Speaker 1: Good team. It's the bloody project. That's you, Tiffany and
Speaker 1: Cook over there in the fancy ritchy area of Melbourne
Speaker 1: that she lives in Glaspow up there in the bloody
Speaker 1: jungle in Queensland. Will start with the smart one. Good I, tiff.
Speaker 2: Good I.
Speaker 1: We'll go to the beautiful one next. How are you?
Speaker 1: How's your day been?
Speaker 2: I've been fabulous? Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well you should thank me because I just finished twenty
Speaker 1: minutes ago training you and your gorilla boyfriend. You're the
Speaker 1: andethal boyfriend who can cook chock brown in like world
Speaker 1: class apparently. Yeah, oh well, good for you, doctor Gillespie.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Fourteen days later, here we are,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Good good? Yeah, it's been a yeah follo out.
Speaker 3: Fourteen days for me actually feels like several months.
Speaker 1: Actually, I thought you tried to avoid work as much
Speaker 1: as possible. How dare you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, the new book's coming out twenty eighth of April,
Speaker 3: and so there's a bit of stuff that has to
Speaker 3: happen ahead of that, including producing the actual book.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Well, because you're you're the world's worst at
Speaker 1: fucking self promotion. If I managed you were, if I
Speaker 1: was your agent or any I'd be like, dude, do better,
Speaker 1: so give us, give us without doing anything sales. You
Speaker 1: just tell us about what you can about the book.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I'd rather than at the moment.
Speaker 1: That's a terrible start my case.
Speaker 3: It's called the Attention Recovery Plan, right, and it is.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of stuff written about, including by me,
Speaker 3: about the damage that devices and addictions are doing to us.
Speaker 3: So you know, the social media gaming, all that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, and I've written a lot about that and
Speaker 3: made it really really clear that the biochemistry tells us
Speaker 3: that this is no different to substance abuse, and it's
Speaker 3: having the same consequences, which is severe addiction, anxiety, depression, psychosis, schizophrenia.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're going to hell in a handbasket
Speaker 3: as a society because the rates of those things are
Speaker 3: increasing incredibly quickly because we're addicting everybody. And so I've
Speaker 3: written about that before. We've spoken about it before, I've
Speaker 3: written books about it. The most recent time was a
Speaker 3: book I wrote called Brain Reset a few years ago.
Speaker 3: This is about Okay, that's brilliant, thanks for scaring me
Speaker 3: to death. What do you do about it? And the
Speaker 3: answer can't be well, chuck your phone in the bin,
Speaker 3: because if it were that easy, it wouldn't be an addiction.
Speaker 3: So that's not what this book's about. This book's about
Speaker 3: how do you intentionally recover your attention? How do you
Speaker 3: intentionally recover your focus? How do you, I guess, for
Speaker 3: want of a better term, go through a focused workout
Speaker 3: to make sure you can still do it and you
Speaker 3: can still apply your mind. And how do you combat
Speaker 3: the inevitable disease wave that comes with addiction, the anxiety,
Speaker 3: the oppression, the ADHD, all of those things. So this
Speaker 3: is an intensely practical book about what do you do?
Speaker 3: So there's a little bit of science in there, some
Speaker 3: of it you're recognize from things that we've discussed over
Speaker 3: the years, but it's mostly about what do you do
Speaker 3: about it? And there's a lot of step by step
Speaker 3: guide's a lot of planning exactly what to do, how
Speaker 3: to organize your workspace, how to organize your personal life,
Speaker 3: all of those sorts of things to ensure that you
Speaker 3: maintain focus, fitness.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's good. And the fact that it it's outlining
Speaker 1: the problem but really talking about and presenting a solution.
Speaker 1: I love and it is. It is interesting when you
Speaker 1: think that, like whether it's booze or whether it's gambling,
Speaker 1: or whether it's drugs, or whether it's pawn or whether
Speaker 1: it's foo, it's I mean, it's the addiction is kind
Speaker 1: of the same in a way. It's just a different
Speaker 1: pathway to a similar addiction, right.
Speaker 3: It's exactly the same. From a biochemical perspective. Your brain
Speaker 3: can't tell the difference between a gambling addiction, a gaming addiction,
Speaker 3: a social media addiction, or an addiction to heroin. It
Speaker 3: can't tell the difference from a biochemical perspective, They're all
Speaker 3: exactly the same.
Speaker 1: And without giving away anything, you can't, so feel free
Speaker 1: to not answer it. Did you where did you? Did
Speaker 1: you talk to people who had overcome this addiction? Did
Speaker 1: you talk to addiction specialists? Did you read a million
Speaker 1: papers as you do? From where? Did you kind of
Speaker 1: create or formulate your suggestions or your kind of recovery models.
