Speaker 1: You are only remembering the last time you remembered. And
Speaker 1: what this really means is that our memories are incredibly
Speaker 1: susceptible to alterations. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us on this episode. We have Ella Francis
Speaker 1: Sanders and internationally best selling author and illustrator of three books.
Speaker 1: Her third book, which Ella and Eric discussed today, is
Speaker 1: Eating the Sun, Small Musings on a Vast Universe. It
Speaker 1: was the recipient of the two thousand nineteen Whirling Prize
Speaker 1: for Prose and has been translated into many languages. Hi, Ella,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hi thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I am really happy to have you on. We are
Speaker 1: going to discuss, among other things, your latest book called
Speaker 1: Eating the Sun, small musings on a vast universe. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, we'll start, like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: side of us that are always at battle. What is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandpa says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So I think about this
Speaker 1: like a type of conversation, a very ongoing conversation, And
Speaker 1: this would be a conversation between me and these wolves,
Speaker 1: and it would be the kind of conversation that you
Speaker 1: can't pick up exactly where you left it, and this
Speaker 1: then extends into feeling like the wolves have moved from
Speaker 1: where you lost saw them or heard them, and they've
Speaker 1: gone off to con room something without you. So in
Speaker 1: my little image of this, I go and I find
Speaker 1: the walls, and I have to sit them down and
Speaker 1: explain them that I need to do things today and
Speaker 1: tell them what those things are. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: what it played out as a little scene in my head.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of work and life, I think
Speaker 1: that feeding of the wolves um is choosing. I think
Speaker 1: about it as choosing possibility over panic, because for me,
Speaker 1: the kind of largest parts of those two walls are
Speaker 1: probably fear and anxiety, a kind of flight response to
Speaker 1: a lot of triggers. And then the antithesis of that
Speaker 1: this good wolf would be. I found it very difficult
Speaker 1: to think about the right words for it, but it's
Speaker 1: sort of like an awareness or a belief in my
Speaker 1: kind of human weight and human substance, and I guess
Speaker 1: the ability to find myself convincing sort of I'm convincing
Speaker 1: to myself in a myriad of ways. I love that
Speaker 1: the two things you said there that were great is
Speaker 1: that the wolves don't stay put. I think that is
Speaker 1: absolutely true. If they stayed where we left them, it
Speaker 1: would be easier. But they're always moving and changing, just
Speaker 1: like we are. And then I love that sort of
Speaker 1: comparing possibility versus panic. Those are good flip sides because
Speaker 1: they both reflect uncertainty. They both reflect like, well, I
Speaker 1: don't quite know what's going to happen, and so one
Speaker 1: way to interpret I don't know what's going to happen
Speaker 1: is oh bad, bad bad. The other is, oh wow,
Speaker 1: look at that I didn't expect, you know, like something
Speaker 1: came out that I didn't expect. Those are a good balance,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of us are in these times.
Speaker 1: In particular, I think that the panic one is getting
Speaker 1: a lot of attention. We're very focused on the narrative
Speaker 1: right now is these are very difficult times. These are
Speaker 1: very hard times. These are child lenging times like we've
Speaker 1: never had before. You know, there's a lot of that narrative.
Speaker 1: I hear it everywhere I turn. There's very little of
Speaker 1: the other narrative this as well. But there's possibility in chaos,
Speaker 1: there's possibility in change, There's possibility and upheaval, And I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear a little bit more of that sort
Speaker 1: of conversation. And part of the reason I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you was that I felt like your book
Speaker 1: is a really nice balm for this very small minded
Speaker 1: focus on only human affairs and only the human affairs
Speaker 1: that are occurring like right now. Whereas you know, one
Speaker 1: of the ways I think to move from panic to possibility,
Speaker 1: to use your phrase in general, is to broaden out
Speaker 1: our perspective. And one of the best ways I know
Speaker 1: to broaden my perspective is science. Science is an extraordinarily
Speaker 1: perspective broadening thing. Right You start talking about billions of
Speaker 1: galaxies and all that stuff, and you're like, WHOA, hang on,
Speaker 1: I'm part of something really big here. And so that
Speaker 1: was part of what I really wanted to explore with
Speaker 1: this book, was a conversation about some of these bigger,
Speaker 1: more timeless things that can bring about a sense of
Speaker 1: wonder and awe and wonder and awe also, to use
Speaker 1: your words again, lead us back to possibility. That's a
Speaker 1: lot to go on. It does overlap hugely and alarming
Speaker 1: lye the panic side with what is going on globally,
Speaker 1: and what's going on globally and really every corner that
Speaker 1: you want to look in on every stone that you're
Speaker 1: going to turn over. And I think it's in part
Speaker 1: sort of I mean, fearmongering is maybe a strong word,
Speaker 1: but news excites the kind of human response in often
Speaker 1: a very negative way. And I was reading an article
Speaker 1: yesterday somebody had sent me, and it was talking about
Speaker 1: Norwegians living in the north of Norway and how they
Speaker 1: think about their extreme winters, you know, freezing temperatures, maybe
Speaker 1: three hours of barely their daylight, and you know, the
Speaker 1: way we kind of think about the winter is, oh, no,
Speaker 1: it's coming. What are we going to do? Will we
Speaker 1: be warm enough? Will we be able to do the
Speaker 1: things we know enjoy? And they're not worried about it.
