Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Robert Greene. Robert Greene is an author who has written more than five. Best-selling books including the 48 Laws of Power the laws of human nature and Mastery. He did his Bachelors training at the University of California, Berkeley.
University of Wisconsin at Madison Robert Greene's books are both unique
and important for several reasons not the least of which is that they explore the interaction between the psychology of self self exploration and the psychology of human interaction all rooted in history and modern culture and at the same time in a way that pertains to everybody. I first learned about Roberts work from reading the book Mastery which to my mind is a brilliant exploration and a practical tool for how to think about and pursue ones.
Opus whenever I'm asked for book suggestions, I always include Mastery in my top three recommendations during today's discussion. We cover a wide range of topics including how to find and pursue and Achieve ones purpose. We talk about the selection of a life partner as well as romantic and other types of relationships. We also discuss the topics of motivation and urgency and this concept of death ground, which arose during our discussion of Roberts recent stroke. Robert stroke rendered him certain limitations, but also has allowed
To explore how to write how to exercise indeed how to interface with life in general in new ways that allow him to continue to expand his sense of purpose. I'm certain that by the end of today's episode. You will have gleaned tremendous amounts of new knowledge that will allow you to navigate forward along the path to your purpose. Perhaps find your purpose if you feel you haven't done that yet as well as to greatly enhance your relationship with yourself with others and indeed to the world around you before we begin. I'd like to emphasize
Sighs that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is rokka rokka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are the absolute highest quality. I've spent a lifetime working on the biology the visual system and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly
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Str non-slip depressed protocols. I started using the waking up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing Yoga Nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app turned out to be the waking up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body in two different states and that he liked it very much. So I gave the waking up a petri and I too found it to be extremely
Tremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate other times. I've longer to meditate and indeed. I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about Consciousness. But also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of States depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up app has lots of different types of Yoga Nidra sessions. Those of you don't know Yoga Nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's a very different than most meditations and there's excellent.
Scientific data to show that Yoga Nidra and something similar to it called non sleep deep rest or NS. TR can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy even with just a short 10 minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up app, you can go to waking up.com huberman and access a free 30-day trial again. That's waking up.com hubermann to access a free 30-day trial and now for my discussion with Robert Greene Robert. I'm so happy you're here. I'm really happy.
To be here Andrew. Thank you so much for inviting me a short story in 2015. I was teaching a course to undergraduates. This was a big course 450 students causes. This was when I was a professor at University of California San Diego. I was about to move back to Stanford, but the course was entitled neural circuits in health and disease but there was a final lecture where I would do a lot of Q&A with the students about science about
Years about career paths and what I found was that many of the students had questions about not just science but about how to learn and forage for information and I recommended three books at the end of the course every year that I taught it I taught for four years and one of the books was the book longitude, which is a wonderful story about discovery of timekeeping devices at see ya one book. I'll leave as a mystery not to be not to be mysterious. But because it's not it's
A science book. I'll just tell you what it is. It's principles of Neuroscience. So I thought that you know that one. Yeah, it's a big it's a it makes a better doorstop foremost than a book but it's a wonderful resource. If you want to learn about neuroscience and your book Mastery. Oh and the reason I recommended Mastery is because these students were soon going to go into the great Jungle of yeah, you know post undergraduate education. And and for me, I found Mastery to be an absolutely transformative book.
that it taught me so much about how to learn from others how to expect certain types of interactions when one kind of assigns themselves to a mentor and vice versa and it talked about some things that we'll get into in more depth today, but not the least of which is about identifying that unique seed that exists within all of us that can guide our best decisions in terms of finding our purpose and it and so I
I usually end with a great debt of gratitude and I'll probably do that again at the end, but I want to start with a great debt of gratitude. Thank Mastery transformed my entire life. And in many ways this podcast probably wouldn't exist. Were it not for Mastery because it really embedded in me this idea that we all have a deeper purpose and it explains how to go about finding that purpose. So I tell you that and I also will use that as a segue for
Um asking you now since I'm sure people's ears are perked up to this. You know, how do you find your purpose? Could you share with us what it is to find one's purpose and how early life events perhaps can queue us to what that purpose is for each of us. Well, thank you for that that marvelous introduction is and I'm almost blushing. That's that's fantastic story. Um, well, you know being a human being is not easy as opposed to an animal because we're born and
Nobody gives us like a direction. Our parents might be a little bit at our college teachers Etc mentors, but generally we're on our own and it's a very very difficult process you wake up in the morning and you don't really know what you're what you can do. You could choose 12 different paths. It can be very confusing and very overwhelming when you find that sense of purpose when you find what I call your life's task. Everything has a direction. Everything has a purpose your energy is concentrated. It's not like
Just going down to a single narrow pathway. It's not like life becomes boring and it's just about discipline and solving problems. It's actually the most exciting thing that can ever happen to you because you never have that lost feeling you wake up in the morning and go. Yeah. This is what I need to accomplish people come at you with all kinds of distractions and boring and irritating things you're able to cut it out. It's just the most marvelous piece of internal radar that you can have. So I genuinely wish that everybody can find that kind of
internal radar and so it's not easy and I understand that there's no like instant formula because we're all about instant formulas. It's difficult and I want you to know that so it's not like Robert can give me the answer in 3 minutes. No, I can't but there's a process involved. It's not it's not, you know a mystery. You can't follow a very singular process and the idea is you're talking about childhood the way I like to frame it is when you were born
You are a phenomenon. You are unique. Your DNA has never occurred in the history of the universe going back billions of years. It will never occur in the future your life experiences with your parents and everything that you experience in your early years going on up is unique. It's yours. You are one of a kind right? So that is your source of power to waste that is just the worst thing you can do in your life and what what the power is is finding that you
- what makes you you and how you can mine that and how you can go deep into it and use that to create a career path, right? And so I tell people when you're a child when you're 45, or even younger you have what the great psychologist Maslow called impulse voices their little voices in your head that say, I love this. I hate that I like this food. I don't like when Mommy moves this way. I like when Daddy comes from here.
You're very cute into who you are and what you like and what you don't like and these voices kind of direct you in certain ways, right? And when you're very young they direct you towards intellectual mental Pursuits as well. And there's a book I recommend for everybody. It's Howard Gardner's five frames of mind. It's helped me immensely the idea is he talks about five forms of intelligence. Our problem is we think of intelligence as mostly intellectual.
But there are many forms of intelligence. There's the intelligence that has to do with words. There's abstract intelligence tests do with patterns and Mathematics. There is kinetic intelligence that has to do with the body. There's social intelligence. He has five of them and the idea is your brain naturally veers towards one of them you can veered towards two of them that happens, but generally one of them kind of dominates right and it's like a grain in your brain that's going in a certain direction you want to go
With that grain and because that's where your power will lie. So when you're young if you go back and think about when you were four or five you can maybe get a picture of some kind of direction or voice inside of you that was compelling you towards this. I know for me it was words from I can remember when I was six years old. I was just obsessed with words just the letters in Words almost like in this almost slightly schizophrenic way. I would spell words backwards. I would take them apart.
I would do anagrams. I love palindromes. Right so I had a thing about words and language. It's very Primal some people, you know Albert Einstein when he was four years old his father gave him a birthday gift of a compass and he was just mesmerized by this Compass the idea that there are invisible forces out there in the cosmos moving this needle and he's obsessed with the idea of invisible forces Steve Jobs when he was like seven or eight or maybe younger in Burlingame, California.
Near his father. They passed by a store with Devoe technological devices in the window. And he was just hypnotized by the design of those devices in the glass tubes and everything. So he wanted to go in that direction. You know, Tiger Woods saw his father hitting golf balls in the garage and he was just like screaming with joy, he had to he had to do that, right, you know, I can give you a million different examples of this. Of course, these are people who are famous. Obviously we can go back and find that.
It's easier. But what happens to you and please cut me off of I'm going on too long. Please continue. What happens to you is your seven now you're getting older and you're starting to not hear that voice anymore. You're hearing the voice of your teachers telling you you're not good at this field. You need to get better at math. You know, you shouldn't be interested in these sports or anything. You should go in this tree. Your parents are starting to tell you. This is the career they want for the direction. They want you to go in right you start.
That more than your own voice as you get older it gets worse and worse and worse. Then when you're a teenager, it's all about what other people are doing your peers. What's cool, what's not cool, you know and that kind of is more so all of these noise enters your brain and you can't hear that anymore. You don't know who you are. And so you go to college you kind of maybe choose a career Major that seems practical that your parents want you to go into
Maybe you kind of wander around you're not sure and then you enter the work world without that inner radar that I'm talking about and you brother. You're lost right? Where should I go? Well, I need to make money right? And so you make a choice based on the need to make a lot of money some not everyone but some people do that and I understand that need we all need to make a living but that can set you off in a very bad path because you're not connected emotionally. The thing is when you
Out that Primal inclination that grain that's inside of you. Then you have the the energy to do to be disciplined to go through boring tasks to learn you learn at a faster rate because you're emotionally engaged when you're emotionally engaged in a subject the brain learns twice three times four times as fast as when you're not I always give the example in college. I studied foreign languages which was kind of a passion of mine.
For three or four years, I studied French and then I went to Paris and I couldn't speak a word it was it was useless because it didn't teach me anything practical right? I was totally confused and then but I was in Paris and I loved and I wanted to live there right and I had a girlfriend and I needed to speak French to her and I can tell you in one month. I learned more than those four years of University because I wanted to because I was engaged my emotions were there. It was like I had to survive.
To learn French, whereas so most of us, we don't have a need really to learn this subject. We're half were paying half attention. But when you find that thing that really connects to you, you're paying deep attention. Your emotions are engaged. You're learning at a much faster rate. Okay. And so the thing is, how do you find that when you're older when you're 21, I give people a lot of help and it's usually not so difficult. We can go through that process. It gets harder when you're 30.
Yeah, and you've been wandering around but it's not impossible. I didn't really start find my exact path until I was 3839 to be honest. So there's hope when you get 40 and you get 50 gets more and more difficult. Right and it's very sad, if you wasted that seed of unique this that I'm talking about and I tell people there are ways of going back and we go through a process like archaeology we have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones from your childhood that indicated what you were meant to do.
When you find your life's task everything opens up, it doesn't mean you figured out. Okay, I've got a name for this particular job when I'm 28. It's not how it works. It gives you a sense of direction. You can try different things. You can experiment you can have fun when you're in your 20s. You're going to learn you learn skills, but it gives you an overall framework instead of whoa. All this confusion is chaos social media the internet I could go here here here, you're lost at sea, it gives you a very important sense of direction a compass.
as you describe this I have this image of you know, you mentioned the animals that presumably don't have a lot of flexibility in terms of the niches they can exist in but the way I imagined this process is that as a human were plopped into a environment and here I'm using an algae where we don't really know if we are an aquatic animal a terrestrial animal or or an avian, right if you beat or an amphibian for that matter,
And to make the wrong choice right to be an amphibian who's trying to fly, although them sure. They're out there in the animal kingdom. It's not just a waste of time. It's probably deadly and not to overdramatize the the failure of finding one's purpose, but I see it that way. Whereas perhaps we could just say that the process of finding one's purpose is to realize like, ah, you know, I'm an amphibian I can go in and out of water whereas a bunch of other creatures
Teachers around me stop at the water's edge. Right, right, and this is really cool and a bunch of these other things like these flying things that they can't actually even go in the water some of them might, you know be on the surface or dive into it, but they can't do what I can do. So the process of self-discovery, it sounds like it's about restricting one's choices to a sort of wedge within the full landscape of options and you know for me I can certainly recall after reading Mastery it helped me recall some early seed
Jeans that I experienced as a very distinct sensation in my body. I'll describe that. Yeah. Well without making it too specific to my unique taste, you know as a kid, I loved flora and fauna. I love learning about biology sure you no surprise there but animals and how they move in particular and fish and going to a proper aquarium store for the first time for me and going snorkeling for the first time was like Wow and is even as I describe it. It's almost like my body floats I feel
It in my left arm of all things and it feels like there's something to do about it. It's not just that I'm an observation of things that Delight me like there's something there's an activation State created within me like I got to do something with this and typically it's tell everybody about it until they won't listen anymore. But oftentimes it's also draw those things to think about them and I just Delight in them. It's a constant source of delight and so seed such as those and there are few other things in that in that landscape of flora and fauna and
Learning about animals and biology including the human animal and then organizing information feels so satisfying to me. It's like a drug that and so I just felt feels like this, you know it ternal spring of life, right? And so for me, that's what it was and to and in 2015 when I was teaching that course the course I loved but I was feeling a little bit astray in my scientific career. And then I read Mastery and I realized yes, I love running a laboratory. I love teaching but
there's something else for me and it has to do not with a podcast and even know what a podcast. I probably I knew what a podcast was. I was listening to podcast at that time. But but I wasn't on social media. I had no thoughts of having a podcast. But what I wanted was that feeling in its total number of forms, that's the goal get that feeling in as many forms as possible. Right? Is that is that about that's its that's absolutely perfect because the connection to what I'm talking about. It's not an intellectual thing.
It's visceral. It's emotional its physical right and you feel it in your body and when you're doing it, it's like it's at your level. It's like you're swimming with the current you feel that things are easy everything clicks together. There's a delight not everything is going to be delightful. There's going to be tedium involved. There's going to be moments of boredom but you're able to withstand the moments of boredom because you feel that deep overall connection. So yes, that's precisely what I'm talking about. I mean, it's
For me, it's a little bit similar thing is I said about words, but the other thing that I was obsessed with when I was a kid was early human ancestors. Don't ask me why I just was so obsessed with our ancestors millions of years ago and how it's possible to be living here in the 60s or 70s with cars and everything but to come to where we are now and I wrote a stash ort story when I was 8 years old about a vulture.
It Was Written from the point of view of a vulture watching the first humans kind of emerge on the planet, I'm sure it was absolutely awful Dreadful but the weird thing is I'm writing a new book and all I'm doing in that book is going into ER into early humans and I feel like a kid again, I'm so excited. I'm so happy so I can very much relate to your story you mentioned these five different forms of intelligence or frames of mind if you refer to them and
I'm certainly aware that the I lean towards a more intellectual interests. Although as you pointed out that the excitement the Delight is visceral. Yeah, and the actions are actions there over the body ultimately right one has to draw speak write books Etc to transmute that excitement into something real.
For people that are not as intellectually tune, but maybe our kinesthetically tuned for instance. I can only wonder what that's like, I'm not completely uncoordinated, but I don't think I have a kinesthetic Attunement or frame of mind but I for instance had a podcast listener mention that they think in feels that they literally experienced thought as a serious sort of a patchwork of a bottle.
Sensations, right and that fought for them is not of the stuff from the neck up but only from the neck down which to me was really intriguing and so I only raised this because there have to be a as you point out. There's an infinite number of different sort of orientations based on our unique DNA and experience. But what do you think explains why these particular seeds or as you point out like the the direction that the grain runs in the brain?
I mean, it's partially going to be nature. It's going to be DNA but we were talking about this as if there's some exciting or all inspiring or delightful thing that captures us can it be the other way to can it be you? No one has a bad experience as a child in an intellectual environment and then decides, you know, I'm going in the things of the body feel good if things of the mind of intellect feels bad and does it matter whether or not
We are drawn to our Purpose By recognizing what we love or what we hate or are both useful though. They're both very very useful. You know, a lot of intelligence is is not is nonverbal. We think in terms of images. We're very much infected by the emotions of other people so I know for instance, my mother is very very interested in history. She's obsessed with history and I probably
Absorbed her interest in history. I don't think there's a genetic Gene for that interest, you know, so you're going to absorb things from your parents as well. So it's not all just genetic. But yeah, what you hate will pay a big have a big thing. But the problem with doing that is if you go into a direction in your in your in elementary school Etc and they force you to learn math and you hate it. What it tends to do is it turns you off from learning in general?
