Latest / The You Project / #1529 How To Be An Everyday Scientist - Dr. Bill Sullivan

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#1529 How To Be An Everyday Scientist - Dr. Bill Sullivan · The You Project

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'll get a team. Welcome to another installment of my
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: favorite podcast. Well is it? Look it's definitely in the
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: top five, maybe not definitely top ten. This is definitely
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: in the top ten of my favorite podcasts. Now people
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: are going to email me tip, say what's number one?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Roll with the Punches? Of course? Oh I see what
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: it did there. That'll be ten dollars, thank you. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you're welcome anyway, Welcome to the You Project, everyone. Tiffany
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and Cookers over there at typ Central. It's early in
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  Speaker 1: the morning, per It's nine point thirty four in the
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  Speaker 1: am here in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne. She is
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  Speaker 1: normally punching people in the face at the gym because
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: she's a pugilistic thug. She's a mover and a shaker.
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  Speaker 1: Why are you not at the gym punching people in
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  Speaker 1: the face?
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  Speaker 2: I have been, I have been already, and I've I've
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  Speaker 2: just swooned in for a quick party and then I'll
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: be off doing it again after this.
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  Speaker 1: Somebody asked me recently, does tiff still fight? Does she
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  Speaker 1: still get in the ring and have your days of
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  Speaker 1: actual boxing? Punching poor unsuspecting women in the face, and
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  Speaker 1: the odd man. I know that happens unofficially, but that's
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  Speaker 1: just Saturday night in the car park outside the pub.
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  Speaker 1: But have your official days of boxing been hung up?
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  Speaker 2: I actually punch more blokes than ladies currently, and I
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  Speaker 2: don't know if there'll ever be a time in life
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  Speaker 2: where I will say, Yep, I'm done. There's definitely no
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  Speaker 2: more fights, really, and I think a lot of boxes
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  Speaker 2: in combat sports people would agree with that philosophy. It's
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  Speaker 2: always lurking, not far behind. It's just life, you know,
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  Speaker 2: taking priority most of the time.
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  Speaker 1: Well, and also cognitive health and brain health. You know,
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  Speaker 1: I worry about your brain. Could you please stop getting
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  Speaker 1: hit in the face. I know, I know you do
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  Speaker 1: most of the hitting. But doctor Bill Sullivan, I bet
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  Speaker 1: you're not a big fan of CT or being punched
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  Speaker 1: in the head in general, are you.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: No. We wrote about that in my book. It's generally
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  Speaker 3: a bad idea to take repeated blows to the head.
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  Speaker 1: It's funny that it's funny that, Tiff, are you listening?
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  Speaker 2: I might go, I might just pull that client and
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  Speaker 2: tell them what usual time I'll see.
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  Speaker 4: A good thing.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't want to.
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  Speaker 3: This is like this, This is why I don't get
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  Speaker 3: invited back on a lot of stuff.
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  Speaker 4: I tell people the truth.
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  Speaker 3: I tell them what they don't want to hear, like, yes,
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  Speaker 3: you are abusing your body, Yes you're doing something you
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  Speaker 3: shouldn't and yeah, and they don't call me back, And
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  Speaker 3: then I wonder why.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it's I mean, it's funny, isn't it. More broadly,
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  Speaker 1: I mean everyone that I was, including tif that getting punched
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  Speaker 1: in the face is bad for a Brian. But you've
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  Speaker 1: mitigated that. Really, haven't you liked You're not getting hit
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  Speaker 1: in the head these days much, are you?
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  Speaker 2: No? No, definitely, I definitely. It was a big concern
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  Speaker 2: for me for quite a while, and I stopped doing
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  Speaker 2: it at all, and then I just weighed things up
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  Speaker 2: and went, well, you know, in life, we always have
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  Speaker 2: to have a happy medium. You got to do what
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  Speaker 2: you love and just manage the risks as best you're
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  Speaker 2: comfortable with.
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  Speaker 1: Having said that, don't get in the ring again properly,
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  Speaker 1: will you please? But it's funny you say that, doctor Bill,
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  Speaker 1: because in terms of I was thinking about the one
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  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about science communication today, because I've
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  Speaker 1: got a little bit of a story I want to
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  Speaker 1: share that I want your thoughts on it. But like
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  Speaker 1: a lot of the messages that we need to hear,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps let's put that in inverted commas need to hear
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  Speaker 1: around our health and our lifestyle and our behaviors and
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  Speaker 1: our habits, they're not always the messages that we want
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  Speaker 1: to hear, right, And so you as a scientist, researcher, communicator, educator,
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  Speaker 1: and me not in the ballpark of you, but I
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  Speaker 1: still do. I stand in front of lots of audiences
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  Speaker 1: and it's like sometimes I say, I can tell you
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  Speaker 1: the thing that you want to hear or the thing
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  Speaker 1: that you need to hear, what you refer and I
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  Speaker 1: reluctantly say, okay, tell us what we need to hear.
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  Speaker 1: And it's just because some of the stuff is just
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  Speaker 1: like creating improved health and function and operation and new
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  Speaker 1: habits and new behaviors and a new lifestyle. It's sometimes
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  Speaker 1: it's just hard, uncomfortable work, right.
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  Speaker 4: It can be very challenging.
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  Speaker 3: Like you said, when you get new data, it often
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  Speaker 3: changes lives and a lot of people get set in
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  Speaker 3: their ways or they enjoy certain activities that you know
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  Speaker 3: inflame our dopamine system and give us a lot of
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  Speaker 3: pleasure and we have to balance, you know, how well
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  Speaker 3: we want to take care of our physical and mental
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  Speaker 3: well being with how much short term pleasure we want
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  Speaker 3: to experience, you know.