Speaker 1: They look forward to the aspects of it that are
Speaker 1: going to be more challenging. They think, oh, we can
Speaker 1: go skiing in the dark, and we can go outside
Speaker 1: and look at the stars every morning. And that kind
Speaker 1: of got me yesterday actually, because without realizing the last
Speaker 1: five six months, you lose track. At this point, I
Speaker 1: have myself been feeding the panic more even though we're
Speaker 1: not moving around as much, even though we're not engaging
Speaker 1: with as many people or as any things and in fact,
Speaker 1: maybe it is the staying in one place part that
Speaker 1: gives it is that it's it's almost when you're in
Speaker 1: one place that wolf has you in its sites. You know,
Speaker 1: it can see you all the time, it knows where
Speaker 1: you are. You're moving in smaller circles, and it is
Speaker 1: really hard for people to think and feel outside of
Speaker 1: what feel like very monumental and terrible things and those
Speaker 1: are happening to them personally maybe or the happening to
Speaker 1: people that they know, or they can see them, watch
Speaker 1: them read about them happening. So absolutely with this book,
Speaker 1: I mean it was written before much of what is
Speaker 1: going on was even a flicker on the horizon. But
Speaker 1: it was about making people feel small in good ways,
Speaker 1: in ways that maybe push the ego down a little bit,
Speaker 1: or yeah, slow them down, because unless you are moving
Speaker 1: slowly and relatively gently, you just can't notice a lot
Speaker 1: of what's good. I think, yeah, that is a very
Speaker 1: true statement. Unless you're moving slowly, you can't notice a
Speaker 1: lot of what's good. Absolutely, So speaking of moving slowly,
Speaker 1: that's a great transition. We're going to talk about things
Speaker 1: that move very slow, but they move, which are plants.
Speaker 1: Your book is called eating the Sun. That's the title
Speaker 1: and obviously comes from the fact that everything we eat
Speaker 1: is partially made from the Sun's energy. So let's let's
Speaker 1: just talk a little bit about plants. What are some
Speaker 1: of the things in your book that you wrote about
Speaker 1: plants that you find most fascinating. Yes, so the title
Speaker 1: eating the Son is also the title of one of
Speaker 1: the earlier chapters. And I think I write at the
Speaker 1: end of this short essay that I think I say
Speaker 1: something like, it's astonishing to think that we've been solo powered,
Speaker 1: solar powered since the beginning of anything at all. It's
Speaker 1: all solar powered, and now talking about solar power seems
Speaker 1: maybe less than the last five to ten years, but
Speaker 1: it's a new shiny possibility for greener living. And I
Speaker 1: thought writing this thing, no, no, no, it's ancient. Yes,
Speaker 1: and we forget because we've got a lot of things
Speaker 1: that we are only here because we can eat the
Speaker 1: nutrients that plants produce. And so if you're eating plants,
Speaker 1: or if you're eating the animals that have eaten plants,
Speaker 1: all of it is sun because they use the light
Speaker 1: to photosynthesists, and nearly all plants do this. It seems
Speaker 1: kind of I'm going to lack the right word, but
Speaker 1: it seems kind of not rude or a bit inflated
Speaker 1: to presume that we're kind of here on of our own.
Speaker 1: It's not our own making. It is plants. So I
Speaker 1: could have written fifty one essays about plants, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: and I liked too. I didn't really explore this in
Speaker 1: the essay, but for me, I've thought it quite maybe
Speaker 1: poetic because not I don't know, too strong, not too strong,
Speaker 1: but this idea that every time we're eating something or
Speaker 1: picking something, it's like a story that's been ended. I
Speaker 1: think I used the phrase stories cut short, because all
Speaker 1: these things growing our stories, and they would be part
Speaker 1: of other stories were we not to, you know, harvest them,
Speaker 1: eat them, kill them. Whatever it is. Yeah, plants are astounding.
