Speaker 1: People think when they're working and they're attempting to multitask,
Speaker 1: they're getting more done, But studies show they're not, they're
Speaker 1: getting less done. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Dr Daniel Leviton, an award winning scientist, musician, author, and
Speaker 1: record producer. He's the author of three consecutive number one
Speaker 1: best selling books, This Is Your Brain on Music, The
Speaker 1: World in Six Songs, and The Organized Mind. He's also
Speaker 1: the James McGill Professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at
Speaker 1: McGill University in Montreal, where he runs the Laboratory for
Speaker 1: Music Cognition, Perception and Expertise. Dr Daniel Leviton earned his
Speaker 1: b a and Cognitive psychology and Cognitive Science at Stanford
Speaker 1: University and went on to earn his PhD in psychology
Speaker 1: from the University of Oregon. His newest book is Weaponized Lies,
Speaker 1: How to Think Critically in the Post truth Era. If
Speaker 1: you value the content we put out each week, then
Speaker 1: we need your help. As the show has grown, so
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Speaker 1: help to make the show sustainable and long lasting. Again,
Speaker 1: that's one you Feed dot net slash Support. Thank you
Speaker 1: in advance for your help. Hi Daniel, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to
Speaker 1: have you on. You have written a number of different books.
Speaker 1: I think all of them best sellers a lot of
Speaker 1: different topics music, which we're gonna get into because I
Speaker 1: love You've talked about how to organize our mind in
Speaker 1: a time of information overload, which is something we end
Speaker 1: up talking about a lot. And your latest book is
Speaker 1: called Weaponized Lies, how to Think critically in the post
Speaker 1: truth Era. And we'll get into all that here in
Speaker 1: a minute, but let's start like we you usually do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the ransom stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfa and he says, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well. It's a interesting way to begin
Speaker 1: a conversation. I've been thinking a lot in the last
Speaker 1: few months about evidence based thinking and in some cases,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm pushing Sisaphian rock up a hill.
Speaker 1: I understand part of evidence based thinking is trying to
Speaker 1: be precise with language and to look at the claim
Speaker 1: is being made. And in this parable, the good wolf
Speaker 1: represents kindness, bravery, and love, and I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree that these are desirable qualities, and the bad
Speaker 1: wolf represents greed, hatred, and fear. And I think that
Speaker 1: the way it's set up, we're meant to feel that
Speaker 1: these are undesirable qualities. But I'd like to challenge that
Speaker 1: assumption for a moment or that that view, and in
Speaker 1: the service of critical thinking, I think that hatred and
Speaker 1: fear are really important emotions. We should hate racism and tyrants.
Speaker 1: For example, Uh, if there was an organization that was
Speaker 1: trying to minimize hate crimes and stamp out hate, a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who hate hate, I would join them.
Speaker 1: Hatred motivates us to resist, It motivates us and enables
Speaker 1: us to um to draw a line in the sand.
Speaker 1: We should fear poisonous stakes. We should fear are airplanes
Speaker 1: flown by people who aren't licensed and it may not
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. So I like stories and I'm
Speaker 1: a storyteller. Um, I had a short career as a
Speaker 1: stand up comedian, which involves storytelling. But I think not
Speaker 1: to rain on your parable parade, but I think that
Speaker 1: some parables take a simplistic approach which squelches critical thinking.
Speaker 1: They try to reduce life to simple sayings that some
Speaker 1: people will invoke mindlessly, and I'm advocating for the opposite mindfulness.
Speaker 1: That's a great take. Well, let's move on and talk
Speaker 1: about critical thinking. Your book called Weaponized Lies, How to
Speaker 1: Think Critically in the Post Truth Era. It seems like
Speaker 1: every day that post truth era becomes more and more
Speaker 1: upon us. And I, you know, we stay out of
Speaker 1: politics on this show in general, but I think that
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, and what I really wrestle with,
Speaker 1: is the idea that there are some things that do
Speaker 1: have a truth. You know, there is truth in in
Speaker 1: certain things. You know, there are facts, not alternative facts,
Speaker 1: but real facts. And so your book is really about
Speaker 1: how to think critically through that. And I thought one
Speaker 1: place might be interesting to start because your book is
Speaker 1: I loved it. It's really good, and i'd encourage anybody
Speaker 1: to look at it and read it and learn a
Speaker 1: lot of it. Is not the sort of stuff you
Speaker 1: just summarize on a podcast really easily. There's some complexity there,
Speaker 1: which is the nature of critical thinking. But I thought
Speaker 1: that one way to sum up a lot of the
Speaker 1: things in the book would be to talk about the
Speaker 1: case study on autism being caused by vaccines. And in
Speaker 1: that one you really pulled together four different common errors
Speaker 1: that we go into. So I thought that might be
Speaker 1: a really succinct way to show four common errors in
Speaker 1: thinking around one particular case study. So could you walk
Speaker 1: us through that? Yeah, and I might ask for your
Speaker 1: help in the categorization of the four absolutely as we go,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know this was going to be on
Speaker 1: the tab, but I certainly do you want me to
Speaker 1: give you the four Maybe we could start and you
Speaker 1: could rescue me when I start hanging to myself. All right,
Speaker 1: fair enough, And I know that this is going to
Speaker 1: make some people mad. Some people have decided that the
Speaker 1: MMR vaccine Measles monster Bella vaccine causes autism, and they're
Speaker 1: suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. They assume that somebody
Speaker 1: who denies it is on the take, is getting money
Speaker 1: from special interests, or has their head in the sand,
Speaker 1: and there's really a lot going on here. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the factors is there's a correlation that's undeniable between
Speaker 1: the administration of the vaccine and the diagnosis of autism.
