Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Lisa Feldman Barrett,
00:00:03 her second time on the podcast.
00:00:05 She’s a neuroscientist at Northeastern University
00:00:09 and one of my favorite people.
00:00:11 Her new book called Seven and a Half Lessons
00:00:13 about the Brain is out now as of a couple of days ago,
00:00:16 so you should definitely support Lisa by buying it
00:00:19 and sharing with friends if you like it.
00:00:21 It’s a great short intro to the human brain.
00:00:25 Quick mention of each sponsor,
00:00:27 followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
00:00:29 Athletic Greens, the all in one drink
00:00:32 that I start every day with
00:00:33 to cover all my nutritional bases.
00:00:36 Eight Sleep, a mattress that cools itself
00:00:39 and gives me yet another reason to enjoy sleep.
00:00:42 Masterclass, online courses that I enjoy
00:00:45 from some of the most amazing people in history.
00:00:48 And BetterHelp, online therapy with a licensed professional.
00:00:52 Please check out these sponsors in the description
00:00:55 to get a discount and to support this podcast.
00:00:58 As a side note, let me say that Lisa,
00:01:00 just like Manolis Calles,
00:01:02 is a local brilliant mind and friend
00:01:05 and someone I can see talking to many more times.
00:01:08 Sometimes it’s fun to talk to a scientist
00:01:10 not just about their field of expertise,
00:01:12 but also about random topics, even silly ones,
00:01:15 from love to music to philosophy.
00:01:19 Ultimately, it’s about having fun,
00:01:21 something I know nothing about.
00:01:23 This conversation is certainly that.
00:01:25 It may not always work, but it’s worth a shot.
00:01:28 I think it’s valuable to alternate
00:01:31 along all kinds of dimensions,
00:01:32 like between deeper technical discussions
00:01:35 and more fun random discussion,
00:01:37 from liberal thinker to conservative thinker,
00:01:40 from musician to athlete, from CEO to junior engineer,
00:01:45 from friend to stranger.
00:01:48 Variety makes life and conversation more interesting.
00:01:51 Let’s see where this little podcast journey goes.
00:01:54 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
00:01:57 review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
00:01:59 follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon,
00:02:02 or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
00:02:05 And now, here’s my conversation with Lisa Feldman Barrett.
00:02:11 Based on the comments in our previous conversation,
00:02:13 I think a lot of people will be very disappointed,
00:02:17 I should say, to learn that you are in fact married.
00:02:20 As they say, all the good ones are taken.
00:02:22 Okay, so I’m a fan of your husband as well, Dan.
00:02:28 He’s a programmer and musician,
00:02:29 so a man after my own heart.
00:02:32 Can I ask a ridiculously over romanticized question
00:02:36 of when did you first fall in love with Dan?
00:02:40 It’s actually, it’s a really romantic story, I think.
00:02:45 So I was divorced by the time I was 26, 27, 26, I guess.
00:02:53 And I was in my first academic job,
00:02:54 which was Penn State University,
00:02:57 which is in the middle of Pennsylvania,
00:02:59 surrounded by mountains.
00:03:01 So you have, it’s four hours to get anywhere,
00:03:03 to get to Philadelphia, New York, Washington.
00:03:05 I mean, you’re basically stuck, you know.
00:03:09 And I was very fortunate to have
00:03:12 a lot of other assistant professors
00:03:14 who were hired at the same time as I was.
00:03:16 So there were a lot of us,
00:03:17 we were all friends, which was really fun.
00:03:20 But I was single and I didn’t wanna date a student.
00:03:24 And there were no,
00:03:27 and I wasn’t gonna date somebody in my department,
00:03:29 that’s just a recipe for disaster.
00:03:33 So even at 20, whatever you were,
00:03:35 you were already wise enough to know that.
00:03:37 Yeah, a little bit, maybe, yeah.
00:03:39 I wouldn’t call me wise at that age.
00:03:41 But anyways, not sure that I would say that I’m wise now,
00:03:44 but.
00:03:46 And so after,
00:03:50 I was spending probably 16 hours a day in the lab
00:03:53 because it was my first year as an assistant professor
00:03:57 and there’s a lot to do.
00:03:58 And I was also bitching and moaning to my friends
00:04:02 that I hadn’t had sex in I don’t know how many months
00:04:06 and I was starting to become unhappy with my life.
00:04:10 And I think at a certain point,
00:04:13 they just got tired of listening to me bitch and moan
00:04:15 and said, just do something about it then,
00:04:18 like if you’re unhappy.
00:04:20 And so the first thing I did was I made friends
00:04:23 with a sushi chef in town.
00:04:25 And this is like a State College, Pennsylvania
00:04:28 in the early 90s was there was like a pizza shop
00:04:32 and a sub shop and actually a very good bagel shop
00:04:36 and one good coffee shop and maybe one nice restaurant.
00:04:39 I mean, there was really,
00:04:40 but there was the second son of a Japanese sushi chef
00:04:44 who was not going to inherit the restaurant.
00:04:47 And so he moved to Pennsylvania and was giving sushi lessons.
00:04:51 So I met this guy, the sushi chef
00:04:54 and we decided to throw a sushi party at the coffee shop.
00:04:57 So we basically, it was the goal was to invite
00:04:59 every eligible bachelor really within like a 20 mile radius.
00:05:05 We had a totally fun time.
00:05:07 I wore an awesome crushed velvet burgundy dress,
00:05:11 it was beautiful dress.
00:05:14 And I didn’t meet any, I met a lot of new friends,
00:05:16 but I did not meet anybody.
00:05:17 So then I thought, okay, well,
00:05:18 maybe I’ll try the Personals ads,
00:05:20 which I had never used before in my life.
00:05:23 And I first tried the paper Personals ads.
00:05:29 Like in the newspaper?
00:05:30 Like in the newspaper, that didn’t work.
00:05:33 And then a friend of mine said,
00:05:33 oh, you know, there’s this thing called Net News.
00:05:36 So we’re going, this is like 1992 maybe.
00:05:40 So there was this anonymous, you could do it anonymously.
00:05:43 So you would read, you could post or you could read ads
00:05:49 and then respond to an address which was anonymous
00:05:54 and that was yoked to somebody’s real address.
00:05:57 And there was always a lag
00:06:01 because it was this like a bulletin board sort of thing.
00:06:04 So at first I read them over
00:06:08 and I decided to respond to one or two.
00:06:12 And, you know, it was interesting.
00:06:15 Sorry, this is not on the internet.
00:06:16 Yeah, this is totally on the internet.
00:06:18 But it takes, there’s a delay of a couple of days
00:06:20 or whatever.
00:06:21 Yeah, right, right.
00:06:21 It’s 1992, there’s no web, web pictures.
00:06:25 There’s no pictures, the web doesn’t exist.
00:06:27 It’s all done in ASCII format sort of.
00:06:30 And, you know, but the ratio,
00:06:33 but the ratio of men to women was like 10 to one.
00:06:38 I mean, there were many more men
00:06:39 because it was basically academics and the government.
00:06:42 That was it.
00:06:44 I mean, I think AOL maybe was just starting
00:06:47 to become popular, but.
00:06:51 And so the first person I met told me that he was a scientist
00:06:56 who worked for NASA and, yeah.
00:07:03 Anyways, it turned out that he didn’t actually.
00:07:07 Yeah, this is how they brag is like you elevate your,
00:07:11 as opposed to saying you’re taller than you are,
00:07:12 you say like your position is higher.
00:07:14 Yeah, and I actually, I would have been fine
00:07:16 dating somebody who wasn’t a scientist.
00:07:18 It’s just that they have, it’s just that whoever I date
00:07:21 has to just accept that I am and that I was pretty ambitious
00:07:28 and was trying to make my career.
00:07:30 And, you know, that’s not, I think it’s maybe more common
00:07:34 now for men to maybe accept that in their female partners,
00:07:38 but at that time, not so common.
00:07:40 It could be intimidating, I guess.
00:07:41 Yes, that has been said.
00:07:44 And so then the next one I actually corresponded with,
00:07:49 and we actually got to the point of talking on the phone,
00:07:51 and we had this really kind of funny conversation
00:07:53 where, you know, we’re chatting and he said,
00:07:57 he introduces the idea that, you know,
00:08:00 he’s really looking for a dominant woman.
00:08:02 And I’m thinking, I’m a psychologist by training,
00:08:05 so I’m thinking, oh, he means sex roles.
00:08:07 Like, I’m like, no, I’m very assertive
00:08:08 and I’m glad you think that, you know, okay.
00:08:10 Anyways, long story short, that’s not really what he meant.
00:08:16 Okay, got it.
00:08:17 Yeah, so, and I just, you know,
00:08:20 that will just show you my level of naivete.
00:08:22 Like, I was like, I didn’t completely understand,
00:08:24 but I was like, well, yeah, you know, no.
00:08:27 At one point he asked me how I felt
00:08:29 about him wearing my lingerie, and I was like,
00:08:33 I don’t even share my lingerie with my sister.
00:08:35 Like, I don’t share my lingerie with anybody, you know?
00:08:39 No.
00:08:40 The third one I interacted with was a banker
00:08:45 who lived in Singapore, and that conversation
00:08:50 didn’t last very long because he made an analogy,
00:08:55 I guess he made an analogy between me
00:08:57 and a character in The Fountainhead,
00:09:03 the woman who’s raped in The Fountainhead,
00:09:06 and I was like, okay, that’s not.
00:09:08 That’s not a good.
00:09:09 That’s not a good, no, that’s not a good one.
00:09:11 Not that part, not that scene.
00:09:12 Not that scene.
00:09:13 So then I was like, okay, you know what?
00:09:16 I’m gonna post my own ad, and so I did.
00:09:18 I posted, well, first I wrote my ad,
00:09:20 and then I, of course, I checked it with my friends
00:09:22 who were all also assistant professors.
00:09:24 They were like my little Greek chorus,
00:09:26 and then I posted it, and I got something like,
00:09:30 I don’t know, 80 something responses in 24 hours.
00:09:34 I mean, it was very.
00:09:35 Do you remember the pitch?
00:09:37 Like how you, I guess, condensed yourself?
00:09:40 I don’t remember it exactly, although Dan has it,
00:09:44 but actually for our 20th wedding anniversary,
00:09:48 he took our exchanges, and he printed them off
00:09:51 and put them in a leather bound book for us to read,
00:09:54 which was really sweet.
00:09:57 Yeah, I think I was just really direct.
00:09:58 Like I’m almost 30.
00:10:00 I’m a scientist.
00:10:01 I’m not looking, I’m looking for something serious.
00:10:04 But the thing is, I forgot to say where my location was
00:10:08 and my age, which I forgot.
00:10:12 So I got lots of, I mean, I will say,
00:10:14 so I printed off all of the responses,
00:10:17 and I had all my friends over, and we had a big,
00:10:22 I made a big pot of gumbo,
00:10:24 and we drank through several bottles of wine
00:10:27 reading these responses.
00:10:28 And I would say for the most part, they were really sweet,
00:10:32 like earnest and genuine as much as you could tell
00:10:36 that somebody is being genuine.
00:10:37 I mean, it seemed, there were a couple of really funky ones,
00:10:40 like this one couple who told me
00:10:42 that I was their soulmate, the two of them,
00:10:44 when they were looking for a third person,
00:10:47 and I was like, oh, okay.
00:10:48 But mostly super, seemed like super genuine people.
00:10:53 And so I chose five men to start corresponding with,
00:10:57 and I was corresponding with them.
00:10:58 And then about a week later, I get this other email.
00:11:03 And okay, and then I post something the next day
00:11:05 that said, okay, thank you so much,
00:11:06 and I’m gonna, I answered every person back.
00:11:10 But then after that, I said, okay,
00:11:11 and I’m not gonna answer anymore,
00:11:13 because they were still coming in,
00:11:15 and I couldn’t, I have a job,
00:11:16 and a house to take care of and stuff.
00:11:18 So, and then about a week later, I get this other email.
00:11:22 And he says, he just describes himself,
00:11:27 like I’m this, I’m this, I’m this, I’m a chef,
00:11:30 I’m a scientist, I’m a this, I’m a this.
00:11:32 And so I emailed him back, and I said, you know,
00:11:36 you seem interesting, you can write me
00:11:38 at my actual address if you want, here’s my address.
00:11:40 I’m not really responding,
00:11:42 I’m not really responding to other people anymore,
00:11:43 but you seem interesting, you know,
00:11:45 you can write to me if you want.
00:11:46 And then he wrote to me, and I wrote him back,
00:11:52 and it was a nondescript kind of email,
00:11:54 and I wrote him back, and I said, thanks for responding.
00:11:56 You know, I’m really busy right now.
00:11:58 I was in the middle of writing
00:11:59 my first slate of grant applications,
00:12:02 so I was really consumed, and I said,
00:12:04 I’ll get back to you in a couple of days.
00:12:06 And so I did, I waited a couple days
00:12:09 till my grants were, you know, safe,
00:12:11 grant applications safely out the door.
00:12:13 And then I emailed him back, and then he emailed me,
00:12:16 and then really across two days, we sent 100 emails.
00:12:22 And text only, was there pictures or any of that stuff?
00:12:25 Text only, text only.
00:12:27 And then, so this was like a Thursday and a Friday,
00:12:30 and then Friday, he said,
00:12:33 let’s talk on the weekend on the phone.
00:12:35 And I said, okay.
00:12:37 And he wanted to talk Sunday night,
00:12:39 and I had a date Sunday night.
00:12:42 So I said, okay, sure, we can talk Sunday night.
00:12:48 And then I was like, well, you know,
00:12:49 I don’t really wanna cancel my date,
00:12:50 so I’m just gonna call him on Saturday.
00:12:52 So I just called, I cold called him on Saturday,
00:12:55 and a woman answered.
00:12:57 Oh, wow.
00:12:59 That’s not cool.
00:12:59 Not cool.
00:13:01 And so she says, you know, hello.
00:13:04 And I say, oh, you know, stand there.
00:13:06 And she said, sure, can I ask who’s calling?
00:13:09 And I said, tell him it’s Lisa.
00:13:11 And she went, oh my God, oh my God, I’m just a friend.
00:13:14 I’m just a friend.
00:13:15 I just need to tell you, I’m just a friend.
00:13:17 And I was like, this is adorable, right?
00:13:21 She doesn’t, and then he gets on the phone,
00:13:23 not hi, nice to meet you.
00:13:24 The first thing he says to me, she’s just a friend.
00:13:27 So I was just so charmed really by the whole thing.
00:13:32 So it was Yom Kippur.
00:13:34 It was the Jewish day of atonement that was ending
00:13:38 and they were baking cookies and going to a break fast.
00:13:40 So people, you know, as you know, fast all day,
00:13:42 and then they go to a party and they break fast.
00:13:44 So I thought, okay, I’ll just cancel my date.
00:13:49 So I did, and I stayed home and we talked for eight hours.
00:13:56 And then the next night for six hours.
00:13:58 And basically it just went on like that.
00:14:00 And then by the end of the week, he flew to stay college.
00:14:06 And, you know, we’d gone through this whole thing
00:14:08 where I’d said, we’re gonna take it slow.
00:14:10 We’re gonna get to know each other, you know.
00:14:12 And then really by, I think we talked like two or three times
00:14:16 these like really long conversations.
00:14:18 And then he said, I’m just gonna fly there.
00:14:20 And then, so of course there’s,
00:14:23 I don’t even know that there were fax machines
00:14:26 at that point.
00:14:27 Maybe there were, but I don’t think so.
00:14:31 Anyway, so he, we decided we’ll exchange pictures.
00:14:34 And so he, you know, I take my photograph
00:14:37 and I give it to my secretary.
00:14:39 And I say to my secretary.
00:14:41 Fax this.
00:14:42 I say that, send this priority mail.
00:14:45 Priority mail, yeah.
00:14:45 And he goes, okay, I’ll send a priority mail.
00:14:47 And I’m like, it’s a priority mail.
00:14:48 He’s like, I know, priority mail, okay.
00:14:50 And then, so I get Dan’s photograph in the mail.
00:14:55 And, you know, it’s him in shorts.
00:14:59 And you can see that he’s probably somewhere
00:15:01 like the Bahamas or something like that.
00:15:03 And it’s like cropped.
