The following is a conversation. Lisa Feldman bear it a professor of psychology, north eastern university and one of the most brilliant and bold thinkers and scientists of ever had the pleasure of speaking. with she's the author of a book that revolutionized our understanding of emotion in the brain called how actions are made and she's coming out with a new book. called seven and a half lessons about the brain the EU can and should pre order. Now I got a chance to we did already ready as one of the best short world when introduction to the human brain of ever read It comes out on november seventeenth, but again, if Anybody worth supporting its lisa, so please do pre order. The book now listen. I agree to speak once again around the time of the book release, especially because we felt that this first conversation is good. Truly now

since we talk about the divisive time were living through in the united states leading up to the election, and she gives me a whole new way to think about it from neuroscience perspective that is ultimately inspiring of empathy, compassion and love, quick mention of each sponsor, followed by some thoughts related to this absurd First sponsors athletic greens, though all in one drink that I start every day with to cover all nutritional bases that or otherwise. from my diet. Naturally, second is magic. Spoon, low carb, killer friendly. wishes cereal that I reward myself with after a productive day. The cocoa flavour is my favorite third sponsor cash, app the app I used to send money to friends for food drinks and unfortunately, for the many bets I have lost to them. Please check out.

The in the description to get discount and support this package. As aside no, then let me say that the bold first principles way that lisa approaches are study of the brain is something that has inspired me ever I learned about her work. In fact, I invited her to speak at the asia. I series- I can at mit several years ago, but is a little twist instead of a lecture. We did a conversation from the class I think that was one of the early moments that led me to start this very podcast. It was scary and gratify, which is exactly what life is all about. and it's kind of funny how life turns a little moments like these, that at the time, don't seem to be anything out of the ordinary if you enjoy this thing subscribe on youtube review it with five stars and upper podcast following spotify support on patron or connect with me on twitter, at lex friedman

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other intelligent life out there in the universe, honestly, I've been asking myself lately, there's intelligent life on this planet, I have I I have to think probabilities suggest yes, and also secretly. I think I just hope, that's true, it would be really. I know scientists earns buster, have hopes and dreams, but I think it would be really cool, and I also think you'll be really sad if you, if it wasn't there If we really were alone, that would be thou. I would seem profoundly sad, I think so- exciting to moscow, yeah now, you know I take a lot of come in curiosity, it's a great it's a great resource for dealing with stress

so I'm learning all about mushrooms and octopus is- and you know, all kinds of stuff, and so for me this count, I think in the realm of ah. But all I think I'm somebody who cultivate are deliberately on purpose to feel like a speck, you know I find it. A relief occasionally feel small to feel small in a profoundly large, an interesting universe, so maybe to dig more technically on the question of intelligence to think is difficult for intelligent life to rise, like it did on earth it from everything. You've, written and studied the brain, how much you call the thing. Is it in turn? of the odds it takes to arise yeah, so you no magic is just

get me wrong. I mean I like the I like a magic show as much as the next person. I, my husband was a magician at one time, but I you know magic is just a bunch of stuff that we don't really understand how Yet so I would say from what I understand there are some major steps in the course of evolution, that at the beginning of life, the step from single cell to multi cellular organisms. Things like that which are really not known. I think for me, the question is not so much could it. You know what's the likelihood that it would happen again as much as one of the steps and how long would it take and if it were to happen again on earth, would would we end up with the same You know, menu of life forms that we currently have now, and I think the answer is probably no right. There it's so much about

That is the stochastic end. By chance. The question is whether that many will be equally delicious, meaning like there be rich complexity of the kind. Like it would we get dolphins in humans? Are quarrels I category of italy, intelligent seamen, intelligent? However, define that. Well, I think that has to be true. If you just look at the range of creatures who ve gone extinct, I mean, but if you look at the range creatures that are on the earth. Now, it's incredible and you know it sort of tried to say that, but it actually is really incredible I particularly I don't know, I mean most their animals that seem the ordinary until you watch them closely, and then they become miraculous sooner like certain types of birds which do Very miraculous things builds.

you know bowers and do dances and all these really funky things that are hard to explain The standard, evolutionary story, although in our appeal to have them, further weird. They do a lot for meeting purposes. They they have a concept of beauty. Well, I haven't, quite maybe you know much better, but it didn't seem to fit. Evolution arguments. Why guys fit it? Well, it depends right, so we, I think, you're talking about the evolution of beauty, the book that was written recently by wizard from his name richard from me, think I ignored and always a great book. It's very controversial, though, because he is argument argument that the question about in some other animals is. Why would they engage in such metabolic costly displays when it doesn't improve their fitness at all,

and the answer that he gives is the answer the darwin gave, which is sexual selection? Not natural selection, but you know, selection- can occur for all of reasons. There could be artificial selection, which is when we Breed animals right, which is actually How darwin that that observation, help darwin the idea of natural selection, polish and, and then their sexual select in meaning and the argument that that I think his name is from Makes- is that that it's the pleasure, the selection pressure is the poor. You're a female birds which, as a woman and as someone studies affect that's a great answer, actually think they're probably is I think there is an aspect of natural selection to it, which he may be hasn't considered. Will you we're saying that the reason we brought our birds is the life got now seems to be quite hear. Those peak into the ocean

into the sky. There, miraculous creatures, look at creatures who gone extinct and you know in science fiction stories. You couldn't dream up something as interesting, so my guess is that. No intelligent life evolves in in many different ways. Even on this planet, there isn't one form of intelligence. There is not one brain that gives you intelligence. There are lots of different brain structures that can give you intelligence. So my guess is that the monopoly We might not look exactly the way that it looks now, but it would certainly be as as interesting, but if we look at The human brain versus the brains of water. We call on the mecca hymns of intelligence and our ancestors even early ancestors, you write about, for example, in your new book. Why? What's the difference between the

and ceased brain. We got, which is the human brain and the ancestor brains that it came from. Yeah. I think it depends on how far back you wanna go you go all the way back right in in has book was the interesting comparison. We said well principle When you say that the human brain is the fancies brain we ve got, I mean an octopus brain is pretty different and pretty fancy and they can do some pretty amazing things that we cannot do You know we can't go back limbs. We can't change color and texture. We can't comport ourselves and squeeze ourselves into a little crevice when these are things that we invent dessert like superhero abilities that we invent in stories right. We can't do any of those things and so the human brain is certainly. We can certainly some things that other animals can't do that simple. Impressive to us, but but I would say that there

A number of animal brains which seem pretty impressive to me, they can do intern seeing things and really impressive things that we can't do we work on how emotions are made and so on you, you kind of repaint, the view of the brain is as less glamorous, I suppose that would otherwise nothing or like? I guess you draw thread that connects all brains together, in terms of homeostasis and all that kind of stuff yeah, I wouldn't say that the that the Human brain is any less miraculous than anybody else would say. I think that there are other brain structures which are also miraculous I also think that there are a number of things about the human brain which we share with other other vertebrates other animals with backbones, but that are more that we share these miraculous things, but we can do some things in abundance

and we can also do some things with our brains together, working together that other animals can't do, or at least we cabin discovered their ability? you at the other social thing? How I mean that's one of the things you write about what sir I d make sense of the factor like the book sapiens and the fact that we were able to Can I connect like network our brains together, like you write about our job I'll, try to stop saying that is that is that, like some kind of feature that building There is that unique to our human brains like how do you make sense of that? What I would say is that our ability to coordinate with each other is not unique to humans Lots of animals were with who can do that. We are, but what we

do with that, coordination, is unique because of some of the structural features in our brains, and It's not that annam other animals, don't have those structural features its. We have them in abundance. So you know the human brain is not larger than you would expect it to be. Four. A primate of our size if he took a chip, z- and you view, grew it too The size of a human that chimpanzee would have a brain that was the size of a human brain. So there's no special about our brain in terms of its size. There's nothing special our brains in terms of the the basic blueprint that builds on brain from an embryo is the basic blueprint that bill

all mammalian brains and maybe even all vertebrate brains. It's just that because of its size, and particularly because of the size of the cerebral cortex, which is the part that people. Mistakenly, a tribute to rationality, mistakenly where all the clever cleverest happens? Well, no, it really isn't it and I will also say that lots of clever stuff happens in animals who don't have a cerebral cortex, but but but because of the size of this river cortex, and because of some of the features that are enhanced by that size. That gives us the capacity to do things like bills, realizations and coordinate with each other, not just to manipulate the physical world, but to add to it in very prone

and ways like whom you no other animals can cooperate with each other in use tools. We draw a line in the sand and we may country. and even then we create. You know we create citizens and immigrants, but also deal I mean the pine trees are centred around the concept of like ideas for might. Well what do you think a city It has an an immigrant. Those are ideas, those ideas that we impose on reality and make them real, and then they have very, very serious and real effects. Physical effects on people. What do you think. but the idea there. But you people written about. Ganz with means, which is like ideas a breeding like we're, just like the canvass for ideas to breed in our brains, so there, got a noteworthy talk about of brains is just a little canvass for ideas. eating at each other and so on. I think, is a return.