Speaker 1: You've got a phrase in the book that I love,
Speaker 1: which is we humans are incredibly shortsighted compared to plants,
Speaker 1: which is great. I mean, certain plants certainly outlive us,
Speaker 1: they're around a long time. And the other thing that's
Speaker 1: an emerging field, or maybe it's maybe it's not emerging,
Speaker 1: but I'm hearing a lot more about it is plant neurobiology, right,
Speaker 1: and and sotis in that field have have sort of
Speaker 1: found out that plants possess characteristics like memory and learning
Speaker 1: and problem solving, these really remarkable things that we just
Speaker 1: don't attribute that level of intelligence is perhaps not the
Speaker 1: right word, but will use it for for common purposes.
Speaker 1: But what are some of the things that you found
Speaker 1: out that plants could do that sort of stoked your
Speaker 1: sense of wonder? So I think you're right. It's important
Speaker 1: to distinguish between intelligence and consciousness, and scientists, of course
Speaker 1: don't use those two things interchangeably, but plants do possess
Speaker 1: types of intelligence. As a precursor to the things that
Speaker 1: I'll mention about plants, I think it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that humans and plants work at very different speeds. For us,
Speaker 1: you know, signals from our brain to our hand happen
Speaker 1: incredibly quickly. Signals within the brain fire fractions of the
Speaker 1: second for something a tree, they happen at something like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a fraction of an inch in terms
Speaker 1: of this travel so very sluggish compared to our modes
Speaker 1: of these signals. And I think that's important to remember
Speaker 1: because it puts the plant intelligence in a in a
Speaker 1: kind of context. And then the other thing is that
Speaker 1: if you go under the soil, you have micro rhizal fungi,
Speaker 1: and these are everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, and they have a
Speaker 1: symbiotic relationship with plants in that the plant can't survive
Speaker 1: without the fungi, and the fungi need the plants to
Speaker 1: survive because they don't have their own chlorophyll. So one
Speaker 1: of the more astonishing things about this micro rhizal fungi
Speaker 1: in the relationships that it allows plants to have, is
Speaker 1: that they can effectively communicate with each other. If you
Speaker 1: think about different types of tree in a forest, maybe
Speaker 1: one year an aspen is doing better than a pine,
Speaker 1: and it will effectively lend or give divert nutrients to
Speaker 1: these other trees. Trees that are ancient and intertwined have
Speaker 1: been known to die at the same time because they're
Speaker 1: so bound together. I think that sometimes giving plants sort
Speaker 1: of human characteristics can be unhelpful, but to a large extent,
Speaker 1: I think it is helpful to give things human characteristics
Speaker 1: when it's important that we can connect to them and
Speaker 1: care about them, because that's how we're going to keep them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I think there's a tendency. People say, well,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't anthropomorphize things so much, right, give things human tendencies,
Speaker 1: which if we want to be strictly scientific in our
Speaker 1: understanding of other things, can get in the way. But
Speaker 1: to your point, if what we're trying to build as
Speaker 1: some sort of empathy with other things, if we're trying
Speaker 1: to build some sort of connection so that we care
Speaker 1: more about them, that's the way that we tend to
Speaker 1: do it. So I don't think it's bad in that sense.
Speaker 1: And yeah, plants are sort of amazing. I read a book.
Speaker 1: I want to read it again because I do not
Speaker 1: retain facts. We're going to talk about memory here in
Speaker 1: a little bit. Things just sort of come in and
Speaker 1: out of my head. But it was called The Secret
Speaker 1: Life of Trees. And it's astounding. I mean, like trees
Speaker 1: are communicating with each other, they are sending signals via
Speaker 1: the roots systems warning of predators doing different. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really remarkable in the way that they are connected
Speaker 1: and that they are together. You have a lovely line
Speaker 1: in the book talking about how plants and trees share
Speaker 1: food and help nourish their competitors, and you say, apparently
Speaker 1: for no other reason than that. Living becomes much easier
Speaker 1: when you're helping others rather than simply ensuring your own survival,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a beautiful idea that pertains very much
Speaker 1: to our human realm of living. Becomes easier when helping others.
