Speaker 1: For James, what it meant was you have the ability
Speaker 1: to seize upon possibilities in your life. The maybe's the
Speaker 1: hypotheses of your life, and that's where you can make
Speaker 1: your life meaningful. Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today we welcome John Kig, the Chair and Professor of
Speaker 1: Philosophy the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He received his master's
Speaker 1: degree in philosophy from Pennsylvania State University as PhD in
Speaker 1: philosophy from the University of Oregon. His running has appeared
Speaker 1: in The Parish Review, The New York Times, and Harper's Magazine.
Speaker 1: He's the author of Hiking with Nietzsche, American Philosophy, a
Speaker 1: Love Story, and his most recent book is called Six Souls,
Speaker 1: Healthy Minds, How William James Can Save Your Life. In
Speaker 1: this episode, my conversation with John Gaig revolves around the
Speaker 1: existential question we've all had, is life worth living? John
Speaker 1: expounds on William James's the answer of maybe. He shares
Speaker 1: about his near death experience and how vulnerable moments in
Speaker 1: his life have led him to a more nuanced understanding
Speaker 1: of philosophy. We also touch on the topics of metaphysics, determinism, suffering,
Speaker 1: religion and transcendence. This conversation was very rich. William James
Speaker 1: is the founder of the field of psychology, so it
Speaker 1: seems really appropriate that we would have an entire episode
Speaker 1: of the Psychology Podcast dedicated to William James. And I
Speaker 1: can't think of anyone better. Going to a real delight
Speaker 1: to chat with John Kaig about William James, considering he
Speaker 1: has such a broad depth of knowledge about him. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I bring you John Kaig. Well, I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off with discussing your philosophy specialization. What
Speaker 1: would you say is are the main areas within the
Speaker 1: purview of the field that must excite you. My specialization
Speaker 1: is in nineteenth century philosophy, primarily American philosophy, but also existentialism.
Speaker 1: But really, I mean I was taught by a number
Speaker 1: of teachers who believed that philosophy at its best should
Speaker 1: go back to the Greeks, and the Greeks really thought
Speaker 1: about philosophy as helping us through the thoughtful business of living.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a discipline, it was really a way of life.
Speaker 1: And so I have been attracted to philosophers who hold
Speaker 1: that position, and we find a number of them in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Yeah. Yeah, So there's this thread that
Speaker 1: runs your work on what does what does it mean
Speaker 1: to live a life well lived? As well as more morose,
Speaker 1: why don't we kill ourselves? So those are two big questions.
Speaker 1: In a way they are they're in verses of each other.
Speaker 1: So I mean, we talk about the meaning of life,
Speaker 1: and we then talk about why we shouldn't. My teacher
Speaker 1: John McDermott would say, why bother with anything? And my
Speaker 1: interests have really drawn me to philosophers who asked that
Speaker 1: question in a very sincere way, So Frederick Nietzsche on
Speaker 1: the one hand, and William James on the other. As
Speaker 1: I've grown older, I've gravitated toward James, at least in
Speaker 1: part because I think he gives us a better answer
Speaker 1: to the question is life worth living? Than Nietzsche does.
Speaker 1: And I have looked at James's life, not just his philosophy,
Speaker 1: as a way of thinking through my own difficulties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I definitely want to get to that and hear
Speaker 1: how he saved your life, because that's the subtitle of
Speaker 1: your book, how William James? Well, it's I guess it wasn't.
Speaker 1: How wayn James saved my life, but it is how
Speaker 1: William James can save your life. But he did save
Speaker 1: your life, right. So there's an interesting thread that runs
Speaker 1: through this book that I wanted to open up with
Speaker 1: and talk about. It almost feels like there's a real
Speaker 1: privilege for those who even have the resources to be
Speaker 1: able to think so deeply about why it was the
Speaker 1: purpose of life. It feels like so many people in
Speaker 1: this world are trying to get their basic needs met
Speaker 1: and that is their focus. It's a fascinating sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It's like no one's winning, you know. It's like you
Speaker 1: can spend your whole life trying to overcome so many
Speaker 1: economic hardships only to get to the other side. And
Speaker 1: then when you get to the the other side, you start
Speaker 1: to ask questions like is this all there is? Maybe
Speaker 1: I should just kill myself. It just seems like there's
Speaker 1: no door or portal into utopia having human existence, And
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a deep truth there. There's like
Speaker 1: a real deep truth that everyone at some point in
Speaker 1: their life kind of realize, and well, not everyone realizes it,
Speaker 1: but it feels like the philosophers throughout the generations realize
Speaker 1: it and they keep writing about the same thing generation,
Speaker 1: and no one solved the problem once and for all.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to talk about that because that was
Speaker 1: a very interesting thread running through this because William James
Speaker 1: himself face that, you know, he got to a point
Speaker 1: He's like, I kind of have it all, yet I
Speaker 1: feel like I have nothing, and it's a very fascinating,
Speaker 1: fascinating sort of paradox. So can we start there with
Speaker 1: that conversation? Of course. I mean there's a way in
Speaker 1: which existential crises are a luxury for those who don't
Speaker 1: have real on the ground crises, and it's the case
Speaker 1: that those who are just trying to make ends meet
Speaker 1: any My students, for example, are first generation college students,
Speaker 1: and they're just trying to get by. They're trying to
Speaker 1: pay their rent, they're trying to get food on the table,
Speaker 1: they're trying to provide if they have kids, for their kids.