Well tool. It's cool to think you know that way. So I think it was oh Paul and I dont remember it was in the bottom desire, but it was in one of his early book. On botany and gardening, where he road about and I wrote about you know: plants eat utilizing humans for their own. You know evolutionary purposes, because the kind of interesting you can think about a human got in a sense as propagation device were the seeds. You know tomatoes in what I would have you some kind of cool. So I think I think rhetorically, it's an interesting device, but you know idea are, as far as I know, invent. by humans propagated by humans? So you know, I don't think. There's

bread from human brains and in any way, although it it would be. It is interesting to to think about it that way, while of course ideas that are using your brain to communicate and right at some books, and they basically pick you lisa says, effective, communicator and and thereby are winning so there's an interest what you did to think that there is particular aspects of your brain that conducive to certain set of ideas, and maybe there ideas will win out here, I think, the way that I would say it really, though, is that there are many, Species of animals that influence each other's nervous systems that regulate each other's nervous systems. And they mainly do it by physical means. They do it by chemicals sent they do a by. Also so terms It's an ant and bees, for example, use chemicals, sense, mammals like mike rodents, use

and they also use hearing audition and that little division, primates Non human primates add vision right and dumb. I think everybody uses touch you. when's, as far as I know are the only species that use ideas and words, to regulate each other right. I can text something to some one. Halfway around the world s, they don't have to hear my voice. They'll have to see my face and I can have an effect on their nervousness. And ideas the ideas that we communicate with words. Words are in a sense, a way for us do mental telepathy with each other right. I mean I'm not the first person to say that obviously, but why troll your heart rate. How do I control your breathing? How do I control your actions with words? It's because those words are communicating ideas, so you also right. I think, let's go back.

brain. You write that plato gave us the idea that the human brain us three brains in three forces. just kind of a compelling notion, you disagree, First of all, what are the three parts of the brain? and why do you disagree so Who played owes description of the psyche which, for the moment will just, assume is the same as a mind. There are some scholars who would say no a soul, a psyche, a mind. Those aren't actually all the same thing in ancient greece, but we'll just for now gloss over that. Who played as idea was that- and it was a It was a description of really out and moral behaviour and moral responsibility in humans. So the idea was that You know the human psyche can be described within metaphor of two

Mrs anna charioteer, so one horse for instincts, ec feeding and fighting and flee and reproduction in china. Control, my salty language, which apparently they print in england like I actually tossed offer release of us yet f, okay, yeah, It's like you printed that I couldn't leave in front of that without, like the stars or whatever, oh, no, no, there was full print. They also printed. The be word, and it was really why I shouldn't. we should learn something from england. Indeed, anyways but instincts in the other horse, represents emotions and then the. Every tier represents rationality, which controls you know the two beasts right and fast forward. You know a couple of centuries

and in the middle of the twentieth century. There is a very poor. pillar view of brain evolution, which suggested that you have this reptilian corps like a lizard for an inner lizard brain for instincts. And then wrapped around not evolved on layer. On top of that, evolved alembic system, for in mammals was of a novel He was in a mammalian brain which this out mammals with gave them, emotions that passive emotions and then on top. Tat evolved a cerebral cortex which, in my view, in largely in primates but but very large in in humans, and it's not that I personally disagree. It's that

as far back as the nineteen sixties, but really by the nineteen seventies it was shown pretty clearly with evidence from molecular genetic, so peering into cells, the brain to look at the molecular make up of genes that the brain did not evolve. That way, and the irony is that you know that. the idea of the three lay brain with an inner lizard. You know that hijacks ear, hijacks your behavior causes you to do and say things that you would otherwise not or maybe that you will regret later, that india became very popular was popularized by Carl Sagan in the dragons of Eden, which, when a pulitzer prize in nineteen seventy seven

when it was already known, pretty much in evolutionary neuroscience that the whole narrative was a myth, so what the narrative is on the way devolved. But do you. I mean again it's that problem of it being a useful tool of conversation, to say like there's a lizard brain and there's a If I get over emotional on twitter, that was the lesser brain and so on. But you know I don't think it's his farm. I think it's I think that is is is it is a useful, accurate. I dont think its act, red and therefore I dont think its use for so I ears what I would say in all. I think that the way I think about philosophy, and science is that they are useful tools for living and

In order to be useful tools for living, they have to help you make good decisions. The trial brain as it's called this this three, your brain the idea that your brain is like an already baked cake, and you know the cortex cerebral cortex, just layer on top like ice the idea that India is the foundation of awe The law in most western countries, its foundation of economic theory and it large and its great narrative, it sort of fits, are intuitions about how we work, but it also, in addition to being wrong. It lets people off the hook for foreign nasty behavior. You know and it also suggests that emotions can't be a source of wisdom

which they often are. In fact, you would not want to be around someone who didn't have emotions. That would be that's a psychopath. I mean that's, not someone you, you know want to want to really have have that person deciding come so I guess my and I can sort of go on and on and on. But my point is that I don't think I don't think it's a useful narrative in the end, was the more in view of the brain, use one worth thinking about it. I'll answer that the second pillar say that even our notion of what an instinct is or what a reflex is not quite right right. So, if you look at evidence from a call gee, for example, and you look at animals in their ecological context. What you can see is that even things which are reflexes are very context. Sensitive

The the brains of those animals are executing, so called instinct shoe well actions in a very, very context, sensitive way, and so You know, even when a physician you know takes that you not like the idea of your patel reflex where they hit. You know your position, attendant on your knee, and you you kick them the force with which you kick and so on in is influenced by all kinds of things. It's it's. A reflex isn't like a robotic response. and so I think a better way is aware that to think about how brains work is the way that matches our best understanding are a scientific understanding which I think is really cool, because it's real counter intuitive, so how I came this view, and I am certainly not the only one who holds this view. I was

in work in non nor anatomy and that the view that I'm about to tell you was subjected strong we suggested by that and then I was reading work and signal processing like by engineer electrical engineering and similarly it the work suggested that that the resource suggested that the brain work. This way, and I'll just say that I was reading across multiple literatures and they were who don't speak to each other and they all pointing in this direction and so far, although some of the details are still up for grabs, the general jest, I think, is I ve not come across. It's anything yet which really violates, and I'm looking and- and so the idea is something like this. It's very counter intuitive and so the way to describe it is to say that your brain doesn't react to things.

In the world? It's not it to us. It feels like our eyes and our and our windows on the world. We see things we hear things we we react to them and in psychology we call this stimulus response, so your faces as your voice is a stimulus to me I receive input, and then I react to it and I might react very automatically. You know system one, and old, but I also my ex execute some country well, where I maybe stop myself from saying something doing something and more in a more reflective way executed. Different action right that system too, The way the brain works, though, is it's predicting all the time stately, talking to itself constantly talking to your body and its constantly

predicting. What's going on in the body and what's going on in the world and making predictions and the information from your body and from the world really confirm or correct those predictions. So fundamentally the thing that the brain does most the time is just predict How can you herself and predicting stuff about the world not like this? Damn thing they just senses and respond sense. Yes, I've waited the way to think about is like this. You know brain is trapped in a dark, silent box. That's very romantic of you, which is your skull, and the only information that it receives from your body and from the world right is through the senses, through the sense organs your eyes your ears and you have sense. Sensory data that comes from your body

that, your largely unaware of to your brain, which we call intercept of as opposed to access receptive, which is the world around you and but your brain is receiving sense data continuously, which are the fact of some set of causes Your brain doesn't know the cause of these sense. It's only receiving the effects of those causes which are the data themselves, and so your brain has to solve what philosophers call an inverse info problem. How do you know when you only received the effects of something? How do you know what cause those effects? So when. The flash of light or a change in pressure were tough. somewhere in your body how your brain know what caused those

and so that it knows what to do next to keep you alive and well, and the answer is that your brain has one other source of information available to it, which is your past experience. It can reconsider tude in its wiring past experiences, it can combine those past experiences in novel ways, and so we have lots of names for this in ecology, we call it memory, we call it perceptual inference, we call it emulation. It's also. We call it. Concepts are conceptual knowledge. We call it prediction. Basically, if we were to stop the world right now, stop time, your brain is in a state and its

presenting what it believes is going on in your body and in the world and its predicting. What will happen next, based on past experience, right probable, mystically, what's most likely to happen and it begins to prepare your ass, shan and it begins to prepare you're. The inn prepare your experience based. So it's anticipating the sense data. It's going to receive And then, when that those data come in, they either confirm that, action and your action executes because the plans already been made, or it were there. Some sense data that your brain didn't predict, that's unexpected and your brain takes it in. We say encodes it with fancy name for that.

We call it learning your brain learns and it updates. Store house of knowledge, which we call an internal model and that you so that you can predict better next time and it turns out that predicting and correcting predicting and correcting is a much more metabolic lee efficient way to run a system than constantly reacting all the time if you're, constantly reacting it means you have. No, you can't debate in any way. What's gonna happen, and so the the amount of ants anti that you have to deal with is overwhelming to a nervous system but costly. I, like it, and so what is a reflex? A reflex is when your brain doesn't check against the sense data that the potential cost to you is so good, eight, maybe because you know your life is threatened, that your brain makes the prediction and executes the action without checking s book production

