Latest / Aired Out / Dr. Brian McKeon - Sweethearts & Heroes
Transcript
- 0:20Speaker 1: The step, speaking instant, speaking step, stinking instant people and
- 0:58Speaker 1: basting step.
- 1:14Speaker 2: All right, here we go, new day, new week, new month,
- 1:19Speaker 2: Welcome to July. Of course, we've got some new laws
- 1:24Speaker 2: to celebrate here in Vermont. We're gonna be talking about them.
- 1:29Speaker 3: At some point.
- 1:31Speaker 2: I know Smuggler's Notch is just one of them, but
- 1:34Speaker 2: there's a few others here, and I've got to post
- 1:36Speaker 2: it up on the page if you haven't had a
- 1:39Speaker 2: chance to have a look.
- 1:41Speaker 3: Yes, lots to get to, lots to talk about.
- 1:43Speaker 2: This morning, deb Phillips is kicking off our Wednesday Morning
- 1:48Speaker 2: from the world. What's Fresh, What's New?
- 1:50Speaker 3: Debt?
- 1:51Speaker 4: Well, good morning j D. So we have We're hoping
- 1:56Speaker 4: everyone has a safe and enjoyable fourth of July. In
- 2:00Speaker 4: this week's paper, we have the Randolph schedule. Last week
- 2:05Speaker 4: we had the Woolster and the mont Pilier schedule for
- 2:11Speaker 4: the event. So if somebody missed that, we do have
- 2:14Speaker 4: the digital version of the paper up so that you
- 2:17Speaker 4: could go back and then look at that schedule. One
- 2:22Speaker 4: thing that we have is really exciting is the simply
- 2:26Speaker 4: Vermont's Summer Guide, forty eight pages events and things to
- 2:32Speaker 4: do around Barrymont, Pilier all through Washington County. That's an
- 2:36Speaker 4: insert in this week's paper. And we also have money
- 2:42Speaker 4: saving coupons. You can save on oil changes, four tire changeovers,
- 2:47Speaker 4: carpet and flooring, a whole lot more. And at the
- 2:51Speaker 4: same time, we're congratulating the Hardwood Boys lacrosse d two
- 2:55Speaker 4: state champions. Yeah, big, big deal there, very good. And
- 3:01Speaker 4: in addition, we have like Corey Works is going to
- 3:05Speaker 4: Coreyworks Theater is presenting a Grand Night for Singing a
- 3:09Speaker 4: Rogers and Hammerstein Musical review July ninth through twelfth and
- 3:14Speaker 4: July sixteenth through nineteenth, and all their performances are free
- 3:18Speaker 4: and very worthwhile to go and see.
- 3:22Speaker 2: Deb I know that last week you had a bunch
- 3:25Speaker 2: of fourth of July stuff in their schedules for tounds
- 3:30Speaker 2: like well, of course Montpelier, but also Cabot and you
- 3:35Speaker 2: said Randolph Is We've got that schedule out in today's paper.
- 3:39Speaker 4: Yes, okay, and off is in today's paper. And last
- 3:42Speaker 4: week we had also.
- 3:43Speaker 2: Wooster oh oh that was the other one, Yes, yes,
- 3:47Speaker 2: yeah boy and one of the best, one of the
- 3:49Speaker 2: best fireworks shows right there.
- 3:51Speaker 4: Definitely, definitely all and very worthwhile to go and see
- 3:55Speaker 4: and enjoy.
- 3:57Speaker 2: Deb thanks for coming on and thanks for presenting aired out.
- 4:01Speaker 2: We appreciate and love you and Gary and the rest
- 4:03Speaker 2: of the team over there so much.
- 4:05Speaker 4: All right, thanks so much, Jady.
- 4:06Speaker 2: Look for the paper. It's out today. The world's getting
- 4:09Speaker 2: distributed everywhere. Quick notice here on the boil water notice
- 4:17Speaker 2: for Barrytown. It was lifted yesterday for Barrytown. Easy to
- 4:24Speaker 2: get that confused with the whole Graniteville thing. But that
- 4:30Speaker 2: water main break on Websterville Road that has been repaired,
- 4:35Speaker 2: and the boil water notice for Barrytown again lifted. But
- 4:39Speaker 2: Graniteville still under a boil water notice as it's related
- 4:44Speaker 2: to a separate issue. If you didn't see that on
- 4:48Speaker 2: the page yesterday, that is the case, and that will
- 4:51Speaker 2: be in place until this afternoon probably. I want to
- 4:56Speaker 2: make sure we get that out there. Also another public
- 5:00Speaker 2: service announcement here with the heat and the heat indexes
- 5:04Speaker 2: being insane in Vermont over the next couple of days,
- 5:09Speaker 2: the humidity playing a huge role here in those temperatures,
- 5:16Speaker 2: and we just want to say, please be safe, check
- 5:20Speaker 2: on your neighbors. I note that the Berry City Fire
- 5:23Speaker 2: Department is going to be spraying the fire hoses over
- 5:25Speaker 2: in Curier Park, getting the kids and the families out
- 5:28Speaker 2: there and having fun with that.
- 5:30Speaker 3: It's going to be an amazing night tonight.
- 5:34Speaker 2: Hopefully you'll be able to come out and endure the temperatures,
- 5:39Speaker 2: maybe cool off a little bit for the farmer's markets,
- 5:43Speaker 2: the food trucks and the concerts in the park every
- 5:46Speaker 2: single Wednesday. There's also some cooling shelters up at the
- 5:53Speaker 2: Bury Auditorium here. Over the next couple of days, we're
- 5:56Speaker 2: going to be paying attention to what's on the Berry
- 5:58Speaker 2: City page, the aired out page. We'll be posting up
- 6:04Speaker 2: and sharing that information as much as possible. But water
- 6:08Speaker 2: and cooling shelters up at the Barry Auditorium. I have
- 6:12Speaker 2: with me this morning a guest who I am so
- 6:17Speaker 2: much looking forward to having on, Doctor Brian mckeeon Sweethearts
- 6:22Speaker 2: and Heroes are next Resident Philosopher. I think is what
- 6:28Speaker 2: you're being referred to?
- 6:29Speaker 3: Is that? Do I have that right? My friend? Is
- 6:31Speaker 3: that correct?
- 6:32Speaker 5: That's my current official title?
- 6:34Speaker 2: Man, I am I've never met you. I am honored
- 6:39Speaker 2: to have you here in the studio, but I gotta
- 6:41Speaker 2: tell you, man, before we even get started, your son
- 6:46Speaker 2: is such an amazing guy and has brought so much
- 6:52Speaker 2: to the airwaves here to this platform over the last
- 6:57Speaker 2: couple of years. And You've done one hell of a
- 7:00Speaker 2: job raising him.
- 7:01Speaker 6: Man, I appreciate it. I wish I could take all
- 7:03Speaker 6: the credit, but I can't. But I'm proud of all
- 7:07Speaker 6: my sons. Actually, I think you've had Joe as well.
- 7:09Speaker 2: I have, Yes, I have. It's been a while since
- 7:11Speaker 2: I've had Josiah on. But man, these two guys are
- 7:15Speaker 2: just they they bring the goods man, and you know,
- 7:18Speaker 2: and they've they've talked about you as as has has Tom.
- 7:25Speaker 2: It just said, yeah that you know, it's one thing
- 7:27Speaker 2: to have Brian on, but when you get Brian Senior on,
- 7:30Speaker 2: look out, Tom's saying that that I shouldn't be light
- 7:36Speaker 2: on you this morning. We're just gonna let it go.
- 7:38Speaker 2: We're just gonna have a conversation here. You and and
- 7:42Speaker 2: I've got another good friend of mine, Paul Brody, who's
- 7:46Speaker 2: on the couch right across from me, who's a therapist
- 7:50Speaker 2: that specializes in Druggnnette alcohol treatment. Lots to unfold here
- 7:58Speaker 2: and uncover, but for the July weekend, right in front
- 8:02Speaker 2: of us alcohol consumption food consumption, the burgers, the hot dogs,
- 8:13Speaker 2: the sodium, throwing a lot of alcohol in there, and
- 8:17Speaker 2: then and then let's have the great idea of lighting
- 8:20Speaker 2: off some fireworks. It's a culmination of a lot of
- 8:27Speaker 2: things that aren't necessarily great for us, but nonetheless, we
- 8:32Speaker 2: celebrate two hundred and fifty years of independence, and this
- 8:36Speaker 2: is how we act. Paul and I were just chatting
- 8:41Speaker 2: before we went live here this morning, and Paul was like,
- 8:47Speaker 2: ask him, Let's ask him right now. The most dangerous
- 8:51Speaker 2: substance that we as humans can put in our bodies?
- 8:57Speaker 3: Is it? Is it alcohol? Is it food? Is it drugs?
- 9:01Speaker 3: What say you? M?
- 9:06Speaker 5: I think it has to do with the volume of
- 9:08Speaker 5: those substances that you put in.
- 9:11Speaker 6: I have an addiction to red Bull, and I've calculated
- 9:15Speaker 6: it once I can't remember.
- 9:16Speaker 5: I think I've had I.
- 9:17Speaker 6: Don't know how many eight thousand and eighty thousand gallons
- 9:20Speaker 6: of red Bull, some large amount, and it'll eventually kill me.
- 9:23Speaker 6: And when you drink three or four a day, it's
- 9:26Speaker 6: not good for you. So I think a lot of
- 9:28Speaker 6: it has to do with how much we put into
- 9:32Speaker 6: our bodies, and any of them could kill you.
- 9:37Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I want to just Paul.
- 9:42Speaker 3: Anything on that.
- 9:44Speaker 7: I want to ask all kinds of Red Bull questions,
- 9:46Speaker 7: but the.
- 9:47Speaker 3: Time, Yeah, no, ask him. Now, I want to know.
- 9:50Speaker 2: I want to know if Brian knows what every ingredient
- 9:53Speaker 2: is in Red Bull, if he's memorized it.
- 9:57Speaker 5: No, I didn't memorize them. All I cared about was
- 9:59Speaker 5: the touring.
- 10:00Speaker 6: And in fact, the first time I had a Red Bull,
- 10:02Speaker 6: it tastes disgusting, but I figured if I persisted, I
- 10:05Speaker 6: eventually get good at it.
- 10:06Speaker 7: That's the people that people.
- 10:07Speaker 6: That's true for smoking and alcohol and everything else.
- 10:14Speaker 7: So I was I was curious that, like I'm Paul.
- 10:17Speaker 7: By the way, Hi, Brian so JD had sent me
- 10:19Speaker 7: a link to a podcast that you've done, I think
- 10:21Speaker 7: from your from the school you work a year or
- 10:23Speaker 7: so ago. So listen to that, and I was really
- 10:26Speaker 7: impressed with the way you describe lifetime learning and your
- 10:29Speaker 7: approach that and and the things that you've done. And
- 10:31Speaker 7: so that's interesting to me from my alcohol and drug
- 10:34Speaker 7: counselor so I work with addiction and so looking at
- 10:37Speaker 7: the different things that get people in, like or what
- 10:40Speaker 7: the origin point is for the addiction. So, like you
- 10:43Speaker 7: describe yourself as this addiction with red Bull. How do
- 10:46Speaker 7: you how like the understanding you haven't in your background
- 10:49Speaker 7: in biology, so you understand those chemicals and impact on
- 10:52Speaker 7: your bodies, Like, how do you what?