Speaker 1: Correlation is very high, relatively large number of people who
Speaker 1: are diagnosed with autism previously had the vaccine. But I
Speaker 1: think that one of categories that is drawn out in
Speaker 1: this example is that correlation doesn't mean causation. So for example,
Speaker 1: I had a cup of tea about ten minutes ago,
Speaker 1: and then you called me on Skype. Every time, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna just gonna happen every time, Dan, Alight, careful with
Speaker 1: your tea, all right, I don't think one caused the other.
Speaker 1: And we have to be careful here. In the case
Speaker 1: of the autism UH and vaccine link, it's unsafe to
Speaker 1: give vaccines prior to a certain age. The child's developing
Speaker 1: physiology and immune system isn't ready for vaccination, so we
Speaker 1: wait until the child is a certain age. Autism doesn't
Speaker 1: show up until a certain age, because by definition it's
Speaker 1: a delay in normal development. You have to wait to
Speaker 1: see if the child misses some developmental milestones. Now, it
Speaker 1: turns out that in general, the shot is given some
Speaker 1: months before an autism diagnosis is possible. So there's a
Speaker 1: third factor here which is causing both the timing of both.
Speaker 1: But and that's you know, age aging, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that one's causing the other. Another factor here is
Speaker 1: that when many people first heard about the link, they
Speaker 1: were able to pull up examples of people that they
Speaker 1: knew who had autism and who had the vaccine first.
Speaker 1: And the human brain is sort of configured that we
Speaker 1: focus on these positive, positive associations. This happened, and this happened.
Speaker 1: We don't focus on all the negatives. So how many
Speaker 1: people do you know who got the vaccine who didn't
Speaker 1: get autism? Well, it's it's an enormous number of people.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's no way that if you looked
Speaker 1: at both of those you would conclude that the vaccine
Speaker 1: caused autism. Another thing is there's belief for severance. Am
Speaker 1: I hitting the force so far? Once people make a
Speaker 1: claim to you or proposal about something in the world
Speaker 1: it might be true, your brain starts trying to think
Speaker 1: of ways that that might be possible. You try to
Speaker 1: generate examples. That's one of the things the human brain does,
Speaker 1: and so you start thinking, oh, well, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: so there there could be some chemical in the vaccines
Speaker 1: that causes autism. It could be that the drug companies
Speaker 1: don't want us to know this because they make so
Speaker 1: much money selling vaccinations. The problem is that once your
Speaker 1: mind starts engaging in that thinking and you adopt the
Speaker 1: belief before all the evidence is in belief. Perseverance teaches
Speaker 1: us that it's very difficult to unseat or or unhinge
Speaker 1: a belief once it's taken hold. It takes a very
Speaker 1: deliberate effort on all of us, on all of our parts,
Speaker 1: to to adopt a new view, very very hard to do.
Speaker 1: You have to be aware that this bias exists. That
Speaker 1: one's so tricky because I think, like you said, we
Speaker 1: all have to be aware of it. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many studies that just show that you know,
Speaker 1: we will, we will that we come up with a conclusion,
Speaker 1: we become emotionally attached to it, and then we look
Speaker 1: for the evidence to justify. You know, the confirmation bias,
Speaker 1: I think is a is a similar way to phrase it.
Speaker 1: There's two things that work here. One is that we
Speaker 1: tend to make decisions emotionally rather than based on evidence.
