The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 381. Change Your Mindset, Your Health, Your Life ｜ Dr. Ellen Langer

00:00:00.960 Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone watching and listening.

00:01:10.900 Today I'm speaking with the mother of mindfulness, Dr. Ellen Langer.

00:01:15.920 Dr. Langer was a colleague of mine when I worked at Harvard in the early 90s, and so it's a particular pleasure for me to be talking to her today.

00:01:22.520 We discuss her latest book, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.

00:01:28.960 We explore how intentional awareness paired with humility allows for a healthier mindset and body.

00:01:35.220 How the perception of time impacts the effects of disease and age.

00:01:39.720 The way to view tragedy and suffering so that we might conquer them through faith and hope.

00:01:44.680 And the immense benefits to be found in carefully considering to what, where, and who you direct your attention.

00:01:53.440 So, I was reading your new book today, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.

00:02:01.880 And, you know, we were colleagues back in the 1990s.

00:02:05.600 I suppose we still are colleagues in some ways.

00:02:08.060 That's right.

00:02:08.540 And I was thinking about mindfulness, again, and I have a proposition for you, and you tell me what you think about this.

00:02:17.360 I was thinking that mindfulness is something approximating paying attention to what you're paying attention to.

00:02:26.840 But I'm open for definitions.

00:02:29.380 Yeah, that's great.

00:02:29.440 No, no, no.

00:02:29.980 I like that.

00:02:30.740 But the way I've defined it is actively noticing.

00:02:35.820 You know, that if you, people, give people instructions and say, pay attention, be present.

00:02:44.020 And that's sweet, but it really falls on deaf ears because when people are not there, they don't know they're not there.

00:02:50.100 And all of the research we've done over 40 years says most of us, most of the time, are mindless.

00:02:56.120 So, to be mindful, you can do one of two things.

00:02:59.920 The one most, the easiest for people is probably just to notice new things about the things you thought you knew.

00:03:09.060 And then you come to see you didn't know them as well as you thought you did, and then your attention naturally goes to them.

00:03:14.620 The other is to adopt a mindset, the only mindset we should have, for uncertainty.

00:03:22.120 People don't realize that everything is always changing.

00:03:26.120 Everything looks different from different perspectives.

00:03:28.360 So, we can never know.

00:03:31.000 And if you know you don't know, then you naturally stay tuned in.

00:03:37.400 If you were going to, if you thought you knew what I was going to say next, why listen to me?

00:03:42.480 So, Jordan, it's fun.

00:03:43.660 When I lecture, I often begin a lecture and I ask people.

00:03:46.580 So, I'll ask you, how much is one plus one?

00:03:49.180 And people are annoyed with me because they think it's ridiculous, and then they dutifully say two.

00:03:56.360 But it's not always two.

00:03:58.240 If you add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one.

00:04:02.220 Add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one. 0.99

00:04:06.400 Add one wad of chewing gum to one wad of chewing gum, one plus one is one.

00:04:11.360 So, in the real world, one plus one probably doesn't equal two as more often as it does.

00:04:18.320 And the problem is that we're all taught absolutes.

00:04:21.720 We're taught facts that we think are unchanging.

00:04:25.420 And again, when you think you know, you don't pay any attention.

00:04:28.960 So, that's why I like the one plus one because that's the most basic where people think surely they have the right answer.

00:04:36.720 I must tell you.

00:04:37.880 So, I was at this horse event many years ago.

00:04:40.880 It changed my life.

00:04:42.600 This man came over and asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he was going to go get his horse a hot dog.

00:04:49.840 You know, you know I'm Harvard-Yale all the way through.

00:04:52.780 Nobody knows better.

00:04:54.820 People know as well that horses don't eat meat.

00:04:57.900 They're herbivorous, right?

00:04:59.660 He comes back with the hot dog and the horse ate it.

00:05:03.520 And it was at that moment that everything I thought I knew, I realized could be wrong.

00:05:08.720 Which for me was very exciting because that opened up a world of possibility.

00:05:13.540 When was that?

00:05:15.760 Oh, God.

00:05:16.580 That was about a long time ago.

00:05:20.020 I'd say maybe even 30 years ago.

00:05:21.940 You know, so I have been in this state of openness for at least, if not for my lifetime, for at least the last 30 some odd years.

00:05:31.560 So, this, you mentioned art, for example.

00:05:35.040 And you mentioned, you mentioned actually that people should pay more attention to what they take for granted.

00:05:42.880 And one of the things that I've come to realize, I think part of it.

00:05:46.240 But they can't, no, but Jordan, they can't pay attention to what they take for granted because it doesn't occur to them.

00:05:52.060 They're in a robotic state of mind.

00:05:54.660 I'm sorry to interrupt.

00:05:55.500 Oh, no, no, that's fine.

00:05:56.600 I have written a little bit about the role of art in remediating that because one of the things that happens, as far as I can tell, you can see this, for example.

00:06:07.860 I think it's exemplified well by Van Gogh's painting, Irises in particular, because it's easy in some ways to take what you've looked at many times for granted.

00:06:17.180 But what an artist will do, and this is really their function, is to put a twist on the perception and then snap you out of that habitual frame of mind so that you see the object that you have taken for granted outside of the strictures of your preconceptions.

00:06:35.040 And the object always transcends your preconceptions because there's much more to it than you think.

00:06:40.000 Like, so what seems to happen neurologically is that we build up these little modules that specify our perceptions and then we default to them.

00:06:49.220 But it's possible to stop those modules and to re-novelize the phenomena and then to see it again in its glory.

00:06:57.180 And that is one of the things that, what would you say, keeps us falling in love with life.

00:07:02.100 Yeah, I mean, I think that's perfect.

00:07:04.120 The only thing is that once somebody sees it anew, if they think now they know what it is, then they're going to be mindless again, you know, with just that brief interval of being mindful.

00:07:16.800 And it's interesting, and I don't know if you know, I started to paint about, well, after I turned 50.

00:07:23.060 And I'm, you know, not one of those kids when I was younger who knew how to draw.

00:07:27.060 But nevertheless, I took to the whole thing.

00:07:30.320 It was very exciting.

00:07:32.160 And prior to my painting, I had just assumed leaves, for example, on trees were green, you know, except in the fall when they turn brown.

00:07:43.760 But, you know, then I started looking at the leaves, and there are hundreds of shades of green.

00:07:48.360 And so, the taking to painting opened my eyes and made me see that, again, things I thought I knew, I didn't know at all.

00:07:59.660 So, whether you're creating the art or observing the art, in both cases, it can have that effect, and it can be an important effect as long as people don't think, ah, now I know.

00:08:12.860 So, on this theme of paying attention to what you pay attention to, I want to tell you a bit of a story and get your comments on it.

00:08:22.420 So, for years, I was trying to sell tests that help people by aiding them in specifying better employees.

00:08:34.200 And I talked to hundreds of middle managers about the tests.

00:08:37.540 I developed them, actually, when I was working at Harvard in our department there.

00:08:41.080 And what I found was that people didn't want those tests, but what they did want to know was how to deal with people, their employees, that they already hired who weren't doing well.

00:08:53.160 And I thought, well, there isn't anything you can do with them because you're just a manager and you don't have the time or resources to deal with people's serious problems.

00:09:00.720 But no one really liked that answer.

00:09:02.560 So, I went into the literature and I tried to see if there were any interventions that were scalable and inexpensive and harmless that actually produced a remedial effect.

00:09:14.560 And there was a couple of sources of literature that specified exactly that.

00:09:20.780 One was derived, one stream was established by people studying goal setting in the industrial realm.

00:09:29.560 And the other stream was established by James Pennebaker at the University of, at Austin, University of Texas at Austin.

00:09:38.140 And what Pennebaker showed was that if you got people to write about their past traumas, that made them physically healthier.

00:09:47.260 And people varied his research to show that if you got people to write about their future, that that also made them healthier.

00:09:55.880 And the goal setting literature showed that if you got people to write about their future, that they became more productive.

00:10:01.480 So, we developed this program that was a vision program, essentially, called Future Authoring.

00:10:06.900 And you can do it in 90 minutes.

00:10:09.120 It asks people to develop a vision for their life.

00:10:13.040 And so, that means to pay attention to what they're paying attention to, to decide what they want, if they were going to optimize their life, to do it consciously, to decide what they didn't want, and to aim away from that, and then to do that in seven different dimensions of their life.

00:10:30.180 If you have students do that, if you have students do that, if you have students do that for 90 minutes, when they come into college for their orientation, they are 50% less likely to drop out, and their grade point averages go up 35%.

00:10:51.680 90 minutes of 90 minutes of...

00:10:53.320 I'm, I'm, yeah.

00:10:54.740 No, I think that's great, Jordan.

00:10:56.180 I'm not surprised because everything that you just mentioned, you know, Penny Baker's work, for instance, is an instance of making people mindful.

00:11:04.700 If you are writing about traumas that you've already discussed with people, it doesn't have the ameliorative effect.

00:11:12.380 And the thing about coming up with a scale, it's very interesting because people don't realize that what we're always doing is trying to solve today's problems with yesterday's solutions.

00:11:26.480 And so when you're taking a scale, you're assuming everything is staying still, and those people may have, if they did well on those scales, possibly do well at the job as it was defined in the past, but it's going to change.

00:11:44.980 So I have a different approach to all of it, which is essentially the same thing that you're, you're suggesting with this 90-minute interaction for students, which I think is, you know, is wonderful.

00:11:58.820 What you're doing is waking them up.

00:12:01.260 And, you know, when you're writing about the past where you have to write about something you never explored before, obviously you're being mindful because the idea of being mindful is noticing new things.

00:12:14.400 When you're writing about the future because you haven't experienced a future, again, you're being mindful.

00:12:22.460 And so, you know, they should be taught just to be mindful from the start, either in your way or added to it or in place of it.

00:12:33.020 And just an understanding that is very unusual, especially in schools, for people to be taught to exploit the power in uncertainty.

00:12:42.020 Again, all of the schools, schools, parents, the army, you know, industry in general, teaches people absolutes.

00:12:52.880 This is the way you do it.

00:12:54.600 This is what it is.

00:12:56.380 Horses don't eat meat.

00:12:57.720 One and one is two, you know, and so on.

00:13:00.200 And by teaching people that everything looks different from different perspectives, everything is always changing, uncertainty is the rule, not the exception.

00:13:10.760 And you don't have to feel bad about not knowing.

00:13:13.680 You should make a universal rather than a personal attribution for not knowing because nobody knows.

00:13:19.140 And not knowing is good because then it makes everything potentially new and exciting.

00:13:23.860 I'm thrilled that you found this in 90 minutes.

00:13:29.040 Well, it's stunning.

00:13:30.160 Well, it actually shocked me half to death because I started thinking about it.

00:13:35.600 I had been using the same program in my classes because I had people outline a vision for their future.

00:13:41.900 And then I started thinking about the fact that we don't do this in the education system.

00:13:47.660 So I was teaching kids who had 15 years of education already and no one had ever sat them down once, once in their entire educational history and said,

00:14:00.000 why don't you think about what you really want and who you could be and how you might lay that out?

00:14:06.400 And so then I did some research into trying to figure out why in the world this was because it was as if we have a society that's predicated on literacy and forgot entirely to teach people to read.

00:14:19.500 There's nothing more important than helping people establish vision.

00:14:23.120 So I looked at the history of the development of the education system, and it turns out that it was developed as a consequence of bringing in Prussian militaristic models of blind obedience in the late 1800s, right?

00:14:38.800 To produce mindless workers who would not be creative and who would not question authority.

00:14:45.060 And so that's actually that rule following, that mindless rule following that you're describing is built right into the system.

00:14:51.260 Yeah, that's great.

00:14:53.060 You know, that I've been studying mindful learning where essentially all you do when you're teaching is make it conditional.

00:15:01.740 You know, rather than saying here are three reasons for the Civil War or whatever, it would be here are three reasons that could explain the Civil War from this perspective or that.

00:15:12.760 So you change things, horses don't eat meat to it seems that most horses don't eat meat, possibly horses don't eat meat.

00:15:21.260 It could be that horses don't eat meat.

00:15:23.480 You know, all of the words that suggest it's not always so.

00:15:28.020 And then you get an enormous difference because people don't learn the lesson and then think, now I've got it, and then close their mind to all the ways it's changing.

00:15:39.300 It's interesting because somebody asked me the other day when I was doing the podcast, because I said we should be mindful all the time.

00:15:49.380 And I'll explain what I mean by that to you in a moment.

00:15:51.960 And they said, you know, isn't it exhausting?

00:15:55.960 And I'll talk about that.

00:15:57.520 But the important thing was, they said, you know, why is everybody so mindless?

