Latest / Drawn of History / Dr. David Linden _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _595(M4A_128K)

Transcript

Dr. David Linden _ This Past Weekend w_ Theo Von _595(M4A_128K) · Drawn of History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We're getting into the final shows for the Return of
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the Rat Tour. Gosh, this rat is almost fully returned.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: July 9th will be in Philadelphia, Rochester, New York on
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: July 10th. Then we're in Detroit after that. Moving on,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: we're in Los Angeles, Anaheim at the Honda Center and Oceanside, California.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: You can get all your tickets at theovon.com slash T-O-U-R
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: And just thank you so much for your support. Today's
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: guest is a neuroscientist. He's an author and a professor
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He's written books about addiction, love, death,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and what it means to be human. I'm really grateful
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: for his time. Today's guest is David Lindish. David, are
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: you physically comfortable in here?
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Is it too hot or cold for you?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: No, it's just fine.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It is?
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: And I'm happy to see that my actual name is there.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It's not just brain researcher or something generic. No, no, no.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: We only do that, sometimes we'll do that if it's,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: every now and then we try to get like regular
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: folks out of society in. And sometimes we try to
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: keep that kind of a little bit generic.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, my wife was teasing me, of course.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: She said, oh yeah, like, so you're going on there
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: and there's been like, President Trump and Bernie Sanders and
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: David Spade. And then some scientists nobody's ever heard of. Like,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: you know, like who doesn't fit in this picture? And
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: so I had imagined, you know, brain guy.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Well, look, we're happy to have you, man. We're happy
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to have you. Neuroscientist David Linden, right?
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: That's me. Okay.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And so as a neuroscientist, how do you practice that
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: like in everyday life these days? I know you are
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: a professor.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: That's right. So I'm a professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: And so until very recently, what I did every day
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: was to run a lab where I did research with
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: mice working on brain diseases. But the other things I
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: do involve teaching medical students, teaching graduate students, and then
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: very recently also teaching undergraduates.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for your service. I think being a
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: teacher and an instructor is a service in a lot
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: of ways, and I think it kind of maybe gets
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: overlooked sometimes. I'm not sure if that's true, but, yeah,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: thank you for your service. When you're testing these mice
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: for neurological diseases?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. So, for example, one of the things that
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: we're interested in is recovery of function after brain injury. Okay.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: So you probably have heard that if you get injured—
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: in your spinal cord or your brain, your ability to
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: recover is minimal. Like if you cut a nerve, you
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: get injured, you cut a nerve in your arm, it'll
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: grow back and you'll be fine. But people get injured
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: in their spinal cord, typically paralyzed for life. You get
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: injured in your brain, you can recover a bit. But
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: particularly when you're an adult or old like me, your
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: ability to recover is very limited. And some of that
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: is because the long, thin information sending part of the neuron,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: which is called the axon, can't grow after it's damaged.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: At all?
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: In the brain and the spinal cord. It can, like
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: in your arm or your leg. And that is some
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: of the reason why it's so hard to recover from
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: brain or spinal cord injuries. And so what we're trying
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: to do is develop therapies to allow that to happen
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: so people can recover better from a stroke or a
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: traumatic brain injury like a soldier might get or someone
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: might get in an accident like a car crash.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And so with an actual mouse, how would you– what
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: are kind of the processes of doing that? How do
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: they cause the injuries?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, we're from Baltimore. Yeah. So we do
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: a very Baltimore thing, which is we stab them in
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: the head.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, dang. Is that– Is that true or not?
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Well, that's one way we do it. So we also
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: do another Baltimore thing, which was we get them really
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: high on amphetamines. So yeah, there's a kind of amphetamine,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: which fortunately isn't actually a drug of abuse. We just
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: use it in the lab called perchloroamphetamine. And that fries
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: out a particular kind of neuron that uses the neurotransmitter
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: called serotonin. And so it turns out these neurons that
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: use serotonin counter to the belief that everyone's had in
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: science for years and years, actually can regrow after they're injured.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: And there's another kind of neuron that uses a neurotransmitter
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: called norepinephrine. They can regrow too, but they're just a
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: tiny fraction of the kinds of neurons in the brain.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: And so the goal is to try to figure out, well,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: what's special about them? Why can they regrow when the
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: other neurons can't? And then use that as a clue
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: to to try to develop therapies so that the other
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: neurons could regrow too, and people would recover from their
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: brain injuries or their strokes.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Wow, it's exciting.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: It is exciting. It's been lots of fun. You know,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: hopefully it'll lead to some cures.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: I like your attitude, man. That has me kind of thinking,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: so I know that I take antidepressants, right? I think
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: that's popular. You just mentioned SSRIs. You just mentioned those?
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I mentioned serotonin, which is the first S in SSRI, yeah.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Okay. Does taking SSRIs damage our brain?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Well, taking SSRIs doesn't damage the serotonin neurons, but taking
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: SSRIs has all kinds of bad side effects. I'm sure
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: you know about some of them. One of the ones
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: that is most common is reducing your libido, your sexual desire.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: And so the other big problem with SSRIs is they
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: only work so-so, right? You know, actually, if you look
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: at people who try SSRIs for depression— About a third
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: of the people will say, oh, yeah, that works pretty good.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I feel maybe not totally better, but enough that I
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: can notice it. About a third of the people will say, oh,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: very minimal, just a little bit better. And about a
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: third of people say it didn't do a thing for
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: me at all. So it's better than nothing, but SSRIs
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: are not that great. And they're not as good as exercise.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: They're not as good as cognitive behavioral therapy. And whereas
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: exercise has side effects that are good for you, SSRIs
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: have side effects that are bad for you.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Well, it's funny you say some of this because for myself,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I noticed with– I've been on them I think for
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: 20 years or something. If I am really feeling sometimes overwhelmed,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I almost need to get off of them or I
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: will lower my own dose.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Really? Interesting.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Because sometimes I can't get feelings out of me it
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: feels like. because they're kind of stopping it somehow. I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: don't know the science behind it. And I don't know
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: if that's true, but that's how it feels to me.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Does that make any sense?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: If it feels to you, then it's true, right? You know,
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, everyone responds a little differently to these things.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Some people that work, some people makes them feel this
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: way or that way. But, you know, your experience is
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the truth. Yeah. You know, we're talking about a drug
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: that's supposed to change how you feel. So how you
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: feel is real. It's not like anyone could say to you, well,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: that's not true. That's bullshit. No, that's true. That's That's
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: what's happening for you and I'm sure for certain other
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: people as well.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Does that heightened serotonin, does it make it so you
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: can't have certain feelings?
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it does damp people down a bit.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: For some people, it kind of sedates them. Like some people,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I know people on SSRIs who will take a little
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Ritalin too because they have a hard time concentrating enough
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: to work while they're on their SSRIs. Some people will
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: take drugs like yohimbine to try to get back the
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: sexual desire if that's been dampened out by the SSRIs. But,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: you know, this, I mean, you got SSRIs, they're a
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: stopgap solution. They're not nearly as good as they should be.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It's embarrassing for the field of neuroscience that after all
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: these years working on depression, we don't have something better,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: that our understanding of depression is so bad that we
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: can't offer you a better therapy than SSRIs.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of fascinating to hear you say that.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Do you think that is because of there's not enough science,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: there's not enough information? Is that because pharmaceutical companies are
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: so happy with the sales that they adjust where they
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: put their funds? Or is it just a research issue?
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Or what do you think there?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it is. a research issue. And
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I think part of it is that in neuropsychiatric disease,
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: sometimes when we make a bucket and we throw lots
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: of things into that bucket, we say, oh, depression, that's
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: the bucket. Well, depression can manifest in all kinds of
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: different ways. There's a depression where you just feel, low
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: and unmotivated and nothing makes you happy. And there's another
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: kind of like agitated depression where you're like really on
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: edge and anxious. And we call those both depression. But
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: are they really the same? Well, probably not. They're probably not.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, we know they're not an experience and they're
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: probably not in your brain as well. But let me
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: give you an example of a way in which there's
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: some hope for moving this forward. So The serotonin neurons
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: in the brain are in a part of the brain
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: that's called the raphe.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: The raphe.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: The raphe, yeah, R-A-P-H-E.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: It sounds nice.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: I know. It sounds cool like you'd name your kid that, right?
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like a nice place to take a vacation,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: like a honeymoon.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. We're going to raphe on it. So, yeah,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: so the raphe nuclei have serotonin neurons in them and
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: they go all over the brain. And when we go
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: in with an electrode to record the electrical activity, we
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: would say, oh, maybe there's two or three different kinds
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: of neurons that use serotonin in the raphe. Okay. Well,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: it turns out now we've got techniques where we can
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: take these neurons one by one and analyze the genes
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: that are turned on in each of those, in each
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: individual cell. So there's like 20,000 genes in the genome.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: A typical cell might express 12,000 genes, have those turned on.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: And that varies a bit from neuron to neuron. So
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: you can say, how many flavors of serotonin neurons are
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: there in the RAFEA? Turns out there's 14 flavors in
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: the RAFE. Well, probably only some of those have to
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: do with depression, and some of them have to do
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: with other things, maybe some of the bad side effects
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: that you don't want from your SSRIs. So what this
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: means is that this kind of knowledge, knowing all these
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: different subtypes, means that maybe that can be the basis
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: of knowledge to develop therapies that are more specific, that
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: will work on the mood-altering serotonin neurons and leave the
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: other ones alone and be able to have us make
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: a better drug or a better therapy.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I've loved a lot of your work. I saw you
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: had a great conversation with Andrew Huberman, and he was
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: just on recently. He's a very fascinating guy, a lot
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: of information, and he's great at sharing information out into
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: the world. I believe he's a great conduit for information.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you about love, I guess, right?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I think it might be a neat place to start,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: kind of. Did human beings always love or was that
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: something that we learned over time?
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's a hard thing to know. We
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: can't look at the fossils and know whether people loved.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: What we do know about humans is that our mating
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: system is really, really, really unusual.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: So humans have a system where in one woman's cycle,
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: she usually is only mating with one guy. Paternity is
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: usually pretty accurate. Like if you go all around the
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: world and you do genetic testing on kids and you say,
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: is the father really the long-term partner, spouse, whatever of
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: the mom? About 90, 95% of the time, paternity is accurate.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter where you go in the world, some
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: jungle village in Malaysia, New York City, it's the same.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Paternity is accurate. Human dads, for the most part, tend
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: to stick around and help. Either they help by changing
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: diapers and actually taking care of the baby, or they
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: provide resources, but one way or another, they help. Humans
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: have most of their sex recreationally. They go all through
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: the cycle, whereas most animals are only interested in sex
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: when the female is in heat, right? These things make
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: mating behavior in humans like extremely rare across– if we
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: look at our mammalian cousins, very few have that. And
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: it's very rare to take care of children.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: So those characteristics are unique to humans.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: These are, I mean, not entirely. You know, you've probably
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: heard about like these penguins, for example, that, you know,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: rear the young together. And you've probably seen the nature
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: movie where, you know, the egg is on the feet
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: and they take care of it. So I'm not saying
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: it's absolutely unique to humans, but the human situation is really,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: really unusual. Part of the reason it's unusual is because
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: human children are unusually useless, right? There's no other animal
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: except a human where a five-year-old can't make its way
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: in the world, only humans. You need your parents. When
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: you're five, you need your parents. If you're an elephant five-year-old,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: if you're an orangutan five-year-old, if you're a mouse, well,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: you don't live till five-year-old, but this is a unique
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: human thing. So what that means is that Whereas an
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: orangutan mom can take care of her kid by herself
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: just fine. It doesn't matter that the dad wanders off
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: into the forest and doesn't help at all. For humans,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: it really matters. Parental contribution really matters. So long-term pair
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: bonding really matters. And this is a really long, circuitous
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: kind of answer about love. So if you're going to say, well,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: why do we have love? And is love something central
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: to being human? I'm going to guess and say, yeah,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: our first Homo sapiens 200,000 years ago in Africa probably
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: had love too because they had the biological situation that
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: made it so that you needed to have long-term pair
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: bonding to help take care of kids and help the
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: genes that you got into the next generation survive long
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: enough to be viable. And then you sort of think, well,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: why is that? Why are human kids so hopeless, so
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: helpless compared to other animals? Well, when a baby is born,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: its brain is about 400 cubic centimeters in volume.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: How big is that?
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Well, so, you know, about, yeah, about like my fist. Okay.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: And an adult brain is about three times that, 1,200.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: So you got to go from 400 to 1,200. We
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: need big brains to be clever. Humans are pretty clever
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: compared to most other critters. And so you might just say, well,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: all right, like why not just make the birth canal
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: bigger and give birth to a baby with a really,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: really big head and then have a childhood that's not
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: so protracted. But the problem we think is that in
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: order to do that, you couldn't have women walk upright anymore.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: In other words, the hips would then get too messed
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: up to walk upright.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Right, if I bring the front of them down, it'd
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: probably be almost a quad pedal or whatever it's called.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. So probably upright posture limits the degree.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: As it is right now, human childbirth is really difficult
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: compared to childbirth in most animals. There are very, very,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: very few animals that regularly die in childbirth. Humans are one.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And hyenas are another because hyenas give birth to something
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: called a pseudophallus. The females actually have something that looks
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: like a dick and their vagina goes down through the
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: middle of it and they give birth through that.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Wait, what? Sorry, David. I have never heard this. Bring
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: up a little bit of that.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: There's a good picture of the outside of it dangling
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: down there.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, dang. And that's on a woman?