- 10:54Speaker 3: What?
- 10:55Speaker 7: How do you defeat the cognitive dissonance that must come
- 10:57Speaker 7: up with that?
- 10:59Speaker 5: Well, I'm a hypocrite.
- 11:01Speaker 7: You're humans, so you know we all got that right, So.
- 11:04Speaker 5: I'm really good at that.
- 11:06Speaker 6: It's interesting because I have learned over the years that
- 11:10Speaker 6: I guess I'm not.
- 11:11Speaker 5: Quite like other people.
- 11:13Speaker 6: I never really exercised and and generally my health has
- 11:17Speaker 6: been fine. All my wives have sent me to the
- 11:20Speaker 6: doctor repeatedly, and the doctor says I'm perfectly healthy in
- 11:23Speaker 6: every way. So I think I'm one of those anomalies
- 11:27Speaker 6: that just got lucky in my genetics. Unfortunately, that's not
- 11:32Speaker 6: true for everybody, right, and I'm sure there's something out
- 11:34Speaker 6: there that that could easily kill me. But so for me,
- 11:38Speaker 6: I think it's about all of us finding finding our
- 11:41Speaker 6: own way in that sense.
- 11:42Speaker 5: And so far those things haven't beaten me down yet.
- 11:45Speaker 6: I figured I would keep going until they started to
- 11:47Speaker 6: make me sick, and then I switch it up.
- 11:49Speaker 7: Yeah, Like Alan Wattson, I'm familiar with him. But he was, Yeah,
- 11:54Speaker 7: so he's a big spiritual teacher, and and some people
- 11:56Speaker 7: would often ask him about his use of tobacco and
- 11:58Speaker 7: alcohol because and he said, well, I want to enjoy life.
- 12:02Speaker 7: And so even though he has this spiritual proach, and
- 12:04Speaker 7: you think, this guy's got to figure out he's living
- 12:05Speaker 7: in zen all the time, but then he's still engaging
- 12:07Speaker 7: these behaviors that are killing his body. And so but
- 12:10Speaker 7: for me, I guess my understanding that is kind of
- 12:12Speaker 7: like the balance the en and young of it is
- 12:14Speaker 7: that so he's he's so into the spiritual energy, but
- 12:17Speaker 7: he's also in the physical. He's just not giving into
- 12:20Speaker 7: the physical cravings or sensations. But I guess it is
- 12:23Speaker 7: kind of a sensory experience. So it's a it does
- 12:26Speaker 7: seem to have, like we I guess.
- 12:28Speaker 3: There's a balance.
- 12:29Speaker 7: So I don't know if that that makes any sense
- 12:31Speaker 7: for you and your experience.
- 12:32Speaker 6: And oh yeah, I mean I've spent a lot of
- 12:34Speaker 6: time studying Daoism and young Ying and actually listening to
- 12:38Speaker 6: Alan Wats quite a bit, and there is an interesting.
- 12:43Speaker 5: Phenomenon of this balance.
- 12:45Speaker 1: Uh.
- 12:46Speaker 6: And so certainly that I think is probably how he
- 12:50Speaker 6: saw it. He saw it his balance. In that sense,
- 12:52Speaker 6: you have to have the light in the dark. You
- 12:53Speaker 6: can't just have one or the other.
- 12:56Speaker 7: That's just interesting stuff.
- 12:58Speaker 2: You. You are a man of much knowledge, my friend.
- 13:03Speaker 2: You have a couple of a couple of degrees you've
- 13:06Speaker 2: spent something. Can you tell us what are some of them?
- 13:11Speaker 2: You're an assistant professor of biology at Penn College.
- 13:16Speaker 5: I was, you were.
- 13:18Speaker 3: I was for more than twenty years.
- 13:21Speaker 6: Twenty years at Penn College, and then I had four
- 13:26Speaker 6: years at Broome Community College in two years at Penn
- 13:29Speaker 6: State Erie.
- 13:30Speaker 5: So twenty six years as a professor total.
- 13:32Speaker 3: Wow, what are we talking about for degrees? For you?
- 13:38Speaker 6: So I got my bachelor's in biology with a minor
- 13:41Speaker 6: in chemistry, and I was going to go to med
- 13:43Speaker 6: school and actually.
- 13:46Speaker 5: Kind of interesting. I had applied.
- 13:48Speaker 6: And everything, and then Brian was born January of my
- 13:51Speaker 6: senior year in college, and I held him and I
- 13:54Speaker 6: realized that A he didn't have to be born and
- 13:57Speaker 6: be that if I went to med school, I'd never
- 13:58Speaker 6: see him, and I figured that wasn't fair to him.
- 14:02Speaker 6: So I'm not blaming him, but like, I'm happy. Actually
- 14:05Speaker 6: I made the right choice. And I said, well, I
- 14:06Speaker 6: guess I'm not going to med school.
- 14:07Speaker 5: Now what do I do? I spent four years trying
- 14:09Speaker 5: to do it.
- 14:10Speaker 6: So I ended up going to get my master's at
- 14:13Speaker 6: Ducane University and I got that in molecular biology, and
- 14:19Speaker 6: then I got a job working at Penn State Erie.
- 14:22Speaker 6: I was a lab coordinator and I did some teaching,
- 14:25Speaker 6: but you can't I was working with all the PhDs,
- 14:29Speaker 6: and you know, if you don't have the same level
- 14:33Speaker 6: of degree in that sense, then you can't quite do
- 14:37Speaker 6: all the same things. So I ended up we moved
- 14:39Speaker 6: to Binghamton, which was closer to family, and I got
- 14:41Speaker 6: my While I was working in teaching, I got my
- 14:44Speaker 6: doctorate in philosophy of mind.
- 14:46Speaker 5: I didn't realize it until.
- 14:49Speaker 6: Talking to a philosopher a bit at Penn State Erie,
- 14:51Speaker 6: but I found out I was a philosopher at heart.
- 14:53Speaker 6: So I got mine in philosophy of mind, actually with
- 14:56Speaker 6: a concentration in medical ethics because I was doing a
- 14:59Speaker 6: lot of that microbiology, anatomy and physiology, that sort of thing.
- 15:04Speaker 6: And so that's when I got the job at Penn
- 15:07Speaker 6: College in Williamsport, which is the littley Hall of Fame.
- 15:11Speaker 6: And while I was here, I wanted the perks the
- 15:14Speaker 6: job was that family members could take classes for free,
- 15:17Speaker 6: and I could take classes for free.
- 15:19Speaker 5: So I'm fortunate.
- 15:21Speaker 6: All my sons got to go to Penn College and
- 15:24Speaker 6: take classes for free, which I was happy about, which
- 15:28Speaker 6: is good because the degrees they got are not the
- 15:29Speaker 6: ones they're using. So but while I was there, because
- 15:35Speaker 6: I got to take classes I would take. I took
- 15:37Speaker 6: six credits a semester for the twenty years I was there,
- 15:40Speaker 6: so I have over three hundred and thirty credits total.
- 15:43Speaker 5: I got a paralegal degree while I was there.
- 15:45Speaker 6: I got to work with the district judge here, Judge
- 15:49Speaker 6: Brand for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. I was an
- 15:52Speaker 6: ex turn for him for six months, and then I
- 15:56Speaker 6: got my chemical I actually got a chemical defendency certificate.
- 16:01Speaker 5: While I was at Penn College.
- 16:02Speaker 6: And then I was taking other classes as well, just
- 16:04Speaker 6: classes I was interested in. And it was nice because
- 16:07Speaker 6: I got to say to the students, look, I'm in
- 16:09Speaker 6: class too, so I understand what's going on with you.
- 16:12Speaker 5: I also got to see how my.
- 16:14Speaker 6: Colleagues would teach and I would take ideas from them,
- 16:16Speaker 6: so it was it was a good time for me.
- 16:18Speaker 3: Wow.
- 16:20Speaker 2: Paul and I were chatting a little bit ago about
- 16:25Speaker 2: what you were saying on this on this podcast about
- 16:29Speaker 2: automatic memory moments. Yep, speak to that a little bit
- 16:34Speaker 2: of of what this is about, Paul. You were saying,
- 16:37Speaker 2: flash bowl memory.
- 16:39Speaker 7: Yeah, well, that's what I'm familiar with some psychology classes,
- 16:42Speaker 7: like the flash ball memories, like you've mentioned nine eleven.
- 16:44Speaker 7: Everyone remembers where they were, and that's okay to mind,
- 16:47Speaker 7: But you were calling them automatic memories.
- 16:48Speaker 2: I think where, yeah, and where we were when when
- 16:51Speaker 2: Kennedy was shot. You know my mom My mom would
- 16:54Speaker 2: also always tell me, you know, exactly where she was
- 16:59Speaker 2: when she find doubt that Elvis Presley died.
- 17:03Speaker 3: So you speak to that doc if you would.
- 17:06Speaker 6: Yeah, automatic memories are I don't know if that's an
- 17:10Speaker 6: expression I came up with. I don't remember anyone else
- 17:12Speaker 6: saying it, but it was I thought the easiest way.
- 17:15Speaker 6: I've always been into trying to simplify things, make them
- 17:18Speaker 6: as simple as possible so that people could understand them.
- 17:20Speaker 6: I had, you know, all freshmen students and news to science,
- 17:24Speaker 6: that sort of thing.
- 17:25Speaker 5: So that's been my habit.
- 17:27Speaker 6: But from the very beginning, I've been into edutainment, where
- 17:31Speaker 6: we where we really connect, you know, with the students
- 17:36Speaker 6: in that way. It's not just rote and boring and dry.
- 17:40Speaker 6: And so I always wanted to create automatic memories. And
- 17:42Speaker 6: I thought, if each lecture could have one automatic memory,
- 17:45Speaker 6: something where they just couldn't forget it, h.
- 17:48Speaker 8: Then from there you're going to go ahead and build
- 17:52Speaker 8: off of that memory once you remember the I routinely
- 17:57Speaker 8: would in the beginning of the semester when I was trying
- 17:59Speaker 8: to show balance it's for anatomy physiology. I'd get up
- 18:01Speaker 8: on the desk and I'd stand on the desk and
- 18:03Speaker 8: I'd tell them about which muscles are moving and all that.
- 18:05Speaker 5: Sort of thing.
- 18:08Speaker 6: McKeon stood on the desk, and from there that automatic
- 18:11Speaker 6: memory triggers.
- 18:12Speaker 5: Oh and then after that we talked about this.
- 18:14Speaker 6: So my feeling was if we could have one automatic
- 18:16Speaker 6: memory per lecture, that was always my goal.
- 18:18Speaker 5: Everything else would just be review after that.
- 18:21Speaker 6: You wouldn't have to work super hard at getting those
- 18:25Speaker 6: memories back from lecture. So that was always my plan,
- 18:28Speaker 6: and so I did a lot towards that. I ended
- 18:31Speaker 6: up early on realizing that I grew up a superhero fan,
- 18:36Speaker 6: which is funny where I work now, But I wore Superman, Batman,
- 18:41Speaker 6: I wore superhero shirts to lecture every day.
- 18:43Speaker 5: I never dressed up. It just wasn't my thing.