Speaker 3: It's a combination of a few of those things. The
Speaker 3: book has a lot of stories from you know, anonymised obviously,
Speaker 3: but a lot of real world stories from people who've
Speaker 3: struggled with these things. You know, things like dating app addictions,
Speaker 3: gaming addictions, gambling addictions, and so on, and real life
Speaker 3: stories of that. And the reason for putting those in is,
Speaker 3: rather than me just banging on about all this is bad,
Speaker 3: I want people to be able to read the story
Speaker 3: of a person and identify them, see themselves in the story,
Speaker 3: see something that they're doing, because one of the difficulties
Speaker 3: with addiction is it usually comes with an enormous moral judgment.
Speaker 3: As this there's this general sense that if you're an addict,
Speaker 3: it's because you're weak or you're in some other way faulty,
Speaker 3: and you just need to get your act together and
Speaker 3: we can't help it. It's just it's ingrained in the
Speaker 3: way we operate as humans. You know, if you see
Speaker 3: someone addicted to pornography, it's because they've got something wrong
Speaker 3: with them, or you see someone addicted to gambling, they're
Speaker 3: weak in some way. But that's not what's going on.
Speaker 3: What's going on is a very intentional perversion of some
Speaker 3: biochemistry in the human brain by people who are doing
Speaker 3: it to make money. And we need to not lose
Speaker 3: sight of that that this is a business model we're
Speaker 3: talking about here, and this book is about fighting that
Speaker 3: business model and keeping your own brain to get us.
Speaker 1: And I guess the reality is, as much as we
Speaker 1: don't want to hear this, if we put aside morality
Speaker 1: in all of that, just for this hypothetical, it's in
Speaker 1: the interest of a lot of these companies and apps
Speaker 1: and all of that to get people addicted because it's
Speaker 1: financially rewarding.
Speaker 3: Well, we've said this before. You know, when the product
Speaker 3: is free, you are the product. And that's what's going
Speaker 3: on in when people are selling addiction. It's the point here, say,
Speaker 3: for whether it's a playing games or gambling or on
Speaker 3: social media, it costs billions of dollars to develop, maintain,
Speaker 3: and run something like Facebook or Instagram, and what does
Speaker 3: it cost you to do it? Nothing? Not a sense.
Speaker 3: That just doesn't make sense as a business model. That's
Speaker 3: totally insane. And that's because that's not the business model.
Speaker 3: The business model is capturing seconds of attention, yes, or
Speaker 3: engagement as it's often called, and then reselling that to
Speaker 3: the highest bidder, and the best way to do that
Speaker 3: is to addict people.
Speaker 1: We talk about it a fair bit, but it feels
Speaker 1: to me like everyone kind of like what we've well,
Speaker 1: some of what you've said so far will be revelatory
Speaker 1: to some of it will bit like, oh wow, I
Speaker 1: didn't really think about it. But I think most of
Speaker 1: us kind of know that there's a problem around social
Speaker 1: media and the like. But I also feel like while
Speaker 1: we we kind of get intellectually that it's a potential
Speaker 1: threat for some people in some ways, if not all
Speaker 1: of us, we don't hold it in the same regard
Speaker 1: as booze or heroine or gambling or some of the
Speaker 1: I guess the addictions that we would call life destroying
Speaker 1: or destructive, but it seems like which it isn't, but
Speaker 1: it can almost seem like, oh yeah, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an addiction, but it's not one of them, the danger ones.
Speaker 3: There's two aspects to addiction, which people often mix up
Speaker 3: because when you talk about let's say a substance addiction
Speaker 3: or you know, things like her and cocaine, etc. People
Speaker 3: talk about the symptoms of that and the badness associated
Speaker 3: with that, and what they're actually talking about is the
Speaker 3: side effects. So in order to produce the dopamine spike
Speaker 3: and create the addiction, those things come with side effects
Speaker 3: because they're drugs, and a lot of those side effects
Speaker 3: are what people associate with addiction, but that isn't addiction.
Speaker 3: Addiction is the dopamine spike that's produced in the first place,
Speaker 3: and the damage done by that is not from the
Speaker 3: side effects, or it's not the primary damage from the
Speaker 3: side effects. If you didn't think about something like gambling,
Speaker 3: there's no real side effect from gambling in the same
Speaker 3: sense of substance abuse, but no one would fight with
Speaker 3: you over the notion that it's very definitely an addiction.
Speaker 3: What's going on there is that dover meanspike is being
Speaker 3: produced by behavior, which is gambling, and that dover meanspike
Speaker 3: is having the consequence that you become anxious and depressed,
Speaker 3: that you create chaos in your life by running out
Speaker 3: of money, and that in turn makes it even worse.
Speaker 3: So that's a pure form of what happens in addiction.