Speaker 1: And that serves us well for some things, like jumping
Speaker 1: out of the way of a snake in the grass,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't serve us well for other things. Any
Speaker 1: failed romantic relationship you had where after the fact you
Speaker 1: can see the signs were there, you just ignored them
Speaker 1: because we're trying to not be rational, or you let
Speaker 1: your emotions carry you. I'm not saying that emotions are bad.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that when you have a decision to make,
Speaker 1: let the evidence trickle in. Wait until you've got a
Speaker 1: mound of evidence that weighs the Teeger Totter of decision
Speaker 1: one way or the other, and then use your emotions
Speaker 1: to be joyful or angry or you know, outraged about
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you've decided. Uh, the emotional decisions
Speaker 1: of the first part and the other part is that
Speaker 1: we're all overloaded. This is an age of information overloud.
Speaker 1: We're deluged with factoids and pseudo facts and science and
Speaker 1: pseudoscience and um Dan Gilbert from Harvard and others have
Speaker 1: shown that when you're in a state like that, you
Speaker 1: just don't have the gumption the extra cycles to make
Speaker 1: a sound decision, and so you throw up your hands
Speaker 1: and you go with your gut to your detriment. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we have the fourth one of your autism.
Speaker 1: It was the persuasion by association. Ah, yes, so this
Speaker 1: is uh Andrew Wakefield. Andrew Wakefield is a British physician
Speaker 1: who wrote a paper claiming a link between autism and
Speaker 1: the MMR vaccine. We associate m d s with with
Speaker 1: rigorous thinking. Generally, that's a good assumption. In this case,
Speaker 1: Wakefield lost his medical license, he had to retract the paper.
Speaker 1: He admitted to fabricating data, and so the evidence that
Speaker 1: let anybody to form the opinion in the first place
Speaker 1: is now gone. But because a belief for severance, we
Speaker 1: hold onto you. I just think it was a good example.
Speaker 1: It shows kind of how we get ourselves into believing
Speaker 1: certain things in some of the logical fallacies. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing here, Eric is that if somebody is saying I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I believe that there's no link, that's exactly
Speaker 1: the kind of skepticism that I think you and I
Speaker 1: are promoting. Question the status quo, question the claim, right,
Speaker 1: That's that's the basis of critical thinking. The problem is um.
Speaker 1: Critical thinking requires some systematic follow through. Okay, it's not
Speaker 1: enough just to raise the question. You have to figure
Speaker 1: out what evidence can you get that will inform the question,
Speaker 1: and then evaluate the evidence in a rational way. Easy
Speaker 1: does it on the fast forward a couple of quick notes.
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Speaker 1: as a last thing, if you like the show, talk
Speaker 1: to somebody about the show, give us a review on iTunes.
Speaker 1: And now back to the rest of the interview with
Speaker 1: Daniel Levitton. Given where we, particularly as a society in
Speaker 1: the US, is headed right now, do you see this
Speaker 1: continuing to get worse? Do you think this is a anomaly?
Speaker 1: You know, just because somebody's an expert, and one thing
Speaker 1: doesn't make an expert another thing. So I'm asking for
Speaker 1: your opinion here, not your deep study on this thing.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious how you see this all
Speaker 1: playing out, this post fact era. You know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it depends on predits. Has been trump
Speaker 1: um so far, As David Brooks said in his column
Speaker 1: yesterday in The Times, and I have a related piece
Speaker 1: coming out in the Daily Beast this weekend. So far,
Speaker 1: Trump has, in his speech and his actions, has led
Speaker 1: us to believe that facts are irrelevant to decision making,
Speaker 1: and he reflexively brands as fake or untrue anything that
Speaker 1: makes him look bad, anything he disagrees with, and he
Speaker 1: brands the media as liars. I think the media play
Speaker 1: a very important role here, and I would include you
Speaker 1: in this. You are the media, Eric uh In trying
Speaker 1: to keep a sibyl and rational conversation going about issues
Speaker 1: of importance to citizens in a free country. As long
Speaker 1: as Trump keeps sounding the clarion call for avoiding facts
Speaker 1: and information, there are a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: persuaded by him and who think that he is the
Speaker 1: person who's going to drain the swamp and fix some
Speaker 1: of the inefficiencies of government. And I think people on
Speaker 1: both sides of the political spectrum admit and agree that
Speaker 1: there are a number of inefficiencies, and there's corruption, and
Speaker 1: there's problems that need to be taken care of. I
Speaker 1: think we may disagree about how to fix it from
Speaker 1: one end of the spectrum to the other, but I
Speaker 1: don't think we disagree there are problems. But if Trump
Speaker 1: is willing to change the conversation and say, look, we
Speaker 1: we want to build some infrastructure, we want to build
Speaker 1: some roads. We've commissioned to study. Here's where we actually
Speaker 1: need the roads. According to the study that's fact based.