00:16:04.060 Doesn't it serve a purpose?

00:16:06.340 And my answer to that, and I'm curious about your reaction to this, because I think you're better read in this regard than I, that I don't have any data.

00:16:15.620 But my armchair reasoning leads me to believe that teaching everybody all this mindlessness instantiates the status quo.

00:16:25.440 You know, there's no reason why you and I should have these lofty positions.

00:16:30.080 And so many others, who would have something else to bring to the table that's no less valuable, don't get a chance to offer it.

00:16:40.080 You know, so, and so we'll speak to that, and then I'll tell you what I mean by why we should be mindful all the time.

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00:18:25.180 Well, I think that you can make a case that, and this is a common case made by, say, social critics, particularly on the left,

00:18:38.200 is that anything that biases behavior in favor of maintenance of the status quo obviously benefits people who are highly positioned in that status quo.

00:18:49.380 So, right, now, but there's another psychological reason for that, too, which is that if you introduce anomaly into a conceptual scheme,

00:18:59.800 you increase entropy by increasing choice.

00:19:03.700 And increased entropy, if you increase entropy and that happens involuntarily, you catalyze a stress response.

00:19:11.800 Now, if you increase entropy voluntarily, you don't catalyze a stress response.

00:19:18.560 You catalyze a challenge response, and the challenge response looks like it's associated with positive emotion, exploration, and play.

00:19:27.580 And so, that's another issue where attitude makes all the difference.

00:19:31.120 You see this in clinical work, too, because if people are exposed accidentally to a stressor and they're phobic,

00:19:37.540 that tends to make them more phobic.

00:19:40.280 But if they're introduced voluntarily to a stressor of the same magnitude, then the introduction of the stressor is curative.

00:19:50.540 And then, on your final point, you said that it's also easier, let's say, to default to mindlessness.

00:19:57.220 And the thing is, you know, that's true.

00:19:59.460 No, I don't think it's really easier, in fact.

00:20:02.860 I think people don't fully understand what I mean by being mindful.

00:20:08.200 Because they think, you know, when I say you should be mindful all the time, people get crazy.

00:20:13.360 How could that be?

00:20:14.200 Because they confuse mindfulness with just thinking.

00:20:17.100 And thinking has gotten a bad rep.

00:20:19.260 Thinking is fun.

00:20:20.900 What's not good about thinking and stressful about thinking is worrying about whether you're going to get the problem solved. 0.99

00:20:28.700 Whether you're going to look stupid when you come up with your answers and so on. 0.97

00:20:34.040 Which, you know, which is the stress that you're talking about. 0.99

00:20:38.160 And that's debilitating.

00:20:39.340 But all stress is mindless.

00:20:41.840 You know, so my view is that if you're going to do it, you should be there for it.

00:20:47.200 And that mindfulness, it turns out, is energy begetting, not consuming.

00:20:53.000 And that, you know, when you're, if you came here to visit me, Jordan, since you've never been at my house here, everything would be new.

00:21:01.300 You'd be looking around.

00:21:02.600 You'd see, what books is she reading?

00:21:04.180 Oh, you know, there are all those Fritos that your men who helped set this up left around. 0.93

00:21:10.180 You know, you would notice.

00:21:11.700 And it wouldn't be hard for you.

00:21:14.200 You'd go on a trip to Europe.

00:21:15.780 You don't have to practice being mindful.

00:21:18.000 Your expectation is it will all be new.

00:21:20.460 And so you are mindful.

00:21:21.800 And mindfulness is the essence of engagement.

00:21:24.900 It's what you do when you're having fun.

00:21:27.580 So, you know, is there a limit to how much fun and how happy you can be?

00:21:31.500 I don't think so.

00:21:33.200 So we should be mindful all the time.

00:21:35.080 And people say, well, aren't there circumstances where it's your advantage to be mindless?

00:21:40.300 My answer is emphatically no.

00:21:42.380 And I say, let's say you're at the park and you took a two-year-old with you.

00:21:47.940 And this is the person trying to challenge me and says, now, and the two-year-old wanders into the street.

00:21:54.640 Wouldn't it be best to mindlessly just grab the child so that the child isn't hit by the oncoming car?

00:22:01.120 And my response to that is twofold.

00:22:03.800 The first is that if you were mindful, the child wouldn't have ended up in the street in the first place.

00:22:09.360 And secondly, that probably in grabbing the child, you want to notice the posture of the driver to figure out whether they're going to turn right or left to know if you should take the child out of harm's way going to the right or left and so on.

00:22:25.260 And that the only time one should be mindless, I believe, is when you found the very best way of doing something and nothing changes.

00:22:35.900 And so clearly, I don't think those conditions can be met.

00:22:39.480 So mindlessness feels good.

00:22:41.380 I have over 45 years of research showing that it's good for your health.

00:22:47.960 It's good for your relationships.

00:22:49.460 People see you as authentic, charismatic, and it even leaves its imprint on the things that we do.

00:22:55.960 And given that it's so easy, I can find no reason why people wouldn't begin immediately after understanding us today to become more mindful.

00:23:06.620 So a variety of things there.

00:23:10.000 The first is the behaviorists, the neuroscience-oriented behaviorists, distinguish two forms of reward.

00:23:17.840 There's satiation reward, consumatory reward, technically, and incentive reward.

00:23:24.340 And consumatory reward tends to bring about quiescence and sleep.

00:23:29.140 And so I might say, well, you should be mindless when it's time to go to sleep because it's time to go to sleep.

00:23:35.660 If you're satiated, there are times for rest.

00:23:40.060 With regard to optimized engagement, that seems to be an incentive reward phenomenon.

00:23:45.780 And that's mediated by dopamine.

00:23:48.400 And it's associated, as you already pointed out, with exploration and play.

00:23:52.960 And I would say that is, is it exhausting?

00:23:55.960 I mean, it depends on the level of intensity, but it's definitely engaging.

00:23:59.800 And it's also engaging in an interesting manner because what play does is engage you in a manner that expands your realm of adaptive competence, right?

00:24:10.840 So you're doing the task, but you're simultaneously getting better at doing the task.

00:24:16.500 And that's an optimized place to stand.

00:24:19.880 And that's Vygotsky's zone of proximal development because you're continually expanding your domain of adaptive competence by playing.

00:24:27.880 And the emotions that are associated with that are associated with engagement and meaning and depth.

00:24:33.900 Right, right.

00:24:34.360 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:35.400 You know, it's interesting.

00:24:36.280 You mentioned fatigue.

00:24:37.880 So in the Mindful Body, I have, I present some research on fatigue.

00:24:42.200 Let me give you the simplest of these.

00:24:44.860 Let's imagine, we have, what do I have to imagine and I'll report it.

00:24:49.060 So we have a group of people, we have them do 100 jumping jacks, very simple, and tell us when you get tired.

00:24:55.660 So they get tired around two-thirds of the way through the activity, around 67.

00:25:00.820 Then we have another group of people, they're going to do 200 jumping jacks.

00:25:05.540 And we ask them, tell us when you're tired.

00:25:07.840 And they also are tired two-thirds of the way through, which is twice as many jumping jacks as the former group.

00:25:15.700 And we do this across all, you know, ballerinas in all different spheres.

00:25:21.080 So there's a degree to which fatigue itself is a mindset and limits us.

00:25:27.520 But I think that, you know, if you go back to, you made me think about something, if somebody you get into bed and you want to go to sleep and you were suggesting that maybe at that point they should be mindless.

00:25:41.600 I think that what happens too often is that the stress of the day keeps people awake, you know, and that if they weren't stressed, and stress is mindless.

00:25:54.440 You know, when you're stressed, two things are happening.

00:25:57.060 First, you believe something awful is going to happen.

00:26:01.240 And second, that when it happens, it's going to be awful.

00:26:04.160 And prediction is an illusion.

00:26:06.420 So if you said to yourself simply, what are three, five reasons why this thing won't happen?

00:26:11.100 You won't fail the test, you won't be fired, your spouse won't leave you, whatever it is that's keeping you awake at night.

00:26:17.540 And you give yourself three to five reasons why it won't happen.

00:26:20.940 Well, you immediately feel better.

00:26:22.560 Maybe it'll happen, maybe it won't, rather than it's definitely going to happen.

00:26:26.440 And then turn it around, let's assume it does happen.

00:26:30.200 What are three or five reasons, ways that that's actually a good thing?

00:26:35.700 And if people don't realize that events themselves don't come prepackaged, there aren't good things, bad things, that whatever happens needs to be interpreted by us.

00:26:46.440 And the more mindful you are, the more available are multiple interpretations, good, bad, and whatever.

00:26:53.400 And I don't know why I keep using this as an example.

00:26:55.920 Maybe help me come up with a better one.

00:26:57.740 But if you and I went out to lunch and the food was delicious, wonderful, the food's delicious.

00:27:03.220 If you and I go out for lunch and the food is awful, wonderful, the food is awful, presumably I'll eat less.

00:27:09.480 And that'll be better for my waistline.

00:27:11.820 You know, that when, you know, and with this attitude, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to make this clear, but I hope people will think about it.

00:27:19.700 But there's a way, I live my life and I fall up.

00:27:23.440 I don't fall down.

00:27:24.940 You know, my car gets a ding on it.

00:27:27.140 I get it repaired and I fix something else about the car.

00:27:31.520 So afterwards, it's better than it was before.

00:27:35.240 You know, so when you realize that events don't determine how you feel, it's the view you take of the event that determines how you feel.

00:27:44.020 Well, then, you know, it's hard to understand why we would come up with explanations that are frightening and stressful.

00:27:53.640 People say, you know, everybody has to experience stress.

00:27:56.880 They just take it as a given.

00:27:57.960 I tell you, Jordan, that there are things, you know, I'm 76 years old, so certainly in my life there are things that have happened that have been big.

00:28:07.580 But in the normal course of a day, a week, a month, a year, I don't experience stress.

00:28:14.020 And I have this one-liner that I think people will find useful.

00:28:20.100 You know, ask yourself when something happens, is it a tragedy or an inconvenience?

00:28:26.200 Rarely is it ever a tragedy.

00:28:28.260 The dog ate my homework.

00:28:29.560 I missed the bus.

00:28:30.600 I burnt the meal.

00:28:32.160 You know, whatever it is that causes us stress.

00:28:36.440 And it turns out that almost everything that we're stressed about, virtually all of it, never happens.

00:28:43.260 So, you know, take the attitude, no worry.

00:28:47.080 Take the attitude, no worry before it's time.

00:28:49.920 Yeah.

00:28:50.540 The reframing that you talked about with regards to people's worry at night, that's something that's very much part and parcel of cognitive behavioral therapy.

00:29:00.280 Is that one of the things that you do with people?

00:29:02.200 Yes, which I was involved in the beginning.

00:29:03.900 Right, right.

00:29:04.640 Well, you take people who are locked into, say, a depressive or an anxiety-inducing pattern of repetitive thought,

00:29:12.260 and you have them open up a wider realm of possibility.

00:29:16.200 And then you have them practice instantiating that, so that becomes more part of their, well, part of their nature, let's say.

00:29:22.700 You also mentioned the jumping jack study, and it reminded me of studies done by Peter Herman showing that if you,

00:29:30.960 imagine you bring people into the lab and you have them watch a movie and you give them a bag of popcorn.

00:29:35.940 If you give them a small bag of popcorn and you ask, they'll eat the whole bag of popcorn, and then if you ask them if they want another, they'll say no.

00:29:44.940 But if you give them a bag of popcorn that's five times that big, they will also eat that.

00:29:50.140 They'll eat all that.

00:29:51.020 Yes, exactly, exactly.

00:29:52.440 It's like, and what seems to happen is that we set up a target, and the target is somewhat arbitrary, right?

00:30:00.420 So it could be portion size, and then the goal is to hit the target, and the emotions that are experienced in relationship to that target are target-dependent.

00:30:14.300 And so, and this is also, it's also part of the trick of setting optimal goals, right, is that you want to set a goal that challenges you and that pushes you beyond your limits,

00:30:24.460 but you don't want to set a goal that's absolutely impossible to attain.

00:30:28.120 If you set a high goal, the amount of positive emotion that you experience as you move towards the goal increases.

00:30:36.140 But if the goal is too high and it's impossible, well, then it's, you know, then that can be frustrating and disappointing.

00:30:42.100 But it's very interesting to see how malleable that is.

00:30:46.080 Well, it's interesting because one of the ways I define mindlessness is to be goal-driven, rule and routine-driven.

00:30:54.580 You know, that it's fine to have a goal, but you have to realize we're setting that goal at time one, and oftentimes moving towards something several years in the future.

00:31:06.940 Lots change, and there's no reason for us not to take advantage of the changes and perhaps change the goal.