Speaker 3: And when people wave away things like Instagram or dating
Speaker 3: apps or gaming and say, well, that's not the same thing,
Speaker 3: they're mixing the two up. Yes, there are no instant
Speaker 3: downside side effects from substance consumption, but the effect on
Speaker 3: the brain is identical, which is why we're seeing anxiety
Speaker 3: rates in teenagers go through the roof. It's why We're
Speaker 3: seeing depression go through the roof. It's why schizophrenia is
Speaker 3: that epidemic proportions, It's why suicide is going crazy. It's
Speaker 3: because these are the flow on effects of addiction. So
Speaker 3: people waving away something because it doesn't have a substance
Speaker 3: abuse side effect doesn't make it any less addiction.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. I've even with adults, and maybe for me,
Speaker 1: it's almost like this is like the impact of if
Speaker 1: we had an impact scale of these things that went
Speaker 1: from zero to ten, and we go, well, ten is complete.
Speaker 1: It's hijacked your life in your brain and you really
Speaker 1: need you really need help, and then write down to
Speaker 1: almost like disordered eating through to an eating disorder. So
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the level of impact kind of
Speaker 1: grows without us even realizing. But it still comes down
Speaker 1: to like our awareness around it now, willingness to acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: But I was having a chat yesterday with a made
Speaker 1: of mine who's fifty five. Was something he's got grandkids
Speaker 1: and his kid, his son took his iPhone off his
Speaker 1: well I don't know, nine year old or ten year
Speaker 1: old for a week, and the kid lost his shit.
Speaker 1: I mean he and he was there when that, like
Speaker 1: he happened to be there and I don't know what
Speaker 1: the kid did, but the consequence of what he did
Speaker 1: was no phone for a week. Well you think you
Speaker 1: would think, he said to me, it's like they fucking
Speaker 1: chopped his leg off.
Speaker 3: Or it's like any other addict when you take away
Speaker 3: the thing that they're addicted to. M that's what's going
Speaker 3: on here. And people will often say to me when
Speaker 3: I talk like this, they'll say, yeah, but I'm not,
Speaker 3: as you know, I don't really have addiction. Sure, I
Speaker 3: don't mind a bit of gaming or a bit of
Speaker 3: gambling or you know, get on the social media or someone,
Speaker 3: but I'm not. I'm not addicted. You know, there's no
Speaker 3: problems there. And often I'll say to them, well, sure, well,
Speaker 3: there's an easy way to put through that, you know,
Speaker 3: just to lete the apps, and they go, sure, easy,
Speaker 3: do it tomorrow, and they will, knowing in the back
Speaker 3: of their mind that they can reinstall them anytime they want.
Speaker 3: But if I say to them, well, just delete the
Speaker 3: accounts too, then they're then they're not so easy to convince.
Speaker 3: No one wants to delete the accounts because that really
Speaker 3: is stopping and they in their own minds are behaving
Speaker 3: the way that kid is behaving, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: they're rebelling against the notion of stopping this, and that's
Speaker 3: a sure sign of addiction. But even if you're not
Speaker 3: prepared to acknowledge that, there are other signs. The early
Speaker 3: metabolic signs of addiction are insomnia and focus difficulties, or
Speaker 3: what people are now currently describing as ADHD. The massive
Speaker 3: title wave of adult diagnosis of ADHD is in fact
Speaker 3: diagnosis of the functional effects of addiction, which is should
Speaker 3: focus that comes from being an addict. It's been measured.
Speaker 3: It's forty seven seconds I think is our average ability
Speaker 3: to stay on task at the moment, and that has
Speaker 3: been a massive decline. And what's happening on a society
Speaker 3: wide basis is we're fracturing everybody's focus. That's the first
Speaker 3: thing to go. Focus is the first thing to go.
Speaker 3: It's the first sign that there's a problem. Then you
Speaker 3: start noticing things like insomnia, you start noticing stress growing
Speaker 3: to anxiety, growing to depression and so on. But ask yourself,
Speaker 3: am as I am I as focused as I remember
Speaker 3: being ten years ago?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's yeah. Well, I mean everyone who
Speaker 1: is addicted thinks they're not addicted, or most people, if
Speaker 1: they do.
Speaker 3: Or if they do, think they're addicted, or no, they're addicted,
Speaker 3: or at least suspec most of them don't like the
Speaker 3: fact that they are and will deny it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I had to, like, in all
Speaker 1: of my meetings and stuff, even if I just had
Speaker 1: my phone near me and it would chime or it
Speaker 1: would like there would be something I would I would get.
Speaker 1: I would in the middle of the thing. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: pick up my phone, but I would. I would. My
Speaker 1: attention would shift a minute to the fucking phone. And
Speaker 1: it's not like I went, oh, that dinged I think
Speaker 1: I should. I just looked before I'd thought, like, it's
Speaker 1: Pavlov's dog.
