Latest / The You Project / #2227 Is Education in Crisis? - Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath

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#2227 Is Education in Crisis? - Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: G'day team, it's Harps and it's Dr.
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Speaker 2: Jared.
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Speaker 1: He's joining us for the first time ever on the
0:05
Speaker 1: You Project, two and a half thousand episodes in. Here
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Speaker 1: he is. I've been building to this point in time,
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Speaker 1: this crescendo, the greatness that we've just wheeled into the studio. No,
0:15
Speaker 1: all jokes aside, we got connected by a mutual friend, Phil.
0:19
Speaker 1: And thanks, Phil, for the connection. Morning, Doc. How are you? Good.
0:25
Speaker 2: How are you doing? Good.
0:27
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good over here in the thriving metropolis.
0:29
Speaker 1: Now you're on a quick trip out to Australia from
0:32
Speaker 1: the States. How long are you in town?
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Speaker 2: Been here for two weeks. We got two more days
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Speaker 2: and then head home. It's my first big overseas trip
0:41
Speaker 2: with my three-year-old daughter.
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Speaker 1: It's been a trip.
0:45
Speaker 2: It's been interesting. Wow.
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Speaker 1: And that's not the shortest trip ever. How do you
0:48
Speaker 1: go with a three-year-old for 14 or 16 hours or
0:52
Speaker 1: whatever it is on a plane?
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Speaker 2: One of those big things. So one of my big
0:56
Speaker 2: kind of topics is impact of tech on learning and development.
1:00
Speaker 2: But it's one of those sweet things where like before
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Speaker 2: a 16-hour flight, you have everything planned. We have these games.
1:06
Speaker 2: We have these stickers. We have this. We'll sleep this.
1:09
Speaker 2: And then God just kind of laughs. You get about
1:11
Speaker 2: two or three or four hours into it and you're like,
1:13
Speaker 2: all right, peppa pig. Just settle down. I can't have
1:17
Speaker 2: you running up and down the aisles.
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Speaker 1: I'm going to suspend all of that stuff I talk
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Speaker 1: about just for 16 hours. And we will never talk
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Speaker 1: of this again. This goes in the book.
1:29
Speaker 2: And we will pretend this until we have to fly home.
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Speaker 2: And now that's the dread is as you get closer
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Speaker 2: to leaving, you just feel this kind of weight going,
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Speaker 2: oh boy, this is going to be fun. But what
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Speaker 2: do you think? Do what we do.
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Speaker 1: Is that a real juxtaposition for you? Because, of course,
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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about tech and the impact of
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Speaker 1: that on learning and kids' development and all that stuff.
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Speaker 1: But you know that I can just give this kid
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Speaker 1: this thing and she'll probably sit there for two hours
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Speaker 1: and not move and she'll be transfixed and I'll have
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Speaker 1: two hours of something close to bliss. Do you battle
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Speaker 1: with that decision or are you like, nah, here you go?
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Speaker 2: Oh, 100% because it's– There are times when you absolutely
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Speaker 2: can't do it because how easy is it like at
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Speaker 2: a dinner table to say, I just want to have
2:13
Speaker 2: dinner with my wife or at home. And it's like,
2:15
Speaker 2: you know, I just need to take a shower. But
2:19
Speaker 2: those are the times when I'm very much aware. Don't
2:21
Speaker 2: do it. That's that's the trap is when it requires
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Speaker 2: a little more effort from you. You got to put
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Speaker 2: in that effort. But it's something like a flight where
2:30
Speaker 2: you're just trapped in a box. And I know she's
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Speaker 2: starting to act up and she's going to jump on
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Speaker 2: someone's lap and someone's going to get mad. That's when
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Speaker 2: I'm just like, whatever, we just got to hold our
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Speaker 2: breath and get through this. I will use whatever tool
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Speaker 2: I have to in that case. If there's an end
2:45
Speaker 2: in sight, maybe that's the difference.
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Speaker 1: The greater good of the community around me and for
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Speaker 1: the sanity of the other passengers, I'm going to take
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Speaker 1: a hit for the team and discard my own advice
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Speaker 1: momentarily or disregard.
3:00
Speaker 2: Take my daughter for a couple of hours.
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Speaker 1: Now, rather than me read a bio, which is what
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Speaker 1: I was going to say, boring, your bio is not boring.
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Speaker 1: It's fascinating. But give us the Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath
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Speaker 1: snapshot of who you are.
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Speaker 2: So I am a teacher turns a neuroscientist. So teaching,
3:20
Speaker 2: that's my passion. That's all I ever wanted to do.
3:23
Speaker 2: But back when I was teaching a couple decades ago,
3:25
Speaker 2: that was the decade of the brain. And so everything
3:28
Speaker 2: in the news was brain, this brain books, brain gym.
3:32
Speaker 2: And I thought that's going to make me a much
3:33
Speaker 2: better teacher if I understand how the brain works. So
3:35
Speaker 2: that's where I said, all right, I'll go back. I'll
3:37
Speaker 2: study neuroscience. So I can bring that back to my practice,
3:41
Speaker 2: back to the classroom. And unfortunately, as you've probably found out,
3:46
Speaker 2: academia is a black hole. Once you're in, it's real
3:48
Speaker 2: hard to get out. Like you finish your PhD and
3:51
Speaker 2: then there's a project and then there's a grant and
3:53
Speaker 2: then you got to do this. So I kind of
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Speaker 2: got stuck in academia for about two decades now. But
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Speaker 2: I just my entire focus is on human learning. How
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Speaker 2: do human beings learn? What's memory? What's attention? How does
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Speaker 2: what's metacognition? The idea being that I get to work
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Speaker 2: primarily now with schools, with teachers and students and say,
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Speaker 2: if this is learning, what does this mean for us?
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Speaker 2: How does that change what we do in a classroom?
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Speaker 2: How does that change what we're doing at home? So
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Speaker 2: I don't have my own classroom, but I still get
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Speaker 2: to work primarily with education, which makes me super happy.
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Speaker 1: Well, you kind of do. You have your own. It's
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Speaker 1: just big. It's like it's not 30 kids.
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Speaker 2: It's very large.
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Speaker 1: It's 30 million kids, right? It's like it's potentially.
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Speaker 2: There's nothing like like when you any teacher will know,
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Speaker 2: like so in university and this will be your next
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Speaker 2: phase to now that you're done with a Ph.D. at
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Speaker 2: some stage, you're going to teach a university course and
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Speaker 2: you'll see your kids, your students, 10 hours over a term,
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Speaker 2: 12 hours over a term when you're teaching K through 12.
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Speaker 2: you see your kids about two hours a day, every
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Speaker 2: single day. There's a whole different relationship ballgame that really
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Speaker 2: starts to build there, which is just, I just, I lack,
5:01
Speaker 2: I miss that. I have my own kid, which is perfect,
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Speaker 2: but I miss those 30 kids that I have a
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Speaker 2: year to really, really play with and influence.
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Speaker 1: What about, we talk a lot about the impact of
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Speaker 1: tech on kids and learning and classrooms and what habit,
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Speaker 1: what happens and even the impact on their ability to
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Speaker 1: socialise and look somebody else in the face and have
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Speaker 1: a three-dimensional chat without an emoji. What about the impact
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Speaker 1: on teachers? How's that been? Because, I mean, I guess
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Speaker 1: you would, no disrespect, there'd be 55-year-old teachers who are like, nope,
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Speaker 1: and then be 22-year-old teachers who are like, I'm all
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Speaker 1: about it. The uptake and the response, you know?
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Speaker 2: Yeah. And the uptake, it's weird. Tech and education, it
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Speaker 2: came in about 15 years ago and it just swarmed
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Speaker 2: where whether you're the 50 year old teacher, the 20
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Speaker 2: year old teacher, you don't have a choice is basically
5:56
Speaker 2: the principal says we are giving every kid a laptop.
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Speaker 2: You must use this program. You must do this. And
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Speaker 2: in my experience, man, 70% of teachers, old and young,
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Speaker 2: they're done with it. They hate it. They don't like it.
