WEBVTT - David Eagleman 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.400 And my grandfather was born in three. I had a 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:10.280 proper Victorian for a grandfather. So my grandchild was born 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:14.680 eighteen seventy nine. What. Yeah, he was fifty years old 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:16.840 when he had my father, and my father was getting 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:19.960 close to fifty when he heard me, that's bananas. That 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.200 was really interesting being taught to grow tomatoes by a 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.920 ninety seven year old grandpa. And my mother was always 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:28.280 working jokes about are you sure girls are allowed to 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:38.120 grow tomatoes? Hello, I'm mini driver. Welcome to Many Questions 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:42.280 Season two. I've always loved Pruce's question that it was 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:46.600 originally an nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:49.960 each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.560 players true nature. It's just the scientific method really. In 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:57.600 asking different people the same set of questions, you can 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.360 make observations about which truths appear to be universal. I 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.920 love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.959 these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater 0:01:08.080 --> 0:01:11.200 depths would be revealed if I ask these questions as 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:15.560 conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.240 different disciplines. So I adapted prus questionnaire, and I wrote 0:01:19.280 --> 0:01:22.200 my own seven questions that I personally think a pertinent 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:25.119 to a person's story. They are when and where were 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.520 you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:32.920 What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.720 question would you most like answered? What person, place, or 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.640 experience has shaped you the most? What would be your 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:42.360 last meal? And can you tell me something in your 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:46.040 life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:50.480 gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:53.000 am honored and humbled to have had the chance to 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:55.760 engage with. You may not hear their answers to all 0:01:55.840 --> 0:01:59.360 seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.360 question felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:09.200 or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:14.040 today is the neuroscientist and author David Eagleman. I'm not 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:16.800 sure I've ever had a really long conversation with a 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.119 polymath before, but you sure don't forget it when it's over, 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.320 because you know, you keep waking up thinking about things 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:26.880 they said, and expands everything from quantum of spirituality to 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:31.919 philosophy to neuro Law and Science to coffee in I Hop, 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.880 David writes about the brain and how it constructs a perception, 0:02:37.040 --> 0:02:40.079 and how different brains do so differently, and how much 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:44.000 that matters for society. He is, among many other things, 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:46.960 the executive director of the Center for Science and Law, 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:49.320 which is a nonprofit that sets out to improve the 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.640 legal system by importing our knowledge about the human brain, 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:58.400 which then gives options for rehabilitation beyond mass incarceration. He's 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:01.040 written tons of books, and you will read and be 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.360 astonished by all of them. He said something that I 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:09.440 think about a lot. He said he was interested in 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.519 exploring the vastness of our ignorance. And he said to 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.760 this kind of interest and excitement and without judgment of 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:21.600 our human brains, which he also described, and I'm paraphrasing 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.639 as the three pound meat machine who lives in the 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:29.040 dark and basically runs everything. I hope you enjoy listening 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:40.280 to David's brain. What relationship, real or fictionalized, de finds 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:42.040 love for you? I think there are two ways to 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.120 think about that. One is how we feel about the 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:47.760 love for our children. So if you think about Cormick 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:50.640 McCarthy's The Road, for example, you know, it's a post 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.240 apocalyptic world after nuclear war, and this father does everything 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.120 in his power just to save his son, just to 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.480 do everything you can to protect his son and keep 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:01.520 him alive. And of course there are there are many 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:04.480 stories like this life is Beautiful Roberto Bernini Amy getting 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.120 the title right of that one. Yeah, when he puts 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:08.680 him in the bin at the end, Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:10.920 He's in a concentration camp with his son and he 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:13.320 does everything you can to protect his son. So that's 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:15.320 a kind of love that now that I'm a father, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:19.039 is very meaningful to me. As for romantic love, I 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:22.240 think that would change each year of my life for me, 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:24.560 which is to say, when we're younger, we all take 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:27.600 these great romance fantasies to represent love, and as you 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.480 get older, more realism seeps in. So I've been married 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:33.200 for twelve years now, and I appreciate now the way 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.320 that real relationships are complex and people change over different 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.760 time scales, as life changes in his career, opportunity to change. 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:43.120 And I just recently re saw rewatched Fiddler on the Roof, 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:45.080 you know, and he says, have you asked his wife? 