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: And that is on a woman. Wow. That's right. That's right.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: So the hyena, you don't want to mess with a
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: female hyena. Well, you don't want to mess with a
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: hyena generally. But the whole reason I got to hyena genitals,
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: which is a weird thing to talk about. I mean,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: you probably didn't think we were going to talk about
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: that when you woke up this morning.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I did not at all. Here we go right here.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Then there's an image of it.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: So female hyenas give birth through this pseudophallus. And it's
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: really hard, not surprisingly. You know, just think it's like,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: you know, pushing a potato through a hose or something
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I couldn't do it.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: You know, and female humans, it's not as bad. But still,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: you know, giving birth is super crazy dangerous. And women
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: die in childbirth and babies die in childbirth. And you
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: need to do C-sections and all kinds of crazy stuff happens.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: This is not a normal thing if you look in
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: the animal kingdom, you know. Most— mammals give birth just fine,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: there aren't so many problems. We have that problem because
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: even giving birth to that 400cc brain is like right
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: on the edge of being possible for human women.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's pretty fascinating. So even that, down to the millimeter,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: centimeter of it, it's very precarious.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very precarious. And precise, if you look at it.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: Things have to go right. There's all kinds of ways
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: for things to go wrong during childbirth, as women will
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: tell you, as OB-GYNs will tell you. And to get
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: back to love, right? So then now you got this
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: 400cc baby that is hopeless, right? And it's– in order
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: for the brain to mature, that takes 20 years, right?
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a ridiculously long amount of time. That's
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: a really, really, really long childhood. So maybe you can
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: make your way independently, you know, before 20, but not
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: that much before 20.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And you need support.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: And you need support. And so to have a social
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: system that promotes that, that's where love comes from, to
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: get all the way back to your question.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And that could be love, I mean, from your parent.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: It could be love that even comes from a society.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: It could be, I mean, that love could then be
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: in different forms, kind of.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely right in the sense. So yes, we can
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: talk about romantic love, which is the kind most of
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: us think about, but they're all different. other important kinds
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: of love. And to some certain extent, it actually does
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: reduce to that. It reduces to getting your genes in
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: the next generation. In other words, we're most attached to
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: the people we share genetic history with. And as a society,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: we are too. Like I'd be willing to speculate. If
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: you look in Europe, in northern Europe, like in Finland
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: and in Sweden and Norway and places like that, those
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: are the places that have the most socialist economies where
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: people share– taxes are high. People share the most with
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: each other. And people are pretty happy to do it
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: because they see their neighbors and the people around them
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: as being fundamentally like them. You go to the United States,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: you go to Southern Europe, we're more of a melting pot, right?
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: People don't necessarily- Want to share. Want to share. And
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: I think the reason is because people don't see their
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: neighbors as being as much like them as they do
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: in a place like Finland, where all 5 million modern
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Finns came from 1,200 founders who came, whatever, in the
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: year 800 or something. Right.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: And I think that kind of makes sense, like that
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: there's something inside of us where you- feel safest taking
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: care of your own? Is that what you're saying?
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, you would like to think, well,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: we're all brothers, you know, you would like to be,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: you would like to, you know, a lot of the
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: world's religions, certainly Christianity has this idea, you know, you
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: should help everyone. You should share with everyone in practice though.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: People are most likely to help people who are like them.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: And it even gets, and that goes down to our DNA.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Um, it, Goes down to our DNA and it goes
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: down to the way we divide people culturally. Yeah.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. At a scientific level, why do you find someone beautiful? Like,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: is it only visual? You know, most fellows enter the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: room wiener first. You know that.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Knock, knock.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Who's there?
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Wiener, baby.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: You know it. And blue chew... Is helping. Blue Chew
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: isn't just a tablet. It's a cheat code for your crotch. Stronger, harder, longer, lasting.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Like someone gave your downstairs a pep talk and a
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: gym membership. Blue Chew is the original brand offering chewable
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: tablets for better sex. That's the truth. And guys, it
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: isn't just about performance. It's about legacy or third legacy.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Give her group chat something to talk about. You know
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: when you lay it down, they're talking about how it
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: gets up. Bang, gank, gank, gank, cock. Nothing makes you
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: more of a legend than a little bit of Blue Chew.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Discover your options at bluechew.com. And we've got a special
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: deal for our listeners. As always, get your first month
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: of Blue Chew free when you use promo code Theo
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: at checkout. and pay five bucks for shipping. That's it.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Join Blue Chew's mission to upgrade humanity one thrust at
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: a time. Head to bluechew.com for details and safety info.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And big thanks to Blue Chew for sponsoring the podcast.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: This is an ad by BetterHelp. Workplace stress is now
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: one of the top causes of declining mental health, with
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: 61% of the global workforce experiencing higher than normal levels
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: of stress. We all feel it. Most of us do anyway.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: The constant need to keep going, to keep figuring it out,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to create more, always on call. We're all that way.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: To battle stress, most of us can't wave goodbye to work,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: but we can start small. That's where BetterHelp comes in. BetterHelp,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. And
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: it works. with an app store rating of 4.9 out
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. And
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: it's convenient. You can join a session with a therapist
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: at the click of a button, and you can switch
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Our listeners get
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com. slash T-H-E-O. That's better,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: H-E-L-P dot com slash Theo. At a scientific level, why
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: do you find someone beautiful? Like, is it only visual?
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a good question. I mean, obviously, it's not
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: just visual, but vision is the dominant sense for beauty.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: So obviously... People have– are attracted to voices, right? And
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: of course that's something– it's not a universal. It's a
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: cultural thing. Like British guys come to the US to
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: get laid because American women hear a British voice and
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: they just– They want, you know, they want to, you know,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: some British guy could say, oh, fuck me on the floor.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm doing a Scottish guy, but.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: That's fair, dude. Well, the Scots, yeah, the Scots will
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: do anything on the floor, first of all.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: But, you know, and it's just, oh, you know, so
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: we love British accents in the USA.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Come colonize his vagina type of thing.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I mean, this is a thing. So
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: obviously voices can be attractive too. But yeah, visual is
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: really important. Smell is important. I know you were talking
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: about this with Huberman, right? Weren't you talking about the
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: dirty T-shirt? experiment.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Um, he may have mentioned it. My brain falls off sometimes. Well,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: you know, so, so I'm just wondering, like, is there
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: like what elements go into that attraction, that feeling when
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: you find somebody, uh, I guess attractive is more of
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: the kind of what I'm looking for instead of beautiful.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I think really the main thing it gets
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: down to is we're attracted to people who seem like
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: if we were to mate with them, We would have
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: children that would be likely to thrive and survive. So
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: the most attractive faces are the most symmetrical faces. People
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: who have smooth skin are more attractive than people who
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: have– mottled skin, right? And there are various other things
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: that go there. In other words, things that signal fitness,
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and I don't mean fitness in the sense of like
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: going to the gym. I mean fitness in the sense
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: of being able to survive and get your genes into
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: the next generation, sort of the Darwin way of saying
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: the word. Those are the things we find beautiful. When
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: you're saying, I find someone beautiful, most of the time
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: you're saying, yeah, you look like somebody who would be
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: good to mate with and have my children with. And
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: the thing is, if you're gay, you still have that
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: feeling even if you're not making children with people. In
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: other words, that's such a fundamental human thing about attractiveness
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: that these fitness signifiers like being symmetrical, having clear skin,
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: being tall, being well-muscled, these sorts of things are things
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: we find beautiful even if you aren't thinking about mating
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: with that person.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Are there any scientific differences between straight and gay people?
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Does that question make sense kind of?
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's a fundamental question. And so, well, let's
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: approach it a couple of different ways. So one way
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: you could say, well, how much of the trait of
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: who you're interested in sexually– is heritable. You inherit it
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: from your parents.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Okay. So heritable means you can inherit it from your parents?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: And you can pass it down?
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's right. Exactly. That's right. So eye color, for example,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: is something we will understand that we inherit from our parents.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Got it. Mom's got this. Your dad's got this. But
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: most traits are not so defined that way. They're only
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: partially heritable. They're only partially determined by the genes you
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: get from your mom. and your dad. So sexual orientation
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: turns out it's actually different for men and women. The
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: best estimates for genetic studies are that sexual orientation in
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: men is about 40% heritable, and in women, it's about
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: 20% heritable.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: So that means you could pass down... gay from an
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: adult to a child?
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: You could pass down gay or straight or bi or
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: whatever you happen to be.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: From a parent to a child. But keep in mind, Kit,
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: what these numbers are. Like 40%, that's only 40%. That's
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: not the whole story. That's still leaving 60% that you're
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: not getting from the genes you inherit from your parents.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: But that still doesn't mean that that 60% part of
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: that isn't biological. It's just not heritable. So, for example,
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: we know that women who, for various different reasons, were
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: exposed to testosterone in the womb or as they were
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: young because the adrenal glands can secrete testosterone. There is
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: a disease called congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which just means the
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: adrenal glands get big and they secrete a lot of testosterone.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: So women who have that can be slightly masculinized in
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: their appearance sometimes, and they're way more likely to be
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: into other women sexually. Hmm. right?
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense because you have more testosterone.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: That's right. So that's not something you're going to pass
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: down to your kids. Got it. But it's a biological
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: way in which your sexual orientation can be affected.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: I see. So that's an example of a biological way.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: That's a biological, I mean, biological is the whole thing.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Biological means the hereditary stuff, the inheritable stuff, and the
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: non-heritable stuff that's also biological. Got it. And then, so
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: you might say, well, what about how your parents raised you?
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Here's something that to me is shocking, right? There was
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: this major study done by the American Psychological Association to
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: say if you are raised by gay parents or straight
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: parents or a single mom or two parents or you're
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: religious or non-religious or you're politically this way or that way,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: does it make a difference on how likely you are
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: to be straight versus gay? The answer doesn't make any
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: damn difference.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: At all.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: It's unimportant. Now, it make a difference in terms of
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: how willing you are to express it. Like if you
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: grow up in a super religious family or any religious
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: family where being gay is looked down on, you might
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: not want to admit it. You might not come out,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: but it doesn't mean you don't feel it in yourself.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: So you're saying if a couple's driving a Subaru, they're
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: not more likely to have a child that could be
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: gay than somebody else?
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: No, they're more likely to have– if they do have
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: a kid that's gay, they're more likely to have a
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: kid that's comfortable with being gay as opposed to repressed
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: about it and feeling like they can't express that. Oh,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: I feel like this– But there is– I mean– and
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: this is kind of surprising, right? Because people say, oh,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: parents are so important. Parents are important, but they're not
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: important in everything. And whether you're gay or straight, parents
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: don't have a damn thing to do with it.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Now, what if somebody's almost gay, right? They think about
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: being gay sometimes, but they're not being gay. Are they... Like, can...
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: I just wonder, is there a level of that kind of,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: you know, like almost gay where then the kid is gay?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Well, so when you say the kid is gay, though,
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: what do you mean? You mean— Just the kid is— Well, like,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, to me, what I'm talking about is what
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: do you feel in your heart about your own self?
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: What do you answer in an anonymous survey? You know,
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: not when you're too scared to be in your school
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: or your community or with your coworkers or with your family,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: but what's really inside you? Parents don't matter for that.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: parents matter a lot and your community matters a lot
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: for are you willing to admit it? Are you willing
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: to come out? Are you willing to, you know, bring
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: your gay partner home to meet the folks? You know,
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: their parents and community matter enormously. Yeah. Right?
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Does nature, and this is awesome, and it's Pride Month too,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: so I'm glad that we're talking about some of this stuff.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Does nature, is being gay an abnormality to nature?
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Well, let's put it this way.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean a negative abnormality.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I just mean, is it something unique to nature or
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: is that the right term?
