The Art of Manliness - The Art of Exploration — Why We Seek New Challenges and Search Out the Unknown

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.160 the human urge to explore has taken us to every corner of the planet from the highest peaks the

00:00:16.680 far-flung islands to even the deepest dimensions of an idea our species has an innate drive to

00:00:21.440 venture into the unknown what's behind this need to explore is it genetic cognitive or something

00:00:27.100 else entirely here to unpack this question is alex hutchinson author of the explorer's gene why we

00:00:32.680 seek big challenges new flavors and the blank spots on the map today on the show alex shares the

00:00:38.220 fascinating science behind exploratory tendencies from the dopamine driven explorer's gene that

00:00:42.900 varies across populations to the universal cognitive frameworks that govern how we navigate

00:00:47.280 both physical and mental landscapes he explains the delicate balance between exploring new

00:00:51.620 possibilities and exploiting what we already know and why we sometimes find meaning in difficult

00:00:55.860 challenges we also discuss why younger people explore more than older people do how this

00:01:00.320 decline in exploration doesn't have to be an inevitability and how to keep exploring throughout

00:01:04.300 your entire life after the show is over check out our show notes at awim.is slash explore

00:01:08.860 all right alex hutchinson welcome back to the show thanks brett it's great to be back

00:01:25.520 so uh you got a new book out called the explorers gene why we seek big challenges new flavors and the

00:01:32.080 blank spots on the map i've known you and i'm sure a lot of our listeners know you as the endurance and

00:01:38.080 running guy but something i didn't know about you is that you also enjoy backpacking but you like to

00:01:44.060 backpack in really really remote places what's been the most remote trip you've been on that's a good

00:01:49.680 question i and i should clarify that i'm not a real exploring guy i don't go like parasailing to the

00:01:54.520 south pole or anything like that but i definitely like to go places where i can imagine that i'm a

00:01:58.360 in the middle of nowhere i did a trip with my wife on the south coast of tasmania the whole southern

00:02:04.700 part of tasmania is basically like empty and there's a route called the south coast track it was

00:02:10.100 originally blazed like a hundred in early 1900s as a way for shipwrecked sailors because the ocean's

00:02:15.900 really crazy down there and so people would sometimes wash up on the south shore of tasmania and then

00:02:19.920 they'd have no way of getting back to civilization so there's a track that just basically follows the

00:02:24.260 whole south coast of tasmania to get back to the the one road that leads down there so you drive down

00:02:29.780 to the southeast corner then you take a little two-seater plane out to the southwest corner and

00:02:35.260 land on a little patch of gravel and then you hike back for a week so that that was a trip where it was

00:02:39.520 like yeah if something goes wrong you know there's no way of hiking out you need to be rescued basically

00:02:46.040 and then some of these trips you've taken your kids on as well yeah i i don't know if if anyone

00:02:52.580 from children's aid is listening to this podcast uh you know please press mute now so i don't get in

00:02:57.880 trouble yeah we definitely dial it down for the kids but both my wife and i love we just love being out

00:03:02.120 in the back country and so we we didn't want to just like turn that off for 10 years while our kids

00:03:06.460 were young so we tried to find ways of having adventures that have become steadily frankly steadily a

00:03:12.520 little more crazy as the kids have gotten older but at the very beginning i remember like when our

00:03:16.460 youngest kids were still was still like i don't know six months old we did a camping trip for example

00:03:22.100 where it was a 400 meter walk-in or 400 yard walk-in to camp and so 400 it's not a long way to travel but

00:03:29.560 it's still enough that instead of camping you know where you're 10 feet from the next tent and 10 feet

00:03:35.740 from the one after that we were just trying to find ways of feeling like we're in the forest and yeah

00:03:40.120 we've started to push it a little farther we go on hiking trips and camping trips with them

00:03:43.600 so how did your backpacking hobby get you thinking about what causes humans to explore

00:03:49.880 yeah it's funny so for a while i was writing adventure travel articles for the new york times

00:03:55.940 and so basically every time my my wife and i would go for a a crazy vacation i'd then write about it for

00:04:01.920 the times and i started to notice a pattern like you know you don't want to write the same article

00:04:06.060 over and over again but in every article i was like we're in you know whatever nepal or we're in

00:04:11.620 papua new guinea or we're in australia and there's this beautiful hike that everyone does and so we

00:04:15.440 decided not to do that hike we decided to go to this miserable place that's covered in leeches

00:04:19.260 and is you know hard to get to and do this hard thing to get away from everybody and i started to

00:04:24.820 wonder like what is it that's driving me like the reason people go to the popular places is because

00:04:29.700 they're really nice why am i going to the less nice places just to get away from people because i'm not

00:04:34.240 i'm generally like i actually quite like people i'm not like a people hater or anything like that

00:04:38.560 but somehow on these trips i was really drawn to the idea of getting out into the unknown and i

00:04:43.400 i didn't really know why i didn't know what i was looking for and i started to see connections with

00:04:47.660 other parts of my life in you know whether it's career choices or ordering in a restaurant or whatever

00:04:53.420 that i have this drive to find out to try the new thing to try the unknown thing and i wondered what

00:04:59.200 that was all about yeah and you've you talk about this in your book you've kind of explored with your

00:05:03.320 own career you started off as a physicist and then you moved to writing about outdoor adventures

00:05:09.500 writing about sports science and i mean there's been this constant shift in your career yeah and

00:05:15.700 and it was like i feel like everyone gets one mulligan right so i i started studying physics and i i

00:05:21.640 went pretty far in that i did a phd and was working as a researcher and then when i was 28 i was like

00:05:26.340 yeah this is this is not for me and i went back and did a journalism degree and became a journalist

00:05:31.680 and so fine okay well it took me a while to find myself but then in my mid-40s i'd kind of gotten

00:05:38.000 where i wanted to go as a journalist i was writing about topics that really interested me the science

00:05:41.840 of endurance and i i had a book that came out in 2018 called endure which was really kind of bringing

00:05:47.000 together all my reporting on the science of endurance and it did actually you know quite a

00:05:51.620 bit better than i expected and so it set me up to kind of like okay my career set i can be the science

00:05:56.540 of endurance guy for for the rest of my working days and kind of milk that and i should get to

00:06:00.420 work on endure too and it all made sense except that i just the the the subtext was like it doesn't

00:06:08.240 sound that fun to me i don't want to write endure too i want to do something different and and at this

00:06:12.420 point i was like well you know i had a career swerve in my you know in my 20s going from physics to

00:06:16.400 journalism but to do it again it's like oh hang on maybe i've got something wrong with my wiring that

00:06:21.660 i just can't settle down and enjoy what i've worked hard to achieve and is this a good thing is this

00:06:26.220 like helping me discover the world or does it mean that i'm going to be wandering around never actually

00:06:31.600 finding that what i'm looking for so that kind of seeded the idea of the book oh let's talk about

00:06:37.160 humans and exploration so humans we're everywhere on planet earth most animals they kind of like an