00:31:15.540 You know, when we form these goals, where do they come from?

00:31:18.200 You know, somebody said it's important to be a doctor, for example, and so you're on your way to be a doctor, but you really don't want to be a doctor.

00:31:26.640 You know, change it.

00:31:29.060 Essentially, at the end of the game, you want to feel good about yourself.

00:31:35.540 You want to feel good about your relationships and feel perhaps that you've made some contribution in some way to somebody or to the world at large.

00:31:45.640 And you can do that almost in any occupation.

00:31:51.260 And I think that, you know, there are people who are given goals.

00:31:55.540 I want to be a billionaire.

00:31:57.840 Used to be when I was younger a millionaire.

00:32:00.180 That's not enough.

00:32:00.980 I want to be a billionaire.

00:32:02.440 But I think that if we surveyed most of the billionaires and they were honest, you'd see most of them are not very happy.

00:32:09.360 So if you sit back at square one, do you want to be an unhappy billionaire or a happy bike store owner?

00:32:18.040 I think people might choose differently.

00:32:20.980 So as you're gaining information, pursuing the goal, you want to, in fact, be open to possibility.

00:32:28.600 I mean, so I say to my class that, you know, let's say that on your way to school today, you run into, I don't know, who's famous these days that they might like.

00:32:41.760 Sean Penn.

00:32:42.720 Taylor Swift.

00:32:43.760 Okay, Taylor Swift.

00:32:45.040 I'm going to go with Taylor Swift.

00:32:46.280 Sure, that's better.

00:32:47.120 Oh, yeah, that you are just so cool, or whatever word they use.

00:32:52.900 Please, you know, let's go have a cup of coffee.

00:32:56.120 But you say, no, I can't.

00:32:58.060 I have Professor Langer's class meeting now. 0.97

00:33:01.420 I tell them, that's ridiculous.

00:33:04.200 You know, that here's an opportunity that you're probably not going to get again, something you would really want to do. 0.59

00:33:10.900 You should deviate from the plan.

00:33:13.420 You know, you should be in the state of mind so that whatever you're doing is, in a sense, what you would choose to do now, not doing it because what you decided to do for you a prior life, you know, years ago.

00:33:29.860 It goes against lots of what people think.

00:33:32.440 I mean, I'm sure you're going to say to me after this, well, what about delayed gratification?

00:33:36.700 And here I have a lot to say that is probably going to be met with, I don't know, disagreement, rage, outrage, who knows.

00:33:47.760 I don't think we should delay gratification.

00:33:51.120 I think that, first of all, since everything is changing, you know, if I decide I'm not going to do this now, I'll do it next week.

00:33:58.080 This is a good thing because next week will be better for me.

00:34:02.220 The world may change and often changes in such a way, two ways.

00:34:06.780 One, that I may not have the opportunity to do it in the future, as in the going for the coffee with Taylor Swift.

00:34:14.920 Or second, that my desires very well may change.

00:34:18.980 Now, so you say, well, what about studying and, you know, things of this sort where we have to do the work so tomorrow we prosper?

00:34:29.160 And it's very simple, Jordan, you know, that no matter what you're doing, there's a way of doing so that it's fun and enjoyable.

00:34:38.220 Almost no matter what.

00:34:39.620 If you put away the stress of failure, of not being able to complete it successfully and so on, then all the little challenges that present themselves motivate us and feel good.

00:34:52.900 And, you know, so there's, I don't know if you've ever seen it, but you should.

00:34:56.360 It's wonderful.

00:34:57.220 There's a YouTube called Piano Stairs.

00:34:59.500 And so what these people did in Scandinavia, they go to subway stations all over the place.

00:35:08.440 And in all of these subway stations, you have an escalator and stairs.

00:35:13.220 And so the film is very clear.

00:35:15.160 Everybody takes the escalator.

00:35:16.980 Everybody.

00:35:18.120 Random young person who wants to take the stairs. 0.99

00:35:21.240 Then they laid down piano keyboards on the stairs.

00:35:25.320 So it actually makes noise.

00:35:26.720 So now you go, do, do, do, as you're going up.

00:35:29.500 Because it's such fun, in a very short amount of time, nobody virtually takes the escalator.

00:35:35.800 Everybody is taking the stairs.

00:35:38.180 Anything can be made to be fun.

00:35:40.100 And so I tell my students, why wait for somebody to put down the keyboard?

00:35:44.960 You know, one can do, do, do, do.

00:35:46.880 I can't sing or else I would make it more compelling for you as they go up the stairs.

00:35:52.280 There's a way to make everything, if not fun, interesting, and potentially exciting.

00:35:58.540 Once we take off that layer of evaluation apprehension.

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00:37:11.280 Well, one of the things you do, I've got two lines of questioning to explore in relationship to that.

00:37:21.700 One of the things you do as a clinical therapist is help people find the manner in which they can extract enjoyment

00:37:31.900 from at least in potential necessary tasks, right, to help them recraft the way that they're looking at the world.

00:37:37.560 So, for example, one way of approaching that is that if someone lives in a very messy and disordered environment

00:37:45.940 and they want to put that into something approximating order,

00:37:49.660 you experiment with them to find out how much they could work on that every day

00:37:53.580 until they find an optimized balance so that they're compelled and interested in doing it.

00:37:59.320 And it might be that they can only do it to begin with for two minutes or three minutes,

00:38:03.200 but they can joust with themselves to find out what's interesting and engaging.

00:38:08.320 And it is certainly the case that you can ask yourself, regardless of the task that you're engaged in,

00:38:14.720 how you could orient your attention so that that task would be as engaging and meaningful as possible.

00:38:20.740 And that's a constantly worthwhile thing to do.

00:38:23.100 Now, I want to decorate that with something.

00:38:26.160 So, you might find this interesting.

00:38:28.720 I hope you find it interesting.

00:38:29.900 So, you know, this issue of attention has been an obsession of deep thinkers for thousands of years.

00:38:40.400 I spent a fair bit of time studying ancient Egyptian theology.

00:38:45.220 So, there's a set of stories that derive out of ancient Egypt that were, well, they're extremely influential.

00:38:51.580 In fact, some of the symbols we still know.

00:38:53.660 So, one of the symbols is the famous eye.

00:38:55.740 You know, the Egyptian eye with the curved eyebrow? 0.99

00:38:58.600 So, here's what the Egyptians figured out.

00:39:01.960 They figured out there were four deities.

00:39:05.240 So, one deity was the king.

00:39:08.320 That was Osiris.

00:39:09.640 One deity was the king's evil brother.

00:39:12.280 That was Seth.

00:39:13.620 That word eventually becomes Satan.

00:39:16.060 One deity was Horus, who was a falcon.

00:39:18.500 And the other deity was Isis, who was queen of the underworld.

00:39:21.120 So, Osiris is habit.

00:39:25.880 And Osiris is represented by the Egyptians as a great king who's now anachronistic, archaic, and somewhat senile.

00:39:33.460 Senile and willfully blind.

00:39:35.680 Okay. 0.99

00:39:36.100 Now, he has an evil uncle. 0.87

00:39:37.900 He has an evil brother. 0.86

00:39:38.900 And that's Seth, the evil brother of the king.

00:39:40.840 And he's the proclivity of ordered systems to become malevolent with time.

00:39:47.800 The antithesis of that is Horus.

00:39:52.300 And Horus is the open eye and the falcon.

00:39:55.980 And he's the falcon because falcons can see better than any other animals, including human beings.

00:40:00.320 And so, the Egyptians determined that Horus, who was the god of attention, was the force that kept the evil king at bay, so destroyed the negative consequences of habit, and revitalized the social order.

00:40:14.900 And they prioritized attention as the highest god.

00:40:18.920 And so did the Mesopotamians.

00:40:20.660 So, they had a god, Marduk, who was their pinnacle god. 0.84

00:40:26.040 So, Jordan, they all beat me to the punch.

00:40:28.400 So, this is good to know.

00:40:30.640 And the question is, why has it taken so long for cultures around the world to see the wisdom in all of this?

00:40:39.380 Well, Alan, do you think it's partly because if you start to become mindful, there's also the possibility that you'll bring your shortcomings to mind.

00:40:52.020 Like, imagine that you do start a practice of attending.

00:40:56.000 As you attend, you're going to learn things about yourself that are interfering with your ability to openly attend, right?

00:41:03.660 And that can be challenging and off-putting because you can see, because you're wondering, well, if this is so obvious, why don't people notice it?

00:41:13.060 Why don't people just automatically do it?

00:41:14.800 And I do think that part of it is that when you start to pay careful attention, you find things that need to be fixed.

00:41:22.620 And that calls you.

00:41:24.040 Okay.

00:41:24.320 So, well, that's one possibility anyways.

00:41:27.720 Well, so let me speak to that because something that's very important to me is the idea that behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective or else he or she wouldn't do it.

00:41:40.160 And so if one were mindful, they'd be aware of why they're doing what they're doing.

00:41:45.980 And it turns out that every description we have of people, ourselves or others, has an equally potent but oppositely valence alternative.

00:41:56.180 So you want to diminish me because I'm so gullible, which I am.

00:42:01.360 From my perspective, I'm trusting.

00:42:04.200 You drive me crazy because you're so inconsistent.

00:42:07.280 From your perspective, you're flexible.

00:42:09.720 You can't stand me because I'm so impulsive.

00:42:13.180 That's because I value being spontaneous.

00:42:16.420 So it's interesting.

00:42:17.500 You'll like this as a clinician.

00:42:18.880 Years ago, we did this study where we gave people about 200 of these behavior descriptions.

00:42:24.240 And we said, circle those things about yourself that you want to change but you have trouble changing.

00:42:32.300 Okay.

00:42:32.520 So for me, it would be gullible, impulsive, for example.

00:42:38.120 Now you turn the sheet of paper over and in a mixed-up order are the positive versions of each of these.

00:42:46.980 And now we ask people, circle those things about yourself you really value.

00:42:51.580 Trusting and spontaneous.

00:42:55.600 And so as long as I value being trusting, I'm going to necessarily be gullible.

00:43:01.880 As long as I value being spontaneous, people on occasion are going to see me as impulsive.

00:43:07.960 And when you realize that behavior makes sense, then we don't want to change ourselves or other people in the same way.

00:43:16.940 You know, that you might be tired of me because I'm so whatever.

00:43:23.020 And then when you see the positive version of it, you welcome it.

00:43:26.540 And our relationship flourishes and we become less judgmental.

00:43:30.500 Because before you were talking about what do we do with people in industry who don't do well at whatever the task is.

00:43:40.920 And it occurred to me that everybody doesn't know something.

00:43:48.340 I wrote a little song about this that I sang for mine and taught my grandkids.

00:43:54.880 I'm not going to sing it because I can't carry a tune.

00:43:57.060 Although I should, Jordan, because that's what it's about.

00:44:00.440 I do a lot very, very well.

00:44:02.940 So why should I hesitate?

00:44:04.440 So here we go.

00:44:05.160 You ready?

00:44:05.960 I'm ready.

00:44:06.360 Everybody doesn't know something, but everyone knows something else.

00:44:11.540 Everyone can't do something, but everyone can do something else.

00:44:16.120 So my long-term goal is to take the horizontal where we comfortably sit on top, the vertical rather, and make it horizontal where everybody is valued.

00:44:28.120 And so the person who seems not to be able to do whatever it is will be able to do it differently somehow else.

00:44:36.740 You know, it goes back to you have your teaching and you ask your students how much is one-in-one, and one person in the class says one.

00:44:45.980 And what we do now is we belittle that person, we teach the students around to have no respect for that person, where in my world what we do is say, Johnny, Susie, whatever, how did you come up with that?

00:45:00.160 And then they tell us they added one cloud plus one cloud, or however they came up with it, and that we learn that much more.

00:45:08.160 You know, I was lecturing in South Africa many years ago, and I was staying at this fancy hotel, and I note I was down at the pool resting one afternoon, and I noticed that there was this enormous amount of real estate in the hotel, you know, part of the hotel, that nobody was using.

00:45:26.560 And the only person who knew that was the lowly cabana boy, you know, that, of course, if we assumed that he had something really to offer, we would think to get that information from him and then make more money, which seems to be the goal of most of these entrepreneurs or hotel owners or what have you.

00:45:48.520 So, you know, so we're brought up thinking there's a single way of doing things, there's a single answer to questions, and all of that fosters our mindlessness.

00:45:59.160 And, you know, sometimes when I'm lecturing, I'll look in the audience to see if there's some guy who seems really big, and I'll say, you know, ask him if he'll come to the stage.

00:46:09.080 So, let's assume I'm lucky that day, and he's 6'5".