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know what unique to nature is. Nature
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: is everything we got. but, but, but, well, I can,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I can tell you this and you've probably heard this before.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: We're not the only animals that, uh, where they're same
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: sex sexual behavior, right? You can find in lots of
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: different critters, uh, What is true, though, is that if
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: you look at examples, sheep are a good example, right? Okay,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: some male sheep will mount other male sheep, right? Okay,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: are they really gay? Well, actually, they're bi. So it
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: turns out when you look at critters and you look
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: at same-sex behavior, it's almost never exclusive same-sex behavior.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: So they're just having a good time.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: They're in a frat.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: No offense, dude. So that is somewhat different. But in
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: terms of is there– like can we divine a larger purpose.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: For– For gay and bisexual behavior, you know, people have
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: theorized about this. They've theorized about the contribution of the
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: gay aunts or uncles in helping to raise kids the
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: same way people talk about the grandparent effect, you know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: pitching in, whether that is really a true thing or not,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I would say is still very much up in the air.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: That's a cool answer, man. Bring up the sheep again.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: That's really interesting. I didn't know this. Homosexual behavior in
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: sheep has been well documented and studied. The domestic sheep
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: is the only species of mammal, except for humans... which
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: exhibits exclusive homosexual behavior.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Well, so that's contradicting what I just said. That's interesting.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. I wonder if this is, but
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: this is also Wikipedia.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Well, but Wikipedia probably is more up-to-date than me. Sheep
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: may be an exception. But if you look, I mean,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: there's a whole lot of different species that do have
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: homosexual behavior. And for most of them, it's not exclusive
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: homosexual behavior. Okay.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Go back to that again, actually, because I think a
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: lot of what you're saying is in here. 30% of
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: all rams, which are male sheep, demonstrate at least some
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: homosexual behavior. One report on sheep found that 8% of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: rams exhibited homosexual preferences. That is, even when given a choice,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: they chose male over female partners. This documented homosexual preference
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: has garnered much discussion. Such rams prefer to court and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: mount other rams only, even in the presence of estrous ewes. Anyway,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: it's interesting. I never thought about this or even talked
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: about it with somebody, so this is pretty cool.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Well, so I mean I think the important thing here
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: is that this is not just something humans came up with.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Right? It's not– and if you're trying to explain it
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: as a moral failing, right, as many religions would, well,
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: you would have to say, well, you know, it didn't
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: start with us. Right. You know? Pete Buttigieg says– had
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: a real good quote, and I'm paraphrasing him. And he
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: was saying, I've been felt gay as soon as I
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: had any sexual feelings whatsoever. It wasn't a choice. If
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: your quarrel with me, Mike Pence, is not with me,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: it's with my creator. I got made gay. I was
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: born that way.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: That's a great statement, huh?
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I think it gets to the heart of
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the matter. If you ask a straight man, when did
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: you decide to be straight? No guy's going, oh, yeah,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about it, and I was weighing the
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: pro and cons, and I was like, well, you got
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: to put you over here.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: It was February.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, okay, I kind of came down like
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be straight. No, no guy ever answers
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: You're right. Oh, yeah. I think that's pretty ridiculous, and
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: I think that Yeah, to me, it doesn't feel like
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: that would be a moral thing. I just wonder, I
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: guess I wonder, I wonder sometimes does nature, because nature,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I guess I always look at it as male and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: female needed to reproduce to keep existence happening, right? And
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: so then I wonder at some point, does nature need
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: more like gay energy just in the unit? You know
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying? I just don't know sometimes like what
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: nature's plan is, I guess.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I guess it's TBD, some of it.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: A lot of it, yes.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Is love scientifically quantifiable?
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Well, it kind of is. In other words, if.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Certainly new love. Yes, right? New love. So if we
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: take people who are in that like obsessional, you know,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: first six months.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, just crazy about you phase.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Fucking drooling your eyes.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: Right. And we put them in a brain scanner and
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: show them a picture of their beloved, right? And then
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: we image it and we look at what do we see? Well,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: we see that there's this part of the brain that's
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: part of kind of the pleasure and reward circuitry. that
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: lights up. And Huberman was talking about this. It's called
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: the dopamine neurons of the ventral tegmental area. So they
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: light up. And then we also see the Prefrontal cortex
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: of the brain, the part of the brain that's really
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: involved in making careful, reasoned, rational decisions, that's like turned
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: way the hell down. So what that means is like
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: think about this in terms of your own subjective experience
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: of being truly, madly, deeply in love. You're going like, oh, yeah,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: she's so great. And that sore on her lip will
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: clear up. Yeah. Right?
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: You know? And the other thing that happens, there's this
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: part of the brain called the amygdala that's very involved
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: in fear and feeling under threat. And that's also turned
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: way down, even below normal. Wow. Right? Because you feel
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: very comfortable. You feel very safe. So the interesting thing, right, is,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: so this study was done with people who were in
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: that truly, madly, deeply early phase. Yeah. So then you
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: go to old married people who've been together for a
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: real long time, and you ask them, you say.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Do you feel, do you feel, the.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: Same way about your partner as you did when you
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: first met? And 19 out of 20 people will say, well, no, right?
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: It's not that same crazy, passionate, wonderful, obsessed, got to
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: have sex every minute thing that when we first met.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: It's sort of settled into a more mature, loving, kind
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: of respectful sort of thing. But one out of 20
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: people say, no, it's just as intense, just as passionate
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: as it always was. And I know when I heard this,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: I said, you're lying.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: That's what I thought. This person is crazy.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Well, not just lying. They're full of shit.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're pervert.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: They're probably swingers. Maybe they just want to appear a
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: certain way.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: They're swingers, David.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: But, you know, they're saying this about, you know, not
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: their piece on the side, but their long-term partner.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: And so what happens when you put old married people
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: in the brain scanner? Well, you know, the 19 out
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: of 20 people who say, no, it's not the same
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: way it was when we first met, their amygdala is
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: not turned down. Their prenatal frontal cortex is not turned down.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: They are seeing their partner in the cold, clear room.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: light of day with all their rational faculties. But that
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: one out of 20 people that says they are truly, madly,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: deeply still, the brain agrees with them. In other words,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: their brain scan looks like someone feeling new love. Now,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: what do these people have that most of us don't have,
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: and how can we get it?
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: We don't know.
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: It'd be good to bottle that.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, gosh. I'd do a couple grams of it right now, dude.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say anything. I'd eat it. I'd I'd put
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: a pill under my tongue and let it, you know.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I'd do a half an eight ball of it right
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: now and take you to a damn sphere show of
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: the Grateful Dead. It'd be fun. Yeah, I think love
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: is something that certainly gives us a sense of purpose,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I think, you know.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like humans these days, we talk a
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: lot about purpose on here. Do you feel like humans
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: these days that we're losing a sense of purpose? That's
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: what it feels like sometimes to me.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, certainly there are fewer and fewer people
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: who are involved in relationships and fewer and fewer people
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: who are living together and more and more people who
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: are living alone. And the people who are living alone
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: aren't always replacing a romantic partner with lots of time
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: with friends. A lot of times they're replacing it with,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: you know, the internet. with watching podcasts like this, not
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: to disparage podcasts like this, but what I'm saying is
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: not the same, right? So I think there is a
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: crisis of connection that people are feeling right now. And
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: I think it is something to really, really be concerned about.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: Why do you think it's so important for the human
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: brain or humans to seek meaning in life?
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I think we can't help but do it. I think
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: our brains are hardwired to take fragments of information and
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: then try to make a story out of them. We
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: are a story-making, story-telling species. We can't help but do it, right?
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: It is a deeply human thing. And, you know, let
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: me tell you a little bit of what I mean, right? So,
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: People say, well, science and faith are somehow in opposition.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I say science and faith are two branches of the
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: same human stream. We're starting with fundamental questions that we
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: can't know. What is our purpose? How did we get here?
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: How should we live our lives? What happens after we're gone? Right?
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: And faith takes one path. It says, all right, you know,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I've got an explanation for doing that. It involves the divine,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: and I will believe that, and that is my way forward.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: And science says, well, I'm going to address those mysteries
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: in a different way. I'm going to do experiments and
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: observations and subject those to falsifications, and I'll take some
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: wrong turns, but I'll fix them, and eventually I'll get
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: closer and closer to the truth. And they are two
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: different ways of getting at it, but they have the
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: very same root. We as humans are curious. We want
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: to know what's going on. We want to put it together.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: We want to make a story. And it happens in
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: the most basic sensory level. Like if you're walking through
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: the woods and you hear– You can't help but imagine
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: that someone's coming up behind you, right? You're making a
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: story in your mind about what those sounds mean. Our
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: whole brains are built to take fragmentary information and put
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: them together in a story. It's the most fundamental human
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: thing there is.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Why does it feel that science is always trying to
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: defeat faith? Does it make any sense? Well– I just thought,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and maybe not always, maybe that's not true. I don't know,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: that just popped in my head.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, certainly that's the way that a lot
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: of people think about it. I mean, there are certain
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: aspects of certain faith stories where science will weigh in.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: In other words, if you say, I believe the literal
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Bible that the earth was created 6,000 years ago by God, Well,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: scientists will say, you know, we got some observations that say,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: you know, it's been around a lot longer than that
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: and it didn't happen that way. And so, you know,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: we have a problem with that.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, science is going to be like, hold my degree. Yeah.
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: But, you know, when you look at it, a lot
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: of faiths. don't really have as much of a quarrel.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, there are some people who are really fundamental
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: literalists and they're going to say, no, they have a
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: Bible story about 6,000 years is right. And if you
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: scientists disagree with me, well, then we got problems. There's
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: really no way to reconcile. But, like, if you look
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: at the Catholic.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Church, right?
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: So, you know, the popes say, well, all right, you know,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: that Old Testament stuff shouldn't be taken entirely literally. We've
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: got astronomers. The Vatican actually sponsors some scientific research, you know.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And you can be a person in the Catholic faith
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: and you can believe in God and you can believe
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: fundamental aspects of the credo of the faith. And still
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: be all right with the scientific model of the Big
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Bang or evolution or humans being 200,000 years old.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: Bring this up really quick. I do think this is interesting.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Let me take a peek here. The Vatican supports research
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: through various initiatives, most notably the Vatican Observatory. and the
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Wow, that's where Harry Potter went,
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: I think. The Vatican Observatory conducts research in astronomy and
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: related sciences, while the Pontifical Academy of Sciences promotes advancements
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: in various scientific fields. The Vatican also supports research into
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: stem cells, rare diseases, and other areas.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: Huh. That's right. So, you know, this is an example
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: of a major branch of Christianity that doesn't have like
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: a fundamental basic problem with the scientific method. And it's
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: not just Christianity. Like, for example, if you were to
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: look at Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, our present Dalai Lama, says, yeah,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: I'm really interested in science. If science conflicts with Buddhism,
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: then Buddhism's going to have to change a little bit.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: We're going to have to adapt. And so, you know,
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: you can be a live according to Buddhist principles and
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: still have a scientific worldview and respect science and believe
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: in the scientific method. These things aren't at their core irreconcilable. Excellent.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you so much, man. I think a lot
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: of people need to hear stuff like this because I think,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: especially that last piece, it was like, you can do
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: both of these things. You can, you know, I think
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of people who get stuck in the
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: word of like, well, if I don't do exactly this,
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: then God's not going to love me or God's not
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: going to care about me. Or if I even imagine, like,
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: I remember, um, there were, it felt like when I was,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: sometimes when I was young in certain environments that if
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: you even like neighbors that I had and stuff, if
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: they even had like an imagination that it would go against, um,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: some of their beliefs that were like, really iterated strongly
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: in their household, right? And no judgment against that. Those
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: beliefs may have kept them in this pattern that was
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: safe and great for them, right? And it may do
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: that for millions of people. But I do think it's
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: just interesting how we manage, how do you manage both?
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that God would let us have this,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: these thoughts if it weren't, we weren't supposed to have
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: these thoughts, you know?
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: He gave you the hardware. to have those thoughts. You're
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: absolutely right. Uh, you know, like Pete Buttigieg said about
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: being gay, you know, ultimately this goes back to my creator,
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: not me.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Bring it up PDB. I want to see exactly what
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: he said, man. Started over going.
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: You may be religious and you may not, but if
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: you are, and you were also queer and you have
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: come through the other side of a period of wishing
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: that you weren't, then you know that that message, this
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: idea that there is something wrong with you, is a
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: message that puts you at war not only with yourself,
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: but with your maker. And speaking only for myself, I
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: can tell you that if me being gay was a choice,
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: it was a choice that was made far, far above
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: my pay grade. And that's the thing I wish the
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: Mike Pence's of the world would understand. That if you've
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: got a problem with who I am, your problem is
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: And did Mike Pence directly attack him or was that,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: some of that could be political kickballing. I don't, I
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: don't remember exactly, but either way, that's a, uh, that's, yeah,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: I think that's such a, it's just a, it's an
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: important thing to hear, you know?
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: I think it's a very important thing to hear. And
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: to me, like the interesting thing when we talk about
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: faith is, uh, What does it mean that you find
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: faith everywhere in the world? In other words, if you
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: talk to the anthropologists who go all around the world and,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: you know, studied every society all around the world, there
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: isn't a single place that doesn't have some kind of
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: supernatural explanation.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Amen. Right? And they can be fascinating, right? Now, that's
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: something that also makes us unique, is it?
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Well, who knows? I mean, if there's chimpanzee religion, how
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: would we know?
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: So even animals could be in heaven. Dude, if I
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: get to heaven, there's a bunch of mosquitoes up there.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: If their beliefs, if they– that's going to piss me off.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: You know, I had an advisor when I was an
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: undergraduate and I worked in a lab. And he said,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: you know, I had a bad dream last night. And
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: I said, Joe, what was that? And he said, you know,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: this is a lab where we work with rats. And
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: he said, you know, I had this– Dream that I
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: died and I went up to heaven and I met St.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: Peter and he had pink eyes and little whiskers. Oh, no,
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: I'm in the shit now.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe he had conjunctivitis. Who knows what he had, huh?
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe he had a long Saturday night, huh?
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, dang.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: So even animals?