Speaker 1: And I think if he models this kind of behavior,
Speaker 1: we'll get back on track. If he doesn't We're already
Speaker 1: seeing that the judiciary is modeling that kind of behavior.
Speaker 1: When the panel of three federal judges throughout his initial
Speaker 1: immigration ban, I don't even be the exact quote, but
Speaker 1: it was. The gist of it was there was no
Speaker 1: evidence for the administration's claim that these seven countries pose
Speaker 1: a threat to US, no evidence, which which elevates evidence
Speaker 1: to a position of primacy, which is of course the
Speaker 1: whole point of a judiciary. They should be making decisions
Speaker 1: based on evidence, not on earsay or rumor or gut
Speaker 1: or anecdote or yep. Exactly. Yeah, I just like I said,
Speaker 1: you know, on the on the political side, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm fairly moderate, and I try
Speaker 1: and stay out of it. I just it's the dialogue
Speaker 1: that we're having that troubles me so much, or or
Speaker 1: lack of Yeah, exactly. Look, I I'm not going to
Speaker 1: come out as pro or anti Trump. I want Trump
Speaker 1: to succeed. I want to see the country made better
Speaker 1: by this president. If I were Trump, I would get
Speaker 1: down to business with elevating science, elevating the arts, and
Speaker 1: elevating a kind of non belligerent, cooperative discussion based on facts. Ye.
Speaker 1: Let's move from facts and critical thinking and let's talk
Speaker 1: about your book, The Organized Mind. The basic premises we
Speaker 1: have way more information coming at us than we could
Speaker 1: ever handle, and that despite that, there are ways that
Speaker 1: we can become more organized and and at least deal
Speaker 1: better with the delusion information? Is that how you say it? Deluse?
Speaker 1: Your deluse? I don't even know. It's one of those
Speaker 1: words that I read, but I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever heard anyways say out loud. I always say deluge.
Speaker 1: But I think your sense right. I have a dictionary here,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to look at up. I think your sounded
Speaker 1: more correct. So one of the big things that you
Speaker 1: talk about in that book is multitasking, and I'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about multitasking a little bit and what's wrong
Speaker 1: with multitasking and what is the effect that that has
Speaker 1: on us? It seems to be something and I'm asking
Speaker 1: sort of from my own personal life as somebody who
Speaker 1: seems to engage in it more than I would like,
Speaker 1: even though I know that it's probably not the best idea.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm curious to to hear more about it
Speaker 1: from you. Let's say what multitasking is not Multitasking is
Speaker 1: not playing a musical instrument while you're reading music and
Speaker 1: listening to the other musicians around you. Multitasking is not
Speaker 1: driving and listening to the radio at the same time. Really,
Speaker 1: multitasking is attempting to do a bunch of things at
Speaker 1: the same time that compete for your attentional resources with
Speaker 1: one another. And the problem with it is that it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually exist. It's an illusion. So if you think
Speaker 1: that you can text and drive at the same time,
Speaker 1: or that you can be talking to somebody on the
Speaker 1: phone and doing your email at the same time, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence that you can't. What's happening is
Speaker 1: that your attentional system rapidly shifts from one thing to
Speaker 1: the next. So you do one thing for a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds, and then another, and then another and another,
Speaker 1: and then you come back around in the first one.
Speaker 1: You're fractionating your attention into itty bitty parts and pieces,
Speaker 1: not really devoting full attention to anything. And the danger
Speaker 1: here is that we find it very titillating and exciting
Speaker 1: to do this. All this kind of switching gives us
Speaker 1: a little bit of a high, and we don't want
Speaker 1: to let go of it. Because you know, ample evidence
Speaker 1: to your detriment. People think when they're working and they're
Speaker 1: attempting to multitask, they're getting more done, but studies show
Speaker 1: they're not. They're getting less done. Unitaskers, people who will
Speaker 1: immerse themselves in one thing, get more done and the
Speaker 1: quality of their work is rated as higher. The other
Speaker 1: thing I thought was interesting was you talk about how
Speaker 1: multitasking has been found to increase cortisol levels. You've also
Speaker 1: said elsewhere, and I mean not just you, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people have talked about how raised levels of
Speaker 1: cortisol actually stops us from thinking clearly and thinking, well
Speaker 1: it it gets in the way. Cortisol is an interesting hormone.
