Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / The Neuroscience of Empathy: Why Brains Need Friends w/ Dr. Ben Rein (Stanford Scientist)

Transcript

The Neuroscience of Empathy: Why Brains Need Friends w/ Dr. Ben Rein (Stanford Scientist) · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

• 0:00
  I am going to ask you a question that was sent to you by my
• 0:03
  partner and she says this, She says from your perspective,
• 0:06
  what's the most exciting or surprising discovery about the
• 0:10
  brain in recent years? We think for a minute, Oh my
• 0:13
  gosh, there's so many. Let me give you 1 from my book
• 0:16
  that so. Welcome to the King Dems
• 0:24
  Podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people
• 0:27
  and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world.
• 0:31
  From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we
• 0:33
  uncover the mindset, strategy, and grit behind greatness.
• 0:37
  Whether it's business, culture, or personal growth, we ask the
• 0:40
  real questions. This isn't just conversation,
• 0:43
  it's transformation. The Kingdom's podcast, Your next
• 0:46
  breakthrough starts here. Music licencing reimagined.
• 0:52
  Before we dive back into today's conversation, I want to share
• 0:54
  something important. This episode includes a pay
• 0:56
  partnership with Better Help, a platform designed to make
• 0:58
  starting therapy easier. I know from my own journey as a
• 1:00
  leader and entrepreneur that life can sometimes feel
• 1:01
  overwhelming. There are seasons, severe
• 1:03
  stress, uncertainty, and pressure build up, and you need
• 1:05
  a safe space to process it all that severe therapy comes in.
• 1:07
  Therapy isn't only for people facing clinical challenges.
• 1:09
  It's the space to reflect, grow, and find better ways to my
• 1:12
  stress, relationships and pessima goals.
• 1:14
  It takes the courage to seek help, but it's also one of the
• 1:16
  smartest investments you can make in your mental and
• 1:18
  emotional world. That's why I'm proud to
• 1:20
  highlight. Better help with better help.
• 1:21
  Think you feel out of a short question there and get match to
• 1:24
  the credential therapist in just a couple of days.
• 1:25
  If the first match doesn't feel like the right field, you can
• 1:28
  easily switch therapist at no actual cost until you find
• 1:30
  someone who should connect with you.
• 1:31
  Inside the platform, you also find tools like Donelline and
• 1:33
  group sessions on different topics that can support your
• 1:35
  growth. And with over 7000 reviews and
• 1:36
  4.5 trustpathy, reason, Better Help is a platform you can rely
• 1:39
  on. So if you feel like you'd
• 1:40
  benefit from talking to a therapist, visit
• 1:41
  betterhelp.com/contained. That's betterhelp.com/contained
• 1:44
  to get 10% off your first mother therapy.
• 1:46
  Once again, this is a big partnership with Better Help and
• 1:48
  I encourage you to take that first step if you've been
• 1:50
  thinking about it. Sometimes the best you can make
• 1:52
  ease in. Yourself real life, ladies and
• 1:55
  gentlemen, you'll once again welcome to the Kingdom's
• 1:58
  podcast. And today I've got with me a V
• 2:02
  VIP14 out of New York, United States of America.
• 2:07
  Mick, welcome, Doctor Benjamin Ryan.
• 2:12
  How are you, Doctor Ben? I'm great man, Thanks for having
• 2:15
  me. It's good to be here.
• 2:17
  Wow, wow, finally, finally six months in the making.
• 2:21
  And of course, you know, we finally have you here.
• 2:24
  And before we hit the record button, I was saying it like it
• 2:28
  feels like this man is not just a genius.
• 2:31
  This man is also a seer. Probably he sees the future.
• 2:37
  I think we should have futurist to to your list of titles
• 2:41
  because you actually did like a perfect timing on the better
• 2:47
  help partnership. So better help reached out to me
• 2:51
  last week to become a brand partner with them.
• 2:57
  And you know, this is highly, highly connected to the work
• 3:01
  that you do to mental health. It's a therapy and it's it's a
• 3:06
  good time. It's a good time to be on the
• 3:08
  podcast and you actually timed it perfectly.
• 3:11
  So I appreciate you and of course, like I like to see in
• 3:16
  every of my episodes, gratitude is good attitude.
• 3:20
  When a person shares their time with you, they share their life
• 3:23
  with you because the SI unit for measuring life is time.
• 3:27
  So I will give you your flowers. Please sit back and let me read
• 3:31
  out your introduction. So ladies and gentlemen, to do I
• 3:35
  have the pleasure of speaking with Doctor Benjamin Brain, a
• 3:39
  neuroscientist, educator and award-winning science
• 3:42
  communicator. Doctor Ben is the Chief Science
• 3:46
  Officer of the Mind Science Foundation and adjunct
• 3:49
  instructor at Stanford University and founder of the
• 3:53
  Aspiring scientists Collision supporting students in over 75
• 3:58
  countries. He's groundbreaking research
• 4:01
  spans autism spectrum disorder, empathy and the neurobiology of
• 4:07
  social behaviour, and he has authored more than 20 peer
• 4:12
  reviewed papers. Beyond the laboratory.
• 4:15
  Doctor Ben reaches over 1,000,000 people worldwide with
• 4:19
  educational science videos on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube,
• 4:23
  where he breaks down complex neuroscience and tackles
• 4:26
  misinformation head on. His mission is to see is to make
• 4:30
  science accessible, accurate and inspiring.
• 4:34
  And today we're diving deep into his journey, research and
• 4:38
  impact. Once again, ladies and
• 4:40
  gentlemen, make welcome Doctor Ben Rain.
• 4:45
  Thank you for that intro by the way, because you know IA lot of
• 4:48
  the time people when I'm introduced, they'll just use the
• 4:50
  bio I have on my like website or whatever.
• 4:53
  But I could tell you, you really you customised that and I
• 4:56
  appreciate that. It means a lot really.
• 4:58
  Brother, we, we, we do our research here, you know, and of
• 5:00
  course, that is why we're climbing the global rankings.
• 5:04
  I'll tell you these. Well deserved.
• 5:06
  Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
• 5:08
  You know, as at the time of recording, we are currently
• 5:12
  global top 2.5% and the goal is to make it to the global top 1%.
• 5:20
  I think you're going to do it. Absolutely with you on the show
• 5:23
  come on collaboration, teamwork makes the dream work.
• 5:27
  You know that's right. This dream is going to
• 5:30
  absolutely work we're going to smash it we are going to smash
• 5:33
  it. Let's.
• 5:34
  Do it. Wow.
• 5:36
  So let's go back to, you know, where it all started.
• 5:39
  You know your journey and your vision.
• 5:41
  What really you know initially treats you to neuroscience.
• 5:45
  And how did empathy and social behaviour become central to your
• 5:49
  research focus? Man, my relationship with
• 5:53
  neuroscience started way before I knew it started.
• 5:58
  It really began for me honestly in, in grade school, elementary
• 6:01
  school, I remember looking around my cafeteria, sitting at
• 6:06
  lunch and eating my sandwich or whatever and just noticing that
• 6:10
  there was the kids naturally distributed by like social
• 6:14
  behaviour. And, and you know, I, that's not
• 6:16
  how I thought about it when I was like 7 years old.
• 6:18
  But I noticed that there were really outgoing groups of
• 6:21
  children and then they were really shy, quiet groups, you
• 6:24
  know, and you see this everywhere now as an adult, you
• 6:26
  can look around a bar, a pub, you know, a library, a concert,
• 6:30
  whatever, you name it. You look around, you can see
• 6:32
  this distribution of how people treat and act towards others.
• 6:36
  And I thought that was really interesting when I was young
• 6:38
  because I was, I was like, why? Why are some people really
• 6:41
  outgoing and others are really shy?
• 6:43
  But I didn't think about it obviously from a neuroscience
• 6:45
  lens. But later on when I got to my,
• 6:48
  my college, I was studying psychology and I was interested
• 6:52
  in that. I was interested in social
• 6:54
  psychology, why people act the way they do and, you know, in
• 6:57
  social interactions. And I knew I had an interest in
• 6:59
  the brain. I knew I had some, like there
• 7:01
  was something inside of me that said the brain is the
• 7:04
  interesting part. It's not about the behaviour,
• 7:06
  it's about what's driving the behaviour, right.
• 7:08
  Like this organ, this mysterious organ up here in the dark.
• 7:10
  What's it doing? And but I was afraid of
• 7:13
  neuroscience. Honestly, I was.
• 7:14
  I was. Everybody thinks you have to be
• 7:16
  a genius to to be a neuroscientist.
• 7:18
  I don't know. And I.
• 7:20
  Didn't well, I didn't believe in myself And, and you know, the
• 7:23
  reality is if you want to become a neuroscientist or you want to
• 7:26
  become, you know, any sort of scientist or doctor, whatever,
• 7:28
  you have to take, you know, genetics, molecular biology,
• 7:30
  biochemistry, all these really challenging courses.
• 7:34
  And I didn't know if I had it in me.
• 7:35
  I was really intimidated by that.
• 7:37
  And so I stayed studying psychology for a while, kind of
• 7:41
  feeling like I was doing the wrong thing but not willing to
• 7:44
  confront it. And then in my second year of
• 7:48
  college, I had the most terrifying nightmare of my life.
• 7:51
  And I'll spare you the details of the nightmare, but the
• 7:53
  important part is that I woke up and I sat up in bed and I
• 7:56
  thought, Oh my goodness, how did my brain do that?
• 8:00
  How did my brain generate this whole environment, this world
• 8:04
  that I was interacting with and there were characters and I was
• 8:07
  making decisions and there was a storyline and people would say
• 8:09
  things to me and I would react. And not knowing that it was all
• 8:13
  happening within this one organ, the world I was inhabiting and
• 8:16
  the person I was, we're all within the same organ.
• 8:19
  And that just blew my mind. Like it something just happened
• 8:21
  where I was like, I need to understand the brain.
• 8:23
  It's not about behaviour, it's about this thing.
• 8:26
  And I literally changed that day.
• 8:27
  I went to my academic advisor, changed my major, changed my
• 8:31
  path, started studying neuroscience got as in those
• 8:35
  classes I was afraid of. So everybody, don't be afraid.
• 8:38
  Don't let your intimidations steer you in the wrong
• 8:40
  direction. Take it on.
• 8:41
  You were saying this before we started recording.
• 8:43
  I mean, if you really, if you want something, if you really
• 8:45
  believe in something you're capable of anything you can get
• 8:47
  right through it. And so now coming full circle,
• 8:50
  I'm able to, I've been studying for the last decade, the
• 8:52
  neuroscience of social behaviour and studying things like you
• 8:54
  mentioned, autism spectrum disorder, empathy, looking at
• 8:57
  the, the brain systems that drive these social changes and
• 9:01
  social differences in people and really getting it to the heart
• 9:04
  of that question I cared about as a child.
• 9:06
  And I'm, I'm living the dream. I'm enjoying all the, the work
• 9:09
  I'm leading. It's a lot of fun.
• 9:11
  Wow, you know, it's, it's quite interesting and I appreciate
• 9:16
  your what I say, authenticity and ability to the vulnerable.
• 9:24
  A lot of successful people want to paint a perfect picture, but
• 9:29
  I always tell people, people don't relate to perfection.
• 9:33
  People relate to excellence. And successful people are people
• 9:38
  who have failed multiple times. But you know, we're Brazilian
• 9:43
  enough to find ways to be successful at the things that
• 9:47
  they do. Imposo syndrome.
• 9:50
  A lot of people struggle with imposo syndrome, but I'm quite
• 9:54
  grateful. I'm a man of faith, by the way,
• 9:56
  I'm a Christian and at the early age of 16, I went to Bible
• 10:02
  school, graduated and you know, the faith was, you know, very,
• 10:07
  very ingrained in my heart. And do you want to know what my
• 10:11
  favourite Bible verse is? Philippians chapter 4, verse 13.
• 10:17
  I can do all things true crisis strengthens me.
• 10:19
  That's verse what I say sort of helped me in my life to beat the
• 10:26
  whole imposter syndrome thing. I'm not afraid to feel because I
• 10:30
  failed multiple times out of very early age.
• 10:33
  I was very poor at mathematics and failed twice at what you
• 10:39
  call the O level in Nigeria and third time asking, third time as
• 10:45
  a champ. I got it.
• 10:47
  So I feel like that experience made me have a very, very early
• 10:52
  encounter with failure. And we've been there, done that.
• 10:56
  But what would you say about like young people who try to
• 11:00
  chase perfection and I'm not able to get it.
• 11:03
  And because they probably feel like certain things, they feel
• 11:09
  like they're not worthy or they don't have a place in society.
• 11:15
  And going into the adulthood impulsive syndrome, you know,
• 11:20
  kicks in. I'd like for you to touch on
• 11:22
  that. Yeah, You know, I told you the
• 11:24
  very short version of my story, which basically sounded like I
• 11:28
  became a neuroscientist and it was successful, right?
