In this episode, we talk with a woman who got a brain injury and decided to make a video game to help her brain recover. She talks about her journey to recovery and what it took for her brain to be able to function normally again. We also talk about post-concussion syndrome, which is a new term for a concussion and a new type of brain injury that can have devastating effects on memory and function. This episode is brought to you by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Veterans Administration, and the National Center for Neurological Injury Prevention and Research. Thanks to our sponsor, Caffeini, for sponsoring this episode. Caffini is a high-end frozen margarita company that specializes in making high-performance margaritas. They are a great place to get your drinks and enjoy the ambiance and atmosphere of the bar scene. We hope you enjoy listening to this episode and share it with your friends, family, and loved ones. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and review! Thanks for listening and a Happy New Year! XOXO, EJ & Jane Music by Jeff Kaale Thank you for listening to the podcast and supporting the podcast! -Jon Sorrentino and our sponsors: Caffino and Caffeino's Music: The Good Fight Company, Inc. and The Good Luck Project, LLC. - Don't Tell a Friend of Your Day - The Good Morning Coffee - Thank You, Jane Gooding, Inc., & The Good News Project - The Bad News Project, Thanks, Jane Bad News Agency, LLC - Good Luck, Joe Good Luck & Joe Good Hope, LLC, and Joe Good Works, LLC - Thank you, Joe Bad Luck, LLC! -Joe Good Luck! - Joe Goodness, Joe's Story, Joe, Jr. -- Thank You for Listening to Me, Joe and Joe, Sr. & Joe, Please Share This Podcasts, Thank You For Your Support & Support Me, My Story, Thanks You'll Hear Me, Thank Me, Mr. Joe Good Morning, Joe & My Story? -- Please Share Me, Please Tell Me, Thanks Me, I'll See Me, Me & I'll Listen To Me, Sarah Goodness & More! -- Joe Good Work, My Thoughts,
00:00:45.000I mean, it was like the lowest point of my life.
00:00:49.000And I knew from my research that when we play games, you know, we have more optimism, we're more determined, we're better able to ask people for help, right, to team up with us, be your allies.
00:01:01.000And I just figured, well, this is like the worst I've ever felt in my life.
00:01:07.000Maybe if I can bring some of that gameful spirit to recovery, I could kind of jumpstart my brain back into healing.
00:01:13.000So what was the nature of your injury?
00:01:16.000I mean, it started out as just a normal concussion.
00:01:20.000So this is my public service announcement for the episode.
00:01:24.000I was standing up from underneath an open cabinet, and I'm a runner, so I have really strong legs, and I was just in a hurry, and I was full force right up into the corner of the cabinet, hit my head, and it was like classic, you know, my husband was joking around, you know,
00:01:39.000who's the president, and I couldn't remember who the president was, and I was like, Oh, shit.
00:03:07.000I would try to go into a Whole Foods, the fluorescent lights would feel like I was under fire from weapons.
00:03:15.000I was in bed, basically, for three months.
00:03:19.000All stimulus would make me nauseous and migraines and everything.
00:03:24.000So it started out normal concussion, but then it's kind of unraveled into what they call post-concussion syndrome, which is a thing that I didn't know existed.
00:03:34.000But a lot of people, concussions take up to a year to heal.
00:03:48.000I've also seen people that were great fighters.
00:03:50.000There's a guy named TJ Grant who was in line for a UFC title shot, got a concussion, not even from getting kicked or punched.
00:03:59.000It was from a grappling exchange, just bonked his head on something.
00:04:04.000I believe it was somebody's knee or someone's hip or something like that.
00:04:07.000And then Was never the same again and has never fought again.
00:04:11.000And it's been like, I think almost two years.
00:04:13.000Yeah and I mean that's something I've gotten actually pretty active in the research community and trying to share information.
00:04:21.000So it turns out like the first week of recovery can really determine if you're going to go into this extended you know it's gonna take you three months six months a year if you're not if you're not resting enough in that that first week.
00:04:35.000So the first week it's critical that you just do nothing?
00:04:48.000I could only watch TV shows I'd already seen before because having to process plot, new plot, was not helpful.
00:04:56.000So I was rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I'd seen them all like a million times.
00:05:01.000And, you know, keep the lights off if they, you know, keep sunglasses on indoors.
00:05:07.000But the first 48 hours and then after the first week, if you can avoid overstressing your brain, you have a much better chance to recover within the one to two week period.
00:05:45.000But you're not you don't have that same kind of rational decision-making ability So sometimes you know a friend or you know a loved one needs to take you aside and say I'm not letting you do anything for this first week.
00:05:58.000You've just got to let your brain heal and this is Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's relatively new our understanding of what takes place after concussion and what you have to do to recover and Yeah, no, there's just last year, there was a big study that came out showing that four months after a concussion,
00:06:17.000There's still, it's like a kind of a scarring that happens, like a scab, that certain parts of the brain will still be thickened.
00:06:26.000For months after, even if you think you're feeling fine, which means that you're still vulnerable.
00:06:31.000You know, if you were to get hit again, it would be more dangerous.
00:06:34.000And And if you're still feeling symptoms after four months, you know, that's why it's like when you, you know, cut yourself open and you get the scab, you can't be picking at the scab by doing things that are triggering your symptoms.
00:07:14.000And I'm literally having him Google suicidal thoughts concussion because I'm like, am I really suicidal?
00:07:22.000Am I rationally thinking I'm never going to be able to work again?
00:07:26.000My husband's going to have to take care of me.
00:07:27.000I should just end it, which is what I was thinking.
00:07:29.000The voices in my head were saying, but it didn't feel, you know, that didn't feel like myself.
00:07:37.000And so fortunately, he was finding articles like, wait, one in three people with a concussion have suicidal thoughts.
00:07:41.000And that is actually a reaction to the neurochemistry.
00:07:45.000When you have a concussion, you don't have dopamine in the reward pathways, which means your brain can't anticipate anything good in the future.
00:07:53.000You become, like, completely unable to imagine That you'll feel better, that good things will happen for you, and that's just like a perfect neurochemical foundation for suicide.
00:08:05.000So you were able to remember how you used to think, and so you knew this is not the way I think.
00:08:12.000Yeah, I mean, I was able to distance myself a little bit from the thoughts where, you know, because I was just at home, I wasn't going anywhere, I would say to my husband, like, I feel like I have this voice that's saying, you know, you should kill yourself.
00:08:28.000And I would talk about it because I didn't...
00:08:31.000I mean, I think if you talk about it, it becomes less, you know, this feeling that you have that you have to really believe and more like this thing that you can look at and try to figure out.
00:08:41.000And so it was like, it just felt so weird to me because I'm like, why?
00:08:50.000And once I knew that it was a symptom of concussion rather than, oh, Jane has figured out that her life is terrible and Logically, she wants to kill herself.
00:09:56.000I did not try that, but actually this is sort of very exciting for me.
00:10:05.000Because there's no good treatment for this, when my game worked so well for me and other people started using it and it worked well for them, we were able to get a grant from the NIH to test this with young athletes through Ohio State University Medical Research Center.
00:10:21.000We just released our findings last week that the game that I invented did improve the post-concussion syndromes in 100% of the people who used it compared to only 50% of people who didn't play.
00:10:35.000So this is one of the first validated treatments that can reduce the headaches and the nausea and the confusion and the difficulty.
00:10:46.000How did you get to the point where you wanted to experiment with a game?
00:11:44.000I mean, there's all other kinds of proof in the book, but I'm like, I'm going to live it.
00:11:49.000And that was just, I didn't know how else to provoke the positive emotions.
00:11:54.000And when we play games, there's a whole list of positive emotions that we feel when we play games, like curiosity.
00:12:00.000Excitement and awe and wonder and pride and she's like I gotta get some of these emotions because my doctor had said the more depressed and anxious you are that can actually slow down the healing process that is actually Detrimental right if you if you fuel if you can feed the depression anxiety detrimental and in terms of measurable effects or detrimental in terms of the way you feel like I That from the brain's ability to heal,
00:12:28.000the neurochemistry of depression is not conducive to that.