Speaker 1: And they oftentimes say to me, they say, doctor Keg,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried about whether life is worth living. I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to live. And what's curious is that as
Speaker 1: they grow older and some of them do then sort
Speaker 1: of move into a position where they have the time
Speaker 1: and luxuries that they that they've always wanted. They then
Speaker 1: turn around and they say, well, now I have to
Speaker 1: ask the question is life worth living? And oftentimes they think,
Speaker 1: huh is this it? So once you have all of
Speaker 1: your needs and desires met, you oftentimes find that they
Speaker 1: weren't the right pursuits or you find that they're deeply
Speaker 1: fulfilling or meaningless. But you have to get them first
Speaker 1: before you actually have that realization. William James, I mean
Speaker 1: he was born into a life of privilege. His grandfather
Speaker 1: was one of the wealthiest men in the Northeast, and
Speaker 1: it gave his father, Henry James Sr. The ability to
Speaker 1: provide a great deal of freedoms, intellectual freedoms and spiritual
Speaker 1: freedoms to his kids. And the mandate in the James household,
Speaker 1: and it's a funny mandate, but it's a mandate that
Speaker 1: some of us can understand, is the mandate to make
Speaker 1: good on life's possibilities and freedoms. The mandate is be free,
Speaker 1: go ahead. But James experienced something that many nineteenth, twentieth
Speaker 1: and twentieth twenty first century inhabitants too, which is freedom
Speaker 1: is really anxiety provoking, storing care of guards, said that
Speaker 1: there's this, you know, intimate relationship between possibility and drowning anxiety.
Speaker 1: Drowning is the word he used. Yeah, yeah, possibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're facing, I mean, some of us
Speaker 1: are facing today. But to get back to your point,
Speaker 1: those who are struggling to even have certain possibilities in
Speaker 1: life don't find themselves in such anxiety provoking positions. What
Speaker 1: they find themselves in, at least from what I understand,
Speaker 1: is positions of fear or insecurity or lack, which is
Speaker 1: different than anxiety. Anxiety, at least for the existentialists and pragmatists,
Speaker 1: is the feeling of freedom. It's a feeling of which
Speaker 1: way do I go? I have all of these options.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to become or who to be.
Speaker 1: And that question is not raised for those individuals who
Speaker 1: are just struggling to get by. Yeah, you say in
Speaker 1: your book it is as if only after a person
Speaker 1: has been given everything that one has the chance to
Speaker 1: realize that everything might never be enough to really matter.
Speaker 1: Holy col Jonathan, Look, your book is not oprah asque
Speaker 1: self help. You know you know you're you're like like philosophy,
Speaker 1: self help is always depressing as hell, like you wrote,
Speaker 1: by the way, your book's not depressing, I'm just being
Speaker 1: cheeky you But you do write things like at the
Speaker 1: end of the Existential Day, where a bunch of meat
Speaker 1: sacks destined for the grinder. So I guess the interesting
Speaker 1: the thing about philosophers is that they like, they like
Speaker 1: getting into the piercing reality and then say, well, what
Speaker 1: can we where's the hope there from that? And there
Speaker 1: is a lot of hope in the right. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you all start. Philosophs are really good at
Speaker 1: kind of starting with piercing reality as the foundation. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And I mean I think that that's the
Speaker 1: place where many readers want to start. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that it's really necessary to start where some readers
Speaker 1: who are really struggling are. And I think James was
Speaker 1: lovely at being able to do that for his readership
Speaker 1: and his audience. He doesn't sugarcoat anything. And I think
Speaker 1: that his answer when he asked the question is life
Speaker 1: worth living in the eighteen nineties to this group of
Speaker 1: YMCA Christian Cambridge, you know youngsters, when he asked the
Speaker 1: question is life worth living? And he says, maybe it
Speaker 1: depends on the liver. He's not being cheeky. He really
Speaker 1: me so, I know. And there's something they're very, very
Speaker 1: profound about that point that he made. Unpacking it a
Speaker 1: little bit, he's basically saying life can be worth living
Speaker 1: if you make it worth living. That and intimately tied
Speaker 1: up with that are notions that he's wrestled with in
Speaker 1: his lifetime of free will, notions of you know, what
Speaker 1: does it mean to have free will? What does it
Speaker 1: mean to have control over your life? But you know,
Speaker 1: he was very obsessed with things such as control as
Speaker 1: well and chance and probability. These are a lot of
Speaker 1: issues he wrestled within his lifetime that people are still
Speaker 1: wrestling with modern day philosophers and modern day neuroscientists and psychologists.
Speaker 1: Interesting enough, the idea of suicide. I believe this is
Speaker 1: something that you wrote. You said suicide can be regarded
Speaker 1: not as a letting go, but rather a laying claim
Speaker 1: to a life that is otherwise out of control. Now,
Speaker 1: I find that that really interesting and that ties in
Speaker 1: with a lot of the themes in William James's life. Right,
Speaker 1: you argued what he really wanted in his life was
Speaker 1: not to have non existence but to have control of
Speaker 1: his existence. Is that about right? That's right? And I
Speaker 1: mean we oftentimes think that suicide and considering suicide is
Speaker 1: a weak action, but many nineteenth century philosophers and the Stoics,
Speaker 1: for example, in ancient thought that suicide and contemplating suicide
Speaker 1: was simply a matter of contemplating life's worth and also
Speaker 1: the issue of taking control of one's life, seizing it
Speaker 1: in a particular way. And I think that that's what James,
Speaker 1: when he struggled with suicide through his thirties, who was
Speaker 1: really worried about the dilemma of determinism, this idea that
Speaker 1: all of the universe was controlled in a particular way
Speaker 1: and that we were just pawns in a great mechanical scheme.
Speaker 1: That this is a disempowering thought for James. This is
Speaker 1: the thought that led him to consider suicide. And at
Speaker 1: least one could do some thing right and this act,
Speaker 1: this seemingly radical act, might be that something. And I
Speaker 1: think that many individuals that James encounters in his life
Speaker 1: who were suffering through depression or anxiety, felt disempowered, felt
Speaker 1: like they had nowhere to go, felt like they were
Speaker 1: all alone in their suffering, and I think what James
Speaker 1: did was when he said is life worth living? The
Speaker 1: answer is maybe it depends on the liver is He
Speaker 1: was saying, hold on, you still have some control over
Speaker 1: your life, over your situation, and that control is embodied
Speaker 1: in a maybe. What does that mean? I think for James,
Speaker 1: what it meant was you have the ability to seize
Speaker 1: upon possibilities in your life the maybe's the hypotheses of
Speaker 1: your life, and that's where you can make your life meaningful.