00:06:43.980 area where they're at they might expand across a continent but then they don't go any further like

00:06:48.200 humans are everywhere even in the most remote places where you wouldn't expect humans to be

00:06:53.260 they're there are humans the only animals that explore or are there other animals that explore

00:07:00.420 in the way that humans explore yeah there's a debate on this so on one end of the spectrum

00:07:06.220 there's a view that humans are unique not not that they have like some trait that nobody else have

00:07:12.220 but just in terms of the degree to which we explore that we're maybe the only species that

00:07:17.360 even when things are good when we've got enough resources and enough space we're still pushing

00:07:22.920 on to find somewhere else so you know you can imagine like how did we get from europe to asia

00:07:29.120 well maybe there was a you know bad weather or a famine or it was crowded and people spread out but

00:07:33.580 when you're looking at like how did we get to easter island it's like yeah nobody gets to easter island

00:07:39.820 because it was a little too crowded where they were you only get to easter island by by being like

00:07:45.100 i want to know what's over that horizon and i'm going to go sail in that direction and so to what

00:07:49.920 extent are other animals like this you know i talked to some scientists who are like you know

00:07:53.080 it's all the same like you know maple trees have spread pretty far across large swaths of the planet

00:07:58.720 they're not exploring they just have seeds that blow in the wind and so i guess where i would come

00:08:04.180 down on this is that humans are uniquely exploring but it's a matter of degree not that they have some

00:08:09.860 a gene that nobody no other animal has well one thing you do in this chapter where you try to

00:08:15.280 figure out if humans are unique in the way they explore is that you look at polynesians and how

00:08:21.420 they spread and settled across islands of the pacific and i love this chapter because my family we went to

00:08:27.520 hawaii for the first time last year and i remember there being there and thinking man this is kind of

00:08:34.100 crazy like how did humans end up on these islands way out in the pacific so how could understanding how

00:08:39.440 polynesians spread across thousands of miles in the pacific help us understand how humans explore

00:08:46.540 yeah so in this debate that i was just talking about of like is there something different about

00:08:50.460 humans water crossings become this crucial test of like okay you know a maple seed can blow in the wind

00:08:57.920 cross a long distance but it's not crossing the ocean and so what size of water crossing tells you that

00:09:03.960 it's not just someone drifted off but that they're like let's go see how far we can get

00:09:08.720 and even getting to australia some people view that as the first concrete evidence of like modern

00:09:15.620 humanity australia was separated even in ancient times when sea levels were different there was

00:09:20.240 enough water crossings that someone had to have like technology and you know the kind of thinking

00:09:25.500 ahead and planning and imagining what life might be like in a different place even to get to australia

00:09:30.700 but if you move beyond australia then it's like okay once you get to polynesia the distances are so

00:09:36.640 crazy that one could argue that you can only get there if you've got some desire to sail off into

00:09:44.820 the unknown because it's not just like hey in the distance i see a dot there it's like no there's

00:09:48.900 nothing there and you can take your boat and you can sail out three days and there's still nothing

00:09:52.280 there and so then either you turn back to you because you need to fresh water whatever or you're like no

00:09:57.080 we're going to stock up for a long voyage and we're going to keep going and there was a really

00:10:00.640 famous academic debate in the 1950s and 60s and 70s between people who thought polynesians to get

00:10:07.760 there they must have had this voyaging culture where they were they could figure out where they were

00:10:11.740 going without the benefit of gps and they could sail long distances like more than 300 miles in their

00:10:18.780 little slender you know catamarans built but you know they didn't necessarily have big trees on their

00:10:24.060 islands so a lot of cases it's like little pieces of wood kind of sewn together and there was a strong

00:10:29.300 view there's a guy named andrew sharp a historian who was like there is no way the only way they made

00:10:34.740 it to these islands was by being blown off course or by being banished and most of them died but

00:10:39.560 occasionally someone would make it to one of these islands and that that led to this famous voyage in

00:10:44.780 the 1970s there was the polynesian voyage voyaging society they built a traditional boat and they're

00:10:50.480 like we're going to sail from hawaii to tahiti which is like 900 miles or something like that

00:10:55.160 we're going to do it with no technology we're not even bringing watches because being able to tell

00:10:59.660 time is is that useful for for navigating we're going to navigate by the stars and we're going to

00:11:04.060 prove that yeah it's possible to navigate using traditional knowledge and they they did it they made

00:11:09.460 it that doesn't prove that that's what happened in the past but i think the general consensus based on

00:11:14.340 uh sort of all the lines of evidence is that yeah it required deliberate exploration to go and settle

00:11:21.400 these islands again to like you know to the extent of places like easter island where it's like no it

00:11:26.700 wasn't just random chance that people ended up there so with human exploration there's intention

00:11:31.860 behind it it's not just like a wolf who kind of happens to wander into new territory for humans

00:11:38.140 it's like the moana lyrics see the line where the sky meets the sea it calls calls me yeah yeah

00:11:43.960 exactly because lots of animals spread out and normally it's like yeah you're looking for food

00:11:48.740 you know you don't see any here let's try over there oh over here's pretty nice maybe i'll actually

00:11:52.400 make my den over here to set out on a water crossing it's like there's another concept that i came across

00:11:58.000 in the book which is this idea of expanding the adjacent possible so if you look at patterns of

00:12:02.520 how people discover new music on spotify or even how they write new articles on wikipedia most of the

00:12:08.580 way people expand into new territory whether it's intellectual or physical is you take where you are

00:12:13.920 and you take one step beyond the border of what you know you're expanding and so when you're expanding

00:12:17.740 on land you can expand the adjacent possible but you can't get to to easter island by expanding the

00:12:23.080 adjacent possible you have to stand there at the border of your island or your your your shore and

00:12:28.040 imagine what might be completely out of sight and why it might be nice to get there what what you

00:12:33.140 might get out of so it's a real imaginative leap and it requires like there's a lot of reasons not

00:12:38.340 to get on a boat and sail out into the ocean not knowing where you're going or what lies over the

00:12:43.240 horizon so there has to be some strong intrinsic drive that pulls you to take on this this seemingly

00:12:49.320 crazy challenge well let's talk about that intrinsic drive so your book is called the explorer's gene

00:12:54.840 is there a gene in humans that nudges people to explore yeah i will confess that the explorer's gene

00:13:01.300 was maybe a slightly deliberately provocative title uh the editor picked that i you know i can't even

00:13:07.440 blame the editor i i picked it but i was like let's let's stir the pot look no exploring isn't determined

00:13:12.780 by one gene but there is definitely some some genetic underpinning and where i got the the the the name

00:13:19.760 from is that there is one particular gene that's associated with one particular dopamine receptor the

00:13:24.360 drd4 receptor which basically they're different variants and some people get a bigger kind of

00:13:31.040 jolt out of discovering something new or experiencing something novel than others do and this the

00:13:37.480 variant seems to have first appeared about 50 000 years ago which as it happens is roughly when our

00:13:43.160 ancestors started really spreading out rapidly from from europe and asia and africa to the rest of the