00:12:34.000So literally being depressed can slow down the physical healing of the brain itself.
00:13:39.000I mean, the only thing that I really experimented with was trying to eat things with like omegas, you know, omega-3, omega-6, which are supposed to be good for brain healing.
00:13:52.000And there is some scientific literature on that where, I mean, doctors will say eat walnuts, you know.
00:15:07.000Because of the dopamine I was wondering like serotonin is like five HTPs really good for rebuilding serotonin or building blocks of serotonin.
00:15:16.000Yeah, I didn't get it together to try any of that.
00:15:31.000It seems counterintuitive to someone who doesn't know anything like me that you're saying that you could only watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer because he'd already seen it before, but playing a game isn't part of...
00:15:51.000It's like a kind of pinball game where you shoot little pinballs around and pop pegs and they play like the Hallelujah Chorus every level you complete.
00:16:27.000You just, like, learn the rules and play.
00:16:29.000So I just started making up rules for myself about doing things that you would do in a video game, like collecting power-ups or spotting, like making a list of the bad guys and all the ways, like where they would show up and what my strategies were for fighting them.
00:17:01.000And really, you know, the first thing I did was I adopted this secret identity, like my avatar.
00:17:06.000I was going to have an avatar in my recovery, and that was Jane the concussion slayer, because I'm like, oh, I'm going to be like Buffy, and Buffy did not choose to be the slayer, right?
00:17:17.000Like, they just told her, you're the slayer, you have to save the world.
00:17:20.000And I'm like, I did not choose to hit my head, so I'm going to be like her and just rise to the heroic occasion and kind of try to Tap into my sense of determination and being a badass.
00:17:32.000What did you do after you took on this persona or adopted the idea of this avatar?
00:17:59.000You've got to figure out how you're going to Tackle it or get past it.
00:18:03.000And the same is true with recovery from any kind of injury or illness.
00:18:07.000You have to keep testing the limits, right?
00:18:09.000Because otherwise, you wind up never getting better.
00:18:12.000You're kind of convinced that you're just flat on your back forever.
00:18:16.000And this is sort of an aside, but as I was doing all the research for this new book, I found out that the number one predictor of disability after a back injury is avoiding things that make your back hurt.
00:18:31.000So you would think like, oh, you have to, you know, don't do anything that will make your back worse.
00:18:37.000But the longer you keep that mindset, that's the number one predictor of who becomes chronically disabled, not able to work, or their life is affected in a major way.
00:18:46.000And it's not the severity of the injury, it's not the severity of the pain.
00:18:51.000So with all kinds of injury and illness now, because you get stuck in that pattern.
00:19:32.000Maybe next week it'll be five minutes.
00:19:34.000And then you kind of start to get your life back because you don't want to get on that course towards seeing yourself as kind of chronically...
00:19:41.000So that's, you know, you come up with these ways to battle the bad guys, you know, every day.
00:19:47.000And in the version that we tested with the NIH, the game is activate three power-ups a day.
00:19:52.000So for me, that might have been eating walnuts or like cuddling my dog because that made me feel like safe and happy.
00:20:00.000So anything that provokes a positive emotion, if you're depressed, you have to really find what are the things that can get through that depression and And still make you feel good.
00:20:09.000So, you know, I'd cuddle my dog, I'd eat walnuts.
00:20:12.000You do three of those a day, one bad guy battle a day, where you really test the limits to see if you're getting better, and one quest a day, which is the smallest possible thing you can do That will kind of move you in the direction of your goal or recovery or just feel like something productive that you want to do.
00:20:30.000So I remember one time, my quest, I decided to bake cookies for the baristas at the coffee place down the stairs.
00:20:37.000I felt like I couldn't do anything for myself.
00:20:40.000So I'm like, I'm gonna bake cookies for someone else today.
00:20:42.000And as a result, randomly, I wound up getting free coffee for a year.
00:20:46.000Because they were like, I could not believe somebody came down with this giant plate of cookies fresh out of the oven.
00:20:55.000But that was just like, you know, find one thing I can do today that will have a positive impact.
00:21:01.000And that's the sort of, there's other stuff, you know, in the game, but that's sort of the main, you're basically using game models to kind of structure your life to make sure that you're staying engaged, not hiding,
00:21:17.000you know, actually making progress to getting better.
00:21:33.000I haven't had a concussion, I don't think, since I was probably 20. And I would think that what it would be like would be like, oh, my head feels like shit.
00:22:45.000And I actually, I mean, I, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm your ally.
00:22:49.000And I'm like, always, you know, sending direct messages to like random people I don't know, checking in on them to see fit in the right thing.
00:22:56.000Because it's not even like if your friends and family will not understand, they will think, oh, you'll be out on the couch for three days, and they expect you to be back to normal.
00:23:04.000And they don't understand why three months, four months later, you're still Struggling.
00:23:09.000It's not, I mean, it has not been discussed enough, although I think that's changing now.
00:23:14.000People, especially with so many soldiers coming back with long-term symptoms of the concussions.
00:23:22.000Now, the other thing that's confusing to me with this is that in the beginning, the first stage of your concussion, it's critical that you do nothing.
00:23:52.000So depending on the studies you read, it'll say between 48 hours to one week is the most crucial stage where you want the most cognitive rest and you want to avoid basically just exhausting the brain.
00:24:08.000Because anything you do that's cognitively demanding, it directs blood flow to different regions of the brain.
00:24:15.000You don't want your brain spending time trying to figure out your email because there's only so much blood to flow around and you don't want it to be spent.
00:24:27.000And trying to do an email will require So much more effort from you than it normally would.
00:24:34.000Now, eventually, the brain kind of gets into this sort of, I don't know, stasis where it's like, okay, now we're working or you've got kind of your thickened up lesions that's going to take, you know, four months to kind of dissolve and...
00:26:08.000So, this is why I wrote the book, because I didn't really understand why it worked.
00:26:13.000I knew it worked for me, and then I put the rules online, and people started writing me from all over the world that they were using it, and not just for concussions.
00:26:22.000I mean, people were writing for, you know, I have cancer, I just had knee surgery, someone who was just diagnosed with ALS starts playing it, and it It seems to be extraordinarily effective at treating depression,
00:26:37.000anxiety, and also making people feel just stronger, just like better versions of themselves.
00:26:46.000And I say this all the time to people because there can be a lot of skepticism that a game can be helpful during a really serious It's a challenge in your life.
00:27:08.000It's why I started doing our clinical trial and the studies we've been doing for the last few years to try to understand because all I knew was that it seemed to be having all these positive effects.
00:27:22.000Even to a game designer like myself, who believes in the power of games, I was really taken off guard.
00:31:13.000Because obviously everyone knows now if you have more than one, it can start to, the healing will take longer.
00:31:19.000I didn't know until like a month into my injury, I'm talking to my parents and they mentioned Well, you know, the last time you had a concussion, you were feeling better much faster.
00:33:25.000Yeah, that's the recognition of vulnerability is an issue with people that get hurt because then all of a sudden you realize you can get hurt and sometimes you just walk on eggshells all the time.
00:34:21.000But I was like, dude, I was going fast when I wiped.
00:34:24.000There's a video that's online today that I just retweeted earlier today.
00:34:28.000This fucking kid is in Colorado and he's on a skateboard and he's going 70 miles an hour down a hill.
00:34:37.000And you just watch it and like every part of my body is like tingling with fear.
00:34:44.000You know, that anticipation of an injury is just like, ugh.
00:34:48.000You tweeted that, didn't you tweet the roof topper, like the guy in Russia who goes, hangs off?
00:34:53.000So that's, you know, I'm really interested in like neuro hacks, how you can do little things to like, you know, change like how your brain is working right now.