• 11:30
  I left out a lot of details. And the reality is it wasn't, it
• 11:34
  wasn't just I changed my major and I poof, I was a Stanford
• 11:37
  neuroscientist. No, the truth is I've had I had
• 11:40
  setbacks like that all the way through my life.
• 11:42
  And when I was first applying to college, I thought I was, I
• 11:46
  thought I was smart and I thought I was gonna have no
• 11:48
  problem getting into colleges. And I thought I'll, I'll know
• 11:51
  I'm smart, you know, And so I applied to, I don't know, 12
• 11:54
  dozen schools. And the only school that I got
• 11:57
  into was my very lowest fall back, a school with like an 80%
• 12:00
  acceptance rate. And it's a, it's a, it's a
• 12:04
  great, it was a good school. I had a great education.
• 12:06
  It's West Virginia University. It's in West Virginia in
• 12:08
  America. And it's most known for being
• 12:11
  the number one party school in America.
• 12:12
  And I had a good time. I did, but I was disappointed
• 12:16
  with myself. I was disappointed with life.
• 12:17
  And that was the first time where I felt like, Oh my gosh,
• 12:21
  my life is not going to be what I thought it was going to be.
• 12:23
  You know, like I like I've, I had this ambitious vision and
• 12:27
  now I just took this scary detour into I don't know what my
• 12:31
  life is going to be like. And that scared me that kind of,
• 12:34
  you know, it's intense to say this, but it kind of traumatised
• 12:37
  me where that was the first time I felt like my well-being, my,
• 12:40
  the sustainability of my career was threatened.
• 12:42
  So I went to my, my undergrad, I did it.
• 12:45
  I worked as hard as I could. I had a four point OGPAI
• 12:47
  graduated in, in three years. I, so a year early, I worked in
• 12:51
  all these research labs. I did everything I could so that
• 12:53
  when I was applying to my PhD, it wouldn't happen again, that I
• 12:56
  wouldn't get disappointed like that.
• 12:58
  And so I applied to all these great schools now like 10, once
• 13:02
  again, I only got into my lowest fall back, which is the school
• 13:05
  that I did not want to go to. And I was like, Oh my goodness.
• 13:08
  Again. I worked so hard, like I was
• 13:11
  100% more deserving this time around.
• 13:14
  I had such a higher GPAI had all this extracurriculars, like I've
• 13:17
  poured everything into being successful academically and I
• 13:20
  still didn't get what I wanted. And that broke my heart.
• 13:23
  And so, but I kept my head up and I stayed optimistic.
• 13:26
  And so I went to my PhD and once again, I worked my ass off.
• 13:30
  Sorry, I don't know if we swear on this podcast, but.
• 13:33
  Feel free. Feel free brother.
• 13:35
  All right, I'll, I'll try and take it easy here.
• 13:37
  Not, not like a off the rails cursor or anything, but I worked
• 13:41
  really hard and I ended up publishing, you know, a bunch of
• 13:44
  papers and having a really high GPA and getting all these
• 13:47
  awards. And I went to the next step
• 13:49
  where you're after a PhD, you apply to a postdoc.
• 13:52
  If you're doing a, if you want to be a researcher, it's kind of
• 13:54
  like a residency. When doctors do a residency, a
• 13:56
  postdoc is like the scientist equivalent.
• 13:58
  And so I applied to Stanford, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Yale,
• 14:03
  Harvard, all these great schools.
• 14:05
  And I thought, please do not let me get disappointed again.
• 14:08
  And I got offers from Stanford, MIT, Yale, Duke, Johns Hopkins,
• 14:13
  I could have gone to any of those places and I end up going
• 14:15
  to Stanford. And that was I Stanford.
• 14:20
  I went to Stanford because it's one of the top institutions in,
• 14:23
  in the US And when I visited, so I'm from the East Coast and the
• 14:25
  East Coast is very where, where I'm from at least, is very grey
• 14:29
  and cloudy and you don't get a lot of sun.
• 14:30
  It's cold, we get a lot of snow. And then we, my wife and I, we
• 14:33
  visited Stanford and we were like, yeah, like this is, it's
• 14:36
  like blue skies, sunny, gorgeous.
• 14:38
  And it was, it was kind of the, the environment that that sold
• 14:41
  us and also the, the lab that I was going to work with.
• 14:43
  That's amazing. But I, but I share all this to
• 14:45
  say, like, you can be disappointed and humiliated and
• 14:51
  just terrified over and over, and then you can have a
• 14:55
  breakthrough. And I think that it's, it's
• 14:58
  important to not bang your head against a wall that's going
• 15:01
  nowhere. But I think, you know, you want
• 15:04
  to make calculated decisions about this stuff, right?
• 15:07
  Like, I don't think that in any universe, even if I, let's say
• 15:10
  the story ended in a bad way, where once again, I didn't get
• 15:12
  into all those places, I don't think I would look back and say,
• 15:15
  man, I regret trying so hard. You know, and I regret having
• 15:18
  all that success academically, But I, it did pay off because I
• 15:21
  was resilient and I kept pushing through.
• 15:24
  And, you know, I, I think that as long as we know that the
• 15:29
  challenge we're up against is worthwhile and that the
• 15:32
  outcomes, the potential upside is there and it's what we want,
• 15:36
  You know, it's, it's just like the same thing with taking those
• 15:38
  classes. You know, you might be afraid
• 15:39
  of, of something and then you do it and just 'cause you have to
• 15:41
  do what you get through it. You know, I think if you love
• 15:43
  something and you want it and you keep fighting for it,
• 15:47
  there's going to be something good.
• 15:48
  It may not be the, you know, I can't promise, you know, you're
• 15:50
  going to get everything you want, but you will breakthrough
• 15:52
  eventually. And and you can imagine what it
• 15:57
  has been like for me. I mean, imagine, imagine going
• 15:59
  through that and going all these universities saying you're not
• 16:02
  worth our time, you're not worth, you can't be a student
• 16:05
  here. And then finally, after 10 years
• 16:07
  of working on that or seven years of working on that, you
• 16:09
  get to Stanford and you're in front of all these scientists
• 16:12
  who are Stanford scientists and they all come from Harvard and
• 16:14
  UC Berkeley and all these great schools.
• 16:16
  And you're like, I've never been in anyone like around these
• 16:19
  calibre people ever. Imagine the imposter syndrome,
• 16:22
  right? That was difficult, but it was
• 16:26
  fine. I was completely fine.
• 16:28
  I kept up with everyone, you know, I, I, it was completely
• 16:31
  fine. There was no issue.
• 16:32
  And, and I could have been alongside these people all
• 16:34
  along. I think that the truth is, you
• 16:38
  know, another major lesson I like to tell people is this all
• 16:41
  started because I didn't apply myself in high school.
• 16:43
  I didn't have the grades that I, that I thought I had in high
• 16:46
  school. I, you know, I was capable of
• 16:48
  getting high grades, but I wasn't really trying in my
• 16:50
  classes. And if I had tried harder, then
• 16:53
  I would have probably gotten into a better college and then I
• 16:55
  would have gotten into a better PhD and I wouldn't have been
• 16:57
  fighting all that time. And so, you know, I think for
• 17:00
  young people, it's important to take academics seriously because
• 17:03
  academics in many cases will be the key to unlocking whatever
• 17:07
  the future is. And when that when you reach
• 17:09
  that point, if you reach that point like me, where you open
• 17:13
  that door, you know, use that key and you twist that knob and
• 17:15
  you open that door and it's a horrifying reality on the other
• 17:18
  side and it's not what you expected.
• 17:20
  That's a real wake up call. And so if you can apply yourself
• 17:23
  earlier and really start taking stuff seriously before it
• 17:26
  becomes too late, you're gonna thank yourself for doing that.
• 17:30
  And I wish I had done that myself.
• 17:32
  Wow. I think this is a very, very
• 17:35
  great a Big Brother advice. You know, here in the UK, it's
• 17:39
  really, really puzzling to me how the key to here, the Gen Z
• 17:46
  generally do not really value education, especially tertiary
• 17:50
  education. And then they tell me, oh, if
• 17:53
  you went to university, I'm not interested in going to
• 17:55
  university. I'm like, OK, there's one in my
• 17:59
  apartment. I had to talk to you.
• 18:02
  I said, you know what, if you become well educated, you may
• 18:08
  never become very rich or you will never become very poor and
• 18:15
  good. Point unless you take out too
• 18:19
  many student loans. You know, back to your point of,
• 18:22
  of, of, you know, at least trying, you know, Nelson Mandela
• 18:26
  of blessed memory, he said something.
• 18:28
  He said if we try, we may fail. Or if we don't, we have failed,
• 18:34
  at least try. And I love your theme of
• 18:37
  resilience. It's something that I preach,
• 18:41
  you know, on this podcast, you know, all the time.
• 18:44
  Resilience is, is very important.
• 18:46
  You know, keep going and never let anybody stop you.
• 18:50
  Never let anybody put you down. Never let anybody, you know, try
• 18:55
  to put you in a box because we all don't know what we are
• 18:58
  doing. And, you know, some people try
• 19:00
  to advise other people based on their own worldview or based on
• 19:06
  the limitations that, you know, they have on their minds or the
• 19:10
  cast on themselves, right? And they try to project it and
• 19:13
  other people. And that's something I very,
• 19:16
  very, very much detest. I remember when I was, you know,
• 19:19
  about to start this podcast, I'll see someone who was very
• 19:24
  opposed to it. And I think that was the reason
• 19:27
  why that relationship had to end.
• 19:30
  It's crazy. You can't stop me from my
• 19:32
  dreams. You can't stop me from my goals.
• 19:33
  And I was very, very upset about it.
• 19:37
  And they were like, oh, you're finance guy, What are you?
• 19:40
  Why are you going into the media?
• 19:43
  Do you need permissions from anybody?
• 19:45
  If you're passionate about something and go for it.
• 19:48
  If you have a dream, always go for it.
• 19:50
  And of course, keep. And, you know, can I add
• 19:52
  something on that because we were talking earlier before we
• 19:55
  started, before we turn on the recording, we were talking
• 19:57
  about, you know, your journey and what you're up to nowadays.
• 20:00
  And you know, I was noticing because you're talking about
• 20:03
  this theme of. Basically, I was realising that
• 20:07
  your values and beliefs and your interests are all perfectly
• 20:11
  blended into the theme of this podcast.
• 20:13
  You know, like you've taken all these different things that you
• 20:16
  come that you care about, right? Like whatever finance, business,
• 20:20
  psychology, growth mindset, you've taken all these, all
• 20:22
  these angles that have influenced you in your life and
• 20:25
  you compiled them into one podcast.
• 20:27
  Then I think another tip for young people and anybody really
• 20:30
  is like, you know, you will naturally gravitate towards what
• 20:34
  you care about. And it's for me, like I, I
• 20:38
  started this is getting really complicated now, but when I
• 20:42
  started my PHDI was just happy to be there because I had gotten
• 20:46
  almost rejected from all PhDs and I just wanted to be
• 20:49
  successful. That's all I wanted.
• 20:51
  I wasn't thinking about, oh, I want to study social behaviour
• 20:53
  anymore. It didn't matter.
• 20:54
  It was just like, I need to just be successful.
• 20:57
  That's I need to, I need to regain the lost ground that
• 21:00
  I've, that I've lost, right. And so I ended up joining this
• 21:02
  research lab and started working there for in about a year in it
• 21:07
  occurred to me that I was studying autism spectrum
• 21:10
  disorder, that I had joined the lab because they were a
• 21:13
  productive lab. And I thought, this isn't the
• 21:14
  lab that's going to give me the best shot at being having a good
• 21:16
  career. But I found myself, I had carved
• 21:20
  out this little niche of studying social behaviour
• 21:23
  without even thinking about it. It was just like my gut and my
• 21:26
  subconscious mind had sort of geared me into this direction of
• 21:29
  doing what I love. And I think, you know, I got
• 21:31
  this fortune cookie years ago that I always think of that
• 21:34
  says, look for the dream that keeps coming back.
• 21:37
  It is your destiny. And that's kind of what I think
• 21:40
  about with your podcast and with my journey and, and with just
• 21:43
  with your journey and like this person telling you like, oh, why
• 21:46
  you're a finance guy? Why are you talking about this
• 21:48
  stuff? Like, or why are you going into
• 21:50
  media like that's that's you. That's that's what makes you who
• 21:53
  you are. That's what makes you unique
• 21:55
  and, and what you care about. That's what your brain is
• 21:57
  interested in. And you're naturally suited to
• 22:00
  put out good materials on this because people, people like what
• 22:03
  they're good at. People are, they're naturally
• 22:06
  driven to the people, the things that they excel at.
• 22:07
  And so if you are good at something and you're have
• 22:11
  interesting ideas about it, your podcast is going to do well and
• 22:14
  look at where you are. So I think, you know, follow
• 22:17
  that dream to the listeners, you know, like, listen to your gun
• 22:20
  and listen to your heart because it's it's telling you your
• 22:24
  destiny. Maybe if my fortune cookie was
• 22:25
  right. Well, I love and respect to you,
• 22:29
  you know, absolutely love how you you framed it so, so
• 22:34
  beautifully. It's interesting.