00:13:48.860 world you know moving out to crossing the bering strait and getting down into well polynesia and south

00:13:53.980 america and all that so what's interesting is there's a study in 1999 so it was quite a while ago

00:14:00.560 that asked if you look at populations around the world do they have different proportions of this

00:14:06.360 so-called explorer's gene based on how far their ancestors migrated and the answer is yes it's a

00:14:12.000 basically a linear relationship the farther a population moved the higher the proportion of this

00:14:17.220 explorer's gene they have this dopamine receptor gene so at the southern tip of south america you've

00:14:22.020 got a population groups that have you know 80 percent of the people have this explorer's gene whereas

00:14:26.240 closer you know in europe you have some populations where it's like 20 or lower now the key thing that

00:14:32.800 i want to the caveat that i have to throw in there you know right away is this doesn't mean that some

00:14:38.040 people always want to explore and others never want to explore or that all south americans want to

00:14:42.380 explore and no sardinians want to explore that's not what we what we need to take from this because we

00:14:47.980 all have the same kind of reward circuitry dopamine circuitry that and it's complicated but that

00:14:52.740 essentially is looking for surprises is looking for things that it didn't expect we all have that

00:14:58.300 it's just that some people have a slightly bigger helping than others and over time that can lead to

00:15:02.240 these changes we see in populations but we're all wired in so like i definitely you know as someone

00:15:07.640 who's who spent the last five years writing a book about exploring i've had lots of conversations

00:15:11.480 that go along the lines of like oh yeah exploring well if it's an exploring gene i definitely don't

00:15:17.260 have it i don't like exploring and it's like no no that you may not like parasailing to the south

00:15:21.420 pole but we're all drawn i think to novelty in some way whether it's listening to new music or finding

00:15:28.380 you know books that you haven't read or ordering different things in the restaurant or whatever

00:15:32.480 exploring doesn't just mean physical hardship but what it means is we're drawn to novelty all of us

00:15:38.280 have that wiring that gene but some of us have variants that amp it up a little bit more yeah when

00:15:43.220 you you know talked about how some populations have more of this gene than others it made me think i know

00:15:48.600 this is reductive and i know this is not the point you're trying to make but it made me think about

00:15:51.900 america like america is like this dynamic their people are constantly moving like what's going on

00:15:56.320 there and there's probably a lot going on the environment and history but i do wonder if like

00:16:01.240 sort of our immigrant past like the type of people who come to america they probably maybe i don't know

00:16:08.000 maybe had some more of that dopamine gene and so maybe that contributes to a bit of sort of the

00:16:13.400 national character of america i don't know yeah well there's some so people have tried to look

00:16:18.460 for this and the the signal for the dopamine receptors is it's hard to see like these things

00:16:23.040 are subtle but the piece of evidence that i found really fascinating is someone did a big analysis of

00:16:28.540 the emigration records from scandinavia in the i can't remember the exact time like late 1800s early

00:16:34.960 1900s where there was this huge like millions and millions of people went from countries like sweden and

00:16:40.860 and settled in like minnesota and you know places like that so you look at the they looked at the

00:16:47.780 ship records of who emigrated and and correlated them with their family so people who emigrated

00:16:52.940 were more likely to have unusual first names than people who than families who stayed relative to the

00:17:01.060 general population so and what they think is that having an unusual first name is kind of a marker of

00:17:07.040 these people didn't want to just do the same old thing and follow the same old path these families

00:17:11.860 were families where someone in the family valued novelty and trying something new and being different

00:17:17.980 and being individual and those are the people who left scandinavia and came to the united states

00:17:23.040 so you could say that might have informed the character of the united states and that i'm sure that

00:17:28.560 was sort of replicated not just in scandinavia but in you know who chooses to leave and emigrate to

00:17:34.260 the new world as it was then informs the country and then it may also have had an impact on the old

00:17:39.680 country so one of the then that then sort of corollary theories is why do scandinavian countries have

00:17:45.860 such strong social programs and a sort of collectivist mindset well the individualists all went to minnesota

00:17:52.120 and the collectivists stayed behind it and so those two societies have kind of diverged and like you said

00:17:57.820 that's reductivist and you know people and countries are complicated but it's interesting to think that

00:18:03.220 there may be some kind of effect like that that's really interesting so nothing you do in this book

00:18:08.380 besides looking at the genetics potential genetics that influence exploration as you get into

00:18:14.160 cognitive science probability mathematics to help us figure out why we have this nudge to explore

00:18:20.760 and you really brought to bear your experience as a physicist into this book i thought it was a lot of

00:18:25.680 fun to help us figure out like mathematically why humans explore and one area you start exploring

00:18:32.560 and talking about is this idea of predictive processing what is predictive processing and

00:18:38.900 what role does it play in the human urge to explore yeah this was a fun little digression for me i actually

00:18:45.360 didn't expect to get into that and then i discovered this this literature on it i was like oh this is

00:18:49.440 super interesting it's relevant to exploring but it's also like a cool topic on its own so this was kind

00:18:54.580 of news to me so i'll give some general background for listeners who may not have heard the term

00:18:58.080 predictive processing because i think it's going to be something that people are going to hear a lot

00:19:01.300 about in the next 10 years basically it's an idea that emerged about 20 years ago in neuroscience as

00:19:08.160 a very small niche idea and has gradually kind of taken over the field to where i think it's fair to

00:19:13.360 say it's probably becoming become or becoming the dominant view of how our brains work why they're

00:19:20.540 wired the way they're wired and the basic idea is that our brains and everyone's brains that all living

00:19:26.520 things the fundamental goal in order to stay alive is to be able to successfully predict what's going on in the

00:19:33.380 world around you so that you're not just like sitting there looking around and seeing what's happening

00:19:38.040 around you your brain is always predicting and then basically what your senses are doing is just checking

00:19:42.440 whether your predictions are right and having good predictions is a good way of staying alive because you

00:19:46.340 know what's what's happening you're not going to get surprised so this creates a philosophical

00:19:50.580 problem which is that if our brains are fundamentally wired all we want to do is be able to predict

00:19:55.780 exactly what's going to happen next then what it suggests is we should hate exploring we should

00:20:01.000 in fact want to just go into the closet turn off the lights and shut the door and stay there because

00:20:06.800 then we're going to know exactly what's happening next at all times which is nothing in the sort of

00:20:11.020 philosophy and cognitive science world this is called the dark room problem why don't we just all want

00:20:15.000 to lock ourselves in dark rooms and there's been a lot of debate about this for about a decade but i think

00:20:19.660 where the current thinking is is it's like you need to think about prediction about learning knowing

00:20:25.020 about the world not just in the sense of can you predict what's happening exactly right now or two

00:20:29.960 seconds from now you want to know what's going to happen in the future you want to be able to predict

00:20:34.640 well in advance what things are happening and to do that you need to understand how the world works and

00:20:39.260 so you need to learn as much as you can about the world so this idea of having a predictive brain