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  Speaker 4: And I get it. You know, people, some people.
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  Speaker 3: Who really like to live for the day aren't really
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  Speaker 3: too concerned about the future. But a lot of people,
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  Speaker 3: I think, when they get to the future, look back
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  Speaker 3: on those old days and wish they would have behaved differently.
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  Speaker 3: But one of the strategies I used, Craig that I've
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  Speaker 3: developed rather recently when people give me a hard time
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  Speaker 3: about yeah, you really shouldn't eat that third doughnut, or
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  Speaker 3: yeah you shouldn't get regularly kicked in the head, or
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  Speaker 3: yeah you should get this vaccination. It's going to protect
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  Speaker 3: you and those around you. These are things that, maybe
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  Speaker 3: inconvenient disrupt people's lives, and they don't want to do
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  Speaker 3: it themselves. So I ask, okay, well, think about this,
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  Speaker 3: what would you tell your children, you know, how would
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  Speaker 3: you encourage them to behave And.
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  Speaker 4: Nine times out of ten.
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  Speaker 3: A lot of them would tell their children something different
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  Speaker 3: than how they're behaving right now in the moment. So
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  Speaker 3: like they will tell their children to eat better, yet
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  Speaker 3: they themselves will not follow that scene advice, So reframing it,
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  Speaker 3: taking the issue off of them and talking about their
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  Speaker 3: children can really make a difference sometimes definitely.
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  Speaker 1: And also, yeah, that makes complete sense. And I think
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  Speaker 1: the challenge is that I think for a lot of people,
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  Speaker 1: like in the micro of the day to day, like today,
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  Speaker 1: oh yeah, today, I've got to get through this. And
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  Speaker 1: I'm like, it's almost like nearly everyone has this intention
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  Speaker 1: that they're going to change something soon. I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: stop that soon. I'm going to do less of that
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  Speaker 1: and more of that. I'm going to deal with that
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  Speaker 1: shitty behavior. I'm going to make better decisions, do better things,
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  Speaker 1: create better outcomes. And I'm going to start Monday, not today,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to start Monday, or I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: start January one, because that's the stuff starting day, you know.
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  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes in the day today micro, we
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  Speaker 1: forget to zoom out and just go all right, well,
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  Speaker 1: let's look at me at this point in time on
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  Speaker 1: my journey. You know, I just turned sixty and let's
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  Speaker 1: say hopefully I've got ninety years. Who knows I could
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  Speaker 1: have sixty one, We don't know. But if I go
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  Speaker 1: all right, well, I'm sixty years old? What do I
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  Speaker 1: want my body to work like, feel like, function like
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  Speaker 1: when I'm sixty five, let's hope I'm still around. What
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  Speaker 1: kind of lifestyle do I want to have? What kind
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  Speaker 1: of behaviors do I want to be embracing, What kind
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  Speaker 1: of relationships, what kind of situation and environment? What kind
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  Speaker 1: of work do I want to be doing? All of
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  Speaker 1: these kind of big picture questions, and then zooming back
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  Speaker 1: to now. So what do I need to do now
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  Speaker 1: though to make that likely? What decisions do I need
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  Speaker 1: to make? What things do I need to acknowledge? Because
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  Speaker 1: I think to an extent, I think, to an extent,
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  Speaker 1: doc we live in this kind of almost groundhog day
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  Speaker 1: and then we go, oh shit, and now I'm sixty
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  Speaker 1: or now I'm fifty.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, those are great questions.
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  Speaker 3: Getting out getting yourself out of the day to day
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  Speaker 3: route teens can be a real challenge, especially if they
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  Speaker 3: are routines that you have built up over years, maybe decades.
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  Speaker 3: Those are hard habits to break. There's a lot of
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  Speaker 3: tools out there now, however, that can hold you accountable
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  Speaker 3: to the goals that you want to achieve. And I
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  Speaker 3: liked one of the things you said Craig, you talked
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  Speaker 3: about your future self, you know, your sixty five year
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  Speaker 3: old self, and what that person is going to be like,
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  Speaker 3: what they would kind of come back and tell sixty
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  Speaker 3: year old Craig to do or not do in order
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  Speaker 3: to be better. And that's a really great strategy. You know,
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  Speaker 3: we have this very powerful capacity for imagination, and a
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  Speaker 3: lot of times we don't use it.
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  Speaker 4: You know, if we.
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  Speaker 3: Envision ourselves in the third person as like a friend
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  Speaker 3: in the future, Okay, what is my future self going
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  Speaker 3: to feel like about the behaviors that I'm doing today?
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  Speaker 3: Would they condemn them or would they praise them? And
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  Speaker 3: that's a good way to frame, you know, the behaviors
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  Speaker 3: you're undertaking on a day to day basis, and if
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  Speaker 3: your future self is not going to approve, that should
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  Speaker 3: give you some incentive to dissociate yourself from that habit. Now,
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  Speaker 3: in terms of breaking those habits and making new ones,
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  Speaker 3: you can basically take advantage of the same system that's
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  Speaker 3: in the brain in order to change bad habits. One
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  Speaker 3: of the first things you have to recognize are the
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  Speaker 3: emotions that swell up right before you engage in that
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  Speaker 3: bad habit, like before you eat that third doughnut, or
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  Speaker 3: before you go out for a cigarette or have like,
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  Speaker 3: you know, another beer, you want to think about, do
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  Speaker 3: I really want to do this? Recognize that emotion that
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  Speaker 3: you think that's going to give you pleasure, and it
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  Speaker 3: probably will in the short term, but you have to
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  Speaker 3: envision what the long term effect is going to have.