Speaker 1: So maybe it depends on the liver. Wasn't simply saying, well,
Speaker 1: maybe your life is worth living, Maybe it's not. James,
Speaker 1: I think was directing us a little more poignedly to
Speaker 1: the fact that when you experience and explore hypotheses, the
Speaker 1: maybe's of life, that's where the meaningful stuff. That's where
Speaker 1: the significance is. And I think that's something really powerful
Speaker 1: in James's answer, and powerful in a way where a
Speaker 1: simple yes, yes, life is always worth living would actually
Speaker 1: not provide that same type of power. I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, And it seems like his life really fundamentally
Speaker 1: changed once he came up with a realization. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: my first act of free will shall be to believe
Speaker 1: in free will. It seems like a lot changed for
Speaker 1: him after coming to that realization. I could hear in
Speaker 1: the back of my head some modern day neuroscientists having
Speaker 1: a conversation with him after saying that, and saying, well, actually,
Speaker 1: you had no free will, that you're going to believe
Speaker 1: in free will, you know from an ultimate perspective, because
Speaker 1: it was decided at the start of the Big Bang
Speaker 1: and all the walls of the universe are outside of control.
Speaker 1: And if you believe that, if you don't, if you're
Speaker 1: a non if you're if you're you know, as long
Speaker 1: as you're like not a duellist, then there's really no etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: What would he say in response to all the modern
Speaker 1: day neuroscientists who kind of reduced free will to the
Speaker 1: causal patterns of the universe going back to the Big Bang.
Speaker 1: It's a great question, I mean, and we oftentimes downplay
Speaker 1: James as a metaphysical thinker because pragmatism is famously anti metaphysical,
Speaker 1: but actually that's not the case. I mean, James had
Speaker 1: a view on what the universe was like, and it
Speaker 1: entailed and possibility, So I think it's a really good question.
Speaker 1: I think that James is a metaphysical thinker. I think
Speaker 1: that he believed against the determinists. He said that the
Speaker 1: universe is shot through with possibility and chance, and very famously,
Speaker 1: one of his students, l Alignman Cabot said, chance, metaphysical
Speaker 1: chance is always quote my chance. In other words, there
Speaker 1: are these openings, sort of call them spaces or opportunities
Speaker 1: that the universe affords. And this is a very sort
Speaker 1: of idealistic nineteenth century thought, and that I explore those
Speaker 1: possibilities at my own risk, but also at my own reward. Now,
Speaker 1: James argues for indeterminism, so he says that large chunks
Speaker 1: of our life are governed by habit, by mechanical necessity,
Speaker 1: but there are spaces for us to still explore our
Speaker 1: own free will. And in fact, the fact that the
Speaker 1: universe is set up by way of maybe's and a
Speaker 1: hypotheses and chances is how we as evolutionary beings came
Speaker 1: to have something like free will. And I think that
Speaker 1: he's getting that from his friend Csperse, who believes that
Speaker 1: Tuke or Taychism, as he calls it, is the sort
Speaker 1: of metaphysical position that chances are real in the world.
Speaker 1: Chance is real. Yeah, I mean when I mean I
Speaker 1: follow the modern day free will debates and philosophers that
Speaker 1: if you survey philosophers and you survey neuroscientist, there's a
Speaker 1: rift in terms of the belief, you know, between libertarian
Speaker 1: free will and all the different varieties. And I like
Speaker 1: William James, like you know, he I like a lot
Speaker 1: of things he said he was probably one of the
Speaker 1: true geniuses of the field of psychology as well as
Speaker 1: philosophy throughout the ages. There are a lot of things
Speaker 1: I like about him. But is he was a scientist,
Speaker 1: but he always left open this like possibility for the
Speaker 1: hidden order of the universe and like the unseen, And
Speaker 1: I love that shit. I mean I do. I like
Speaker 1: because I'm very spiritual myself. And I love the idea
Speaker 1: that he would used to turn off the lights in
Speaker 1: order to see if he could see the unseen. You know,
Speaker 1: where's the is the ghost in the room with me?
Speaker 1: You know that? Isn't that cool? That's cool? We need
Speaker 1: more of that kind of romantics. It's to me, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a there's a certain romancesm there. It's hard
Speaker 1: to explain what I mean by that, but I mean,
Speaker 1: I really I agree with you one hundred So. Oliver
Speaker 1: Wendell Holmes famously said that James would turn down the
Speaker 1: lights in the rooms so the miracles could happen. And
Speaker 1: what I think is really philosophically interesting and also psychologically interesting,
Speaker 1: is that James took the question of the subliminal as
Speaker 1: the primary question of psychology moving into the next hundred years.
Speaker 1: He says it, He says, says the question of the
Speaker 1: subliminal and the unconscious is a central question for the
Speaker 1: discipline of psychology and philosophy for the next hundred years.
Speaker 1: And he's getting that, at least in part from his
Speaker 1: Transcendentalist upbringing. I mean, he's the intellectual godson of Ralf
Speaker 1: Walden Emerson, you know, the big transcendent eyeball, the all
Speaker 1: seeing eye. And James suspects, along with Emerson, that we
Speaker 1: live most of our lives half asleep, that we don't
Speaker 1: see things clearly, that we see the world through glass darkly,
Speaker 1: and that the point of living Alea Threau is to
Speaker 1: wake up, to come to to reach the end of
Speaker 1: Walden and say that the point of living is to
Speaker 1: see the dawn. James James was one hundred percent into
Speaker 1: that position, and I think that in part, that's his
Speaker 1: interest in the unseen order. Yeah, it's funny because you
Speaker 1: have this part in your book where you link it
Speaker 1: to college kids and they're talking about wokeness. But I
Speaker 1: actually don't think that he would be very woke. If
Speaker 1: he was. I mean, he would care about discrimination all that,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, but I think he means something
Speaker 1: different about what he means waking up, because I think
Speaker 1: that what I love about about what he brings to
Speaker 1: the table with this is my own interest in being
Speaker 1: able to see the hidden possibilities in others, like the
Speaker 1: potential that people have. You know, he has this beautiful quote.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to butcher by trying to remember, but
Speaker 1: like dafts are checked and you know what's the quote.