00:46:12.520 Well, I'm 5'3", almost, all right? 0.81

00:46:16.040 And so we look ridiculous next to each other.

00:46:19.420 And then I ask him to put his hand up, and his hand is three inches bigger than mine. 0.69

00:46:24.000 And then I raise the question, should we do anything physically the same way?

00:46:28.340 Should we hold a tennis rack, a baseball bat, a golf club?

00:46:32.260 And the answer is clearly no.

00:46:34.520 And that the more similar you are to the person who wrote the rules, perhaps the better it is for you to follow.

00:46:42.340 But the more important part of that is the more different you are, the more important it is for you to find your own way of doing it.

00:46:51.580 And, you know, and that when people are taught conditionally, you know, you sort of hold the racket like this, or you could hold the racket like this.

00:47:01.060 They're more likely to come up with their own way than somebody who's told, this is the way.

00:47:07.640 Okay, so I want to sort what appear to be two competing claims out in my imagination.

00:47:14.160 So, on the one hand, as far as I can tell, you're making the case that all things considered, an attitude towards the world that's more attentive and mindful is better.

00:47:25.340 So that's a definite up.

00:47:26.620 I'll be there.

00:47:27.400 Okay, okay.

00:47:28.240 Yes.

00:47:28.480 But you added to that a different conception, which was that every negative trait, let's say, has a positive element, which, by the way, is something that seems to me to be an appropriate statement.

00:47:42.020 But there's somewhat of a contradiction there, as far as I can tell, because on the one hand, you're flattening out the moral hierarchy and saying, well, there's a multitude of ways of looking at things.

00:47:53.180 And just because you think something is bad, and just because you think something is bad, it isn't necessarily bad.

00:47:56.960 It could be good in another way.

00:47:58.880 But at the same time, there is a sort of ultimate top, which is, okay, yeah, yeah.

00:48:03.540 So how do you reconcile those?

00:48:05.260 That's right.

00:48:06.260 I don't.

00:48:06.980 I don't.

00:48:07.480 I think that, you know, that in today's world, we all aspire to certain things.

00:48:14.200 And given the values that are currently operative, to meet those values, to live the kind of life that most people seem to want, which is not answering the question about whether they'd be better off living a very different kind of life, mindfulness sets the stage for it.

00:48:32.620 And, you know, that if it's a contradiction, so be it, you know, that I think that we can live with contradictions until we accumulate enough wisdom to resolve them.

00:48:45.440 But at this point, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

00:48:48.380 Nothing is good or bad, except it's better to be mindful.

00:48:53.620 Well, so, but, you know, I think one of the things that I'd like to talk about, if you're willing, is some of the health work in the mindful body.

00:49:04.520 Because here, one of the values that we seem to have is to be healthy, to live a long, happy, healthy life.

00:49:14.320 And one could argue that also, that if one is going to live multiple lives, which some people believe in a reincarnation and whatever, maybe that goal is misplaced.

00:49:24.660 But if we take that goal as real, a great deal of the information we've been given is simply wrong.

00:49:31.660 And I go back to the horse that ate the hot dog.

00:49:35.300 And what people need to realize is that studies, research can only give us probabilities.

00:49:42.700 You do a study, and the study shows you that if you were to do it again the exact same way, which we could never do, we're likely to get the same findings.

00:49:53.960 These probabilities are then taught to us as absolutes.

00:49:58.320 Horses don't eat meat, one and one is two, and so on.

00:50:01.680 Now, when you're given a diagnosis and you're told, research shows that you have six months to live or whatever it is, I mean, that's insane.

00:50:13.340 You know, nobody can know that.

00:50:15.340 And when you realize that everything we're taught are maybes, it allows us to go forward and find new ways of doing things, new ways of meeting our needs, and so on.

00:50:28.040 So I talk a lot in the mindful body about mind-body unity.

00:50:32.720 And tell me what you think of this.

00:50:34.140 I say, mind-body, these are just words.

00:50:37.340 Imagine, we could have had mind-body and elbows.

00:50:40.400 You know, that would lead us to a different conception of people.

00:50:43.580 And right now, people think, you know, that mind and body being separate, and they know, well, they're sort of connected.

00:50:50.660 They don't know how.

00:50:51.740 That the problem is, for people who separate mind and body, is how do you get from this fuzzy thing called a thought to something material called the body?

00:51:04.400 So I said, you know, I don't want to pay attention to any of that.

00:51:08.100 It's all interesting philosophy, but it's not useful.

00:51:12.340 Say, put the mind and body back together.

00:51:15.040 Then wherever you're putting the mind, you're necessarily putting the body.

00:51:19.340 And we've done so many studies on this.

00:51:22.300 The first one you might know about, because I reported it earlier on in work, is the counterclockwise study.

00:51:28.840 Do you know this, Jordan?

00:51:29.740 We retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier and had old men live there as if they were their younger selves. 0.97

00:51:36.940 So they're speaking about the past in the present tense.

00:51:40.580 Everything is designed to make them think that now was 20 years earlier.

00:51:46.200 As a result of this, without medical intervention, in a period of time as short as a week, I think it was only five days, actually, their vision improved, their hearing improved, their memory improved, their strength improved, and they look significantly younger.

00:52:04.260 Just by putting the mind in a different place.

00:52:07.880 So you want me to tell you about a couple of the newer ones?

00:52:10.300 Yeah, please do.

00:52:11.480 Please do.

00:52:11.960 And then I'll respond.

00:52:14.420 Okay.

00:52:15.080 So I'll go in some chronological order.

00:52:17.600 The next one we did was a study with chambermaids. 0.99

00:52:21.360 And we asked the chambermaids, how much exercise do you get?

00:52:24.780 They thought exercise is what you do after work, because that's what the surgeon general leads people to believe, and they're just too tired.

00:52:31.440 So they don't think they get any exercise.

00:52:33.560 So all we did was take half of them and teach them that their work was exercise.

00:52:38.240 Making a bed is like working on this machine at the gym and so on.

00:52:41.620 So I think we have two groups.

00:52:42.600 One who sees their work as exercise, the other who doesn't realize their work is exercise.

00:52:47.960 Just changing that mindset.

00:52:51.080 Eating the same, working the same way.

00:52:53.760 They're not working harder.

00:52:54.940 They're not eating less.

00:52:56.100 They're not eating more.

00:52:57.620 Just changing their mind to now their work is exercise.

00:53:01.260 They lost weight.

00:53:02.240 There was a change in waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure came down.

00:53:09.980 Okay.

00:53:10.420 So now let's go fast forward.

00:53:11.920 Let me just give you one of the newest studies.

00:53:14.740 So we inflict a wound.

00:53:16.180 Well, you know that it would be wonderful if I could do something dramatic and really hurt people.

00:53:22.760 I have no desire to do that.

00:53:24.460 And even if I did, luckily, the review board is not going to let me.

00:53:28.620 So we inflict a minor wound.

00:53:30.920 Now we have people sitting.

00:53:33.040 It's a little more complicated than I'm saying, but just so it becomes clear.

00:53:36.780 They're sitting in front of a clock.

00:53:39.600 For a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time.

00:53:44.620 For a third of the people, the clock is going half as fast as real time.

00:53:49.740 For a third of the people, the clock is real time.

00:53:53.620 And the question is, how long does it take the wound to heal?

00:53:57.900 Well, it turns out the wound heals based on clock time, perceived time.

00:54:02.980 And we have studies with diabetics.

00:54:07.500 You know, the same thing.

00:54:08.600 We find that insulin increases or decreases based on perceived time rather than real time.

00:54:15.120 We have people in a sleep lab.

00:54:17.200 They wake up.

00:54:17.880 They think they got two hours more sleep than they got, two hours fewer, or the amount that they got.

00:54:22.920 Biological and cognitive functioning seems to follow perceived sleep.

00:54:27.520 And all of this, this might be a fun story for you.

00:54:30.600 You know, somebody had asked me, where did this come from?

00:54:34.000 I mean, how did I get into this?

00:54:36.220 And I was married when I was very young.

00:54:39.940 And I went to Paris on my honeymoon.

00:54:43.000 And it was very important that I was very sophisticated because now I was a married woman, even though I was a baby.

00:54:49.000 And I ordered mixed grill in this restaurant we were eating in.

00:54:54.300 And on the plate was pancreas.

00:54:57.360 And I said to my then husband, which one is the pancreas?

00:55:00.660 This is that one.

00:55:01.940 Okay, so now I don't know if I can do it, but I feel like now I'm so sophisticated, I have to be able to eat the pancreas.

00:55:09.640 I eat everything on the plate with gusto.

00:55:13.100 Now the moment of truth.

00:55:15.060 Can I eat it?

00:55:16.100 Well, I start eating it and I'm literally getting sick.

00:55:20.100 I can't swallow it.

00:55:21.860 And my then husband starts laughing.

00:55:26.140 And I say, what's so funny?

00:55:27.500 He said, that's chicken.

00:55:28.620 You ate the pancreas 20 minutes ago.

00:55:31.620 Okay, so.

00:55:32.300 Yeah, yeah.

00:55:32.940 I said, wow, what's going on here?

00:55:34.940 You know, it's like you're walking down the street and a leaf blows in your face and you get all startled.

00:55:40.000 Until you realize it's just a leaf.

00:55:43.420 You know, that our thoughts have enormous control over our health.

00:55:49.860 And we need to pay more attention to that.

00:55:53.660 You know, my mother had breast cancer.

00:55:56.480 Last story.

00:55:57.400 My mother had breast cancer that had metastasized to have pancreas. 0.99

00:56:01.680 And that's the end game, right?

00:56:03.820 Pancreatic cancer.

00:56:05.340 And then magically it was just gone.

00:56:08.160 And the medical world couldn't explain it then and they still can't explain it now.

00:56:12.700 And this mind-body unity idea does explain it.

00:56:15.800 And I think spontaneous remissions are much greater in frequency than people realize.

00:56:22.180 You know, you have people who never get to the medical world in the first place, who have tumors that they don't know they have.

00:56:27.680 Or even you and I.

00:56:29.960 Tumors that are there that are magically gone.

00:56:34.220 You know, we've all heard stories of people who are told they only have a year to live and they're telling us a story 10, 15 years later.

00:56:41.060 You know, and when we believe again that we can beat whatever this thing is, we organize ourselves differently.

00:56:52.340 And even in a very mundane way, you know, if I think that I'm going to live, I start living.

00:56:58.260 I start doing things.

00:57:00.520 The, you know, the neurons are firing.

00:57:02.400 Where if I believe my demise is only moments away, I shut down, you know, and help in some sense the end of my life.

00:57:14.060 Okay, so I've got a variety of comments about what you just said.

00:57:18.920 My wife was diagnosed with cancer.

00:57:22.360 First of all, in principle, a trivial form.

00:57:25.240 And then that was a misdiagnosis.

00:57:28.360 And then she was diagnosed with a cancer that only 200 people in the world have been reported to have that killed every single one of them in 10 months.

00:57:36.800 And she told me about six months into the treatment that she would be better on our wedding anniversary, which was August 19th.

00:57:46.800 This was three months ahead.

00:57:49.220 She got better on our wedding anniversary.

00:57:52.020 And it's been five years.

00:57:53.600 Yes, it's so, so, so I'm telling you that.

00:57:57.100 So you're a believer.

00:57:58.180 Well, I'm telling you that because I've seen strange things happen.

00:58:02.020 Now, I've also seen in my clients, for example, you see this with people who are retiring. 0.99

00:58:07.060 And retiring is generally a very stupid plan for people. 0.99

00:58:11.080 Mixed blessing, yeah. 1.00

00:58:11.840 Well, they have a, they have a very narrowed image of what retirement means.

00:58:16.240 So they imagine themselves, you know, sirping, slip, sipping margaritas on a beach in the Caribbean, which is a real good plan for the first night.

00:58:23.820 But a really long, really bad.

00:58:26.160 Well, right. 0.99

00:58:26.640 You just turn into like a fat, sunburned alcoholic in no time flat.

00:58:30.960 And like, I've seen people around 55 start to decide that they're old.

00:58:37.620 You know, they've sort of decided that they've had the adventure of their life and that they're done.

00:58:41.660 And that makes, that does facilitate their aging very rapidly.

00:58:46.720 Now, but, by the same token, this is, and this is where all this is going, you know, I understand that the structure of reality is malleable in relationship to interpretation and to a degree that is unspecifiable, right?

00:59:04.060 However, I'm curious about your notion of where the limits to that are.

00:59:08.520 I mean, you took these elderly people and you put them in a situation where they were acting out the proposition they were 20 years younger and they were getting all sorts of feedback from their environment that that was valid.

00:59:19.380 But the painful truth of the matter does seem to be that we all age and that we all die.