The court has a beautiful vision of the brain. I wonder from almost an air perspective. Budgets computationally is the branches Mostly a prediction machine then, like is the perception just the. Nice little feature on top like the bottom, the integration of new perceptual information. I wonder how big of an impressive system is that relative to just the big predictor model concerned Well, I think that we can. We can look to evolution for that for one answer, which is that when you go back, you know five in fifty million years, give or take we in the world was populated by creatures really ruled by creatures, without brains and and you know, that's a biological statement, not political statement

really thrilled with the dinosaurs, dumb you're talking about like. Oh, no, I'm not talking to my dinosaurs, honey. I'm talking waved back further back than that, and really these there, these little little creatures called Amfi oxus, which is the modern. It's or a lance it. That's the modern animal but It's an animal that scientists believe is very similar to our common. The common ancestor that we share with invertebrates because be basically because of the trail back the molecular genetics and cells and that animal had brain it had some cells. That would later, into a brain, but in that animal there's no brain, but that animal also had no head and it no eyes, and it had no ears, and it had really really. No sense is, for the most part, it had very, very limited sense of touch. It had an eye spot for not foreseeing but

for in training to circadian rhythm to light and dark, and it had no, hearing it had a vestibular cell so that it could keep upright in the water at the time a proxy talking evolutionary scale here, so you know give or take some hundred million years or something but at the time you know what are the vertebrate like one of when a backbone evolved, and a brain evolved, a full brain that was when head, evolved with sense with sense, org and when that's when you're viscera, like internal systems involved. So the answer I would say is that that senses, Nurse motor neuroscientist people who studied the control of motor behaviour believe that set is involved in the service of motor action. So

the idea is that work, what triggered the? What triggered? What was what was the big evolutionary change. What was the big pressure that made it useful to have eyes and ears and a visual system and an auditory system in a brain. Basically- and you know, and the sir, that is commonly. retain right now is that it was predation that, when at some point an animal evolved that deliberately eight and other animal, and this launched an arms race between predators and pray, and it became very useful to have senses right. these, these little amphioxus these little empty oxy. You know, don't really have the data,

have and they're not aware of their environment, very much, really they and so being able to look up ahead and you know ask yourself, you know, is that it should I eat that are willing to me. It is very useful thing. So the idea. Is that sense it? Since, since data is not there for consciousness, it's didn't evolve for the purposes of consciousness, it didn't evolve for the purposes of experiencing anything and it evolved in the cert to be in the service of motor control. However, maybe it's useful- and this is why you know scientists sometimes avoid questions about why things evolved, that this is what philosophers

this teleology, you might be able to say something about how things evolve, but not necessarily why we, really now the? Why that's all speculation, but the wise colonizers of nice? Here's the interesting thing is that was first element of social interaction is, Am I gonna eat you where you can eat me and for that was useful to be able to see each other sounds each other, this kind of fascinating, now that there was a time when life didn't eat each other or they did by accident. Right so an embryo is, for example, will it kind of lake gyrates in the water and then it plants itself in the sand like blade of grit like a living blade of grass, and then it just filters whenever comes into

mouth right. So it is, it is eating, but it's not actively hunting front and when the concentration of food decreases it the amphioxus can sense this, and so it basically wriggles itself, randomly to some other spot which put probabilistic? We will have more good then, wherever it is, so it's not really. You know guiding its actions on the basis of a thought we would say There is no real, intentional action in that in that, in the traditional sense begin of international action and if the brain is put, if prediction is indeed core component of the brain. The me ask you a question that scientists also hate is about free will, Do you think about freeware much? How does that fit into this

into your view of the brain. Why does it feel like we make decisions in this world This is a hard me. Scientists hate. This is a hard bazaars question. We know they are setting aside. I think everywhere. I think I have taken decided it. I dont put a lot of stock in my own intuitions or anybody's intuitions about the cause of things right, aurex, but one thing we know but and for sure is that the brain creates experiences for us. Our my brain creates experiences for me, your brain trades experiences for you in a way that lures you to believe that those experiences actually reveals the way that it works, but it doesn't so the first, intuition and not really will not really- I mean nobody I am also somewhat persuaded by you know. I think Dan Dennett road at one point like you know the philosopher,

then a road at one point that it it's like. I can't say it is eloquently as him, but it people obviously have free will. They are obviously making choices. So it's you know, and so there is this. Observation that we're not robots and we can do some. It's like a little more sophisticated than an empty oxus. So so here's what I. Say I would say that you're predict and your internal model that's running. right now right that your ability to understand the sounds that I'm making Attach them to ideas is based on the fact that you have years of experience, knowing what these sounds mean in a particular statistical pattern. Right I mean that's how you can understand that words that are coming out of my mouth ripe. I think we did this once before too didn't we when we were, I would have done

since my memory module. I think when I was in your when I yeah. I think we did it just like that. Actually, so bravo, while after Look back to the tape yeah anyway idea, though, is that your brain is using past experience and it can and it can use past experience in and so it's remembering but you're, not consciously remembering it's basically re implementing prior experiences as a way of predicting. What's going to happen next, and it can do something called conceptual combination, which is, it can take bits and pieces is of the past and combined it in new ways. So you can experience and make sense of Things that you ve never encountered before, because you ve encountered something similar to them, and so,

A brain in a sense is not just doesn't just contain information, it is information gaining meaning. It can create new information by this generative process. So in a sense you could say well that maybe that's that's a source of free well, but Think really? Where free well comes from or the kind of free? Well that I think, is worth having recovery. In about is involves cultivating experiences for yourself that change your internal model. when you were born and you were raised in a particular context, that maude your brain wired itself to your surroundings, to your fists surroundings and also to your social surroundings, so you were hand an internal model. Basically, but when you grow up the more control you have

were you're where you are and what you do. You can cultivate new experiences for yourself and those new experiences, can change our internal model, and you can actually practice those experiences in a way that makes them automatic make meaning it makes it easier for the brain, your brain, to make them again, and I think that that is something like what you would call free will you aren't responsible for the mob that you were handed that someone. You know you're you're, caregivers, cultivated a model in your brain, you not respond for that model. But you are right before the one you have now you and choose you choose what you expose yourself to you choose how you spend

time not, everybody has choice over everything, but everybody has a little bit of choice, and- and so I think that is. something that I think is arguably called free. Will yeah this, like the the ripple effects of the billions Decisions you make early on in life have are so great that, even if it's not even if it's like all the monistic just the amount of possibilities that air crew. He did and then the focusing on those possibilities into a single trajectory. There somewhere within that that's free will, even if it's all deterministic that might as well be

just the number of choices that are possible and the fact that you make one trajectory through a set of choices seems to be like something I fell because we were, but it's the kind of sad to think I like that, doesn't seem to be a place where there's magic in their way. All just the computer. Well, there's lots of magic, I would say so far because we don't really understand how. All of this is exactly played out anna. I mean scientists are working here, and disagree about some of the details, the hood of what I just described, but I think there's quite a bit of magic We can also there's theirs. So stuck casting firing of nerve neurons. Don't they dare not purely digital in the sense that there,

is there is also analogue communication between neurons, not just digital, so sancho with not just with firing of vaccines and some of that they there's. There are other ways to communicate and also there's noise in the system? and the noise is there for a really good reason, and that is the more very ability there is the more potential there As for your brain to- able to be information bearing so basically. you know there are some animals than have clusters of cells. The only job is to inject noise You know into their I'm neural patterns. Some of your noises are the source of free will, so you can think about. You can think about stuck hostility or noise as as a source of free, free, well or you can think of a conceptual company. she as a source of free. Well, you can certainly

think about cultivating? Ah you know you can't reach back into your past and change your past. You know people try by psychotherapy and so on, but what you can do is change your present and which becomes your past let me write about their sentences, so one way to think about it is the ear continuously. This is a colleague of mine, a friend of mine, said. So what you're saying is that people are continually cultivating their past and I was like that's very poetic. Yes, You are continually cultivating your past as a means controlling your future, think I am, I guess, the construction of the mental model of the eu for prediction, ultimate, contains within it. Your perception of the path like the way you interpret them even just the entirety of your narrative about to pass through

they re writing the story. You pass our boy yeah, that's one poetic and also just an inspiring what about the other day. You talk about eve mention about sensitive perception as a thing that is just yet for about the sources of the thing that you have perceived to your senses, this is so. Let me ask the another ridiculous, question is, is anything real at all? I can do we know it's real. How do we make sense of the fact that, just like you, there's this brain sitting alone, the darkness trend perceived the world. How do we that the world's out there I can be pursued yeah so think the EU should be asking questions like that without passing a joint right know for sure yeah. I actually did before this budget that's. Ok for apologise for not sharing. That number

But I would say what I would say is that the real and why we can be pretty sure that- There's a there. There is that the stock sure of the information in the world, what we call status the irregularities, insights and sounds, and so on and the structure of the information that comes from your body. It's not random stuff, there's a structure to it, there's a spatial structure and a temporal structure and that spatial and temporal structure wires, your brain, so an infant brain is not a miniature adele brain. It's a brain that he's waiting for wiring instructions from the world and it must reach see those wiring instructions to develop in a typical way For example, when a new born is born when a new born is born, when I'm gonna babies born the the baby, can't see very well, because

the visual system, in that babies brain is not complete. the retina of your eye, which actually is part of your brain, has to be stimulated with photons of late. If it's not, the baby won't develop normally does to be able to see in that in a neurotypical way. Same thing is true for hearing the same thing is true really for all your senses. So the point is that and that the physical world the sense data from the physical world wires, your brain, so that you have an internal model of that world so that your brain can predict well to keep you alive and well and allow you to thrive as fascinating that the brain is waiting for a very specific kind of set of instructions from the world like not not the specific but a very specific kind of instructions.

