52.560 | a kind of supernatural level of ability to do this.

01:10:55.240 | And he keeps coming back to this thing in our discussions,

01:10:58.320 | but also in his book and elsewhere

01:11:00.720 | about how the greatest impediment to the creative process

01:11:05.720 | is to think about the publicity or cultural milieu

01:11:10.660 | that it's going to exist in,

01:11:11.780 | that he really believes that these things are offerings

01:11:14.920 | to God, to the universe, to whatever that come through us.

01:11:19.160 | And that the barrier is the,

01:11:22.780 | it's almost like the self-awareness is the barrier.

01:11:25.160 | - So one of the earlier titles of "The Mindful Body"

01:11:28.600 | was "Who Says So?"

01:11:30.440 | - Love it.

01:11:31.280 | - And, you know, realizing that everything that is

01:11:34.080 | was at one point a decision made by people

01:11:37.140 | with different motives, different histories,

01:11:39.240 | different needs.

01:11:41.200 | And when you put people, as I say, back in the equation,

01:11:45.480 | everything becomes mutable, everything.

01:11:48.600 | You know, so, and so there are things,

01:11:50.840 | here's where I am different from many other people,

01:11:54.000 | for better or worse, I think in this case for better,

01:11:56.840 | you know, that I, everything can be changed.

01:12:00.000 | You know, you tell me you meet this, you know,

01:12:01.840 | this woman and she's too heavyweight can be lost,

01:12:04.240 | hair can be grown, everything can be changed.

01:12:07.280 | So I give a talk when I was very young

01:12:10.440 | and I'm here on the stage and, you know,

01:12:14.360 | the audience is all the way back here.

01:12:16.520 | And I knew that was gonna make me nervous.

01:12:19.040 | So what I did was move all the chairs to be closer to me.

01:12:23.700 | Now, if you said to anybody, can you move the chairs?

01:12:27.160 | Everybody would say, of course,

01:12:29.120 | but mindlessly it doesn't occur to you.

01:12:31.960 | It doesn't occur to you that what is

01:12:35.160 | doesn't have to be as it is.

01:12:37.740 | And it, you know, the older I get,

01:12:40.200 | the more malleable everything seems to be.

01:12:44.400 | Even a thing, you know, to go back,

01:12:46.600 | I don't know why this comes to mind, but it does.

01:12:49.680 | If an insurance company is making a decision

01:12:53.060 | about what drugs to insure.

01:12:55.520 | Now, who said that this disorder is better

01:12:58.440 | or more worthy than that disorder?

01:12:59.920 | I say, so these are people making this decision.

01:13:02.700 | So imagine that you have a group of nuns,

01:13:06.840 | they're the committee making the decision,

01:13:08.900 | versus a group of lusty 50-year-old men.

01:13:12.240 | And they're deciding whether people should be reimbursed

01:13:14.880 | for Viagra, for example.

01:13:18.680 | And that's what it's all about, you know,

01:13:20.760 | that when you recognize that whatever is

01:13:23.220 | could be different as meetings.

01:13:25.020 | And I deal with this when I give lectures.

01:13:28.400 | You know, at some point I might say,

01:13:30.900 | look in the audience and see if there's usually a man.

01:13:34.200 | Is there a man here?

01:13:35.280 | It's about 6'5".

01:13:37.040 | Somebody always there, I don't know why.

01:13:39.040 | 6'5" men find me attractive, I don't know what.

01:13:43.160 | Anyway, I invite him to the stage

01:13:44.720 | and then we look ridiculous.

01:13:46.240 | I'm 5'3", he's 6'5".

01:13:48.780 | And I ask him to put his hand, I put his hand up.

01:13:51.680 | His hand is three inches larger than mine.

01:13:53.560 | And then I just raise the question,

01:13:55.080 | should we do anything physical the same?

01:13:58.540 | And it's ridiculous, you know.

01:14:00.560 | But one of us is teaching how to do it.

01:14:03.660 | You know, so the more different you are

01:14:06.680 | from the person who wrote the rule,

01:14:08.860 | the more important it is for you

01:14:11.140 | not to mindlessly follow the rule.

01:14:14.260 | So you don't hold the tennis racket like this

01:14:17.840 | if your hand is half the size of the person who,

01:14:21.000 | or twice the size, or anything else.

01:14:23.960 | And people don't realize it.

01:14:26.400 | That everything that is was a decision.

01:14:29.440 | For something to be a decision means there was uncertainty.

01:14:33.040 | As soon as the decision is made,

01:14:34.640 | we forget all that uncertainty

01:14:36.320 | and act as if this is the way it's supposed to be.

01:14:39.360 | An example I often use, you know, tennis.

01:14:42.120 | So you have, and everybody, when you think about this,

01:14:45.280 | and nobody's gonna argue, that, of course,

01:14:47.840 | the rules to tennis weren't handed down from the heavens.

01:14:50.880 | Somebody decided it should be two serves, and that's fine.

01:14:54.420 | But for me, three serves would be better.

01:14:57.320 | The first time, I kill it, doesn't go in.

01:14:59.920 | Now I'm afraid to try to kill it again

01:15:02.000 | and learn from that, 'cause I don't wanna double fold.

01:15:04.700 | So I have a little wuss second serve.

01:15:07.160 | By three serves, I kill it, it doesn't go in.

01:15:09.720 | Now I learn from that, I kill it again,

01:15:11.180 | but I'm getting a little better.

01:15:12.360 | And I still have my backup third serve.

01:15:15.080 | All right, so what is the point of that?

01:15:17.000 | That if I wrote the rules to the game,

01:15:20.400 | I would be a better tennis player.

01:15:23.280 | You would be better at whatever you're writing the rules to.

01:15:26.880 | So you think differently about yourself.

01:15:28.960 | You don't feel bad about it.

01:15:30.600 | In fact, you know, when people play tennis with me,

01:15:32.880 | we often play three serves.

01:15:34.360 | Why not?

01:15:35.200 | Everything about it is up for grabs.

01:15:39.040 | And, you know, so what happens is,

01:15:42.320 | the lower down you are on the totem pole,

01:15:44.600 | the fewer of these things, games, ways of being

01:15:48.700 | that you yourself have created,

01:15:51.360 | the more you're trying to fit yourself into some form

01:15:55.240 | that isn't so comfortable.

01:15:58.120 | So we need to appreciate that rules, laws, everything,

01:16:03.120 | is just somebody's decision about how things should be.

01:16:07.320 | And, you know, don't violate them purposely,

01:16:10.560 | but if they don't fit, you know,

01:16:13.240 | legality is not the same thing as morality, you know.

01:16:17.320 | By law, one was not allowed interracial marriage.

01:16:21.560 | By law, one was not allowed to be gay.

01:16:24.560 | By law, you know, so on and so forth.

01:16:27.040 | One wasn't allowed to drink at one point, and so on.

01:16:30.400 | These are not moral issues.

01:16:31.720 | These are a group of people who are making a decision

01:16:34.600 | for the rest of us.

01:16:36.680 | If it doesn't hurt, fine.

01:16:38.800 | But, you know, if it does, fight it, deviate,

01:16:43.800 | at least live the life you want to live.

01:16:45.920 | - I'd like to take a quick break

01:16:49.200 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.

01:16:51.960 | Last year, I became a Function member

01:16:53.560 | after searching for the most comprehensive approach

01:16:55.860 | to lab testing.

01:16:57.320 | Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests

01:17:00.280 | that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health.

01:17:03.720 | This snapshot offers you with insights

01:17:05.360 | on your heart health, hormone health,

01:17:07.160 | immune functioning, nutrient levels, and much more.

01:17:10.360 | They've also recently added tests for toxins,

01:17:12.400 | such as BPA exposure from harmful plastics,

01:17:15.000 | and tests for PFASs, or forever chemicals.

01:17:17.960 | Function not only provides testing

01:17:19.520 | of over 100 biomarkers key to your physical

01:17:21.720 | and mental health, but it also analyzes these results

01:17:24.640 | and provides insights from top doctors

01:17:26.800 | who are expert in the relevant areas.

01:17:28.880 | For example, in one of my first tests with Function,

01:17:31.560 | I learned that I had elevated levels

01:17:33.080 | of mercury in my blood.

01:17:34.680 | Function not only helped me detect that,

01:17:36.640 | but offered insights into how best

01:17:38.160 | to reduce my mercury levels,

01:17:39.720 | which included limiting my tuna consumption,

01:17:42.080 | I'd been eating a lot of tuna,

01:17:43.520 | while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens

01:17:45.720 | and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine,

01:17:48.080 | both of which can support glutathione production

01:17:50.120 | and detoxification.

01:17:51.560 | And I should say, by taking a second Function test,

01:17:54.080 | that approach worked.

01:17:55.080 | Comprehensive blood testing is vitally important.

01:17:57.600 | There's so many things related to your mental

01:17:59.480 | and physical health that can only be detected

01:18:02.000 | in a blood test.

01:18:03.120 | The problem is blood testing has always been very expensive

01:18:05.520 | and complicated.

01:18:06.560 | In contrast, I've been super impressed

01:18:08.320 | by Function's simplicity and at the level of cost.

01:18:11.520 | It is very affordable.

01:18:12.800 | As a consequence,

01:18:13.640 | I decided to join their scientific advisory board

01:18:15.960 | and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast.

01:18:18.640 | If you'd like to try Function,

01:18:19.960 | you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman.

01:18:22.920 | Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people,

01:18:26.040 | but they're offering early access

01:18:28.160 | to Huberman podcast listeners.

01:18:29.860 | Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman

01:18:33.120 | to get early access to Function.

01:18:35.760 | - I feel like one of the major detriments

01:18:38.160 | to living the way that you're describing,

01:18:41.880 | which by the way has tremendous gravitational pull

01:18:46.380 | in my mind.

01:18:47.220 | Like it's such a better way to go through life, right?

01:18:50.440 | And I subscribe also to this notion

01:18:53.760 | that pretty much everything was made up

01:18:56.120 | besides the laws of nature, right?

01:18:58.240 | I mean, to me, physics is real and chemistry is real.

01:19:02.840 | Biology gets, biology is real.

01:19:04.760 | It gets tricky because-

01:19:06.600 | - They're all real,

01:19:07.840 | but it's our understanding of them that varies.

01:19:11.840 | So we haven't worked out all of physics yet.

01:19:15.160 | - Sure.

01:19:16.120 | - Or biology or any of these other things.

01:19:18.280 | So I don't think that we should set these aside

01:19:21.080 | and say those rules we should follow come hell or high water.

01:19:25.560 | - Right, I mean, seeing what may be,

01:19:28.160 | like, I mean, I could say, listen,

01:19:29.940 | because of the laws of gravity, objects fall down, not up.

01:19:33.100 | But of course, we could create exceptions to that,

01:19:36.800 | but that humans make up all sorts of rules.

01:19:41.400 | Culture dictates, group think dictates.

01:19:44.640 | And it seems that one of the major detriments

01:19:46.920 | to living in this freer way,

01:19:49.000 | this more exploratory way that we're talking about today

01:19:52.200 | is this whole thing of theory of mind,

01:19:54.480 | that we are able for better or worse

01:19:58.520 | to get into the minds of others.

01:20:00.240 | And in some cases, create ideas, true or not,

01:20:03.700 | about how you will be judged if we do A, B, or C.

01:20:07.420 | And in doing so, we give up some real estate.

01:20:11.040 | We give up some--

01:20:12.560 | - See, that's, okay, so that's perfect, Andrew,

01:20:15.500 | because we think we know,

01:20:18.180 | but are oblivious to the fact that everything,

01:20:21.140 | everything, it's a big statement,

01:20:23.100 | behavior can be understood in equal dimensions,

01:20:26.960 | equal potency as good or bad.

01:20:30.260 | Now, so that I can control what you're thinking.

01:20:33.260 | So you think that I'm gullible.

01:20:35.500 | You could persuade me that I'm gullible.

01:20:37.820 | I can try my hardest not to be gullible,

01:20:41.160 | but I'm going to eventually be gullible.

01:20:43.660 | And the reason for that is that I value being trusting.

01:20:47.020 | And as long as I value being trusting,

01:20:50.100 | I'm going to be seen as gullible.

01:20:52.180 | As long as you value being flexible,

01:20:54.660 | you're going to be inconsistent.

01:20:56.580 | As long as you value being stable,

01:20:58.960 | you're going to be seen as boring, and so on.

01:21:02.040 | And so this is what I said to you before

01:21:04.680 | in different terms, that with all that I've studied,

01:21:09.200 | found, found interesting over all these decades,

01:21:13.400 | the thing that meant the most to me was the realization

01:21:16.780 | that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective,

01:21:20.120 | or the actor wouldn't do it.

01:21:22.140 | Now, if you think about that,

01:21:23.560 | that means every single time you're demeaning somebody,

01:21:27.200 | or yourself, or you're coming up

01:21:30.160 | with a New Year's resolution,

01:21:32.300 | what you're doing is denying the sense

01:21:35.000 | of what you were doing and saying,

01:21:37.280 | "Oh, you should have done something different."

01:21:39.800 | Okay.

01:21:41.640 | Once you realize that your behavior makes sense,

01:21:47.120 | you like yourself more,

01:21:49.400 | when you're realizing that in any relationship,

01:21:53.400 | anything that's difficult is difficult

01:21:56.040 | because one of you thinks there's a right way

01:21:58.400 | and is denying the other person's perspective.

01:22:00.920 | We did this thing so many years ago.

01:22:03.060 | I gave people a list of,

01:22:06.280 | I don't remember, it was 200 or 300 behavior descriptions.

01:22:09.840 | It said, "Circle those things about yourself

01:22:12.760 | "that you keep trying to change, but you keep failing at."

01:22:15.800 | So for me, I'd circle impulsive, gullible,

01:22:20.320 | but I won't tell you the rest.

01:22:21.800 | Okay, then you turn the page over

01:22:24.040 | and in a mixed up random order

01:22:26.720 | are the positive versions of each of these.

01:22:29.480 | Now people are asked,

01:22:30.840 | "Circle those things you really value about yourself,

01:22:33.760 | "my spontaneity and my being trusting.

01:22:37.880 | "And as long as I value being spontaneous,

01:22:40.980 | "I'm going to appear impulsive," and so on.

01:22:45.500 | And so now that I have more respect for myself

01:22:48.560 | because what I did made sense,

01:22:50.400 | I carry myself differently.

01:22:53.200 | I'm not doing what you were just suggesting before

01:22:56.880 | where I'm tormenting myself and so on.

01:22:59.880 | And the people I'm with,

01:23:03.400 | there's a lot in the mindful body that deals with language

01:23:07.960 | and only a fraction of the sensitivity I seem to have

01:23:12.960 | to language in a different way

01:23:15.280 | from the way linguists would study it.

01:23:18.500 | But you have things,

01:23:20.180 | let's say forgiveness.

01:23:22.840 | We have all these terms that seem good.

01:23:25.640 | And you know, because you figured me out now

01:23:28.480 | that if you say it's good, I'm gonna find a way it's bad.

01:23:30.760 | If you say it's bad, I'm gonna, good.

01:23:32.320 | Okay, so this is one of those.

01:23:35.080 | I don't want anybody,

01:23:37.600 | certainly not the person closest to me to ever forgive me.

01:23:41.980 | I want to be understood.

01:23:45.840 | And if you understand, there's no reason to forgive me

01:23:49.100 | because my behavior will make sense

01:23:50.900 | or else I wouldn't do it.

01:23:52.880 | Okay, so how did this come about?

01:23:55.700 | I was asked to give a sermon.

01:23:57.840 | Sermon, I'm Jewish, I have to go to this church

01:24:01.100 | 'cause I say yes to everything

01:24:02.660 | and I'm gonna give a sermon.

01:24:04.500 | What am I gonna talk about?

01:24:05.580 | I know nothing about religion.

01:24:07.100 | Forgiveness, it's not religion, but it sounds religiousy.

01:24:11.940 | All right, I'll think about forgiveness.

01:24:13.380 | I think about forgiveness and what I came up with

01:24:16.180 | was sacrilegious, some would think.

01:24:19.320 | If you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad,

01:24:22.680 | what are they gonna tell you?

01:24:23.680 | - They're gonna tell you it's good.

01:24:24.520 | - It's good.

01:24:25.340 | If you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad,

01:24:28.240 | what are they gonna say?

01:24:29.480 | It's bad.

01:24:30.320 | But you know, you can't forgive unless you first blame.

01:24:33.880 | So our forgivers are our blamers.

01:24:36.020 | That's interesting.

01:24:37.380 | Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things?

01:24:40.720 | You blame people for bad things,

01:24:42.660 | but things in and of themselves aren't good or bad.

01:24:45.440 | So what happens is the people who see the world negatively,

01:24:48.720 | who blame, then forgive, hardly divine.

01:24:52.980 | Now, if you blame, it's better to forgive than not forgive.

01:24:57.280 | But if you understand why the person did what they did,

01:25:00.380 | it obviates the necessity for blame,

01:25:03.160 | which then obviates the necessity for forgiveness.

01:25:07.080 | - I'd love to bypass blame.

01:25:09.060 | - Yeah, well, that's, you know,

01:25:10.480 | I think that's the way to do it is to recognize

01:25:13.920 | in a more open-minded way the motivations

01:25:18.920 | that people have vary, the consequences.

01:25:23.000 | You know, no matter what you do,

01:25:25.200 | whatever negative thing it seems,

01:25:28.040 | they're, you know, positive things will follow

01:25:31.400 | if you allow them and you look at it that way.

01:25:35.080 | - Can I ask you to--

01:25:35.920 | - No.

01:25:36.980 | Oh, that's right, it's your podcast.

01:25:38.280 | Yes, you can.

01:25:39.120 | - It's definitely not my podcast.

01:25:40.200 | We're here together.

01:25:41.220 | Could I ask you for any reflections

01:25:45.360 | that come up around this recent thought train I was on?

01:25:49.160 | I was laughing at the fact that our species,

01:25:55.520 | for whatever reason,

01:25:58.480 | seems to keep wanting to build technologies,

01:26:02.200 | and that much of our effort these days

01:26:04.760 | is focused on trying to undo some of the ills

01:26:07.360 | of the technologies that we've developed.

01:26:09.160 | So I use smartphones and I love them,

01:26:11.420 | and I use social media,

01:26:12.480 | and I think it's terrific for certain things.

01:26:13.960 | But of course, these things have issues,

01:26:15.480 | just like the automobile created issues,

01:26:17.420 | the television created issues, and on and on.

01:26:19.680 | Okay, fossil fuels and all of this.

01:26:23.280 | People will debate fossil fuels, but anyway,

01:26:25.040 | you get the point.

01:26:25.880 | Every technology brings with it some convenience

01:26:28.780 | or some way that humans have been able

01:26:31.420 | to overcome nature in some way or work with nature, right?

01:26:35.240 | You know, we can't fly, so we build planes.

01:26:37.880 | Okay.

01:26:39.600 | And I just decided to look at this through a different lens.

01:26:42.000 | Like, this is amazing.

01:26:45.160 | We're sending rockets into space.

01:26:46.720 | We'll probably colonize Mars not too long from now

01:26:49.000 | if Elon figures it out.

01:26:50.400 | I get the sense he probably will.

01:26:51.760 | We've got AI just this last week.

01:26:53.780 | There's this whole AI thing.

01:26:55.680 | And so then I started thinking like,

01:26:57.280 | you know, at what point do we just kind of stop?

01:27:00.320 | And the answer is pretty clear.

01:27:01.560 | It's unlikely that humans are ever going to stop

01:27:03.480 | this kind of itch to develop technology.

01:27:07.080 | And I thought, wow, you know,

01:27:09.440 | like we're the only species that does this.

01:27:12.240 | Like, you know, if the raccoons get together

01:27:13.880 | and they think, okay, like, let's figure out

01:27:16.080 | how to pick locks, like actually how to pick locks,

01:27:18.760 | as opposed to just go in through crawl spaces.

01:27:20.760 | If they've been working on that,

01:27:21.720 | they're still failing miserably, right?