Speaker 1: And it really does appear that plants do this too,
Speaker 1: and that you know that a forest is a really
Speaker 1: useful place for a tree to be. They don't do
Speaker 1: as well when they're out on their own, no, and
Speaker 1: they do much better when they are in forests and
Speaker 1: ecosystems that are varied, that have variety. A lot of
Speaker 1: what we've done in our kind of modern agricultural and
Speaker 1: more generous word than the one I'm thinking of being
Speaker 1: encompassing of a lot of taking things down and ripping
Speaker 1: things out and leaching the soil of nutrients. A lot
Speaker 1: of what we've replaced natural, beautiful, well functioning ecosystems with
Speaker 1: will be trees of say, one species. It can't work
Speaker 1: in the same way. It needs the variety in order
Speaker 1: to stay healthy for what can be thousands of years,
Speaker 1: which is something that you can think about in the
Speaker 1: context of humans, and a lot of times in the book,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying something, and it seems to be a
Speaker 1: comment about plants, or it seems to be a comment
Speaker 1: about planets, or it seems to be a comment about
Speaker 1: the use of language and science. What I'm trying to
Speaker 1: notdge read it into is thinking about themselves, and actually
Speaker 1: it will relate just as strongly to us. That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing that I haven't said yet
Speaker 1: that I meant to say earlier is we're discussing your books,
Speaker 1: and your writing is beautiful and poetic, and yet that's
Speaker 1: only part of your books, because you're also an illustrator,
Speaker 1: and there are lovely illustrations throughout the books that this
Speaker 1: medium podcasting simply doesn't allow me to convey. So I think,
Speaker 1: in addition to the to the writing, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to say the listeners like they're beautiful books, you know,
Speaker 1: the way they're written, the way they're drawn, and making
Speaker 1: it sound like it's just this collection of science facts
Speaker 1: and that is not at all what it is. Thank you.
Speaker 1: That's very kind. The last thing I'll say about plants,
Speaker 1: and you sort of use this phrase earlier, but I
Speaker 1: really loved this sentence, and all of this leaves us
Speaker 1: entirely at the mercy of vegetation. Without plants and what
Speaker 1: they do, there simply would be no life. It's interesting
Speaker 1: to reflect back on that at one point the Earth
Speaker 1: was primarily anything that lived lived on carbon dioxide. You know,
Speaker 1: we did not have an atmosphere of oxygen until we
Speaker 1: begin to get plants, you know, until plants sort of
Speaker 1: figured out evolution got to the point where it could photosynthesize.
Speaker 1: That's when really the entire complexion of the planet changed.
Speaker 1: Or practically, Yeah, absolutely, there's a kind of audacity I
Speaker 1: think that we walk about with because we are at
Speaker 1: the mercy of vegetation, and when you look at how
Speaker 1: we behave in our modern loud ways, it's remarkable and
Speaker 1: horrifying and sometimes amusing. You have to laugh. I say
Speaker 1: this at the beginning of the book, and it may
Speaker 1: have come up later, but I it seems like a
Speaker 1: good time to mention. It is the sheer, ridiculous nous
Speaker 1: of a lot of what is happening and has happened
Speaker 1: and has been able to happen. And I talk about
Speaker 1: it in the context of I think scale and being
Speaker 1: so absurdly small as a person compared to these huge,
Speaker 1: unfathomable abstract sizes and laws. But it's so ridiculous that
Speaker 1: sometimes the only two plausible reactions I feel either to
Speaker 1: kind of sob hysterically or laugh. Sometimes you just have
Speaker 1: to to laugh, because a lot of what we experience
Speaker 1: is absurd, and we walk around thinking this is normal,
Speaker 1: that is normal. Of course, we go up forty seven
Speaker 1: floors to the office, but it's just bizarre. A lot
Speaker 1: of it. You can put on these sort of bizarre
Speaker 1: glasses and then everything is usually entertaining. Yes, yes, And
Speaker 1: that's back to that idea of perspective that one of
Speaker 1: the things science gives us is this astounding perspective. In
Speaker 1: your book has lots of that perspective, and I always
Speaker 1: think perspective is interesting because on one hand, when we
Speaker 1: look at things intergalactically and time wise, we are the
Speaker 1: tiniest fraction of in anything, and then if we go
Speaker 1: the other direction, we start zooming in compared to an atom,
Speaker 1: we are huge, we are massive, we are monstrous. It's
Speaker 1: it's so interesting that I can go either way with
Speaker 1: that either direction on that scale and have a very
Speaker 1: different perspective of what I am. Yeah, absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know to what extent. I've achieved this with
Speaker 1: the book, but it's really hard for most people to
Speaker 1: make sense of these kinds of scales. The numbers are
Speaker 1: unthinkably huge, and you can give things adjectives or diagrams
Speaker 1: or long, science heavy explanations, but a lot of the
Speaker 1: time and you can understand it on an intellectual level,
Speaker 1: or believed you've understood these things on intellectual level, but
Speaker 1: your body doesn't really understand them at all, right, nor
Speaker 1: is it designed to write. I've done a lot of
Speaker 1: reading and studying unconsciousness, and the consensus is sort of
Speaker 1: the way that we view the world is not in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form the way the world is.