Oh you, scientists call it expected input. The brain needs some input in order to develop normally and set were and we are genetically in a week, as I say in the book, we we have the kind of nature that requires nurture we. We can't develop normally without sense input. Sensory put from the world and from the body and what's really interesting about humans. And some other animals too, but really sir Firstly, in humans is the end. But that we need is not just physical. It's also social We in order for an an an infant, a human end. To develop normally that infant needs eye contact touch, it needs certain types of smells, it needs to be cuddled, it needs right so

without social input. The brain with that that Infants brain will not wire itself in a nerd typical way and again I would say that there are lots of cultural policy. Earns of caring for an infinite, not like the infants to be cared for in one way or whatever the social environment is for an infant that it will be reflected in that infants internal models. We have lots of different called there is lots of different ways of rearing children and that's an advantage for our species, although we don't always experience it that way, that is an advantage for a species, but if you if you just you, know, feed and water a baby without all the extra social do, dad's what you

that is a profoundly impaired human birds. Nevertheless, you caught us that the physical reality has has a consistent thing throughout that keeps feeding these sort of sensory. Information that our brains are constructed for, but yeah. The cool thing, though, is that if you change the consistency, if you change the statistical regularities, so prediction error, your brain can learn it. It's expensive for your brain to learn and it takes a while, the two for the brain to get really automated with it. But you know you: who had a wonderful conversation with David human who just published a book about this and gave lots and lots of really very, very cool examples, some of which I actually disgusting, how motions were made, but not obviously, to the extent that he did in his book. It's a fascinating book and its, but it it speaks to the point

that you're internal model is always under construction and therefore You always can I defy your experience, So what the limits are? Lay cow. Forget it put it on mars. Have it put in virtual reality. If we sit home during a pandemic, and we spend most of our dan twitter and tiktok. I wonder what were the breaking point, like the limitations of the brains, capacity to were to prop, We continue wiring itself. Well, I think what I would say is that there are different ways to. Ass. If I, your question right like one way to specify it, would be the way the David phrases at witches can can we create a new sense like you? Can we create an sensory modality how would that be one of the limit

in doing that, and but another way to say it is what would happen to a brain when you remove some of those states. Took irregularities right like what happens to a brain, what happens to an adult brain when you remove some of the statistical patterns that were there and they're, not there anymore dogma in the environment or in the actual, like you remove eyesight, for example, or judge well either way I mean basically one way: limit the inputs to your brain arches. Stay home and protect yourself. I see another way is to put someone in solitary confinement another way is to stick them in Nursing home. While not all nursing homes, but you know, but there are some right which really are somewhere p

people are some impoverished in the interactions. The end this sensors to the variety of sensory stimulation that they got Another way is that you lose a sense right, but the point is, I think that No, the human brain really likes for Eighty two to say no You know I like a problem. You know sort of cartesian way. Variety is a good thing or brain and um, there are risks. you take when you restrict what you expose yourself to there. As always talk talk diversity is a brain, loves it to the fullest dignan mission and degree of diversity. Yet I mean, I would say the only thing. Basically, women brains thrive on diversity. The only place

we seem to have difficulty with diversity is with each other, but we who wants to use the same food every day you never would, who wants to wear the same clothes every day, a mere my husband. If you ask him to close his eyes, he won't be able to tell you what he's wearing just right here by seven shirts of exactly the same style in every color but they are indifferent, colors right. Now. How would you then explain brain which is terrified of choice and therefore were the same thing every time. While you must be getting your diverse The efforts of all you are a fairly sharp dresser, so there is that right you're getting some real progress waves, but though your brain must get divorced, in and others in other places, but I think we know the so there, the two most bent things your brain can do metabolic speaking, is, is move your body,

and learn something new, so novelty? That is diversity right comes at a cost of metabolic cost, but it's a cost it it's an investment that it gives returns and in general people very and how much they like novelty, unexpected things that some people really like it. Some people really don't like it and there's everybody in between, but general. We don't need the same every day we don't usually do exactly the same thing in exactly the same order in exactly the same place every day, the only place we have difficulty, With diversity in is in each other and then We have considerable problems there. I would say as a species them ass god. familiar Donald happens, work about, a questions of reality. What what are your thoughts of the possibility that the

Everything would be talking about of the brain Wiring itself from birth to particular set of inputs is just a little slice of reality that there is something much you out there that we humans, without cognate and cognitive capabilities issues, just perceiving than with the thing were perceiving just the happy like windows. Ninety five interface onto a much bigger, richer set of complex physics that were not even in touch with Well, without getting too metaphysical about it, I think we know for sure it doesn't have to be the you know. Crappy version of anything, but we definitely have a limited, we have. We have a set of sensors

that are limited in very physical ways- and we are clearly not perceiving everything there is to perceive that's clear- I mean it's just it's not that hard. We can't without special. Why do we invent scientific tools it so that we can overcome our says and an experience things that we couldn't otherwise. Well, They are, you know different parts of the visual spectre either spectrum or things there to see microscopically small for us to see or too far away for us to see Clearly, we are only getting a slice and that slice. You know that the interesting or potentially sad thing about humans is that we, whatever we experience, we think, there's a natural,

reason for experiencing it, and we think it's obvious unnatural and it must be this way and that all the other stuff isn't important and that's clearly not true men. The things that we think of as natural are anything, but we ve come there, certainly real, but we ve created them, certainly very real impact, but we ve created those impacts. I also know that there are many things outside of our awareness that have have tremendous in louis on what we experience in what we do. So there is no question that that's true I mean just its it some but extent. Is how found out your questions. How fantastical is like what you know? A lot of people asked me of my allowed to say this. I think I'm off to say this of have eaten a couple times, but having gone before I'm talkin to view researchers and second Alex is an interesting scientifically place like what is that,

Porto you're entering when you take psychedelic or another would ask as like dreams. What are they Let me tell you what I think, which is based on nothing like a book on violent right, though I do the urine tuition? It's based on my its base, some mike I'm guessing now, I'm based on I do now I would say, but I think that was about what happens so you running your brains running this internal model mine, it's all its idea, your awareness for yacht. You see that you feel the products, but you don't you. Since the if no awareness of the mechanics of it ran it's going on all the time. and so one thing that's going on all the time that you are completely unaware of. Is that when your brain, your brain is basically asking its figuratively speaking, not literally right like how it descent give it the last time I was in this sensory array with

this stuff going on in my body and I, and that this chain of events which just occurred. What did I do next? What did I feel next would device next, it doesn't come up with one answer: it comes up with a distribution of it possible answers. And then there has to be some selection process into, You have work in your brain us sub network in your brain, a population neurons that helps to choose. It's not I'm not talking about a homunculus in your brain or anything. Silly like that. This is not the sole all. It's not the centre of yourself or anything like that, but there is It is a set of neurons that ways the probabilities in and helps to select.

Act nor narrow the field, okay and that that network is working all the time. It's actually called the control network. The executive control network, where you can call it a front o pride of because the regions of the brain that make it up are in the frontal lobe and the pride hello. are also parts that belong to the sub cortical parts of rain. It doesn't really matter. The point is that there is this network and it is working all the time whether You feeling control whether or not you feel like you're spending effort doesn't really matter it's on all the time, except when you sleep, when you sleep, it's it's a little bit relaxed and so think about was happening when you sleep, when you sleep, the exchequer, the external world receives the sense from so basically, your model becomes a little bit the tethers

from the world are loosened, and this network, which is involved in You know, maybe weeding out on realistic things is a little bit quiet, so used your dream, aims are really or internal model. That's unconstrained by. the immediate world, except so you Do things that you can't do in real life in your dreams right, you can fly like I, for example, when I my back in a dream I much faster than when I fly my front. Don't ask me why I don't I'll go in your laying in your backing? You do know when I'm in dream and flying in a dream. I am much faster flaw you're in the air I often I like you, talk about like you, I don't think I've found for many years. Well, you must try it as a fault. I've flaunt falling at scary,

yeah, but you fly, you don't buy like airline. I fly my dream, I'm way faster rate and your, but on my back way faster now you can say: well, you know you never flew in your life right. It's conceptual combination. I mean I flown in an airplane and I've seen birds fly and I've watch movies people flying- and I know superman- probably flies- I dont know he flies faster on his back, but he's Well, he's never seen sitting on his front drive, but so yeah but anyways. My point is that you know all of this stuff really and all these experiences really become part of your internal model. The thing is that when you're sleep year. Interim all is still being constrained by your body. Here, your brains always attached to your body. It's always receiving sense data from your body. Your mostly never aware of that. Unless you wrap the stairs. or you know. Maybe you are ill in some way, but your mother,

sleep not aware of it, which is a really good thing, because if you were, you know, you'd, never attention to anything outside your and skin. Ever again like right now, you seem like you're sitting there very calmly, but you ever a virtual holes. Roma rights like? Oh, look it up broad going on inside your body, and so I think that one of the things that happens when people take so Simon were take. You know ketamine, for example, is that the heather's completely, are completely removed. Yeah, that's by saying and then when and that's why it's helpful to have a guide right, because the guide is giving you sense, data to stay her that internal models so that it doesn't go completely off the rails, yet another shot

again that wiring to the other brain, that's the guide, ITALY's a tiny little tether exactly here. Let's talk about emotion a little bit if he could. should comes up often, and I have never spoken with anyone. Who, who the clarity about emotion from a biological and neuroscience perspective, the you do and I'm not sure I fully know how to as as I mentioned this way too much, but as somebody who is born the soviet union and romantic This is basically everything talks about love, nonstop. Emotion is what to make of it. I what some maybe I was just trying to I any from neuroscience perspective we talked about the last time your book covers it, how much the maid. But what are some misconceptions?

we writers of poetry? We, romanticizing humans, humans have about emotion that we should, move away from afford to think about emotion from both the scientific and an engineering perspective you so is a common view of emotion in the west. The caricature of that view is that You know we have an inner beast your limbic system. Your inner lizard we have an inner beast and that comes baked in to the brain and births. So you ve got circuits for anger, sadness sphere its interesting that they all have english names. These circuits are, but that that there there and their triggered by things in the world, and then they cause you to do and say in the issue when your fear circuit is triggered you

widen your eyes. You gas, pure your heart rate, goes up you prepare to flee or to freeze- and these are these are modal responses are not the only response is that you give, but on average there, the prototypical responses, that's the view and that's the view of emotion in the law. That's the view that motions. Are these profoundly unhelpful things that are obligatory kind of like reflexes. The problem with that view is that it doesn't comport to the evidence and it doesn't really matter the evident actually lines are beautifully with each other. It just doesn't line up with that view, and it doesn't matter whether measuring people's phases. Facial movements

measuring their body, movements are measuring their peripheral physiology measuring their brains for their voices or whatever pick any any. Output that you want a measure and you know any system, you want a measure and you don't really fine strong evidence for this, and I say as somebody who not only has reviewed really thousands of articles and run a big. better analyses which are statistical summaries of of publish papers, but also as someone who has sent teams of researchers to small scale cultures in a remote cultures, which are very dear. Friend from urban large scale. Cultures like ours and culture that we visited say we euphemistically, because I I might- didn't go because I only had to research permits and I gave them to my students cause I felt like it was

better for them to have that experience and more format for them to have that experience that I was in contact. With them every day by satellite phone- and this was to visit the hadza hunter gatherers in tanzania who are not an ancient people. There modern culture, but they live in circumstances, hunting and foraging circumstances. That our very similar in who are conditions to our ancestors. Gathering ancestors when expressions of emotion were supposed to have evolved by one view of okay, so you know, for many years I was sort of struggling with this of observations right, which is that I feel emotion and I

see. I perceive emotion and other people, but scientists can't find a single marker, a single biomarker not a single individual measure or pattern of measures that will can predict house One, what kind of emotional state therein? How could that possibly be? How get? How can you possibly make sense of those two things and through a lot of reading and a lot of and immersing myself indifferent literatures I came to the hypothesis- is tat. The brain is constructing these instances out of more basic income. Dance. So when I tell you that the brain, when I think you that what your brain is doing is making diction and its asking itself figuratively speaking the last time