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  Speaker 4: That can be a powerful way to break it. You
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  Speaker 4: need to you need to think about your emotions.
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  Speaker 3: You need to put a space in between when those
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  Speaker 3: arise and what sort of action you take, and try
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  Speaker 3: to build new healthy habits around that.
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  Speaker 1: I think also like the idea I love that, but
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  Speaker 1: also the idea of when I say to people, don't
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  Speaker 1: overthink this, but what are your values? What are some
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  Speaker 1: of your values for life? And then people will often go, oh,
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  Speaker 1: you know, my quality time with my family, you know,
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  Speaker 1: mental health, physical health, you know all these great things.
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  Speaker 1: And then I say, great, let's jump those down and
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: now let's do an inventory or a stock take or
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: an audit on our current behavior. Like is the way
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  Speaker 1: that I typically live in alignment with ice with the
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  Speaker 1: things that I say are my values? Like if I
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  Speaker 1: didn't know you, but I just observed you, would I
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  Speaker 1: know that phiz mental and emotional health was a priority
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: based on how you live, and people go, oh, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: well maybe not. You know, so it's not about how
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  Speaker 1: to walk, it's not about condemnation or criticism. It's about awareness,
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  Speaker 1: you know, because you're not going to accidentally end up healthy,
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  Speaker 1: You're not going to accidentally end up successful. You know.
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  Speaker 1: It's like you need to recognize the thing that you
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  Speaker 1: say really matters. And then you know, I think being
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  Speaker 1: able to turn down the emotion a little bit and
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  Speaker 1: be brave and courageous and say am I full of shit?
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  Speaker 1: Or am I an example of the things that I
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  Speaker 1: want my kids to do? Like even for me, I
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  Speaker 1: have a pretty big platform, and I write a lot
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  Speaker 1: and teach a lot, and sometimes like there were periods
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  Speaker 1: in my life where I owned gyms, Like I owned
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  Speaker 1: multiple gyms, and I had five hundred staff working for
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  Speaker 1: me over a period of time. And there were times
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: bill where I was telling people to do stuff that
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  Speaker 1: I wasn't doing, you know, and I was living out
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  Speaker 1: of alignment, and it it. You know, I was kind
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  Speaker 1: of operating on this fraudulent level where I wasn't trying
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  Speaker 1: to be a fraud, but I was teaching people how
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  Speaker 1: to live and make decisions, and you know, human optimization
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  Speaker 1: and nutrition and then secretly eating crap and dealing with
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: all my the same you know, human bullshit. So you
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  Speaker 1: know we're all prone.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: You sound like one of those television evangelists.
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  Speaker 4: You know, they're.
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  Speaker 3: Talking about the Bible and don't do this and that sin,
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  Speaker 3: and then boom they're out doing that very thing.
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  Speaker 4: So like Socrates's kind of sad, you know, they self right.
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  Speaker 3: You got to take stock of your actions every single
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  Speaker 3: day and if they're out of alignment with the virtues
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  Speaker 3: that you want to possess, you know, don't eat yourself
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: up about it. Everybody makes mistakes, but you take that
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  Speaker 3: knowledge and do something productive with it for the next
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  Speaker 3: day and say I'm going to I'm going to do
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  Speaker 3: better tomorrow.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you about. I sent you
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: a few ideas I wanted to talk about, and one
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: was the idea of you know, most of our listeners,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: we have a great audience, shout out to you, audience,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: love you. About seventy percent of our audience a female,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: about thirty percent male for whatever reason, and I would
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: think it's it's you know, a very curious, very engaged audience,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: but not not disproportionately higher in academics. So I don't know,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: maybe ten percent fifteen percent academics, but eighty five percent
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: ninety percent not academics per se, which is not a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: judgment either way, but trying to, trying to, I'm always
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: thinking about how do I share these messages? How do
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I get the bill on who's an academic and a
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: scientist and in my opinion, a genius and share ideas,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: thoughts and information. So here's two parts. How do we
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: share this stuff in a way that's not only relatable
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and understandable, but maybe a little bit inspirational. But then
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: my next question is how can those of us who
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: are not perhaps scientists or don't really understand the jargon
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: or lingo, how can we implement science in our own life?
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: How can we I don't know, I guess, run our
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: own studies? How can we do how can we be
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: an equals one in the middle of our own little
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: kind of experiment? And is that a good idea of
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: what does that look like?
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: There's a lot to unpack there.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, sorry about that. That was thirty questions, so good
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: good luck?
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how much time we got so let's deal with
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: the last question you asked, and if there's elements that
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: I didn't address, we'll come back to them. I'll be
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: happy to fill in in a holes that I leave.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: But when you're asking something about how non scientists can
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: maybe embrace a more scientific lifestyle or more evidence based lifestyle,
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: even though obviously they don't subscribe to the scientific technical
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: journals and understand a lot of the heavy jargon that's
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: out there, I don't understand a lot of it myself,
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: to be honest. I mean, there's very narrow fields of
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: science that we specialize in. So while you call me
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: a genius, I kind of laugh at that because there
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: are I know far less about many more things than
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: the some.