Speaker 1: He's like, we're capable of so much more, you know,
Speaker 1: than we realized. And I love that idea as well,
Speaker 1: and I love that he applied his kind of mysticism
Speaker 1: to human potential as well. You know, like maybe the
Speaker 1: kid ostensibly and even being measured by our instruments doesn't
Speaker 1: show the potential, but if we turn the lights down enough,
Speaker 1: you know, metaphorically, we give the metaphorical, we give the
Speaker 1: kid the opportunities. You know, maybe they will surprise us.
Speaker 1: It's really not all that together different than his other
Speaker 1: views about other things in life. I think James is
Speaker 1: interested in individual human potentials. He's always interested in second wins,
Speaker 1: these places where we think, oh, I can't go any further,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly something happens and you can. I mean,
Speaker 1: the varieties of religious experience is about transcendence, but it's
Speaker 1: not just about transcendence in a sort of religious sense,
Speaker 1: although it can also be transcendence in our religious sense,
Speaker 1: but it's also transcending the self imposed boundaries that we
Speaker 1: have in life. And we have so many of them
Speaker 1: that James says, do one thing that is difficult, okay,
Speaker 1: just no, do two things that are difficult every day,
Speaker 1: just for the practice of it. This is tran I mean,
Speaker 1: this is going beyond the self imposed boundaries that you
Speaker 1: have in life. I think that when it comes to
Speaker 1: the interpersonal world, I think James is pretty good on
Speaker 1: this as well. He says that we as human beings
Speaker 1: are prone to a what he calls a certain blindness
Speaker 1: and human beings which is I like to think about
Speaker 1: it as David Foster Wallace's comment that we are naturally
Speaker 1: self centered little beasts, and that all of our experience
Speaker 1: is filtered through my experience. It's my table, it's my
Speaker 1: desk lamp, it's my computer, it's my life, and so
Speaker 1: salience dictates that whatever is mine feels the most vivid
Speaker 1: and therefore the most important. And the blindness that we
Speaker 1: have in life comes in when we actually think we
Speaker 1: see someone else living their life and we can't actually
Speaker 1: understand why it might be significant to them, And that's
Speaker 1: I mean. James, in the essay on a Certain Blindness
Speaker 1: and Human Beings, says that he's driving along in the South,
Speaker 1: at least south to his Cambridge, Massachusetts, and sees a
Speaker 1: number of towns and houses that he could never imagine
Speaker 1: living in there, just too lowly, and then he realizes
Speaker 1: how incredibly both insensitive but also blind he is to
Speaker 1: the experience of others. And I think that that moment
Speaker 1: of humility is a really important one in James's corpus,
Speaker 1: and a really important one for readers of James. I agree.
Speaker 1: I agree. He says, our fires are damped, our drafts
Speaker 1: are checked, we are making use of only a small
Speaker 1: part of our possible mental and physical resources. The human
Speaker 1: individual thus lives far within his limits. He posis as
Speaker 1: powers of various sorts, which he habitually fails to use.
Speaker 1: And then there's the word habitually. He's obsessed with habits too, right,
Speaker 1: and like changing. He does believe in the potential for
Speaker 1: change through the use of habits of mind. He does,
Speaker 1: And I mean this is why he's fascinated with yoga
Speaker 1: in part, I think as well, because I mean yoga does.
Speaker 1: I mean the mind body dualism sort of breaks down,
Speaker 1: obviously both for James and the yoga practitioner, but also
Speaker 1: yoga creates habits in our mind and our bodies. But
Speaker 1: it's also about breaking habits, breaking certain routines, or getting
Speaker 1: in a rut and breaking out of that rut. And
Speaker 1: James famously he's talking to c Us Purse about this
Speaker 1: pretty famous essay of Purses called the Fixation of Belief.
Speaker 1: And the essay that Purs writes is about how does
Speaker 1: belief get fixed in our minds and our bodies and
Speaker 1: our societies. And James comes back and says, what I'm
Speaker 1: interested in is how believes, how belief is unfixed. How
Speaker 1: does it come, how does it come apart? How does
Speaker 1: it change? How does it grow? How does it morph quickly?
Speaker 1: And I think that's that's an interesting question for all
Speaker 1: of us. I think very interesting. I mean, these questions
Speaker 1: still don't have answers in science. It's not like I
Speaker 1: can point you to the that's all study, you know,
Speaker 1: But I love it. I love the things he would
Speaker 1: raise and postulate, especially his second win ideas she tried
Speaker 1: to tackle for a long time in his life. He wrote, once,
Speaker 1: it is evident that our organism has stored up reserves
Speaker 1: of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but they
Speaker 1: may be called upon. Deeper and deeper strata of combustible
Speaker 1: or explosable material discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by
Speaker 1: any one who probe so deep and repairing themselves by rest,
Speaker 1: as well as do the superficial strata. Most of us
Speaker 1: continue living unnecessarily near our surface. That's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: Near our surface? What is the What is the surface
Speaker 1: is the surface? Our consciousness is our surface. The things
Speaker 1: that we currently are and that we just keep repeating
Speaker 1: them over and over and over again. Maybe that's what
Speaker 1: he means by surface. Well, as opposed to like really
Speaker 1: testing the limits of our of what we could change
Speaker 1: in two. I don't know, I just riffing with you.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer. I think he means it
Speaker 1: in several different ways. One is, we live, according to James,
Speaker 1: and then also according to the transcendentalisms like Fuller and
Speaker 1: Emerson and Threa, we live our daily life in a
Speaker 1: sort of surface world, in the world of appearances. I
Speaker 1: mean this goes way back to the Platonic idea of
Speaker 1: the difference between semblance and reality. We just deal in surfaces,
Speaker 1: surfaces of people, and very rarely do we go deep
Speaker 1: with anyone, including ourselves. So that's one issue. The other
Speaker 1: issue I think has to do with consciousness, which is
Speaker 1: we very rarely are aware of everything that we could
Speaker 1: be aware of a we are only our angle of
Speaker 1: vision is severely restricted, and we have the tendency to
Speaker 1: confuse the immediate with the actually important. That which is
Speaker 1: most immediate to me is usually not the most ultimately
Speaker 1: important thing that I should be attending to. So I
Speaker 1: think there's that mistake. I also think that when it
Speaker 1: comes to surface, we very rarely ask about ourselves, what's inside,
Speaker 1: how things are making me feel how I am reacting.