I was in this situation and this you know physical state. What did I do next? What did I see next? What did I hear next? It's basically asking what am I passed is similar to the present and things which are similar to one another, are called category a group of things that are similar one, another category and a mental representation of a category is a concept, so your brain is constructing categories or concepts. On the floor, continuously. Do you really want understanding? The brain is doing you, don't you

The machine learning like classification models is not going to help you, because the brain doesn't classify it's doing. Category construction and the categories change or it or you could say, is doing concept. Construction. Its using past experienced conjure a concept which is a prediction and if its using past experiences of emotion than its constructing an emotion concept, you're concept will be the content of it is is, Changes depending on the situation that you're in so, for example, if your brain uses past experience As of anger that you have learned either because somebody labelled them for you taught them too, You, you observed them in movies and so on. In one situation could be very different from your concept

for anger than another situation, and this is how anger instances of anger are what we call a population of variable instances: Sometimes when you're angry scowl Sometimes, when you're angry, you might smile sometimes when you're angry you. Cry Sometimes your heart rate will go up. It will go down. It will stay the same. It depend On what action you're about to take, because the way predict- and I should say the idea that figure ology is yoke to action is very old idea in in the study of the peripheral nervous system has been known for really decades, and so, if you look, but the brain is doing. If you just look at the anatomy in an you, what the here's, the hypothesis that you would that you would come up with I can go into the details. I've publish these details in in scientific paper,

and they also appear somewhat in how motions are made my first book. They are not in the seven and have lessons, because that book is is really not pitched at that level of explanation, but it's just giving is really just a set of little essays em, but the evidence, but we're about to say, is actually based on on on scientific evidence when your brain begins to predict. Make former prediction the first thing it's doing is its making a prediction of how to change the internal systems of your body, your heart, your cardiovascular system, the controls. heart controlled your lungs right of a flush of of court as all which is not a stress hormone. It's a hormone that gets glucose into your bloodstream very fast, because your brain is predicting. You need to do something metabolic lee expensive.

And so so either. That means either move or learn. Ok, and so your brain preparing your body, the internal systems of your body, to execute some actions to move in some way and the in then it in furs based on those mode predictions and what we call viscera motor predictions, meaning that the the changes the viscera that your brain is preparing to to execute it. Your brain makes an inference about what you will send based on those motor movements, so your experience of the world and yet sperience of your own body are a consequence of those predictions, those concepts when

brain, makes a concept for emotion. Its constructing instance of that emotion is how motions are made and those concepts load in the actions that are made include, damn contents inside the body contents outside the body. I mean it includes other humans suggest this construction of a concept includes, the variables that are much richer than just some survey. Simple notion. Yes, our colloquial notion of a concept where it it. You know, I'm where I say well, what's the concept of a bird and then you list the set of features off to me. That's that's people's understanding. You know typically what a concept

but if you go into the literature in cognitive science, what you see is that the way that scientists have understood what a concept is has we changed over the years, so people used to think about a concept as philosophers and scientists used to think about a concept as dictionary definition for a category, so there's a set of things which are similar outlaw world. And do your concept for for that category is the dictionary desk definition of the features, the necessary and sufficient features of that of those instances. So for a bird- and you know it would be wings feathers right, a b it flies whenever ok, that's called the classical category and scientists discovered observed that actually Not all instances of birds have feather

and not all instances of birds fly, and so the idea was that you don't have a single representation of necessary insufficient features stored in your brain somewhere. Instead, what you have is a prototype, a prototype, meaning you still have a single representation for the category one, but the features are like of the most for instance, of the category or maybe the most frequent instance, but not all instances of the category have all the features right. They they have some graded similarity to the prototype. And then you know what I'm gonna do, like incredibly simplify, now a lot of work to say that, then a series of experiments were done. Show that in fact, what you brain seems to be doing is key. up with a single eggs?

ampler, or instance of the category and reading off the features. When I ask you for the concept, so if we were in a pet store- and I asked you what are the features of a bird. Tell me the concept of bird. You would be more likely to give me features of a good, pat and if we were in a restaurant would be more likely illegal, buggy, right or working Three, if we were in a restaurant, you would be more likely to give me the features of a bird that you would eat like a chicken and we were in a park. You be more likely to give me in this country in the future. Of a sparrow or a robin, whereas if we were in south america, you'd probably give me the features of a peacock, because that's more common

it's where it is more common there than here that you would see a peacock in such circumstances. So the. Idea. Was that really what your brain was doing was conjuring a concept on the fly that meets the function that the categories being put to gay. Then people started studying ad hoc concepts, meaning concepts that, where the instances don't share any feet, any physical features, but the function of the instances. the same so, for example, think about all the things that can protect you from the rain. What are all the things that can protect you from the rain brown, like this apartment. eight

giving a damn like like em. The mine, say yeah right right. So the idea is that the function of the instances is the same. In a given situation, even if they look different, sound different smell different, this is called an abstract concept or a conceptual concept. Now the really cool thing about conceptual categories or conceptual concert: gps conceptual category, a conceptual as a category of things that are held together by a function which is called an abstract concept or a conceptual category, because the things don't share physical features, they share functional features there to really cool things about this. One is that's what darwin said: a species was

Who darwin is known for discovering natural selection, but the other thing he really did, which was really profound, which is less celebrated for, is understanding that all illogical categories have inherent variation, inherent variation. Darwin wrote in the origins this is about before Darwin's book a species was thought to be classical category where all the instances of dogs were this im had the exactly same features and any variation from that perfect. Put platonic instance was considered to be error, and darwin said no, its, not error its meaningful nature, selects on the base,

of that variation. The reason why natural selection is is powerful and can exist is because there is variation in a species and in dogs weed but that variation in terms of the size of the dog in. Amount of further dog has on the color in the still, how long the tail and how long is this now. In humans. We talk about that variation in all kinds of ways. Right, including in cultural ways. So that's one thing that really interesting about conceptual categories is that darwin is basically saying a species is a conceptual category and in fact, if you look at modern debates about

what is a species, you can't find anybody agreeing on what the criteria are for a species as they don't all share the same genome. We don't all share, we don't there isn't a single human, you know, there's a population of genomes, but their variable not unbounded variation, but they are variable right and the other thing. It's really cool about conceptual categories. Is that they are the categories that we use to make civilization so think about money, for example, What are all the physical things that make something a currency? Is there any physical feature that all currencies in all the world's that's,

been used by humans share, will certainly labour, but what what is it eyes definable? the south is getting to the point that you here long term function there. It's the function, frank, it's that we trade it for material goods and that and we have to agree right. We all in hose on whatever it is. Salt barley, little shells, big rocks in the ocean that can't move bitcoin pieces of plastic mortgages, which are basically a promise of something in the future. Nothing more right! All of these things. We impose value on them, and we all agree that we can exchange them for material goods and yes has brought by the way you're, attributing some that did Darwin, that he thought I'm now, I'm saying it something really in view of what a species is the function. Yet, what I'm saying is that, where darwin

when really talked about variation in. If you read, for example, the biologists Ernst mare who was an evolutionary biologist and then, when he retired became my historian and philosopher biology and his suggestion. is it that darwin darwin did talk about variation, he vanquished woods called centralism. These idea that there's a single set of features that define any species and

and out of that grew and really discussions of what the function. You know like some of the functional features that species have like they can reproduce or the afsp they can have offspring. The individuals of a species can have offspring and turns out. That's not a perfect. Definitely, you know that's not a perfect criterion to use, but it's a functional criterion right. So what I'm saying is that in cognitive science, people came up with the idea, they discovered the idea of conceptual categories, or ad hoc concepts, these concepts that can change based on the function their serving right and that its there our wits in darwin and its also in the philosophy of social reality? You can the way that philosophers talk about social reality. Just look around you I mean we impose. We're

reading a bunch of things as similar, which are physically different and sometimes we take things that are physically the same and we treat them as separate categories but feels like the number variables involved in that kind of categorization, nearly infinite No, I don't think so, because there is a physical constraint right like you, and I could agree that we can fly in real life, but we can't that's a physical, that's, a physical constraint that we can bring all right, you and I could agree that we could walk through the walls, but we can't we could agree that we can eat last but there's a lot of constraint, but I agree that the virus doesn't exist and we don't have to wear masks, but you, physical reality still holds the trump card right, but still there's a lot of hard work,

It is time completely unintended, but there you go, that's a predicting brain for air out of it, but bad. There is a tremendous amount of leeway, Yeah. That's the point, so I, what I'm saying is that emotions are like money. Basically, there they're like money there like countries there like king, in queens and presidents there like everything that we construct that we import whose meaning on we take these physical signals. We give the meanings that They don't otherwise have by their physical nature and cause we agree. They have that function, but that the beautiful thing so maybe I'm like money. I love this similarities. It is not obvious to me that this kind of emergent agree

