Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - James Doty (on the neuroscience of manifestation)

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

James Doty (Mind Magic, Into the Magic Shop) is neurosurgeon and author. James joins the Armchair Expert to discuss what happens to someone who is constantly activating their sympathetic nervous system, how compassion for others can often be limited by how much compassion you have for yourself, and losing $80 million in 6 weeks. James and Dax talk about their relationship with money, what they’ve learned about doing acts of service for others, and the science behind manifestation. James explains how people look for evidence to confirm their own biases, why being kind and compassionate increases our chances of survival, and the importance of self-awareness and humility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on experts, I'm Buck Rogers and I'm joined by Monica Lightyear. Hi. Today we have Dr. James Doty. He is a Stanford neurosurgeon, a serial entrepreneur, and a bestselling author. His books include Into the Magic Shop,

and a new book out right now called Mind Magic, the Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. It's a very fascinating topic. And a little backstory is required. BTS. BTS, so I can't remember how much of those we've already said in the past, it doesn't matter.

It's important for this interview. We got our calendar days mixed up. Yeah. An entire day's work was put on a Thursday that actually was supposed to be on a Wednesday. Yes. And we were already recording Armchair Anonymous that Wednesday.

And we were midway through talking to someone and Rob all of a sudden said, oh my God, our expert for tomorrow just texted me that he's five minutes away. And I was like, well, Tommy's here a day early, blah, blah, blah. And then Rob was typing around and stuff. And then all of a sudden, Rob said, no, it's us, which has never happened to us. So Tiffany Haddish was the same day. From Monday. Yeah, and James was that day too.

Yes, it was so stressful. So we salvaged the armchair anonymous and then James was nice enough to come back. Yes, so this was his second time to the attic. Yes, and we felt terrible. I'm proud of the fact that this is the first time this has happened. I'm shocked it is. Yeah, but boy did we feel stupid.

Yeah, we did. So anyways, that's the backstory of James arriving. Yes. So let's just start with thanking him for coming back. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you, James. Please enjoy Dr. James Doty. We are supported by Buick.

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Orange Bagels. And the line is six miles long but Rob somehow has it dialed in. He has some hookup there. Yeah, my friends own it. That's a pretty good hookup. It's actually better than owning it. Yeah. It's like having a friend with a truck.

You get access, but you don't have to deal with the details. No headaches, just the fun food. All right. Well, if you're ready, I'm ready to start chatting. Boy, thank you, Rob, for that. Courage bagel. And did you get Jim a fun drink too from Maru? Yep.

The other thing is Maru is the coffee shop here in town which also has a line two miles long and of course Rob also has a connection there. Got a sweater from each too. Really? Wow, this is amazing. Sweater from Courage and. Oh, from each? Oh wow, they have sweaters now at Maru? That's where we stood in. Oh, from each, oh wow. They have sweaters now at Maru? Is this wearing top?

No, it does not. Oh wow. Oh my god, I need that. Oh, that's great. Wow. Kring-tot. That's incredible. Signature dress. I'll give that to my wife. Well, thank you.

No, I bet if you wear that on campus, all of a sudden they'll be like, oh shit, I didn't know Jim. It kind of sounds like a little bit of a sexual innuendo though. Cream top it does. Yeah, just had to leave. So on campus, I don't know. Actually that somehow connected in my mind,

I was reading some article on, what do they call it, death scroll? Doom scrolling? Doom scrolling, yeah. And it said, man with largest penis in the UK doesn't want surgery. No surgery. I'm good. Yes.

I wonder how that would be known that he has the largest penis in the UK. Is it on the census? Maybe in Sweden where the health data is in a database. I was trying to figure that out because it's not like something you just go around and wear a t-shirt that says I have a huge penis. Yeah. And also not a standard part of a physical. It's not like the doctor's ever like,

well, we gotta get this penis measurement for your child. Were there dimensions in the article? Yes. No, there wasn't. What did they say? There was 12 inches by, I think eight or something. 12 by eight? No.

Wow. It didn't show it. Sadly. 12 inches. He went to Oxford actually, and he's sort of a nerd. And he's not a big guy, and he's not handsome. So he probably looks even bigger than him. He's not handsome.

No, no, not like us. Sure, sure, sure. He's not Rob, that's for sure. That's why Rob has access to all of these things. Exactly. You know, what's also relevant, since we're on this train of thought, is it's standard that you up it by like 20%.

If you're six inches, you would say that you're seven and a half. Just like height. And now women unfortunately have adjusted their thing, their boyfriends have been telling them it's this, so he probably has to lead with like, I have 14 and a half inches, I'd imagine. Look, no one wants that.

There's probably the smallest of subset of women. That are interested. Like anything, I mean, there's always this 5% over here. Thank God for the internet for him. But this is unfortunately the problem with comparison, which is so common with males and females Okay, boy, we could start in so many places first and foremost you come to us by way of John Hamm, which is interesting How did you guys come to know one another? Actually, it's interesting. He has an agent

I don't know if you know him. Got him Ryan Abushi. Never met him. So I wrote a book that came out in 2016 called Into the Magic Shop a neurosurgeon's quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart. It is a memoir that includes contemplative practice, meditation, and neuroscience. That ended up being a New York Times bestseller. It was a bestseller in eight countries. And in fact, have you heard of this group called BTS? Oh, yeah. Oh, the band. Yeah. So they used it as the basis for their third album. No way.