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. Look, I'm not going to tell you.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell you that chimpanzees have religion.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: I'm just saying that if they did, it wouldn't be
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: something that– That it would be straightforward for us to know.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: For sure. The fascinating thing is that it's a human universal.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: In other words, not everyone is a person of faith,
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: but everywhere around the world, every single society has people
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: of faith.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool, though. Think about how cool it is.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, so it can't be an accident.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: Okay. Right?
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, this fulfills some fundamental human need.
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: need to have these ideas. And, you know, if you like,
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: if we talk about mortality later, I can tell you
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: a particular theory I have about that. We don't have
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: to get into it now.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: So, no, David, that leads exactly to kind of what
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about. My next question is, how does
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: our quality of life affect our beliefs about death or
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: the afterlife?
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think this is something where neuroscience
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: actually has something to offer. Okay.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: So when I first started studying the brain, you know,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: 40-plus years ago, I was taught, well, the brain just
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: kind of sits there. and it waits to react to something.
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: Something comes in your senses, you hear something, you see something,
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: your brain does something, and then you move your muscles
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: and you respond to it. And that's what it is.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: The brain's kind of sitting there waiting for something to happen.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: It's a reactive organ.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Like a two-stroke motor or something.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: That's right. Well, even not like a two-stroke motor that
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: isn't even started yet. It's waiting for someone to pull
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: the ripcord, right, for it to start up. And what
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: we now know, the modern conception of the brain is
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: that when you're just sitting there spacing out, Your brain
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: is really busy and it is a prediction machine. Your
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: brain is trying to figure out what's going to happen
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: next in the near term. It's doing like, is that
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: a person who's walking up there, friend or foe? Am
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: I likely to be hungry lately? Oh, I see those
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: French fries. Should I secrete some saliva of the type
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: that's particularly good for breaking down starch? Or am I
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: going to eat meat? And so should I secrete this
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: kind of saliva that's particularly good for breaking down protein?
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: All of these are examples of where our brains and
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: our body working together are trying to predict stuff in
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: the near term. Well, what does that mean? It means
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: that our brain is wired to presume that there will
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: always be a near term, that there will be a future, right?
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I got diagnosed with terminal cancer. Uh,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: I was told four years ago that I had six
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: to 18 months to live. And, you know, while, I mean,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: of course that was really upsetting and I was freaking
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the fuck out about it. Uh, In addition, you know,
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: I could do practical stuff. Oh, I better write my will.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: I better have this conversation with my kids. I better,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: you know, make sure this is done in the house
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: and like these letters are written for my students, you know,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: so then to go on the next part of their career,
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: like all that practical stuff. Right, exactly. But in terms
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: of actually deeply engaging with myself not being there anymore,
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: with my own demise, I felt like, you know, I
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: was skittering across the ice. You know, I couldn't really
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: dig in and grab it. I couldn't really think about
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: what it's like for me not to be there anymore.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: And I thought, well, is this a personal failing? Do
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: I just suck? And I thought, well, maybe. But, I mean,
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: I do. We all do. But, you know, what I'm
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: thinking fundamentally is that This is not something that we
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: as humans are designed to do. Our brains are hardwired
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: to predict the near future, which presumes that there will
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: be a near future, right? And so if you extrapolate
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: this a little bit.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: And what does extrapolate mean? Just so people know.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. If you kind of move on to the
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: next step, right, of what this means for faith. If
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: you go around the world, nearly every– not absolutely every
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: but nearly every religion in the world has an afterlife
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: or reincarnation story. Very few religions– Judaism is one. You're
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: dead and there isn't actually a story about what happens
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: after you're dead. But almost every other one does. You
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: go to heaven. You melt with the divine. You're reincarnated.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: But there's something that happens. These stories are exceedingly popular
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: all over the world in all cultures. Well, I think
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: that the reason they are is because of this brain
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: bug we have. We can't imagine ourselves dead because our
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: brains are hardwired to predict the future. And that's why
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: we have these afterlife and reincarnation stories in faiths all
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: over the world. And so I have total sympathy for these,
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: not just because I'm diagnosed with terminal cancer, but because
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: I see them as something deep and fundamental to what
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: it is to be human and something that binds us all.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: It's so funny, man. My next question is why is
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: it so hard for us to think about our own deaths?
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we got there. You got my answer.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: It is funny because I'll start to think about it, right?
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: And I can– at first I can think about, okay–
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: you're going to die. Right. I can think about the certain,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: like the mechanics of like, okay, I'm in a hospital
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: bed and I'm laying there and someone's holding my hand,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: all of that. The part where I start to like,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: it almost like makes my soul. Like, it's like when I,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: you're not going to exist. Yeah. That's the part I just,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: my brain, it can't, it won't accept that. It's like, well,
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: what do you mean? I won't exist.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: It's a very hard thing to, to deal with.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: And, you know— You think it's a clue?
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if it's a clue or not.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, for me, in sort of dealing with my
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: terminal cancer diagnosis, it's like, you know, for myself, I'm
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: 63 years old.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, yeah, I would love to have 20
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: more years or something like that. You know, that would
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: be great. But I've had a really good life. I
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: got no complaints. You know, I've got a terrific wife.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to be in love.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: I got great kids. I've gotten to be in love.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: I've gotten to do good work, have good friends, have adventures,
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: do the things I want to do. I got to
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: have a job where I don't have a boss and
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: follow my own curiosity. Almost no one gets that. So
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: I've had a really good life. And when I think
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: about not being there, it's not so much, oh, I
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: do want more of it. That's not the first thing.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: I think about my family.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: I don't want to leave them. I don't want to
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: leave my wife. I don't want to leave my kids.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: I don't want to leave the people who are close
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: to me. That's the part that gets me fundamentally. Not like, oh, shit,
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: I wish I could have 20 more years of partying.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't mind listening to a couple more
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Grateful Dead tunes, you know, in between loving my.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Are you are you a deadhead man.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I just got him in the past year and a half.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: Really also a new a nouveau deadhead all right okay.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Um but no you know it's so funny david and
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: thank you for sharing that man um you know what
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: sometimes makes me like i guess it may i don't
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: know if it's lame or whatever to say but um
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: like sometimes i feel like i could never let certain
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: people know how much i love them you know it
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: almost feels like it's not even physically possible sometimes to
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: let like, like if I did, the cops would have to, like,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: you almost like, you know what I'm saying? Like it
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be a perversion thing, but it would be like, hey,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: you can't lawyer on my porch anymore. It's like, sometimes
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: it feels like a feeling that's so impossible to completely share,
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: like to let your kids know how much you love them.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Like you probably could never do it.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think I could. I mean, for me,
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: I do struggle with that, but I struggle with it
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: less for the people I'm really close to. You know,
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: I think I'm pretty good about telling them how I feel. Right.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: I think my wife knows how I feel. I think
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: my kids know how I feel. I think, you know,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: my friends, my colleagues, you know, who I love deeply,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: I don't think, you know, it's harder for that. It's
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: harder for me to, you know— go to my best
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: work buddy and say, dude, you don't know how much
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I love you. That would be a little weird, right?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying, dude. It's hard to express
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: some things without becoming an HR issue.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: So I think that's sometimes, and I don't know if
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: that's scientific or not, but love sometimes gets shut down
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: by the HR department.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: And I think more in men. Yeah, I think men
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: have a harder time with this.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But it is funny that that's the one feeling
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: sometimes for me, it's like, I almost, you couldn't put
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: together how much you love somebody or something, you know,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: or somebody, you know, you just couldn't put together how
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: much you love somebody. It's like you can't, I don't know,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: love is this thing. It's so, it's like, I don't know.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: To me, it's just, it's such a fascinating energy. It is.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: And, you know, it's remarkable to think that something that
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: profound ultimately originates in this biological imperative to mate. And
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: even though this love translates into situations that don't have
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: anything to do with making babies or whatever, it generalizes.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: That's where it came from. And it's easy to think, oh, well,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: like it must have come from something like this deep
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: wellspring of mysticism. But, you know, I don't know that
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: it means that. It can be that transportive and that
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: surreal and that important and still be fundamentally natural.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: In the end. Like a teammate of the reproductive process.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, you go, oh, my God, you know,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: I'm so in love. Well, you know, why is that? Well,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: you know, ultimately, get your genes in the next generation.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of interesting because even this kind of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: moment is a little bit of that faith in science.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: A little bit of that. There's some mysticism and then
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: there's some science right there with it. Is pornography causing
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: porno for longer periods of time and having trouble stopping?
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: Is porn affecting your relationship or dating life? Well, you're
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: certainly not alone. Watching pornography has become so commonplace today,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: and oftentimes men use porn to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and depression. Shame and stigma prevent men from talking about
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: these issues and getting help for them. I want to
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: introduce you to my friend Steve. Steve is the founder
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: of Valor Recovery, a program to help men overcome porn
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: abuse and sexual compulsivity. Steve is a long-term sexual recovery member.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: and has personally overcame the emotional and spiritual despair of
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: abusing pornography and has dedicated his life to empowering men
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: to do the same. Steve is an amazing person, and
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: he is a close friend of mine. I mean that.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: Valor Recovery helps men to develop the tools necessary to
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: have a healthier sex life. Their coaches are in long-term
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: recovery and will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual guide
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: to transcend these problematic behaviors. To learn more about Valor Recovery,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: please visit them at www.valorrecoverycoaching.com or email them at admin
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: at valorrecoverycoaching.com. Thank you. Man, thank you so much, David.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: We're not done. I just want to say thank you, man.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I just appreciate it. I think it's, you know, one
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: of the things I feel so lucky about this job
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: is just that I get to have Um, I get
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: to have moments with people sometimes that mean something, you know?
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: And it's nice.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm very, very happy to be here. Yeah.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Um, let's talk about a little,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: a little bit about individuality because, um, well, for one,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: do you have a book actually sent? What, um, yeah,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: there it is. The, the unique, the new science of
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: human individuality.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: Know it, be it, live it. Buy it for your friends.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, know it, be it, live it. Buy it for
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: your friends right there. You can get it online, right?
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: And we'll put a link below in our YouTube video.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: So let me just start with this. It's kind of
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: just a very basic. Are our fingerprints the only thing
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: that makes us individual?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: No, there's all kinds of things that make us individual,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: but I love fingerprints. Let's talk about fingerprints, right? So.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: Identical twins, and actually I hate this term identical twins
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: because they're not really identical, but genetically identical twins. The
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: science term we use for it is monozygotic twins. It
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: turns out they don't have identical fingerprints.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, really? I've never believed in twins.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an important thing for solving crimes.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: You can imagine a mystery story. No, my identical twin
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: did it. Well, no, he didn't, asshole. He has different
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: fingerprints than you.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: I've never trusted twins that much.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, I have twins. Oh, you do? Not identical twins.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: I have boy-girl twins.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's, yeah. I'm willing to at least hear about that.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Well, so yeah, fingerprints are something, like the statistics of fingerprints,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: like how many ridges you have, that has a heritable component,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: meaning that is partly determined by genes you get from
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: your mother and father. And so if you have an
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: identical twin, you're probably going to have the same number,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: but the exact precise pattern is... Exactly where the whorls
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: and swirls are on your fingertip, that is individually determined.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: And even genetically identical twins have different fingerprints. Wow.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty wild. So that's saying that even in
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: this moment where there's a lot of replication, I guess,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: between twins, that even there, each one has a stamp
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: of uniqueness to them.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this brings up something that's super,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: super crazy important. And it brings up, you know, have
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: you known some so-called identical twins in your life? Yeah.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: And so you know they're not really identical, right? In
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: other words, like you can look at them and you
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: can tell them apart and they don't have the same personalities.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: And even if you met them as newborns, they wouldn't
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: truly be identical down to the last hair and– molecule
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: and their temperament. Like one would cry more, one would
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: be more calm, one would be more this way. Interestingly,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: this is a tangent, right? People study this a lot
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: in armadillos. Because the nine-banded armadillo, they are born every
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: time as identical quadruplets.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: Wait, so there's the nine-banded armadillo, every time that they're born,
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: there's four of them?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: There's four of them, and they're four genetically identical ones,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: and it's coming up on your screen.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Wow, why?
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so if you take nine banded armadillos, so
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: you can do stuff with armadillos you're not gonna do
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: with people, like dissect them and look at their organs
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: as soon as they're born, and you'll see, all right,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: these are genetically identical critters, but one of them's got
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: a liver that's 50% bigger than the other. The other
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: one's got a spleen that's different than this one. They're
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: not really identical even at birth. Well, so how did
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: that happen? Well, they got the same DNA and they
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: grew up right next to each other in the same womb,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: in the same mom. So how did they get different
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: even when they were born? And the answer is this.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: It turns out that the DNA is not like a blueprint.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: It's not like a wiring diagram for the body and
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: the brain that absolutely specifies everything. It's more like a
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: really vague recipe, right, that says– like if we're imagining
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: this for the brain, instead of saying, hey, you– you know,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: neuron number 1,407, you know, grow a little bit towards
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: the top and then after four millimeters, make a left
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: turn and go across the other side of the brain. No,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: it doesn't work that way. It isn't a wiring diagram.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: It's more like, hey, you bunch of neurons over there,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: about half of you cross over the other side of
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: the brain and half of you keep going. And in
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: one identical twin, maybe 40% will cross over and another
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: 60% on average, 50% do. But even in genetically identical animals,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: the variation in how they develop gives rise to individuality.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: I see, so you're saying it's not like a dictator,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: it's more like a crossing guard, like you this way,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: this way, you guys that way.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: That's right, it's like, you know, so there's this guy
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: in Ireland, his name's Kevin Mitchell, he's a neurogeneticist.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Does he seem like a neat guy?