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: Things I do know about.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: You know, So you know, you need to start with
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: an intellectual humility, which surprisingly a lot of people do
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: not have. Goes back to what we were saying earlier.
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  Speaker 3: We get stuck in our ways, we have our habits
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  Speaker 3: and think we're you know, we think we're living well
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  Speaker 3: and right. But you've got to start with the humility
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  Speaker 3: that you could be wrong about things and let life
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  Speaker 3: surprise you, let you know, go where the evidence takes you.
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  Speaker 3: So in my personal opinion. Note to answer your question,
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  Speaker 3: I think we're all kind of born scientists. Humans are
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: evolutionarily wired to look for patterns in nature and in
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: their lives and in their human interactions in order to
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: try to formulate predictions because we don't like uncertainty. It
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: creates chaos in our lives. And back in the day
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: when we just climb down from the trees and survival
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: was everything, you needed to be really cautious and formulate
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: good models about how the world works, or that was
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: the end of your genetic line, you know. So those
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: behaviors are woven into the very fabric of our DNA.
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  Speaker 3: So we're naturally curious and we look for these patterns,
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  Speaker 3: and that's pretty much what a scientist is. So I've
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: been curious all my life. It starts with this, Hey
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know this, I'm curious about it. So I'm
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: going to formulate a hypothesis, which is an educated guess
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: as to what might happen if I do X, or
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: what might happen if I do Y. And then you
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: conduct that experiment and you analyze the results and you
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: try to see if your guest was correct or not, and.
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  Speaker 4: If it's correct.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe you hit upon the truth, maybe still could have
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: missed something, But if you can't falsify the hypothesis, that
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: is a signal that you're on the right track. And
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: that's how science works. It's really that simple, educated guest
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: do an experiment and then analyze the data.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: Now, what's beautiful about science?
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  Speaker 3: I advocate science all the time as the greatest method
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  Speaker 3: humanity has devised. Yeah, that can get us as close
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  Speaker 3: to the truth as possible. Okay, it can give us
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  Speaker 3: the most accurate representation of what's.
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  Speaker 4: Out there in the world. It just works.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it has great merit, it's a rigorous system,
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  Speaker 3: it is self correcting, and it's democratic. And what I
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: mean by that is that other people can do the
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  Speaker 3: same experiment that you performed, Okay, and if they repeat
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  Speaker 3: your results, that's further evidence.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: That you're on the right track. But if someone can't get.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: The results that you did, maybe you need to revisit
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: your experiment or your ideas and reformulate them. That's why
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: I think science is so beautiful, and you can apply
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: it to just about everything in your life, you know,
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: And I think evidence based living is what I championed
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: in the book. Please to meet me, and that system
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: is a great way to go about making decisions in
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: your life because you know they're rooted in reality, you
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: know they're based in evidence, and you can move forward
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: not only to make a better life for yourself and
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: your family, but hopefully to have better interactions and make
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: the world a better place.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's I love all of that. So let's
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: say somebody says that makes sense to me, Doc I
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: want to start, I don't know where to start. Here's
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: an idea, tell me what you think of this. So
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I was talking to somebody recently and it was about
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the whole very typical weight loss, health, fitness, fatness, in shape,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: out of shape, longevity, health span conversation, and I said too,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: it was a lady. I said, here's my idea. This
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: is a question I ask a lot of people that
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: they don't think about, is how many calories do you
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: drink a day? And they're like, what, I go, how
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: many calories do you drink a day? And so when
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: we broke down calories that are in liquid form for her,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: it was on ad about eight hundred calories a day,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and I said, well, over a thirty day or Yeah,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: let's say a thirty day period a typical month, that's
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: twenty four thousand calories. So why don't you try this,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Why don't you try one month with no liquid calories
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: so you can have some tea or coffee, no milk,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: you can drink water of course, anything that doesn't contain calories.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Leave your food the same, you know. And I've done
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: this with lots of people, and I go leave all
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the other variables the same, but just change that, just
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: so that there's not a multitude of things we're changing,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: and then we don't know exactly what's working and what's not.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And anyway, so she's started that, and she's dropping some
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: fat and weight, which is good, and she's happy, and
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: she's surprised. What a simple protocol. That's not her word,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: that's mine. But how easy that is to do? Do
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: you think that's a good way to start? Is just
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: doing a period of time and trying one thing and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: changing one thing? Is that a good kind of starting
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: or step off point?
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Well, I can certainly tell you from a scientific perspective,
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: ideally you just want to work with one variable at
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: a time. Same goes for medicine. You know, when you're
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: looking at you know, the effects of different drugs, whether
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: they work or not, what side effects might arise. You
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: have to do what we call very control, well controlled experiments.