00:15:05 So clearly what he’s done is he’s taken a photograph
00:15:07 where, you know, he’s in it with someone else
00:15:10 who turned out to be his ex wife.
00:15:11 So I’m thinking, well, this is awesome.
00:15:14 You know, I’ve hit the jackpot.
00:15:15 He’s, you know, very appealing to me, very attractive.
00:15:18 And then, you know, my photograph doesn’t show up
00:15:23 and it doesn’t show up.
00:15:24 And, you know, so like one day and then two days
00:15:27 and then, you know, he’s like, you know, I said,
00:15:30 well, I asked my secretary to send a priority.
00:15:34 I mean, I don’t know, you know, what he did.
00:15:37 And he’s like, I said, I’m like, well, you don’t have to,
00:15:40 you know, you don’t have to come.
00:15:41 And he’s like, no, no, no, I’m gonna, you know,
00:15:43 we’ve had like five dates,
00:15:45 the equivalent of five dates practically.
00:15:48 And then, so he’s supposed to fly on a Thursday or Friday,
00:15:52 I can’t remember.
00:15:53 And I get a call like maybe an hour
00:15:56 before his flight’s supposed to leave.
00:15:58 And he says, hi.
00:15:59 And I say, and it’s just something in his voice, right?
00:16:00 And I say, cause at this point I think I’ve talked to him
00:16:03 like for 25 hours, I don’t know.
00:16:05 And he says, hi.
00:16:07 And I’m like, you got the picture.
00:16:09 And he’s like, yeah.
00:16:10 And I’m like, you don’t like it.
00:16:12 And he’s like, well,
00:16:17 I’m sure it’s not, I’m sure it’s your,
00:16:20 I’m sure it’s just not a good, you know,
00:16:21 it’s not, it’s probably not your best.
00:16:24 Oh no.
00:16:25 You know, you don’t, you don’t have to come.
00:16:28 And he’s like, no, no, no, I’m coming.
00:16:29 And I’m like, no, you don’t have to come.
00:16:30 And he’s like, no, no, I really wanna,
00:16:32 I’m, you know, I’m getting on the plane.
00:16:33 I’m like, you don’t have to get on the plane.
00:16:36 He’s like, no, I’m getting on the plane.
00:16:38 And so I go down to my, I go,
00:16:40 I’m in my office, this is happening, right?
00:16:42 So I go downstairs to one of my closest friends
00:16:44 who is still actually one of my closest friends,
00:16:48 who is one of my colleagues and Kevin.
00:16:51 And I say, Kevin, and I go to Kevin,
00:16:53 I go, Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, he doesn’t like the photograph.
00:16:55 And Kevin’s like, well, which photograph should you send?
00:16:57 And I’m like, well, you know the one
00:16:58 where we’re shooting pool?
00:16:59 And he’s like, you sent that photograph?
00:17:03 That’s a horrible photograph.
00:17:05 I’m like, yeah, but it’s the only one that I had
00:17:07 that was like, where my hair was kind of similar
00:17:09 to what it is now, and he’s like, Lisa,
00:17:13 like, do I have to check everything for you?
00:17:15 You should not have sent that, you know?
00:17:18 But still, he flew over.
00:17:20 So he flew. Where from, by the way?
00:17:22 He was in graduate school at Amherst,
00:17:25 yeah, at UMass Amherst.
00:17:27 So he flew and I picked him up at the airport
00:17:32 and he was happy, so whatever the concern was, was gone.
00:17:38 And I was dressed, you know, I carefully, carefully dressed.
00:17:43 Were you nervous?
00:17:44 I was really, really nervous.
00:17:46 Because I don’t really believe in fate
00:17:49 and I don’t really think there’s only one person
00:17:52 that you can be with.
00:17:54 But I think some people are curvy,
00:17:59 you know, people who, some people are curvy,
00:18:02 they’re kind of complicated,
00:18:04 and so the number of people who fit them
00:18:06 is maybe less than.
00:18:08 I like it, mathematically speaking, yeah.
00:18:10 And so when I was going to pick him up at the airport,
00:18:13 I was thinking, well, this could,
00:18:15 I could be going to pick up the person I’m gonna marry.
00:18:20 Or not.
00:18:21 I mean, like, I really, but I really, you know,
00:18:24 like, our conversations were just very authentic
00:18:27 and very moving and we really connected.
00:18:33 And I really felt like he understood me, actually,
00:18:38 in a way that a lot of people don’t.
00:18:41 And what was really nice was, at the time,
00:18:49 you know, the airport was this tiny little airport
00:18:53 out in a cornfield, basically.
00:18:54 And so driving back to the town,
00:18:58 we were in the car for 15 minutes,
00:19:00 completely in the dark, as I was driving.
00:19:02 And so it was very similar to,
00:19:04 we had just spent, you know, 20 something hours
00:19:07 on the telephone, sitting in the dark,
00:19:09 talking to each other.
00:19:11 So it was very familiar.
00:19:14 And we basically spent the whole weekend together
00:19:16 and he met all my friends and we had a big party.
00:19:19 And at the end of the weekend,
00:19:22 I said, okay, you know,
00:19:26 if we’re gonna give this a shot,
00:19:30 we probably shouldn’t see other people.
00:19:33 So it’s a risk, you know?
00:19:35 Commitment.
00:19:36 But I just didn’t see how it would work
00:19:40 if we were dating people locally
00:19:42 and then also seeing each other at a distance.
00:19:44 Because, you know, I’ve had long distance relationships
00:19:46 before and they’re hard and they take a lot of effort.
00:19:50 And so we decided we’d give it three months
00:19:51 and see what happened and that was it.
00:19:54 This is an interesting thing.
00:19:57 Like we’re all, what is it?
00:19:58 There’s several billion of us
00:20:00 and we’re kind of roaming this world
00:20:02 and then you kind of stick together.
00:20:04 You find somebody that just like gets you.
00:20:07 And it’s interesting to think about,
00:20:09 there’s probably thousands if not millions of people
00:20:12 that would be sticky to you,
00:20:14 depending on the curvature of your space.
00:20:17 But what is the, could you speak to the stickiness?
00:20:23 Like to the, just the falling in love?
00:20:25 Like seeing that somebody really gets you?
00:20:29 Maybe by way of telling, do you think,
00:20:35 do you remember there was a moment
00:20:36 when you just realized, damn it, I think I’m,
00:20:40 like I think this is the guy.
00:20:42 I think I’m in love.
00:20:44 We were having these conversations actually
00:20:46 from the, really from the second weekend we were together.
00:20:49 So he flew back the next weekend to State College
00:20:51 because it was my birthday.
00:20:52 It was my 30th birthday.
00:20:53 My friends were throwing me a party.
00:20:55 And we went hiking and we hiked up some mountain
00:20:58 and we were sitting on a cliff over this overlook
00:21:01 and talking to each other.
00:21:02 And I was thinking, and I actually said to him,
00:21:04 like I haven’t really known you very long,
00:21:06 but I feel like I’m falling in love with you,
00:21:08 which can’t possibly be happening.
00:21:10 I must be projecting, but it certainly feels that way.
00:21:14 Like I don’t believe in love at first sight.
00:21:16 So this can’t really be happening,
00:21:18 but it sort of feels like it is.
00:21:20 And he was like, I know what you mean.
00:21:21 And so for the first three months or four months,
00:21:24 we would say things to each other.
00:21:25 Like, I feel like I’m in love with you,
00:21:28 but you know, but that can’t,
00:21:32 but things don’t really work like that.
00:21:34 So, but you know, so, and then it became a joke.
00:21:37 Like I feel like I’m in love with you.
00:21:38 And then eventually, you know, I think,
00:21:41 but I think that was one moment
00:21:43 where we were talking about just,
00:21:50 you know, not just all the great aspirations you have
00:21:53 or all the things,
00:21:54 but also things you don’t like about yourself,
00:21:56 things that you’re worried about,
00:21:57 things that you’re scared of.
00:21:59 And then I think that was sort of solidified
00:22:03 the relationship.
00:22:04 And then there was one weekend
00:22:06 where we went to Maine in the winter,
00:22:09 which I mean, I really love the beach always,
00:22:12 but in the winter, particularly.
00:22:15 Because it’s just beautiful and calm and whatever.
00:22:18 Yeah.
00:22:19 And I also, I do find beauty in starkness sometimes.
00:22:24 Like, so there’s this grand majestic scene
00:22:28 of, you know, this very powerful ocean
00:22:30 and it’s all these like beautiful blue grays
00:22:33 and it’s just stunning.
00:22:35 And so we were sitting on this huge rock in Maine
00:22:39 and where we’d gone for the weekend,
00:22:40 it was freezing cold.
00:22:42 And I honestly can’t remember what he said
00:22:45 or what I said or what,
00:22:48 but I definitely remember having this feeling of,
00:22:53 I absolutely wanna stay with this person.
00:22:57 And I don’t know what my life will be like
00:22:58 if I’m not with this person.
00:23:00 Like I need to be with this person.
00:23:02 Can we, from a scientific and a human perspective,
00:23:05 dig into your belief that first love at first sight
00:23:09 is not possible?
00:23:11 You don’t believe in it?
00:23:13 Cause there is, you don’t think there’s like a magic
00:23:15 where you see somebody in the Jack Kerouac way
00:23:19 and you’re like, wow, that’s something.
00:23:22 That’s a special little glimmer or something.
00:23:26 Oh, I definitely think you can connect with someone
00:23:29 instant, in an instance.
00:23:32 And I definitely think you can say,
00:23:34 oh, there’s something there
00:23:35 and I’m really clicking with that person.
00:23:37 Romantically, but also just as friends,
00:23:39 it’s possible to do that.
00:23:40 You recognize a mind that’s like yours
00:23:44 or that’s compatible with yours.
00:23:47 There are ways that you feel like you’re being understood
00:23:50 or that you understand something about this person
00:23:52 or maybe you see something in this person
00:23:54 that you find really compelling or intriguing.
00:23:58 But I think your brain is predictive organ, right?
00:24:03 You’re using your past.
00:24:05 You’re projecting.
00:24:06 You’re using your past to make predictions
00:24:10 and I mean, not deliberately.
00:24:12 That’s how your brain is wired.
00:24:14 That’s what it does.
00:24:15 And so it’s filling in all of the gaps that you,
00:24:21 there are lots of gaps of information
00:24:23 that you don’t, information you don’t have.
00:24:26 And so your brain is filling those in and.
00:24:31 But isn’t that what love is?
00:24:32 No, I don’t think so, actually.
00:24:35 I mean, to some extent, sure, you always,
00:24:38 there’s research to show that people who are in love
00:24:41 always see the best in each other
00:24:43 and when there’s a negative interpretation
00:24:48 or a positive interpretation,
00:24:49 they choose the positive ones.
00:24:50 There’s a little bit of positive illusion there going on.
00:24:54 That’s what the research shows.
00:24:55 But I think that when you find somebody
00:25:00 when you find somebody who not just appreciates
00:25:07 your faults but loves you for them actually,
00:25:13 like maybe even doesn’t see them as a fault,
00:25:16 that’s, so you have to be honest enough
00:25:20 about what your faults are.
00:25:24 So it’s easy to love someone for all the things
00:25:26 that they, for all the wonderful characteristics they have.
00:25:34 It’s harder, I think, to love someone despite their faults
00:25:37 or maybe even the faults that they see
00:25:39 aren’t really faults at all to you.
00:25:41 They’re actually something really special.
00:25:43 But isn’t that, can’t you explain that
00:25:45 by saying the brain kind of, like you’re projecting,
00:25:50 you have a conception of a human being
00:25:54 or just a spirit that really connects with you
00:25:58 and you’re projecting that onto that person
00:26:01 and within that framework, all their faults
00:26:04 then become beautiful, like little.
00:26:06 Maybe, but you just have to pay attention
00:26:09 to the prediction error.
00:26:11 No, but maybe that’s what love,
00:26:13 like maybe you started ignoring the prediction error.
00:26:17 Maybe love is just your ability, like.
00:26:21 To ignore the prediction error.
00:26:22 Well, I think that there’s some research
00:26:24 that might say that, but that’s not my experience, I guess.
00:26:30 But there is some research that says,
00:26:31 I mean, there’s some research that says
00:26:33 you have to have an optimal margin of illusion,
00:26:35 which means that you put a positive spin on smaller things,
00:26:42 but you don’t ignore the bigger things, right?
00:26:45 And I think without being judgmental at all,
00:26:48 when someone says to me, you’re not who I thought you were,
00:26:52 I mean, nobody has said that to me in a really long time,
00:26:55 but certainly when I was younger,
00:26:56 that was, you’re not who I thought you were.
00:26:58 My reaction to that was, well, whose fault is that?
00:27:01 You know, I’m a pretty upfront person.
00:27:08 I mean, I will though say that in my experience,
00:27:11 people don’t lie to you about who they are.
00:27:15 They lie to themselves in your presence.
00:27:18 And so, you know, you don’t wanna get tied up in that,
00:27:29 tangled up in that.
00:27:30 And I think from the get go,
00:27:32 Dan and I were just for whatever reason,
00:27:34 maybe it’s because we both had been divorced already
00:27:36 and, you know, he told me who we thought he was
00:27:44 and he was pretty accurate as far as I could,
00:27:47 pretty much actually.
00:27:48 I mean, there’s very,
00:27:51 I can’t say that I’ve ever come across a characteristic
00:27:54 in him that really surprised me in a bad way.
00:27:58 It’s hard to know yourself.
00:28:00 It is hard to know yourself.
00:28:01 And to communicate that.
00:28:02 For sure.
00:28:03 I mean, I’ll say, you know,
00:28:05 I had the advantage of training as a therapist,
00:28:08 which meant for five years I was under a fucking microscope.
00:28:11 Yeah.
00:28:12 You know, when I was training as a therapist,
00:28:14 it was hour for hour supervision,
00:28:17 which meant if you were in a room with a client for an hour,
00:28:20 you had an hour with a supervisor.
00:28:23 So that supervisor was behind the mirror for your session.
00:28:28 And then you went and had an hour of discussion
00:28:30 about what you said, what you didn’t say,
00:28:33 learning to use your own feelings and thoughts
00:28:37 as a tool to probe the mind of the client and so on.
00:28:42 And so you can’t help but learn a lot of,
00:28:45 you can’t help but learn a lot about yourself
00:28:47 in that process.
00:28:48 Do you think knowing or learning how the sausage is made
00:28:55 ruins the magic of the actual experience?
00:28:58 Like you as a neuroscientist who studies the brain,
00:29:01 do you think it ruins the magic of like love at first sight?
00:29:05 Or are you, do you consciously are still able
00:29:09 to lose yourself in the moment?
00:29:11 I’m definitely able to lose myself in the moment.
00:29:13 Is wine involved?
00:29:14 Not always, chocolate.
00:29:17 I mean, some kind of mind altering substance, right?
00:29:20 But yeah, for sure.
00:29:23 I mean, I guess what I would say though,
00:29:24 is that for me, part of the magic is the process.
00:29:31 Like, so I remember a day there was,
00:29:35 while I was working on this book of essays,
00:29:38 I was in New York.
00:29:41 I can’t remember why I was in New York,
00:29:42 but I was in New York for something.
00:29:44 And I was in Central Park and I was looking
00:29:47 at all the people with their babies.
00:29:50 And I was thinking, each one of these,
00:29:54 there’s a tiny little brain that’s wiring itself right now.
00:30:00 And I just, I felt in that moment,
00:30:03 I was like, I am never gonna look at an infant
00:30:06 in the same way ever again.
00:30:08 And so to me, I mean, honestly,
00:30:11 before I started learning about brain development,
00:30:14 I thought babies were cute, but not that interesting
00:30:17 until they could do interact with you and do things.
00:30:21 Of course, my own infant, I thought,
00:30:22 was extraordinarily interesting,
00:30:24 but they’re kind of like lumps.
00:30:27 That’s until they can interact with you,
00:30:29 but they are anything but lumps.
00:30:31 I mean, so, and part of the,
00:30:35 I mean, all I can say is I have deep affection now
00:30:38 for like tiny little babies in a way
00:30:41 that I didn’t really before
00:30:46 because of the, I’m just so curious.
00:30:51 But the actual process of the mechanisms
00:30:53 of the wiring of the brain, the learning,
00:30:56 all the magic of the neurobiology.