Speaker 1: I know that we live in a fairly me centered world,
Speaker 1: but I think if we're honest with ourselves, we typically
Speaker 1: don't spend the time to ask ourselves about our own
Speaker 1: emotional state, about how things are affecting us honestly, in
Speaker 1: a sort of the unexamined life is not worth living sets.
Speaker 1: So I think those are at least three meanings of
Speaker 1: surface that we could go deeper. That's great. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you for doing a seance here with me and
Speaker 1: resurrecting William James. You're like the three meetings. How do
Speaker 1: you hell know what he means? I have no, So
Speaker 1: to be absolutely clear, I mean downstairs, I have the
Speaker 1: whole selection of James's journals from the Psychical Research Society
Speaker 1: that he helped found, and I mean he is he
Speaker 1: was one of the world's greatest ghostbusters, ghost hunters, and
Speaker 1: he was fascinated by the and the eccentricity of it,
Speaker 1: the mystery of it, the perhaps hoax of it. And
Speaker 1: he comes to the end of his life and he says,
Speaker 1: these wonders are not for human you know, are not
Speaker 1: are not meant to be sorted out, And so like
Speaker 1: maybe I can maybe channeling William James is also channeling
Speaker 1: the admission that like you just don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: his friend Alfred North Whitehead said, like, you know that
Speaker 1: after philosophy has run its course, the wonder remains that.
Speaker 1: So it's not supposed to extinguish it. I think James was.
Speaker 1: James was in there on that realization, absolutely absolutely. I
Speaker 1: also like this. Of course there are limits that trees
Speaker 1: don't grow into the sky, but the plain factor means
Speaker 1: that men the world over possess amounts of resource which
Speaker 1: only very exceptional individuals pushed to their extremes of use.
Speaker 1: So I love that. So just closing the circle on
Speaker 1: the second wind idea. So his pragmatism is it goes deep.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't just cover free will, but it
Speaker 1: also covers things like zest and authenticity, right what you know,
Speaker 1: like it goes deep, it does. And I mean the
Speaker 1: thing is is that James is such a he was
Speaker 1: called an adorable genius. He's such an adorable writer, such
Speaker 1: a good writer, that sometimes we miss how profound his
Speaker 1: thoughts are. I think, and the question of authenticity is
Speaker 1: central to James in a way that it's central to
Speaker 1: existentialists who we regard as real philosophers because they're so
Speaker 1: you know, serious and dark. And also to the Greeks
Speaker 1: who that we need to give an apollo geo or
Speaker 1: a good account of our life. I mean Thoreau says
Speaker 1: we need to improve the nick of time. James spent
Speaker 1: his entire life trying to figure out how to improve
Speaker 1: the nick of time. I mean his voluminous writings over
Speaker 1: at least three disciplines philosophy, psychology, religious studies, physiology. I
Speaker 1: mean this is an almost manic attempt to improve the
Speaker 1: nick of time and to sort himself out and to
Speaker 1: lay claim to something, to say, I my life is
Speaker 1: worth living. Okay? What makes He's obsessed with this phrase?
Speaker 1: What makes life significant? And his life bears it out.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the energy that this
Speaker 1: man put into living, I know you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: create the or make the biographical fallacy where you look
Speaker 1: at a person's life and interpret their philosophy according to it.
Speaker 1: I do it all the time, and I think you
Speaker 1: should because like the person behind the philosophy matters. And
Speaker 1: when you look at James's life, I think he might
Speaker 1: have been limited in a number of different ways. One
Speaker 1: has his blindness to race relations and socioeconomic disparity. He
Speaker 1: wasn't great on those things. But there are certain things
Speaker 1: about James's life that are deeply inspiring. One of them
Speaker 1: is the Zest. So okay, so first of all, I
Speaker 1: want to actually tell you about my friend David Yayden,
Speaker 1: who has a new book coming out on William James.
Speaker 1: I think you're really going to like. So I just
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you about that. I wanted to plug
Speaker 1: my friend David Aiden, he said. So David reached out
Speaker 1: to me and we just missed each other. Actually I
Speaker 1: was up in Vermont and he came into Harvard or
Speaker 1: you know, he was giving a talk at Cambridge and
Speaker 1: we were supposed to have dinner, but we just missed
Speaker 1: each other. Oh bummer. Well, maybe someday all three of
Speaker 1: us can hang out and get out over Willam James.
Speaker 1: But anyway, really looking forward to David's new book. It's
Speaker 1: going to be a great update William James ideas about religion,
Speaker 1: spirituality and transcendence. And speaking of which, let's let's talk
Speaker 1: about wonder and hope, you know, because I mean, my
Speaker 1: gosh and what like I said, in the one sense,
Speaker 1: you say a lot of really brutal, you're kind of
Speaker 1: savage in some places at about the reality of human existence.
Speaker 1: You know, on the one hand, like you say things
Speaker 1: like each of us suffers in our own unique hellholes
Speaker 1: according to Schoppenhower, But this is the isolating fact that
Speaker 1: each of us shares. But then you do get to
Speaker 1: the wonder and hope. You do get there. You do
Speaker 1: get there. You say, it is up to us to
Speaker 1: literally to make what It is up to us to
Speaker 1: literally make what we will of life. The existence of
Speaker 1: chance makes the difference between a life of which the
Speaker 1: keynote is resignation and a life to which the keynote
Speaker 1: is hope. So let's double click on that sentence right there.
Speaker 1: What do you mean about that? And how can we
Speaker 1: influence that chance a little bit? Do we have an
Speaker 1: control over that? Yeah? I mean, this is a deep question,
Speaker 1: and actually it has become a more and more personal
Speaker 1: question since I've written the book. I mean, six days
Speaker 1: after the book was published, I was running on a
Speaker 1: treadmill and hopped off the treadmill, laid down on the floor,
Speaker 1: and went into cardiac arrest and was shot back to life.