01:27:24.120 | As far as I know.

01:27:25.600 | So it's something so unique to our species

01:27:28.560 | among the old world primates to develop technologies.

01:27:31.040 | Other animals do it.

01:27:32.440 | Crows do it.

01:27:33.320 | Other primates do it.

01:27:34.320 | But we, I mean, we are really the utmost example of this.

01:27:39.320 | And I just wondered, like,

01:27:42.880 | what do you think the human compulsion is

01:27:44.720 | to develop technologies?

01:27:46.120 | - I don't think there is a compulsion

01:27:47.560 | to develop anything in particular.

01:27:49.720 | I think there's a compulsion to develop.

01:27:51.720 | There's a compulsion.

01:27:53.440 | I wouldn't call it compulsion because that sounds negative.

01:27:57.120 | But I think that-

01:27:58.560 | - A drive.

01:27:59.400 | - Yeah.

01:28:00.240 | I mean, all mindfulness is is noticing new things,

01:28:03.800 | creating new things.

01:28:06.020 | With that creation, we're maximally alive.

01:28:09.420 | And so if we happen to be on the technology train,

01:28:12.940 | then it's technology that's going to get our attention.

01:28:17.160 | The people who are in other areas,

01:28:21.440 | whether it's creating music,

01:28:23.220 | doing what you and I do,

01:28:26.020 | it doesn't seem to me any different in principle.

01:28:28.740 | - What do you think that's about?

01:28:29.820 | I'm not asking us to go into evolutionary psychology,

01:28:32.220 | but what do you think it is that humans

01:28:34.180 | have this generative spirit in their mind-body,

01:28:38.540 | the same thing,

01:28:39.380 | to express and to create things

01:28:43.140 | that have some durability in time

01:28:44.740 | or that are just an expression of where we are?

01:28:47.500 | I mean, it's so unusual.

01:28:48.980 | - But I don't think that it's durability is what matters.

01:28:53.980 | I think then that becomes a social construction.

01:28:56.580 | What is the group, the Asians,

01:29:01.380 | the monks who are going to create art.

01:29:04.300 | And as soon as it's finished,

01:29:06.020 | then you bring it down to the water

01:29:07.540 | and to show that nothing lasts.

01:29:11.100 | - Yeah, sandcastle no selfie, I call it.

01:29:14.140 | Sandcastle no selfie.

01:29:15.660 | You're just doing it to do it.

01:29:16.860 | I actually do a lot of writing these days,

01:29:19.100 | like in my brain, I've always called sandcastle no selfie.

01:29:21.460 | Like it's getting washed away.

01:29:23.420 | And then someone says, well, you could take a photo of it.

01:29:24.860 | It's like, nope, actually, I just do it just to see.

01:29:27.860 | It's just a practice of getting out

01:29:30.140 | what I feel I need to get out.

01:29:31.980 | - Well, so for my mindfulness book,

01:29:34.300 | which I wrote way back when,

01:29:36.500 | the secretary I had then was a wonderful guy,

01:29:40.020 | but didn't know anything about computers and I knew less.

01:29:43.740 | And so I would give him something and I'd say,

01:29:46.300 | insert this page 20, whatever.

01:29:49.460 | And he would just sort of randomly,

01:29:52.420 | 'cause he didn't know what he was doing either.

01:29:54.740 | And then at some point he lost an entire draft of the book.

01:30:00.580 | I sort of imagine, you know,

01:30:02.700 | and my first thought was probably more typical

01:30:07.260 | than my second thought, which is to go crazy.

01:30:08.900 | Oh my God, you know?

01:30:10.460 | And then I said to myself,

01:30:11.660 | what makes me think that that draft was better

01:30:14.500 | than the next draft that I can come up with?

01:30:17.580 | You know, in some sense, a version of your, who cares?

01:30:20.740 | And then I just started working on it again.

01:30:23.700 | You know, at some point

01:30:26.020 | when you're writing these research papers,

01:30:27.900 | I think most people come to the point where,

01:30:30.940 | first numbers count, right?

01:30:32.740 | How many publications?

01:30:34.060 | Then at some point the game changes

01:30:36.860 | and you don't care about the number and that's freeing.

01:30:40.900 | And so it seems a little similar.

01:30:44.660 | I think that for people to recognize

01:30:47.540 | that that excitement can be gotten,

01:30:50.340 | the threading of the needle, as I said before,

01:30:52.940 | would make much of life feel different.

01:30:57.380 | You know, so we did,

01:30:59.660 | this is gonna seem strange kind of answer here,

01:31:03.100 | but we took people who didn't like rap music,

01:31:07.620 | people who didn't like football,

01:31:09.940 | people who didn't like art.

01:31:11.500 | Okay, so a lot of haters.

01:31:13.660 | People don't like anything.

01:31:15.340 | One group is just given the activity.

01:31:18.140 | The next group is asked to notice one new thing about it.

01:31:21.820 | The next group, three new things about it.

01:31:24.100 | - They're doing it or observing it?

01:31:25.660 | - Well, if it's football, they're observing.

01:31:27.540 | It doesn't matter if you're observing the rear ends

01:31:29.980 | of the football players, just noticing new things.

01:31:33.260 | And the more you notice,

01:31:34.660 | the more you like what you're noticing.

01:31:36.980 | And to recognize that that's how simple it is.

01:31:39.820 | Now, most people, especially when you're younger,

01:31:42.460 | you're waiting for something to pull you,

01:31:44.940 | something to grab me and get me all excited.

01:31:47.900 | And how freeing if people were taught

01:31:50.580 | that you could grab it, whatever the it is,

01:31:54.420 | just by noticing.

01:31:56.020 | You don't have to hold on to the thing you're holding on to

01:32:00.340 | when you're recognizing

01:32:01.980 | that you could hold on to the next thing.

01:32:03.660 | I saw this Seinfeld, this was so funny, I thought,

01:32:06.900 | must've been old Seinfeld.

01:32:08.340 | He, after the show, he does a five minute standup.

01:32:12.060 | And I'm gonna not do it as well as he, but nor should I.

01:32:16.660 | He says, "What is this thing with appetites?"

01:32:19.180 | You know, you go out to dinner and people say,

01:32:21.260 | "Don't eat the bread, you're gonna spoil your appetite."

01:32:23.540 | There's so many appetites.

01:32:25.140 | You spoil this one, there's another one right behind it.

01:32:27.900 | You know, and if you realize that that high,

01:32:31.180 | that total engagement, the passion you were feeling

01:32:34.780 | was not a result of anything particular about the person,

01:32:39.780 | the context, the context, how freeing it would be.

01:32:44.380 | It'd be easy to let things go

01:32:46.580 | knowing that you can have that, you know, a moment later.

01:32:51.180 | - This is why at some point in my life,

01:32:52.900 | I'm going to tell my team six months and I'm done,

01:32:57.460 | and I'm gonna go do art.

01:32:59.760 | And I just don't wanna scare anybody.

01:33:03.260 | But I just, I love the idea of being able to switch venue

01:33:07.380 | and possibly to even change identity,

01:33:12.220 | which is something I'd like to talk to you about.

01:33:14.900 | - Well, the art is kind of interesting, you know,

01:33:17.140 | that I started painting when I was about 50.

01:33:19.980 | And I was one of those kids who couldn't draw.

01:33:23.060 | And I'm gonna have someone think of education.

01:33:25.940 | What mark might I have made on a page

01:33:28.380 | that would have led an elementary school teacher

01:33:31.500 | to lead me to believe that I had no artistic ability?

01:33:36.500 | When you think of a difference between a Mondrian

01:33:39.180 | or Rembrandt, you know, I mean, people so different

01:33:43.020 | that it's sinful for people to think

01:33:46.300 | they know how things should be

01:33:48.100 | so they know who can do it and who can't,

01:33:50.980 | as if there's only one way to do whatever it is.

01:33:53.980 | And I had this experience, and it was very clear in my mind.

01:33:58.380 | So I have this painting,

01:34:00.140 | and I have this friend who is an art collector.

01:34:05.140 | She drinks a little too much.

01:34:06.900 | She came over for a visit, and she saw the painting,

01:34:10.060 | a very early painting of mine.

01:34:12.020 | And she looks at it and just,

01:34:14.100 | "Ellen, there's something there."

01:34:17.140 | This is the important part, just,

01:34:18.540 | "Now, don't go thinking you're Rembrandt,"

01:34:21.580 | which wasn't nice, but she had a little too much,

01:34:24.020 | but it didn't matter.

01:34:25.140 | But my response was so important to me,

01:34:28.180 | I didn't say it 'cause I didn't think it would go over well,

01:34:30.700 | but I said, "And Rembrandt isn't me."

01:34:33.860 | Now, I would rather be the very best Ellen Langer

01:34:38.860 | than the 500,000th, 5 millionth, whatever, Rembrandt.

01:34:44.300 | And when you recognize that quality

01:34:48.780 | is a decision people are making,

01:34:50.860 | there is no absolute standard.

01:34:53.220 | You know, if you know anything about art,

01:34:55.060 | I mean, you know, let's take even the Impressionists,

01:34:57.740 | where people would pay so much money today,

01:34:59.900 | they were all rejected in their day.

01:35:02.140 | You know, when you realize that in some ways,

01:35:07.260 | and my work has suggested this to me,

01:35:09.740 | that if you're present when you're doing it,

01:35:12.740 | you're mindful when you're doing it,

01:35:14.340 | somehow that reveals itself in what you're doing.

01:35:19.340 | And whether or not it does,

01:35:22.780 | if you're putting yourself on that canvas,

01:35:25.180 | then it's great fun, it's exhilarating.

01:35:28.940 | And, you know, when somebody, you know,

01:35:33.160 | belittles it, it's strange to me.

01:35:40.620 | Where are those criteria coming from?

01:35:43.740 | No different from in schools.

01:35:45.820 | You know, I'm very much in favor

01:35:48.820 | of trying to create mindful education

01:35:52.420 | because, as I said before,

01:35:54.340 | I think that it's our system of education

01:35:57.100 | that has caused most of the mindlessness.

01:35:59.300 | And, you know, a slide that I put on

01:36:02.820 | when I give some of these talks, in my view,

01:36:06.620 | that virtually, I don't really mean virtually,

01:36:10.100 | I have to say it 'cause I'm an academic, right?

01:36:12.580 | All, I believe all of our ills, all of them, Andrew,

01:36:17.580 | personal, interpersonal, professional, global,

01:36:22.020 | are the indirect or direct effect of our mindlessness.

01:36:25.720 | So here we have schools all over the country

01:36:29.500 | teaching these absolutes,

01:36:31.240 | propagated in magazines, newspapers, you know,

01:36:36.600 | taught by our parents, taught to each other,

01:36:40.220 | all that are limiting us

01:36:42.180 | and causing the problems that we keep trying to solve.

01:36:46.980 | And how easy it would be if we just acknowledge

01:36:51.300 | everybody doesn't know something,

01:36:53.260 | everybody knows something else,

01:36:54.980 | everybody can't do something,

01:36:56.940 | everyone can do something else.

01:36:58.780 | So when you're grading that paper

01:37:01.060 | and you're so sure that this paper, you know,

01:37:03.940 | just doesn't make it,

01:37:05.720 | to presume that every smart person in the world

01:37:11.480 | would evaluate that the same way, I find this tasteful.

01:37:15.340 | So constantly, you know, you give tests in school

01:37:19.640 | to find out what people don't know,

01:37:22.060 | give tests to find out what they do know.

01:37:24.360 | - Turns out it's the best way to learn.

01:37:26.400 | I'd researched an episode of us,

01:37:28.640 | a solo episode of this podcast I did

01:37:30.920 | and to figure out what are the best ways to study and learn.

01:37:33.440 | It was based on a course

01:37:34.380 | that I had guest lectured in at Stanford.

01:37:36.440 | It turns out we have to be careful now.

01:37:39.280 | I have to be careful with saying things like the best.

01:37:41.160 | One of the most effective ways to learn

01:37:44.440 | is to self-test for what one knows and doesn't know,

01:37:47.020 | but not for sake of evaluation,

01:37:48.880 | but for sake of enhancing recall

01:37:51.200 | and depth of consolidation.

01:37:53.520 | And I think all of us in, at least in this country--

01:37:56.320 | - Well, but I'm saying something a little different,

01:37:57.920 | you know, is you're saying how to remember,

01:38:00.400 | which I agree with that completely,

01:38:02.360 | but I'm saying that when we're testing people,

01:38:05.720 | we, whoever the we is,

01:38:08.640 | decided what is important to know

01:38:11.280 | to see does that student know that,

01:38:14.080 | ignoring all the other things that student must know.

01:38:17.800 | I said this before that when I was lecturing in South Africa

01:38:23.160 | and they put me up in this very fancy hotel

01:38:25.760 | and I had taken a few hours off and I was down by the pool.

01:38:29.400 | And I, you know, there was this enormous amount

01:38:33.040 | of the hotel space, the real estate,

01:38:36.400 | that was totally unused.

01:38:38.760 | The only person who knew that was the lowly cabana boy,

01:38:42.700 | who nobody is going to ask what his opinion is.

01:38:46.980 | You know, everybody has a perspective that can add to the,

01:38:51.440 | you know, the larger piece.

01:38:53.560 | And by having this idea of there are those of us on top,

01:38:56.840 | we really know, you know, people expect,

01:38:59.160 | and I was given this genius award and, you know,

01:39:01.840 | shortly afterwards, every time I say,

01:39:03.400 | and you're supposed to be a genius, I never claimed.

01:39:05.920 | - The danger of awards that carry things,

01:39:08.280 | titles like genius or even Nobel, you know,

01:39:12.080 | I'm not gonna poke at my few friends

01:39:13.960 | that happen to have Nobels

01:39:15.040 | 'cause they've done beautiful work,

01:39:16.340 | but it's rare that people who get Nobels do much after that.

01:39:20.600 | They become great sources of fundraising for universities.

01:39:23.680 | So you get leveraged for that.

01:39:26.160 | But, and I don't think anyone's gonna shed a tear

01:39:28.640 | for a Nobel Prize winner here,

01:39:29.920 | but this brings me to this notion of labels,

01:39:33.080 | not just rankings and performance, but labels.

01:39:35.960 | - Sure. - I mean, we-

01:39:36.960 | - Labels hide all the ambiguity.

01:39:39.680 | So if I, you know, we can use grades.

01:39:42.800 | When I give a student an A versus a B,

01:39:46.960 | it sounds like they're very different.

01:39:49.200 | But imagine, and I've studied this with respect to health,

01:39:55.520 | that the person who gets an 89,

01:39:59.560 | so you go from an 80 to an 89, you get a B,

01:40:03.920 | a 90 to a 100, you get an A,

01:40:07.040 | nobody in their right mind would think

01:40:09.480 | there's a real difference between the person

01:40:11.520 | who's gotten the 89 and the person who's gotten the 90.

01:40:14.780 | But their worlds become very different.

01:40:19.000 | You know, all the ambiguity is hidden.

01:40:21.760 | We studied this, it's the borderline effect,

01:40:24.800 | as we call it, where, so imagine,

01:40:27.720 | let's say you and I take an IQ test,

01:40:30.360 | and for argument's sake, that you get a 70,

01:40:33.960 | so you're normal, I get a 69, so I'm cognitively deprived.

01:40:38.960 | I could have sneezed and read the question wrong.

01:40:42.680 | I could have come up with multiple answers

01:40:45.720 | that could have been better than the one

01:40:47.120 | that got the question and the person

01:40:48.720 | who wrote the question, and so on.

01:40:50.720 | But now, we're put into two different categories.

01:40:54.240 | And because I'm cognitively deficient,

01:40:56.880 | I'm not given the training that I should be given,

01:40:59.840 | I no longer think well of myself,

01:41:03.320 | and so if you asked me to read certain things,

01:41:05.880 | I'd probably opt out, and so on.

01:41:07.600 | And in a very short time,

01:41:09.800 | the difference between us becomes very real.

01:41:13.200 | Well, it's the same thing with a medical diagnosis.

01:41:17.000 | There is always somebody who's right below the border

01:41:21.840 | who has it, or we'll say who doesn't have it,

01:41:24.440 | I don't know about below,

01:41:25.640 | and the person right above or at that has it,

01:41:29.720 | where the two scores are not meaningfully different,

01:41:33.560 | but where one then is told they have the disease

01:41:36.400 | and the other not, and the difference becomes real over time.

01:41:40.840 | And so we have data supporting that,

01:41:43.600 | and it's almost just a gedanken experiment,

01:41:45.920 | a thought experiment, you know.

01:41:50.160 | At some point, you have to put a limit,

01:41:54.200 | but you need to always know that it's made up.

01:42:00.400 | So what is the expiration date for this can of food?

01:42:05.400 | Well, I mean, there are people

01:42:07.440 | who actually go through their shelves

01:42:09.040 | and throw these things out because it's two weeks old,

01:42:13.320 | not realizing how did they come up with that date

01:42:16.200 | in the first place?

01:42:19.120 | Anyway, so to go back to what you were saying,

01:42:23.000 | let me remind you now, 'cause I'm having the junior moment,

01:42:26.240 | that labels, names of things, these categories,

01:42:30.880 | help us organize things, but more often,

01:42:33.840 | or as often, hold things still and cause problems.

01:42:38.840 | I did that first study way back when

01:42:44.560 | called a patient by any other name,

01:42:47.160 | and we made a videotape of a person being interviewed

01:42:52.160 | and showed it to therapists

01:42:57.280 | who were either behavior therapists or Freudian types,

01:43:01.240 | and the person on the tape was called

01:43:03.800 | either a patient or a job applicant.

01:43:06.240 | So the exact same tape.

01:43:08.400 | When we called the person a patient,

01:43:10.920 | they were seen as having hidden this

01:43:12.960 | and problems in that and so on.

01:43:15.160 | When the person was called a job applicant,

01:43:17.120 | they were seen as well-adjusted.

01:43:19.360 | - I have a friend who was in elite, elite special operations

01:43:24.320 | for a number of years, very smart guy, very philosophical,

01:43:27.840 | and he once said to me for reasons that I don't recall,

01:43:31.400 | he said, you know, the two most powerful

01:43:33.880 | but also dangerous words in the English language are I am,

01:43:38.320 | because anything that follows the words I am

01:43:41.760 | will completely constrain your notions

01:43:43.760 | of what's possible and what's not possible.

01:43:45.800 | And I said, you know, why are you telling me this, right?

01:43:48.840 | Because I pointed out that he was from special operations.

01:43:51.520 | He said, you know, that he and his teammates

01:43:54.680 | had a mode of refreshing their mindset

01:43:58.520 | around particular operations that were,

01:44:00.480 | because of the division of the military he was in, et cetera,

01:44:02.760 | it was quite varied.

01:44:03.600 | It wasn't like they were just sort of

01:44:05.440 | doing one type of thing.

01:44:06.480 | They had to be very adaptive.

01:44:08.000 | And he said that they had to completely wipe away

01:44:11.880 | this I am component of their vocabulary,

01:44:15.280 | except as it related to the word adaptive.

01:44:18.640 | It was like, I am adaptive.

01:44:19.960 | So, but there was never a title to who they were,

01:44:23.840 | what they were, once they entered the context

01:44:26.240 | of a planning execution of one of these operations.

01:44:29.080 | Very interesting way of thinking about identity,

01:44:32.040 | how it shapes mindset, how it constrains it and opens doors

01:44:35.560 | and converts things into action or failure to execute.

01:44:41.520 | - Yeah.

01:44:44.560 | I found it very intriguing, you know,

01:44:46.080 | 'cause here's a guy that wouldn't normally think,

01:44:47.760 | like think of this stuff, but it turned out,

01:44:49.640 | he said that was a very potent tool for them.

01:44:52.400 | Yeah.