I meant, should happen with emotion, because our experiences are so different for each of us humans and yet we cannot converge. While in a culture we converge, but not across cultures. Their huge huge differences there are huge differences in what catty, what concepts exist, what they are what they look like. So what I would say is that I feel like what we're doing with our young children as we as their brains become wired to their physical and there, sir shall environment right is that we are curious thing for them. We are boots dropping into their brains set of emotion concepts, that's partly with their learning and we curate those for infants just the way we curate for them. What is a dog? What is a cat? What is a truck, we sometimes explicitly label and we sometimes

just use mental words when you know you're a kid is you know three, curios on the floor instead of eating them or your kid is crying when you know she won't herself to sleep or whatever use mental words and a word is this words with for infants, words. Are these really special things that they help infants, learn abstract categories? There's a huge literature showing that children can take? things. I don't look infants like infants, really young infants of pre verbal infants can take if you label. If I say to you and your an infant case, I say lacks laxity this. Is a bleeding, and I put it down in the bling makes us squeaky noise, and then I say the letters delighted about that

is a blessing and I put it down and it makes the three key noise and then I say, let's see this is a blessing you as young as four months old will expect this to make a noise or a squeaking noise, and if you don't, if it doesn't you'll, be surprised because it violated your ex station right. Now, I'm building for you, and internal model of a bleeding. Ok, infants can do it's really really at a young age, and so there's no reason to believe that couldn't learn. Emotion, categories and concepts in this way and in in one and what happens when you go to a new culture. When you go to a new culture, you have to do what's called emotion, cultivation so Colleagues, I shall, in belgium studies emotional cultivation. She studies how, when people move from one country to another, how do they

learn the emotion concepts of that culture. How do they learn to make sense of their own internal, since Nations and also the movements- you know, rays of an eyebrow the tilted ahead. How did they learned to make sense of cues from other people using concepts they dont have but have to make on? The fly the difference in cultures, the mia open another door not shown open, but the difference between men and women is a difference between emotional lies of those two, categories of biological systems. So here's what I would say in a we did a series of studies in the ninety nine days where we are, men and women- to tell us about emotional lives and women just themselves as much more emotional than men. They believe that they were more emotional men and men agreed. Women are much more.

In america and then we gave them little handheld computers. These were a little hewlett, packard computers they fit in the palm of your hand, couple a pathway, wait, a couple of pounds council: this is like creep pilot even like this was ninety nineties. yeah like early and I. We asked them. We would, you know Peng them Like ten times a day and just ask them to report, how they are feeling which is called sperience sampling, so experience sampled, and and and then at the end, and then we looked at their reports and we found that men and women basically didn't differ when there were some people were really had many more instances of emotion. So they were. You know they were treading water in a tumultuous sea of emotion,

there were other people who were like floating tranquilly you know in a lake, is it really not perturb very often and and everyone in between, but there were no difference between men and women, and the really interesting thing is at the end of the sampling period. We asked people, so we reflect over the past two weeks and tell it so we ve been now pinging people like again and again and again right the tell us how Marshall do think, you're no change from the beginning, so men and women believe that their they believe. that they are different and when they are looking at other people, they make different inferences about emotion. If a man, if a man Scowling like if you and I were together and some so somebody's watching this, ok and damn thing, by that people love it. When you look at the camera

if you and I make exactly the same set of facial movements when people look at you, men and women. Look at you. They are more likely to think oh he's, reacting to the situation and when they look at me, they'll say she's having emerged, she's gonna hear, and I about this actually right before were the two thousand sixteen election, you know, maybe I could confess. Let me try to carefully confess, but you are really getting yeah. That's that When I hear that there is an element, when I see Hillary Clinton that there were something annoying about her to me, and I just that feeling and that I try to reduce their too.

What? What is that? Because I think the same attributes that are annoying about her. When I see in other people wouldn't be annoying, so I was trying to understand what is it because it did. It certainly does feel like that concept. constructed in my mind well I'll, tell you that I think well, let me just say that that that what you would predict about, for example, the performance of the two of them. in the debates, and I rode not bad for the new york times actually before the second debate and it played out really pretty much, as I thought that it would operate, research is not like I'm like a great fortune, teller or I was as applying the research which is that when a woman, a woman's people make internal attributions, it's called they be inferred the facial movements and body posture and vocal illustrations of a woman reflects your interstate

for a man there more likely to assume that they reflect his response to the situation, This energy about hammett says something about the situation leaves in now for the thing that you works, that you were. describing about Hillary Clinton. I think a lot of people experienced but it also in line with research, which shows an end patchouli research actually on em in about teaching evaluations, is one place that you really see it, where the expectation is that a woman we'll be nurture and and that a man there's just no expectation for him to be nurtured, and so here you know if he is nurture and he gets points If he's not, he gets points there just different points right whereas for a woman, especially woman whose

an authority figure she's, really in a catch twenty two, because if she serious she's a batch and if she's empathic than she's weak as brilliant one of a bigger questions to ask here. So that's one example were are concerned. Construction of concepts gets right, but member in trouble, but so but member, I said science is a science and philosophy are like tools for living. So I learned recently that if you asked me what is my intuition about what regulates my eating, I will say: carbine aids I love, carbohydrates. I love past. I love brad. I love I just love, carbohydrates, but actually research shows and it's beautiful research. I love this research because it so violates my own Deeply deeply held beliefs about myself that most

animals on this planet who have been studied and there are many actually eat to regulate their protein intake So you will over each carbohydrates if you- where to get enough protein, and these rate this research has been done with human, very beautiful research with humans with forgets with like you know banal. I mean just like all these different animals, often over, but I think like baboons, now that I have no intuition about that. and I even now, as I regulate my eating, I die still, I just have no intuition it just. I can't. I can't feel it. What I feel is only about the car, if you like your regulating around carbohydrates, not the protein here, but in fact actually I am doing if I am like most anna on the planet. I am regulating them protein. So knowing this, what do I do correct my behaviour to eat too, to action,

deliberately try to focus on the protein that, is the idea behind biased training. Right like, if you, I also did not experience Hillary Clinton as the warmest candidate, however, you can use consistent science since a consistent signed it, findings to organize your behaviour. That doesn't mean That rationality is the absence of emotion because sometimes ocean are sent anything your feelings in general, not the same thing as emotion. That's another topic, but you know our art are a source of of information and their wisdom and helpful. So I'm not saying that, but what I am Is that if you have a deeply held belief and the evidence shows that you're wrong, then you wrong,

It doesn't really matter how confident you feel you that confidence could be also explained by science right. So It would be the same thing as if I, regardless, but whether someone is republic, Charlie baker, right regardless of whether somebody's a republican or a Democrat, if that person has a record that you can see, is consistent with what you believe and that is information that you can act on and then such tried you I mean this is kind of way. Empathy is an open. Mindedness has tried to consider that the set of concepts that you be a brain has constructed which yours now perceive in the world is not painting the full picture. I now true for basically era. These are the men and women can be basically the prism social policy. Actually, the political discourse right absolutely so so here's what I would say

though, you know there are people who scientists who will talk to you about. Cognitive, empathy and emotional empathy, and I I prefer to think of it. I think the evidence is more consistent with what I'm about to say which is that your brain is always making predictions using your beer. Own past expired, and what you ve learned from you, no books and movies other people telling you about their experiences and so on and your brain, cannot make a concept to make sense of those anticipate. What sense. Data are and make sense of them. You will be expiry. Actually blind. So you know I'm giving lectures to people I'll show them like a lobby, black and white image and their experiences blind to the image there

can't see anything in it, and then I shall them a photograph, and then I show them the image again the blobby. Image, and then they see actually an opt in it, but the auto that the image is the same. It's there there actually adding there predictions. Now are adding right or anyone example anybody whose learned a language. A second language after their first language also has this experience of things that initially sound like sounds that they can't quite make sense of eventually come to make. They eventually come to make sense of them and in fact there are real cool examples of people who were like worn blind because they have cataracts or they have corneal damage, so that no light is reaching the brain.

and then they have an operation and then light reaches the brain, and they can't see four days and weeks and sometimes years, have they are experiencing blind to certain things. So what happens with empathy is that your brain is making a prediction and if it doesn't, if it doesn't have the capacity to make. it doesn't. If you don't share, if you're not similar. Remember you mean you know: categories are instances which are similar in some way, if you are not similar, enough that person you will have our time making a prediction about what they feel you'll be expelled,

chile blind to what they feel in the united states. Children of color are under proscribed medicine by their physicians. This is been documented. It's not that the physicians. Our racist necessarily, but they might be experienced chile, blind. Is the same thing is true of male physicians. With female patience, I could tell some hair raising stories really that where people die as a consequence, a physician making the wrong in france the wrong protection, because a beam experience fully blind. So we are.