Speaker 1: So one of its primary missions is to help prepare
Speaker 1: you for a fight or flight response, and it begins
Speaker 1: a cascade of several things, such as raising your heart
Speaker 1: rate at your respiration rate. You know, imagine being confronted
Speaker 1: by a tiger. You've got a couple of choices. You
Speaker 1: either gonna fight it or you're gonna run, and you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time to make a decision,
Speaker 1: and there are a bunch of things that are sapping
Speaker 1: your bodily resources that aren't gonna matter if you don't
Speaker 1: solve this problem. Among them are your libido. You don't
Speaker 1: need to have, you know, sexual drive at this moment,
Speaker 1: hopefully not. You don't need to be digesting your food
Speaker 1: because you know that takes up a lot of resources. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you don't need to be weighing different options in
Speaker 1: a kind of systematic way. You have to move quickly,
Speaker 1: so those three kinds of things get put on hold.
Speaker 1: Your libido, your digestion, your immune system is a fourth one,
Speaker 1: uh and and and systematic thought so that you can
Speaker 1: act quickly. The problem is that it's not just tigers
Speaker 1: that release cortisol. Now, it's the stress of multitasking. It's
Speaker 1: being yelled at by your boss, being cut off, for
Speaker 1: given the finger by somebody in traffic, and you've got
Speaker 1: no way to work off the court assoul. It's not
Speaker 1: like you can run, you know, for a mile up.
Speaker 1: They only get away from you know, your your your
Speaker 1: boss or something like that. So toxic effects of it linger. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the other things you talked about, you say
Speaker 1: that nerve scientists have discovered that unproductivity and loss of
Speaker 1: drive can result from decision overload. And the thing about
Speaker 1: multitasking for me, And I know decision overload and multitasking
Speaker 1: are are different things, but for me, the thing with
Speaker 1: multitasking that I get is that I feel like it
Speaker 1: really wears me out and it takes an emotional toll
Speaker 1: on me in a way that I can't quite put
Speaker 1: my words on. And by multitask, I mainly mean I'm
Speaker 1: looking at my email and then I remember, oh, I
Speaker 1: should check Twitter, and then I gotta get something on
Speaker 1: my calendar, and then I've got to, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: several hours of that, and I feel very worn out
Speaker 1: or just can't quite find the right word for it,
Speaker 1: but it takes an it takes an emotional toll. Well,
Speaker 1: I know what you mean, and I guess I think
Speaker 1: of this not as multitasking narrowly defined, but multitasking broadly defined.
Speaker 1: And what you're really doing is rapid task switching, which
Speaker 1: requires that you redirect your attentional focus to one thing
Speaker 1: and then another, and then another and then another, and
Speaker 1: usually each of those things required or some decision making,
Speaker 1: and that's where this concept you're raised of decision fatigue
Speaker 1: comes in. So let's just take email for example. Suppose
Speaker 1: you're working on something maybe you're working on your weekly budget,
Speaker 1: or you're writing a letter to your grandma, or you're
Speaker 1: doing a report for work and your email programs open
Speaker 1: because who knows, something urgent could come up and you
Speaker 1: hear that ping, So right away you've got to make
Speaker 1: a decision to do I look at my email or not.
Speaker 1: Then once you look at it, you have to decide
Speaker 1: am I going to deal with this now or later?
Speaker 1: Is it something that I can forward then somebody else
Speaker 1: can deal with is it SPAMH Do I need to
Speaker 1: do a little bit of research in order to answer
Speaker 1: this question. That's five decisions right there. Each decision comes
Speaker 1: with a metabolic cost. It depletes glucose in our brains
Speaker 1: that is required to keep neurons, you know, functioning properly.
Speaker 1: So after an hour or two of this kind of
Speaker 1: rapid decision making, um, you've literally depleted your neural resources.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're describing is what the US
Speaker 1: feel after a couple hours in the morning of work,
Speaker 1: just depleted and worn out. Fortunately, the cure is to
Speaker 1: take a break. And I don't mean a break where
Speaker 1: you check Facebook or you check you know, you know,
Speaker 1: your news feed. I mean a break where you allow
Speaker 1: your mind to reset itself what I call the mind
Speaker 1: wandering mode, by walking in nature, exercising, looking at art,
Speaker 1: listening to music, taking a little nap, closing your eyes,
Speaker 1: just something restorative like that. It effectively hits the reset
Speaker 1: button in your brain and restores the depleted chemicals. The
Speaker 1: idea of doing work in focused bursts, you know, doing
Speaker 1: um I think I've heard people refer to it as
Speaker 1: as pulsing or but of you know, setting the timer
Speaker 1: for twenty minutes and only doing one thing, turn off email.