00:20:44.740 then ends up suggesting that we should be wired to seek out the thing the areas that we know the least

00:20:51.660 about that when we see a closed door or you know a road leading over the horizon or around a corner

00:20:57.640 we want to know what's around that corner because if we don't then something might jump out from around

00:21:03.200 that corner and come and chase us so predictive processing ends up creating this argument that we

00:21:08.000 are wired to pursue uncertainty to pursue what we don't know not because we love uncertainty itself

00:21:14.320 because it gives us the opportunity to reduce that uncertainty and so the kick we get from

00:21:18.760 exploring is the feeling of finding an area that where we didn't know how things were going to turn

00:21:24.700 or know what was going to happen and then having the satisfaction of reducing that uncertainty

00:21:28.900 okay so we explore and we see uncertainty so that we can be more certain in a way it's right it's kind

00:21:37.440 of like why do we like sugar well we like sugar because ultimately it gave us something good which

00:21:43.260 was calories and similarly we don't like uncertainty because we like not knowing what's going to

00:21:48.380 happen we like uncertainty because we like learning what's going to happen we like the result of

00:21:53.060 pursuing that uncertainty and then you bring this idea of the want curved i spell pronounce that with

00:21:58.000 w w-u-n-d-t yeah i've been debating how i should be i like should i put on the full dramatic

00:22:04.680 it's a vunt curve the vunt is very important it's named for a uh i should not do accents it's named for a

00:22:10.900 19th century wilhelm wunt who was the first to kind of look at this idea but let's call it the

00:22:15.920 one curve so i'll anticipate your question i'll jump in and say what the one curve is yeah basically

00:22:20.720 it's like a bell curve so it's an upside down u that's saying there's a relationship between how

00:22:26.300 complex or how novel or how unexpected or how complicated something is and how much we like it

00:22:31.460 and if it's not complex at all or not unexpected we find it boring but at the other end of the spectrum

00:22:37.900 if it's really complicated and really unexpected we find it scary and incomprehensible but there's

00:22:43.960 a sweet spot in the middle where it's there's enough uncertainty that it's interesting and we

00:22:48.780 feel like we can learn something about the world but it's not so uncertain that we can't actually

00:22:52.720 make sense of it so there's this sweet spot of uncertainty which is really a moving target it's

00:22:57.680 different between people it's different over time your one curve will shift i mean i think a good

00:23:03.400 example of that is musical tastes you don't like music that's just like mary had a little lamb after

00:23:08.380 after you know after you've heard it a billion times because it's too simple you might not like

00:23:12.540 you know atonal 20th century classical music because it's like i can't figure out what the

00:23:16.740 heck's going on there's a sweet spot in the middle of intermediate complexity but that changes if you spend

00:23:21.660 a lot of time listening to music you'll generally start to like more and more complex and dissonant

00:23:26.600 than unexpected music and conversely like if my life is really stressed out and i'm you know i've

00:23:32.060 got lots of uncertainty in in my professional or my family life i want to listen to like some simple

00:23:36.500 music that i know really well that i listened to a lot when i was 18 or whatever i want to go back

00:23:40.340 and so my one curve has shifted just based on what's going on in my life and i imagine dopamine

00:23:44.780 is interacting with this kind of shifting the vunt curve so when it's like completely boring there's

00:23:50.300 no dopamine and then when it's just chaotic you just can't even make sense of it so you don't have

00:23:54.280 any dopamine release but then that sweet spot it's like yeah you need to hit this more because

00:23:59.120 you're getting some good dopamine here yeah well and one way the dopamine turns out to be super

00:24:03.520 complicated i was hoping that there'd be a simple dopamine story so i can once and for all say here's

00:24:07.840 what dopamine does but one of the ways of understanding dopamine is that it's effectively a marker of

00:24:12.360 prediction error so it's not that you get a hit of dopamine when something is good you get a hit of

00:24:18.140 dopamine when something is better than expected so that's why you know the first time you take a drug

00:24:22.820 let's say you get this feeling that's good and you're like that was way better than i expected

00:24:26.280 i need to do this again the 10th time you take the drug you're like that was exactly what i expected

00:24:30.580 based on the last nine times i took it so you don't get a hit of dopamine and that's why you have to

00:24:34.240 then increase the dose you know your vunt curve has changed i guess you have to increase the dose to

00:24:39.080 make it better than expected so what this vunt curve is telling us is you're looking for ways of

00:24:44.700 finding prediction error that you can then resolve so that you can get that hit of dopamine

00:24:48.880 because something was different or better than expected we're gonna take a quick break for your

00:24:53.480 word from our sponsors and now back to the show okay so let's kind of summarize what we've talked

00:25:00.640 about one reason why humans might explore or have this urge to explore there's a gene potentially that

00:25:06.660 plays a role in that kind of nudging some people more than others to explore but then also cognitively

00:25:12.020 all of us are wired to look for new things so that we can figure out the world in a way that's

00:25:19.120 what the whole predictive processing thing is then you also talk about this idea that's been floating

00:25:23.040 around in cognitive psychology that's popping up more and more it's the explore versus exploit

00:25:28.900 framework what is the explore versus exploit framework yeah so we've been talking all about

00:25:34.440 exploring and how great exploring is and i started writing out this writing this book and figuring

00:25:38.100 that the subtitle might be like you know why we should all explore more and that kind of thing

00:25:43.300 and one of the sort of nuances that i eventually realized is actually you know exploring isn't the

00:25:48.420 only option exploiting can be a good option too so exploiting is this is set up as a classic choice

00:25:54.140 and exploiting is basically staying on the path you're on you taking advantage of the knowledge you

00:25:59.480 already have to pursue where you kind of know what the outcome is going to be exploring something is

00:26:05.580 getting off the beaten path where you don't know what the outcome is going to be and the classic

00:26:09.280 example of this is that it's often used to explain it is you're at a restaurant it's a familiar

00:26:14.060 restaurant you've been to many times you know that you like the hamburger quite a bit and you always

00:26:19.580 order the hamburger and then you see the server walking by with the meatloaf or with the special or

00:26:24.180 something like that and you're like oh wait i know i like the hamburger i know it's pretty good

00:26:28.340 i've never tried that it might be better but it might be worse and so do you want to take the chance and

00:26:34.680 you know we all wrestle with this right and then you you order the meatloaf and then it turns out

00:26:38.360 to suck and you're the person you're with ordered the burger and you're like i can't believe i ordered

00:26:41.900 the thing that i that i didn't know was going to be good when i could have ordered something i knew

00:26:46.320 was going to be good so it turns out that exploring and exploiting are both useful and trying to figure

00:26:51.260 out when you should do one and when you should do the other is a super super complicated challenge

00:26:56.600 well yeah this problem pops up in big issues too like you had the explore exploit problem when you're

00:27:01.500 deciding after you wrote indoors like all right i set myself up as the endurance guy i can write

00:27:06.120 about the science of endurance and fitness and i can have a great life that's the exploit like you

00:27:10.520 found something you could exploit but then you started feeling like what am i missing out on is