01:44:53.240 | - Well, I think that as soon as you're learning something

01:44:57.080 | and if you have your sense of,

01:44:59.080 | as if you're going to be the same person

01:45:03.760 | over the next 70 years, for example,

01:45:06.880 | we don't actually cognize that,

01:45:08.960 | but without literally realizing

01:45:11.280 | that you're not gonna be the same person

01:45:13.040 | and you take in whatever you've just learned

01:45:16.320 | and continue doing it the exact same way.

01:45:20.280 | You know, we go back to tennis.

01:45:21.960 | You learn the game of tennis when you're 15

01:45:24.400 | and now you're 40.

01:45:27.640 | You shouldn't be doing any of it the same way.

01:45:30.000 | - Why do you think we get--

01:45:30.840 | - And now you're 80 again.

01:45:33.240 | And so what happens is your performance

01:45:36.120 | is not going to be as good as it could be

01:45:38.800 | because the 80 year old body's trying to do it

01:45:41.480 | as if it's a 15 year old

01:45:43.480 | rather than taking advantage of,

01:45:45.800 | there are positive things that happen as you get older.

01:45:48.240 | They're not all negative.

01:45:49.800 | You know, that, I mean, if I'm playing tennis

01:45:52.320 | with, I don't know, a 15 year old kid,

01:45:56.720 | I'm gonna win without having to move very much

01:46:00.880 | 'cause they don't know what they're doing, you know?

01:46:03.080 | So that you don't need the same skills

01:46:06.520 | the more experience you have with the task,

01:46:10.800 | necessarily at least.

01:46:12.680 | You see what I'm saying is that we freeze,

01:46:15.360 | we freeze our own behavior.

01:46:17.120 | Every time you learn, the way we learn everything,

01:46:19.760 | it just, it ogles the mind.

01:46:22.680 | You learn how to drive

01:46:24.760 | and then you freeze the way you're learning how to drive

01:46:27.880 | when you know the least about how to drive, you know?

01:46:31.640 | And that's the way you're going to do it

01:46:33.480 | for the rest of your life.

01:46:35.480 | A driving thing, just as,

01:46:37.400 | not really apropos of anything except in the car,

01:46:42.480 | that if you're driving on ice, what do you do?

01:46:45.760 | The car starts to skid, you're driving on ice.

01:46:49.040 | I know in California, you don't pay.

01:46:50.680 | I know what you don't do.

01:46:52.080 | You don't slam on the brakes.

01:46:53.360 | You come off, you slowly come off the gas.

01:46:55.920 | I've driven on the East Coast a little bit.

01:46:57.320 | That's exactly wrong, Andrew.

01:46:59.280 | That used to be the case.

01:47:01.000 | You see, so you've heard,

01:47:02.200 | this is the way we learn everything.

01:47:04.680 | You start on the way things are right now,

01:47:07.800 | that when you skid, we were told

01:47:10.760 | that what you're supposed to do is gently hit the brake

01:47:14.560 | and turn into the car.

01:47:16.440 | Now that there are anti-lock brakes,

01:47:19.000 | the only way, the safest way to stop that car

01:47:21.880 | is to jam on those brakes.

01:47:24.200 | So we just think about it

01:47:25.400 | because this is the way we learn everything.

01:47:26.960 | You learn, in this case,

01:47:28.520 | you're learning how to drive for safety sake.

01:47:31.560 | And then you mindlessly continue that

01:47:35.240 | and it becomes very unsafe.

01:47:37.880 | - I didn't get the memo.

01:47:39.960 | - No, okay, no, most people don't.

01:47:41.360 | That's why I brought it up now,

01:47:43.360 | seeming apropos of almost nothing.

01:47:45.520 | But we need to understand that things are changing

01:47:50.200 | and pay attention to the way that they're changing

01:47:53.000 | and change with it.

01:47:54.640 | And the more you hold yourself,

01:47:56.840 | you're talking about identity,

01:47:58.480 | the more you hold yourself still,

01:48:01.560 | the harder that's going to be.

01:48:03.520 | I'm much older, as most people are, than I used to be,

01:48:09.960 | but I don't have any sense of age.

01:48:13.040 | I really don't.

01:48:14.120 | In fact, the other day,

01:48:15.440 | and the other day now means years ago,

01:48:17.320 | I was helping this woman with something

01:48:21.800 | and somebody dear to me said,

01:48:24.360 | "You're probably 20 years older than she is."

01:48:27.360 | I had no sense.

01:48:28.200 | I thought I was helping this old person.

01:48:31.120 | Age is just not a relevant factor for me.

01:48:34.160 | Sometimes you want to be aware of age.

01:48:37.160 | We did some research where we have people who,

01:48:41.840 | you know, they're accused in the environment

01:48:44.320 | that often tell us how old we are

01:48:47.600 | and those are not always so good.

01:48:50.720 | So for example, if I, at my age,

01:48:54.320 | I'm in a fancy store and I go to buy,

01:48:58.160 | let's say a dress, a skirt, okay,

01:49:00.800 | it would be inappropriate for me to buy a miniskirt.

01:49:05.720 | I'm too old to be wearing almost nothing there, right?

01:49:09.560 | So clothing tells you how old the person is.

01:49:15.480 | Now, we did research, just archival research,

01:49:19.440 | with people who wore uniforms.

01:49:23.040 | Now, if you're wearing a uniform

01:49:24.720 | from the first day you start working,

01:49:27.320 | you're there 30 years, there's no difference, okay?

01:49:31.600 | There's no age-relevant cue.

01:49:34.040 | And in those situations are healthier.

01:49:39.000 | Really?

01:49:39.840 | Yeah, because they're not getting the cue that they're old.

01:49:42.800 | I'd like to take a quick break

01:49:45.640 | and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Our Place.

01:49:48.400 | Our Place makes my favorite pots, pans, and other cookware.

01:49:51.560 | Now, I've discussed on this podcast before

01:49:53.720 | that the PFASs or forever chemicals like Teflon

01:49:56.720 | have been linked to major health issues

01:49:58.160 | such as endocrine disruption,

01:49:59.840 | that means hormone disruption,

01:50:01.360 | gut microbiome disruption, fertility issues,

01:50:03.560 | and many other health problems.

01:50:05.160 | So it's really important to avoid them.

01:50:06.960 | This is why I recently fell in love

01:50:08.440 | with Our Place products,

01:50:09.840 | especially one of their cooking pans,

01:50:11.400 | the Titanium Always Pan Pro.

01:50:13.800 | Our Place products are made

01:50:14.960 | with the highest quality materials

01:50:16.380 | and are all PFAS and toxin-free.

01:50:19.040 | They're beautifully designed and function extremely well

01:50:21.800 | for all your cooking needs.

01:50:23.200 | Most mornings, I cook eggs in it,

01:50:24.680 | I cook ground beef in it, ground venison,

01:50:26.600 | and the titanium pan is also designed in a way

01:50:29.340 | that allows eggs and meat to cook perfectly

01:50:31.600 | without sticking to the pan.

01:50:33.000 | It's extremely easy to clean,

01:50:34.600 | and like all Our Place products,

01:50:36.500 | it's nice to look at when sitting on the counter

01:50:38.480 | or on the stove.

01:50:39.600 | For a limited time,

01:50:40.520 | Our Place is offering an exclusive 20% discount

01:50:43.660 | on their innovative Titanium Always Pan Pro,

01:50:46.220 | designed to last a lifetime and completely toxin-free.

01:50:49.400 | Visit fromourplace.com/huberman

01:50:52.280 | and use the code SAVEHUBERMAN20 to claim the offer.

01:50:56.220 | - So if one has parents, let's say,

01:50:58.580 | who are quote-unquote slowing down a bit,

01:51:01.200 | and they're talking a little bit about some aches

01:51:03.220 | and pains and there's a stairwell in the house,

01:51:06.340 | for instance, and they're starting to say things like,

01:51:10.060 | you know, at some point,

01:51:11.040 | we're either gonna have to move into a place

01:51:12.720 | that doesn't have a stairwell

01:51:14.040 | or put one of those chair lifts things,

01:51:16.540 | or maybe just move into the downstairs.

01:51:20.820 | Do you think that in just thinking about that,

01:51:23.620 | they're going to accelerate

01:51:24.820 | the demise of their locomotor ability?

01:51:28.220 | - I do, actually.

01:51:30.280 | I think that when we start entertaining

01:51:33.660 | these negative thoughts and evaluating ourselves,

01:51:36.300 | we're always gonna find evidence.

01:51:38.460 | You know, as you get older, you start,

01:51:39.780 | oh my God, am I forgetful?

01:51:41.140 | So you pay attention each time you forget,

01:51:44.540 | and that makes it even worse.

01:51:46.760 | When I said to my students in this health class,

01:51:50.860 | smart kids at Harvard, this is on Thursday,

01:51:54.720 | I teach Tuesday and Thursday,

01:51:56.200 | I said, what was the last thing I said in class on Tuesday?

01:52:00.180 | Nobody remembers.

01:52:01.280 | I said, you must be getting dementia.

01:52:03.280 | You know?

01:52:04.120 | All right, so that when a young person forgets,

01:52:07.120 | it's okay, they don't pay any attention to the forgetting.

01:52:09.760 | As you get older and you forget,

01:52:11.760 | you get less involved in what you're doing.

01:52:14.880 | If you're trying to learn something,

01:52:16.460 | you have the competing part of you saying,

01:52:19.540 | you know, that you're not gonna remember this, and so on.

01:52:22.640 | And independent of all of this,

01:52:25.320 | I think a lot of the loss in memory

01:52:28.460 | has nothing to do with memory.

01:52:30.780 | You know, there, when I was young,

01:52:34.580 | and you're introducing me to people,

01:52:37.120 | I thought it was important for me to remember their names.

01:52:40.560 | Andrew, I know, doesn't speak well of me.

01:52:42.400 | I don't really care.

01:52:43.920 | You're gonna introduce me to five of your,

01:52:45.520 | why do I care?

01:52:46.760 | If I'm gonna need their names,

01:52:48.640 | chances are I will meet them again, right?

01:52:51.540 | So afterwards, if you say to me,

01:52:53.720 | remember Jim, and I say to you, which one was Jim?

01:52:57.240 | It wasn't that I forgot.

01:52:59.120 | To forget means I had to have learned it in the first place.

01:53:02.960 | And so if you don't learn it in the first place

01:53:05.320 | 'cause you don't care, 'cause your values

01:53:10.320 | change as you get older,

01:53:12.220 | then it's not a matter of forgetting

01:53:13.880 | when you don't know it in the second place.

01:53:16.680 | And I think that, you know, if we turn it around,

01:53:19.880 | 'cause now I'm doing this,

01:53:20.840 | 'cause I know you expect it of me,

01:53:22.900 | and we say, what if you remembered everything?

01:53:25.760 | Everything.

01:53:26.600 | - That would be terrible.

01:53:27.440 | - How would you get through, you know,

01:53:28.900 | you wouldn't get to experience anything new.

01:53:32.360 | So forgetting, you know, serves a purpose.

01:53:36.560 | And I used to think, I never tested this,

01:53:40.600 | and now we came up with this years ago,

01:53:43.140 | and I think it's probably wrong, but it's kind of fun,

01:53:46.120 | that people, as they get older, they become hard of hearing.

01:53:49.940 | But it also happens that the older you get,

01:53:54.040 | the more you realize nobody's really saying anything.

01:53:57.160 | And so being hard of hearing protects you

01:54:00.040 | from a lot of that, you know, noise.

01:54:03.160 | - Yeah, my grandfather used to turn off his hearing aid.

01:54:05.560 | You know, I started wearing,

01:54:06.400 | I've always had glasses for reading at night

01:54:09.560 | when my eyes would get fatigued or something.

01:54:11.640 | But recently I came to my awareness

01:54:15.120 | that my vision at a distance is very, very sharp.

01:54:17.680 | I'm like an eagle, I can, you know,

01:54:19.040 | read numbers for, you know, very far away.

01:54:22.040 | But my vision up close has been diminishing.

01:54:26.240 | I find myself straining a bit more even than this.

01:54:28.160 | So I started wearing, you know, eyeglasses.

01:54:30.280 | - Or you should have the book further away.

01:54:31.880 | - Or you should have the book further away,

01:54:33.120 | but, you know, I've just, I've defaulted to eyeglasses.

01:54:35.480 | And then, but I realized that

01:54:37.280 | because I understand the neuroplasticity

01:54:40.040 | of the visual system, that I'm certainly accelerating

01:54:42.840 | the demise of my near vision by wearing glasses.

01:54:46.440 | And so I'm trying to, you know, balance the two.

01:54:48.360 | - Well, do you know our vision study?

01:54:50.280 | This is kind of fun.

01:54:51.600 | So I'm in the doctor's office, and like everybody else,

01:54:54.880 | I'm given the snelly night chart.

01:54:57.920 | - The letters, the snellen is the letters and numbers.

01:55:00.640 | - Yeah, okay.

01:55:01.480 | And, you know, but I'm different from most people.

01:55:04.960 | And I resent that the letters are getting smaller

01:55:09.720 | and smaller because it's creating an expectation

01:55:13.280 | that soon I won't be able to see.

01:55:16.040 | So I ask what would happen

01:55:18.200 | if the letters got larger and larger,

01:55:20.800 | which would be to change the expectation

01:55:23.080 | that soon I will be able to see.

01:55:25.200 | So when we do that, people are able to see

01:55:28.120 | what they weren't able to see before.

01:55:30.480 | Now, most of us have trouble

01:55:33.000 | around 2/3 of the way down the chart.

01:55:35.760 | So what we did was start the chart 1/3 of the way down.

01:55:40.760 | So the letters are smaller than on top.

01:55:43.080 | So now 2/3 of the way down, that starting point,

01:55:48.040 | the letters are really small.

01:55:50.240 | And what happens is, again, people can see

01:55:52.320 | what they couldn't see before.

01:55:54.040 | - Awesome, yeah.

01:55:55.520 | So the idea that your vision has to get worse,

01:55:58.520 | I don't, I think there are many, many instances

01:56:04.080 | where that's not the case,

01:56:05.200 | but also the whole test of vision is bizarre.

01:56:08.680 | How often in your life are you looking at letters

01:56:11.920 | that make no sense?

01:56:13.800 | You know, if I don't wanna see you,

01:56:16.320 | I'm gonna see you a lot sooner be able to run away from you.

01:56:19.240 | If I'm hungry, I can see the restaurant sign

01:56:23.040 | much quicker than if I'm not hungry.

01:56:25.080 | I see things in color that are different

01:56:27.200 | in black and white, you know, so on and so forth.

01:56:30.080 | And to lose all of that with a two-dimensional eye test

01:56:34.800 | seems to me, you know.

01:56:36.880 | And again, you know, we haven't touched on this,

01:56:39.240 | but it's probably important with respect to vision.

01:56:42.000 | It's true with everything.

01:56:43.800 | You know, in fact, I tell people, you're wearing glasses.

01:56:47.720 | Try it without glasses.

01:56:49.520 | You want to see when you can see and when you can't see.

01:56:54.240 | With almost everything, we, again,

01:56:58.800 | hold things still when they're varying.

01:57:04.320 | Now, what I mean by this is that, let's say with vision,

01:57:08.280 | my guess is that 11 o'clock in the morning,

01:57:13.280 | my vision is better than at seven o'clock at night.

01:57:18.080 | - The data, yes. - Okay.

01:57:19.880 | I mean, it'd be hard for at night.

01:57:21.120 | So what does this say?

01:57:22.320 | This says maybe I should either have a nap.

01:57:26.640 | I don't nap, so I should have an energy bar.

01:57:28.480 | And even an energy bar is cute.

01:57:29.960 | It's just a candy bar, but you call it an energy bar,

01:57:32.120 | you're allowed to eat it.

01:57:33.400 | It's like you take a piece of cake, put it in a muffin tin.

01:57:36.080 | It's called a muffin.

01:57:36.920 | It's healthier than the piece of cake.

01:57:39.640 | Anyway, I'll leave that as it may.

01:57:44.160 | That control, a great amount of control

01:57:49.160 | over our physical well-being

01:57:52.120 | comes about by attention to variability,

01:57:55.080 | which is just a fancy way of talking about mindfulness.

01:57:57.680 | Mindfulness is noticing change.

01:57:59.640 | That's what it means to be variable.

01:58:01.560 | All right, so if you took your glasses off

01:58:04.620 | and you saw for yourself, what are the times,

01:58:07.620 | what are the moments that you're having?

01:58:09.580 | I'm not talking about people who are almost blind,

01:58:12.920 | where I can't see and when I can see.

01:58:15.120 | And then you ask yourself why.

01:58:17.240 | And then it may be the case that it's a particular font

01:58:21.720 | or more likely that you're tired

01:58:23.840 | and then you have other options.

01:58:25.760 | But once you start wearing them,

01:58:27.280 | it's like taking a laxative.

01:58:30.160 | Take a laxative once, it's fine.

01:58:31.860 | If you're taking a laxative all the time,

01:58:34.140 | you're teaching your body to depend on the laxative.

01:58:37.520 | You can teach ourselves by some of these

01:58:42.400 | things that are supposed to be helpful

01:58:44.480 | that we teach ourselves to need them

01:58:47.040 | in ways we otherwise wouldn't.

01:58:48.840 | And so he did this attention to symptom variability

01:58:52.080 | with big diseases.

01:58:53.640 | So when you have a chronic illness,

01:58:55.880 | the way most people understand chronic illness

01:58:59.880 | is that there's nothing that can be done about it.

01:59:02.920 | Yeah, the word chronic implies that.

01:59:04.200 | Exactly.

01:59:05.040 | But all it means is the medical world doesn't have a fix.

01:59:08.400 | It doesn't mean there's nothing can be done.

01:59:10.480 | Now, you have your symptoms of the chronic illness.

01:59:13.520 | The presumption most of the time, I would think,

01:59:16.640 | is that the symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse.

01:59:20.440 | Nothing only moves in one direction.

01:59:24.680 | Sometimes it's a little better,

01:59:26.120 | sometimes a little, the stock market.

01:59:28.040 | If it's going up, it doesn't go up in a straight line,

01:59:30.280 | goes up, down a little, you know, and so on.

01:59:32.760 | All right.

01:59:33.600 | So when it's better, why is it better?

01:59:36.800 | So we do this, we call people periodically,

01:59:41.400 | and we simply ask them, how is the symptom now?

01:59:45.240 | Is it better or worse than the last time we called?

01:59:48.160 | And why?

01:59:49.000 | Several things happen.

01:59:50.480 | The first, by engaging in the whole process,

01:59:53.440 | people feel less helpless,

01:59:55.240 | and that turns out to be good for your health.

01:59:57.600 | Second, once you start noticing

02:00:00.440 | that now it's a little better,

02:00:02.560 | or it can even be a little worse,

02:00:03.920 | you feel better 'cause you thought that it was,

02:00:05.760 | you know, always maximally, I'm always in pain,

02:00:08.120 | I'm always stressed, whatever it is.

02:00:10.040 | Third, or whatever I'm up to,

02:00:12.480 | by asking the question,

02:00:14.600 | why now is it better or worse than before,

02:00:17.240 | you engage in a mindful search.

02:00:19.720 | And I have decades of evidence that that mindfulness itself,

02:00:24.600 | the neurons are firing, that itself is good for your health.

02:00:27.840 | And then finally, I believe you're more likely

02:00:30.480 | to find a solution if you're looking for one.

02:00:33.360 | So we've done this with multiple sclerosis,

02:00:36.080 | chronic pain, Parkinson's, stroke, biggies,

02:00:40.520 | and in each case have very positive results.

02:00:43.760 | And the good thing about these sorts of things

02:00:46.240 | is that there are no negative side effects.

02:00:48.880 | And it doesn't mean that you have to stop doing

02:00:52.160 | any medical procedures you may be doing.

02:00:55.440 | But you know, you're asking,

02:00:56.840 | you're back in charge of your own healthcare.

02:00:59.640 | Why does this hurt now?

02:01:01.800 | You know, stress, there are some people

02:01:04.320 | who think they're stressed all the time.

02:01:05.680 | Nobody is anything all the time.

02:01:08.240 | So I call you, Andrew, and I say,

02:01:11.000 | how stressed are you now, and why?