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Speaker 2: For that express purpose is learning is human. It's a
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Speaker 2: humanistic endeavor. We have biological mechanisms built in that say
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Speaker 2: we learn from other human beings better than any other
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Speaker 2: animal does. That's one of our superpowers. But when a
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Speaker 2: screen comes up, all of those mechanisms basically sever at
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Speaker 2: that moment. Yes. And instead of looking at a sea
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Speaker 2: of faces, a sea of kids, I'm looking at a
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Speaker 2: sea of Apple logos that I cannot literally connect with,
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Speaker 2: that I don't know how to influence. And so as
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Speaker 2: a teacher, you start to lose the passion. You start
6:44
Speaker 2: to lose the thrill that made teaching your, it becomes,
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Speaker 2: and I don't mean to, because everything can be a vocation,
6:52
Speaker 2: but teaching, nursing, these things are vocations. They were passions
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Speaker 2: as much as they were careers. But more recently, they're
6:59
Speaker 2: just becoming careers. It's a paycheck. You're losing that thrill
7:03
Speaker 2: that my soul needs to teach because we're just not
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Speaker 2: teaching all that much anymore.
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Speaker 1: One of the things I love that I do, like
7:13
Speaker 1: we said, you do a fair bit of corporate. I'm
7:15
Speaker 1: sure I do a fair bit of corporate, but part
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Speaker 1: of this is, I mean, I use tech a lot,
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Speaker 1: but I've just been teaching, presenting, coaching, whatever we want
7:27
Speaker 1: to call it, a certain way for a long time.
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Speaker 1: And it's very, very analog. And that is I use
7:34
Speaker 1: a whiteboard.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I have my Instagram pages, all handwritten whiteboard messages from me.
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Speaker 1: And whenever I try and use AI, people are like,
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Speaker 1: we hate the AI. Stop using AI. Write your message
7:50
Speaker 1: on your whiteboard. Take a photo of it and put
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Speaker 1: it back. And because they connect with not only the message,
7:57
Speaker 1: because there's no distraction, there's no waterfalls and mountains and angels,
8:01
Speaker 1: and there's just black, slightly messy but slightly cool writing
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Speaker 1: on a whiteboard. And because I wrote it, I literally
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Speaker 1: physically wrote it with my hand and not every S
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Speaker 1: or every G or every A is the same. It's
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Speaker 1: all varied. There's much more connection. And when I... When
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Speaker 1: I go to a conference, and often I'm presenting for,
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Speaker 1: like you, I guess, anything between a 45-minute keynote and
8:29
Speaker 1: a three-hour workshop. And when I have no slides to
8:33
Speaker 1: give them, they're like, oh, can we have your USB?
8:36
Speaker 1: I go, I don't have one. They panic. They panic.
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Speaker 1: What do you mean you don't have a PowerPoint? I go,
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Speaker 1: I've been doing a version of this for 40 years.
8:46
Speaker 1: I'm 62, bro. I don't need like this is all
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Speaker 1: I talk about. If I don't know how to talk
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Speaker 1: for three hours, I'll have a one-page A4 with some
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Speaker 1: dot points on it, which I rarely look at. But
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Speaker 1: my experience is building rapport with the group, respect, understanding.
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Speaker 1: reading the room, reading the energy and navigating that rather
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Speaker 1: than following some preordained script, no matter what. No matter what,
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Speaker 1: I'm going to slide four next. Doesn't matter what's happening
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Speaker 1: in the room. We're doing slide four. And everyone's like,
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Speaker 1: Fuck slide four, just keep talking about that.
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Speaker 2: Story, right?
9:30
Speaker 1: I want to, yep. Yeah, it's like that was fascinating
9:33
Speaker 1: and now we're talking about, you know, now we're talking
9:37
Speaker 1: about sleep and the impact of sleep on mental health.
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Speaker 2: It shows you how learners... It doesn't matter if you're
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Speaker 2: a kid or an adult. Sometimes we get trapped in
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Speaker 2: these patterns of what feels good, of what feels easy.
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Speaker 2: And we forget how much deeper learning can be when
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Speaker 2: we literally just connect with the other human being. So
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Speaker 2: it's i'm very similar to you like in my classroom
10:01
Speaker 2: when i teach at uni now there's no nothing is
10:04
Speaker 2: allowed you cannot bring in a keyboard you cannot bring
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Speaker 2: in a pen and a paper you it's me and
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Speaker 2: you and for like the first month of class my
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Speaker 2: kids are shocked they're gobsmacked same as they're like where's
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Speaker 2: my notes where's my slides i'm like When was the
10:18
Speaker 2: last time you took notes while watching a Marvel superhero movie?
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Speaker 2: You didn't, you just sat down, watched it and you
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Speaker 2: let the narrative wash over you and you understood it.
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Speaker 2: You connected with it. Watch how much more you learn
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Speaker 2: when you stop trying to learn and you allow yourself
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Speaker 2: to engage with me, the material, this moment. And there's
10:37
Speaker 2: a thing you'll love it. So it's called responsive teaching.
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Speaker 2: It's one of the biggest, um, drivers of learning we have.
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Speaker 2: It used to be called formative assessment. And it was
10:48
Speaker 2: basically those kind of like in the moment questions you'd
10:51
Speaker 2: ask your students to get feedback. And we always thought
10:55
Speaker 2: formative assessment worked because it told the kids where they
10:57
Speaker 2: were at. You're learning this. Now you need to learn this.
11:00
Speaker 2: Then we did our research. We now call it responsive
11:03
Speaker 2: teaching because it turns out it's effective because it tells
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Speaker 2: us what needs to happen. It gives the teacher the
11:09
Speaker 2: insights to go, ah, we need to focus more here. Oh,
11:12
Speaker 2: we need to jump here, which is exactly what you're doing.
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Speaker 2: When you have a slide deck and you're like, we're
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Speaker 2: going right to slide four, come hell or high water.
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Speaker 2: That's not responsive teaching. That's not one of the drivers
11:23
Speaker 2: that we know really works. What works connect with the
11:26
Speaker 2: human being and you as the teacher, you use your
11:28
Speaker 2: expertise to say, you know what? You're right. Let's go
11:30
Speaker 2: down this path. We need to talk more about sleep. Oh,
11:33
Speaker 2: that's an interesting question. Now we need to shift over here.
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Speaker 2: you are basically demonstrating what effective teaching looks like by
11:41
Speaker 2: going back to analog and just being there with your students.
11:43
Speaker 2: That's brilliant.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. And that, you know, we spoke before you asked
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Speaker 1: me what my PhD was about meta perception for my
11:51
Speaker 1: listeners who forget. So the ability to understand what it's
11:54
Speaker 1: like being around you, essentially, it's more than that, but
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Speaker 1: that's a snapshot, how people perceive or process or experience
12:01
Speaker 1: you in the moment. Now, If you are basically scripted
12:07
Speaker 1: before you go in, like I went to a, I
12:09
Speaker 1: spoke at a conference, it was probably a year ago now,
12:13
Speaker 1: but it was a medical conference and I felt out
12:17
Speaker 1: of my depth because, you know, I'm not, they were surgeons, right?
12:21
Speaker 1: And anyway, the presenter before me, the content was amazing,
12:28
Speaker 1: but I came in and I listened to that before
12:32
Speaker 1: I spoke. There was a little five-minute break, so I
12:34
Speaker 1: had a little buffer. But I was fascinated with their
12:39
Speaker 1: research and kind of, you know, what came out of that.
12:45
Speaker 1: But the actual presentation, without being, there was almost no, well,
12:50
Speaker 1: there was no interaction at all. There was no back
12:54
Speaker 1: and forth at all. And I looked around the room.
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Speaker 1: There were 300 or so people. And I would say
13:00
Speaker 1: 200 people were not looking at her and they were
13:04
Speaker 1: not paying attention. They were on their phone. They were
13:06
Speaker 1: on an iPad. They had their eyes closed there. And
13:09
Speaker 1: I'm like, and also she was unaware of this because
13:15
Speaker 1: she was engrossed in the process of clicking slides and
13:18
Speaker 1: reading slides and talking about graphs and data. Now, maybe
13:22
Speaker 1: in an academic only environment, well, even then that's not
13:26
Speaker 1: going to work, as you know, but And I'm going
13:29
Speaker 1: up to her and going, you are brilliant, but have
13:32
Speaker 1: a look around. Like, definitely smarter than me, hands down.
13:36
Speaker 1: But it's like, how much of this is getting through?
13:42
Speaker 1: Are you speaking a language that they resonate with? Please
13:45
Speaker 1: tell us a story about one of something relating to
13:49
Speaker 1: this science. Tell us a joke.
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Speaker 2: Tell us a story.
13:52
Speaker 1: Humanise it. And, yeah, I just and I have that
13:57
Speaker 1: quite a bit, which sounds very judgy. I don't mean
14:00
Speaker 1: it to. And that's not to say all of my
14:02
Speaker 1: stuff lands either. But I'm constantly watching the room. for
14:07
Speaker 1: that meta-perceptive kind of thing to go, are they engaged?
