The Charlie Kirk Show - Escaping "Scarcity Brain" with Michael Easter

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, Tana Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 One of my favorite authors, Michael Easter.

00:00:03.000 We talk Scarcity Brain, his new book, also author of Comfort Crisis.

00:00:06.000 Can't recommend that book enough.

00:00:08.000 Fix your craving mindset and rewire habits to thrive with enough.

00:00:11.000 Michael Easter, Scarcity Brain.

00:00:14.000 Check it out today.

00:00:15.000 Email us, freedom at charliekirk.com and get involved with TurningPointUSA today at tpusa.com.

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00:00:28.000 Become a member, charliekirk.com and click on the members tab and email me as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:34.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:35.000 Here we go.

00:00:36.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:00:47.000 I want to thank Charlie.

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00:01:17.000 Joining us now is one of my favorite authors.

00:01:19.000 In fact, I read something like 28, 30 books last year, and his book won my book of the year award, Comfort Crisis.

00:01:27.000 But we're here to talk about his new book that I'm super excited about, Michael Easter.

00:01:31.000 Michael, thank you so much for taking the time.

00:01:32.000 Welcome back.

00:01:33.000 Hey, thanks for having me back, Charlie.

00:01:34.000 It's good to see you, man.

00:01:35.000 Thank you.

00:01:36.000 Love your approach to try to find the truth and try to help people's lives.

00:01:42.000 Again, I cannot recommend Comfort Crisis enough.

00:01:44.000 It's super powerful.

00:01:46.000 But you have a new book called Scarcity Brain.

00:01:48.000 In fact, we purchased like 40 or 50 copies for our entire directories at Turning Point USA.

00:01:52.000 We're actually reading through it right now.

00:01:54.000 Introduce the book Scarcity Brain to our audience.

00:01:57.000 Yeah, it looks at, so everyone knows that everything is fine in moderation.

00:02:01.000 Well, why are humans not so great at moderating, right?

00:02:05.000 We're people who can't seem to get enough of everything from food to stuff to status online to all these different things.

00:02:13.000 And so the book really looks at why do we crave so much?

00:02:18.000 Why do we tend to be overconsumers?

00:02:20.000 And how is that hurting us in a lot of different ways, everything from our health to our mental health.

00:02:24.000 And I think one of the revelations of the book is that, you know, we live in a world now where technology knows so much about us, the apps we're on and how we spend our time online that we're really being pushed into more than we ever have been before of purchases, of food, of all these different things.

00:02:42.000 So let's just define our terms, scarcity.

00:02:45.000 Scarcity is actually usually considered to be a negative term, but we live in overabundance.

00:02:51.000 Most of our problems are because of a surplus, too much screen time, too much sugar, too much carbohydrates, too much entertainment, too much idle time.

00:03:01.000 When in past, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, as you build out in this book and also in Comfort Crisis, that these are new problems, that actually the problems that are facing our species have never been problems before.

00:03:12.000 And so we have this hardwiring that is supposed to allow, you know, try to deal with scarcity when we really have problems with abundance.

00:03:20.000 So talk about the scarcity loop.

00:03:22.000 I found that to be fascinating.

00:03:24.000 Yeah.

00:03:25.000 So the, so to your point, you know, we humans came up for all of time.

00:03:30.000 We lived in these environments where everything we needed to survive was scarce and it was hard to find.

00:03:34.000 So if you were the type of person who defaulted to a little bit more every time you got the opportunity, that would help you survive.

00:03:41.000 Today, our problem is abundant.

00:03:42.000 We still have those sort of old genes pushing us into more when it doesn't always make sense.

00:03:46.000 We're in these worlds of plenty.

00:03:47.000 The scarcity loop is something that I discovered when I traveled into a casino laboratory in Las Vegas.

00:03:55.000 So I live in Las Vegas and there is a casino on the edge of town that is brand new.

00:04:00.000 It's cutting edge.

00:04:01.000 It's got the nicest everything.

00:04:03.000 But the public isn't welcome in the traditional sense of a casino.

00:04:06.000 So this place is used entirely for research on human behavior and figuring out how can we get people to sort of do what we want in the casino.

00:04:15.000 And it's not just funded by the gambling industry.

00:04:18.000 It's also funded by a lot of big tech companies.