- 18:46Speaker 6: And so you know, in all those ways, I try
- 18:50Speaker 6: to make it so that the students felt really comfortable
- 18:53Speaker 6: with class, felt comfortable with me.
- 18:56Speaker 5: But if they had those.
- 18:56Speaker 6: Automatic memories, then it would be a lot easier for
- 18:59Speaker 6: them when they's outing for exams.
- 19:03Speaker 3: Fascinating.
- 19:04Speaker 7: That's also it's like anchoring points and something else that
- 19:07Speaker 7: you would and I don't keep perferring back to this
- 19:09Speaker 7: other podcast and there's no point and ever he's gonna
- 19:13Speaker 7: ever go listen to that. But I don't want to
- 19:16Speaker 7: double up and everything. But like so with the automatic
- 19:18Speaker 7: memories that the anchoring points you talked about, you'd go
- 19:20Speaker 7: from one when you were taking your other classes. So
- 19:23Speaker 7: you're teaching classes, you're also in classes as a student yourself.
- 19:25Speaker 7: And so when you're in one class and you're learning something,
- 19:28Speaker 7: it might be unrelated to the topic that you're teaching,
- 19:30Speaker 7: but you found ways to draw analogies or to bring
- 19:32Speaker 7: it in because and so that expands your ability to teach.
- 19:36Speaker 7: And I always like that. And that's that's along with
- 19:39Speaker 7: the automatic memories. If you're if you're able to create
- 19:41Speaker 7: anchor points to something that someone already knows and they're
- 19:43Speaker 7: able to remember it better. So if you can, that's
- 19:45Speaker 7: where like, if you can bring in the mundane and
- 19:46Speaker 7: everyday experiences and apply it to whatever the topic is
- 19:49Speaker 7: that you're talking about, then it'll be easier for them
- 19:52Speaker 7: to remember. So you're giving him these these flashbolt memories,
- 19:55Speaker 7: something exciting and new and very unique that excites the
- 19:57Speaker 7: brain and so jumping on the table and ex planning
- 20:00Speaker 7: how that what's going on, and they're gonna remember that
- 20:02Speaker 7: if they're not paying attention, all of a sudden you
- 20:03Speaker 7: stand on the table, they're gonna pay attention. And then
- 20:05Speaker 7: if you can bring it into you know, tie it
- 20:07Speaker 7: into something that's every day perfunctory, then they can it
- 20:11Speaker 7: anchors that new idea into that. There's a Dexter Holland,
- 20:16Speaker 7: the singer from The Offspring, he studied I think he
- 20:19Speaker 7: was a microbiologist. He's viral biology or microbiology something that
- 20:22Speaker 7: he's got a master's degree in that when he was
- 20:24Speaker 7: in the he was doing his master's program when he
- 20:25Speaker 7: wrote the song come Out and Play I'm going to
- 20:27Speaker 7: say Keepers Separated. That was written on the hood of
- 20:30Speaker 7: the like the chemical vent hood in his lab they
- 20:32Speaker 7: saw keep him separated. And that's that's what we wrote
- 20:34Speaker 7: that song based on. It's about like gang violence and stuff.
- 20:37Speaker 7: But this is a cool origin story for that. But
- 20:39Speaker 7: that's that anchoring point. He's tying taking something that he
- 20:41Speaker 7: knew and turning it into you know, taking something like a
- 20:43Speaker 7: punk rock song and now you can apply that to
- 20:45Speaker 7: your lab chemical lab work.
- 20:48Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, fine, Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah.
- 20:50Speaker 6: I like taking different classes because I always said when
- 20:54Speaker 6: I was teaching ethics and sociology those sorts of things,
- 20:57Speaker 6: I always had students in different majors and being able
- 20:59Speaker 6: to use the lingo from their majors certainly I think
- 21:04Speaker 6: gave me some credibility and allowed them to also, as
- 21:07Speaker 6: you said, make those connections, which that's how we learn, right,
- 21:11Speaker 6: We have to build on something. That's why we have
- 21:14Speaker 6: analogies and metaphors in our language, because we need them
- 21:16Speaker 6: to understand new things, and so I tried to bring
- 21:19Speaker 6: those in as often as possible.
- 21:21Speaker 3: Do you look at yourself, Brian, as kind of a
- 21:25Speaker 3: modern day Da Vinci or maybe a polymath.
- 21:31Speaker 6: Probably polymath. I never thought of myself as da Vinci.
- 21:34Speaker 6: He was far more autistic.
- 21:36Speaker 5: But the idea for me really is that I got
- 21:41Speaker 5: bored easily and somewhat unfairly.
- 21:45Speaker 6: I don't have a full photographic memory, but it's pretty close.
- 21:49Speaker 6: I remember most of what I read the first time.
- 21:51Speaker 6: So I routinely wanted to keep learning. Knowledge was my thing,
- 21:57Speaker 6: and after a while I started to get bored or not.
- 22:01Speaker 5: Like, I never wanted to be a teacher.
- 22:02Speaker 6: My dad was a teacher, and I remember his last
- 22:04Speaker 6: couple of years that I was home. He came home miserably,
- 22:07Speaker 6: had some rough students, and so I'm like, I'm not
- 22:09Speaker 6: teaching never twenty six years later. But it ended up being,
- 22:14Speaker 6: you know, good for raising and family. But because I
- 22:17Speaker 6: never want I didn't want to teach, because I didn't
- 22:18Speaker 6: want to get bored, and so I had to find
- 22:20Speaker 6: ways to keep my mind activated taking classes I'm studying
- 22:25Speaker 6: on my own. Of course, there are a ton of
- 22:26Speaker 6: things I've studied that I haven't taken any classes in.
- 22:29Speaker 6: And eventually I got to a point where I was like, well,
- 22:31Speaker 6: I want to see you know what my limits are?
- 22:33Speaker 6: Are there things I can't do? So I kept trying
- 22:36Speaker 6: new things and even now you know, I'm doing Sweethearts
- 22:40Speaker 6: and Heroes? Is it something I can do that? I
- 22:42Speaker 6: just like the challenge of new things. I had Actually
- 22:45Speaker 6: before this, I had applied. I took my LSATs and
- 22:50Speaker 6: applied and got into law school. I was going to
- 22:52Speaker 6: go to Penn State Dickinson, but circumstances changed. But I
- 22:56Speaker 6: was supposed to do that this year, and I ended
- 22:58Speaker 6: up changing my mind. But it's you know, can I do?
- 23:00Speaker 6: What can I accomplish?
- 23:01Speaker 2: You ended up changing your mind? And yeah, with you know,
- 23:06Speaker 2: and and Paul and I talk about this all the time.
- 23:09Speaker 2: Just going with the flow, allowing yourself to to change
- 23:13Speaker 2: your mind, to have an open mind, and to explore
- 23:18Speaker 2: different different things, different different music. You know, Paul and
- 23:24Speaker 2: I have discussions about this all the time. Try it,
- 23:27Speaker 2: you know, and and be fair and true to yourself.
- 23:31Speaker 2: If it's something that that you're good at, that you enjoy,
- 23:34Speaker 2: continue doing it. But if if you if it starts
- 23:37Speaker 2: to get boring, or if your your your thoughts and
- 23:41Speaker 2: your interests change, allow allow that to happen naturally, and
- 23:48Speaker 2: just go with it. Don't push against it, don't paddle
- 23:50Speaker 2: against the stream, right, Paul.
- 23:53Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, very dabash, right, go go with the flow.
- 23:57Speaker 6: I've my one chief concerned throughout my entire life has
- 24:02Speaker 6: been truth. I've wanted to know the truth. And I
- 24:04Speaker 6: think I know I frustrated some people because you know,
- 24:07Speaker 6: they want to name me down. What do you believe
- 24:08Speaker 6: exactly on this? And what do you believe exactly on that?
- 24:11Speaker 5: And routinely I'm saying, well, this is what I think
- 24:14Speaker 5: right now.
- 24:14Speaker 6: But you know, if you present some good evidence, some
- 24:16Speaker 6: good arguments, and I think about them for a while,
- 24:18Speaker 6: I could easily change my mind.
- 24:20Speaker 5: I don't mind being wrong.
- 24:22Speaker 6: I don't mind that yesterday I thought something different. And
- 24:26Speaker 6: Emerson said, you know, we shouldn't worry about contradicting ourselves.
- 24:29Speaker 6: We should speak the hard truth today what we believe,
- 24:31Speaker 6: and then tomorrow we should speak the hard truth again,
- 24:33Speaker 6: even if it contradicts yesterday.
- 24:35Speaker 5: I think he said this is his essay self reliance.
- 24:37Speaker 6: He said, don't carry around the corpse of your memory
- 24:40Speaker 6: of yesterday, which I think is pretty funny.
- 24:43Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great analogy. Yep.
- 24:47Speaker 3: You say it's the question that drives us.
- 24:52Speaker 5: That's correct.
- 24:53Speaker 3: It's good to question stuff.
- 24:57Speaker 8: Yeah, I think when you have to question everything, not
- 25:01Speaker 8: just it's easy to question others.
- 25:05Speaker 2: What we see, what we hear in the news, what
- 25:07Speaker 2: we hear, what's coming down the pipe onto our phones,
- 25:12Speaker 2: whether it's politics or anything else. But to question yourself
- 25:20Speaker 2: is much more challenging. That's next level.
- 25:26Speaker 6: I never found it difficult, but I've come to realize
- 25:29Speaker 6: that a lot of people don't do that, and it
- 25:32Speaker 6: could go back to a security thing.
- 25:34Speaker 5: Right, It's interesting we're wired to pass on our DNA.
- 25:38Speaker 6: We don't really think about that that way, but that's,
- 25:41Speaker 6: you know, genetically, how we're wired.
- 25:42Speaker 5: In order to do that. We have to live.
- 25:44Speaker 6: We have to survive, so we worry about survival, but
- 25:47Speaker 6: we don't typically think about that. So what do we
- 25:49Speaker 6: think about We think about safety and security a few
- 25:52Speaker 6: levels up.
- 25:54Speaker 5: And I think that feeling safe and secure.
- 25:57Speaker 6: We don't realize it's ultimately so we can pass on
- 25:59Speaker 6: our DNA, but feeling safe and secure is really what
- 26:04Speaker 6: drives us in a lot of ways, and belonging is
- 26:07Speaker 6: part of that. We want people to think the way
- 26:09Speaker 6: we do because then we feel safer.
- 26:11Speaker 5: So I think we have these innate biological drives.
- 26:14Speaker 6: Again, our culture has evolved a lot faster than our DNA,
- 26:18Speaker 6: so we have these biological drives for when we were
- 26:21Speaker 6: on the savannah and the planes and living in much
- 26:25Speaker 6: less secure scenarios, and that hasn't changed fast enough.
- 26:30Speaker 5: Compared to the security and safety that we have now.
- 26:33Speaker 6: So I've always been interested in the truth and willing
- 26:38Speaker 6: to like none of that really bothered me.
- 26:40Speaker 5: But I think that.
- 26:43Speaker 6: If you feel like you are insecure, if you don't
- 26:46Speaker 6: have that security, that safety that we don't realize it's biological,
- 26:51Speaker 6: but I think it leads to us, then no, I
- 26:53Speaker 6: have you know, I've got to have one thing to
- 26:55Speaker 6: stick to and I can't change my mind, and I've
- 26:57Speaker 6: got to get.
