The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad

00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody. This is God Sad for The Sad Truth. I recently had Dr. Randy Nesse, who's a pioneer

00:00:07.760 in evolutionary medicine and a psychiatrist. And then a couple of days ago, I had Dr. Drew Pinsky,

00:00:12.860 who's an addiction physician specialist. And today I've got another psychiatrist and physician,

00:00:19.500 Robert Waldinger, or colloquially, Bob. How you doing, Bob?

00:00:23.820 Good.

00:00:24.640 It's so nice to be, I have your book right here, your latest book with Mark Schultz. Please go out

00:00:30.640 and get this, The Secrets to a Good Life. You want to read it. But before we do that, let me just read

00:00:36.120 some of your bio. And I need my glasses for that. As I said, you're a psychiatrist and part-time

00:00:41.360 professor at Harvard. You're also, you're a psychoanalyst. You're a Zen priest. Maybe we'll

00:00:45.760 get into that. You're the director of the incredible longitudinal study called the Harvard Study of

00:00:51.500 Adult Human Development. I think maybe it's been about eight decades now. Your books include,

00:00:57.760 as I said, the latest one, The Good Life Lessons from the World's Largest Scientific Study of Happiness

00:01:03.260 with Mark Schultz, and a much earlier book, Psychiatry for Medical Students. Did I hit all

00:01:09.620 of the key points, Bob, or would you like to add anything?

00:01:12.560 That's plenty.

00:01:13.200 Okay. So let's get going. First, I actually first heard of the longitudinal Harvard Adult

00:01:21.560 Development Study when I quoted, I think in one of my past books, I mean, we would say,

00:01:28.260 because I come from French Canada, Georges Vaillant, I don't know how the Americans would say it would

00:01:33.140 be valiant. Is that how, how would you pronounce it?

00:01:35.060 He pronounces it valiant.

00:01:36.680 Valiant. Okay. So we, okay, there's the difference. And I had quoted him probably about

00:01:42.540 something dealing with the importance of relationships. Maybe we could start with that

00:01:47.440 longitudinal study, and then we can eventually get into your book.

00:01:51.920 Sure. Do you want me to explain what the-

00:01:54.380 Please, because I mean, it really is arguably, is it not the longest standing longitudinal study?

00:01:59.540 Okay. So take it away.

00:02:00.280 Yes. Yes. So the study has been going for 85 years. It started in 1938, and it started

00:02:10.200 with two studies that didn't actually know about each other. They were both started at Harvard

00:02:15.560 University, but one was started at Harvard Student Health Service. It was a group of 268 19-year-old

00:02:25.320 young men who were chosen by their deans as fine, upstanding young men for a study of young adult

00:02:32.780 development, adolescence into young adulthood. And now, of course, we, you know, we think, well,

00:02:39.660 if you want to study normal development, you don't restrict yourself to all white men from Harvard.

00:02:46.260 But at that time, that's what they did. The other study was a study of juvenile delinquency

00:02:53.600 started at Harvard Law School. And it was specifically a study of how some children from

00:03:00.220 really disadvantaged backgrounds and troubled families managed to stay out of trouble and

00:03:07.040 take good developmental paths. And so there were 456 boys, average age 12, who were brought

00:03:15.720 together for this study. And then eventually we brought in their spouses, we brought in their

00:03:22.360 children more than half of whom are women. So we have both class diversity and gender diversity in the

00:03:29.560 study now. Amazing. And what are I mean, how many variables are being, you know, coded and quantified

00:03:38.400 in the ongoing study? Well, there've been hundreds over the life of the study, many hundreds. And now,

00:03:48.940 probably 100 or more that we're studying right now, we're collecting data on the second generation on all the

00:03:58.240 children, even as we speak, we're doing a survey. So yeah, they're just a lot of data.

00:04:06.820 And it's a, it's a genealogical study in that it's only the descendants of the original participants who are

00:04:14.160 allowed to participate. Or can you bring in completely fresh new participants?

00:04:19.420 No, we've decided not to. Otherwise, I think we would have brought in more diverse groups, you know,

00:04:25.960 African Americans and Latinos and many other people. But our unique value is the genealogical part of it.