00:04:20.000 And while I was there, I talked to a slot machine designer who unpacked this idea of the scarcity loop.

00:04:27.000 And it explains why people spend so much time on, for example, slot machines.

00:04:33.000 People will play for hours and hours and hours doing this behavior that doesn't seem to make sense, right?

00:04:37.000 Everyone knows the house always wins in the long term.

00:04:40.000 So this loop, it's got three parts.

00:04:42.000 It's got opportunity, it's got unpredictable rewards, and it's got quick repeatability.

00:04:46.000 You got an opportunity to get something of value that'll enhance your life, but you don't know when you're going to get it and you don't know how valuable it's going to be.

00:04:53.000 And then three, you can quickly repeat the behavior.

00:04:56.000 So if you think of a slot machine, you got an opportunity to win money.

00:04:59.000 On any given game, you could lose, you could win a couple bucks, or you can win thousands of dollars.

00:05:04.000 And then you can play and play and play.

00:05:06.000 Now, the reason this is important and why it's not just gambling companies who are invested in this casino laboratory is you can put this system in a lot of other things to get people to repeat behaviors that are fun in the short term, but can hurt them in the long run.

00:05:21.000 So for example, it's really what makes social media work.

00:05:23.000 It's being put in dating apps.

00:05:25.000 It's being put in a lot of new financial apps.

00:05:29.000 It is being put in gig work economy apps like Uber and Driving for Lyft.

00:05:35.000 It's in the rise of sports gambling.

00:05:37.000 And as this thing sort of ripples out, especially as we start to spend a lot more time on our phones, but it's not just in our phones, but I think the best case, the best case studies are in our phones.

00:05:47.000 You just see that people start to make some decisions that they maybe otherwise wouldn't.

00:05:53.000 So Michael, let me ask you about addictions.

00:05:55.000 People think of alcohol and heroin.

00:05:57.000 You mentioned kind of the video games, emails, newsfeeds, social media.

00:06:00.000 Just how much of talk about how these things can be, yes, similarly chemically addictive, but also the people that are designing them.

00:06:09.000 Is there intent also to addict us?

00:06:12.000 Well, I think the intent of people who are designing, say, apps or even foods, I mean, there's just as there's a casino laboratory, there are hundreds of labs across the country trying to figure out how do we give people the perfect mixture of sugar and salt and fat so they end up eating more.

00:06:28.000 You know, I think that the intention is to get us to use the product more, to buy more of the product.

00:06:36.000 And unfortunately, the more incentives there are to use a product, probably the more likely it is going to be addictive.

00:06:43.000 So most of the most addictive behaviors and substances, they all tend to fall into this scarcity loop.

00:06:51.000 So for example, with drugs, it's not just the chemical impact of the drugs that people get addicted to.

00:06:57.000 They often get addicted to the search for drugs, right?

00:07:00.000 They don't know when they're going to get drugs, and that's really alluring to people.

00:07:03.000 And then they finally get them and it's like, great.

00:07:05.000 And then they use them and then they got to reuse them again.

00:07:06.000 That's the same architecture that you see in a slot machine, the same architecture that you see in social media use.

00:07:12.000 Pretty much all animals get really attracted to unpredictable rewards and we can't seem to look away.

00:07:19.000 And identifying those kind of patterns is super important.

00:07:19.000 Yeah.

00:07:24.000 And so I want to read, I want to read part of this from the book, which I think is really important.

00:07:28.000 And first, it's, you know, detecting the hidden scarcity cues to stop cravings is really important.

00:07:33.000 It's something you talk about here.

00:07:34.000 But also just from the slot machine is one of them.

00:07:36.000 But it's kind of funny, Michael, when I'm going through my email, I feel as if I'm going through a slot machine, right?

00:07:41.000 It's kind of like you go down, you never know what's going to come up, right?

00:07:45.000 And you don't know if there's something hidden in the junk folder.

00:07:49.000 Is that actually a good comparison?

00:07:51.000 You know, kind of talking about like talking about how email and slot machines kind of have been developed a similar psychology.

00:07:58.000 Yeah, 100%.

00:07:59.000 It's an unpredictable reward game, right?

00:08:01.000 So when you get a ping on your phone, you go, okay, you got an opportunity to get information that could enhance your life, but you don't know what it is, right?