02:01:13.360 | And we go through this over time.

02:01:15.320 | And then you find out, you know,

02:01:17.080 | you're stressed when you're talking to Ellen Langer.

02:01:19.520 | Well, then the solution is easy, don't talk to me.

02:01:22.560 | - I've been thinking about deadlines a lot lately.

02:01:26.600 | And we hear stories of, you know,

02:01:29.960 | people being told I need this done in 15 days.

02:01:32.960 | And if people are forced to do it in 15 days,

02:01:35.720 | somehow they're able to get it done in 15 days.

02:01:38.960 | Or, and certainly there are limits to this.

02:01:40.740 | If you told me I need to write 1,000 pages in five minutes,

02:01:43.240 | I would, there would be very little on each page.

02:01:46.600 | But staying within the bounds of reason

02:01:48.680 | of what we're talking about

02:01:49.880 | when we say there's a deadline in X number of days,

02:01:53.120 | why do you think it is that our perception

02:01:55.320 | of what's possible tends to scale with,

02:01:58.000 | A, what's been done before?

02:01:59.760 | So precedent or no precedent,

02:02:01.360 | the four minute mile, for instance,

02:02:03.120 | until Bannister broke it, you know, no one else broke it.

02:02:06.800 | He broke it, lots of people have broken it since

02:02:09.680 | and did immediately afterwards.

02:02:11.200 | So what do you think about this notion of what's possible

02:02:14.860 | in terms of preordained human decision constraints?

02:02:19.860 | Like no one can break the four minute mile.

02:02:22.640 | Someone breaks the four minute mile,

02:02:23.600 | now we reset to a new reality in time

02:02:27.520 | and in sort of capability.

02:02:29.200 | Because I feel like much of what we believe about ourselves

02:02:32.720 | is also constrained by our beliefs about the outside world.

02:02:36.920 | And as you pointed out earlier,

02:02:39.000 | all of that's just a human script

02:02:40.760 | that is the play we're all in.

02:02:43.560 | - Yeah.

02:02:44.400 | I think that the first part is what guides most of us

02:02:50.400 | is what's been done before.

02:02:52.400 | And the fact that nobody has done it to me

02:02:55.400 | means nothing but to a lot of people.

02:02:58.680 | People create theories working backwards,

02:03:01.680 | you know, which is they often take what is

02:03:04.760 | and then derive rules to explain

02:03:07.320 | why it has to be like that.

02:03:09.080 | Once you believe it has to be like that,

02:03:11.480 | then it doesn't occur to you to do anything other than that.

02:03:15.820 | But if we start off with the notions of science

02:03:19.920 | that I was talking about before,

02:03:21.240 | that it's all just probability, no absolutes,

02:03:25.360 | then it wouldn't occur to you

02:03:27.000 | to stay within the rigid boundaries.

02:03:31.540 | Not the best answer, but the only one that came to mind.

02:03:35.480 | - No, it's a great answer.

02:03:37.000 | I'm trying to think about the use of the scientific method,

02:03:40.600 | which is what you use in your lab and in your research.

02:03:44.300 | And why it is that you haven't, it seems,

02:03:50.400 | challenged the scientific method itself,

02:03:52.680 | except at the level of like what hypothesis

02:03:54.880 | you're gonna test.

02:03:55.940 | I mean, in order to do great science,

02:03:57.700 | I mean, at some point you need statistics,

02:04:01.140 | you need sample size to be sufficient.

02:04:03.440 | You know, the rigor of your studies is as important

02:04:07.040 | as the originality of the questions you're asking.

02:04:10.760 | And so it seems that you've embraced

02:04:12.560 | the scientific method as at least useful.

02:04:15.560 | - Yeah, that's the key.

02:04:17.500 | That, to me, it's a means of speaking to certain people.

02:04:21.800 | And it carries with it a certain gravitas.

02:04:24.480 | But I, by no means, feel that it's giving answers

02:04:28.840 | that are any more absolute.

02:04:31.880 | Well, as I said before,

02:04:32.960 | that all of the answers are probabilities.

02:04:35.880 | So it's just a language to use.

02:04:38.560 | You know, the counterclockwise study was criticized

02:04:43.560 | because I didn't publish it in a standard journal

02:04:47.320 | because my assumption of the, you know,

02:04:51.120 | it's very hard if you're doing something over a week's time

02:04:55.160 | to control every possibility.

02:04:57.880 | And what I was trying to do in that study

02:05:01.320 | was to show that vision, for example, can be improved,

02:05:06.320 | that lots of the things that people presume are wired in

02:05:13.120 | as you get older, it gets worse and worse,

02:05:15.520 | that just doesn't have to be that way.

02:05:19.140 | But I'm having trouble remembering now

02:05:22.640 | because I know that I was going to write a paper

02:05:26.400 | taking the whole science of science apart and never did.

02:05:31.400 | And if I had written the paper,

02:05:34.720 | I'd probably remember what I was going to say

02:05:36.920 | and answer your question.

02:05:38.520 | Well, it's a good one,

02:05:39.880 | but I don't think that there's anything

02:05:44.080 | that is described as absolute that's going to be right.

02:05:49.380 | Whether it's physics, even physics,

02:05:52.300 | biology, psychology, anything, you know,

02:05:55.660 | that our methods can only take us so far.

02:05:58.940 | And the people who get beyond that

02:06:02.700 | are the people who don't presume

02:06:06.260 | that that's as far as you can go.

02:06:08.220 | You know, if you can go this way, you can go a little further.

02:06:10.740 | I was a chemistry major when I was an undergraduate.

02:06:14.340 | And the problem was I practiced Jewish chemistry,

02:06:17.060 | which was a little as good, a little more is better,

02:06:20.300 | which is not the way to do chemistry.

02:06:22.760 | But I don't know what it is

02:06:25.700 | that leads some people to be rigid

02:06:30.060 | and to take everything that is told to them

02:06:33.240 | as if it must be.

02:06:35.100 | And what it is that led me to a different way of being

02:06:40.100 | and testing it or just thinking that some of the things

02:06:45.060 | that people say just made no sense to me.

02:06:47.920 | - Not long ago, we went through

02:06:49.540 | one of the biggest public health crises

02:06:51.820 | of at least my lifetime.

02:06:54.180 | And at least two major controversies arose.

02:06:59.180 | One was the extent to which masks should or shouldn't be worn

02:07:03.340 | and are useful or no.

02:07:04.840 | The other is about the so-called vaccines.

02:07:08.400 | And this is-

02:07:09.500 | - Yeah, and I think those are beautiful examples

02:07:12.300 | because one can make an argument

02:07:15.780 | that you should wear masks,

02:07:17.980 | but the other side also makes sense.

02:07:20.460 | The way masks were preventing

02:07:22.980 | even nonverbal communication, which is very important

02:07:25.940 | and important to people's health, right?

02:07:27.580 | Your relationships are not an inconsequential part

02:07:31.220 | of your wellbeing.

02:07:33.400 | And vaccines, there is no treatment

02:07:38.400 | that's going to be good for everybody.

02:07:41.320 | Somebody very close to me,

02:07:43.620 | if given dexedrine, puts her to sleep.

02:07:46.860 | - Dexedrine is basically speed.

02:07:48.380 | - Exactly, puts her to, you know.

02:07:50.420 | And so when we recognize the uncertainty

02:07:54.580 | inherent in all of these things,

02:07:56.420 | I think we don't mandate things in quite the same way.

02:08:00.380 | Now, you can mandate that people wear masks,

02:08:03.840 | but it shouldn't be that people wear masks

02:08:06.260 | because we're absolutely certain that masks should be worn.

02:08:10.180 | There are other arguments to be made

02:08:12.860 | why people should wear masks.

02:08:15.420 | - Or not wear masks.

02:08:16.260 | - Or not wear masks, whatever the case is going to be.

02:08:19.240 | And I think it's important that in the medical world,

02:08:25.060 | that I think, I gave this talk at one point

02:08:30.620 | and I thought I was talking to 5,000 women

02:08:34.340 | with breast cancer.

02:08:36.100 | And it turned out there were lots and lots

02:08:39.300 | of physicians there.

02:08:41.080 | If I had known that,

02:08:42.560 | I might have spoken a little differently.

02:08:45.100 | And I'm scared afterwards.

02:08:47.660 | I said, you know, oh my goodness,

02:08:48.740 | because I was not flattering.

02:08:50.580 | You know, I had great respect for most of these people.

02:08:54.520 | But then I found out afterwards that they were thrilled

02:08:58.600 | because they know they don't know.

02:09:01.340 | And, you know, operating on the world

02:09:03.580 | with an awareness that you can't be sure

02:09:07.300 | leads to a different humility,

02:09:09.180 | a different way of appreciating other people

02:09:12.460 | when they disagree with you and so on.

02:09:15.620 | And I don't know how you do that at the higher level,

02:09:19.380 | you know, government and so on.

02:09:21.700 | But, you know, this is maybe a silly example,

02:09:27.180 | but meaningful to me.

02:09:28.500 | So I spent a lot of time in Mexico

02:09:31.300 | and there's this very busy intersection.

02:09:35.660 | And there are no stop signs,

02:09:38.180 | there are no traffic lights,

02:09:39.980 | and there are no accidents.

02:09:42.220 | Because everybody knows there's no traffic light,

02:09:45.580 | there's no stop sign.

02:09:47.180 | You have to pay attention to what's going on.

02:09:49.820 | You know, so lots of these rules and laws

02:09:54.240 | divert attention to,

02:09:55.980 | as if there's only one thing that matters.

02:09:58.740 | You know, so when you're told to drive 60 miles an hour,

02:10:02.100 | what does that mean?

02:10:04.020 | You know, and, you know, that if you drive 70,

02:10:08.220 | you're going to get a ticket.

02:10:09.380 | Okay, so if you're not afraid of getting the ticket,

02:10:11.800 | but there were other considerations

02:10:13.860 | to how fast you might go.

02:10:15.740 | You know, the quality of your car,

02:10:17.860 | the quality of the roads,

02:10:19.380 | is it raining at the moment,

02:10:21.700 | how uncomfortable or comfortable the passengers are.

02:10:25.160 | And all of this gets, and much more,

02:10:27.800 | gets lost by having the rule, 60,

02:10:31.520 | as if that, you know, somehow is an absolute truth.

02:10:36.520 | - Yeah, and experience matters,

02:10:38.860 | at least in my view, because,

02:10:41.600 | so for instance, going back to vaccines, right?

02:10:43.720 | I'm not trying to create unnecessary controversy here,

02:10:46.120 | but it's absolutely clear to me

02:10:48.720 | that there are people who believe that,

02:10:50.800 | for instance, the COVID vaccines were immensely valuable.

02:10:53.720 | On the whole, it saved lives, et cetera.

02:10:55.480 | And there are other people who are absolutely convinced

02:10:58.620 | that the vaccines caused injury,

02:11:01.320 | perhaps to them or to people that they know.

02:11:03.160 | And both sides, as it were,

02:11:05.920 | seem to know a lot about their side.

02:11:09.760 | And so the discussions aren't really discussions,

02:11:13.080 | because the people that felt that they had a vaccine injury

02:11:16.320 | know an immense amount about that injury,

02:11:19.480 | the context, and others who had it.

02:11:22.720 | The people who had a different experience of the vaccines

02:11:26.240 | or have a different stance of the COVID vaccine

02:11:28.880 | know a tremendous amount about the statistics and mass

02:11:31.520 | of what the general outcomes were as a consequence.

02:11:34.200 | Okay, so it's futile, right?

02:11:36.360 | Like, it's not a meaningful discussion.

02:11:39.500 | And then what ends up happening-

02:11:40.340 | - But it didn't have to be that way.

02:11:41.960 | You know, we go back to the beginning,

02:11:43.880 | and in school, you're asked a question

02:11:46.600 | and expected to give a single answer.

02:11:49.960 | Life would be so different for us as we grow up

02:11:53.480 | if you gave multiple answers to whatever the question was.

02:11:56.480 | That immediately would make clear

02:11:58.400 | that there are alternative perspectives.

02:12:00.740 | Just a very simple change in schools.

02:12:05.920 | - Well, then I'd like to challenge an idea,

02:12:07.960 | since that seems to be a challenging assumption.

02:12:09.920 | - One of my ideas, no.

02:12:11.360 | - No, not one of your ideas.

02:12:12.700 | I'd like to challenge the assumption

02:12:14.120 | that as people get older, they become more set in their ways.

02:12:17.260 | Because many times today, I'm hearing that as one,

02:12:21.760 | and I'm getting older, I'm now can say,

02:12:23.220 | I'm so happy I can say I'm almost 50.

02:12:25.420 | I actually love getting older.

02:12:26.660 | I feel better now. - Me too, me too.

02:12:28.580 | - I feel better now at almost 50 than I did in my 20s,

02:12:32.020 | and psychologically and physically.

02:12:34.460 | And I felt great then.

02:12:35.860 | So I challenge the assumption that we get worse with age.

02:12:40.020 | - Yeah, no, I'm with you, and I'm much older than you are.

02:12:43.540 | - So do we get set in our ways,

02:12:45.060 | or maybe we're more flexible in our thinking?

02:12:47.580 | - I think that the older you are,

02:12:52.300 | let's say you've tried different ways of doing something,

02:12:55.620 | and there's a particular way that works for you.

02:12:59.620 | And it doesn't matter if the other way is faster,

02:13:02.940 | is prettier, is whatever, this works.

02:13:05.580 | And so you can be seen as set in your way,

02:13:09.060 | because you know it doesn't really matter.

02:13:11.220 | I could do it that way, that way, or this way.

02:13:12.940 | I'm gonna continue to do it this way.

02:13:15.180 | I think as you get older,

02:13:17.300 | presumably you've had more mindful experience,

02:13:21.260 | 'cause if you're a robot,

02:13:23.980 | you're not going to be learning anything,

02:13:27.540 | and getting more set or less set is an irrelevant question.

02:13:30.980 | But I remember, this goes back to the pancreas.

02:13:35.980 | Am I not eating the pancreas?

02:13:40.340 | I really believed I had to eat that pancreas

02:13:43.140 | to show that I was all grown up.

02:13:45.180 | So you get a little older, and you realize,

02:13:48.060 | I wrote this blog once, a long time ago,

02:13:51.340 | where you're two years old, and you fall,

02:13:53.940 | and you're screaming bloody murder,

02:13:55.460 | 'cause you scraped your leg.

02:13:57.300 | And then you're seven years old,

02:13:59.260 | and Johnny or Janie didn't send you a Valentine,

02:14:01.940 | and you're distraught.

02:14:03.940 | And then you're 13 years old,

02:14:05.620 | and you have a pimple, and oh my God,

02:14:07.900 | no one's ever gonna find me attractive.

02:14:09.660 | And it goes on and on.

02:14:10.940 | And at some point, this was all kind of silly.

02:14:14.620 | And with that, you become easier.

02:14:19.060 | But sometimes that easier can be misunderstood by others.

02:14:22.660 | So let me give you an example.

02:14:23.900 | And I talk about this in the book

02:14:25.820 | when I talk about three levels.

02:14:27.580 | That, in the example I use,

02:14:32.660 | The New Yorker is a wonderful magazine.

02:14:37.060 | But let's say we have three levels.

02:14:38.460 | Level one, people who don't read The New Yorker.

02:14:41.580 | Level two, people who read The New Yorker.

02:14:44.860 | Level three, people who don't read The New Yorker anymore.

02:14:48.260 | We could have them read it again,

02:14:49.500 | but let's just skip it first, okay?

02:14:51.540 | Level one, not reading,

02:14:53.220 | and those not reading it anymore are very different.

02:14:58.220 | But they're seen as the same by the level twos.

02:15:01.620 | Level two people are the bane of my existence.

02:15:04.820 | All right, so let's say you have,

02:15:06.940 | you're young, you're uninhibited, level one.

02:15:10.540 | Then you're like most people, you become very inhibited.

02:15:14.580 | Then, hopefully, you get to a certain point in life,

02:15:17.660 | you say, "Who cares?"

02:15:19.460 | And you become disinhibited, not uninhibited,

02:15:23.660 | 'cause you know the rule,

02:15:25.340 | you're just choosing not to follow it.

02:15:27.540 | But those at the level two will see the level three

02:15:30.980 | and think they're level ones,

02:15:32.620 | 'cause you can't see beyond your own level of development.

02:15:35.500 | When I was young,

02:15:37.220 | especially if I'm on an important show like yours, Andrew,

02:15:40.900 | and we just took a break for a minute,

02:15:43.260 | and if I had eaten something

02:15:44.820 | and I got a spot on my sweater, I'd sit like this.

02:15:49.820 | Not even realizing how stupid does this look, right?

02:15:53.380 | But that no one should see that I got, you know.

02:15:56.380 | - Yeah, God forbid you're human,

02:15:57.740 | you spilled a piece of food. - Yes, you get to a certain,

02:15:58.980 | who cares?

02:16:00.820 | So I do this thing with my students,

02:16:03.540 | and it's very simple,

02:16:05.740 | but it has a very big effect on them,

02:16:08.500 | where I tell them you can't come to class next week

02:16:11.980 | unless you're wearing two different shoes.

02:16:14.300 | It's very hard, some won't come to class, most come.

02:16:18.740 | Then a large majority wear two different shoes

02:16:21.740 | that look the same, you know,

02:16:23.300 | two different black sneakers that are, you know.

02:16:25.580 | And then you have the bold where you're a red

02:16:27.860 | and a black sneaker, that's cool.

02:16:30.140 | And we talk about these, nobody even noticed.

02:16:33.340 | And if they notice, what are they noticing?

02:16:35.580 | Somebody who knows you is not gonna judge you differently

02:16:39.340 | 'cause you're wearing two different,

02:16:40.180 | they're gonna assume there's some reason for it.

02:16:41.860 | And those who don't know you, don't know you,

02:16:43.700 | so what do you care?

02:16:44.860 | So this wonderful young woman,

02:16:47.660 | I did this in my seminars as well,

02:16:49.180 | that was in the lecture class.

02:16:51.220 | She comes in, just, "Professor Langer,

02:16:52.860 | "you won't believe what happened."

02:16:53.900 | I said, "What happened?"

02:16:55.180 | She said, "I'm in the elevator, there's this guy,

02:16:57.460 | "he looks at my feet, he looks at my face,

02:17:00.780 | "he looks at my feet, he looks at my face,

02:17:03.780 | "he looks at my feet."

02:17:05.100 | And he points and he says, "Was that intentional?"

02:17:08.260 | You know what I did?

02:17:09.100 | I said, "No, what did you do?"

02:17:10.340 | She said, "I looked at his feet, I looked at his face,

02:17:13.700 | "I looked at his feet, I looked, I pointed to his feet

02:17:17.020 | "and said to him, 'Was that?'"

02:17:19.380 | You know?

02:17:20.220 | - So good.

02:17:21.140 | - And when people recognize that everything

02:17:24.940 | is sort of in some sense up for grabs,

02:17:27.520 | you know, that none of it really matters,

02:17:30.840 | it's so freeing.

02:17:32.480 | And there's so many ways that we constrict ourselves.

02:17:35.400 | And to make that an answer to your question,

02:17:38.000 | hopefully you get older and you realize that most of this,

02:17:42.920 | it just doesn't matter.

02:17:44.640 | Now you can learn that when you're younger.

02:17:48.360 | All you need to do is recognize that those people

02:17:52.040 | who you think are thinking you're X are,

02:17:55.080 | there are other people who are going to go,

02:17:56.720 | "Yay, you're X."

02:17:58.400 | You know, that you may love me because I'm trusting,

02:18:02.760 | you may dislike me because I'm gullible.

02:18:05.540 | So you can't please everybody,

02:18:09.000 | not because your behavior is unpleasant,

02:18:11.320 | but because all of it is up for their own definition

02:18:15.080 | and you can't control the way they're going to see it.

02:18:17.920 | - It's like our sense of justice

02:18:19.720 | kind of gets in the way sometimes.