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: In other words, you only want to analyze the one
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: variable that you're testing. Otherwise what we call confounding variables
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: can come into the equation and cloud our interpretation of
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: the data. So I really like your approach there, not
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: only because on a scientific level it's like a well
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: controlled experiment, but I also believe that if you're trying
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: to initiate change in someone's life, particularly as it pertains
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: to diet, changing just one small thing is a lot
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: easier than a tremendous upheaval and all of their habits
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: all at once. So I think that has a much
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: greater chance of success. And then you know, maybe the
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: next round you can try dropping out one other high
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: calorie item from their lifestyle and see even more improvement.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: You think. Also, so even putting aside the physiological you know,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the energy and out component, and you just think about
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the social, the behavior or the emotional and the psychological
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: stuff that's wrapped around in this example food, You know,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: so many of us have been eating a certain way
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and choosing a certain way for so long. It's very
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: unlikely that we're going to undo that programming in four weeks,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: you know, especially when we're talking about thirty or forty
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: or fifty years of thinking and eating and kind of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: operating in a certain way. Yeah, but I think having
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: that clearly defined kind of product while I'm doing one
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: thing and I'm doing it for this long, I think
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that I like working in short blocks too, like a
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: month or thirty days, twenty eight days, whatever it is,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: because for me, it seems like it's it's short enough
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: to stay pretty focused, but long enough to get some
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: some data, you know.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think not long ago, maybe a couple of
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: years ago, there was a great book written called Dopamine Nation,
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: and it speaks to some of these principles. Humans can
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: become addicted to pretty much anything.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, so when.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: We ingest certain foods or you know, a lot of sugar,
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of fat, for example, very similar analogous things
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: can happen in our brain at a molecular level to
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: that compared to someone who is basically hooked on drugs
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: or alcohol. You know, the brain changes to expect and
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: accommodate this massive amount or this unusually high sugar amount
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: that you're putting into your body. So if you start
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: giving that up, you know it has to be done
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: gradually or else your body is going to go into
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: I guess what you would analogously call withdraw and you're
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: going to need to combat those symptoms of withdrawal by
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: re engaging in the bad habit that you're trying to remedy.
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: So stepping down from things is probably a wiser route,
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: you know, if it's at all possible. And in the
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: case of drug and alcohol addiction, scientists are trying to
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: devise similar molecules that work the way the drug does.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: It binds to the same receptors, but can do so
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: in a non addictive fashion, so you can get the
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: person weaned off the drug without experiencing the harsh withdrawal
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: symptoms and kind of let the brain recalibrate itself, getting
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: back to this what we call homeostasis. Okay, that's kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: of like the baseline of where your.
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: Brain should would be.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: When you start overindulging and getting addicted to things, whether
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: it be something in your diet, alcohol, or drugs, the
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: brain is going to adapt to those and weaning yourself
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: off can create some very serious problems.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: It's almost like DOPA means the addiction, but we just
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: take different paths to get there.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: You know, it's likely, Yeah, I'm addicted.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: To that feeling, to that biochemical reaction, and gambling or
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: booze or drugs or pawn or whatever. That's the conduit.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: That's the door that opens the response for me. So
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to keep opening that door.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: That's right, and that hits upon the thesis of this book.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: You can become addicted to psychological things as well. The
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: author of the book herself admitted that her addiction was
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: like teenage romance novels or something like that.
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: She just couldn't stop reading them.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Very benign addiction compared to someone on on crack or cocaine,
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: But nevertheless, it illustrates that the same brain pathways, the
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: same transmitters are involved, and the same deprogramming steps are
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: as effective. So yeah, you just basically kind of got
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: to get your brain back to homeostasis. And the hardest part,
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: the biggest challenge is coping with the withdrawal period. If
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: you can get through that period, you're kind of well
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: on your way. The author of this book also cited
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: like alcoholics anonymous as a really good program to hold
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: yourself accountable and to have other people kind of hold
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: you accountable or at least be there when you feel
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: like you're going to cave into the craving, so that
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: social support system can be invaluable in helping people shake
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: some of their bad habits.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you spoke before a little bit about I think
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: you said about being open to a curn't remember exactly,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: but open to learning new things. And I think one
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: of the challenges too when you are a when you
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you know, scientist, non scientist, but when you have certain
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: certain ideas or beliefs that you believe to be true,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and you think, oh, this thing that I think that
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: is the truth. So therefore anything that doesn't align with
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that is you know, problematic, or it's wrong or it's misinformed.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I think one of the challenges, like an example that
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I've given too many times on this show, but I've
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: never given it to you, Doc, is when I grew
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: up in the early eighties and I was working in
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: gyms and working with athletes in the general public, and
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: I would talk to people about the food pyramid because
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: that's what I believe to be basically good science. Around food,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: and then over time I realized that probably isn't optimal.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: And then, but what that meant for me was I
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: had to acknowledge that I've been wrong, and not only
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: had I been I was teaching people things that were wrong,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and so being willing to go, oh, one, I got
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: it wrong, being willing too to unlearn and then relearn.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: And then I think three for me, I want to
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: know your opinion on this. I think the hardest thing
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: is when your identity is intertwined with a certain model,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: or a certain paradigm or a certain belief system, When
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: you get your sense of identity from that, it makes
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: you pretty much unteachable.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: I couldn't agree more.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: I've accumulated a little bit of wisdom in my old
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: age as well. And when you're younger, you love to
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: identify with things. You love to incorporate certain causes or
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: behaviors you know or groups as a part of you.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: It's almost like you are proud of this, you're signaling it.
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: It's a real element of the self.
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: And I think that is that really backfires in a
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: lot of ways, because, as you said, it closes you.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: You off automatically, and then the brain goes into like
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: this automatic shutdown when it here's something different than what
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: your group tells you to believe. And really, when you
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: identify with something like that, who are you living for now?