- 26:57Speaker 5: You to think the way I do, because then I
- 26:58Speaker 5: feel safer. Yeah.
- 27:01Speaker 7: Absolutely, is that the And it's all based on our
- 27:05Speaker 7: preference or like our preferences the things our past experience
- 27:07Speaker 7: is to determine what we feel safe with, what we
- 27:09Speaker 7: don't feel safe with, and then what our need for
- 27:11Speaker 7: feeling that security is. And so if we're insecure inside
- 27:14Speaker 7: because we've had experiences that have left us uncomfortable in
- 27:17Speaker 7: some way, it didn't go the way we wanted it
- 27:18Speaker 7: to based on our previous experiences, or it's just something
- 27:20Speaker 7: that's not pleasant to us, and we don't want we
- 27:22Speaker 7: don't know how to handle it, or we don't want
- 27:24Speaker 7: to handle it, and so we're uncomfortable, and so we're
- 27:26Speaker 7: seeking to avoid that I from Ember happening again, either
- 27:28Speaker 7: or something that's good and we want to we want
- 27:30Speaker 7: to repeat that. So then we're that becomes our survival
- 27:32Speaker 7: instinct in a way. Again, we don't think about it
- 27:35Speaker 7: in that context, but we're trying to repeat the things
- 27:37Speaker 7: that felt good and prevent the things that didn't feel good.
- 27:39Speaker 7: And then it's just we've become so distracted by seeking
- 27:42Speaker 7: to make a comfortable environment that we lose lose sight
- 27:47Speaker 7: of what is really going on inside of us. We're okay,
- 27:50Speaker 7: You're okay in every moment, and it's just if you don't,
- 27:53Speaker 7: if you get distracted by the external things, you forget
- 27:56Speaker 7: that you're okay inside, and then you're in survival mode
- 27:59Speaker 7: instead of creative mode. And so once you've got that, uh,
- 28:02Speaker 7: if you will face those things, if you'll go and
- 28:05Speaker 7: ask yourself, why am I uncomfortable in this situation? What
- 28:07Speaker 7: is it that I want to have happen? Is it okay?
- 28:09Speaker 7: If it doesn't happen the way I want it to?
- 28:11Speaker 7: Can I be okay, even if I don't get my way,
- 28:13Speaker 7: which is really good. That's what I've come to recently
- 28:15Speaker 7: is that every problem is the root of it is
- 28:17Speaker 7: that we're not getting our way. So we're all two
- 28:19Speaker 7: year olds throwing the tantrum in the store because because
- 28:21Speaker 7: mom will buy the candy bar for you in every situation.
- 28:24Speaker 7: Can boil it down to that.
- 28:26Speaker 5: Once you get that I said it, I didn't mean
- 28:31Speaker 5: just agreeing with you. I think I think you're right.
- 28:33Speaker 7: Yeah, and so, and that's that goes to that. So
- 28:35Speaker 7: like with JD's talking about, like do we question ourselves
- 28:38Speaker 7: and if we're insecure inside, we're not feeling the safety
- 28:41Speaker 7: and security. So we're trying to make We first need
- 28:43Speaker 7: to make everything outside us the way we want it
- 28:45Speaker 7: to be so that way we can ask those questions.
- 28:47Speaker 7: But if we manipulate the outside to ask those questions,
- 28:51Speaker 7: we're not actually asking the real question because we think
- 28:53Speaker 7: then that if if I'm doing if I have this job,
- 28:56Speaker 7: I have this relationship, if I have if I achieve
- 28:58Speaker 7: this goal, then I'm okay. We're never actually facing the
- 29:01Speaker 7: inside stuff, which is why are you chasing those things
- 29:04Speaker 7: in the first place. Are you okay with the job
- 29:06Speaker 7: without the job.
- 29:07Speaker 5: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. We're not very good at
- 29:10Speaker 5: asking questions.
- 29:11Speaker 6: There's a great book called A More Beautiful Question by
- 29:13Speaker 6: Burger that changed my life a decade or however long ago.
- 29:16Speaker 5: And we have to ask those questions.
- 29:19Speaker 6: The question our quote you just used that I had written,
- 29:24Speaker 6: that's actually from the Matrix right where Morpheus says to Neo,
- 29:27Speaker 6: it's the question that drives us. But ultimately I think
- 29:32Speaker 6: it's you know, passing on your DNA safety. And then
- 29:35Speaker 6: really what's conscious for our semi conscious, I guess, is
- 29:38Speaker 6: this idea of belonging. You're right, we need to feel
- 29:41Speaker 6: like we belong somewhere, and I think that's part of
- 29:42Speaker 6: our safety. If I belong here, then I know what
- 29:45Speaker 6: I'm doing. Most people don't like the discomfort. I really
- 29:51Speaker 6: have taken on sort of the marine attitude. I was
- 29:54Speaker 6: never a marine, but I've known a few. But this
- 29:56Speaker 6: idea of you know, embracing discomfort, right, and in fact
- 30:02Speaker 6: I try to. It's kind of like exposure therapy, right,
- 30:05Speaker 6: where you put yourself in an uncomfortable situation and see
- 30:07Speaker 6: what happens, and eventually, over time those situations when you
- 30:10Speaker 6: don't die your your neolithic brain stem says, oh, I
- 30:16Speaker 6: didn't die, so this isn't actually dangerous, right.
- 30:18Speaker 7: It's how you got used to the red bull too.
- 30:21Speaker 7: This tastes terrible, but let me see you try.
- 30:24Speaker 6: And I think that's how you get used to drugs
- 30:26Speaker 6: and alcoholics, until you get used the smoking. It's how
- 30:28Speaker 6: you get used to anything. It's this exposure therapy. And
- 30:32Speaker 6: we don't really talk a lot about that. It's amazing
- 30:35Speaker 6: to me, for all of the information we have available
- 30:37Speaker 6: to us in our society, the basic features of humanity
- 30:43Speaker 6: are something that we miss a lot of. We just
- 30:46Speaker 6: don't see them, we don't understand them.
- 30:48Speaker 2: Right, speaking of drugs and alcohol and we talked about
- 30:54Speaker 2: this a little bit last week. I was not familiar
- 30:56Speaker 2: with is it?
- 30:57Speaker 5: Is it?
- 30:57Speaker 3: Johann Hari, Yeah, tell us about about this. It was
- 31:03Speaker 3: a journalist, right.
- 31:04Speaker 7: Yea journalists in England. Have you read those books, Brian?
- 31:07Speaker 5: I have not Chasing the Scream.
- 31:09Speaker 7: And Disconnection, I think is the other one Chasing the Screen.
- 31:12Speaker 7: He's got a couple of them. But Chasing the Scream
- 31:14Speaker 7: is about He goes into the history of opiate addiction
- 31:16Speaker 7: and the War on drugs, and he speaks on the
- 31:19Speaker 7: war drugs. It's really fascinating. But and then his book Disconnection,
- 31:24Speaker 7: was more about depression, but basically the same topic. In
- 31:27Speaker 7: both cases he's he's citing disconnect so like, kind of
- 31:30Speaker 7: what you're talking about with the belonging, this need for
- 31:32Speaker 7: belonging or this drive for belonging, the disconnection is what
- 31:35Speaker 7: leads to depression and addiction. So my personal feeling is
- 31:40Speaker 7: that addiction is a symptom of something else. It's never
- 31:43Speaker 7: the root, cause it's always because like you said, like
- 31:45Speaker 7: it's this exposure therapy approach. I like that. I'm gonna
- 31:48Speaker 7: probably think more and use that kind of language with
- 31:51Speaker 7: people because I think that's a good way of looking
- 31:52Speaker 7: at it. Is you have an experience is uncomfortable, and
- 31:56Speaker 7: so you seek to make it less uncomfortable, and so
- 31:59Speaker 7: you might do that with alcohol. Now, sure it makes
- 32:01Speaker 7: it less uncomfortable in that moment, and so you find
- 32:04Speaker 7: relief and so oh this worked, and so on some
- 32:07Speaker 7: maybe cellular level or you know, or conscious or a
- 32:10Speaker 7: subconscious level, but you feel like this worked, I'm going
- 32:12Speaker 7: to do this again. And then even though the next
- 32:14Speaker 7: day you might feel hungover or down the road, that
- 32:17Speaker 7: you have the health problems or legal problems or relationship issues,
- 32:21Speaker 7: and there's so many different negative impacts that result or
- 32:24Speaker 7: consequences from alcohol use when it gets to a problematic level.
- 32:28Speaker 7: But if it fixed, fixed, right, But like if it
- 32:32Speaker 7: resolves some of the discomfort in the moment, then you
- 32:35Speaker 7: continue to go with it and you keep going back
- 32:37Speaker 7: to it, and it's like that becomes that form of connection.
- 32:40Speaker 7: But the more times you have an experience where you
- 32:43Speaker 7: get what you want out of it, if you are
- 32:47Speaker 7: disconnected from in different use of the word, if you're
- 32:49Speaker 7: disconnected from the consequences, and I think that's how the
- 32:51Speaker 7: addictions form. But it's always something that's traumaous. Depression is anxiety,
- 32:55Speaker 7: which basically all the same thing as a body responding
- 32:58Speaker 7: to something, whether or imagined. That alert puts you into
- 33:02Speaker 7: this threat mode and then you're uncomfortable and you're trying
- 33:05Speaker 7: to resolve that, and that's all, that's all survival.
- 33:08Speaker 3: I gotta see I gotta see this Ted talk. Man.
- 33:10Speaker 3: I I still haven't seen it.
- 33:11Speaker 7: But I told you about this years ago. I know
- 33:14Speaker 7: you can sit here and talking to you about this
- 33:16Speaker 7: guy and his books.
- 33:17Speaker 3: Shame on me, Shame on you.
- 33:19Speaker 5: Regard he was the guy first time.
- 33:21Speaker 7: So I'm no shame on Brian, shame on JD.
- 33:25Speaker 2: This was the guy that was saying the the opposite
- 33:28Speaker 2: of addiction is connection. Yeah, which which Will eberately was
- 33:32Speaker 2: in here talking about the other day.
- 33:34Speaker 3: Fascinating stuff.
- 33:35Speaker 7: They're really good books. Johan Hary is a good writer,
- 33:38Speaker 7: and and but the topics and his research, I think
- 33:41Speaker 7: it's pretty sound. So he goes into a lot of details.
- 33:43Speaker 3: Brian, you want to you want to weigh in on that.
- 33:46Speaker 6: Yeah, I like what you said, and I think it's interesting.
- 33:50Speaker 6: We see this interesting pattern. And I just was thinking
- 33:53Speaker 6: about this pattern as you were telling me about that.
- 33:56Speaker 6: What do we do as humans? We were inventors. We
- 33:59Speaker 6: come up with it and we say, hey, I invented this,
- 34:01Speaker 6: let's try it out. And we do a great job
- 34:04Speaker 6: at that, and then twenty years later we find out, oh,
- 34:08Speaker 6: taking steroids isn't really good for you.
- 34:10Speaker 5: Who knew? Oh, giving kids smartphones isn't really good for them?
- 34:14Speaker 5: Who knew?