00:08:08.000 It could be an email saying, hey, we got this great guest to come on the show that you've been trying to get for a long time.

00:08:13.000 Exactly.

00:08:14.000 Or it could be a piece of spam, right?

00:08:16.000 It's nothing.

00:08:17.000 And not knowing. what it's going to be, that's really captures people's attention, right?

00:08:23.000 You have to open that email and then you have to see what it is.

00:08:26.000 And then, oh, by the way, you're getting another email in about three, four minutes.

00:08:29.000 So you just play that game all day.

00:08:31.000 And I think people get hooked into all different behaviors that fall into this loop.

00:08:36.000 Email is one that I think people struggle with checking over and over and over and over again, even when they're off of work hours.

00:08:44.000 Social media, shopping online uses a lot of elements of this scarcity loop to get people to buy more.

00:08:50.000 So a great example is advertisements online that are embedded with casino-like features, they increase conversion rate by sevenfold.

00:08:59.000 Sevenfold.

00:09:00.000 I mean, that's a huge determinant of how people are buying.

00:09:03.000 Yeah.

00:09:03.000 So I want to dive in throughout the hour of practical ways people can understand, you know, how they are preyed upon by some of these products and some of these, but it's also just, you know, kind of educating yourself on the latest neuroscience breakthroughs of exactly how our brain is wired.

00:09:21.000 And I mean, we are a largely addicted country to a lot of different things, right?

00:09:26.000 And, you know, being able to get to the fundamental parts of the part of the brain that is being taken advantage of by the rigging of the apps, the games, the products, and the feedback loops to create these types of applications.

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00:10:42.000 So, Michael, on page 81 of your book, Scarcity Brain, you say something that could be considered a thought crime where you, I think, very kindly challenge this idea of addiction as an incurable disease, right?

00:10:56.000 And you go through a series of studies here.

00:10:59.000 So, this is important because some people will say, There's nothing I can do with my alcoholism problem or with other addiction problem.

00:11:07.000 I have an addictive personality and it cannot be cured.

00:11:11.000 You're careful in the way that you challenge it, but you do it very factually, where you say, quote, Sattell, who is a researcher here, says the implication of blaming addiction on brain chemicals like dopamine is that addicts should just be taking dopamine blockers, medication that blocks the release of dopamine, but that doesn't work.

00:11:28.000 And it says they're not alone in their ideas, that there's a growing community of people that believe that you actually can change the brain of someone who's addicted.

00:11:37.000 So, give our audience some background here, and let's dive into this.

00:11:42.000 Yeah, so we've traditionally thought of addiction in two ways in the U.S. We've thought of it that an addict is a bad person, and so they are deserving of punishment.

00:11:50.000 They're making this negative choice day in, day out.

00:11:53.000 And then we've thought of it as a brain disease.

00:11:55.000 That is to say, they have zero agency in this thing, and it is just a result of chemical phenomena in the brain that is causing them to make these choices.

00:12:03.000 It turns out that both ways, in my opinion, are not a great way of looking at addiction.

00:12:09.000 So I tend to see addiction as more of a symptom of something else underlying, and that people who are addicted to a substance often use the substance to solve a problem in the short term.

00:12:21.000 So you tend to see that people who become addicted to alcohol or drugs, that substance solves their problems in the short term, right?

00:12:30.000 They might have some bad childhood.

00:12:33.000 They might have lost their job and they're trying to solve for that.

00:12:37.000 But the problem is, is that repeating that behavior, it leads to long-term problems.

00:12:42.000 Now, the upside is that because you're using this thing to solve a problem, if you can find a more productive way to solve whatever the underlying problem is that's leading you to use substances in a way that is harming you in the long term, you can often get out of it.

00:12:57.000 And you see this in, there's a fantastic case study from the Vietnam War.

00:13:01.000 So during the Vietnam War, about 20 to 25% of our soldiers in Vietnam were using heroin.

00:13:08.000 So at the time, it was thought, you know, if you use heroin one time, you're going to become an addict.

00:13:12.000 And President Nixon didn't want a bunch of addicts coming back into the United States of America.

00:13:17.000 So we set up this program that was called Operation Golden Flow.

00:13:20.000 And it was pretty simple.