Speaker 1: The amount that I get done when I do that
Speaker 1: is just staggering in comparison to the amount I normally
Speaker 1: get done when I'm kind of just doing that, sitting
Speaker 1: at my desk, working on whatever comes up. And I
Speaker 1: just noticed things like I flip over to my calendar
Speaker 1: and then I don't remember why I'm even in my calendar.
Speaker 1: There was something that made me want to go there.
Speaker 1: And that's what happens when I'm in that check email,
Speaker 1: do calendar, and you know, I'll check my feed all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I just more and more as time goes on,
Speaker 1: and I recognizing the challenges that cause and I elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the book, I think you said something like, you know,
Speaker 1: make no mistake, Facebook and all those things are neural addiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe they are. And you know, in writing The
Speaker 1: Organized Mind, I had the oppertu tunity to debrief and
Speaker 1: interview and shadow some people who are really productive Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winners, great artists, um ceo s of some big corporations,
Speaker 1: members of the Obama White House. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: highly productive, efficient people. And the trend there, the pattern
Speaker 1: that I observed was that they turn off the Internet
Speaker 1: for a couple hours at a time and focus and
Speaker 1: if somebody needs to reach them, they've got to get
Speaker 1: them some other way. Uh. And you know they're all
Speaker 1: different techniques that we can talk about for Okay, well
Speaker 1: I have to be reachable. Okay, well, but but manage
Speaker 1: it right. Don't allow just everybody to interrupt you all
Speaker 1: the time. Manage it by having a second cell phone
Speaker 1: or a second email account or you know something like that.
Speaker 1: Set up a white list for your email or what
Speaker 1: you know, on the iPhone, you can set up a
Speaker 1: list of people that get through that do not disturb it.
Speaker 1: So you know, there are all these little things you
Speaker 1: can who So let's turn our attention to music. You
Speaker 1: were a engineer, a producer, you played music. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you still do play music. And um, you wrote a
Speaker 1: book called This is Your Brain on music, really exploring
Speaker 1: kind of what happens in our brain as we listen
Speaker 1: to and make music and listeners on the show. No,
Speaker 1: you know, Chris and I are both musicians. All the
Speaker 1: music breaks in the show are always something we've written,
Speaker 1: so big passion of mine. I loved the book, and
Speaker 1: I have to start though. There's so much to get into,
Speaker 1: and we don't have a lot of time, but I
Speaker 1: have to start with. At one point, you were meeting
Speaker 1: with somebody who didn't really understand rock and roll. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the gentleman's name, but John R. Pierce, the
Speaker 1: inventor of satellite communication. Here you go, lover of music,
Speaker 1: didn't understand rock and roll, and you went to dinner
Speaker 1: and you brought with him six songs. And so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna read the six that you brought. And then you
Speaker 1: did say that I get a lot of mail about
Speaker 1: this because people are they do you, because this is
Speaker 1: a source of controversy. I'm happy to do before you
Speaker 1: read the list, I want to say I'm not purporting
Speaker 1: that this is the perfect list of the six songs
Speaker 1: that explain rock and roll. It's the best I could
Speaker 1: come up with on short notice. And you said even
Speaker 1: when you wrote this book, which was a long I mean,
Speaker 1: how long has it been ten fifteen years this book?
Speaker 1: So you know, you said, all our great songs, but
Speaker 1: even now I'd like to make some adjustments. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read the list and then ask you for
Speaker 1: a couple more you might add to that list if
Speaker 1: you were to do it again. Very nice, Thank you,
Speaker 1: all right? So first was Long Tall Sally by Little Richard,
Speaker 1: roll Over Beethoven by the Beatles, All Along the watch
Speaker 1: Tower by Jimi Hendrix, Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton, Little
Speaker 1: Red Corvette by Prince An Anarchy in the UK by
Speaker 1: the Sex Pistols. So that was the list fifteen years
Speaker 1: ago or so, what what are some things you'd add
Speaker 1: to that list today? You know that that are you know,
Speaker 1: are rock songs that that you really either love or
Speaker 1: think are important. This is a what do you love? Question?
Speaker 1: More than you know. I was trying to be systematic
Speaker 1: and scholarly about it, and um I felt that I
Speaker 1: wanted to define rocket roll broadly as the kind of
Speaker 1: popular music I listened to, which pretty much fans nineteen
Speaker 1: forties to the present. And I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to have something to represe and the one
Speaker 1: of the architects of rock and roll, you know, like
Speaker 1: Little Richard or Chuck Berry or the Beatles. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're all these these you know, touchstones you want to get.