Speaker 1: And taken to a Tough's medical center, where I was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with a congenital heart defect and given bypasser or
Speaker 1: I went through bypass surgery. And it doesn't get more dismal,
Speaker 1: Or maybe it does get more dismal, but I hadn't
Speaker 1: experienced anything more dismal than the experience right before I
Speaker 1: left this world. I mean, the feeling of dying is
Speaker 1: not a one to mess around with, but the feeling
Speaker 1: of coming back is quite remarkable, and it clarified things
Speaker 1: that I had written into the book that I had
Speaker 1: only theoretically understood, but now at least well I might
Speaker 1: not understand them. I think I experienced something of them.
Speaker 1: It's that when you hit rock bottom, or when you disappear,
Speaker 1: or when you when you encounter your ownfinitude or your
Speaker 1: own mortality, there is you have a choice about how
Speaker 1: you respond to that. And that choice has to do
Speaker 1: with the difference between resignation and hope and also isolation
Speaker 1: and connection, and those those choices are not fully yours,
Speaker 1: but you can lean it. I think about them as
Speaker 1: lead in the direction of either. In my case, I
Speaker 1: really I think I lean toward hope and connection, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't make me some sort of existential hero. I
Speaker 1: think lots and lots of people have done this and
Speaker 1: have experienced something like this that in the darkest moments
Speaker 1: of their lives they have you know. Victor Frankel says,
Speaker 1: between stimulus and response, there's this little space and we
Speaker 1: get to respond to our situation. Everything can be taken
Speaker 1: from a man, but one man, woman, person, but one thing,
Speaker 1: and it's the ability to respond and lean into something
Speaker 1: like hope, expectation, and connection rather than you can hear me,
Speaker 1: you can hear it in my voice, instead of leading,
Speaker 1: instead of leaning the opposite direction in terms of resignation,
Speaker 1: alienation and yeah, yeah, wow, I mean that's really powerful.
Speaker 1: My favorite psychologist is Abraham Maslow, and he talked about
Speaker 1: the post mortem life. He thinks everyone should have one.
Speaker 1: He had something similar happened to him, that happened to you,
Speaker 1: and he said, from that point forward, he just saw
Speaker 1: such more transcendent possibilities in the universe that he never
Speaker 1: saw before. Everything became more special and more precious. And
Speaker 1: he argued everyone should be able to have a post
Speaker 1: mortem life. To die, and he said everyone should be
Speaker 1: able to die and come back. What's interesting is that
Speaker 1: this relates very closely to the James family. I mean
Speaker 1: the mystic that Emmanuel Swedenborg had what's called a vast
Speaker 1: station where everything is wiped out. You just feel your
Speaker 1: entire self sort of completely wiped out, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you feel something toward a divine or another.
Speaker 1: And Emanuel Swedenborg was basically the patron saint of the
Speaker 1: James household. I mean, Henry was Henry James was a Swedenborgian.
Speaker 1: William James was pretty close. And this feeling of being
Speaker 1: there's this expression in varieties of varieties of religious experience
Speaker 1: where James says, there is an experience known to religious
Speaker 1: men and women where they quote be as nothing in
Speaker 1: the water spouts of God. And that experience of being
Speaker 1: as nothing in the water spouts of God is not necessarily,
Speaker 1: I would contend, just for the religiously observant. It's for
Speaker 1: anyone who experiences something of the dissolution of the self
Speaker 1: and then the reconstituting of the self in what Maslow
Speaker 1: would call a post mortem life or a life after death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some people say they get that from like psychedelics.
Speaker 1: You know that that experience for them helps them kind
Speaker 1: of dissolve the self in a certain way that they
Speaker 1: see the world differently afterwards. Have you experimented with psychologists? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can. I'm going to speak to something
Speaker 1: that I very rarely speak about. But I mean, many
Speaker 1: of my books are memoir and they hiking with Nietzsche
Speaker 1: and American Felosy a love story, and that life was
Speaker 1: lived with a woman who I'm no longer married to,
Speaker 1: and who the dissolution of that marriage had had something
Speaker 1: to do with psychedelic use. And I think so the
Speaker 1: answer to your question is have I experienced psychedelics indirectly
Speaker 1: at least? And it is the case that it changes
Speaker 1: people's lives. I mean, Poland Michael Polland is not off
Speaker 1: the mark when he talks about about that. Similarly, I
Speaker 1: was recently recently talking to Bessel vendor Clo the body
Speaker 1: keeps the score, the author of a Body keeps the score,
Speaker 1: and and he's become more and more interested in the
Speaker 1: relationship between psychedelic you know, psychedelic treatment and the treatment
Speaker 1: of trauma. And I think James would have been interested
Speaker 1: in this, would have been interested in this work. Now
Speaker 1: I think that all of those comments might be true,
Speaker 1: but I think that there's a danger in the dissolution
Speaker 1: of the self as well, because it's it's what mystics
Speaker 1: used to call pre list. It's a confusion between absolute
Speaker 1: narcissism and communing with the absolute. And there's again it's
Speaker 1: pre prelest p r e l E s T. And
Speaker 1: this experience of the dissolution the self and then connecting
Speaker 1: with something else. I think that there is a confusion.
Speaker 1: There is a potential confusion that's always present about prioritizing
Speaker 1: your experiences and your transcendental experiences over the lives of others.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a concern that I've harbored for
Speaker 1: a long time. I mean, I'm kind of curious since
Speaker 1: you just since we're riffing, I'm curious what you think
Speaker 1: about that in terms of when for those individuals who
Speaker 1: claim transcendental experiences in the religious or spiritual sense, do
Speaker 1: you always do see that there is a temptation to
Speaker 1: air morally, to air in a self centered way, to
Speaker 1: air on the side of narcissism rather than connection. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually wrote a Scientific American article on spiritual narcissism
Speaker 1: and try to delineate the difference between what psychologists have
Speaker 1: found the I'm enladened in your not effect versus what
Speaker 1: a spiritual what spiritual, what authentic spiritual growth looks like,
Speaker 1: which is more of a of a deepening of humility,
Speaker 1: of awareness of your fallibility and the complexities of being human.