• 22:38
  You're welcome. I tell people this, right?
• 22:40
  There's potential and there's credentials.
• 22:43
  When you're younger, you you judge based on your potentials.
• 22:46
  But as you grow older, you get judged based on your
• 22:49
  credentials. But you don't want to be a
• 22:52
  person who has, you know, massive potentials but little
• 22:57
  credentials. And a lot of people suffer from
• 22:59
  this bandwagon effect, you know, wanting to do what other people
• 23:03
  are doing. You are not other people.
• 23:04
  You're yourself. And I think a lot of people get
• 23:07
  discouraged by the opinions of other people.
• 23:11
  It's crazy. Think about it like if I had
• 23:14
  listened to that person at that time saying do not do
• 23:20
  podcasting, I wouldn't be here speaking with, you know, one of
• 23:25
  the greatest scholars of my generation, you know, today.
• 23:31
  Think about. It I'm honour for you to say
• 23:32
  that. Thank you.
• 23:34
  To walk and I think about my body of work.
• 23:36
  I've spoken to, you know, people that are highly successful from,
• 23:42
  you know, different parts of the world in your neck of the woods.
• 23:45
  I spoke on people who weren't in school and have it, you know,
• 23:48
  for it. It's really mind blowing.
• 23:50
  People who are #1 in the world, you know, at whatever ease that
• 23:55
  they're doing. And if I listen to, you know,
• 23:58
  that person saying do not do this, what would happen?
• 24:01
  So I don't know, like what what would you say to the people out
• 24:04
  there in terms of, you know, sticking to their guns and
• 24:10
  believing in themselves? And if you're able to maybe
• 24:15
  butchers that with a personal story of yours in a situation
• 24:18
  where you wanted to go for something or somebody said
• 24:22
  otherwise apart, you talk to your gods, your instinct and you
• 24:26
  know, went for it and he was successful.
• 24:30
  Yeah, for I, you're bringing up something immediately, you know,
• 24:34
  so I've always been really ambitious, which is probably
• 24:37
  clear from my story. And, you know, the career path I
• 24:39
  chose, you know, and, and I like to reach for things.
• 24:42
  I like to set goals and, and get after them.
• 24:44
  And just for everybody listening and yourself included, you know,
• 24:47
  I, I wanted to make it very clear.
• 24:50
  I was completely full of anxiety all the way along that journey I
• 24:54
  just described. Imagine how it felt when I
• 24:56
  didn't get into that school that I wanted to and I realised, Oh
• 24:59
  my gosh, like I was horrified for my future.
• 25:02
  And I was and I was motivated to keep on reaching and keep on
• 25:05
  reaching. And so I don't want everyone to
• 25:07
  think, you know, oh, this guy is just full of confidence and he
• 25:10
  believes in himself all the way. No, you can.
• 25:12
  It's, it's going to be normal for you to experience that for
• 25:14
  sure. But an example of what you're
• 25:16
  talking about when I was working at Stanford, this is very
• 25:20
  personal, but I don't mind sharing personal things.
• 25:22
  When I was working at Stanford, I was seeing this therapist
• 25:24
  because I was, and I was talking to her about exactly what we've
• 25:29
  been talking about here, that I'm, I want so badly to just
• 25:32
  succeed in my career and I'm so afraid of setbacks.
• 25:35
  And I've always been like, I want to be the best at this, you
• 25:38
  know, I want to be like the number one scientist, whatever.
• 25:41
  You know, I've always just been ambitious like that.
• 25:43
  And this, this therapist, she told me basically, it's OK to be
• 25:49
  average. She was like, if you, you know,
• 25:51
  I, I bought this book something, something about basically it's
• 25:55
  OK to be average. And I gave it to my son and he's
• 25:57
  reading it because I want people to understand it's OK to be
• 25:59
  average. And I was like, that's really
• 26:02
  comforting advice, but that's not what I want.
• 26:06
  That's I had to listen to my heart, which was telling me,
• 26:11
  yeah, you're reaching for something so far away and it's
• 26:15
  stressful because you want it so bad and you don't know what
• 26:17
  you're going to, if you're going to get it or not.
• 26:19
  And so sure, it would be so much easier to say, you know what,
• 26:22
  I'm OK with not getting it. I'm OK with being average.
• 26:25
  But that's not the journey that I wanted for myself.
• 26:27
  That's not what I how I view my life and how I view myself, you
• 26:30
  know, I want to reach. And if I fail, I fail, but I
• 26:32
  don't think I'm going to fail. And that's a big part of it, by
• 26:34
  the way, is just being optimistic and having that
• 26:36
  growth mindset. And I remember just, you know,
• 26:41
  this was right when I joined Stanford and I was dealing with
• 26:43
  that imposter syndrome that I described.
• 26:45
  And I remember like three years after that, I was in, I don't
• 26:50
  know, Iceland or Italy. I've been to Portugal.
• 26:52
  I've been flown out to give talks.
• 26:55
  And I thought, Can you imagine if I had, if I had just decided,
• 26:58
  yeah, I want to be average. Like, I wouldn't have achieved
• 27:01
  this for myself. I wouldn't have experienced
• 27:03
  this. The satisfaction of attaining
• 27:05
  that goal that I wanted so bad. And that's what drives me.
• 27:07
  Is this the satisfaction of setting a goal and then working
• 27:12
  my way to it? I love the feeling of progress.
• 27:15
  And I, I don't think I would be happy if I, if I just said, you
• 27:18
  know what, I'm going to stop reaching.
• 27:19
  It's, it's not what's meant for me.
• 27:21
  And so my advice to anybody is to basically like set goals and
• 27:28
  figure out what you want, right? If by setting a goal, you can
• 27:31
  learn a lot about your preferences and what you want
• 27:34
  from life, you know, because if you're setting a goal and it's
• 27:36
  like, all right, I'm a scientist.
• 27:37
  My goal is to win a Nobel Prize. You know, it's like, OK, that's
• 27:40
  a lofty goal. Like, I don't know, 0.0001% of
• 27:44
  scientists win the Nobel Prize. I'm making that up.
• 27:46
  But it's really, really, really small.
• 27:48
  That was my goal when I was young, by the way.
• 27:49
  I'm now smart enough to realise, or I guess wise enough to
• 27:52
  realise that that's never gonna happen.
• 27:53
  I'm never gonna win a Nobel Prize.
• 27:54
  I'm OK with it. But if your, if your goal is
• 27:57
  like, I wanna win a Nobel Prize, OK, good.
• 28:00
  Like hunt after that, right? Make that your journey.
• 28:03
  Make that your, your meaning of life, right?
• 28:07
  But if your goal is like I, I just want to like, take, have,
• 28:11
  make enough money to take care of my parents.
• 28:12
  It's like, OK, there's a lot of routes that you can take to that
• 28:14
  goal, right? Like you don't have to be as
• 28:16
  hungry as devoted, but identify sort of your ambition levels
• 28:20
  and, and what your dreams are. Because to me, that is one of
• 28:26
  the sort of meanings of life. I think like if anyone ever
• 28:28
  asked me, what do you think the meaning of life is?
• 28:30
  For me, it's about telling yourself this is what I want and
• 28:34
  going and getting it, carving that journey for yourself,
• 28:38
  right? I think of it like a, like a
• 28:39
  board game, right? It's like you get to pick your,
• 28:42
  your player and where they go and which direction you're
• 28:44
  headed or what kind of player you want to be like.
• 28:46
  That's life. You get to live 100 years and
• 28:49
  take whatever journey you want. And I think it's, I get sad when
• 28:52
  I think about people who kind of just float in that journey and
• 28:56
  they don't steer their own journey.
• 28:57
  And I think it's important, especially as young as you can
• 29:01
  be, the younger, the better to start thinking about where is
• 29:05
  that dream and how do I get there?
• 29:07
  Because for me, that's the most satisfying thing in the world.
• 29:10
  And that dream can change, by the way.
• 29:11
  So don't worry, mine has changed.
• 29:15
  That's called P13. You know, along the journey of
• 29:18
  life, I remember a particular lecturer, you know, when who
• 29:23
  taught me in my professional accounting classes on strategy.
• 29:28
  He said, you know, that different types of strategy and
• 29:31
  you know, strategy comes with planning.
• 29:33
  And some people have, you know, that's plan to be average.
• 29:38
  And you know, they say something, if you don't plan,
• 29:43
  you plan to fail. So not having a plan is a plan
• 29:46
  on its own. It's just a plan to fail.
• 29:49
  But you know, back to your point on, you know, it's OK to be
• 29:53
  average. I don't like that idea at all.
• 29:55
  And you know, I'm grateful I was able to read a book, alien life,
• 30:00
  It's called Conquering an Enemy called Average by John Mason.
• 30:04
  I think I'll try to put the link to that book in the description.
• 30:08
  And of course, you should, you should give, give that book to
• 30:11
  your son as well because for me, no, no, average is a no, no.
• 30:16
  Like I'm not born to be average in Nigeria.
• 30:21
  If you are to join the military and as a graduate from
• 30:25
  university, I thought about joining the military and about
• 30:29
  somebody told me that if you join the military as a graduate
• 30:32
  from university, you did not go to the combat school.
• 30:36
  You can never become a general. And immediately that dream just
• 30:41
  died. Like I will never join an
• 30:44
  organisation where I can never rise to the top.
• 30:48
  No, no, no, no way, No way. And that has actually like,
• 30:52
  pushed me in terms of the way my career has progressed.
• 30:56
  And when you join the big four accounting firms, they always
• 30:58
  tell you, you know, join us and associate.
• 31:00
  You can actually work your way up to become a director or
• 31:03
  partner, you know, having share of profit.
• 31:06
  Yeah, that's cool. That's interesting.
• 31:09
  You must always have that pathway, reasonable pathway to
• 31:13
  the top. And of course, you know, if you
• 31:15
  work, if you put in the work, right, you should get, you know,
• 31:18
  certain expected results. That's what I like personally,
• 31:22
  but I stand to be corrected. But when when we come back to
• 31:25
  science, you know, the autism and of course our
• 31:28
  neurodevelopment are disorder disorders, right?
• 31:31
  Your PhD identified neural systems are regulating social
• 31:36
  behaviour in autism. So looking at that field now,
• 31:40
  which therapeutic pathways seem, you know, most promising?
• 31:45
  But you have gene therapies, epigenetic approaches or the
• 31:49
  pharmacological tools like MDMA. So which pathways actually would
• 31:57
  I say are effective or efficient in your opinion?
• 32:02
  Yeah. So when it comes to autism
• 32:04
  spectrum disorder, which is characterised by difficulties in
• 32:09
  social interactions, there's nothing on the market right now.
• 32:13
  If if you or a loved one is someone who is on the autism
• 32:18
  spectrum and you suffer with social interactions and you want
• 32:21
  to enhance your interactions or feel more comfortable in
• 32:23
  interactions, there's no options.
• 32:25
  There's nothing out there. And, and before I even go any
• 32:27
  further in this topic, I just want to mention that there are a
• 32:33
  lot of people who are, you know, in the autism community or
• 32:36
  they're on the spectrum, they have loved ones with autism and
• 32:39
  they're, the idea of the treatment is, it's just, it's a,
• 32:44
  it's a terrible idea. It's basically that to treat
• 32:48
  this is to label it as a dysfunction and to say that
• 32:52
  there's something wrong with me. But this is what makes me
• 32:55
  unique. And so I, I just want to qualify
• 32:58
  that by just acknowledging that it is not my belief that
• 33:02
  everyone on the autism spectrum should have some treatment.
• 33:04
  That's not at all what I believe.
• 33:05
  In my PhD, though, I got to studying the biological basis of
• 33:09
  autism and discovered, you know, there are no treatment options
• 33:11
  for those who are struggle with their symptoms and want
• 33:14
  treatment. And that was sort of the focus
• 33:16
  of the lab. And so I got into studying like,
• 33:18
  what are these brain systems and how could they potentially be
• 33:20
  altered, which is interesting, altered to enhance sociability,
• 33:23
  I should say, which is interesting because it got
• 33:26
  exactly at the question that I was looking at when I was young,
• 33:28
  which is like, how do you know if, if you could go into the,
• 33:31
  the table where the quiet kids are sitting and tickle a certain
• 33:34
  brain system and make them feel like sitting with the, you know,
• 33:38
  outgoing kids? Like, wouldn't that be
• 33:39
  interesting? What, what brain systems are
• 33:41
  there that, that do that? Right?
• 33:42
  It's such a fascinating question to me.
• 33:44
  And so it turns out it's, it's very complicated and very
• 33:47
  molecular, basically. But I will say this, the root
• 33:53
  cause of autism in most cases or many cases I should say, I guess
• 33:57
  is genetic. And so it is possible that if
• 34:03
  done early enough, if like, because what happens is if you
• 34:05
  have a genetic mutation, so the gene is coded as it is.