I think I don't want to I don't want to I don't want to beat this but I don't want to go through anything because it's painful doesn't lead anywhere. It's not me at frustration. It turns you off from learning in general. So it's really really important for a child to have the love experience as early as possible so that they can know what they hate and why they hate it right and then they can Rebel and they can go into that field as opposed to I hate learning I hate dis but I hate studying. I hate trying things over and over again if you're Candace.
Directly oriented and you know a part of me. I understand that because I love sports is you have to you have to practice it's going to take a lot of it's not you're not going to instantly be good at something right and that's going to require a love of it. Right? But if your math experience cause I hate learning shit, you're not you're just going to transfer to sports. You're going to hate discipline in general. So it's very important for parents to let that child have at least glimmers of that. Love moment. I know.
For me when I finished college and I enjoyed the work world. I had to get a job. I got worked in journalism. I hated it. I hated working for other people. I hated office politics. I hated all the egos. I hated the smarmy Enos. I hated the lack of quality was all just about you know, making money and getting things out there and then I worked in Hollywood. I hated Hollywood. I hated working in Hollywood that formed me very much. Maybe go in the direction.
Wented but only from the basis of I knew that I wanted to be a writer so, you know, that's very important that it's not just hate it can form you but there also has to be that positive deep emotional love of something that also is grounded in you in some way what you just said really highlights the fact that energy and motivation can come from either either pressure, you know desire for something or desire to get away from something and earlier.
When you were talking about how we are so much more engaged and driven toward things that stir us emotionally and actually we know based on the Neuroscience as you know to I'm sure that only by the release of certain neural chemicals in the brain and body would our brain have any reason to change right? If you don't feel agitation and you can do everything that you're trying to do, of course your brain wouldn't change like why would it right that agitation is a is a signature of the neurochemicals that are saying hey,
Something's different now, right right, you might need to do something different including rewire yourself, right and that can come from positive or negative test variances course. I'm obsessed with this idea of energy. I mean, we all want to have more energy and focus and normally we hear about the concept of energy in the context of caloric energy. Like what should we eat? And when and how much and we need to get sleep, but what you're really referring to is neural energy like the engagement of ourselves that's you know sitting there.
Ready to be engaged but it requires the right experiential macronutrients, right the experiential micronutrients as opposed to of course, we need good nutrition, but that's not sufficient. It's necessary but not sufficient. So would you say that when we are let's say since a good number of our listeners are in adulthood, you know from our 20s on that the things that excite us as adults that really generate some feeling of Readiness or
Grab our attention are still informative toward guiding our decisions about best life and life purpose. Well, what exactly do you mean by that? I mean like because there are things that excite you in a kind of a quick way like, you know where you have to relieve some tension and you there's entertainment and there's things that kind of give you pretty immediate gratification and there's the larger picture of something that will give you.
Fulfillment over years to come so you can feel that when you're older and you can pay attention to it. But a lot of the time is we're paying too much attention to the immediate pleasures of life to what gives this instant gratification and that's what we're grabbing for. So this is a much more kind of deeper process that involves that digging that I was saying it it's deeper than just kind of I like this. I don't like that, you know kind of thing. It's more. It's more something macro.
And then just just that and so when you're in your 20s or when your 30s or your 40s you want to be paying attention to yourself and the problem with people in the world today is you're not paying attention to yourself. You're not inside your own head. You don't hear those voices. You don't hear what you love what you like anymore because as I said, there's so many of these other distractions going on. And so you're always like a tune to what other people like right because you're in social media. This is what people are following.
Louis is what they're interested in as opposed to disengaging backing off from that and looking at yourself and going through the process of that's not me. Actually. I don't really like that, you know, and so what you're talking about is I think very profound is levels of frustration or anxiety are definite signals that you must pay attention to that. They're telling you this isn't a good direction for you. This is a waste of time for you and in general. I tell people
Self-awareness being able to hear those voices to understand that your frustration is telling you something and sometimes you just act on it without understanding it but understanding why you're frustrated why you don't like your career why you're not happy about where you're going is the key to everything it will open up. It will be actually be able to even in your 30s to return you to that childhood inclination. But if you can't listen to where those emotions come from
then they're useless. They're not teaching you anything as we all know quality nutrition influences, of course our physical health, but also our mental health and our cognitive functioning our memory our ability to learn new things and to focus and we know that one of the most important features of high quality nutrition is making sure that we get enough vitamins and minerals from high-quality unprocessed or minimally processed sources as well as enough probiotics and prebiotics and fiber to support basically all the cellular functions in our body including the gut microbiome.
Now I like most everybody try to get optimal nutrition from Whole Foods. Ideally mostly from minimally processed or non-processed Foods. However, one of the challenges that I and so many other people face is getting enough servings of high quality fruits and vegetables per day as well as fiber and probiotics that often accompany those fruits and vegetables. That's why way back in 2012 long before I ever had a podcast. I started drinking a G1 and so I'm delighted that a G1 is sponsoring the huberman Lab podcast. The reason I
I started taking a G1 and the reason I still drink a G1 once or twice a day is that it provides all of my foundational nutritional needs that is it provides insurance that I get the proper amounts of those vitamins minerals probiotics and fiber to ensure optimal mental health physical health and performance. If you'd like to try a G1 you can go to drink AG one.com huberman to claim a special offer. They're giving away 5 free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K to again. That's
AG one.com huberman to claim that special offer. So it sounds like one of the goals is to engage in what I'll just call for the moment and adulterated self-referencing, you know, unadulterated in the all senses of the word being because as a child as you point out at stages of life that are before puberty, there are literally pre sexual which I think is important right because puberty
T to me as a neurobiologist who started off as a developmental neurobiologist I can tell you that puberty is the most profound transformation that the brain undergoes food in the entire lifespan. There's just absolutely no question about it. Everything is different after puberty because of all of the new relational dynamics that become apparent and our potential involvement in them. It's just it's you know, it's not talked about enough how dramatically puberty changes the Grange I mean, we are different people.
And after puberty that are suddenly raging the hormones are there and it's not just changes in how we view the world but changes in how the World Views us. Yeah and not just through the lens of sexuality but also expectation of what we are capable of what we are responsible for or not responsible for our learning capacity. I mean, if you were T is like this, you know, it's also the most rapid stage of Aging in our entire lifespan. Let's get set go home for summer and then come back like shaving you.
No, I was sort of a late. I wasn't a late bloomer had a long protracted puberty, but I remember those kids. I'm sure we all remember those kids everything changes. And so I think prior to puberty the seed says you've described them of delight or of resistance to things. I think they are an adult rated. They're not contaminated by the voices and expectations of others and so I can see the challenge of reaching back to those as an adult. I wonder if this relates to something that I've heard you talk about
Before although perhaps not as much as some of the other topics you've discussed publicly which is the real versus the false Sublime. Could you perhaps just Define for us what Sublime really is what a Sublime experiences and and the distinction between real and false Sublime experiences because I feel like this relates to finding that seed right? It's about finding authentic seeds of within us as opposed to when emotions can be
distracting and misleading. Wow. I never thought never made that connection and it's the book that I'm writing right now. So thank you for that. I have to think about that. I'm actually I'm writing a book on the sublime and I have several ways of kind of illustrating. I generally like to use a metaphor and the metaphor is that being a human being being a social human being living in a particular culture means that you live inside of a circle and that Circle of that time are the
Hands of thinking of ideas that are acceptable of behavior that is acceptable. This is where you where you can go mentally where you can go physically, you know, all the codes and conventions so that Circle for ancient Egypt and for 21st century America, they're obviously very different but it's the same circles the same limiting factor, you're not supposed to go outside of it. These are thoughts experiences Behavior. You're not supposed to do the sublime is what
lies just outside that circle the word sublime comes from on the threshold of it's like here's a door and the sublime is literally at the threshold of the door. You're looking out into something else. Right and the quintessential Sublime experience is a near-death experience. You're standing on the on the door where the threshold of death itself right? And so in my book, I'm illustrating the different kinds of subjects.
I'm experiences that you can have in relation to the cosmos in the relation to thinking about being alive just being alive is the strangest sensation. You could possibly have I have I know that very personally after my stroke I go into child a chapter on childhood and how Sublime your own childhood was I go into animals relation to animals I go. I have a chapter about the brain chapter about love. I'm working right now on a chapter about history. Okay, but what I'm trying to say is the human
brain is wired for these experiences is wired for transcendental experiences that take us out of the narrow little realm that we live in because we're aware of our death is the only animal truly conscious of its own mortality and it frightens the hell out of us and the idea that we can see something larger than just the the banal parts of our life is a doorway. The opened allows us to kind of transcend the moment to feel connected to something larger to fit.
Connected to some power in the cosmos to Evolution itself. Right? And so we're wired for that and I'm writing a chapter now about 40,000 years ago at the moment where I think the sublime was born is a story that I'm trying to illustrate right now with our upper Paleolithic ancestors. So it's deep inside of us. We need it. We have to have it and the 21st century. We have very few avenues for it. Any real Avenues religion used to be the main?
Main kind of way of accessing this and so because it's so deep we reach for false forms of the sublime that give us the sense that were were transcending, but it's not at all because Sublime has to come from within it's an experience that you have that you're generating in your own mind and your own experience. The false Sublime comes from outside. It comes from drugs. It comes from alcohol. It comes from shopping it comes from
Online rage it comes from joining a cause and just getting out all your aggression and violence, right? It comes from causes. It comes from addictions it K it gives you a sense. It calms you down and makes you feel like there's something else going on in life. Besides your job that you're sick of but it's not real. It's not lasting it's false. It's an illusion. It's not based on anything real. It's not connecting to that deep part of human nature that's wired for these experiences.
So what happens is you have to have more and more and more and more of it. You have to have you know, more of this rush. You need more of the drug. You need more of The Alkali need more of the section you more of the porn. It's never going to satisfy you but the real Sublime you don't have that feeling it's like it's transformative. Once you feel it. It lasts for you for the rest of your life. It's what Maslow again called a peak experience. So that's the difference between the false.
And the real Sublime I haven't quite connected to what you were saying. But if I think about it, I think you're on something very interesting. I mean maybe the connection I was trying to draw was doesn't hold but yeah for me those early experiences of seeing things that just delighted me in a way that felt like that not only is the the thought process is long time ago when something like, oh my goodness. I can't believe this exists. This is so cool.
This is the coolest thing and so clearly create an activation state within me, but then there was also a fought and a feeling of get a lot of this is or pre pre verb, it's not truly pre verbal I could speak at that age. But it was that's of me and I'm of it right there's a connection there and then it was there something to do about this the activation State created in the body was you know, I need to learn more about this. I need to tell people about this. I need to think.
Think about this. I need more examples of this and see whether or not they're all like this, you know, etcetera Etc. So certainly it meets some of the criteria of a Sublime experience. Definitely and I knew again when I was in graduate school and again when I was a young Professor about to transition to tenure that I knew it was going to going to do something different it was as if I was on the threshold of something but I didn't know what that next thing was, but I could trust it because of that early experience of knowing
That's the thread like like I'm an amphibian. This is my environment and you're an in phibian to yeah, we're different amphibians. But you know, we're going to be amphibians together, right and then and there's a permanence to it. It does seem to transcend time. I'm obsessed with time perception. So I have to be careful not to go off on a tangent about that. But at the human brain's ability to find slice or macro sliced time, it's incredible and it's been said of not just addictions but also interactions with toxic people that they murdered
Time that that humans have a I think it was young. I'll look it up but one of the great psychologist said something to the extent that addictive behaviors thought patterns substances are humans attempts to murder time so that they don't have to address their mortality. Yeah, and that's always made a lot of sense to me. Yeah. We say kill time is our expression kill time through passive.
But also kill time through I'm trying to get overwhelmed or overtaken by an experience or a substance as opposed to when you're truly connected you have that sense of flow and three hours can pass by and you're not even aware of it. So time is a totally subjective experience. You can be extremely slow and tedious and you feel very depressed or it can pass by but the passes by without you even noticing it and it's a wondrous experience, you know.
When I'm deep in my writing, I'm not aware of the time passing. I'm so involved him. So immersed. It's a deeply deeply pleasurable experience of time. It is Sublime. And yeah, so I agree with you. I think your distinction is very interesting. I'm eagerly awaiting your next book, but we won't rush you. Well. I'm so immersed in it that I could I could talk for hours because I also have a chapter in there about what I call the Damon.
Which is like that voice inside of you that speaks to you and I'm running a whole chapter about how Sublime that is when you connect to that voice. So you ask spot on there is something very much committed to Mastery in this book, but it's the next chapter that I'm writing. Tastic can't wait. I can't wait. I'd like to shift slightly to a topic that you've written extensively about which is power and not just power but also seduction which you've written extensively about
And of course you've written about finding one's purpose. So tell me if the framework that I've just given myself Liberty to create is an accurate one. And if it's not I'm hoping that it's not in perhaps some interesting ways. So to me you talk about and we will talk about power as a resource. It's something that it's there as a resource. It could be used or not used and I think of Seduction as one form of Exchange
Change between individual. So there's a verb associated with seduction power. I'm thinking of more as a noun in this context. You're the word guy and then you know purpose is is really about finding like to what end or ends one is going to devote power seduction and the other forces that allow human beings to interact with each other in the world, but power as a resource that can be expressed in different ways and accessed in different ways. Maybe we could just
Explore that a little bit because you know when we hear the word power, I think a lot of people kind of brace themselves out. Here we go. Someone's going to try and have power over me. This is about manipulation and so on and so forth, but I learned pretty early on that every every career Endeavor their power dynamics. There's mentor-mentee their teachers and their students and both have power in inter in romantic relationship. There's a power exchange there. Yes.
In their nose, there are maybes there are covert and overt contracts. Yeah, I'll do this because I want to write you'll do this because you want to great sounds great over contract. They're also covert contracts. Well, I don't feel safe doing that. So what I'll do is I'll take something on through from the interaction that you're not aware of so that I can sort of ease my sense of danger and make my give myself the illusion of feeling safe and all sorts of kind of complicated human.
Dynamics that have to do with us having this for brain thing that can do all of that gymnastics. So maybe we could start very simply by just saying, you know, how would you define power in terms of its functional definition like in in interpersonal relations? And then why do you think power is so essential to all relationships? That's really what I'd like to get to why is it so essential? Why couldn't it be something else?
Well, the way I Define Powers I try and take it away from that kind of negative context that most people have in that you that you brought up and I bring it to something very primitive and very Primal the way the human being is wired the feeling that we have no control of our environment and in the earliest period it was literally over our environment and wild animals and nature and the climate Etc. But now the sense that you have no control over your career.
Over your children over your parents is deeply deeply and misery rating and it compels us to act in certain ways either attempts to find positive ways power or doing what you call covert ways of getting power, you know, passive-aggressive traditionally passive aggressive means so is deeply wired in us to want a degree of control over the immediate environment and immediate events. We can never have complete control and the idea of having complete control is
Nonsense and it would actually be very ugly because you want a degree of Letting Go and letting circumstances come to you etcetera Etc. So the sense of you you want to feel like with other people and relationships that you can influence them that you can move them in a certain direction either to get you to love you and treat you better or either just stop annoying irritating behaviors or either to you know, wake up and find and do productive.
Activity, that's your children Etc. You want to have the ability to influence people to move them in a certain direction either in your interest or in their interest, right? And once you have that need and every single human being ever who's ever lived has that need and we often don't recognize it because we're embarrassed by it were embarrassed by our desire for power for our need to control every human being has it right and it's not easy.