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: And he is a neat guy, and so Kevin Mitchell
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: says- if I were to make 100 clones of you
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: and they grew up, they wouldn't be 100 Theos, they'd
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: be 100 individuals, each with their own experience that developed
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: in different ways. And not just because they had different
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: experiences from you, even the 100 baby clones would already
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: be different because the way they grew in the womb
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: isn't exactly the same, isn't 100% specified by the DNA.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: And so this is some of the way we say, well,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: how do we become individuals? Well, some of it is
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: what you inherit from your parents in your DNA. And
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: some of it is other biological stuff like what hormones
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: were flying around when you were in utero or growing up.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: And some of it is your experiences in the world.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: And then some of it is this fundamental randomness of
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: development that I just talked about. what we call the
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: stochastic nature of development in science speak. Well, that's a
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: fun word, isn't it? Stochastic. Say that at the, you know,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: tonight and impress your friends.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't want to just go back to fingerprints
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: on this, but to use that as a marker for individuality,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: could someone throughout time even have had the same fingerprints?
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Do we know? Like, do we know if someone else
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: in history could have had the same fingerprints as you
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: like back throughout time?
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, that I don't know. In other words, I don't
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: know if there's so much– if patterns get repeated. I
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: mean I think if so, the answer is not very often.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: I mean otherwise the fingerprint databases that all these law
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: enforcement groups have would be worthless. Sometimes– In groups that
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: are very genetically homogeneous, you walk down the street and
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: you feel like you've seen the same face. I spent
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: some time in Finland. All five million Finns came from
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: like a thousand founders. And you walk down the street
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: and you go, oh, see that dude. Like 10 people later,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 2: you go, is that the same guy or is that
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: your brother? Like, what the hell? That's the same face again, right? Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: You know, so there's some groups that had so few
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: founders that there actually isn't that much genetic variation, right?
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, try to pick out of a police lineup in Finland.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, of course, you know, maybe I'm just being
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: racist against Finns and the Finns would say, well.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: Right. You know.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: But why does nature make us so individual? I wonder, like,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: why is that important?
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Well, so there's a couple of levels of that. You know,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: one way to think about it is the way... that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: individuality starts is by sexual reproduction. In other words, when
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: you are the mixture of your mother and your father,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: then you're stirring the pot and making a new mixture
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: and that makes individual you, right? Not all animals reproduce
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: that some way. Some animals just split and they make
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: genetically identical copies of themselves. They make clones. And you
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: might say to yourself, well, that's easy. Why doesn't every
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: animal just split and make identical copies of themselves? And
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: the idea behind this is that if you are constantly
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: mixing and recombining, as you do with sexual reproduction, then
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: you're getting a population that has more different traits vary.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: Maybe this person is an early riser and this one's
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: a late riser. This one can tolerate heat, this one
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: can tolerate cold. And so if a disaster happens, you're
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: less likely to kill off the whole population. So in populations,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: genetic diversity is good, and sexual reproduction, as opposed to
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: just splitting yourself and making a clone, doesn't get you
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 2: that diversity. Interestingly, there are some animals, like there are
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: some insects that can reproduce both ways. They can reproduce
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: sexually or they can split themselves.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: Really? Yeah.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: And in times of plenty, they tend to do one,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: and in times of lean, they tend to do the other.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: And there are plants that do the same way like
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: ferns are a good example. Ferns can propagate with runners
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: and make clones or they can propagate sexually and mix
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: their genes and make individual mixed offspring.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, hell yeah. Oh, ferns look like they've been partying
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: if you just look at them. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: It looks like.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: I know what you mean. If I'm going to come
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: back as a plant, I think I want it to
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: be a fern.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: Are those devil horns or are you doing ferns in... No, see,
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: this is the fern sign, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, this
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: is the horns, this is the fern.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: I'll do both, dude. It's like they've been at Ferning Man, dude.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: Ferning Man.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: Thanks for even.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: That's comedy gold right there.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: It's copper, comedy copper I'll go with. But thank you
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: for even entertaining it. Yeah, go back to this. Let
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: me see. Insects that can reproduce sexually and also through parthenogenesis...
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: A form of asexual reproduction include aphids and some species
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: of stick insects.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's right. So parthenogenesis is a term. It
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: comes from Athena, the Greek goddess, right, who sprung from
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: the head of Zeus. So the idea is that she
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: didn't come from sex. So the word parthenogenesis, the reason
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: where that word comes from is coming from that Greek myth. Right?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's cool.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Interestingly, some animals that normally reproduce sexually, it's a
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: very rare thing, but occasionally a woman's egg will actually
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: start dividing in a way that it can actually make
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: a whole embryo. And you can have a female that
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: gives birth to an exact copy of itself. Dudes can't
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: do that, right? Only females can do it. And that's
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: called parthenogenesis. People have argued about whether it happens in humans.
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the internet will say right now.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: When I looked into it about 20 years ago, some
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: people were saying yes and some people were saying no.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know what the latest is on that.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: And some people say that in addition that their fingerprint,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: that people's sphincters, like their butthole or b-hole or whatever,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: that it is like the 11th fingerprint, some people say,
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: is that?
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: You know, remember when people would straddle Xerox machines and
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: make photographs of their nethers?
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: That's the Christmas party.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Well, so that could be your
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: scanner for the 11th fingerprint.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: But can you look up if the sphincter, I don't
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: know how you would even say that. While not considered
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the 11th fingerprint in any official capacity, the concept of
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: the anus as a potential biometric identifier has been explored
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: due to its unique characteristics. Historically, this is the only
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: information I'm seeing here, the artist Salvador Dali is credited
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: with having observed the unique nature of anal creases and
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: comparing them to fingerprints. So this has been thought of before.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: It means if you're undergoing anal bleaching, then you can
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: evade the cops if you're using that as a way
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: of identifying it.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: I'll ride with that. We'll look at that more another time.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I've always heard that. Do we have nerves
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: in our– we have nerves in our butt, right?
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Well, you've got nerves in all
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: your skin. But it turns out that in the places
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: where people like to get sexy, you've got a special
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: kind of nerve. And so the lips– The genitals, the butthole, right?
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: So these places aren't just random. They're a special kind
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: of skin. And so for years and years and years,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: people said, well, how come you can have sexual sensations
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: from certain places on your body but not others? Like
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: the back of your hand doesn't feel that sexy. End
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: of your nose, not that sexy. But, you know, your genitals, sexy.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: Your lips, you know, maybe your butthole, sexy, you know.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: And so why is that? And Nobody really knew the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: answer until there was a fundamental discovery. And it actually
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: started in the 1850s. There was a German anatomist named Krauss.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: And he took sections of the skin of the penis
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: and the skin of the clitoris. And he looked at
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: them under a microscope. And he said, well, there's this
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: one kind of little nerve ending. And it's kind of
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: like wiggly like this. And it has a little capsule
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: around it. And I see a lot more of them
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: here than I do in other places in the body.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: And maybe this is the special nerve ending that makes
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: sexual activity.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's interesting.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: And people said, well, yeah, maybe, but maybe not. We
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: don't really have a way of testing it. We didn't
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: have a way of like specifically activating those ones and
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: not other ones, turning them on or turning them off.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: And this was like a total mystery. But there were
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: some things that really made it seem possible. So, all right.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: So like if we're going to talk about dicks. here,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: like if you talk to most guys and you say,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: on your dick, what is the most very sensitive part
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: of the dick? Well, most guys will say, well, like
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: the ridge right around the head of the dick, what's
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: called the corona. That's a real hot spot. And the
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: underside of the dick, particularly that kind of elastic tissue
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: towards the bottom, it's called the frenulum is what the
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: doctors call it.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: That baseboard or whatever. Right.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: These are like the hottest sexy hotspots on a guy's dick.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: All right. And it turns out that's where the very
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: largest number of these crouse corpuscle endings are. So, oh, well,
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: that seems like likely to be true, but is it
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: really true? But– A couple of years ago, a buddy
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: of mine, David Ginty at Harvard, figured out how to
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: specially label and then electrically turn on or turn off
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: these endings in laboratory mice. And he proved that these
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: really are the nerve endings that are involved in sexual sensation.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: And so- Now, mice are partying, huh? Well, you know,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: mice got what we got, right? I mean, they've got
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: You know, mice have sex, mice have orgasms. They do
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: what we do.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're willing to be tested, too.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, they don't get to say no.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: I've never heard one complain, to be honest with you.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, this brings up some things. So
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: people always joke about how young men come really fast, right? Well,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: you know, that's for a lot of different reasons and,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: you know, being nervous and being new and all that.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: But part of the reason is actually not just these
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: Krauss endings but all the different endings in your skin.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: From about 20 as you age, you lose about 1%
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: of them every year. So you get less and less
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: sensitive in your skin as you age. get older. Why?
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: Well, we don't really know why. That's a good question why.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: But this seems to happen. It happens in humans. It
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: happens in other critters. And so part of the reason
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: why old guys don't come as soon and sometimes have
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: a problem coming at all is because fewer and You
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: lose them as you age. The same thing happens, interestingly,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: with nerve endings for pain. So you might have heard,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: for example, like old folks that are confined to bed
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: get bed sores. Well, and you might think, well, why? Like,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: you know, and they get it from just laying in
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: one position and wearing a hole in the skin. You
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: would think, oh, God, that would hurt like hell. Why
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: don't they just move to a different spot? And the
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: reason is as you get older, you not only lose pain,
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: The sexy nerve endings and the fine touch nerve endings,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: you lose the pain nerve endings too.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: They don't feel it.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: They don't feel it.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's why. Yeah. Oh, dude, if I'm a, yeah,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: even if I ejaculate or whatever, it's like a couple
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: mealworms getting out of a sleeping bag, you know? I mean,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: there's not, it's definitely things change, you know?
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: Things change.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: And my father was 70 when I was born, which
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: is just, I just say that now because I never
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: really thought about this. Could there be something different about his, um,
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: like genetics or something at that age? Could there be
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: something at that age that would make me any different
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: than a young, like a child, say if his father
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: was 35?
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: Well, so, you know, that's an interesting thing. So, so,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: so men are different in the sense that, you know,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: you can still, you know, produce sperm later into years, whereas,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: you know, women have menopause and there's a, there's a,
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: there's a hard stop, but I'm not an expert in this,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 2: but it is my understanding that there are some things
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: that are more likely to occur with older paternal age. And, uh,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: So it's not something I know a lot of the
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: details about.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: I heard you talk on the Huberman podcast about having
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: traits which we often think are genetic but that are
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: actually attributed to early life experiences. Can you talk a
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: little bit more about that?
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: There's a really interesting one of these that was discovered
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: in World War II. So early in World War II,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: the Japanese army was just rolling through Asia, right? You know,
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: they rolled through China and British Malaysia and Singapore and Burma. And,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: you know, they were up to the edge of India.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: And just nobody could stop them. They were just a machine. But, like,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: not everything was perfect. And part of the problem was
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: that a lot of the Japanese soldiers were having heat stroke.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: You know, it was hot there in the tropics where
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: they were fighting. And they were just keeling over with
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: heat stroke. And so the doctors in the Japanese armies
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: were looking into this because it was going to be
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: a problem. They said, oh. Well, the soldiers that are
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: having the problem with heat stroke are more likely to
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: come from northern Japan. You know, Japan is oriented north
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: to south. The island, the most northern island, Hokkaido, is
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: pretty chilly. They've got mountains and snow. The most southern island, Kyushu,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: is pretty tropical. And so there's a big variation. It's
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: like San Diego to, you know, Seattle or something like that, right?
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: And so they say, well, the people who come from
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: the north, they're the ones who are having the problem,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: the hot weather. And you might think, oh, well, I
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: know how that happened. You know, they come from families
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: that have been there a long time, and then gradually
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: they've evolved to be less good in hot weather because
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: their sweat glands aren't as good. And what it is
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: is that we actually all have pretty much the same
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: density of sweat glands, but— If you come from a
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: hot climate, more of your sweat glands receive nerves from
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: your brain and can get the signal to sweat more
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: when you're hot, right? And it turns out if you
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: come from South Japan, you've got a lot of those
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: sweat glands that get messages from your brain. And if
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: you come from North Japan, you got fewer of them.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: People say, oh, that's just evolution over a long period
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: of time. But when they looked into the data a
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: little more carefully, it was really interesting. It turns out
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: that if you grew up in Southern Japan, even if
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: your parents and your grandparents and all your line before
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: you came from Northern Japan were you had lots of
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: innervated sweat glands and you did fine in the heat.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: Or if it went the other way, and let's say
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: you're from an old South Japan family, but your parents
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: moved to North Japan and you grew up there in
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: the first years of your life, no, you develop the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: sweat glands of a Northerner and you'd have a problem
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: with the heat. So it's something that you would think, oh,
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: that's a genetic thing. Like, you know, that got selected
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: for by evolution over many generations. But actually, it's a
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: developmental thing. It is something that is imprinted upon you
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: in the first years of life and then stays with
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: you through your whole life.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: What are some things that parents could best do to
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: set their children up for neurobiological success? Does that make
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: any sense?