Speaker 3: You know, it's exactly like Pavlov's dog.
Speaker 1: It's a trained response.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And just you know, if anyone's not across those experiments,
Speaker 3: what Pavlov did was get some dogs to cellivate when
Speaker 3: they heard a bell ring, and the reason was he
Speaker 3: ring the bell and then give them something to eat.
Speaker 3: And then he got them to ring. Then the experiment
Speaker 3: progressed on and it'd ring the bell and not give
Speaker 3: them something. To eat and they'd celebrate because their brains
Speaker 3: have been trained. When that bell rings, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be rewarded. And that's what's going on with notifications. That's
Speaker 3: why there are notifications. By the way, it's not by
Speaker 3: accident that every app is sending you a million notifications
Speaker 3: a minute. It's that they know that this is part
Speaker 3: of the addictive mechanism and it's a very important part
Speaker 3: of it. In fact, so important that there's a whole book,
Speaker 3: in a whole chapter in the book dedicated to notifications
Speaker 3: and why theyre an important part of addiction and why
Speaker 3: they have to be turned off.
Speaker 1: Bro, you should be doing workshops on this in every
Speaker 1: fucking school in Australia. No, you don't have the time
Speaker 1: or the energy, but I mean, it is so important,
Speaker 1: and it's like I think everybody, like even I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about now and what do I and I know we're
Speaker 1: going to have another conversation probably we'll see how we go.
Speaker 1: We didn't intend to have one, But this is how
Speaker 1: we work, isn't it. But the door's open down we've
Speaker 1: kind of but I just think, like, and I know
Speaker 1: this is often discussed, but talking about real practical like
Speaker 1: what's really happening physiologically, psychologically, and strategically from the companies,
Speaker 1: and then what's happening in your body and your nervous
Speaker 1: system and your brain chemistry when just to like, you
Speaker 1: know that seek first to understand, like try to understand
Speaker 1: what this is actually doing to you, not via some
Speaker 1: meme on social media, but actually to try to understand
Speaker 1: a little bit about your own body and your own
Speaker 1: brain and the way that things work. And being able
Speaker 1: to recognize that. And the other thing too is because
Speaker 1: like there's a diminishing return on the same dose. So
Speaker 1: what used to fucking light you up doesn't light you
Speaker 1: up five years to light you up, now you need ten.
Speaker 1: Three months later, you need two hundred to get the
Speaker 1: same response that you used to get from five. So
Speaker 1: you're training your self up. Oh god, you know.
Speaker 3: And even that's pure biochemistry. We've got to switch in
Speaker 3: our brain that every time we give it a dose,
Speaker 3: it moves up a notch. It's a rat. So so
Speaker 3: every time we rapchet it up one, it means we
Speaker 3: need a bigger dose next time. And that's by design.
Speaker 3: So that's the way our brain works, it's the way
Speaker 3: our physiology works, and the companies know that and exploit that.
Speaker 3: Now that has really really bad effects on the way
Speaker 3: our brain works, but they don't care about that as
Speaker 3: long as we remain addicted to their product. Mmmm. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: One of one of the things I suggest people do
Speaker 3: is is introduce the idea of friction. Intensionally, introduce friction.
Speaker 3: One of the things that an addictive anything tries to
Speaker 3: do is remove friction, so it tries to make it easier.
Speaker 3: So and I give the example of you know, if
Speaker 3: you're a gambler and you had in order to gamble,
Speaker 3: you had to you know, get dressed, walk five miles
Speaker 3: to the casino and then gamble, You'd be much less
Speaker 3: likely to do it. Then if you could just pull
Speaker 3: your phone out of bocktt and have a bet right
Speaker 3: there and then so that you get dressed, leave the home,
Speaker 3: walk to the casino is friction. And everywhere you can
Speaker 3: introduce friction between you and the addictive behavior is.
Speaker 1: A good thing. And you may or may not have
Speaker 1: any insight into this specifically, but I'm sure you'll have
Speaker 1: an opinion. The how is the under sixteen band working
Speaker 1: in Australia? Is that making? Is that doing anything? Or
Speaker 1: is that a is that window dressing.
Speaker 3: I think it's important, but not for the reasons that
Speaker 3: it's often promoted as being important. People get lost in
Speaker 3: the weeds about this and say it won't work. You know,
Speaker 3: kids will get around this this marter than we are.
Speaker 3: They'll figure it out and they will just the same
Speaker 3: as they have around alcohol. Band. Did you know that
Speaker 3: you're not supposed to drink if you're under eighteen in Australia.
Speaker 1: I've heard of that.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't know it from observing the average under eighteen,
Speaker 3: but it is the law. And you're not supposed to
Speaker 3: smoke if you're under eighteen either, But it is because
Speaker 3: it is the law. The fact that it is the
Speaker 3: law does, however, introduce friction. It does, however, mean that
Speaker 3: a parent can say to a kid, no, you are
Speaker 3: not having a beer because you are seventeen. It gives you.