Speaker 1: So I absolutely agree with that and think that we
Speaker 1: can really easily fall prey to the imun lane and
Speaker 1: you're not effect because yeah, William James talked about this, right.
Speaker 1: He talked about how we're prone to to our ego
Speaker 1: in spirituality, you know, but the ego is really what
Speaker 1: it is that we're developing, not the spirituality, but the ego.
Speaker 1: And he says you can kind of apply that to
Speaker 1: any field anything that you become you master or you
Speaker 1: become good at, including in the spiritual demean you can
Speaker 1: be prone to this bias to sort of think you're
Speaker 1: better than others because you've mastered it. I think James,
Speaker 1: even though he was called it an adorable genius, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the amount of self examination m kept his
Speaker 1: potential arrogance in check. And I really appreciate that in James,
Speaker 1: and also at least the attempt to understand that fallibility
Speaker 1: is our own and that fallibility is what we see
Speaker 1: out in the world. So while he doesn't, well, while
Speaker 1: he never really liked Arthur Schopenhauer and his studies and pessimism,
Speaker 1: I don't think James would have disagreed that that we
Speaker 1: are suffering, that we are suffering beings, and that to
Speaker 1: see our fallibility clearly is to regard each other as
Speaker 1: what Chopenhauer calls companions and misery, which when I say
Speaker 1: that to my students, they're like, oh man, what a bummer.
Speaker 1: We're just companions and misery. But maybe that's some of
Speaker 1: the best solace that humans like us can have. I
Speaker 1: mean that I don't feel like that's that's as optimistic
Speaker 1: as it could be, because it's true each of us
Speaker 1: suffers in our own uniskelholes. But we're not always suffering
Speaker 1: in a hellhole, right like we can't. We sometimes, ever,
Speaker 1: just bond over having a good day, I wonder. So
Speaker 1: my concern about that move and it's not just that
Speaker 1: I'm the dark, dark philosopher who says that we're sacks
Speaker 1: of meat, because I mean, I like bonding over commonalities
Speaker 1: as well, and we all get a concert. We can
Speaker 1: all go to a concert. Or we can all have
Speaker 1: a soda together or whatever. Yeah, like, so, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's there's nothing wrong with that, except I think logically speaking,
Speaker 1: it's almost necessarily exclusionary. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is that the loyalties that we have that govern our
Speaker 1: camaraderie are often times exclusive ones, and I think that
Speaker 1: will suffer is not like the membership status you want
Speaker 1: to have in life, like, that's not it is, however,
Speaker 1: the membership status that we all share, which is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I'm like, yeah, at least it's
Speaker 1: not exclusionary. Yeah, I hear that. I like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like the idea of bonding over are you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that human existence is suffering. And I also
Speaker 1: try to make the point that suffering is not a competition,
Speaker 1: because some people kind of do treat it that way.
Speaker 1: So I agree, I agree with that for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean I tend to just you know, I work in
Speaker 1: the field of positive psychology and even its psychologies. I
Speaker 1: also like the potential for people to bond over transcendent experiences,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I get into this argument with
Speaker 1: James Powalski, who's a positive psychologist at Penn and also
Speaker 1: at James in all the time. I mean, and we
Speaker 1: have slightly different angles on James. I mean, I read
Speaker 1: James as an ext stentialist, and I think James Polski
Speaker 1: does too to some extent. But it's it's really a
Speaker 1: bit more. It's hopeful without tearing with the darkness. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that's what I worry about, and I think James. I
Speaker 1: don't know what James would want. Actually, I have no idea,
Speaker 1: but I know that when I'm reading James's writings when
Speaker 1: he tarries with the darkness, when he says when he
Speaker 1: tells the story of having a nightmare and envisioning this
Speaker 1: epileptic in an asylum and looking, you know, in his nightmare,
Speaker 1: thinking oh my gosh, this is me. This is that
Speaker 1: here I here I and sorrow sit. Those are the
Speaker 1: moments that have saved my life. Frankly, I mean, those
Speaker 1: are the moments where I say, I'm not alone. James
Speaker 1: lived this really amazing life and he's still had these
Speaker 1: feelings and it's okay to have these feelings. It's not
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with me that I'm not completely unmoored
Speaker 1: and by myself, and I think James is giving us
Speaker 1: those really useful breadcrumbs, saying it's okay, I'm here too,
Speaker 1: I've gone through it, And then I trust him when
Speaker 1: he says things like, I mean, I'm thinking about his
Speaker 1: love of Walt Whitman, who he does see as a
Speaker 1: type of like healthy minded, strong I contain multitudes and
Speaker 1: he admires Whitman, and I'm like, now, I believe you
Speaker 1: that somebody like me who has a kind of sick
Speaker 1: soul could aspire to becoming what he calls twice born,
Speaker 1: in other words, to become a more healthy, well adjusted,
Speaker 1: positive person. I believe him more. Yeah, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: noticed that a lot of philosophers tend to have a
Speaker 1: melancholic personality disposition anyway, And I'm wondering what the chicken
Speaker 1: and egg is here? Is it that because the thing is,
Speaker 1: I mean, what you focus on in your life kind
Speaker 1: of influences, I mean, that is your life. Is it
Speaker 1: the case that philosophers tend to become more melanchock once
Speaker 1: they do foster, because they start seeing reality more clearly?
Speaker 1: Or is it that they're writing about certain darker aspects
Speaker 1: of humanity because their melancholic disposition causes them. And this
Speaker 1: is my personality psychologist Lens asking this question, you are
Speaker 1: asking the question that I have since my heart surgery.
Speaker 1: I have been asking it every day because when my
Speaker 1: readers send me stuff, and they have recently, they say,
Speaker 1: where's the writing, What's happened? You've stopped, Like you haven't
Speaker 1: published anything since William James came out, Like what's going on?
Speaker 1: And I write back to them and I say, I'm
Speaker 1: writing because I'm happy. And they think they're like what,
Speaker 1: And I say, and I'm not sure, as you say,
Speaker 1: what the direction of causation is? Okay? Is it because
Speaker 1: I'm happy because I'm not writing, or is it because
Speaker 1: I'm not writing because I'm happy. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, and I've not told others that if
Speaker 1: you read American Philosophy and a Love Story and Hiking
Speaker 1: with Nietzsche, there's a dark line in those books, and
Speaker 1: there's even a dark line in Six Soles Healthy Minds.