14:11
Speaker 1: Is this working? Is this landing? Is this meaningful? And
14:15
Speaker 1: you can, in real time, read the room if you
14:17
Speaker 1: know your subject matter really well and then just figure
14:20
Speaker 1: out where you're going to, you know, like I will
14:22
Speaker 1: walk up. One of the, like a common thing that
14:26
Speaker 1: I do is I'll get on stage. I've just been introduced.
14:29
Speaker 1: And the introduction is embarrassing because they take the best
14:33
Speaker 1: shit you've ever done and condense it into 45 seconds.
14:36
Speaker 1: And you look like a genius. I'm like, well, if
14:40
Speaker 1: you read out all the dumb stuff I've done, that
14:42
Speaker 1: would take an hour. That's why this only takes 45
14:46
Speaker 1: seconds because I've only done five amazing things, right?
14:50
Speaker 2: There's not much more to it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And I go, yeah, that's the highlight reel
14:56
Speaker 1: of my 40-year career. And I said, put up your
14:59
Speaker 1: hand if you're an overthinker. I go, don't overthink this.
15:03
Speaker 2: Put up.
15:04
Speaker 1: And all the hands go up. And then I go,
15:06
Speaker 1: how's that working for you? And they all laugh. I go,
15:09
Speaker 1: what is that about? What is that rumination, that overthinking?
15:12
Speaker 1: Like what do you reckon the driver of that is?
15:14
Speaker 1: What do you think sits underneath that behaviour or that habit?
15:18
Speaker 1: Then all of a sudden we're in a chat. We're
15:20
Speaker 1: chatting about, and by the way, you've already got engagement
15:23
Speaker 1: and connection because they all put up their hand. So
15:26
Speaker 1: now it's us. It's not me and them, right? Now
15:31
Speaker 1: in less than 60 seconds, right? But it's that, and
15:34
Speaker 1: it could be obviously something completely different. But that ability
15:38
Speaker 1: to build rapport with your audience, be that on a podcast,
15:42
Speaker 1: be that in a classroom or an auditorium or some
15:46
Speaker 1: kind of corporate context, if you can't do that, you're
15:50
Speaker 1: not that effective.
15:52
Speaker 2: And I think you make a wickedly good point. So
15:56
Speaker 2: if anyone is interested in kind of mechanisms, what's going
15:59
Speaker 2: on here is There's a process called affective empathy. So
16:05
Speaker 2: we all know the term empathy and everyone's like, assumes
16:09
Speaker 2: that empathy is a trait or an emotion. I am empathetic.
16:12
Speaker 2: I have empathy. Turns out empathy, you don't have it.
16:15
Speaker 2: It's not a personal thing. It's what we call the
16:18
Speaker 2: transpersonal emergent property. When two or more pairs of biology
16:22
Speaker 2: come together, those biologies can start to synchronize. They can
16:26
Speaker 2: resonate in a very real sense. If you and I
16:28
Speaker 2: start to empathize, what's going to happen is our heart
16:31
Speaker 2: is going to start to beat simultaneously. We're going to
16:33
Speaker 2: start to breathe at the same rate. We're going to
16:35
Speaker 2: blink at the same time. Our brains are going to
16:37
Speaker 2: start to look almost identical. That is exactly what you're
16:40
Speaker 2: talking about when you're talking about building a rapport, connecting
16:43
Speaker 2: with your learners. That is a measurable thing. We can
16:47
Speaker 2: tell you when it's happening. It doesn't matter. You could
16:48
Speaker 2: have 3,000 people in front of you. You can get
16:51
Speaker 2: it where all 3,000 people are blinking simultaneously because we're
16:54
Speaker 2: all in the same spot together. In order for that
16:57
Speaker 2: to work, though, Exactly. As you said, there has to
17:01
Speaker 2: be some sort of recognition of each other and connection.
17:05
Speaker 2: It can't be me on a stage looking out at
17:07
Speaker 2: a bright light and nothing else. There has to be
17:10
Speaker 2: some sort of give and take a recognition of humanity.
17:13
Speaker 2: And I think what, what you're describing is I, it
17:17
Speaker 2: makes me think of jazz. All right. You get a
17:21
Speaker 2: bunch of musicians up to do jazz. They have their standard.
17:24
Speaker 2: They don't go up there clean. They know we're going
17:26
Speaker 2: to play this song, but within that song, I trust
17:30
Speaker 2: my expertise enough and I trust the people around me
17:33
Speaker 2: enough to play, to say, you know what? I'm going
17:36
Speaker 2: to listen to you. I'm literally going to listen to
17:38
Speaker 2: what you're doing and I'm going to respond to it
17:40
Speaker 2: with my instrument. We're still playing the song. Everyone knows
17:43
Speaker 2: this is a Duke Ellington tune or whatever, but we're
17:47
Speaker 2: playing within that. And that's where that responsive teaching, that's
17:50
Speaker 2: where that connection allows me to be in your head,
17:53
Speaker 2: the same moment you're in my head. So we're all
17:55
Speaker 2: making the same moves together. And that, and I think maybe,
17:58
Speaker 2: maybe that does come to With expertise and practice, if
18:02
Speaker 2: you're new to maybe teaching or if you're new to presenting,
18:05
Speaker 2: if it's your first presentation, maybe you're not used to
18:09
Speaker 2: speaking in front of people. Maybe you haven't mastered that
18:11
Speaker 2: skill enough to say, I'm going to autopilot this and
18:14
Speaker 2: allow me to pay attention. And that's fine. But the
18:16
Speaker 2: more you practice, the better you get at that. The
18:18
Speaker 2: idea would be, hopefully, that you start to open up
18:21
Speaker 2: the edges a bit and let your learners actually be
18:23
Speaker 2: a part of the show rather than just being passive
18:26
Speaker 2: observers of you talking about something you know.
18:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. And also coming in with the
18:35
Speaker 1: understanding or the assumption that most people in the room
18:38
Speaker 1: don't think like you, right? So if I do a
18:41
Speaker 1: presentation by Craig for Craig, that's awesome for Craig. It's
18:46
Speaker 1: crap for most people. But the thing is, you know,
18:50
Speaker 1: there's a construct in psychology which you would know of.
18:53
Speaker 1: It's called the false consensus effect. And it means that
18:56
Speaker 1: most people assume that other people kind of think like them.
19:00
Speaker 1: So I want to tell you, I want to give
19:02
Speaker 1: you some encouragement, some support, and maybe what I think
19:05
Speaker 1: is a bit of helpful guidance. And so I bang
19:08
Speaker 1: it on you, you know, thinking I'm doing a good thing.
19:10
Speaker 1: And you, in the middle of it, you're like, he
19:12
Speaker 1: is such a judgmental, like giving, like criticizing me. So
19:18
Speaker 1: my intention is definitely not your experience. Well, I need
19:21
Speaker 1: to be aware of that. I need to be aware
19:23
Speaker 1: of most people don't think like me, theory of mind,
19:27
Speaker 1: how do other people think? How does this what I'm
19:31
Speaker 1: saying land with them? Is this too sciencey and academic?
19:36
Speaker 1: Is this academic enough, depending on who I'm talking with?
19:41
Speaker 1: And trying to find that appropriate language and messaging style
19:47
Speaker 1: where you're still getting across the information. but it's in
19:50
Speaker 1: a way that's close to optimal uptake for them. Because
19:59
Speaker 1: it's like- I've done three days in a row I
20:02
Speaker 1: did this. I spoke at a medical conference, I spoke
20:05
Speaker 1: in a prison, and then I spoke at a high school,
20:08
Speaker 1: like three days in a row. And I'm like just
20:12
Speaker 1: messages kind of similar, some of them, but the style
20:17
Speaker 1: and the context and the stories like had to be
20:21
Speaker 1: completely and the energy had to be different. Yeah.
20:24
Speaker 2: What have you experienced now? in because as you're talking
20:31
Speaker 2: about this i'm kind of thinking about the concept of
20:34
Speaker 2: the echo chamber the meta-awareness metacognition is has has to
20:39
Speaker 2: at some stage say a recognition of the context i'm
20:43
Speaker 2: in recognition of exactly what impact i'm having but if
20:46
Speaker 2: we have something like say social media where the only
20:49
Speaker 2: people who pay attention to me are the people who
20:52
Speaker 2: think exactly the same as me do we run the
20:55
Speaker 2: risk then of basically eliminating any more cognitive awareness Purely
20:59
Speaker 2: because my my zeitgeist, my my inner circle says everything
21:04
Speaker 2: I say is right. Therefore, I'm good, which might make
21:07
Speaker 2: it harder for me to connect with the idea that
21:08
Speaker 2: now if someone disagrees with me in the real world,
21:12
Speaker 2: rather than just assuming they're wrong, somehow being able to
21:15
Speaker 2: connect with that and adjust as well. So where do
21:17
Speaker 2: you see like maybe social media and. And tech in
21:20
Speaker 2: this kind of narrow windows of streams of information we get,
21:24
Speaker 2: does that kind of negatively influence that, do you think?
21:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. That's a great question. So the
21:28
Speaker 1: whole confirmation bias, I think that everybody thinks, or I
21:32
Speaker 1: only listen to people who reinforce what I think or
21:36
Speaker 1: are in my thought of cult, cult of thought, I
21:40
Speaker 1: should say.
21:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, cult of thought.
21:43
Speaker 1: It's a thinking cult. It's like we all think the same.
21:46
Speaker 1: And if anyone doesn't, well, clearly they don't understand. So
21:52
Speaker 1: it's automatically they're wrong. And that's very much ever present
21:57
Speaker 1: in social media. And when I coach people one-on-one, one
22:03
Speaker 1: of the questions I ask almost every session that they
22:06
Speaker 1: don't like is what part of the problem are you?
22:08
Speaker 1: Because most people think if they've got some kind of
22:11
Speaker 1: conflict or disagreement or angst at work, at home, with
22:15
Speaker 1: the next door neighbor, with a friend, that it's zero
22:19
Speaker 1: them and 100% the other person. And I go, well,
22:21
Speaker 1: this is a false premise to start with, more than likely.
22:26
Speaker 1: And I go, I think about this stuff all the time.
22:29
Speaker 1: I teach this, I study this, and I'm wrong every
22:31
Speaker 1: day about probably 20 things. So I'm operating on the
22:35
Speaker 1: assumption that I'm coming in and I'm just right. But
22:39
Speaker 1: people don't like to be wrong. People like feedback until
22:43
Speaker 1: it's feedback they don't like. So they don't really like feedback.
22:46
Speaker 1: They like praise and reinforcement and endorsement. And it's recognizing that.
22:52
Speaker 1: And I think it's also this seems like to me,
22:55
Speaker 1: this is not science, this is my opinion, an ever-present
22:59
Speaker 1: need for people to be right. Because one of the
23:02
Speaker 1: problems is when you believe something passionately, that becomes your
23:07
Speaker 1: identity or part of your identity, right? I don't think
23:11
Speaker 1: I'm right. I know I'm right. Therefore you're the enemy.
23:15
Speaker 1: And so a very simple example of that is for me,
23:19
Speaker 1: I probably taught the food pyramid as part of my,
23:23
Speaker 1: I opened the first personal training centers in Australia, right.
23:26
Speaker 1: And wrote the first course in forever ago, 36 years ago,
23:30
Speaker 1: I opened the first center and I started PT 40
23:34
Speaker 1: years ago. So I, I thought that the food pyramid,
23:37
Speaker 1: which at the time was the science that was, so
23:40
Speaker 1: I just taught that. And then one day kind of,
23:42
Speaker 1: I went, okay, so I've been wrong about a lot.
23:46
Speaker 1: And I kind of had to go, Hey, I was wrong. Sorry.
23:50
Speaker 1: Here's what I know now. And that ability to go,
23:54
Speaker 1: I was wrong. I've changed my mind. I've got more information.
23:57
Speaker 1: I've got more awareness. And I think too, with academics, um,
24:01
Speaker 1: because their research and their findings or their belief about
24:05
Speaker 1: that particular thing is intertwined with who they are and
24:08
Speaker 1: how they are in their sense of self. It's very
24:12
Speaker 1: difficult to find truly objective, open-minded people in that space.
24:18
Speaker 2: And isn't it, it's interesting, I'm working on a documentary
24:21
Speaker 2: now on genius, and there's this kind of concept of
24:23
Speaker 2: genius that as you get older, you lose creativity. You
24:28
Speaker 2: kind of do all your best work somewhat early, and
24:31
Speaker 2: then you just kind of imitate yourself after that. And
24:34
Speaker 2: a researcher out of Santa Barbara said, no, it's actually,
24:37
Speaker 2: when you look at the data, it's not age, it's
24:40
Speaker 2: vested interest. It's when you make a point that you
24:44
Speaker 2: become well known for that it costs you more to
24:48
Speaker 2: change your mind than it does to just stick with it.
24:51
Speaker 2: That's when you see genius decline wickedly rapidly. And then
24:55
Speaker 2: the rest of your life, you basically just repeat something
24:57
Speaker 2: that probably internally, you know, needs to evolve or change.
25:02
Speaker 2: But right now, that's where the money is. That's where
25:04
Speaker 2: the safety is. That's where the identity is. So you
25:06
Speaker 2: just stick with that. So basically, it's not age. It's
25:09
Speaker 2: vested interest. When you get too deep into a single
25:12
Speaker 2: idea that it costs you more to change your mind
25:14
Speaker 2: than to just stick with it, that's when you can
25:17
Speaker 2: basically kiss it goodnight because you're going to watch the
25:20
Speaker 2: rest of your life kind of go down this path.
25:22
Speaker 2: And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus,
25:24
Speaker 2: but just as an example of this in our field
25:27
Speaker 2: is Carol Dweck out of Stanford in Growth Mindset. When
25:32
Speaker 2: she first wrote her book, Growth Mindset, and this idea
25:36
Speaker 2: of mindset, excuse me, just general mindset, it was very academic.
25:40
Speaker 2: It was very left-right. There was still a lot of
25:43
Speaker 2: open interpretation to it, but the world interpreted it to
25:46
Speaker 2: mean if you have a growth mindset, you do better.
25:48
Speaker 2: If you have a fixed mindset, you will do worse.
25:52
Speaker 2: And that became her zeitgeist. And it didn't matter that
25:55
Speaker 2: over the next 10 years, all this academic research came
25:59
Speaker 2: back saying, that's not right. That's not actually how this
26:01
Speaker 2: game works. I was at Unimel a couple years ago
26:05
Speaker 2: and she came down and I said, do you genuinely
26:07
Speaker 2: believe this stuff? I don't know how much more data
26:10
Speaker 2: you need to say what you're telling these kids is wrong.
26:14
Speaker 2: And she still says, yeah, I think you all are
26:16
Speaker 2: just doing research wrong. I still think my idea is
26:19
Speaker 2: correct and everything else is wrong. And she didn't even
26:21
Speaker 2: recognize that it wasn't even her idea. What she was
26:23
Speaker 2: now supporting was never her original argument. She just allowed
26:27
Speaker 2: it to move because that became her professional identity. That
26:30
Speaker 2: became her personal identity. And I'd be curious to see
26:33
Speaker 2: if she doesn't hit like 70 and look back and go, yeah,
26:35
Speaker 2: you know, that was kind of over-interpreted. You know who
26:38
Speaker 2: did it really well? Flip side. Angela Duckworth, the woman
26:42
Speaker 2: who created Grit. She comes out, does a TED talk,
26:46
Speaker 2: writes a book. Everyone talks about it. The data comes
26:49
Speaker 2: back and basically says grit isn't what you think it is.
26:51
Speaker 2: And it doesn't work the way you think it work.
26:54
Speaker 2: She just published a book last week called Situated, which
26:56
Speaker 2: is basically her trying to correct the story of grit saying, wow,
27:01
Speaker 2: I think the basis was right. I think our interpretation
27:03
Speaker 2: was wrong. There was way more to this. Who are
27:06
Speaker 2: you surrounding yourself with? All of this matters as well.
27:09
Speaker 2: That's an example of someone who is able to take
27:11
Speaker 2: an idea, not personalize it. And actually then move wherever
27:15
Speaker 2: the idea had to move next, regardless of what that
27:18
Speaker 2: meant for her professional identity. I thought that was such
27:20
Speaker 2: a cool move on her part.
27:21
Speaker 1: Wow, that is admirable. And also, you know, the thing
27:25
Speaker 1: is that I get chills up my spine when people go,
27:30
Speaker 1: the science tells us. I'm like, does it? I'm like,
27:35
Speaker 1: I go, who's science, bro? Like, I can... You know,
27:39
Speaker 1: and I'm not an academic like you. I'm a pracademic, right?
27:43
Speaker 1: I'm just a grunt. I'm a foot soldier, right? I'm
27:46
Speaker 1: not you. You're a bloody general. And I mean that genuinely, right?