00:13:21.000 If you, as a soldier, wanted to come back from your time in Vietnam back to the United States, you had to pass a drug test.

00:13:28.000 Now, if addiction is a brain disease and people have zero agency over this, they're just sort of slaves to these neurochemicals, then you would assume that, well, 20, 25% of those soldiers got left in Vietnam.

00:13:41.000 They couldn't come home.

00:13:42.000 But the reality is, is that every single soldier passed a drug test by and large.

00:13:47.000 And when they were back in the United States, what else happened is that very, very few relapsed.

00:13:52.000 I think maybe 5% relapsed.

00:13:54.000 And the 5% that relapsed of all those people, they tended to be people who used drugs before the war.

00:13:59.000 Now, okay, so why was that able to happen?

00:14:02.000 Well, very simple.

00:14:03.000 These soldiers were in Vietnam and they're in a literal war zone where they're seeing all kinds of terrible things from war every single day.

00:14:12.000 And using a drug allowed them to escape that terrible, terrible reality that they were in.

00:14:17.000 And it allowed them to feel better for a little bit of time.

00:14:20.000 But once they were out of Vietnam, they no longer needed that escape from drugs and were able to quit drugs.

00:14:26.000 So I think that the metaphor there is that in the United States, you tend to see drug problems rise and fall in areas that tend to have more problems.

00:14:34.000 Maybe the jobs all got wiped out.

00:14:36.000 Maybe the economy has really created.

00:14:39.000 And there's a lot of different complicated reasons, but I think that's a larger thing you tend to see.

00:14:43.000 Some of the most exciting discoveries in neuroscience show how much your brain can actually change at almost any age.

00:14:49.000 And this is, again, it's underreported.

00:14:51.000 We get almost nothing but negative news.

00:14:53.000 But this is something, one of the most famous examples is when they did brain scans of the cabbies in London, where they found that the hippocampus was actually significantly larger because the grid of streets in London are indecipherable to any human being.

00:15:08.000 There is no grid.

00:15:09.000 There is no rationale.

00:15:10.000 It is a series of randomness.

00:15:13.000 In fact, you cannot become a certified London cabby without passing a test called the knowledge.

00:15:18.000 And actually, to get, it's a big deal.

00:15:20.000 And they found when they scanned the brains, spatial awareness, which goes to the hippocampus and understanding maps and turns, that London cabbies had like a 10 to 20% bigger or more active hippocampus than just a random person in London.

00:15:31.000 And most of the people didn't get the job until their late 20s or early 30s, which then goes to show that you can actually change your brain far more than people realize.

00:15:39.000 And that goes against all the garbage of the early 20th century, not garbage, but the psychologists said, oh, no, you are who you are from like two years old.

00:15:47.000 You're kind of the cake is baked. 0.97

00:15:49.000 And it's actually not true.

00:15:51.000 Your agency, your ability to make choices should actually give you hope.

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00:16:58.000 Do you have any reaction to this idea that brains can change?

00:17:01.000 New neuroscience breakthroughs are showing us just how quote-unquote plastic the brain is, the London Cabby example being one of the most famous.

00:17:10.000 Oh, yeah.

00:17:11.000 I mean, everything changes the brain, right?

00:17:13.000 Everything we do, this conversation we're having right now is changing our brain.

00:17:17.000 But I think the problem is that especially the NIH and NIDA with the overseas drugs and research around drugs, they tend to imply that changes that happen in the brain because of drugs make you unable to make a decision.

00:17:31.000 Now, that's not, that's not, and we see that in plenty of anecdotes.

00:17:35.000 And I think that the real problem with that message is that it tends to leave people hopeless.

00:17:41.000 So there was a great piece of research out of the University of New Mexico, and it basically looked at alcoholics.

00:17:46.000 It tracked them over the course of a year.

00:17:48.000 And it found that the number one reason for relapse among alcoholics was believing that they had an incurable disease, because that's the problem, right?

00:17:57.000 It's like the NIDA is saying, hey, this is a disease, but oh, by the way, we don't have a cure for it.

00:18:03.000 And that leaves people hopeless.

00:18:05.000 And why fight against something if it's not something you can change?

00:18:08.000 When the reality is, is that the vast majority of the data suggests that most people who have or have had a substance addiction, they get over it over time.