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The best thing you can do to set your
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: children up for neurobiological success is to pay attention to them,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: to give them your own attention, to read with them,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 2: to play with them, to have game night, to go hiking,
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: to do sports together, to do the normal stuff. There
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: is no replacement for parental attention. It is the absolute
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: number one best thing you can do for your kids. Now,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: I'm assuming that you're not in a situation where you're
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: starving and, you know, they're basically okay. They have food,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: they have medicine, they got shelter, right? You know, if
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: you're in that situation and you're asking what you can
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: do for your kids, it's like, it's your attention. You know,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: you can't buy them fancy software and then like, you know,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: put your own nose in your phone and not pay
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: attention to them. You know, the biggest thing is the
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: habit of reading. Right? And the kids model your own behavior.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: If you read books, they're going to read books.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: If you're curious, they're going to be curious. If you
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: play sports and exercise and engage with the world, then
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: they will. So those are the things you can do.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: It's not like some special thing to feed them for
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: lunch or some special game to buy to put on
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: their phone or their laptop. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. What's something that you think you inherited from,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: like inherited, like learned inherited? Is that possible? I guess
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: a learned trait maybe that you got from one of
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: your parents early that you never thought you would have gotten.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Is there anything like that that kind of showed up
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: for you?
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I would say the things I got
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: from my parents are pretty, you know, there's a lot
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: of things my parents did that benefited me a lot.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: And I think the main thing is that they gave
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: me a lot of attention. I had a really weird family.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: Really weird family, maybe even weirder than yours, right? Okay,
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: so my parents met when they were young and they
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: got divorced within a year. And then they moved to,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: they met in Chicago. My mom moved to New York.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: My dad moved to LA. After a couple of years,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: my dad said, let's try again. He must've been really
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: convincing because my mom moved to LA. They got married
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: a second time. They got divorced a second time. But
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: they were so hot for each other, they couldn't keep
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: their hands off each other.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: Other.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: And I was conceived in a hot pillow joint on
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: Sepulveda Boulevard in LA. Yeah. Right, yeah. We would drive
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: by it, and my mom would say, that's the place.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: I go, oh, jeez, thanks, Mom. That's embarrassing.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: There's your spot.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: Room 212. Exactly, exactly. There was a magic fingers attachment
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: on the bed, as I remember she would say. And so,
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: you know, I grew up a child of divorce, but
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: my parents never divorced while I— they were already divorced. That's hilarious.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: So there was no divorce trauma. Yeah. right? That's just
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: the way things always were. And my dad was around.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 2: I lived with my mom, but I saw my dad
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: every weekend and every Wednesday night from dinner from where
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: I could remember till like the day I went away
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: to go to college. And so it was a weird
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: way to grow up, but it was a great way
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: to grow up because I had great parents and they
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: gave me a lot of attention. But an example of something,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: my dad was a psychiatrist, an old-fashioned talking cure psychoanalyst,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 2: lie on the couch, tell me about your dreams, tell
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: me what you're thinking, kind of shrink, right? And so,
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: you know, Wednesday night dinner with my dad, what would
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: we do? We'd talk about his patients. Now, of course,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: like he wouldn't say their names or any, he'd keep
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: it anonymous. He was ethical. But, you know, I would say, hey, dad, like,
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: what's up with your narcissist? Oh, well, yeah, you know,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: he's got, he had this dream. I think it's really
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: important because, so, you know, it was really fun. And
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: as I was growing up, it became clear to me
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the personality to be a psychiatrist. I'm
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: not empathetic enough for that. And I don't have the
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: tolerance to listen to people's problems enough for that. I'm
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: glad there are people who do. Good therapists are a
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: wonderful thing. I'm not cut out for that. My dad
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: was really good. But I thought, you know, I want
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: to understand the biology of this. And that's why, really, fundamentally,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: that I became a brain scientist. It's because... My dad
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: was a therapist, and I wanted to get at it
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: from a different angle.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: I had a question about evolution, if we can go
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: into that a little.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: Okay. Does evolution have like a set speed?
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: Wow, that is a really good question. It turns out
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: that's something that evolutionary biologists argue about. So some people
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: think fundamentally that evolution does have a set speed and
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: it kind of goes on and it's always, always really slow.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: But now there's more and more evidence for something that
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: the scientists call punctuated equilibrium. And what that just means
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: is times where there's really, really big change that occurs really,
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: really fast. I mean, one example I would give is reading, right?
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: Humans have been around for 200,000 years ago, starting in Africa.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: But it's only been in Africa. the last few thousand years,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 2: a blink of evolutionary time that we've had written language, right?
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: So when we think about things like people who struggle
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: with dyslexia, right, reading is not something that our brain
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: is deeply evolved to do, right? We've only been doing
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: it for a few generations in evolutionary time, so it's
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: not that problem that in some folks it screws.
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: Up, you know? Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous. We're making
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: fun of the dyslexic kid. It's like, That makes the
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: most sense.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: That's right. This is an absolutely new thing. This is
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: just like– this is the latest trend in humanity when
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: you look in evolutionary time is reading.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah. Sometimes evolution is slow and steady and
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: sometimes it is– it can change really quickly. One thing
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: that changed really quickly is a classic thing that people
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: talk about in evolution is is when cows got domesticated
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: and people started eating a lot of dairy, suddenly you
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: started to have a situation where the gene to digest
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: the sugar lactase, which you find in milk, which is
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: normally present in kids but turned off in adults, it
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: tends to persist into adults. And this only happened relatively recently,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: about 10,000 years ago.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: When we started drinking milk.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: When we started drinking milk. Interestingly, it happens separately several
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: different times in different human groups. It happened once in
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: East Africa and once in Turkey and once in Iraq,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: maybe even more times than that. But this is convergent evolution,
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: things that happened in different places to achieve the same result,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: but something that happened pretty quickly and pretty recently in
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: evolutionary time.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think that that could have been the cause
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: of a ton, that that could have led to a
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: lot of different medical problems that humans face?
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, there are some people who think that
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: dairy is really problematic in terms of disease. I'm not
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: convinced by that, honestly. I think it bears a lot
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: more research, but— In my own life, I eat dairy
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: just fine. I love cheese. I love pizza.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll have a little bit of cheese.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: I'll have a little. And I don't think there's any
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: reason to think that it's poison for you.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't feel like it.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: Like even if I even just think about it a little,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: it's like if somebody said that, I'd be like, I
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: don't know, dude.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: You know, here's the thing right now. Here's my theory
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: about foods and sort of the mania for people– including
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 2: or not including certain foods right now, people are feeling
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: so messed with right now. People feel so disempowered. They
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: feel like they're messed with by the government. They feel
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: like they're messed with by corporations, by they're messed with
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: like their boss, like they have so little in their
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: lives they can control. But what can I control? I
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: can still damn control what I eat, right? So people
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: focus on that because You know, they're feeling so fucked
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: around with in so many other ways. Yeah. I'll have
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: the cheese. And I understand that. And so it's like, yeah,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: I'm going to eat this. No, I'm not going to
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: eat this.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: And, you know, it gives— It's like, let me do something. Right.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: And it gives rise to a whole lot of nuttiness. Like, yeah, oh, man,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: I'm only going to eat meat and nothing else. Well,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: that's really not a very good idea. Oh, no, I
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: got to absolutely avoid dairy because it's going to kill me. No,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: it won't kill you. It's okay. Yeah.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I feel that.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: But I understand where it's coming from. It's like there
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: aren't that many things left where you really feel like
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: you control it.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think that humans can– can we stop evolution
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: from happening?
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 2: No. Evolution is going to– that train is going to
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: roll on no matter what we do. It's just– some
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 2: people like to think, oh, evolution is something that happened
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: a long time ago and now like that doesn't happen anymore.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: They think– technology insulates it from us. Like we don't
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: have to worry about being cold right now because like
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: I got a heater in my house. I got AC.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, my food comes to me,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 2: you know, from DoorDash. And so I don't have to
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: like hump the bear to eat. And yeah, those things
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: are true. But, you know, evolution never stopped happening. Maybe
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: right now, the thing that we're evolutionarily selecting for is
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: being able to deal with certain pollutants in our atmosphere.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, right.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: We don't know what evolution is doing right now with us.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: That's right. You know, we, we, evolution never stops. It
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: doesn't stop for humans. It doesn't stop for any other.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: We're all of its mice.
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: We're all guinea pigs in this, in this plan. But
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: the forces that are molding us right now are different.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: The planet's warming. That's molding us. We are subject to
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: different environmental pollutants. That's molding us. Maybe right now it's
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: going to turn out that we're being selected for people
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: who can tolerate microplastics in their body, right? Because that
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: is something in our environment that didn't used to be there.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: That wasn't an evolutionary pressure. That mattered— a hundred years ago,
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: but it matters right now. So yeah, evolution's still happening. Yeah.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: We're all, yeah. It's constantly like the experiment is ongoing.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: Ooh, that's pretty fascinating when you think about it like that.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: When you, when you, you mentioned microplastics.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: That's like a fear right now. Like I've honestly started
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: to buy like, um, cotton underpants and stuff like that?
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: Because I'm just like, you start to wonder, well, how
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: are things getting into our system, right? Do you have
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of fear? Is that like a fear in
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: the scientific community?
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I don't think you have to worry about your underpants.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, unless you're eating them for lunch, I think
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: you're fine. I got to worry about things you're ingesting
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: or inhaling, things that have an obvious way of getting in. Yeah. right?
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: You know, so, you know, yeah, yeah. Worry about microplastics
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: in your water, in your food, that you inhale, you know,
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: that are in your cookware that might get, you know,
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: those are valid things to be concerned about. You know,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: if there are, you know, if there's a plastic band
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: in your underpants, there probably isn't really a way that
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: that plastic's getting in your body. Got it. Yeah.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: We, we have been, we've been evolving as humans, right?
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: If we develop too much technology, are we still humans
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: at a certain point or do we have to like
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: reclassify ourselves or something? Does that make any sense?
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, maybe where you're going at is like
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: if we all have Elon's brain implant. Yeah.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: You know, so Elon's got this company and other people
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: have these companies where they're trying to, you know, build
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: something that would actually be implanted in your brain and,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe you could have a device that would
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: enhance your perception or your cognition like you could see
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: in the infrared or You could remember everything that's on
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: the internet, things of– this kind of science fiction stuff
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: that you could imagine in the future. And if that
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: were to come to pass, well, then I think, yeah,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: fundamentally you would have to think are we still Homo
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: sapiens or are we Homo sapiens muscensis? I don't know.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, muscensis. I see. Like that's the evolution of it, right?
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: Because they would probably name the evolution after whatever ever
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: owned it. Well, and then– Right.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: I'm deeply skeptical of everything corporate, right?
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I get an implant in my brain. What
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: am I going to get? I'm going to get ads.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: Well, like, you know, you ever read the science fiction
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: writer named Philip K. Dick? You know, he was the
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: guy who wrote the stories that were the basis for
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: films like Blade Runner and, you know, a lot of
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: our other famous science fiction films. He was a writer
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: who was active in the 60s and the 70s, Man
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: in the High Castle.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: For example, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep became Blade Runner.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: So he'd be a cool person to talk to.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: Minority Report, right? That film came from Philip K.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: Dick.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: Wow. Right? Lots of famous science fiction stories came from
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: his work. Well, things that got made into shows or films. And,
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: you know, yeah, he had in Blade Runner, you know,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: you're walking down the street and things are being beamed
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: into your retina.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: You know, like the government wants you to go off
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: world and see another planet or they want you to
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: buy this thing or, you know, this company wants you
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 2: to do that. And so, yeah, people have been imagining
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: this for a long time. The science fiction writers are
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: always ahead of the curve.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: I remember when I was a kid, when I was
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: a really nerdy kid and I read a lot of
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: science fiction, there were stories about this thing that hadn't
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: happened yet. It was called a computer virus. And everyone
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: was going, oh, could that ever really happen? Could that
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: be a thing? Yeah, some code that could hop from
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: computer to computer and infect it and mess with it
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: and make it do things. And people were like, oh,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: could this ever really happen? Oh, maybe that's just science fiction.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, it happened big time, right? And
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: that's our world. right now. So, you know, this is
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: one of the many examples where science fiction writers were
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: ahead of the curve in imagining the future.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, we're living in our own future. That's
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: the crazy part sometimes, you know? Like the thing we
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: imagined when we were kids, like we're living in it,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: you know? Sometimes it happens so gradually, you just don't
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: even notice little parts of it.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not all bleak. Let me put it
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: that way, right? You know, it's not all bleak, right?
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: You know, and, you know, Being a biomedical researcher, I
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: think about this a lot. Cancer is the area where
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: perhaps it's been the most dramatic, right? There's a kind
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: of leukemia called ALL, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. It used to
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 2: be if your kid had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, 95% they
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 2: were going to die. Forget it. No hope. Now it's
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: the other way around. 95% of kids with ALL are
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: going to live and thrive. And this is happening more
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: and more. We're at the precipice of fundamental new cures.