00:30:58 Yeah, and or something like,
00:31:03 when you make eye contact with someone directly,
00:31:05 sometimes you feel something, right?
00:31:10 Yeah, that’s weird.
00:31:13 What is it?
00:31:14 And what is that?
00:31:15 And so to me, that’s not backing away from the moment.
00:31:20 That’s like expanding the moment.
00:31:22 It’s like, that’s incredibly cool.
00:31:24 You know, when I was, I’ll just say that
00:31:27 when I was in graduate school,
00:31:30 I also was in therapy because it’s almost a given
00:31:34 that you’re gonna be in therapy yourself
00:31:36 if you’re gonna become a therapist.
00:31:38 And I had a deal with my therapist,
00:31:41 which was that I could call timeout
00:31:44 at any moment that I wanted to,
00:31:46 as long as I was being responsible about it.
00:31:48 And I wasn’t using it as a way to get out of something.
00:31:50 And he could tell me, no, he could decline and say,
00:31:54 no, you’re using this to get out of something.
00:31:56 But I could call timeout whenever I want
00:31:58 and say, what are you doing right now?
00:32:00 Like, what are you, here’s what I’m experiencing.
00:32:02 What are you trying to do?
00:32:03 Like I wanted to use my own experience
00:32:06 to interrogate what the process was.
00:32:10 And that made it more helpful in a way.
00:32:18 Do you know what I mean?
00:32:18 So yeah, I don’t think learning how something works
00:32:21 makes it less magical actually,
00:32:23 but that’s just me, I guess.
00:32:25 I don’t know, would you?
00:32:27 Yes.
00:32:29 I tend to have two modes.
00:32:32 One is an engineer and one is a romantic.
00:32:35 And I’m conscious of like, there’s two rooms.
00:32:41 You can go into the one, the engineer room.
00:32:43 And I think that ruins the romance.
00:32:45 So I tend to, there’s two rooms.
00:32:48 One is the engineering room.
00:32:50 Think from first principles, how do we build the thing
00:32:53 that creates this kind of behavior?
00:32:55 And then you go into the romantic room
00:32:57 where you’re like emotional, it’s a roller coaster.
00:33:00 And then the thing is, let’s take it slow.
00:33:03 And then you get married the next night
00:33:05 that you just this giant mess and you write a song
00:33:08 and then you cry and then you send a bunch of texts
00:33:12 and anger and whatever.
00:33:14 And somehow you’re in Vegas and there’s random people
00:33:17 and you’re drunk and whatever, all that,
00:33:18 like in poetry and just mess of it, fighting.
00:33:21 Yeah, that’s not, those are two rooms
00:33:24 and you go back between them.
00:33:27 But I think the way you put it is quite poetic.
00:33:29 I think you’re much better at adulting
00:33:32 with love than perhaps I am.
00:33:37 Because there’s a magic to children.
00:33:40 I also think like of adults as children.
00:33:45 It’s kind of cool to see, it’s a cool thought experiment
00:33:48 to look at adults and think like that used to be a baby.
00:33:53 And then that’s like a fully wired baby.
00:33:56 And it’s just walking around pretending to be like
00:33:58 all serious and important, wearing a suit or something.
00:34:01 But that used to be a baby.
00:34:03 And then you think of like the parenting
00:34:05 and all the experiences they had.
00:34:07 Like it’s cool to think of it that way.
00:34:09 But then I start thinking like
00:34:11 from a machine learning perspective.
00:34:13 But once you’re like the romantic moments,
00:34:16 all that kind of stuff, all that falls away.
00:34:19 I forget about all of that, I don’t know.
00:34:21 That’s the Russian thing.
00:34:23 Maybe, maybe.
00:34:24 But I also think it might be an age thing
00:34:26 or maybe an experience thing.
00:34:28 So I think we all, I mean,
00:34:33 if you’re exposed to Western culture at all,
00:34:35 you are exposed to the sort of idealized,
00:34:40 stereotypic, romantic exchange.
00:34:45 And what does it mean to be romantic?
00:34:48 And so here’s a test.
00:34:53 I’m seeing how to phrase it.
00:34:55 Okay, so not really a test,
00:34:56 but this tells you something about
00:34:58 your own ideas about romance.
00:35:03 For Valentine’s Day one year,
00:35:06 my husband bought me a six way plug.
00:35:10 Is that romantic or not romantic?
00:35:14 Like, sorry, six way plug, is that like an outlet?
00:35:17 Yeah, like to put it in an outlet.
00:35:19 Is that romantic or not romantic?
00:35:21 I mean, it depends the look in his eyes when he does it.
00:35:28 I mean, it depends on the conversation
00:35:31 that led up to that point.
00:35:33 Depends how much, it’s like the music,
00:35:38 because you have a very, you’re both from the,
00:35:42 my experiences with you as a fan,
00:35:44 you have both a romantic niche,
00:35:45 but you have a very pragmatic,
00:35:46 like you cut through the bullshit of the fuzziness.
00:35:51 And there’s something about a six way plug
00:35:53 that cuts through the bullshit
00:35:54 that connects to the human,
00:35:55 like he understands who you are.
00:35:57 Exactly, exactly.
00:36:00 That was the most romantic gift he could have given me
00:36:03 because he knows me so well.
00:36:05 He has a deep understanding of me,
00:36:08 which is that I will sit and suffer and complain
00:36:12 about the fact that I have to plug and unplug things.
00:36:15 And I will bitch and moan until the cows come home,
00:36:17 but it would never occur to me to go buy
00:36:21 a bloody six way plug.
00:36:23 Whereas for him, he bought it, he plugged it in,
00:36:27 he arranged, he taped up all my wires,
00:36:29 he made it like really usable.
00:36:31 And for me, that was the best present.
00:36:38 It was the most romantic thing
00:36:40 because he understood who I was
00:36:43 and he did something very,
00:36:45 or just the casual, like we moved into a house
00:36:49 that we went from having a two car garage
00:36:51 to a one car garage.
00:36:52 And I said, okay, I’m from Canada,
00:36:54 I’m not bothered by snow.
00:36:56 Well, I mean, I’m a little bothered by snow,
00:36:57 but he’s very bothered by snow.
00:36:59 So I’m like, okay, you can park your car in the garage,
00:37:01 it’s fine.
00:37:03 Every day when it snows, he goes out and cleans my car.
00:37:06 Every day.
00:37:08 I never asked him to do it, he just does it
00:37:12 because he knows that I’m cutting it really close
00:37:15 in the morning, when we all used to go to work.
00:37:18 I have a time to the second
00:37:20 so that I can get up as late as possible,
00:37:23 work out as long as possible,
00:37:25 and make it into my office
00:37:27 like a minute before my first meeting.
00:37:29 And so if it snows unexpectedly or something,
00:37:31 I’m screwed because now that’s an added 10 or 15 minutes
00:37:35 and I’m gonna be late.
00:37:36 Anyways, it’s just these little tiny things.
00:37:39 He’s a really easygoing guy
00:37:43 and he doesn’t look like somebody
00:37:45 who pays attention to detail.
00:37:48 He doesn’t fuss about detail,
00:37:50 but he definitely pays attention to detail.
00:37:53 And it is very, very romantic in the sense
00:37:56 that he loves me despite my little details.
00:38:04 And understands you.
00:38:05 Yeah, he understands me.
00:38:06 It is kind of hilarious that that is,
00:38:09 the six way plug is the most fulfilling,
00:38:14 richest display of romance in your life.
00:38:19 I love it.
00:38:20 I love it.
00:38:20 That’s what I mean about romance.
00:38:21 Romance is really, it’s not all about chocolates
00:38:23 and flowers and whatever.
00:38:25 I mean, those are all nice too, but…
00:38:28 Sometimes it’s about the six way plug.
00:38:29 Sometimes it’s about the six way plug.
00:38:32 So maybe one way I could ask
00:38:35 before we talk about the details,
00:38:36 you also have the author of another book
00:38:38 as we talked about how emotions are made.
00:38:41 So it’s interesting to talk about the process of writing.
00:38:44 You mentioned you were in New York.
00:38:46 What have you learned from writing these two books
00:38:48 about the actual process of writing?
00:38:50 And maybe, I don’t know what’s the most interesting thing
00:38:53 to talk about there.
00:38:54 Maybe the biggest challenges
00:38:55 or the boring, mundane, systematic,
00:38:58 like day to day of what worked for you,
00:39:00 like hacks or even just about the neuroscience
00:39:04 that you’ve learned through the process
00:39:07 of trying to write them.
00:39:08 Here’s the thing I learned.
00:39:09 If you think that it’s gonna take you a year
00:39:11 to write your book,
00:39:12 it’s going to take you three years to write your book.
00:39:15 That’s the first thing I learned
00:39:17 is that no matter how organized you are,
00:39:22 it’s always gonna take way longer than what you think
00:39:28 in part because very few people make an outline
00:39:33 and then just stick to it.
00:39:36 Some of the topics really take on a life of their own
00:39:39 and to some extent you wanna let them have their voice.
00:39:43 You wanna follow leads until you feel satisfied
00:39:46 that you’ve dealt with the topic appropriately.
00:39:52 But that part is actually fun.
00:39:54 It’s not fun to feel like you’re constantly behind the eight
00:39:57 ball in terms of time.
00:39:59 But it is the exploration and the foraging for information
00:40:02 is incredibly fun.
00:40:05 For me anyways, I found it really enjoyable.
00:40:07 And if I wasn’t also running a lab at the same time
00:40:09 and trying to keep my family going,
00:40:13 the whole thing would have just been fun.
00:40:15 But I would say the hardest thing about,
00:40:18 the most important thing I think I learned
00:40:20 is also the hardest thing and that for me,
00:40:22 which is knowing what to leave out.
00:40:27 A really good storyteller knows what to leave out.
00:40:32 In academic writing, you shouldn’t leave anything out.
00:40:38 All the details should be there.
00:40:45 I’ve written or participated in writing
00:40:50 over 200 papers, peer reviewed papers.
00:40:54 So I’m pretty good with detail.
00:40:57 Knowing what to leave out and not harming
00:41:01 the validity of the story.
00:41:04 That is a tricky, tricky thing.
00:41:06 It was tricky when I wrote How Emotions Are Made,
00:41:10 but that’s a standard popular science book.
00:41:13 So it’s 300 something pages.
00:41:15 And then it has like a thousand end notes.
00:41:18 And then each of the end notes is attached to a web note,
00:41:22 which is also long.
00:41:23 So I mean, it’s, and it start, and I mean the final draft,
00:41:28 I mean, I wrote three drafts of that book actually.
00:41:33 And the final draft, and then I had to cut by a third.
00:41:36 I mean, it was like 150,000 words or something.
00:41:42 And I had to cut it down to like 110.
00:41:44 So obviously it’s, I struggle with what to leave out.
00:41:49 Brevity is not my strong suit.
00:41:50 I’m always telling people that it’s a warning.
00:41:52 So that’s why this book was,
00:41:55 I’d always been really fascinated with essays.
00:41:58 I love reading essays.
00:41:59 And after reading a small set of essays by Anne Fadiman
00:42:05 called At Large and At Small,
00:42:07 which I just love these little essays.
00:42:10 What’s the topic of those essays?
00:42:12 They are, they’re called familiar essays.
00:42:15 So the topics are like everyday topics,
00:42:18 like mail, coffee, chocolate.
00:42:22 I mean, just like, and what she does
00:42:23 is she weaves her own experience.
00:42:26 It’s a little bit like these conversations
00:42:28 that you’re so good at curating, actually.
00:42:32 You’re weaving together history and philosophy and science
00:42:36 and also personal reflections.
00:42:38 And a little bit, you feel like you’re like eavesdropping
00:42:44 on someone’s train of thought in a way.
00:42:47 It’s really, they’re really compelling to me.
00:42:51 Even if it’s just a mundane topic.
00:42:53 Yeah, but it’s so interesting
00:42:55 to learn about like all of these little stories
00:43:02 in the wrapping of the history of like mail.
00:43:08 Like that’s really interesting.
00:43:10 And so I read these essays
00:43:12 and then I wrote to her a little fan girl email.
00:43:15 This was many years ago.
00:43:16 And I said, I just love this book.
00:43:21 And how did you learn to write essays like this?
00:43:23 And she gave me a reading list of essays
00:43:26 that I should read like writers.
00:43:27 And so I read them all.
00:43:28 And anyway, so I decided it would be a really good challenge
00:43:33 for me to try to write something really brief
00:43:37 where I could focus on one or two really fascinating tidbits
00:43:45 of neuroscience, connect each one
00:43:50 to something philosophical or like just a question
00:43:54 about human nature.
00:43:56 Do it in a really brief format
00:43:58 without violating the validity of the science.
00:44:05 That was a, I just set myself this,
00:44:07 what I thought of as a really, really big challenge
00:44:09 in part because it was an incredibly hard thing
00:44:11 for me to do in the first book.
00:44:13 Yeah, we should say that this is,
00:44:15 The Seven and a Half Lessons is a very short book.
00:44:17 I mean, it’s like it embodies brevity, right?
00:44:22 The whole point throughout is just,
00:44:25 I mean, you could tell that there’s editing,
00:44:27 like there’s pain in trying to bring it
00:44:31 as brief as possible, as clean as possible, yeah.
00:44:35 Yeah, so it’s, the way I think of it is,
00:44:37 it’s a little book of big science and big ideas.
00:44:41 Yeah, really big ideas in brief little packages.
00:44:44 And I wrote it so that people could read it.
00:44:49 I love reading on the beach.
00:44:51 I love reading essays on the beach.
00:44:53 I read it, I wrote it so people could read it on the beach
00:44:55 or in the bathtub or a subway stop.
00:44:58 Even if the beach is frozen over in the snow.
00:45:02 Yeah, so my husband, Dan, calls it
00:45:04 the first neuroscience beach read.
00:45:06 That’s his phrasing, yeah.
00:45:11 And like you said, you learn a lot about writing
00:45:13 from your husband, like you were saying offline.
00:45:15 Well, he is, of the two of us, he is the better writer.
00:45:20 He is a masterful writer.
00:45:24 He’s also, I mean, he’s a PhD in computer science.
00:45:28 He’s a software engineer,
00:45:29 but he’s also really good at organization of knowledge.
00:45:36 So he built for a company he used to work for,
00:45:38 he built one of the first knowledge management systems.
00:45:41 And he now works at Google
00:45:44 where he does engineering education.
00:45:46 Like he understands how to tell a good story,
00:45:51 just about anything, really.
00:45:55 He’s got impeccable timing, he’s really funny.
00:45:59 And luckily for me, he knows very little
00:46:01 about psychology or neuroscience.
00:46:03 Well, now he knows more, obviously, but.
00:46:05 So when How Emotions Were Made, he was really, really helpful
00:46:13 to me because the first draft of every chapter
00:46:17 was me talking to him about what,
00:46:19 I would talk out loud about what I wanted to say
00:46:22 and the order in which I wanted to say it.
00:46:24 And then I would write it and then he would read it
00:46:28 and tell me all the bits that could be excised.
00:46:33 And sometimes we would, I should say,
00:46:35 I mean, we don’t, he and I don’t really argue about much
00:46:39 except directions in the car.
00:46:41 Like if we’re gonna have an argument,
00:46:44 that’s gonna be where it’s gonna happen, where.
00:46:46 What’s the nature of the argument about directions exactly?
00:46:50 I don’t really know, it’s just that we’re very,
00:46:52 I think it’s that spatially,
00:46:56 I use egocentric space.
00:46:58 So I wanna say, turn left.
00:47:01 Like I’m reasoning in relation
00:47:03 to my own physical corporeal body.
00:47:06 So you walk to the church and you turn left and you,
00:47:10 then whatever, I’m always like,
00:47:11 and he gives directions allocentrically,
00:47:16 which means organized around north, south, east, west.
00:47:21 So to you, the earth is at the center of the solar system
00:47:24 and to him, reasonably.
00:47:26 I’m at the center.
00:47:27 You’re at the center of the solar system.
00:47:29 Okay, so.
00:47:30 Anyway, but here, we had some really riproaring arguments,
00:47:37 like really riproaring arguments where he would say,
00:47:40 like, who is this for?
00:47:41 Is this for the 1%?
00:47:44 And I’d be like, 1% meaning not wealth,
00:47:47 but like civilians versus academics.