00:35:01.000And that video, it seemed to me, would be really good for people to get a little bit of adrenaline going.
00:35:06.000If you're like on your couch and you're like having a hard time getting yourself out of bed.
00:35:50.000There's no way, I mean, they're not faking this, unless this is some sort of advanced CGI. No, I was gonna say, I mean, it almost could be a video game.
00:35:58.000Like, watch when he reaches his hands down.
00:37:13.000But good Lord, when you see something like that, knowing what you went through, like anything, like when you see like dirt bike riders doing flips.
00:37:21.000I actually have a really, I stopped watching professional football after, I used to, you know, I mean, go 49ers.
00:37:49.000I think that's something that a lot of people are struggling with these days with all these, you know, the real sports story that they did on traumatic brain injury and the issues that people are having and the all the stuff I've seen from fighters over the years is definitely affected my enjoyment.
00:38:12.000People are, yeah, they're retiring one, two years into their career.
00:38:17.000Yeah, well, there's more of that now than ever before because guys are realizing, first of all, at the end of their career, they're most likely going to be debilitated.
00:38:28.000I mean, almost all of the players that take a lot of hits suffer from serious injuries for the rest of their lives.
00:38:35.000And so when you're young and you're looking at your future, you're going, look, I could put all my energy into this and...
00:38:40.000You know be a mess or I could say you know what I'm still young I'm 23 I could do anything I want like look I've been in the NFL I've experienced it.
00:38:52.000It makes you worry that the future of the sport is going there's gonna be a big Socioeconomic divide where the only people who who really want to play and are willing to take that risk are people who feel like they have nothing to lose, you know There's that, and there's the people that want to watch it.
00:39:07.000Like, we've experienced that with the UFC, too.
00:39:10.000There's a bunch of people that want to watch the head injuries.
00:39:15.000They don't know what they're seeing yet.
00:39:18.000Like, when you watch somebody get KO'd, like, really badly, when you see someone get head kicked or dropped in their head or something like that, you just see excitement.
00:39:27.000You see, like, oh, that guy just beat that guy.
00:45:10.000And that's why it's like, when you realize how vulnerable people are and how much is out of our control, I mean, those are the people who are the first in line to try this and who benefit the most.
00:45:22.000So we had half a million people play an electronic version, like logging their power-ups and their bad guys in Quest so that I could get data on it and see what are the most effective power-ups?
00:45:32.000Like, how often do you have to, you know, check in to get better?
00:45:36.000And we found that people with the most painful and difficult situations were the ones that were benefiting the most.
00:45:43.000It's like sort of the more you realize how vulnerable you are, the more open you are, and the more this kind of concrete, purposeful, positive action can actually make a big difference.
00:45:56.000I mean, once you feel the vulnerability, it becomes real.
00:46:02.000Whereas when you look at someone who has a broken leg, and you go, oh, I can intellectually understand that that person broke their leg, but I don't know what it feels like.
00:46:25.000And the reality of you having that head trauma and trying to figure out, like, there's got to be a way to get out of this swamp, this mental swamp that I'm stuck in.
00:46:42.000A person who's been through a bunch of surgeries and injuries and stuff, it totally makes sense to me because there's a reality that every time I've really badly injured myself, like when I needed knee surgery or something, there's like a, just an acceptance.
00:47:04.000Like, no, it's like, I don't think you get it.
00:47:07.000No, and a lot of times you'll have an injury and you won't know if it will get better, if you'll be able to get back to what you were doing before, which is actually where the name Super Better comes from, because I wasn't sure I would ever have the same cognitive capabilities I had.
00:47:22.000And at that time, I had just gotten my PhD.
00:47:49.000I'll be like this new super version of myself, like Spider-Man.
00:47:53.000You know, he got bit by the radioactive spider and this concussion is my radioactive spider.
00:47:57.000And I don't know who I'm going to be, but it'll be someone different.
00:48:01.000And instead of just trying to You know, because anytime you have an injury or an illness, you don't know who you're going to be at the end of it.
00:48:12.000And you want it to be the best different that it could be.
00:48:14.000Yeah, there's been many stories of people that have gotten knocked on the head and all of a sudden had musical talent or mathematical talent.
00:48:21.000Were you hoping that that was going to...
00:48:41.000But what we know about, like, the difference between introverts and extroverts is introverts tend to stimulate themselves with internal thinking.
00:48:49.000They're always thinking, and they don't need other people To kind of get them excited.
00:48:55.000Extroverts respond much more positively to external stimulation.
00:50:01.000If you can convince yourself to be social, it's really good for you.
00:50:06.000But introverts just still have a different brain chemistry, so their brain's telling them, People, scary, like, you know, too much stimulation.
00:50:15.000Well, that's one of the weirdest things about online interaction, is that it's kind of a combination of both, introvert behavior and extrovert behavior.
00:50:24.000Because even though you are interacting with people, you're not seeing them.
00:51:45.000Whereas if you do that online, there's like none of that.
00:51:48.000I think that there's something very strange that's going on in our culture right now with so many people spending a giant amount of their time only interacting with people through text.
00:52:24.000In video games and as a result of video games, sort of collaboration, skills, their sort of psychological performance, things like that at UC Berkeley was where I studied.
00:52:35.000And so one of the things that we know that's happening in video games is that there's a really big difference between playing a video game in the same room with somebody and playing online.
00:52:44.000So like if we're playing Call of Duty and I'm trying to kill you, if we're playing in the same room, We actually undergo really great, it's kind of, they call it synchronization.
00:53:00.000We get a kind of mirror neuroning process going on where it's like blood flow is mirroring where it's flowing.
00:53:06.000The patterns of activation are mirroring each other.
00:53:09.000And all of that's associated with More compassion, more empathy, we like each other more, we trust each other more.
00:53:15.000Even if the game is violent, even if we're competing, all of this happens.
00:53:19.000And it happens because, you know, when you're playing a game with or against someone, you have to try to get in their brain, like, what are they going to do next?
00:53:47.000Yeah, well, you're trying to think, what are they doing?
00:53:50.000And there is just something about if you're...
00:53:53.000You may think you're looking at the screen, but there's also just a general awareness.
00:53:59.000Like when you're sitting next to someone, you're aware of sort of what's going on.
00:54:04.000And cues that you're picking up, body language cues, and if you turn to look at them, even just in a split second, you'll get this sort of facial expression cue.
00:54:14.000And that doesn't happen in online games.
00:54:19.000So what we've seen is if you take the same game and play it against somebody in the room, you wind up with these positive impacts, like more compassion, more empathy, you like each other more.
00:54:32.000If you play the same game online, you're not able to see their facial expression.
00:54:36.000You're not able to get the same sinking phenomenon.
00:54:48.000And so it's one of the reasons why in the book I talk about how, you know, unless you're actively trying to change your personality to be more aggressive and you want to, I don't know, for some reason you feel like you want to be kind of more of a Half your time is a lot of time.
00:55:42.000There's a lot of camaraderie and stuff.
00:55:44.000But if you put a barrier up, but they're in the same room, or if they're in a room that's right next door, but you know they're there and maybe you can hear their voice, or if you shut that door and you can't hear their voice, have you changed?
00:55:56.000Have they seen if the mirroring is consistent?
00:56:01.000The studies that I've seen show that you have to be in physical proximity.
00:56:05.000So if there was a barrier and I was unable to look over and get those cues from your body language or from your facial expression, that it would not happen.
00:56:15.000What if it was like a cubicle thing and I could just like reach up?
00:56:23.000The thing I'm really curious about is with Twitch and now YouTube Gaming, is if you can watch somebody playing and now you're seeing their face while they're playing, A game.
00:56:35.000Studies have shown that watching someone play a game that you know how to play will trigger the same mirror neurons because your brain can kind of emulate.
00:56:43.000If you're playing a game, I don't know how to play.
00:56:58.000So one thing I'm interested in is if I can see someone's face, you know, while they're playing the game, they're playing a game I know, could you get some of the benefits?