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 2: So there's a very bad kind of cancer called multiple myeloma.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: It's a blood cancer, but it causes your bones to
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: get brittle. Not only is the prognosis really bad, but
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: it's a really, really bad, painful way to die. There
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: are indications right now. There's an engineered T-cell therapy where
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: they take cells from your blood, take them out of
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: your body, genetically modify them and put them back in.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: People are thinking it might even be a cure for
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: multiple myeloma. It's amazing. I mean, right now it costs
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: a million dollars and only a few people can get it,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: but there's going to be a point where that's the
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: standard of care. for people all around the world. So,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: you know, let's not all be doom and gloom entirely
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: about technological change.
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: It's a great point.
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: A lot of it is going to be really good, but,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: you know, it depends upon biomedical research.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just about to ask you about that. Yeah,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: I know we had mentioned before we even started talking
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: that the government is cutting or potentially cutting funding for
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: biomedical research. How does... What does that look like realistically?
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: And then how does that– how could that affect our
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: everyday lives?
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, it turns out that it is a potential
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: absolute disaster for biomedical research. So in the president's budget
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: for the next year, 40 percent cut to the National
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 2: Institutes of Health, about the same to the National Science Foundation.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 2: This would devastate biomedical research. It would basically– it would basically,
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: you know, turn off the tap. So many promising things
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: would be lost. There is so much right now that's
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: changing in terms of new therapies for cancer, for neurological illness,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: new devices, new therapies. You know, just think about things
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: that you know about in your own life, like... like
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: these weight control and diabetes drugs, these GLP-1s, right? They've
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: only been around for a couple of years, right?
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: And those are, you're talking about like Ozempic and Westwego
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: or whatever?
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound, these drugs, like they are saving lives, right?
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: You know, it's not just like, oh, I want to
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: look better, right? It's helping people with diabetes. It's helping
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: liver disease, heart disease. It's remarkable how... useful they are.
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: And you might say, well, all right, but didn't this
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: just come about from drug companies? Didn't drug companies do that?
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: Well, no.
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: The fundamental, the basic research that gave the drug companies
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: the idea, it came from funding from the federal government.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: The federal government does the basic research. And sometimes, like,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: these are the sort of things that people like to
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: make fun of and they think our money's being wasted.
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: So you ever heard of a lizard called a Gila monster?
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 2: Right? So they're out in the desert in Arizona and
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 2: places like that, and they've got venom. And in their venom,
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: there's something that looks like this hormone called GLP-1. GLP-1
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: is the hormone that's secreted by your small intestine That
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: goes to your brain and suppresses your appetite, and that's
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: the basis. That's what these drugs like Ozempic mimic. They're
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: like GLP-1 with some– natural GLP-1 with some modifications. Now,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 2: the problem, you might say, well, people knew about GLP-1.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: Why can't you just take GLP-1 and inject it into
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: your body? And the reason is it's broken down in
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 2: your bloodstream like in a minute or two. It doesn't
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: linger long enough. It turns out that there are modifications
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: in the Gila monster venom GLP-1-like molecule that make it
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: linger and last. And that was the innovation that allowed
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: these drug companies to make these long-lasting compounds that allow
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: you to suppress appetite and lose weight. And they also
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: seem to have anti-inflammatory properties. So the receptors for the
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: GLP-1 What it binds to to make it work is
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: not just in your brain to suppress your appetite. Those
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: receptors are in your heart. They're in your liver. They're
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: in your kidneys. They're in all kinds of organs. They're
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: in your guts. And they seem to have additional beneficial
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: properties beyond just losing weight. But this kind of innovation
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: would never happen if it weren't for the United States
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: government funding fundamental biomedical research. The kind of thing that
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: somebody in the Senate might get up and say, these
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: eggheads are wasting our money on studying Gila monster venom.
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: What a waste of your taxpayer dollars. This is such bullshit.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: But really, where did it get us? It got us
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: to a fundamental medical breakthrough that helps everybody.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What are some of the other positive effects of that?
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: That's a great point, man, because you would just hear, yeah,
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: they were studying like drool from a– baby walrus or whatever,
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: but where did it get us, right? So yeah, bring up,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: what are the other positive effects of GLP-1? I never
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: really looked at this. I hear about it all the time.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: Well, so like one interesting claim that's being made right
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: now is that these drugs to help suppress appetite also
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: help other compulsive behaviors, whether it's drug addiction, compulsive shopping, gambling.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: The GLP-1 receptor agonists, like semiglutide, show promise in reducing
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: alcohol and opioid use disorders by targeting reward pathways in
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: the brain and reducing cravings. They may also help by
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: calming the stress response and reducing drug-seeking behaviors. However, more
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: research is needed to fully understand their effectiveness and safety
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: in addiction treatment.
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: Are there side effects of GLP-1?
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are. Sometimes people get constipated on them. Sometimes
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: people feel nauseated.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: Shit, I get constipated off a bad waffle. Look, dude,
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: I'm willing to risk it.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: And some people feel tired sometimes. So there are some
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: side effects, and sometimes they can be serious enough that
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: people will want to quit the drug because they can't
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: handle the side effects. But mostly the side effects are
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: not bad. Yeah, it doesn't look like it. And there
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: are even some hints. It's early days. I wouldn't bet
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 2: my money on this, but there are some hints that
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: it may actually be beneficial in terms of likelihood of
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: developing Alzheimer's disease. Yeah, and there are some potential benefits
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: for Parkinson's disease as well. So, you know— Do.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: You— go on.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: You know, right now, every drug company in the world
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: is making another drug for this. There's an absolute gold
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: rush for them. So right now, you know, Lilly's got
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: one drug. Novo Nordisk drug company has got another drug. Oh, yeah,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: they're all popping off. But there are many, many, many
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: of them in the pipeline and clinical trials. And so
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: these– we'll know more about their positive effects on things
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: like kidney and liver disease, but we'll also know more
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: about their effects on behavior, on compulsive behaviors like that. shopping, gambling,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: drug addiction, you know, which, you know, anything we can
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: do to help people get clean, you know, you know,
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: is a godsend.
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure, man.
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: Look, I've been down that road myself. I do want
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: to look at what are Trump's proposed budget cuts on that? 40%.
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: Documents released late last week are providing new details about
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: the breadth and depth of the spending cuts the White
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: House is asking Congress to make to public health and
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: biomedical research programs in the 2020 fiscal year that begins
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: on October 1st. Among other things, the plans call for
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: deeper spending and staff cuts at the Centers for Disease
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Control and Prevention, CDC, and were outlined in a less
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: detailed skinny budget. Yeah, and then scroll down to the
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: other places you noticed. Okay, the request largely confirms cuts
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: outlined in documents that leaked last month. It proposes to
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: cut NIH's discretionary budget by about 40% or $ 18 billion
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: to $ 27. 5 billion and consolidate NIH's 27 institutes and centers
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: into just eight. The reorganization would preserve National Institute of
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a couple of other places, but
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: eliminate institutes studying minority health, alternative medicine, nursing, and global health.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: The remaining institutes would be folded into four new ones.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: Biomedical research proponents sharply criticized the proposed cuts. If the
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: proposal is enacted, Americans today and tomorrow will be sicker, poor,
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: and die younger. Why do they want to do this,
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: I wonder?
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I mean, some of it has to
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: do with, you know, they want to save money. I
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: don't think this is a place to save money. Something
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: that has to do with an actual hatred for academic
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: scientists and people in the public health world. You know,
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: I think it's become a partisan issue in a way
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: it shouldn't be, right? Everybody gets sick and everybody benefits.
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: from new therapies. For years and years and years, it
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 2: didn't matter what side of the aisle you were on.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: Republicans supported biomedical research. Democrats supported biomedical research. It was
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 2: something that people agree on. Now, just in this last time,
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: really since COVID, it started to get really politicized. And
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: the Trump administration will tell you, oh, this is waste, fraud,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: and abuse, or this all has to do with DEI efforts,
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: and that's the only stuff we're cutting. But It's nonsense. 40%,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: it's a fucking hatchet, right? It's not just, oh, we
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: got rid of a few bad studies that were misguided
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 2: or some waste or fraud that we found over here.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: It's like we are going to cut it down to
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: the bone. And when that happens, the therapy is to
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: help everyone's families for cancer, for heart disease, for mental health,
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: for everything that you're hoping for, new therapies and cures.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 2: all that stuff's coming to a screeching halt. And the
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: United States has been the world leader on this. This
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 2: is a place where America absolutely kicks ass. We are
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: the acknowledged world leader in biomedical research. And to give
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: it up would be the stupidest fucking thing we could
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: possibly do.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: How much of the funding is negatively influenced by big
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: pharmacy stuff. I'm just wondering, because otherwise I don't understand
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: this doesn't make that much sense.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: Just to be clear, this funding doesn't go to drug companies.
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: This funding goes to research institutes, it goes to universities,
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 2: and it goes to the NIH itself in Bethesda, Maryland,
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: where some of the research is done. This funding, by
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: and large, this isn't a way that the government is
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: subsidizing Pfizer or Lilly or any of these giant corporations.
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: These corporations are really good at taking an idea and
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: turning it into a product, right? Okay. They're not good
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: at the basic research that gives the idea to do
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: it in the first place.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: Is there anything in there that tells? Pentagon. That's defense stuff.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: That's horrible. Department of Homeland Security. I feel like all
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: these people are building us up to be in some
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: type of a war. I don't even know. It's very
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: scary days. Oh, the budget proposal aims to cut funding
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: for research related to radical gender ideology and diverse racialism.
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: That sounds so vague.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: Well, the truth is that– yeah. So there have been
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 2: some grants that do involve stuff like that. But it's
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction, right? Don't believe that
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: 40 percent of the NIH has to do with studying
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: things like trans folks. I mean, I think it's perfectly
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 2: legitimate to study trans folks myself.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I'm curious about them. Most people are curious.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: Even if you think that's bad, that's like a tiny,
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: tiny fraction of the NIH. There's not 40% of that
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: to be cut.
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: I wish we could talk to someone who was involved
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: with– I don't know if it's Doge or what the
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: exact group is that's organizing a lot of these proposed cuts.
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: Well, you've had RFK Jr. on here.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: So, you know, he's— Maybe if we get to have
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: him back on, we get to talk to him about it.
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 2: You know, he's the one who's involved in this and
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: the new head of the NIH and the new head
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: of the CDC. That's a great point. These are all
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: folks that are fundamental to this.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What did that article say about RFK I saw,
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: the one part? Let me see. The budget request reflects
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: priorities advanced by the Department of Health and Human Services
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., including a focus on food
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: additives and chronic diseases at the expense of infectious disease
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: studies and a real-world data platform to allow scientists to
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: study the causes of autism. Oh, that's awesome. It also
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: proposes using artificial intelligence and big data analysis to research
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: the exposome, the collection of environmental factors that can influence
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: human health. So I wonder if they're just trying to
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: redirect it to things that he cares more about.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: Well, so I think the thing to realize is, first
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: of all, it's a 40% cut. So it's not like
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: you're taking the same pot of money and then just
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 2: reshuffling around to different priorities. First of all, you start
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: with a 40% cut. And then the 60% that's left,
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: you're going to take away from stuff like vaccines and
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: put it into bullshit clothes, you know. Cold plunge therapy
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: and other stuff that are his pet projects, you know.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: I'm curious why.
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 2: Let me just be clear. There are some things where
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: I really agree with RFK Jr. He is absolutely right
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: that we should be taking a closer look at food additives.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: He is absolutely right that ultra-processed foods are a big
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: problem in health. And he is absolutely right that environmental
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: pollutants are a big problem in health and there should
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: be a lot more attention paid to that. Where I
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 2: get off the bus has to do with cutting all
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: these other areas that are so very, very promising. And
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: also with some of the other very unproven things that
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: he has advocated for. So for example, the drug Ivermectin,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 2: he's a big fan of it for COVID and other things.
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: It's nonsense. It doesn't work. It's not true. It's fraudulent.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: Don't believe it.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: I've had friends that have taken it. They've had success
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, that's the reason we don't make
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: biomedical policy based on anecdotes that something that happened to
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: our buddy, right?
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: We do.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: We do studies for it.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: You know, and so, you know, like like like I
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: go and I take some vitamin C and I feel
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 2: better for my cold. Well, maybe I was going to
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: get better anyway. We don't know. Yeah.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe the vitamin C did something. Well, what's the way
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: to know that you have to do a real controlled
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: study the way the proper way.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: Assuming that the that there aren't budget cuts or even
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: assuming that there are. Right. What do you feel like
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: the next 10 years of biomedical research looks like?
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's going to involve a lot of
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: really exciting things that we're on the precipice of. One
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 2: of them is really finally realizing the promise of individualized medicine.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: In other words, you go in, you give a little blood,
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: or they scrape the cells from your cheek, they read
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: a lot of your genetic situation, and they know how
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 2: to give therapies that are precisely designed for you for
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: the very best outcome and the few side effects. This
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: is the sort of thing that's already happening in cancer, right?