Speaker 3: It gives a parent the ability to fall back and say,
Speaker 3: I have the support of my society. The law is
Speaker 3: that this is not possible. Sorry, I don't know. If
Speaker 3: you can hear the dog barking in the background, Well.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 3: Saying I have the backing of society when I tell
Speaker 3: you you're not doing this. So in that way it's
Speaker 3: a good idea. In that way is it allows parents
Speaker 3: and others to say, no, you are not having access
Speaker 3: to this thing because it is against the law. Will
Speaker 3: may still break the law, Yes they will. Does it
Speaker 3: make it harder, Yes it does.
Speaker 1: There's a guy who comes in to the cafe I
Speaker 1: have a coffee out every morning. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: me a shout out. He used to play footy in
Speaker 1: the AFL Force and killed her. James Gwilt James. And
Speaker 1: he's got the gorgeousest little girl in the world, cool rosie,
Speaker 1: and she two and a half and she's got blonde,
Speaker 1: curly hair, and she looks like something out of a
Speaker 1: fucking nursery rhyme. And every time she comes in she
Speaker 1: comes straight to me because she sits on my lap
Speaker 1: and watches pepper Pig. That sounds creepy. I don't mean
Speaker 1: it too. Her dad's there. It's all good, right, but
Speaker 1: it's and she goes from mayhem to complete focus. By
Speaker 1: the way, we only watched two or three minutes of
Speaker 1: pepper Pig, but talk about like this tiny little bundle
Speaker 1: of energy goes to this fully focused cyborg. In a
Speaker 1: matter of seconds, just watching Pepper Pig and she only
Speaker 1: comes to me. She don't wonder, she's not interested in me.
Speaker 1: She's like, I'm the pathway to Pepper Pig. I'm the
Speaker 1: conduit to the thing that she wants. Dealer, Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm just handing out a little bit of cartoon over
Speaker 1: here in the corner. And I said to her dad,
Speaker 1: how much of this does she Yeah? No, we don't
Speaker 1: let her at home. So that's why she fucking loves you,
Speaker 1: because she gets whatever her three minute hit every second
Speaker 1: day or whatever it is. But now I'm feeling like
Speaker 1: I'm a dealer. Now I'm feeling like I'm enabling some
Speaker 1: two and a half year old into a lifetime of
Speaker 1: bloody potential addiction. But it is even at that age
Speaker 1: can have a massive It's not just fourteen, fifteen, sixteen
Speaker 1: year olds, you know, it's toddlers.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. I mean you don't have to walk into
Speaker 3: a supermarket to see that. I mean, you know, all
Speaker 3: the kids in the in the prams are sitting there
Speaker 3: set to stunt with an iPad in front of their faces.
Speaker 3: And I'm that sounds like I'm having a go and
Speaker 3: I'm not that is a direct consequence of the business
Speaker 3: model that is being used. The younger you can get
Speaker 3: people on these things, the better as far as that
Speaker 3: business model is concerned. And it's not a judgment about
Speaker 3: what's going on. It's just an observation, and I want
Speaker 3: people to stand back from it and say, wow, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure I want that to happen. I will happily,
Speaker 3: you know, give these kids a shot of vodka to
Speaker 3: calm them down. Am I happy to do it with
Speaker 3: digital vodka? Hmm? I saw you laughing there. She's thinking, yeah,
Speaker 3: I would actually, yeah.
Speaker 2: Like the term digital voca.
Speaker 1: No, that's good. That's I'm going to write that down.
Speaker 1: That could be today's podcast titled digital vodka. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you're not nostradamis, but you're pretty nostrodharmasy. So
Speaker 1: obviously you're trying to make a dent, which is great.
Speaker 1: And we've got more awareness, which is great. I think
Speaker 1: we've got a few more rules and REGs or laws
Speaker 1: in place, which is good. But like just humor me
Speaker 1: go like left unchecked, like we just let this be
Speaker 1: a fucking free for all with no awareness or no
Speaker 1: kind of speed bumps put in place for these people
Speaker 1: who are addicted or if not addicted, like significantly influenced
Speaker 1: in their behavior. Like, what's the end of the line,
Speaker 1: just a total.
Speaker 3: Blind is you just have to look at a graph
Speaker 3: of the rates of anxiety depression ADHD diagnosis in Australia
Speaker 3: and these things are off the charts, right. These are
Speaker 3: growing by multiples of four or five times in just
Speaker 3: the last five years. So these things are in steep
Speaker 3: upward climbs, and you know, we see it occasionally surface
Speaker 3: in crime statistics, you know, and people sort of vaguely say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, us holds are up because of mental health
Speaker 3: or what they mean there is that there's lots of
Speaker 3: there's an epidemic of schizophrenia in the community. Now schizophrenia,
Speaker 3: for those of your listeners who aren't quite sure what
Speaker 3: that is. That's people having hallucinations, being believing that people
Speaker 3: are out to get them and acting on those beliefs.