00:47:51 Are these for the scientists
00:47:52 or is this for the civilians, right?
00:47:54 So he speaks for the people, for the civilians.
00:47:56 He speaks for the people and I’d be like, no, you have to.
00:47:59 And so he made, after one terrible argument that we had
00:48:03 where it was really starting to affect our relationship
00:48:05 because we were so mad at each other all the time,
00:48:09 he made these little signs, writing and science.
00:48:14 And we only use them, this was like,
00:48:17 when you pulled out a sign, that’s it.
00:48:20 Like the other person just wins
00:48:22 and you have to stop fighting about it and that’s it.
00:48:25 And so we just did that.
00:48:26 And we didn’t really have to use it too much for this book
00:48:29 because this book was in some ways,
00:48:34 I didn’t have to learn a lot of new things for this book.
00:48:37 I had to learn some, but a lot of
00:48:41 what I learned for How Emotions Are Made
00:48:46 really stood me in good stead for this book.
00:48:49 So there was a little bit,
00:48:50 each essay was a little bit of learning.
00:48:52 A couple were, was a little more than the small amount.
00:48:55 But I didn’t have so much trouble here.
00:48:59 I had a lot of trouble with the first book.
00:49:02 But still even here, he would tell me
00:49:07 that I could take something out
00:49:08 and I really wanted to keep it.
00:49:10 And I think we only use the signs once.
00:49:14 Well, if we could dive in some aspects of the book,
00:49:17 I would love that.
00:49:18 Can we talk about, so one of the essays looks at evolution.
00:49:23 It looks at evolution.
00:49:28 Let me ask the big question.
00:49:30 Did the human brain evolve to think?
00:49:33 That’s essentially the question that you address in the essay.
00:49:38 Can you speak to it?
00:49:39 Sure.
00:49:40 The big caveat here is that
00:49:43 we don’t really know why brains evolved.
00:49:45 The big why questions are called teleological questions.
00:49:49 And in general, scientists should avoid those questions
00:49:55 because we don’t know really why, we don’t know the why.
00:49:58 However, for a very long time,
00:50:03 the assumption was that evolution worked
00:50:07 in a progressive upward scale,
00:50:09 that you start off with simple organisms
00:50:11 and those organisms get more complex
00:50:13 and more complex and more complex.
00:50:14 Now, obviously that’s true in some like really general way,
00:50:18 right, that life started off as single cell organisms
00:50:22 and things got more complex.
00:50:24 But the idea that brains evolved in some upward trajectory
00:50:32 from simple brains in simple animals
00:50:34 to complex brains in complex animals
00:50:37 is called a phylogenetic scale.
00:50:40 And that phylogenetic scale is embedded
00:50:44 in a lot of evolutionary thinking,
00:50:46 including Darwin’s actually.
00:50:48 And it’s been seriously challenged, I would say,
00:50:53 by modern evolutionary biology.
00:50:57 And so thinking is something that,
00:51:01 rationality is something that humans,
00:51:04 at least in the West, really prize
00:51:07 as a great human achievement.
00:51:10 And so the idea that the most common evolutionary story
00:51:15 is that brains evolved in like sedimentary rock
00:51:21 with a layer for instincts, that’s your lizard brain,
00:51:25 and a layer on top of that for emotions,
00:51:30 that’s your limbic system, limbic meaning border.
00:51:33 So it borders the parts that are for instincts.
00:51:36 Oh, interesting.
00:51:37 And then the neocortex or new cortex
00:51:42 where rationality is supposed to live.
00:51:46 That’s the sort of traditional story.
00:51:48 It just keeps getting layered on top by evolution.
00:51:52 Right.
00:51:52 And so you can think about, I mean,
00:51:55 sedimentary rock is the way typically people describe it.
00:51:58 The way I sometimes like to think about it
00:52:00 is thinking about the cerebral cortex
00:52:03 like icing on an already baked cake,
00:52:08 where the cake is your inner beast.
00:52:11 These like boiling, roiling instincts and emotions
00:52:14 that have to be contained by the cortex.
00:52:19 And it’s just, it’s a fiction, it’s a myth.
00:52:23 It’s a myth that you can trace all the way back
00:52:26 to stories about morality in ancient Greece.
00:52:31 But what you can do is look at the scientific record
00:52:35 and say, well, there are other stories
00:52:38 that you could tell about brain evolution
00:52:40 and the context in which brains evolved.
00:52:45 So when you look at creatures who don’t have brains
00:52:50 and you look at creatures who do, what’s the difference?
00:52:55 And you can look at some animals.
00:53:02 So we call, scientists call an environment
00:53:05 that an animal lives in a niche, their environmental niche.
00:53:09 What are the things, what are the parts
00:53:10 of the environment that matter to that animal?
00:53:13 And so there are some animals whose niche
00:53:15 hasn’t changed in 400 million years.
00:53:18 So they’re not, these creatures are modern creatures
00:53:21 but they’re living in a niche that hasn’t changed much.
00:53:24 And so their biology hasn’t changed much.
00:53:27 And you can kind of verify that by looking at the genes
00:53:30 that lurk deep in the molecular structure of cells.
00:53:34 And so you can, by looking at various animals
00:53:38 in their developmental state, meaning not,
00:53:41 you don’t look at adult animals,
00:53:43 you look at embryos of animals and developing animals,
00:53:46 you can see, you can piece together a different story.
00:53:49 And that story is that brains evolved
00:53:53 under the selection pressure of hunting.
00:53:57 That in the Cambrian period, hunting emerged on the scene
00:54:01 where animals deliberately ate one another.
00:54:06 And what, so before the Cambrian period,
00:54:11 the animals didn’t really have,
00:54:14 well, they didn’t have brains,
00:54:15 but they also didn’t have senses really,
00:54:19 the very, very rudimentary senses.
00:54:20 So the animal that I wrote about in seven and a half lessons
00:54:26 is called an amphioxus or a lancelet.
00:54:29 And little amphioxus has no eyes,
00:54:34 it has no ears, it has no nose, it has no eyes.
00:54:38 It has a couple of cells for detecting light and dark
00:54:44 for circadian rhythm purposes.
00:54:47 And it can’t hear, it has a vestibular cell
00:54:51 to keep its body upright.
00:54:53 It has a very rudimentary sense of touch
00:54:56 and it doesn’t really have any internal organs
00:55:00 other than this like basically stomach.
00:55:03 It’s like a, just like a,
00:55:04 it doesn’t have an enteric nervous system.
00:55:06 It doesn’t have like a gut that moves like we do.
00:55:11 It just has basically a tube.
00:55:14 So it’s like a little container, yeah.
00:55:16 And so, and really it doesn’t move very much.
00:55:20 It can move, it just sort of wriggles.
00:55:22 It doesn’t have very sophisticated movement.
00:55:24 And it’s this really sweet little animal.
00:55:27 It sort of wriggles its way to a spot
00:55:30 and then plants itself in the sand
00:55:33 and just filters food as the food goes by.
00:55:37 And then when the food concentration decreases,
00:55:41 it just ejects itself, wriggles to some spot randomly
00:55:47 where probabilistically there will be more food
00:55:50 and plants itself again.
00:55:51 So it’s not really aware,
00:55:56 very aware that it has an environment.
00:55:58 It has a niche, but that niche is very small
00:56:00 and it’s not really experiencing that niche very much.
00:56:05 So it’s basically like a little stomach on a stick.
00:56:08 That’s really what it is.
00:56:09 And, but when animals start to literally hunt each other,
00:56:14 all of a sudden it becomes important
00:56:17 to have, to be able to sense your environment.
00:56:20 Cause you need to know, is that blob up ahead
00:56:23 gonna eat me or should I eat it?
00:56:27 And so all of a sudden you want,
00:56:29 distance senses are very useful.
00:56:31 And so in the water, distance senses are vision
00:56:36 and a little bit hearing.
00:56:38 Olfaction, smelling and touch,
00:56:43 because in the water touch is a distance sense
00:56:46 cause you can feel the vibration, so it’s right.
00:56:49 So on land, you know, vision is a distance sense,
00:56:54 touch not so much, but for elephants maybe, right?
00:56:58 The vibrations.
00:56:59 Vibrations, olfaction definitely
00:57:02 because of the distance sense.
00:57:04 And so it’s very important to have a sense of touch
00:57:07 and olfaction definitely because of the concentration
00:57:09 of, you know, the more concentrated something is,
00:57:12 the more likely it is to be close to you.
00:57:14 So animals developed senses.
00:57:17 They developed a head, like a literal head.
00:57:20 So amphyoxus doesn’t even have a head really.
00:57:22 It’s just a long.
00:57:23 What’s the purpose of a head?
00:57:25 That’s a great question.
00:57:27 Is it to have a jaw?
00:57:29 That’s a great question.
00:57:30 So jaw, so yes, jaws are a major.
00:57:35 Useful feature.
00:57:36 Yeah, obviously they’re a major adaptation
00:57:39 after there’s a split between vertebrates and invertebrates.
00:57:42 So amphyoxus is thought to be very, very similar
00:57:45 to the animal that’s before that split.
00:57:48 But then after the development,
00:57:50 very quickly after the development of a head
00:57:52 is the development of a jaw, which is a big thing.
00:57:56 And what goes along with that
00:57:59 is the development of a brain.
00:58:02 It’s weird, is that just a coincidence
00:58:04 that the thing, the part of our body,
00:58:07 of the mammal, I think, body that we eat with
00:58:12 and attack others with is also the thing
00:58:15 that contains all the majority of the brain type of stuff.
00:58:21 Well, actually the brain goes with the development of a head
00:58:25 and the development of a visual system
00:58:27 and an auditory system and an olfactory system and so on.
00:58:31 So your senses are developing
00:58:34 and the other thing that’s happening
00:58:38 is that animals are getting bigger
00:58:41 because they’re, and also their niche is getting bigger.
00:58:44 Well, this is the, just sorry to take a tiny tangent
00:58:47 on the niche thing is it seems like the niche
00:58:50 is getting bigger, but not just bigger,
00:58:53 like more complicated, like shaped in weird ways.
00:58:56 So predation seems to create, the whole world
00:59:01 becomes your oyster, whatever,
00:59:03 but you also start to carve out the places
00:59:06 in which you can operate the best.
00:59:08 Yeah, and in fact, that’s absolutely right.
00:59:10 And in fact, some scientists think that theory of mind,
00:59:15 your ability to make inferences
00:59:16 about the inner life of other creatures
00:59:21 actually developed under the selection pressure of predation
00:59:24 because it makes you a better predator.
00:59:28 Do you ever look at, you just said you looked at babies
00:59:31 as these wiring creatures.
00:59:34 Do you ever think of humans as just clever predators?
00:59:39 Like that there’s, underneath it all is this
00:59:44 the Nietzschean will to power in all of its forms?
00:59:49 Or are we now friendlier?
00:59:52 Yeah, so it’s interesting.
00:59:54 I mean, there are zeitgeists
00:59:57 in how humans think about themselves, right?
00:59:59 And so if you look in the 20th century,
01:00:04 you can see that the idea of an inner beast
01:00:08 that we’re just predators, we’re just basically animals,
01:00:10 baseless animals, violent animals
01:00:13 that have to be contained by culture
01:00:15 and by our prodigious neocortex
01:00:17 really took hold, particularly after World War I,
01:00:25 and really held sway for much of that century.
01:00:32 And then around, at least in Western writing, I would say,
01:00:36 you know, we’re talking mainly
01:00:38 about Western scientific writing,
01:00:41 Western philosophical writing.
01:00:42 And then, you know, late 90s maybe,
01:00:47 you start to see books and articles
01:00:50 about our social nature, that we’re social animals.
01:00:53 And we are social animals,
01:00:54 but what does that mean exactly?
01:00:57 And about.
01:01:00 It’s us carving out different niches
01:01:02 in the space of ideas, it looks like.
01:01:03 I think so, I think so.
01:01:04 So, you know, do humans, can humans be violent?
01:01:14 Yes.
01:01:15 Can humans be really helpful?
01:01:17 Yes, actually.
01:01:19 And humans are interesting creatures
01:01:22 because, you know, other animals
01:01:25 can also be helpful to one another.
01:01:28 In fact, there’s a whole literature, booming literature
01:01:30 on how other animals support one another.
01:01:38 They regulate each other’s nervous systems
01:01:40 in interesting ways,
01:01:41 and they will be helpful to one another, right?
01:01:43 So for example, there’s a whole literature on rodents
01:01:46 and how they signal one another what is safe to eat,
01:01:52 and they will perform acts of generosity
01:01:57 to their conspecifics that are related to them,
01:02:01 or who they were raised with.
01:02:03 So if an animal was raised in a litter
01:02:05 that they were raised in,
01:02:07 although not even at the same time,
01:02:09 they’ll be more likely to help that animal.
01:02:11 So there’s always some kind of physical relationship
01:02:14 between animals that predicts
01:02:17 whether or not they’ll help one another.
01:02:19 For humans, you know, we have ways of categorizing
01:02:27 who’s in our group and who isn’t by nonphysical ways, right?
01:02:32 Even by just something abstract, like an idea.
01:02:35 And we are much more likely to extend help
01:02:39 to people in our own group,
01:02:41 whatever that group may be at that moment,
01:02:44 whatever feature you’re using to do that.
01:02:48 Feature you’re using to define who’s in your group
01:02:51 and who isn’t.
01:02:53 We’re more likely to help those people
01:02:55 than even members of our own family at times.
01:02:59 So humans are much more flexible in their,
01:03:05 in the way that they help one another,
01:03:07 but also in the way that they harm one another.
01:03:08 So I don’t think I subscribe to,
01:03:13 I don’t think I subscribe to, you know,
01:03:18 we are primarily this or we are primarily that.
01:03:21 I don’t think humans have essences in that way, really.
01:03:25 I apologize to take us in this direction
01:03:27 for a brief moment,
01:03:28 but I’ve been really deep on Stalin and Hitler recently
01:03:32 in terms of reading.
01:03:34 And is there something that you think about
01:03:37 in terms of the nature of evil
01:03:41 from a neuroscience perspective?
01:03:44 Is there some lessons that are sort of hopeful
01:03:52 about human civilization that we can find in our brain
01:03:58 with regard to the Hitlers of the world?
01:04:01 Do you think about the nature of evil?
01:04:05 Yeah, I do.
01:04:07 I don’t know that what I have to say is so useful
01:04:11 from a, I don’t know that I can say as a neuroscientist,
01:04:14 well, here’s a study that, you know,
01:04:17 so I sort of have to take off my lab coat, right?
01:04:20 And now I’m gonna now conjecture as a human
01:04:22 who just also, who has opinions,
01:04:24 but who also maybe has some knowledge about neuroscience.
01:04:28 But I’m not speaking as a neuroscientist when I say this,
01:04:30 cause I don’t think neuroscientists know enough really
01:04:33 to be able to say,
01:04:34 but I guess the kinds of things I think about are,
01:04:38 what, so I have always thought,
01:04:44 even before I knew anything about neuroscience,
01:04:48 I’ve always thought that,
01:04:53 I don’t think anybody could become Hitler,
01:04:54 but I think the majority of people can be,
01:04:59 can do, are capable of doing very bad things.
01:05:05 It’s just, the question is really
01:05:06 how much encouragement does it take from the environment
01:05:09 to get them to do something bad?
01:05:11 That’s what I kind of, when I look at the life of Hitler,
01:05:14 it seems like there’s so many places where…
01:05:19 Something could have intervened.
01:05:20 Intervene, no, it could change completely the person.
01:05:23 I mean, there’s like the caricature,
01:05:25 like the obvious places where he was an artist
01:05:28 and if he wasn’t rejected as an artist,
01:05:30 he was a reasonably good artist.
01:05:32 So that could have changed,
01:05:33 but just his entire, like where he went in Vienna
01:05:36 and all these kinds of things,
01:05:37 like little interactions could have changed
01:05:40 and there’s probably millions of other people
01:05:44 who are capable, who the environment may be able to mold
01:05:49 in the same way it did this particular person
01:05:51 to create this particular kind of charismatic leader
01:05:55 in this particular moment of time.
01:05:57 Absolutely, and I guess the way that I would say it,
01:06:01 I would agree 100% and I guess the way that I would say it
01:06:04 is like this, in the West,
01:06:08 we have a way of reasoning about causation,
01:06:14 which focuses on single, simple causes for things.