You know empathy is not its, not magic it. It's we make inferences about each other about what each other's feeling and thinking in this culture more than there are some cultures where you know, people have what's calo past, city of mind, where they will make a prediction about someone. Actions, but they're, not inferring anything about the internal state of that person, but in our culture were constantly making inferences. What is Person thinking one is and we're not doing it necessarily consciously, but it would soon really automatically using our predict what we know and if you expose yourself too information which is very different from somebody else, really what we have is we have different cultures in this in this country right now that There are a number of reasons for this mean part of it is only if you saw the answer,

the dilemma: the netflix, hardwired yeah. It's a great. It's really rate documentary and about what social networks are doing to our society ass a year. But no, nothing, no Phenomenon has a simple single cause, there are multiple small cause which all add up to a perfect storm. That's that's just you know how most things work and so The fact that machine learning algorithms are serving people up information on oh media, that is consistent with what they ve already viewed and making you know it part of the reason that you have these silos, but is not the only reason why you have these silo. I think there are other. There are other things of foot that

enhance people's inability to even have a deal in conversation focuses so many things Instead, brilliance of the experiment, experiential blindness, but also from my perspective, I preach, and I tried to practice empathy alive. and something about the way you ve explained. It makes me almost see as a kind exercise that we should all do like to train the ad experiences to the brain, to expand its capacity to dick to more effectively so lately. So why wouldn't like what I do is come like a method acting thing which is I imagine what the life of a person is like you just think me. This is something you see it likewise matter and police officers, if you like they're both now both but have

because martial arts and saw a lot of friends who cops day. Necessarily have empathy or visualize. The experience of the other, certainly currently unfortunate, people are doing of police officers. There now imagining they're, not empathizing putting them, I was in the shoes of a police officer to realise how difficult the job is hoddan it is how difficult it is to maintain com in under so much uncertainty, all the sky You know, but there's more. There is even that's all that's true, but I think that there is even more there's even more to be said there I mean like from a predicting brain standpoint. There is even more that can be said, so I don't know if you want to go down that path, reverse drawn empathy, but I will also say that one of the things that I was most defied by I still am leaving. It's been three

more than three and a half years and how motions are made came out and I'm still receiving. Daily emails from people right. So that's gratifying, but one of the most gratifying emails I received was from police officer in texas who told me that he, thought that how motions are made contained information that would be really help far too resolving some of these difficulties. And he hadn't even read my abed piece about when is gun not a gun, and you know like using that what we know about the signs of perception from predict from a prediction. Standpoint like the brain is a predictor to understand a little differently. What might be happening in these circumstances. So there's there's a real with hard about it's hard to talk about because everyone gets mad at you with the type of

this, like you know, and there is a way to understand this, which has profound empathy for the suffering of people of color and that definitely is in line with black lives matter. At the same time, understanding the really difficult situation that police officers find themselves in and I'm not talking about this bad apple or that bad apple. Am I talking about police officers who were necessarily shooting people in the back as they run away? I'm talking about the cases of of really good, well, meaning cops. Who have the car? and of predicting brain that everybody else has. There in a really difficult situation that I think

if they and the people who are harmed don't realize think they get the the way that these situations are constructed. I think it's yes, there is a lot to be said there. I gases. Yes, what, when I want to do something we can try to say in a sense, a worm from the perspective of the predictive brain, just a fascinating perspective, take on this. You know all the protest that are going on. There seems to be a concept of a police officer being built. I think that polly, I think that concept is there, but is is gaining strength. So is being re. I mean yeah yeah yeah yeah there, but I think you know for sure. I think that that's right, I think that there is some there's a shift in the stereotype of what I would say is the stereotype there's a stereotype of of

black man in this country- that's always in movies and television not always, but like largely there. many people watch. I mean you know that you think you're watching at ten o clock drama and all you're doing is like kicking back and relaxing, but actually you're having certain predictions reinforced and others not an what's happening. What's happening now with police is the same thing that there are certain stereotypes of a police officer that are being abandoned and other stereotypes that are being reinforced by by what you see happening, I'll say? Is that if you remember me, there's a lot to say about this, really that you know regardless whether makes the matter not. I mean I just, I think the site this is what it is. Just however, what I said the brain is makes predictions about internal

changes in the body first and then motored. It starts to prepare motor action and then it makes a prediction about what you will see and hear and feel based on those actions. Okay, so it's also the case that we we didn't talk about. Is that sensory sampling, like your brain's ability to sample? What's out, there is yoked to your heart rate, its yoke to your heart beats. There are certain phases of the heartbeat, where it's easier for you to see what's happening in the world than in others offended if your heart rate, those through the roof. You will be less light. You will be more likely. You just go with your prediction and not correct, based on what you, what what's out there, Has europe actually literally not seeing as well. were you will see things that aren't there. Basically,

there's something that we could say in by way of a device for. This episode is released in their case, ass of emotion, side and about a term, that's flying around on social media. What some will act? We think it is, it is she's in the following sense. You know- and it sounds a little bit like it sounds a little bit like artificial, when I had the wisdom to say it, but I really think that this is what's happening. You know one thing we haven't about is, you know, brains evolved, didn't have all free to see they didn't have offered to hear they didn't evolve to feel they evolved to control your body. That's why you, a brain. You have a brain, so they control your body and the metaphor that there's a the scientific term for pray.

Heavily controlling your body is alice stasis your brain is making is attempting to its tempting to dissipate the needs of your body and meet those needs before they arise so that you can act as you need to act and the man for that I use as a body budget. You know your brain is running a budget for your body. It's not budgeting money, it's budgeting, glucose and salt and water, and in stead of having you know, one or two bank accounts. It has gazillion, they're all these systems in your body that have to be kept in balance and it monitoring very closely. It's making predictions about like when is it good, expand and when is it good to stave and what would be a good investment, and am I gonna get a return on my investment whenever people talk about reward or reward prediction, error or anything to do with reward their or punishment. They're. Talking about the body budget, there talking about your brains

actions about whether or not there will be a deposit or withdraw so When you, in your brain is running a deficit in your body, Budget year have some kind of metabolic imbalance. You experience that as discomfort you experienced that as distress when your brain, when things are chaotic, you can't predict what's going to happen next. so I have this absolutely brilliant scientists working in my lab who his name is jordan, terrio and he's publishes really terrific paper on, a sense of should like. Why do we have social rules? Why do we do you know?

here too social norms. It's because, if I make myself predictable to you, then you are predictable to me and if you are predictable to me, that's good, because that that is less metabolic expensive for me, novelty or unpredictable at the at the extreme is expensive, and if it goes on for long enough, what happens is? First of all, you will feel really jittery and ansi, which we describe as anxiety, it isn't necessarily anxiety. It could be just thing is not predictable and you are experiencing arousal because the chemicals that help you learn, increase your feeling of arousal basically, But if it goes on for long enough, you will become depleted and you will start

feel really really really distressed. So what we have is a culture of full of people. Right now who are their body budgets are just decimated. And there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty when you talk about it as depression anxiety, it makes you think that it's not about your metabolism, that it's not about your body budgeting- that it's not about getting enough sleep. or about eating well or about making sure that you have social connections. It's you know it's. You think that some separate from that, but depression, anxiety or just a way of being in the world. There are way of being in the world when things are quite right, with your predictions at such a deep way of thinking that the brain is maintaining.

Homeostasis, actually Alistair raises some harry and its is causing making predictions and metabolic speaking, is very costly to make Will I get costly, be learning to making adjustments. and over time, there's near there is cause to be paid. I fear just yeah in and in a place of chaos weathers. causing need for adjusting in and learning and expand. Novel things and so part of it problem here, they're a couple of things that I said you know it's a perfect storm. There isn't a single cause. There are multiple has multiple things that combined together it's a complex. It's a complex system, multiple things part of it is that some people are there their metabolic metabolically, encumbered and their distressed, and in order to try to have

the thief or someone who is very much unlike you, you have to forage for information. You you have to explore information that is novelty you an unexpected. and that's expensive, and at a time when people What do you do when you are running a deficit in your bank? Account you stop spending. What does it mean for brain to stop spending, a brain stops moving very much sums, in the body and it starts learning it just goes with it. Colonel model brilliantly put it so. Empathy requires to have empathy for someone who is, unlike you, requires, learning and practice you. If foraging for information

and I mean that it is something I talk about a mile in the book in seven and a lessons about the brain. I think it's really important in its hard, but it's hard. I think it's you know it it's hard for people to have to be curious about use that are unlike their own when, when they feel so encumbered and I'll just tell you, I had this epiphany really, I was lost thing to Robert Russia's the system. He was talking about oligarchy versus democracy, So all of is where very wealthy people, like extremely wealthy people, shift power

so that they become even more wealthy and even more insulated any from the we know the pressures of the common person. It's actually the kind of system that leads to the collapse of civilizations, if you believe jura diamond just say that, but anyway, I'm listening to this- and I am listening to him- describe in fairly decent detail how the ceo of these companies there's been a shift in what it means, be a ceo and not not being no longer being a steward, the community and so on, but like in the nineteen eighties, that sort of shifted to this other model of being like an oligarch and he's talking about how it used to be the case that that's egos made like twenty times what their employees made.

and now they make about three hundred times. On average whether employees made so. Where did that money come from? It came from the pockets of the employees and they do they don't know. About it right. No one knows about it: they just no. They can't feed their children. They can't pay for health care. They can't take care of family, and they worry about. What's gonna happen to their than you know, their living like you know, month a month. Basically, any one big bill could completely, you know, put them out on the street, so the huge number of people living like this so all they with their experience they on a wider experiencing it. So it's an it and then someone comes along and gives them a narrative. Well somebody

else, but in line front of you and that's why you're this way? That's why you experience what your spiriting it just for a minute I was thinking. I had deep empathy for people who have believes that are really really really. the different from mine, but I was trying really hard to see it through their eyes and did it cost me They met a baldly, I'm sure I'm sure I'm, but you add something in the gas think. Well, I to allocate their email does the question is: where d you? What resources did your brain? draw on in order to actually make that effort. Well, I'll tell you something honestly lacks. I don't have that much in the gas tank right now. Right so

I am surfing the stress that you know stresses just, but when his dress dresses, your brain is, caring for big metabolic outlay and it just keeps preparing in preparing in preparing and preparing you as a professor, was a human. Both right is it for me. This is a moment of existential crisis. Much. Is anybody else, democracy, all these things so in many of my rules, some what I guess, what I'm to say, is that I get up every morning, and I asked her sighs I run I row I left weights but you exercise in the middle of the day I saw you're like you know yeah. I hate it. Actually, you lie.