Speaker 3: So it's an extreme form of anxiety about the intentions
Speaker 3: of others, or an extreme form of paranoia about the
Speaker 3: intentions of others. And once again there's a tendency to
Speaker 3: be judging about that and think that all these are
Speaker 3: poor weak people. But it's not the case. This is
Speaker 3: an inevitable consequence of doing this to the human brain.
Speaker 3: You keep pushing that dopamine requirement higher and higher and higher,
Speaker 3: and you eventually get into the territory of schizophrenia. You
Speaker 3: don't want to live in a society where there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people who are suffering hallucinations and suffering
Speaker 3: extreme paranoia and are prepared to act on the belief
Speaker 3: that you are there to harm them. And you know,
Speaker 3: a more obvious and earlier sign of this is the
Speaker 3: massive increase in ADHD diagnosis. It's what I'd call functional ADHD,
Speaker 3: which is the symptoms look the same as the traditional ADHD.
Speaker 3: The inability to focus at all on anything at any
Speaker 3: time without medication, and that is on an absolute tear.
Speaker 3: You know, we already have teachers saying they have classrooms
Speaker 3: that you know, you know, twenty years ago they might
Speaker 3: have had one kid if that, suffering from something like that.
Speaker 3: But now you know, five, six, seven, eight of the
Speaker 3: kids in your average twenty twenty two kid class I
Speaker 3: have those problems and or need to be medicated to
Speaker 3: control them.
Speaker 1: Teaching has got to be the hardest job. Like at
Speaker 1: the moment, I thumb and there's a lot of hard jobs,
Speaker 1: but it's got to be in the top for nursings
Speaker 1: up there and a lot of you know people who
Speaker 1: work in that space.
Speaker 3: But down the front they're the front line. Both of
Speaker 3: those professions are the front line. They're seeing this day
Speaker 3: by day. They're seeing the increase in mental illness, they're
Speaker 3: seeing the increase in ADHD and kids.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's going to sound like a weird question,
Speaker 1: not a normal question. I would ask you it's more philosophical.
Speaker 1: But what what drives you to write a book like this?
Speaker 1: I know it's not for money because you make about
Speaker 1: the thirteen cents every time you write a book. We
Speaker 1: know how profitable books are in Australia. I also know
Speaker 1: what is it because you just see that there's a
Speaker 1: need and you want to highlight that and potentially talk
Speaker 1: about some you know, strategies or solutions. Or is it
Speaker 1: because you have a personal interest or you've this has
Speaker 1: been something's happened to you or around you that's triggered this,
Speaker 1: Like where does that come from?
Speaker 3: You're all all of the above, So it is it
Speaker 3: is a combination of I'm just naturally a person who
Speaker 3: needs to understand how things work, and I rarely buy
Speaker 3: this is a complex problem that we don't know how
Speaker 3: it works. I think the science is good enough now
Speaker 3: that we know how most things work, if we're prepared
Speaker 3: to have an open mind in looking at what the
Speaker 3: science is actually telling us. There's a lot of people
Speaker 3: out there in your future profession who still favor the
Speaker 3: psychobabble and one narrative explanations for all of this, but
Speaker 3: it isn't. The narrative explanations are useless. This is neurochemistry
Speaker 3: we're talking about, and you push the right buttons, the
Speaker 3: same things will happen every single time in every single human.
Speaker 3: And we know enough now The science is good enough
Speaker 3: for us to be able to put those blocks together
Speaker 3: and say this is what is going on. I want
Speaker 3: it to stop. I want the society that we're living
Speaker 3: in to return to a state where not every second
Speaker 3: person is potentially suffering from mental illness. I want that
Speaker 3: to stop, and I want it to go on to
Speaker 3: reverse because I think we're a better society if we're
Speaker 3: not all sick. And I at a personal level, yes,
Speaker 3: I have seen things like this, both in myself and
Speaker 3: in others that I think this, if you apply the
Speaker 3: things that I set out, can be corrected. And I'm
Speaker 3: not suggesting it's easy, but I think it's a lot
Speaker 3: easier if you've got a plan.
Speaker 1: If to you on the one to ten ten being
Speaker 1: it's hijacked your life and brain. Do you think you
Speaker 1: have an issue? Not an addiction necessarily, but are you
Speaker 1: challenged in this space? Do you feel like you need
Speaker 1: to be on less or use it less? Or that's
Speaker 1: not a loaded question, that's curiosity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, like what what.
