Episode 428： How Dopamine Gets You Addicted to Porn, Politics, Sex & Drugs
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 34 minutes
Words per minute
189.74161
Harmful content
Misogyny
23
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Hate speech
19
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Daniel Z. Lieberman talks about the importance of dopamine and why it could determine the fate of the human race. Dr. Lieberman is the author of the book, "Dyslexia: How the Brain Decodes the World," and he is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.
Transcript
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I feel I'm so close I could take sweet victory.
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Yeah, why would you bet on Goliath when we got Bet David?
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This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to haters.
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Today I'm sitting down with Daniel Z. Lieberman.
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We talk about the effects of dopamine and why power, politics, sex, porn, marriage, love,
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all of these crazy things we talk about in today's sit-down.
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And I got him to admit, what was his favorite magazine as a boy?
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This professor, Daniel Z. Lieberman, tells us his favorite magazine and other things.
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Dr. Daniel Lieberman, thank you for coming out.
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That's a pretty strong statement right there to say, determine the fate of human race.
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Well, you know, it is pretty strong and it gets a lot of attention.
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But we didn't write that title until we finished writing the book.
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And the second last chapter in the book is all about the ways this chemical, dopamine,
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And you know, we're hearing about it all the time.
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I think the first time it was used, what was it, 1957, some timeline I read about, some lady, Karen.
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I don't know if it's, maybe you can tell us about it, where the word dopamine came about.
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So, originally, we thought that this chemical was simply a precursor molecule
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to make a different chemical in the brain called norepinephrine.
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That's closely related to adrenaline, the fight-or-flight molecule.
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So, it was just thought that it was this intermediate step, not important.
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Then it turned out that it was a neurotransmitter in its own right.
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A neurotransmitter being a chemical the brain uses to process information.
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Since then, we found out it's probably one of the single most important neurotransmitters
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in the brain, responsible for an unbelievably broad variety of behaviors in human beings.
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Have we already figured out enough of this, or is there more to learn about this dopamine?
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Are we at a place where our data is clear enough, where we can trust the data and the studies
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that are coming out, or are we still years behind it?
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And psychiatry, the study of the brain, I think could be considered the youngest of the medical
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scientists, simply because the brain is so complex.
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That said, if you Google the different molecules, Google Scholar, which looks at the medical journals,
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the most articles you're going to find, the most hits, are going to be dopamine.
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That's the one scientists are most interested in.
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So, we don't know everything there is to know, but we know a lot.
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And a lot of the studies, the most important studies, have been replicated, so we can have
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I'm looking forward to getting more educated on this dopamine thing that we're talking about
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And it's not a drug, but it plays as a form of it.
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What made you want to say, I want to study brains?
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I mean, at what point did you decide, I want to be a psychiatrist?
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Well, when I was in college, I studied philosophy.
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I went to a special college called St. John's College.
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What's special about it is there are no textbooks, there are no lectures, and there are no tests.
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What you do is you read original sources, the great books of Western civilization, and you
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get together in small groups and discuss them and write about them.
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So, I came out of there thinking, all right, it's all about the human mind.
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That's where everything that's beautiful comes from.
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It's where everything that's ugly comes from as well.
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It's where everything that's important comes from.
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So, I went to Japan because I had no job, and a friend of mine was Japanese.
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He said, I get a job over there teaching English.
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And while I was there, I ran across the writings of psychologist Carl Jung.
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And reading him, I decided, that's what I want to do.
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It was the way he showed that the human brain is a combination of two things.
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You know, it's easy to say, well, I can't control my body, especially as you get older, Patrick.
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It gets tougher to get a lot of things to get up, you know, in the morning.
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The thing between our ears is we have total control over it.
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The biological substrate of our brain, including the neurotransmitters like dopamine in our brain,
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And a lot of people don't realize just how much that is.
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Is there any linkage between why you wanted to study this or with anybody in your family upbringing
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where you're like, this reminds me of the experience I had with my dad or my mother or my sister or my uncle
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or somebody where you said, I want to go deeper.
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Because, you know, sometimes when it comes to health, a lot of my friends who are doctors
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or they go into this mode, there is somebody in their lives that inspired them to go even deeper.
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And I was pretty sure I was going to be a lawyer.
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And so one year, one summer, I worked in my father's law firm.
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So you know you were going to do it right after that.
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So you go from lawyer to wanting to be a study philosophy?
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Well, you know, I thought that I was going to be an engineer because I loved science.
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And then you know how when you're in high school, colleges send you this PR stuff?
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So St. John's College, their PR stuff is a list of the books you read.
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Plato, Aristotle, The Iliad, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, Newton, Einstein.
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I looked at this list and I said, I got to read these books.
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I don't think I can be an educated person without reading these books.
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What a great, I mean, if you know, because somebody's going to read and say,
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But someone's going to read and say, I want to know everything about these guys.
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So it's going to attract the people that you want.
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Were you always a reader and have an interest in philosophy?
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Not necessarily an interest in philosophy, but I was the kid who wanted to stay inside
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and read while other people were out playing football.
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You did great in school, the whole nine, that kind of a kid.
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And every time I start reading something, he just wants to come next to me.
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It's one of the things I wanted to pass to these kids because I don't jump high.
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If you ever see me throw a first pitch, I threw a first pitch at a game a month ago,
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and it was the most embarrassing first pitch you'll ever see in your life.
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So the only thing I can pass on to these guys is, hey, if you get reading going,
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The same grandfather that he told me that was in Germany or the other side?
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Okay, how about that grandfather, if you can talk about him?
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My father and my father's family were born in Germany, and they were Jews, and they had
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They'd come from Poland, and my grandfather was a furrier.
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And he moved to Berlin because they needed people in that industry there.
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Nazis came to power, and people started saying, hey, you need to get out.
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He had an apprentice that he was teaching the business, young German man, member of the
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One day, he comes, he said, you got to get out.
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They're going to take you, your whole family away.
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They left that night, little suitcase, left everything behind, made it out one step ahead
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Okay, if you haven't seen it, it's a really, really good movie.
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The whole story is this guy that played very good piano, and the Nazi soldiers took a
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liking in him when he would play, and they kind of helped him save, and he helped some
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When you hear these stories, it's very admirable to have that kid do something like that, knowing
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It just tells you, even then, there's some heart in these kids to say, I want to save
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So what did your grandpa end up doing when he came out here?
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You know, he didn't have a chain of them, but he had one, and he had a good middle-class
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life, sent my father to law school, sent my uncle to medical school, American dream.
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So you're raised in this family, and by the way, mother's side, what did your mom, your
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They had been in Buffalo for a number of generations.
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Interesting story on that side of the family, if I can tell it.
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My great-grandfather was in the Russian army, and they were involved in some kind of retreat.
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I don't even know what war it is, but his boots fell apart, and he couldn't walk all
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these miles, so they had to leave him hidden in some town.
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The rest of his company, they make it to the town they're going to.
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His family thought that he had been killed, too, and I don't know, months, years later,
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So I feel pretty lucky to be here on both sides.
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I used to be a die-hard Bills fan when I came to the stage.
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I was a Thurman Thomas, BB Bryce Popp, you know, Bruce Smith, Doug Flutie, all of those
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I was a die-hard Bills fan, but that's a whole different.
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Which one of the philosophers stuck out to you, not in Japan?
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I'm talking about here, all these people you're studying.
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Who stuck out to you as the one that had the biggest positive influence, and was there
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So I think the one that had the biggest positive influence was Plato.
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And he wrote about how you really need to carefully test the things you believe with
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Because the things that we intuitively think are true...
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But he made the point that that's very, very important.
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I mean, he asked the most fundamental questions.
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And got some very interesting things that came out of it.
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How about the one that was the most wackiest guy?
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Because, you know, philosophers, they have a very interesting...
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Boy, I wasn't a big fan of the existentialists.
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You know, the existentialists, the way I interpreted them, and I'm certainly not an expert in existentialism,
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but they basically say, there's no help out there.