Speaker 1: The Beatles were great writers, but they were also a
Speaker 1: great band. Having them do Roll over Beethoven as a
Speaker 1: way to get Chuck Berry and the Beatles in one choice,
Speaker 1: you know, it was complicated and wonderful. Tonight was an
Speaker 1: attempt to try and capture the soft rock of the seventies,
Speaker 1: you know that included the Carpenters and James Bound, James
Speaker 1: Taylor right, and I mean it couldn't than any of them.
Speaker 1: I knew that John Pierce had worked on in developing
Speaker 1: the vacuum tube, and so I wanted to also. The
Speaker 1: other constraint is that I wanted him to be able
Speaker 1: to experience a range of different guitar tones so he
Speaker 1: could see what his invention had wrought. I think today
Speaker 1: I would add Hallelujah, the Leonard Cohen song Um, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not rock and roll, but it's popular music. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I would add it in, probably in the version
Speaker 1: by Jeff Buckley or by Rufus Wainwright. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of possibilities there. Um, it's been covered
Speaker 1: so much. Certainly I would add something that's from hip hop,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure what, but I would probably go
Speaker 1: back to the basics like Houdini or Sir Mix a
Speaker 1: Lot or you know, LLL cool j Um, you know,
Speaker 1: just in terms of the origin story. I also like
Speaker 1: Naz and Ludicrous, So I mean that that's hip hop
Speaker 1: is Dead would be an interesting choice. You might want
Speaker 1: to get some MOBI in there. I was sick that
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to include Stevie Wonder or led Zeppelin.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, those are yeah. I mean it's it's preposterous
Speaker 1: to try and think of six songs to represent Oh man, boy,
Speaker 1: that's a well. I love the sex Pistols choice. Um.
Speaker 1: I really like the Prince choice too. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great one. Um. I think I probably would have
Speaker 1: to get the Rolling Stones in there somehow. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that or the one that you reference in
Speaker 1: the book a lot, you know, Honky tonk woman, this
Speaker 1: is a discussion we could we could do for hours,
Speaker 1: so um, we'll leave it there. But I just found
Speaker 1: it fascinating to well, I didn't find it fascinating. What
Speaker 1: I found it was fun to read the list and
Speaker 1: to think about it. Um, I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about music and the role it can have
Speaker 1: in our brains and in helping us to live better lives.
Speaker 1: You say that, Uh, current neuropsychological theories associate positive mood
Speaker 1: and effect with increased dopamine levels. Music is clearly a
Speaker 1: means for improving people's moods because music is acting on
Speaker 1: the dopamine system. Um, can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that and maybe anything else that you would
Speaker 1: add since you wrote the book, then about what we've
Speaker 1: learned about how music can help us with mood regulation. Well, already,
Speaker 1: so many of us use music to regulate our mood
Speaker 1: and the way we use drugs like caffeine and alcohol.
Speaker 1: We've done surveys of thousands of people talking about how
Speaker 1: they use music, and it's a typical thing is that
Speaker 1: people will use a certain kind of music to help
Speaker 1: them get going in the morning, another kind of music
Speaker 1: relax before bed, if they have a fight with someone
Speaker 1: close to them, there's a music that they know, will
Speaker 1: you know, soothe them and comfort them? Um, these different
Speaker 1: uses of music, or what I explored in my second book,
Speaker 1: The World in Six Songs, Music as medicine. I do
Speaker 1: want to be fair here and say that I think
Speaker 1: that in enroll the arts and for all these benefits.
Speaker 1: It's not just music. Uh, I happen to study music,
Speaker 1: but there's uh, you know, engagement with literature and theater,
Speaker 1: with painting, dance. Depending on which art forms speak to you,
Speaker 1: these things can all improve your mood. I think the
Speaker 1: arts give us a broader perspective on the world than
Speaker 1: we get through say, journalism. They helped to break down
Speaker 1: our resistance and our barriers to understanding other human beings
Speaker 1: because they reach us emotionally, right, they have the ability
Speaker 1: to go a little bit below the conscious, hypercritical mind.