Speaker 1: Would be the thing that you would want to reduce.
Speaker 2: Or if you're definitely that's.
Speaker 1: What did he say?
Speaker 3: Less porn?
Speaker 2: Yeah, David Gillespie like comment.
Speaker 1: That that is that's him getting edge, that's him just
Speaker 1: like letting his hand opportunity for a joke about time.
Speaker 1: Fucking welcome to the club. Do it, will you?
Speaker 3: And sorry for interrupt let us please tell us.
Speaker 1: I am aware of loo.
Speaker 2: I noticed myself pick up and open apps and open
Speaker 2: apps mindlessly without it happening like I do that. I
Speaker 2: do that a lot. And yeah, so I think I
Speaker 2: use social media and things way too much.
Speaker 1: Mmm, I'm a little bit the same. I'm not as
Speaker 1: bad as I was, but I'm still not there, so
Speaker 1: that one of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the app, and when I'm when I'm going to
Speaker 2: do something and forget and then open three social media
Speaker 2: apps and then go, oh, I want to pick up
Speaker 2: my phone.
Speaker 1: For why have I opened that app?
Speaker 2: Because the finger just going straight to that app? You know,
Speaker 2: it's silly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have this default where if I I'm just
Speaker 1: doing nothing, I'll go, I wonder else, see who liked
Speaker 1: that post I put up like that? Will I'm not thinking,
Speaker 1: oh geez, I'll ring mum, I'll go, I wonder how
Speaker 1: that post is traveling? Oh really, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 3: But what your brain is saying is just give me
Speaker 3: another dopamine hit. Because what your brain wants when you
Speaker 3: do that and check how the post is going is
Speaker 3: they want to see the number of likes gone up.
Speaker 3: And because every every single like is an oxytocin hit,
Speaker 3: which produces a dopamine hit. And that's what's going on
Speaker 3: in your brain. And you might say, oh, it's harmless,
Speaker 3: I'm just looking at stuff. Well, sure, but it's rewiring
Speaker 3: your brain just as effectively as anything else that produces
Speaker 3: a dope. Meine it's and then there's also the time cost.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've noticed, but you only get
Speaker 3: one life, and the minute that you spent doing that
Speaker 3: is a minute you never get back.
Speaker 1: M M yeah it is. It's like cost benefit analysis.
Speaker 1: What is this? What am I investing? Time? Energy, money,
Speaker 1: maybe focus, attention? What am I getting back? Fucking an addiction?
Speaker 3: Like you're also getting some ads?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's not a great ROI if we're talking
Speaker 1: about digital investment in terms of our attention and and
Speaker 1: I know there's no three step plan, but surely, like
Speaker 1: as you're talking, I'm like, yeah, that's that's not me,
Speaker 1: that is me. That's a bit me. Tiff is probably
Speaker 1: the same. I know there's no single entry point or
Speaker 1: stepping off point, but if it.
Speaker 3: Is, this is not meant to be like alcoholics anonymous
Speaker 3: or something. This is meant to be for everyone who
Speaker 3: has who sees a little bit of themselves in all
Speaker 3: of the stories that I put in this book, who
Speaker 3: sees some of the things there that they are doing too.
Speaker 3: And the plans I put forward for what to do
Speaker 3: about it are relatively easy to implement, and they're not
Speaker 3: things like throw your phone in the bin. They are
Speaker 3: things like introduce friction by doing this instead of this,
Speaker 3: you know, introduce delay by doing it this way rather
Speaker 3: than that way. And I walk people through that in
Speaker 3: this book and then describe why it matters and what
Speaker 3: effects doing that will have on your brain biochemistry.
Speaker 1: Do you touch on? And we'll wind up now because
Speaker 1: I know you've got to get back to your computer game.
Speaker 1: Do you touch on? Do you touch on? AI? I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, so many of my friends don't
Speaker 1: actually write whatever it is they're writing. They don't actually
Speaker 1: write it anymore. They just put in a prompt and
Speaker 1: AI writes it for them and that becomes the letter.
Speaker 3: It's a slightly different thing in that AI is not addictive,
Speaker 3: but it is something else and it's related. And I
Speaker 3: was actually having this thought today and I thought we
Speaker 3: might talk about this today, but we've got a little
Speaker 3: bit sidetracked. I was thinking, if a guy is doing
Speaker 3: our thinking for us, and increasingly it is, isn't this
Speaker 3: just like the Industrial Revolution when machines started doing our
Speaker 3: lifting for us. So the idea of there being a
Speaker 3: gym or you're doing a workout in the early eighteen
Speaker 3: hundreds would have been frankly laughable because people were just
Speaker 3: doing that every day anyway, it was the job. And
Speaker 3: for that to have become something that has been created
Speaker 3: is really really interesting, which is you know, you probably
Speaker 3: know about Eugene Sandow, sort of the father of bodybuilding
Speaker 3: modern bodybuilding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the actual mister Olympia, which is the biggest
Speaker 1: comp in the world. The trophy is called the Sandow Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I mean he was the I guess, the original
Speaker 3: fitness influencer. If it had an Instagram account, it would
Speaker 3: have been mad. But he was a product of something
Speaker 3: called the physical culture movement, which really spread throughout Europe
Speaker 3: the United States as a result of the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 3: and it was based in this notion of you are
Speaker 3: no longer using your body for what it was designed
Speaker 3: to do, what it has been doing for the rest
Speaker 3: of time up until now when we had all these
Speaker 3: Now I got all these machines that do it for us.