00:27:15.940 there something that would actually be better if i did something different and leaving more of a sure

00:27:21.620 good thing to try something else that was a risk it's like that whole a bird in the hand is worth

00:27:26.800 two in the bush type thing that's kind of the explorer versus exploit problem right there absolutely

00:27:32.300 yeah the explorer exploit terminology was actually it came from a 1991 paper by a guy named james march

00:27:39.060 who was a stanford university management prof and he was writing about it in a corporate context

00:27:43.140 how do companies decide when to like spend money on r&d trying to develop something radically new

00:27:49.440 versus why don't we just spend that money marketing our current product line you know we've got some

00:27:54.020 good stuff let's exploit what we've already done and so so it's you know it's a corporate context it's

00:27:59.980 a societal context like how much of our resources do we want to devote to like blue sky research and

00:28:05.920 development that we don't know is going to pay off in any tangible way and james march's argument was

00:28:11.660 fundamentally that because when you exploit you know what's going to you're going to get and you get

00:28:16.980 feedback pretty quickly like you find out yeah yeah you know i spent more money on marketing hey look

00:28:21.540 sales went up whereas when you explore you know i gave money to r&d and three years later we still

00:28:26.000 have no idea whether it's going to work out there's a big chance of failure it might we might get

00:28:29.620 nothing that we tend to systematically under invest in exploration because the feedback loop is is so

00:28:36.940 much less direct even though when you look over time the return on exploration you know in the

00:28:43.280 corporate context or in the ordering food from a restaurant context the return is actually positive

00:28:48.680 but it's still hard to take that leap because you're you're giving up the the bird in the hand

00:28:53.680 so when humans are trying to make this decision of whether to explore or exploit so imagine there's a

00:28:59.340 guy midlife he's got a solid career house and he's like man i'm feeling the is this all there is

00:29:06.040 but i don't want to leave i don't want to you know jump careers because that that's going to take a

00:29:09.720 long time how do we make that decision whether to explore or exploit like what goes on inside of

00:29:14.160 our head okay that's it yeah i thought you're going to ask like what what should the right

00:29:18.440 decision be and i was going to say i don't know i don't want to get in trouble for the guy leaving

00:29:21.460 his career what's going on inside our head is actually a really interesting it's it's a deep

00:29:26.980 and interesting question and one that cognitive scientists have been spending a lot of time

00:29:30.120 working on in the last like let's say seven or eight years there's been a ton of work so i guess

00:29:35.180 the thing to start with is that and you know you mentioned the math trying to salt quote unquote

00:29:39.560 solve the explore exploit dilemma even when you restrict it with very specific conditions so that

00:29:44.240 it's the kind of thing you can solve in a lab it is mathematically super super hard for decades

00:29:48.780 scientists were working on this and then in the 70s someone finally came up with a solution called

00:29:52.680 the gittins index but it only works under very specific solutions circumstances and the math involved

00:29:58.120 is just insane so it's like that's not what's going on in our heads we're not doing the gittins index

00:30:02.580 instead we have sort of shortcuts that try and help us figure out what we should do and you can

00:30:08.360 dig into the math behind them and it turns out that we actually do a pretty good job in most cases

00:30:13.860 of coming up with good rough and ready solutions and one example that i think is a good illustration

00:30:19.640 is well okay let me give two examples one is that there's two ways of exploring one is that you can

00:30:25.880 pursue the thing you know the least about so when you're choosing options exploring is like well

00:30:31.480 i know a lot about that i know a little bit about that i know nothing about that let's do the thing i

00:30:35.720 know nothing about because i have the most to learn about that the other way you can explore is you can

00:30:40.380 just basically flip a coin you can say i'm gonna do what's called random exploration it's like well

00:30:45.820 in order to avoid biasing myself by always going with what i know i'm just gonna make all decisions

00:30:50.320 randomly you know there's been some funny experiments where people have tried to live their life that way

00:30:55.280 it's like i'm gonna draw a random number every time i have to make a decision and that's another way of

00:31:00.200 making sure that you don't get stuck in a rut and so these things happen in our brain and you can

00:31:06.360 put people in like decision making lab studies and dial up and change the parameters so that it's more

00:31:14.340 advantageous to use random exploration or more exploration to use uncertainty directed exploration

00:31:19.920 or more advantageous to not explore and people do respond and so like random exploration for example

00:31:24.860 you can see the variability in the nerve signals in the brain goes up so you just put basically you're

00:31:31.660 putting noise in the circuit and your brain is deciding okay well we're gonna follow the usual

00:31:36.240 instructions but we're gonna add some random noise as i send this signal so that sometimes i'm gonna get

00:31:40.920 the opposite answer of what i thought i was gonna get and that's gonna make sure i keep exploring so

00:31:45.060 so there's really subtle sort of neuroscience that goes on that influences these decisions no yeah it is

00:31:51.180 really interesting you go deep into it it's completely fascinating but i think you're right

00:31:54.420 humans just kind of use heuristics and i think most people like i've noticed in my life i use that

00:31:58.800 sort of uncertainty directed heuristic to decide whether to explore and exploit and something i've

00:32:03.580 noticed too that i'll do is i'll do both at the same time or try to do both at the same time you

00:32:08.340 know i've noticed that with my career you know with the art of manliness i started off just as a

00:32:12.460 website where we just published articles and then 2009 like podcasting kind of came up and i'm like oh

00:32:19.200 that's interesting i'll try that but i kept writing articles because i knew that was a good thing

00:32:24.220 i was exploiting it so i started exploring the podcast and then that worked out this is great

00:32:29.420 i'm gonna exploit that and then you know i tried video explored that for a bit didn't like it so i

00:32:34.380 stopped i just didn't do that anymore so i think that's one thing that humans do is like they'll try

00:32:38.480 to explore and exploit at the same time yeah and i think that you relate this back to the want curb a

00:32:43.920 little bit of a sweet spot but it's like if you're always exploring and i use the example of music too

00:32:50.380 like okay most of us become less exploratory in our musical taste as time goes on and so you might

00:32:56.980 say well you know you're 28 and you've got all the songs you need so you don't you're not going out

00:33:01.960 there looking for new music you might say well you're missing out on something you should still

00:33:05.720 be listening to new stuff exploring new stuff and that's great but if you were to push it to the

00:33:10.720 extreme and say i'm going to always explore everything essentially means i'm never going to listen to

00:33:14.540 the same song twice i'm going to just seek new music and once i've heard it it's dead to me i need to

00:33:19.620 explore something new and that's obviously you can that's obviously an absurd example but it makes

00:33:24.100 no sense like one of the reasons to seek out new music is to find things you'd like and then to

00:33:28.240 enjoy it to exploit it to sit back and listen to this music you've discovered that you like

00:33:31.920 and so i think career-wise or more generally making these decisions if you don't have a mix of

00:33:36.660 exploring and exploiting it's clear that you're you're you know you don't want to be on either end of

00:33:40.900 the extreme both for the point of view of satisfaction but also like risk and safety and like career-wise