Yeah, their album is called Love Yourself, Tear, and the third song is Magic Shop. When you listen to that song, do you see the connective tissue or are you like, I don't understand? It's in fucking Korean. Okay, so you're not connecting so much. But the words are very nice because BTS is very focused on emotions

and caring for others. They're very focused on mental health, doing the right thing, and that's probably why the book resonated with them. Yeah. So then I'm assuming Ham stumbles across the book. So Ryan Abushi read the book. He says it's his favorite book. He distributed it to all his clients at CAA.

Then John got interested. We met, and then we decided to do a movie. And so he's had sort of the rights or toying with that for a few years. A docu-series or a narrative? Actually about the book itself and my life experience. Okay, so where did you grow up? I grew up early on in Ashland, Kentucky, but then we moved to Lancaster, California. At what age?

Seven or eight. And we also moved around in Varus and Sundry, other locations. Do you have memories? One of my great fascinations is the culture of honor, the culture of pride that is prevalent. In Kentucky, my whole family's from Kentucky. They migrated to Detroit. Many of my neighbors had that same culture of pride.

Very, very retaliatory group, trending high on the violence scale, a lot of fighting, a lot of standing your ground. Were you old enough to have yet observed all that? I did not observe it, but it's interesting you say that because I had an older brother who was a year and a half older and he was gay early on. He was out?

Well- He couldn't hide it. Yeah, and he was a brilliant guy, but he would be bullied all the time, and I was bigger than him. So I would always be his defender. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So when trouble would happen in the household, my father was an alcoholic, my mother had had a stroke when I was a child. So she was paralyzed, had a seizure disorder, chronically depressed, attempted suicide. We were in public assistance as a child. But what would happen is my brother, if there was any stuff going on,

he would go hide in his room and close the door. Yeah, yeah. So I would have to be the guy who would either go to the bar or call the ambulance, go with the ambulance to the hospital. You had to get responsible very quick. Yep, obviously it's an unfair burden for a child and it fucks you up in a variety of different ways.

Who we become as adults is a manifestation of the baggage we carry from our childhoods. And actually when we talk about, let's say changing our lives, you can't change your life unless you face your background and the drivers of your behavior because I'm sure you've experienced, you keep making the same decisions and you sit there and go,

I don't understand why this keeps happening. Yeah, expecting a different result. And it's because you have a subconscious driver that has been embedded in you. As an example, if you've had an abusive parent, and then they abuse you, and then they hug you, and tell you they love you, you get this whole fuck up between love and abuse.

Yeah, you connect the two. They're connected. It's horribly unfortunate. The abuse is obviously horrendous, but you're constantly being won back over, which is also wonderful. And so your expectation of love is also quite heightened. I also think it fucks you up on the other side

of the scale, which is like, I get this intense rebuilding and repair because some adult is in shame and winning you back over and spoiling you and hugging you and apologizing. And so normal kids aren't getting that side of the spectrum either. So it's just very bipolar and extreme on both ends. So it's like when you're experiencing probably normal love, it's not even a registering cause that's not what you associate with it, but I think you're in

a really unique position. Increasingly, we're starting to understand that it's not just your memories. There is circuitry formed from a childhood like this. There is adaptive properties that arise in the brain that you will then carry with you. You'll have an exaggerated immune system for life. Tell us what happens physiologically. When you're constantly activating your sympathetic nervous system of course which is your flight, fight or fear response you're trying to decrease and so you do all of these things. Your brain doesn't develop completely until you're in your mid-20s and certainly when you're a very young

child seven eight nine ten I mean this is a very formative period and there's a whole body of knowledge about attachment theory bonding and that can go awry and the circuitry can get screwed up. Now the wonderful thing is that you can change your brain. I mean your brain has an incredible power to change but if you never learn that reality or how to do that then you're sort of locked in and what happens to a lot of people is they keep looking for something outside of themselves to help them, change them. And it doesn't work for most people, even for myself.

I mean, my whole life, I've sort of kept looking for a father figure and you know, it never came. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You want that senior person who says, you know, you're okay, you're doing a good job, keep at it, I'm proud of you, or hey, listen, here's some advice, or let me introduce you to somebody. Because if you grow up in poverty and you don't have access to mentors or financial resources,

even your parents they can't help you. Well you're stuck and if you're an intelligent kid it's torture because frankly you look around at other children who have more traditional and I hate to say that because most of the people I run across have actually had fucked up childhood. Even though we keep looking at people. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you learn molesting figures and you're like, oh shit, yes, the majority of us.

You learn physical violence in the house. It's the majority of us. You know, it's so funny, the only person who I ever met who seemingly had really a perfect life was an Indian kid I met. Really? And I met. And I met him on a plane and we were both heading to the Kentucky Derby. But it was so funny because his father was an engineer and immigrated to somewhere in Pennsylvania.