Speaker 3: So you need to keep training it, you need to
Speaker 3: keep using it, or it will disappear. And I wonder
Speaker 3: is there something like that necessary with AI, because what
Speaker 3: a lot of people are doing now with AI is
Speaker 3: using it to do their thinking. And if we use
Speaker 3: a machine to do our thinking, do we need something
Speaker 3: like the physical culture movement, where we actually design programs
Speaker 3: that where people can do a mental workout every day.
Speaker 3: And I'm not touring a sudoku or something like that.
Speaker 3: That's the equivalent of lifting a tin of beans and
Speaker 3: calling it a workout. I am saying programs that are
Speaker 3: actually designed to make sure your brain still functions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny when you think about eugen stand out onwards, right.
Speaker 1: Imagine you know, for however long depends, they keep changing
Speaker 1: the timeline. But three hundred thousand years where men and
Speaker 1: women were active, most men and women active all the time,
Speaker 1: lifting shit, like fixing shit or whatever, just moving their
Speaker 1: body a lot, expending physical energy a lot, naturally functional
Speaker 1: and strong, and them projecting forward going, oh, in two
Speaker 1: hundred years, nobody will do any of this, but they'll
Speaker 1: go to this room and then they'll pretend to Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll pick something up and put it down for an hour,
Speaker 1: and then they'll go back and sit in their lounge chair.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's well, there was no need really, no,
Speaker 1: there was no.
Speaker 3: Need recently, and and to me, I'm wondering there was
Speaker 3: no need for the similar things for brains. And I
Speaker 3: think we're going to need it, and I think there's
Speaker 3: a new Eugene Sander. Maybe it's you and new Eugene
Speaker 3: Sander waiting in the wings to do the same thing
Speaker 3: for brains because of what AI is going to do
Speaker 3: to or is doing to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do actually talk about the importance of training
Speaker 1: our brain, like the importance of maintaining, if not optimizing
Speaker 1: cognitive function and solving problems and being creative and doing all.
Speaker 3: It's not just that it's the physical brain interaction. It's
Speaker 3: high kinetic sports and so on that have high rates
Speaker 3: of thinking and action associated. So you know, not surprisingly,
Speaker 3: I would use handball given my association with handball, with
Speaker 3: that where that's an extremely high speed, high cardio sport
Speaker 3: where things are changing second by second. It's the interaction
Speaker 3: of the brain and the body in that motion that
Speaker 3: I think will become more and more important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's another one which I would just because I
Speaker 1: have been a tiny bit involved in, but I've trained
Speaker 1: quite a lot of athletes who do Brazilian jiu jitsu
Speaker 1: Tiff knows one of them, and like it's such a
Speaker 1: cerebral sport where they're on the map, which if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, you wouldn't think that. You think it's
Speaker 1: just two bullf ed's just squeezing each other and strangling
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 3: All highly kinetic sports, fencing, jiu jitsu, all of the
Speaker 3: martial arts where your brain has to be functioning at
Speaker 3: light speed and incredibly focused or you are going to
Speaker 3: get messed up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh I'm excited. What's the ETA on
Speaker 1: the book again?
Speaker 3: Did you say twenty eighth of April, just after transit?
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll do a promo when it comes out.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, that was good, mate, that was so interesting.
Speaker 1: But just also shout out everyone on David's substack page.
Speaker 1: You wrote an article today which I actually read in
Speaker 1: preparation for this, which god, I know, so I've actually
Speaker 1: got it under the under your faces, well can't see
Speaker 1: your face. You're always just a black box, like a
Speaker 1: fucking mystery thing on a plane. But anyway, may I yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. But the article is called the Purchased Health Halo.
Speaker 1: We might talk about it next time, but it's on substack.
Speaker 1: Just go David Gillespie substack. It will come up on
Speaker 1: Google or whatever. It's fucking great. So have a read
Speaker 1: of that and maybe we'll explore that next time, but Mate,
Speaker 1: appreciate you as always and thanks for the chat and Tiff,
Speaker 1: thanks for hanging out, Thanks lads, Thanks Jo