Because human beings are complicated. They don't if you say do this you're talking to your son. He'll do the opposite or I'll do something else. You can't just force people in a direction right by being Overton telling them. This is what you need to do. You create resentment. You create an enemy they may say yes. Yes daddy. Yes husband. I'll do what you say. But they're you they're good. They're going to resist you deep down inside, right? So people are tricky they wear
They pretend to say one thing and they do another they have their egos and you inadvertently wound their egos or trip them in some way and they react in a way that you don't expect and so power is this kind of invisible realm that envelops Society where people are continually battling each other and struggling in it. But no one is like talking about it. No one's being overt about no one's saying this is exactly what I'm trying to do. And so when you enter the social world in the career world
Old you're not expecting these battles. You don't know what's taught you don't strain to your parents. Don't train you nobody trains you and you make mistakes and you realize how political people are if you're a Sharky character and then there's this certain percentage of them you realize wow, I can deceive people I can manipulate the Hmong get what I want. I could pretend to love them and they'll fall for me and I can do all this other stuff. But for most of us the 90s 5% of us who aren't sharks and I'm including myself in that.
Category it's very very disturbing to suddenly enter that world and see all that invisible power games on that's no one's given you any advice for helped you and so take it out of the realm of it's just about trying to dominate the world and manipulate and exploit and abuse. It's something inside of you you have this need and your suppression of it will only make you come out in passive ways and you
Won't be able to control certain things. If you want to move people if you want them to follow your ideas, if you want them to be more aligned with your politics or your ideas. You have to be subtle. You have to learn psychology. You have to learn certain aspects of how to almost move people without them realize you can in certain directions, which is like The Art of Seduction and if you're not interested in that you're just going to tell people what you think and whether you're going
Do that means you're not interested in Practical action. You're not interested in results. You're just interested inventing your own frustrations or your own anger. So learning the subtle little dynamics of power is extremely essential because we're a social animal. It doesn't mean that you're going to get dirty that you're going to suddenly go out there and manipulate the hell out of people most of them 48 Laws of Power is about defense but how to defend yourself from the Sharks about their how to defend yourself from making classic.
Mistakes like outshining the master like talking too much like arguing with people instead of demonstrating your ideas on and on and on it's not an ugly thing. It actually makes you a better social individual. So that's how I like to frame it. It's very interesting. I think as a young guy growing up it was so important to me to know where I fit in with my friend group and I didn't think of it so much as a hierarchy.
Nor when I was in my academic studies did I think of it as a hierarchy even though it was clearly was right so much as the goal was to figure out where was my unique slot that I could do the most good for myself and others write your kind of finding my spot. I don't wanna sit on a shelf because that it gives it an image of something vertical but you know in the let's make it lateral lateral arrangement of different people with different strengths different.
Current life purposes trying to figure them out. Where should I be in order to express that and also feel connected to others? And and in order to do that? I did have to I realize now based on your answer. I did have to figure out who's trying to have power over who's pretending that they don't want power but is actually exerting power, you know, these sorts of things and there's an incredible piece that comes from knowing that
One is in the correct Place both profession interpersonally in relation to one's self. But also in the context of one peer peer group, it's kind of yeah, this is where I belong because trying to gain power when one is trying to move to a position that isn't right for them or in a way that isn't right for them just seems so energetically costly. Yeah seems like a waste of a life frankly, right, you know, trying to gather resources simply to have them to give the illusion of power but then being afraid of losing them just sounds like
like a recipe for misery as you pointed out. Yeah, we're as figuring out where am I most powerful in the benevolent sense of the word that that seems like a good a good Pursuit. Well, it's connecting up to Mastery again in finding your life's purpose. You know II knew when I was young that I couldn't exert physical power because I was a skinny little runt and I wasn't bullied but people would kind of pick on me etcetera Etc. So I veered towards
Intellectual Pursuits where I could have power and in the end, you know, you might have been a jock and you might have done well in high school, but haha Look at me now. I'm not saying that it's a beautiful thing that that's but that's part of human nature the desire to actually, you know, prove yourself and find that Niche that you that you belong to so you don't have that kind of humid that sense of inferiority which Alfred Adler the psychologist describes very eloquently. So a lot of it is kind of compensate.
Ting when you're a child for things that are your weaknesses and finding what you're so good at that you do have that power and people can't bully you right and you're like now a famous neuroscientist whereas they're like knows what they're doing kind of thing. So power definitely de is connected in some way to that inner sense of what you were meant to do and you feel it with the with the ease and the connection that comes from it right so I can honestly say that
My dislike of working for other people and office politics and egos. I now have an existence where I don't have to deal with any of that and I'm so blessed and I wake up every morning and I pray to God thank God like I found this because it's it's the perfect lifestyle for me and your are can be accurately described as an intellectual Beast. So it's in it, which is like a compliment right? We hear the word beast and we think you know a Ferocious Beast trying to harm others, but
I'm happy being a beast. Yeah. Yeah, you know it so I think finding where we can be a beast, you know, and for some people that's painting or gardening or whatever. It might be I think is again ties back to the these issues of or this quest for Mastery seduction is also a very loaded word, right even more uglier than power because deduction right seduction kind of drips with the idea that somebody is tricking.
Else into doing something that they otherwise would not want to do but seduction is both our propensity to do it and to have it done to us is hardwired into our nervous system and has a lot to do with the hypothalamus and a bunch of other areas that I won't bore us with the nomenclature but seduction to me implies some sort of exchange. I suppose we could seduce ourselves through denial or convincing ourselves that of something but more often than not
we talk about seduction. We're talking about an interaction between two or more people. So what are some of the core principles of Seduction in and if you care to play Anthropologist a bit and a neuro scientists, I would invite that why do you think we have neural circuits in our brain that allow us to seduce and be seduced? Well, I don't know how if I'm if I'm being kind of an armchair intellectual here, but my theory
Is some of it has to go back to social events long in our prehistory, which have to do with taboos and Society was initially kind of organized by a series of taboos. Right? Most notably the taboo on incest and what happens is just not my theory is the theory of the malinowski malinowski surrounds its at the moment a taboo enters the human brain like you
You're not supposed to sleep with this woman the desire arises inside of you to actually sleep with that woman. Then the the sense of know since it this is prohibited stirs the desire stirs the contrary impulses in humans and we can be very what's the word perverse creatures, right? So if you've ever tried to suppress a thought you realize that it keeps coming up keeps coming up. You can't suppress it. Don't think of an elephant and
Whatever you do don't think of an elephant you're thinking of it because you can't help it right the idea that you're not supposed to desire this person stirs that actual desire. So I believe the sense of something being taboo and transgressive is the ultimate kind of origin of our desire for seduction, but seduction involves vulnerability, it involves. Somebody gets inside. Somebody gets under our skin right and to do that we have to
to let them in so the person being seduced is in some ways to a degree complicit because if you just put up a wall and you said no I'm not going to be seduced nothing will happen. But you have a vulnerability you letting that person into your psyche Into Your Inner Space the Paradigm for that is Early Childhood. So before he talks a lot about this, I don't know if people still believe in front anymore, but I certainly do. Okay. Absolutely.
Genius of both Psychology and Physiology wrong about a lot of things did a lot of things he shouldn't have done. I let's acknowledge that. I think everyone would agree that sleeping with your patients and being a cocaine addict bad ideas. But at the same time he had absolute like near Supernatural levels of inside and Brilliance into human nature sleep with his patients. I believe he did but if I just doesn't have I just threw that on him without him doing it then, you know, forgive me certainly had emotional attachments to his
a patient's that he shouldn't have had. I don't know if he slept with him very well might have
But his idea was that the child is seduced by the parent. You're an extremely vulnerable position, right your life depends on them and their seducing you with their energy. You're letting them in right and that kind of creates a pattern for the rest of your life. And so for instance the feeling of being carried by your father and just being taken around physically is a form of Seduction because he
Don't know what he's going to do to you. You're very excited. You want that surprise, right? And to me it's related to the seduction of a story stories are very seducing to us. We don't know where they're taking us. We don't know what the next chapter is what's going to happen to this character or not? The surprise lowers our resistance and opens our mind up to what's going to happen. Next is a form of Seduction fairy tales the stories you were reading as a child your interactions with your parents.
Deeply deeply ingrained in you you cannot be seduced unless you are vulnerable. Right? And so I like to switched it around and get it out of the negative connotations being vulnerable is actually a positive trait. I think a lot of people now in the world today because things are so harsh and invasive that people have become too involved honorable. They don't want to let anything in right and this now infects the relationships with
Other people they don't want to be influenced. They want to be strong inside of themselves. They're afraid of giving into the other person of surrendering to their influence, but it's actually a delightful feeling to surrender to the power of another person and then reverse that charge and have them surrender to your power. So when I'm reading a writer and sometimes they completely seduced me like Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite writers. I
Go of everything I let him enter my brain and I'm completely seduced. I let him lead me along but then I encounter writers that I don't like at all. I'll mention one, you know, probably not a good thing. But Steven Pinker, I don't like Steven Pinker. I find him really annoying. Okay, but I forced myself to try and find a way to be seduced by him to let him into my brain to see where he's coming from to open myself to the possibility that he could be, correct. So
So vulnerability letting people into your mental space is a form of intelligence. It's kind of an emotional and intellectual intelligence and forgive me for interrupting, but I think it also implies a level of confidence because empathy or allowing oneself to be vulnerable to the point where your seduced by something by definition if you're choosing to do it implies that you also have the confidence that you can get back to yourself afterwards right that you're not going to get lost. Of course the
So you're not going to be hijacked to the point of no return right or in some way that's detrimental to you. So it's something really nerdy here. It's collinear with with confidence in many ways. Sure, like take my mind and take it where you will because I know I can come back at any time. Right? Right and the same thing in a physical seduction in a romantic sense, right? You're opening yourself up to the charm to the energy of the other person, but if they start displaying dark,
Energy, and you see that they're abusive or something is wrong. You have the ability to retreat. Well, there it gets tricky because it's very tricky well because the attachment systems which are also rooted in childhood oftentimes can overwhelm one's ability to recover oneself liked it. I mean to start mean how many fight a dollar for every time someone in that I knew in my life saying like, you know, I know they're bad for me, but I just can't like we just can't seem to disengage like that. You hear about that all the time. I mean you see court cases about this.
Republic and you know just go why didn't they just walk away from one another well because once those attachments systems are locked in yeah, it almost becomes in a here metaphorically speaking like a parent-child relationship. Like you can't suddenly decide your parents weren't your parents right simply because you know better now you are forever stricken with the reality that they were and they had an influence and I think that that attachment system is is it as a force that tugs pretty hard. Yeah, and a lot of women have written to me.
Me since the Art of Seduction sort of saying that their boyfriend or husband was applying some of these tactics on them and it was very painful and they were kind of a little bit angry at me for Ford then they kind of realized that they it wasn't they didn't learn it really from my book was already kind of wired in them. But that reading about these tactics in these strategies actually help them to recognize what their husband or boyfriend was doing to them the manipulation and the games that were being played do
Then write to you and talk about the seductive adornments that women have used to to bring them into relationship as well. Or as are you typically hearing from women? I mostly hear from women complaining about men and and and how they've abused them and how they use some of these some of the strategies I didn't I don't deny have a slightly nefarious Edge to them because I didn't want to write a book about Seduction That doesn't have that taboo element because I say seduction involves the taboo, and I didn't want to I didn't want to send
Censor myself but female-to-male seduction clearly also exists. There is less soft. I acknowledge that. It's less often. Is it physically abusive but right I mean from an early age both boys and girls men and women are coached by Society on the sorts of seductive tactics and in adornments, right? I mean everything from makeup perfume hairstyles cars watches jewelry Expressions power displays of any kind. I mean that stuff the
filled with that stuff if it men are generally kind of happy when a woman seduces them right there unless they were after their money or something like that which happens but generally the sense, you know, I talk about this in the first chapter about Sirens, which I can say is the quintessential archetype of the female seductress the the kind of half human half bird creature on a rock singing so beautifully that you have to jump in the water and then they kill you and so the idea is that men want
To let go because men have to be so in control. So powerful. They have to project this image. They have a secret desire to let go and be almost dominated by a very powerful woman a lot of men have that and I talked about some of the most powerful men in history Julius Caesar Mark Antony Joe DiMaggio who all these men very masculine men who fallen for very feminine siren like women and been completely dominated by them and they actually
The kind of enjoy the process because it's like a sense of I can let go I can enter this totally sesh sensual physical world and it's extremely pleasing. It's like another realm outside of my kind of cold masculine world, you know, so I don't really get men complaining too much about women who seduce them. Honestly. It's usually the other way around
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Tom huberman I've heard before and I promise this is not an original idea that I'm pretending to have heard elsewhere. The my friend asked me to ask sort of question that in all sexual exchanges. There's a power exchange Definitely Maybe you could elaborate on that because as you were describing some of the seductive power dynamics that exist a phrase that I've heard before came to mind that at first made me chuckle but then made me think quite deeply about this issue of the relationship between
Sexual and power dynamics, which is this notion of topping from the bottom, you know, if one is giving someone else the impression that they are more powerful by virtue of the word giving they actually hold some power right power is can be given or taken but oftentimes seductive exchanges and sexual exchanges and romantic exchanges in particular are about both people.
Buying into a loot a temporary illusion. Let's pretend that you're in charge when actually I'm in charge. Okay, but I know that you think that you're in charge. Okay, let's just pretend none of that exists and just do X right and I think this is another example of covert contracts and it's one that actually can potentially create a lot of problems post hoc. Right, but I think the relationship between sex romance and power is an important area to
Explore in the context of this. Well, I wrote The Art of Seduction with the idea that it was an art invented by women. It was invented by women who had no power essentially socially politically in any sense of the word in in the in domestically, right? And but the one power that they could that they could wield over a man was through sex some physical attraction. And so they developed this art of kind of luring a man into their world through various theatrical.
A trickle effects Cleopatra being kind of the archetype of this and then lowering the powerful man into this world. He has the illusion that he's the one pursuing her. But in fact she is the one controlling the dynamic so oftentimes the person who appears to be the weaker one in the relationship who's not doing the pursuing is actually inviting the pursuing is actually leading the other person on so there's a
Of kind of appearance games going on and you can never really figure out who exactly is in control of the dynamic because one person is like allowing the other person to lead them on but the fact that you're allowing them is a degree of powers the degree of control, right? So it's very hard to figure out and sex and power and romantic relationships are very much intertwined in US physically emotionally neurologically.
You can't avoid it right the end. So I think it's kind of dishonest to say that that none of that exists that it's like that there's some egalitarian Paradise out of there when it's really not wired in us for that kind of relationship. There's a recent scientific publication / factoid that I wanted to share with you in this context because I'd like your thoughts on it David Anderson who's a phenomenal neurobiologist. He's been a guest on this podcast before he's a professor at
Caltech studies basically the functions of the hypothalamus so okay things like aggression mating and and things of that sort and does it so it's great to tell he's a virtuoso of the hypothalamus and he published a paper two years ago showing that indeed there are neural circuits in the brain of animals and presumably in humans as well that control sexual mounting Behavior, but that there is actually a separate circuit.
For purely non-sexual mounting and physical power over that's expressed in animals. And anyone that's ever owned a dog and gone to the dog park will see same-sex mounting between dogs or mounting between dogs that has apparently no sexual endpoint. Yeah and in exploring this literature and some talking to David about it. It's very clear that there are neural circuits that have everything to do with essentially one animal of a species.
Getting on top of the other animal usually from behind oftentimes scruffing or biting the back of the neck and saying I control you it's often done in a playful context, especially between animals not always aggressive but there's a certain element of aggressive to it, but it essentially says I decide whether or not you are mobile or not for this moment and that it and this is very important when emphasizes this is a circuit that is entirely separate from all of the reflexes associated with sexual behavior in males and females.