00:57:05.000But it would only be unidirectional because if you're, like, live streaming your gameplay, you can't see me.
00:57:12.000But it would be interesting because we know that if you get this mirror neuron effect, it makes people want to help each other more, like each other more.
00:57:20.000I'm, like, thinking, like, being a powerful, you know, Twitch streamer or YouTube game streamer will, like, Could make you really cultivate a large community of people who really want to help you.
00:57:32.000It seems like if I were building an empire of a new kind of community, I feel like that would be what I would be building because it would be like a really tight bond.
00:57:54.000And the mirror neuron thing helps explain it because it's not like watching TV where it's just passive.
00:57:59.000If you know how to play the game, your brain starts working to process it and anticipate what they're going to do next, trying to figure out what decision they'll make or where they'll go.
00:58:12.000And so you're actually getting a lot of the same stimulation as if you were playing the game yourself.
00:58:17.000And that's the thing people don't understand.
00:58:21.000If you know how to play a musical instrument and you watch somebody playing that same musical instrument, your brain starts to, you know, activate as if you were playing it yourself, which is why it can be more interesting for someone who knows how to play the piano to watch someone else play the piano or listen to someone else play the piano versus somebody who doesn't know.
00:59:21.000I play pool, and when I watch really good players play, I can kind of emulate what they do.
00:59:28.000But I feel like it's not just copying, but I kind of tune in to how they're doing it.
00:59:34.000Oh yeah, because your brain is practicing it.
00:59:35.000I find that after a Grand Slam in tennis, because I'll watch, the only reason why I'm not watching tennis right now is because we're here doing this.
01:00:42.000I think that probably is the case with pretty much everything that people do.
01:00:45.000It's one of the reasons why a sense of community amongst people that are all involved in the same sort of endeavor is so important because you kind of push each other and inspire each other and also you kind of feed off of each other.
01:00:57.000Maybe one, like if we were all Maybe you would have a certain kind of style that I don't have, and I would see your style and go, oh, Jane's got this crazy thing she's doing.
01:01:08.000And then maybe I would do something that you didn't do, and you're like, maybe I need to be more this, and sort of tune in to how people are doing, to the point where a lot of comics, when they're around each other, it becomes an issue sometimes because they kind of mimic each other's personas.
01:01:24.000Or even just the cadence, you would think.
01:01:48.000There was all these Tell Babies that were running around it, but really they're just young comics that admire his sort of case, and they're trying to do it too, and they're super inspired because they're young and they're just trying to make it, and then they're seeing this guy who's this fantastic comedian,
01:02:09.000I mean, you just, it becomes a template.
01:02:13.000Yeah, nobody exists in a vacuum, right?
01:02:14.000I mean, everybody sort of, there's, everyone influences everyone around them to a certain extent.
01:02:20.000We all want to believe that we're some rogue, independent operator that exists out in the fringe of society and lives in a fucking wooden house in the woods somewhere.
01:02:49.000The sentence you just read, it changed your brain.
01:02:52.000So, I mean, on one hand, it's sort of silly to look at research that says, oh, games change your brain like this, or music changes your brain like that.
01:02:59.000Because everything you do, everything you're exposed to, changes your brain.
01:03:04.000You're making a memory, or you're sort of activating a pattern.
01:03:08.000So, I mean, like, even this conversation, you know, congratulations, like, you have changed my brain today.
01:03:20.000And, well, that's one of the weirdest things about doing a podcast is how many people will tell me after they listen to the podcast for 500 episodes, dude, you changed my life.
01:03:33.000But we really are changing each other's lives.
01:03:35.000I mean, the podcast has changed my life just being able to talk to all these different people.
01:03:39.000That's why it's important not to have dipshits in your life.
01:03:42.000Because if you're around people that are just constantly fucking up and constantly making the same mistakes over and over again, like that pattern affects you too.
01:03:50.000That pattern will creep into your mind.
01:03:53.000Well, they say, you know, it's really good to surround yourself with people who inspire you because they talk about having a cognitive model for behavior change.
01:04:01.000Like if you're trying to get better in some way, if you can visualize, if you know somebody who's already done it or doing positive things in their lives, It requires less energy for your brain to imagine yourself doing it.
01:04:13.000If you're not surrounded by anybody who's trying to get healthier or trying to get fit or whatever it is, it's literally harder to imagine.
01:04:21.000And so it's more exhausting for you to try to imagine yourself getting better, whereas if you're surrounded by people who are doing it, It becomes familiar to your brain.
01:04:30.000There's all sorts of examples that your brain can call on.
01:04:33.000It literally takes less energy for you to imagine yourself actually doing it.
01:04:37.000And weirdly, they found at Stanford University, using avatars, if you can see an avatar that is designed to look like you, doing the sort of things you want to do, like being really physically fit, like working out in the game world, if you just watch an avatar custom designed to look like you doing that,
01:04:56.000It lowers the cognitive threshold for you to do it and then you will do more in real life.
01:05:01.000You will work out more, you'll spend more time committed to those goals just by having watched the sort of mirror version of yourself having done it.
01:05:35.000They talk them through their scenarios.
01:05:39.000They will sit down and they'll close their eyes and meditate and visualize themselves getting out of bad situations, visualize themselves winning, and do it over and over and over again to the point where it becomes like a part of this is your reality.
01:06:07.000There's a little bit of nuance to it that's really interesting.
01:06:12.000For example, if you are walking on a treadmill while you're watching a custom avatar of yourself and the avatar starts running faster and is getting fitter, you will run faster.
01:06:39.000I watched this movie today and a week later I'm still feeling more powerful.
01:06:44.000You kind of want to do it in the moment.
01:06:46.000The one study at Sanford found for 24 hours they were more physically active, like taking stairs or doing more push-ups or whatever.
01:06:56.000But I do like the idea of using it The one thing they know is for positive visualization, I don't know if you've seen, there's been new research coming out, that you have to visualize the effortful action and not the outcome.
01:07:11.000If you're visualizing getting lifted up on people's shoulders like, I'm the champion, that actually seems to sometimes have a counterproductive effect because your brain can imagine it so vividly, you kind of feel like you've already had that payoff and you put in less effort.
01:07:29.000There's been studies for a few years that show this.
01:07:33.000But if you're visualizing the effortful activity that it takes to get there, you're picturing, you know, here's what I have to do on game day, and you're thinking about the things that require effort on your part, techniques or, you know, the actions you're going to take,
01:09:10.000I know how much sodium I have to take at different points.
01:09:13.000I know what the course looks like, so I've got a mental plan.
01:09:16.000Having that sense of reasonable optimism and focusing on visualizing what you'll do successfully that's focused on your own skills and abilities, that in all of the scientific literature is linked to better outcomes.
01:09:31.000Whereas if you're imagining things that are outside of your control, it just doesn't...
01:09:37.000it might inspire you and maybe you'll, you know...
01:09:40.000Get out of bed and put more of an effort as you picture something good happening to you.
01:09:46.000But the mental model that seems to be most powerful is when you're focusing on things that you have direct control over, if that makes sense.
01:10:02.000Well, how much of all that is just a little like what you're talking about is just focus is just Thinking about what you're doing and the more you think about what you're doing and the more energy you put towards what you're doing makes you better and how much of this is just and is it possible that all these ideas of just Visualization is what you're doing is really just focusing more and loving more what you're doing I think that could be a big part of it.
01:10:29.000You're able to perform better, you learn faster.
01:10:32.000I think part of it is also something to do with the dopamine system.
01:10:38.000You know, in video games, So I've talked to lots of neuroscientists for this book, and a lot of them will say, if you want to increase someone's self-efficacy, you have them play a video game, because in a video game,
01:10:53.000you're constantly required to take action And then wait to see, you know, I try to fire my weapon, I wait to see if I shot successfully, I try to orient around an obstacle, I'm gonna see, I'm gonna get information.