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: Like it used to be like you went and you'd say, oh,
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 2: you got lung cancer. All right, well, we're going to
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 2: treat you generically for lung cancer with the thing that
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 2: works the best for the most amount of people. But
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: it turns out that like depending on the flavor of
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: what's in your tumor, actually it For some people, it
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: might be much better to get this one. And some people,
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: it might be better to get that one, right? And
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: this is something where AI is actually, and machine learning
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: are extremely valuable. Another thing that's extraordinarily exciting is the
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: use of gene editing technology, so-called CRISPR. You may have
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: heard that term. CRISPR is a technology for changing your DNA.
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: So what this is, if you have kids that are
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: born with these rare genetic diseases where there's a disease
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 2: where where you can't do your metabolism right and you
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: build up ammonia in your body, and these kids die
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: within a few years, right? So right now, there's great
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: promise for using CRISPR to be able to modify their
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: DNA to correct the genetic deficit. And allow them to
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: live normally. This is just starting right now. It's the
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: very dawn of the age of CRISPR therapy. But the
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: next 10, 20 years are going to see this sort
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: of thing explode.
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: Is AI helping us?
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: AI is helping us massively because there are certain sort
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: of things where you want to– what you want to
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: know is like– What happens when you put a thousand
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: different variables that you measure from your blood test, from
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: testing your DNA, in to predict what the best therapy
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: is for you or how you are likely to respond
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: to a different drug or antibody or something like that?
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: And AI is extraordinarily good. There is a fellow named
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 2: Eric Topol at the Scripps Institute just wrote a book
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: called Super Agers that is really excellent. And he spends
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: a long time talking about the promise of AI and
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 2: big data in the next era of medicine. He'd be
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: a wonderful person for you to– for you to have
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: on the podcast. Thank you, David.
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to check that out.
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: Super agers. Yeah.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: Do you think, I wonder if one of the reasons
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: why they could be, or one of the reasons why
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: they're even could be proposing budget cuts if they think
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: that AI could, would it save money, you think, for research?
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: No, AI is a good, in other words, bringing AI
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: to medicine is a good idea. I mean, it's not
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: always a good idea, but there are many areas where it,
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: It is genuine. It's not like doing things with AI
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: is going to allow you to achieve economies of scale
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: or cut this or do things in fundamentally different ways
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: so much as it's another tool in the armamentarium. There's
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 2: nothing wrong with bringing AI to biomedical research. Right. What's
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: wrong is that 40% cut. And it's not just that.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: They're doing dirty tricks, right? Congress allocates money for biomedical research,
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 2: and then right now the administration is just slow walking
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: actually allocating it. So the rate at which the money
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: is actually getting to the scientists to support the research
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: is only about half the level that it was the
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: previous year. And this is– illegal and unconstitutional. The Constitution
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: says the power of the purse resides with Congress. And,
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: you know, the executive branch is saying, well, no, we're
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 2: not really doing anything. But, you know, if you want
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: to throw sand in the gears, if you want to
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: slow things down and screw things up, it's so there's
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: a million ways.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: To do it. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, the same
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: thing happened. We had like a Border Patrol guy on
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: and he said that they would arrest the same guys
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: over and over again. and the executive, the judicial branch,
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: they would never process any of them. So it was like,
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: these parties just keep kind of finding ways. There's always
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: a way for them to choose to make things tougher
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 1: on the regular person, I feel like, you know?
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there are ways to get around, to claim
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: you're not doing something, but really do it. Claim you're
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: not cutting biomedical research.
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: Point at the next guy.
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: But, you know, actually just will slow down getting the
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: money out there. And fundamentally, you're cutting biomedical research. Or
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: in this case, The Trump administration is actually saying, yeah,
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: we want to cut 40%, and that's a good idea.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 2: And then what it's really going to be is more
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: than 40% because it's going to be 60%, and then
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 2: they're going to throw the sand in the gears of
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 2: the 60, and it'll be even less than that.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: I'd love to get to talk with Bobby Kennedy again
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: to learn more about that. So hopefully I'll get that opportunity,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: and if I do, I'll make sure to bring that up.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: Please do.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. I think one thing that
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: makes us America also is that we are always trying
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: to be at the forefront that we are trying to research,
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out the best way. Right. And trying
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: to figure out new ways.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: I think that's one thing that's always made us America. Um, Oh,
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: your cancer diagnosis. Can I get an update on it?
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: Is that okay to ask?
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's totally okay to ask. Thanks for asking, actually. So, yeah,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 2: four years ago, I had a giant tumor removed from
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 2: my heart. It was a kind of cancer called synovial sarcoma.
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 2: The tumor was about the size of a Coke can.
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 2: I know. It was a crazy, awful surgery. And the
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: tumor had grown into the wall of my heart. So
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: in the end, they couldn't take it all away. They
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 2: could take away most of it, but the part that
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: was in the wall of my heart, if they took that,
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: I'd have a hole and my heart would be broken
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: and I would have died right there on the table.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: So I got out of that. They biopsied it. They said, yeah,
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: it's this malignancy. And the oncologist said, you got six
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: to 18 months to live. Well, that was over four
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: years ago. And so I'm feeling very fortunate to still
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 2: be here. I didn't expect to still be here. The
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 2: amazing thing is during all this time, the only thing
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: that's made me feel bad has been the therapy. In
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 2: other words, recovering from the surgery made me feel bad.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: The chemo, the radiation made me feel bad. But I've
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 2: never actually had any symptoms from the tumor yet. I
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: got like so now the tumor is like the size
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: of a walnut and it's in the wall of my
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: heart and it means my heart muscle can't work quite
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 2: as well as efficiently. So like I can't do really
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: high intensity exercise like like I can't really run full out.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: I used to like to downhill ski. I don't downhill
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: ski anymore.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, bummer.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: But, you know, pretty much everything else that I want
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: to do, I can do. You know, I can be
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: completely active in my world. And so, you know, so
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: one of the things is that it's made me really
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 2: interested in cancer. Honestly, before I thought cancer was kind
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: of a boring area of biology. Oh, cells start to
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: grow and they keep growing. It's important for people's lives,
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: but intellectually, I don't really care about it. Now, of course,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: I'm really interested in it. And one of the things
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: that is most interesting to me is that it's come
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: full circle. So I'm a brain researcher. I got cancer.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 2: It turns out what we're learning now is that most
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: solid tumors in the body eventually become innervated. In other words,
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: nerves come from the brain and the spinal cord, and
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: they come to the tumor, and they wrap around, and
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: they send messages. And when tumors get innervated, it's almost
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 2: always bad news. When a tumor gets innervated, it means
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: your prognosis is worse. The chance of it spreading is more.
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: The chance of the tumor growing is more.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 1: And the innervation happens so that the user will know
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: they have the tumor?
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: No, you're not. This is all subconscious. In other words,
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: you don't feel it. It's like I can't go, oh, yeah,
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: I feel the tumor in my heart right now. I
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 2: can't do that.
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: But why does the brain do that?
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: Well, we don't know. We don't know. But it happens.
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 2: But here's the interesting thing, right? So people ask me.
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: You know, why are you still alive after four years?
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: To what do you attribute it? And I say, when
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 2: I say this, I am not being like woo-woo or metaphorical.
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: I'm saying I attribute it to the love of my wife,
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: a wonderful wife. She is the best. And I say
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: my wife's love is keeping me alive. And like that
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 2: sounds like some very airy, fairy, kumbaya kind of thing
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: to say, but what's exciting to me is that like
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: there may well be a biological basis to this. When
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: I receive my wife's love, my brain's reward circuitry, those
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area that we were
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: talking about before, they light up, they fire. We now
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 2: know from studies in laboratory animals that when those neurons fire,
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: it activates the immune system in a way that can
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: fight cancer.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: Love will keep us alive.
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 2: Love will keep us alive, right? Love will not tear
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 2: us apart, like Joy Division said. Love will keep us alive.
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: And so I think that there are potential biological ways
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 2: in which These things that we think of acting on
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: sort of the spiritual level, love and faith and community,
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 2: can affect your body and the progression of disease. I
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: think the way that happens isn't a mystical way. Ultimately,
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: it's a biological way, and ultimately we'll understand that. And
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: that's what my new book is going to be about.
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 2: My new book, which I'm writing right now, won't be
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 2: out for quite a while, is going to be called
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: The Real Science of Mind-Body-Health. And it's going to be
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 2: about exactly that.
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: Let's go, David. Man, that's so fascinating because you're talking
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: about like a cross between what we're talking about throughout this.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: We've talked about love. We started off talking about love.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: And we talked about faith and science and how they
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: don't have to be just one or the other. Right.
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: And then see a moment really where your wife's, your
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: faith and your love that you have with your wife,
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: something that's tangible, that's real.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: And how that makes you feel. scientifically affects the way
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: your body feels and behaves.
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: That's right. And we kind of know this already. So
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 2: you've probably heard of the placebo effect, right? A sugar
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 2: pill or a sham injection. Placebo effect, the best thing
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: it's for is chronic pain. Placebo effect is a pretty
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 2: strong effect for chronic pain. But how does the placebo
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 2: effect work? Well, it turns out that if you give
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: people Narcan, you know, this drug that you use to
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 2: save people if they're having like a fentanyl or a
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 2: heroin overdose, it blocks the receptors for both, you know,
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: fentanyl and heroin, but also your body's own natural morphine-like molecules,
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: the endorphins. This drug will block the placebo effect. So
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 2: the placebo effect, you think, oh, it's a psychological thing.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: It acts on this different realm. It acts in the
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 2: cloud somehow. No, it doesn't. It acts on the damn
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 2: mu opioid receptor. It's a biological thing, right? So the
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 2: idea that the thoughts you have, the beliefs you have,
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 2: your emotional state can affect your brain and your body
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: in fundamental ways to do things like change the progression
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: of your cancer or to change your chronic pain, to
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: influence depression and anxiety, these are, you know, these are
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: areas that I think are some of the most fascinating
• 2:10:18
  Speaker 2: things to research. And there's going to be an explosion
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: of this in the next 10 years. Let's go.
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: Well, that's very exciting, man. I appreciate you for coming
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: and helping us think about stuff. I appreciate you for
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: thinking about, like, how we feel and some of the
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 1: sciences behind it. And just for answering some of my questions, man,
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: I couldn't be more grateful for your time. And are
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: you going to be okay with your health? What's the latest?
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I go in and I get a
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 2: scan every six months. And at any point they could say, sorry, dude,
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 2: the scan, you know, your cancer's now spread to your
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 2: liver or your lungs. And then things would be a
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: lot worse. And I'd have to decide, you know, do
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 2: I do another round of chemo? Do I do surgery?
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: Do I say, fuck it?
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: No.
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 2: But fortunately that hasn't happened. I get the scan every
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: six months and so far it's been okay. But in
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: planning your life– so I closed my lab because my
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: lab is full of people who are– who are getting
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 2: their training, you know, they're getting their PhD, they're getting
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: their postdoctoral training. If I kick off in the middle
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: of their training, they're out of luck. Like it's really
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: bad for them. So I don't think morally that I
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: can take somebody on new in my lab if I
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: can't guarantee that I can see them through to the
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 2: end of their training. And so when I got diagnosed
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: four years ago, I told the people in my lab,
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: I said, hey guys, you know, you might want to
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: bail out because, you know, I'll support you because, you know,
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: I can't guarantee I'm still going to be here. And,
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: you know, They all stuck with me. Man, I don't know, really.
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 2: They all stuck with me. And I thought, oh, man,
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 2: I really can't die now because I don't want them
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: to be screwed because they were loyal.
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of reasons to want to be alive,
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 2: but that's one of them is to not screw your
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 2: good friends and the people you work with. And so
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 2: fortunately— They all got to move through, do their projects,
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 2: publish their papers, get new jobs, move on to the
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 2: next stage of their life in a natural way. Last November,
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: the last dude in my lab finished. He's done. I
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 2: closed the door on the lab. So I still work
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: at Hopkins. Now I teach more. I write more. I
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 2: do a little more admin work. but I'm still a
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: Hopkins professor. And, and, and so, yeah, I'm living life to,
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: to its fullest, but you know, at any moment, the
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: hammer could drop.
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: Well, let's hope the hammer stays alive and vigilant and
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: far away from dropping, man.
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you so much for, well, thank you, man.
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: Thank you for researching. You start to realize how important
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: research is to even just talking to, you know, and how,
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: and then it's like, You being a person that's dealing
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: with this right now, you just you're like a living
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: example of, you know, hearing you say that it's powerful
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: because it's like we need research in order to help
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 1: people that are sick, you know, and it's just important.
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: So I just think, yeah, and just the power that
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: we can have to help each other and the science behind,
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: you know, believing in one another, all of that. It's
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: just really, man, I can't thank you more for your time.
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure to be here. Yeah.
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: You have your book, Unique, The New Science of Human Individuality.
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: And you're working on a new project. Keep working on stuff, man.
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: I just, yeah, I'm excited to hear more and just
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: be able to have another conversation down the line.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: All right. Well, maybe you can have me back when
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 2: the new book comes out. That would be fun.
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds cool, man.
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: All right, David. Lyndon, thank you so much.
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: All right. Thanks so much, Theo. It's been a pure
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 2: delight to me.
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 4: Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 4: I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh,
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 4: but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 4: of mind I found. I can feel it in my bones.
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 2: But it's gonna take...