00:59:26.360 And so, you know, there are, there are intrinsic limits to, so, so tell me how you, what you make of that.

00:59:32.180 Yeah.

00:59:32.920 Yeah.

00:59:33.440 I don't know what the limit is.

00:59:35.040 I think that it's to our, um, uh, advantage as individuals and as a culture, uh, to assume that we can exceed wherever we are.

00:59:46.760 You know, I think that, um, people, what people used to die, you probably know just when, when they were 20 years old and then people were dying mostly at 40 years old.

00:59:56.980 And, uh, this, you'll find this funny.

00:59:59.860 Do you know who Willard Scott was?

01:00:01.440 I've never said this publicly.

01:00:02.740 Anyway, Willard Scott was the, um, a weatherman for, um, a news program.

01:00:09.800 And what Willard Scott would do is every day, every morning, he'd say, and happy birthday, Rosie from Michigan, who just turned a hundred.

01:00:19.200 And happy birthday, Peter, who, uh, just turned a hundred.

01:00:23.120 And so the idea of turning a hundred became, to my mind, for many people, much more likely.

01:00:31.880 And I think that oddly, you know, despite all the work I've done in the, uh, aging area, all the medical work, I think he had a very significant role in extending our lifespan.

01:00:43.840 You know, again, if you think you're going to live, um, a long life, you organize yourself differently.

01:00:50.580 Um, and it's that organization, those thoughts of how to continue growing, uh, no, it's very funny.

01:00:59.100 The other day I was, uh, helping this person, um, this old woman with something.

01:01:05.560 And my spouse said to me, you know, she's probably a lot younger than you are, which I didn't even realize.

01:01:11.720 So, um, I just don't have a sense of, I don't use age as a measure of do it, don't do it.

01:01:18.480 Um, and I think that that's, that's healthy.

01:01:21.640 I think that you, you asked about limits.

01:01:24.960 Um, interestingly, years ago, I think it might've even been when you were at Harvard.

01:01:29.860 Um, I was on the division of aging at, uh, the medical school and Jack Rowe was, uh, the chair of the committee.

01:01:38.460 And I called Jack one day, he was my doctor of choice at the moment.

01:01:42.660 And I said, Jack, how long does it take for a broken finger to heal?

01:01:47.100 And he says, I don't know, let's say a week.

01:01:49.420 I said, what would you say if I said I could heal it psychologically in five days?

01:01:55.540 He said, okay.

01:01:56.820 I said, what about four days?

01:01:58.380 Um, yeah, okay.

01:02:00.420 What about three days?

01:02:01.640 No.

01:02:02.300 Okay.

01:02:02.860 What about three days and 23 hours?

01:02:06.560 You know, where is, where is the breaking point?

01:02:09.440 And so that's the way things progress is in these small steps.

01:02:14.640 Um, um, but if you follow that logic, you know, if you know that if you can do it in three days and 23 hours, so why not three days and 22 hours?

01:02:25.140 And why not, you know, and then you slowly get yourself to the point where you can do it in three days.

01:02:30.520 And if you can do it in three days, why not two days and 23 and a half hours and so on.

01:02:36.600 And I don't know what the limit is.

01:02:38.640 I just think we're so far from what these limits to what we can do in, in any parts of our lives, not just our health.

01:02:47.300 Um, that we, we can far exceed whatever goals we set for ourselves.

01:02:53.380 I've been writing about, there's, there's a notion that's deeply embedded in, in the Genesis text that human suffering is a consequence of sin and not built into the structure of the universe, right?

01:03:06.300 And it's, um, it's a strange doctrine in many ways, because as I pointed out earlier, the normal course of human events is that everybody ages and dies.

01:03:16.560 And so the notion that suffering and limitation is built in seems self-evident.

01:03:21.300 But then there's another part of me that thinks, you know, we all waste an awful lot of our own time, um, in futile pursuits and self-defeating pursuits.

01:03:31.000 And we impose limitations on ourself that are arbitrary and often lazy.

01:03:35.320 And we hurt ourselves by doing that.

01:03:37.580 And then collectively we deceive each other and we lie and we don't cooperate well together and we manipulate.

01:03:44.460 And that interferes with our ability to apprehend things properly and to structure our existence properly.

01:03:50.900 And, you know, the wildly optimistic side of me thinks, and I do think there's reason for believing this, that if we got our act together completely, insofar as that's possible, and that might partly be by paying more attention, that there aren't any intrinsic limits that would necessarily stop us.

01:04:09.100 We'd still have to figure out, for example, like, it's an open question to me, and I'm kind of curious about your attitude towards this.

01:04:16.400 You know, if you, if you could choose how long you would live, do you have any idea how long you would choose?

01:04:25.680 I mean, an indefinite existence, you know, of hundreds of thousands of years, that seems, it seems to me to be, like, incomprehensibly dramatic and awesome.

01:04:39.100 Right?

01:04:39.480 I mean, it's a long time.

01:04:41.120 Yeah.

01:04:41.700 But 80 years seems kind of short.

01:04:44.680 So.

01:04:47.160 I think that, you know, it depends.

01:04:51.400 What people should strive for, rather than adding more years to their life, they should be adding more life to their years.

01:04:58.820 And by doing that, then you'll want to extend.

01:05:03.700 You know, if today is really exciting, you look forward to tomorrow.

01:05:07.300 If you're miserably depressed today, you're scared about tomorrow.

01:05:11.860 And so that if we were able to create a world where people were more mindful, where people had more respect for each other by noticing people's behavior make sense or else they wouldn't do it, that I think that there'd be no reason to fear.

01:05:30.260 You know, you can't imagine what life is going, I can't even imagine what life is going to be like in 50 years.

01:05:38.560 And I'm assuming, which is separate from whether I'm going to be alive or not, most people would say no.

01:05:44.640 But, you know, who knows?

01:05:45.640 You know, AI is changing things.

01:05:50.740 The iPhone changed things.

01:05:54.440 The railroad changed things.

01:05:57.220 And all of these.

01:05:58.380 So we don't know what the big change is going to be.

01:06:02.360 It could be, which planet was it?

01:06:04.600 Was it Venus where they just found ice making space travel to wherever it was seemingly more possible?

01:06:14.740 I don't know.

01:06:16.220 I don't claim to have any special knowledge about what the deep future holds.

01:06:21.980 So I wouldn't know how to think about it.

01:06:24.620 But I do know how to think about it.

01:06:27.020 You think that if you concentrated on maximizing the quality of your life, the issue of how long that should extend would more or less solve itself as a consequence of that proper orientation.

01:06:39.440 Yeah, that seems reasonable.

01:06:41.900 I think so.

01:06:42.240 Alan, can I change the topic a little bit?

01:06:46.720 When we were discussing the possibility of this podcast, one of the things we had talked about a little bit is the state of the university.

01:06:58.680 And I do want to approach that with you, too.

01:07:01.540 When I worked with you, if you don't mind, when I worked with you in the 1990s, I was at Harvard between 92 and 98.

01:07:10.240 And I really thought it was a great privilege to be there.

01:07:14.500 I really enjoyed my time.

01:07:15.920 In terms of attitude, there was something interesting that happened then, too, that you might find worthy of contemplation, given your attitude towards attitude.

01:07:26.840 You know that the junior professors at Harvard were always destined to leave in 99.9% of the cases.

01:07:34.880 And when I first came there, I observed that some of the junior faculty who were at the outer limits of their brief tenure there were unhappy that they weren't likely to be considered for permanent status and that they'd have to move on.

01:07:52.860 And I thought, well, I don't want to be in that position in six years.

01:07:57.820 I think I'll go there and think, if the turnover of junior staff wasn't high, I wouldn't have got this job to begin with.

01:08:06.480 And that I'm pretty damn lucky to go to Harvard and meet all these people and be paid for it, because most people who go to Harvard have to pay to go.

01:08:14.960 And I got paid for going, so that was a good deal.

01:08:17.300 And that I should be happy with the outcome, regardless of what it was, and then move on to wherever I was going.

01:08:24.400 And that was an attitudinal shift that was very helpful to me and made the transition out of there much smoother than it might have been, even though it was accompanied by a certain amount of grief.

01:08:35.680 Anyways, when I was there, I also felt that it was a very admirable institution and that I was there in a kind of golden age.

01:08:43.340 I thought the university had prioritized the research requirements of the senior faculty as their number one goal.

01:08:51.460 And then they treated undergraduates exceptionally well.

01:08:55.240 And then they were pretty good to junior faculty and graduate students, kind of in that order.

01:08:59.640 And the administrative apparatus was essentially there to facilitate all of that.

01:09:05.460 So it was structured in a lovely way.

01:09:07.580 And I also found that my colleagues, junior and senior alike, were fundamentally focused on their intellectual interests and their research.

01:09:15.980 And they did what was necessary to keep things moving forward on the administrative front effectively.

01:09:23.020 But that was not anyone's primary concern.

01:09:26.000 So I was thrilled to be there.

01:09:28.400 I can't say that the University of Toronto operated with that degree of professionalism, let's say, and commitment to excellence.

01:09:36.740 And I also saw a decline in the quality of the university enterprise that was quite precipitous over about a 20-year period.

01:09:44.400 And so I'm wondering, well, I'm wondering your reactions to that.

01:09:48.120 And I'm not happy with what's happened in the university community in general.

01:09:53.980 What's your take on the educational front?

01:09:58.240 Yeah.

01:09:58.400 Well, the first thing is that we have to be aware that anything I say may just be the difference of being, you know, 30 years old versus as old as I am, you know, rather than a change in the university itself.

01:10:13.900 My change rather than the university's change.

01:10:16.280 The idea that most people are not going to get tenure was the rule.

01:10:23.800 I was actually, was I tenured when you were there?

01:10:26.680 Yes, you were.

01:10:27.380 You and Jill Hooney.

01:10:28.640 I was the first.

01:10:29.600 No, no, no.

01:10:30.300 Then it's much later.

01:10:31.660 Because I was the first tenured woman in the psychology department.

01:10:35.920 And there were years where there was, you know, nobody else tenured.

01:10:39.520 Right, right, right.

01:10:40.280 That was by far the norm.

01:10:41.540 And I, yeah, but I remember, you know, I was hot stuff then.

01:10:46.800 I'm allowed to say it because it's the past, right?

01:10:49.480 You know, that, and I suffered, you know, with am I going to get tenure?

01:10:54.680 Am I not going to get tenure?

01:10:55.960 I was the hottest thing out there.

01:10:57.320 I shouldn't have had to suffer.

01:10:58.880 And I said to myself, you know, having gone through this, nobody should have to go through this.

01:11:04.420 And it turned out to be positive.

01:11:06.460 And that was wonderful.

01:11:07.420 Well, the university changed over time.

01:11:10.280 So now, if you were to come as a junior person, you're very likely to get tenure.

01:11:16.840 It's now just like all the other universities in the world.

01:11:20.420 So that's a good thing.

01:11:23.580 As far as, and the students are still spectacular.

01:11:29.000 And my colleagues are doing very interesting work.

01:11:32.380 And the university supports all of that.

01:11:34.440 So those things haven't changed.

01:11:36.320 My feeling is that there are more rules and regulations than there were in the past, which interferes at time with certain intellectual activities.

01:11:50.220 You know, if I wanted to, and this has happened over and over again, I want to do research.

01:11:56.160 The research I'm doing is not like in the medical school where you can take one person's head and put it on another person and then see if it works.

01:12:04.120 You know, most of the things we're asking people to do are innocuous.

01:12:08.740 And it takes forever.

01:12:10.620 So we have the idea.

01:12:12.340 Then it takes a good, over a year to get approval to do it.

01:12:18.680 And then we actually do it.

01:12:21.720 It's just, it's too many steps.

01:12:24.520 And so I find, for whatever reason, I don't know what the reason is, actually, but that when I was younger, it was easier to get these things done.

01:12:33.480 And not because I'm an older person now.

01:12:36.600 I mean, I think in this way I'm wiser.

01:12:39.360 You know, but things have just become more complicated.

01:12:42.440 You know, I used to have somebody from Europe or in the States or even somebody in Boston right next door want to volunteer to be in my lab.

01:12:55.720 Well, it turns out, and that was great because, you know, I have so many ideas and so many things I want to do.

01:13:01.760 I need an army of people to help me do it.

01:13:05.240 It turns out you can't take volunteers unless they're Harvard students.

01:13:10.200 Why can't you take volunteers?

01:13:11.720 Well, because unions and whatever has changed so that in one person's lab, somebody found out that they weren't getting paid.

01:13:22.100 They were volunteering, and they were doing the exact same thing as somebody else volunteering.

01:13:27.060 Excuse me, as somebody else.

01:13:29.140 So same job, one is paid, one isn't.