01:06:21 There’s an essence to Hitler,
01:06:22 there’s an essence to his character.
01:06:24 He was born with that essence
01:06:26 or it was forged very, very early in his life
01:06:30 and that explains the horrible landscape of his behavior.
01:06:38 But there’s another way to think about it,
01:06:41 a way that actually is much more consistent
01:06:42 with what we know about biology,
01:06:45 how biology works in the physical world.
01:06:48 And that is that most things are complex,
01:06:52 not as in, wow, this is really complex and hard,
01:06:54 but complex as in complexity,
01:06:56 that is more than the sum of their parts
01:06:59 and that most phenomena have many, many
01:07:05 weak nonlinear interacting causes.
01:07:08 And so little things that we might not even be aware of
01:07:13 can shift someone’s developmental trajectory
01:07:17 from this to that and that’s enough
01:07:20 to take it on a whole set of other paths
01:07:24 and that these things are happening all the time.
01:07:28 So it’s not random and it’s not really,
01:07:31 it’s not deterministic in the sense
01:07:32 that like everything you do determines your outcome,
01:07:35 but it’s a little more like you’re nudging someone
01:07:41 from one set of possibilities
01:07:44 to another set of possibilities.
01:07:46 But I think the thing that I find optimistic
01:07:50 is that the other side of that coin is also true.
01:07:54 So look at all the people who risked their lives
01:08:00 to help people they didn’t even know.
01:08:05 I mean, I just watched Borat, the new Borat movie.
01:08:09 And the thing that I came away with,
01:08:11 but the thing I came away with was,
01:08:15 look at how generous people were in that.
01:08:19 Oh, he’s making, there are a lot of people he makes fun of
01:08:21 and that’s fine, but think about like those two people
01:08:24 two guys, those.
01:08:27 The Trump supporter guys.
01:08:28 The Trump supporter guys.
01:08:29 Those guys.
01:08:30 That was cool, there was kindness in them, right?
01:08:33 They took a complete stranger in a pandemic
01:08:38 into their house.
01:08:41 Who does that?
01:08:42 Like that’s a really nice thing.
01:08:44 Or there’s one scene, I mean, I don’t wanna spoil it
01:08:47 for people who haven’t seen it,
01:08:49 but there’s one scene where he goes in,
01:08:51 he dresses up as a Jew, I laugh myself sick at that scene,
01:08:57 seriously, but he goes in
01:09:00 and there are these two old Jewish ladies.
01:09:04 What a bunch of sweethearts, oh my gosh.
01:09:07 Like really, I mean, that was what I was struck by actually.
01:09:12 I mean, there are other ones or like the babysitter, right?
01:09:15 I mean, she was really kind.
01:09:18 And yeah, so that’s really what I was more struck by.
01:09:22 Like sure, there are other people
01:09:25 who do very bad things or say bad things or whatever,
01:09:30 but like there’s one guy who’s completely stoic,
01:09:35 like the guy who’s sending the messages,
01:09:39 I don’t know if it’s facts or whatever.
01:09:41 He’s just completely stoic,
01:09:43 but he’s doing his job actually.
01:09:45 Like you don’t know what he was thinking inside his head,
01:09:48 you don’t know what he’s feeling,
01:09:49 but he was totally professional doing his job.
01:09:53 So I guess I just, I had a bit of a different view, I guess.
01:09:58 So I also think that about people,
01:10:00 I think everybody is capable of kindness,
01:10:06 but the question is how much does it take
01:10:08 and what are the circumstances?
01:10:09 So for some people it’s gonna take a lot
01:10:11 and for some people it only takes a little bit,
01:10:14 but are we actually cultivating an environment
01:10:21 for the next generation that provides opportunities
01:10:28 for people to go in the direction of caring and kindness
01:10:32 or, and I’m not saying that as like a Pollyanna ish person.
01:10:40 I think there’s a lot of room for competition
01:10:42 and debate and so on,
01:10:45 but I don’t see Hitler as an anomaly and I never have,
01:10:50 that was even before I learned anything about neuroscience.
01:10:52 And now I would say knowing what we know
01:10:55 about developmental trajectories and life histories
01:10:57 and how important that is,
01:10:59 knowing what we know about that the whole question
01:11:03 of like nature versus nurture is a completely wrong question.
01:11:07 We have the kind of nature that requires nurture,
01:11:11 we have the kind of genes that allow infants to be born
01:11:14 with unfinished brains where the brains,
01:11:18 their brains are wired across a 25 year period
01:11:21 with wiring instructions from the world
01:11:23 that is created for them.
01:11:25 And so I don’t think Hitler is an anomaly,
01:11:32 even if it’s less probable that that would happen,
01:11:37 it’s possible that it could happen again
01:11:39 and it’s not like, you know, he’s a bad seed.
01:11:43 I mean, that doesn’t, I just wanna say for like,
01:11:45 of course he’s completely 100% responsible for his actions
01:11:48 and all the bad things that happen.
01:11:50 So I’m not in any way, this is not me saying.
01:11:53 But the environment is also responsible in part
01:11:56 for creating the evil in this world.
01:11:59 So like Hitler’s in different versions of even more subtle,
01:12:05 more smaller scale versions of evil.
01:12:07 But I tend to believe that there’s a much stronger,
01:12:13 I don’t like to talk about evolutionary advantages,
01:12:16 but it seems like it makes sense for love
01:12:20 to be a more powerful emergent phenomena
01:12:25 of our collective intelligence versus hate
01:12:28 and evil and destruction.
01:12:30 Because from a survival, from a niche perspective,
01:12:34 it seems to be like in my own life
01:12:38 and my thinking about the intuition
01:12:40 about the way humans work together to solve problems,
01:12:44 it seems that love is a very useful tool.
01:12:47 I definitely agree with you.
01:12:50 But I think the caveat here is that, you know,
01:12:54 humans, the research suggests that humans are capable
01:12:58 of great acts of kindness and great acts of generosity
01:13:04 to people in their in group.
01:13:07 Right, so we’re also tribal.
01:13:11 Yeah, I mean, that’s the kitschy way to say it.
01:13:14 We’re tribes, we’re tribal, yeah.
01:13:16 So that’s the kitschy way to say it.
01:13:18 What I would say is that, you know,
01:13:22 there are a lot of features
01:13:25 that you can use to describe yourself.
01:13:28 You don’t have one identity, you don’t have one self,
01:13:31 you have many selves, you have many identities.
01:13:34 Sometimes you’re a man, sometimes you’re a scientist,
01:13:37 sometimes you’re a, do you have a brother or a sister?
01:13:40 Yeah, brother.
01:13:41 So sometimes you’re a brother.
01:13:42 You know, sometimes you’re a friend.
01:13:45 Sometimes you’re a human so you can keep zooming out.
01:13:47 Yes, exactly.
01:13:48 Living organism on Earth.
01:13:49 Yes, exactly, that’s exactly right.
01:13:53 And so there are some people
01:13:58 who there is research which suggests
01:14:01 that there are some people who will tell you,
01:14:05 I think it’s appropriate and better to help.
01:14:08 I should help my family more than I should help my neighbors
01:14:11 and I should help my neighbors more than I should help
01:14:13 the average stranger.
01:14:15 And I should help, you know, the average stranger
01:14:19 in my country more than I should help
01:14:20 somebody outside my country.
01:14:22 And I should help humans more than I should help,
01:14:25 you know, other animals.
01:14:26 And I should, right, so there’s a clear hierarchy
01:14:28 of helping and there are other people who, you know,
01:14:33 they are, their niche is much more inclusive, right?
01:14:37 And that they’re humans first, right?
01:14:40 Or creatures of the Earth first, let’s say.
01:14:45 And I don’t think we know how flexible those attitudes are
01:14:50 because I don’t think the research really tells us that.
01:14:53 But in any case, there are, you know,
01:14:56 and there are beliefs, people also have beliefs about,
01:14:59 there’s this really interesting research in,
01:15:03 really in anthropology that looks at
01:15:08 what are cultures particularly afraid of?
01:15:12 Like what the people in a particular culture
01:15:15 are organizing their social systems
01:15:17 to prevent certain types of problems.
01:15:20 So what are the problems that they’re worried about?
01:15:22 And so there are some cultures that are much more
01:15:24 hierarchical and some cultures that are,
01:15:28 you know, much more egalitarian.
01:15:30 There are some cultures that, you know,
01:15:32 in the debate of like getting along versus getting ahead,
01:15:35 there are some cultures that really prioritize
01:15:38 the individual over the group.
01:15:40 And there are other cultures that really prioritize
01:15:41 the group over the individual.
01:15:43 You know, it’s not like one of these is right
01:15:45 and one of these is wrong, it’s that, you know,
01:15:47 different combinations of these features
01:15:49 are different solutions that humans have come up with
01:15:52 for living in groups,
01:15:55 which is a major adaptive advantage of our species.
01:16:00 And it’s not the case that one of these is better
01:16:02 and one of these is worse.
01:16:03 Although as a person, of course, I have opinions about that.
01:16:07 And as a person, I can say,
01:16:10 I would very much prefer certain, I have certain beliefs
01:16:14 and I really want everyone in the world
01:16:15 to live by those beliefs, you know.
01:16:17 But as a scientist, I know that it’s not really the case
01:16:21 that for the species,
01:16:24 any one of these is better than any other.
01:16:26 There are different solutions that work differentially well
01:16:29 in particular, you know, ecological parts of the world.
01:16:36 But for individual humans,
01:16:39 there are definitely some systems that are better
01:16:42 and some systems that are worse, right?
01:16:43 But when anthropologists or when neuroscientists
01:16:46 or biologists are talking,
01:16:48 they’re not usually talking about the lives
01:16:50 of individual people,
01:16:52 they’re talking about, you know, the species,
01:16:54 what’s better for the species,
01:16:55 the survivability of the species.
01:16:57 And what’s better for the survivability of the species
01:16:59 is variation,
01:17:01 that we have lots of cultures
01:17:03 with lots of different solutions
01:17:05 because if the environment were to change drastically,
01:17:09 some of those solutions will work better than others.
01:17:17 And you can see that happening with COVID.
01:17:21 Right, so some people might be more susceptible
01:17:23 to this virus than others.
01:17:26 And so variation is very useful.
01:17:28 Say COVID was much, much more destructive than it is.
01:17:32 And like, I don’t know, 20% of the population died.
01:17:36 So, you know, it’s good to have variability
01:17:40 because then at least some percent will survive.
01:17:42 Yeah, I mean, the way that I used to describe it
01:17:46 was, you know, using, you know, those movies
01:17:51 like the War of the Worlds or Pacific Rim,
01:17:55 you know, where like aliens come down from outer space
01:17:58 and they, you know, wanna kill humans.
01:18:01 And so all the humans band together as a species
01:18:04 and they all, like all the, you know,
01:18:06 little squabbling from countries and whatever
01:18:08 all, you know, goes away
01:18:10 and everyone is just one big, you know.
01:18:13 Well, that, you know, that doesn’t happen.
01:18:19 I mean, cause COVID is, you know,
01:18:21 a virus like COVID 19 is like a creature from outer space.
01:18:29 And that’s not what you see happening.
01:18:31 What you do see happening,
01:18:33 it is true that some people, I mean,
01:18:35 we could use this as an example of essentialism also.
01:18:37 So just to say, like exposure to the virus does not mean
01:18:41 that you will become infected with a disease.
01:18:45 So, I mean, in controlled studies,
01:18:48 one of which was actually a coronavirus, not COVID,
01:18:51 but this was, these are studies from 10 or so years ago,
01:18:55 you know, only somewhere between 20 and 40% of people
01:18:59 were developed respiratory illness
01:19:02 when a virus was placed in their nose.
01:19:06 And so.
01:19:07 And there’s a dose question, all those.
01:19:09 Well, not in these studies, actually.
01:19:10 So in these studies,
01:19:11 the dose was consistent across all people
01:19:15 and everything, you know,
01:19:16 they were sequestered in hotel rooms
01:19:18 and what they ate was, you know,
01:19:21 measured out by scientists and so on.
01:19:23 And so when you hold dose, I mean,
01:19:25 the dose issue is a real issue in the real world,
01:19:27 but in these studies, that was controlled.
01:19:32 And only somewhere between 20,
01:19:34 depending on the study,
01:19:35 between 20 and 40% of people became infected with a disease.
01:19:38 So exposure to a virus doesn’t mean de facto
01:19:43 that you will develop an illness.
01:19:46 You will be a carrier
01:19:47 and you will spread the virus to other people,
01:19:50 but you yourself may not,
01:19:52 your immune system may be in a state
01:19:55 that you can make enough antibodies
01:19:58 to not show symptoms, not develop symptoms.
01:20:05 And so, of course, what this means is,
01:20:08 again, is that, you know,
01:20:10 like if I asked you, do you think, you know,
01:20:12 a virus is the cause of a common cold or,
01:20:17 you know, most people, if I asked this question,
01:20:19 I can tell you, because I asked this question.
01:20:21 So do you think a virus is the cause of a cold?
01:20:25 Most people would say, yes, I think it is.
01:20:27 And then I say, yeah, well,
01:20:28 only 20 to 40% of people develop respiratory illness
01:20:32 in exposure to a virus.
01:20:34 So clearly it is a necessary cause,
01:20:38 but it’s not a sufficient cause.
01:20:39 And there are other causes, again,
01:20:41 so not simple single causes for things, right?
01:20:44 Multiple interacting influences.
01:20:47 So it is true that individuals vary
01:20:50 in their susceptibility to illness upon exposure,
01:20:53 but different cultures have different sets of norms
01:20:57 and practices that allow,
01:21:01 that will slow or speed the spread.
01:21:05 And that’s the point that I was actually trying to make here
01:21:08 that, you know, when the environment changes,
01:21:15 that is, there’s a mutation of a virus
01:21:18 that is incredibly infectious,
01:21:21 some cultures will succumb,
01:21:25 people in some cultures will succumb faster
01:21:27 because of the particular norms and practices
01:21:32 that they’ve developed in their culture
01:21:35 versus other cultures.
01:21:36 Now, there could be some other, you know,
01:21:40 thing that changes that where those other cultures
01:21:45 or, you know, would do better.
01:21:46 So very individualistic cultures like ours
01:21:49 may do much better under other types of selection pressures.
01:21:53 But for COVID, for things like COVID,
01:21:57 you know, my colleague Michelle Gelfant,
01:22:00 her research shows that she looks at like loose cultures
01:22:03 and tight cultures,
01:22:04 so cultures that have very, very strict rules
01:22:08 versus cultures that are much more individualistic
01:22:10 and where personal freedoms are more valued.
01:22:14 And she, you know, her research suggests that
01:22:18 for pandemic circumstances, tight cultures actually,
01:22:22 the people survive better.
01:22:24 Just to linger a little bit longer,
01:22:27 we started this part of the conversation talking about,
01:22:30 you know, did humans evolve to think,
01:22:33 did the human brain evolve to think,
01:22:36 implying is there like a progress to the thing
01:22:39 that’s always improving?
01:22:41 That’s right, we never, yeah,
01:22:43 and so the answer is no.
01:22:46 But let me sort of push back,
01:22:47 but so your intuition is very strong here,
01:22:51 not your intuition, the way you describe this,
01:22:54 but is it possible there’s a direction to this evolution?
01:22:58 Like, do you think of this evolution as having a direction?
01:23:01 Like it’s like walking along a certain path
01:23:04 towards something?
01:23:06 Is it, you know, what is it?
01:23:12 Is it Elon Musk said like the Earth got bombarded
01:23:16 with photons and then all of a sudden,
01:23:20 like a Tesla was launched into space or whatever,
01:23:23 a rocket started coming?
01:23:24 Like, is there a sense in which,
01:23:26 even though in the, like within the system,
01:23:30 the evolution seems to be this mess of variation,
01:23:33 we’re kind of trying to find our niches and so on,
01:23:35 but do you think there, ultimately, when you zoom out,
01:23:38 there is a direction that’s strong,
01:23:40 that does tend towards greater complexity and intelligence?
01:23:49 No.
01:23:50 So, I mean, and again, what I would say is I’m really,
01:23:54 I’m really just echoing people who are much smarter
01:23:58 than I am about this.
01:24:00 But see, you’re saying smarter.