I find this to be fascinating and because we hear about power over right and we hear about power and we think about physical power over but the idea that something as primitive as mounting just like something as primitive as biting or as striking has its own unique set of circuits in the brain. I think substantiates that everything that you put in in your books about power and maybe even seduction as well. So as I just got tossed that out there for consideration, I
I wonder if you have any Reflections on it. If not, feel free to just say I don't but of course, but to me, this was a really important Discovery because I think everyone looks at mounting behavior and says, oh that has to be sexual and sometimes it's I see what you mean, but it's not that there is a there seemed to be a host of neural circuits in the brain that are really about defining who's on top. Literally it has nothing to do with sex.
Yeah, I'm sure that's true. I've never I've never I've never read anything about that but I can say that I wrote a chapter in my new book about love and that's a different thing than seduction and I was trying to come up with an idea of love that does have an element of equality that doesn't have this power Dynamic going on in it. I love that and you know kind of like the antithesis of my Art of Seduction where I'm almost con.
Texting myself and I was going into the into the biology of it and even into the physics of it. So there is a famous French biologist whose Name Escapes me. Sorry. I can't remember from the 20s and 30s and he was studying paramecium and he's found he was studying them. You know, they were there in these ponds Etc. And he said that there was these moments where these single-celled organisms were suddenly coupling.
They were all joining together just one and two one and they were absorbing the membrane of one inside the other and then they would like go then once one couple to that all the paramecium started joining up together. Then they would sink to the bottom of the pond and paramecium don't reproduce through sex. They reproduce through dividing themselves, right self reproduction. And so he was saying that the desire to couple 222
Next to someone so deeply where you absorb one is absorbed in the other is biologically wired into US goes back millions and millions and millions of years and it's a desire essentially a biological desire for love. Right and it's an energy that permeates all although it's not just about power and hierarchies and that he was showing other creatures that had something similar going on and you know in physics we
Talk about entanglement. And we also talk about you. No matter if matter isn't observant opposed by a lot of kinetic energy it joins together. I mean particles join together to form matter, etc. Etc. So there's something in the universe that's trying to connect things to each other. So there's this this kind of energy that exists in the world where we have a deep need to connect to somebody with outside of those power dynamics.
Right where there's a degree of equality where we are drawn to each other and we let go of the ego games. We let go of the playing we kind of surmount our own physiology our own hypothalamus and we engage in this I call it love Sublime and it involves the physical part. The sexual part is the trigger for it because when you have sex with someone your body is suddenly permeable to their energy in a way that you cannot.
Control it agrees is all kinds of of chemicals in the brain that are very powerful and often times that sense is too powerful and you react and you're afraid of it and you pull back but if you don't react and you go further, then the mind also becomes permeable to the other person and their energy and their desire and so then it kind of creates a spiraling effect with the physical and the mental connection reaches the state that I called. Love Sublime.
Now it's an ideal. It doesn't really exist that much out there in the world today, but there are stories in history that Illustrated and I believe that is a biological necessity for us to feel a deep deep sense of connection. We normally ascribe that to religion to God etcetera, but I maintain the essence of love the model for love is between two human beings straight or homosexual doesn't matter and that feeling of
of surmounting our own neurology our own system and and entering the zone is deeply deeply satisfying we all wanted and it has to involve letting go of the power dynamics letting and everything being equal. It's not that the other person is exactly like you you recognize their difference. But but as far as being worthy of attention being worthy and respected,
You leave all that other stuff outside. So there is a Zone that's possible that's outside this power Dynamic that we're talking about. I'm excited that you're writing about this. So this is for your next book. Yeah. I'm very excited. I couldn't help but think of some of the parallels between what you described and what we're observing nowadays in the landscape of politics and social dynamics where clearly there is no setting aside of egos people feel. It's both sides feel attacked.
ruin in between feels confused like why do I have to pick a side and there seems to be no hint of a future where people are setting down their swords it which means if we were to go with your earlier definition, which I like a lot that nobody feels safe enough to be vulnerable enough to to allow the union of people to occur and which is just a way of rewording, you know a bunch of
Other things and not nearly as eloquently as you described it but if setting aside of power dynamics and making oneself vulnerable is the key to accessing love in the Romantic context surely but also in the societal context, I mean, what are the channels for that? I mean I suppose there is the argument not mine that everyone should just take a boatload of psychedelics and see the interconnectedness of things. But that seems like an unrealistic route. I just don't see that being you know, you know.
Of grade graduation curriculum nor do I think it would be healthy to be clear? I think that you we'd end up with a lot of expression of problems there but short of a magic substance that could increase feelings of connectedness among everyone simultaneously. How are you going to save Humanity Robert? Well because I'm concerned about young people in particular with hookup culture with pornography, etc. Etc. It's kind of rewiring the human.
Rain, and we're losing what I was just describing and I see a lot particularly a lot of young people and I don't blame them because they've grown up in a world. That's very chaotic and very hostile. Could it could I say I think it's and not to be nitpicky here, but I love what you just said. I think in my mind, it's height things like that or hijacking the hard wiring of the brain. Okay, and I mean just right? No not again forgive me my but the eyes is probably going well. I really rewire the brain right? That's well. I think we can expand and rewire.
Pain are hard wiring but so much of what you talked about in your books is about finding one's Essence. But then also what I love about your book so much and many other things is that it's about that dance between the hard wiring and the possible of through effort. So anyway, forgive me for not being that's very accurate up. So yeah, we're how do you get us out of this? Well, if you putting a big burden on me, but I think you're up to it. Well, I try to do it in this chapter because I wanted to seduce the
reader into the idea that this is something extremely pleasurable and extremely healthy and the feeling of being vulnerable is a very positive attribute that will in fact not just your romantic relationships, but will infect you mentally so creative people are extremely vulnerable. They're extremely vulnerable to ideas. They're extremely vulnerable to the environment and closing yourself off into your own ego into
Of the chapter is called Escape the Prison of the ego and you're kind of trapped inside of yourself and your own thoughts and your own desires and it's like a prison. It's in closing you and you want to escape somehow and you escape through drugs you escape through porn but it doesn't lead to actually escaping you want to be able to let go of the self and get out of this this prison that you're in right? And so it's a desire that we all have and so I wanted to frame it as this incredibly positive.
Positive Dynamic that you can engage in and the ability to be vulnerable to other people to open yourself up and to say that yeah, they might hurt me, but I'm strong enough to take it and if they hurt me I'll learn from it and I'll rebound and I know that's a bit naive on my part, but I want you to least have that feeling because a lot of young people write to me and they say I can't fall in love anymore. I can't I don't like that feeling. I've it makes the loss of controls to
Much, you know and a lot of that their behavior patterns are and creating the sense of control which you can have when you're locked inside of yourself hence over indulgence in pornography. Yeah and masturbation etcetera as a way to avoid the you know, the understandable fear about interracial relational Dynamics. Yeah. So, you know when you're young you're idealistic at least a lot of young people are and you have these dreams.
Eames and these hopes and to let go of this possibility which is deeply pleasurable and deeply therapeutic to the human animal as a social animal. It's like the highest form of interaction that we can have. So my strategy in that chapter was to paint such a wonderful portrayal of the pleasures that are awaiting You by letting go of your defenses of letting go of all of your natural resistance factors and opening yourself up.
Other people is is a key to not just a romantic relationship but to Career Success to mental energy to creativity to being open in general, right? And so I don't think I could have a why you know a huge impact, but we'll see when that when the book comes out, but I'm advocating that sense of opening yourself up to the universe to the cosmos itself as an energy that
It permeates the world and so that you don't want to the feeling of being closed inside of your ego inside of your yourself. I want to make it so you feel the pain of that because you don't really feel the pain of it. You feel like it's comfortable for you, but I want to make it clear to you that it's not comfortable. It's deeply deeply painful and it's disconnecting you from some of the best experiences you can have in life. So I have that strategy the only other
By have is in the human Spirit itself. So a lot of this is being caused by social media, I believe right and and the instant and the the kind of immediate gratification we can get in so many ways and my hope is that young people get fed up and get dissed just disgusted with all this disconnection and alienation in their life and that they hunger from actually something more communal.
More interactive more real as opposed to Virtual. And so that the human Spirit can't be completely squashed by technology Etc. So I have that hope because we've gone through these Cycles before in history where people have become very involved honorable and very locked and closed and suddenly there's an explosion a creative explosion like in the 1960s like in the 1920s like an 18th century Europe with a Casanova where
Reached its kind of apogee etcetera. So it has kind of swung back and forth between these moments where humans get incredibly closed and bitter and partisan and everything's conflict and everyone's divisive etcetera and suddenly goes in the opposite direction. I have hope in that possibility and I structured my chapter 2, perhaps sweep that a little bit along that tie and see if I can have any effect. Well, I think what you just described in conversations like it.
It and that stem from it are likely to have a tremendous effect. I think it's exactly what's needed now and certainly I'll be to amplify that message. I agree with everything you said and not just because you're sitting here as a guest on this podcast, but because it's clear to me that while power dynamics and seduction are wired into our human relations since the beginning of time that we have reached a very challenging period in our history.
It's somewhat of a relief to me to know that it's happened before but in a very different context, we hear a lot about The Swinging back and forth of the pendulum someone in fact Peter Atia online Physicians brother actually said so what credit him he said? No, it's not. It's not a pendulum that swings back and forth. Unfortunately now, it's become a wrecking ball. So it's swinging back and forth and doing damage as it as it reaches its, you know, it's extremes and I think that I also look forward to it.
Time where people acknowledge that the injustices around them and that have been done to them and others and but somehow are able to transcend that and the word that I'd like to pick up on. There is the word justice. It was pointed out to me by someone. I respect very much that you know, having a sense of justice is a wonderful and important thing and as humans, it's important to how we structure Society but I do think that a lot of the negative things that we see out there nowadays aren't have something to do with the availability of
Ready availability of pornography high-density calorie food Etc a bunch of things like that. But that one of the issues with social media because it does have its positive aspects but one of the negative issues in my mind is that it's a steady flow of examples of Injustice. So all day long, you're just seeing things like that that piss you off and that pisses other people off and for different reasons, but but was pointed out to me is that one of the key things about a sense of Injustice is to be able to determine
Whether or not there's anything that you should do about it, and I think that everyone now feels a bit hijacked by all the injustices we see because we feel like we're supposed to do something about it. But it may be that while we can't let every Injustice pass that being bombarded all day long with things that upset us is hijacking our creativity. It's distracting us from our deeper purpose. It's preventing a sense of vulnerability that would lead to a sense of deep love ya and on and on so I don't think it's just about the
The tantalizing lures of sex food and looking at you know body is in hearing voices on social media. I think there is some validity to that but that it's also that you know, there's just a lot opportunity to go down the gravitational pull forces of Injustice. Like that's so frustrating. Why are they doing that and I catch myself doing that talking to co-workers when I walk in about did you see this thing? This is crazy what's going on with that? They're crazy when you know as opposed to thinking about anything else in.
That moment and I try and yank myself out of that but I think that you're not gonna do it alone. But I think you will play a major role in saving us from this because people I do I think because people just need to see themselves through a different lens and realize this is distracting me from who I'm supposed to be. Well a lot of what what modern life should involve is the ability to ignore certain things. So for instance, I don't know if you know that app next door. Oh, right. I used to have it.
But then I'd see all the packages being stolen off. My neighbor's porches in Oakland and then I started enjoying living in Oakland last and I love the city of Oakland. It's got its problems. They don't have any problems. But as an East Bay kid, you know and went to school out there and you know, like I have deep love for the East Bay and it's always had those problems. But when you see stuff being stolen on your phone in the middle of the night when you wake up, it creates a sense that like they're out to get my stuff right terrible, right? And so I have it in my
I'm filter but I look at it. And every headline is people stealing somebody broke into somebody's house. This purse dog. Bit me. This is rabid dog around there's this homeless person that's yelling and attacking people on and on and on I feel like I'm living in this neighborhood. It's like Beirut or something in the 1980s. I can't even walk out my door. I just got I don't look at next door anymore. I just ignore it. I don't open it ever because I know that that they're designed algorithmically.
To put that in front of you every single time so that you click on it because that's what we respond to that kind of stuff. Naturally. We can't help it. So you have to be able to shut that stuff up and look at what you can actually control in your life. So I've have this visceral dislike of what's going on in Ukraine because I was in Ukraine recently and I feel I've identified very strongly with their struggle right and it just I can't that outrage feeling it's just every time
I read an article about it. It just drives me crazy. So the only thing is I stopped reading as much as I can. I read things that are kind of rational and intelligent and I send them money and I you know, I donate as much as I can and I help them practically, but I don't allow myself to get that kind of outraged feeling all of the time. So somebody has to write a book. Somebody has to instruct Us in what to ignore and what to actually pay attention to so there are
things that you can control in justices that are out there that you could control by voting by certain by amassing a movement by you know, dealing with climate change not by trying to recycle every little thing in your house, but actually doing something really much more macro in the world, you know joining a cause there are things you can do and that's positive and that's a way of channeling that kind of dark energy in you for a positive purpose, but it's totally
totally disruptive and it totally distracts you and weakens you and drains you of energy to fall into those rabbit holes and let them and let yourself fall into them. So you have to learn the art of what to ignore and what not to pay attention to and understand that you're wired to see those kind of red alert buttons on Facebook or on next door wherever they are and it's just it's - it's like a candy rush and you have to avoid it and it's taking us away from our
Purpose which we each have I mean I think to me that's the most deleterious a spot unless unless your purpose is to organize and be an activist people ask me. I wrote a lot about in my human nature book about the shadow side of human nature. Right? And we all have it we all have a dark side. We all have hidden aggression. We all have feelings of Envy. We all have feelings of grandiosity. We all have aggressive impulses. How do you deal with it? And I say the way to deal is to channel it into
think positive and pro-social and that could be putting it in your artwork venting that anger and that outrage and something that people kind of can identify with or it can be an organizing something that could be your purpose in life and actually doing something positive. So that's the only way that you could actually use that energy for some kind of actual lives task or purpose you discussing lately a bit on some of your channels about masculine and feminine.
What's a roles and crises of the masculine feminine dance as well as the crisis of masculinity purse a crisis of femininity per se. Do you care to expand on that a bit? I think we could probably take 3-4 hours to explore all this in full but I was struck by some of the things that you said because I agree completely that just as we are not given a roadmap when we
Ivan the world as to how to find our purpose. I think there's also a very conflicted road map that's thrown in front of us and indeed conflicting multiple roadmaps about what it means to be masculine or feminine or some combination of both which of course everybody is some combination of both just to varying degrees. Well, yeah, so men have a feminine side to them, which if you try to repress it will come out in other ways and women have a masculine side to them.
I think Young describe this very well with the anima and the animals which I think is is extremely real. It's very very confusing times for both men and for women right now. We don't know the roles that their everything is just so fluid and it's very very difficult particularly if you're young so young women are getting this idea that everything should be equal and that women should have and of course, it's where I should I be paid the same and she had the same.
We are opportunities. There should be no Prejudice or harassment or anything. But at the same time on social media, it's all about looking perfect and looks are incredibly important. And if you're not hot you're in terrible trouble and a lot of young girls are extremely confused by this. They're getting mixed signals. Right and boys are even in perhaps even worse circumstance where being masculine is seen as something negative. So we don't have any ideals out there anymore.