01:13:31.880 That caused a lot of difficulty with the result that I can't take these people.

01:13:37.640 You know, it's things like that that make it hard.

01:13:41.720 At any rate.

01:13:43.800 But it's still a wonderful place to be.

01:13:47.300 You've seen somewhat of a proliferation of bureaucratic impediments.

01:13:51.160 Well, it's hard on the research side because if you're an entrepreneurial and creative person, which is what you need to be if you're going to generate a lot of research ideas, there's a certain quickness of mind and approach and striking while the iron is hot that goes along with that, right?

01:14:08.240 Because you have to follow that thread of interest.

01:14:10.100 And for me, for me to have to delay a study for a year means that by the time the study is possible, I don't want to do it.

01:14:18.620 You're not even interested.

01:14:18.840 Well, not in the least.

01:14:19.800 It's like, what, I haven't learned anything in the intervening year?

01:14:23.260 Right. 0.99

01:14:23.520 You know, what kind of useless bastard would I be in that situation? 1.00

01:14:27.360 Yeah. 1.00

01:14:28.180 So let me tell you something.

01:14:29.540 So I think that this was, I don't remember the year, but it was a long time ago.

01:14:34.540 So it might have even been before things were bureaucratic.

01:14:37.480 You still had people on these review committees who I disagree with vehemently.

01:14:43.480 So I want to do this study.

01:14:45.060 I actually talk about this in The Mindful Body, which we ended up doing.

01:14:49.640 But the study is we want to see the difference between seeing your cancer as in remission versus seeing it as cured.

01:15:00.180 All right.

01:15:00.500 Now, when the cancer is not there, it's, you know, this happened to a friend of mine who had a very bad case of cancer.

01:15:07.980 One day she comes back from Mass General and she said, I said, how are you, Eva?

01:15:12.180 She said, great, my cancer is in remission.

01:15:14.740 And at that moment, the light bulb went off.

01:15:16.820 Why is it if I had the exact same test, they'd tell me I don't have cancer and she has cancer in remission.

01:15:25.460 And, you know, once a person is told that cancer is in remission, the implication, it may still be there and that you're stressed.

01:15:34.580 And that stress, I think stress, by the way, is the major killer over and above genetics, over and above nutrition.

01:15:42.240 And so a woman with the silly five-year rule where there's no data for it, you know, the cancer is gone. 1.00

01:15:49.120 They're not going to declare her cancer-free in any permanent sense until five years have passed.

01:15:54.960 Five years of stress is awful.

01:15:56.620 And what people need to understand is that if you're in remission, and I'll tell you about the study in a moment, but if you're in remission, you're worried about the cancer.

01:16:07.280 If you're cured, you go about living.

01:16:09.160 And if cancer comes back, in some ways, it'll be the same cancer.

01:16:16.140 That's why we call it cancer.

01:16:17.720 But in just as many ways, it's brand new.

01:16:20.960 And so there's reason to see it as something different.

01:16:25.300 It never comes back exactly the same.

01:16:27.840 And so when you have a cold, and then the cold is gone, you don't see yourself as in remission.

01:16:34.680 You know, and when you get another cold, you don't see it as the same cold as before.

01:16:38.340 It's a brand new cold, even though they both bear similarities, which is why we call them both colds.

01:16:44.240 And so each time you beat a cold, you become in some sense less and less frightened of getting a cold.

01:16:50.180 I can beat this.

01:16:51.740 I've beaten it many times in the past, which is not the case oftentimes with cancer.

01:16:57.580 So what we did, and here's where the review board comes into play.

01:17:01.000 The first attempt at this was to ask people, women, on a cancer awareness walk about whether they see their cancer as in remission or cured.

01:17:14.280 And then we'd check back a while later, six months later, to see how their health has progressed.

01:17:20.920 The review board wouldn't let us do this because asking somebody about their cancer they thought was stressful.

01:17:28.940 These are women on a breast cancer awareness walk.

01:17:33.380 I mean, you know, and so it required lots of fighting with them.

01:17:37.820 The best one, years and years ago, this student comes in, she's gay, and she believes, and I think it's a very reasonable assumption, 0.88

01:17:49.220 that if a child is brought up by two women, since mothers are so important to the upbringing of kids, 1.00

01:17:55.420 this child is going to be better off.

01:17:57.460 And that would have been worth noting.

01:17:59.860 So what she wanted to do was to go into gay bars, and if there were women in gay bars, she wanted to ask them if they had children. 1.00

01:18:08.840 And if they had children, she wanted to ask them to be in the study.

01:18:13.780 And the review board said asking, remember, in a gay bar, asking people if they're gay is insulting. 0.95

01:18:22.640 You know, well, when I heard this, I went crazy, homophobic, whatever.

01:18:29.060 Now, the point, the larger point, I guess, is that the people who are on these boards are ordinary people with ordinary biases.

01:18:38.100 Things change over time.

01:18:39.440 I couldn't imagine that that study wouldn't be allowed to be run immediately now, for better or worse.

01:18:48.200 And, you know, so for me, these review boards, while I appreciate their need, maybe,

01:18:55.280 it's always been the bane of my existence, because if they do a cost-benefit analysis, you know, should we be able to run the study?

01:19:06.100 Well, let's see what the aggravation and potential harm it's going to do to people and what we're going to do.

01:19:10.460 For my work, they almost never think it's going to work, which is why I want to do the study in the first place.

01:19:17.420 And so if you don't, you know, if you're on the board and you're going to do a cost-benefit analysis,

01:19:21.920 and you don't believe it's going to work, even if I just ask you to fill out three questions, the costs exceed the benefits.

01:19:29.780 So it's always been hard for me.

01:19:31.740 And, you know, I know that the original nursing home study that we did, where we gave people a plant to take care of,

01:19:38.960 encouraged them to make decisions for themselves, and they lived longer.

01:19:43.860 This was a very important study, not just from the mind-body-unity idea, but for medicine in general.

01:19:51.340 And I don't think they'd let me do it now.

01:19:55.460 And so I think that's a shame.

01:19:58.360 Well, we don't exactly understand the invisible preconditions for the scientific enterprise, right?

01:20:06.160 I mean, we tend to think of science as a robust enterprise and, in some ways, a self-evident enterprise. 0.92

01:20:12.720 And that's stupid because it's only about 450 years old. 0.95

01:20:17.280 And it only emerged once, as far as we know, in human history. 0.99

01:20:21.820 And God only knows why we ever allowed it.

01:20:25.040 I mean, a lot of the great early scientists were independently wealthy, or they had a patron, like an artist.

01:20:33.120 And they were left the hell alone, thinking of people like Galtin or Darwin.

01:20:37.160 I would love that.

01:20:38.460 Right, right.

01:20:39.040 If you know anybody, I'm available.

01:20:42.960 Yeah, well, you know, it's really what scientists should be looking for, I would say, instead of government funding.

01:20:48.920 Because along with that government funding comes exactly the sort of problems that we're discussing right now, which is, well, you know, is this going to be of broad public benefit?

01:20:59.440 And the answer is, well, if I knew that, I would turn it into a company in a second, right?

01:21:06.080 If you knew for certain that your new discovery was going to be of broad, significant economic benefit, you'd raise money and you'd have entrepreneurs on board in two seconds.

01:21:16.620 And so that problem would take care of itself.

01:21:19.100 And as you pointed out, too, is that the probability that a given study will work is inversely proportionate to its daringness and its creative nature.

01:21:31.280 And so those are exactly the studies that are going to be scuttled by anything, even approximating a cost-benefit analysis, which no one on an ethics committee ever does anyways, because they don't have the technological qualifications for doing so.

01:21:43.800 No, I think they do far more harm than good.

01:21:46.620 You know, people point to the-

01:21:47.980 No, we're on the same page.

01:21:48.880 Well, look, the overall evidence for malfeasance on the scientific side of things in relationship to the treatment of research participants is very, very sparse.

01:22:01.240 There are some egregious counter-examples, right?

01:22:05.100 Experimentations in the concentration camps in Germany, experimentations by the Chinese, the Tuskegee experiment.

01:22:14.040 Like, you can point to exceptions, but all things considered, well, most scientists who run a research lab would just assume, for example, that their participants might come back again, or that, you know, bad word doesn't get out about exactly what's going on in the lab.

01:22:28.520 And so, and most scientists who are genuine scientists also have a very high regard for ethical conduct and the truth, because if you don't, you never discover anything, right?

01:22:38.200 I mean, you cannot be a crooked scientist and discover something.

01:22:42.360 It's just not possible.

01:22:43.840 So, I also wanted to point out, you may know this already, but you know that involuntary exposure to stress directly compromises immune function, right?

01:22:55.320 Because what happens is you produce cortisol, and that heightens immediate responsivity, but it compromises any long-term adaptation.

01:23:03.720 And so, the idea basically is, is if a tiger is chasing you around a tree, you can afford to suppress your immune system temporarily, because you want to devote all the resources to getting the hell away from the tiger.

01:23:15.360 Getting away, yeah.

01:23:15.940 But if you are stressed, and so it does beg the question that you were pointing out with regards, say, to the attitude of remission versus cure.

01:23:23.040 However, if you are stressed, even at a low level, but that's chronic, like it might be, by noting that you're now at heightened risk and you're only in remission, that stress might compromise your immune system enough so that the probability of cancer recurrence is, you know, is higher.

01:23:41.100 Sure, it's certainly possible.

01:23:42.680 I mean, the physiological pathways for that being a reality are definitely there.

01:23:47.960 I wanted to ask you about a dark side of reassessment of illness, though.

01:23:54.720 Look, I was in an elevator once in a hospital.

01:23:58.120 This is when I was doing clinical work.

01:24:00.160 And a patient got on, and she was muttering to herself.

01:24:03.960 And she was muttering.

01:24:05.060 She was very distressed.

01:24:06.100 She was completely white, ghostly looking, like sweating, unbelievably stressed.

01:24:11.080 And she let the people in the elevator know that she was suffering from cancer and that she was extremely guilty.

01:24:17.960 Because she believed that it was an inadequacy in her attitude that had led her to contract this disease and to be unable to deal with it.

01:24:26.720 And so, one of the things that I have wrestled with, because I do understand the utility of maintaining, let's say, a positive attitude in relationship to illness and a can-do attitude, let's say.

01:24:37.920 But by the same token, you know, it's very hard on ill people when they have to cope with the fact that they're ill and suffering.

01:24:46.540 Okay.

01:24:46.760 Okay, so what do you make of that?

01:24:48.740 Okay, so I gave, yeah, so I gave a, if I'm understanding you correctly, I gave a talk many years ago to 5,000 women with breast cancer.

01:24:58.520 And at the end, I don't remember, it was, you know, at the end of the talk, this man said that, aren't I blaming the victim?

01:25:09.420 Right, exactly.

01:25:10.160 Because I'm telling you that.

01:25:11.760 And I said to him, no, I'm not blaming the victim.

01:25:16.040 The culture teaches us, you know, that we don't have any control over these chronic illnesses.

01:25:21.540 And remind me, I want to talk to you about the attention to variability, where we've looked, we have a psychological treatment for big illnesses.

01:25:29.640 And as long as the culture teaches us that we have no control, how can you blame anybody for presuming they have no control?

01:25:37.080 And then he said, and besides that, you're wrong, because my wife fought the cancer at every turn, and she still died.

01:25:44.780 And then I said to him, well, let me ask you something.

01:25:48.220 If a little kid, let's say a two-year-old, is tugging on your pants, do you see yourself as fighting that little kid?

01:25:56.560 So the language of fighting the cancer already says it's this gigantic beast, very strong, which says also that in your own mind, you're not very likely to win, to beat it.

01:26:09.260 And so I think that as long as the culture teaches us, and it's done so less so now over time, because there are so many people who managed to beat cancer.

01:26:22.460 But when I was young, all you knew, cancer was a killer.

01:26:26.460 And as long as you believe cancer was a killer, it was going to be very hard not to succumb to it.

01:26:32.660 And I think that we need to celebrate, you know, the people who beat it.

01:26:37.340 And as with that living to 100 example, you know, these small numbers, but they can loom large if we have them vivid and come to people's minds.

01:26:48.060 When my mother was in the hospital, this woman, a very nice woman who she didn't know, walked in because she knew my mother had pancreatic cancer. 0.99

01:26:58.040 And, you know, obviously was told she didn't have very long to live.

01:27:01.540 And she said, Sylvia, my mother's name.

01:27:03.460 And they told me, 20 years ago, I only have six months to live.

01:27:09.420 I went and I spent all my money.

01:27:12.020 I'm still alive, but now I'm poor, you know.

01:27:15.320 And everybody knows of examples like this.