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I think, though, it may be a little bit over-optimistic in terms of the strength that human beings have.
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These guys were amazing that they could do that.
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I think it's pretty tough for the ordinary person, though.
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Today, wouldn't it be easier to live that today versus then?
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You know, things have gotten a lot better for us from a material sense.
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I'm not sure things have gotten any better from an emotional sense, though.
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I mean, it's easy to go out and buy a cell phone.
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It's one of the things we talk about in the book, that there's a difference between wanting something and liking it once you get it.
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There's a difference between your brain driving you to collect resources that are going to be useful from a survival evolutionary point of view.
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There's a difference between that and living a happy, fulfilling, satisfying life of contentment.
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And I'm not sure all of the prosperity and technology we have helps us all that much with the latter.
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So, you know, scriptures, different religions, they all talk about contentment, you know, finding ways to get to that point.
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What would the world look like if everybody was content?
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You sit and I say, OK, let's just say you and I sit down and we agree on everything.
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Can you imagine if we go to dinner and we're sitting on time and we're like, OK, yeah, I agree.
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So, you know, you want to go, there's got to be a little bit of that, I feel.
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Because, you know, when a lot of people come and tell me, like, how do you view world peace?
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When somebody says, we've got to have world peace, how do you process that?
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We evolved to fight because we grew up, I mean, we evolved in very difficult circumstances.
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I don't think that's the right way to look at it.
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But sometimes you've got a lot of people that want to force change.
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And when you try to force change, you create enemies.
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I don't know if you ever read the book by Dr. Hawkins, Power vs. Force.
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I don't know if you've ever read the book Power vs. Force.
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It was on one of Oprah's top 10 lists 20 years ago, something like that.
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And he says that everybody has certain levels that you go through from the lowest level to
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the highest level of consciousness, enlightenment being at the highest, then it's peace, joy,
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And then one of the highest levels he has below love is reason, learning how to reason.
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Then below reason is, I think it's willingness, acceptance, neutrality.
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Meaning I can sit down with you and you can have a view and he can have a view and I can
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get along with both of you guys because I can be neutral and kind of be able to have the
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And then the first lowest level of consciousness he says that it's in a good area is courage.
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And then below it at the lowest, I think it's shame, apathy, grief, pride, anger, desire,
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like sex desire, not desire to do something big with your life.
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Very, very interesting when you think about it.
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So for me, it's when you said a world peace, can it exist?
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You know, I don't think it's something that is a good thing or a bad thing.
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How do you teach for all of us to learn how to reason better?
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How do we get a society to be open to reasoning more with each other?
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I think the first step is to identify the challenges.
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Because an important question is, well, why don't we reason all the time, right?
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Because a lot of times when we behave irrationally, we're hurting ourselves more than anyone else.
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So, you know, we've got these biological drives that are manifested in the organization of our brain anatomy.
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We share 50% of our genes with bananas and 99% of our genes with chimpanzees.
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Maybe that's why that art sold for $120,000 with that banana sticker.
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And in that little tiny piece that makes us human, we got reason.
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Because in some ways, reason has allowed us, not completely, but to partially sever ourselves
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But our brains can rise above it and look at abstract laws.
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And that ability to reason is what has allowed us to become the dominant race on this earth
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through technology, through inventions, through the ability to, in some ways, act against our
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biological nature when that's in our best interest.
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But we have to remember it's hard because reason is powerful in what it's able to do,
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but it is weak in terms of its motive force inside of our brains.
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So if I instinctually want something, maybe it's food, maybe it's sex, but my reason tells
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me, hey, maybe that's not the right thing for you to do.
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It's going to be tough for reason to win that battle.
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Does it have anything to do with pleasure and pain or not at all?
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You know, one of the things I do is treat people with drug addiction.
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And in that case, you really see the battle between reason and instinct.
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In drug addiction, instinct in a way has been twisted to want nothing more than to use drugs
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So it's a little bit different than ordinary instinct, but it's so powerful.
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People will give up their jobs, their families, their health, their homes.
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They'll give up everything to feed their brain with this toxic substance.
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And their reason knows that this is the wrong thing to do, but it's powerless.
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They say, all right, I know what the right thing to do is.
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Willpower is like a muscle in that it fatigues very easily.
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And I can give you an example of that if you're interested in it.
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So they did this study called the Chocolates and Radishes Study.
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They brought people in a room, and on the table was freshly baked chocolate chip cookie
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And half the people, they said, hey, go ahead and eat the cookies.
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The other half, they said, you can only eat the radishes.
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Afterwards, they had them work on a problem that was impossible.
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Yeah, because the Radish people had already used up all their willpower, not eating the cookies.
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So we teach them, it's better to be smart than strong.
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If you're going to a party where alcohol is going to be served, and you're an alcoholic
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Bring a sober body who can look after you and make sure you're not going to drink.
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Figure out some way to outsmart instinct rather than trying to take it head on with willpower.
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Can you work on it enough where you're eventually strong on your own?
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Just because of the nature of the willpower circuits.
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So is it a transferable thing to somebody else?
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Or some people are wired to have a stronger willpower than somebody else?
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You know, I can build up muscles, but I'm never going to be like a bodybuilder, right?
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And then some of it is exercising, whether you're exercising your will or your muscles.
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I just don't think it's a good strategy to rely on it.
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And that's been your experience of dealing with people that are on drugs.
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So, you know, a lot of people have heard about dopamine as the pleasure molecule.
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Dopamine was originally made to make us desire things that will benefit us evolutionarily
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The reason why drugs are so dangerous is because they short-circuit these survival pathways.
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And instead of gently stimulating it like winning a competition would do or eating a nice meal,
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they slam it with a chemical blast that outweighs any natural behaviors.
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Now, your brain develops priorities in large part based on how much dopamine it's going to get.
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A hundred dollars or what's behind door number two?
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There's a good chance what's behind door number two is like a car or something, right?
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That's going to give you more dopamine, all right?
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Now, what would you do if something you value is at risk and your child's life is at risk?
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You're going to go after your child, of course.
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That's going to give you more dopamine beyond any moral, rational thing.
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Now, the thing about drugs is because they artificially stimulate this circuit,
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they produce more dopamine than any other natural behavior.
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And so when we see some poor guy out on the street who's lost his family, his job, his home, his money,
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for his drug, we say, geez, that looks completely irrational.
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It's rational to him because he's choosing the bigger dopamine hit.
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It's just as rational as giving up the $100 for door number two.
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What drug produces the highest level of dopamine?
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I don't think so, but heroin does other things as well, which makes it more addictive than cocaine.
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I had a friend who committed suicide, and he was taking 50 Vicodins a day.
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And I took him to a rehab center in Tarzana, 14 days.
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It was like 400 bucks a day, and he was able to stay disciplined for a while.
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And eventually, God, I was good, and he got back on Vicodin, couldn't get off Vicodin.
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Eventually, one day, May 5th, he's done, and obviously, he's not here with us.
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And many people came back and said it was suicide because of him taking too many Vicodins.
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Vicodin and heroin are the two toughest ones to get off of.
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What makes it so tough to get off of those two things?
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The reward is that when you take it, it not only stimulates dopamine, it stimulates different
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It's like the pleasure you feel when you're excited and enthusiastic about something.
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It's the pleasure you feel when you hit the home run or score the soccer goal.
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There's a contentment pleasure where you feel like everything in the world is perfectly okay.
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Heroin, Vicodin, the other opioids, they give you both of those.
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I don't know of any natural behavior, maybe except outside of sex, that gives you both
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The punishment is that if you get addicted to it and then you stop using it, you go into
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I mean, have you seen the movie Johnny Cash Walk the Line?
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I mean, I think if you went to my school of psychiatry, you would have to watch Walk the
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Before we study Plato or Aristotle, you've got to watch philosopher Johnny Cash.
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But there's this one scene where he's in bed and he's trying to go through it and you're
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seeing him sweating and the guy's coming from the other side to sell him the heroin
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and the drugs that he's addicted to and his father-in-law comes out with a shotgun to
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It's a real unique scene because it shows the example of how it all starts.
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Lamar Odom did an interview recently and he said, guy asked him a question, how'd you get
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He says, he says, you know, he was a weak guy, you know.
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I'd go to all these clubs off of Sunset and he was always there.
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He says, one day he gets invited by this swinger couple, okay.
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They invite him over and they say, hey, I want you to come over.
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Every other time I tried, it was about experiencing what it was like the first time I did it.
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Think about you buy, I don't know, you buy a new coat.
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You're never going to get pleasure like that again from wearing that coat.
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Once you do it again, you don't get the same burst of dopamine.
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Like your first puppy love where you, is it where that puppy love you're never going to experience again?
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I think every time we fall in love, the entire world is brand new.
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Yeah, I think falling in love gives you what nothing else can give you.
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But think about, you're working, you get a big promotion, you get a big raise.
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You get that raise for the first time, you see that big paycheck, you got tons of dopamine.
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Second month, third month, fourth month, little by little.
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You don't think like, if I go from $10 an hour to $20 an hour to first time I make six figures,
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or first time I make a million, you're thinking six figures produce more dopamine than a million did?
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What I'm saying is, you're not making six figures.
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So when I was a resident, when I was training to be a psychiatrist, I was getting paid very, very little.
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Then I became a faculty member, and my paycheck just jumped.
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First time I got that paycheck, I was in seventh heaven.
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By the fifth time I got the paycheck, it was the same old, same old.
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So it's similar to that when you get into cocaine or drugs like that.
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Do they all pretty much fall into the same category?
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So what is the difference between a dopamine experience I have from drugs, you know, from sex, you know, from high, from alcohol?
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Well, I would say the dopamine experience itself is probably similar.
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And so in addition to dopamine, you've got all kinds of other chemicals doing their thing at the same time.
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It's more like a symphony than a single instrument playing a tune.
00:30:33.340
So what's going to make all of these different dopaminergic experiences different are the different instruments, the other neurotransmitters, brain chemicals that are going on.
00:30:44.240
So, for instance, if I'm addicted to alcohol, if I'm addicted to cocaine, if I'm addicted to sex, I can't have enough sex.
00:30:56.320
Is it extremely different, or there's a lot of similarities?
00:31:06.040
I write about a patient in the book who is a sex addict.
00:31:09.220
And, you know, he's one of these guys who would go to bars, and he'd pick women up and take them home, and he'd sleep with them.
00:31:15.280
And what he started to notice was that as soon as he had sex with them, he completely lost interest in them.
00:31:23.140
They were nothing to him after he had achieved that conquest.
00:31:27.600
What's interesting is that that moment when he lost interest in them became earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier.
00:31:35.020
And it got to the point where he gave them his line.
00:31:44.240
As soon as the conquest was complete and the sex was now a sure thing, he lost interest in it.
00:31:54.360
Dopamine doesn't give us pleasure for things we have.
00:32:00.300
And that's where we got the title from, the molecule of more.
00:32:10.260
So how different is drugs, alcohol, sex versus social media?
00:32:16.580
Well, let me say a little bit more about once you get it, dopamine shuts off.
00:32:20.760
Because I think the best way to understand that is with buyer's remorse.
00:32:24.860
You think about something that you were incredibly excited about buying.
00:32:28.820
And you imagine, for example, I got a Mazda Miata, which I absolutely love.
00:32:36.240
Before I got that, I would spend hours and hours on the internet reading about it.
00:32:40.620
You know, going to these sites where owners were talking about it.
00:32:45.920
I thought my life is going to be completely different once I got it.
00:32:52.440
But once I got it, I stopped going on the internet to read about it.
00:32:59.140
I didn't exactly have buyer's remorse, but my attitude about it changed from desire, excitement,
00:33:05.200
and enthusiasm to just kind of more of a quiet enjoyment.
00:33:14.180
Social media gets you addicted by always promising you more.
00:33:19.260
There's always this sense, if I'm not on social media, I'm going to miss out on something.
00:33:30.440
Have you ever been kind of scrolling through your social media, looking at these different stories,
00:33:35.540
looking at these different posts, and you realize, I'm miserable.
00:33:46.280
Because what you're afraid of is that there's something down there that might be important.
00:33:51.260
There's something down there that might give you more, might make your life better.
00:33:59.940
How different is it with when it was TV and no social media and people watching TV at night
00:34:05.040
or consuming the news by reading the newspaper?
00:34:09.360
The difference is that the news was almost never about you.
00:34:21.580
Because remember, the point of dopamine is evolutionary success.
00:34:26.600
So dopamine is always scanning the environment.
00:34:29.460
What has the potential to influence my future well-being?
00:34:33.660
You look on the news, all right, the weather report does.
00:34:39.360
Maybe there's something that's going to influence you.
00:34:41.540
But most of it really doesn't influence you all that much.
00:34:47.480
And that's why you get so much more of a dopamine hit.
00:34:57.080
But with great power comes great danger as well.
00:35:02.780
What's the worst thing that could happen with this?
00:35:06.640
The danger is that it's no longer a tool to make your life better.
00:35:10.960
However, it becomes a sink where it absorbs all of your time, all of your focus, all of your energy, and everything else around it shrivels.
00:35:24.500
So you stop paying attention to the people in your life because all you're worried about is getting more dopamine off of social media.
00:35:41.500
We all pull out our phones and we start scrolling.
00:35:44.040
I was doing a radio interview the other day about the holidays.
00:35:47.300
And the interviewer was telling me about how Christmas had been the favorite time of year for his mother.
00:35:54.640
And every Christmas, the most meaningful thing he did was think about her and remember those past Christmases he had with her.
00:36:06.300
And it tells us we've got to appreciate what we have now.
00:36:10.180
There's going to come a time when the people we love are no longer with us.
00:36:14.360
We need to put away our cell phones and make those memories.
00:36:20.640
Those messages have been made over and over and over again.
00:36:24.360
What I'm asking is what is the worst, what are the consequences of us being addicted to social media, Instagram, Twitter, texting, Snap, all of the YouTube.
00:36:36.580
What is the worst long-term consequences we could face with this?
00:36:46.080
So, you know, earlier we were talking about the advantage of modern society compared to ancient society and all the fantastic stuff that we have right now.
00:37:05.860
We've got all kinds of things we can experience.
00:37:11.420
We do years and years and years and years of education.
00:37:17.640
What is it that we're giving up for all of these things?
00:37:23.300
Once an economy reaches a certain point of prosperity, the members of that economy lose interest in reproducing.
00:37:31.480
All of the developed nations have a negative population growth rate.
00:37:35.800
In order to keep the human race going, each woman needs to have 2.1 children.
1.00
00:37:42.300
Two children to replace her and the father and one to replace people who die before they have a chance to reproduce.
00:37:51.260
In all developed countries, the birth rate is less than 2.1%.
00:37:55.500
Even in developing nations, we're seeing this happen.
00:38:03.220
There are some countries where they're now paying people to have children, and even that's not working.
00:38:09.160
As we get more and more gadgets that attract our attention, they become substitutes for family.
00:38:19.080
And ultimately, the human race is simply going to collapse unless something changes.
00:38:24.880
Are you trying to tell everybody that's watching this to set the phone aside and have sex with somebody right now?
00:38:32.680
So, you're promoting more sex is what you're promoting.
00:38:36.000
So, we're going back to the Woodstock days of just let's get together and have sex with each other.
00:38:40.220
And listen, promoting, I'm not the first one to promote sex.
00:38:42.660
In Singapore, they had this holiday called National Night.
00:38:46.720
It was co-sponsored by Mentos, the fresh maker.
00:39:00.240
We got to move you over there and tell us how it is when you come back.
00:39:02.780
The question is if Bumble is there and if Tinder is there.
00:39:09.900
We have to make sure you can still swipe right or left over there.
00:39:15.240
So, this could cause us to not have enough babies.
0.68
00:39:19.520
We need to have 2.1 babies to continue the number.
1.00
00:39:24.580
Now, the argument on the opposite side, I hear a lot of people saying this.
00:39:32.660
Then you got climate change people talking about the fact that the more population we have,
00:39:38.560
That's not good because of the whole, you know, the theory.
00:39:41.120
The greenhouse, you know, the whole theory about the fact that sun's coming in and it's
00:39:47.320
going out and it's getting thicker so it's staying in here.
00:39:55.120
We need to keep having babies versus people are saying let's not.
00:39:59.540
You can't have, I think their limit is to one baby per family right now.
00:40:05.080
They changed it some time ago because what they realized was they were getting negative
00:40:11.800
The problem with negative population growth is you need young workers to support the older
1.00
00:40:20.660
And what happened with China with their one child policy is that they now realize they don't
0.87
00:40:26.900
have enough young people to support the pensions of the older people.
00:40:42.400
I think the Chinese government has actually done a 180 degrees.
00:40:46.160
And they're now encouraging people to have more children.
00:40:50.120
Because you're going to get social unrest otherwise.
00:40:53.020
How are you going to pay the pensions of all these old people?
1.00
00:40:55.980
Somebody may say they've got one and a half billion people there, though.
00:41:01.000
But for an economy to grow, you've got to have a growing population.
00:41:12.160
You know, but you're saying they're not having more kids today because we are on the phones
00:41:17.640
And even at night, if you're on your bed, you're looking at your phone.
00:41:20.140
Many people are falling asleep watching their phones.
00:41:22.040
So, the last thing you're thinking about is what?
00:41:24.020
Hey, babe, you want to mess around or something?
0.58
00:41:26.360
And you're already too tired to have sex because either she fell asleep or you fell asleep on
0.64
00:41:32.380
And I tell you what the bigger problem is, is pornography.
00:41:40.920
When I was a kid growing up, if you wanted pornography, you had to go to the drugstore.
00:41:45.040
Pick up a magazine and hope the person across the counter wasn't a member of the office of sex.
1.00
00:42:04.300
But I tell you one time, I'm going to tell you the funniest story.
00:42:27.220
So I go to the room and I see all my best pictures sitting on top of my bed.
00:42:34.640
I said, mom, what do you want me to masturbate to?
00:42:40.600
So I started setting them aside and she was nice enough to not tear them apart.
00:42:43.360
But I had to find a different place to hide it.
00:42:45.460
So kids, if you're watching, it's a good place to hide.
00:42:56.500
And you bottom drawer on the, what do you call it?
00:43:08.620
And then one day she took it at Goodwill and somebody got a surprise, right?
00:43:15.300
You know, because porn is more available today.
00:43:18.240
And by the way, you know, yesterday's video we were making.
00:43:20.120
We were making a funny video about the whole annual review I was telling you about.
00:43:27.180
As crazy as this sounds, I cannot tell you how many people.
00:43:36.380
I'm like, buddy, over here, honestly, you know, what do you do?
00:43:44.820
And, you know, you're the next person next to you in the stall.
00:43:51.120
So what is the worst effects that porn can have on our lives?
00:43:54.880
So pornography stimulates dopamine, just like drugs and food and all of these other things.
00:44:01.040
And, you know, when we talk about people being addicted to something, what we want is we want
00:44:09.660
Is it taking up large amounts of time in which they could be doing something else?
00:44:17.920
People who get addicted, they'll spend hours and hours per day.
00:44:25.440
People who spend too much time watching pornography, they have trouble performing with regular sex.
00:44:33.560
And the reason is that just like with alcohol, you might start out with some beer, maybe some wine.
00:44:39.340
You progress to hard liquor, mixed drinks, and finally you're just drinking the vodka right out of the bottle.
00:44:45.760
You start out with tame stuff, and little by little, you go up to more and more extreme acts.
00:44:51.960
When you're with a real human being, it just doesn't do it anymore.
00:44:55.940
And so a lot of people have erectile dysfunction.
00:44:59.060
They don't even want to have sex with real people.
00:45:01.940
One guy's quoted as saying, I'd rather stay at home and look at pornography than go out on a date
00:45:07.140
because the pornography woman never says no, and she never asks anything of me.
00:45:15.180
And so I've had buddies say, like, you know, Pamela Anderson did an interview on porn.
00:45:21.900
By the way, Pamela, if you watch this, I'd love to have you here and talk about this topic
00:45:25.320
because I think so many young men can learn from the way she describes it.
00:45:29.780
She says, so one day she talks to her son about sex because, you know, the whole porn situation.
00:45:36.540
So she says, I'm out there dating, and all of a sudden I'm going out there and I'm going on dates
00:45:41.460
and I'm having sex and guys are trying stuff on me.
0.51
00:45:46.760
And they're trying things thinking that's what women like.
1.00
00:45:51.200
Because what they see in a porn thinking that's exactly what everybody wants to do.
00:45:56.340
And then when they do, somebody's disappointed, not realizing these are professional porn stars.
00:46:03.240
I don't know if you know, Chatsworth 20 years ago was the 80% of porn was producing Chatsworth.
00:46:08.960
80% of porn in the U.S., whatever porn people watch, 80% was producing Chatsworth.
0.94
00:46:14.180
So I'm the weekend manager at Chatsworth, and I'm shutting down the gym.
00:46:18.260
These porn stars would come to me and they would say, hey, man, you know, can I use the gym?
00:46:21.520
We just want to do a quick 30-minute shoot at the end.
00:46:27.340
We'd have to send these guys home all the time.
00:46:28.680
Obviously, my young guys, everybody wanted to stick around.
00:46:31.740
They wanted to participate and contribute to society with these porn stars.
00:46:34.900
I imagine it's not that sexy, though, when you're actually seeing the porn stars shoot on the set.
00:46:40.860
When you're 21 full of testosterone, it's very sexy.
00:46:46.660
Some of us, you're taking notepads and trying to take notes.
00:46:49.440
But the point is, the sex with porn stars, with the camera off, is just, you know, different than a sex with, you know, on camera.
00:47:01.860
So a lot of, so Pamela Landry is telling her son, saying, listen, if you're going to have sex with your girl, just know, all these other things you saw there, she's probably not going to like it.
00:47:09.300
Okay, so if you want to ask, ask first if she likes it before you do, because you may have, like all of us, if you've dated, if you've been with, you know, many sexual partners, you'll always come across to one that likes to be hanging off the top and a rope and freaking hit me with this.
00:47:26.380
And I want you to bring this, you know, all these weird things to use.
00:47:30.100
I had a very interesting girlfriend of mine in the army that liked a lot of extracurricular activities.
00:47:36.340
But then you realize most of them are not really into that kind of stuff.
00:47:40.740
So porn completely disappoints men thinking girls want to do that.
00:47:46.640
So what is the biggest threat with porn when virtual reality and augmented reality comes out?
00:47:52.760
I mean, you're sitting there and you're watching the porn.
00:47:55.360
What effects do you think this is going to have long term?
00:48:00.360
It's going to make it worse and worse and worse.
00:48:06.600
And we're going to have, it's going to create unrealistic expectations.
00:48:11.820
Just as pornography has created this unrealistic expectation for Pamela Anderson's son, it's going to be like Netflix.
00:48:23.360
These porn channels are going to learn what kind of women you like, what you like the women to do.
1.00
00:48:29.620
And it's going to know you so well that no flesh and blood human being is going to be able to compete with the pixels.
00:48:38.620
And we're going to be less and less interested in human beings and more and more interested in pixels.
00:48:50.600
Hopefully, things will get bad enough that we begin to realize, hey, this is a dangerous thing.
00:48:55.300
We've got to start looking at this the way we look at alcohol and cocaine and realize that this taps into our brain in such a powerful, primitive way that it's going to destroy our life.
00:49:11.080
I mean, you go back to biblical times that we talk about the city of Corinth, right?
00:49:15.740
You know, they say the oldest occupation in the world, you know what it is, prostitution, right?
00:49:21.960
So is this really something that is a new thing that we're going to experience and it's going to really have that kind of a dramatic effect?
00:49:30.040
Because, you know, sometimes my concern is when we go and we sell fear, obviously we all know fear sells, dramatically fear sells.
00:49:39.560
When the market tanks, infomercial guys are blowing up because they know how to sell anything during that time because fear sharpens listening when you're afraid you'll listen.
00:49:47.620
Sometimes I think we have to be a little bit more careful in this.
00:49:54.140
Because sometimes we turn something as a crisis into an 18-year-old thinking about it.
00:50:03.820
So because they think it's even a bigger problem, sometimes they even get more obsessed about it.
00:50:08.820
And in their mind, they think it's going to be terrible for them versus not even paying attention to something a little bit and just kind of telling them to, you listen, it is something you've got to be careful with.
00:50:20.840
I'd say, you know what, dad, I'm having a big problem with my son right now, my first son.
00:50:27.580
I said, you know, you realize he's doing, you know, he wouldn't pick up after his stuff the other day.
00:50:39.760
I just, I'm concerned because, you know, when I tell him what to do, you know, he's just, he's two and a half years old.
00:50:47.480
When I talk to him sometimes, I don't think he's really talking to me.
00:50:52.200
So every time that I thought something was an issue, it lasted two, three, four, five, six months, and it went away.
00:51:01.420
And sometimes for us, go back and think about the biggest thing you had to overcome when you were a kid or I was a kid.
00:51:06.080
So we were like, oh, somebody thought we're never going to get rid of it.
00:51:10.740
You think sometimes we have to all to be held responsible to not make, turn molehills into a mountain because the next generation is going to have a unnecessary fear injected into them that could prevent them from fulfilling their own life?
00:51:25.780
Well, you know, I think you make a very good point.
00:51:28.080
If I sound like I'm on shrooms, just say, Pat, you sound like you're high.
00:51:30.520
If I have a point, just tell me I have a point.
00:51:38.240
And a lot of times the good sense wins over our destructive, instinctual reactions.
00:51:58.380
Now, at some point, we as a society realized or decided, I don't know if we're right or wrong, we decided we have to start putting some restrictions on cigarettes because the product is simply too dangerous.
00:52:16.320
And so when people get addicted, they lose control.
00:52:19.160
We kind of felt like the basic good sense that human beings have is no match for this terribly addictive drug.
00:52:29.040
Let me tell you why I think pornography might lead us in this direction.
00:52:36.540
One cared about your happiness more than anything else.
00:52:44.580
You'd obviously go for the beautiful one that cared about you.
00:52:56.780
Let's say that physically, she was indistinguishable.
00:53:07.040
Because feelings to me to know that I sincerely believe you chose to love me and accept me matters to me rather than fabricating that feeling by recoding you in a way where you love me just because I coded you properly.
00:53:22.860
The robot would love anybody, but the human being is only going to love you.
00:53:30.780
I mean, there are things about human beings that are unfathomable depths.
00:53:37.440
And if anything is going to save us, that's what's going to save us.
00:53:40.260
Those unfathomable depths that you can't get from a computer.
00:53:49.940
So, look, if you're watching this interview and watching porn, turn off the porn.
00:53:53.480
I'm just telling you, turn the porn off and pay attention to the interview here.
00:54:06.540
Because I know we said love is very different than everything else.
00:54:10.560
Because love confuses the hell out of all of us.
00:54:15.940
Some people say that love is the most intensely pleasurable experience that human beings have.
00:54:28.140
You know, you see so many movies about it, so many books about it.
00:54:33.420
And when you fall in love, you feel like the world is brand new.
00:54:42.140
But the problem with love, of course, is that it doesn't last.
00:54:45.960
And people always want to try to make this passionate love last.
00:54:54.780
And they think that when the passionate love comes to an end, on average it lasts 12 months,
00:55:01.240
when the passionate love comes to an end, it means the relationship has come to an end.
00:55:09.140
One of the things we write about in the book is that's not true.
00:55:16.240
Passionate love lasts about a year, and then it turns into something different.
00:55:20.820
It turns into something called companionate love.
00:55:37.440
Companionate, though, uses pleasure chemicals in the brain that are about the present moment.
00:55:47.420
It's about the deep satisfaction of having another person's life deeply entwined with your own.
00:55:53.660
So, when you fall in love, you've got to be ready for that shift.
00:55:58.840
You've got to look for it when it comes and say, yeah, it's sad that the rollercoaster ride of passionate love is over,
00:56:05.960
but this is a deeper, more enduring love that in some ways is a better ride than the rollercoaster.
00:56:13.180
You know, most people can't comprehend what you just said.
00:56:16.860
It's a very deep topic, what you just said, because, you know, the whole idea of newness, right?
00:56:25.820
Like, the moment you date somebody and let you say, guys, get sexual, what time you get off work?
00:56:35.680
And then, yeah, you're having sex, but not like before.
00:56:41.360
I'm tired, and I'm just going to stay in, right?
00:56:43.320
And then you go to the next one, wanting to chase the next thing, that experience that.
00:56:47.280
And a lot of time in marriage, this comes to an eventual point where it's tough to kind of make the marriage work.
00:56:53.380
What do you do when you get to that point where you sit there and you say, I love you, but I'm no longer in love with you?
00:57:04.020
Well, a lot of people say, I say, so what's happening between the two of you guys?
00:57:09.680
I'm just not in love with her anymore like I once was.
00:57:12.920
What does that mean when people say that to you?
00:57:21.020
And we just, our brains were simply not wired to have this in love feeling last forever.
00:57:28.840
You know, companionate comes from the word friend, companion.
00:57:35.200
And so you don't have this person you're absolutely insane over.
00:57:39.640
And by the way, there is a way to bring back sparkles of that passionate love, which we can talk about.
00:57:45.940
But instead what you have is this loyal, deep friendship with another person.
00:57:59.200
How does one in that moment know the fact that whoever else you date a year later is going to become not passionate love, companion love?
00:58:14.880
I mean, you know, what is the divorce rate right now in America?
00:58:18.640
Okay, that's not, you know, so what do we have, what are we getting wrong in this place?
00:58:23.640
Because you've got one community that's saying man is not built to be monogamous, right?
00:58:31.520
I don't know if you've seen Hugh Hefner make the argument.
00:58:42.300
Human beings have a very strong mating for life instinct, just like swans and prairie voles.
00:58:54.100
But if you, the World Health Organization looked at global statistics and they found out that by the age of 50, more than 90% of people all over the world have been married at least once.
00:59:07.600
Now, that's not to say that they were absolutely faithful, but marriage is an intention to have one individual for life.
00:59:15.520
And 90% of us, at some point in our life, at least had that intention, and many of us kept it.
00:59:25.600
Or have we kept it because of some kind of a church or a belief that has made us believe that it's the right thing to do,
00:59:34.100
where at some point this religion was used in a way to control the populace of not, you know, pissing off each other.
00:59:42.020
And I don't flirt with your wife because natural instinct, if I mess with your wife, you're going to be upset at me.
1.00
00:59:46.560
If you flirt with my wife, I'm going to be upset at you.
1.00
00:59:52.560
Or how much of it is an institution or church or religion pass it down to us where we believe that?
01:00:03.600
You know, inside our head, we think there's one person, me.
01:00:06.800
But it's actually this seething cauldron of competing motivations and goals.
01:00:16.640
The drug addict also wants to be a good father.
01:00:19.420
Now, a lot of the time the cocaine's going to win, but we've got these competing drives.
01:00:24.980
So when you get married, there's a big part of you that wants to be a good husband for the rest of your life, but you can't help it.
01:00:33.800
You've got these competing drives that you see a pretty woman and you want to have sex with her.
1.00
01:00:39.440
So we've got these things like the church, our community, our government, that have been built up to support one of these drives.
01:00:50.380
And if we don't think that's the right thing, nobody keeps us in the church these days.
01:00:54.920
You know, in the old days, if you wanted to be part of society, you had to go to the church or the synagogue or the mosque.
01:01:02.000
A lot of people choose to do it, though, because they're identifying with one of those competing drives.
01:01:09.720
They're saying that, yeah, I know I've got these interests in other women, but I don't like that part of myself.
01:01:20.020
And so I'm going to surround myself with these institutions that's going to help me stay a good husband.
01:01:27.120
And I think that they're acting prudently because how many people have an extramarital affair and two years later say, best thing I ever did?
01:01:40.040
But we know it's not a good idea, just like we know eating that third donut is not such a good idea.
01:01:46.880
It's a primitive drive that doesn't necessarily have our future happiness in mind when it makes us eat that third donut or have the extramarital affair.
01:01:57.980
So the three institutions you said, church, religion, government, what was the other one you said?
01:02:08.340
Regarding anything else you have to share on the love side?
01:02:17.460
Yeah, no problem, because that topic is a deep topic.
01:02:21.960
So politics for me is, and then we'll go into domination because I'm curious to know what you're going to say.
01:02:26.860
By the way, I haven't even gone through my notes.
01:02:28.220
Just the conversation alone, I'm enjoying this, just so you know this.
01:02:31.240
And I told you earlier, Daniel Lieberman, you know, there's two of you.
01:02:38.760
So it's kind of like, you know, it's conflicting which is which, but I know you've done your own speeches and his.
01:02:46.300
You know, for me, sometimes I look at people and I say, you just feel like a liberal to me, okay?
01:02:57.760
And I'll see someone and I'll just say, you feel like a conservative to me.
01:03:01.860
And I'll see someone and I'll say, you're an independent.
01:03:06.740
You're just kind of trying to stay in the middle, neutral.
01:03:09.800
You're just kind of trying to, I totally understand.
01:03:13.780
And it doesn't take long to realize if somebody's a Democrat or a Republican or a liberal or a, you know, conservative.
01:03:20.540
A few minutes of conversations, you can kind of figure out where people are leaning.
01:03:29.960
Myself, I'm curious to know what your answer is going to be.
01:03:32.100
Are we born somewhat liberal or, you know, and are we born, some of us, from the day we're born, we're liberals, a part of us, and we're conservative, a part of us?
01:03:43.640
I think the answer is yes, but I think it's a very, very small tendency.
01:03:48.780
And the reason why I say that is that if you look at individuals, it's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to find something they're born with that is leading them to a particular political ideology.
01:04:03.100
But if you look at very, very large groups of people, thousands of people, little tiny things will come out in the averages, and we can see that.
01:04:14.780
People who have different kinds of upbringings, people who have different kinds of genes, there are very, very subtle influences that we can bring out in the averages.
01:04:27.560
It's a small percentage, yeah, but it is genes.
01:04:28.820
Yeah, because for me, I say, a guy asked me one time, how do we come up with political beliefs?
01:04:33.300
I said, listen, tell me if you agree with us or if you see it's different.
01:04:39.240
You were involved in a Christian church, and everybody there was conservative, so you kind of grew up in that environment.
01:04:47.400
The other one is you had a falling out with somebody.
01:04:51.600
He made a lot of money but wasn't around, so you become a Democrat because you hate Republicans because all they care about is money.
01:04:56.160
Or you grew up in a family that was a Democrat.
01:04:59.360
They were all, let's just say, financially, they weren't doing well, and they were just kind of voting for a certain party, and you're like, okay, I don't want to go that route because I don't want to live that life.
01:05:09.060
So you fight whatever somebody lets you down in your life, so you go and become the opposite that somebody does.
01:05:18.460
Then the other one is somebody took a liking into you.
01:05:21.020
You grew up with not even any political beliefs.
01:05:22.680
A coach liked you, a professor liked you, a teacher liked you, and they became a father figure or mother figure that you didn't have in your life, and they happened to be a Republican.
01:05:34.120
And you say, no one in my life has been this interested in me as this man is.
01:05:39.420
And then there's people that just kind of want to, they had a big life-changing event that happened to them.
01:05:45.520
You were in your house, and somebody came in and shot you with a gun, and you didn't like guns, and now you say, everybody needs to have a gun because I've got to protect myself.
01:05:54.380
No one will ever come and shoot somebody, my father or somebody, I need to have a gun.
01:06:00.500
Would you say there's any other things outside of that that determine, end up somebody being a liberal or a conservative?
01:06:08.660
Well, first of all, I think you make a great point that we believe that our political views are based on reason, but reason probably plays a very small role.
01:06:19.620
And sometimes you see videos on YouTube where they go to people on streets and they read them something that a politician said, and they say, what do you think about that?
01:06:29.100
Well, it turns out it was said by someone on the other side of the spectrum as you.
01:06:34.080
But, you know, I'm going to go out on a limb, and I'm going to say, I think biology has something to do with it.
01:06:42.940
So, you know, it comes back to the whole thing about the brain chemicals.
01:06:48.940
Dopamine looks to the future, getting more, making the future a better place.
01:06:54.780
We haven't spoken quite as much on what we call the here and now neurotransmitters.
01:07:00.280
Those are the neurotransmitters that help us to experience the present.
01:07:04.240
And typically what we experience in the present are sensory inputs, which you see here, taste, smell, touch, emotions, and interpersonal relationships.
01:07:14.020
So some of those chemicals are going to be oxytocin, endorphin, endocannabinoid.
01:07:19.220
If you are born where the future-oriented dopamine circuits are a little bit stronger, you're more likely to be liberal.
01:07:28.880
If you're born where the here and now circuits are a little bit stronger, you're more likely to be conservative.
01:07:34.840
And again, it's a small piece, but if you look at large groups of people, you can see the differences.
01:07:40.800
Can you talk about what you write about in your book when you said in Hollywood they measure to see what percentage of money was given to Obama versus Romney?
01:07:51.300
Can you elaborate on that, on how that comes about?
01:07:54.040
So there are some people who we might call dopaminergic.
01:07:59.640
These are people who are very much focused on the future.
01:08:02.700
Your listeners, I think, tend to be very dopaminergic.
01:08:06.580
It takes an enormous amount of motivation, an enormous amount of drive to be an entrepreneur.
01:08:12.940
I tried, by the way, and I failed, which is a great experience.
01:08:23.180
Well, Hollywood, they're not entrepreneurs as much.
01:08:26.440
We're seeing a different kind of dopaminergic person.
01:08:29.460
People in Hollywood are notorious for excess, right?
0.90
01:08:36.580
It doesn't matter how many starring roles you've been in, you always need to have another.
01:08:41.620
It doesn't matter how many mansions you have around the world, you always need another one.
01:08:46.060
We were talking about marriage and how the divorce rate among the general population is 50%.
01:08:51.800
During the first five years of marriage, in Hollywood, the divorce rate is 80%.
01:08:59.320
Is it because it's never good enough or is it because temptation's all around you?
01:09:09.380
And we clearly see that there is a strong bias towards the left in Hollywood.
01:09:14.500
Almost all of the financial donations that were given were given to Democrats.
01:09:22.100
This is where we see the dopaminergic entrepreneurs.
01:09:26.380
In Silicon Valley, they give all their money to the Democrats as well and very little to the Republicans.
01:09:42.120
Liberalism is about making the world a better place.
01:09:46.060
The criticism of it is that they try to make the world a better place by achieving utopia.
01:09:51.680
And the only way you can do that is by having total control over society.
01:09:56.020
But the goal is to make the world a better place, to plan our cities so that they will be less polluting and easier to get around,
01:10:07.200
to determine what kind of education our children need, to tell people, hey, you've got to wear helmets when you ride your motorcycle,
01:10:19.140
Let the government take it over because the government knows better and the government will fix it.
01:10:24.720
It's about progress, and that's a very dopaminergic thing.
01:10:29.360
So where you find dopaminergic people, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, academia,
01:10:35.780
you find people who lean towards the progressive side of the political ideology.
01:10:42.120
The other way around are people who are more focused on the here and now.
01:10:47.380
You see, they're more likely to be conservatives.
01:10:51.540
It means keeping what we've inherited from our forebears and not letting it change, conserve.
01:11:02.460
You see this these days, especially among blue-collar workers, that segment of our country feels like things are changing too fast.
01:11:10.600
I can't keep up with all of these politically-collect rules I have to follow.
01:11:16.320
I can't keep up with, you know, there used to be two genders.
1.00
01:11:21.460
Now nobody knows how many genders there are.
1.00
01:11:24.340
They feel like things are moving too fast, and they're the brakes.
01:11:28.560
The liberals are the accelerator in the car, and the conservatives are the brakes.
01:11:33.280
They're saying, hold on a minute, let's not lose all of the good things we've inherited from the people who came before us.
01:11:44.660
Dennis Prager once said, conservatives are wise, liberals are smart.
01:11:57.280
You seriously think there's no wisdom on the left?
01:12:02.560
My professors were brilliant and had almost no wisdom.
01:12:05.700
So you're saying the left is smart, the right is wise?
01:12:14.880
Yeah, you know, on average, liberals do have a higher IQ than conservatives.
01:12:27.740
IQ is measuring a dopaminergic ability to figure out problems.
01:12:33.500
Your IQ will predict how well you do in school.
01:12:37.200
It will also predict how much money you make in your career.
01:12:41.220
But it does not predict how happy you're going to be.
01:12:44.820
Having high IQ doesn't help you decide who to be friends with.
01:13:15.380
If you, if you, if we get the link, I want to put, if you want to see the link, we'll get
01:13:21.060
So conservatives live happier lives than liberals do, even though liberals on average have a
01:13:32.640
And it makes sense because if you want, if you're very dopaminergic.
01:13:40.100
I mean, I'm already like, I'm still thinking about it.
01:13:43.160
If you're very dopaminergic and you want to change the world, happiness is your enemy.
01:13:49.380
You, you were talking about, what if everybody is content?
01:13:53.300
Only some people in our society can be content.
01:13:57.640
We need the unhappy, dissatisfied people to move us forward.
01:14:05.680
So if you want to light it up, we're getting a little too deep right now with these conversations.
01:14:11.580
That's very interesting with the political side.
01:14:13.720
Any other research or studies you did on the politics side that, you know, gave you some
01:14:20.320
kind of a trend to say, this is another thing that we can talk about to, to learn about the
01:14:26.300
We looked at some very interesting research that showed ways in which scientists could
01:14:30.120
actually manipulate people's political beliefs and make them either more conservative or more
01:14:40.760
Let me, let me talk about ways in which they were able to make liberal people more conservative.
01:14:45.800
They took a bunch of students and they had them fill out these questionnaires,
01:14:49.800
looking at their political ideology and they could give them a score, how liberal, how
01:14:58.040
One group, they had to fill it out and there was a hand sanitizer nearby.
01:15:04.840
The presence of the hand sanitizer made them more conservative.
01:15:08.360
The presence of the hand sanitizer made them more conservative?
01:15:14.260
On average, this group filled out their questionnaire in a more conservative way than the other group
01:15:20.840
The reason is the hand sanitizer is a sign of threat.
01:15:26.080
It reminds you that you are at risk of becoming infected.
01:15:30.360
It's a tiny, subtle intervention, but it reflects a much larger intervention that we all understand.
01:15:37.420
Terrorist attack make the country more conservative.
01:15:40.820
If there's an election coming up and there's a terrorist attack around the time of the election,
01:15:48.960
Because when you feel under threat, you say, I need to protect what I have.
01:15:54.260
It's when you feel safe that you say, let's take some risks.
01:16:03.300
Now, what's funny is election season's in November.
01:16:08.220
So, when you go to your polling place, you might see a little thing of hand sanitizer sitting
01:16:15.540
So, if the RNC or the DNC is watching this, the RNC needs to get a bunch of hand sanitizer
01:16:28.260
Let me put some hand sanitizer, and the DNC's got to pull all that stuff out.
01:16:33.320
Some guy once said that when you go to the bathroom, you know those signs that said employees
01:16:53.060
So, different group of scientists, very similar kind of questionnaire, and they told people,
01:17:00.340
imagine that you have superpowers and nothing can hurt you.
01:17:04.540
I just want you to spend five seconds just imagining you have superpowers and nothing can hurt you.
01:17:19.120
How are immigrants going to change the country?
1.00
01:17:22.380
How are people who are different from me going to threaten my way of life?
01:17:26.580
If you can lower those fears, they will become, in subtle ways, not traumatic, but in subtle
01:17:45.040
That's why you have a left wing and a right wing.
01:17:49.720
So, like currently right now with impeachment, is the wise decision being made or the smart
01:18:00.660
When theory turns into practice, it becomes much more complicated.
01:18:13.020
So, is impeaching the president a liberal thing to do or is it a conservative thing to
01:18:25.240
You know, a lot of people will say, well, this is my political ideology.
01:18:29.320
They get to Washington, D.C. and a lot of times it just becomes about what's convenient.
01:18:38.460
You know, we saw the Tea Party come out because what the conservatives were finding-
01:18:47.700
Michelle Bachman, all those guys that were coming up.
01:18:51.880
The reason they came is because conservative voters elected Republican politicians.
01:18:57.520
The Republican politicians went to Washington and behaved in liberal ways.
01:19:07.320
The Tea Party said, we're electing you guys and you're growing the government.
01:19:13.800
And so the point is that when you have real people doing real things, theory breaks down.
01:19:19.000
When you have real people doing real things, theory breaks down.
01:19:24.420
And I wonder how many times like the one party is mimicking the other side's habits and they don't even know they're doing it.
01:19:32.320
But you doing the retaliation is not your way of doing things.
01:19:36.460
You're retaliating like a liberal or you're retaliating like a conservative because you're mimicking what they're doing to you.
01:19:43.940
But you're not being true to your own way of thinking.
01:19:51.260
Yeah, because sometimes you're like, they're not acting like liberals.
01:19:56.320
They're acting like, what the hell is going on?
01:20:07.060
And they're losing a bit of their identity sometimes.
01:20:11.840
I mean, the theory of the republic is that we elect people to represent our views.
01:20:17.360
But how many laws are passed that the majority of Americans don't want?
01:20:24.200
So you got people that come out of high school, people that go to college.
01:20:28.200
And there's those that say, I just want to go make my money, make millions, leave me alone.
01:20:36.080
And then there are those that go into politics and they say, oh yeah, I'm going to have control
01:20:43.320
And I'm going to be able to get to control people with the decisions that I want to make.
01:20:47.460
Now some people go into politics to want to do good.
01:20:49.480
But some people go into politics for power versus freedom.
01:20:52.420
Do you see a trend with people who chase money, they're typically seeking freedom versus
01:20:59.180
those who chase power, they're seeking, you know, chase politics, they're more seeking
01:21:17.740
You have to do a certain amount of top line revenue and they bring people from 60 plus
01:21:21.760
countries, 140 CEOs, founders, you kind of spend three weeks together on campus.
01:21:26.180
So I went there and I experienced what it was like to be on the campus.
01:21:35.660
I went during the time where Trump and Hillary were debating, one of the debates, I was there
01:21:47.760
Everybody, oh, you're such a this, you're a bigot.
01:21:51.500
I'm just kind of sitting there watching everybody just to kind of get a feel.
01:21:55.140
So to me, sometimes I wonder if academia and politics, they're going to have power and
01:22:01.140
decision-making process to see that they can have a little bit of control over you.
01:22:05.580
And the guys that go on the money and, you know, business side, they're just kind of
01:22:11.320
Do you see that as a trend with the wiring or not really?
01:22:14.160
Yeah, I think the academia is a little more complicated.
01:22:19.160
But let's just talk about politicians and business people.
01:22:22.600
So somebody starts a business, they want that business to grow and be successful.