00:18:18.000 And a lot of that occurs due to how the brain changes over from ages 15 to 25.

00:18:24.000 And people, I mean, as simple as it sounds, a lot of people tend to age out of it.

00:18:28.000 And there is a belief that you are captive to your patterns.

00:18:28.000 Yeah.

00:18:32.000 And yes, you could just build new neural pathways.

00:18:35.000 Now, old ones, you know, in the book Dopamine Nation by Anna Lempke, she highlights that it's very easy to go back to old addictions if you're not careful, right?

00:18:45.000 Once those pathways are built, they're still there and it doesn't take a lot to dust them off.

00:18:49.000 But you could build new exciting ones with, and the best example of this is you could walk into any room and five people say, hey, what is one food that when you smell it, you do not want it because you threw up when you're all of a sudden you have an association, right?

00:19:03.000 So for me, it was like breakfast sausages, right?

00:19:05.000 Just so happened, I used to love them, ate too many when I was 10 years old, didn't have a great experience afterwards.

00:19:10.000 And for literally the next decade, if I smelled breakfast sausages, I had to leave the room.

00:19:13.000 Now, that's irrational to someone that didn't have that experience, but it took a while to build a new neural pathway.

00:19:19.000 Michael, apply that to what you've learned in the book and you talk about in the book Scarcity Brain.

00:19:24.000 Well, I think the number one driver of behavior is our environment.

00:19:28.000 So let's go back to that example I gave about soldiers in Vietnam.

00:19:32.000 It's like, why did they stop using drugs?

00:19:34.000 Well, because their environment radically changed, right?

00:19:37.000 The reason that they were using drugs in the first place was removed.

00:19:40.000 And so as part of this book, I traveled to Iraq, which didn't have a drug problem.

00:19:45.000 And then because the country was destabilized and Syria fell and started shuttling in this drug called Captagon, which is analogous to methamphetamine, you start to see addiction rise.

00:19:57.000 And most of the thinkers in that country say, you know, the reason we're having this problem is because you have a lot of people who have gone through psychological trauma due to war.

00:20:06.000 Number two is that they don't have a lot of ways to deal with that that are productive.

00:20:10.000 And then three, we have this sudden abundance of a substance that can allow them to escape from their problems, at least in the short term.

00:20:19.000 And so I think the message for the average person is that if you have a addiction, you need to ask, okay, well, why am I doing this thing in the first place?

00:20:28.000 What is the real underlying reason?

00:20:30.000 And then you need to start to work on solving that.

00:20:33.000 And I don't think that's going to be easy, right?

00:20:35.000 Everyone wants to hit the easy button, and it would be wonderful if we had an easy button out of addiction.

00:20:40.000 But the reality is that we don't.

00:20:41.000 You have to make some hard choices.

00:20:43.000 You're going to have to go through some hard situations.

00:20:46.000 But on the other side of that is growth.

00:20:48.000 And that is kind of the universal message in my work is that oftentimes you have to go through short-term discomfort in order to get a sort of greater long-term benefit.

00:20:56.000 That applies to everything.

00:20:57.000 That applies to raising children.

00:20:59.000 That applies to marriage.

00:21:00.000 That applies to going through a career path and coming out, you know, the top of your company.

00:21:06.000 And for some reason, we think that that just doesn't apply to certain things in life, like substance use.

00:21:11.000 Yeah.

00:21:11.000 So let's talk through some of the practical kind of things that you recommend people do.

00:21:16.000 And you get into this later on in the book here.

00:21:19.000 And you talk, it's broken into different categories, happiness, information, stuff.

00:21:23.000 And so for someone that, I mean, obviously read the book and they'll get the information.

00:21:28.000 But what was one of the, you know, when you start to write a book, I'm sure you have some idea in your head of what you're going to discover or how you're going to go.

00:21:34.000 What was one of the big surprises that really opened your eyes in researching this book?

00:21:39.000 Because you do such thorough, in-depth research where you were so shocked where something you previously believed was challenged and you have a 180 different perspective when it comes to addiction and what you call the scarcity brain.

00:21:54.000 I think addiction was a big one.

00:21:55.000 I mean, we've talked about that.

00:21:57.000 I think that honestly, it was this scarcity loop because the reason I started on this path in the first place is noticing that people play slot machine.