Speaker 1: The way we view the world is the way that
Speaker 1: our species has constructed the world to make it most
Speaker 1: likely that we survive in it. So what we're actually
Speaker 1: seeing out there, and what we're able to picture and
Speaker 1: imagine and all that is not a necessarily a very
Speaker 1: accurate picture of reality. It is a entirely constructed view
Speaker 1: that serves a certain purpose, and that purpose is to
Speaker 1: make us survive, which is lovely and I'm glad it
Speaker 1: has happened that way. And yet we get really lost
Speaker 1: in thinking that what we see is reality. I've I've
Speaker 1: got this program I call Spiritual Habits program, and one
Speaker 1: of the principles is we don't see the world as
Speaker 1: it is. We see it as we are, and we
Speaker 1: have so many different filters on that we see the
Speaker 1: world through. I find science and some of the facts
Speaker 1: and the sort of things you do in that book
Speaker 1: really good ways of illustrating like we're not seeing reality.
Speaker 1: Like right now, I don't know the exact numbers, but
Speaker 1: we are spinning at a crazy fast rate. We are
Speaker 1: hurtling through space at an insane rate, and our entire
Speaker 1: solar system is gravitating around. We are in motion at
Speaker 1: breathtaking speeds, and yet it seems like we are just
Speaker 1: sitting here still. You and I am in a conversation.
Speaker 1: Nothing's moving. Well, I think the Earth rotates at something
Speaker 1: like I think it's over a thousand males pera in
Speaker 1: terms of rotation. I'm full of numbers, so I could
Speaker 1: have that wrong, but I believe that we are our spinning.
Speaker 1: It is alarming. And if you sit and you try
Speaker 1: to think about that number, you can't put those two
Speaker 1: things together. Because you're right, We're still aren't we We're
Speaker 1: not moving right, you know, you maybe and think about
Speaker 1: how fast a car drives or how fast an airplane flies,
Speaker 1: And it's just I think it's the thing of recognizing
Speaker 1: within the body something to be true or not. I
Speaker 1: liked what you said about filters and about kind of
Speaker 1: being covered in them, partly because it would make for
Speaker 1: a very interesting illustration to have someone covered in all
Speaker 1: manner of filters. But you don't notice when they maybe arrive,
Speaker 1: and you don't notice because the change can be quite subtle.
Speaker 1: You don't notice how you're thinking has been kind of shifted,
Speaker 1: or why you're looking at something in a different way.
Speaker 1: And I think this bleeds into quite nicely the question
Speaker 1: of memory. You can kind of remember, well, I thought
Speaker 1: about thing last year in such a way, and now
Speaker 1: I think about this thing in a different way this year.
Speaker 1: And I'm not really quite sure how I got there,
Speaker 1: but I did. So. I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: is these little kind of imperceptible journeys or streets, because
Speaker 1: a lot of people do think that they have things
Speaker 1: in hand, that they know what's going to happen next week,
Speaker 1: and I find that incredible. I'm also weird because you
Speaker 1: have no idea science works in terms of laws, and
Speaker 1: laws are the kind of what if you like, So
Speaker 1: there are things that we know happen so that we
Speaker 1: can observe happening, and then things like scientific theory give
Speaker 1: you the why they happen. So laws as we know them,
Speaker 1: those things have been true since the Big Bang. You
Speaker 1: know they will. It's like sort of inertia and science.
Speaker 1: You know that the idea that things will keep moving
Speaker 1: unless they're given a reason to stop. Everything that has
Speaker 1: ever happened and that will ever happen. He's a result
Speaker 1: of these laws that have been around since the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: since the beginning of anything. So it's almost like they're
Speaker 1: in control. You wouldn't want to call it fate, or
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to call it destiny or something like that.
Speaker 1: I don't really like those ideas, but these laws do
Speaker 1: decide in a weird way because they've always been there
Speaker 1: and we're kind of just milling around down here thinking
Speaker 1: that we know what we're going to have for lunch. Right.
Speaker 1: There's a line that you use in the section on
Speaker 1: the self, which if we have time, we will get
Speaker 1: to But you say, though frustrating, we cannot ever choose
Speaker 1: or control the aspects of life that ultimately influence what
Speaker 1: we say, do or think. And that is a deeply
Speaker 1: profound sentence because it points to that we think that
Speaker 1: we act upon the world, but the world largely acts
Speaker 1: upon us. And it's back to that idea of we
Speaker 1: don't see the world as it is, we see it
Speaker 1: as we are. All those filters that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: that it's impossible to not see the world through. All
Speaker 1: those filters are the result of all the experiences that
Speaker 1: have occurred in our lives, all the things we've been
Speaker 1: exposed to, the ideas we've been exposed to, the conversations
Speaker 1: we've had. This is a rabbit hole I don't go
Speaker 1: down too often, which is the one about free will. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't often go down this rabbit hole because I
Speaker 1: don't find it a very useful rabbit hole. But I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say that there is both more
Speaker 1: and less free will than we think there is in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, and that it can be profoundly disconcerting.