01:11:04.000Every time that your brain expects information about your performance, it gives you a little dopamine release.
01:11:10.000Dopamine feels good, so you get excited, but increased dopamine also allows you to pay closer attention and to learn faster, right?
01:11:19.000So anytime you're trying something where you're constantly taking actions, getting feedback, And you have to kind of learn and improve.
01:11:27.000You'll get all this dopamine going, and that is associated with the ability to build self-efficacy.
01:11:41.000I mean, it's not just a matter of what you think.
01:11:45.000It's also about changing what is going on in your brain so that the brain is primed to learn faster, And that's why there seem to be so many cool applications for video games,
01:12:02.000because if you can get a cancer patient who feels really powerless and overwhelmed to play a video game about chemotherapy and it starts building self-advocacy and getting all the dopamine going, there was a clinical trial that showed that kids who played a video game about cancer were for Two to three months later,
01:12:22.000missing fewer doses of their medicine, taking more antibiotics, they were more engaged, which leads to more cases of cancer going into remission.
01:12:32.000Right, but isn't that just more focus?
01:12:42.000But it's focused with the dopamine hit.
01:12:44.000And the increased dopamine is going to, it changes.
01:12:48.000So what's, well now we'll get really deep here.
01:12:52.000Every time that you consider a goal, Your brain stops and says, is it worth it?
01:12:57.000Because your brain's trying to conserve your body's energy and, you know, your cognitive energy.
01:13:03.000And we'll say, if I do this goal, do I really want it?
01:13:07.000Am I going to put the energy to do it?
01:13:09.000And what researchers have found is the more dopamine you have in your reward pathways, The more you focus on the positive outcome and the less you think about the effort required.
01:13:19.000So if I give you a bunch of dopamine hits, you're going to be thinking about, I might be cured someday.
01:13:24.000I don't care how many side effects there are to this medicine.
01:13:26.000I'm swallowing this pill, you know, and I'm going to do it because you're focused on the positive outcome, not all of the other things that stress you out about it or make you, you know, the nausea and the energy that it takes.
01:13:40.000And this is true if you're doing push-ups, you know, like, do I really feel like doing 100 push-ups right now?
01:13:45.000If you have more dopamine going, you're gonna be more likely to say, this is important to me, it's important to my training.
01:13:51.000And if you are low dopamine, which is when you're clinically depressed, you have really low dopamine.
01:13:58.000Oh, why am I gonna bother getting out of bed?
01:14:00.000There's like, the effort required seems so much more important than the goal.
01:14:04.000So there is a neurological underpinning Self-efficacy is sort of this combination of really wanting to achieve your goal and having that increased attention so you learn faster.
01:14:17.000It's not just a matter of saying, I'm going to pay attention now.
01:14:22.000You have to be priming your brain to increase the dopamine in your reward pathways.
01:14:27.000Right, but the dopamine hit, what is the mechanism that creates the dopamine hit?
01:14:32.000Is it just simply loving what you're doing and being enthusiastic about it?
01:14:38.000Well, specifically, it's anticipation of feedback.
01:14:40.000So the fastest way, if you wanted to increase your dopamine right now, I would say make a prediction about something that's going to happen today.
01:15:43.000Like, if there's one thing that he could go back and do again, like, he thinks his parents didn't really instill any sense of competition in him.
01:15:50.000And he's one of those guys, if he's playing a game and it's not going his way, he'll pull the plug.
01:16:08.000Well, and probably what's going on is his brain is saying, you know, it's starting to realize no amount of effort is going to turn this around.
01:18:56.000But he wrote to people that he was worried that he was addicted to it.
01:18:59.000He talked a lot about how he had this game addiction, which is fascinating when you think about today how many people worried about I'm addicted to World of Warcraft or whatever game.
01:19:09.000So even Einstein worried about being addicted to his favorite game.
01:19:28.000There's a whole chapter in the Super Better book about game addiction and how to stop it, how to reverse it, and what tends to lead people into it.
01:19:38.000I wish my friend Duncan was here right now.
01:19:41.000He's the biggest addict I know when it comes to video games.
01:19:46.000The biggest predictor for who will become addicted to games and feel like it kind of gets out of control, spirals out of control, is if they're playing for escapist purposes to try to block other feelings.
01:20:31.000Other goals outside the game that the game is connected to because the biological process of addiction is the narrowing of goals that the brain responds to.
01:20:45.000I mean, all forms of addiction, pornography.
01:20:48.000Narrowing of goals that the brain responds to.
01:20:50.000Right, so you know I said you get like this dopamine hit when you anticipate something good.
01:20:55.000In addiction, the brain starts to believe that the only source of the next dopamine hit is the thing you're addicted to.
01:21:04.000And you can't imagine other things that are going to make you feel that good or feel that excited.
01:21:11.000And there's this great new book called The Biology of Desire that a neuroscientist kind of lays out all the new thinking on addiction.
01:21:18.000And one of the ways you break out of cycle for any addiction is to start priming the brain to anticipate You have to stop thinking about the game as the only source of that good feeling.
01:21:46.000You have to start thinking about other goals that you have besides just the sort of sense of relief that the game is going to provide.
01:21:55.000That's something that they tell addicts, drug addicts, channel that addiction into something else.
01:22:01.000So that's essentially what they're saying.
01:22:03.000They're saying what you need to do is find something else that's positive that you can get addicted to.
01:22:07.000So you're seeking out that weird chemical reaction in the mind when you're stimulated by something else.
01:22:14.000So instead of chasing crack, you'll chase exercise.
01:22:19.000But what we're seeing with games is because games aren't inherently dangerous.
01:22:25.000And in fact, it can be dangerous to just go cold turkey on games because it's like taking someone off an antidepressant without tapering them because games have such a powerful...
01:22:36.000You know how many kids are gonna listen to this go mom?
01:22:38.000It's dangerous for me to quit this game Listen to Jane.
01:22:42.000There are like suicide I mean their cases of kids who have killed themselves when their parents Turn off the game those kids would have killed themselves over anything I, I think, I think it is likely related to, it's the same thing when you take someone off an antidepressant and the brain is no longer having that,
01:23:01.000it's like, you lose your ability to imagine, to feel positive.
01:23:07.000Is the term addiction, like, is that a flawed term?
01:23:11.000Because it seems like it's so limiting and so narrow in its scope.
01:23:16.000We think of addiction, we think of, oh, he's on the heroin.
01:23:19.000You know, like you just automatically think.
01:23:21.000But really, what is it that your brain has locked into these pathways of achieving desirable effects?
01:23:31.000I've done some work with some rehabilitation centers, recovery centers for addiction, where they're starting to be more aware of this, the new sense of what addiction is.
01:23:45.000But if people are interested, the book that just came out this year about that, The Biology of Desire, does a really good job of explaining it because it's, I mean, it's a pretty provocative argument.
01:23:56.000It says that addiction is not a disease.
01:23:59.000The brain is functioning absolutely perfectly.
01:24:07.000But if you had that same brain chemistry about running a startup company...
01:24:12.000I mean, Mark Zuckerberg was addicted to his startup in the same way that someone can get addicted to a video game or addicted to a substance.
01:25:43.000And so it's like the intervention for that, you know, if you were to sort of follow the guidelines of how you get people to sort of focus on other goals, is you would just start by asking him, Well, why are you good at making money in this game?
01:25:56.000What does it take in terms of skill or commitment or research?
01:26:22.000And that seems to be, if you look at the scientific literature, just talking about what you own and what is a result of your skills and abilities, that that helps you broaden that.
01:28:12.000I would go do my comedy sets, and then I'd go play pool until three, four o'clock in the morning.
01:28:16.000And then I would get up in the morning and go work out.
01:28:19.000I'd go, you know, go do my comedy and do the same thing every night.
01:28:23.000But all I was thinking about was the game.