- 34:14Speaker 6: Right, So we invent these things and they solve one problem,
- 34:19Speaker 6: but we totally ignore all the other side effects, or
- 34:21Speaker 6: we don't know about the side effects long term.
- 34:24Speaker 5: And so I think you're right.
- 34:25Speaker 6: I think with alcohol, with drugs, we're trying to solve
- 34:28Speaker 6: a problem, an emotion that we're uncomfortable with, something we're
- 34:31Speaker 6: not dealing with in that moment, and it works. But
- 34:35Speaker 6: then you have all the side effects long term, and
- 34:37Speaker 6: it's easy for us. Well, I don't have them now,
- 34:39Speaker 6: I'll be fine.
- 34:40Speaker 5: Me and red bull. Eh, it'll probably kill me.
- 34:43Speaker 6: One day if I don't change my ways, right, But
- 34:47Speaker 6: I feel good now. So we're doing well, and we
- 34:50Speaker 6: tend to do that. And I think we simplify things.
- 34:53Speaker 6: I like to simplify things and under to understand them.
- 34:56Speaker 6: But I think as humans again, our survival. If I
- 35:00Speaker 6: look on the planes, I'm out there and I see
- 35:02Speaker 6: a blade of grass moving, it's probably the wind, But
- 35:06Speaker 6: all of our ancestors just said it's just the wind
- 35:08Speaker 6: got eaten, right, And all of our ancestors it said,
- 35:11Speaker 6: oh my god, that could be a lion and ran away.
- 35:13Speaker 5: Whether it was or not, they lived.
- 35:14Speaker 6: I mean, we're we're descended from people afraid of their
- 35:17Speaker 6: own shadow, and so these tendencies that we have are
- 35:22Speaker 6: quite interesting there there. We have to make split decisions
- 35:26Speaker 6: on very little information, and that's part of survival. But
- 35:29Speaker 6: when you translate that to the modern world and all
- 35:32Speaker 6: the things we have access to that does not work
- 35:34Speaker 6: in our favor.
- 35:35Speaker 7: Absolutely we would. I'll so the people who see the
- 35:40Speaker 7: blade of grass blows says the wind, they get eat
- 35:42Speaker 7: and the people who say it's a lion and run
- 35:44Speaker 7: away even if it's not his, survived. So what do
- 35:45Speaker 7: you think about, Like this is a little tangent, but
- 35:47Speaker 7: like this making I'm going on, I don't know, this
- 35:50Speaker 7: is interesting to me. Like, so, like from natural selection
- 35:52Speaker 7: or for survival of the fittest, how did they both survive?
- 35:55Speaker 7: So obviously the ones who didn't think it was a
- 35:57Speaker 7: lion got eaten, so they didn't survive. But we still
- 35:59Speaker 7: have people that do that today.
- 36:00Speaker 6: So it's like, yeah, because there wasn't always a lion there, right,
- 36:05Speaker 6: So it's not that every single one that thought there
- 36:07Speaker 6: wasn't a lion there got eaten.
- 36:09Speaker 5: It was lucky the draw but.
- 36:12Speaker 6: A significant portion of us, I would say, predominantly we
- 36:16Speaker 6: you know, we derive from people who are afraid of
- 36:18Speaker 6: their own shadows.
- 36:19Speaker 7: Yeah, that was the thing. And also like if if
- 36:21Speaker 7: we go into that's where society comes that society is
- 36:23Speaker 7: gonna protect certain people like that and when we see
- 36:25Speaker 7: that in our culture today. You know, there's there's people
- 36:29Speaker 7: who are working and you know, surviving based on their
- 36:34Speaker 7: own merits, and there's people who are not, and some
- 36:36Speaker 7: of them can or can't. You I have a brother's autistic.
- 36:38Speaker 7: He cannot if he was left to his own devices,
- 36:40Speaker 7: he'd be dead in a week. So he needs someone
- 36:42Speaker 7: to take care of him. So there are people that
- 36:44Speaker 7: have physical limitations and stuff like that. So I'm not trying
- 36:46Speaker 7: to say one anything's better or worse than an other.
- 36:48Speaker 7: It's just this is the way it is. But like
- 36:50Speaker 7: in that society, we can then have the people who
- 36:52Speaker 7: are afraid of the wind rustling when there's nothing there,
- 36:55Speaker 7: and the people who treat it as a legitimate threat,
- 36:57Speaker 7: and the people who do survive the lion attack, you know,
- 37:00Speaker 7: and somehow get away with that, you know. So there's
- 37:02Speaker 7: like society that allows all of these different types to persist,
- 37:06Speaker 7: even if not interesting.
- 37:08Speaker 6: Art of society and it's language, right, what sets us
- 37:11Speaker 6: apart from everything else as language and language is really
- 37:15Speaker 6: the so so in the matrix to the architects, as
- 37:19Speaker 6: the neo that hope is the quintessential human emotion, it's
- 37:24Speaker 6: simultaneously the source of our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.
- 37:27Speaker 6: I think language is the source of our greatest strength
- 37:30Speaker 6: and our greatest weakness, because with language we can look.
- 37:33Speaker 5: At all the things we've created and all the things
- 37:34Speaker 5: we've done.
- 37:35Speaker 6: But with language we can talk ourselves into some really
- 37:38Speaker 6: bad places as well. But language is the reason why
- 37:40Speaker 6: we say to ourselves, Oh, maybe there's a thing called ethics,
- 37:44Speaker 6: and maybe that means that for those who can't take
- 37:47Speaker 6: care of themselves, we help them, we take care of them,
- 37:49Speaker 6: and we think that that's.
- 37:50Speaker 5: The right thing to do. That's all language thing. I've had.
- 37:55Speaker 6: We had puppies a few years ago, and one of
- 37:59Speaker 6: the couple of puppies actually weren't doing well. And the dog,
- 38:03Speaker 6: you know, wouldn't feed those puppies that weren't doing well.
- 38:06Speaker 6: I couldn't tell that they weren't doing well or why
- 38:08Speaker 6: they weren't, but she sensed it.
- 38:10Speaker 5: There was no thought.
- 38:12Speaker 6: In my dog's mind, oh man, I'm doing the wrong
- 38:15Speaker 6: thing by not trying to save this one. She figured
- 38:18Speaker 6: it wasn't going to survive, and she wasn't going to
- 38:20Speaker 6: waste any of the milk on the Puppyes, that wouldn't
- 38:22Speaker 6: survive and the animal kingdom is just vastly different from
- 38:24Speaker 6: how we live. And I think the key difference is
- 38:27Speaker 6: with language, we can talk ourselves into thinking different ways
- 38:32Speaker 6: apart from what we're biologically wired for.
- 38:34Speaker 7: Absolutely. Wow, it reminds me of the Four Agreements. I'm
- 38:38Speaker 7: sure if you've come across that book. But he talks
- 38:40Speaker 7: a lot about the power of the word being, being
- 38:43Speaker 7: impeccable with your word, and how we speak everything into existence.
- 38:47Speaker 7: So language really is that that is the root of
- 38:49Speaker 7: all of that. And the Bible in the beginning was
- 38:51Speaker 7: the word, you know. So a lot of different cultures
- 38:53Speaker 7: that have that emphasis on language.
- 38:58Speaker 6: Yeah, my first semester in college, I can't remember the name,
- 39:01Speaker 6: but in English class or lit class, the professor showed
- 39:07Speaker 6: a video of someone and this is on VHS and
- 39:10Speaker 6: the video was from the eighties or seventies. But the
- 39:14Speaker 6: woman said, language does our thinking for us. That changed
- 39:16Speaker 6: my life right there. I've not ever let.
- 39:19Speaker 5: Go of that.
- 39:19Speaker 6: I don't know that she originated that expression, but I
- 39:22Speaker 6: think about it all the time.
- 39:23Speaker 5: Language does our thinking for us.
- 39:24Speaker 6: In fact, as we have these conversations, by the end
- 39:27Speaker 6: of this conversation, I will think slightly differently than when
- 39:31Speaker 6: we started the conversation, because when you asked me questions,
- 39:33Speaker 6: I hadn't thought of I'm going to have to generate answers,
- 39:36Speaker 6: and then as I think about those answers, I'm going
- 39:38Speaker 6: to think later on, yeah, I think I do believe that,
- 39:40Speaker 6: or I'll think later on, boy, I don't really believe that.
- 39:43Speaker 5: I wonder what I actually think on that. So language
- 39:45Speaker 5: is quite interesting.
- 39:46Speaker 6: A lot of times we talk ourselves into thinking something
- 39:49Speaker 6: as we're answering something verbally.
- 39:51Speaker 5: I find that quite interesting.
- 39:53Speaker 7: I've done that a bunch of times. I remember I
- 39:55Speaker 7: had this conversation with a friend's friend one time in college,
- 39:59Speaker 7: and I was doing that as I as I say
- 40:03Speaker 7: things out loud, then I hear myself saying it and
- 40:05Speaker 7: it sounds different, and then I would I would change
- 40:07Speaker 7: my mind mid conversation and I think, oh, you know what, No,
- 40:10Speaker 7: I don't actually I don't think that that. I just
- 40:12Speaker 7: like it was like I was having my own little debate,
- 40:14Speaker 7: and I proved myself wrong. So I listened to as
- 40:17Speaker 7: Thowis as a separate voice and so and she said
- 40:20Speaker 7: that she said I was schizophrenic in my thinking or
- 40:23Speaker 7: something like that, and I was, you know, twenty three
- 40:25Speaker 7: year old kid trying to explain things or whatever, and
- 40:28Speaker 7: so I said, maybe, but I don't know. You know,
- 40:30Speaker 7: it's like if I if I hear something like you
- 40:32Speaker 7: said before, when you're presented with new information, do you
- 40:34Speaker 7: draw new conclusions or do you stick with what you
- 40:36Speaker 7: believed before? Do you stay stuck in your rut because
- 40:39Speaker 7: that's what's comfortable and familiar, back to the idea of
- 40:41Speaker 7: survival and security and stuff like that. Stay with our
- 40:43Speaker 7: beliefs because they're familiar to us. I grew up Mormon.
- 40:46Speaker 7: I left the church about seven years ago now, and
- 40:49Speaker 7: so talk about being stuck. You know, when I was
- 40:51Speaker 7: in that very strong belief that I was raised and
- 40:54Speaker 7: I had no reason to question it, and I fully
- 40:56Speaker 7: believed it until I've obtained information about the church's history
- 40:59Speaker 7: that said, oh, well, if this isn't true, then how
- 41:01Speaker 7: is any of the rest of this stuff true? And
- 41:03Speaker 7: so I finally took that approach, like, well, if I
- 41:05Speaker 7: have new inform, Not finally, I mean it was my
- 41:07Speaker 7: whole life. I was building up to this, being able
- 41:09Speaker 7: to open up and to take a new information. I
- 41:10Speaker 7: was always doing that, but like that for the big
- 41:12Speaker 7: piece for that, that one final belief element. It was
- 41:16Speaker 7: can I take new information and make a new decision
- 41:18Speaker 7: and think? Can I be different? And so I allowed
- 41:21Speaker 7: myself to do that and to transition. So yeah, absolutely,
- 41:23Speaker 7: every every moment we're new. And so same thing with me,
- 41:26Speaker 7: Like after this conversation, I will be a different person
- 41:28Speaker 7: than I was beforehand. And that's great. That's that's the
- 41:31Speaker 7: whole point, right.