Speaker 1: That's right. And I think that the real power of
Speaker 1: the arts is to re contextualize reality for us, to
Speaker 1: help us see things in a different way. And being
Speaker 1: able to exercise that part of your brain being you know,
Speaker 1: the ability to see things in a different way is
Speaker 1: of course crucial to problem ablem solving. Whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about solving a personal problem, or making a decision about
Speaker 1: a relationship or where to invest your money, or whether
Speaker 1: you're trying to get involved in politics. How are we
Speaker 1: going to make the world a better place? What can
Speaker 1: we do about climate change? What can we do about
Speaker 1: the unequal distribution of wealth and hunger and poverty? How
Speaker 1: can we stop aggression across countries? These are problems that
Speaker 1: require creativity to solve. If they were easy to solve,
Speaker 1: that have been solved already, And I think the arts
Speaker 1: play a fundamentally important role in that. I agree you
Speaker 1: say that as listeners, there is every reason to believe
Speaker 1: that some of our brain states will match those of
Speaker 1: the musicians we are listening to. So a lot of
Speaker 1: people when they feel sad, right, they reach towards sad
Speaker 1: music and there's a there's a comfort in that. Is
Speaker 1: there anything that shows that listening to, say, happy music
Speaker 1: makes you happier. I'm just interested in what kind of
Speaker 1: things we're seeing there, because normally my reaction is I
Speaker 1: feel down. At least certainly a lot of my life,
Speaker 1: I would go to the sad music I found myself
Speaker 1: as I've gotten older, and maybe romanticize feeling crappy less
Speaker 1: than maybe I did when I was younger. I moved
Speaker 1: towards more positive things now as a way to lift
Speaker 1: myself out of that. Well. You know, I think that
Speaker 1: the terms happy and sad are broad, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to be happy, things to
Speaker 1: be happy about. There are a lot of different neural
Speaker 1: signatures to them, and I think it's important to understand
Speaker 1: that variability. In some sad states, happy music will soothe
Speaker 1: and comfort you, and in other sad states, sad music will.
Speaker 1: In a lot of cases, when you're feeling sad, it's
Speaker 1: because you feel in some way fundamentally misunderstood. But the
Speaker 1: right sad song, you go, oh yeah, that person understands me,
Speaker 1: and I have somebody to sit on the edge of
Speaker 1: the cliff with, if that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: was curious if you know who are some of the
Speaker 1: thought leaders in using music for therapeutic purposes, Like who
Speaker 1: might I look to? You know that that are real
Speaker 1: experts in this space or just still doing research today
Speaker 1: around music and emotion. Your lab I think, just released
Speaker 1: a paper, So you're still you still get your hand in.
Speaker 1: I sure, hope. So that's my day job. I would
Speaker 1: say music and emotion is different than music therapy. That's true.
Speaker 1: On the music therapy front, there's Suzanne Handzer at at
Speaker 1: Berkeley College of Music. There's and Roth at Western Michigan
Speaker 1: State University, Michael taught in Colorado, t h a U
Speaker 1: t Um, Connie Tomato in New York. On the music
Speaker 1: and emotion front, this is a more scholarly endeavor that's
Speaker 1: really about basic research usually, and some of the leaders
Speaker 1: in that field include William Ford Thompson at McQuary University
Speaker 1: in Australia. My own lab, I don't know for at
Speaker 1: the forefront of it, but we've published several studies on
Speaker 1: music and emotion along with my students. And there is
Speaker 1: um Patrick uslan j U s l i n another
Speaker 1: leader in that field. And so you guys had a
Speaker 1: recent paper that was published in Nature. Was the most
Speaker 1: recent paper that you guys did? I think it was
Speaker 1: a paper that came out a week ago, uh in
Speaker 1: the Nature journal called Scientific Reports, And in that one
Speaker 1: we showed this did have to do with music and emotion.
Speaker 1: My doctoral student at Dill Malick a post doct named
Speaker 1: Mona Lisa Chanda, and I administered a drug to people
Speaker 1: that temporarily blocked one of the neurochemicals that we know
Speaker 1: is associated in the brain with pleasurable experiences, such as
Speaker 1: taking drugs or having an orgasm, and um, we were
Speaker 1: curious to know if that drug also served the music system.
Speaker 1: So people take a pill it's either the opioid blocker
Speaker 1: or it's neutral inert and they don't know it, and
Speaker 1: they listen to music, and then we had a number
Speaker 1: of ways of measuring whether they were experiencing normal musical
Speaker 1: pleasure or not. And um, it turns out when they
Speaker 1: took the drug, they did not experience musical pleasure, which
Speaker 1: was the first demonstration that I know of, uh, that opioids,
Speaker 1: the brain's own endogenous opioids, in particular the MW opioids
Speaker 1: for those of you were neurochemists, are responsible or at
Speaker 1: least implicated musical pleasure, just like food pleasure, sex pleasure,
Speaker 1: and drug pleasure. So that that old saying about sex, drugs,
Speaker 1: and rock and roll going together is true, Yeah, at
Speaker 1: a chemical level. Well, Dan, thanks so much for for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on. Um, Like I said,
Speaker 1: I could probably talk about several of these subjects for
Speaker 1: for a long, long time, but I really enjoyed your books.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on. It was it
Speaker 1: was pleasure to have you. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: It was really great to talk to you. Bye bye.
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