Of what what constitutes a good positive form of femininity and a good positive form of masculinity. In fact, we even think that there shouldn't be anything like that. There's no such thing as being masculine or feminine and whatever it's very very confusing and so, you know, I think of masculine traits that I think are very positive and that should be out there to kind of counteract the sort of and Route 8
Seduction that a lot of young men are falling for and it's a kind of an inner strength where you're sort of in control of your emotions. You're not invulnerable etcetera Etc, but you can take criticism. You can take people, you know, you can have moments of failure and you'll bounce back but you have a kind of resistant or resilience and a kind of inner strength a kind of a quiet calm that I think used to be exemplified in
Movie icons like a Gary Cooper type thing, right and the kind of sense of inner calmness where you're not hysterical you're not getting upset about everything that happens when you have a kind of an inner strength and a confidence and you can withstand kind of what Ryan holiday talks about lot about with stoicism. You can stand all of the hardships in life. But you have that Citadel within you is a very very powerful form of masculinity as opposed to it's all about
sleeping with a lot of women having really fast cars, you know being abusive and being a bully etc. Etc. These are signs of weakness of insecurity and to be masculine should be a sense of security and inner confidence in Inner Strength, right and that's what we should venerate in our culture and we should have icons like that. Okay, it doesn't mean that that there's no role for men who are not masculine or will have more of the feminine virtues. That's
Also, there's definitely a role for that and you know, we see a lot of that in all sorts of add Arenas of life and then there should be a positive model for women, you know where instead of their appearances being judged by their appearances and having to conform to his ideals of what's hot or not. It's about being incredibly powerful and confident and have expertise in being really successful in your career and as opposed to
to be continually judged by your appearances, which is very damaging. So these are terrible times. I mean, I I feel fortunate that I grew up in a time where there were these kind of models for me to go by and I think of my father who was a very quiet man and he was he was just a middle-class salesman. He's basically what he was he just sold for all his whole life. He sold chemical supplies for one company.
But he was very dignified. He treated people. Well, he was very calm and very quiet but he also was very empathetic but that was my role model for what I think is a good masculine energy. And I think a lot of people just don't have that in their very lost. And so I don't know what the answer is to that. I can't really produce that out of thin air, but I wish I could certainly nowadays. There are many more.
Let's say examples and options of masculine and feminine qualities out there for observation because of social media and because of the internet and as you point out before a key feature to becoming a functional human being especially nowadays is learning what to ignore. I mean, there's an interesting idea in the circles around a nutrition and health that you never before in human history have human beings been able to access such a wide variety of foods that are differ from
What their ancestors ate and I don't even mean ancient ancestors. I mean if you grew up in the Bay Area as I did in the 1970s and 80s, there were a few ethnic restaurants, but we ate the same, you know, 15 or 20 Foods over and over again, and then eventually that exploded into dozens of options and more and fusion foods and all sorts of things. And so there is this idea and the nutrition communities that we are not hardwired to
Ink about and discern so many different food options that you know, that's and to taste so many distinct flavors, whereas before people one portion of the planet or country generally one way in a given season their seasonality, etc. Etc. In a similar vein. We are now and children to are now overwhelmed with the number of different options of how to express oneself both masculinity and femininity, but generally speaking and so the question is then how does one choose right? How does
One decide what's what's functional? What works what's best? What's me, right everyone asking themselves? Who am I right? I think all teenagers. I find this fascinating ask themselves. Who am I adults don't tend to ask themselves that question. Who am I? I still ask myself. Okay. Well that's good. You should ask myself that more often, but I think that we clearly have gone over a cliff with this stuff. I don't think we're still at the point where we're kind of veering towards the edge of
confusion. I think young people are really confused because the moment one assumes one clear and let's say balanced mask set of masculine feminine attributes, or maybe there's a bit more masculine are a bit more feminine. It's like they're a million examples telling you that that's wrong and then sometimes has the tendency to Anchor to well. No. No, I'm right because this is this is who I am and then all of a sudden you're in a larger battle, so, you know, Gary Cooper's great love his movies, but we're like we
I'll have a million variations on Gary Cooper that don't look anything like the Gary Cooper you and I are talking about in a lot of people won't even know who were talking about but right but that's perhaps I'm a dinosaur but perhaps it illustrates the point know, I'd not that you're a dinosaur but that there is no single or even said of masculine or feminine ideals. That was so picking Role Models is something that I really truly internalized from your book Mastery. Yeah, you know, there were a lot of lonely years for me.
And I won't get into the stories of just wondering like like what am I going to do? You know, I'm 13. My home was completely broken. No semblance of the reality it was before you know, who are the males in my life. I'm going to orient doing fortunately for me. I signed mentors to me whether or not they knew it or not. Yeah, that really helped me along and I changed them up as you recommend. There wasn't one. Yeah, I understood there was a breaking up process and integration process combining and threading together different things. I think I truly believe that that's what's required then.
It doesn't have to be 100% Gary Cooper. It can be 10% Robert Greene 10% Someone else. Yeah, you know 5% this and creating a pie chart of sorts of you know, who one wishes to be in a given context, but that takes work. It takes a bit of work and discernment but gosh that's powerful and really credit goes to you because I you know, you were a mentor of mine. You didn't even realize it in the way that you forge an organized information and there were others and but
re is where I learned to do that and this is not a podcast. It's a sales pitch for Mastery, but gosh it really taught me. Okay. I have a graduate advisor. She was wonderful and Brilliant, but she didn't know how to explain a lot of things to me. So I'd find someone else for that right and someone else for the other thing and someone else for the other thing and together create a patchwork of really excellent mentors that made a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's a role for that process that you spell out in Mastery in the
Your context of like could it become as a person and that includes masculine and feminine ideals? Yeah, and it's an ongoing process throughout your life. So who you glommed onto when you were 14 or 15 will change when you're 19, I had a series of people like you're talking about my high school English teacher who had an enormous impact on me who taught me basically how to write I internalized his voice when I went to Berkeley. I had a professor there who became my kind of surrogate father.
At Berkeley who I deeply admired for his level of scholarship. So he became kind of an intellectual role model later in life. When I finally wrote my first book. I met a man. Yo Stouffer's who is a book packager who understood the business Etc. He kind of saved me. He was sort of my mentor for the next phase in my life. So on and on and on I found people but they have positive qualities qualities that I admire they're not perfect. Everyone is flawed and so at some point maybe you see too many
The flaws you go on. I need somebody new in my life, but there's nothing wrong with that. It's not like you're violating any codes or hurting them you move on to somebody else but the sense of finding people whose qualities you admire. We don't learn from people just by following their ideas. We pick up their energy their Spirit now you didn't necessarily pick up my energy or Spirit from Reading master of them. Maybe you did. I don't know but when you in
You're acting with that professor at Stanford or whatever. It's not just verbally there's kind of a nonverbal communication going on your internalizing some of the positive qualities that you saw in them and finding these series of mentors because I call it surrogate parents. You can't choose your father and mother but you can choose these ideals for you can choose these mentors in your life. You can kind of rewrite your family history and find that.
Other figure you never had by glomming on to this person, but it has to be the right fit has to be someone that you connect to emotionally and intellectually and that has the positive qualities you wish for yourself. Well, I'll embarrass you perhaps by saying that since I was a freshman in college, which is really when I turn my academic life around and really my life around I've maintained the same notebook with a list of names of people that I admire and who I'm you know, trying to emulate in some way not in.
Every way certainly and that certain names have been crossed off but most of them have survived and and certainly after reading Mastery your name made that list and and I hope I'm not being crossed off at some point. No, not at all. Not at all and through Reading Mastery. There were there were additional names. You know, I had the great the great Misfortune of having all three of my academic advisors die suicide cancer cancer, which sounds tragic the joke in my field is you don't want me to work for you. That's what that's what everyone says but by being essentially scientific
The orphaned yeah, because there's a strong mentor-mentee relationship in science and progression through the career track. It forced me to go out and find other people and also to learn how to quote unquote mother and father myself in the context of profession and I got a lot of help but I can't emphasize enough how valuable that practice is. And so when one looks out on the landscape of social media options, I mean, these are literally just options of people to we call it following but you know, it's probably should be called something.
Thing else because following, you know fall short of emulating or attempting to emulate but I think that in the context of masculine and feminine ideals, this is so critical but it's like the buffet of food is so enormous now, right? I mean, you've got every cuisine on the table and we're speaking we're not wired for that know, and I know personally I get very agitated and upset if I go to the market and I have to choose between 30 items and I have no idea what I want. It makes me really cranky an
Whereas if I know okay, I cannot have this food. I can't have that. I'm only looking for this. Okay. It's easy. It doesn't take two hours waste my time too. Much choice is very detrimental to the human being I think and that's why we're going back to what I originally said when you have that sense of purpose about your life, but what's important it does just does infects your career but infects everything you do. So, you know eating this food is going to drain me of
of my energy that I need to create this thing. That means so much to me and energy and feeling my brain active and alive is incredibly important value. All right, I'm not going to eat all that Sugar because it's bad for me. Right? It means I'm not going to get outraged by these things on the internet because it's a waste of time I can't do anything about it is just feeding on my, you know on my forget the part of the brain. That's that's like the amygdala whatever right? So no, I don't want to go there right and on.
On and on all these things in social media some of its good some of it's interesting. I can follow Andrew who Berman's podcast and I enjoy that and I learned a lot from but a lot of these podcasts are useless. They're not helping me in any way. So it gives you this kind of filter and this radar to cut out those hundred different choices that drive us absolutely crazy. And I know maybe I'm partially I maybe I'm a little bit. I don't know. I hate to say it. I maybe I'm partially on
Spectrum or something, but I can't transfer can't stand too many choices. It completely drives me nuts. So I always have to kind of fun on my energy into something to things that are productive and having a sense of your purpose whenever you've discovered in your 20s. Hopefully gives you that ability to say these are the positive role models. I want in my life. These are the mentors and the thing about following people and so she means it's so easy as just a click it doesn't mean anything.
Mentor relationship takes work it takes courage because you have to actually go up to somebody and physically ask for their help and a lot of people write to me say I'm afraid of asking this important powerful person to be their mentee, right? So it involves a sense of social courage where you have to literally engage with another human being who you admired you think is powerful. So it's building your social skills Etc, but it's a skill you develop. You can't just follow
One you can't just watch their lectures. You have to engage with them and you have to get over some of your fears and your anxieties in the process and I might add to it. I think everything he says absolutely true and I think engaging in the the various tools that they recommend is immensely helpful. Like I think hearing about a book is great reading a book is even better thinking about a book is even that you read is even better than that and then writing down your own ideas and writing a book.
Well, that's that's the big win. Right and that's what the world. I believe that's what the universe wants from us. Not necessarily to write a book but you know translate what I just said to any number of different Endeavors you want to be able to think for yourself, right? So you're not just absorbing ideas from other people and kind of mimicking them and kind of just learning the exteriors of their ideas. You want to kind of digest them and then have them slowly become your own ideas.
by interacting with them by creative and I putting them through your own lens so someday it's a book stirring in me is the art of thinking and how to use that kind of process and go deeper into it and I talked a lot about it in one of my podcast which might be the seed of a book but it's the the difference between dead thinking and Alive thinking ideas can be either alive, or they can be dead and
I have idea is something that enters your brain from an external Source a philosopher an article somebody you admire somebody you hate and then you absorb it and you think about it and you decide I'm going to turn it around into this and I'm going to make it alive and make it something that's part of me. Another part of an alive idea is you have an idea that comes to you about a book or a project or something about the world and you go
maybe that's not actually true. Maybe the opposite is true and you go through a process and you cycle through it on and on and you reflect on it and you refine this idea and maybe it turns into its opposite and through the process of reflecting and correcting and revising it you turn it into something living something alive within you right on on on and what prevents people from going through that process, which should be the subject of my book is basically anxiety because I think how you
Handling Society is the most important kind of quality in life. It will determine whether you will be successful whether you will find your career path or whether you won't be able to I don't know if you can follow that idea at all. But anxiety is a signal to you that you don't understand something that there's a problem out there that you can't resolve and so what happens to most people if you're insecure is you glom onto something instant easy.
To get rid of your feeling of anxiety. I don't understand this problem. So it must be a must a must be the answer because this person said that right and so you don't develop the ability to think you don't have the ability to go to the next level. But if you take that anxiety and you go all right, maybe a is an answer and then you start going through and then you go know maybe a isn't the answer maybe B is the answer you're able to surmount your anxiety and go past further and further and further.
Don't rush for the first available answer that's out there, right you're able to go through a process of refining things and so in your career if you're anxious for Success, if you're anxious for money, you're going to make the wrong choices, but if you're able to deal with that anxiety and say maybe I'm I have to think more deeply about where I'm going. I have to come up with other Alternatives then you're going to make a much better choice on and on and on. So how if your deal if you're
Creative person. It's very very challenging to have that blank piece of paper before you that books. You haven't written that film or whatever you filled with a lot of anxiety and you have to deal with it. And if you're able to turn into something creative and productive then great things will happen. You'll create a masterpiece. So the ability to deal with anxiety and do not give in to the most instant gratification that you can get is to me a marker of somebody who will be creative and will invent something as opposed to
people who just recycle old and dead ideas.
Amen to that, I was once told that you know anxiety makes children of us all and not in the positive sense of being childlike, you know, it regresses us to a mode where we feel a complete lack of control and I completely agree that being able to manage anxiety and and work dance with it. Yes, we can't rid ourselves of it. No, no perhaps nor should we write because it's a signal as you point out that we don't understand something that there's there's something to get curious about, right?
Process or something out there or both. I think that really resonates. Yeah, I think a lot of people will benefit from from hearing that because I think we hear the word flow and we just all imagine even catch myself imagining that you know, when Robert Green sits down to write it's like there's a blank she and then he just kind of meditate and then boom out come these books, but I you know, if I get realistic for a second, I'm sure that there's a lot of inner turmoil and anxiety God. You have
no idea. So my
A process is 95% pain and maybe two and a half percent ecstasy. And I don't know what the other two and a half percent would be but so I write a story because all in my new book and most of my books. I always begin with the story from history Etc and it is so bad and I just can't believe how bad how flat it is how it sucks. I'm so embarrassed. I hate myself and I go in a good dig into
Start changing the words in it. I started making a little bit better the second version its kind of palatable but it still sucks. It's if I let it out into the world and be very embarrassing. I work time. It's anxious, you know, and my wife can tell you I'm a miserable being when that happens. Everything looks black to me at that point and I push through it. So if I gave in to my anxiety and this happens with a lot of books and writers, I would just put out that second version which isn't very good.
It isn't very strong. It isn't thought through because my ideas when I look at them the first time I go that's not real. That's not the actual thing that's going on here Robert. You've missed the mark you want to hit what's actually real in that story. So you have to go deeper and deeper and harder and harder and harder so I don't just give up and go here's the chapter. It's got to be better. It's got to be better until finally after two months of struggling. It seems like it's
On to the place that I wanted to be in right but I I use that anxiety to keep improving and making better. And then when I reach that point in the story is good enough and I can let my wife read it and then my editor I feel great. I have that 2% moment of Joy, but it came through all of that anxiety, but I can tell you.
The feeling of fulfillment when I finish a chapter is pretty damn great when I finish a book it's better than any kind of drug experience anyone could ever have it's such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and pushing past all the barriers, you know, so my process involves a lot of anxiety and dealing with that's what I'm talking about and why want to write a book about it.
Thank you for sharing that. I'm attempting to write a book and have been for several years and now I feel a little bit better.
But clearly I need to ratchet down harder, but in other domains of life, I am familiar with the experience of tons of anxiety and just you know going to just get to this one Milestone and then I'll figure out the next Milestone but even that process of saying OK I'm going to break this down into Milestones itself is anxiety-provoking sure. It's just that but some point you generates enough inertia, that usually does they you just sort of stumble forward into the process and then right keep going. So try not to bloody oneself through too much. Yeah.
I think a lot of people will benefit from hearing about that. And in fact, I'm certain they will So speaking of anxiety. You have a clip on the internet that we will provide a link to in the show notes captions, which I think is absolutely fabulous about how to find a romantic partner and or get more out of an existing romantic partnership. I don't even remember
what I said, you're gonna have to remind
no, it's so good one point in particular.