- 41:32Speaker 5: For me, anyway, I think.
- 41:33Speaker 2: So, yeah, we get a comment here saying that's the
- 41:36Speaker 2: difference between open and closed mindedness.
- 41:39Speaker 7: Yeah, fixed and uh fixed and growth mindsets you get
- 41:43Speaker 7: about another podcast.
- 41:46Speaker 5: Yeah, growth mindset is really important.
- 41:49Speaker 3: You know.
- 41:49Speaker 2: I wanted to tell you guys that I just got
- 41:54Speaker 2: back from a Monday night Carlos Santanta concert.
- 41:57Speaker 7: Who cares JD. We're talking about important ha.
- 42:00Speaker 2: Haal, don't do that now, come on now listen Carlos Santana.
- 42:06Speaker 2: I mean, everybody knows unless you're really young like you, Paul,
- 42:11Speaker 2: and we've never even heard heard of Carlos, unlike Brian
- 42:16Speaker 2: and I. I mean this, this guy is the shaman
- 42:20Speaker 2: of the music industry really, and to hear him come
- 42:24Speaker 2: out on stage and speak to how so many of
- 42:28Speaker 2: us are living our lives without discovering our inner light
- 42:34Speaker 2: and our connection to others. That we're walking around with
- 42:39Speaker 2: this facade. It's a big show. But rather to just
- 42:46Speaker 2: be quiet, and I mean, here's a guy who is,
- 42:49Speaker 2: you know, shredding on a guitar, but just to be
- 42:52Speaker 2: quiet and listen to our inner voice was amazing and
- 42:56Speaker 2: it just got me. It got me thinking about all
- 43:03Speaker 2: of the possibilities of what you can accomplish in your
- 43:06Speaker 2: life if you have an open mind. Look at Brian.
- 43:10Speaker 2: So it it when we left the concert. It gave me,
- 43:16Speaker 2: gave me a different perspective to think of, like the
- 43:23Speaker 2: question I mean, Brian, Brian says in the matrix, of course,
- 43:27Speaker 2: it's the question that drives us. What It's the question
- 43:30Speaker 2: of what if?
- 43:32Speaker 3: You know?
- 43:32Speaker 2: Brian says, what if I took a culinary course at
- 43:38Speaker 2: Penn College. What if I were to do this with
- 43:43Speaker 2: this knowledge that I have, whether it's a degree on
- 43:47Speaker 2: paper or not.
- 43:48Speaker 3: What if?
- 43:49Speaker 2: So, you know, I just got thinking, I'm like, what if?
- 43:55Speaker 2: What a what a broad question that is, but what
- 43:57Speaker 2: if our priorities changed? What if what's important to us
- 44:03Speaker 2: today is not important to us at all a year
- 44:06Speaker 2: from now? What if you're worrying about something that you
- 44:12Speaker 2: look back and realize that you never needed to, that
- 44:15Speaker 2: it was wasted time, wasted wasted energy. You know, what
- 44:21Speaker 2: if what interests you today doesn't interest you at all
- 44:26Speaker 2: a couple of months from now. I mean, Brian is
- 44:30Speaker 2: our example of that. I mean, he's he's just you're you're,
- 44:35Speaker 2: you're fluid.
- 44:38Speaker 5: I try to be.
- 44:40Speaker 6: I think I was influenced by a lot of different
- 44:42Speaker 6: things over time, but I think it was.
- 44:46Speaker 5: Was it Renee de Kart?
- 44:48Speaker 6: I think therefore I am, uh, well, he got there
- 44:52Speaker 6: because he's decided, well, I need to figure out what
- 44:56Speaker 6: it is I actually believe, and I think I want
- 44:58Speaker 6: to start from scratch. And he did discarded every The
- 45:01Speaker 6: story is he discarded everything he believed, and he says, Okay,
- 45:05Speaker 6: what do I know for sure? Well, he knows he's
- 45:07Speaker 6: having thoughts, he's having experience of thoughts, and therefore he
- 45:11Speaker 6: knows he exists, right, And I thought about that. I thought,
- 45:16Speaker 6: how hard is that? Can you possibly discard everything you
- 45:19Speaker 6: believe and start over? So that's what I tried to
- 45:22Speaker 6: do in my early twenties, is I discarded everything I
- 45:25Speaker 6: believed and I tried to start over and build from there.
- 45:28Speaker 6: And there's an interesting tension. And I don't use this
- 45:33Speaker 6: term lightly or with disrespect, but you mentioned, you know,
- 45:36Speaker 6: your friend saying you were acting like you're a schizophrenic.
- 45:41Speaker 6: I'm not a clinician, but in a sort of common
- 45:44Speaker 6: everyday sense, I feel like all of us are somewhat schizophrenic.
- 45:49Speaker 6: And the reason is we have what we were raised with.
- 45:52Speaker 6: I call them knee jerk reactions.
- 45:54Speaker 3: Right.
- 45:55Speaker 6: I'm very philosophical, and I believe this is the way
- 45:58Speaker 6: we should raise children. And then this happens, and without
- 46:01Speaker 6: thinking about it, my knee jerk reaction is to act
- 46:03Speaker 6: like my dad, right, whether I agreed with that moment
- 46:06Speaker 6: or not. And so I'm constantly feeling like I have
- 46:11Speaker 6: multiple minds on the subject because there's what I was
- 46:13Speaker 6: raised with, and those neurons are so strong, so deeply entrenched.
- 46:18Speaker 6: I'll be fighting them the rest of my life, the
- 46:20Speaker 6: things I don't like that I developed as a kid
- 46:23Speaker 6: or that I saw as a kid. And then you know,
- 46:25Speaker 6: I'm trying to do that again through language, by by
- 46:29Speaker 6: reanalyzing myself constantly. I think for me, I've never had
- 46:35Speaker 6: a problem with that I wanted again because my goal
- 46:37Speaker 6: was truth, then I want.
- 46:39Speaker 5: The truth, no matter what it is.
- 46:40Speaker 6: If I'm completely wrong, then I want to get rid
- 46:42Speaker 6: of what I believe, and I want to believe in
- 46:44Speaker 6: what is true. And so I think that's probably why
- 46:48Speaker 6: I've been more fluid than maybe other people. But yeah,
- 46:52Speaker 6: the fluidity, I think is a big deal. It certainly
- 46:57Speaker 6: very Taoist.
- 46:58Speaker 5: It allows you to handle any situation that comes at you. Theoretically, well, so.
- 47:06Speaker 7: Can truth exist? Then? With an open mind? Can what?
- 47:08Speaker 5: What? How?
- 47:08Speaker 7: How do you know truth?
- 47:10Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 47:10Speaker 6: So this is interesting, right, truth does exist. Whether or
- 47:15Speaker 6: not we can know it is another matter. We're finite,
- 47:19Speaker 6: we have finite information. We will never know one of
- 47:24Speaker 6: any truth. And I usually think about this. If you
- 47:27Speaker 6: and I are on opposite sides of a mountain, I
- 47:30Speaker 6: may describe the mountain as having a nice slope and
- 47:33Speaker 6: it's got trees on it and it goes up really high.
- 47:35Speaker 5: And on the other side of the mountain, you say, no,
- 47:37Speaker 5: that's not the mountain. I'm looking at the mountain I'm
- 47:39Speaker 5: looking at.
- 47:39Speaker 6: It's got steep rock faces, and you know, you could
- 47:42Speaker 6: climb on it, but it's anything but easy to walk.
- 47:45Speaker 6: We're describing two sides of the same coin as the
- 47:47Speaker 6: expression goes. And so our perspective is quite interesting. Because
- 47:51Speaker 6: it's finite. It really hampers us. It's very hard to
- 47:55Speaker 6: move beyond our finite experiences and our finite interpretations. And
- 48:02Speaker 6: so as a result, the truth exists. We think there's
- 48:07Speaker 6: obviously some truth of reality. At the very least, I know,
- 48:10Speaker 6: I'm having experiences, and you all could just be in
- 48:12Speaker 6: my head, right if I'm a slipsyst and so you
- 48:15Speaker 6: could just be in my head. And the only thing
- 48:17Speaker 6: I know for sure is I'm having experiences right now.
- 48:19Speaker 6: The past, those memories could have been implanted, they could
- 48:23Speaker 6: just be made up. The future doesn't exist. All I
- 48:26Speaker 6: know is I'm right here, right now, having experiences. I
- 48:29Speaker 6: don't even know that you're real. I had this argument
- 48:31Speaker 6: for quite a long time with students.
- 48:33Speaker 5: I don't know that you're real at all. I just
- 48:35Speaker 5: know that in my head, I'm having these interaction.
- 48:37Speaker 7: Experiences right because you can have a dream state where
- 48:40Speaker 7: you are you're interacting with people, having a conversation, and
- 48:44Speaker 7: is that any more or less real than this conversation
- 48:46Speaker 7: right now, or you sitting in person with your class.
- 48:48Speaker 7: I use that two sides thing all the time, like
- 48:50Speaker 7: the mountain, you know, usually with a chair in my office,
- 48:53Speaker 7: I'll say what do you see? And then I'm at
- 48:55Speaker 7: a different angle and say, well I see this, and
- 48:56Speaker 7: like we're not describing the same thing. But yeah, thats
- 49:00Speaker 7: Ruiz does that with the Four Agreements. He talks about
- 49:02Speaker 7: that that's the truth. The truth is in the thing.
- 49:04Speaker 3: He said.
- 49:04Speaker 7: There is truth, whether or not we can put it
- 49:06Speaker 7: into language. Again, back to language, and that's what in
- 49:10Speaker 7: the Four Agreements.
- 49:11Speaker 5: He uses that.
- 49:11Speaker 7: He's like, there's a tree and you might call it
- 49:14Speaker 7: a beautiful tree, and I might call it an ugly tree.
- 49:15Speaker 7: I think it's an evasive species needs to be cut
- 49:17Speaker 7: down and destroyed, and you think it's beautiful. I love
- 49:19Speaker 7: the way it looks. I want to keep it there forever.
- 49:21Speaker 7: And so which one is true?
- 49:23Speaker 5: Well?
- 49:23Speaker 7: The tree, well, but he calls it our bowl because
- 49:26Speaker 7: he's he's a Spanish speaker, native Spanish speaker, so he
- 49:28Speaker 7: calls it our bowl. I call it trees, Like, so
- 49:29Speaker 7: what is it then? Is it our bowl? Or is
- 49:31Speaker 7: a tree? What is the truth there? So the truth
- 49:32Speaker 7: is in the physical structure of that tree. But then
- 49:37Speaker 7: as soon as we start to put language onto it.
- 49:39Speaker 7: We've lost them, lost some of its truthfulness.
- 49:42Speaker 6: And again are we talking truth or fact? Right, there's
- 49:45Speaker 6: a fact. It is so truth in fact or two
- 49:51Speaker 6: different things. And so that leads us into issues as well.
- 49:54Speaker 6: Our symbolic representation of something is not the thing. Alan
- 49:57Speaker 6: Watt says all the time. You know, we shouldn't confus
- 50:00Speaker 6: this symbol of the thing for the thing itself. Plato
- 50:03Speaker 6: talked about the forms, right, that the desk that we
- 50:06Speaker 6: see here is modeled after an ideal desk.