• 34:10
  And then if there's a change in one of the base pairs, let's
• 34:12
  say, and it, each gene corresponds with a physical
• 34:16
  protein. So you have, you know, 30,000
• 34:18
  genes, 30,000 proteins floating around your cells or that, you
• 34:22
  know, you could have up to 30,000 floating around your
• 34:24
  cells. And so I like to think of it as
• 34:26
  like a house. Let's use that analogy.
• 34:29
  So your cell, each of your brain cells is a house.
• 34:32
  And like, you know, this book is 1 protein, right?
• 34:36
  Like this book serves a purpose. Like this water bottle is a
• 34:39
  protein. It serves a purpose.
• 34:40
  And so there's a blueprint to build this water bottle.
• 34:43
  There's a blueprint to print this book.
• 34:45
  Those are the genes, right? So the genes are the blueprint
• 34:48
  and they build the actual like physical structures.
• 34:51
  And So what could happen is you can have a mutation in one of
• 34:54
  the genes which causes the blueprint to basically change.
• 34:58
  So let's say there's a mutation in the gene for this water
• 35:01
  bottle and it comes out and there's a hole in the bottom,
• 35:04
  and now it's no longer functioning as a water bottle
• 35:05
  because the water is draining out the bottom.
• 35:07
  That's sort of like what happens in cells where if you have a
• 35:09
  genetic mutation, the protein in your cell that's supposed to do
• 35:13
  something is not doing what it's supposed to do.
• 35:16
  It's it's functioning improperly.
• 35:18
  And that can change how brain cells are functioning in a way
• 35:21
  where if that change happens to be going on in a brain area
• 35:25
  involved in social interaction and the brain starts that brain
• 35:28
  area starts functioning differently, it can result in
• 35:30
  changes in social behaviour. And so if this genetic change is
• 35:35
  caught early enough, super, super, super early, like in the
• 35:38
  womb in it before, you know, the brain has developed, could
• 35:43
  theoretically reverse autism spectrum disorder before it even
• 35:48
  like begins. Very controversial idea though,
• 35:50
  of course, right. It's like if we're gonna do gene
• 35:53
  therapy, if anyone's gonna do gene therapy, you know, the, the
• 35:56
  first use case should be anything that's fatal, right?
• 35:58
  If there's someone, if you're gonna suffer from some condition
• 36:00
  like like Huntington or something like that,
• 36:03
  Huntington's disease and you're gonna be struggling your whole
• 36:05
  life with with condition, you know, this, whatever it may be,
• 36:10
  and you're gonna die young. Those are the things that should
• 36:12
  be used for gene therapy, autism even even to propose that is
• 36:15
  super controversial to use gene therapy.
• 36:17
  But hypothetically, you know, it would kind of make sense because
• 36:21
  it's a genetic disorder in many cases.
• 36:23
  Now, the other thing you mentioned, it's like
• 36:24
  pharmacology, right? So you can use pharmacological
• 36:28
  agents, drugs, in other words, to target epigenetics, which is
• 36:33
  kind of sounds confusing because epigenetics is how experience
• 36:38
  changes our, our gene expression.
• 36:41
  So expression being not the code or the blueprint, but how many
• 36:44
  of these water bottles do I have?
• 36:46
  You know, And so you could think if I'm really thirsty, I might
• 36:49
  want to have ten of these water bottles around.
• 36:51
  And so I'll go to the store and get 10 of these bottles or I'll
• 36:53
  make 10 of them from the blueprint.
• 36:55
  That's how cells act, right? Like you have an experience,
• 36:57
  like my experience as being thirsty, I need more of these
• 36:59
  cells are the same. Something changes in the cell or
• 37:01
  we need more of that or we need less of that.
• 37:03
  Let's change how many copies of that gene we're producing.
• 37:07
  That's epigenetics. And so while it would seem that
• 37:10
  only experience can do that, you can actually there are
• 37:14
  epigenetic drugs that you can basically go in and manipulate
• 37:19
  the parts of the cell that make that change happen or manipulate
• 37:24
  the accessibility of the DNA. And there is some evidence from
• 37:28
  the lab that I was do working in and some of my own research that
• 37:31
  doing that and altering the gene expression through a drug can
• 37:35
  change social behaviour as well. And so that's, you know, a
• 37:40
  possibility. But again, none of these things
• 37:41
  are actually like demonstrated, right?
• 37:43
  Like we haven't done this in human beings.
• 37:45
  We don't know if this is useful. And then the last one though, is
• 37:47
  MDMA. And I've also studied MDMA, but
• 37:50
  in a different context. And for those who don't know,
• 37:51
  MDMA is ecstasy, the illegal drug.
• 37:55
  But I in my postdoc working at Stanford, I was studying how
• 37:59
  MDMA enhances empathy. And if you're curious, if you're
• 38:03
  neuroscientifically minded, it comes down to serotonin release
• 38:07
  in the nucleus accumbens, a certain brain area That's kind
• 38:11
  of irrelevant unless you want to get into that.
• 38:12
  But, but what's interesting though, is that we actually, we
• 38:15
  found that in in mice with those same genetic mutations that are
• 38:20
  linked to autism in humans, those mice socialise less.
• 38:24
  They also show reduced empathy. We can test empathy in mice
• 38:27
  also. Happy to get into that if you
• 38:28
  want, but they show reduction in social and empathic behaviours.
• 38:33
  And when we gave the mice MDMA, they became more social, they
• 38:37
  became more empathic. And I mentioned that MDMA's
• 38:42
  effects seem to be related to this serotonin release in the
• 38:44
  nucleus accumbens. Well, when we just know MDMA, we
• 38:48
  just stimulated serotonin in the nucleus accumbens.
• 38:51
  It had the same effect on the mice.
• 38:52
  So it's possible that that also could be an approach.
• 38:57
  You know, I actually personally, I see that less as a like a
• 39:00
  therapeutic for autism. I see that more of a just
• 39:04
  empathogen, which is what you know, and empathogen is a drug
• 39:08
  that's that enhances empathy. But I see that if we can target
• 39:11
  that system, it could be a useful tool for all of humanity.
• 39:15
  You know, I think that we are, we are living in a sort of
• 39:18
  unusual time right now. I would argue that the current
• 39:23
  era of humanity, at least in America, I'm not sure how it is
• 39:26
  over in the UK, but in America it feels like we're really kind
• 39:29
  of living through an era of low empathy.
• 39:31
  And I think part of that is because we interact.
• 39:34
  Yeah, I think part of that is because we interact online a
• 39:37
  lot. I think part of that is because
• 39:38
  we're super politically polarised.
• 39:40
  And so, you know, we can get into this, but the brain's
• 39:43
  empathy systems are very sensitive to how we view
• 39:46
  someone, whether they're on our team or not, basically.
• 39:48
  And that can be anything. It could be their political
• 39:50
  affiliation, it could be their religion, their race, their
• 39:54
  sexuality. If we see them as different from
• 39:57
  us, The brain scenarios that Dr Empathy literally just like
• 40:02
  don't come online as much. They show less activity.
• 40:05
  That's significant. And I think, you know, in a
• 40:07
  world that's very politically polarised where you look at
• 40:10
  anybody, at least this is how it is in America.
• 40:12
  You look at someone, you look at their clothes, you know, maybe
• 40:14
  they have a Red Hat on or maybe they have, you know, a blue
• 40:17
  shirt on or whatever it is. And you're like, oh, that
• 40:20
  person's on the other side. Empathy systems.
• 40:23
  Disengage and you basically view that person or your brain treats
• 40:28
  that person as less of a person and that's really problematic.
• 40:31
  And so, you know, do I really think that we'll be given people
• 40:36
  will be taking a drug to simulate their empathy?
• 40:39
  No, I mean, because how would that even work?
• 40:42
  And it's another ethical concern.
• 40:44
  But but hey, maybe, you know, maybe not in a clinical context
• 40:49
  where it's like like going to this, you know, clinic and take
• 40:53
  this drug and you're gonna feel empathy.
• 40:55
  But wouldn't it be cool if there was like, like instead of going
• 40:58
  to the bar and drinking alcohol, we went to a bar and drank in a
• 41:02
  pathogen, right? Something that stimulated
• 41:03
  serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens, made us all feel a
• 41:06
  bit more connected and more empathic and you know, not to be
• 41:10
  kumbaya, but like brought people together and actually drove
• 41:15
  connection and community. I think that that'll be
• 41:18
  interesting. And the reality is we don't know
• 41:21
  how to do that neurobiologically.
• 41:23
  But with the research that I did at Stanford, we know a little
• 41:25
  bit more about how we might do that.
• 41:27
  And I don't want to, by the way, before I go any further, I don't
• 41:29
  want to say I just said how we might do that.
• 41:32
  I know there's a lot of people out there with opinions on
• 41:33
  science. I don't want people to think
• 41:35
  that there's like some secret scientific society controlling
• 41:38
  what you drink at the bar. There's not.
• 41:39
  Scientists have very little control over the real world.
• 41:42
  We could control what happens in our labs.
• 41:43
  But even when it comes to policy, public policy, you know,
• 41:46
  we're very detached, unfortunately, because I think
• 41:49
  scientists often have a lot of good ideas.
• 41:51
  But yeah, I mean, you know, our our goal is to discover new
• 41:55
  things so that humanity, whether that's, you know, commercial
• 41:58
  entities like what if really, what if a drink came out, a
• 42:01
  brand came out that was like, you drink this and you're going
• 42:03
  to feel more empathy. It's, you know, there's no
• 42:05
  hangover. You can go to the bar and drink
• 42:06
  it. People be interested in that,
• 42:08
  right? It's kind of interesting idea.
• 42:10
  Or if there was a clinical drug that people could take and
• 42:12
  enhance their empathy, you know, or if what I always like to joke
• 42:16
  about is half kidding. Wouldn't it be amazing if right
• 42:19
  before a political debate, the presidential debates, all of the
• 42:22
  candidates had to take a drug that made them more empathic and
• 42:25
  made them see the other person's side a bit more?
• 42:28
  And so instead of going up there and just hurling insults at each
• 42:30
  other, they actually understood each other and had a real
• 42:33
  conversation about why they disagree.
• 42:35
  And not in a way that was hostile and violent and maybe
• 42:38
  not violent, but hostile and aggressive and sets this bad
• 42:41
  example for all of Americans to think That's how I treat the
• 42:44
  people on the other side. So anyways, as you can probably
• 42:47
  tell, you know, I care about community and connection.
• 42:52
  And, you know, this is also the whole, the topic of my my whole
• 42:55
  book, which I held up earlier as an example.
• 42:57
  But why brains need friends? I, you know, we need each other.
• 43:01
  And I think that the more we can understand the importance of
• 43:04
  that, truly, the healthier we will be.
• 43:07
  The research suggests that we will be healthier and we will be
• 43:09
  happier as well. Wow, I'll tell you something.
• 43:14
  Let's say like minds always find a way to connect.
• 43:19
  There's something I always see on the podcast and it's links
• 43:23
  back to the title of your book. It is hate when you can't
• 43:28
  collaborate. Why hate?
• 43:30
  You know, it's crazy how people always find something to act as
• 43:36
  a differentiator. We are all human, we all bleed
• 43:40
  red. And it takes a high level of
• 43:46
  when I say certain ease, right, I tell people you can never
• 43:52
  function at a high level capacity, right, if you don't
• 43:57
  have certain ease right at that high level.
• 44:01
  And what are the ES education, exposure, enlightenment and
• 44:07
  experience. So fees ease right from the
• 44:14
  level of capacity that a person can perform at intellectually.
• 44:20
  So a lot of times when I see people acting in a sub, you
• 44:26
  know, optimal way or an undesirable way, I, I, I feel, I
• 44:31
  feel sorry for them. I feel empathy for them because
• 44:34
  the joke is not on me. The joke is on you, right?
• 44:37
  You get into an elevator, you, you try to be polite, you try to
• 44:41
  be respectful. You see a greeting and you know,
• 44:46
  some people just ignore you as though you don't exist.
• 44:48
  And you look at yourself, Am I, am I invisible now?
• 44:52
  It's crazy. Like what you said, people, you
• 44:55
  know, lack empathy in this age and time.
• 44:59
  I'm a very, very big enthusiast of AI and I'll just make the
• 45:04
  joke that it's like my parents knew the assignment.
• 45:07
  My initials are AII team. All I see there, because, you
• 45:11
  know, I've used AIA lot, you know, in terms of enhancing
• 45:15
  efficiency for my company and of course green this podcast.
• 45:19
  In university, I studied economics and that is, you know,
• 45:23
  the social sciences faculty and I was, you know, opportunity to
• 45:27
  take courses in psychology and sociology.