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:47.240 You know? Do you love me? And she says, do 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:49.640 I what and so? And you know, they realized that 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:54.000 the romantic notions can't capture it. But other notions, uh, 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:55.680 you know, what they do for each other, how they 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.200 demonstrate their bond to one another. This does capture something important. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.960 Do you think that the romantic love, the faith based love, 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.120 service based love, the love of our children? Do you 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:09.159 think that the route that it's erroneous that we have 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.880 the same word for it, because there are myriad ways 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:17.520 to love, right? Yeah. Raymond Carver has a short story 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:19.800 called what We talked About When we talk about Love, 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:21.800 and I've always it's a great short story, but I've 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:24.800 always loved the title as well, because it's about the 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:27.200 complexity of it, and like so many words in our language, 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.599 there's just too much semantic weight that that word is 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:32.039 trying to hold, because in fact, it is composed of 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:36.080 many different things. Yeah, exactly, It's composed of so many things, 0:05:36.279 --> 0:05:40.000 and which of those things matters to us that changes 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.320 through the years. You know, my father, before he died, 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.000 was in one of these care homes. So I met 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:47.440 some of the other people on his hallway, much older 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:49.600 men and women who were there, and I think they 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.200 still cared about love, but it was something so different 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:54.159 for them. It wasn't about the you know, sort of 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.320 young sexy thing, it was about something else. Yeah, definitely. 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:00.880 It's really I'm fascinated by the different permutations of it, 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.800 of devotion, and of the way in which people love differently, 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.159 when the love that they have with their version of God, 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.320 or with animals or with something that they do, how 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:17.080 they love romantically changes directly depending on what their relationship 0:06:17.160 --> 0:06:19.360 with that sort of outsourced love, as it were, the 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:21.680 love that we don't really talk about. I always think 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.000 of love as romantic. I think lots of people do. 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.120 But yeah, that's right. And the other thing about love is, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:29.960 you know, obviously it goes into directions. So we all 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.240 want to get love. We want to receive love, love 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.080 in various ways, including from our dogs and so on. 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:36.640 But we want to be good to the people that 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.560 we care about and love them well. But it's hard, right, 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:42.279 because we're made up of all these different neural networks 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.479 that all have different drives and care about different things. 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.360 And so sometimes you're feeling angry, and sometimes you're feeling 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.640 distracted by work, and sometimes you're feeling whatever, and so 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.680 you know, we're constantly finding ourselves in situations where we 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.160 don't behave the way that we would like to. One 0:06:56.160 --> 0:06:58.479 of the books that I'm writting right now has to 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.440 do with something called the Ulysses contract, which is how 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.320 you can make a deal with yourself in time to 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:08.240 constrain your behavior by doing something right now that essentially 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:10.280 puts you in a contract so that you'll behave better 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.720 in some future situation. This is what Ulysses did when 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:14.880 he lashed himself to the mask. He knew that the 0:07:15.000 --> 0:07:17.240 sirens song would tempt him just like any mortal man, 0:07:17.240 --> 0:07:19.400 any crash in the rocks. So what he did is 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.640 the Ulysses of sound mind lashed himself to the mass 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.640 so that the future Ulysses couldn't behave badly. And I 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.200 find this a really interesting concept about the things that 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:32.320 we do to make sure that we don't behave badly 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.520 the future. This is this absolutely fascinating carry on carry on. Well, 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:38.000 you know. One example is if you're trying to get 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:40.360 over some addiction, like you know, alcoholism, what you do 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:42.280 is you clear all the alcohol out of your house 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:45.560 so that on a you know, festive Saturday night or 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:47.360 a lonely Sunday, night or something you're not going to 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.440 go in. Even if you think, oh, I'm sure I 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:51.520 won't drink this anymore, you get rid of it. That's 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.200 the Ulysses contract or, you know, for drug addicts when 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:55.720 of the first things they're taught when they're trying to 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:57.680 break this is never walked around with more than twenty 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:00.240 dollars in your pocket, because at some point was going 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:02.080 to come up to you and offer to sell you drugs, 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:03.840 and you'll be tempted and then you'll give in. So 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:06.240 there are many things that we do to make sure 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:08.520 that we can, you know, make a choice now that 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:12.160 will pay off to keep us acting consistently with our 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.680 long term decision making. I mean, I think I could 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.680 definitely just put a big piece of tape over my 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:23.000 mouth and that would be my Ulysses contracts sorted. Future 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:25.880 me is never going to say the stuff that I 0:08:25.920 --> 0:08:28.400 am thinking that I know is going to cause trouble 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:30.600 because I've got a massive piece of tape. And maybe 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:32.880 you could, like TM your name. It could be like 