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: It's like you've erected this your own prison. Okay, you
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: really can't be an authentic self if you stop learning
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: and you're so glued to a concept, ideal organization that
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: you're impenetrable to new knowledge or evidence. And to me,
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: you might as well be six feet underground because you're
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: not really living anymore.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: And also, I mean, now, now the person who you
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: know in this instance, so you know, in some ways
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I would go, well, I'm a scientist, blah blah blah.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: But also, oh, but now I'm being emotional and irrational.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Now this is you know, it's like, because I don't
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: want to be wrong, and therefore if you don't agree
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: with me in inverted commas, then then you're the enemy.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And so then this and I think being able to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I know this sounds quite philosophical, but you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: it's a really interesting component of learning and growing, and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: you know, experimenting and unlearning and relearning is being able
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: to deal with the fact that you're going to be
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: right wrong, probably more than you're going to be right
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: and being okay with that, you know, whereas when we
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: live in this echo chamber of confirmation bias, where everyone
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: in the world who doesn't agree with me on this
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: is wrong. Like, like, even from a logical point of view,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: how dumb is that thought?
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: Right? Right? How dumb?
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: How is that?
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's audacious and dangerous because when you think
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: you know everything, you are closing yourself off to new knowledge,
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: you know, and we're discovering new things all the time,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: So you can get into very serious trouble if you
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: double down on, you know, beliefs that you.
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: Think are true.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: We see this, unfortunately in politics all the time, and
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: it is so maddening that, you know, their behavior is
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: so ridiculous when they double down on something that is
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: obviously wrong, it's demonstrably false, and yet they stick to
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: their guns and end up shooting themselves in the foot
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: with those guns. You know, it's just a and there's
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: no way you can run a successful nation with leaders
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: like that. It's just like you said, it's a formula
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: for insanity. So we have this, and it goes back
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: to the issue we were talking about earlier, Craig. We
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: have this capacity in our brain to crave comfort, security, predictability,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: and that's why we're so resistant to change. And there
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: seems to be a window in our youth where we
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: are kind of trained that this is the right religion,
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: this is the right idea, this is the right behavior,
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: and it's like solidifies after a certain age. It becomes
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: very hard to start chipping away at that foundation, but
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: it certainly can be done. I mean, I work in
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: the sciences and I run into scientists quite regularly who
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: will double down on ideas that have been pretty convincingly
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: proven false. Okay, but they're going to cling to that
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: dogma that they're used to, you know, for reasons that
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: just defy logic at times. So even scientists and doctors
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: are not immune to this very quirky thing about the
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: human brain in that it just holds so tight it
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: gives you know what, It's like we're bear hugging our
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: beliefs when in fact we should just be holding that
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: hand very very loosely and be willing to let it go.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: We have to get comfortable with uncertainty and the possibility
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: that we could be wrong about things. Yes, let me
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: tell you about this experiment. This is also a book.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: It's a great concept that it was. It's the principle here.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Do you ever hear of something called the knowledge illusion?
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think so, tell me.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So the knowledge illusion was this experiment that was
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: done that got in a group of participants and they
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: asked the group if they knew how a bicycle were.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: They asked them how confident they were, rate themselves on
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: a scale of one to ten, how well they think
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: they know how a bicycle works, And most people give
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: themselves a ten. Sure, I know how a bicycle works.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: I've been riding them all my life. I built one
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: some time ago.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: And then the experimenters give them a piece of paper
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: with a half drawn bicycle on it and tell them
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: to complete the drawing, and most of them can't do it.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: You should google these images because they are some of
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: the most you know, outlandishly non functional you'll ever see
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: on paper. If like pedals and chains going all which way,
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: it clearly it wouldn't work. And then they have to reevaluate,
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: they have to rescore themselves, okay, and most of them
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: bring their score way down because they realize I thought
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I knew something and turns out I don't, and this
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: just isn't With bicycles, they ask them all sorts of questions,
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: you know, they ask them like, how does a zipper work?
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: Okay? How does a toilet flush?
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: And then in America we ask questions like how well
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: do you know Obamacare?
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: Okay?
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: You ask them certain things that they that are political
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: in nature, that they think they know so much about,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: and then you ask them just some very basic questions. Okay,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: so tell me how a zipper works, tell me what
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: is Obamacare about? You know, how does it work? And
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: they can't answer this. This is the knowledge illusion. We
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: think we have a lot more knowledge in our head.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: We think we have a much better understanding of the
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: world world then we really do. So you got to
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: put your money where your mouth is. And if you
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: claim to know something, you know, you have to be
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: able to illustrate that you are an expert in the area.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: But I think what the knowledge illusion really illustrates for
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: you know, most people, is that we have to accept
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: the fact that we think we know a lot more
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: than we do, and we have to get comfortable with that.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: That's not a ding against your personality. It doesn't mean
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: you're flawed in any way. It means you're human. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: if you don't accept that as a basic fact, you're
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: going to be closing yourself off from lifelong learning and
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: possibly discovering some really interesting and fascinating things about yourself
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: or about the world.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: I love that. It's funny. When you said the knowledge illusion,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: I almost went, yeah, I know what that is. I
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: would have been perfect because I.