00:33:48.360 that you know i i definitely identify with what you're saying with the art of manuals in terms of

00:33:51.980 how i've managed my career i've taken some big risks but i've generally tried to cover my risks

00:33:56.800 so that the downside is not too serious something you explore too is that you explore about exploring

00:34:03.980 is kids young people are more likely to explore than adults why is that well it's it's a smart decision

00:34:12.040 in a lot of ways so i mean you can think of it mathematically you can also think of it just

00:34:15.920 logically that the more time you have in front of you the greater the time you have to enjoy

00:34:22.720 whatever or benefit from whatever you discover through your exploration there's a a scientist

00:34:27.940 at the university of california berkeley uh alison gopnick who's proposed this theory or this idea

00:34:32.960 that childhood really is basically designed as a solution to the explore exploit dilemma that the

00:34:39.280 reason humans have an unusually long childhood even compared to like apes and the reason is it's a

00:34:45.420 good solution that you learn as much as possible about the world when you still have lots of time

00:34:49.860 to enjoy whatever you learn and as time goes on you take advantage of what you learn and you start

00:34:54.100 exploiting more and more to the logical end point that you know in theory the day before you die you

00:34:59.600 should not be exploring at all because there's no benefit but well let's talk about that that's kind

00:35:04.540 of depressing as you get older it's like well there's no no benefit to exploring what do you think about

00:35:10.100 that i mean it sounds like you're not for that that we should keep exploring i hate that idea i

00:35:14.980 hate that idea yeah but i also like look i i respect the math so yeah mathematically it makes sense right

00:35:21.280 it does make sense rationally but i just i don't i don't like that yeah i hate it now and i asked

00:35:26.560 pretty much every scientist i spoke to i asked about this and they had various answers i think most

00:35:31.920 people agreed that it's like it is logical that you explore less as you get older that i mean for one

00:35:37.460 thing when one of them said there's quotes like you can't regrow your expectations about the world

00:35:41.320 when you're older you know stuff so it's like for my kids you know when they were young it's like oh

00:35:46.480 we're going to go tobogganing for the first time this is going to be an active exploration it's going

00:35:49.780 to be so much fun they don't know what it's like to slide down a hill it's like i already know what it's

00:35:53.800 like toboggan i still like tobogganing but it's no longer exploratory for me and i can't invent

00:35:58.060 new sports every day like i already know stuff so there is a logical progression but the trend or the

00:36:05.280 the sort of natural progression of exploring less may not match up well with modern life and so like

00:36:12.060 one of the scientists said if you're 60 years old you know a million years ago when you're 60 years

00:36:17.200 old it may have been like yeah dude just kind of you know where the the tubers are you keep digging

00:36:22.480 those tubers and and just try and stay alive for the longer don't explore anymore now if you're 60

00:36:27.020 years old there's a good chance you're going to live you know 20 25 30 years and so how depressing

00:36:32.300 is that if you're like well i'm not going to make any new memories i'm just going to kind of coast

00:36:35.260 along on fumes so there's that argument that we live longer so you want to keep exploring longer

00:36:40.100 than you might otherwise assume and there's the other thing which is that we can describe the reasons

00:36:45.300 for exploring in two ways one is that it leads to good things it's how we learn about the world

00:36:51.080 the other is that it feels good and those two things are linked the reason it feels good is that

00:36:56.380 evolutionarily it led to good things it was good for us but now we're in this this world where

00:37:01.380 it's just like you know sugar told us where calories were but sometimes even if i don't need

00:37:05.880 calories i like to eat dessert because it tastes good and you know i'm 49 now i hope that when i'm

00:37:12.400 75 or or 80 or whatever i still will enjoy the feeling of discovering something new of of the frisson

00:37:19.040 of uncertainty of not knowing how something's going to turn out instead of just doing the same things

00:37:23.120 over and over again okay so this is an inspiration to even if you're 40 50 60 keep doing new things

00:37:30.520 you don't you don't go crazy you don't like just upend your life maybe i mean that's what you want

00:37:34.980 to do that's how you scratch your itch and it's like you can minimize the downside but yeah keep

00:37:39.280 trying new things there is a benefit to it even though rationally it doesn't make sense yeah so a

00:37:44.380 good example is a few years ago i took up rock climbing and i've been a runner all my life and i'm

00:37:48.700 you know pat myself on the back here i'm a very good runner and so in terms of like a recognition from

00:37:53.700 other people or even self-actualization of like doing something good running is the no-brainer for me i can go

00:37:59.240 and feel good about myself i have a terrible rock climber i just suck at it but there is something

00:38:04.300 amazing about because when i took it up it had been a long time since i'd done something that was

00:38:09.440 just totally new and that i sucked at and it's not that i enjoy sucking at things but i enjoy

00:38:15.060 look i realized that i was kind of missing this feeling of learning something new of like every day

00:38:20.940 is a journey of you know of not that i'm making tons of progress but i make little bits of progress

00:38:26.480 and i don't know how it's going to turn out i'm not an expert in this area and so yeah i would

00:38:30.860 absolutely say that you don't have to go to the north pole or whatever you don't have to you know

00:38:35.360 take up wingsuit flying or anything like that but you should have something in your life that's new

00:38:40.560 and different that's different than you were doing a decade ago where you have the prospect of of

00:38:45.260 learning that that that is it's good for your brain on a neuroscientific level but it's also just

00:38:49.780 the cool feeling it's good for the soul let's talk about how we explore landscapes you go into this so

00:38:54.820 how does our brain explore physical landscapes yeah so this is a really neat area of science and and i

00:39:03.180 think a lot of people are familiar with the idea of cognitive maps that there's an area in our brain

00:39:07.820 in the hippocampus that maps areas that we're familiar with in an actual like a completely literal sense

00:39:14.240 you get to know a neighborhood then there will be one neuron that fires whenever you're at that

00:39:18.180 particular intersection and another neuron that fires when you're at a different intersection or halfway

00:39:22.800 down the street these are called place cells and in addition to place cells we have like boundary

00:39:27.020 cells and direction cells and stuff so we literally have like this gps in our hippocampus

00:39:33.080 and you know there's famous study from about 25 years ago where they studied london taxi drivers who

00:39:38.660 have to basically memorize the streets of london in order to get their license and found that their

00:39:42.500 hippocampuses are enlarged that this is a quote-unquote muscle that you know enlarges with use

00:39:48.360 so we can find our way around the world by wandering around gradually mapping the world

00:39:54.680 and recording it in our hippocampus we can also get around by just memorizing basically a series of

00:40:00.640 stimulus response directions i want to get to the library i go two blocks that way until i see the

00:40:06.660 gas station then i turn left and go up the hill until i see the the church and then i turn right or

00:40:11.240 whatever that's called stimulus response navigation and it's generally faster and easier and more

00:40:17.140 efficient than this cognitive mapping approach and and we all use both right like there's there's

00:40:22.840 context when one is better than the other but the general trend in the modern world is that we need