02:18:21.700 | I mean, sense of justice can be very important in society.

02:18:24.800 | So don't get me wrong.

02:18:25.640 | But for instance, recently I had the experience

02:18:28.520 | where a news story came out.

02:18:30.040 | It wasn't about me, but-

02:18:33.920 | - And those are the only ones you read, right?

02:18:35.680 | - Yeah.

02:18:36.520 | It came out and the headline was,

02:18:40.320 | well, I'm just going to say what it was,

02:18:41.680 | that so-and-so's home, this famous person's home,

02:18:44.900 | was destroyed in the LA fires.

02:18:48.440 | Had a description of what had happened.

02:18:52.040 | It had a photograph of the home before and after.

02:18:54.640 | The devastation.

02:18:56.440 | And I immediately got upset because that was not their home.

02:19:00.840 | That was my home.

02:19:02.320 | - Oh my goodness.

02:19:03.160 | - Okay, now I hadn't lived in that home in a while.

02:19:05.560 | So there was no reason for them to say that it was my home.

02:19:08.760 | I wasn't upset that they didn't say it was my home.

02:19:10.880 | But there was my Toyota 4Runner parked in the driveway.

02:19:15.360 | - Oh, wow.

02:19:16.280 | - Like basically the whole thing was made up.

02:19:18.840 | And I actually know the reporter

02:19:20.600 | because they had tried to contact me once before.

02:19:22.640 | They had somehow got ahold of my phone number,

02:19:25.120 | which frustrates me in addition to that.

02:19:27.440 | And I realized-

02:19:28.280 | - That was my fault.

02:19:30.000 | - And I realized they're just making up lies.

02:19:33.160 | They're not even attempting to fact check.

02:19:34.880 | Now this was a minor thing whose home it was perhaps,

02:19:37.960 | but they made a bunch of issues around this.

02:19:39.520 | And then another article came out about this person

02:19:41.680 | and another one.

02:19:42.520 | And I basically, I don't believe anything that I read,

02:19:47.160 | certainly from that particular venue.

02:19:50.600 | And then I started to realize that probably half or more

02:19:55.120 | of what we read in traditional popular press

02:19:58.320 | is just made up.

02:20:00.160 | And no one's fact checking this stuff

02:20:01.560 | 'cause how could they, like how could they know?

02:20:03.120 | And of course I'm not gonna pursue this

02:20:04.400 | in any kind of legal way.

02:20:05.320 | I don't really care.

02:20:07.000 | But my sense of justice is what frustrated me.

02:20:10.040 | And as soon as I went-

02:20:12.120 | - But what difference does it make?

02:20:13.560 | - That's kind of funny.

02:20:14.400 | Like this reporter so desperate for a story

02:20:18.040 | and to capitalize on the horrible events,

02:20:20.880 | like felt that they needed to do.

02:20:22.760 | And I thought this is like ridiculous

02:20:25.640 | and our species is just so weird.

02:20:27.620 | This is what I always default to in the end,

02:20:29.420 | whether or not it's about technology, about something else.

02:20:31.920 | I mean, real tragedies are real tragedies.

02:20:34.280 | And when those happen as the fires were, it upsets me.

02:20:37.600 | But so much of like what grabs our attention

02:20:40.720 | and the drama of things is just humans being ridiculous,

02:20:45.220 | sometimes lying, sometimes in service to one thing

02:20:48.400 | or pretending it's in service to justice

02:20:50.180 | when in fact it's in service to themselves

02:20:52.760 | or a combination of things.

02:20:54.700 | And I think as I've hit this,

02:20:57.340 | like what I hope is a new vista in my life,

02:21:00.180 | I'm thinking to myself like, wow, we're really obvious.

02:21:05.180 | Like we're so obviously silly.

02:21:08.080 | Like the game, I bring up Rick Rubin again.

02:21:11.060 | He has this saying that he repeats over and over to me.

02:21:13.620 | He said, like, there are only two truths,

02:21:15.720 | nature and professional wrestling.

02:21:17.700 | He loves professional wrestling.

02:21:19.380 | He watches hours and hours of professional wrestling.

02:21:21.940 | And I said, why do you do that?

02:21:23.480 | Isn't that?

02:21:24.320 | He said, it's made up and everyone knows it's made up.

02:21:28.580 | But it doesn't matter.

02:21:29.420 | Which is why it actually is one of the few things

02:21:32.060 | that's real because we all know it's made up.

02:21:34.580 | So whether or not they become allies

02:21:36.220 | or they become enemies in a given match

02:21:37.940 | or whether or not somebody breaks the rules

02:21:39.800 | and the ref pretends they don't see, it's theater.

02:21:42.980 | And it's designed to show you the theater

02:21:44.940 | that is human nature.

02:21:46.820 | I never had any appreciation for professional wrestling.

02:21:49.340 | I thought, but he's right, it's just.

02:21:51.380 | And so once you start looking, it's all made up.

02:21:53.740 | - Well, it doesn't have to be made up or not.

02:21:56.340 | If you ask yourself, what difference does it make?

02:21:59.500 | - The wrestling?

02:22:00.340 | - No, any of it.

02:22:01.660 | So it's your house, it's somebody else's house.

02:22:03.980 | - Exactly, I realized I was the one being ridiculous.

02:22:06.780 | I'm upset because there's some injustice because what?

02:22:09.500 | Because I don't want my forerunner in a news article

02:22:12.020 | about someone else's home.

02:22:13.420 | Maybe that person had a home that looked very similar,

02:22:15.620 | but I guess it was the break with my assumption

02:22:19.200 | that the traditional media tries to get things right,

02:22:22.820 | that they at least try.

02:22:23.940 | And in this case, the person clearly didn't even try.

02:22:26.260 | They had access to the real information.

02:22:28.220 | They chose to lie.

02:22:29.060 | - If you say there's something to be learned

02:22:31.940 | regardless of whether it's true or not.

02:22:34.740 | I thought you were going someplace else with this.

02:22:38.020 | My mind wanted to, I thought you were talking

02:22:41.420 | about the tragedy of the fire,

02:22:43.460 | which as an example, I use in "The Mindful Body"

02:22:47.140 | to show that events are not good, bad.

02:22:52.140 | Rather, our view of the event is what makes it good or bad.

02:22:56.340 | And so I had this experience.

02:22:59.100 | I was at a friend's house for dinner.

02:23:00.900 | I come back late, which never happens.

02:23:03.460 | And all of my neighbors were outside

02:23:07.860 | because my house had burned down.

02:23:10.300 | And, you know, just pretty scary.

02:23:12.740 | Okay, a couple of funny things happen.

02:23:16.260 | They said they were able to save my dogs,

02:23:18.860 | which that wasn't funny, that was wonderful,

02:23:21.000 | but they couldn't save the parrot.

02:23:22.740 | I said, "Parrot, I didn't have a parrot."

02:23:24.740 | Well, Roger Brown, when he was alive,

02:23:26.300 | gave me this stuffed parrot that was in a cage.

02:23:29.460 | - Oh my, okay, as a kid who owned parrots,

02:23:32.120 | I was like frightened for a moment.

02:23:34.000 | - Okay, so now I stay at a friend's house

02:23:37.340 | and the next day I call the insurance company

02:23:41.620 | and the person comes over and he said

02:23:46.300 | this was the first time in his 20-year career

02:23:49.840 | that the damage was worse than the call.

02:23:53.020 | Most people, "Oh my God, oh my God, it's not so bad."

02:23:56.140 | Here, I had already lost everything,

02:23:58.780 | so it didn't make sense to throw my sanity away after it.

02:24:02.120 | Okay, so that was the first thing.

02:24:04.260 | I move into the Charles Hotel

02:24:07.060 | and I'm a sight to be seen with my two little dogs.

02:24:09.720 | And it's Christmas, then all the presents coming in,

02:24:15.060 | you know, were burned, all the ones going out, you know.

02:24:18.300 | It's now Christmas Eve and I go out for dinner

02:24:23.220 | and I come back to the hotel room and it's full of gifts,

02:24:26.980 | not from the owner of the hotel, not from the management,

02:24:31.900 | but from the so-called little people, the chambermaids,

02:24:35.500 | the people who parked my car, the waiters and waitresses.

02:24:39.160 | Andrew, I tell you, I could not tell that story

02:24:42.620 | for months, maybe years,

02:24:44.540 | without it bringing tears to my eyes.

02:24:46.660 | It was beautiful.

02:24:48.580 | Every Christmas I'm reminded about what feels to me

02:24:51.780 | the basic goodness of people.

02:24:53.740 | And I couldn't tell you except for one thing,

02:24:56.140 | what I lost in that fire.

02:24:58.100 | So, you know.

02:24:59.460 | One stuffed parrot.

02:25:01.940 | No, no, that, I don't remember that until right now.

02:25:05.380 | No, it was kind of fun.

02:25:06.800 | I was teaching, going to be teaching,

02:25:10.020 | you know, as soon as school began again,

02:25:12.220 | a large lecture class and all my notes were burned.

02:25:15.020 | So, oh my God, what am I going to do?

02:25:18.420 | And so what I did was I called a student

02:25:22.180 | who got an A in the course the year before,

02:25:25.620 | borrowed her notes and omitted those and taught the course.

02:25:30.620 | But, and it was the best course I ever taught

02:25:33.320 | because I was not relying on anything

02:25:38.260 | that I would then repeat in, you know, in any absolute,

02:25:41.100 | I was totally there for each lecture.

02:25:44.140 | What do you think it is about hard events

02:25:49.180 | that are life-changing that anchor our mindfulness?

02:25:54.180 | No, no, I don't think that they necessarily are.

02:25:57.600 | I think that, you know, if something happens,

02:26:02.060 | you know, you should take advantage of it

02:26:05.860 | and learn something from it.

02:26:07.860 | And, you know, so there's data, not from my lab or yours,

02:26:11.880 | but that people who have heart attacks

02:26:15.260 | and you live through a heart attack or a stroke,

02:26:17.620 | all of a sudden you realize, gee,

02:26:19.580 | this is not going to go on forever.

02:26:21.820 | I've got to start living.

02:26:24.580 | And it's a shame.

02:26:26.220 | I mean, I think most people are sealed in unlived lives

02:26:29.820 | and, you know, that you need a heart attack to wake you up

02:26:34.820 | or somebody else's death, you know.

02:26:37.640 | My postdoc advisor, well, all three of my advisors died,

02:26:42.620 | suicide, cancer, cancer.

02:26:44.900 | So the joke is you don't want me to work for you,

02:26:47.060 | but in all seriousness, and I was very, very close

02:26:50.340 | with the middle one, but the last one as well.

02:26:53.580 | And he died of pancreatic cancer, as it were.

02:26:57.740 | And we did multiple feshthrifts for him,

02:27:01.460 | celebrations of life, right?

02:27:02.740 | You know, there's like in academia,

02:27:03.820 | they can't get enough feshthrifts and this, you know.

02:27:06.180 | And I'll never forget Ben getting up

02:27:08.220 | the celebration of life

02:27:10.900 | in front of all the big ups at Stanford

02:27:12.980 | and all these people and editors flew in.

02:27:14.860 | I mean, they were like over 200 people there,

02:27:16.620 | president of Stanford was there.

02:27:18.220 | And he said, you know,

02:27:19.060 | if I had known that I was going to be so celebrated

02:27:23.340 | and that people were going to be so kind to me,

02:27:24.900 | I would have died a lot earlier, you know.

02:27:27.880 | That was the first thing he said.

02:27:29.080 | And the second thing he said is,

02:27:30.680 | you know, if I could do it over again,

02:27:34.640 | you know, one of these, if I could do it over again things,

02:27:37.040 | he said, I would have never agreed to review so many papers,

02:27:42.040 | review so many grants,

02:27:43.920 | and I would have eaten a lot more sushi

02:27:46.280 | and a lot more ice cream.

02:27:48.220 | And that was it.

02:27:49.120 | He had a good relationship with death.

02:27:51.600 | I interviewed him for hours, even before I had a podcast.

02:27:54.880 | - Yeah, I don't think people,

02:27:56.560 | when people are afraid of death,

02:27:58.800 | I don't think it's really death that they're afraid of.

02:28:01.240 | They're afraid of pain.

02:28:03.480 | And that, you know, and having no control at that moment.

02:28:07.760 | The old people I know, studying this for so long,

02:28:10.880 | I know lots of very old people.

02:28:14.960 | None of them seem to be afraid of death.

02:28:17.040 | In fact, I ended my counterclockwise book

02:28:19.660 | with a conversation I was having

02:28:21.920 | with a friend who was 90 something.

02:28:25.080 | And she said, you know, Ellen, I'm not afraid of dying,

02:28:28.440 | but living is such fun.

02:28:30.620 | And I think that that's the way most of us should be.

02:28:33.880 | But there's something I wanted to say

02:28:36.240 | that we touched on before,

02:28:38.480 | and I don't think, it's not really relevant now,

02:28:41.200 | but you'll find a way to,

02:28:42.400 | I'll find a way to make it relevant,

02:28:44.160 | about spontaneous remissions.

02:28:46.360 | You know, I said that with my mother,

02:28:50.400 | there was a spontaneous remission,

02:28:52.000 | and the medical world can't study spontaneous remissions,

02:28:56.320 | or doesn't study, so they seem infrequent.

02:28:59.760 | And I think, you know, that,

02:29:03.020 | how frequent does something have to be

02:29:06.560 | to give people a sense of hope that it's possible?

02:29:10.800 | You know, I don't think it has to be an everyday occurrence.

02:29:13.840 | Of course, the more frequent it is, the more likely,

02:29:16.300 | and then, you know.

02:29:18.360 | But when I think about spontaneous remissions,

02:29:21.360 | and I personally think that they're much more common

02:29:25.240 | than the medical world is likely to believe.

02:29:29.240 | You know, once you're in a hospital,

02:29:31.400 | life is very different from the way

02:29:34.320 | your health is once you're out of the hospital.

02:29:38.140 | I don't mean that you're sick in one case

02:29:39.760 | and not sick in the other,

02:29:41.380 | but the attention that's given to it,

02:29:43.920 | the degree to which things become self-fulfilling prophecies,

02:29:48.640 | you know, I think that if you believe

02:29:51.920 | that cancer is a killer,

02:29:53.320 | which is what people used to believe,

02:29:55.920 | then I think there are many ways

02:29:58.300 | that the cancer becomes a death sentence.

02:30:02.400 | You know, that the body learns to,

02:30:06.160 | well, you don't, even in a very mundane way,

02:30:09.520 | if you think you're going to die,

02:30:10.840 | you don't do those things that keep you alive.

02:30:14.400 | You know, you're not gonna go out and get exercise,

02:30:16.440 | for example, if you thought that was good for you.

02:30:18.720 | I mean, I'm gonna die anyway.

02:30:20.440 | The will to live is a very interesting thing.

02:30:23.600 | These super agers, the people that fall into that category.

02:30:26.520 | I hate that.

02:30:28.200 | No, I'm serious.

02:30:29.480 | Super memorizers, super tasters.

02:30:31.840 | As soon as we make a group of people, the super group,

02:30:35.120 | that says that whatever they're able to do

02:30:38.120 | is not available to everybody else,

02:30:40.340 | and I don't think that there's any evidence for that.

02:30:43.120 | Yeah, well, I align with you on that stance.

02:30:44.960 | I mean, I use the name only

02:30:47.480 | 'cause they're sometimes referenced as such,

02:30:49.760 | but a focus of the podcast recently has been to emphasize

02:30:53.360 | that in that group and others,

02:30:55.760 | there's a brain area that's available to everybody

02:30:59.060 | 'cause everybody has it,

02:31:00.080 | which is this anterior mid-cingulate cortex,

02:31:02.040 | which is activated when people embrace new forms

02:31:04.560 | of learning and challenges,

02:31:05.840 | and it does seem to correlate

02:31:07.400 | with maintaining cognitive function into later age,

02:31:10.500 | and it's roped into, excuse me,

02:31:13.400 | neurally it is roped into,

02:31:14.600 | it's linked up with the dopamine reward circuitry

02:31:17.200 | and other circuitries in a way that ties it somewhat

02:31:20.260 | to this notion of the will to live

02:31:21.960 | being related to the embracing new learnings

02:31:26.560 | or at least new challenges.

02:31:27.680 | You know that there was a story way back when,

02:31:32.280 | so there's this mental facility

02:31:36.600 | and people are on what's,

02:31:40.680 | their vernacular called the hopeless ward,

02:31:43.680 | and then they wanted to renovate the ward

02:31:45.960 | so they move all of the people.

02:31:47.720 | So you're in the hopeless ward,

02:31:49.000 | now you're in a hopeful without it being called that.

02:31:52.200 | Then the renovation is finished

02:31:54.320 | and people are returned to their old rooms

02:31:56.680 | and many unexpected deaths occurred.

02:31:59.400 | - This makes me wonder why we have names for hospitals,

02:32:02.660 | like Hospital for Sick Children.

02:32:04.560 | - Yeah.

02:32:05.400 | - I've always been bothered by that title.

02:32:06.880 | Sorry for anyone that's been treated there

02:32:09.280 | and had a great experience

02:32:10.200 | 'cause I imagine it's a great hospital, but-

02:32:12.160 | - Did you read "The Mindful Body"?

02:32:13.920 | I talk about a mindful hospital,

02:32:15.860 | which would be different from the ground up.

02:32:19.200 | And I'm now trying to,

02:32:21.080 | in Mexico,

02:32:24.100 | Canada,

02:32:26.700 | in the States, Minnesota,

02:32:31.160 | trying to put up at least,

02:32:32.860 | start with a mindful emergency ward

02:32:35.440 | and then become a whole mindful hospital.

02:32:37.920 | - Why don't they call it-

02:32:38.760 | - It should be very different.

02:32:39.880 | I mean, for the reasons that I'm presuming

02:32:41.800 | you're getting that.

02:32:42.640 | But, you know, do you know anybody

02:32:44.760 | who's ever walked through a hospital door

02:32:47.360 | that isn't stressed?

02:32:49.360 | I mean, no.

02:32:50.200 | - No, only walking out.

02:32:51.560 | (laughing)

02:32:52.380 | - Yeah, no.

02:32:53.220 | But, and I believe that stress is by far the major killer.

02:32:57.520 | It's a very extreme position, Andrew.

02:32:59.520 | I believe, I was gonna do this work

02:33:01.200 | with people in China before COVID.

02:33:03.320 | We take, let's say a few hundred people

02:33:05.400 | who are just diagnosed with cancer,

02:33:07.920 | vary the cancer.

02:33:09.920 | And we find out how stressed they are.

02:33:12.440 | And nobody's gonna be happy being told they have cancer.

02:33:15.840 | So we give them a little while.

02:33:17.000 | It's given them three weeks to adjust to it.

02:33:19.760 | Then we measure their stress level every three, four weeks.

02:33:23.480 | I believe the stress level will predict

02:33:27.460 | the course of the disease over and above

02:33:30.400 | nutrition, genetics, and treatment.

02:33:33.760 | And stress is psychological,

02:33:37.200 | which takes me back to how all of this

02:33:39.720 | can be controlled by our minds.

02:33:43.120 | But anyway, so you go to a hospital,

02:33:44.600 | the first thing you are is stressed.

02:33:46.880 | You have the people working in the hospital

02:33:49.760 | who, especially during COVID,

02:33:51.600 | but it was always the case,

02:33:53.160 | suffer an enormous amount of burnout.

02:33:55.280 | Well, what is burnout?

02:33:56.940 | You don't get burnout if you're mindful.

02:33:59.440 | You know, if I'm seeing you every day

02:34:01.620 | and I'm presuming you're the same Andrew I've seen before,

02:34:05.240 | your symptoms are basically the same.

02:34:06.920 | I was, how are you, Andrew?

02:34:08.400 | I take your temperature.

02:34:09.720 | Everything is pretty much the same.

02:34:11.720 | It can be exhausting because I'm not getting anything.

02:34:15.360 | If on the other hand,

02:34:16.720 | I'm noticing all the new things about you,

02:34:19.080 | then I'm being fed and my neurons are firing

02:34:23.480 | and I'm not going to burn out.