• 45:30
  You know, psychology is the study of the human mind and
• 45:33
  sociology is the study of human social behaviour, social
• 45:37
  interactions. And it gave me that privilege to
• 45:40
  be able to, you know, stand back and be objective, you know, to
• 45:45
  observe and analyse, you know, absorb information like a
• 45:49
  sponge. And like I told you before we
• 45:51
  started the podcast, when I was in secondary school, I was just
• 45:56
  pure sciences, a student. So I understand that background
• 45:59
  from chemistry to biology to physics, and adopting the
• 46:04
  empirical method for reasoning. When you adopt the empirical
• 46:10
  method of reasoning, it makes you objective, right?
• 46:13
  And that's why I think in terms of basic education, people
• 46:17
  should I don't know what the policy makers are doing the
• 46:21
  people first to study the sciences, right, Because, you
• 46:25
  know, still part of the ease if your education is, you know,
• 46:30
  left wanting, it's difficult to have you operate at a high level
• 46:37
  of critical reasoning. You know, philosophy has a
• 46:42
  branch called logic for a reason, deep logic, arguments,
• 46:46
  critical reasoning. And when I think about the high
• 46:50
  quality of education that I am privileged to have, it has made
• 46:54
  me to be able to operate at a high level in in society.
• 47:01
  I've been privileged to, you know, speak with brilliant
• 47:03
  minds, you know, of my own time. And you know, you look at my
• 47:06
  body of work, having people from different works of life, from
• 47:10
  athletes to businessmen to scientists like yourself, to
• 47:14
  healthcare practitioners. And this is a guy from finance.
• 47:18
  I have this debate, right, about the nature versus nurture.
• 47:25
  And I want to put it on you right now because you are the
• 47:29
  science guy. What do you think?
• 47:32
  Or is there like a balance or hybrid or what's the bigger
• 47:37
  influence in terms of people's behaviours?
• 47:42
  Is it nature or is it nurture? It's, it's got to be both.
• 47:47
  It's always both, in fact. Well, actually, no, that's not
• 47:49
  true. It's not always both.
• 47:50
  So let me let me give you an example.
• 47:52
  Let's say, let's talk about empathy, right?
• 47:55
  Let's say you are born with a genetic change that
• 48:02
  fundamentally alters how parts of your brain work.
• 48:05
  And let's say those parts of your brain are related to
• 48:08
  empathy. You will probably be diagnosed
• 48:11
  at some point in your life with a condition called psychopathy,
• 48:15
  where you are, you lack empathy. That change was driven by a
• 48:22
  genetic mutation that happened to you when you were a cluster
• 48:25
  of cells, before you had a brain, you know, before you were
• 48:28
  anything, before you encountered the world.
• 48:31
  And it it required that you will develop with an absence of
• 48:35
  empathy. That's very much nature, right?
• 48:39
  And that genetic change could happen to anybody.
• 48:41
  It's just, you know, in that case it would be de Novo.
• 48:43
  It's new, it happens randomly, spontaneously, very much nature.
• 48:49
  But you could also not have that genetic change and be born with,
• 48:53
  you know, a brain that is like the average person's brain, but
• 48:57
  be born to parents that are super unresponsive to your
• 49:02
  emotions. They don't show you, hey, this
• 49:04
  is how you react, right? Like you.
• 49:07
  And then it starts with very young children emotional
• 49:09
  mirroring, right? You smile and you laugh in the
• 49:12
  baby's face and the baby starts laughing and smiling in your
• 49:15
  face, right? And then when you, when the baby
• 49:17
  smiles, oh, the parents start smiling and laughing too,
• 49:19
  because it's cute, right? This like emotional mirroring
• 49:22
  and the parents responsiveness to the child, to their emotions
• 49:27
  is a big part of shaping empathy.
• 49:29
  That's nurture, right? That's pure experience.
• 49:32
  And so you could be born with the exact same genes but have
• 49:36
  parents that are super responsive to your emotions or
• 49:39
  super unresponsive to your emotions, end up with completely
• 49:43
  different ways of perceiving the world and and experiencing
• 49:47
  empathy and experiencing other people's emotions.
• 49:50
  So it's gotta be both. It has.
• 49:51
  It's always both. I mean, and what, and basically
• 49:54
  the way I see the, the role of genes is that they're sort of
• 49:57
  like a funnel, right? So it's like you could be
• 50:00
  anything, right? You could be anywhere out here.
• 50:02
  I'm not sure how much my, my body.
• 50:04
  You can actually see my hands are wide or if anyone's
• 50:06
  listening, I have my hands wide out.
• 50:08
  You could be everybody could be anything, but your genes narrow
• 50:12
  that range to you. You could be something like
• 50:14
  this. And and it's for every trade,
• 50:16
  right? Your height, you might be
• 50:17
  anywhere between 5-6 and five eight, because that's the height
• 50:21
  of your genetics, right? Or your empathy.
• 50:24
  You might be really empathic or you might be sort of empathic,
• 50:26
  but you're probably not gonna be not empathic or you're how how
• 50:29
  sociable you are. You're probably gonna be not
• 50:32
  very extroverted. You'll probably be more
• 50:33
  introverted because that's what your genes, how they have shaped
• 50:36
  your brain. That's all nature.
• 50:39
  But then you're born and you encounter the world and any of
• 50:43
  those things can change. I mean, maybe not height.
• 50:44
  I don't know about height, if that can change, but you know,
• 50:47
  like your your introversion, extroversion, right?
• 50:50
  When you're young, you might your it might just so happen
• 50:54
  that your parents best friends had kids the same age as you.
• 50:59
  And so when from when you were a little kid, you always hung
• 51:01
  around others. And so your nurture, your
• 51:03
  experience caused you to start favouring social interaction.
• 51:07
  Even though your parents might be introverts, suddenly you had
• 51:10
  experiences that shaped you. And, and I think that we are all
• 51:14
  this just beautiful, unique concoction of our experiences
• 51:21
  and where we come from, our lineage, our parents, their
• 51:25
  parents, their parents, their parents, this all is just
• 51:29
  uncontrollable. And, and As for the argument of
• 51:33
  like free will versus determinism, you know, I think
• 51:36
  by the time our genes narrow us to that range and then our
• 51:41
  experiences narrow us even further, there's a very small
• 51:45
  area of wiggle room that we are basically able to operate
• 51:49
  within. And so that's kind of the Robert
• 51:52
  Sapolsky determinism perspective.
• 51:55
  And, you know, I, I believe in that.
• 51:58
  I, I believe that we have free will, but I believe that our,
• 52:00
  our ability to exercise that free will is very much
• 52:04
  restrained by who we are and who we are comes from what we've
• 52:07
  been through and what we, where we come from.
• 52:09
  And you know, it's interesting because I'll have, I'll have
• 52:12
  this happen to me all the time where like, you know, I'll, I'll
• 52:15
  film a video for Instagram 'cause I post like short form
• 52:18
  videos on, on social media about neuroscience.
• 52:21
  I'll, I'll press play and I'll start talking and I'll record
• 52:24
  myself. And then I, you know, couple
• 52:27
  days pass by and I look back at the video or I maybe I don't
• 52:30
  even look back at the video. And I'm like, yeah, you know
• 52:32
  what? I, I don't, I don't think I like
• 52:33
  that take. Let me redo this video.
• 52:35
  And so I'll, I won't have a script.
• 52:37
  I'll refilm the exact same video and then a couple days later
• 52:40
  I'll come back and I'll compare the 2 and it'll be like the
• 52:42
  exact same video. Like I did not watch the video
• 52:45
  before. I was not at all influenced, but
• 52:48
  the wording, the way I presented it, the way I move my arms, it's
• 52:51
  like I only have so much wiggle room to act within.
• 52:55
  And when I'm talking about it, you give me the the prompt of
• 52:58
  talk about this topic. I'm probably gonna say almost
• 53:02
  the exact same thing most of the time because it's who I am.
• 53:06
  And I might feel like I have free will when I'm exercising
• 53:09
  that, but it's, it's like determined by who I am.
• 53:12
  And so it's got to be both. It's always both.
• 53:15
  You know when you have an identical twin, and of course
• 53:19
  the this has happened in real life.
• 53:21
  You have identical twins who maybe by way of life
• 53:25
  circumstances grew up in different environments.
• 53:29
  They typically have different attitudes, but tend to have like
• 53:33
  similar talents. Interesting.
• 53:38
  And you know, for me, I feel like the talent is the nature
• 53:43
  and the attitude is the nurture. Interesting.
• 53:47
  And there's something I always say on this podcast, hard work
• 53:52
  beats talent when talent does not work hard.
• 53:57
  But when you're talented and you work hard at the same time, you
• 54:03
  become unstoppable, unbeatable. You know, I tell people about
• 54:07
  how growing up I felt like I was talented at music and talented
• 54:13
  at speaking. The very first two books I ever
• 54:17
  bought with my own money were books by Bill Kanecki, How to
• 54:25
  Win Friends and Influence People and The Art of Public Speaking.
• 54:29
  So people because of the nature of the education that I have in
• 54:36
  finance, you should think oh why are you going into the media?
• 54:41
  They you don't know Jack about me.
• 54:46
  I grew up in a place in Nigeria called Lagos and just right at
• 54:50
  the back of my parents house was Dark Communications, that is the
• 54:57
  company that owns the very first independent radio and TV station
• 55:04
  in Nigeria. Think about it right that just
• 55:09
  where the whole dream of broadcasting came about.
• 55:14
  So I was exposed very early to, you know, the media and that was
• 55:21
  a very big influence. You now go to university, become
• 55:25
  a finance guy. Even in university I used to,
• 55:29
  you know, MC events. I did MC an event for a when I
• 55:36
  say a concert very in this this guy that's really famous right
• 55:42
  now in Afrobeat. His name is Shake.
• 55:45
  He went to my university and you know, it's it's crazy how people
• 55:48
  have potentials. And I never knew he was going to
• 55:51
  be that that famous going into the future.
• 55:53
  And I used to MC seminars, conferences and, you know, left
• 56:00
  university. But there's something we do in
• 56:03
  Nigeria called the NYSE, the National Youth Service Corps.
• 56:06
  It's like a one year service to your government, a paramilitary
• 56:10
  training. When I was on the camp for that
• 56:13
  service, I was on something called the Orientation
• 56:17
  Broadcasting Service. Now you see the storyline.
• 56:22
  I've always taken communication very seriously and I got into
• 56:25
  PwC, second largest accounting firm in the world.
• 56:29
  I was always involved in, you know, the trainings, teaching to
• 56:35
  clients, right, Anything involved in communication.
• 56:39
  I got into KPMG here in the UK, find a way to always be involved
• 56:44
  in presentations and you know, people not think, oh, you're a
• 56:51
  finance guy, you shouldn't be in the media.
• 56:53
  But they don't realise that I had made that conscious effort
• 56:57
  over time. Oh, I, I think I left something
• 56:59
  out. I was also involved in teaching.
• 57:01
  I was a lecturer for professional accounting
• 57:05
  students, right. That actually helped to refine
• 57:08
  my approach. And of course you are a teacher
• 57:10
  as well. You'd agree with me that the
• 57:13
  highest level of communication is teaching something.
• 57:18
  Of course, you need to understand it better than the
• 57:22
  average person before you can teach it.
• 57:25
  If you if you think you want to communicate something, teach it.
• 57:30
  And then you know that, OK, that's the highest level.
• 57:34
  Yeah, or if you want to think you want to, if you want to
• 57:36
  learn something, right, that'll happen to me.
• 57:38
  I used to do that in my PhD all the time.
• 57:39
  I would read a paper and the way I would test myself, do I
• 57:44
  actually, did I learn it? Did I actually figure out what
• 57:47
  they were doing is I would, I would ask myself, all right, how
• 57:50
  would I teach this to someone? And you start telling, you know,
• 57:53
  you start imagining. OK, so this is what you know,
• 57:55
  this is what the the study found.
• 57:56
  And and you imagine, oh, well, they're probably gonna ask me
• 57:59
  that question. And it's like, oh, shit, I don't
• 58:01
  know the answer to that. You know, let me go back and and
• 58:03
  study some more and see if I can figure that.
• 58:05
  Out. Absolutely.
• 58:07
  Absolutely. When they ask you questions, it
• 58:08
  makes you think about the concept from another
• 58:11
  perspective, and thinking about it from another perspective
• 58:16
  helps you to understand it better.
• 58:18
  Yeah. And by the way, on this, I meant
• 58:20
  to say this in the beginning. We're talking about like young
• 58:23
  people and, and learning and stuff.
• 58:25
  Never be afraid to ask questions.
• 58:27
  That is like the best thing you could possibly do.
• 58:30
  I used to always be afraid, oh, if I'm gonna ask this question,
• 58:34
  I'm gonna look stupid. They're gonna, they're gonna
• 58:35
  know. Obviously, I don't know the
• 58:37
  answer to this and I'm gonna look so stupid.
• 58:40
  You don't look stupid. What looks stupid is if you
• 58:42
  don't ask the question and then five years later, you definitely
• 58:45
  should know that information, but you don't know it because
• 58:47
  you never asked. And now you do look stupid
• 58:50
  because you're in a position where you should know it for
• 58:51
  sure when you're learning and you're just getting started.