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:42.040 David Eagleman Ulysses tape. I would buy that ship. But 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:45.240 that requires a modicum of self knowledge that most people 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:48.000 are not interested in interrogating because they don't want to 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:49.920 think that there is something fundamentally wrong with them that 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.440 it's going to affect their situation now much less in 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:55.160 the future when the mermaids are singing and calling you 0:08:55.200 --> 0:08:58.840 into the ocean. Were so tender and we're so lost 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.200 as people. I mean, I love that you write these 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.480 books that really do act as guide posts, because that's 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:08.360 what I think they are. And I'm constantly looking for 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:12.840 signs and signed posts because it is so fragile and tender, 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.120 and that you know that you're writing a book for that. 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.120 But I feel for I feel for all of us, 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:20.000 myself included, going I just I wonder how deep I 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.680 can go into who I am to know how I 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.640 could save myself from myself. Yes, exactly. So, when it 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:31.400 comes to this issue about self interrogation and really trying 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:33.280 to understand who we are, one of the hardest things 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.640 to see is the way that we come off to 0:09:36.679 --> 0:09:39.080 other people. Because in fact, this is what one of 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:41.200 my other books is and I'm writing right now. It's 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.000 called Empire of the Invisible, and it's all about what's 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.000 going on in politics right now. Specifically, it's asking why 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:50.520 we each believe that we have the truth and we 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:54.160 see the truth so clearly, and everyone else is misinformed 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:56.600 or they're a troll or whatever it is. And if 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.760 I can only shout in all caps loud enough on Twitter, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.400 I could convince everyone that I am right. It's crazy 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.000 to me that everybody believes this at whatever part of 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.240 the political spectrum. And by the way, in terms of relationships, 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:11.240 we know tend to all believe this as well, which 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:13.679 is okay, Well, I I already know how to do relationships. 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:16.480 I'm I'm saying the right things all the time. Do 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:20.160 you think that that kind of the surety of that 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.560 empiricism that is so pervasive, is that human or is 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:27.640 that learned? Like is that hardwired into our brains? Is 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:32.840 that something that was useful once when we were discovering fire? Yeah, 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.360 it couldn't actually be any other way because the way 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.240 we build a model of the world. Remember, your brain 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.200 is locked in silence and darkness inside your skull, and 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.840 all it's trying to do is put together an internal 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:46.000 model of what is going on out there, which includes 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:48.160 other people and how other people behave and how they'll 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:49.960 react to what you say. And the thing is that 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:54.400 this internal model is inherently limited. It's only built up 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.520 from the little dribbles of data that you get in 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.680 during your years. And so the way the brain works 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.000 is it says, okay, look, I've got this data. I've 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:04.520 collected all this data. I know what is true, and 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:06.319 it's just built up from what we've taken in. Now, 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:08.600 by the way, I will say, we're probably better off 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.600 than we were historically because now we have, for example, 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.000 the printing press, and so we have movies and things 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:16.400 like that, and so you put all this together and 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.600 we're exposed to literature and two stories that are much 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.600 broader than our own experience. So that helps. But still, 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:24.800 I've only read a find a number of books in 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:26.760 my lifetime. I've always met a finite number of people, 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:29.840 and that has shaped my experience, just like your experiences 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:32.680 have shaped your brain. And so that's why given that data, 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:34.559 you say, Okay, I know what is true. This is 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.920 what is true. It's very very interesting. I'm really looking 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:47.160 forward to reading that book. What person, place, or experience 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:51.720 most altered your life? Well, interestingly, it's almost certainly my parents. 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.360 But the interesting part is that that feels invisible to us. 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:56.800 In other words, it's very hard to to see all 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:58.480 of the ways of what your parents shaped you, because 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:01.320 you knew nothing else. That was us the background furniture 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:03.199 of the world, and you grew up against that. So 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:06.320 that's certainly what has shaped me the most my parents. 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:09.120 But when I was in graduate school, my thesis advisor, 0:12:09.120 --> 0:12:12.920 ain him Read Montague, was unbelievably influential on me. He 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:14.960 you know, you come to an age when you're a 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.520 young person. I was like, I guess maybe when I 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:19.920 entered grad school, you know, you're just leaving your parents 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:22.480 home and you're looking for other people in the world. 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:25.280 And he was just a great person to really admire 0:12:25.320 --> 0:12:27.960 in so many ways. He was twenty points at ahead 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.800 of everybody, and he was a terrific athlete, unbelievably strong 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.000 and fast and so on, and and the key thing 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:36.640 is he gave me no charity. I mean, he spent 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:40.240 the entirety of grad school beating me up every day. 