Killer. Yeah that I remember that I think is oh so true is that there needs to be at least one and probably several points of like real convergence in terms of one's interests or likes that go beyond like what food somebody likes or you know, what type of house they want to live in but that actually traces back to these early forms of delight and you
mentioned that for you and therefore presumably your partner that you know, a mutual love and respect for Animals happens to be one of those things within the context of your relationship, right the not that our love for Animals is required for me. It sure as hell is right exactly.
So never go out with the woman who didn't love
animal right? My sister used to tease me that if a woman gave me a birthday card or a card that had a drawing of a particular animal which I'm particularly fond of mice.
Trees have an older sister and she used to say oh no, it's over. He's
gone, you know that it would you
know, fortunately it's not that simple but there's some truth to what she was saying. It's certainly a it's necessary but not sufficient, but maybe you could elaborate a little bit on this notion of convergent interest and contrast it with a lot of what people tend to hear and say about what's important in Partnership because I think this is
Thing that a lot of people grapple with both in terms of finding a partner and in terms of building partnership.
Well, you have to you know, there's you can there's different relationships you can have. I mean, do you want like a one-week a one-month relationship? Are you looking for something longer more satisfying that will entail, you know, maybe years of being together and you know, people can get very boring very quickly, right particularly. If you can have a conversation with them about subjects that interest you and so you mention an
Those animals is a very good example because it's not I'm not saying that you both have to be Democrats or Republicans. That's tube a known superficial but the Love of Animals reaches into your character reaches something deep inside of you or your dislike of animals if that happens to be the case, but it's signals something about it. That's so Primal. That's so connected to a child that there's going to be a deep connection there and saw like you have to both love cats which
Is good if that happens to be the case, but just animals in general you love their energy you love the fact that they're that they're innocent in their own way. You love the fact that they're not playing games with you. You love the kind of instant love you can get from them kind of thing. And you connect to them on that level is a very very positive sign because it goes beyond just intellectual things into something emotional and visceral so really the emotional connections the values that you
Have together are very important money is another one that's extremely important. So if one of you is incredibly material oriented and is all about money is power and success and comfort and the other isn't really into it as into spending money Etc. A lot of people have endless fights or something like money right where this is no convergence there and money signals a deeper.
Tell you about the person so I'm not saying there's anything wrong if money motivates you I'm not moralizing about it because that can signal a value that maybe you grew up without it and that feeling comfortable and feels like you don't have to worry about something is very very important to you and they'll not being interested in money reveals something about your character. So I'm telling people you want to look at the person's character and see a kind of convergence there and something that can last and I remember I was reading
For one of my books about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. And the thing of it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt was this incredibly handsome vibrant young man before he got polio very active very athletic. Very handsome. All of the women were after him. He was like the perfect match. He was wealthy and Eleanor Roosevelt was like the ugly duckling. She wasn't very pretty. She was kind of socially awkward, but he saw into her character. He saw that intellectually.
She was a match for him. He saw that they had kind of similar interests on that level that I'm talking about that go beneath just the surfaces and he chose Eleanor and everyone was shocked about it. You know, nobody was was trying to court Eleanor where her last name at the time. I think she might have been being Roosevelt. So it was very shocking. He said I looked at somebody who I could last with who had some qualities that were much more important to me and it ended up being a very
Relationship course later on he had his dalliances so it wasn't perfect but it was a very it was a very positive relationship. So seeing your values in life, you know, when it comes to like money when it comes to like career when it comes to comfort or lack of comfort some people like not being comfortable. They like being on the edge. They want challenges. They want to move from City to City kind of thing and if you
Partner with someone who just wants to live in the same house you're going to have conflict after conflict after conflict. The sex might be great and that might be good for a month or two months. I have nothing against that I'm not going to judge that either but it won't lead to a long-lasting relationship, you know Sports and Athletics are another thing. This is someone that likes the outdoors or is it someone who's you know, like Zsa Zsa Gabor and has to be in a Time Square and in a penthouse in Manhattan, you know kind of thing so,
Reach inside of a pertinent character that are deeply ingrained that you can almost not change. You can't control there's a convergence there on several levels is a sign that you can have a deep connection with that person. It's very important and if those connections are good, and there's a physical attraction because if without the physical attraction, it will kind of fizzle out. You've got a recipe for incredible success for some
that can really last and having a lasting relationship is I've had
Is is such an anchor in your life, you know for me for someone who works as hard as I do and hopefully for her as well. It just grounds me and it makes life so much simpler and easier and and it's not just simple and easy at this a lot of love and a great deal of deeper emotions involved but having a long-term relationship if you can have it is something that pays off in so many dividends so being able to find that kind of convergence.
No, when I first met my now my wife I had a cat the time I'd always been a dog person. But this is the cat I had and I love that cat like how I can't believe he was such a wonderful cat. I brought her over to my apartment on the first date. I wanted to see her reaction to the cat, you know, because I generally and I don't know people misjudge that women who don't like cats. I don't can't get along with right.
There's something feline in the feminine nature that I loved and she loved my cat boy. That was the best sign of all and things just Blossom and she loved me for loving a cat. So there was a great convergence right there that we saw right away. Then there were other things but that was the first one.
I love that story and everything. You just said suggests. I believe that in order to find the right partner and to build an existing partnership.
Hopefully feels at least partially right to people that it requires at least some knowing of self Because unless you know, your character one's own character, then it's impossible to really determine if somebody else is character is going to mesh well
with it or not. Self-awareness is is actually the most important quality in life for all aspects. But yeah, I mean if we go by social pressures a man will choose a trophy wife who looks sexy and hot
and will impress all of his male friends, etc. Etc. You go by the things that culture tells you that these are the right images for you, right and then there won't be any connection to you because you're choosing for purposes that aren't don't connect to who you are. And so you have to know yourself. You have to know what you love. You have to know what you hate. I think most people know that they love animals or don't love animals. I think most people know that they like stability or they like things to be kind of a slightly.
Chaotic, I think you have to go through deep levels of introspection. But what you have to do is when you're involved in a relationship, you have to think that those things matter. That's the problem you tend to think that those things many think that sex matters more than anything physical attraction matters or you think that the person having a lot of money matters, etcetera Etc. You don't think that this other aspect is important if you value what I'm talking about then your self-awareness.
I will kick in because you really basically know these essential basic parts about your own character.
I think people sometimes get distracted by admiration of qualities that they might find admirable but that don't mesh with their own character. I've seen this many times before where it's well where someone will say, well then someone will start listing off the positive attributes of the person that they happen to be dating like he does this blank blank and blank she does this
You know, he volunteers Etc. And that's all great. I mean volunteering for good causes. I'm all in support of that. But then what they're overlooking often it seems is whether or not that's a core value for them or whether or not just something that they admire I hear a lot of admiration in the early days of relationships that later I hear about failing. I'm what you're talking about is something deeper more aligned with one's own sense of self and it almost leads me to use
The word, you know sort of a more about energetics. It's like merging of people's energies which sounds very new agey and that's not my intention. But but I think it relates to something that we do hear a lot about and I think is valid which is how it feels to be around somebody in different contexts. Like do we feel at ease do we feel a lightness and ability to express ourselves and to and do we enjoy and admire them in their expression as opposed to just admiring what they do?
They've accomplished blank blank and blank, right? They manifest these qualities that I wish I had right you hear that and aspired to have which is very different than a meshing of
energies. Also other couple other things you have to understand their character as well and people can be very deceptive and very slippery and can wear masks one telling sign that I've noticed in my own relationships in the past is that the woman would be a certain way with me that I
Was very good and I liked and then the moment we were with other people she actually in a way that was very irritating as like a different character and I really kind of fell out of love with her when I saw her in social interactions. She revealed so with me she was almost wearing a mask and play a game but the moment she entered a different circumstance. I saw other aspect to her character. So you also have to be very attentive to their character what lies underneath that they have some of these values that they're not just trying
To win you over for whatever reason are playing along with you. The other thing that's very important is a sense of mystery. So a partner can become boring very very quickly right after a year, you know, every single thing about them, right? They're going to say the same things this conversations go around in circles. It's just you've reached an end. There's no surprises. There's no mystery you want somebody where they have corn?
That you don't really see it first if they surprise you sometimes suddenly there's a quality that you hadn't suspected before. So people who were too obvious who were too familiar who show everything instantly. They're going to end up boring you right but people who have a bit of Reserve I'm going to do this is maybe I'm projecting my own values on the world, but people who who kind of intrigued you that you don't fully understand that make you want to know more.
And if they can be like that after two years or three years or five years. Wow, that's fantastic. But the sense of I know every single thing about this person. They never surprise me anymore is what kind of breaks the the enchantment and leads to the end of the relationship
with the idea of more to learn about somebody perhaps also suggests that they are continuing to evolve into forage in the landscape of Life. Yeah that they're not fully baked. Yeah, right that which I think is an interesting idea.
In during the four episode series that we did on Mental Health Paul Conte a psychiatrist said that a matching of generative drives, which he defined as the desire to create something in the world of One's Own expression is really critical in relationship and he said, you know, it matters less whether or not one person likes classical music in the other person rock and roll provided that their relationship to music is similar or something of that sort like that. It's about a drive to of a certain sort to engage in the world. So
a person could love music the other person's not into music, but the way that they approach life is one of grabs Mutual curiosity desire to find out etcetera and that there's a success on a Continuum. I've curious if it seems to jive with what you're worth what you're
says, but the only thing I would add is if you love classical music and they love like heavy metal music you're going to be driven crazy pretty quickly. It's going to you know, it's not going to mesh with you and I know I would have that problem.
You'll both be in headphones
along right? So the fact that you both have because music is like animals in a way. So I agree completely with what you're saying, but I would say maybe music isn't the best example because music says something very deep about a person right there. And you know, I'm not saying one is superior to the other but it reveals something that's nonverbal that that kind of gives you a window into who they are.
So if they like punk rock like you do and I grew up on punk rock. There's a rebellious thing this tube this an anti-authoritarian quality. It's very strong you get you get to see that through them if they like mode so hard and soft string quartets. There's somebody that kind of value softness and tranquility and peace and you're not like that. So the music kind of shows you something equality about their character that can be very telling me be very eloquent.
it doesn't mean that you both have to love The Clash or the Dead Kennedys or whatever showing my own generation, but that you both have that rebellious streak and that rebellious streak could be you like there's classical music composers who could be pretty damn rebellious and angry, you know, and I actually kind of liked them so that convergence I think is the positive one kind of thing, but in general I agree with that
I'm curious
about the nonverbal communication component of all types of relationships, but let's stay in the landscape of romantic relationships for the moment. Yeah, maybe include professional relationships too because what you just described is really about a resonance around the nonverbal stuff. I mean it can be articulated with words. Yeah. I love animals. I love this music. This is the best song like did you see that like otters are amazing, right this kind of thing, but language is just an attempt to
Place, you know words on a Feeling in those instances so it can be classified as non verbal with respect to nonverbal communication and you've written fairly extensively about the fact that people often communicate with their body and facial expressions. I'm certainly familiar with the somewhat. If not, very eerie sensation of somebody smiling like a toothy smile and then
Then as they pivot away that smile just dissolving very quickly and you know, you don't have to be a neuroscientist or a psychologist to realize that like there was something quite false about that experience or that this person experiences emotions, like step functions on off on off which is not how most of us experience emotions. Most of us experience emotions were some pervasiveness. Like I was happy walking in the door because I'm something happened before and someone a smile while I'm walking in the door. I see something shocking.
In dismaying, of course, I'm going to frown I'm going to wipe away that smile but those are rare instances. So let's talk about the mouth the eyes the face the body in the context of communication. What are some important
things to pay attention that I want to go back on as far as convergence is sense of humor is extremely important, right? So it's not like you both like the same comedians, but if one person likes raunchy humor, and the other person doesn't that's that's a problem and also the fact that the person doesn't have a sense of
Humor or doesn't make you laugh is a very very bad sign. So I wanted to add that one component in there.
I'm so glad you did someone who can make me laugh has you know necessary but not sufficient, but boy, it's approaching sufficient. Yeah, so I
see so, you know when it comes to the Art of Seduction The Art of Seduction is a nonverbal language that you must Master. It's a language of the gifts that you give it's a match. It's a language of of how
Smell it's the language that you Trent that you communicate through the eyes, etc. Etc. And think you have to understand about the human being is that we evolved for a much longer period of time without words, then the small 40 35 thousand years that we have symbolic language. So during that vast period of Darkness where we did not have words. We were non communicating non-verbally we were picking up signals from people.
We were watching every little detail of their behavior because we didn't have words to decipher it. So it's wired into our brains to have an amazing sensitivity to people's nonverbal Communications. We can almost be telepathic that way if we learned that language the problem is we have the capacity, but we don't develop it at all because we are so word oriented. You're just listening to people if you're even listening to them at all.
All you just hearing the words and your so thinking that the words means that the words are sincere, which they're often not at the same time that you're listening so much towards people are shuffling in their chair. They're kind of looking away. They're looking at other women or other men their voice is kind of trembling when they say something that word shouldn't trouble their eyes are dead. The smile is kind of fake. You're not watching any of it. So the most important thing in nonverbal communication law number one is pay
agent to it continually develop the practice of shutting off the words and watching people almost as if you took the television and muted it right and just watch their behavior. It's not easy and it's not natural because it's
the words the words words.
We want to want to focus on them. Right but your ability to turn that television off to mute. It will suddenly open up so many things about people they reveal so much things Sigmund Freud said people
Continually losing out all of their secrets through their nonverbal Behavior. You can read them like an open book if you master this language and I have the laws of human nature. I described the story of Milton Erickson. I don't know if you're familiar with Milton Erickson, perhaps the greatest modern master of number will be communication. He was at an amazing psychologist. He sort of is the inspiration behind
And what's it called in? Help me out here neuro-linguistic
do the NLP NLP.
I mean it's kind of a bastardization of his ideas, but he's created hypnotherapy. He's the person who created
hypnotherapy only. I hypnotherapy as a valid psychiatric practice. I mean, it's excellent clinical data to
support. Well Milton Erickson had Polio when he was 19 and he was paralyzed his entire body was paralyzed. He couldn't even move his eyeballs.
Right and he sat in bed and he had a very active mind and he was going to die from sheer boredom and what he did during the two years of being paralyzed like that was just watching People's nonverbal communication and making notes in his brain and learning every single. He learned the 20 different forms of yes, the hundred different forms of know right every intonation how somebody entered the room how they left the room, you know how they
Looked at him with the pity or empathy or city. He mastered it and then he became a psychiatrist and he treated people they thought he was psychic. He could see everything into them. It's because for two years, that's all he could do was Observe them. He couldn't speak he couldn't do anything. He couldn't read a book. So you have that same power, but you don't have polio obviously, but you have to first pay attention to it, right? It's an amazing thing.
Once you do, it's a lot of fun actually and I tell people go to a cafe one day in your city, wherever you live and just watch people because you can't hear them. There are a few tables away watch their nonverbal Behavior as they interact and see if you pick up cues from them and they're things that are signs of genuine emotions. So for instance an exercise you can do is you go up to somebody from an angle where they can't see you coming up.
Them and you surprised me go. Hey, hey, Mike, whatever. They turn for that second their expression reveals how they really think about you you'll detect if you can pick up micro expressions and and you can they're only like one 1/50 of a second. But the there you can press a kind of they smile you can see the little disdain in their eyes, right then the mass comes on right or you're talking to them. They're looking at you.
You but their feet are facing in an opposite direction. That means that they're dying to get away from you kind of the these are signals that you don't necessarily pay attention to their posture will tell you everything about their levels of confidence right on and on and on the fake smile. If you can just mastered the ability to detect the fake smile. It will go wonders for you because you able to see what you really want to do is to see the person with a genuine smile particularly in romantic.