He started there at like three, lived there his entire life, and he has like six or eight friends who he's grown up with. Nobody moved from the block. They all stayed connected. They were all friends. They still remain friends. And he's in his early 40s. He expects stability. Yes. What happens to people who don't have that environment? You're always wondering what the subtext is versus if you're with people who care about you, who you trust, you just naturally assume everybody's looking out for your best interests and cares about you.

Yeah, such a preferred way to go through life, assuming that, because it's not gonna have an impact. Like I've lied to myself over the years, like no, no, no, I'm great, I'm a bullshit detector. It doesn't yield any positive results. Life is what it is. You're gonna get X amount of con artists in your life. You just either live expecting that

or it happens occasionally. Well, the problem is people have a tendency to project those types of fears or anxiety or expect failure or expect people to take advantage of them and that becomes reality for them. You've led us directly to the theme of your book. Yeah, and therein lies the problem.

Now the great thing is there are Tibetan monks and I'm sure you've heard of Wim Hof, have the ability to control what are typically subconscious or unconscious behaviors of your body. You can control your body temperature, you control your heart rate. And in fact, I've been a meditator for a very long time. I mean, I can drop my heart rate 20, 25 beats just through thinking about it. So you can do it, but obviously it takes work. And in fact, there's a fellow named Maturikard, who's a Buddhist monk. Some people have called him the happiest man in the world

because he's been a compassion meditator. But the thing is, under an MRI, you can sit there and say, I want you to be empathic. And there's certain areas of the brain that will light up, but you can sit there and say, I want you to be 25% empathic. No way. Or 75%.

And you'll see the metabolism in those areas. Now the problem is if you say, I want to be empathic, or I want you to be empathic, you have to take on the emotional state of another, and in this context, suffering. So you can imagine actually that's very painful to do because you're taking on that emotional state. But yeah, there are people who can actually do that.

And if you also take it to the next level and say, I wanna be compassionate, I care for others, I want the best for others, you will see the pleasure and reward centers in your brain activate. Okay, so along your journey, Lancaster couldn't have been, I mean, I don't wanna be disparaging to Lancaster, I go there often.

I've been disparaging. Okay. Okay. But I can't imagine the environment improved all that much. I just can't imagine it was a bounty of support and wonder up there. Was dad present? Well, as you know, you can be physically present, but not mentally present. If you're an alcoholic and that's the driver, as an example, he would get a job, and then there would always be something that would occur.

And then he would go on a binge Then he had disappear for days to weeks. Then of course he would come back and be very apologetic and sorry and shamed and then it would start over and of course you could never predict when that's going to happen because of the Chaos and uncertainty that activates your sympathetic nervous system, right? You're in a constant state of turmoil. People talk about post-traumatic stress disorder related to military veterans. But this happens to children. When children grow up in these types of environments of uncertainty and chaos,

they're always anxious and stressed. Their muscles are always tightened because there is no ability to predict what's going to happen. And as a result, you have all the negative effects of engaging your sympathetic nervous system. And the thing is that when that system's engaged, there's part of your brain called your executive control network, which is in your frontal areas, that gives you access to memories, experiences to make discerning or thoughtful decisions. If you're in a constant state of trauma and worry, that actually shuts down because you're only trying to survive. So you're finding the quickest solution. That's what's so insidious about it, is it puts your thinking in an area of your brain that prevents you from using the tool you need most to get out of it.

It's very detrimental, and of course you have all the other secondary effects because it impairs your cardiac function, it impairs your immune system. Insulin even. Yeah, and the expression of stress hormones like cortisol and the expression of inflammatory proteins which are associated with chronic disease states. So it can be horrible on a long-term basis because our sympathetic nervous system has been with us throughout our evolution as a species, but it was never meant to be chronically turned on. Yeah, you explain in the book life on the Serengeti which some people will be familiar

with. But yeah, what would be a normal percentage of activation in hunting and gathering life? Probably be less than once a day, but the thing is, it would happen, and then either you survive or you don't. Right. And then it goes away.

It's not just lingering. No. Well, the problems of pre-civilized society were very acute. There was an animal. There wasn't like a bad credit score that's slowly sinking the entire ship over the course of years, right? It's like the threat is so elongated

now. And that's what's so unfortunate because not only do you have, as an example, the need to support yourself, which in modern society requires a job, but you have to feed your family, you have to pay rent and also care for children. And this is what's so disturbing on some level is you see over the last few decades, and I would suggest probably since Reagan, where there is an attempt to remove a social safety net for people. And of course, it's horrible because if you don't have anything, there's nobody who can help you, there's no shelters, there's no food banks. Now, of course, there are, but there's not enough. And frankly, the problem is too, we have a minimum wage, although it's

recently increased in California. But can you imagine raising a family on $7.25 an hour? No, not possible. And that means both parents have to work. And who takes care of the children? They did a study, average discretionary income in all comers is only $400. That's not talking about poor people, that's talking about the average amount. So you can see how the very nature of living in modern society is horrible. Okay, so somehow you get yourself to UC Irvine. Did you see that as like, okay, that is gonna be my way

out of this entire experience? Did you even have lofty goals like that? Yes, I had a physician come to my class in fourth grade and he so impressed me because he just exuded kindness. And when you ask him a question, he looked at you, he treated you like an equal and it made you feel good. And he was talking about how it's a privilege to be a doctor, to care for people.