• 58:53
  Or honestly, it doesn't even matter if you're just getting
• 58:55
  started, if you ask people to help you, it shows humility and
• 59:01
  it also shows respect and it just shows vulnerability and
• 59:04
  trainability. And these are all great traits
• 59:06
  that you want. Never be so worried about
• 59:08
  looking smart or looking a certain way that you that you
• 59:10
  don't ask for help. Super, super important.
• 59:13
  But there's also another point that I wanted to comment on
• 59:17
  earlier. You talked about the importance
• 59:19
  of learning the, the nature of empirical study, scientific
• 59:22
  study, right? And this is how I live my life.
• 59:26
  I don't know if it's because I'm a scientist or not, or if it's
• 59:29
  just the way I think. But like this is how I think
• 59:32
  about everything. It's like I want to know the
• 59:34
  answer to something. Show me the data.
• 59:36
  Let me what what are the data say?
• 59:37
  And so like, here's an example of this.
• 59:39
  Evidence based. Yeah, like you, it just, it will
• 59:43
  take your life like you want to live like a genius.
• 59:45
  Like I always like to motivate people with this.
• 59:47
  It's like, OK, if you want to live like a genius, use science
• 59:50
  in your daily life because it will.
• 59:52
  It'll help you just understand the world.
• 59:53
  Here's an example. So the other day I went to make
• 59:57
  a cup of water from my refrigerator, and I have a part
• 1:00:02
  that dispenses water, and I have a part that makes ice.
• 1:00:06
  And so I make this cup of ice water and it's cloudy.
• 1:00:08
  And I think, oh man, OK, something's wrong.
• 1:00:11
  It's either the water or it's the ice.
• 1:00:14
  How can I get to the bottom of this?
• 1:00:15
  Well I can fill 1 cup with just water and I can fill 1 cup with
• 1:00:19
  just ice and wait for the ice to melt and see which of these cups
• 1:00:23
  is cloudy. Like yeah, this may be seem
• 1:00:25
  obvious but what's the reason I bring this up and explain this
• 1:00:28
  is because what empirical study and following the data does is
• 1:00:33
  it unlocks the ability to take your emotions out of it.
• 1:00:36
  Because I, I may not want my ice dispenser to be making cloudy
• 1:00:42
  water, cloudy ice, because I want a pain in the ass.
• 1:00:45
  Now I have to fix my ice dispenser.
• 1:00:47
  I just call it a handyman. I have to come pay all this
• 1:00:49
  money to get it fixed. It would be much easier if if
• 1:00:51
  maybe you know, I accidentally the cup was dirty, it wasn't
• 1:00:54
  properly cleaned by the dishwasher or something that
• 1:00:56
  doesn't cost me money. It would be so much more
• 1:00:58
  convenient. But if I do this experiment and
• 1:01:00
  I get the answer, my emotions are out of it.
• 1:01:03
  I'm not thinking about, oh, I really, I don't want it to be
• 1:01:05
  this. It's like, that's what it is and
• 1:01:06
  I just deal with it. And I think trying to just
• 1:01:09
  follow the evidence makes life so much easier because you're
• 1:01:14
  not like you're never, you're never living at a knowledge
• 1:01:17
  deficit. You're never trying to operate
• 1:01:19
  in circumstances where you don't know everything.
• 1:01:21
  If you have a grip of what's going on, it just makes it much
• 1:01:25
  easier to make decisions and to, I don't know, move forward in
• 1:01:28
  whatever direction you're going, whether that's solving a problem
• 1:01:30
  or just trying to figure out which, you know, should I go to
• 1:01:33
  this school or should I go to this school?
• 1:01:34
  It's like, well, look at the data.
• 1:01:36
  You know what, what's the percentage of people from that
• 1:01:39
  school who land the job that you're interested in?
• 1:01:41
  You know, like that kind of stuff is so important.
• 1:01:43
  And another thing that's happening in America is we're
• 1:01:46
  suffering from this truth decay. That's what people call it,
• 1:01:48
  where we're basically losing sight of what's true, right?
• 1:01:51
  What is fact, What is information, what is reliable?
• 1:01:54
  What's fake news, right? We're, we're getting, it's
• 1:01:56
  really hard to know what's real. And that's real scary because
• 1:02:00
  how do you live a life and steer yourself and take care of your
• 1:02:04
  family if you can't trust information and we can't
• 1:02:07
  fundamentally agree on what is fact.
• 1:02:09
  So search for fact wherever you can and and use it to your
• 1:02:12
  advantage because you'll be better.
• 1:02:14
  You'll be more advantage than a lot of people who who don't rely
• 1:02:17
  on fact these days. I very much appreciate what
• 1:02:22
  you've just said of a curse. Spent about 8 years of my life
• 1:02:27
  in accountancy practise and what was I doing?
• 1:02:30
  I was an auditor and what the auditors do you know, verify
• 1:02:34
  information, you know, make professional decisions and
• 1:02:42
  opinions based on what and verified facts and you know,
• 1:02:46
  this has actually like followed me in my life and everything
• 1:02:50
  that I do. I followed the data and you know
• 1:02:53
  when the data you know, in order we say something.
• 1:02:56
  The most compelling form of audit evidence is reliable third
• 1:03:05
  party evidence. It's not about me saying it when
• 1:03:10
  I reached out to you and you know was giving you updates,
• 1:03:14
  right? I give you the updates from
• 1:03:17
  where leasing Notes and Leasing Notes is the Google of podcasts,
• 1:03:22
  right? Listen, Notes is the world's
• 1:03:24
  number one podcasting database with a public verification and
• 1:03:29
  Leasing Notes says I am global to top 2.5%, right?
• 1:03:34
  I did not state that claim. You could go verify it, right,
• 1:03:37
  Right. It was easy for you to believe,
• 1:03:40
  right? But if I came up and said I am
• 1:03:43
  global so and so you asked me, who gave you that certification?
• 1:03:49
  Yeah, based on what, right. So it's it's it's, you know,
• 1:03:54
  very important that, you know, we actually verify information.
• 1:03:58
  People say, OK, somebody came and told me the other day and
• 1:04:02
  said Nigeria has so and so and so numbers.
• 1:04:05
  And I'm like, oh, where did you get that info from?
• 1:04:07
  Then they were like, I saw it on TikTok, like, OK, it, it's, it
• 1:04:13
  speaks to what I have said on this podcast before.
• 1:04:17
  We are in an age of the height of artificial intelligence, but
• 1:04:22
  unfortunately, we are also in the age of the height of human
• 1:04:27
  foolishness. So I am not the neuroscientist.
• 1:04:30
  You're the neuroscientist. Why?
• 1:04:32
  Why is this happening? What?
• 1:04:35
  What's responsible for this? For for you mean for the lack of
• 1:04:42
  trust in data. No, no.
• 1:04:45
  So The thing is this, right, I'm 3033 years old, so I'm a
• 1:04:49
  millennial and I remember growing up, you know, back home
• 1:04:53
  in Nigeria, if wanted to get like important information, a
• 1:04:58
  lot of times you need to go to the library, dig into, you know,
• 1:05:01
  that rabbit hole of books and over time came Google, you
• 1:05:08
  search and search and search different, you know, databases,
• 1:05:11
  check for the ones that are reliable.
• 1:05:13
  Now you have the likes of chat, cheapity, cloudy eye,
• 1:05:16
  perplexity, you know, on and on and on, right?
• 1:05:19
  And information is easily and widely available right now in
• 1:05:27
  this agent time. Yet people still easily spread
• 1:05:31
  false information, and people are easily misinformed.
• 1:05:34
  And people find it very easy right to spread information that
• 1:05:40
  is false. But why?
• 1:05:43
  I mean, you got to look at the incentive structure, right?
• 1:05:46
  So back in, I don't know, let's say 2000, the year 2000, right?
• 1:05:54
  If a website comes out on the middle of whatever, you know,
• 1:05:58
  they can buy a URL and they post a website and it contains fake
• 1:06:02
  information, what's the point of doing that?
• 1:06:04
  You know, no one's going to read your website, no one's going to
• 1:06:06
  trust your website, right? There's no incentive to do that.
• 1:06:11
  But now there's so many incentives built into misleading
• 1:06:15
  people. And one of those it starts with
• 1:06:18
  social media that the development of these
• 1:06:21
  recommendation algorithms where now if you post juicy enough
• 1:06:26
  content that gets people to feel some sort of emotion, that is
• 1:06:30
  probably going to be shown to people who don't follow you,
• 1:06:33
  right? We have this like TikTok start
• 1:06:35
  of this and now it's on Instagram and now it's on
• 1:06:37
  YouTube and all sorts of places where you just sit back, swipe
• 1:06:41
  and it just feeds you content that it thinks you're going to
• 1:06:43
  like. You don't have to follow them,
• 1:06:44
  right? And so for everybody on the
• 1:06:46
  other side of that equation, the person cooking up the meals that
• 1:06:49
  you're the, you know, the content that you're eating and,
• 1:06:51
  and consuming, you have so much incentive to do whatever it
• 1:06:56
  takes to get in front of that person.
• 1:06:58
  Because if you get more followers and you get more
• 1:07:00
  likes, then you get brand deals and you get sponsorships and you
• 1:07:03
  get fame and you have all these incentives built into simply
• 1:07:07
  getting attention. And what's the best way to get
• 1:07:09
  people's attention to make them feel some sort of strong
• 1:07:12
  emotion? And oftentimes what we see
• 1:07:14
  nowadays is that strong emotion is shock or disbelief or rage,
• 1:07:19
  negative emotions and things that either fear exactly things
• 1:07:23
  that make you step back and say, whoa, wait a minute, you know,
• 1:07:26
  that person's doing something horrible.
• 1:07:28
  I despise that person. Or you know, or what?
• 1:07:31
  Whatever it is, social media creators have every reason to
• 1:07:38
  say anything whatever, like where you can make up is always
• 1:07:42
  going to be more interesting than the truth.
• 1:07:44
  Because I could tell you, oh, you know, what's the prefrontal
• 1:07:48
  cortex? Well, as neurons, and they
• 1:07:49
  signal with glutamate and GABA, whatever, that's no one cares.
• 1:07:53
  Or I can tell you in the prefrontal cortex, you know,
• 1:07:55
  your neurons send around sour cream.
• 1:07:58
  And so the more sour cream you eat, the more effective your
• 1:08:01
  brain works. Like you can say whatever.
• 1:08:03
  And if people believe it, then you will start getting
• 1:08:05
  attention. And that's really dangerous
• 1:08:07
  because there's also no fact checking online.
• 1:08:10
  There's no sort of regulations around misinformation.
• 1:08:13
  And so, yeah, a big part of what I do is I actually try to go out
• 1:08:16
  and find videos that are spreading misinformation.
• 1:08:19
  And usually it's not very hard to find them because they have
• 1:08:21
  millions of views. And I can just, you know, people
• 1:08:23
  will often send them to me as well.
• 1:08:25
  And if it's getting a lot of views, then I'll go out and I'll
• 1:08:27
  make a video where I or I debunk it where I explain, you know,
• 1:08:30
  here's what's wrong about this. And I, I always try and do it in
• 1:08:32
  a, a very polite and not condescending way.
• 1:08:36
  Nobody wants to hear a scientist in a white coat talk down to
• 1:08:40
  them and say you're wrong. And here's why.
• 1:08:43
  And you know, neither do I I didn't want that when I was
• 1:08:45
  studying, you know, I wanted to be understood.
• 1:08:47
  And So what I try and do is just basically lay out the facts and
• 1:08:51
  I take my emotions out of it just like I do in my daily life
• 1:08:53
  and just explain, oh, here, this is not right in basically the
• 1:08:57
  heroes of studies and, you know, believe whatever you want to
• 1:08:59
  believe. But here's the real evidence on
• 1:09:01
  it. Here's what this what the
• 1:09:02
  evidence in the data say. And, you know, I've been really
• 1:09:04
  fortunate to see that catch on and people seem to really
• 1:09:07
  respect that and appreciate it. And it just speaks to how
• 1:09:12
  inaccessible good information is.
• 1:09:14
  You know, the, the, the quality of the information that you get
• 1:09:17
  online about neuroscience and psychology.
• 1:09:19
  Speaking as a neuroscientist, it's horrible.
• 1:09:22
  It's garbage. There are some creators who you
• 1:09:25
  can trust that are real neuroscientists and, and
• 1:09:27
  researchers and they actually spread good information.
• 1:09:30
  For every one person like that, there's, I don't know, 10,000
• 1:09:34
  people who just start talking about neuroscience in the brain.
• 1:09:37
  And basically what they're saying is just not, it's not
• 1:09:39
  based on real science. It's based on something they
• 1:09:41
  read on a website or, you know, something that they
• 1:09:43
  misunderstood or whatever. And some of those people are
• 1:09:46
  just genuinely speaking from their heart and trying to help
• 1:09:50
  others and don't realise that they're wrong.