02:34:25.480 | Then we have lots of simple things.

02:34:27.080 | So when I was talking to Atul one day,

02:34:28.880 | he did some wonderful work on checklists.

02:34:31.480 | And, you know, in surgery, for instance,

02:34:34.080 | if they have a checklist,

02:34:35.320 | there are many fewer errors that are made.

02:34:38.040 | But he had just, you know,

02:34:40.280 | sent the last draft to the publisher.

02:34:42.400 | So he wasn't going to be able to change it.

02:34:44.480 | I said, we need a mindful checklist.

02:34:46.600 | What is a mindful checklist?

02:34:47.840 | And you remember when we used to travel

02:34:50.800 | and you come back to the States

02:34:52.240 | and you had to fill out these forms

02:34:53.760 | and you're bringing any livestock.

02:34:55.560 | Now, do you have any fruits and vegetables?

02:34:57.640 | You answer three of these

02:34:58.760 | and you don't answer any of the other.

02:35:00.040 | You just know it's no, no, no, all the way down the list.

02:35:02.400 | So a checklist, and even the checklist in aviation,

02:35:06.960 | you know, the pilot, co-pilot flaps up,

02:35:11.160 | throttle open, anti-ice off, it becomes mindless.

02:35:18.200 | So remember the plane that was going from,

02:35:22.080 | the Air Florida flight,

02:35:23.240 | going from Florida to Washington DC.

02:35:26.920 | So that's one warm climate to another warm climate.

02:35:30.320 | And they got flaps up, throttle open, anti-ice off,

02:35:34.520 | but there was a snow in DC, an unusual event.

02:35:38.920 | The plane crashed because the de-icer was turned off

02:35:41.800 | and people were killed.

02:35:43.680 | And the point of it is that a checklist,

02:35:47.240 | well, better than no checklist,

02:35:49.080 | there's a better than better way.

02:35:50.840 | And we talk a lot about that in "The Mindful Body,"

02:35:54.080 | that the checklist needs to be a mindful checklist.

02:35:57.480 | So not, is Andrew in bed?

02:36:00.800 | Yes.

02:36:01.640 | What position is Andrew in, in the bed?

02:36:04.520 | You know, not, does Andrew have two eyes?

02:36:07.880 | But, you know, how much liquid can you see?

02:36:11.160 | So not yes, no, going beyond yes, no.

02:36:13.800 | Where you can only answer the question

02:36:16.000 | if you're actually looking at the person.

02:36:18.120 | So then you're noticing.

02:36:19.320 | Now, the wonderful thing about that is,

02:36:21.360 | if I'm noticing you and being mindful about aspects of you,

02:36:25.960 | you feel noticed.

02:36:27.640 | And that's the way you feel cared for.

02:36:29.760 | And then the relationship grows.

02:36:32.080 | It keeps coming back to powers of observation,

02:36:37.080 | asking questions, depth, as opposed to speed.

02:36:42.080 | Yeah.

02:36:42.920 | These seem to be the kind of basic contour.

02:36:45.800 | Yes, but it all follows from recognizing you don't know.

02:36:49.760 | So how do we get people to actually look

02:36:52.560 | for the changes in people?

02:36:55.080 | When I was talking about attention to symptom variability,

02:36:58.200 | and I said before,

02:36:59.040 | imagine you're with somebody who is,

02:37:02.920 | you think they're losing it, they're forgetting.

02:37:05.840 | Now, if you think they're forgetting,

02:37:08.680 | you become intolerant every time they forget something,

02:37:11.400 | because you forgot that it's not willful.

02:37:13.720 | They really just don't remember, number one.

02:37:15.640 | Number two, the only time you're paying attention

02:37:18.520 | is when they're forgetting.

02:37:19.560 | So you've not attended to all the times they're remembering.

02:37:23.760 | So the problem seems worse.

02:37:27.200 | But if you were, in fact, attending

02:37:30.000 | to when are they misremembering,

02:37:33.360 | what are the circumstances, and you catch it early,

02:37:36.560 | you see that the person doesn't forget everything.

02:37:39.480 | They forget, I don't know,

02:37:42.080 | questions about restaurants, for example.

02:37:45.040 | Well, then, you know, probably they don't care.

02:37:47.560 | I'm gonna be happy.

02:37:48.640 | I'm an eater.

02:37:49.480 | I'm gonna be happy wherever we go.

02:37:51.360 | And so, unless we're going to someplace

02:37:53.840 | that's phenomenally expensive,

02:37:55.760 | or we have to travel a great, you know,

02:37:57.920 | whether we went to restaurant A, B, or C,

02:38:00.240 | I might not remember.

02:38:01.840 | For you, since you're very discerning,

02:38:04.360 | you're gonna know you had a wonderful meal here

02:38:06.920 | and a horrible meal in the other three places.

02:38:09.440 | So for you, it matters.

02:38:10.840 | The point is, when somebody doesn't know,

02:38:13.240 | why don't they know?

02:38:15.040 | And if you immediately assume it's because of dementia,

02:38:19.160 | you have a catch-all and are missing all of the subtleties

02:38:22.760 | that, in fact, would lead to different diagnoses.

02:38:25.400 | And so, if the, this, you know,

02:38:28.080 | the same thing in the nurse or doctor

02:38:31.880 | attending to the patient,

02:38:33.480 | if they're attending to the changes

02:38:35.320 | and asking themselves why,

02:38:37.240 | the smaller changes and the things that are not changing.

02:38:41.400 | Now, I had a student many years ago who had MS,

02:38:46.320 | and when somebody would ask her how she is, she's great.

02:38:49.320 | You know, and then one person then said,

02:38:51.920 | but how could you be gracious?

02:38:53.400 | My arms work, my head is working, you know,

02:38:55.600 | and went through all the parts of her

02:38:57.520 | that are not suffering, you know.

02:39:00.560 | So you can always attend to what's wrong.

02:39:02.920 | You can't attend to everything.

02:39:04.480 | You know, playing tennis,

02:39:05.720 | you could attend to the wonderful shots you made,

02:39:08.000 | you can attend to the faults, you know,

02:39:11.880 | and that's gonna lead to very different states, right?

02:39:15.200 | If I attend to every time I hit that ball in a way

02:39:18.640 | I didn't think I could hit it,

02:39:19.600 | I'm gonna learn something from it

02:39:20.920 | and be motivated to try it again.

02:39:23.040 | If I attend to every time I screwed up,

02:39:25.760 | I'm gonna, you know, be embarrassed,

02:39:27.520 | I'm gonna be afraid to expand and experience new things.

02:39:32.520 | - I feel like-

02:39:36.320 | - I've just combined 12 different areas.

02:39:38.240 | - Yeah, and masterfully, and masterfully.

02:39:40.480 | Yeah, masterfully, and what I realized

02:39:42.960 | is that we're always to some extent in choice, as they say.

02:39:47.120 | And I think to some people that will feel freeing,

02:39:50.360 | like, you know, I'm always in choice.

02:39:52.480 | I can, my house burned down.

02:39:54.880 | Well, you know, who knows what newness

02:39:56.800 | that will bring, these kinds of things.

02:39:58.960 | But to some people-

02:40:00.440 | - Only if they believe that there's a right answer.

02:40:04.520 | If you don't believe there's a right answer,

02:40:07.160 | if you believe there's a right answer,

02:40:08.320 | you want someone to give me that answer.

02:40:09.960 | Which surgery should I have?

02:40:11.480 | Oh my God, I'm supposed to have a house, the house burned.

02:40:13.800 | You know, life is over.

02:40:15.680 | But if you realize that any experience

02:40:19.080 | is only experience through you and provides opportunities.

02:40:24.080 | - I can certainly adopt that.

02:40:28.000 | I also can feel the parts of me that I assume

02:40:30.880 | are what other people experience as well,

02:40:33.640 | which is that when one has so many degrees of freedom

02:40:38.040 | over how to respond, that itself can feel

02:40:41.320 | a bit overwhelming. - No, of course.

02:40:42.840 | So when Eric Fromm wrote "Escape from Freedom,"

02:40:45.960 | it was that same idea that you can be paralyzed

02:40:50.080 | by so many choices.

02:40:51.440 | But I think that's wrong.

02:40:53.200 | I think you're only paralyzed by the choices

02:40:55.920 | if implicitly you believe there's a right

02:40:58.320 | and a wrong choice.

02:40:59.880 | And when you recognize that they're all equal,

02:41:02.520 | it just doesn't matter.

02:41:04.320 | It's easy to choose them.

02:41:06.400 | - So it's choose your own adventure.

02:41:07.960 | - Exactly, yeah.

02:41:09.480 | And that, or make whatever you're doing an adventure.

02:41:12.080 | And if I can't be near the one I love,

02:41:13.720 | I should love the one I'm near.

02:41:15.880 | - I mean, at one time that was considered okay.

02:41:18.480 | Nowadays, well, nowadays there are a couple of things

02:41:20.520 | that are more complicated, I would argue.

02:41:23.560 | One, earlier you mentioned coddling of people

02:41:27.600 | that are, you know, aged, elderly.

02:41:31.200 | - I hate that word now that I'm 77.

02:41:33.400 | - Well, you are, no one would guess that you're 77.

02:41:37.920 | And yeah, your vitality is undeniable.

02:41:41.200 | This notion of coddling, you know,

02:41:43.280 | Jonathan Haidt wrote "The Coddling of the American Mind,"

02:41:46.680 | "Anxious Generation."

02:41:48.040 | I have to wonder what it's like for kids growing up nowadays

02:41:50.920 | and teenagers constantly being told about this disorder

02:41:54.000 | and that disorder and the idea that, you know,

02:41:57.680 | if you meet five out of 10 of the, you know,

02:42:00.360 | menu of criteria that you are,

02:42:03.120 | you might even be this thing.

02:42:04.520 | You are blank as opposed to just having blank

02:42:07.120 | or struggling with blank.

02:42:07.960 | - Everything is, yeah.

02:42:09.000 | - Yeah, and we certainly over prescribe medication

02:42:13.480 | in this country, certainly compared to other countries.

02:42:16.640 | You know, the vast amount of antidepressant

02:42:18.760 | and anti-anxiety medication is consumed in the United States

02:42:21.760 | and certainly those medications can be valuable for people,

02:42:25.920 | I would argue, but they are over prescribed,

02:42:29.800 | I would also argue.

02:42:30.920 | So my question is, if one grows up being told

02:42:35.000 | that they are fragile, that there's threat everywhere

02:42:38.880 | or even that there's threat everywhere on social media,

02:42:41.000 | let's just like push into that dent a little bit too,

02:42:44.920 | because that's Jonathan's idea.

02:42:48.140 | You know, sitting here talking to you,

02:42:51.360 | that now has me thinking, well, maybe my 18 year old niece

02:42:56.360 | is perfectly capable of navigating this online landscape

02:43:00.840 | and it's just me who's not capable of it.

02:43:02.800 | And so I'm gonna decide that she's struggling,

02:43:05.840 | but maybe kids aren't getting enough physical activity,

02:43:07.800 | one could argue, but on the basis of data,

02:43:10.600 | but do you see where I'm going here?

02:43:11.760 | When one can kind of pivot to different lenses

02:43:14.480 | to look at something through,

02:43:16.480 | it increases the number of options.

02:43:19.200 | But then at some point we have to decide,

02:43:20.400 | are we coddling our kids too much

02:43:22.200 | or are we not coddling them too much?

02:43:25.560 | - It reminds me of an argument back,

02:43:28.520 | I guess when I was your age.

02:43:30.520 | And the question was violence on TV

02:43:35.160 | and were kids being exposed to this violence,

02:43:37.960 | becoming more violent.

02:43:39.480 | And I never quite understood it

02:43:41.640 | because if you were my child

02:43:45.000 | and we were sitting there watching this violence,

02:43:47.800 | I go, oh, and you would see my reaction to it was negative.

02:43:51.880 | And you'd learn not to engage in that

02:43:55.720 | or to recognize the effects on other people.

02:44:00.320 | What I'm saying is that rather than the medium

02:44:04.360 | being the message, the medium...

02:44:09.360 | People say to me, is technology good?

02:44:12.000 | Technology isn't anything, the tools.

02:44:14.240 | And if they're used mindfully, they're good.

02:44:16.720 | If they're used mindlessly, they're not good.

02:44:19.800 | And so I think it's silly.

02:44:24.640 | There's data showing that kids who are college kids,

02:44:30.400 | for example, who use a lot of social media

02:44:33.240 | have lower self-esteem and all of this.

02:44:35.520 | And I present this to them and I say, this is silly.

02:44:39.040 | You're not now gonna get off Facebook

02:44:41.720 | because of these data, but let's look at it.

02:44:43.880 | You're Harvard students for God's sakes.

02:44:46.720 | Why is it that you're only gonna post the picture

02:44:49.800 | where you look the prettiest?

02:44:51.400 | Have the nerve to turn it around.

02:44:55.640 | Hey, would you believe what I look like last night?

02:44:59.360 | When you're having that bad hair day

02:45:01.760 | or something didn't go well.

02:45:03.200 | Just have the guts to do that.

02:45:05.080 | So it's not the social media.

02:45:07.240 | It's the lying that, or the mistaken assumption

02:45:12.200 | when you see all of the successes,

02:45:16.200 | that that's the more general truth.

02:45:18.880 | Everybody but you is having these successes.

02:45:21.540 | - Yeah, certainly social media gives it a literal score

02:45:27.860 | for followers and likes and things of that sort.

02:45:30.400 | So it's thumbs up, thumbs down.

02:45:32.440 | I mean, literally scoring performance

02:45:35.120 | in terms of what other people think.

02:45:36.680 | It's certainly training those circuits very robustly,

02:45:40.320 | whereas-

02:45:41.160 | - But if people learn the three levels

02:45:42.720 | that I was explaining before,

02:45:45.800 | then you'd see that what looks like is not very good,

02:45:49.520 | in fact, may be quite something.

02:45:51.960 | You know, you have people who are poor

02:45:55.740 | and they can't spend a lot of money on their appearance.

02:46:00.080 | And then you have everybody else

02:46:01.280 | is spending a lot of money on their appearance.

02:46:03.360 | They'd have some of these very, very rich people who,

02:46:06.600 | yeah, I had this editor for Mindfulness, wonderful woman.

02:46:11.600 | She has recently died.

02:46:15.840 | And the first time we went out,

02:46:19.440 | this is when I was young and it was wonderful

02:46:22.520 | how they're gonna send me all these free books

02:46:25.000 | and they take me out all the time

02:46:26.360 | to get me to publish with this company

02:46:27.980 | as opposed to that company.

02:46:29.760 | And I'll never forget this.

02:46:31.200 | We go for this meal and she looked poor.

02:46:35.720 | So I didn't eat anything.

02:46:38.440 | I chose the cheapest thing on the menu

02:46:40.880 | because I knew she was paying.

02:46:42.200 | And I found out she was one of the richest people

02:46:44.120 | in New England, you know.

02:46:46.360 | So that's the level three where you have so much,

02:46:49.080 | you hide it and, you know.

02:46:50.760 | - Well, this is interesting because, you know,

02:46:52.440 | when I was growing up,

02:46:53.720 | unless people had money to purchase things,

02:46:55.640 | they would drive older cars and things like that.

02:46:58.840 | With credit, that changed.

02:47:00.360 | - Yeah.

02:47:01.520 | - And I have friends who like to wear

02:47:04.780 | very, very fancy watches.

02:47:06.440 | I also have friends who have far more money than them

02:47:09.760 | and choose to wear no watch.

02:47:12.200 | So it's getting harder to discern,

02:47:15.280 | except at the extremes, of course.

02:47:17.240 | It's getting harder to discern who has what

02:47:19.320 | and maybe that's a good thing.

02:47:21.200 | Again, at the extremes, it's obvious, you know,

02:47:23.520 | the homeless issue in Los Angeles

02:47:26.440 | and everywhere in California is so troubling

02:47:29.320 | and so sad what's happening.

02:47:32.120 | But setting that aside,

02:47:34.760 | I think nowadays we have less information

02:47:37.400 | about people's values, even just by looking at them.

02:47:39.960 | When I was growing up,

02:47:40.800 | if somebody wore a particular t-shirt

02:47:42.240 | with a particular band,

02:47:43.240 | you kind of knew if you were part of the same group.

02:47:45.040 | All of that's gone now, it's all leveled.

02:47:47.200 | - Yeah, but people could be asked at any stage,

02:47:50.840 | why is somebody dressed this way?

02:47:53.720 | Why is somebody doing what they're doing?

02:47:55.760 | And when asked now, you're only given a single answer.

02:47:59.840 | When you're given multiple answers,

02:48:01.700 | you see the three levels.

02:48:03.080 | You know, they're doing it for this wonderful reason,

02:48:05.520 | for this awful reason, it has this meaning, that meaning,

02:48:08.520 | and that's what you want, things to be obscured.

02:48:10.720 | You don't want to be pigeonholed

02:48:13.200 | because if you think you know what I'm going to say

02:48:17.400 | because of this belief of who I am,

02:48:19.360 | you're not going to listen to me.

02:48:21.000 | And then we're not going to have a conversation

02:48:22.680 | that's going to be interesting, and that's a waste.

02:48:26.440 | - I know that you're not a fan of particular activities

02:48:30.480 | as a way to increase longevity,

02:48:32.320 | or particular activities as a way to increase mindfulness,

02:48:34.920 | but could we say that having somewhat of a mindset

02:48:39.200 | of playfulness with ideas and one's environment

02:48:43.000 | could potentiate longevity?

02:48:45.720 | - So I have these lyrics in the books.

02:48:48.400 | A friend of mine, Zoe Lewis, wonderful entertainer,

02:48:51.120 | and she sings a song that I just love,

02:48:52.760 | "You're Never Too Old to Be Young."

02:48:54.600 | And sure, I think that one should be playful to be playful.

02:49:00.600 | Now, a side effect of that is I think

02:49:04.160 | you'll be happier and healthier,

02:49:05.960 | and if you're happier and healthier,

02:49:07.160 | I think you'll live longer.

02:49:08.840 | But the reason to do it, the problem with most people now

02:49:12.100 | is that everything they're doing is for some other reason.

02:49:15.360 | I'm taking this medication so that eventually.

02:49:18.600 | I'm going to the gym so that eventually.

02:49:21.340 | I think who knows what's going to happen eventually.

02:49:25.840 | - I feel lucky that I enjoy exercise and always have,

02:49:28.600 | but if I didn't, I don't know what that would be.

02:49:31.520 | - Oh, how do you get yourself, yeah.

02:49:32.360 | I don't like exercise, that's exercise.

02:49:35.120 | I mean, I'm sorry, I was telling somebody this story

02:49:37.520 | actually just yesterday.

02:49:40.000 | So I was visiting friends many, many years ago

02:49:43.200 | in Vero Beach, and they said in the morning,

02:49:45.520 | "Let's go to Captain Jack's."

02:49:46.900 | I'm thinking, Captain Jack's is going to be breakfast,

02:49:49.080 | and I'm thinking, I'm going to have a big breakfast.

02:49:51.200 | Why not?

02:49:52.040 | I'm going to take a long walk to get there,

02:49:53.440 | and I'm very excited.

02:49:55.120 | So we get down to the beach,

02:49:55.960 | and we're walking to Captain Jack's,

02:49:57.520 | and then there's this stick in the sand

02:50:00.800 | that says on it, "Captain Jack's."

02:50:03.000 | All it is was the endpoint to our walk, you know?

02:50:07.240 | Well, for me, if I had known the walk was just for the walk,

02:50:12.160 | I probably would have enjoyed it much less.

02:50:15.280 | You know, that if I'm in Paris and shopping,

02:50:18.720 | or window shopping, I walk 10 miles a day

02:50:22.160 | and enjoy myself thoroughly.

02:50:23.800 | But if you said, "Let's go for a walk of even five miles,"

02:50:27.000 | and it's just to walk, now, this is mindless.