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: Would have asked to Okay, how's it work exactly?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Fuck, I'm glad, I said no. But I've heard the term,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: but I don't know what it is.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: But it's like, because you know, perfectly illegraated the kind
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: of intellectual honesty and humility that you need, why are
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: people so afraid to say, I don't know, I would
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: like to learn.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: To me, that's yeah, go on, well I think we do.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: You know, ego is self esteem all that bullshit. But
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: but it's like you said, it's it's human. I mean
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I I yeah, I think it's you know, like we
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: need to celebrate our humanity or at the very least,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: go yeah, I don't know, or I fucked that up.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: I got that right, I got that wrong. You know,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: like sometimes I'm in the middle of doing something or
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: saying something, and I have this awareness, Oh, this is
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: my ego right now, this is this is me trying
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: to make doctor Bill like me. In the moment, I'm
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: like more of my fucking seven you know.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: But you evolved from a social primate species that are
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: very similar to chimpanzees, and we carry this evolutionary baggage around.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: We want social advancement, we want to be respected in
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: the tribe. Because even worse than feeling seven Craig is
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: not being able to have opportunities.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: To attract a mate.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Okay, And in the olden days, when we were climbing
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: down from the treaties, that was paramount. Reproduction was paramount,
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: and you had a much higher probability of passing along
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: your genes if you had a higher place in the
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: hierarchy within the tribe. And all these silly little games
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: that human beings continue to play today go all the
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: way back to that evolutionary psychology. And when you frame
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: the silly things we do in that way, you know, subconsciously,
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: my brain wants to attract a mate. So that's why
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: I'm going to double down on this falsehood so that
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: I can maintain face and some semblance of prey man,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: you really do look ridiculous. Yeah, but a lot of
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: people can't see through that.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the conversations that I have
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: with different people from different spaces, background scientists or not,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: we end up talking about the human experience, and we
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: kind of in a way come back to this underlying
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: idea in psychology of you know, metacognition is thinking about
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: how we think, like why do I think this way?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Why do I tell myself? What's the origin story for
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: this thought? What's the origin story for this story? You know? Like,
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: and then you know, the next layer up in the
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: self awareness pyramid from that is theory of mind is
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: me trying to understand how TIF thinks, Me trying to
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: understand how you know, how you think, Bill, And then
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: above that is my PhD, which is a meta perception
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and meta accuracy, is me trying to understand the creve
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: experience for you. But just in general terms, I don't
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: think we actually think about how we think or why
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: we think the way we think as much as we should.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: We just think and believe that we're right because well
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: that's what I think.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: Did you?
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: But rather go cool. I get it. I get it
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: that you believe that and that you think that, And
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not debating you. I'm just going why do you
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: think that? And a lot of people go, fuck, I
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: don't know, I just think that, right.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: But that's that's a wonderful question to ask someone, especially
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: if you have differing opinions on an issue. Rather than
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: just get mad and go on to defensive, you know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: to try to prove that you're right, why not get curious, okay,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: get curious about that person and try to understand, well, hey,
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: I have a completely different view. What have you experienced
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: in your life that has led you down a different
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: path to come up with a completely different conclusion. And
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: you know, just because you understand how they arrived that
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: their belief doesn't mean you agree with it or condone it.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: But to have that understanding makes for a much more
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: productive conversation than two people just trying to convince each
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: other that they're idiots and that they're wrong. You know
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: that plays out in American politics and probably Australian politics
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: as well every single day. Rather than people trying to
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: come together and learn why they believe the way they do,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: they would just rather fight and name call and throw
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: a bunch of mud. And you can't have a productive
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: society when everyone's acting that way now.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: And you, I mean, you know, Stephen Covey and a
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: bunch of others, you know, seek first to understand and
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: then to be understood. But I think one of the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: one of the misconceptions is if I say something like
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I understand war, people think they're saying I can doone war.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: No.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I fucking hate war, but I understand how it happens.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I understand domestic violence, but I hate it. I understand
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: drug addiction, but I don't can you know. It's like
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: I can't overcome the thing I can't understand or won't understand.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: And so whether or not I agree or disagree a
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: line or don't a line, support or don't support whatever
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: it is that person believes, thinks, I want to understand it,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you know, because that's the stepping off point. Whereas you're
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: exactly right in not just in politics, but in religion,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: in you know, in food. Cults Like to me, they're
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: all just cults of thinking. It's like this is how
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: in our whether it's religious, political, nutrition, sociological, cultural, there
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: are all these cults of thought, where this is how
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: we think, this is how we see the world, this
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: is what we believe. All of that's cognitive stuff, right,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: And in the middle of that is absolute intolerance for
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: anything that doesn't sound or look or smell like me,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: you know, and just the willingness to go Look, Bill,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I don't agree with you, but I'm really curious. Tell
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: me where that came from. And maybe maybe you'll turn
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: me around. Maybe you won't. But even if we are
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: diametrically opposed, that's still okay. I believe in God and creation.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: You believe you're an atheist and you believe in evolution.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: But we can still be mates because, of course, our
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: friendship ain't dependent on or you know, yeah, it ain't
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: reliant on total agreement.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: I always encourage people that when you encounter someone different
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: than you, to view them as a mosaic piece of art, right, Yeah,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: you know, the mosaics are made up of these tiny
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: little tiles, and if you're real close to the piece
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: of work, you can't.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: Tell what it is.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: You need to say, step back in order to get
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: the whole picture and see the complete portrait or the
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: complete person. So, like you said, when we align in
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: like a cult cult like fashion to group think and
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: have to agree with everything that our group says, or
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: else will become an outsider to that group. Okay, despite
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: all of that, that's only one tile of their personality.
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: And believe me, on the book tours and when I
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: go out and give scientific lectures to the general public,
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: I encounter a lot of people who are very unlike
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: me okay in certain respects. And we always try to
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: approach that situation and saying, okay, my beliefs about X
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: or just this one.