27:51
Speaker 1: But for me, what I find funny is that all
27:56
Speaker 1: science is designed by humans or studies are run by humans.
28:04
Speaker 1: It's interpreted by humans. And all humans are flawed. All
28:08
Speaker 1: humans make mistakes. All humans have emotions and egos. All
28:12
Speaker 1: humans want to be right and want to win, you know,
28:15
Speaker 1: to an extent. And it's like that human component makes
28:21
Speaker 1: it more unreliable, although we need humans to run it,
28:25
Speaker 1: you know. And so when I attach my whatever, sense
28:29
Speaker 1: of whatever to being right, now I shut myself down
28:34
Speaker 1: to any other message. which is the opposite of being scientific.
28:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, you nailed it. Whenever people say, the science says,
28:45
Speaker 2: I always say, no, no, no. What you meant is
28:48
Speaker 2: the scientist said. The data says, no, the data doesn't
28:53
Speaker 2: say anything. It's the guy who interpreted the data. That's
28:57
Speaker 2: who you're quoting. And that's fine. It's just recognize there's
28:59
Speaker 2: a big difference there. But I think it's, so what
29:02
Speaker 2: does this come? There's a researcher here that I got
29:05
Speaker 2: to work with He was the only way I could
29:08
Speaker 2: describe him was he was the greatest learner I had
29:11
Speaker 2: ever met in the sense that he's very well known
29:14
Speaker 2: for an idea. The first time I met him, I
29:16
Speaker 2: didn't know that he was well known for this idea.
29:19
Speaker 2: And he said, here's my book. Read it. What do
29:21
Speaker 2: you think? And I mean, I'm a bit of a butthead.
29:24
Speaker 2: I just think I said, I don't know. I think
29:26
Speaker 2: this would be a better doorstop than something to read.
29:30
Speaker 2: And to his credit, he goes, cool, why? And we
29:33
Speaker 2: ended up working together for the next six years. At
29:36
Speaker 2: no point did he ever take an ounce of anything seriously.
29:40
Speaker 2: If it was wrong, he was willing to address it
29:43
Speaker 2: and change it. If I was wrong, he was willing
29:46
Speaker 2: to say, no, I believe the data is as it
29:48
Speaker 2: says over here. And at no point did he identify
29:52
Speaker 2: as the idea. And his biggest thing he always shared,
29:56
Speaker 2: like if I take away one thing from him, he said,
29:58
Speaker 2: always attack the idea, never attack the person. Because especially
30:02
Speaker 2: early in my career, I would make the mistake of
30:04
Speaker 2: attacking the scientist as opposed to the theory. And he's like, no,
30:08
Speaker 2: don't do that. We're all just humans. And somehow he
30:12
Speaker 2: was able to understand learning well enough to recognize that
30:16
Speaker 2: learning is uncomfortable. Getting feedback puts these chemicals. I can
30:21
Speaker 2: explain the chemicals. It's kind of boring, but it basically
30:24
Speaker 2: sends your body into a system where it can change itself.
30:27
Speaker 2: But in so doing, it's uncomfortable. It will not feel good.
30:30
Speaker 2: Just like working out doesn't feel good. Being done working
30:33
Speaker 2: out feels good, but the act itself is painful. And
30:38
Speaker 2: the more you recognize that, the more you're able to
30:40
Speaker 2: sit with that and depersonalize yourself from that process to
30:43
Speaker 2: say that crunch doesn't mean I'm wrong. That crunch doesn't
30:46
Speaker 2: mean I'm an idiot any more than a stomachache means
30:49
Speaker 2: I'm an idiot. It just means my system is working.
30:52
Speaker 2: And so I think from him, I just learned is
30:55
Speaker 2: like the greatest thinkers are the ones who do not
30:58
Speaker 2: identify with the idea or the process of learning. They
31:00
Speaker 2: recognize I am separate from that. That's some of my work.
31:04
Speaker 2: That's some of my thoughts. That's some of my ideas.
31:07
Speaker 2: But by all means, if it changes, it's okay. It
31:10
Speaker 2: doesn't mean I'm wrong or I'm a horrible human being.
31:14
Speaker 2: But you're right. It's the discomfort. I'm pretty damn bad
31:17
Speaker 2: at it. I'm not going to lie. I hate getting
31:20
Speaker 2: feedback because it's just uncomfortable. But the more you recognize
31:24
Speaker 2: the process, meta-awareness, the more hopefully you can kind of
31:27
Speaker 2: engage with it. bit more?
31:29
Speaker 1: I think it depends on where the feedback is coming from,
31:33
Speaker 1: who it's coming from, the intention behind it. And I
31:38
Speaker 1: don't think all feedback is clearly not positive or constructive. Hopefully,
31:43
Speaker 1: the feedback that you're getting is, but there's a fine line.
31:47
Speaker 1: I think people mistake just flat out criticism and jealousy
31:52
Speaker 1: or resentment for feedback and they're different. But also there's
31:56
Speaker 1: this this happens a lot in exercise science, which was
32:00
Speaker 1: my original, my undergrad degree and, and, and in, and
32:04
Speaker 1: in medicine and in nutrition and all the health related
32:08
Speaker 1: kind of where people think that, you know, they'll say
32:12
Speaker 1: something like, you know, what's a really good snack. Jared,
32:16
Speaker 1: you should really maybe have 30, 40 grams of almonds
32:19
Speaker 1: a day because it does this, this, this, and this. Well,
32:23
Speaker 1: not if you're allergic to almonds, it's not, you know, or, or,
32:27
Speaker 1: How much people say to me, how much sleep do
32:29
Speaker 1: I need? I go, I don't know. I don't know.
32:32
Speaker 1: Because not only is it not a constant, it's a
32:35
Speaker 1: day-to-day variable depending on what you've done, right? You might
32:39
Speaker 1: need seven and a half hours tonight. You might need
32:42
Speaker 1: six and a half tomorrow. And it's not a constant
32:46
Speaker 1: static number, just like Jared might have six hours of
32:51
Speaker 1: sleep and he's brand new, depending on a bunch of variables, right?
32:55
Speaker 1: his genetics and also his sleep and I might have
32:58
Speaker 1: seven and a half and it's not enough and I
33:00
Speaker 1: feel like dog shit when I get out of bed.
33:02
Speaker 1: So this idea that there are these arbitrary numbers or
33:07
Speaker 1: levels that people have to, everyone needs to meet this
33:10
Speaker 1: single kind of number to get an identical experience is
33:15
Speaker 1: so ridiculous. It's like, well, you know, people go to me,
33:19
Speaker 1: what's like dumb things, like what's the best chest exercise?
33:23
Speaker 1: I go... You know, well, there isn't one. But there
33:27
Speaker 1: might be one for you because your rotator cuff is
33:30
Speaker 1: stuffed and you've got low bone, whatever. So maybe something
33:35
Speaker 1: with a neutral position rather than a pronated hand position
33:38
Speaker 1: is better because it puts less stress on your rotator cuff.
33:41
Speaker 2: But generally, you know, whatever.
33:43
Speaker 1: Like when it comes to personal application, there are so
33:47
Speaker 1: many variables that that make the single kind of number
33:52
Speaker 1: or whatever prescription irrelevant for so many people.
33:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think what the fear is is some
34:02
Speaker 2: people recognize that and they then swing the pendulum way
34:06
Speaker 2: too far the other way to say, therefore, there is
34:08
Speaker 2: no science of sleep. And you're like, no, no, you
34:11
Speaker 2: do have to sleep. It's just the specifics. So if
34:15
Speaker 2: you can view– academic research, if you can view science,
34:20
Speaker 2: if you can view theory more as a roadmap, less
34:23
Speaker 2: as a prescription. Like that's why whenever I work with teachers,
34:26
Speaker 2: I'm like, we're going to focus on how human beings learn.
34:29
Speaker 2: Knowing how people learn will give you boundaries. That says
34:33
Speaker 2: you can't do this. If you want someone to learn,
34:35
Speaker 2: you certainly can't do this. But within those boundaries, There
34:39
Speaker 2: is no answer. That's where now you, your context, your students,
34:43
Speaker 2: your goals, your day-to-day expertise, that's where you become a teacher.
34:47
Speaker 2: That's where your expertise kicks in. It says, how am
34:49
Speaker 2: I going to move you through this map? And that's
34:51
Speaker 2: where I think a lot of people, especially in education,
34:54
Speaker 2: they're so mad at the kind of research I do
34:56
Speaker 2: because it says there are walls here. It's not a free-for-all.