00:40:28.680 cognitive mapping less and less even if no one has given us directions we have our phones with gps

00:40:34.000 and turn-by-turn directions we don't have to know anything about where we're going we just have to press

00:40:38.680 a button and when it says turn right we say turn right we turn right when it says jump we say how high

00:40:43.280 and it's just removing the need to actually know where we are or to form a cognitive map yeah so gps

00:40:50.360 uses that stimulus response navigation yeah certainly the turn-by-turn directions it's pure stimulus

00:40:57.780 response a key distinction is like if i know how to get from point a to point b and i know how to get

00:41:04.900 from point b to point c if i'm following stimulus response it's just a series of turns then i have no

00:41:10.400 idea how to take a shortcut from a to c like to get to c i have to go first to b because i know the

00:41:15.240 directions to b and then b to c follow those directions if i have a cognitive map i know where

00:41:20.280 everything is relative to each other so i can say oh i can just cut straight across here to get to c

00:41:25.220 because i understand where these things are because i have a map in my head what does the research say

00:41:30.740 that this reliance on turn-by-turn directions using gps what is that doing to our ability to

00:41:36.780 create cognitive maps this is a small area of research but the researchers i spoke to

00:41:42.660 are worried about it because like everything the brain responds to how we use it stimulus response

00:41:48.500 navigation is mostly dependent on an area of the brain called the caudate nucleus instead of the

00:41:54.280 hippocampus so the more you use stimulus response navigation the more you use your caudate nucleus the

00:41:59.780 bigger it gets in fact and the less you use your hippocampus the smaller it gets smaller hippocampus

00:42:04.640 is a risk factor for a whole bunch of pretty unpleasant things things like alzheimer's and

00:42:10.680 ptsd you know cognitive decline and so there are some researchers who are like yeah you should really

00:42:17.380 be wary of turn-by-turn directions on your gps of being overly reliant and not actually taking the

00:42:23.040 time to look around to explore to be lost occasionally and i don't want to be like again i don't want to

00:42:28.760 over hype the findings but i will say i try to avoid using turn-by-turn directions on my phone

00:42:33.780 or in my car you know i will look up where i'm going i'll try to figure out where i'm going and

00:42:38.760 then i'll just turn it off until if i'm not sure where to go i'll turn them back on so that's that's

00:42:43.720 my reading my reading of the evidence is such that i'm trying to be more conscious of wandering through

00:42:49.040 my surroundings and knowing where i am even if that means occasionally getting lost well it's something

00:42:53.520 else that some researchers have speculated is that our reliance on gps not only has affected our ability

00:43:00.700 to navigate the physical world but it also might be affecting how we explore navigate abstract ideas

00:43:08.060 in our head yeah so this was a really cool thing that i didn't realize until i started researching

00:43:14.580 this which is that the hippocampus that's idea of a cognitive map i thought of it purely in terms of

00:43:19.860 physical landscapes but it turns out there's there's a growing amount of evidence that we map

00:43:24.540 ideas and people and social relationships we also map those in the hippocampus in a very similar like

00:43:30.260 sort of map so that you can think of like two ideas that are close to each other or farther apart and you

00:43:38.420 can have shortcuts between ideas and you can expand the area around those ideas so or people for example

00:43:44.820 there is a study that shows that we tend to map people in the hippocampus based on how well we know

00:43:50.700 them and what sort of interactions we have with them so that's like a two-dimensional map of like

00:43:54.900 i know this person really well and they're a jerk i know this person not very well but they seem nice

00:43:59.500 or whatever and so the hippocampus is important so on the one hand what this suggests is that

00:44:04.940 even if we use gps navigation we're not going to stop using our hippocampus because we use it for lots of other

00:44:09.620 things so we shouldn't overstate the dangers of gps but on the other hand it suggests that if

00:44:14.820 if we do allow our hippocampus to become less if we use it less and it atrophies to some extent

00:44:21.960 if we're compromising our hippocampus it might be not just that we're having more trouble finding our

00:44:27.860 way around but also that we're having more trouble mapping ideas together seeing how things connect

00:44:32.480 keeping track of people okay so maybe the takeaway there use gps less try to navigate by dead reckoning

00:44:39.600 every now and then perhaps i also i kind of inspired me like i thought about because you talk about this in

00:44:44.620 the book doing orienteering maybe that's something you do to exercise your hippocampus take an

00:44:49.040 orienteering course there we go because there's a little bit of research coming out on orienteering

00:44:53.340 where it's like because these are races where you run but you have to navigate with a compass and it's

00:44:57.820 like whatever you're doing for your brain you get a supercharged effect because the physical exercise

00:45:02.780 is flooding your brain with things like bdnf which which helps enhance the growth of neurons or the

00:45:09.320 connections between neurons so you're you're getting a double whammy of the exercise plus the

00:45:13.320 cognitive effect but yeah just to amend or to follow up on that point i'd say yeah like gps is

00:45:19.460 is an easy example and so i use gps turn by turn by directions as a thing that is an example of the

00:45:25.460 way we're moving towards stimulus response but i think it's not just the one specific technology

00:45:30.780 it's more the idea of of always optimizing efficiency of always prioritizing getting to the destination

00:45:37.360 rather than seeing where you're going so i think that the big picture advice is like

00:45:42.200 be present look around know where you are like so i'm looking out my window right now as we speak and

00:45:48.320 it's like i should know what's there i should know you know what kinds of trees are there and which

00:45:52.860 direction the river is and and stuff like that i should be aware of my surroundings i'm willing to

00:45:57.240 get lost occasionally willing to take a wrong turn because that will force you to pay your attention

00:46:02.620 to to start forming cognitive maps so yeah it's it's about being present as much as avoiding your

00:46:08.500 gps yeah this goes back to predictive processing you want to make errors because it'll help you in the

00:46:13.240 long run that's right yeah otherwise you're just living at the bottom of the one curve where there's

00:46:18.740 no uncertainty and no prediction error so exploring it feels good but it can also be uncomfortable and

00:46:24.520 frustrating like your explorations might lead to failure setbacks disaster sometimes you know

00:46:30.180 it's not exploration there's no risk of failure but we still explore despite knowing that oh my gosh

00:46:36.800 like things could end up poorly like what's going on there like why do we do this thing that can

00:46:41.440 make us feel bad but we still enjoy doing it yeah this was one of those kind of eureka moments for me

00:46:47.640 when i stumbled across some research in psychology about something called the effort paradox

00:46:52.300 this is from michael inslicht that's right we had him on the podcast yeah we had him on the podcast

00:46:57.400 yeah there we go so i refer listeners then to hear michael himself uh explain this but we actually we

00:47:03.640 talked about uh willpower okay he debunks willpower but we talked a little bit about the effort paradox so

00:47:08.880 yeah flesh this out a little bit more because we didn't get much into that yeah so the idea is that

00:47:13.400 there are things that we value not in spite of the fact that they're hard but because they're hard and

00:47:20.020 so this is a kind of mental shift because you know i've been talking about how wonderful exploring