Relationships someone whose face lights up a real smile lights your whole face up. It doesn't like your mouth these parts of your face. Go up your eyes get alive. There's like there's like a neuro thing going on in your brain that's changing your whole facial expression and it means that someone genuinely likes you their genuine the interest in you. They're genuine Lee laughing or connecting to you man. If you can see that it'll help you so much in the
Attic realm and then it'll help you get away from those toxic people that are continually faking interest in you because a narcissist a toxic person thrives by deceiving you with a Charming alluring front that makes you come into their world, then they can hurt you. Then they can do something to you rather than they have you in their in their you know in their trap, right? So being able to see that they're not genuinely interested in you that they're fake.
It will help you avoid very toxic relationships. And as I said to you, I don't know if we were on are not but deep narcissus have dead eyes. They almost can't help it. They can fake the smile. They can fake everything else. But the eyes you have to be able to read it because you say well what are dead eyes you'll know it when you see it. There's no life in them. They're like looking through your they're not looking at you. They're looking through you. What can I get? If you you're what they call a self object there an object.
For you to use and that's how they're looking at you like they would look at a hammer or
something. Yeah the concept of dead eyes and
Also alive eyes is so fascinating because as audience of this podcast will know that because I've said it too much but I'll say it again that the eyes are the only two pieces of your brain that are outside the cranial Vault. I mean, they literally two pieces of brain lining the back of your eye and the Dynamics of the pupils those changes, of course reflect how bright or dim it is in the room, but they also reflect levels of arousal that shown the millisecond time scale. So as one expresses, you know words of
Of Glee right the pupils constrict a little bit believe you're not. All right, excuse me dilate a little bit. I got it backwards there for a moment and vice versa, you know, as one feels less less excited sort of moments of Despair expressions of Despair that people should get a little bit smaller because arousal is going down. And so I think you know we pick up on these things that unconscious level. We do the deadness of the eyes is kind of the the the conclusion that pops out at
us if we're paying attention, but the problem is it
level registers unconsciously, but we don't give it any value to it. We trust our words we would trust our rationality as opposed to our intuitions about people sometimes when you meet a person for the first time signals go up and you're my brain something's wrong about them and then you forget it because you don't trust those initial unconscious signals that your brain is giving you, right? So you have to you have to first kind of trust that these intuitions are
Valuable the other thing is pay deep attention to the tone of voice The Voice as actors will tell you is like the hardest thing to fake. Right? It's very hard to fake excitement your voice either has it or a dozen. It's very hard to fake confidence and you can I mean books have been written about that. I'm not going to go into all the details about it, but the person will reveal so much.
Of their emotional the emotions that they're experiencing particularly levels of confidence and you know, like a trembling Voice or something or booming confident voice which some people can fake. But often it's very difficult. You can still see through it and on the level of Seduction women men are very very attuned to the voice of whom but we're not aware of it because the voice of our mother had an incredible impact on us in earlier.
Early Childhood her singing heard the tone of her voice that was probably the first seduction that we ever went through and a woman's voice has tremendous power over us, right and so hearing a voice the kind of grades are irritates you is something that's that's a bad sign that goes deeper than all the characters is that we were talking about but a woman's voice that kind of reminds you of that mother that sing-songy whatever feeling was that.
That's somebody that's that can very easily seduced you
now there's a there's a place for naming this of it's like subcortical courtship, you know, you know below the cortex is yeah the geeky neuro scientist, like myself say, you know, you getting down below the cortex with all of this stuff, you know convergence of of real loves and desires. I mean, we express with words we sense the world using a course our cortex, but really talking about getting into the subcortical stuff that
is the stuff of our history the stuff of our hardwiring and our unique our uniqueness I couldn't help but think about the fact that earlier we were talking about the now, you know, infinitely vast number of choices of things to engage in people to engage with etcetera, but at the same time as you are now talking about these micro inflections and the subtleties of voice and bodily communication that whether or not it's emojis or
people sending filtered images or the default to text message communication. That is so prominent. Now, it seems like we now have more choices so more input but the sort of qualitative differences between the inputs have been binned into a couple of simple bins as if it's as if we've regressed to primary colors only but the canvas is huge or maybe I don't know if that analogy works, but you get the idea because ultimately in order to
Develop good choices about profession romantic relationships friendships. You need a lot of examples and a lot of information that allows you to glean the subtlety but as long as it's emojis and filtered pictures taken at a particular angle, you know, usually from above ask for the picture head-on and Below send me a picture of your worst your worst expression all of that. It seems that there's now increased opportunity for deception.
And I don't just mean people misleading others. I also mean us misleading ourselves like oh my goodness. How could I be so disappointed yet again about particular landscape of life. It doesn't just have to be romantic interactions. It could be other Landscapes. Like, how could I be fooled? Well, you fooled because of the the inputs were deficient not good data as we say.
Well the thing is if things are so you're immersed in the virtual Realm.
It's very very hard to master the nonverbal communication aspect which is so important. So if you're dating from a nap and you're flipping through and then you find that person you've missed out on the greatest experience of life, which is actually having to go out to a bar or go to a restaurant or go to a social event and have to literally encounter another person and deal with looking at their their behavior and kind of assessing who they are.
Our it's a muscle that you have to pay attention to nonverbal communication. And if you're just you know going through the Emojis are going through the Tinder apps that muscle completely atrophies. You have no power you not able to decipher anything and that's what's happening with a lot of people who were using these apps a social skills are like any skill at all. They you have to develop them. It's a muscle you have to develop
and you've all noticed this probably in your own life, if you've gone through a period where you're kind of retreating you don't want to be around people and you spend a month like that and then you go out you feel awkward. It takes you like a couple days to get used to being around other people. You say stupid things your body language is awkward. But if you're in a situation for months where you're constantly interacting people you're on a film set and day and day out they uh, that's kill starts developing, but you have to be out there in the world you have to
Interacting you have to be looking at people's emotions. You have to be gauging them in real-time.
We're not built for
virtual encounters were creatures of human of
Flesh and
Blood and we need to be looking at each other in the eye and paying attention to all these little details these nuances that you can only get
in person along those lines. What are your thoughts about Ai and how that's going to shape our sense of self sense of others and relationships as if
That's a topic that could be covered in a series of minutes. But what are your what are your top Contour maybe even deeper thoughts about
AI. Well, I'm going to I'm going to piss a lot of people off, but I'm I'm kind of very concerned about it. I mentioned before about anxiety the role that anxiety plays in thinking you come upon an idea.
And you go. Yeah, that's a good then you go to the next level and it becomes better you go. I'll maybe that's not so good. Then you go to the next level you go to level 3 and it gets better and better you have anxiety. Another aspect of intelligence is self-awareness, right the bit of a look at yourself go. I have biases I have confirmation bias. I have conviction bias. I have recency bias. I have to counteract these things. I also have a dark side. I have aggression. I have to be aware of how they color my thinking my
Is the third quality that goes into a tell I'm calling about now intelligence not artificial intelligence to be able to deal anxiety and go to a third level intelligence is the ability to look inside of yourself and see your own biases. And the third thing is the ability to see a holistic picture the kind of aha moment that scientists have were you accumulate all kind of data points and then out of nowhere an image comes to your mind of yeah. There's the answer. You see the whole thing. You see the whole Gestalt, right?
Simone vile compared to a square Cube you can only see a cube from one side or you can never see a square Cube. You can only see a side of it if it's rotating. You still only seeing sides of it only in your mind. Can you picture the whole thing? So the mind has to go through a process to have holistic thinking if they can invent a machine that can deal with anxiety and has anxiety and can go
Level three if they can make a machine that can be self-aware. They can go the people who programme have biases. Therefore. I have biases. I also have a dark side because people have programming you have a dark side. If this machine can also think holistically beyond all of the data points and all the massive information. It's combined and can have that aha moment. All right, I can see a human consciousness. I can see creativity there. The other thing I would say is when I was
a student at Berkeley going way back. I was 19 years old. I decided One Summer. This is a big paradigm shift for me. I'm going to take this class in ancient Greek in six weeks. They teach you a year of ancient Greek that means every day. You have an exam every Friday. You have a final exam eight hours every day of the dead language. I thought this would be the best discipline for me after someone who didn't been doing too many drugs to be honest with you. Okay, and so
Only at one point they give us this paragraph of the hardest ancient Greek writer of all to read this was near the end thucydides or through Kennedy's as they say.
I stared a saw I had had like the whole night to try and translate one paragraph. I couldn't figure it out. You have to understand the weirdness of ancient Greek all the endings the weird ways of thinking the whole picture that aha moment was eluding me at one point. I thought I got it and I translated it and I gave it to the teacher next day. I remember who's this kind of hippie that you have it Berkeley Dennis Classics Professor, but also a hippie the fact
that you knew his first name is very definitely remember his first name Dennis.
He's he said Robert I can see her thinking but you need to go to another level you missed didn't have that aha moment. You didn't put the whole thing together. You were close, but you didn't you have to try harder and that stuck in my mind forever. Like whenever I have a problem. I have to think harder. I have to go to that next level. Now what would happen if I had pulled out my translation of through cities and just copy that out. Right? What have happened if I put it through chat GPT and a game.
Me the translation that muscle in my brain that I have developed for 40 years that allows me to write books would never have developed and that muscle is I don't know the answer here. I have to go to another level. I have to try hard drive to think I have to think I have to have that engine whirring around right, but if I just grab for chat GPT, it's deadened and they would have a whole generation of people who stop thinking who don't go through that process. You know, you've heard of Douglas hofstadter. I think he said,
People trained to go to Mount Everest. It takes months physical exertions painful, then they climb Mount Everest. They see the top. Whoa. What a great moment. He said chat GPT is be the equivalent of taking a helicopter to the top of Mount Everest without any of that training and having the same moment. It's not the same right you need to go through that process. You need to go through that pain and if you just and the thing of his chat gbt, we think we're so modern. So sophisticated.
But really we're just seduced by Magic you put it in there and you see the Scooby-Doo show. Whoa, It's like magic. It's like a magician but it's empty. It's like not your brain functioning right? It's pay is the Pagan part of us. We like that kind of magic as opposed to actually having to go through the thought process itself. So I'm not against having tools. I use tools I use the internet I use Google I'm sir.
Searching for like some factoid for my book. I find it. I use it. I like it. But I've also learned to develop my brain to think to get that engine constantly moving and I'm deeply concerned about Jim people who can't learn a foreign language who can't master anything who just immediately grabbed the first answer that it generates etcetera Etc. I have concerns
I am too and I was thinking a moment ago that you know, like some people might hear what you just said and say, oh, well the
The thing was probably said about the automobile like how many amazing experiences of walking from one place to another are going to be lost when people start driving from one place to another but I think a key difference and this certainly launch with everything you just said is that what you're talking about is not just arriving at the same destination you're saying the destination itself is different when one exert some effort and experiences some anxiety to get there. So it's not the same as automobile versus horse versus walking.
Versus Aeroplane. Yeah, it's fundamentally different because the the journey transforms the outcome. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm in agreement with you about many aspects of AI. I'm also excited about it in the context of certain things
II agree with you. It could be a tool but are we operating the tool or the tool operating us is what I'm talking
about. I am concerned a bit too, especially in the context of what we've been talking about for most of today's discussion about avatars replacing
Our online personas too much, you know, the Avatar ization of ourselves is already taking place at through filters through reduction of emotional expression to emojis through reduction of language to a diminish number of words to explain one's feelings, you know prior guest on this podcast Lisa Feldman Barrett who's an expert in emotions talked about how the moment that a culture has a word for a particular.
Set of anxious feeling so so for instance, she taught me that in Japanese. There's a word for the sadness one experiences when they get a bad haircut. Yeah, I know, you know, and so that normalizes the feeling and leads to feelings of less despair as opposed to what now many kids especially grew up learning which I'm anxious. I'm sad. I'm depressed. Yeah that you know in science we say there are lumpers and there are Splitters and they've been arguing for years about like is that one brain structure? Well, if I name those two things next to each other two different things not only can I not
When after myself, which is what tends to happen so to speak but when you have too many lumpur's or too many Splitters things are either overly simple or overly complex that of course the right answer the best use of naming things arrived someplace in the middle, right? That's how a field progresses because if you if you lump things together too much. If you can't progress you give the yourself the illusion that it's progressing, but it's not progressing. But if you split things up into a million different sub categories, like just even the word adrenaline is also called epinephrine and that
That has to do with basically people arguing over who got credit crazy and it's confused people for four decades. Yeah, and there's a there's another story there that I know far too much about the scientists involved and the there was a love triangle about naming of certain parts of the nervous system that oh, yeah people sleeping with other people's partners and love triangles have have created more drama and of nomenclature in science. I could do a whole hour on this in any case I what I'm hearing from you is that we cannot afford to lose.
Our sense of nuance and also because that sense of nuance Taps into what we're really experiencing and AI threatens that that we can become avatars of our
self. Look at it this way we worship technology. It's our new religion. Okay, and we worship chap GPT as if it's a God I'm like seriously. There's a religious elements going on here. Well, we really should worship is the human brain, which is the greatest creation in the known universe.
Universe I'm afraid it is the most complex piece of matter in the entire universe. The number of neurons the number of synapses the number of possible connections between neurons is infinite practically infinite. It is a wondrous instrument it is so powerful. We've we've barely scratched the surface of what we can use for it. Let us worship that brain. It's in your head. You only have so many years to use it you have also been used to develop it it is so wonderful and Powerful that can bring you such pleasure.
So much power in life. So tools are fine. We all need tools. We all need me to hammers. We need Nails. We need sauce etcetera. But the real thing is the hand that uses it the brain that connects the hand to the Hammer that knows how to to hit things. You know, I think of the of the great painter Renoir the 19th century, he had like a stroke or something then the last year's he couldn't move his right arm, which was
is she painted with it was disastrous. So what he did is he put the brush in his mouth and he paid it and he painted some beautiful paintings that way because his brain had mastered the art of painting not his hand but his brain had mastered it. So well that he could actually paint well with the brush in his mouth because he could direct it and he had the knowledge of how to make something perfect. The brain is absolutely incredible the plasticity of the brain, which I'm discovering.
After my stroke is absolutely a miracle. You know what I don't know. Is it Professor Schwartz UCLA who is studying OCD and how he was able to his kind of cure people of OCD through certain plasticity exercises that he had making them aware of their kind of brain lock etcetera and getting them out of it. The that plasticity of the brain is par far the greatest Miracle of all and it goes on into your 60s and 70s and on.
Onward let's all get down on our hands and knees and worship the brain and if we did it would create a complete shift in our values and we wouldn't be so instantly seduced and enamored and worshiping the technology. We would worship the brains that create the technology instead of, you know, the other way around. I
certainly got a fan of brains and their potential for plasticity sitting over here. He have the benefit of having Mike.
Scientific great-grandparents are he won't weasel who won the Nobel Prize for neural plasticity during the critical period so that again so my scientific great-grandparents are David hubel and Torsten Wiesel David's dead torn Stood Still Alive. He's 96 and they won the Nobel Prize for essentially discovering the critical window early in development where plasticity is especially robust. They did other things to they should have won two. Nobel is frankly for their other work on Vision, but one thing that they missed however was something that you mentioned and is worth hi.
Highlighting again, which is that the brain maintains the capacity for immense plasticity throughout the entire life span. That's absolutely clear the conditions change from early to later in life. But your specific situation really highlights that and it's something I'd really like to talk about for a few minutes if you're willing as you mentioned you experienced a stroke and perhaps it was aware to some but perhaps not to all especially the people just listening to this podcast and who are not watching.
Video that on your shirt while very nicely designed in its original state also includes some unique stitching. So maybe you could share with us what the end for those listening. There's a there's a jagged line of stitching that extends from Roberts left short sleeve to his mid line to where the buttons on your shirt are and from the from his right short sleeve also to the midline offset from one another these this is the sort of stitching that looks like perhaps I had been at the sewing machine.