Speaker 1: As you say in that line, it's frustrating that we
Speaker 1: can't choose or control the aspects of life that ultimately
Speaker 1: influence us. Right, Like we're being influenced by the world
Speaker 1: around us, and we don't get to choose what arrives.
Speaker 1: We just have to do our best to respond to
Speaker 1: it in a way that is as skillful as as
Speaker 1: we're able to make. Image. Yes, absolutely, and it goes
Speaker 1: without saying. But of course we have choices. Of course
Speaker 1: we can move in the directions we want to move in,
Speaker 1: and there are things about the world that can make
Speaker 1: that harder or easier. And you can practice, you know,
Speaker 1: noticing where the hardness and softness comes from and alternately
Speaker 1: back away from it or move into it. And I
Speaker 1: like chaos too. I'd like to mention chaos because people
Speaker 1: either find this alarming to a huge degree or reassuring,
Speaker 1: and maybe there are some options in between, but in
Speaker 1: general it seems to fall to one of these extremes.
Speaker 1: The universe is. This is not my opinion, This is
Speaker 1: just the facts. The universe is moving slowly, but surely,
Speaker 1: I mean very slowly, imperceptibly slowly, towards a kind of
Speaker 1: ultimate chaos. You can't put things back, and a good
Speaker 1: example of this, because people don't really know what that means.
Speaker 1: A good example of this is kind of a mess
Speaker 1: or things falling apart. So you can push a pile
Speaker 1: of books or a pile of papers onto the floor.
Speaker 1: They will fall on the floor, but they're never going
Speaker 1: to fall back up. This might be too abstract of
Speaker 1: an example, but there is innate chaos about everything that
Speaker 1: we encounter and live through. And so this is something
Speaker 1: that I do find useful to remember from time to
Speaker 1: time because things can feel out of hand right now,
Speaker 1: especially for people personally, and then more broadly, and you
Speaker 1: can kind of think about the chaos that we create
Speaker 1: and the chaos that we move within, and you think
Speaker 1: about the kind of road of chaos that the universe
Speaker 1: is on. It can't compete. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people when things don't stay orderly in their lives, whether
Speaker 1: that be their house or their habits, or their kids
Speaker 1: or any number of different things, we take it as
Speaker 1: a personal failing. But the reality is that is the
Speaker 1: nature of things. Things move from being ordered to disorder.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the direction they go. And so putting
Speaker 1: order on things takes an enormous amount of energy and
Speaker 1: and so we do it, but we're not failing when
Speaker 1: that order falls apart, because inevitably it does. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like you know, I'm a big proponent. I work
Speaker 1: with people on coaching on planning your day right, and
Speaker 1: so we plan our days. We we do our best,
Speaker 1: and yet disorder, chaos, whatever you wanna call it, intrudes constantly.
Speaker 1: It's not that we're failing. That's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: And I find that a comforting fact because then it's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's the way things are. It's not like I'm awful.
Speaker 1: The distribution of chaos often seems woefully unfair, and it is,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's a law of nature. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about memory. I guess everything we're
Speaker 1: talking about, to a certain extent can be somewhat disconcerted,
Speaker 1: and this one is I'm going to rephrase that from
Speaker 1: disconcerting to what we are working on doing here is
Speaker 1: unsettling certainty. So we're trying to shake loose certainty. And
Speaker 1: so if the world is not already doing it enough
Speaker 1: for you, here we are helping out. But an area
Speaker 1: we feel very certain of is our past, our memories.
Speaker 1: We go that happened, This happened to me, This happened
Speaker 1: to me, This happened to me. We feel very certain
Speaker 1: about our memories but perhaps we shouldn't. Perhaps we shouldn't. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I liked your reframing certainty. That was good. Yes, this
Speaker 1: chapter or essay was given the title you are only
Speaker 1: remembering the last time you remembered. And what this really
Speaker 1: means is that our memories are incredibly susceptible to alterations. So,
Speaker 1: and to mention filters again, the memories that we have
Speaker 1: of the past all filtered through the present moment. This
Speaker 1: is because what the brain is trying to do is
Speaker 1: provide us with information to make the good and useful
Speaker 1: decisions in the present. It's not concerned about what did happen,
Speaker 1: It's concerned about now and where you're going to go
Speaker 1: from this now. So we have countless memories, you know,
Speaker 1: boxes and boxes of nostalgia. Everybody does, and it can
Speaker 1: be disappointing to learn. And I was a little bit
Speaker 1: disappointed to learn this too, that you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like for a long time, people thought believed scientists thought
Speaker 1: the memory was like going into a library that was
Speaker 1: always there and picking up a book off a shelf,
Speaker 1: and these books were there, and you could take the
Speaker 1: book off and you could look at it, and then
Speaker 1: you could put it back that is not the case
Speaker 1: at all. So this, yes, this um, It comes back
Speaker 1: to the title of the chapter. Really, you're not remembering
Speaker 1: the memory. And this is the worst bit for some people.