- 50:09Speaker 5: So quite interesting.
- 50:11Speaker 6: Language gives us all these problems, great powers, but all
- 50:15Speaker 6: these problems as well, these difficulties. And language not only
- 50:18Speaker 6: does our thinking for us, but it makes it feel real.
- 50:20Speaker 6: If I can describe a unicorn, and I can draw unicorn,
- 50:24Speaker 6: it feels real even if I've never seen one. So
- 50:29Speaker 6: language makes things feel real. So if I say to
- 50:31Speaker 6: you this happened, or that this event is true, or
- 50:34Speaker 6: that I believe this, it feels real to me and
- 50:36Speaker 6: now it exists exactly. So if I think in my head,
- 50:39Speaker 6: oh man, JD just gave me a look. He's mad
- 50:41Speaker 6: at me, Now it's real to me because of the
- 50:44Speaker 6: language that I used.
- 50:45Speaker 7: Exactly, that's what epigenetics is like Joe Despenza and into
- 50:50Speaker 7: the epigenics. He talks about that if you say I
- 50:52Speaker 7: am depressed, you're commanding your body to be depressed. So
- 50:55Speaker 7: we're giving ourselves. We give ourselves labels and symbology. And
- 50:57Speaker 7: then I just forgot the other fine thing. I thought
- 51:00Speaker 7: you said something that's made me think of something I
- 51:02Speaker 7: forgot already.
- 51:03Speaker 2: And then the next thing, you know, we're a hypochondriact
- 51:06Speaker 2: because we're self diagnosing.
- 51:09Speaker 5: You're a hypochondriac if you're afraid of all those things. Yes,
- 51:12Speaker 5: it's to embrace the fact that this is life.
- 51:14Speaker 6: That I'm gonna break a leg, I'm gonna you know,
- 51:18Speaker 6: I'm gonna lose money, I'm gonna get cheated. People aren't
- 51:21Speaker 6: always like if we accepted our experiences of reality for
- 51:26Speaker 6: what they were without judging them, then we wouldn't become
- 51:29Speaker 6: necessarily hypochondriacs.
- 51:31Speaker 2: I want to ask you, but I ask you both
- 51:33Speaker 2: about ADHD. I mean, so many of us are saying
- 51:38Speaker 2: I have ADHD, but a doctor has never told us
- 51:43Speaker 2: that we've were just under this very strong assumption by
- 51:48Speaker 2: the way we think we're self diagnosing. Do you think
- 51:52Speaker 2: is do you believe in what I'm saying, is that
- 51:57Speaker 2: something that you share that same opinion on Brian.
- 52:01Speaker 6: Yeah, well, ADHD is an interesting one. So as an
- 52:05Speaker 6: evolutionary biologist, right, the things that we have are traits
- 52:09Speaker 6: that have survived for some reason. And I can't remember
- 52:13Speaker 6: the article now, but in the last couple of years
- 52:14Speaker 6: an article came out and they suggested, well, look, ADHD
- 52:18Speaker 6: is a survival mechanism. The hunter gatherers that went to
- 52:21Speaker 6: gather berries, if you were focused and you were going
- 52:24Speaker 6: to do your job well, and they were berries, you
- 52:26Speaker 6: get the low hanging berries.
- 52:27Speaker 5: But then as you try to go for fruit higher up,
- 52:29Speaker 5: it takes more and more time. The ADHD hunter gatherer
- 52:33Speaker 5: would grab the litw berries. Oh there's more over here,
- 52:35Speaker 5: Oh there's more over here.
- 52:36Speaker 6: Before you know it, they're back at their camp with
- 52:39Speaker 6: their berries. The other guy's still trying to finish the
- 52:41Speaker 6: one tree. So I think ADHD. Actually, I think that
- 52:46Speaker 6: mental health issues, as we refer to them, I think
- 52:49Speaker 6: a lot of them are really just survival mechanisms that
- 52:53Speaker 6: have persisted. ADHD is a great survival mechanism in keeping
- 52:58Speaker 6: us moving. Great survival because then you're harder to track
- 53:02Speaker 6: because you're always moving around, you're using less energy because
- 53:05Speaker 6: you're getting the low lying fruit, so to speak. I
- 53:08Speaker 6: don't think there's anything wrong with having ADHD as part
- 53:12Speaker 6: of your makeup, and even self identifying is that, and
- 53:15Speaker 6: then it's a matter of using that to your advantage.
- 53:19Speaker 6: Cure Guard wrote a long time ago an article called
- 53:23Speaker 6: the Rotation of Crops, and he said, look what we
- 53:27Speaker 6: ought to do is we ought to work on something
- 53:29Speaker 6: and then you know, we can move on to something else.
- 53:32Speaker 6: If you continue to go with you know your nature
- 53:36Speaker 6: in that sense, you can keep your attention longer. So
- 53:39Speaker 6: I don't think that. In fact, I don't think the
- 53:42Speaker 6: mental health issues that we see in our society are
- 53:44Speaker 6: necessarily bad. I think that they were survival mechanisms for
- 53:48Speaker 6: different periods of time that have stuck around and we
- 53:51Speaker 6: just don't know how to handle them properly.
- 53:53Speaker 5: Absolutely, they're just inconvenient in society, is what I should say. Right,
- 53:57Speaker 5: That's why we lost, because they're inconvenient for us because
- 54:00Speaker 5: more time well, and.
- 54:02Speaker 7: It doesn't it breaks down that everything makes sense perspective.
- 54:07Speaker 7: If somebody wants to have everything be familiar and be
- 54:10Speaker 7: everything needs to be in its place so that I
- 54:12Speaker 7: can be okay. You go into someone's house and you
- 54:14Speaker 7: start moving around their little trinkets of their furniture and
- 54:16Speaker 7: stuff like that, they might get uncomfortable because you've shifted
- 54:19Speaker 7: their environment and they're not comfortable with that environment, so
- 54:21Speaker 7: they want to put it back the way it was.
- 54:23Speaker 7: Does it matter if the sofa is on this side
- 54:25Speaker 7: of the wall? That wall punctue would say it does?
- 54:27Speaker 7: There is some there's some thought in that. I'm not
- 54:29Speaker 7: studying that enough, but you know, but realistically, if you
- 54:32Speaker 7: move around the figurines on someone's mantlepiece of their pictures
- 54:34Speaker 7: on the wall, they might feel uncomfortable. You don't feel
- 54:37Speaker 7: it because there's no meaning to you. But if that's
- 54:39Speaker 7: the environment that they've created, this is where I feel safe,
- 54:41Speaker 7: and then you start to mess with that, then they
- 54:43Speaker 7: feel unsafe. And because they're not fluid, they're not going
- 54:45Speaker 7: with it, they're not open to it. And so maybe
- 54:48Speaker 7: that's part of it. We get we have all these
- 54:50Speaker 7: anomalies and society and society two hundre years ago, a
- 54:52Speaker 7: hundred and fift years ago put people in asylums, So
- 54:54Speaker 7: let's just take them out, you know, And for whatever
- 54:56Speaker 7: I don't I wasn't there, So I can't say what
- 54:58Speaker 7: their reasoning was for that, but it was to hide
- 55:00Speaker 7: the anomaly, take the people who aren't fitting in the
- 55:02Speaker 7: way we want them, to get them out of the way.
- 55:04Speaker 7: Or was it the best care they could provide. I
- 55:06Speaker 7: don't know, but I guess in this line of thinking,
- 55:08Speaker 7: maybe if we're just if we're trying to keep everything
- 55:11Speaker 7: sameness so that it's familiar, so it's comfortable. So it's
- 55:14Speaker 7: Main Street USA, everywhere is the same franchises, every McDonald's
- 55:18Speaker 7: is supposed to be the exact same thing, so that
- 55:19Speaker 7: you have this sense of comfort whenever you travel, you
- 55:21Speaker 7: can go into the same restaurant whether whatever it is,
- 55:24Speaker 7: and it's going to be the same thing it is
- 55:25Speaker 7: in your hometown. And they that's the thing that humans like,
- 55:28Speaker 7: that comfort. And so maybe just by identifying all these
- 55:32Speaker 7: things as problems, it's a way to try and force
- 55:35Speaker 7: that sameness. And I don't know that anybody's doing that
- 55:37Speaker 7: on purpose or consciously trying to make everybody cut all
- 55:41Speaker 7: the tall blades of grass so everything's the same level.
- 55:43Speaker 7: It's just something that society does maybe because it's more
- 55:45Speaker 7: comfortable or familiar.
- 55:47Speaker 5: Well it is again I think we go back to safety.
- 55:49Speaker 6: But Harari points out in his Sapiens book, and we've
- 55:53Speaker 6: known this for a while, that genetically we're wired for
- 55:55Speaker 6: groups of fifty to one hundred and fifty. You cannot
- 55:59Speaker 6: if you think about the relationships if you had fifty people,
- 56:03Speaker 6: that's what twelve twenty five relationships. There's me and you,
- 56:07Speaker 6: there's me and JD, there's just you two, right, if
- 56:10Speaker 6: you add up all the relationships.
- 56:12Speaker 5: And so.
- 56:14Speaker 6: When you look at that, we can't keep track of that.
- 56:17Speaker 6: We just don't have the bandwidth for it. And so
- 56:20Speaker 6: we're wired for these small groups and we're not wired
- 56:23Speaker 6: for large groups. Well, what evolved over time for large
- 56:26Speaker 6: groups was religion, government, and money, and so those were
- 56:30Speaker 6: the great unifiers. And now what we try to do
- 56:34Speaker 6: is we've gotten into this habit of well, we don't
- 56:38Speaker 6: realize that we're wired for small groups, but we want
- 56:40Speaker 6: to feel like we're safe and we want to feel
- 56:42Speaker 6: like we belong, and so we try to force this
- 56:44Speaker 6: large group society, this nationalism, to pervade again from our
- 56:50Speaker 6: desire to feel safe and secure and belong. Rather than
- 56:54Speaker 6: recognize it, we just don't talk about it. But we
- 56:55Speaker 6: should recognize it. It's okay that I'm only close with
- 56:59Speaker 6: a couple people and we can follow basic rules in
- 57:03Speaker 6: this society so that we're not hurting each other and
- 57:05Speaker 6: that sort of thing. But I don't have to agree
- 57:07Speaker 6: with your political views. I don't have to agree with
- 57:10Speaker 6: your religious views, and that's okay. One of the things
- 57:13Speaker 6: I love about philosophers typically is that we'll disagree vehemently
- 57:17Speaker 6: about ideas and then you know, when we're done talking
- 57:19Speaker 6: about it, we'll go to the pub and we'll get
- 57:21Speaker 6: a drink and we'll laugh and joke. Because our disagreement
- 57:25Speaker 6: doesn't mean you and I can't be friends, but for
- 57:28Speaker 6: most people that I have experienced with it, it does
- 57:30Speaker 6: mean we can't be friends.
- 57:32Speaker 7: Right, Yeah, that's that's huge think. I think that's the
- 57:35Speaker 7: most important things for us to take in is you
- 57:39Speaker 7: can disagree with someone, but not that it has nothing
- 57:42Speaker 7: to do with you.