I bet right, you get an oh, I hate it. I hate it, but I do it religiously yeah. Why? Because it's a really good investment. It's an expenditure. That is a really good investment, and so. when I was exercising, I was listening to the book and when I realized the insight that I was sort of like playing around wesley is this. Does this makes sense to me since didn't immediately plunge into it. I basically wrote some stuff down. I set it aside, and then I did what I prepared myself to make an bandit sure. I don't do what you do before you exercise. I always have a protein shake always have a protein jake, because I need to fuel out before I make this really big expenditure, and so I did the same. thing I didn't approaching drink, I am but I I did the same thing and

fueling up can mean lots of different things. It can mean talking to a friend about it. It can mean- and you know it can- it can mean get making sure you get a good night's sleep before you do it. Can mean Lhasa different things, but I guess I I think we have to do these things then the seminary. Listen to this conversation several does billions, but I do, I do think about, yeah I've encountered so many people they can't, possibly imagine that a gate human being can vote for donald trump and have also encountered people They can't imagine that an intelligent person can possibly vote for Democrats and I, by blogger both these but many of whom are friends and.

Let's just say after this conversation I can see as their predicting brains not willing to invest. the resources to empathize with the other side, and I think you have to in order to be able to like this the obvious common humanity in us. I don't know what the system is thus creating this division? My computer, they ve, said it's a perfect storm be the social media I don't know what the hell you think. It's a bunch of things. I think it's just clarissa. There is an economic system which is disadvantaging large numbers of people there's a year. social media like if you, if I had to orchestrate or architect a system that would Screw up a human body budget it would the one that we live in it. We don't sleep enough. We eat pseudo food basically,

we are on social media too much, which is full of ambiguity, which is really hard for human nervous system. Right really, really hard like ambiguity with no contacts to predict- and I mean it's like really and then There are the economic concerns that effect large swaths of people in this country. I mean it's really, I'm not everything is reducible to metabolism. Not everything is reducible to metabolism, but there if you combine all these things together, its helpful to think of it that way waiting, somehow it also adds reduces the entirety of the human experience, the same kind of obvious logic like we should exercise every day in the same kind of way, which should do wish empathize every day. another. These really wonderful, wonderful programmes for for teens and sometimes also for parents of people who lost child

and in in wars and in conflict and political conflict where they go to a view, call Setting and they talk to each other but their experiences and do miraculous things happen. You know so yeah, it's easy to its easy to sort of shrugged this stuff, as kind of pollyanna ash. You know like what's this really gonna do, but you have to think about. When my daughter went to college. I I gave her advice. I said I try to be around people who, let you be the kind of person you want to be. You were back to free. Will you have a

you have a choice. It might seem like a really hard choice. It might seem like unimaginably difficult choice. Your choice, wanna be somebody who is wrapped in in fury and agony. Or do you want to be somebody who extends a little empathy to somebody else and in the process may be learned. Something curiosity is the thing that it protects. You curiosity is the thing its curative curiosity on social media. With a thing, I recommend the people at least this weapon approaching social media at adopt. It doesn't seem to be the I'm an approach, but I basically give love to people who seem to also give love to others, as is the same

the concept of surrounding by yourself by the people you want to become- and I ignore sometimes block, but just ignore. I do, I dont add aggression to people who are just constantly full of aggression and negativity and toxicity theirs certain desire. When somebody says something mean too, to and two something too. you say why or try to alleviate the meanness and so on, but we are doing a centuries and here you are now surrounding yourself by that group of folks- that had that negativity It's just the conversation, so I you know, I I think it's just so powerful to to put yourself amongst people who are ya who, whose basic motive, Interaction is kindness, because I mean I dunno what it is but maybe I'm just the way I'm built. Is that to me-

energizing for the gas? Think of that, then I can pool who fisher, when I start reading the rise and fall of the third reich and start thinking about math, germany and empathize with ever. Involved, they can start to think make these difficult like thinking as required to understand our little planet. Earth mother is research to back up what you sat there research, that's consistent with your intuition there. You know that this research that shows that being kind to other people doing something nice for someone else. Is like making a deposit to some extent, because I think, making a deposit not only in their body budgets but also in yours, like people feel good when they do good things further people. Here we are social animals. We

regulate each other's nervous systems for better and for worse right, the best thing for human nervous system. is another human worse thing. a human nervous system is another human, so you decide do you. Be somebody who makes people feel hoo, hoo hoo makes people better or do you wanna be somebody who causes people pain and We are more responsible. for one another than we might like or then we might want, but member. Why don't we set about social reality? You know I thought reality. So you know there are lots of different cultural norms about You know independence or, were you know, collective? You know nature of people.

The fact is, we have socially dependent nervous systems. We evolved that weighs species and in this country, we prize in visual rights and freedoms, and that is a dilemma that we have to grapple with. And we have to do it in a way. If we're going to be productive about it, we have to do it in a way that requires engaging with each other and which is what I understand that You know the founding members of this country, intended beautifully. Put the mask a few final silly questions. So one talked a bit about love, but that it's as fund. Ask somebody like you who can effectively from at least neuroscience perspective, disassemble somebody's romantic notions, But what do you make of romantic love? Well

What do human mean beings seemed to fall of, at least at least the bunch of haiti's hair bands of written about it. or I is a nice feature to have that a bug. What is it? why I'm really happy that fell in love. I wouldn't want in any other way, but I would say that you, the persons We hear the neuroscientist well I'll, be. That's me, the person's many but I would say, as an aside his baby, you're born not able to reach. He lay thrown body budgets because their brains are fully wired. Yet. when you feed a baby when you cut le baby when you reading you do with a baby impacts that babies body budget and helps to wire that babies body budget

has to wire that babies brain to manage eventually her own body budget, to some extent that's the basis biologically of attachment humans evolved, other species to be socially dependent, meaning You cannot mean in your body budget on your own. Without a tax, Eventually you pay many years later in terms of some metabolic illness right loneliness when you break up with someone that you love or you lose them right. If you feel like it's gonna kill you, but it doesn't, but lo This will kill you. It will kill you approximately. You know what is it seven years earlier? I can't remember exactly the exact number: it's is actually in the web notes to 'em seven and a half lessons, but am

social isolation, loneliness will kill you earlier you would otherwise die, and the reason why is that you're not you didn't evolve to manage your nervous system on your own when you do you pay a little tax and that tax a cruise vary slightly over time. over a long period of time so that by the time you're in You know middle aged or a little older You are more likely to die sooner from some metabolic illness from heart disease from diabetes, depression. I'm your more likely to develop alzheimer's disease. I mean it's that it. You know it takes a long time for that tax to a crew, but it does so. Yes, I think it's a good thing for people to em to fall in love but I think the vital view of it is that it is clear that humans need the social attachment to

What is it manage? Their nervous systems is as you're describing, and the reason you want to stay with somebody for a long time is so you don't have. Is the novelties very cost reform. Now you might think now you're mixing faint, not enough to decide where, but what I would say as we knew lose someone you love you am it feels like you, ve lost a part of you and that's because you have you, ve lost someone who was contributing to Your body budget, we are the caretakers of one another's nervous systems like it or not, and out of that comes very deep feelings of attachment, some of which are romantic love. Are you Fraid of euro mortality- we too human sitting here

I do think, do ponder your mortality among yearn, somebody's thinks about brain a lot? seems one of the more terrifying or I dunno I dunno how to feel about it, but it seems to be one of the most definitive aspects of life. Is that it ends it's a complicated answer, but I think the best I can do in a short it would be to say for a very long time. I did not fear my own mortality. I feared the I feared pain and suffering so that that I feared I feared being harmed or dying in a way that would be painful, but I didn't fear having my life be over now As a mother, I think I have feared, I fear, die

being before my daughter is ready to be without me. That's what I fear. It's. That's that's really what I fear and, frankly, honestly, I fear my husband dying before me much more than I fear my own death, there's the love and social attacks again yeah, because I know it. I know it's just gonna, I'm gonna. Feel like I wish I was dead, question about life What do you think is the meaning of it all was the meaning of life, I think that there isn't one meaning of life. There's like many meetings of life- and you know he use different ones on different days for me, First, that the ban on the feeding on the day that for me, I would say.

sometimes the meaning of life is to understand to make meaning. Actually the meaning of life is to make meaning. Sometimes it's that Sometimes it's to leave the world just slightly a little bit better than it will like the johnny apple seed view you now have. Sometimes the meaning of life is too low clear the path for my daughter or for my students. You know it's too. Sometimes it's that and sometimes it's just. You know, like you know,. Even moments where you're lucky, at the sky or error Well, you know by the ocean, or sometimes it's even like I'll, see.

You know like we'd, poking out a crack in a sidewalk. You know- and you just have this overwhelming sense of the word wonder of the. of the world like the world is like just like the the whole world is so honduras and each year, get very immersed in the moment and the moment, like the sense some of the moment sometimes at the meaning of life- I don't think there's one meaning of life. I think it's a population of instances just like I just like any other category I think there is a better way to ended. They said the first hours spoke is, I think, if not the then one of ethics, first conversation. I had the best we launched this park, yeah, that's actually. The first conversation had lost his partner and now get the

and they do it the right way. Some is a huge wanna talk to you that you spent. I was me I can't wait for hopefully in the many more books you write, certainly came, We too are already read this this book by. I came here to listen to a because, as you said, fine, that you're reading it at a given. Rate voice you great on what the nice way to put it. But me and pr voice there s version of what that is. So thanks again for talking to the. How is my pleasure? Thank you. So much for having me back. Thank you for listening to this this issue at least have feldman bear it and thank you, tore sponsors afflicted greens. which is an all in one nutritional drink, magic spoon which is low, carb, kiddo, friendly cereal and cash app

which is an app for sending money to your friends. We check out these sponsorship description to get a discount and to support the spock ass. If enjoys thing subscribe on you to review with five stars and apple pie, gas follows spotify support on patron connect with me on twitter a lex friedmann? And now, let me leave you so words from lisa, feldman beret it takes more the one human brain to create a human mind? Thank you for listening. I hope to see you next time. In the.