And not somebody with skilled, but he they did a good job. Basically putting it back together. Why are those stitches in your shirt? Tell us about the stroke and let's let's talk about
neuroplasticity. It could also seem like a fashion statement, you know, but it really it isn't. Well it was May of 2018. It was my birthday and my wife gave me this shirt. I have a love of plaids. It's like, I don't know why I just love patterns and Plaza must be like some Scotch part of me some
It's true thing, but I love
plaids get can I interrupt you just briefly forgive me. Everyone's going to get upset that I interrupted you would know that there is a fundamental circuit in your visual cortex designed to detect plaid patterns. No, I did not. Yes and we can talk about why that is is tightly tightly linked to your ability to perceive motion. Really? Yeah, we can go over it some other time. But yeah, so we'll talk about just as IQ so, okay. Yes back to your
birthday. Okay, so she gave me a pleasure knowing how much I loved it and I love this shirt. I love the colors in it. It says
her etcetera and then two months three months that are August 17 2018. I was driving my car. She was with me. I was pulling out into traffic. I started driving and suddenly she said pull over pull over and go why why I can drive I'm fine and then suddenly everything started getting really strange. Everything looks strange. My voice didn't sound the same and she was like freaking out, but she was actually
Early cam which is amazing. I was undergoing a stroke. I had a blood clot that was blocking the brim blood flow to my brain. I actually at one point got out of the car. Like I was I don't know what the hell I was thinking and then she pulled me back in and then the rest goes blank and I had some weird Sensations that still remain with me because essentially I was on the verge of dying because blood is not flowing to your brain is basically the end of you right
Right, unless something happens very quickly, and she either that or you can get severe brain damage. So she called 911 right away. She recognized something my whole face was looking funny and they got there. I was unconscious and essentially they took this shirt. I just scissored the thing in half and took it off my head and then they intubated me. I believe in my hip area to get something the blood clot was in my neck and they were able to free it up.
And they rushed me to the hospital and I'm unconscious and then I wake up and I'm in a gurney in the hospital and I don't for a moment. I'm thinking maybe I'm dead because I'm lying in a gurney and um feel like I'm in a coffin. I don't know what's going on and I have all of these weird Sensations
And I tell people were so curious about death. We think about death a lot. And you know, is it final what does it mean? We really should pay attention to dying dying is actually much more interesting in some ways than death and people who have died go through a process if it's long enough and people who have had near-death experiences. Like I do have gone through that process of dying and have come back to life.
And in the process of dying strange things happen to the brain, right? So particularly with a stroke or something like that where blood stops flowing to your oxygen stops flowing to your brain, you have kind of visions and things that you might think are hallucinations, but that later seem like actually you are actually glimpsing the reality as opposed to the illusion of the brain creates. So I've written about this in my new book,
But my idea of the brain is that it creates endless series of Illusions for you. It creates this seamless version of reality the sense of a self the sense of a continuous self Through Time, right? It creates a linear sense of time progressions. It creates color to creates a world that visually you can seems familiar and etcetera etcetera, but it's all illusion. It's all a construction right images come into your brain.
And they're not organized in any way and the Brain organizes in the way that you can understand it. Well when you're dying all of that scrambles up and you actually are seeing something else. So I saw for instance that I really don't have a self that it doesn't really actually exist that I'm and the image that came to my mind because it was in sitting in that Gurney was a weird feeling of
Like I can almost not explain it but it's as if you took an image of something real in the world and you completely scrambled it up and it was all wavy and you couldn't see what exactly it was to me. That was the image. I had of the self. There are like 50 different selves inside of you that are all competing and you think there's just one and you think it's consistent but there's not it's an illusion. The self is literally an illusion that your brain constructs when you're dying you see
These things when you're dying, you see other things like that. You see that time something very weird. So I had experienced when I got out of the car and I got pulled in. I thought like 10 seconds had passed. My wife told me. No those disciplines like 10 minutes. I had no sense of time everything was scrambled. And so it was very very elegant taught me so much things that I can I can barely even express now,
I'm always now thinking of strange things that come to me because my brain was damaged. It made me realize that the brain creates everything so I can't communicate with my hand my fingers. I can't communicate my brain can't communicate with my leg. Right? So you think that walking and riding and handling things is just your body operating certain way. It's your brain telling you how to move these different things.
When that brain stops functioning you realize how much your brain determines everything it all starts there and when there's damage to your brain your whole thinking Alters Etc not to mention how you look at life itself after something like that. So it was a terrible experience. It's ruined so many things that I loved in life, but it's given me an awful lot as well in return that I could go on for hours and talk about because it was the most powerful.
Experience of my life
when you were going through your re-emergence to Consciousness in the hospital. Did you feel as if you were observing these multiple versions of yourself, maybe a different way to phrase it is did you feel you were sort of behind the circuit board that is your brain observing how you normally function and you could see multiple versions of self or was it something else where you sort of outside of your body and
brain?
equals more outside of my body and brain I also had this other thing that happened where
I don't you know, sometimes you can't remember it your memory might be playing tricks on you. So I've also have to realize that maybe I'm not remembering exactly what happened or that I've since translated in a different way. So that's a caveat here and I'm aware of it. But I had this Vision that I was dead. At first when I first became conscious and that I was up in the sky and I was looking down and my mother and my wife were talking and just like over my grave I suppose and I had
Feeling everything's okay. I'm gone but life goes on. They're doing fine. It's okay, right, so I don't know about that sense of self whether it was like I'm aware of it happening. But I have a feeling it was something from the outside. I don't really know the answer to that because it's very confused. The other feeling I had was life when I was having the stroke was life draining out of me and my bones getting softer and softer.
Softer and softer and I can't really logically explain that the feeling of Bones softening up and dissolving but for weeks and months afterwards, I could access that feeling of my bones dissolving Etc. It was a feeling of
All your energy draining out of you and you're dying. Literally So reading books about near-death experiences because that's a lot of what I'm a big part of my next book God is is fascinating. There's so many interesting things to go in because it teaches us so much.
I'm so glad a you survived your stroke be that your mental faculties.
Not more grateful than I am.
I probably not but still very grateful. So they're just illustrates how grateful you must be be that you've maintained. If not grown your mental faculties. I mean you seem extremely sharp. I promise you you're not missing a beat, you know one always wonders, right? Actually one of the most common fears people have is that somehow they're losing their mind or their memory and people aren't and they aren't aware.
That you know your eye family members who have asked that if they ever start to exhibit signs of severe dementia that I well put an end to them, which I won't that's not my place in this world, but I think it's a common fear among among people but you're still extremely sharp and thank goodness for it. And you mentioned that while you've lost certain abilities that new appreciation and new abilities have surfaced you perhaps share what some of those are and and what
they mean to you because I think that when one hears about somebody having a stroke we tend to focus on what's what's lacking but clearly this has been a transformative experience also in positive ways.
Well, I had to confront some of my own demons. I had to confront the sense that I expected things out of life and here I've they're taken away and I'm kind of ungrateful for being alive and Hyrum
Pissed off that. It takes me 10 minutes to tie my shoes and I can't really button my shirt. I had to learn what really matters and to have patience and stuff. The other thing was
I used to love hiking a very physically active and I'm sitting at my window in my office. I'm see people running up and down bicycling walking their dogs God. I'm so envious if I had if I could walk a dog right now. I'd be the happiest person alive, but then I go through a thought process which maybe isn't completely healthy, which is they're not aware of how wonderful it is just to walk the dog, but I'm aware of it. So when I go out in my backyard and I
Can't walk and I'm seeing like I know this is gonna sound really tree Ackley and sentimental but I see, you know butterflies or things in my garden. I'm like, wow, that's incredible, you know things like that that I couldn't appreciate before because I'm I'm sedentary and I can't move I have to suddenly pay attention to what's around me knock take it for granted and find and suck all of the pleasure out of it that I
I can so now when I sit at my desk to write my new book is for hours because that's all I can stand maybe three. Sometimes
those four hours are like such Bliss for me. I
truly appreciate it now because I know that my brain was almost gone, right so it means so much for me and to just be alive, you know is is is this the wondrous experience? I have a chapter in my new book called.
Awaken to the strangeness of being alive and it's about the fact that if you think about it and how unlikely it is that we humans evolved at all even that we even exist all the bottlenecks and evolution that we had to pass through including The Disappearance of the dinosaurs in the emergence of mammals, but there are 20 other huge bottleneck throughout the history of evolution. We had to pass through all of those. We nearly went extinct 80,000 years ago from
Virus that infected their only 8,000 people humans on the planet all these different things and here we are with zoom meetings, etc. Etc. It's like the strangest story. You can average it's beyond science fiction, but nobody thinks about nobody sits down and goes God. I'm alive. If you went back to the chain of people that had to connect and have children leading up to your parents the unlikeliness of you ever being born.
Is astronomical I mean unless my science is all wrong, you know seventy thousand generations of people meeting etcetera Etc. Finally ending at your DNA. I mean unless I'm missing something it's pretty unlikely, but nobody thinks about it. Well, I certainly think about it now because I almost died. I had nothing else to think about it. I have to entertain my brain the way Milton Erickson had to entertain himself by observing people.
So it's taken a lot away from the I can't swim. I'm riding my bike recumbent bike which I love and 80 year old grandmother's are zipping by me and God damn. How awful I so envious. I'm so my insecurities all well up, but then I realize hey, I'm like, I'm on my kind of boat. I'm sailing. It's wonderful. I'm outside. You know, I have to go through these processes, but I think it's developed me in some way that's in the end very positive
Delta.
Had to adjust to a new frame rate on life like that. The the old movie had a certain frame rate. This movie has a certain frame rate, but that within that frame rate there are gifts to be had that you certainly missed in your prior version of self is that said
about yeah, but also like I tell people this I totally took my life for granted. I was swimming all the time. I was fantastic. I was bicycling I was traveling but I never set back.
And thought wow, this is wonderful how grateful it is could be taken away from you. I tell people don't do that to yourself. I try and teach them it can be taken away from tomorrow. When you're out walking the dog think of me think of me that can't walk a dog and appreciate those things, which I didn't appreciate so I try and help people in that way when I can you know,
I think critical message is also to inspire a sense of urgency and people, you know, I think people here are some
Emergency and they go. Okay. I'm already under so much pressure life so hard but we're not talking about a sense of urgency to take on more of what life has to offer. I think we're talking about a sense of urgency to find one's purpose which takes work and is an ongoing process, but to really get out of modes of apathy laziness languishing and to start as you've described it paying deeper attention. I mean, this is a
Concept that was super important for me to hear about and I learned about it from you was how do you get yourself out of a rut you start paying deeper attention to the things around you and inside you and perhaps not coincidentally you referred to that as quote death ground.
Yeah, so it's what it's a strategy for my book. I wrote a book on strategy. My version of The Art of War is called.
three strategies of war but it's really about strategy the Strategic thinking it's inspired from Sun Tzu's a great Chinese strategist, but it has vast philosophical implications the idea is
You can almost think of it like barometric pressure when necessity is pressing in on you like your back is against the wall like you have to get something done and there's like this pressure around you you find energy into that. You never believed before William James talks about this and when he talks about getting a second wind, which explains it very eloquently when you feel like your life's in danger suddenly, you can you can leap over things that you never could leap over before so
Sun Tzu says put an Army on death ground and it will fight until it wins meaning put an army with its back to the ocean or a back to the mountain and it's either win or die. They're going to fight ten times harder you're going to find the energy and you that you normally lack when death is facing you in the face or urgency or deadlines or people pressing in on you when that barometric pressure loosens up and there's none of it.
You think you have all the time in the world you get nothing done?
Wow, man, I'm 23. I got all these years ahead of me. I'll going to figure it out right? I'm not gonna die. I got 50 70 80 years ahead of me. No, you don't that pressure now is gone and you're wasting time you're you're doing all sorts of things that aren't leading to any kind of skill. You're not learning or anything. You need to put yourself on death grinding need to feel that barometric pressure, which is the actual reality. The actual reality is you could die tomorrow.
Have a stroke tomorrow. You could be fired tomorrow. Everything could fall apart. You need to have that sense of urgency now because that's the reality you're fooling yourself by thinking you have all of this time. And so when you feel that pressure suddenly, you can move mountains. If you have energy your life, you know, you just have focused Etc neurologically everything Clicks in you know, and people who've had that
experience where they've where they felt like the ship was going under and they better get their act together and survived. They talked about all these physical processes. I have a story in my new book. I do not bore you with all
know about of the quite the
opposite about a mountain climber.
Who?
He was climbing this mountain by himself, and he was having a great time with there was a storm coming and he had to get down and he suddenly fell and he cut his leg opened massively and it was like a branch to he in it and he broke all these bones and he was you was going to die who's on a Ledge he can see that it was getting dark and and storm clouds were massing there was gonna be this was in the Rocky Mountains. He was alone and suddenly
He managed to get up on his two feet.
And he can't explain how but all of this energy all this adrenaline started flowing in them. And he said he was like a mountain goat. He was like going down the ledge he jumped he was able to kind of get down to another ledge. He has he got it. He got out of it and for the next 20 years it was haunted by how did that happen? I want that feeling again because it was actually the most ecstatic feeling. I had energy that I never suspected in myself. And so he tries everything to get that.
Feeling back tries climbing other mountie tries going to to Mount Everest he tries it doesn't come back. And finally he found kind of figures out the Formula Ford and why it happened. He studies a lot of Neuroscience. It's a great book. I'm using in my new book. It's called bone bone games. It's very interesting book a lot of Science in it, and he got the feeling back in a smaller sense.
But it was the feeling of your life is in danger. I better get my act together or it's the end and suddenly adrenaline dopamine all the other things were occurring in him and he got any found that energy so that's that's the ultimate kind of death ground right there.
The human will to live is truly incredible. And so now I have to say as I said before I'm so grateful that your stroke didn't take you out because clearly there's still so much in there and you're continuing to share what is really exquisitely useful knowledge. It's just it's just kind of astonishing to me. I started off today's discussion.
Expressing my gratitude for what you've already done for my life and for the lives of so many other people with through your books, you know, it's clear you've been on a foraging exploration and that foraging for organizing and communicating information mainly in the form of written books. But also online content you have a terrific YouTube channel, which I've subscribed to and follow and and listen to with rapt attention and the other venues which you share information.
Doing this one today are really truly valuable and appreciated. So I want to say on behalf of myself. And for those who have known you and your work for a number of years, but also for the many people that are now sure to know who you are and what you're about that is just so clear that like this stuff comes from the heart and that it whatever early seed planted this, you know that we're all grateful for and better off as a consequence of that seed. So
I could make this list very very long with the number of specific ways in which you improve the journey through life and made it clearer. I mean, you know life is certainly can be hard but it all scheme can be really confusing and I feel that the Robert Green Road map, even though it's but one roadmap is an extremely valuable map to have and to use certainly has been for me. So just an enormous thing.
Thank you, Robert. Thanks for sharing today. And thanks for all you do and all that you're still doing and sure to do in the
future. Oh, thank you. I wish I could find the word for explaining the kind of weird emotions that I'm feeling when I hear that there isn't maybe yudish maybe for clamped or something. I don't know. But thank you. Yeah,
we'll have to have you back here again when your next book comes out can't wait, but we will wait. Okay. Yeah.
Hopefully I'm still around.
Okay.
Then you will be
okay. Okay good. Thank you. Come back. He answered. Thanks very much. I hope I will
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Neural network newsletter is a zero cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as toolkits. The toolkits are brief PDFs that you can download that give you tools for things like neuroplasticity and learning for managing dopamine for enhancing sleep for physical performance flexibility deliberate cold exposure and on and on to join the neural network newsletter, you simply go to huberman lab.com go to the menu tab scroll down to newsletter and enter your e-mail. We do not share your email with anybody. Thank you. Once again for joining me for today's discussion with Robert.
And last but certainly not least. Thank you for your interest in
science.