- 57:43Speaker 6: It's not pretre but it interferes with our feelings. Safe
- 57:46Speaker 6: exactly if we could bring that information to people so
- 57:49Speaker 6: they recognize, hey, it's again exposure therapy.
- 57:52Speaker 5: You're safe. It's okay. We don't have to or agree
- 57:55Speaker 5: in order for you to be safe.
- 57:58Speaker 2: Paul and I I've said to Paul before, We've had
- 58:03Speaker 2: arguments about this. I'm like, Paul, how, how how is
- 58:08Speaker 2: it possible that you you don't like strawberry shortcake.
- 58:12Speaker 7: One time he hit me with a table, He broke
- 58:15Speaker 7: a table across my back because because he didn't he
- 58:17Speaker 7: didn't agree with my.
- 58:19Speaker 2: I just can't understand how anyone Brian could possibly not
- 58:27Speaker 2: love I didn't say like I said, love strawberry Shortcake
- 58:31Speaker 2: the fourth of July.
- 58:32Speaker 7: Come on, Paul, Yeah, you have to. I did too.
- 58:37Speaker 7: JD's actually insane. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
- 58:40Speaker 7: This one of the fever.
- 58:41Speaker 2: Dreams because I got ticked off because you didn't like
- 58:44Speaker 2: Strawberry Shortcake.
- 58:45Speaker 3: I don't understand that.
- 58:46Speaker 7: I'm so uncomfortable with the idea that people think that
- 58:48Speaker 7: I don't like Strawberry Shortcake that I can't even go
- 58:50Speaker 7: along with the ruise anymore. I can't. I can't go
- 58:54Speaker 7: along with a skit because I like Strawberry Shortcake.
- 58:58Speaker 3: Is the uh.
- 58:59Speaker 6: I want you to know that you should feel accepted
- 59:01Speaker 6: in love regardless, thank you, even if I don't everybody.
- 59:05Speaker 5: You just need a couple of people to love you.
- 59:07Speaker 7: That's right. That's always my way. I don't I don't
- 59:09Speaker 7: care if I gotta, if I gotta, I don't even
- 59:10Speaker 7: need anybody. I don't know. But if I have a
- 59:12Speaker 7: few few people I can connect with it, I'm happy.
- 59:14Speaker 2: Listen Brian, your your connection with Sweethearts and Heroes and
- 59:19Speaker 2: how you how you met Tom and your son, Brian,
- 59:23Speaker 2: who is just such an amazing guy. Tom is blessed
- 59:28Speaker 2: to have all of you as a member of his
- 59:31Speaker 2: Sweethearts and Sweethearts and Heroes team and family. What is
- 59:37Speaker 2: it that you're you're hoping to and I'm I'm sure
- 59:41Speaker 2: you've had some pretty deep conversations with with Tom. What
- 59:45Speaker 2: is it that you're hoping to to bring is it?
- 59:49Speaker 2: Is it perspective to a different perspective for the staff
- 59:54Speaker 2: or or you looking to get to the audience of
- 59:58Speaker 2: Sweethearts and heroes and speak to them directly.
- 1:00:03Speaker 5: Probably a combination.
- 1:00:06Speaker 6: I have obviously lots of experience at the college level,
- 1:00:10Speaker 6: and I think that bringing Sweethearts and Heroes to colleges
- 1:00:14Speaker 6: is a big deal, and so that's one thing I'm
- 1:00:16Speaker 6: working on.
- 1:00:16Speaker 5: I'm working on.
- 1:00:18Speaker 6: Brian's done a great job writing the Brave program, and
- 1:00:22Speaker 6: so I'm simply coming in. I've been, you know, making
- 1:00:25Speaker 6: some minor tweaks here and there, just to help it
- 1:00:29Speaker 6: maybe flow better or to really we've been working lately
- 1:00:33Speaker 6: on tracking, you know, connecting the Brave program to New
- 1:00:36Speaker 6: York State Portrait of graduate to the SEL components so
- 1:00:39Speaker 6: that teachers can see, Oh, if I do this, then
- 1:00:41Speaker 6: it meets this requirement for graduation.
- 1:00:46Speaker 5: I would love.
- 1:00:48Speaker 6: The part of PAT teaching that I loved was being
- 1:00:50Speaker 6: in front of the classroom. I was like acting, so
- 1:00:51Speaker 6: I loved bringing difficult concepts to people and explaining it
- 1:00:55Speaker 6: to them.
- 1:00:55Speaker 5: So being in the classroom was the best. Hated grading.
- 1:00:59Speaker 6: Wasn't a fan of all my administrative duties here and there.
- 1:01:02Speaker 6: So Sweetheartans and the Heroes is really ideal for me
- 1:01:05Speaker 6: because it's the parts of teaching that I loved and
- 1:01:07Speaker 6: none of the parts I didn't like. So and then ultimately,
- 1:01:11Speaker 6: if I could be involved, I've done a little bit
- 1:01:14Speaker 6: of traveling already, but I'd like to be involved in
- 1:01:16Speaker 6: bringing circles to places.
- 1:01:17Speaker 5: When Tom feels I'm ready, so I'd like to do
- 1:01:20Speaker 5: all of it.
- 1:01:21Speaker 6: I again get bored easy, so I need to do
- 1:01:23Speaker 6: computer work and hands on.
- 1:01:26Speaker 2: Amazing to have you on this morning. Thank you ever
- 1:01:29Speaker 2: so much, Brian, pleasure, hope to meet you.
- 1:01:34Speaker 5: We all come up sometime.
- 1:01:36Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for coming on so much. We'd love to
- 1:01:40Speaker 2: have you. We got room for you on the couch
- 1:01:42Speaker 2: here anytime.
- 1:01:43Speaker 3: Man.
- 1:01:43Speaker 5: Yeah, sounds good. I appreciate it.
- 1:01:45Speaker 3: Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. Doctor Yep, all right. Wow,
- 1:01:51Speaker 3: what do you think Paul's cool?
- 1:01:54Speaker 5: I like him.
- 1:01:54Speaker 7: I could talk to him.
- 1:01:56Speaker 3: I know you could and you did. Yeah you did.
- 1:02:00Speaker 2: Wow, good stuff man, great stuff. Listen that the cooling
- 1:02:07Speaker 2: with the fire department where they're going to be spraying
- 1:02:10Speaker 2: people with the water hose.
- 1:02:11Speaker 3: You are not going to go down for that.
- 1:02:13Speaker 7: No, I'm not going to be there.
- 1:02:14Speaker 3: Really, but it's going to be hot outpost.
- 1:02:17Speaker 7: It's like sixty degrees in my office. Oh but the
- 1:02:19Speaker 7: Ace Clantard building does an amazing job. It's so comfort Yeah.
- 1:02:25Speaker 7: I walk in and I'm sweating, and then I change
- 1:02:28Speaker 7: into sweatpants and the sweatshirt. When I get in my office,
- 1:02:31Speaker 7: I'm freezing. The back of my head is cold, my
- 1:02:34Speaker 7: ears are freezing. And I walk out of there and
- 1:02:36Speaker 7: it's sweating again.
- 1:02:37Speaker 3: Wow.
- 1:02:37Speaker 2: And they're going to be turning on the fire hoses
- 1:02:42Speaker 2: between one and three point thirty today.
- 1:02:44Speaker 7: If they're turning on the ice cream hoses, you let
- 1:02:46Speaker 7: me know. I'll be there for that.
- 1:02:48Speaker 3: That's different.
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: They're also going to do it from noon to two tomorrow.
- 1:02:53Speaker 2: So get on out, get the family over Currier Park.
- 1:02:57Speaker 2: The food trucks, the farmer's market, the live music, and
- 1:03:03Speaker 2: the fire hoses are all going to be happening.
- 1:03:05Speaker 7: That sounds so chaotic.
- 1:03:07Speaker 2: Doesn't it. Well, there's ice cream involved too. You can
- 1:03:09Speaker 2: get some ice cream too. Better eat it fast.
- 1:03:11Speaker 7: Watch out those those fire hose operators.
- 1:03:14Speaker 2: Gill frisky, and don't flight the cooling shelters up at
- 1:03:19Speaker 2: the Burry Auditorium.
- 1:03:21Speaker 3: They're also given out free water as well. Here.
- 1:03:23Speaker 2: Over the next couple of days, the heat index is
- 1:03:27Speaker 2: right anywhere from ninety five to like one hundred and
- 1:03:31Speaker 2: ten across Vermont. And I'm not joking. That is that's
- 1:03:35Speaker 2: serious heat. Please check on your neighbors if you can,
- 1:03:40Speaker 2: whether no matter who they are, whether you even like
- 1:03:44Speaker 2: them or not, if they're especially if they're disabled or elderly.
- 1:03:49Speaker 2: Check on your neighbors. Mountaineers going to be in action
- 1:03:53Speaker 2: this weekend. There's a lot happening. Fireworks everywhere, a thunder
- 1:03:58Speaker 2: Road of course tomorrow and tomorrow night, and then also
- 1:04:04Speaker 2: Shaggy is going to be performing at the Lake Mory
- 1:04:09Speaker 2: Summer Concerts Series all night.
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you know I was afraid you were
- 1:04:14Speaker 3: going to say that.
- 1:04:15Speaker 7: What else MNNA say? Who's Shaggy?
- 1:04:18Speaker 3: Paul? You know what?
- 1:04:21Speaker 8: What?
- 1:04:22Speaker 3: There's hope for you?
- 1:04:22Speaker 4: Bub?
- 1:04:24Speaker 3: Why there is?
- 1:04:26Speaker 7: Are you applying it? There's something wrong with me?
- 1:04:27Speaker 3: No, not at all.
- 1:04:29Speaker 7: Sounds like you are.
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: No, not at all.
- 1:04:31Speaker 7: Sure, seems like you are.
- 1:04:33Speaker 3: Not at all.
- 1:04:35Speaker 2: Don't forget Wing Wednesday. That's going on to VFW Post
- 1:04:42Speaker 2: seven ninety and Barry five o'clock. We'll see at Courier
- 1:04:46Speaker 2: Park tonight. Thanks to our sponsors. Our presenting sponsors, are
- 1:04:53Speaker 2: supporting sponsors, great people. Real Bounce is one of them.
- 1:04:59Speaker 2: You look for a gathering that's going to be happening
- 1:05:04Speaker 2: this summer, you want to step it up to the
- 1:05:05Speaker 2: next level.
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: Reel bounce dot com. They bring the party to you.
- 1:05:10Speaker 2: Giant water slides, which sound absolutely incredible right now, not
- 1:05:15Speaker 2: so much jumping up and down inside of a bouncy house,
- 1:05:18Speaker 2: but the water slides sounds incredible. Reel bounce dot com.
- 1:05:27Speaker 2: All right, we'll see it tomorrow. Rick Singary from Home
- 1:05:31Speaker 2: Share is going to be in here my guest tomorrow
- 1:05:34Speaker 2: morning here in the aired out podcast. Be well, stay cool,
- 1:05:38Speaker 2: and don't forget again. Check in your neighbors, see.
- 1:05:41Speaker 3: You sore.
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: To the touch to depict the tectic iCal test to
- 1:06:31Speaker 1: them to depend to the tic iCal test.