35:00
Speaker 2: Learning is constrained. And they take that to assume that
35:04
Speaker 2: means I'm going to tell you how to do your
35:05
Speaker 2: job as a teacher without recognizing that. No, it's just
35:08
Speaker 2: like medicine. Good luck trying to tell a doctor how
35:11
Speaker 2: to do his or her job. They are the kings
35:13
Speaker 2: of saying, get out of it. I do my work.
35:16
Speaker 2: But they are all playing on the same map. They're
35:19
Speaker 2: playing the same game, germ theory of disease. If you're
35:22
Speaker 2: not playing that game, maybe you're in esoteric medicine. Maybe
35:25
Speaker 2: you're in Eastern medicine. But in Western medicine, that's at
35:29
Speaker 2: least there are boundaries within which you're going to bounce.
35:32
Speaker 2: without then assuming that that means that dictates how I
35:35
Speaker 2: need to be a doctor. So I think that's how
35:37
Speaker 2: we can better engage with research exactly as you said,
35:40
Speaker 2: is if you see it as a concept to help
35:44
Speaker 2: frame your thinking without then asking it to dictate to
35:48
Speaker 2: you your day-to-day behaviors, your thoughts, assuming there's going to
35:51
Speaker 2: be some personal answer in it, or then assuming that
35:54
Speaker 2: because there is no personal answer in it, it must
35:56
Speaker 2: all be pointless. It serves its purpose. It's a very
35:59
Speaker 2: narrow purpose, but it doesn't absolve you from needing to
36:02
Speaker 2: be a human and needing to live your life.
36:06
Speaker 1: What are some of the pushbacks that you typically get
36:09
Speaker 1: on your philosophy about learning that doesn't sit well with
36:15
Speaker 1: some people?
36:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's weird. I'm in this very strange position in
36:21
Speaker 2: that I, it's very hard to push back against me.
36:26
Speaker 2: People usually hate me until they hear me teach or
36:28
Speaker 2: they read my books or they, and then they're like, Oh,
36:32
Speaker 2: you didn't say what I think you were going to say.
36:33
Speaker 2: I'm like, no. So I think there's a lot of
36:34
Speaker 2: misconceptions about what I will do. But I, if you
36:38
Speaker 2: probably the hardest thing I teach people is that exactly
36:42
Speaker 2: what we're just saying is every human being love it
36:44
Speaker 2: or hate it learns in the same way.
36:47
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:47
Speaker 2: Now, that one statement usually flips people out. But it's
36:51
Speaker 2: very non-controversial once you see it. Like when I say
36:54
Speaker 2: all human beings digest in the same way, no one's
36:58
Speaker 2: got a problem with that. Of course we do. Some people,
37:00
Speaker 2: I mean, no one's spitting acid. No one's chewing cud.
37:06
Speaker 2: We all have the same system. Now, by all means,
37:09
Speaker 2: the supports I need to make that system work might change.
37:13
Speaker 2: What I put through that system might change. Some people
37:15
Speaker 2: can do gluten, some can't. But the system by which
37:19
Speaker 2: the body extracts nutrients, excretes waste is the same for everyone.
37:22
Speaker 2: If it was different, you wouldn't be human. We all
37:24
Speaker 2: breathe the same way. Of course we do. Some people vape.
37:27
Speaker 2: Some people need an iron lung. The supports, what we
37:29
Speaker 2: put through might change. But the process doesn't change. When
37:33
Speaker 2: I say all people learn the same, what I'm saying
37:36
Speaker 2: is there's a biological process. by which biology intakes information,
37:40
Speaker 2: organizes it, and makes it applicable for you. I think
37:44
Speaker 2: most people assume that that means I'm now going to
37:47
Speaker 2: tell them what's the best way to learn. And exactly
37:50
Speaker 2: what you said is, no, there is no best way.
37:53
Speaker 2: It's just a process. The process is here. How you
37:57
Speaker 2: need to bring people through that process, that's different. That's teaching.
38:01
Speaker 2: And I don't think that will ever be answered. If
38:03
Speaker 2: you've got a kid who's blind, you can't show them
38:05
Speaker 2: a picture and say, here's a painting. You're going to
38:08
Speaker 2: have to find a different way to get art into
38:11
Speaker 2: their awareness. But it doesn't mean that learning is different.
38:13
Speaker 2: It just means that the input has to change. How
38:16
Speaker 2: you're walking them through that process might change. So I
38:19
Speaker 2: think once people realize that exactly, learning is a map.
38:23
Speaker 2: There are constraints to how learning works. There are patterns
38:26
Speaker 2: how all human learns, but that doesn't mean I can
38:30
Speaker 2: tell you what that means for teaching. That doesn't mean
38:32
Speaker 2: you now need to do X. Otherwise, because if that
38:36
Speaker 2: will be a wrong answer is now it will be
38:39
Speaker 2: constrained to your specific environment on how you need to
38:42
Speaker 2: walk through that process. But the better you understand the process,
38:45
Speaker 2: at least you know what decisions you need to make.
38:48
Speaker 2: Where are the edges? What are the walls I need
38:49
Speaker 2: to walk through? without knowing exactly how to walk through it.
38:53
Speaker 2: Does that kind of make sense?
38:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. We had a guy on recently who's
38:58
Speaker 1: a researcher, medical doctor and psychiatrist, and he's pioneering or
39:03
Speaker 1: is at the front pioneering and pushing this field called
39:06
Speaker 1: metabolic psychiatry. Have you heard of that? No. Fascinating, dude. Fascinating.
39:13
Speaker 1: Me too. I'm like, what is that? That sounds interesting.
39:16
Speaker 1: And Obviously, the current model primarily is this person has
39:20
Speaker 1: this psychiatric condition or they present this way or this
39:23
Speaker 1: is what's going on. It's just a matter of choosing
39:26
Speaker 1: the right drug or combinations of drugs or blah, blah, blah.
39:29
Speaker 1: Here's theory being that it doesn't solve problems, it treats symptoms,
39:33
Speaker 1: but ultimately the problems don't go away, which I'm like,
39:36
Speaker 1: I concur, Your Honour. And then he was just, you know,
39:40
Speaker 1: he's got this, him and quite a community that's growing
39:43
Speaker 1: and It makes, to me, a lot of sense. I
39:47
Speaker 1: still know 1%, but it just makes a lot of
39:51
Speaker 1: sense treating some of these issues with food, with sleep,
39:56
Speaker 1: with sunlight, with a multitude of different interventions and variables.
40:02
Speaker 1: And it's like I just sat there talking to him,
40:06
Speaker 1: having my mind blown, and that was probably two weeks ago,
40:09
Speaker 1: and I think I've thought about it every day, and
40:12
Speaker 1: trying to reconcile how we currently view psychiatry and treatments
40:17
Speaker 1: and that's not to say that there's no need for
40:19
Speaker 1: drugs of course right but just opening this other door
40:23
Speaker 1: going also there's this like maybe it doesn't need to
40:29
Speaker 1: be that or this maybe it could be a combination oh.
40:32
Speaker 2: Wait there's more yeah and.
40:34
Speaker 1: Look maybe now we're dealing with and maybe even alleviating
40:39
Speaker 1: reducing potentially eliminating some of the actual problems that are
40:44
Speaker 1: creating the symptoms rather than so that, that where, and
40:48
Speaker 1: he just gets heaps of hate. He's also got lots
40:51
Speaker 1: of support, but he just, and he's getting hate from
40:54
Speaker 1: people who haven't even read any of his work. And
40:57
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, that is, that is so interesting.
41:00
Speaker 2: Isn't it? So it's so easy for us to hear
41:03
Speaker 2: like the AI summary. What did some dude say about that?
41:06
Speaker 2: Now I'm an expert. I know you're wrong. It's, That's
41:11
Speaker 2: when we talk and this is my favorite, but it's a,
41:13
Speaker 2: when we think about like metacognition or meta awareness, it's
41:16
Speaker 2: thinking about your thinking, it's knowledge of your knowledge. It's,
41:19
Speaker 2: it's one step above. And a big question is how,
41:22
Speaker 2: how can the brain step outside of itself? How can
41:25
Speaker 2: the mind give root to a higher mind? And I
41:28
Speaker 2: think that question begs the answer. That question assumes that
41:31
Speaker 2: the brain is the center of everything and that we
41:35
Speaker 2: are nothing more than a brain and, And as a neuroscientist,
41:38
Speaker 2: let me be the first to tell you, no, the
41:41
Speaker 2: more we learn about the brain, the more we realize
41:43
Speaker 2: this ain't the end all be all. There's a concept
41:46
Speaker 2: called emergence, which basically says when multiple entities or when
41:52
Speaker 2: multiple things come together, bigger, more complex properties will emerge
41:57
Speaker 2: that cannot be reduced down. That does not exist in
42:00
Speaker 2: any of the pieces that only exists through their interaction.