So that had a huge impact. Now, saying you're gonna be a doctor and actually having it happen, two completely different things. So that was always in the back of my mind, I wanted to be a doctor. But how I ended up at Irvine is as follows. I had no clue that there was actually the timeframes associated with applying to college. The way I found out was I was at a science class and there was a girl next to me and she was filling out her application. And I looked at her and I said, oh, what are you doing? She said, I'm filling out college applications.

I go, oh, it was complete news to me. I said, well, where are you going? And she said, I'm going to UC Irvine. And she looked at me, she said, where are you going? I said, UC Irvine. Oh wow. Yes. She said, well, you haven't filled out your application.

I said, no, I didn't get it. And she said, well, I have an extra one. Oh my God. I applied to one college. She said, well, I have an extra one. Oh my God. I applied to one college. Were you a good student in high school? I was a good student when I was a good student. If I'm tied up with issues at home, everything else suffers. Yeah.

Because you don't have a place to study. There's always a TV on there's smoke filling the room. There are fights. I had the potential to be a good student and I could be a good student. It's always interesting because you'll see kids from more affluent environment and I'm not complaining that somebody's affluent took me wrong, but you know, they have their own room,

quiet place to study, parents can pay for tutors. Yeah, they get the SAT prep thing. Yes, yes. They're not worried about do my shoes have holes? Is there electricity, all these basic things? Yes. After Irvine, you go to Tulane and you do go to medical school at Tulane.

And then this is a fun detour and I wanna know what motivated it. You end up doing your residency for neurosurgery at Walter Reed. How did that come about? And then how do you end up in the military? Really quick, if I'm graduating from medical school, I'm like, where are the Porsches?

Oh yes. Get me to the Porsches as quick as possible. The problem is Tulane was a private school. You can either take loans and end up about 150,000 or 200,000 in debt. Then? Yeah, or you could join the military and then you don't have any debt.

So you did it for the, what we would have called the GI Bill. They call it a health profession scholarship, but backtracking to Tulane, I had to leave college multiple times to deal with family issues, I had to leave college multiple times to deal with family issues. I had friends in college, and nothing is worse than you tell a friend

or even a loved one, you know, I have an aspiration to be a doctor. I go, you're never gonna do that. Look at your grade point average. That's a joke. So when I applied to med school, my grade point average was 2.53. Now the average grade point average at point average was 2.53. Now the average grade point average

at that time was 3.79. 2.5 doesn't sound med school-bound, if I'm being honest. We used to have a pre-med committee, so you had to go before the pre-med committee and they would write a letter. So I go to the secretary and I say, I want an appointment with the pre-med committee, so I get my letter.

And she looks at me and she says, I'm not giving you an appointment. And I said, why? And she said, because it's a waste of everyone's time. Right. I said, well, I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm not leaving here until you give me that appointment. And she did.

Now, you remember those photographs of Putin sitting at one end of a table and you have these people at the other end. So I walk into this room and there are three people at the end of the table and the guy in charge, he has my file and he takes it and he throws it on the table. And he says, say what you have to say so we can get this over with. How cruel to a young person, inexperienced. So I looked at the guy and I said, I'm not going to allow you to objectify me to a grade

point. I proceeded to lecture him for 20 minutes and the two other people with him. And at the end of it, they were all crying because it's easy to objectify somebody because you don't have to deal with the emotional issues. You're separating yourself. If you force them to look at you as a human being, they can't look away. And by the way, if you hear someone's story, it becomes increasingly impossible to not see that they're a person. Exactly.

As I was leaving that, the woman who refused to give me an appointment, she says, listen, I think this will really help you. And she gave me a brochure. And it was for a summer research and educational program at Tulane for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and minority students. And she looks at me and she said, you know, the deadline has passed, but I don't think that will have any impact for you. So what happened is they ended up giving me the highest letter of recommendation. And then I talked my way into the summer program and I applied to one medical school and that was Tulane.

And actually I didn't graduate from college initially. From UC Irvine. Right, well it came a couple years later because they let me transfer some courses. So I got in with a 2.53. And no degree. No degree. Wow, oh my gosh. You could have written that book too came a couple of years later because they let me transfer some courses. So I got in with a 2.53. And no degree. No degree.

Wow, oh my gosh. You could have written that book too, that could also have been your book. How to go to med school with a 2.5 and no degree. Well, that only happens to one person. But none of us have the ability to judge someone's ability to accomplish something. So if you were to fast forward,

Tulane is in New Orleans and after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans flooded. So the med school closed for a couple years, the students went to Houston, to Baylor to continue. The dean actually resigned, library was destroyed. So if you fast forward, they were looking for a new dean because the guy resigned, they had a guy from Harvard who wanted to come, but he wanted an endowed chair. And I don't know if you know how endowed chairs work.