01:28:24.000I was thinking about, like, knocking the balls into the whole, like, the dopamine effect or whatever it is of winning or of being successful, of running out the table, of having the ball do what you want it to do.
01:28:37.000And because it's so difficult, the reward is so much, like, anything that's really, like, if you play a game, it's really easy.
01:28:44.000Like, When you win, it doesn't mean anything.
01:28:46.000But when you play a game that's really hard to do, that reward is so fucking exciting.
01:29:58.000And I have a couple chronic injuries that I have because one particular of a back injury that was a bulging disc that I just would I would ignore.
01:30:12.000Because I just needed that rush until it got pretty chronic and then I had to take a long stretch off and really let it heal up but it It gave me that perspective.
01:30:20.000It feels like, I mean, just hearing you say that makes me think really how important it is for people to understand like how this system works so that you can say, look, my brain's telling me to go back and work out now, even though my doctor said don't do it and I can Google and it says stay off it for six weeks.
01:30:37.000And to understand your brain is telling you that because it wants a dopamine hit.
01:30:41.000If you really want to rehabilitate properly, you need to start doing other things that produce dopamine hits.
01:30:48.000And that's, I mean, fantasy sports, for example.
01:30:51.000Do get really into that for the season that you're taking off because that's you're making predictions.
01:31:29.000Well, I think my brain was wired with martial arts and competing, which is extremely exciting but dangerous and thrilling, and the thrills are so high.
01:31:40.000The thrills of competing are just beyond anything that you can ever get from something that's non-physical, non-threatening.
01:31:47.000It's high-level problem-solving with dire physical health consequences.
01:31:53.000So there's all sorts of craziness involved in it, and the intensity and the focus that you need So you understand that guy on the skateboard really well then, actually.
01:32:10.000That's why one of the things that freaks me out most about those people that are tightrope walking and jumping those squirrel suits where they jump off of cliffs and fly around.
01:33:23.000Whatever weird problems that you might be dealing with with your personal life, they seem so inconsequential.
01:33:31.000When I would have relationship problems, a girl I was dating, some craziness about to break up, I would go spar and I would be like, who gives a fuck?
01:33:43.000I remember one time having this conversation with this girl I was dating.
01:34:45.000But it's like, it's why somebody seems, you don't understand, even if you're dating and you kind of like that person, but they're already, they're down the road, they're in love, they are addicted.
01:34:57.000And then your behavior might seem totally crazy to me, because I'm not there yet.
01:35:01.000And even though I liked you, because you're further along in that process, and that sort of narrowing of attention, I freak out.
01:35:08.000Whereas, you know, maybe if I had waited a few more weeks.
01:35:12.000I might have been far enough along that it actually doesn't scare me off.
01:35:17.000People fall in love at different rates.
01:35:20.000It's not that you're a crazy person and I'm a normal person and therefore I shouldn't date you.
01:35:25.000It's just the biochemical processes look a little faster for you.
01:35:30.000I think there are couples who break up too soon because one of them kind of got further along in the addiction process than the other.
01:36:03.000You're just syncing up whatever personality aspects that you have, holes and square pegs and round holes, and everyone's trying to figure out where everything fits in.
01:36:14.000There's also a weird thing where we've all had friends that alter who they are when they start dating someone.
01:38:00.000But isn't that a biological trick, just to get us to breed?
01:38:03.000Like, you stick around long enough to make a baby, and then, you know, fall in love with the baby so that you raise it, so that that baby can go and have a baby.
01:38:11.000And the sense of community that you have all sort of is addictive, and it keeps you together, which ensures survival.
01:39:35.000They almost get to this thing where they can't be in the moment because they don't know how long the moment lasts and the anticipation of the moment ending is just too freaky.
01:40:33.000You've got to think, at a certain point in time, that there's levels to happiness and harmony, the harmony that you achieve with the environment that you find yourself in.
01:40:49.000And the more The chaos that you create and the more problems that you create just to solve those problems, that energy keeps you from doing something else.
01:41:00.000That energy is going to block you from the other pursuits.
01:41:31.000So he comes into the dressing room beforehand, and they don't do a pre-show interview because they want you to be kind of off guard and off balance.
01:41:37.000And he comes in and he says, you know, have you seen the show?
01:41:40.000Okay, I'm going to be in character now.
01:41:42.000And I'm going to be really stupid and stubborn and your job is to disabuse me of my stupid and stubborn ideas.
01:41:49.000And they said, now let me ask you a question.
01:41:55.000And I was like, is this, is he like, is he practicing, you know, is this like, am I, are we practicing some kind of witty rapport for the show or whatever?
01:42:04.000So I'm like, I'm trying to go into that mode and I'm like, well, you know, yes, of course it is.
01:43:25.000It's one of them is just open-ended and There's you know, there's no clear pathway It's a game that literally you're standing in the middle of the universe BAM and especially in 2015 if you have the means you can get on a plane and go to another part of the game You know,
01:43:43.000you can just hop on a plane and you know, we were talking before this podcast started about the Radiolab podcast that's out today and About that guy who was on my podcast Cory Nolton who shot that Rhino like that's a guy who took the game and decided to go to a fucking place He totally doesn't belong or is never you know never is not born there or whatever not and shouldn't say doesn't belong but a completely different area of the game and He's doing something over there and everybody over in this part of the game is like what the
01:44:14.000Over there like some guy who gets on a boat and decides to sail across the world They're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
01:44:20.000Well, he decided that he's going to go to a different part of the board and he's going to get in a boat and he's going to drink rainwater and try to catch fish and travel across the fucking ocean.
01:45:36.000Because if you run, like I have my friend Cameron, Cameron Haynes, he's run two ultra marathons.
01:45:42.000He'll, you know, post about it on his Instagram, or he'll show you his time or something like that.
01:45:46.000But he's trying, like, he's an athlete, and he's sponsored by a bunch of companies, and part of his gig is that he inspires people, and he really feels good about that.
01:47:22.000There's a lot of people who, when someone will accomplish something, I'm fascinated by watching the observers.
01:47:29.000And the Instagram observers are the most fascinating, because whenever I go to someone's page and someone's done something cool, like my friend Cameron running 100 miles, I'll look at the negative comments, and I go to their Instagram page, and they're almost It's always blocked.
01:47:57.000Which means they don't understand the vulnerability involved.
01:48:00.000Like, if you had the experience of having other people write on your stuff the same way that you were doing on someone else, you might not be doing that.
01:48:09.000Well, they're playing the low, they're playing tic-tac-toe.
01:48:23.000Yeah, I mean, it is kind of what it is.
01:48:24.000If life is this really super complex, open-ended game where essentially...
01:48:31.000If you live in a free culture like we do, you know, we're not living in North Korea where you're assigned a job and if you don't cry when something happens, you know, you go to jail, your game is essentially open-ended.
01:48:42.000That's one of the reasons why when people get out of jail, they find themselves like institutionalized is the word, but they find themselves so trapped in the game of jail that that's how their brain is wired.
01:48:54.000It's really extremely difficult for them to deal with the open-ended game of life.
01:49:00.000I mean, even for, you see it with, when someone graduates college, kids who have been from the top colleges who have been taught to play the game of achieving and achieving in this really rigid structure, and then they get out into the world and nobody's telling them, Here are the things you have to do to be considered a good student or be successful.
01:49:56.000Well, it's interesting because I've been so steeped in It's psychology literature, and a lot of the folks who play Superbetter are traumatized, and they've been through PTSD. And it is absolutely true that avoiding triggers prolongs the problem.
01:50:16.000I mean, I can look at the scientific literature and say trigger warnings are actually They're not going to help.
01:50:22.000They're going to make you weaker over time.
01:50:23.000It's like we were talking about, you know, oh, I'm so scared of the bad guy.
01:50:27.000I have to avoid everything that is a trigger.
01:50:31.000So when I hear about that, I wish, and I try to talk to people.