02:50:29.800 | I'm not suggesting this is a good thing.

02:50:32.200 | But, you know, activities that are meant to be fun

02:50:36.940 | and that are easy to engage and are fun

02:50:41.840 | will be good for you.

02:50:43.240 | And if you see it as exercise,

02:50:45.040 | if you're doing it for some other reason,

02:50:48.080 | it's a shame because even the exercise for exercise sake,

02:50:51.880 | I won't do it if it isn't fun.

02:50:55.220 | I don't know if that's a privileged position.

02:50:57.720 | But now, that's not that, you know,

02:51:01.600 | I say I won't do it if it isn't fun.

02:51:03.440 | I think that this is something that I do well

02:51:06.400 | is to make almost anything be fun.

02:51:09.840 | - Well, that's a great skill.

02:51:10.920 | I was talking to my mom last night

02:51:12.960 | and she was saying, "Not much is happening here."

02:51:16.200 | And I kept saying, "No, tell me, what are you guys up to?

02:51:18.680 | It'd been a while."

02:51:19.500 | And she said, "Well, I don't have this big exciting life."

02:51:22.440 | And I said, "What's going on?"

02:51:24.800 | And she said, "Okay, well, if you really wanna know,

02:51:27.560 | there's this new plant weed that's growing in the garden."

02:51:30.880 | And she started explaining to me

02:51:32.240 | this really interesting weed

02:51:33.680 | that has these little yellow flowers.

02:51:35.020 | And my mom loves gardening.

02:51:36.400 | And so she delights in gardening

02:51:38.040 | and I was delighting in her delight.

02:51:39.560 | And when she was done, I said-

02:51:41.180 | - Well, that's something.

02:51:42.020 | - That's actually the kind of thing

02:51:42.840 | I'd love to talk about, you know, and hear more about,

02:51:45.680 | because I also know my own experience.

02:51:48.000 | So I didn't need to talk about, like,

02:51:49.400 | what's going on on the podcast

02:51:50.560 | or what's going on in my daily life

02:51:52.320 | or the incredible breeds of dogs

02:51:54.480 | that I'm considering getting, maybe all of them,

02:51:56.880 | because I was interested in what was going on in her garden.

02:52:00.440 | And so what was trivial to her

02:52:01.840 | was actually interesting to me

02:52:02.960 | and it represented a really good bridge

02:52:05.880 | to a number of things.

02:52:07.360 | I have to say that we were talking earlier

02:52:11.280 | about how one frames past, present, and future.

02:52:15.480 | I don't know if we were talking about it in that way,

02:52:17.640 | but in thinking about age, longevity, and what's possible,

02:52:22.640 | the word that came to mind

02:52:24.280 | that I'd like to just pressure test a little bit

02:52:27.280 | is nostalgia.

02:52:29.320 | And I have this feeling, and I hope I'm wrong,

02:52:31.720 | 'cause I've been wrong about most things today

02:52:33.120 | in a way that I've been learning from,

02:52:36.240 | that nostalgia can be, perhaps,

02:52:39.280 | kind of a dangerous line of thinking,

02:52:40.840 | this idea that things used to be great,

02:52:43.540 | but now they're not.

02:52:44.380 | - Why can't they be like we were?

02:52:46.800 | - And I thought to myself,

02:52:47.640 | what a terrible sense or emotion.

02:52:50.980 | And it led me to some practical questions,

02:52:54.040 | like, should we go to high school reunions?

02:52:56.200 | And I thought, well, no, if all we're gonna do

02:52:58.800 | is embrace nostalgia,

02:53:02.240 | yes, if it makes us feel like we're 19 again.

02:53:04.640 | - Yes, exactly.

02:53:06.000 | - This kind of thing.

02:53:06.840 | And here you can substitute reunions with,

02:53:09.240 | should I look at photo albums?

02:53:11.120 | Like, I don't know how I feel about photos from the past.

02:53:13.600 | I used to collect them and cherish them.

02:53:16.720 | And now, sometimes when I look at them,

02:53:18.760 | it just makes me long for something.

02:53:20.820 | And I'm trying,

02:53:21.660 | I think I need to learn how to pivot through that.

02:53:23.160 | So what are your thoughts on nostalgia

02:53:24.920 | and just notions of how we think about our past in general?

02:53:28.820 | - I don't think they're very different

02:53:30.280 | from what you've already covered.

02:53:32.400 | In that fire, I lost all the photos.

02:53:35.120 | And it didn't occur to me

02:53:37.360 | that I had lost all of them for years,

02:53:39.660 | because I didn't look at them.

02:53:41.720 | - Sorry, I couldn't help but laugh at a lot of that,

02:53:44.120 | so that's very true, yeah.

02:53:45.440 | - I think, you know, when I was young,

02:53:48.800 | some of my friends were keeping a diary.

02:53:52.980 | And I never kept a diary.

02:53:56.120 | And so then my feeling was,

02:53:58.480 | I'd rather just be living than recording.

02:54:02.080 | But it depends on how you record it.

02:54:04.860 | If you're reliving it while you're recording it,

02:54:07.440 | then you're living, it's the same thing.

02:54:09.520 | You know, one activity is really no better than another

02:54:12.600 | if you're doing it mindfully.

02:54:14.240 | Now, this is hard for people to accept.

02:54:15.920 | And if I say to you that if you're cleaning a toilet,

02:54:20.040 | that the distinctions you're drawing are no better or worse

02:54:23.240 | than if you're trying to come up

02:54:25.920 | with a theory of relativity,

02:54:27.880 | or understand Einstein's theory of relativity.

02:54:31.000 | A distinction is a distinction is a distinction.

02:54:34.680 | And so that's why these little things that you're noticing,

02:54:39.000 | your mother's weed, is no less important,

02:54:42.480 | although she thought you might see it as less important,

02:54:45.240 | than you're having just interviewed somebody

02:54:50.120 | that she thought was phenomenal.

02:54:52.160 | Once you notice, you notice,

02:54:55.080 | and that's the whole ballgame,

02:54:56.160 | and there's always something to notice.

02:54:58.080 | And if you're noticing it without the stress overlay

02:55:02.940 | that some people add to their lives,

02:55:05.480 | which I can't understand,

02:55:06.880 | it's no different from a game.

02:55:09.360 | You know, I use this example,

02:55:12.020 | and I think that my students must think I'm crazy.

02:55:15.180 | So if I believe that,

02:55:18.220 | I should come up with a different example.

02:55:20.480 | But you're flossing your teeth.

02:55:23.920 | Now, you can floss your teeth mindlessly,

02:55:27.600 | in which case you resent being there.

02:55:29.680 | You're spending the time

02:55:30.760 | because you're thinking that it's good for you,

02:55:33.500 | but you'd rather be doing something else.

02:55:35.960 | You're not there, you're flossing,

02:55:40.040 | but your mind is thinking about

02:55:42.120 | a party you're going to go to, for example.

02:55:45.960 | To me, make it fun, it's so easy.

02:55:49.600 | I mean, you play little games,

02:55:51.240 | like can I predict how much junk

02:55:52.800 | is going to come out as a, you know,

02:55:54.360 | and which teeth, which part, you know.

02:55:56.700 | Everything can be made into a game.

02:56:00.420 | I had this, you can maybe figure out

02:56:03.520 | how to bring this product to market,

02:56:05.320 | but it was called, I have so many of these,

02:56:09.120 | it's called WeGo,

02:56:10.320 | a way of training your child to use the toilet.

02:56:13.200 | And so it's not very hard.

02:56:15.920 | We'd sell, you could sell them,

02:56:18.240 | these little vials of chemicals

02:56:20.040 | that when you add it a few drops to urine,

02:56:23.040 | it changes color.

02:56:24.440 | But so each of these vials will change the color

02:56:27.500 | to a different color.

02:56:28.340 | - I think adults would buy that.

02:56:29.600 | - Yeah, and the kid is, you know,

02:56:31.020 | has to guess either to the parent or just for themselves,

02:56:34.600 | you know, is this going to be yellow, green, blue?

02:56:36.920 | You know what?

02:56:37.760 | It becomes fun.

02:56:38.580 | - Gamifying things is one of the great pleasures

02:56:43.640 | of parenting.

02:56:44.480 | - Yeah.

02:56:45.320 | - You know, and earlier you were talking about

02:56:46.960 | what do your grandkids call you?

02:56:50.840 | - Cosmic leader.

02:56:51.840 | - Cosmic leader.

02:56:53.040 | Like you can play these games with them that,

02:56:57.040 | and then they reach their adolescent and teen years

02:56:59.800 | and then they claim they don't like those games.

02:57:02.440 | But as a former child and then teen,

02:57:05.920 | now I delight in some of the games

02:57:07.600 | that my parents played with me when I was little

02:57:10.020 | because it brings me back to the notions of imagination.

02:57:14.200 | - Yeah, no, I think that one of the worst things

02:57:19.200 | that the world teaches us is that we have work

02:57:24.240 | and we have play, as if these are two distinct categories.

02:57:28.120 | In fact, I think if you were to ask somebody

02:57:30.320 | just one question to determine how mindful they are,

02:57:34.200 | it might be, how much do you need a vacation?

02:57:37.340 | - I mean, I've never taken one.

02:57:40.320 | - No, you know, but need and want are two different things.

02:57:43.120 | And if I really need a vacation,

02:57:44.680 | that means my working is being done mindlessly.

02:57:49.280 | And that's a shame.

02:57:51.080 | You know, if you can't find a way to do it

02:57:53.560 | so you enjoy it, go someplace else.

02:57:55.800 | It's not worth the price you're paying.

02:57:57.760 | - And for people that say, well, that's a luxury.

02:58:01.400 | I need to work in order to survive

02:58:03.760 | and feed my family, et cetera.

02:58:05.920 | How does one reconcile that?

02:58:07.980 | - Well, then learn how to make it fun.

02:58:09.880 | You know, that anything can be made fun.

02:58:14.480 | Just, you make it a game.

02:58:15.920 | You try to figure out, guess what's going to happen.

02:58:18.680 | See, can you do it differently from the last time?

02:58:21.720 | Can you do it with your eyes closed?

02:58:23.960 | I mean, you know, it's fun.

02:58:26.240 | You know, get down on, not related to your work,

02:58:29.400 | but you get down on all fours

02:58:31.200 | and see the world that your cat or your dog sees.

02:58:33.940 | You know, close the lights

02:58:36.160 | and see what it's like being blind.

02:58:38.360 | Trying to get through the day without hearing.

02:58:41.680 | I wanted to do this thing 50 years ago,

02:58:44.960 | which was to create a building

02:58:48.760 | that simulated old age.

02:58:52.680 | And so if you took the 50-year-old

02:58:55.200 | and they spent even a short time in that building

02:58:59.120 | where it's colder than usual

02:59:01.380 | because there's less oxygen in your blood,

02:59:03.280 | your field of vision narrows,

02:59:05.720 | that they would expand each of their abilities

02:59:10.720 | at a time that it's easy.

02:59:11.920 | But the problem with that was a 50-year-old

02:59:14.080 | doesn't want to imagine being 80 years old.

02:59:17.440 | - You've done some beautiful studies

02:59:18.760 | on healing and time perception.

02:59:20.720 | Could you just describe that experiment?

02:59:22.600 | I love this paper.

02:59:23.520 | I love this experiment so much.

02:59:25.000 | - Peter Unglund, I did this when I was a graduate student.

02:59:28.360 | We inflict a wound.

02:59:30.040 | Now, it would have been more dramatic

02:59:32.820 | if we could really cut you up,

02:59:35.080 | but we're not sadists.

02:59:36.640 | And even if we were,

02:59:38.000 | the review committees wouldn't let us do it.

02:59:40.200 | So it's a minor wound, but it's still a wound.

02:59:43.280 | And we have people individually sitting in front of a clock,

02:59:47.160 | unbeknownst to them, for a third of the people,

02:59:49.840 | the clock is going twice as fast as real time.

02:59:53.040 | For another third of the people,

02:59:54.320 | it's going half as fast as real time.

02:59:56.560 | And for the last third, it's going real time.

02:59:59.480 | And the question is, most people would assume

03:00:02.600 | that wound's gonna heal.

03:00:04.200 | How that wound heals has nothing to do

03:00:06.480 | with the perception of time.

03:00:08.000 | But it turns out that it healed based on clock time.

03:00:12.300 | Now, when you add that to some of the things

03:00:14.560 | that we've already said,

03:00:16.640 | you end up with a very different picture.

03:00:18.800 | You broke your arm and you asked the doctor,

03:00:21.920 | how long is it going to take to heal?

03:00:23.980 | How does he know or she know?

03:00:26.240 | I mean, it's a ridiculous question.

03:00:27.720 | Lots of people have broken arms.

03:00:30.400 | Even if this were somebody who studied broken arms

03:00:34.540 | and he stopped studying yesterday,

03:00:36.760 | today there are new people with broken arms

03:00:39.080 | that might have different rates of healing.

03:00:41.680 | But people give an answer.

03:00:43.400 | And depending on the way the doctor gives that answer,

03:00:45.800 | I think is important.

03:00:47.040 | If the doctor says it's gonna take you,

03:00:48.720 | and I'm making this, I don't know how long it'll take,

03:00:50.720 | it's gonna take you a month.

03:00:52.440 | You organize yourself in such a way

03:00:54.760 | that it's going to take a month.

03:00:56.880 | But I think if the doctor instead,

03:00:59.240 | which is what I would recommend,

03:01:00.840 | said, we really don't know.

03:01:02.800 | Some people heal faster than others.

03:01:05.080 | The fastest healing time that I personally know of is,

03:01:08.980 | you know, let's say two weeks.

03:01:10.480 | You know, and if you can heal faster than that,

03:01:14.240 | then good for you, and if not, you know, it's fine also.

03:01:18.720 | Because there are advantages to not healing

03:01:20.840 | that people don't realize.

03:01:22.560 | You know, if you've broken your right arm

03:01:25.600 | and it's taking a long time to heal,

03:01:27.320 | that means you're using your left arm.

03:01:29.520 | And if you're using your left arm,

03:01:31.160 | you're exercising the right side of your brain,

03:01:34.500 | which is going to be good for many tasks.

03:01:38.220 | I don't know how we ended up right-handed or left-handed.

03:01:42.800 | Are you ambidextrous?

03:01:44.040 | I'm right-handed.

03:01:45.100 | I'll occasionally go into hook righty, but I'm a righty.

03:01:50.520 | My dad was naturally left-handed.

03:01:52.240 | They forced him to be right-handed.

03:01:53.560 | Oh, interesting, 'cause I'm sort of ambidextrous,

03:01:56.120 | mostly right-handed.

03:01:57.220 | But people don't realize that if you're using

03:02:00.360 | your right hand, it's controlled by the left part

03:02:03.200 | of your brain, your left hand, the right part of your brain.

03:02:06.120 | And wouldn't it be nice to exercise both parts of our brain?

03:02:09.640 | And so we're doing research where we get people.

03:02:12.800 | This is really interesting, because it's not just using.

03:02:16.520 | So this work was begun, gosh, I can't tell you

03:02:19.600 | how many years ago, and for one reason or another,

03:02:21.760 | never got finished.

03:02:23.140 | Initially, it was just getting people

03:02:25.320 | to use their right or the left hand.

03:02:28.220 | Now it's more sophisticated, where it's using your left hand

03:02:32.880 | with an awareness that you're using it or not.

03:02:35.800 | And I think that the effect on the brain

03:02:39.920 | will only obtain if you're aware.

03:02:43.360 | - Oh, this fits so beautifully.

03:02:45.040 | I don't wanna spend too much time on this,

03:02:47.720 | and you're probably aware of these experiments,

03:02:49.240 | but just for sake of our listeners,

03:02:50.960 | you probably know that your colleagues at Harvard,

03:02:55.120 | David Huel and Torsten Wiesel, won the Nobel Prize

03:02:57.680 | for brain plasticity, critical periods of vision, et cetera.

03:03:01.080 | And they had this sort of doctrine

03:03:02.760 | that they stated in the '80s, and it lasted until the,

03:03:07.040 | gosh, until the early and mid-2000s,

03:03:09.240 | that there was no significant brain plasticity

03:03:13.040 | in adult humans, that it literally shut down.

03:03:15.880 | Mike Merzenich and a guy named Greg Reckinzone at UCSF

03:03:18.640 | did these beautiful studies.

03:03:19.840 | I'll try and describe this really quickly,

03:03:22.120 | where they would have their subjects pay attention

03:03:25.080 | to little bumps on a rotating drum

03:03:29.640 | of different coarseness or fineness.

03:03:32.000 | And then there was a tone playing in the room.

03:03:34.200 | And if they were told to discriminate

03:03:36.560 | when the bumps were changed from coarse

03:03:39.520 | to just slightly less coarse or more coarse,

03:03:41.920 | the subject would signal, "Okay, that happened."

03:03:45.200 | And then over time,

03:03:46.280 | the area of the brain responsible for touch in adults

03:03:50.240 | expanded the map of that.

03:03:52.400 | So adult plasticity was very interesting, however,

03:03:55.360 | is if they did the exact same thing,

03:03:58.000 | but they were told to attend to slight changes

03:04:00.320 | in the frequency of the tone,

03:04:02.120 | it didn't matter what they were doing with their fingers.

03:04:04.640 | The auditory cortex changed

03:04:06.280 | and the somatosensory, the touch map, didn't.

03:04:09.080 | And so it's proof positive

03:04:10.520 | that it's not just a behavior in adulthood,

03:04:12.480 | but the combination of behavior and awareness

03:04:14.760 | of the shift in perception that drives adult plasticity.

03:04:19.600 | And I find those studies to be,

03:04:21.240 | well, first of all, they aren't discussed enough,

03:04:24.200 | that that feature isn't discussed enough.

03:04:25.880 | And second of all, it basically says

03:04:27.800 | that awareness is the gate to brain change.

03:04:31.880 | And I think that fits perfectly

03:04:33.400 | with everything that you've been talking about.

03:04:35.880 | I don't see how it could be otherwise actually.

03:04:38.360 | But to go back to the doctor telling you

03:04:41.520 | how long it's going to heal,

03:04:43.160 | it tends to be now a self-fulfilling prophecy.

03:04:45.820 | So given that doctors have this influence over us,

03:04:49.240 | they need to be more responsible

03:04:51.180 | in the information they're given.

03:04:53.240 | And we can't know how long it's going to take to heal.

03:04:56.440 | People today are different from people 20 years ago.

03:05:00.220 | They ate different things.

03:05:01.360 | The activities were different.

03:05:02.640 | The air was different and so on.

03:05:04.920 | And so from where are these norms derived?

03:05:07.880 | In fact, whenever I speak to anybody,

03:05:09.840 | I get lots of calls from people

03:05:11.400 | who are given these dread diagnoses.

03:05:13.800 | And the first thing I tell them is,

03:05:17.280 | it takes so long to do these studies.

03:05:20.640 | And then it takes forever to analyze the data.

03:05:24.600 | And then it takes another forever to publish it.

03:05:27.440 | And then eventually when you're going to hear about it,

03:05:30.320 | it's already old news.

03:05:32.180 | So the information you're reading now

03:05:36.240 | was true for people who lived 10 years ago.

03:05:40.680 | 10 years is a lot.

03:05:42.080 | There's a lot of things happening.

03:05:44.200 | And always with the intention of getting people

03:05:48.080 | to be less absolute in their understanding of any of this,

03:05:53.080 | so that they can imagine all sorts of possibilities.

03:05:56.840 | But even the thing that I just said a moment before,

03:06:00.040 | that it's important for people to realize

03:06:03.520 | the advantage in using their left hand

03:06:07.360 | if they're right-handed,

03:06:08.320 | or their right hand if they're left-handed.

03:06:10.600 | And then at the same time,

03:06:12.600 | recognizing that when they break a leg,

03:06:17.400 | when somebody breaks a leg,

03:06:19.560 | that forces you to do everything differently.

03:06:23.420 | And if you attend to that, that can be a wonderful thing.