42:03
Speaker 2: So just as a stupidly simple example, If I show
42:07
Speaker 2: you like an engine, if we were looking at a
42:09
Speaker 2: car engine and I ask a bunch of car people, hey,
42:11
Speaker 2: what's the speed of this engine? They'll be like, oh,
42:14
Speaker 2: 200 miles an hour, you know, 220, whatever. Of course,
42:17
Speaker 2: you take it to the track. The engine has no speed.
42:20
Speaker 2: It just sits there because there is no speed in
42:23
Speaker 2: an engine. You can know every nut, every bolt. Speed
42:25
Speaker 2: ain't there, so where is speed? Speed emerges when the
42:28
Speaker 2: engine combines with a bunch of other systems to create
42:31
Speaker 2: a car. It's not in the engine. It's not in
42:33
Speaker 2: the tires. It's not in the axle. It is of
42:35
Speaker 2: their interaction, but it is uniquely separate from and qualitatively different.
42:41
Speaker 2: So when all these scientists, these researchers are trying to
42:44
Speaker 2: look for consciousness, like in the brain, is it in
42:47
Speaker 2: our neurons? Is it over here? The reason why we
42:49
Speaker 2: can't find it is it ain't up there. You are
42:52
Speaker 2: not your brain. You are not your brain any more
42:55
Speaker 2: than you are your heart or your lungs or your
42:57
Speaker 2: spleen or your knee. You're not in here. You are
43:00
Speaker 2: of the interaction of all of this. You emerge through
43:03
Speaker 2: their interaction, but you are qualitatively different from it all.
43:07
Speaker 2: And you can feed back in and start to change it.
43:10
Speaker 2: which has got to be the most insane thing we've
43:14
Speaker 2: ever discovered ever that most people just take like, oh yeah,
43:19
Speaker 2: that makes sense. That's obvious. No, it makes no sense.
43:22
Speaker 2: Imagine if a car, you built a car and somehow
43:25
Speaker 2: a property emerged from that car where the car could say,
43:28
Speaker 2: you know what? I wish I wasn't red. I wish
43:29
Speaker 2: I was blue and could change its color. And then say,
43:32
Speaker 2: you know what? I wish my tires were a bit
43:33
Speaker 2: bigger and could change this time. We've never seen this,
43:36
Speaker 2: but in biology, we see it all the time where
43:38
Speaker 2: higher levels of Things emerge that can feed down and
43:41
Speaker 2: change the very things that made you. So that's when
43:44
Speaker 2: like I'm just when like psychiatry or psychology or a
43:48
Speaker 2: lot of learning comes in and says the answer will
43:50
Speaker 2: be in changing the chemicals of the brain. And then
43:53
Speaker 2: as you're talking about this kind of idea of metabolic psychiatry,
43:56
Speaker 2: where it's like, well, this is a piece, but my God,
43:59
Speaker 2: there is all of this stuff too. That's when you
44:01
Speaker 2: start to get to these bigger themes of you are
44:03
Speaker 2: not your brain. There go. There's a lot more that
44:07
Speaker 2: we got to think about. And that you that emerges
44:09
Speaker 2: from this, that's the meta you, the you that can
44:12
Speaker 2: look in on your own brain at work means you
44:15
Speaker 2: are not a brain. You are an emergent property. You're
44:18
Speaker 2: part of the brain, but you're not in there. And
44:20
Speaker 2: I think, um, it, um, There was this study I'm
44:24
Speaker 2: just reading. I'm doing an episode now on genetics. And
44:27
Speaker 2: this was a funny study where they took a rat
44:30
Speaker 2: and And they did this, it's going to sound horrible,
44:32
Speaker 2: but bear with me. It's called fecal transplant. They just
44:35
Speaker 2: took the poop from one rat and put it in
44:38
Speaker 2: the gut of another rat in the system over here.
44:42
Speaker 2: And that rat totally changed its personality. And all of
44:46
Speaker 2: a sudden they're like the emergent property shifted, changed the pieces,
44:51
Speaker 2: not the brain and the whole emergent property will shift.
44:53
Speaker 2: This is why you hear some people who get like
44:55
Speaker 2: heart transplants, We'll start to take on personality traits they
44:59
Speaker 2: never had before. And it feels normal to them. They're like, yeah,
45:02
Speaker 2: I know this is weird, but that's fine with me now.
45:04
Speaker 2: It's because we're all of this stuff. And I think
45:07
Speaker 2: once you start to recognize that, that's where you can
45:10
Speaker 2: safely as a scientist say, yeah, we don't know it all.
45:13
Speaker 2: If someone has an idea that says if you change
45:15
Speaker 2: your diet, that's just as good as taking drugs. Yeah,
45:19
Speaker 2: why would– The only person who would be mad at
45:21
Speaker 2: that is someone who has already locked their identity into
45:24
Speaker 2: there is nothing but a brain and there's nothing but chemicals.
45:27
Speaker 2: Everything else is noise. And you've got to be ready
45:30
Speaker 2: to let that go if you want to keep moving.
45:33
Speaker 1: That's right. And everything that we do to our body
45:36
Speaker 1: or put in our body is creating a chemical response.
45:40
Speaker 1: If I love my dog and I lie on the
45:41
Speaker 1: floor with my dog and we have two minutes of
45:44
Speaker 1: just bloody spooning, my everything changes, my physiology changes, my
45:50
Speaker 1: neurochemistry changes. It's like now I'm in a different state
45:52
Speaker 1: and a different place and I'm producing different hormones and
45:57
Speaker 1: my heart rate's low, my breathing's low, my blood pressure's low,
45:59
Speaker 1: my parasympathetic nervous system has kicked in and now I'm
46:02
Speaker 1: in a different... I didn't take a pill, I didn't
46:05
Speaker 1: create any intervention, I just lied on the floor with
46:08
Speaker 1: my dog. And so everything, whether or not it's eating
46:12
Speaker 1: an apple or taking a pill or going for a
46:14
Speaker 1: run or lifting some weights... is creating some kind of
46:18
Speaker 1: response you know and i think that's that people don't
46:22
Speaker 1: understand how we can create medicine so to speak that's
46:29
Speaker 1: not you know our typical understanding i was going to
46:32
Speaker 1: say to you i know we're time poor i wish
46:35
Speaker 1: i had two hours.
46:36
Speaker 2: You're very interesting i think uh.
46:40
Speaker 1: So you open the philosophical door a little bit and
46:42
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about your book before you go <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL>
47:04
Speaker 1: Like what are we? If I take away all the
47:07
Speaker 1: things that I'm not, like what's left, who's left, you know,
47:11
Speaker 1: that Eckhart Tolle kind of, I am, what does he say?
47:14
Speaker 1: I'm the observer of everything that I'm not. I'm like,
47:18
Speaker 1: I'm awareness. I'm energy. I'm like, oh, that does my
47:21
Speaker 1: head in. I need a moment. But yeah, well, hey,
47:26
Speaker 1: all right. So let me have a look. Your new book,
47:29
Speaker 1: which is out last month. That's 20th.
47:32
Speaker 2: I am the watcher of the awareness of everything I'm not.
47:39
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
47:39
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what he says.
47:42
Speaker 2: I blinked again. Say that again. I am the awareness
47:47
Speaker 2: of everything I am not. I am the watcher of
47:51
Speaker 2: everything I'm not. What is it?
47:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, he says, as my memory recalls, it's like he says,
47:56
Speaker 1: I'm the awareness of everything I'm not.
48:00
Speaker 2: Yeah.
48:00
Speaker 1: I am awareness. And then even when we go back
48:06
Speaker 1: to the subjective objective, it's like, can I be objective? Because...
48:11
Speaker 1: everything runs through my very programmed brain. So my capacity
48:16
Speaker 1: to be objective and because it's the Craig filter, which
48:21
Speaker 1: has obviously got preexisting beliefs and biases and stories and bullshit,
48:27
Speaker 1: how do I, you know, I think real awareness and
48:30
Speaker 1: maybe leading towards consciousness, whatever that is, is the awareness
48:35
Speaker 1: of your own kind of filter and, It's like, no,
48:38
Speaker 1: there's the thing that happens and then there's my story.