01:50:36.000When that article came out, I tweeted about, and I have a lot of people who follow me who are, you know, have PTSD, and they're very conflicted about whether they're supposed to avoid triggers and they like trigger warnings because they think it's going to keep them Safe, but everything we know is that you need to get better at controlling your reaction to the trigger.
01:50:57.000So I can see why that's so frustrating to people.
01:50:59.000Well, one of the most frustrating aspects of that article in particular was that what's going on in colleges today is it's a control issue.
01:51:09.000It's their controlling behavior in such an extreme way that they want to penalize people for microaggressions.
01:51:18.000Which is like, you say something and I go, alright.
01:51:21.000Which is just a part of a fucking human interaction with you.
01:51:25.000Like, if I say something to you and you give me a sarcastic response, I have to decide, you know what?
01:51:29.000I don't enjoy communicating with her because she makes me feel bad.
01:51:33.000Or I have to say maybe I'm fucking douchey and maybe people react to me in a negative way and I should think about not what I want to say or how I want to say things but rather how people might view what I'm saying and how they take it in and maybe I'm just an ineffective communicator and maybe what's going on here is just you know there's there's like two people playing soccer okay they're both trying to hit the ball and they collide into each other whose fault is it it's well they're both it's just non-smooth movement yep And that sort of interaction
01:52:03.000that you would get when you're trying to hit a soccer ball, it's very similar to the interaction that you have when two people are communicating with each other.
01:52:09.000The colliding people, one person is not necessarily totally responsible for that collision.
01:52:16.000They're both sort of responsible for it, and there's a whole dance going on.
01:52:22.000Poor decision making in the moment and lack of experience and collisions and lack of an understanding of the consequences of those collisions.
01:52:31.000All that is a part of going to college.
01:52:36.000And when you have people that are shielding you from microaggressions, All that shit is just a part of being a human and dealing with your hormones and emotions and you're separated from your family for the first time and now you're in Michigan and some fucking crazy university and you got some fat stupid teacher that's never even existed outside the real world and they're dictating your behavior patterns and telling you you're not allowed to use male and female pronouns anymore.
01:54:01.000I mean, it's definitely something coming from the students who have been raised...
01:54:06.000In this culture of, you know, I mean, it's a very protective culture, and nobody should have their feelings hurt, and nobody should experience failure or rejection.
01:54:18.000I mean, I feel like it's more from that culture than from anything related to contemporary academia or the faculty.
01:54:25.000Well, that's a weird thing, because isn't contemporary academia overwhelmingly liberal and progressive?
01:54:48.000I think the reason why a student culture would have so much impact on this is because universities are now like business models and the customer is always right.
01:54:58.000The professor is not the one who is...
01:55:04.000The professors more often than not resist.
01:55:06.000It's really more at the level of the business side of the college that is trying to make this a good customer experience for the student.
01:55:19.000I mean, I think that is more of the divide.
01:55:21.000I don't think the political affiliations of faculty is not...
01:55:26.000I mean, none of that is really what's going on.
01:55:28.000It's really more about the Students pay so much money for college now and they expect lots of perks and they expect they're paying for a certain experience.
01:55:39.000I think that is really where you're seeing a lot of the friction come because this particular younger generation seems to be, if you look at what a lot of the experts are saying, they don't want the things that feel painful or feel like failure or feel like stress.
01:55:58.000Well, if that's the case, then why are they pointing out all these flaws in all these other people's behavior to control them?
01:56:07.000Flaws in the way people express themselves.
01:56:28.000And do you think that happens a lot because of what we talked about earlier where there's the interaction of just dealing in text is very strange and the interaction without people being right there with each other?
01:57:12.000And I mean, I don't use the terminology microaggressions.
01:57:16.000I don't use the trigger warning terminology.
01:57:18.000So I think we're like in this period where on one hand, things do need to change in some ways.
01:57:24.000You know, you have Nobel laureate scientists giving speeches where they say that it's He doesn't like to have women in the lab because either they fall in love with you or you fall in love with them and then you can't work together.
01:57:36.000When a Nobel laureate says that to a conference of young scientists, that's not helpful, I don't think.
01:57:46.000Do you know that that was taken out of context?
01:57:49.000Do you know the full extent of his phrase?
01:57:51.000It was a joke and he was also talking about his wife because he met his wife in the lab and he was also making himself to be a fool.
01:58:20.000So this is actually a perfect example, because if he was joking, right, so his intentions are totally good, is it possible that it's still not helpful to make that kind of a statement?
01:58:33.000I think that's what people are talking about, right?
01:58:38.000If on one hand there's a lot of interest in trying to increase the number of women in science and technology, is it possible that somebody would hear that?
01:58:46.000And still be kind of demotivated by it or kind of have that sink in.
01:58:52.000So I think people are, when we're discussing these things, you don't have to police other people's language, but I still think it's useful to say that might not be helpful.
01:59:05.000Yeah, there's an article in the leaked transcript.
01:59:09.000What happened was, the people that saw it, at least some of them, thought it was funny.
01:59:16.000But there were aspects of what he said that were probably clumsy, or clunky, or, you know, he was trying to be funny, and he's really just sort of an odd guy who's a scientist.
01:59:28.000And people decided that this is an awesome target.
02:00:29.000I think it's totally fine to say, hey, when you say these things, it might result in some girl thinking, wait, maybe I'm not going to be a good scientist because people say that girls aren't good in the lab or whatever.
02:00:49.000I try to be, you know, even when we say things like about people who play games a lot, you know, they're wasting their lives, you know, why don't you go out and do something real?
02:01:00.000I don't think that's useful to say either.
02:01:06.000Can be really damaging to people's self-identity.
02:01:08.000Well, I think any time you generalize, you know, men do this and women do that and girls aren't good at being in the lab and it's damaging.
02:01:15.000And I think now he understands that a joke like that, as innocent as he might have intended it to be, when you're reading it in a text form, especially, and you're taking some of it out of context, it can be...
02:01:30.000It can be hurtful for someone who's considering...
02:01:34.000How many girls were reading that that were considering a possible career in science and went, I don't have to deal with fucking people like this.
02:01:40.000I'm not going to cry in your lab, asshole.
02:01:44.000So we don't need to police people to have this conversation.
02:01:51.000Well, it does sort of expose, in some ways, it exposes Prevalent attitudes that this guy who is this esteemed Nobel-winning scientist has this attitude You know that he thinks it's funny to joke around about it Like even if he's not a sexist or a bad guy him making this joke about himself being some chauvinist monster Yeah,
02:02:14.000and it's because one of the things is because his wife is a prominent feminist And so he jokes around about him being a chauvinist monster.
02:02:22.000Yeah, you know, that makes sense Yeah, I mean that's it's all out of context and it's all also you're dealing with a guy whose whose real focus is his research not social interaction.
02:03:30.000Recreational outrage is without a doubt a real thing right now.
02:03:33.000And I think that that's what's going on in colleges and that people are finding...
02:03:38.000When you're in college, it's like when you were talking about the addiction that people have to video games, and one of the things that sort of stimulates that addiction is if you're trying to avoid things in your regular life.
02:03:47.000Well, if you are in college, the overwhelming anxiety of being a young person who has gone from living with her parents, going to high school, now you're in college, and you're just a couple years away from the cliff of real world.
02:04:01.000Like, you're fucking sliding towards it, and you're trying to define it and redefine it and change it and establish yourself.
02:04:07.000And then along the way comes things that you can be angry at.
02:04:28.000Rejection and all the shit that makes a person feel weird things and you channel that towards microaggressions or you channel that towards someone deciding to address you with a male or a female pronoun.
02:04:43.000There's a lot of weirdness to being a person.
02:04:47.000But you know, the last thing I want to say about this is...
02:04:51.000Part of it is I think people are just trying to make new rules for the game, right?
02:04:56.000And when you're trying to change the rules of a game, that is really upsetting if you're in the middle of the game.
02:05:02.000You play in a game and someone's like, wait, totally, you can't do that now.