Speaker 1: The memories that you pulled onto the most, that you
Speaker 1: treasure the most, and this doesn't detract from the beauty
Speaker 1: of those memories, but the memories you hold onto the
Speaker 1: most and go back over and over and over, those
Speaker 1: ones are going to be changed the most. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in essence, what's happening you're saying is every time we
Speaker 1: remember something, it's like we pull it out to look
Speaker 1: at it, but we alter it by looking at it.
Speaker 1: By looking at it, we alter it, and then when
Speaker 1: we put it back on the shelf, we don't put
Speaker 1: it back the way it was when we pull it
Speaker 1: off the shelf. We put it back on the shelf
Speaker 1: with the subtle alterations we've made to it. And the
Speaker 1: more often we do that, you're saying, the or often
Speaker 1: we pull the memory out, the more we alter it,
Speaker 1: which is profoundly disconcerting. Well, it's the reason why people
Speaker 1: will believe that they have or think that they have
Speaker 1: a memory of something happening. And it can be very,
Speaker 1: very vivid, very colorful memories are often accompanied by kind
Speaker 1: of senses, you know, colors or sounds, and it will
Speaker 1: be wrong. They will meet someone else who was maybe
Speaker 1: part of that memory, and they'll say, no, I remember
Speaker 1: this happening. That didn't happen. You know, she wasn't there
Speaker 1: at all. And you can have a handful of people,
Speaker 1: are room full of people with the shared memory, and
Speaker 1: nobody can agree on anything, right. It's fascinating, And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of science to back all this up that
Speaker 1: shows that, you know, our memories just aren't as accurate
Speaker 1: as we think. Now I have solved this problem by
Speaker 1: simply not remembering much of anything. So what I after
Speaker 1: reading your book, I've no longer I used to look
Speaker 1: at this as a flaw. I used to think it
Speaker 1: was a problem. Now what I realize is I am
Speaker 1: just minimizing the amount of inaccuracy that I introduced into
Speaker 1: my life. If I just don't remember, I can't get
Speaker 1: it wrong. Do you buy that theory a little bit?
Speaker 1: But only because I also forget a lot. The other
Speaker 1: thing to know is that you only have a certain
Speaker 1: amount of room for memories and for information, but particularly memories,
Speaker 1: and so well, there are information if you know, you
Speaker 1: have to make room, if new things are coming up,
Speaker 1: you have to make rooms somehow. And there are people
Speaker 1: frustrating me who seem to remember everything that ever happened
Speaker 1: to them in great technical detail, incorrect detail exactly. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, forgetting, I am one, And you know, stressful
Speaker 1: situations have an effect on memory as well on forgetting.
Speaker 1: I found myself struggling more to remember things will retain
Speaker 1: information in the last six months. It's my entire childhood
Speaker 1: that's just doesn't exist for me, just not there. There's
Speaker 1: lots of different theories on that we are nearly out
Speaker 1: of time, and I can't decide which place I want
Speaker 1: to take this. So I think where we're going to
Speaker 1: take it is we've talked a lot about science and
Speaker 1: the different things of science, and there was something at
Speaker 1: the end of the book. I don't say this to
Speaker 1: be a braggart, but it's not often that I read
Speaker 1: a book that I'm like, oh, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: at all, Like I had no idea that thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, like I've just done so much reading, I'm old,
Speaker 1: I'm all these different things, But in your book, I
Speaker 1: had no idea of this concept of the half life
Speaker 1: of facts. And one of the things that I have
Speaker 1: been bothered by in life is that science. I go, Okay,
Speaker 1: science is factual, and science is it's good to base
Speaker 1: our decision and our ideas on facts and science. And
Speaker 1: yet I've gone, but science changes. We now know things
Speaker 1: that a hundred years ago we thought were a fact
Speaker 1: that we now go, that's preposterous, it's not. And so
Speaker 1: I just have always been like, how much of what
Speaker 1: we know is really true? And it actually turns out
Speaker 1: that there is some study of this, that there is
Speaker 1: some predictability to the way that facts change over time.