01:27:18.820 They don't, they should never say anything like that because they can't know.

01:27:22.320 And so as long as you can't know, then for as long as you're alive, you should be living.

01:27:28.920 You know, I was going to write a book many years ago entitled Life Before Death because sadly for all too many people, their lives, they're sealed in unlived lives.

01:27:40.360 And that's what all my work is designed to do is to help, you know, break that seal.

01:27:45.380 Well, it's a, when you're suffering, I've also been looking at the book of Job, you know, and Job is a book that exemplifies human suffering.

01:27:55.160 And one of the morals in the story-

01:27:58.080 Is that Steve Job?

01:27:59.220 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:28:01.260 No, it's the older Job from, you know, from way back when.

01:28:04.260 Yeah, and so everything possibly bad that could happen to someone virtually happens to him.

01:28:09.180 And one of the morals that's embedded in the story is that regardless of that, and also regardless of the relative unfairness or perceived unfairness of the fate,

01:28:21.660 your best and most appropriate attitude psychologically is to keep faith and hope alive.

01:28:29.140 And that story in particular is very dramatic in that regard because the reason that Job suffers is because God himself has a bet with Satan that Satan can torture Job enough to make him lose faith.

01:28:42.540 You know, and that's pretty rough, right?

01:28:43.860 If you're going to have forces arrayed against you, God and Satan is a pretty rough battle.

01:28:49.880 And what happens in the story of Job is that he determines to abide by his faith and hope regardless of circumstances.

01:28:58.520 And so maybe you can say to people who are suffering, say, from terminal cancer diagnosis, that obviously a large degree of compassion on the part of themselves and observers is in order,

01:29:12.000 but that they will make the best of a terrible situation by reorganizing their attentional structures so that the maximum amount of faith and hope can be present at every moment.

01:29:24.000 And that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll win, so to speak, in the final analysis, but it might mean that the course of the cancer is going to be less like hell than it could have been.

01:29:35.500 And that's also not nothing.

01:29:38.480 No, that's terrific.

01:29:39.960 You know, I think I speak to many people who are given these dread diagnoses and they're stressed, they're angry.

01:29:47.120 And I simply ask them, not in an aggressive way, let's assume for a moment that that's correct.

01:29:55.640 Is this the way you want to live the last years you have, the last days or a month?

01:30:00.840 And when you realize that, no.

01:30:02.640 I mean, you know, first thing I want to do is go have a half-fudge sundae.

01:30:06.640 You know, whatever it is one thinks that they shouldn't do that, you know, now why not do it?

01:30:12.120 So, yeah, I'm in agreement with that.

01:30:14.980 But the interesting part of that, I think, is that when you then make the decision to make the moment matter, and that's all we have.

01:30:24.040 You know, when you're talking about people who are depressed, one of the best things, I think, as far as therapy goes, is just deal with the moment.

01:30:33.020 And then the next moment, and a moment is easy to deal with.

01:30:36.020 And if they are mindful in the moment, they will probably end up beating the cancer.

01:30:44.040 They stand a good chance of beating the cancer.

01:30:46.960 Let me give you an example of something, Jordan.

01:30:49.320 I don't need to remember in the book, I talk about what we call the borderline effect.

01:30:54.400 Now, so let me explain this.

01:30:56.880 Let's say you and I both take an IQ test.

01:30:59.820 And you get 70, which means you're normal, and I score 69, which means I'm not normal, that I'm cognitively challenged.

01:31:10.720 All right.

01:31:11.060 Nobody in their right mind, they don't need to know anything about statistics to know there's no meaningful difference between 69 and 70.

01:31:19.320 I could have sneezed, so I read the question wrong, and so on.

01:31:22.720 But my life and your life will diverge from that moment in dramatic, quick, and extraordinary ways.

01:31:30.900 And you will be growing, and I will be coming less and less, because now I'm cognitively challenged, what we used to call retarded.

01:31:38.740 Okay, so it starts out, there's no difference, but in some sense, that diagnosis causes the difference.

01:31:45.040 All right.

01:31:45.380 That's the same thing for all different diseases.

01:31:48.920 So we did some work with diabetes and cancer.

01:31:51.200 There is some point on some test where one of us falls right above that borderline, and so we're told we have it, whatever the it is, one of us right below it.

01:32:04.660 And so we find that those who are given that diagnosis fare terribly.

01:32:09.780 The people who are just like them, right before they're given the diagnosis, do fine, which suggests, again, the control we have over our health.

01:32:22.020 In this case, you know, not using that control.

01:32:26.520 Yeah, well, that issue of the edge case is very interesting.

01:32:30.680 I mean, it's, so you can tie a bunch of things that you just discussed together.

01:32:35.620 So the first is, you said, you know, you should pay attention to the moment, and there's a gospel injunction in the Sermon on the Mount to do exactly that, right?

01:32:43.180 Is to focus, to make the concerns of the day sufficient thereof, essentially.

01:32:49.100 And what that means is that you want to occupy a time frame that optimizes the challenge within that time frame without it being too stressful.

01:33:03.020 So one of the things you do, for example, with people who are depressed or anxious is you narrow the time frame over which they're apprehending their behavior.

01:33:12.180 And if you're, like, if you're really suffering, if you're really in pain, you might narrow your time frame to the next minute.

01:33:20.520 Like, you might not be able to handle the next day, right?

01:33:22.940 And so you want to never bite off more than you can chew.

01:33:25.980 And you can do that partly by minimizing the time frame you're computing over and attending more particularly to that narrow time frame.

01:33:33.500 And also by narrowing the scope of your activity, which we discussed a little earlier, too.

01:33:38.540 If you can't take on a major task, you can't put your family in order, you might be able to say something kind to the sister you haven't seen for five years, right?

01:33:50.820 You can take that incremental tiny step forward.

01:33:54.120 And there's real power in that minimal transformation.

01:33:59.740 Now, you also talked about attention to variability in the edge cases.

01:34:03.440 I mean, how do you reconcile that with the apparent necessity for categorization?

01:34:09.060 You know, at the edge of every category is an indeterminate margin, right?

01:34:12.540 And you said, well, if you're in category A versus B, that can have a massive effect, even though there's no real distinction at that border.

01:34:19.900 Now, that's a very important question, you know, that am I saying people should never be given diagnoses?

01:34:28.360 Because there has to be, you know, these have it and these people don't have it.

01:34:32.960 But I'm not saying that what first I use the borderline studies as a way of showing if there's no meaningful difference between two people when they start and they're given the diagnosis and then the two groups come apart.

01:34:47.000 That means that this group that's given that diagnosis could do whatever they were doing that was similar to the other group and diminish the negative consequences.

01:34:58.900 So it was a way, again, of showing the mind-body unity and we have control over our health.

01:35:05.200 Whether we should or shouldn't be given diagnoses, I don't know.

01:35:09.560 But I do know that if you or anyone you love is given a diagnosis, you make them aware that it's a best guess. 0.53

01:35:18.940 That these diagnoses are based on research, they're based on probabilities, not absolute facts.

01:35:27.040 And when you are told that you may have it, you know, that is very different from you do have it.

01:35:34.640 When you're told it may run its course in the following way, it's very different from being told it will unfold in this way.

01:35:43.260 You know, and I think that's crucial for us.

01:35:46.180 Behavioural psychologists aren't very positively inclined to psychiatric diagnosis.

01:35:53.560 And the reason for that is that they're very pragmatic.

01:35:56.360 And so the orientation of a behavioural psychologist is, well, let's differentiate your problems to the point we can envision potential solutions to them.

01:36:05.180 And the meta-construct isn't all that valid.

01:36:08.340 I think there's an exception, possibly, and you tell me what you think about this.

01:36:11.860 Because I found diagnosis useful and salutary in my clinical practice when it helped people bind their otherwise catastrophic anxiety and when it pointed to a direction forward.

01:36:24.360 So someone might come in and say, look, man, I haven't been able to get out of my house for the last five years.

01:36:29.680 I'm completely out of my mind.

01:36:31.180 I'm the only person in the world like this.

01:36:33.040 And there's no hope.

01:36:34.660 And you say to them, look, you're agoraphobic.

01:36:38.800 Lots of people have this problem.

01:36:40.940 Here's the associated symptoms.

01:36:42.380 So you're not the only one.

01:36:44.200 You're not uniquely insane.

01:36:45.780 And we know how to treat it.

01:36:48.000 Well, then diagnosis has a binding capacity, right?

01:36:51.320 It boxes in the issue.

01:36:52.700 And it has a direction.

01:36:55.220 Yeah.

01:36:55.560 Now, you go to the doctor and your stomach is hurting.

01:36:58.860 And you leave and he tells you I have gastroenteritis, which just means a stomachache.

01:37:03.440 And you feel better.

01:37:04.740 I think, you know, for sure.

01:37:06.820 But I want to ask you something before I forget about depression.

01:37:10.520 So I've often thought that if we were able to give people a placebo or convince them in whatever way that their depression will only last another three weeks, that they would instantly become better.

01:37:29.960 That the most depressing thing about depression is that you assume that's all you're going to see going forward.

01:37:37.840 Yeah. Well, I think there is evidence for that on the treatment front, because one of the things you do in cognitive therapy with depression is challenge the assumption of eternal permanence.

01:37:51.200 So depressed people tend to think, okay, I feel awful right now.

01:37:56.160 I have always felt awful.

01:37:58.720 Every single day is unending awfulness, and that will extend indefinitely into the future.

01:38:03.440 And so what you do, one of the things you do, is you have people track their moods over a week, hourly.

01:38:08.960 And you show them that there's substantive variability in their mood, even though they were blind to that.

01:38:13.860 And then you also often have them, so first of all, that shows that it's not permanent and unchanging.

01:38:19.700 And then you often do a very detailed history that helps them understand that they have experienced this before, and almost invariably it has receded.

01:38:29.840 Like, it's almost invariably cyclical.

01:38:32.200 It doesn't feel like that when you're depressed.

01:38:34.680 Jordan, that's perfect, because that's what we were doing with major diseases, teaching people attention to symptom variability.

01:38:46.640 So when you have a major disease, you assume your symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse.

01:38:52.600 Nothing moves in only one direction.

01:38:55.360 All right, so what we did was we would call people, and we'd ask them, how do you feel now, and is it better or worse than before, and why?

01:39:05.120 And three things happen.

01:39:07.160 The first is, wow, I thought I felt this, you know, whatever the pain is all the time.

01:39:14.200 Now we see, there are moments I don't feel it, so you feel a little better.

01:39:17.740 Second, by asking why the search is mindful, and as we've said now enough times, that that mindfulness feels good and is good for your health.

01:39:29.900 The neurons are firing, and it's good for you.

01:39:35.020 And third, I think that you're more likely to find a solution if you're looking for it.

01:39:39.580 So we've done this with biggies, with stroke, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, even depression.

01:39:51.140 And in each case, we have very, very positive results.

01:39:55.560 And so, you know, when I first proposed this, I was seeing it as an antidote.

01:40:02.460 Well, you know, you can't give yourself a placebo.

01:40:06.660 You have to, when you're given a placebo, somebody is fooling you into thinking that it's real medication, and then you take it, and it's not the medication, clearly.

01:40:16.340 It's a sugar pill, so you are helping yourself.

01:40:18.980 So I was trying to think, well, how can we have people give themselves placebos? 1.00

01:40:23.060 And this was a way.

01:40:23.840 So imagine that you have chronic pain, and you set your smartphone to ring in an hour, and then you ask yourself, is it better or worse than before, and why?

01:40:35.700 And then at that moment, set it to ring in two hours and ten minutes.

01:40:39.660 You keep doing this over the day, over the week, if you need more time.

01:40:44.760 And the results have been phenomenal.

01:40:48.500 And I think all of this work, again, supports the idea that I keep coming back to, that virtually everything in the world is mutable.

01:41:00.400 We can make it fit for us better than it does at the moment, and that our own health is largely under our own control.

01:41:11.380 So, Ellen, with depressed people, one of the things you do, and this is true for psychological misery in general, is you ask them to adopt an attitude of open-eyed ignorance about their own nature.

01:41:25.780 So you think you know who you are, but it's possible that you don't really know more about yourself than you know about anybody else.

01:41:32.500 Like, you think you have privileged access, but you're pretty damn complicated, and you're not an open book.

01:41:36.760 And so, one of the things we could do is, let's say, track the variation in your well-being across time.

01:41:43.080 And then what we're going to do is we're going to focus on those times when you feel better.

01:41:47.240 And we're going to try to figure out what the hell you were doing during those times.

01:41:51.820 So, with depressed people, for example, you find that they want to isolate themselves.

01:41:56.540 But if they go see family and friends, they almost invariably feel better.

01:42:01.140 And if they track that.