No, what is that? In academic institutions, having an endowed chair means there's a donor who comes forward, puts in several million dollars, the chair is named after him, that money goes into an endowment, and that person is able to spend the revenue from that investment for equipment, their lab, whatever it is.

So I ended up rebuilding the library and endowing the dean's chair. So the deed to this day is the Doty professor. And I'm on the board of governors. It was a great honor for me because I was also asked because there's something called the white coat ceremony, where for the incoming medical students, they have a physician speak who exemplifies nominally the highest ideals of medicine. So they asked me to give that lecture. Again, none of us can predict someone's ability to have an impact.

What happens is people create these limited beliefs about what's possible for them, and they're held prisoner by it. So how you escape that is really the key. Yeah. Morgan, to fast forward a bit, I wanna get to the next, what feels like the pivotal part of your own story,

which is, yeah, you go to medical school, you train at Children's Hospital, you get pediatric certification, you become an inventor, you take a job at Stanford at some point. I feel like the really, for me, important part now is kind of the dot com era and what happens to your life in that phase of now being an established voice in this world. You are a part of a startup, CyberKnife. You're doing a lot of things.

You're realizing all of the goals that someone might have that goes to medical school. And at a certain point, this is very fortuitous. There's a lot of abundance. What is that ride like, that middle section of your life? Let me take a step back. Please do. Because we talked about the title of my first book,

which was Into the Magic Shop, which tells my story from being a 12-year-old. But it was walking into a magic shop, talked about the title of my first book, which was into the magic shop, which tells my story from being a 12 year old, but it was walking into a magic shop. That's the title. But I met a woman there who was one of these people had this radiant presence about her. She looked at you like she cared. She looked you in the eye. She wasn't no way demeaning to because of your age or how you looked. It turned out she was the owner's mother. I'm trying to say something really quick. Sure.

What's so heartbreaking and so obvious already, all of your stories, all of these mile markers, someone took the time to look at you. Exactly. Yep. Yeah, it's fucking heartbreaking. And that's how it takes. I know, I know. Yeah, it's pretty simple. Yeah. And the reality is,

everybody has the capability to do that if they just take the time to look. You can get stuck in your life tallying how much you've received that. And I think at a certain age and in a certain evolution, you have to flip that to like, how many people am I looking at and giving that to? Because that one's actually far more fulfilling. That's where we'll get to.

So what happened is this woman took the time. She said, I really like you. And again, she created what we call a sense of psychological safety where I had a calmness about me. I wasn't tense. I wasn't anxious. And she said, listen, I'm here for another six weeks. If you show up every day, I'll teach you something. And she taught me a meditation practice

that included a self-compassion practice in how to change your negative narrative and also to look through a different lens. Because when you beat yourself up all the time, you're hypercritical of everyone else. Let's really drill in on that. You can only extend as much compassion to others as you're extending to yourself.

When you think of yourself badly or you do bad things, there's this transference towards others, and we see this with one specifically of our political candidates. It's funny you say that because I give this example all the time, and this relates to Viktor Frankl. I don't know if you've read. It just came up on Chris Pine.

We just had an episode that came up. It's called Man's Search for Meaning. But there's a statement in there that's very relative. And it's one I use as an example, is between stimulus and response, there is a pause. And within that pause lies your freedom. And it's how do you extend the pause? Because we're so reactive.

And I give this example so often about driving. Somebody cuts you off, you assume they're rude, they're selfish, but if you change the narrative to say this is a husband, they're in the car, the wife's nine months pregnant, her water's broke, he's getting her to the hospital, you go fuck. Yes, let me help you. But it shows you how in a microsecond you can change

and have a completely different response. So the key is how do you train yourself not to have that reactive response? And I do pretty good with that. I am certainly not perfect. I'll add a piece to it that was a stumbling block for me, which is I'm also caught in a loop of I won't be duped, I won't be taken advantage of, I won't be bullied,

I won't be subjugated, right? This gets back to your Kentucky. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So in that moment where I'm deciding what to do, the way I think I'm defending myself would be to not allow this, to tell this guy to get out of the car, I'm gonna knock you the fuck out,

never gonna do that, I'm gonna teach you a lesson, I'm gonna protect everyone else from this same behavior. It never occurs to me, or in the past never occurred to me, that the very greatest thing I could do for myself is give that benefit of the doubt, because now I don't have a cortisol dump. I'm not in adrenaline.

Forget that guy. My victory is a huge loss for me. The huge loss for you is actually your victory in the sense that you're not activating yourself. Exactly. I had to redefine what it means to be conquered. Well, it's not even being conquered, it's acceptance and it's not having a reaction to that acceptance.

Because it's not failure, frankly, it's irrelevant. I have had some people, like all of us, who've done horrible things. In fact, I just went through a very painful situation with an individual who literally was trying to destroy my professional career out of jealousy. I was the chief of service and had reprimanded him multiple times.