Speaker 1: So can you share a little bit about that, because
Speaker 1: I found that utterly fascinating. Yeah, I do talk about
Speaker 1: this right right at the end of the book. This
Speaker 1: is the last last piece. And it's the last piece
Speaker 1: for a reason, of course, because I've written about all
Speaker 1: of these things, given all of these numbers, and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of it's wonderful, but I want people to
Speaker 1: get to the end and know that, in this kind
Speaker 1: of bizarre and beautiful way, some of it or all
Speaker 1: of it eventually might not be true. So, and what
Speaker 1: you're talking about is something called science ento metrics, which
Speaker 1: is wonderfully the science of science. There is a science
Speaker 1: of science, which is if anybody ever needed some reassurance
Speaker 1: that scientists are knowing what you know, they study themselves.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, that half life usually in science, what
Speaker 1: one would think of is kind of in terms of
Speaker 1: radioactivity and atoms and things decaying. And you can move
Speaker 1: this across to information into fact. So they call it
Speaker 1: the half life of facts, and it means the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes for half of the kind of
Speaker 1: informational knowledge to become untrue. Essentially, and in the case
Speaker 1: of I think I give two examples. I think one
Speaker 1: of them is medicine. And in terms of medicine, this
Speaker 1: this half life is about four to five years, which
Speaker 1: means that roughly half of what we currently believe to
Speaker 1: be true in medicine, about half of that in forty
Speaker 1: five years we will go that wasn't quite right, Yes,
Speaker 1: but the other half will will still be holding up.
Speaker 1: And of course we don't know which half, which makes
Speaker 1: it challenging, but it gives us a sense of how
Speaker 1: certain we can be about the facts that we have
Speaker 1: at our disposal. Relating to medicine. Now, yes, and you
Speaker 1: think about what victorians were doing in terms of the medicine,
Speaker 1: and it's quite staggering. It's good that some of these
Speaker 1: facts are moving on, it's yeah. And then something like mathematics,
Speaker 1: that half life is much much longer. Yeah, Like I said,
Speaker 1: I find that absolutely fascinating. I'm curious what the half
Speaker 1: life of poorly conducted psychological studies on college students are
Speaker 1: because so much of my world is psychological. And you're like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm reporting this fact of a suddy that was done
Speaker 1: on eight college students, and you know, the half life
Speaker 1: of that is much less because in that world there's
Speaker 1: a reproducibility crisis going on, right, we can't even reproduce
Speaker 1: some of these studies over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: So the half life must be staggeringly short there, if
Speaker 1: it exists at all. But I find it really interesting
Speaker 1: that such a thing exists, because, like I said, I
Speaker 1: love science and I love knowing things out there, and
Speaker 1: then there's just always this part of me that's going, well,
Speaker 1: how serious should I take that? You know, how much
Speaker 1: do we really know? Is there a place to look
Speaker 1: up the half life of different disciplines? I would be
Speaker 1: fascinated to know. I don't know if one, and I
Speaker 1: don't know whether there would be because it's not something
Speaker 1: that is routinely discussed, but yeah, if you look, you
Speaker 1: may find yes, what is the what is the half
Speaker 1: life of diet information? Another area that seems completely fraught
Speaker 1: with like what what do I actually do here? Okay, well, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. You and I are going to
Speaker 1: continue in the post show conversation. We're probably going to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the nature of the self,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite topics, but from a scientific perspective,
Speaker 1: not my usual Buddhist perspective, as well as we're gonna
Speaker 1: use You've got another lovely book called Lost in Translation,
Speaker 1: which are words from other languages that describe very common
Speaker 1: things in our world, and so we might we might
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of those, one of which is
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm gonna pronounce it right j s.
Speaker 1: This refers to a joke so terrible and unfunny that
Speaker 1: you cannot help but laugh, of which I have told
Speaker 1: plenty of in my life. I'll tell one right now.
Speaker 1: I'll give an example. What did the fish say when
Speaker 1: you swam into the cement wall? Damn that falls firmly
Speaker 1: into that that fits. It does, okay, you and I
Speaker 1: will continue in the post show conversation listeners if you'd
Speaker 1: like access to that, as well as an episode I
Speaker 1: do weekly call the teaching a song and a poem
Speaker 1: and an occasional joke. That's not a selling point, I
Speaker 1: know after what I just said, you can go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash join and become a
Speaker 1: member of the community and get access to lots of
Speaker 1: great stuff. Ella. Thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. I really enjoyed talking with you. I think
Speaker 1: your books are are lovely. The illustrations are beautiful, and
Speaker 1: they'll be links in the show notes to them. Thank you,
Speaker 1: this was lovely to talk. Thanks very much for having
Speaker 1: me my pleasure. If what you just heard was helpful
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