00:04:34.960 It's having this longitudinal view of entire lives and entire families. If we bring in new people,

00:04:42.000 we won't have that backlog of information. So that's why we decided to stay with our original

00:04:47.840 724 families. And so for when you were appointed as the director, what does that entail? You're sort of

00:04:56.680 the, the supra organizer of all the sub studies that are taking place? Is that, I mean, largely your

00:05:03.860 role? Is it, is it to be a fundraiser? Is it what, how many hats do you wear as director of such an

00:05:09.180 incredible study? It's all that. I mean, I was, you know, I've primarily been the fundraiser. So I

00:05:14.280 spend a lot of time writing applications for grant money, mostly from the national institutes of

00:05:19.660 health in the U S and, um, and I direct the study and I decide what questions we're going to ask and

00:05:26.880 how we're going to ask, you know, what, what methods we're going to use. I do all of that. And of course I

00:05:32.740 have lots of help. Mike, my associate director, Mark Schultz, and lots of research assistants.

00:05:41.020 And how many people can tap into the database that's been accumulated? Is it open to all

00:05:48.180 researchers that apply to you and say, Hey, I've got a great question that I think might be amenable

00:05:53.280 to an analysis from your data set, or is it restricted largely for Harvard affiliated researchers?

00:05:58.740 No, it's open to any researcher who has a good question that our data could be useful to answer.

00:06:07.560 Um, so we've collaborated, oh gosh, for decades, we've collaborated with people from other research

00:06:15.000 groups, other academic institutions, other countries. Is there a, uh, a cluster of disciplines

00:06:22.800 that are most likely to, so is it going to be other psychiatrists and clinical psychologists,

00:06:27.160 or can you get, for example, I'm, I'm housed in a business school. I, I study evolutionary psychology

00:06:32.580 and consumer psychology. Do you get people across the, you know, a wide buffet of possible disciplines,

00:06:37.860 or is it typically mental health professionals that are interested in this data set?

00:06:43.000 Most typically it's mental health. It's, it's psychologists, psychiatrists, but some sociologists,

00:06:48.360 some criminologists have collaborated with us, some biologists. So it varies. Uh, a neuro imager,

00:06:56.660 we've collaborated with. Amazing. Okay. Well, I wanted to get to this beauty right here,

00:07:03.800 and then we'll talk about stuff that's not necessarily related to the book. Uh, now the

00:07:07.880 reason why I was so interested in having you on, well, for several reasons, one of which is I became

00:07:13.420 intimately familiar with your work because I have this guy coming out soon, this book right here,

00:07:18.560 the sad truth about happiness, eight secrets for leading the good life. Uh, now I don't restrict,

00:07:24.640 uh, my, uh, discussion of happiness to largely relationships. Although of course I recognize

00:07:30.780 how important relationships are to happiness. And, and that's, that's the context in which I quote your

00:07:36.560 work. But in your case, if I'm not mistaken, your book is largely focusing on that singular variable,

00:07:43.320 the importance of the quality of relationships, a wide range of relationships on our sense of

00:07:49.420 wellbeing. Is that a rough, a good summary? Yes, that's right. Cause, uh, our work has shown,

00:07:55.760 you know, a lot of evidence for the power of relationships, both for happiness, but also for

00:08:01.100 physical health and longevity. Yeah. I remember actually, I think one of the quotes that I cited you

00:08:09.440 is towards the end of my forthcoming book where I think, was it you who was doing the,

00:08:14.940 the comparison between cholesterol scores of people at 50 years old versus, versus their relationship

00:08:23.540 quality. And then down when you're 80 years old, the relationships are better predicted than the

00:08:29.180 cholesterol scores. That was you, correct? Exactly. Yes. I mean, so I asked, uh, uh, uh,

00:08:36.920 Dr. Malhotra, a British cardiologist. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. Do you know who that

00:08:41.520 is? Asim Malhotra? Uh, well, I was asking him, so, okay, let's suppose we've established that link.

00:08:49.160 Well, we have that relationships are not only important for your mental health, but there are

00:08:54.700 actually physiological markers that, that manifest themselves. Well, what is the proximate mechanism by

00:09:00.620 which that happens? And in his case, he argued that there is now some compelling evidence linking to a

00:09:06.400 reduction in inflammation as a result of having good, uh, good relationships. Is that largely the

00:09:13.340 pathway by which this works or are there other mechanisms that result in that link?

00:09:17.460 Well, there are undoubtedly other mechanisms, but stress and stress reduction seem to be the biggest

00:09:24.960 factors that we know of so far, meaning that relationships when they're good can help us reduce

00:09:31.220 stress. They can help us calm down. They can help us weather difficulties. And when we're isolated or

00:09:37.720 lonely, uh, that's a stressor and raises our levels of chronic inflammation and circulating stress

00:09:46.900 hormones. So yeah, it's a, it's a very, um, it's a very prominent mechanism by which this seems to work.

00:09:54.660 So of all the various relationships, so I can have a great relationship with my spouse,

00:10:00.340 I can have a great relationship with friends, great relationship with my nuclear family,

00:10:04.200 great relationship with my pet. Uh, and undoubtedly, I'm sure all of them contribute to my sense of

00:10:09.680 wellbeing, but is there a hierarchy across the types of relationships that says, look, if you're

00:10:16.760 going to put all your money on one, go with a good marriage or, or, or get a dog. And that's your

00:10:22.740 ticket to, is there such a hierarchy? Well, there is, but not, not by role, but by the kind of support

00:10:34.060 that's provided. So when our, uh, men, original men were in middle age, we asked them, who could you

00:10:44.280 call in the middle of the night if you were sick or stressed? And most of them could list several

00:10:52.300 people. Some of them couldn't list anyone, including some of them who were married, couldn't

00:10:57.380 list anyone. So it doesn't matter whether you have a marriage license. It doesn't matter what

00:11:04.680 the person's official title is in your life. It really matters. Are they someone who you really

00:11:11.200 feel will be there for you in times of need? Amazing. Uh, I mean, and in, in my forthcoming book,

00:11:19.240 I talk about, uh, the important, I mean, two, two decisions that are crucially important to

00:11:25.560 our happiness. One is choosing the right spouse. Now, of course there isn't a, a formulaic recipe

00:11:31.940 to, to guarantee that you'll choose the right person. There are statistical vagaries that happen.

00:11:36.620 Someone cheats on someone else and the marriage dissolves, but there are certainly scientific findings

00:11:42.320 that are very robust, that help us understand the likelihood of your long-term relationship being

00:11:48.040 successful. One of which, for example, is that all other things considered birds of a feather do

00:11:52.980 flock together when it comes to say values or belief systems. So, uh, you know, uh, the opposites

00:11:58.460 attract mantra might work well for a short-term sexual dalliance, but it is not, uh, a protective,

00:12:05.360 uh, way to ensure long-term stability. You want to really be with someone who shares your values.

00:12:11.820 Uh, have you looked at some of these kinds of issues while navigating through the importance

00:12:17.020 of relationships in your own book? Well, in our research, we've certainly looked at things like

00:12:23.120 what makes for stability. And what we find is that it's not arguments, like the number of arguments or

00:12:33.840 the intensity of arguments doesn't predict whether people will stay together or not. It's really whether

00:12:39.940 while people are arguing, there's still a bedrock of affection and respect.

00:12:44.420 Yes. Yes. I can't remember the, there's a gentleman whom I cite in my book, uh, a very famous

00:12:52.120 marriage council counselor who listed four, is it Eldon? No, I can't remember his name. I, I don't

00:12:58.500 know if it's, it's coming to you. There's a very, very famous, he's, he's got a sort of a marriage

00:13:02.220 institute where he talks about. Oh yeah, John, John Gottman. Thank you, Gottman. I was, I was saying

00:13:07.040 the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Yes. Thank you. And, and, and so basically, and so does your

00:13:14.500 research validate those four horsemen? Yeah. To some extent, we haven't specifically tested it in

00:13:22.060 the way that John did, but he's been an advisor to some of our work and, um, and yeah, I mean,

00:13:30.120 he's right. So for example, contempt is a really bad sign. It's a really bad predictor of whether

00:13:36.940 a relationship is going to stay together. And I mean, and some of the old sort of grandmotherly

00:13:42.340 wisdoms of, or maxims, you know, don't go to bed angry at one another. I mean, certainly from my

00:13:49.480 personal experience, I've been with my wife for 23 years and it is something that we truly try to,

00:13:55.240 to, to, to adhere to, which is, yes, of course there are frictions that arise, but once you get

00:14:00.140 into the, the, the, the, the sanctity of that bed, you, you don't want to go to bed facing opposite

00:14:07.260 directions and having your blood pressure up. And if you can just talk, I'm the type who I'm very

00:14:12.600 passionate. So if we have a disagreement, I'm right there, middle Eastern, I'm confronting it.

00:14:18.080 But then once we're done, we hug it out. We remind each other that we love each other and,

00:14:23.060 and we move on. That, that seems to be the right recipe, correct?

00:14:27.560 Well, it sounds good for you. Have you, are you, if I may ask, are you, are you married?

00:14:32.640 Yeah. How long have you been married for?

00:14:34.980 37 years.

00:14:36.100 Well, you've, you've, you've got me beat by 14 years, so you must know what you're talking about.

00:14:40.580 Okay. Well, let's, so since we're talking about relationships, uh,

00:14:44.980 strangers of course can become the next important relationship. Here's that beautiful girl sitting in 1.00

00:14:50.560 the corner that I need to muster up my, the courage to go speak to her. Here is that guy who seems to

00:14:55.440 be reading a good book that I'm sort of interested in. Maybe I should go up to talk to him and we can

00:14:59.960 become great friends. And so I'm currently reading a book called, I don't know if you, you know it,

00:15:04.320 Bob, it's called the power of strangers. Are you familiar with it? It's a book basically that's

00:15:10.380 arguing that, you know, in the, certainly in the West we've, uh, the operative mechanism is sort of the

00:15:16.580 stranger danger mantra, which is strangers are to be avoided at all costs. Certainly when you're

00:15:22.640 living in a big city, every potential stranger is a source of calamity. And so we end up, uh,

00:15:30.880 forgoing opportunities in making connections so that, in other words, to your point about the

00:15:36.160 importance of relationships, it's not just having a great relationship with a group of friends or

00:15:41.100 with your pet or your spouse. Also being able to have meaningful, fleeting, but powerful

00:15:48.800 interactions with the barista or the person sitting next to you on the bus. Those two are important

00:15:53.860 for my mental health. Do you cover that in your book? We do. Yeah. And we, it's mostly other people's

00:16:00.800 research, but we know some from our own research as well. Okay. Very nice. All right. So now I think

00:16:06.280 I'm going to move on to, uh, some other areas. You're a psychoanalyst. Well, first of all,

00:16:12.380 a psychoanalyst, does that mean that you adhere to sort of the original pioneers of psychoanalysis,

00:16:18.640 Freudian and Jungian stuff, or are we past that? Are we, or how much of those ideas are they are still

00:16:26.220 being practiced in today in psychoanalysis? Well, some of those ideas are still very relevant. And some of

00:16:33.540 those we don't use much at all at this point. So can you give us a sense of one or the other?

00:16:42.220 A sense of one or the other meaning what? Meaning, meaning here are three ideas that Freud and Jung

00:16:47.940 espoused that are still incredibly powerful and relevant today. Here are three ideas that we've let

00:16:53.740 go 40 years ago. Sure. Um, well, ideas that, that are very powerful, the idea of the unconscious,

00:17:01.940 the idea that there are things not in our awareness that actually drive our behavior.

00:17:07.720 Um, that's probably the number one, most powerful idea that they came up with. Correct.

00:17:11.800 Huge. The idea of transference that we transfer expectations from earlier relationships on to

00:17:18.080 current relationships. And, and in that way, in some cases, misperceive other people, um, uh, defense,

00:17:27.020 we protect ourselves using all kinds of maneuvers to kind of twist around reality a bit to, uh, to make

00:17:34.900 ourselves less anxious. Um, and some of the ones that we've discarded into the dustbin of history.

00:17:41.220 Uh, um, I think a lot of his energetic, his, he had a kind of hydraulic model of psychic energy

00:17:50.460 that we don't. He meaning Freud now. Freud. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, yeah, I mean, there are others that

00:17:58.280 are much more controversial that some people adhere to other people don't. And I don't think I'll get

00:18:03.240 into those. The reason why I ask is because I, I think I sent you some of the themes that we might,

00:18:09.420 uh, cover in our conversation. And I included a book that, uh, uh, I read many years ago by a,

00:18:16.500 uh, someone that's within my general field. He's, he's a, he studies decision-making certainly,

00:18:21.460 but I think he was also a clinical psychologist. It's Robin Dawes from Carnegie Mellon. He had

00:18:26.520 written a book in the mid nineties called a house of cards in reference to the idea that many of the,

00:18:32.680 uh, principles that are used in, uh, the mental health professor profession are built on a house of

00:18:39.100 cards. Now that had a personal, uh, effect on me because as I was trying to decide where I would

00:18:45.360 end up, you know, spending my career for a short period of time, I thought whether I wanted to go

00:18:50.880 into clinical psychology or, you know, go, uh, you know, after my undergrad, go to medical school and

00:18:55.520 become a psychiatrist, there were several reasons why I decided against it. And I don't regret it.

00:19:00.420 One of which was, I felt that I may not have the personality to, while I'm, while I'm very

00:19:06.580 empathetic and compassionate, if I could speak of myself, I wouldn't be able to create a clear

00:19:11.740 delineation between what I hear in my job and then coming home. I don't want to be mired all day in

00:19:17.640 negativity. I think I would have been the prime candidate for like jumping off a building because

00:19:22.640 I would have taken all that stuff in. But the second reason why I decided I didn't want to go

00:19:26.780 into the mental health profession is, uh, precisely to Robin Dawes's point. I, I wasn't sure

00:19:33.480 how much of the stuff would adhere to the exacting standards of the scientific method versus some of

00:19:39.700 the stuff that was very much driven by cult of personalities, you know, by quackery and so on.

00:19:45.480 Uh, is this something that, you know, you've heard other prospective students in psychiatry

00:19:51.560 enunciate this idea of, you know, it, for other fields, you know, orthopedic surgery, we, we,

00:20:00.040 right. It's very mechanical. I know exactly how to fix the, the ruptured Achilles tendon. It's clear.

00:20:06.900 We know it. Whereas when you're delving into the depth of the human psyche, a lot of it might make

00:20:12.800 sense. A lot of it might be trial and, you know, trial and error stuff.

00:20:15.740 Actually that dichotomy is much less true than it might seem. So for example, oh yeah. The field

00:20:23.040 of orthopedics, I mean, spine x-rays and spine spinal scans often give us results that have

00:20:30.820 little correlation with somebody's clinical picture, somebody's symptom picture. Interesting. So

00:20:37.340 there's, it's much less of a dichotomy than we think that, that psychology and the mind is

00:20:43.860 less grounded in science and hard, hard things like orthopedics are grounded in science. Not so

00:20:51.320 clear. Not, not true. Well, it's funny because it, by the way, not, uh, what I didn't mean to imply

00:20:57.220 that all of psychology is, is I thought specific, I was referring specific. I mean, otherwise I

00:21:02.640 wouldn't have spent my career being a behavioral scientist. Right. Uh, I mean, do you know who Nassim

00:21:08.140 Talib is the author, the Lebanese author? Nassim Talib has written several, uh, bestselling books.

00:21:14.240 He's a, uh, applied mathematician. He's kind of a rather caustic gentleman. He's a personal friend

00:21:21.340 of mine. We're, we're both Lebanese. And he long ago, uh, was teasing me saying, uh, I don't know

00:21:28.280 what you guys study in psychology, Gad, because all that, all that there is to know about human nature,

00:21:33.740 the ancient Greeks have already told us about. Now he was kind of ribbing me. He wasn't being

00:21:38.120 totally serious, but you know, as I started writing my book and I suspect you being someone

00:21:44.640 who's an expert on, on happiness and the good life, you're familiar with all of the ancient Greeks.

00:21:48.520 It's quite extraordinary to see how much they knew and how much they got right without having access

00:21:55.440 to the empirical methods that we have today. What, what are your thoughts on that?

00:21:58.480 Well, because it's the same human life that it always was. And, uh, empirical methods just help

00:22:06.280 us quantify and, uh, test out hypotheses. The best way to generate hypotheses are through

00:22:14.920 single case methods, right? Where you observe something and say, wow, I think this is what's

00:22:21.100 going on. And then we use empirical methods and research to test those hypotheses out.

00:22:26.760 Right. I actually, I want to show you a book that I just finished. Uh, this is an autobiography by

00:22:33.960 Eric Kandel, uh, the, the famous, uh, neuroscientist. And in his case, as you, you might know, Bob,

00:22:41.100 he started off being very interested in becoming a psychoanalyst. And in those, in that time, of course,

00:22:48.160 most psychoanalysts were first trained in medical school. They were physicians. Then they went into

00:22:52.680 training and psychoanalysis. And then later when his interest in neurobiology was kindled,

00:22:59.880 he tried to create some sort of consilience, some sort of between his neurobiology and his

00:23:06.620 psychiatry. Where do you see the next big sort of consilience idea in psychiatry? The joining of

00:23:13.820 what with what, you know, is it, for example, uh, behavioral genetics and psychiatry? Is it,

00:23:22.100 uh, you know, is it trying to identify the, the, the new, you know, the psychiatric disorders at the

00:23:29.300 most microscopic level? Where is the next big epiphany coming from?

00:23:34.960 I don't know. I think it's, I think it's breaking down silos more than anything. We tend to put things

00:23:42.520 in silos and then we realize, no, actually things are much more interconnected than we thought. So for

00:23:48.640 example, our findings on relationships actually predicting whether you're more or less likely to

00:23:55.480 get coronary artery disease. Like how could that be a thing? Well, if we look across silos, we see that

00:24:01.980 there are all these interconnections. So I think that's what's happening more and more.

00:24:06.840 Oh, I, I, I love that answer. Number one, because I've lived by that model for my entire career to the,

00:24:13.760 to my detriment in that, as you undoubtedly know, Bob, academia doesn't reward, uh, the don't stay in

00:24:21.900 your lane mindset on the, to the contrary, you have to be a hyper specialist, you know, keep pumping

00:24:28.420 out papers within this very, very narrow field because you, you can then have economies of scale.

00:24:33.940 And so even though from this side of our, of the mouth of universities, they say they support

00:24:38.600 interdisciplinarity from this side, they certainly don't seem to reward that. I mean, I, I've had

00:24:43.800 universities who were interested in hiring me specifically say that it played against me that I

00:24:50.720 published in medicine and economics and in psychology and in marketing. I seemed as though I was being

00:24:57.380 frazzled, I wasn't focused. So to your point, do you see us being able to develop better reward systems,

00:25:06.420 uh, you know, tangible reward systems in the universities so that more young scholars can

00:25:11.680 actually move beyond the state in your lane mindset? Thankfully, I'm not in university administration,

00:25:19.740 so I have no idea what that's, where that's going to go. But, but I mean, I guess based on your

00:25:26.700 earlier answer, you, you would, you would certainly hope to, to have a greater rapprochement of

00:25:32.260 difference. Yeah. Oh, I would totally hope so. I think it's where the most creative work gets done.

00:25:37.520 Absolutely. Whether the system will start aligning with that or not. I don't know.

00:25:43.340 All right. Uh, next topic, let me put this one away. Now this one, I, I suspect you may not be very

00:25:49.400 familiar with, and I think you might've warned me that it's not within your area of interest,

00:25:52.920 but I still want to address it since you're a psychiatrist. Are you familiar with the field of

00:25:58.700 Darwinian psychiatry? This is Troisi and Maguire. This is basically the idea of applying the evolutionary

00:26:05.440 lens to study the, the genesis of many of our most common mental disorders that are you at all familiar

00:26:13.580 with the field? No, but do you, can I share with you some, if you want to talk about that, it's your

00:26:21.680 show. I don't know anything about it. So it's up to you. Well, basically the idea is that there are many

00:26:29.520 disorders that we gain perspective and understanding the, the Darwinian etiology of this, of these

00:26:38.740 disorders. So for example, I published a paper, uh, many years ago, uh, where I looked at sex

00:26:45.740 differences in the symptomology of OCD. The idea being that there are some O's and some C's that

00:26:53.340 manifest themselves a lot more in men, others that manifest themselves a lot more in women and others

00:26:58.200 that, that exhibit no sex difference. And I argued that you can use the evolutionary lens to exactly

00:27:04.880 predict how these would assort precisely because there are some evolutionarily relevant problem

00:27:09.880 that men are more likely to face or women or, or equally face. And so the reason why I thought I

00:27:16.980 would mention it to you, notwithstanding that you're not an evolutionary minded psychiatrist is that,

00:27:21.580 as I mentioned earlier, Randy Nesse is someone that I recently had a chat with. And what he's been

00:27:27.260 trying to do is incorporate the evolutionary lens, not just in psychiatry, but across the medical school

00:27:34.300 training. The idea being that, how could you become a physician yet never have studied, uh, you know,

00:27:41.140 what are the selection pressures that would have led to the formation of our bodies and minds?

00:27:46.500 Do you have any thoughts on that? Notwithstanding that that's not within your area of special specialty.

00:27:51.300 No, I don't. So, I mean, I'm sorry, but I just, it's just not something I've thought about or have any

00:27:57.880 experience of. So, so in your case, my question is God, why do you want to keep us talking about this

00:28:05.240 when I've told you, I don't know about it. It's not my thing. Oh, sure. I mean, I'm asked often

00:28:11.360 questions that I don't know about, but because I have, uh, you know, an interest and curiosity,

00:28:16.300 I might offer some insight. You're obviously a very accomplished guy. So I thought you might have

00:28:20.440 something to say, Oh yeah, that sounds interesting or it doesn't, but sure. We can move on to something

00:28:24.240 else. No worries. But, but let me say that people often ask me about things that I really don't know

00:28:29.720 about. And as one of my research teachers said, without data, I'm just another guy with a bunch

00:28:36.380 of opinions. Oh, I appreciate that because I I've argued the exact same thing. When I talk about

00:28:41.020 epistemic humility, if you were to ask me, Hey, what are the benefits or costs of having legalized

00:28:47.120 marijuana in Canada? I would probably say exactly what you said, which is, I frankly don't know

00:28:52.420 anything about it to offer an intelligent opinion. So I get that. Maybe we can wrap up

00:28:57.880 with some, uh, something that you do know about. You're a Zen Buddhist priest. Maybe you could

00:29:05.680 tell us that journey, how you got interested in it and so on. And then does any of your

00:29:09.620 knowledge from Zen Buddhism manifest itself in your psychiatric practice?

00:29:17.240 Yeah. Well, I got interested in Zen Buddhism because I was interested in Buddhist philosophy.

00:29:22.420 And, and, and found it to be, um, uh, one of the most helpful things for me personally.

00:29:28.380 And then, um, I stumbled into a Zen meditation group going on right down the street from where

00:29:34.680 I live and started studying with a teacher there and gradually just grew more and more involved

00:29:42.680 in the practice so that now I teach Zen. I'm a, I'm a Zen master, a Roshi. And I teach, uh,

00:29:49.140 you know, I teach retreats and I teach a weekly meditation session. Um, and I think Zen very much

00:29:57.680 dovetails with my research because Zen is about getting to know what it means to be a human being,

00:30:04.080 what it means to be alive, sitting on a cushion. What does my mind and body do? And I'm studying

00:30:11.560 thousands of lives, uh, as another way to look at the experience of being human. So very related.

00:30:20.480 Beautiful. Uh, do you, before I ask, I ask you the next question, then we'll, we'll take a break.

00:30:26.120 And then I'll ask you one last question for our subscribers only. Uh, one of my former professors,

00:30:31.660 uh, during my PhD training is a gentleman by name of Thomas Gilovich. He specialized in, uh,

00:30:37.560 the study of the psychology of regret. And he argued that there are two sources of regret regret due to

00:30:43.600 action. I regret that I cheated on my wife and now my marriage is over. So it's because of something

00:30:48.760 that I did that I regret versus regret due to inaction. I regret that I never pursued my,

00:30:54.660 my interest in art. And I went to medical school. I never really wanted to be a physician.

00:30:58.700 Uh, and it turns out that over the long run, and it's something that I discuss in my forthcoming

00:31:03.560 book over the long run, what looms larger in our minds are the regrets due to inaction. So if I were

00:31:11.140 to ask you, Bob, at this stage in your life to look back and think about your regrets, what would

00:31:17.620 be the greatest one? And would it be, would it adhere to the inaction one, or would it be an action one?

00:31:24.680 Hmm.

00:31:28.360 Or maybe you don't have any regrets, in which case you're, you're really well adjusted.

00:31:32.100 Well, it's not that I don't have any regrets. I just don't have any,

00:31:36.640 I like, I have regrets every day, but I, but I don't have any great big regrets. I see my life

00:31:42.480 as having unfolded as it has because of so many causes and conditions. And, and so in a certain

00:31:49.580 sense, yes, it could have been different, but I see so many ways in which I understand how it's

00:31:55.720 turned out as it has. It's been a really lucky, privileged life in a lot of ways. So I don't

00:32:03.480 really have a, a big regret.

00:32:06.340 Well, you're a fortunate man. Uh, guys get out and buy this book, The Good Life. Great read.

00:32:12.980 Thank you so much, Bob. Stay on the line for a subscriber only question.

00:32:16.280 Okay. Thank you so much for coming on.

00:32:17.960 Thank you so much for coming on.

My Chat with Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Waldinger, Co-author of ”The Good Life” (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_573)

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