So he basically plotted how to destroy my career. It was very painful and it caused a lot of stress for me, even though I meditate and try to control that. But you know, especially when you've built a career, let's say in medicine, where you're highly respected and then near the end of your career, somebody's trying to disparage you for complete bullshit, it ultimately got completely resolved. But I'm not angry at him, I feel sorry for him. And I refuse to go down that path. Now, obviously, I had to defend myself, but this is the challenge for all of us, because there are always going to be these ups and downs.

So the key is, how do you have equanimity or this evenness of temperament as you go through life? Because there are always gonna be the ups and downs. Yeah, yeah. The woman in the magic shop, why was she so well versed in all of this? Well, that's a good question. Remember I was 12, so I wasn't an investigative reporter.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. She was in her 50s. I have to assume that she had somehow ended up in Haight-Ashbury. Okay, all right. During the 60s. Residual hippie culture.

And had some insights into meditation. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, there. that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. ["The Sunrise Challenge"]

You had a toolkit already. You were successful in exploiting it, but you were focused on a very specific thing, which is the material. Exactly. Because again, if you come from poverty and you buy into the Western capitalist narrative, its wealth power position, and then you equate that with success and happiness. I did get everything that was on my list. I had the cars, I had the house, I was flying around in private jets. Where was the private island? It was in New Zealand, it was beautiful,

it was between North and South Island, and it was 6,500 acres, can you imagine? Oh my Lord. Wait, you had your own private island? Well, I was buying it when everything collapsed, but yes. He had a mansion overlooking Newport Bay, he had every cool car. Wait, and this is just because of medicine?

Well, he had this, he was a part of this company, CyberKnife, he was an angel investor, it was the dot com era, he's dialed, look, he has access to all of the people creating all of the things we're gonna use by virtue of where you're at. Yeah, so I ended up being very successful. So here's the problem, of course, I did get everything.

In fact, on my list was a Rolex watch, right? So, you know, and a Porsche, let's mention, and being a millionaire, et cetera, et cetera. As a neurosurgeon, we're among the highest paid physicians. So we make more than 99% of people. But I was also a successful entrepreneur and investor. When the.com thing happened, I lost when the crash came,

almost $80 million in six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. Okay, hold on once, don't blow through this at all. Because I regularly play out what that feels like and you have lived through it. I have a very, very unhealthy relationship with money. It represents safety in a way

that it actually can't make you safe. I fetishized it, I coveted it. It was going to result in all of my problems being solved. I have such fear of scarcity, it doesn't matter how much I get, I'm terrified. And so basically, you lived through my greatest nightmare. But I looked at it actually differently at the end of the day. So I had borrowed $15 million because when you had that much in stock in a public company, even though you were restricted from selling it.

You could borrow against it. Yeah, so I borrowed $15 million and I bought this penthouse and all the various sundry cars and things. I was now $3 million in the hole after selling everything. And actually I had no retirement. What happens is two people become your best friends. One is your banker. What age were you when this happened?

I was 42, 43. Oh wow. So he called me and basically said, when are you paying us back? And then I had to deal with my lawyer because I had all these different things going on. And I had made some commitments to charity, but they were really primarily for tax things.

It wasn't because I was like a great guy. I was still like, think I'm a pretty good guy, but it was for tax planning. So he said, look, Jim, it turns out we did not file the final paperwork. You don't have to give any of that stock away. And I was talking to a company, Acura, that hadn't gone public. And I went through this period of reflection.

What did I miss here in terms of the lessons that Ruth had taught me? And the reason was every action I was doing was for external affirmation. You'd climb a mountain and then you'd wait for people to go, hey, you're a great guy with the hopes that that fills the emptiness and the shame and insecurity you have. To be honest with you, at the height of all of this, I had all these friends going, God, Jim, you're living the life, man. I was more miserable than I had ever been in my entire life. And so when I lost everything, though, I said, what the fuck happened here? And what I realized was every action I was doing was about me. I want this. And this is the classic

woo woo pseudo science narrative of the secret. the universe should give you whatever you want and you deserve it and if you want to be a Millionaire, that's great. The problem is that is a dead-end to unhappiness Period when it's all about you It has a huge negative effect on your physiology and your brain function and it's not who we really are Who we really are are the people who focus on being of service to others. And after that period of reflection, I told the attorney, I said,

go ahead and give it all away. So that would be $30 billion. Yeah, when it went public, they had 29 million bucks in donation. But it was an incredible gift to me because what it did was, you're talking about scarcity, I was no longer worried about being poor

because what was driving me was the insecurity of not having anything and it liberated me. I was no longer attached to that. Now, I don't wanna imply that losing all that money, I was suddenly on the street. In fact, Oprah was gonna do a story because there was an arc on the Wall Street Journal. We saw you lost all this money,

you gave all this money away, you know, are you living in your car? I said, look, I'm a neurosurgeon. My worst day is I'm doing fine. But what I tell people is I went from rags to riches and back to rags, essentially. But the greatest gift I got and the thing that actually gave me a different type of riches was I ended up founding the Center at Stanford, which studies compassion and altruism. The Dalai Lama ended up being the founding benefactor. He and I became friends. I became chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation. Then this led to me meeting Desmond Tutu,