01:42:02.040 Enjoy it, yeah.

01:42:02.180 Yeah, right.

01:42:02.660 So, well, you can see that the same thing might apply in a situation that's characterized by illness.

01:42:09.020 And you could also imagine that that would have a profound physiological effect.

01:42:12.960 Because imagine that you're in a situation now, and you're suffering from cancer, and you're having a relatively good day.

01:42:21.160 Now, because you're having a good day, you're not stressed out.

01:42:23.740 You have more positive emotion and hope.

01:42:25.580 And there are situational determinants of that.

01:42:27.860 Now, it could easily be, if you could maximize the probability that you would stay there, and then look for improvement even in that, that you would tilt your physiology in a direction of having a better probability of combating the illness itself.

01:42:43.440 It could easily be the case.

01:42:45.380 I think for sure.

01:42:47.500 Another area that lends itself to this attention to variability is stress.

01:42:54.540 There are some people who think they're stressed all the time.

01:42:57.480 No one is anything all the time.

01:43:00.100 So, if we call them periodically, and how stressed are you now, and is there more or less than before, and why, and so on, then what happens is, Jordan, you might find out that you know you're really stressed when you're speaking to Ellen Langer, but not when you're not.

01:43:15.620 Then the solution is simple.

01:43:16.900 Don't speak to me.

01:43:17.760 You know, there's something else that I want to get your view on, which is, you know, I was very active in the beginning, the creation of, say, cognitive behavior therapy.

01:43:29.720 And people have asked me, well, what's the difference between, let's say, a mindful therapy and cognitive behavior therapy?

01:43:35.720 And so, I want you, I'm going to tell you what I think.

01:43:39.740 And then the question to you is, is it a difference that makes a difference?

01:43:44.340 So, you go to the therapist with some problem, and you tell them you see the world in this particular way.

01:43:50.900 And the cognitive behaviorist says, well, perhaps it's this other way.

01:43:56.560 Okay.

01:43:56.960 Now, because the therapist is an authority figure, what I think people too often do is then take the therapist's frame of reference as real.

01:44:09.180 And mindful therapy would be to come up with many explanations.

01:44:14.360 And the more explanation, you know, it's just like what I was saying about stress, that if you think of five reasons why it might not happen, the situation changes.

01:44:26.580 You know, how else might we understand this?

01:44:28.720 And you come to CG, you don't know.

01:44:30.500 And when you know you don't know, then you tune in.

01:44:34.580 And that's the bottom line to how to be healthy, I guess.

01:44:38.940 So, two things on that.

01:44:41.500 Now, the psychoanalysts observed first that if you impose a solution on a client or a patient, even if it's an intelligent solution, there's a high probability that you'll produce resistance.

01:44:55.420 And part of the reason for that is that you're stealing the person's destiny.

01:44:59.140 It's like, look, if you come to me with a problem, and I give you a solution, and you implement it, it's not your victory.

01:45:06.600 It's my victory.

01:45:07.580 And so, I've stolen it.

01:45:08.660 And if you fail, it's your failure, not mine, because you're going to suffer for it.

01:45:13.620 And so, people are naturally inclined to tell an authority figure to go to hell if they impose a solution.

01:45:20.860 A good cognitive behavioral therapist won't say, here's another way of looking at it, although there may be situations where that's necessary because of an emergency, say.

01:45:29.760 What they will do instead is say, look, could we collaborate on imagining alternative conceptualizations of that situation, right?

01:45:41.980 And what you really want, you want the person to come up with the alternatives.

01:45:45.960 And I think that actually does the rewiring, right?

01:45:48.560 If you deliver the alternative, people don't act it out, and they don't remember it.

01:45:54.680 And I think it's because they haven't undergone the cognitive reorganization necessary to actually expand their horizon.

01:46:01.060 You want the client to lead, always.

01:46:04.020 That's why Freud used free association, for example.

01:46:06.600 Yeah.

01:46:07.720 No, and I think that's beautiful.

01:46:09.540 What I'm adding to it is that one should seek multiple potential understandings.

01:46:15.940 Yes.

01:46:16.360 When we have the client now come up with a different understanding, it doesn't make that right.

01:46:21.280 No, no.

01:46:21.700 And it doesn't make the original one wrong.

01:46:23.140 And by recognizing that this thing you were sure was an X, could be a Y or a Z, leads you to think of most, you know, when I said to you before, when the horse ate that hot dog, it didn't just change my mind about whether horses are herbivorous or not.

01:46:43.480 It changed everything for me.

01:46:45.620 One event.

01:46:46.540 And so if the person in therapy is dealing with, you know, you're sure it's this, and then the therapist helps you to come to, could be this, could be that, could be the other, there are many people who can walk away from that one instance now with an entirely new life before them.

01:47:05.080 Well, okay, okay.

01:47:05.660 So you do that, that's actually been technically termed collaborative empiricism.

01:47:11.060 So the notion would be the person's in a fixed mindset.

01:47:13.960 You help them develop a proliferation of alternatives, and then you say, well, look, go home for a week and try this attitude and watch, attend, be mindful, come back and tell me how it went.

01:47:28.740 And we're either going to find out that it's better or the same or worse, and you'll be able to tell me.

01:47:34.000 If it's the same or worse, we'll try another attitude.

01:47:38.300 Don't do it.

01:47:38.760 Right, exactly, exactly.

01:47:39.940 And that does two things, as you pointed out.

01:47:42.720 Now, it may lead to a proximal solution to the proximal problem, but it also teaches the person that they're the sort of creature that can generate alternative hypotheses and then test them and evaluate.

01:47:56.620 And that's kind of a meta-learning, right?

01:47:58.220 That would be more learning not to be attentive to the situation, but to be attentive, period, to make that a habit of mind.

01:48:04.480 Right.

01:48:04.980 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:48:05.720 And a good cognitive behavior therapist would do that.

01:48:09.860 They won't impose top-down solutions.

01:48:12.320 They'll generate, with the client, a multitude of possible solutions and then test them.

01:48:18.900 Do you know the early study I did with therapists and labels?

01:48:22.920 This was good.

01:48:23.760 We had an interview between—it was actually a professor at Yale when I did this when I was a graduate student.

01:48:30.220 And so we take this interview, and we call the person being interviewed either a job applicant or a patient.

01:48:39.220 And then we showed them to therapists of all different stripes.

01:48:43.580 And almost always, when we called them a patient, they saw him as sick, potentially having this and that disorder.

01:48:51.140 When we called them a job applicant, they saw him as well-adjusted, the same person on the same tape.

01:48:55.880 It was interesting because behavior therapists, since they were more attuned to the specific behaviors, were a little less likely to do this.

01:49:07.260 But I think that, you know, I think a lot of therapy needs to be reconfigured because whatever lens you put on is determining what you're going to see.

01:49:20.160 And it doesn't make sense to go pay a therapist top dollar for telling you how wonderful—you're telling them how wonderful you are, them telling you how wonderful you are.

01:49:30.940 And so the focus on problems, in some instances at least, I'm sure itself is a problem.

01:49:36.740 So, you know, so the therapist, I think, has to always say, you know, that in this small realm, this is what's going on, not, you know.

01:49:47.840 Because as soon as you walk into a therapist's office, you're declaring yourself a patient.

01:49:53.000 Well, that's why—

01:49:53.860 Even though the therapist now says client.

01:49:56.160 Well, behavior therapists have said clients forever for exactly that reason.

01:49:59.880 And I don't know, there might be an underground—that might be an underground consequence of your early influence on the field.

01:50:06.620 I mean, it's always—and I always refer to my clients in that manner because I'm not the authority.

01:50:14.860 If I'm the authority in the session, they're paying to boost my ego, right?

01:50:22.060 Yeah, that's all.

01:50:23.220 They have to be the authority.

01:50:24.520 I can listen, and we can exchange ideas, and we can investigate.

01:50:29.960 But in the final analysis, the decision to attend and to change—and Carl Rogers knew this, too, and laid it out beautifully in his work on humanism, humanistic psychology—the impetus has to come from the client, him or herself.

01:50:44.700 Otherwise, it doesn't work.

01:50:45.940 It has to be voluntary and attention-focused.

01:50:48.640 And on the same note, humorously, that if you charge $5 for the hour versus, let's say, $5,000 for the hour, in the second case, the person would get better faster.

01:51:03.340 Not because it's costing so much money, but because they value it so much more.

01:51:08.160 That's very interesting in regard to pricing, period.

01:51:10.800 You know, we've developed a variety of psychological interventions and tried to determine how to price them.

01:51:18.260 And you might think that the compassionate thing to do and the generous thing to do would be to make them free.

01:51:23.320 But it's not.

01:51:24.120 Well, it's not.

01:51:24.740 No, it's not at all.

01:51:26.340 And it's partly because the act of paying, first of all, is fair exchange, and that keeps the interaction, like, neutral and morally untrammeled.

01:51:34.340 There's no charity in it.

01:51:35.340 And second, it is the case that part of how you determine whether something is valuable is whether or not you've had to exchange something of value for it.

01:51:46.100 You bet, you bet, you bet.

01:51:47.460 So those things are very tricky.

01:51:49.860 So there's research.

01:51:51.580 Well, we're coming to the end here.

01:51:53.620 So what I should do is allow you the opportunity, if you have another thing, if you have something else you want to bring up.

01:51:59.160 I have so much to talk to you about, Jordan, because it's such fun talking to you that, you know, we should end here.

01:52:07.440 We can go on for another three hours.

01:52:09.220 So it's your show.

01:52:10.640 You decide.

01:52:11.120 Well, we are going to talk.

01:52:13.240 For everybody watching and listening, many of you know this.

01:52:15.400 We're going to continue for another half an hour on the Daily Wire Plus site.

01:52:18.480 And if you found this conversation interesting and compelling, which was the point, then please do join us there.

01:52:24.220 Otherwise, I'll just let everyone know, again, the name of Ellen's new book, Dr. Langer's new book, The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health.

01:52:33.860 And when is that coming out?

01:52:36.480 It's interesting that it seems to be already out in Canada.

01:52:40.160 I don't know how that happened.

01:52:41.560 Well, we're so quick.

01:52:42.440 But the publication date is September 5th.

01:52:47.780 September 5th.

01:52:48.220 But it can be pre-ordered now.

01:52:49.960 Okay, okay.

01:52:50.520 So you can pre-order The Mindful Body, Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health now.

01:52:55.260 And, well, thank you very much for talking to me today and for sharing what you know with everybody who's watching and listening.

01:53:00.500 I presume that people ill and healthy alike will find what we talked about interesting and perplexing and thought-provoking.

01:53:09.700 That's the idea.

01:53:11.180 It's a very complicated topic.

01:53:12.280 That's the way I found it.

01:53:13.740 Yeah, yeah.

01:53:14.160 Well, the relationship between attitude and brute reality is unbelievably complex.

01:53:19.420 And, you know, it's a constant source of mystery and need for investigation.

01:53:25.660 And so attitude makes a lot of things.

01:53:28.380 There's no doubt about that.

01:53:29.560 And we don't know the limits to that.

01:53:31.040 And your work has certainly been at the forefront of making that idea what's scientifically investigatable and widely publicly known.

01:53:41.140 So thank you very much for that and for talking to us today.

01:53:43.660 For everybody watching and listening, thank you for your time and attention.

01:53:47.040 And to the Daily Wire Plus folks and the film crew here in Northern Ontario, the film crew in—are you in Cambridge?

01:53:53.260 No, I'm in Dartmouth, Mass.

01:53:55.140 You're in Dartmouth.

01:53:56.040 To the film crew in Dartmouth, thank you for facilitating this as well.

01:54:00.160 And, Ellen, we'll rejoin each other on the Daily Wire Plus platform momentarily.

01:54:06.300 Bye-bye, everybody.

01:54:07.500 Take care now.

01:54:08.180 Bye-bye.

01:54:12.400 Bye-bye.

01:54:13.100 Bye-bye.

01:54:13.400 Bye-bye.

01:54:14.120 Bye-bye.

01:54:14.880 Bye-bye.

01:54:15.800 Bye-bye.

01:54:16.900 Bye-bye.

01:54:17.100 Bye-bye.

01:54:17.140 Bye-bye.

01:54:17.840 Bye-bye.

01:54:18.940 Bye-bye.

01:54:19.960 Bye-bye.

01:54:21.360 Bye-bye.

01:54:22.040 Bye-bye.

01:54:22.280 Bye-bye.

01:54:35.000 Bye-bye.

01:54:36.080 Bye-bye.

01:54:36.780 Bye-bye.

01:54:37.220 Bye-bye.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - August 31, 2023

381. Change Your Mindset, Your Health, Your Life ｜ Dr. Ellen Langer

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