01:22:31.940
There's absolutely no question about that, right?
01:22:34.520
Somebody goes into government, they want the government to grow and be successful.
01:22:40.620
And so I think that there is naturally going to be some conflict between the two of them.
01:22:46.080
Because people go, look, let's take the best view of this we can.
01:22:51.780
People go into government to make the world a better place.
01:22:55.480
If you don't have power, you can't make the world a better place.
01:23:01.840
Well, let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
01:23:08.640
I think they're going for the right cause, by the way.
01:23:13.320
So they want to grow the government so that they will have the power, the levers, to make
01:23:23.020
They need to collect taxes in order to spend money on building roads and bridges.
01:23:28.280
And so they want to collect more taxes so they can build more roads and bridges.
01:23:32.320
The people who are running their own business, though, they want the opposite.
01:23:37.560
They say, look, all of your taxes, all of your laws, all of your regulations are making
01:23:47.280
So I think in some ways they both want the same thing.
01:23:50.480
They want to maximize the good they do while they're on this earth.
01:23:57.500
Who gets in the way of the other person the most?
01:24:06.400
Well, the government's probably going to get in the way more just because the government
01:24:12.120
If you're not doing what it likes, they can use force.
01:24:17.680
I mean, a negative review on Yelp for a congressman does what?
01:24:21.740
A negative review for a small restaurant business owner.
01:24:26.880
You can go to DMV and talk about the receptionist sucked.
1.00
01:24:30.620
You can go to a restaurant and say the waiter was terrible.
01:24:36.200
So, you know, it's interesting on the perspective there.
01:24:39.560
I'll tell you an advantage business has, though.
01:24:51.720
And when you pass a law, either it works or it doesn't.
01:24:58.540
With businesses, you've got 100 businesses starting up.
01:25:03.960
And so you've got all of these ideas being tried out.
01:25:15.500
You've got the ability to try thousands of ideas and pick one that works and let all of
01:25:22.900
You know, an old colleague of mine called me and I had a lengthy conversation.
01:25:28.740
While I was in Detroit, he said, you know, Pat, you've got to realize I'm not an entrepreneur
01:25:32.500
He works for a very big company that's controlled by a very big company.
01:25:40.200
It's going to take me 6 to 12 months to get somebody to look at it.
01:25:42.000
I've got to go committee, committee, committee, committee, committee.
01:25:44.160
You guys come up with an idea or the entrepreneur.
01:25:45.560
But you can execute it the same day or the next day.
01:25:51.780
And the thing that's happening, which is kind of a, is a lot of these too big to fail companies
01:25:58.840
are starting to become governments of their own.
01:26:04.560
And it kind of hurts the people that are the entrepreneur thinking within it.
01:26:09.260
And they're either leaving or they kind of have to say, look, I have to kind of figure
01:26:14.020
So last thing that I want to talk to you about, you talk about domination in the book
01:26:23.300
So dopamine is all about maximizing future resources.
01:26:27.920
Now, we've mainly been, and there's different circuits in the brain that use dopamine.
01:26:32.580
We've mainly been focusing on the circuit we call the desire circuit.
01:26:40.560
It's the thing that makes you want the donut and the sex.
0.89
01:26:43.000
There's a different circuit, though, that we call the control circuit.
01:26:46.680
And from an evolutionary point of view, it's a newer circuit.
01:26:56.860
So the desire circuit may say, I want to eat that donut.
01:27:06.320
But if we look ahead a month, a year, five years from now, we're going to be better off
01:27:12.780
So it's the control circuit that gives us a much more sophisticated way of maximizing our future resources.
01:27:21.060
And it allows us to use tools like abstractions, such as science, mathematics, language.
01:27:27.860
And this is where we really see the powerful tools the human brain has for changing the world and making it better.
01:27:37.960
We're using this long-term, sophisticated control circuit to absolutely dominate our environment.
01:27:44.940
To dominate our environment or dominate an industry or same thing?
01:27:54.560
So it's really about squeezing as much resources as we possibly can.
01:27:58.540
Think about what science does in terms of our ability to get calories out of an acre of land.
01:28:05.020
With every agricultural advancement, we're growing more and more food in smaller and smaller areas.
01:28:11.360
It's getting the most we can out of our environment.
01:28:13.740
Where do you put the people that become heavy-duty world leaders?
01:28:20.760
Or what makes them want to go through the pain of being a world leader or president?
01:28:24.800
Whether you put Hillary there or Bill there or Donald Trump there or Obama or Reagan or Bush or some of the even world leaders on the other end.
01:28:35.400
I mean, Erdogan from Turkey and some of these guys have become dictators.
01:28:38.820
What causes someone to want to have that kind of power and influence and put their body through and their emotions through the pain that comes with it?
01:29:02.460
Boy, what a miserable experience that's got to be, right?
01:29:11.540
He's got to deal with the trade dispute with Hong Kong.
01:29:22.940
And why would you sacrifice everything for that level of unhappiness?
01:29:38.860
And let me ask you, if somebody is more driven by a communistic philosophy than the democracy
01:29:45.080
that we have here, does that mean the person of communistic philosophy wants even more power
01:29:54.880
I think that people view communism in different ways.
01:29:57.320
I mean, ideally, when you have communism, the government is supposed to shrivel up and dry
01:30:13.660
It's not possible because everybody is ... I just had a conference call right now, okay?
01:30:19.940
Right before you, and when you were out there, I was just doing a conference call, and the
01:30:26.220
conference call that I had was with my main guys, not my executives, because we have a
01:30:35.880
These are guys that are all making very good money for themselves, ranging from a quarter
01:30:42.260
And the conversation went about, you know, why are you waiting on me?
01:30:52.560
Now, a lot of them were doing the right thing, so it's not everybody.
01:30:54.480
It was like half of the group I was talking to about taking the responsibility where you
01:31:13.140
You're on independent contractors, franchise model, but you're running your own deal here.
01:31:19.160
In a communistic philosophy, everybody's relying on one person to make, because what I'm already
01:31:38.000
Why would anybody want to have all the right decisions?
01:31:42.940
And you've got some people that are still using that regime, and it's going to be interesting
01:31:47.320
What's always funny to me is when some people want that regime, but they've never lived under
01:31:54.140
When some people think, can you imagine what if the right virtuous person showed up, and
01:32:02.740
You know, you read a lot of books, and people have never coached.
01:32:05.200
You know, power of this, and power of positive thinking.
01:32:07.200
You've got to do this, and you go watch Belichick.
01:32:09.440
I mean, if Belichick wrote a book on coaching, you realize it's like, some people will be
01:32:12.900
like, if he actually wrote what he does to coach, actual, not, you know, what you read
01:32:21.760
It's a very different world to be a general, to be a coach, to be a leader than it is to
01:32:27.100
I think pretty much everything looks different from the outside than when it's really...
01:32:30.740
This is why sometimes you read the books, you wonder, like, is it really about him or
01:32:33.900
You know, you hope to see the darker side of the person, because everybody's got it.
01:32:40.500
Like, we learned about you, like Hustler Magazine, when you were a kid.
01:32:50.440
Here's a professor, a psychiatrist, you know, a doctor who's talking about that.
01:32:55.240
I want to know those things, because sometimes that makes the rest of us think we can also
01:33:01.120
So, I got to tell you, brother, I cannot even tell you how much fun I had with you.
01:33:08.180
Sometimes I bring the educators and professors, and within 30 minutes, I'm knocked out sleeping.
01:33:22.560
To spend an hour and a half to get it, this is a very interesting topic.
01:33:25.420
What I want to tell you guys is, if you haven't yet read this book, it's a very, very important
01:33:30.140
Having said that, Dr. Daniel Z. Lieberman, thank you so much for coming.
01:33:38.020
And by the way, if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so.
01:33:45.520
And if you have any questions for me that you may have, you can always find me on Snapchat,
01:33:53.240
And I actually do respond back when they snap me or send me a message on Instagram.