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: Tile in my entire mosaic.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I bet we can find other tiles that we have
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: in common, and we more, we have a lot more
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: in common then we do differences. So when we start
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: talking about music, okay, or movies or you know, things
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: that we like to do in nature, these are things
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: that you can grab onto that are commonalities. And despite
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: any sort of like political or philosophical difference, all of
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: that suddenly seems to shrink. Those differences get smaller and
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: the things that you do have in common get larger.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: So we need to keep in mind when we encounter
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: people different from us, that we're only looking at like
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: a tip of the iceberg or we're only looking at
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: like one tile in this very large mosaic. I have
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: a formula that I write about recently called the three C's,
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: and I think it really helps. It's easy to remember
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: when you approach these, you know, difficult conversations, So you
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: want to engage more with curiosity, okay, then to automatically
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: start spewing out a whole bunch of things and reasons.
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: Why you're right. Okay.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: In the old days, I used to like bury anti
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: vaxxers in charts and graphs and data, and that approach
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: failed miserably. That's not what they want to hear. So
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: instead of trying to be persuasive, I get curious, and
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: just like you said, Craig, I try to learn what
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: experiences did they have that that has led them to this,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: you know, refusal or hesitancy about a vaccine of some kind.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: So that curiosity can spawn some very interesting information and
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: usually provides you more about you know, their life and
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: values that you can find commonalities. And then when you
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: start developing like a relationship a respectable you know, almost
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: even a friendship with this person, they're more likely to
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: entertain any sort of evidence or experience that you want
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: to send their way. So that's the first the curiosity.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: The second one is compassion, and this is kind of related.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: We have a tendency as human beings to get a
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: little aggressive when we're trying to defend our own beliefs
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: or when we're trying to prove someone wrong, and that
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: usually comes at the expense of a compassionate conversation. So
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: you really want to show the other party that you're
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: genuinely interested in why they share these differences, okay, why
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: they have these differences. And the third s is civility.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: There's no reason why we can't have a conversation about
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: differences without getting all angry and aggressive and resorting to
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: name calling and whole bunch of horrible things. So keeping
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: the conversation civil is also going to go a long way. Now,
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: I engage in dialogues with a lot of people who
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: might be opposed to evolution, might be opposed to vaccination,
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: don't believe climate change is happening. That can be a
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: very frustrating experience for me as a scientist because of
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: the experiences I've had. So I want to learn what
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: is it about their life that has led them down
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: a different path. I try to stay compassionate and understanding.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: And even though I'm not going to persuade them, at
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: least not with just one encounter, I walk away from
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: that discussion with the idea, with the comfort that they
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: now know me not as like some kind of aggressive
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: scientist who is just out to call them stupid, but
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: as someone who genuinely cared about how they felt, why
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: they believe the way they do. I wasn't trying to
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: ram stuff down their throat or convince them that I
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: was correct. Just wanted to show respect, show some civility.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: So now when they think about scientists or doctors, their
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: mind might not go to a negative place. They're going
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: to say, hey, my conversation with Bill was really cool.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: He respected me, he was trying to understand my views.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe he's onto something. You know, who knows.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: I think you're going to make more progress that way
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: than if you're just having you know, horrible nan calling episodes.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: I think it's great that you actually conceptualize that because
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: it's true, and irrespective of who's right, wrong, what's true,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: what's not true, Like, there's a certain energy in conversations,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: and you know, even sometimes people that I agree with
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I don't like the way that they go about sharing
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: their thoughts. It's like, I actually believe what you believe,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: but I don't like the aggression. I don't like the condescension.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: I don't like the arrogance or the superiority. It's like,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: you know, that doesn't even if you're right, and who knows,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: but let's go, even if you're right, there's still a
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: way to connect with people that's going to be more
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: resonant or less resonant. And there's you know, so, and
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: I'll be the.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: First to say that scientists and doctors are horrible at that.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: I mean that there's not all of them, of course,
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: but many of them take that condescending route or you know,
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: I'm your doctor, just do as I say, and you know,
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: next patient, please, So yeah, you know, they don't take
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: the time and the energy to explain things.
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: And I get it.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: I've been on the other side of the fence. It
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: can be frustrating sometimes. And there's other people who are
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: just really you know, they show that cult side and.
• 49:27
  Speaker 4: It can get very unnerving.
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: But you have to exercise those three c's, you know, curiosity, compassion, stability.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: It'll get us much further than if we try to
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: continue on the same path that we're on now.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I love chatting with you. You're in
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: my top few. Love chatting with you. Appreciate you is
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: place to make me. Is that your most recent book?
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: It is, it's actually the only book, but it is
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: coming up when it's five year anniversary this August, So
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: I can't believe the time flies, man, But it's great
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: to know that.
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: It's still making waves.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: It's still been translated into a dozen languages so far.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: So I'm just so grateful that people are reading it
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: and absorbing that message in that book.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: I want to know, did you do the audio version,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: the Mandarin audio version? Did you do that?
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: No?
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: I didn't do any of the audio any of those
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: audio versions, but yeah.
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: A Mandarin one for me would have been very interesting.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have been interesting for people who actually
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: speak Mandarin as well. Hi, Doc will saygobof here. But
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: once again, do you want to point anyone towards your
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: socials or a website or anything do you want to
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: direct now? Thanks?
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: Thanks, thanks for reminding me. Author Bill Sullivan dot com.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: You'll find information about the book we've been alluding to
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: but I have been writing a lot of articles, especially
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: about the topics we've been discussing today, Craig, about these
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: civil conversations and trying to understand people who are different
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: than you. You can find those articles at author Bill
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: Sullivan dot com.
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: Wow. We appreciate you, sir, love that you agree to
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: be part of this. Every so often we'll say goodbye affair,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: but from the moment, thanks again, Doc.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Anytime, it's always a pleasure.