03:06:27.440 | I don't know how I got to see these things.

03:06:30.480 | It's very strange to me when I think

03:06:32.000 | of what things have influenced me.

03:06:33.840 | I don't know how old I was, Andrea,

03:06:36.640 | but I'm watching this thing on television,

03:06:39.040 | and there's this woman who has no arms,

03:06:42.040 | who's got a knife between her toes,

03:06:44.440 | who's slicing a tomato.

03:06:46.280 | And it's a lot of years.

03:06:50.520 | I've seen and done a lot of things,

03:06:52.480 | but for me to remember that.

03:06:54.560 | And that even when we're taught to do something,

03:06:59.040 | we're taught a single way.

03:07:01.040 | It's so much more fun to be taught multiple ways.

03:07:04.380 | I mean, when I hurt my right arm,

03:07:06.480 | I'm playing tennis poorly,

03:07:08.280 | but I'm still playing with my left hand.

03:07:11.020 | - We have such a deficit model of life.

03:07:14.400 | - Yes, yes.

03:07:15.240 | - And this also fits with the Kahneman stuff, right?

03:07:17.200 | That people work much harder to avoid a loss

03:07:19.600 | than they will for a gain.

03:07:21.180 | And it seems to be--

03:07:22.720 | - Well, see, now that's interesting,

03:07:24.160 | because when I go to teach that,

03:07:27.000 | I have so much trouble keeping track of what's the loss

03:07:30.120 | and what's the gain,

03:07:31.160 | because I don't see the world that way.

03:07:33.320 | - You've transcended the typical notion of loss.

03:07:36.520 | - Whether I've transcended or not,

03:07:38.240 | I just think differently.

03:07:40.320 | But everybody accepts that.

03:07:42.280 | And to see the gain in the so-called loss,

03:07:45.920 | or the loss in the so-called gain,

03:07:50.300 | you just end up with a very different world.

03:07:52.620 | - Well, I'm not as involved in that aspect,

03:07:56.540 | certainly others as well as you are,

03:07:58.440 | but when I started my lab,

03:08:00.580 | I used to teach my students something,

03:08:03.020 | which was, okay, we're gonna get a lot more rejections

03:08:05.380 | and have to do a lot more revisions

03:08:06.740 | than we are going to get acceptances on papers and grants.

03:08:10.240 | So the best thing that you can do,

03:08:11.660 | which is what I had to do for myself,

03:08:13.340 | one of the best things you might consider

03:08:14.940 | would have been a gentler way to say it,

03:08:16.580 | but I say one of the best things you can do,

03:08:18.060 | 'cause that's the way I talk sometimes,

03:08:19.380 | is to create a long arc of positive feedback loops

03:08:24.380 | when something good happens,

03:08:30.580 | but that when something negative happens,

03:08:32.760 | let yourself feel it acutely and then move on fast.

03:08:36.000 | And like, so if I were to plot this,

03:08:37.260 | it would basically be like an accepted paper

03:08:39.700 | will delight me and motivate me

03:08:41.580 | for many, many months, if not years,

03:08:43.780 | but a rejection or a tough revision,

03:08:46.660 | where we're looking at another year or two of experiments,

03:08:49.780 | I'd allow myself maybe a day and a half

03:08:52.060 | of just being utterly crushed and then right back to it.

03:08:55.860 | - Yeah, but another way,

03:08:57.180 | when I say put people back in the equation,

03:08:59.700 | that's what you need to teach them,

03:09:01.700 | which is the responses you're getting,

03:09:04.380 | these reviews are not from a bunch of sages in the sky.

03:09:08.260 | - Certainly not, certainly not.

03:09:09.740 | - They're just a group of people,

03:09:11.380 | a group of people with different biases and so on.

03:09:15.300 | And it doesn't mean you were wrong.

03:09:19.500 | - Yeah, and reviews,

03:09:20.340 | and I learned from my postdoc advisor, and I love this,

03:09:23.260 | is he used to say, "Reviews always make papers better."

03:09:27.480 | Even if you hate them, they always make papers better,

03:09:29.540 | they never make papers worse.

03:09:30.620 | Sometimes they make papers a little bit harder to track

03:09:32.880 | because like there's this weird figure put in

03:09:34.580 | just to satisfy a reviewer, kind of like, what is this?

03:09:37.140 | But everyone eventually realized

03:09:38.980 | what that figure is about anyway.

03:09:41.580 | And so I adopted the idea that reviews, red ink,

03:09:45.540 | critical feedback are just ways of getting better,

03:09:48.480 | which has also been essential in the podcasting sphere,

03:09:50.620 | 'cause if I've ever gotten anything wrong,

03:09:52.640 | believe me, I hear about it in the comments,

03:09:54.220 | and sometimes it can be embarrassing,

03:09:55.540 | but you just look at it as an opportunity

03:09:57.480 | to address your humanness and move forward,

03:10:00.020 | correct it and move forward.

03:10:01.320 | But I think a lot of people try and maintain

03:10:03.860 | this air of perfection,

03:10:05.220 | like there's some sort of Fabergé egg,

03:10:07.320 | that instead of living life like a work of art

03:10:09.420 | where it has dimples and cracks and acne and all the rest,

03:10:13.420 | and it's human,

03:10:14.440 | I think a lot of people want to present themselves

03:10:17.900 | to the world like a Fabergé egg,

03:10:19.580 | like that's just absolutely flawless.

03:10:21.420 | - But the problem with that is going out the next day.

03:10:24.120 | You can be that Fabergé egg on day one,

03:10:27.860 | but now you've got to maintain that.

03:10:29.640 | I mean, the first paper that I published

03:10:32.260 | came back without a comment, without a comment,

03:10:36.260 | not a correction, not a typo.

03:10:38.380 | - What a dangerous thing to have.

03:10:39.620 | - Exactly, it was awful.

03:10:40.740 | - Yeah, that was not my experience.

03:10:42.380 | - Well, it set me up for expectations.

03:10:45.180 | What do you mean when you, for the next one?

03:10:47.540 | But I think also that it's,

03:10:51.620 | once you recognize that this is an opinion

03:10:56.620 | rather than a statement of fact,

03:10:59.180 | and then when you,

03:11:01.860 | what I tell my students is that when you get a comment,

03:11:05.700 | it doesn't mean that the comment is right.

03:11:09.220 | It means that whatever you wrote wasn't appreciated

03:11:13.340 | in the way you wanted it to be appreciated.

03:11:15.540 | And they're guessing at,

03:11:17.300 | well, if you did it this way rather than that way.

03:11:19.740 | Papers that are not accepted today

03:11:23.180 | may be accepted tomorrow, the same paper.

03:11:25.980 | I mean, I can't tell you how many times people say can't be,

03:11:30.060 | and then it becomes the standard.

03:11:33.980 | - You mean in terms of a field and what's acceptable?

03:11:36.540 | - Yeah.

03:11:37.940 | - Yeah, things have certainly changed.

03:11:39.380 | And look, you've done a tremendous amount

03:11:40.940 | to pioneer that change.

03:11:42.220 | I mean, it's not one study or 10 study or 20 studies.

03:11:45.980 | I mean, there's now a catalog

03:11:47.360 | of incredibly groundbreaking work that you've,

03:11:49.660 | I don't know if you used intentionally

03:11:52.540 | or you're just following your interests,

03:11:54.180 | but that have transformed the way that we think about

03:11:56.580 | the mind and its role in our physiology and so on.

03:12:00.140 | I was hoping to get your reflections on something

03:12:03.060 | that I sometimes say that's probably wrong,

03:12:05.940 | but that is helpful to me because,

03:12:07.660 | and hopefully to other people too,

03:12:09.620 | because it, I think,

03:12:11.060 | captures some of the circuit dynamics

03:12:13.300 | related to reward and reinforcement.

03:12:15.060 | And it sometimes resurfaces on the internet

03:12:17.740 | that addiction, among other things,

03:12:20.460 | is a progressive narrowing of the things

03:12:22.340 | that bring someone pleasure.

03:12:24.460 | And I used to attach to that statement,

03:12:26.780 | enlightenment, if there is such a thing,

03:12:29.220 | is a progressive broadening of the things

03:12:31.180 | that bring us pleasure.

03:12:32.140 | And one thing that struck me throughout today's conversation

03:12:35.340 | is that it seems like you're able to look at

03:12:38.580 | pretty much anything through a bunch of different facets,

03:12:42.280 | take on other points of view,

03:12:44.100 | so strong theory of mind,

03:12:46.220 | while holding onto your own perceptions, right?

03:12:49.420 | Right, you're not drifting off from yourself,

03:12:51.980 | you're remaining, you know, of self,

03:12:55.660 | but taking on other perspectives

03:12:57.780 | and that flexibility of thinking and that expansiveness,

03:13:01.940 | like looking at things as good, bad,

03:13:03.580 | maybe, I don't know, I don't know what's true

03:13:05.900 | or what could be true

03:13:06.740 | and really challenging preconceived notions,

03:13:08.940 | seems very powerful.

03:13:12.380 | Do you believe in enlightenment?

03:13:13.820 | And was the description I just gave

03:13:15.580 | anything like the way you envisioned it?

03:13:18.100 | - No, I'm very flattered.

03:13:19.340 | You know, I think that when you're walking around

03:13:23.500 | and you don't see and all of a sudden you see,

03:13:25.620 | you can say that you're enlightened.

03:13:30.260 | I guess in a not so grandiose way

03:13:35.260 | that that simple thing that I keep saying,

03:13:41.620 | recognizing that behavior makes sense,

03:13:44.820 | leads you to such a different view of people.

03:13:47.860 | You don't have people who are good and bad,

03:13:50.140 | people who are addicted and not addicted.

03:13:52.500 | You don't have A students and failing students,

03:13:58.300 | everything just organizes itself differently

03:14:01.340 | and you come to appreciate the individual talents

03:14:04.960 | that people have.

03:14:06.260 | And when you can do that,

03:14:10.360 | I don't know if you wanna call the person enlightened,

03:14:12.660 | but life just is easier and nicer.

03:14:17.660 | You know, it's nicer to walk outside

03:14:22.600 | and be trusting of people

03:14:24.180 | and not to be afraid of this bastard

03:14:28.420 | or that one who's going to come and get you.

03:14:30.540 | I mean, I went to, with a friend,

03:14:32.860 | this was so many years ago,

03:14:34.580 | to an AA meeting to see what it was like.

03:14:37.660 | And I had left my pocketbook over here,

03:14:41.340 | wherever that is, which you can see.

03:14:43.340 | And we walked over here for whatever reason.

03:14:47.380 | And I said, "I left my pocketbook over there."

03:14:50.420 | And then I thought, you know, so what?

03:14:53.640 | If somebody takes it,

03:14:54.780 | they probably need it more than I do.

03:14:57.100 | And it was so freeing.

03:14:58.740 | You know, just not to care about all these things

03:15:03.100 | that somehow we're implicitly,

03:15:05.060 | sometimes explicitly taught to care about

03:15:08.060 | and always evaluating ourselves.

03:15:10.560 | You know, that little song,

03:15:14.500 | feeling that let me sing.

03:15:16.620 | I enjoy singing.

03:15:17.580 | I can't carry a tune, so what?

03:15:20.840 | Why should somebody make me feel bad about singing?

03:15:24.840 | And maybe I'll become a better singer.

03:15:27.180 | Or maybe I'll sing in some way that'll teach somebody,

03:15:30.320 | you know, some new trick

03:15:31.600 | that they hadn't thought about before

03:15:33.840 | because of my inadequacy.

03:15:36.680 | Why are people evaluating themselves at every moment

03:15:41.320 | rather than feeling good about the things

03:15:43.860 | they know that they can do?

03:15:44.960 | And who decides what's important to be able to do?

03:15:49.080 | I don't know how to most articulately share it,

03:15:52.820 | but it's just a very different life.

03:15:55.740 | You know, a life where you don't,

03:15:58.220 | I just don't believe that stress is necessary.

03:16:02.160 | I don't believe that there's anybody in this world

03:16:05.740 | that's better than I am.

03:16:07.500 | But I also don't believe I'm better than anybody else.

03:16:10.900 | It's very different.

03:16:12.300 | Where everything, especially among, you know,

03:16:14.820 | those of us who are academics,

03:16:16.740 | where every minute you're given a grade,

03:16:18.900 | and even, you know, the number of papers you got accepted,

03:16:22.000 | you know, determines your pecking order and so on.

03:16:25.200 | It's all so silly, you know,

03:16:27.440 | and then you have the money people,

03:16:29.520 | and I have $20 billion, you know,

03:16:32.120 | so I'm better off than people.

03:16:34.120 | I'm a better person than people have $10 billion.

03:16:36.620 | It's sad to me when, in fact,

03:16:40.480 | I think all of it is engaged

03:16:43.240 | in order to feel good about yourself.

03:16:45.840 | That's all.

03:16:46.960 | You know, why do I need that money?

03:16:48.480 | Why do I need those A's?

03:16:50.120 | Why do I need those successes?

03:16:52.160 | So that I'll like myself.

03:16:55.000 | Just like yourself.

03:16:56.600 | Recognize that you're likable.

03:16:59.020 | Why not?

03:16:59.860 | That may seem simple-minded,

03:17:03.080 | but it's gotten me to wherever I am.

03:17:06.440 | - It has indeed,

03:17:07.380 | and it's helped a tremendous number of people,

03:17:09.960 | both in the form of scientific findings,

03:17:13.000 | which are then shared with people through books

03:17:17.440 | and through podcasts,

03:17:19.160 | and I'm just so grateful that you came here today

03:17:21.840 | to share with us.

03:17:23.080 | This is really, as vast as it's been,

03:17:26.120 | you know, just a subset of the discoveries that you've made.

03:17:31.000 | So, you know, a couple of things.

03:17:33.560 | First of all, thank you for coming here today.

03:17:36.640 | - It's been my pleasure.

03:17:37.600 | - I've thoroughly enjoyed this,

03:17:39.560 | and I love, love, love your work,

03:17:41.720 | and it's caused me to think differently about things,

03:17:44.840 | and today's discussion is going to make me,

03:17:46.600 | and I know so many other people,

03:17:47.880 | think differently about everything.

03:17:50.160 | I mean, very few discussions that I'll hold

03:17:52.760 | will make me rethink my thinking about everything.

03:17:57.280 | This one certainly will.

03:17:58.540 | And also for continuing to do the work that you're doing.

03:18:03.040 | I mean, it's clear that you embody

03:18:05.760 | and live the discoveries that you make,

03:18:08.360 | and it's not just an academic pursuit

03:18:11.200 | that then, you know,

03:18:12.040 | allows you to collect all the,

03:18:14.120 | appropriately collect all the amazing awards and titles,

03:18:18.280 | but that it really serves and that you live it.

03:18:20.800 | So thank you for that as well.

03:18:22.640 | And then two more questions, very briefly.

03:18:25.960 | The first one is, would you--

03:18:27.680 | - It doesn't matter how long the question is,

03:18:29.560 | it's the answer that matters, right?

03:18:31.080 | So you asked me the brief question for a long answer.

03:18:33.240 | - The floor is yours,

03:18:34.120 | but would you consider coming back again

03:18:37.360 | to share with us some additional findings

03:18:39.400 | is the second to last question.

03:18:40.720 | And then I'm just thinking that maybe the last question

03:18:43.680 | is so that it sticks in people's minds,

03:18:47.360 | would you be willing to share the song?

03:18:49.420 | - (laughs)

03:18:51.960 | Oh, Andrew, all right.

03:18:53.680 | Yes, I'm going to sing this.

03:18:54.880 | Now you have to remember, though,

03:18:56.800 | that I'm singing this because I think singing is fun

03:19:01.400 | and it shouldn't matter how good a voice you have.

03:19:04.160 | Okay, so here we go.

03:19:05.720 | This is to the old Sara Lee commercial.

03:19:09.960 | And everybody doesn't like something,

03:19:11.560 | but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee.

03:19:14.000 | ♪ Everybody doesn't know something ♪

03:19:16.280 | ♪ But everyone knows something else ♪

03:19:19.100 | ♪ Everyone can't do something ♪

03:19:21.500 | ♪ But everyone can do something else ♪

03:19:23.960 | So what have I lost by singing that?

03:19:26.280 | I know I can't sing, now you know I can't sing,

03:19:29.440 | but do you think my not being able to sing

03:19:31.840 | means I can't write, think, or do whatever it is

03:19:36.800 | that I do better than singing?

03:19:38.880 | No, of course not.

03:19:40.880 | I love the song.

03:19:42.420 | And thanks for saying you'll come back again.

03:19:44.340 | Thank you so much.

03:19:45.400 | - Thanks for having me.

03:19:46.880 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

03:19:48.760 | with Dr. Ellen Langer.

03:19:50.280 | I hope you found it to be as fascinating as I did.

03:19:53.280 | To learn more about Dr. Langer's work,

03:19:55.080 | to find links to her books and workshops

03:19:56.920 | and other resources, please see the show note captions.

03:19:59.920 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

03:20:02.280 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

03:20:04.260 | That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us.

03:20:06.640 | In addition, please click follow for the podcast

03:20:09.080 | on both Spotify and Apple, and on both Spotify and Apple,

03:20:12.160 | you can leave us up to a five-star review.

03:20:14.500 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast

03:20:16.700 | or guests or topics you'd like me to consider

03:20:18.480 | for the Huberman Lab podcast,

03:20:20.120 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

03:20:22.560 | I do read all the comments.

03:20:24.480 | Please also check out the sponsors mentioned

03:20:26.220 | at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

03:20:28.400 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

03:20:30.840 | For those of you that haven't heard,

03:20:31.960 | I have a new book coming out.

03:20:33.160 | It's my very first book.

03:20:34.780 | It's entitled "Protocols,

03:20:36.160 | "An Operating Manual for the Human Body."

03:20:38.340 | This is a book that I've been working on

03:20:39.520 | for more than five years,

03:20:40.660 | and that's based on more than 30 years

03:20:43.000 | of research and experience.

03:20:44.560 | And it covers protocols for everything

03:20:46.360 | from sleep to exercise to stress control,

03:20:50.080 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

03:20:52.560 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

03:20:55.920 | for the protocols that are included.

03:20:58.000 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

03:21:01.880 | There you can find links to various vendors.

03:21:04.240 | You can pick the one that you like best.

03:21:06.040 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

03:21:07.720 | "An Operating Manual for the Human Body."

03:21:10.420 | If you're not already following me on social media,

03:21:12.480 | I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

03:21:15.600 | So that's InstagramX, formerly known as Twitter,

03:21:18.320 | Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads.

03:21:20.540 | And on all those platforms,

03:21:21.720 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

03:21:23.800 | some of which overlaps with the content

03:21:25.360 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

03:21:26.760 | but much of which is distinct from the content

03:21:28.800 | on the Huberman Lab podcast.

03:21:30.320 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

03:21:33.760 | And if you haven't already subscribed

03:21:35.080 | to our Neural Network newsletter,

03:21:36.680 | the Neural Network newsletter

03:21:37.960 | is a zero cost monthly newsletter

03:21:40.000 | that includes podcast summaries,

03:21:41.360 | as well as what we call protocols

03:21:43.160 | in the form of one to three page PDFs

03:21:45.440 | that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep,

03:21:47.720 | how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure.

03:21:50.520 | We have a foundational fitness protocol

03:21:52.280 | that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training.

03:21:55.360 | All of that is available completely zero cost.

03:21:57.840 | You simply go to hubermanlab.com,

03:21:59.560 | go to the menu tab in the top right corner,

03:22:01.440 | scroll down to newsletter and enter your email.

03:22:03.960 | And I should emphasize

03:22:04.800 | that we do not share your email with anybody.

03:22:07.380 | Thank you once again for joining me

03:22:08.680 | for today's discussion with Dr. Ellen Langer.

03:22:11.120 | And last, but certainly not least,

03:22:13.240 | thank you for your interest in science.

03:22:15.280 | (upbeat music)

03:22:17.860 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

Dr. Ellen Langer: Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity

Chapters