• 1:09:52
  And some of those people are intentionally misleading you
• 1:09:54
  because it benefits them financially.
• 1:09:56
  And that's the that's the scary part.
• 1:09:59
  So fast. It's like the case of the blind
• 1:10:01
  leading the blind. But I'll just say one thing.
• 1:10:04
  I think it's the responsibility of anybody consuming information
• 1:10:10
  to verify the source of the information.
• 1:10:13
  And it's really easy to know or to ascertain if the source is
• 1:10:19
  reliable or not reliable. So I think for the viewers, for
• 1:10:24
  the audience, it's something we should try consciously try to
• 1:10:29
  activate in terms of our attitude or our behaviour
• 1:10:32
  towards consuming information. And you talked about a prefront
• 1:10:37
  the, the, the cortex, right? I do have a friend, Maya.
• 1:10:41
  It can go in Abu Dhabi. Very, very obsessed with the
• 1:10:45
  prefrontal context. But before I ask the questions
• 1:10:49
  that she has sent to you, I am going to ask you a question that
• 1:10:52
  was sent to you by my partner. And she says this.
• 1:10:55
  She says. From your perspective, what's
• 1:10:57
  the most exciting or surprising discovery about the brain in
• 1:11:01
  recent years? We think for a minute, Oh my
• 1:11:03
  gosh, there's so many. Let me give you 1 from my book
• 1:11:06
  that So you know, when I wrote this book, so I I've been
• 1:11:09
  studying social behaviour as a neuroscientist for a decade now.
• 1:11:12
  But when I wrote Why Brains Need Friends, I was doing a bunch of
• 1:11:17
  research on, you know, what studies are out there and I
• 1:11:20
  learned a bunch of things. And this is one of the things
• 1:11:22
  that I learned that completely blew my mind.
• 1:11:25
  So when a mother is getting close to giving birth, she will
• 1:11:30
  produce pulses of oxytocin. And oxytocin is, maybe you've
• 1:11:34
  heard of it, the love hormone, right?
• 1:11:36
  People think of oxytocin. They think of bonding and
• 1:11:38
  partnership. And so when you hear that this
• 1:11:41
  oxytocin is being produced by the mother, you probably think,
• 1:11:44
  oh, that's her body and her brain getting ready to meet the
• 1:11:47
  baby and form a connection with the baby.
• 1:11:48
  But it turns out that's actually not the purpose.
• 1:11:51
  What's really happening is this oxytocin produced by the mother
• 1:11:55
  goes, flows into the baby and into the baby's brain and
• 1:11:59
  influences those brain cells and lowers their activity.
• 1:12:03
  And the reason that that's meaningful and that's that's
• 1:12:06
  happening is because when the baby is coming out of, you know,
• 1:12:11
  being born and it's passing through this tight canal, it's
• 1:12:14
  very likely that the baby is going to have to deal with some
• 1:12:18
  restricted blood flow and restricted oxygen.
• 1:12:21
  And so when when you have oxygen not being delivered to brain
• 1:12:26
  cells, brain cells can die. That's what a stroke is.
• 1:12:29
  And so how do you protect the baby's brain to make sure that
• 1:12:32
  brain cells start don't start dying when there's little oxygen
• 1:12:36
  flowing? Well, you reduce the activity of
• 1:12:38
  the brain cells. You reduce their demand to how
• 1:12:40
  hungry they are. It's like if imagine if you're
• 1:12:43
  you're swimming, you're treading water or you're drowning and you
• 1:12:46
  could hold your breath for longer, right?
• 1:12:48
  That's basically what it's doing.
• 1:12:49
  It's allowing these brain cells to stay alive for longer.
• 1:12:51
  And it's basically a neuroprotective system built
• 1:12:58
  into the mother, built into the bodies of human mothers and
• 1:13:02
  other animals too, to protect the baby and its brain on the
• 1:13:06
  way out. And I found that to be
• 1:13:07
  completely amazing because studying in this field, I had
• 1:13:09
  never heard about that fact before.
• 1:13:11
  That's not actually that recent. You did ask me recent, but to me
• 1:13:14
  that one's just like every time I I think about it, it's like
• 1:13:16
  it's mind blowing. Like when we are born, we are
• 1:13:19
  already protected by the ancient wisdom of biology that's built
• 1:13:24
  into us. Just incredible.
• 1:13:27
  Wow, that is, it's not just mind blowing, that's brain blowing
• 1:13:30
  like this. And it's yeah and yeah, I am
• 1:13:32
  going to go into the prefrontal cortex.
• 1:13:34
  Our questions shout out to Maya Ikango from Abu Dhabi.
• 1:13:40
  So number one is does the prefrontal cortex develop
• 1:13:46
  differently depending on gender? Oh man, that's a good question.
• 1:13:51
  You know, honestly, I can't say for sure.
• 1:13:53
  I remember seeing some studies on this like a couple of years
• 1:13:57
  ago and I don't think I ever really got to the bottom of it.
• 1:14:01
  I'm sorry, I can't give a definitive answer, but you know,
• 1:14:04
  hey, this is also one of those things where you don't want to
• 1:14:07
  look stupid asking and questions.
• 1:14:10
  What kind of neuroscientist wants to come on a podcast and
• 1:14:12
  say, I don't know the answer? The answer is an honest one, one
• 1:14:16
  that will actually say, look, I don't you know, this is the you
• 1:14:18
  have reached the limits of my knowledge.
• 1:14:20
  And I think that's also, by the way, a good sign of who you
• 1:14:23
  should trust. If you ask someone a question
• 1:14:25
  and they always have the answer like this.
• 1:14:27
  Absolutely. I only see something you know.
• 1:14:29
  I'm a professional, right? But I don't know all the
• 1:14:33
  answers. Yeah, I've had myself and that's
• 1:14:35
  OK. In knowing we had to get the
• 1:14:37
  answers if I need to. Exactly.
• 1:14:39
  Exactly. Yeah, I could find that answer.
• 1:14:41
  Maybe I'll I'll check it out and I'll I'll.
• 1:14:42
  Send it. Yeah, of course.
• 1:14:44
  So that means that automatically we should book a Part 2 for
• 1:14:48
  this. We can.
• 1:14:50
  So now you're gonna come back. You can come back with an
• 1:14:52
  advanced. Cortex Edition.
• 1:14:55
  Yeah, Prefrontal cortex edition. You said you're ready.
• 1:14:58
  So #2 is does a stress or trauma inhibit its function,
• 1:15:05
  particularly before it's fully developed?
• 1:15:09
  Interesting, yes, so I do know the answer to this one.
• 1:15:13
  Stress does influence the function of the prefrontal
• 1:15:16
  cortex. It's quite interesting, also
• 1:15:19
  based on some research done in my PhD lab.
• 1:15:22
  So when in in short term stress, couple days, couple hours,
• 1:15:27
  whatever, the the prefrontal cortex actually gets more
• 1:15:30
  effective. It becomes better, like the
• 1:15:32
  cells are are interacting more efficiently, which makes sense
• 1:15:35
  because you have to deal with some challenge.
• 1:15:36
  You need to be locked in right? You got to be capable of
• 1:15:39
  processing the challenge. But with chronic stress over
• 1:15:43
  time goes for weeks or months, the prefrontal cortex, the
• 1:15:46
  function goes way down and the brain cells actually become less
• 1:15:49
  effective at interacting. What, what's really happening
• 1:15:51
  amazingly, is that the, the receptors on the neurons where,
• 1:15:56
  you know, brain cells are sending messages to each other,
• 1:15:59
  the receptors start going away. And so the brain cells actually
• 1:16:03
  have trouble communicating with each other.
• 1:16:06
  And, and basically what that amounts to is that you're
• 1:16:07
  processing power and your computing power goes down South.
• 1:16:11
  Chronic stress is bad. As for the timing, I don't think
• 1:16:15
  it can, you know, impair, you know, I would say in the context
• 1:16:21
  of like normal ranges of stress will not necessarily change the
• 1:16:26
  function of your prefrontal cortex long term, but like
• 1:16:29
  traumatic stress, like PTSD, you know, really traumatic
• 1:16:33
  experiences. It could I've been.
• 1:16:34
  I believe there is evidence that that it does alter the the
• 1:16:37
  function of the prefrontal cortex.
• 1:16:39
  Interesting. So there's a third question, and
• 1:16:43
  that is how is the prefrontal cortex different from other
• 1:16:48
  parts of the frontal lobe? I mean, the prefrontal cortex is
• 1:16:53
  the most like evolved. It's like the, it's the, it's
• 1:16:56
  the reason you have the frontal cortex and then you have the
• 1:16:59
  prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is even
• 1:17:01
  more towards the front. And there's this general idea
• 1:17:04
  that like the further away from the brain stem you get and like
• 1:17:08
  this base level, the more evolved and, and fancy the brain
• 1:17:13
  area is. And so the prefrontal cortex, it
• 1:17:16
  just, it has a lot of amazing functions that aren't
• 1:17:18
  necessarily seen in the the frontal cortex, like much more
• 1:17:20
  higher level cognition and be able to understand people and do
• 1:17:24
  things that make us human really.
• 1:17:26
  But, but The thing is the, the prefrontal cortex is also like
• 1:17:30
  every brain area. It's like very distributed.
• 1:17:32
  There's all these different nuclei and brain and sections,
• 1:17:35
  you know, within the prefrontal cortex there's the dorsolateral
• 1:17:38
  prefrontal cortex and all these different subsets of areas that
• 1:17:41
  are all involved in different things.
• 1:17:43
  And you know, the brain is just immensely complicated.
• 1:17:47
  But without a prefrontal cortex, you know we would not be as high
• 1:17:50
  functioning animals. I like that.
• 1:17:54
  I always say that human beings, we are animals, it's just that
• 1:17:59
  we are higher animals, right? And of course, we have the
• 1:18:01
  animals with the highest level of IQ.
• 1:18:03
  That is why we are able to dominate.
• 1:18:05
  So #4 is the prefrontal cortex is sometimes called the CEO of
• 1:18:11
  the brain. Why is that and do you agree
• 1:18:14
  with that? Interesting You could say that
• 1:18:21
  you, I guess, I mean there's a couple different CEOs of the
• 1:18:23
  brain and actually the nucleus accumbens that I mentioned
• 1:18:26
  earlier in the context of MDMA is also one of those.
• 1:18:29
  But I would say, yeah, I guess the way I kind of think about
• 1:18:31
  the prefrontal cortex is it's like the babysitter of the
• 1:18:33
  brain. You have all these brain areas
• 1:18:35
  that are just like impulsive and they're doing their job.
• 1:18:37
  And your prefrontal cortex is, is often like shutting off those
• 1:18:40
  impulses and being like, wait a minute.
• 1:18:42
  But, you know, before we slap this person in the face, let's
• 1:18:45
  think about this for a minute, you know, and it's kind of
• 1:18:48
  babysitting and keeping those brain areas in check.
• 1:18:51
  So yeah. And many, many, it is the CEO,
• 1:18:53
  but I like to think of the the CEO of the brain sort of as the
• 1:18:56
  nucleus accumbens, because the nucleus accumbens is really in
• 1:18:59
  charge of like decision making or not in charge of it.
• 1:19:01
  But it has a major role in like deciding what things we pursue
• 1:19:05
  and what actions we do based on how much they benefit us.
• 1:19:09
  And you know, I think that's kind of like the role of the CEO
• 1:19:11
  really. So is it the CEO or the CEO?
• 1:19:16
  I feel like the, the, the, the nucleus to Cummins is the CEO
• 1:19:20
  and the prefrontal cortex is like the executive board, like
• 1:19:23
  the, you know, you have a board of direct or a board that's like
• 1:19:25
  steering the company in the right direction.
• 1:19:28
  I feel like that's sort of those two are combining to to make
• 1:19:31
  things work properly. OK, interested stuff.
• 1:19:36
  So this particular friend of mine, Maya, she she's very
• 1:19:40
  obsessed with the prefrontal cortex.
• 1:19:42
  And anytime she sees a person acting, you know, in an abnormal
• 1:19:48
  way, she just says, oh, that person's prefrontal cortex is
• 1:19:51
  not properly developed. And she's told me before that
• 1:19:55
  the prefrontal cortex actually fully develops at the age of 25.
• 1:20:01
  Is is is that true? Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  The prefrontal cortex, whether it's there's definitely not like
• 1:20:06
  a you, you're 25, it's done. It's not really like that.
• 1:20:11
  It's more of that, you know, as you're getting older, your
• 1:20:15
  prefrontal cortex is continuing to be shaped by your
• 1:20:17
  experiences. That's really what that whole
• 1:20:21
  like your prefrontal cortex isn't done until 25 means.
• 1:20:24
  It means that unlike other brain areas, your Pfc remains flexible
• 1:20:29
  as you get older. And so, you know, it may not, it
• 1:20:33
  may be 25 that you kind of get to that point or maybe a little
• 1:20:37
  bit later, you know, it doesn't really, it's not like a firm
• 1:20:41
  thing that it's like boom, 25, you're done.