00:22:07.000 I live in Las Vegas and there's slot machines everywhere and people play them around the clock.

00:22:11.000 And it's just so irrational.

00:22:12.000 And you go, why are people doing that?

00:22:15.000 And when this leads me to the casino laboratory, it makes you realize, oh my gosh, there are places where people who are very, very bright sit around thinking about how can I get people to do this behavior that I know is going to drain them of their money in the long run.

00:22:32.000 And so the realization that in many ways we have the chips stacked against us.

00:22:37.000 Now, that doesn't mean we're helpless, but we do live in a world where technology has advanced at such a rate that it is harder than ever to, I think, avoid some of these bad behaviors.

00:22:48.000 And the behaviors are worse.

00:22:49.000 So example, with addictive substances, now that you see fentanyl being put in everything, that's when you really see the death rate over addictions spike.

00:22:59.000 And so we kind of live in a world where everything is faster, everything is stronger, everything is more easily available.

00:23:04.000 Yeah.

00:23:05.000 And it's, I mean, the social media companies also have groups of very, very smart people that sit around and say, how do I get a seven-year-old addicted to a screen, right?

00:23:14.000 Which is really scary and sick when you think about it.

00:23:19.000 So let me ask you, Michael, you also have an entire chapter that you dedicate here talking about, I'm trying to actually have a note here.

00:23:28.000 It's like not a Benedictine monk, something of that, right?

00:23:31.000 If I'm remembering correctly.

00:23:33.000 Yeah.

00:23:34.000 Can you walk our audience through that?

00:23:36.000 Yeah.

00:23:36.000 So I got interested in the topic of happiness.

00:23:39.000 And the reason I got interested in this is that I'm a science journalist.

00:23:43.000 And so I keep tabs on all the science.

00:23:44.000 And the science on happiness is always changing.

00:23:46.000 What makes people happy?

00:23:48.000 What you have to do to be happy.

00:23:49.000 And as a result, you know, we have all these messages from different scientists saying, oh, you must meditate.

00:23:54.000 You must keep a gratitude journal.

00:23:56.000 You must have X amount of friends and spend Y amount of time with them.

00:23:59.000 But I come across this research on Benedictine monks who they live a life that is totally opposite that, right?

00:24:06.000 They're up at 3 a.m. to pray in the chapel and they go in seven times for prayer a day.

00:24:12.000 They do hard labor for four hours a day.

00:24:15.000 They don't eat too much.

00:24:16.000 They don't own anything.

00:24:18.000 They don't talk to each other all that much.

00:24:19.000 They're not that social.

00:24:21.000 And yet the research on them suggests that they are significantly happier than the average person.

00:24:26.000 And so I wanted to know why.

00:24:28.000 And so I went and I spent a week at a Benedictine monastery in New Mexico outside of Silver City and lived with these guys, worked with them, prayed with them, ate with them, did everything they did.

00:24:40.000 And I think my takeaway from that is that, you know, we live in a world where we're always trying to chase the next thing that's going to make us happy.

00:24:46.000 And we often think that it's going to be the purchase or the raise or, you know, the promotion at work or, oh, once we get married, now everything's going to be perfect.

00:24:54.000 And I think that these Benedictine monks taught me that really what makes people happy is finding something higher than yourself and letting that guide you, which often leads you to help others, to realize that you're not the center of the universe and to take actions that ultimately help the world around you to do the next right thing.

00:25:14.000 So are you alluding to kind of just at the very least, not, I mean, I'm very religious, but just a transcendent that something is above you, that it's not as introspective and it's more duty bound and that you're trying to aim for something higher?

00:25:28.000 Yeah, I think that when you look at what gives humans meaning and gives humans deeper reward, it does tend to be things that are hard, that take work, that take effort.

00:25:39.000 So for these monks, you know, they're subverting everything in their life to worshiping God and trying to get closer to God.

00:25:47.000 And I don't know if that's the path for everyone, but I do think that you have to subvert yourself in some way and help others, because that's another thing that these monks are doing a lot of.

00:25:58.000 And so I think that really it does come down, living a good life really does come down to am I helping others?

00:26:03.000 Am I realizing that I'm not the center of the universe?

00:26:07.000 And am I not thinking that, you know, happiness is going to be found in the next drink or the next meal or the next time I purchase a new car?