02:05:17.000But it doesn't mean, as a game designer would say, it doesn't mean that there isn't a better game that actually could have different rules, but it's really upsetting to be in the middle of a game and have somebody say, wait, those aren't the rules.
02:05:34.000I don't know how to do it better because, I mean, look, I'm a progressive person and I'm glad that things are changing in society in lots of ways, you know, that I'm excited about.
02:05:54.000I'm glad that, I mean, paternity and maternity leave, you know, becoming more people having longer maternity leave and the same length paternity leave for dads.
02:06:04.000As a new parent, I'm really excited to see companies doing that.
02:06:08.000And I like that we're starting to talk about income inequality.
02:06:14.000I mean, optimistic that there will be changes in that direction.
02:06:19.000And I think that the Black Lives Matter is a hugely important movement.
02:06:25.000So I think there's a lot of conversations going on right now Where people are angry or have struggled or feel like they've been playing a rigged game.
02:06:51.000I've had Twitter hordes yelling at me because they thought that I was breaking one of the new rules of how we're supposed to...
02:07:00.000Like what did people yell at you over?
02:07:01.000One of the big instances I had was about my recommendations for playing Tetris after a trauma.
02:07:08.000So there have been multiple randomized control studies now out of Oxford University showing that if you play Tetris within 24 hours of a traumatic event, it will reduce the flashbacks you have, the severity of flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms because it It occupies your brain and prevents your brain from kind of locking in in an obsessive-compulsive way on the trauma,
02:07:30.000So I think this is incredibly important advice that everyone should know, kind of like stop, drop, and roll.
02:07:36.000You know, if you catch on fire, you know what to do.
02:07:38.000Everybody should have Tetris on their phone and have it available to them.
02:07:42.000Because I know, having suffered flashbacks from my own head injury, how...
02:07:47.000I mean, I would have nightmares and be...
02:07:49.000Of which I was hitting my head and I would feel it as if for real and I'd wake up and I'd be convinced that I had hit my head in the middle of the night and was going to have this experience all over again.
02:08:01.000When I started tweeting about it, People...
02:08:04.000I got told that there needed to be like trigger warnings on my tweets because I was mentioning PTSD and I might make somebody think about like a trauma that they'd experienced and...
02:08:14.000Well, they're trying to change the game.
02:08:41.000So you're uncomfortable with being unjustly accused of being insensitive when you're bringing out the scientific research that shows that a game can help you with trauma.
02:08:51.000Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna keep doing it, you know, but I understand that the people who say it are hurting.
02:08:59.000The people who are telling me that I'm triggering them...
02:09:09.000I think it's dangerous when it gets pointed out.
02:09:11.000You're pointing out the scientific aspects of a very specific activity that's very good for trauma, and they're saying that you shouldn't talk about this.
02:09:48.000This woman in Kentucky that was trying to stop people from getting gay marriage licenses.
02:09:55.000I took a few days where I wasn't paying attention to Twitter that much, and I didn't know that there was this giant movement supporting this woman.
02:10:02.000And I went to Mike Huckabee's fucking Twitter page and saw that this Crazy old asshole was, like, saying that there's a war against Christians and that, like, hashtag religious liberty.
02:10:14.000And so I was like, that doesn't have...
02:10:16.000Religious liberty doesn't mean you enforce your religion on other people.
02:10:22.000And there was so much I got so many people tweeting at me angrily tweeting at me for saying like and I tweeted something about Ted Cruz about how Ridiculous his views are on gay marriage and like that He's probably gay and I'm like if you listen to the way that guy talks He's super feminine like this like how many times we have to see this where these men I have a bit that I used to do my act.
02:10:44.000There's two types of people that hate gay marriage It's either you're really dumb or you're secretly worried that dicks are delicious.
02:11:35.000And I think it's important because even though I might disagree, I mean, I vehemently disagree with people whose perspectives seem to be fueled by hate.
02:11:45.000But I think it's important to still try to have the empathy or the mental insight to understand why does this make them feel so bad?
02:11:53.000I think what you just said, the feeling that you thought you understood the rules.
02:13:15.000This has been a really good one for me.
02:13:18.000The overall looking at the whole existence as, instead of defining it by the word game, but looking at it with almost the same sort of attitude or approach that you would look at a game is very beneficial.
02:13:46.000Yeah, I think also like the ebb and flow of culture, like the things that seem to definitely, even though I resist like this nonsense about microaggressions and trigger warnings and stuff like that, I'm very happy that things are moving in the direction of acceptance.
02:14:04.000Very happy that you can be whatever the fuck you want.
02:14:07.000You decide you're a woman today, go ahead.
02:14:09.000As long as you don't hurt anybody, who cares?
02:14:11.000This guy wants to wear dresses and he wants you to call him Jane now.
02:15:44.000Father one of the things has changed radically in my life is Seeing people now like when I meet people I see them as babies that have grown up Like I don't see them as in being in a static state, you know,
02:16:00.000and it's it's very strange like even assholes that I mean I'd look at them and even go that guy's a fucking asshole I think of them as like what happened to that person and I practice Zen Buddhism and that's one of the big Buddhist meditations is to picture people as babies.
02:16:19.000When you feel hate for somebody, try to visualize them all the way down to their little baby self and picture what they look like as a baby and to think about who they were when they were that baby before all of life happened to them to make them into somebody that has now triggered these You know,
02:16:42.000You know, I was talking to Michael Irvin, who's a famous pro football player, who's talking to me about kids that grow up in horrible environments, dangerous, volatile environments, where the mother has all this cortisol in her brain while the child's in the womb,
02:16:58.000and the kid literally grows up, like, with a short temper.
02:17:03.000They literally, they're developed out of the womb, like, constantly worried about stress and danger.
02:17:48.000The same cat, because his brain was programmed from the time he was a little baby, and there was not a lot he could do.
02:17:56.000I couldn't say, that cat's an asshole.
02:17:58.000Well, no, that fucking cat was born under an apartment building, and his mom was running away from traffic and trying to eat rats or whatever the fuck they could kill.
02:18:24.000And being able to zoom out and see that makes you feel, I think, will you have more perspective, more wisdom, and maybe more compassion for other people.
02:18:33.000That's also why people like to, rightly so, criticize very narrow-minded, small-town thinking.
02:18:39.000Small, little environments, insulated environments that are very...
02:18:44.000You know, very criticizing or very, you know, just have their way set, and they don't have a wide variety of experiences they can draw upon, or they don't have a broad, nuanced view of the board that they're playing on.
02:19:09.000I think also as time is going on and This is one thing that the positive aspects of social media and of the internet itself is that we're getting more and more information instead of just Accepting these preconceived notions that we have about different groups of people now.
02:19:28.000It's just inadvertently or inarguably changing the way we view those groups Yeah.
02:19:52.000Very openly talked about the institutionalized racism and about how they had found papers from the 1970s that were describing how to behave in certain environments that were exactly the same as what's going on now.
02:20:07.000I don't think that attitude existed just a few years ago.
02:20:10.000I think people are looking at all that data now, and they go, it's slowly coming around.
02:20:15.000And even the hardliners are dropping, you know, if they were at a 10, now they're at an 8 or a 7. Well, fucking kids, you need to go to school or something.
02:20:25.000You know, it's like everyone is sort of slowly recognizing the pieces that are in play.
02:20:30.000It's a lot more complicated than we want to, you know, just narrowly sort of define them in these...
02:20:36.000These really simplistic terms, where it's not simple.
02:20:40.000There's a series of interactions that are going on all over the globe, where human beings are trying to find their way.
02:20:45.000And they're also realizing, somewhere along the line, that their parents weren't these all-knowing creatures, neither were their parents, neither were the President Roosevelt or fucking Abe Lincoln, they were all people that were trying to find their way as well, and this is a group effort.
02:21:01.000It's a group effort that's still going on, and it's not even remotely done.