01:24:01 I thought it doesn’t, there’s no,
01:24:03 I thought there’s no smarter.
01:24:04 No, I didn’t say there’s no smarter.
01:24:06 I said there’s no direction.
01:24:08 So I think the thing to say, or what I understand
01:24:11 to be the case, is that there’s variation.
01:24:15 It’s not unbounded variation.
01:24:17 And there are selectors.
01:24:18 There are pressures that will select.
01:24:22 And so not anything is possible
01:24:25 because we live on a planet
01:24:26 that has certain physical realities to it, right?
01:24:31 But those physical realities
01:24:32 are what constrain the possibilities, the physical realities
01:24:39 of our genes and the physical realities
01:24:42 of our corporeal bodies and the physical realities
01:24:45 of life on this planet.
01:24:51 So what I would say is that there’s no direction,
01:24:56 but there is, it’s not infinite possibility
01:25:03 because we live on a particular planet
01:25:07 that has particular statistical regularities in it,
01:25:10 and some things will never happen.
01:25:12 And so all of those things are interacting
01:25:15 with our genes and so on,
01:25:20 and the physical nature of our bodies
01:25:23 to make some things more possible
01:25:25 and some things less possible.
01:25:26 Look, I mean, humans have very complex brains,
01:25:29 but birds have complex brains,
01:25:31 and so do octopuses have very complex brains.
01:25:37 And all three sets of all three of those brains
01:25:40 are somewhat different from one another.
01:25:45 Some birds have very complex brains.
01:25:47 Some even have rudimentary language.
01:25:48 They have no cerebral cortex.
01:25:51 I mean, admittedly, they have,
01:25:53 this is now lesson two, right?
01:25:54 They have, is it lesson two or lesson one?
01:25:56 Let me think.
01:25:57 No, this is lesson one.
01:25:58 They have the same neurons,
01:26:05 the same neurons that in a human
01:26:07 become the cerebral cortex.
01:26:09 Birds have those neurons.
01:26:10 They just don’t form themselves into a cerebral cortex.
01:26:13 But I mean, crows, for example,
01:26:15 are very sophisticated animals.
01:26:17 They can do a lot of the things that humans can do.
01:26:19 In fact, all of the things that humans do
01:26:22 that are very special, that seem very special,
01:26:24 there’s at least one other animal on the planet
01:26:26 that can do those things too.
01:26:29 What’s special about the human brain
01:26:30 is that we put them all together.
01:26:33 So we learn from one another.
01:26:35 We don’t have to experience everything ourselves.
01:26:37 We can watch another animal or another human
01:26:40 experience something, and we can learn from that.
01:26:42 Well, there are many other animals
01:26:44 who can learn by copying.
01:26:45 That we communicate with each other
01:26:47 very, very efficiently.
01:26:48 We have language.
01:26:49 But we’re not the only animals
01:26:51 who are efficient communicators.
01:26:52 There are lots of other animals
01:26:54 who can efficiently communicate, like bees, for example.
01:26:58 We cooperate really well with one another
01:27:00 to do grand things.
01:27:01 But there are other animals that cooperate too.
01:27:03 And so every innovation that we have,
01:27:06 other animals have too.
01:27:07 What we have is we have all of those together
01:27:11 interwoven in this very complex dance
01:27:14 in a brain that is not unique exactly,
01:27:19 but that is, it does have some features
01:27:25 that make it particularly useful for us
01:27:30 to do all of these things,
01:27:33 to have all of these things intertwined.
01:27:35 So our brains are, actually the last time we talked,
01:27:40 I made a mistake because I said in my enthusiasm,
01:27:45 I said, you know, our brains are not larger,
01:27:50 or relative to our bodies,
01:27:51 our brains are not larger than other primates.
01:27:55 And that’s actually not true, actually.
01:27:57 Our brains relative to our body size is somewhat larger.
01:28:01 So an ape who’s not a human, that’s not a human,
01:28:06 their brains are larger than their body sizes
01:28:09 than say, relative to like a smaller monkey.
01:28:13 And a human’s brain is larger relative to its body size
01:28:17 than a gorilla.
01:28:18 So that’s a good approximation of your, of whatever,
01:28:22 of the bunch of stuff that you can shove in there.
01:28:25 But, well, what I was gonna say is,
01:28:26 but our cerebral cortex is not larger
01:28:29 than what you would expect for a brain of its size.
01:28:33 So relative to say an ape, like a gorilla or a chimp,
01:28:38 or even a mammal like a dolphin or an elephant, you know,
01:28:44 our brains, our cerebral cortex is as large
01:28:50 as you would expect it to be for a brain of our size.
01:28:53 So there’s nothing special about our cerebral cortex.
01:28:57 And this is something I explain in the book,
01:29:00 where I say, okay, you know, like by analogy,
01:29:04 if you walk into somebody’s house
01:29:05 and you see that they have a huge kitchen,
01:29:08 you might think, well, maybe this is a place
01:29:11 I really definitely wanna eat dinner at
01:29:13 because these people must be gourmet cooks.
01:29:16 But you don’t know anything
01:29:17 about what the size of their kitchen means
01:29:19 unless you consider it in relation
01:29:20 to the size of the rest of the house.
01:29:23 If it’s a big kitchen in a really big house,
01:29:26 it’s not telling you anything special, right?
01:29:29 If it’s a big kitchen in a small house,
01:29:31 then that might be a place that you wanna eat for,
01:29:33 you wanna stay for dinner because it’s more likely
01:29:36 that that kitchen is large for a special reason.
01:29:39 And so the cerebral cortex of a human brain
01:29:43 isn’t in and of itself special because of its size.
01:29:48 However, there are some genetic changes
01:29:53 that have happened in the human brain as it’s grown
01:30:00 to whatever size is typical for the whole brain size, right?
01:30:04 There are some changes that do give the human brain
01:30:07 slightly more of some capacities.
01:30:12 They’re not special, but we can do some things
01:30:18 much better than other animals.
01:30:21 And correspondingly, other animals can do some things
01:30:24 much better than we can.
01:30:25 We can’t grow back limbs,
01:30:27 we can’t lift 50 times our own body weight.
01:30:29 Well, I mean, maybe you can,
01:30:30 but I can’t lift 50 times my own body weight.
01:30:31 Ants with that regard are very impressive.
01:30:34 And then you’re saying with the frontal cortex,
01:30:36 like that’s the size is not always the right measure
01:30:40 of capability, I guess.
01:30:44 So size isn’t everything.
01:30:46 Size isn’t everything.
01:30:48 That’s a quoted book.
01:30:49 People like it when I disagree,
01:30:51 so let me disagree with you on something
01:30:53 or just like play devil’s advocate a little bit.
01:30:56 So you’ve painted a really nice picture
01:30:58 that evolution doesn’t have a direction, but is it possible
01:31:03 if we just ran Earth over and over again,
01:31:06 like this video game,
01:31:08 that the final result will be the same.
01:31:11 So in the sense that we’re,
01:31:14 eventually there’ll be an AGI type,
01:31:17 HAL 9000 type system that just like flies
01:31:19 and colonizes nearby Earth like planets.
01:31:25 And it’s always will be the same.
01:31:26 And the different organisms
01:31:29 and the different evolution of the brain,
01:31:31 like it doesn’t feel like it has like a direction,
01:31:35 but given the constraints of Earth
01:31:38 and whatever this imperative,
01:31:40 whatever the hell is running this universe,
01:31:43 like it seems like it’s running towards something,
01:31:47 is it possible that it will always be the same?
01:31:49 Thereby it will be a direction.
01:31:51 Yeah, I think as you know better than anyone else
01:31:57 that the answer to that question is,
01:31:59 of course there’s some probability that could happen, right?
01:32:03 It’s not a yes or no answer.
01:32:04 It’s what’s the probability that that would happen?
01:32:07 And there’s a whole distribution of possibilities.
01:32:14 So maybe we end up, what’s the probability we end up
01:32:17 with exactly the same compliment of creatures,
01:32:21 including us?
01:32:22 What’s the likelihood that we end up with
01:32:27 creatures that are similar to humans,
01:32:29 but similar in certain ways, let’s say,
01:32:33 but not exactly humans or all the way
01:32:35 to a completely different distribution of creatures.
01:32:41 What’s the intuition?
01:32:42 Like if you were to bet money,
01:32:43 what does that distribution look like
01:32:45 if we ran Earth over and over and over again?
01:32:47 I would say given the, you’re now asking me questions that.
01:32:51 This is not science.
01:32:52 This is not science.
01:32:53 But I would say, okay, well,
01:32:54 what’s the probability that it’s gonna be a carbon life form?
01:32:59 Probably high.
01:33:00 But that’s because I don’t know anything about really.
01:33:03 Yeah, I’m not really well versed that.
01:33:07 What’s the probability that,
01:33:09 so what’s the probability that the animals will begin
01:33:12 in the ocean and crawl out onto land?
01:33:14 Versus the other way.
01:33:15 Versus the, I would say probably high.
01:33:19 I don’t know.
01:33:20 You know, but do I think what’s the likelihood
01:33:22 that we would end up with exactly the same or very similar?
01:33:26 I think it’s low actually.
01:33:28 I wouldn’t say it’s low, but I would say it’s not 100%.
01:33:32 And I’m not even sure it’s 50%.
01:33:34 You know, I would say,
01:33:36 I don’t think that we’re here by accident
01:33:38 because I think, like I said, there are constraints.
01:33:41 Like there are some physical constraints about Earth.
01:33:44 Now, of course, if you were a cosmologist,
01:33:46 you could say, well, the fact that the Earth is,
01:33:49 if you were to do the Big Bang over again
01:33:51 and keep doing it over and over and over again,
01:33:53 would you still get the same solar systems?
01:33:56 Would you still get the same planets?
01:33:58 Would, you know, would you still get the same galaxies,
01:34:00 the same solar systems, the same planets?
01:34:02 You know, I don’t know, but my guess is probably not
01:34:06 because there are random things that happen
01:34:08 that can, again, send things in one direct, you know,
01:34:12 make one set of trajectories possible
01:34:14 and another set impossible.
01:34:15 So, but I guess my, if I were gonna bet money
01:34:24 or something valuable, I would probably say,
01:34:28 it’s not zero and it’s not 100%
01:34:31 and it’s probably not even 50%.
01:34:33 So there’s some probability, but I don’t know.
01:34:34 That it will be similar.
01:34:35 That it will be similar, but I don’t think,
01:34:37 I just think there are too many degrees of freedom.
01:34:40 There are too many degrees of freedom.
01:34:42 I mean, one of the real tensions in writing this book
01:34:47 is to, on the one hand, there’s some truth in saying
01:34:52 that humans are not special.
01:34:57 We are just, you know,
01:35:00 we’re not special in the animal kingdom.
01:35:03 All animals are well adapted.
01:35:07 If they’re survived, they’re well adapted to their niche.
01:35:11 It does happen to be the case that our niche is large.
01:35:15 For any individual human, your niche is whatever it is.
01:35:18 But for the species, right?
01:35:20 We live almost everywhere, not everywhere,
01:35:23 but almost everywhere on the planet, but not in the ocean.
01:35:28 And actually other animals like bacteria, for example,
01:35:32 have us beat miles, you know, hands down, right?
01:35:35 So we’re, by any definition,
01:35:40 we’re not special.
01:35:43 We’re just, you know, adapted to our environment.
01:35:46 But bacteria don’t have a podcast.
01:35:48 Exactly, exactly.
01:35:50 And so that’s the other, so that’s the tension, right?
01:35:53 So on the one hand, you know, we’re not special animals.
01:35:55 We’re just, you know,
01:35:56 particularly well adapted to our niche.
01:35:58 On the other hand, our niche is huge.
01:36:00 And we, you know, we don’t just adapt to our environment.
01:36:03 We add to our environment.
01:36:04 We make stuff up, give it a name,
01:36:06 and then it becomes real.
01:36:08 And so no other animal can do that.
01:36:10 And so I think the thing,
01:36:13 the way to think about it from my perspective
01:36:15 or the way I made sense of it is to say,
01:36:17 you can look at any individual single characteristic
01:36:21 that a human has that seems remarkable.
01:36:26 And you can find that in some other animal.
01:36:30 What you can’t find in any other animal
01:36:33 is all of those characteristics together
01:36:37 in a brain that is souped up in particular ways,
01:36:43 like ours is.
01:36:44 And if you combine these things,
01:36:46 multiple interacting causes, right?
01:36:48 Not one essence, like your cortex, your big neocortex,
01:36:53 but which isn’t really that big.
01:36:56 I mean, it’s just big for your big brain,
01:36:59 for the size of your big brain.
01:37:01 It’s the size it should be.
01:37:04 If you add all those things together
01:37:05 and they interact with each other,
01:37:07 that produces some pretty remarkable results.
01:37:10 And if you’re aware of that,
01:37:14 then you can start asking different kinds of questions
01:37:19 about what it means to be human
01:37:22 and what kind of a human you wanna be
01:37:25 and what kind of a world do you wanna curate
01:37:28 for the next generation of humans.
01:37:31 I think that’s the goal anyways, right?
01:37:33 Is just to have a glimpse of,
01:37:38 instead of thinking about things in a simple linear way,
01:37:42 just to have a glimpse of some of the things that matter,
01:37:45 that evidence suggests matters
01:37:49 to the kind of brain in the kind of bodies that we have.
01:37:55 Once you know that, you can work with it a little bit.
01:37:58 You write, words have power over your biology.
01:38:02 Right now, I can text the words,
01:38:04 I love you from the United States
01:38:06 to my close friend in Belgium.
01:38:08 And even though she cannot hear my voice or see my face,
01:38:12 I will change her heart rate, her breathing
01:38:15 and her metabolism.
01:38:16 By the way, beautifully written.
01:38:19 Or someone could text something ambiguous to you,
01:38:22 like, is your door locked?
01:38:24 And odds are that it would affect your nervous system
01:38:27 in an unpleasant way.
01:38:29 So, I mean, there’s a lot of stuff to talk about here,
01:38:33 but just one way to ask is,
01:38:37 why do you think words have so much power over our brain?
01:38:43 Well, I think we just have to look at the anatomy
01:38:46 of the brain to answer that question.
01:38:48 So, if you look at the parts of the brain,
01:38:52 the systems that are important for processing language,
01:38:57 you can see that some of these regions
01:39:01 are also important for controlling
01:39:03 your major organ systems.
01:39:05 And like your autonomic nervous system,
01:39:07 that controls your cardiovascular system,
01:39:09 your respiratory system, and so on.
01:39:12 That these regions control your endocrine system,
01:39:17 your immune system, and so on.
01:39:20 So, and you can actually see this in other animals too.
01:39:22 So in birds, for example,
01:39:24 the neurons that are responsible for birdsong
01:39:28 also control the systems of a bird’s body.
01:39:30 And the reason why I bring that up is that the,
01:39:33 there’s some scientists think that the anatomy
01:39:38 of a bird’s brain that control birdsong
01:39:42 are homologous or structurally have a similar origin
01:39:45 to the human system for language.
01:39:48 So, the parts of the brain that are important
01:39:51 for processing language are not unique
01:39:53 in, and specialized for language.
01:39:57 They do many things.
01:39:59 And one of the things they do is control
01:40:01 your major organ systems.
01:40:03 Do you think we can fall in love,
01:40:05 I have arguments about this all the time.
01:40:07 Do you think we can fall in love based on words alone?
01:40:10 Well, I think people have been doing it for centuries.
01:40:14 I mean, maybe it used to be the case
01:40:15 that people wrote letters to each other,
01:40:17 you know, and then that was how they communicated.
01:40:22 I guess that’s how you and Dan got it.
01:40:24 Exactly, exactly, exactly.
01:40:26 Yeah, exactly.
01:40:28 So is the answer a clear yes there?
01:40:31 Because I get a lot of pushback from people often
01:40:34 that you need the touch and the smell
01:40:39 and, you know, the bodily stuff.
01:40:42 I think the touch and the smell and the bodily stuff helps.
01:40:45 Okay.
01:40:46 But I don’t think it’s necessary.
01:40:47 Do you think you can have a lifelong monogamous relationship
01:40:51 with an AI system that only communicates
01:40:54 with you on text, romantic relationship?
01:40:58 Well, I suppose that’s an empirical question
01:41:00 that hasn’t been answered yet.