48:42
Speaker 1: But most people can't differentiate between their story and the thing.
48:47
Speaker 1: So the story becomes their reality rather than understanding, no,
48:52
Speaker 1: this isn't the reality, this is my reality based on
48:56
Speaker 1: how I interpret everything.
48:59
Speaker 2: It's true. It brings us back to what? Plato's cave
49:02
Speaker 2: is the allegory that we're... We are very limited in
49:06
Speaker 2: what we can do. That limitation is dictated by what
49:10
Speaker 2: we have done. So it's not clean, which means how
49:15
Speaker 2: much can we trust what we do, smell, see, taste, hear?
49:19
Speaker 2: There's a wonderful book. So you probably heard it. It
49:22
Speaker 2: was called the Warfian Hypothesis back in the day. And
49:26
Speaker 2: it was this idea that because Inuits, Eskimos in the U.S.
49:29
Speaker 2: had 17 different words for snow in that they literally
49:33
Speaker 2: perceived snow very differently than everyone else. That it was
49:37
Speaker 2: the language was giving them insights that no one else
49:40
Speaker 2: could tap into. And all this data comes back and
49:43
Speaker 2: it's like, that guy's full of shit. It's all nonsense. Well,
49:47
Speaker 2: cut to today. There was a book published probably like
49:49
Speaker 2: six or seven years ago called Through the Language Glass,
49:52
Speaker 2: which is so good. And it says, it goes through
49:56
Speaker 2: these different cultures around the world and says, these people
50:00
Speaker 2: historically were, for instance, they never even had the concept
50:04
Speaker 2: for the color blue, which means they literally didn't see it.
50:08
Speaker 2: When we test people today who don't have the concept
50:11
Speaker 2: of blue, the Himba tribe in Africa, the northern aboriginals
50:17
Speaker 2: who don't have words for this, if we test them,
50:20
Speaker 2: they do not see it. It's not a matter of
50:22
Speaker 2: they don't have a word to describe it. It doesn't
50:24
Speaker 2: exist for them. And then their languages, like the northern
50:27
Speaker 2: aboriginal tribes, they don't have any language for Central. What
50:35
Speaker 2: is it called? Not not a self-referential language in the
50:39
Speaker 2: sense that when we talk about spatial directions and organization
50:44
Speaker 2: in English, it's always self-referential. That is in front of me.
50:47
Speaker 2: That's the left of me. That's behind me. I am
50:49
Speaker 2: the center point. The world happens around me. In their language,
50:52
Speaker 2: there is no me. It's all tied to the cardinal points.
50:56
Speaker 2: So the table's not in front of me. You'd say
50:58
Speaker 2: the table is north-northeast of me. There's a bee that's
51:01
Speaker 2: south-southwest of my foot. So what they did is they
51:05
Speaker 2: ran all this research on memory, where, for instance, they
51:09
Speaker 2: show them a table and put some objects on the table,
51:13
Speaker 2: line them up and say, I want you to memorize
51:14
Speaker 2: where these objects are on this table. Then they'd all
51:17
Speaker 2: go away. They'd come back five minutes. They'd shift the
51:19
Speaker 2: table around and say, line up the objects the way
51:21
Speaker 2: they were on the table before. From memory, everyone who
51:25
Speaker 2: speaks English, we line them up the way we saw it.
51:28
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter if the table's facing this way, this way,
51:30
Speaker 2: that way, over here. It's just, this was to the
51:32
Speaker 2: right of this. This was to the left of this.
51:34
Speaker 1: Yes.
51:35
Speaker 2: The aboriginals would line up the objects according to the
51:39
Speaker 2: cardinal points in their memory. If the table changed, that
51:43
Speaker 2: means the tree would still have to be on the north.
51:46
Speaker 2: So they completely switched the position of it. And it
51:48
Speaker 2: was interesting to see that their language changed, not just
51:51
Speaker 2: their perception. but their memory for how the world existed
51:55
Speaker 2: before as well. Now it's comfortable to say who's right,
52:00
Speaker 2: who's wrong. Like, well, clearly our language leads to more
52:02
Speaker 2: accurate memory, but I don't know that that's true. So
52:06
Speaker 2: it's when you start to like through the language glass,
52:09
Speaker 2: which is one of those books that just went, you're right.
52:11
Speaker 2: Our perception of the world is not clean. It is
52:14
Speaker 2: highly influenced, but we don't, it's so hard to see
52:18
Speaker 2: out of it until you do. And then you recognize
52:21
Speaker 2: there are colors, there are smells, there are tastes that
52:25
Speaker 2: I just have no clue or even a thing that
52:27
Speaker 2: somebody on the other side of this office, it just
52:29
Speaker 2: might be their reality. And it means nothing to me. 100%.
52:33
Speaker 1: There's an early 20th century writer, and she's one of
52:37
Speaker 1: many to say this, but she was one of the first.
52:40
Speaker 1: Her name is Anais Nin. And she said, we don't
52:44
Speaker 1: see things as they are. We see things as we are.
52:47
Speaker 1: which is exactly what we're talking about. Now, I know
52:50
Speaker 1: you've got to go.
52:51
Speaker 2: And now the neuroscience is catching up. Now we're saying, yep,
52:55
Speaker 2: that's exactly what's happening up there.
52:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. All right. So your new book is called
53:00
Speaker 1: The Digital Delusion, How Classroom Technology Harms Our Children's Learning.
53:05
Speaker 1: And how to help them thrive again. Just a lazy
53:08
Speaker 1: 464 pages.
53:10
Speaker 2: Come on, bro.
53:11
Speaker 1: Come on.
53:14
Speaker 2: It wasn't supposed to be big. They just made it big.
53:18
Speaker 2: It's like two words per page. It was never meant
53:21
Speaker 2: to be big. Is it on audio as well? Yeah,
53:26
Speaker 2: we got the audio book. We got the Kindle. There's
53:29
Speaker 2: all the different fun stuff.
53:30
Speaker 1: Well, that's my salvation right there because I ain't reading
53:34
Speaker 1: 464 pages, especially after the world's longest PhD of six years.
53:41
Speaker 1: Give us a snapshot of the book, if you would, Jared.
53:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, it goes through the data showing that when tech
53:48
Speaker 2: entered business, education, the classroom, learning went down. And it's
53:51
Speaker 2: a big driver of why things are still going down.
53:54
Speaker 2: And then it looks at the mechanisms, cognitively, neuroscience, what's
53:58
Speaker 2: going on? How does attention work? Why are screens bad
54:01
Speaker 2: for it? How does memory work? Why are screens bad
54:02
Speaker 2: for that? And then it tails out with three sections,
54:05
Speaker 2: one for parents, one for teachers, one for administrators, decision makers.
54:10
Speaker 2: What can we do? If we know we need to
54:12
Speaker 2: reanalyze or reanalog learning, what are some steps we can
54:15
Speaker 2: start to take to bring learning back?
54:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. I know you're a busy man. I know you're
54:20
Speaker 1: on a time budget. I'm so grateful for you taking
54:23
Speaker 1: the time to chat with us on the You Project. Phil,
54:26
Speaker 1: good work connecting us. You're a ripper. How do people
54:30
Speaker 1: connect you and find you and follow you?
54:34
Speaker 2: Oh, shoot. If you just look up Jared Cooney Horvath,
54:38
Speaker 2: I put out YouTube videos every once in a while
54:40
Speaker 2: if there's cool research coming out. I also have a
54:43
Speaker 2: sub stack called the digital delusion where any new research
54:46
Speaker 2: on tech and learning I'll publish there. So just try
54:49
Speaker 2: and keep everyone up to date on kind of what's
54:51
Speaker 2: new in the learning spaces.
54:53
Speaker 1: Perfect sub stack. Also Instagram. I was perusing that this morning.
54:58
Speaker 1: It's very good. And also you, yeah, you do. You
55:02
Speaker 1: got 50 something thousand followers, bro. I think your people
55:06
Speaker 1: probably put it together for you.
55:09
Speaker 2: That is so beyond me. My sister-in-law helps me with
55:13
Speaker 2: that stuff. So Heather, thank you for that.
55:15
Speaker 1: Shout out to your sister-in-law. She's getting you some traction.
55:17
Speaker 1: We'll say goodbye for a bit, Jared, for the minute.
55:20
Speaker 1: That was awesome. Thanks so much for your time.
55:23
Speaker 2: Craig, thank you. And I'll tell Phil thank you as well.
55:25
Speaker 2: It's awesome chatting with you.