00:26:14.000 Those sort of acts.

00:26:15.000 And for instead, focusing on others.

00:26:18.000 I'm going to read this from the book, page 261.

00:26:20.000 My first day was followed by more of the same.

00:26:22.000 Wake early, go to the chapel, eat a meal, break, go to chapel, eat a meal, break, do work, break, go to chapel, eat a meal, go to chapel, sleep.

00:26:29.000 I found something like serenity in the repetition.

00:26:33.000 I felt calmer and more connected, not socially, but to myself.

00:26:36.000 Living that schedule also gave me more respect for the monks here.

00:26:40.000 So, Mike, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you actually to compare and contrast the feeling you had with the monks to the feeling you had in the Alaskan wilderness when you wrote Comfort Crisis.

00:26:49.000 What similarities, differences, and lessons do you think you could pick from both?

00:26:54.000 Because those are two very unusual experiences that actually might have a lot in common.

00:26:58.000 That's a really great question.

00:27:00.000 I think the feelings were honestly very similar.

00:27:03.000 And the reality is that it all came down to the fact that it wasn't exactly easy, right?

00:27:09.000 The place I'm staying, it's cold.

00:27:11.000 I'm not eating a lot while I'm there.

00:27:14.000 I'm having to do physical labor and I'm spending time with people.

00:27:18.000 Now, the monks, I only had a handful of hours that I could talk to them, but I'm at least with other people and talking to other people.

00:27:25.000 And I think that's a great lesson.

00:27:27.000 You know, I talked to someone the other day who told me they had taken this four-week vacation to Spain.

00:27:32.000 Two of the weeks they did the Camino of Santiago, they walked the Camino hard, they're carrying all their stuff.

00:27:38.000 Two weeks they went to Abiza at this really nice resort.

00:27:44.000 And she looked back and said, Those two weeks on the Camino where I was actually having to do something that was challenging, that I was in nature, that I was present, that I wasn't focused on my cell phone the entire time, that I actually had to work to get the things that I enjoyed.

00:27:58.000 Those were far better than when I went to the resort and could just hit a button and a cocktail appears, or I can check my email 50 times a day.

00:28:06.000 And so I think that that is kind of the thread between those two experiences.

00:28:10.000 It's exactly, it's against how every marketing campaign in America works, but it's 100% true.

00:28:17.000 It's paradoxical when you think about it, which is you actually have to work harder.

00:28:21.000 You actually might be happy with it.

00:28:22.000 The book is Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter.

00:28:24.000 And also check out Comfort Crisis.

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00:29:25.000 That is members.charlikirk.com.

00:29:30.000 The last part of the book is what we do now.

00:29:34.000 Michael, riff on that for a little bit.

00:29:36.000 What do we do now?

00:29:38.000 Well, we live in a world where this scarcity loop that I talked about, I think, has really captured us in a lot of ways.

00:29:43.000 Now, the upside is that you can get out of it.

00:29:46.000 So, really, the first step is becoming aware of it, realizing that, oh, this is why I fall into these behaviors because I'm falling into this loop that is a sort of ancient part of the human brain.

00:29:57.000 It's sort of wired into us.

00:29:58.000 It used to help us find, help our ancestors find food.

00:30:01.000 And then, two, is that you can either change or remove any of the three parts of the loop.

00:30:06.000 So you can change or remove the opportunity.

00:30:08.000 You can change or remove the unpredictable rewards.

00:30:10.000 You can change or remove the quick repeatability.

00:30:12.000 So I'll give you a couple of examples.

00:30:13.000 Quick repeatability, simply slowing down your ability to do a behavior that you don't want to do.

00:30:18.000 It tends to reduce the amount that you do the behavior.

00:30:21.000 So a great one is shopping.

00:30:23.000 So the average person today owns 10,000 items at least in their home.

00:30:28.000 And one of the reasons for this is that if you want to buy something now, you can do it immediately.

00:30:33.000 Whereas even 20 years ago, you had to get in a car, you had to go down to the store, you had to walk the aisles, you had to do all these things.

00:30:38.000 So I think even if you're having problems with buying too much online, simply setting a boundary that says, okay, I'm only going to purchase things in person.

00:30:48.000 And just having that pause and the effort of having to go to the store will reduce your buying frequency.