01:41:02 But I guess what I would say is
01:41:08 I don’t think I could.
01:41:10 Could any human?
01:41:12 Could the average human?
01:41:14 Could, you know, so if I,
01:41:18 if I even, I wanna even modify that and say,
01:41:25 I’m thinking now of Tom Hanks and the movie.
01:41:31 Castaway?
01:41:31 Yeah, you know, with Wilson.
01:41:33 Yeah.
01:41:34 I think if that was, if you had to make that work,
01:41:37 if you had to make that work.
01:41:39 With a volleyball, yeah.
01:41:40 If you had to make it work, could you,
01:41:43 could you, prediction and simulation, right?
01:41:45 So if you had to make it work, could you make it work?
01:41:49 Using simulation and, you know, your past experience,
01:41:53 could you make it work?
01:41:56 Could you make it work?
01:41:57 You as a human, could you, could you like?
01:41:59 Could you have a relationship literally
01:42:01 with an inanimate object and have it sustain you
01:42:04 in the way that another human could?
01:42:08 Your life would probably be shorter
01:42:11 because you wouldn’t actually derive
01:42:12 the body budgeting benefits from, right?
01:42:15 So we’ve talked about, you know, how your brain,
01:42:21 its most important job is to control your body
01:42:24 and you can describe that as your brain running a budget
01:42:27 for your body and there are metaphorical, you know,
01:42:31 deposits and withdrawals into your body budget
01:42:34 and you also make deposits and withdrawals
01:42:37 in other people’s body budgets, figuratively speaking.
01:42:40 So you wouldn’t have that particular benefit.
01:42:45 So your life would probably be shorter
01:42:48 but I think it would be harder for some people
01:42:51 than for other people.
01:42:52 Yeah, I tend to, my intuition is that you can have
01:42:54 a deep fulfilling relationship with a volleyball.
01:42:59 I think, I think a lot of the, the environments
01:43:03 that set up, I think that’s a really good example.
01:43:05 Like the constraints of your particular environment
01:43:11 define the, like I believe like scarcity is a good catalyst
01:43:16 for deep, meaningful connection with other humans
01:43:20 and with inanimate objects.
01:43:22 So the less you have, the more fulfilling
01:43:24 those relationships are.
01:43:25 And I would say a relationship with a volleyball,
01:43:29 the sex is not great but everything else,
01:43:31 I feel like it could be a very fulfilling relationship
01:43:34 which I don’t know from an engineering perspective
01:43:37 what to do with that.
01:43:38 And just like you said, it is an empirical question but.
01:43:41 But there are places to learn about that, right?
01:43:43 So for example, think about children and their blankets.
01:43:49 Right, so there, there’s something tactile
01:43:51 and there’s something olfactory and it’s very comforting.
01:43:56 I mean, even for, even for nonhuman little animals, right?
01:44:00 Like puppies and so I don’t know about cats but, but.
01:44:04 Cats are cold hearted, there’s no,
01:44:07 there’s nothing going on there.
01:44:08 I don’t know, there are some cats that are very doglike.
01:44:12 I mean, really, so.
01:44:14 Some cats identify as dogs, yes.
01:44:15 I think that’s true, yeah, they’re species fluid.
01:44:21 So you also write, when it comes to human minds,
01:44:26 variation is the norm.
01:44:28 And what we call quote, human nature
01:44:30 is really many human natures.
01:44:32 So again, many questions I can ask here.
01:44:36 But maybe an interesting one to ask is I often hear,
01:44:41 we often hear this idea of be yourself.
01:44:45 Is this possible to be yourself?
01:44:48 Is it a good idea to strive to be yourself?
01:44:51 Is it, does that even have any meaning?
01:44:54 It’s a very Western question, first of all,
01:44:57 because which self are you talking about?
01:45:00 You don’t have one self.
01:45:01 There is no self that’s an essence of you.
01:45:04 You have multiple selves.
01:45:05 Actually, there is research on this.
01:45:09 To quote the great social psychologist, Hazel Marcus,
01:45:13 you’re never, you cannot be a self by yourself.
01:45:18 And so different contexts pull for
01:45:22 or draw on different features of who you are
01:45:26 or what you believe, what you feel, what your actions are.
01:45:32 A different context will put certain things,
01:45:35 make some features be more in the foreground
01:45:38 and some in the background.
01:45:39 It takes us back right to our discussion earlier
01:45:42 about Stalin and Hitler and so on.
01:45:46 The thing that I would caution,
01:45:48 in addition to the fact that there is no single self,
01:45:51 that you have multiple selves, who you can be,
01:45:54 and you can certainly choose the situations
01:45:59 that you put yourself in to some extent.
01:46:01 Not everybody has complete choice,
01:46:02 but everybody has a little bit of choice.
01:46:04 And I think I said this to you before,
01:46:06 that one of the pieces of advice that we gave Sophia
01:46:10 when she went, our daughter,
01:46:11 when she was going off to college,
01:46:13 was try to spend time around people,
01:46:18 choose relationships that allow you to be your best self.
01:46:21 We should have said your best selves, but, you know.
01:46:28 The pool of selves given the environment.
01:46:31 Yeah, but the one thing I do wanna say
01:46:34 is that the risk of saying be yourself, just be yourself,
01:46:38 is that that can be used as an excuse.
01:46:42 Well, this is just the way that I am, I’m just like this.
01:46:45 And that, I think, should be tremendously resisted.
01:46:51 So that’s one, that’s for the excuse side,
01:46:54 but, you know, I’m really self critical often,
01:46:57 I’m full of doubt, and people often tell me,
01:47:00 just don’t worry about it, just be yourself, man.
01:47:04 And it’s, the thing is, it almost,
01:47:07 it’s not, from an engineering perspective,
01:47:09 does not seem like actionable advice.
01:47:12 Because, I guess, constantly worrying about who,
01:47:19 what are the right words to say
01:47:24 to express how I’m feeling is, I guess, myself.
01:47:30 There’s a kind of line, I guess,
01:47:32 that this might be a Western idea,
01:47:34 but something that feels genuine
01:47:37 and something that feels non genuine.
01:47:39 And I’m not sure what that means,
01:47:42 because I would like to be fully genuine and fully open,
01:47:45 but I’m also aware, like this morning,
01:47:49 I was very silly and giddy, I was like,
01:47:52 this is just being funny and relaxed and light,
01:47:57 like there’s nothing that could bother me in the world,
01:48:01 I was just smiling and happy.
01:48:02 And then I remember last night,
01:48:04 was just feeling very grumpy,
01:48:05 like stuff was bothering me.
01:48:09 Like certain things were bothering me.
01:48:10 And like, what are those?
01:48:12 Are those different selves?
01:48:14 Like what, who am I in that?
01:48:16 And what do I do?
01:48:17 Because if we take Twitter as an example,
01:48:20 if I actually send a tweet last night
01:48:23 and a tweet this morning,
01:48:24 it’s gonna be very two different people tweeting that.
01:48:28 And I don’t know what to do with that,
01:48:30 because one does seem to be more me than the other,
01:48:34 but that’s maybe because there’s a story that I’m trying,
01:48:38 there’s something I’m striving to be,
01:48:40 like the ultimate human that I might become,
01:48:43 I have maybe a vision of that,
01:48:44 and I’m trying to become that.
01:48:46 But it does seem like there’s a lot
01:48:48 of different minds in there.
01:48:51 And they’re all like having a discussion
01:48:54 and a battle for who’s gonna win.
01:48:56 I suppose you could think of it that way,
01:48:58 but there’s another way to think of it, I think,
01:49:00 and that is that maybe the more Buddhist way to think of it,
01:49:03 right, or a more contemplative way to think about it,
01:49:05 which is not that you have multiple personalities
01:49:08 inside your head, but you have,
01:49:11 your brain has this amazing capacity.
01:49:18 It has a population of experiences that you’ve had
01:49:24 that it can regenerate, reconstitute.
01:49:27 And it can even take bits and pieces of those experiences
01:49:32 and combine them into something new.
01:49:35 And it’s often doing this to predict
01:49:39 what’s going to happen next and to plan your actions,
01:49:42 but it’s also happening, this also happens just,
01:49:46 that’s what mind wandering is,
01:49:47 or just internal thought and so on.
01:49:50 It’s the same mechanism, really.
01:49:52 And so a lot of times we hear the saying,
01:49:57 just think, if you think differently,
01:49:58 you’ll feel differently.
01:50:00 But your brain is having a conversation continually
01:50:04 with your body, and your body,
01:50:08 your brain’s trying to control your body,
01:50:10 well, trying, your brain is controlling your body,
01:50:13 your body is sending information back to the brain,
01:50:16 and in part, the information that your body sends back
01:50:19 to your brain, just like the information
01:50:23 coming from the world, initiates the next volley
01:50:27 of predictions or simulations.
01:50:30 So in some ways, you could also say,
01:50:34 the way that you feel, I think we talked before
01:50:37 about affective feeling or mood,
01:50:40 coming from the sensations of body budgeting,
01:50:46 influences what you think.
01:50:50 And as much as, so feelings influence thought,
01:50:54 as much as thought influence feeling, and maybe more.
01:50:58 But just the whole thing doesn’t seem stable.
01:51:01 Well, it’s a dynamic system, Mr. Engineer, right?
01:51:05 It’s a dynamic, it’s a dynamical system, right?
01:51:07 Nonlinear dynamical system.
01:51:09 And I think that’s, I’m actually writing a paper
01:51:11 with a bunch of engineers about this actually.
01:51:14 But I mean, other people have talked about the brain
01:51:17 as a dynamical system before,
01:51:18 but the real tricky bit is trying to figure out
01:51:22 how do you get mental features out of that system?
01:51:24 I guess one thing to figure out how you get
01:51:26 a motor movement out of that system,
01:51:27 it’s another thing to figure out
01:51:28 how you get a mental feature,
01:51:30 like a feeling of being loved
01:51:32 or a feeling of being worthwhile,
01:51:34 or a feeling of just basically feeling like shit.
01:51:38 How do you get a feeling,
01:51:39 a mental features out of that system?
01:51:43 So what I would say is that you aren’t,
01:51:48 the Buddhist thing to say is that you’re not one person
01:51:50 and you’re not many people.
01:51:52 You are the sum of your experiences
01:51:58 and who you are in any given moment,
01:52:02 meaning what your actions will be,
01:52:05 is influenced by the state of your body
01:52:07 and the state of the world that you’ve put yourself in.
01:52:10 And you can change either of those things.
01:52:12 One is a little easier to change than the other, right?
01:52:15 You can change your environment
01:52:16 by literally getting up and moving,
01:52:18 or you can change it by paying attention
01:52:21 to some things differently
01:52:22 and letting some features come to the fore
01:52:26 and other features be backgrounded.
01:52:28 Like I’m looking around your place.
01:52:30 Oh no, this is not something you should do.
01:52:32 No, but I’m gonna say one thing.
01:52:34 No green plants, no green plants.
01:52:39 Because green plants mean a home
01:52:41 and I want this to be temporary.
01:52:43 Fair, fair, but.
01:52:45 What goes to your mind when you see no green plants?
01:52:48 No, I’m just making the point that what if you,
01:52:54 again, not everybody has control over their environment.
01:52:59 Some people don’t have control over the noise
01:53:01 or the temperature or any of those things.
01:53:04 But everybody has a little bit of control
01:53:07 and you can place things in your environment,
01:53:10 photographs, plants, anything that’s meaningful to you
01:53:15 and use it as a shift of environment when you need it.
01:53:19 You can also do things to change
01:53:21 the conditions of your body.
01:53:24 When you exercise every day,
01:53:25 you’re making an investment in your body.
01:53:28 Actually, you’re making an investment in your brain too.
01:53:31 It makes you, even though it’s unpleasant
01:53:33 and there’s a cost to it, if you replenish,
01:53:37 if you invest and you make up that,
01:53:39 you make a deposit and you make up what you’ve spent,
01:53:44 you’re basically making an investment
01:53:46 in making it easier for your brain
01:53:48 to control your body in the future.
01:53:51 So you can make sure you’re hydrated.
01:53:54 Drink water.
01:53:55 You don’t have to drink bottled water.
01:53:57 You can drink water from the tap.
01:53:58 This is in most places, maybe not everywhere,
01:54:01 but most places in the developed world.
01:54:06 You can try to get enough sleep.
01:54:09 Not everybody has that luxury,
01:54:11 but everybody can do something to make their body budgets
01:54:16 a little more solvent.
01:54:17 And that will also make it more likely
01:54:21 that certain thoughts will emerge
01:54:23 from that prediction machine, basically.
01:54:27 That’s the control you do have,
01:54:28 is being able to control the environment.
01:54:31 That’s really well put.
01:54:34 I don’t think we’ve talked about this,
01:54:36 so let’s go to the biggest unanswerable questions
01:54:39 of consciousness.
01:54:41 What is, you just rolled your eyes.
01:54:43 I did, that was my, yeah.
01:54:45 So what is consciousness from a neuroscience perspective?
01:54:49 I know you, I mean.
01:54:52 I made notes, you know,
01:54:54 because you gave me some questions in advance
01:54:56 and I made notes for every single.
01:54:58 Oh, except that one?
01:54:58 Yeah, well that one I had, what the fuck?
01:55:01 And then I took it out.
01:55:04 So is there something interesting,
01:55:05 because you’re so pragmatic.
01:55:07 Is there something interesting to say about intuition
01:55:10 building about consciousness?
01:55:13 Or is this something that we’re just totally clueless about
01:55:16 that this is, let’s focus on the body,
01:55:20 the brain listens to the body,
01:55:22 the body speaks to the brain,
01:55:24 and let’s just figure this piece out,
01:55:26 and then consciousness will probably emerge somehow
01:55:29 after that.
01:55:30 No, I think, you know, well, first of all,
01:55:33 I’ll just say up front,
01:55:35 I am not a philosopher of consciousness
01:55:37 and I’m not a neuroscientist who focuses on consciousness.
01:55:40 I mean, in some sense, I do study it
01:55:41 because I study affect and mood.
01:55:44 And that is the,
01:55:49 you know, to use the phrase,
01:55:50 that is the hard question of consciousness.
01:55:54 How is it that your brain is modeling your body?
01:55:57 Brain is modeling the sensory conditions of your body.
01:56:02 And it’s being updated,
01:56:03 that model is being updated by the sense data
01:56:06 that’s coming from your body
01:56:07 and it’s happening continuously your whole life.
01:56:11 And you don’t feel those sensations directly.
01:56:15 What you feel is a general sense of pleasantness
01:56:19 or unpleasantness, comfort, discomfort,
01:56:21 feeling worked up, feeling calm.
01:56:22 So we call that affect, you know, most people call it mood.
01:56:26 So how is it that your brain gives you
01:56:28 this very low dimensional feeling of mood or affect
01:56:33 when it’s presumably receiving
01:56:35 a very high dimensional array of sense data?
01:56:39 And the model that the brain is running of the body
01:56:42 has to be high dimensional
01:56:44 because there’s a lot going on in there, right?
01:56:47 You’re not aware, but as you’re sitting there quietly,
01:56:49 as your listeners or as our viewers are sitting.
01:56:54 They might be working out, running now,
01:56:56 or as many of them write to me.
01:56:57 That’s fair.
01:56:58 They’re laying in bed, smoking weed
01:57:00 with their eyes closed.
01:57:01 That’s fair, so maybe we should say that bit again then.
01:57:05 So if, so some people may be working out,
01:57:07 some people may be, you know, relaxing.
01:57:11 But you know, even if you’re sitting very still
01:57:14 while you’re watching this or listening to this,
01:57:16 there’s a whole drama going on inside your body
01:57:19 that you’re largely unaware of.
01:57:21 Yet your brain makes you aware
01:57:26 or gives you a status report in a sense
01:57:29 by virtue of these mental features
01:57:31 of feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant,
01:57:33 feeling comfortable, feeling uncomfortable,
01:57:35 feeling energetic, feeling tired and so on.
01:57:38 And so how the hell is it doing that?
01:57:41 That is the basic question of consciousness.
01:57:46 And like the status reports seem to be,
01:57:49 in the way we experience them, seem to be quite simple.
01:57:52 Like it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of data.
01:57:56 Yeah, no, there isn’t.
01:57:57 So when you feel, when you feel discomfort,
01:58:02 when you’re feeling basically like shit,
01:58:04 you feel like shit, what does that tell you?
01:58:06 Like, what are you supposed to do next?
01:58:08 What caused it?
01:58:09 I mean, the thing is not one thing caused it, right?
01:58:12 It’s multiple factors probably influencing
01:58:15 your physical state.
01:58:16 Your body budget.
01:58:17 It’s very high dimensional, yeah.
01:58:18 It’s very high dimensional.
01:58:20 And there are different temporal scales of influence, right?
01:58:28 So the state of your gut is not just influenced
01:58:33 by what you ate five minutes ago.
01:58:34 It’s also what you ate a day ago and two days ago
01:58:37 and so on.
01:58:38 So I think the, you know,
01:58:43 when I’m, I’m not trying to weasel out of the question,
01:58:50 I just think it’s the hardest question actually.
01:58:55 Do you think we’ll ever understand it as scientists?
01:59:03 I think that we will understand it
01:59:06 as well as we understand other things
01:59:09 like the birth of the universe or the, you know,
01:59:15 the nature of the universe, I guess I would say.
01:59:18 So do I think we can get to that level of an explanation?
01:59:21 I do actually, but I think that we have to start asking
01:59:24 somewhat different questions and approaching the science
01:59:28 somewhat differently than we have in the past.
01:59:30 I mean, it’s also possible that consciousness
01:59:32 is much more difficult to understand
01:59:33 than the nature of the universe.
01:59:35 It is, but I wasn’t necessarily saying
01:59:37 that it was a question that was of equivalent complexity.
01:59:40 I was saying that I do think that we could get
01:59:44 to some, I am optimistic that I would not,
01:59:51 I would be very willing to invest the time,
01:59:54 my time on this earth as a scientist
01:59:57 in trying to answer that question
01:59:58 if I could do it the way that I wanna do it,
02:00:01 not in the way that it’s currently being done.
02:00:04 So like rigorously?
02:00:05 I don’t wanna say unrigorously.
02:00:06 I just wanna say that there are certain set of assumptions
02:00:09 that, you know, scientists have
02:00:11 what I would call ontological commitments.
02:00:13 They’re commitments about the way the world is
02:00:16 or the way that nature is.
02:00:18 And these commitments lead scientists sometimes blindly
02:00:23 without, they don’t, scientists sometimes,
02:00:25 sometimes scientists are aware of these commitments,
02:00:27 but sometimes they’re not.
02:00:28 And these commitments on the list influence
02:00:30 how scientists ask questions, what they measure,
02:00:34 how they measure, and I just have very different views
02:00:39 than a lot of my colleagues about the ways to approach this.
02:00:43 Not everybody, but the way that I would approach it
02:00:46 would be different and it would cost more
02:00:50 and it would take longer.
02:00:52 It doesn’t fit very well
02:00:54 into the current incentive structure of science.
02:00:56 And so do I think that doing science
02:00:59 the way science is currently done
02:01:00 with the budget that it currently has
02:01:02 and the incentive structure that it currently has
02:01:04 will we have an answer?
02:01:05 No, I think absolutely not.
02:01:06 Good luck is what I would say.
02:01:09 People love book recommendations.
02:01:12 Let me ask what three books.
02:01:14 Oh, you can’t just like, you can’t just give me three.
02:01:17 I mean, like really three?
02:01:18 What seven and a half books you can recommend.
02:01:22 So you’re also the author of seven and a half lessons
02:01:24 about the brain.
02:01:26 You’re a author of how emotions are made.
02:01:29 Okay, so definitely those are the top two recommendations
02:01:32 of all, the two greatest books of all time.
02:01:35 Other than that, are there books that technical,
02:01:38 fiction, philosophical that you’ve enjoyed
02:01:41 or you might recommend to others?
02:01:42 Yes, actually, you know, every PhD student
02:01:46 when they graduate with their PhD,
02:01:50 I give them a set, like a little library,
02:01:52 like a set of books, you know,
02:01:54 some of which they’ve already read,
02:01:55 some of which I want them to read or,
02:01:58 but I think nonfiction books, I would read,
02:02:03 the things I would recommend are The Triple Helix
02:02:07 by Richard Lewontin.
02:02:10 It’s a little book published in 2000,
02:02:14 which is, I think, a really good introduction
02:02:17 to complexity and population thinking
02:02:23 as opposed to essentialism.
02:02:25 So this idea, essentialism is this idea
02:02:27 that, you know, there’s an essence to each person,
02:02:29 whether it’s a soul or your genes or what have you,
02:02:32 as opposed to this idea that you,
02:02:35 we have the kind of nature that requires a nurture.
02:02:38 We are, we are, you are the product of a complex dance
02:02:43 between an environment, between a set of genes
02:02:47 and an environment that turns those genes on and off
02:02:52 to produce your brain and your body
02:02:53 and really who you are at any given moment.
02:02:56 It’s a good title for that, Triple Helix.
02:02:59 So playing on the double helix where it’s just the biology,
02:03:02 it’s bigger than the biology.
02:03:03 Exactly.
02:03:05 It’s a wonderful book.
02:03:06 I’ve read it probably six or seven times
02:03:08 throughout the year.
02:03:09 He has another book too, which is,
02:03:11 it’s more, I think scientists would find it,
02:03:14 I don’t know, I’ve loved it.
02:03:15 It’s called Biology as Ideology.
02:03:18 And it really is all about,
02:03:20 I wouldn’t call it one of the best books of all time,
02:03:22 but I love the book because it really does point out,
02:03:26 you know, that science is its currently practice.
02:03:31 I mean, the book was written in 1991,
02:03:33 but it actually, I think, still holds,
02:03:34 that science is a currently practice,
02:03:36 has a set of ontological commitments,
02:03:38 which are somewhat problematic.
02:03:41 So the assumptions are limiting.
02:03:43 Yeah, in ways that you, it’s, you know,
02:03:45 it’s like you’re a fish in water and you don’t, like,
02:03:47 okay, so, yeah, so here’s the.
02:03:49 David Foster Wallace, that stuff.
02:03:50 Yeah, but, you know, but here’s a really cool thing
02:03:52 I just learned recently.
02:03:55 Is it okay to go off on this tangent for a minute?
02:03:57 Yeah, yeah, let’s go tangents, great.
02:04:00 I was just gonna say that I just learned recently
02:04:02 that we don’t have water receptors on our skin.
02:04:06 So how do you know when you’re sweating?
02:04:07 How do you know when a raindrop,
02:04:10 when, you know, when it’s gonna rain and, you know,
02:04:12 like a raindrop hits your skin
02:04:13 and you can feel that little drop of wetness.
02:04:16 How is it that you feel that drop of wetness
02:04:18 when we don’t have water receptors in our skin?
02:04:22 And I was, when I.
02:04:23 My mind’s blown already.
02:04:24 Yeah, that was, I have my reaction too, right?
02:04:27 I was like, of course we don’t
02:04:29 because we evolved in the water.
02:04:31 Like, why would we need, you know, it just,
02:04:33 it was just this like, you know, you have these moments
02:04:35 where you’re like, oh, of course, there’s like a, yeah, so.
02:04:38 You’ll never see rain the same way again.
02:04:40 So the answer is it’s a combination of temperature
02:04:46 and touch, but it’s a complex sense
02:04:49 that’s only computed in your brain.
02:04:52 There’s no receptor for it.
02:04:54 Anyways.
02:04:55 Yeah, that’s why like snow versus cold rain
02:04:58 versus warm rain all feel different
02:05:00 because you’re trying to infer stuff from the temperature
02:05:03 and the size of the droplets is fascinating.
02:05:05 Yeah, your brain is a prediction machine.
02:05:07 It’s using lots and lots of information and combining it.
02:05:11 You know, anyway, so.
02:05:12 But so biology is ideology is,
02:05:17 I wouldn’t say it’s one of the greatest books of all time,
02:05:19 but it is a really useful book.
02:05:22 There’s a book by,
02:05:24 if you’re interested in psychology or the mind at all,
02:05:27 there’s a wonderful book, a little,
02:05:29 it’s a fairly small book called Naming the Mind
02:05:34 by Kurt Danziger, who’s a historian of psychology.
02:05:38 Everybody in my lab reads both of these books.
02:05:42 So what’s the book?
02:05:43 It’s about the origin of the,
02:05:45 where did we get the theory of mind that we have
02:05:49 that the human mind is populated by thoughts and feelings
02:05:53 and perceptions and where did those categories come from?
02:05:57 Because they don’t exist in all cultures.
02:06:01 Oh, so this isn’t, that’s a cultural construct?
02:06:05 The idea that you have thoughts and feelings
02:06:08 and they’re very distinct is definitely a cultural construct.
02:06:11 That’s another mind blowing thing, just like the rain.
02:06:16 So Kurt Danziger is a,
02:06:18 the opening chapter in that book
02:06:22 is absolutely mind blowing.
02:06:26 I love it, I love it.
02:06:29 I just think it’s fantastic.
02:06:32 And I would say that there are many,
02:06:35 many popular science books that I could recommend
02:06:39 that I think are extremely well written in their own way.
02:06:42 You know, before I, maybe I said this to you,
02:06:44 but before I undertook writing How Emotions Are Made,
02:06:49 I read, I don’t know, somewhere on the order of 50 or 60
02:06:54 popular science books to try to figure out
02:06:56 how to write a popular science book.
02:07:00 Because while there are many books about writing,
02:07:03 Stephen King has a great book about writing.
02:07:07 And, you know, where he gives tips
02:07:10 interlaced with his own personal history.
02:07:14 That was where I learned you write for a specific person.
02:07:17 You have a specific person in mind.
02:07:19 And that’s, for me, that person is Dan.
02:07:22 That’s fascinating.
02:07:23 I mean, that’s a whole nother conversation
02:07:24 to have like which popular science books,
02:07:27 like what you learned from that search.
02:07:31 Because there’s, I have some,
02:07:34 for me, some popular science books
02:07:35 that like I just roll my eyes, like this is too,
02:07:40 it’s the same with TED Talks.
02:07:41 Like some of them go too much into the flowery
02:07:45 and don’t, I would say don’t give enough respect
02:07:48 to the intelligence of the reader.
02:07:51 And, but that’s, this is my own bias very specifically.
02:07:55 I completely agree with you.
02:07:56 And in fact, I have a colleague, his name is Van Yang,
02:08:01 who, you know, he produced a cinematic lecture
02:08:08 of how emotions are made that we wrote together
02:08:10 with Joseph Fridman, no relation.
02:08:13 Yes.
02:08:14 Well, we’re all related.
02:08:16 Well, I mean, you and I are probably,
02:08:17 you know, have some, yeah.
02:08:18 Yeah, I remember.
02:08:20 It’s the memories are in there somewhere.
02:08:22 Yeah, it’s from many, many, many generations ago.
02:08:26 Well, half my family is Russian, so from.
02:08:28 The good half.
02:08:29 The good half, right.
02:08:31 But, you know, he, his goal actually is to produce,
02:08:44 you know, videos and lectures
02:08:46 that are beautiful and educational
02:08:49 and that don’t dumb the material down.
02:08:56 And he’s really remarkable at it actually.
02:08:59 I mean, just, but again, you know,
02:09:01 that requires a bit of a paradigm shift.
02:09:04 We could have a whole conversation
02:09:05 about the split between entertainment
02:09:08 and education in this country
02:09:09 and why it is the way it is,
02:09:11 but that’s another conversation.
02:09:13 To be continued.
02:09:14 But I would say if I were to pick one book
02:09:17 that I think is a really good example
02:09:20 of good science writing, it would be The Beak of the Finch.
02:09:23 Which won a Pulitzer Prize a number of years ago.
02:09:30 And I’m not, I’m not remembering the author’s name.
02:09:34 I’m blanking.
02:09:35 But the, I’m guessing, is it focusing on birds
02:09:40 and the evolution of birds?
02:09:42 Actually, there’s also The Evolution of Beauty,
02:09:45 which is, yeah, which is also a great book.
02:09:48 But no, The Beak of the Finch is,
02:09:51 it’s a, it has two storylines that are interwoven.
02:09:56 One is about Darwin and Darwin’s explorations
02:10:02 in the Galapagos Island.
02:10:04 And then modern day researchers from Princeton
02:10:07 who have a research program in the Galapagos
02:10:10 looking at Darwin’s finches.
02:10:13 And it’s just a really, first of all,
02:10:18 there’s top notch science in there.
02:10:21 And really science, like evolutionary biology
02:10:26 that a lot of people don’t know.
02:10:28 And it’s told really, really well.
02:10:30 It sounds like they’re also, there’s a narrative in there.
02:10:34 It’s like storytelling too.
02:10:35 Yeah, I think all good popular science books
02:10:38 are storytelling, but storytelling grounded,
02:10:42 constrained by the evidence.
02:10:44 And then I just wanna say that there are,
02:10:47 for fiction, I’m a really big fan of love stories,
02:10:51 just to return us to the topic that we began with.
02:10:54 And so my, some of my favorite love stories
02:10:59 are Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson.
02:11:05 It’s a love story about people
02:11:08 who you wouldn’t expect to fall in love
02:11:11 and all the people around them
02:11:12 who have to overcome their prejudices.
02:11:15 And I love this book.
02:11:19 What do you like, like what makes a good love story?
02:11:23 There isn’t one thing.
02:11:24 There are many different things
02:11:25 that make a good love story.
02:11:26 But I think in this case, you can feel,
02:11:32 you can feel the journey.
02:11:36 You can feel the journey that these characters are on
02:11:39 and all the people around them are on this journey too,
02:11:42 basically to come to grips with this really unexpected love,
02:11:47 really profound love that develops
02:11:50 between these two characters
02:11:52 who are very unlikely to have fallen in love, but they do.
02:11:55 And it’s just, it’s very gentle.
02:12:00 Another book like that is the storied life of A.J. Fierke,
02:12:08 which is also a love story.
02:12:11 But in this case, it’s a love story
02:12:12 between a little girl and her adopted dad.
02:12:18 And the dad is this like real curmudgeony, you know, guy.
02:12:26 But of course there’s a story there.
02:12:28 And it’s just a beautiful love story.
02:12:31 But it also, it’s like everybody in this community
02:12:36 falls in love with him because he falls in love with her.
02:12:40 And he, you know, she just gets left at his store,
02:12:44 his bookstore, he has this failing bookstore.
02:12:46 And he discovers that, you know,
02:12:51 he feels like inexplicably this need
02:12:54 to take care of this little baby.
02:12:56 And this whole life emerges out of that one decision,
02:13:00 which is really beautiful actually, very poignant.
02:13:05 Do you think the greatest stories have a happy ending
02:13:10 or a heartbreak at the end?
02:13:14 That’s such a Russian question.
02:13:15 It’s like Russian tragedies, you know.
02:13:18 So I would say the answer to that for me,
02:13:20 there has to be heartbreak.
02:13:21 Yeah, I really don’t like heartbreak.
02:13:24 I don’t like heartbreak.
02:13:25 I want there to be a happy ending
02:13:27 or at least a hopeful ending.
02:13:32 But you know, like Dr. Chivago, like,
02:13:36 or the English patient, oh my goodness, like why?
02:13:40 Oh, it’s just, yeah, no, mm mm.
02:13:45 Well, I don’t think there’s a better way to end it
02:13:47 on a happy note like this.
02:13:50 Lisa, like I said, I’m a huge fan of yours.
02:13:53 Thank you for wasting yet more time with me talking again.
02:13:57 People should definitely get your book
02:13:59 and maybe one day I can’t wait to talk
02:14:02 to your husband as well.
02:14:03 Well, right back at you, Lexi.
02:14:07 Thanks for listening to this conversation
02:14:09 with Lisa Feldman Barrett and thank you to our sponsors.
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02:14:52 And now, let me leave you with some words
02:14:54 from Sun Tzu and the Art of War.
02:14:58 There are not more than five musical notes,
02:15:01 yet the combination of these five give rise
02:15:03 to more melodies that can ever be heard.
02:15:06 There are not more than five primary colors,
02:15:09 yet in combination they produce more hues
02:15:12 that can ever be seen.
02:15:15 There are not more than five cardinal tastes,
02:15:18 and yet combinations of them yield more flavors
02:15:22 than can ever be tasted.
02:15:25 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.