Thich Nhat Hanh, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Amma the Hugging Saint, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Sadguru. Being able to hang out and be friends with some of the leading spiritual leaders in the world and to see how they look at the world, which is through the lens of caring, compassion, love, non-judgment. It was an incredible gift to me and it made me look through the lens of how can I be of service? And if you look through the lens of how can I be of service, it changes several things. One, there's a difference between often,

as we're talking about, what we think we want or need, and typically, like I said, chasing what society defines as success. But also when you look through that lens, you change what you realize is important. So you go from what we call hedonic happiness, which is the things like porches. And of course, that's shallow and transient, if you want to call that happiness. If you look

through the lens of compassion and being of service, that shifts things completely. It is deep, it is meaning, it is long lasting, and it gives you purpose. And that's what we're designed to do, because that's how we evolved as a species. Our offspring need to be cared for. We have an imperative that makes us care. And when we care, this results in the release of certain neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and others, which are the bonding or the love hormone. When you're of service to others, it stops you ruminating about yourself and the issues you have.

And so all of these things are very powerful. And I think that's the fundamental message in this new book. Yes, so the new book is Mind Magic, How the Neuroscience of Manifestation Can Change Your Life. So let's define manifestation, and then we're gonna link it to some physiological things, and we're gonna link it to some science,

which I think will be a great relief to skeptics and cynics like myself. I can't believe that of you. I'm not a cynic, but I'm a skeptic. be a great relief to skeptics and cynics like myself. I can't believe that of you. I'm not a cynic, but I'm a skeptic. How would we define manifestation? It's the ability to embed an intention such that it has the greatest likelihood to occur. And I was curious because a concept we're very fond of on this show and a lot of our

guests are and people are familiar with is we talk a lot about our story, the power of our story and who we are and what's happening in the world we're in. And then what that invites in, of course, is confirmation bias, right? So if my story is, I always get taken advantage of. I am only scanning for moments where people are trying to take advantage of me. And I'm excluding all of the contrary data that would suggest, no, a lot of people are not trying to take advantage of me, they're trying to help me. And so I think of our story as a version of manifestation, and I'm always policing myself

on what story I'm telling, because the story I tell is the one that'll come true, because I will not see any contrary information, and I will only see proof of my story. How are those things related, or how do they differ? They're related in the sense of essentially what you're doing is you are embedding your confirmation bias into your brain and then it seeks out ways to confirm what you wanted to confirm. Now, of course, if you don't have self-awareness and insight, that can be very pathologic,

and you may get confirmation of you being a jerk and thinking everybody's out to get you but that's not gonna make you happy in any way and again it gets back to the negative narrative you have about yourself because you're basically saying everybody's out to screw me which of course activates your sympathetic nervous system because you're always looking around and as a result yes you can have that intention manifest as a truth because the brain has no ability to determine truth from non-truth Only what you believe so it happens

The problem is for many people who it's all about me what I want It's the same type of thing because people who are in that mindset they're insecure. They have shame They're afraid and they're trying to bolster themselves So by having things the problem is that when that's your mind frame, that actually has a negative effect on those parts of the brain, which are associated with actually manifesting. Versus, if you're looking at it through the lens

of compassion, caring for others, that is when you shift from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. That is when you are stimulating your reward and pleasure centers and it's when your physiology is working at its best and that includes brain physiology. This is your rest and digest state. Correct. Getting back to the brain though, so there are basically four networks or cognitive brain

networks that interact and if you're stressed, one of the most important, which is your executive control function, and we talked about this in relation to the guy who cuts you off, it gets shut down and it decreases your options. But that is the CEO that actually makes the action of responding to your attention happen. So then that impairs it. And that's not to say you can't be a jerk or selfish and manifest something. It's just not the best way to do it. And it's not healthy for you.

Those areas of the brain are what we call our default mode network. And that's activated when we are daydreaming or mind-wandering. It's self-referential, who you are, painting the picture of how you define yourself. But that's also where you have dreams and aspirations. So you have to then embed that there. You have to pick who you want to be

Yeah, but then the next question is well How do you get there so you have to have the ability to embed or what we call value tag that? Intention so that it gets into your subconscious that then affects what we call your salience network and your attention Network and what happens then is that once you've made it salient, then it puts your subconscious in the position of like a bloodhound trying to find situations that actually will help you manifest. But it also narrows what you're focused on, your attention.

So once your attention is focused on that intention, then the bloodhound goes to work. And once it then goes to work, then that allows the CEO to make it happen. Here is an example for you. I'm sure you've been to a party and it's noisy. If somebody says your name though, you immediately turn. Well, why is that?

Because who you are, your name is one of the most deeply embedded things within you. So you turn to it. Well, if you embed your intention correctly, what happens is, I'll give you a recent example as a project I'm working on, you know, it's not commonly talked about, and I was at a coffee shop, completely noise, you can hardly hear anything, yet I heard two people talking about exactly what I was trying to do.