00:47:24.880 feels and like we do it because it's you know self-actualizing and blah blah blah and then it's

00:47:30.320 like you you actually get out and take a risk and do something whether it's you know career-wise or or

00:47:35.040 climbing a mountain or whatever and it's like actually this is really hard and i'm scared and it could

00:47:39.520 all go very wrong and so there's a tendency to assume that we're willing to put up with the challenge

00:47:44.840 in order to get to the destination but what michael inslicht and his colleagues essentially argue is

00:47:51.880 that that's that's not actually a satisfying explanation of why we're willing to do hard

00:47:55.920 things we really seem to actually like the hardness of it in some way you know we're eating spicy foods

00:48:02.840 and we're climbing mountains and we're buying furniture from ikea there's some hilarious research on

00:48:08.360 something called the ikea effect which is if you buy a piece of furniture from ikea and you you know spend all

00:48:14.240 this time trying to sort out the stupid pictographic instructions and find all the mismatched screws

00:48:19.000 you put it together if you then are want to sell it you will ask for a higher price than you would

00:48:24.160 have if you had bought the exact same furniture pre-assembled because you value it more because

00:48:29.340 you had to struggle with it and it's you know it's same with like you may start running because you

00:48:34.240 want to get fit but if you're running your fourth marathon there's something more there you're

00:48:38.360 pursuing something different you know if you keep hitting yourself on the on the finger with the

00:48:42.340 hammer you're doing it because on some level you like it and uh so why why do we like it there's a

00:48:47.880 whole bunch of theories that probably all have some grain of truth but i think the big one that

00:48:53.800 encompasses them all is that we tend to find things that are hard meaningful and we have we have trouble

00:49:00.760 defining what it means to say that something is meaningful like why is life what something you do

00:49:04.900 meaningful i don't know i don't know how to explain it but this thing is meaningful and that one's not

00:49:08.320 and it tends to be we find taking on challenges meaningful and that leads to a feel of enough

00:49:15.400 satisfaction and a feeling of wanting to do it again okay so if you experience some difficulty

00:49:19.580 some discomfort in your exploration like lean into it because it might you might find meaning in it but

00:49:25.360 then also you don't want to be stupid about this you know it might be hard and it's your brain's

00:49:30.580 trying to tell you like hey you need to stop doing this because this is not working

00:49:32.940 yeah and that's a subtle distinction and and i i don't have a a simple heuristic to to know which

00:49:39.320 is which it's like with running you know there's two conflicting pieces of advice which is that

00:49:43.780 you're going to have aches and pains and you need to run through them because otherwise you'll never

00:49:46.840 run but you need to rec and you know running's gonna be uncomfortable you need to recognize when

00:49:50.260 you have like a shin splint or a stress fracture coming and you need to be able to distinguish

00:49:54.360 between those two and to some extent you just kind of have to get out there and explore if you

00:49:59.400 figure out which one is which but yeah something that is challenging the the feeling of challenge

00:50:07.140 or difficulty or struggle it's just like you know if you're playing on a soccer team and the soccer

00:50:13.520 team wins 10 nothing that's much less interesting and rewarding than it is than if you win four to

00:50:19.080 three and so it's great to have things that challenge you if it's just defeating you if it's not great to

00:50:26.000 lose 10 nothing losing 10 nothing is challenging but that's on the far end of the one curve and so

00:50:31.120 don't go out there and just take your beating as a masochist but if it's hard don't view that as a

00:50:36.780 disqualifying factor right away so you've been researching and writing about you know exploration

00:50:41.260 for the past five years like what's your explore more playbook for people like what would you recommend

00:50:46.560 people listening to this episode do this week to start exploring a little bit more in their lives

00:50:51.460 yeah so i mean first of all i would say exploiting is good too it's balanced and that's one of the

00:50:57.000 things i came away from the book with which is that it's not about always mindlessly exploring more

00:51:01.800 it's about making sure that you're finding a role for both exploring exploiting in your life

00:51:05.340 so one of the big insights for me was and we talked earlier about my sort of backpacking addiction and

00:51:12.240 really trying to get into these crazy places and after spending a lot of time thinking about

00:51:17.660 exploration and marinating and all this research i really came to the realization that i still love

00:51:22.260 those places but fundamentally what i'm pursuing this feeling of of discovering something that's new

00:51:27.320 to me does not require that i go to the ends of the earth that there are ways of exploring in my own

00:51:34.200 neighborhood there's a way there are ways of exploring intellectually but also even physically like

00:51:37.840 i live in a city of four million in toronto there's a river a block from my house so in the course of

00:51:43.840 writing this book i bought a kayak and i bought a couple actually so i can go with my kids and we go

00:51:49.200 down and float on the river and it's like whoa i've actually lived in this neighborhood most of my

00:51:53.260 life and i know that river really well but i've never you know i've never seen it from the water and

00:51:57.400 there's places i can go there's a marsh near there just you know half a mile down the river from

00:52:02.600 from where i live you can't access it from land so until i'd gone on the water i'd never been there

00:52:06.680 and then you go in there and there's like turtles and deer and stuff it's like wow you know i'm in a

00:52:11.520 city of four million but i'm having that feeling of discovering something new so i think in terms

00:52:17.200 of practical advice it depends on the person but what i would say is there should be something going

00:52:22.000 on in your life something you're doing something you're pursuing whether it's a hobby or at work or

00:52:26.620 in your personal life where you don't know how it's going to turn out where you don't know what

00:52:30.600 the outcome is where it's not all mapped out and maybe even makes you a little bit scared not in a

00:52:36.260 like crap your pants way but in a like i'm nervous about this so that that would be my big call to

00:52:41.820 action i love it well alex it's been a great conversation where can people go to learn more

00:52:45.040 about the book in your work probably simplest place is my website which is alexhutchinson.net

00:52:50.720 i could not get .com unfortunately some kid in new jersey got it but uh yeah alexhutchinson.net

00:52:56.520 i've got links there to the book but also to various stuff i've written and stuff like that social

00:53:01.120 media fantastic well alex hutchinson thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:53:03.500 thank you so much bud i really appreciate it

00:53:06.260 my guest here is alex hutchinson he's the author of the book the explorer's gene it's available on

00:53:10.620 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at his website

00:53:14.380 alexhutchinson.net also check out our show notes at aom.is slash explorer where you find links to

00:53:19.560 resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:53:21.320 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:53:32.600 artofmanly.com where you can find our podcast archives and check out our new newsletter it's

00:53:36.380 called dying breed for both men and women you can sign up at dyingbreed.net it's a great way to support

00:53:41.720 the show directly and if you've done this already i'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give you

00:53:45.580 up a podcast or spotify it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider

00:53:49.820 sharing the show with a friend or family member you think we're something out of it as always thank

00:53:54.080 for the continued support till next time it's brett mckay remind time list they went podcast but put

00:53:58.480 what you've heard into action

00:53:59.920 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Art of Exploration — Why We Seek New Challenges and Search Out the Unknown

Episode Stats

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript