Speaker 1: Hey, keep it down. I'm trying to get hypnagogic. It's
Speaker 1: one more thing I'm strong. And we're talking about the
Speaker 1: hypnagogic state, Jack, which is of course idaho no, I kid.
Speaker 1: It's a state of mind, a state of being. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm talking in this voice.
Speaker 2: Say the word again.
Speaker 1: I think it's pronounced hypnagogic or gogic. Okay, hypna and
Speaker 1: then go og I see what do you think it's Greek? Right, hypnagogic.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyway. It's the twilight zone between sleep
Speaker 1: and wakefulness, and there is ample evidence that it's like
Speaker 1: the most creative space your brain can be in.
Speaker 2: Usually we're talking about usually when you're waking up.
Speaker 1: I guess, well, yeah, yeah, falling asleep, waking up, or
Speaker 1: in drifting between sleep and wakefulness. They give a couple
Speaker 1: of exams. Famously, Paul McCartney came up for the entire melody.
Speaker 1: He woke up with the entire melody for Yesterday in
Speaker 1: his head, and he I had not realized this. He
Speaker 1: jumped straight out of bed, sat down at his piano,
Speaker 1: picked out the melody on the keys, found the chords
Speaker 1: to go with a melody and created some holding phrases,
Speaker 1: famously scrambled eggs I think instead of yesterday, because he
Speaker 1: knew he won three syllables as holding phrases, as songwriters
Speaker 1: called them.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard that phrase anyway before. He wrote proper
Speaker 1: lyrics to fit the melody. But he was so weirded
Speaker 1: out by it. And I'd never heard this before, he recalled,
Speaker 1: and I quote Maca himself. For about a month, I
Speaker 1: went around to people in the music business and asked
Speaker 1: them whether they had ever heard it before. I thought
Speaker 1: if no one claimed it after a few weeks, then
Speaker 1: I could have it. But he was kind of surprised
Speaker 1: that it sprang from his mind and not memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I could see how you think I must
Speaker 2: have heard this somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's funny. This guy either doesn't know where,
Speaker 1: he doesn't mention it. And he's a British he's like
Speaker 1: the head of this psychology department at a British university.
Speaker 2: A lecture and he didn't mention that.
Speaker 1: Keith Richards wrote Satisfaction, the Riff and everything when he
Speaker 1: woke up in the middle of the night. He woke
Speaker 1: up in the morning to see that his entire tape
Speaker 1: from his cassette recorder was all the way toward the
Speaker 1: played end or recorded end, like it had run out
Speaker 1: of tape, and he's like, what the hell, why was
Speaker 1: my Why does my tape look like that? He rewound
Speaker 1: it and listened to it, and he had zero memory
Speaker 1: of playing.
Speaker 2: That riff in the middle of the night. That song
Speaker 2: would have never existed if he hadn't decided to record it.
Speaker 2: I am definitely learned that if you have, you know,
Speaker 2: those kind of moments, whether you're waking up or any time, man,
Speaker 2: you got to write them down or they're gone.
Speaker 1: That is one of the points they make Jack here
Speaker 1: a hundred potent, Right, you've done it. Myself thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll wake up, I'll remember this because it's so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know your only point isn't about songwriting, But
Speaker 2: I know most of the great songwriters talk about this
Speaker 2: idea that like the songs are in the you know,
Speaker 2: in the universe, and they show themselves and you've got
Speaker 2: to grab them when you get a chance to grab them,
Speaker 2: or that's your only option, which is a weird concept.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I was awake in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night when I wrote Sweet Home, Alabama.
Speaker 2: They stole it from me, those long haired bastards. But hippies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's okay. I know in my heart I
Speaker 1: wrote it. But anyway, So this hypnogogic state where you're
Speaker 1: like almost asleep and half awake, they think it uncouples
Speaker 1: your conscious mind from concerns and you know, worrying through
Speaker 1: the things you have to do, and just your worries
Speaker 1: and cares and that sort of thing, and your creative
Speaker 1: mind is able to just process more openly. They did
Speaker 1: the study in twenty twenty one where participants in a
Speaker 1: hypnogogic state were three times more likely to discover the
Speaker 1: hidden rule that could solve a mathematical problem. Now, I've
Speaker 1: never participated in that sort of mathematical riddle before, I
Speaker 1: can't really relate to it. But again, the people in
Speaker 1: that sleepy headed state were three times more likely to
Speaker 1: discover the hidden rule have it occur to them. Psychologists
Speaker 1: associate creativity with qualities such as openness to experience and
Speaker 1: cognitive flexibility. Others have suggested that creativity arises from coordination
Speaker 1: between the cognitive control network of the brain, which deals
Speaker 1: with planning and problem solving, and the default mode network,
Speaker 1: which is associating with daydreaming and mind wandering.
Speaker 2: I think it. It's got to have something to do
Speaker 2: with it. These thoughts about math or music or whatever
Speaker 2: ideas you have aren't being blocked out by the you know,
Speaker 2: the problems of the moment that you're dealing with all
Speaker 2: day long, obscuring them. Sure, yeah, before you wake up
Speaker 2: enough to think, oh god, it's Thursday. That's right, I
Speaker 2: have a test and I got to pick up my
Speaker 2: kid and all these different things.
Speaker 1: For a brief period, our mental boundaries are permeable, and
Speaker 1: there is chance a chance creative insights and ideals will
Speaker 1: flow through from the subliminal mind. Here's where I get
Speaker 1: even more militant, just for myself. I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: you people, just talking about myself and kind of.
Speaker 2: The people I care about, who I will lecture.
Speaker 1: This is why creativity is often associated with relaxation and idleness.
Speaker 1: When we relax, our conscious minds are usually less active.
Speaker 1: Often when we are busy or looking at a screen,
Speaker 1: our minds are full of chattering thoughts, so there is
Speaker 1: no space for creative insights to flow through. That is
Speaker 1: why meditation is strongly associated also with creativity. Perhaps more importantly,
Speaker 1: meditation quiets and softens the conscious minds, so we're more
Speaker 1: liable to receive inspiration from beyond it.
Speaker 2: That is so interesting.
Speaker 1: I have become an absolute advocate for boredom. Every single day.
Speaker 1: Make yourself bored. And if I'm standing wow, wow, that
Speaker 1: is scathing and hilarious, Michael, that is my highest grade
Speaker 1: for sarcastic hilarity. Every day, if I'm waiting for the
Speaker 1: doctor to come into the waiting room, I do not
Speaker 1: look at my phone. I look around at the posters
Speaker 1: trying to sell me on botox or a new knee
Speaker 1: or whatever the hell, and I intentionally don't occupy my mind.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do that every single day. And you know,
Speaker 1: you do it if you want, don't do it if
Speaker 1: you don't want to. But I really I've become a
Speaker 1: believer that you've got to let your mind unwind. And
Speaker 1: it takes a minute. Yeah, I mean, you're an advocate
Speaker 1: for meditation, Jack, and I'm.
Speaker 2: To say, every single day for twenty minutes. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: rarely miss, and if I do miss, at this point,
Speaker 2: it's almost intolerable. So I don't know what happened there,
Speaker 2: But if I miss a day, it is so freaking noticeable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I do it every day, usually right when we
Speaker 2: get off off the air, I go plug in my
Speaker 2: Tesla and sit there and I meditate for twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: I actually do this thing where I write down it's
Speaker 2: a suggestion from some people. Write down my fears and
Speaker 2: resentments on a piece of paper, handwritten, then meditate for
Speaker 2: twenty minutes. And huge part of my life at this point.
Speaker 1: I remember one year of your Christmas present to me
Speaker 1: was you wrote Joe's an asshole five hundred times in
Speaker 1: a raw and you put it in a nice frame
Speaker 1: and he gave it to me. And that was really
Speaker 1: that was nice.
Speaker 2: That was nice.
Speaker 1: You took the time special Christmas. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: very special Christmas, Michael.
Speaker 2: So I do the kind of meditation where you have
Speaker 2: a mantra you go back to. That's the only meditation
Speaker 2: that's ever worked for me. And I've tried every other
Speaker 2: kind that exists, and I just couldn't do it. But
Speaker 2: the mantra kind, I can.
Speaker 3: Is it one mantra or do you have? Does it change?
Speaker 2: It's one? They give it to you. You have to
Speaker 2: keep it secret, Okay, it's the whole thing sounds like
Speaker 2: a scam. Like I've talked about before, you have to
Speaker 2: pay to get your mantra, which just sounds scam olicious.
Speaker 2: All I know is that it's the only meditation that's
Speaker 2: ever worked, and I it's made my life better, so
Speaker 2: it was worth it.
Speaker 1: Mine is in a Gotta Da Vada, very old.
Speaker 2: Classic rock reference.
Speaker 1: The other thing I do is when I and this
Speaker 1: is an ironic thing to say, and I probably shouldn't,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of podcasts that I absolutely love.
Speaker 1: I know I always claim there's just one arse, but
Speaker 1: usually I try once a day when I'm walking Baxter,
Speaker 1: just to look at the trees, look at the leaves,
Speaker 1: look at the sky, look at the grass, just take
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: It calms me. Do you find it or so does
Speaker 2: a great podcast? Do you find it at all? Hard
Speaker 2: to do? Sometimes? Yes, yeah, So I have.
Speaker 1: To remind myself this is why you do this, and
Speaker 1: it's a good idea.
Speaker 2: My example of that I used to I've told this
Speaker 2: story many times, and this is way before podcasts stuff
Speaker 2: like that. When my mind was much slower, when I
Speaker 2: used to do a lot of motorcycle trips and I
Speaker 2: on the motorcycle. I didn't have any sort of mechanism
Speaker 2: for listening to music or podcasts or any of it.
Speaker 2: It was just my own brain. And I've done a
Speaker 2: lot of Katie. This is years ago. Nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 2: I rode to Sturgis, so I rode my Harley all
Speaker 2: the way out. I went through Kansas when up Sturgis
Speaker 2: came back in South Kona. I did forty five hundred
Speaker 2: miles total. That's a lot of miles. And when I
Speaker 2: would first start out on a trip, it was just
Speaker 2: painful to be there just with my thoughts, just like,
Speaker 2: how am I gonna do this all day long? Just
Speaker 2: staring at the road with my own thoughts. But once
Speaker 2: I'd get in the groove, I could go for hours
Speaker 2: easily without effort, and then I would go to sleep.
Speaker 2: In the next day, do another eight ten hours in
Speaker 2: the saddle effortlessly, but then like a couple of days
Speaker 2: of normal life. Next trip, first hour or so, just painful.
Speaker 2: Getting your mind to slow down to where you can
Speaker 2: do that is not easy. But once you do, once
Speaker 2: you get in that zone, you can do it. Farmers
Speaker 2: probably you know back in the day behind a mule
Speaker 2: for fifteen hours. Probably easy for him.
Speaker 1: Start thinking, Man, this mule's got a nice ass, so
Speaker 1: you gotta be careful.
Speaker 2: It cuts both way, and for people who would think
Speaker 2: that would be you know, there was nothing to do,
Speaker 2: life was so boring. How many of them needed anxiety
Speaker 2: medicine or wanted to hang themselves at the end of
Speaker 2: the day or whatever.
Speaker 1: Very few, Katie's missing The really beautiful point you're making
Speaker 1: here is my fault.
Speaker 3: It's because I'm a child, all right. That was funny.
Speaker 2: I have never ended a day of alone with my
Speaker 2: own thoughts, like on those motorcycle trips or camping or whatever,
Speaker 2: where I'm like anxious in wish I were dead. Yeah, ever, no,
Speaker 2: well said.
Speaker 4: See, my mom has been recommending meditation to me since
Speaker 4: I don't even remember how long it's been. But I
Speaker 4: have a real problem with the whole shutting it down.
Speaker 2: Well that's why, Yeah, I me too. It was I'm
Speaker 2: surprised because you seem so placid. It was awful until
Speaker 2: I came across this. You know, I'm not. I don't
Speaker 2: make any money off of pitching TM as a meditation.
Speaker 2: They charge you for it. It's weird. You have to
Speaker 2: bring a fresh fruit, a white piece of cloth, and
Speaker 2: a flower. I know you're giving me that because that
Speaker 2: sounds insane, sounds.
Speaker 1: Like it's one of those white elephant gift exchanges for
Speaker 1: Christmas and they charge you based on how much money
Speaker 1: you make.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, and so I paid over a thousand bucks
Speaker 2: for this class.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean it sounds like it's doing a lot
Speaker 3: of good though.
Speaker 2: It's one of the best things I've ever been in
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, Wow, Well, got your money's worth.
Speaker 2: That's what I always tell people. I say, it's got
Speaker 2: scam written all over it, and the hole you got
Speaker 2: to keep it secret. To me, It's like, if you
Speaker 2: care about people like being placid, why didn't you give
Speaker 2: this away for free? Why are you charging money? But
Speaker 2: what I've whatever, I'm not worried about that. It just
Speaker 2: it works for me to bring.
Speaker 3: Is it a whole watermelon or that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 2: I think I brought an apple, a white handkerchief, and
Speaker 2: then some flowers.
Speaker 1: Final note from this article. Because it's pretty good. We
Speaker 1: can also use the technique of conscious napping to generate ideas.
Speaker 1: Whenever the great inventor Thomas Edison was stuck for a
Speaker 1: solution or new idea. He would allow himself to drift
Speaker 1: it into unconsciousness while holding a metal ball as he
Speaker 1: fell asleep. The ball would clatter to the ground and
Speaker 1: awake him when he would often find that a new
Speaker 1: insight had emerged.
Speaker 2: Wow, now that's an interesting one.
Speaker 1: I actually heard Michael Savage talk about that once years ago.
Speaker 1: More generally, we should use idleness as a way of
Speaker 1: cultivating creativity. Don't think of napping or relaxing as a
Speaker 1: waste of time. To Jack's point, far from being unproductive,
Speaker 1: this may lead to the most inspired ideas, an insight
Speaker 1: of our lives. That's what I'm going to do on
Speaker 1: our vacation, a whole lot of just thinking.
Speaker 2: That's my plan. And I don't really need inspired creative
Speaker 2: insights to invent something new or write a melody or whatever.
Speaker 2: But being you know, happy is a worthwhile goal. Content
Speaker 2: better word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're here.
Speaker 2: I mean I got like, I know the kind of
Speaker 2: guy you are, similar to the kind of guy I am.
Speaker 2: If somebody tells tells you, okay, I'll teach you how
Speaker 2: to meditate, but I need you to bring a clean
Speaker 2: white piece of cloth, a piece of fruit, and a flower,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to charge you based on your income.
Speaker 2: Doesn't that just immediately make you think what?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, it does. Sounds like a cult.
Speaker 2: That's that's what my son calls it, because I've been
Speaker 2: trying to get him to meditate because he his mind
Speaker 2: just tortures him. And I'm not going to do your
Speaker 2: cult voodoo because he knows about the cloth and the fruit.
Speaker 1: I remember there was a great deal of concern about
Speaker 1: TM in the seventies probably or eighties, early eighties in
Speaker 1: my church community.
Speaker 2: Which I grew up.
Speaker 1: What were they afraid it was doing taking you in
Speaker 1: a different direction than Christianity in.
Speaker 2: Short, as a substitute. I could see how that could happen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you're I guess if you're, If you're you know,
Speaker 2: if you're going to church to be like content and
Speaker 2: the meditation works, maybe you stop going to church. That
Speaker 2: could be their concern, I suppose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my recollection was at that point in my life,
Speaker 1: I was only interested in getting a girlfriend and winning
Speaker 1: baseball games, so I didn't I wasn't personally very concerned
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: And one final pitch is watch any of Jerry Seinfeld's
Speaker 2: long videos about TM. They're pretty damned interesting. Or Jennifer Aniston,
Speaker 2: who says she'd she'd rather soft her arm than give
Speaker 2: up her mantra she does the DMO.
Speaker 1: Okay ah, well, I guess that's it.