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:43.920 And that was really valuable because I think, actually, maybe 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:48.480 there's sometimes too much charity that happens because teachers are kind, 0:12:48.640 --> 0:12:50.760 or they're just too tired or whatever. So if you 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.760 get something right and you don't get a hundred percent right, 0:12:53.840 --> 0:12:56.319 no one really says anything. They don't expect anything more 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.640 from you, but read expected a hundred percent all the time, 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:01.760 every time. And that was probably the most valuable thing 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:03.520 that's happened in my life. And then I guess the 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:05.520 last thing I'd say is when I was a post doc, 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:06.960 one of the people I got to work with was 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.640 Francis Crick, who was the co discoverer of the structure 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:12.360 of DNA. That in my entire life since then, I've 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:15.800 not had another experience like that, because he was such 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:18.560 a special person in the sense that not only was 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:21.720 he essentially the giant of twentieth century biology, but he 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:23.480 didn't have a life like other people. He never had 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.440 to right grants and try to get a job as 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:27.920 a professor and whatever. So he just had this office 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.200 and he would read the scientific journals all day. And 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:31.560 I asked him, as I said, what are you looking 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:33.120 for when you're reading there? He said, I don't know. 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:36.439 But what he meant was he's just letting ideas come 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:39.080 to him, and he's writing letters scientists around the world 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:40.640 and saying, hey, why don't you do this experience? What 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:42.160 if you did this and this and this. He was 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:44.800 just a person who because he'd won a Nobel prize 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:47.720 as a young person, got to just be a giant 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.600 thinker his whole life and never had to deal with 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.840 the constraints that everyone else had too. Wow, how amazing, 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:57.360 How amazing that he was your teacher? Yeah, I do think. 0:13:57.480 --> 0:14:00.319 How have things teach you? Yes, we have a big 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:02.360 swell here in California at the moment. I don't know 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.440 if you're aware of yourself, but I am. And yesterday 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.760 I went out very excited and I just took so 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:13.680 many giant waves on my head and I was so bummed, 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:15.840 and I kind of I came in and I sat 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:17.760 on the beach and my friend I was like, oh, 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:19.760 it was just the worst. And my friend went, well, 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:21.560 do you know what you did? Like, do you know what? 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:23.040 Do you know what happened? I was like, well, yeah, 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:25.800 you know that first ten footer I was too far 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:27.760 ahead of it, and on the second one I was 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:29.840 just dealing with being piste off about the first one, 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:33.320 and the third one I was scared. And he was like, great, well, 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:35.600 now you can go back out and not do all 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.120 that ship that you just said, And so I did. 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:41.600 I went back out and I took another ten waves 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:54.960 on the head, but I did get one really amazing one. Yeah, 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:57.880 in your life, can you tell me about something that 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.080 has grown out of a personal disaster? Uh? Yeah. When 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:03.120 I was in the third grade, I fell off of 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:05.920 a roof of a house that was under construction, and 0:15:05.960 --> 0:15:08.560 I almost died. Um. I fell, you know, from the 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.160 roof and landed on the brick floor, face first, and 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.240 I shattered my nose. But I think that's part of 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:17.360 what made me a neuroscientist, because as I was falling, 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:21.200 I was, first of all, having completely calm, clear thoughts. 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.480 I was thinking about Alice in Wonderland and how this 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:25.280 must have been what it was like when she was 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.440 falling down the rabbit hole. And just before that, I 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:29.240 was thinking about, Okay, I wonder if I could still 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:31.720 grab for the roof, and and then I realized that's 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:33.600 tar paper and it's not gonna hold, and that's not 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.840 gonna work. And you know, eventually I just turned and 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.360 faced the bricks and hit. But the thing is that 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:40.440 the whole event seemed to take a very long time. 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:42.960 I still remember the thoughts very clearly because it was, 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:44.920 you know, a traumatic event. But when I got to 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:46.800 high school and I took physics. I realized that the 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:49.080 whole fall had taken point six of a second, and 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.640 I couldn't figure that out. I couldn't understand how this 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:53.480 thing that was so fast seemed to taking so long. 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:55.880 It's like, I'm really interested in our perception of the world, 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:58.720 and specifically in the perception of time and why things 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.600 seemed to go in slow motion during a life threatening event. 