• 1:20:47
  So great news, we actually recently got the brand deal, the
• 1:20:53
  sponsorship and of course our partnership with Betterhelp,
• 1:20:57
  which is the world's leading online therapy brand.
• 1:21:01
  So I'd like to real quick, when I say your brain, pick the brain
• 1:21:06
  of a neurosurgeon on the importance of therapy and what
• 1:21:10
  do you think about online therapy?
• 1:21:13
  Oh, I mean, I think like therapy is huge, you know, I, I see a
• 1:21:17
  therapist proudly. I think more people should be
• 1:21:20
  proud about the fact that they do see a therapist.
• 1:21:22
  You know, it's like people are really eager to share that they
• 1:21:25
  go to the gym, right, 'cause it's like going to the gym is
• 1:21:28
  seen as this good thing. It's like, oh, you're working on
• 1:21:30
  your body. Like good for you.
• 1:21:31
  You know, therapy is working on your brain.
• 1:21:33
  It's like you're, you're going to the gym for your brain,
• 1:21:35
  right? You're working on your mood,
• 1:21:37
  you're trying to improve your well-being, you're trying to
• 1:21:38
  grow. And so, you know, I have no
• 1:21:40
  shame in sharing that I go to see a therapist and, you know,
• 1:21:44
  and some days I go and I'm like, honestly, I got nothing to talk
• 1:21:46
  about right now. Like everything's good.
• 1:21:48
  I'm, I feel good and that's fine.
• 1:21:49
  You know, sometimes you go to the doctor and you're like,
• 1:21:51
  everything's cool. But other days I'm like, Oh my
• 1:21:53
  gosh, thank goodness I have this session because it's really
• 1:21:55
  important. So I, you know, I think, I think
• 1:21:57
  therapy is obviously important and there's obviously tonnes of
• 1:22:00
  research showing that it's effective and helpful.
• 1:22:03
  Having a good therapist matters. And and also, you know, As for
• 1:22:07
  the online component, you know, I prefer generally, you know,
• 1:22:11
  when possible in person. But but for a lot of people in
• 1:22:16
  person has a bunch of problems. One, it's less accessible.
• 1:22:20
  Yeah, sometimes it's it's not easy to get to a place like, you
• 1:22:23
  know, you might not, you might be in the little in the middle
• 1:22:24
  of a therapy desert where you don't have access to a
• 1:22:27
  therapist. You know, if that if that's true
• 1:22:29
  or you have access to therapists, but you don't really
• 1:22:32
  enjoy any of the therapists nearby.
• 1:22:33
  So that's another benefit. And the other thing too, is also
• 1:22:36
  when you have a therapist and you have to go into the office,
• 1:22:38
  you may not feel comfortable going into the office if you're
• 1:22:41
  if you're not a person who's proud to be in therapy and
• 1:22:44
  you're worried that you might see others.
• 1:22:45
  So I think, you know, what was it like?
• 1:22:46
  Betterhelp are great. I mean, the fact that you can
• 1:22:48
  see a therapist online is like, that's a new thing for humanity.
• 1:22:51
  I think it's a good thing. I absolutely would.
• 1:22:56
  I say I appreciate the kind of work that better help out does.
• 1:22:59
  It's, it's interesting, you know, when I look at my body of
• 1:23:01
  work, I've seen a lot of videos wherein I have, you know, spoken
• 1:23:06
  very heavily and assessively about the importance of therapy
• 1:23:11
  and having better help reach out to me to, to be a brand
• 1:23:15
  ambassador or to be a partner feels like a validation for what
• 1:23:19
  I stand for. And you know, it's really great
• 1:23:22
  as a creator to, to represent a brand that aligns with your
• 1:23:26
  philosophy. I think that's the best form of
• 1:23:29
  partnership. Let's talk about your book.
• 1:23:32
  It's, it's coming out very soon, right?
• 1:23:33
  And of course, again, I once assigned, you know, a copy of
• 1:23:37
  your book. It's interesting.
• 1:23:39
  You got a book that's similar to yours, right, Right here by
• 1:23:41
  Professor Bruno Signaco. He gave me this book and of
• 1:23:45
  course, he was on the podcast earlier this year and did sign
• 1:23:49
  the book. So I would appreciate your your
• 1:23:52
  autograph, you know, your celebrities of.
• 1:23:53
  Course, I would love to. OK, yeah, your book, what is it
• 1:23:59
  about? And of course, what are you
• 1:24:01
  trying to achieve with it and why should the audience buy the
• 1:24:05
  book? Yeah, well, the book's called
• 1:24:07
  Why Brains Need Friends, and it's, as the title suggests,
• 1:24:10
  it's about the neuroscience of social interaction and basically
• 1:24:13
  what we get from social behaviour, social connection.
• 1:24:17
  And you know, I think the reason I wrote the book is because
• 1:24:19
  there are all these stats out there that we're becoming more
• 1:24:22
  isolated. We're not spending time with
• 1:24:24
  others as much, and that's often framed as a very negative thing.
• 1:24:28
  And it is. But I don't think people fully
• 1:24:31
  appreciate the significance of what we actually stand to lose
• 1:24:34
  from being isolated and what we actually stand to gain from
• 1:24:38
  being socially connected. And so my goal with this book is
• 1:24:42
  to basically take all of this massive mounds of neuroscience
• 1:24:46
  research that has accumulated over decades and decades,
• 1:24:49
  including, I've been fortunate to contribute some of it myself
• 1:24:52
  and put it all in one place that the average person can read and
• 1:24:55
  understand and walk away and say, OK, I actually need to
• 1:24:59
  consider socialising as a fundamental component of my
• 1:25:03
  well-being. And I, I think people don't
• 1:25:05
  really do that enough, but it's important.
• 1:25:07
  It really makes a difference. And it's, it's just like going
• 1:25:09
  to the gym or having a clean diet or getting enough sleep.
• 1:25:12
  You know, it's one of those things that we really need to
• 1:25:13
  do. And, you know, I'm my goal with
• 1:25:16
  this book is, is that after reading this, people will
• 1:25:19
  appreciate that they will live healthier lives and they will
• 1:25:21
  live more connected lives. Because I am worried also about
• 1:25:25
  not just what the distance between us is doing for our
• 1:25:27
  health, but what it's doing for our societies.
• 1:25:30
  And I think that, you know, maybe by by helping people
• 1:25:33
  appreciate the biological significance for you, right?
• 1:25:38
  You are, as I've discovered through my life of falling in
• 1:25:41
  love with neuroscience, you are the person housed within this
• 1:25:45
  organ, right? And this organ loves interacting
• 1:25:48
  with others. It needs interacting with
• 1:25:49
  others. And so, you know, if I can get
• 1:25:52
  people to understand that the way I learned about it as a
• 1:25:55
  neuroscientist and came to appreciate it, I think we would
• 1:25:58
  have a much healthier, happier society.
• 1:26:00
  So I, I really, you know, and my, and my sort of secret quiet
• 1:26:03
  goal is I really, I want to sort of address this world that we
• 1:26:10
  find ourselves in where we do have less empathy.
• 1:26:13
  We're not really feeling disconnected with others.
• 1:26:15
  You know, I think if if people understood what it really means
• 1:26:18
  to be connected, then we wouldn't maybe be as quick to
• 1:26:21
  put our differences between us. Well, at this point, I feel like
• 1:26:26
  you should actually make me a brand ambassador for your book
• 1:26:29
  because it just completely aligns, You know, we are
• 1:26:33
  Nigeria. Big shout out to Nigeria.
• 1:26:35
  There's a flag of Nigeria. I'll just have my flag handy.
• 1:26:39
  The Yoruba people say carrying carp or yeni yeni.
• 1:26:42
  It means when we walk in groups, right?
• 1:26:45
  It brings honour to us as a people.
• 1:26:49
  If you want to go far, I walk alone.
• 1:26:51
  But if you want to go further, move with people, right?
• 1:26:54
  And, you know, there's a reason why the brain, you know, is in
• 1:26:57
  the head, Tell people because it's, you know, it's meant to be
• 1:27:01
  the leader of the body. If you know, the creator of the
• 1:27:05
  universe, you know, wanted the brain to be somewhere else, he
• 1:27:11
  would have put it somewhere else.
• 1:27:12
  So it's important that we ensure that we, you know, perform
• 1:27:17
  activities that would enhance that brain.
• 1:27:22
  Like you said, rightly said, we train our bodies, right?
• 1:27:25
  But a lot of times we don't do enough to train the brain.
• 1:27:28
  And I really appreciate your body of work.
• 1:27:31
  So the quick fire round are before we let you go, we, you
• 1:27:35
  don't get to see neurosciences every day.
• 1:27:36
  So let's milk out everything we can milk out of you.
• 1:27:39
  Quick fire round. 5 sharp questions, 5 sharp answers.
• 1:27:43
  Are you ready to rumble? Let's do it.
• 1:27:47
  I'm ready. OK, number one, what's the most
• 1:27:50
  misunderstood fact about the brain you wish everyone knew?
• 1:27:56
  Left brain, right brain. People have differences in how
• 1:27:59
  they behave and stuff, but studies show that there is not
• 1:28:02
  actually like the average person.
• 1:28:04
  You put them in a brain scanner, they don't have a dominant side
• 1:28:07
  of the brain. Yeah, I love that because I have
• 1:28:12
  personally been that person that has trained, you know, both
• 1:28:16
  sides, you know, and it's covered.
• 1:28:19
  It's it's kind of like a fallacy.
• 1:28:21
  It's basically how you train it. You can do anything you want to
• 1:28:25
  do and you can be anything you want to be.
• 1:28:27
  TikTok or Stanford lecture hall. Where do you feel you make the
• 1:28:32
  bigger impact? Gosh, TikTok, honestly.
• 1:28:37
  Welcome to the TikTok Generation One book or paper that changed
• 1:28:41
  the way you see neuroscience. For me to publish or to read.
• 1:28:47
  All right, that changed your perspective on on neuroscience.
• 1:28:52
  A book that I oh I see Behaved by Robert Sapolsky and also Live
• 1:28:58
  Wired by David Eagleman. Both both really good.
• 1:29:00
  Those are my top 2 favourite neuroscience books.
• 1:29:03
  Interests and stuff. I think we we should have that
• 1:29:05
  in the description section. Yeah.
• 1:29:07
  OK, so what's your go to practise for protecting your own
• 1:29:12
  mental health as a scientist creator?
• 1:29:16
  Exercise. Lifting weights.
• 1:29:19
  I love that. And of course, if you could
• 1:29:21
  collaborate with any scientist, past or present, who would it be
• 1:29:25
  and why? You know, I'm going to give a
• 1:29:28
  really kind of unexpected answer.
• 1:29:32
  There's a researcher named Doctor Ronald Duman.
• 1:29:35
  I applied to his lab to do a postdoc, and he is an amazing
• 1:29:39
  scientist, neuroscientist. And he passed away of a heart
• 1:29:43
  attack the year that I applied to be in his lab.
• 1:29:46
  And so I never got to work with him.
• 1:29:48
  And I think, you know, I have a lot of respect for him and his
• 1:29:51
  work and was sad to see and learn of his passing.
• 1:29:54
  And it would be awesome to collaborate with him.
• 1:29:58
  Rest his soul. Wow.
• 1:30:00
  And that is the end of today's session.
• 1:30:04
  There's something I always say, you know, gratitude is good
• 1:30:06
  attitude and when a person shares their life with you, the
• 1:30:09
  time with you, they share their life with you because the SI
• 1:30:12
  unit for measuring life is time. So for me, it's immense and
• 1:30:17
  intense gratitude, love and respect to you and of course to
• 1:30:21
  the audience. Guys, I have a neuroscientist
• 1:30:23
  here do the needful right? So go share like comments, you
• 1:30:30
  know, subscribe. If you don't do that, I think
• 1:30:33
  we'll we'll tell him to adjust your prefrontal cortex.
• 1:30:39
  Guys, you know, conceive belief, strive to thrive, and of course,
• 1:30:43
  go achieve. Before you run, do you want to
• 1:30:45
  leave a shout out to anybody before we say goodbye?
• 1:30:48
  I just want to shout out all the mentors that I've had that have,
• 1:30:51
  you know, trained me and, and showed me the way when I had
• 1:30:53
  questions. I think and you know, to the
• 1:30:55
  younger people, the people arising through their careers,
• 1:30:58
  find those mentors, you know, find those people who will
• 1:31:00
  answer your questions because those are your guides.
• 1:31:02
  Those are, you know, you will appreciate those people when you
• 1:31:06
  are in their seat helping the next generation.
• 1:31:08
  So I appreciate those who lend their hand to me.
• 1:31:11
  Wow, I love that curiosity. Curiosity to say it kill the
• 1:31:15
  cat. What satisfaction brought it
• 1:31:17
  back for me and Doctor Ben? It's goodbye and God bless you
• 1:31:21
  guys.