00:30:54.000 And I lay out all different ways that you can use that you can alter this loop to whether it's eat less, spend less time on social media, get a hold of your finances, buy less stuff, all these different ways that you can flip it to do something good.

00:31:08.000 It's the opposite of every one of these like self-help people.

00:31:10.000 They say you need more, you need extra.

00:31:12.000 You have the opposite.

00:31:13.000 Talk about gear versus stuff.

00:31:15.000 I found this interesting.

00:31:17.000 So there's basically four reasons that people buy stuff.

00:31:21.000 The first is because we're using it as a tool.

00:31:24.000 The second is because it gets a status.

00:31:25.000 So for example, no one buys a Rolex watch to know what time it is, right?

00:31:29.000 The third is because it makes us feel like we belong.

00:31:32.000 So this is you buy a certain item that allows you to fit in with a group.

00:31:36.000 And then four is that we're bored.

00:31:38.000 So you see a lot of modern purchases simply being, I'm on the couch, I'm bored, I don't know what to do.

00:31:42.000 I open Instagram, I get an ad for this perfect product that fits me, and I think I need to buy it.

00:31:47.000 But by taking the lens of purchases, and this really helped me reframe what I buy, thinking in terms of gear, which is items of purpose to complete a task, right?

00:31:59.000 Gear is something that you buy so you can do something with it.

00:32:02.000 There's an end game, there's an outcome rather than stuff, which stuff is just stuff you buy.

00:32:07.000 You know, you don't know why you buy it.

00:32:09.000 You buy it to fit in.

00:32:10.000 You buy it because it makes you cool.

00:32:11.000 You buy it because you're bored.

00:32:12.000 So framing your purchases through gear rather than stuff, I think can be a good way to align whether you're spending your money in a way that is going to actually improve your life rather than just lead you with more stuff and less money in your bank account.

00:32:26.000 So in closing here, you know, we talk on this show a lot about legislation.

00:32:30.000 Is there anything in all your research have you done, is there anything that legislative you think you could be done?

00:32:34.000 You know, mental health crisis, you know, social media restriction time.

00:32:38.000 I know you probably don't get too much into that, but is there anything that just is glaring and obvious in your opinion?

00:32:43.000 Where like if America could come together, both sides together and do X, the country would be better to help solve some of these problems.

00:32:51.000 I think we need a lot more clarity on how, whether applications or industries that use this scarcity loop, how they are using it.

00:33:01.000 I think that having that clarity would be good to know.

00:33:03.000 So I'll give you an example.

00:33:04.000 You know, everyone likes to criticize the casino and the gaming industry, but the reality is that the gaming industry is highly, highly regulated.

00:33:12.000 Yes, it is.

00:33:12.000 There's all these things that you could do to a slot machine to make it more addictive, but they can't do it because the government goes, okay, like let's keep some reins on this.

00:33:20.000 But that doesn't happen with social media.

00:33:23.000 And if you look at the rise, especially in teens and youth with mental health problems, I think you see a very, very strong correlation to social media.

00:33:33.000 And that just goes back to how teen brains are changing.

00:33:36.000 And so I think trying to get some rails on how, why, when, where teens can use social media, I think that's probably a smart thing to do if we want the mental health of our country to improve over time.

00:33:49.000 I totally agree.

00:33:49.000 I mean, if a liquor company was targeting kids deliberately, we'd care, but we basically don't care if Facebook is doing it.

00:33:55.000 It's strange.

00:33:56.000 Scarcity Brain, Michael Easter.

00:33:58.000 Great.

00:33:58.000 Thank you so much, Michael.

00:33:59.000 Our whole team is reading it.

00:34:01.000 We'll have you back on.

00:34:02.000 And I hope there's a third book that we can highlight at some point.

00:34:05.000 And I'll also replug Comfort Crisis.

00:34:07.000 That is a great, great book.

00:34:09.000 I got to tell you.

00:34:09.000 Michael, thanks so much.

00:34:10.000 Hey, thanks for having me on again, man.

00:34:12.000 It's great to see you.

00:34:12.000 You too.

00:34:13.000 Thank you.

00:34:13.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:34:15.000 Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:34:17.000 Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.

00:34:22.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - October 27, 2023

Escaping "Scarcity Brain" with Michael Easter

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