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.480 And I ended up, you know, growing up to become 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.000 a neuroscientist. And I studied that. I did these experiments 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.360 where I dropped people from a hundred and fifty foot 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.800 tall tower in free fall and they're caught in a 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.120 net below, going seventy miles an hour, and I was 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.200 able to measure aspects of their time perception on the 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:21.720 way down. How did you do that? What I did 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:23.480 is I built a device that went on their wrist 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.600 and it flashed information at them, visual information at them 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.320 at a certain rate, and depending on how fast they 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.120 were seeing the world, the question was would they be 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:36.200 able to essentially see in slow motion? Because everybody who's 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.160 ever gotten in a car accident says, oh, you know, 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:40.200 I was like so much. I saw the hood crumple 0:16:40.200 --> 0:16:42.040 in the rear view mirror fall off and the facial 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.400 expression the other person and so on, and so I 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:46.560 wanted to really test whether that was true, whether you 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:48.840 could see in slow motion, and it turned out that 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.680 you do not see in slow motion. It's all a 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:55.080 retrospective trick of memory, which is to say, when you're 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:59.040 in a life streating situation, you're laying down memories really densely. 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.080 Normally you're not laying down much memory at all. You know, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:03.720 I don't remember my drive home. It was just it 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:06.520 was nothing. But when something really matters, your brain writes 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:08.680 sound every single thing. So when you read that back out, 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:10.000 when you say what does happen? What does happened? What 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.880 just happened, you remember it in such detail that your 0:17:12.880 --> 0:17:15.480 brain estimates, I guess I was have taken longer. I 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:17.800 was taken a long time. So it's all about the 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:20.439 way memory is laid down. That's why we think the 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.360 event took place in slow motion, whereas in fact it's 0:17:23.400 --> 0:17:25.479 not slow motion. And I realized after I did these 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:27.800 experiments that it has to be that way, because you know, 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.880 coming back to the car accidents, which someone says, look, 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:32.960 I know it went slow motion because I saw these things, 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:35.760 you can just ask the person, Okay, look the passenger 0:17:35.840 --> 0:17:37.640 on the car seat next to you, who is screaming. 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.359 Did it sounds like the person was actually saying because 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:43.199 if not, then that means it was not going in 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.000 slow motion, and people have to allow that. Actually, they 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:48.320 didn't hear things in slow motion, so it's simply that 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.000 they remembered all the details, and so when their brain 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:53.359 makes an estimate, it says, I guess that must have 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.560 been five seconds, because I don't usually have that much memory. 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:58.280 Do you think that only a traumatic event can trigger 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:00.760 that kind of memory sequence, But because something that is 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:04.560 intensely pleasurable and amazing do the same thing? Yeah, good question. 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:06.679 It can be the intensely pleasurable and amazing. It's just 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.920 that's more rare. But it's an area of your brain 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:12.760 called the limbic system and the amygdala in particular, that's 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.960 involved and saying, hey, write this down. This is important, 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.040 and there aren't that many things that are super important 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:20.439 for us write down. Certainly traumatic events count, and certainly 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:23.119 super pleasurable events a count, But otherwise most of the 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:26.320 time you're amygla says, Okay, you know, same old stuff. 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:29.040 I'm not gonna bother keeping dense memories of this. That's 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:32.120 so funny because childbirth, I don't know what your partner 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.240 or wife experience, but it's so interesting. There is great 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:38.119 swathes of the thirty seven hours that I was in 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:42.080 labor that I remember so acutely and keenly, and they 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:46.000 involved pain, and they also involved laughter and hilarious things 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.239 that my mother and my sister said. And then there 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:50.920 must be ours. There were hours and hours and hours 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.560 that I know I was just stumbling through pain, but 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.719 I don't remember exactly. So it's it's interesting. There are 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:58.720 parts of that thirty seven hours that are carved out 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.400 in the boldest relief. So interesting. I've often wondered why 0:19:01.440 --> 0:19:04.160 my brain chose to remember those bits and not when 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.520 I was sitting in the shower, you know, singing, which 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:08.320 I know I did because they told me I did it, 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:11.199 but I don't really remember it. Yeah, Well, what happens 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:13.600 during pregnancies. You've got all these hormones that are going 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:15.840 up and down and bouncing all over the place, and 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.320 for better or worse, this just teaches us what biological 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:21.359 machines we are, which is to say, oh, when this 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.159 hormone's himes and then you're remembering and you can remember 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:26.479 that later, and then when this other thing is happening, 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.119 forget it. You're just not writing anything. Now it's amazing. Yeah, 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:33.520 it can be amazing and depressing and eye opening and 0:19:33.560 --> 0:19:35.960 so on. I think it's the most important thing for 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.719 self understanding, for understanding what is our experience in the world. 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:43.760