Speaker 1: And since heart surgery, I have not been able to
Speaker 1: bring myself to write about the stuff again, primarily because
Speaker 1: I'm not living it. I mean, I'm remarried with two
Speaker 1: kids and two crazy dogs and a big, robust life.
Speaker 1: And the back to the matter is just that sometimes
Speaker 1: philosophy can save your life from you know, taking the
Speaker 1: final exit, and it has for me. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what I That's what I've talked about in six Holes
Speaker 1: Healthy Minds. The philosophy can also deepen depression, deep in melancholy,
Speaker 1: and initiate existential crises that aren't otherwise there. So who
Speaker 1: I mean. My wife Kathleen says to me, She goes,
Speaker 1: when do you think you're going to write again? I said,
Speaker 1: when I can, when I can figure out how to
Speaker 1: write about something happy. I love that. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: love your honesty and I love your your examination. You know.
Speaker 1: I would argue though, that the examined life is a
Speaker 1: good life up to a point. I think one can
Speaker 1: examine life too much. I'm not saying you do that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you do that, but I think, like
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, I'm just making a general point, which
Speaker 1: is there's such a thing as overthinking. Sometimes it's good
Speaker 1: to just get out there and just get into the
Speaker 1: stream of life. Yeah. And I also think that writing
Speaker 1: philosophy in a particular confessional memoir genre lends itself to
Speaker 1: a type of naval not na. It's not exactly navel gazing.
Speaker 1: It's more like you end up living in order to
Speaker 1: write rather than living in order just to live. And
Speaker 1: it requires you to step outside yourself so often and
Speaker 1: in order to write about it that remaining present is
Speaker 1: very difficult. And so even the materials that I'm going
Speaker 1: to publish in the future, they're not going to be
Speaker 1: memoir based, because life is to be lived. And I mean,
Speaker 1: let me just rephrase, I'm not going to be so
Speaker 1: self excruciatingly self examining or personal like those days are past.
Speaker 1: So never say never, Never say never. Let's end on
Speaker 1: the note of the loving cup. Can you tell our
Speaker 1: listeners a little bit about what is the loving cup?
Speaker 1: Why does it matter? Yeah? Of course. So James was
Speaker 1: a philosopher, obviously, and he believed that all philosophy really
Speaker 1: is is a form of teaching, that philosophy that cannot
Speaker 1: be taught or is not to be taught really is
Speaker 1: a philosophy. And he was a brilliant lecturer at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and he taught Harvard's most popular at the time class,
Speaker 1: which was basically Philosophy one oh one or Philosophy and
Speaker 1: the Meaning of Life. Okay, And when he finished his
Speaker 1: career at Harvard. The lecture hall was absolutely packed. It
Speaker 1: was the fullest lecture hall that had that Harvard had seen.
Speaker 1: And at the end of it, after the ovation, his
Speaker 1: students brought a loving cup up to him. A loving
Speaker 1: cup is basically like a trophy, and it was a
Speaker 1: trophy for his teaching. And this trophy that James received
Speaker 1: was then placed in Robin's Library, which is the philosophy
Speaker 1: library at Harvard, and over the years it had been
Speaker 1: sort of pushed back into the stacks of books, and
Speaker 1: it was hiding back in a cupboard when I was
Speaker 1: rooting around when I was a post doc there, I
Speaker 1: was rooting around and found this cup and I pulled
Speaker 1: it out and it said in honor of teaching Philosophy nine,
Speaker 1: which was this last delivered dedicated to Professor William James.
Speaker 1: And then in Greek it said translated it was a
Speaker 1: Protagoras quotation, and it said man is the measure of
Speaker 1: all things. Yeah, A couple thoughts come to my mind
Speaker 1: when I found it. One is that philosophy needs to
Speaker 1: remind itself that it is a form of teaching, that
Speaker 1: it's a very humane pursuit, and that this loving cup
Speaker 1: was probably one of the most valuable items in Robin's library,
Speaker 1: and it shouldn't have just been sort of set aside.
Speaker 1: Another thought that I have is that James believed, not
Speaker 1: in a sort of radical relativistic way, but in a
Speaker 1: way that could be respected that human beings are the
Speaker 1: measures of things, and maybe not that humans are the
Speaker 1: measure of all things, which is not to say that
Speaker 1: all things can be measured. Okay, it's just that we,
Speaker 1: you know, we measure things. We give life its meaning
Speaker 1: and the question is life worth living? Maybe it depends
Speaker 1: on the liver, It's up to us. That's a way
Speaker 1: of interpreting that protect quote. And a last thought was
Speaker 1: that that quote man is the measure of all things
Speaker 1: had been a candidate to be inscribed on the side
Speaker 1: of Emerson Hall, which holds the philosophy department at Harvard,
Speaker 1: but instead they picked something from the Bible, which basically
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get the quote exactly, but it
Speaker 1: says you better, you better work for God, and that
Speaker 1: was the quote that was chosen. But I thought that
Speaker 1: it was beautiful that William James's cup had that inscription,
Speaker 1: because I think James really understood it in a way
Speaker 1: that deserves to be remembered today. Oh my god, that's
Speaker 1: so cool that you found it and it was like
Speaker 1: it wasn't even prominently displayed now, John Keg, I love
Speaker 1: your work, I really do, and love your books, and
Speaker 1: even if though you're not writing memoirs anymore, the ones
Speaker 1: you have written will still impact a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it coming to my podcast today and
Speaker 1: and talking through lots of these kinds of issues with me.
Speaker 1: And these are only the most important issues of human existence.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much and wish you all the best.
Speaker 1: I look forward to reading your more positive stuff later on.
Speaker 1: I look forward to reading your future books as well.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Oh thanks, thanks so much. It's been a
Speaker 1: real honor and pleasure, wonderful. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at Thusycology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also
Speaker 1: put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
Speaker 1: page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind,
Speaker 1: brain behavior, and creativity.