Well, I would never have paid attention to that if it had not been tagged, and that led to me going over and introducing myself and having a conversation and now we're working together. That's bonkers. The subconscious, as I understand it, it's like taking in the enormous block of stimuli that's all around, and then it's filtering and deciding what's gonna make it into your consciousness. Yes, and I would say all of us

are manifesting all the time. The reality is though, most of us do it inefficiently and unintentionally because today's going to be a great day, you know, this is going to happen. Well, that's in a way manifesting versus doing it in a very systematic way that embeds that intention and it has to be done where there's repetition because what fires together, wires together. So through repetition, you create and strengthen neural pathways.

And this is why this idea of manifestation, which is in popular culture and wrapped in pseudoscience and woo-woo, there are certain techniques that have been learned experientially over time. And those are, as an example, writing it down, reading it silently, reading it aloud, visualizing it. And those are the things that strengthen those pathways, but you have to do the work. When I was a kid, I literally made this list of 10 things and I would go through that exercise at least 10, 20,

30 times a day, every day. And so that's the way to do it. But again, if they're all about you, actually it may happen, but it's not in your best interest to happen. And if you want it to maximally happen, you have to activate, as an example, the executive control network,

so it does have the ability to act, verse being impaired by your own stress and anxiety. What have we been told about manifestation that's wrong? The popular narrative is it's about you. The secret, there's a classic example. It's you ask for a million dollars, you should get a million dollars. You throw it out into the universe,

and you have this thing called the law of attraction. So if you put positivity out there, you're gonna get what you want. The challenge with that is, it oftentimes then if you don't get it, it says, well, you did something wrong. You're a loser, you can't manifest. And that's not the case at all.

There is nobody out in the universe who cares about you. In fact, Jon Hamm was on your show. He and I were talking about this. And he responded to the first sentence of my book, which is the universe doesn't give a fuck about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said, well, at best it's indifferent. And it's true.

There is no magic person or father figure that's gonna save you. And this is where we give our agency away because so often we're waiting for somebody to say it's okay or you can do it. That's not a horrible thing when you get encouragement from somebody. But if everything in your belief system is such that you have to have that, then you're giving your own internal power away. And you have so much power that you don't appreciate. And we talked about compassion and this idea of self-compassion. We have what's called negativity bias in the sense that when we were on the

savanna in Africa or the Serengeti, we were always on the lookout for negative events because they put us at risk. And this is why we also in the modern world, we don't see good news channels and we have the same bias that gets into our head about negative statements about us. And so when we repeat, I can't, it is not possible, I am not worthy, that becomes truth. And so then you've created a limited belief system. And this is what I used to do. And what I would say is I was building my own prison, brick by brick, and the walls got higher and got darker. And it was hard to even think about escaping because once they get so high, and it's so narrow and dark in there,

you don't know what to do. But when you realize that you have immense power within yourself, then things can change. Now, the challenge there is, and I'm sure you probably met people like this, there's nothing worse than a reformed reformer. You know, it's like the guy, I'm morbidly obese, now I run 20 miles every day,

and if you don't do it, you're a loser. Nobody's a loser. All of us have different experiences. We're in no place to judge people because what happens is you're picking a narrow slot that has worked for you. And now you feel you're able to look down at others and tell people they're losers. Nobody's a loser. Nobody wants to be poor.

Nobody wants to be obese. Everybody is worthy. Everybody has dignity. And when you interact with people in that way, it's much more effective than listening to somebody tell you, well, if you don't do this, man. And it's really unfortunate. And there's a well-worn pattern among humans

is we really are prone to proselytize. And I really do wanna look at that through the anthropological lens. Like, what is it about the moment you've done something, almost the very next thought is proselytizing about it. And I wanna know what it's served. It could be nice. Yeah, there is some like, what is it about the moment you've done something, almost the very next thought is proselytizing about it. And I wanna know what it's served. It could be nice. Yeah, there is some like,

I'm gonna pass on a cultural tool that's gonna help survival. Like it probably was beneficial at the time. Like, oh my God, you guys, I just dipped my arrow in this frog's back and I barely grazed the antelope and it's dead. I learned how to do this, you can do it too. Yeah, it's been co-opted somehow.

But this is our ego at work, right? And this is actually a detriment to so many of us. And we see it within religion. Well, I'm a Christian and you're not. Obviously, you're praying to the wrong God. Now, it's interesting because the reality is, and I don't know if you know Karen Armstrong, she won the TED Prize in 08. She's a former nun, she's written a number of books about religion and she's a great writer, but she also started something called the chart of her compassion. She met with 19 spiritual and religious leaders

and they all agreed that at the core of every religion is compassion and the golden rule. And what has happened is from when we lived as a nuclear family, then we lived in tribes, we knew from experience that being kind, compassionate actually increases your ability to survive. We knew that, but then we started wrapping around a dogma related to our culture, and that's how religions, or some people could argue how religions were created. But again, unfortunately the natural thing about humans, and it's actually related to this

tribal instinct, is to say my tribe is better than your tribe and we're against you and it leads to all sorts of problems in life because we are no longer in a tribal society in the sense that it is a global community and when we try to isolate ourselves it's to the detriment of us and of course obviously the detriment to so many people in the world. Yeah the trajectory is getting scarier and scarier. Well yeah we're seeing. Okay, so manifesting is broken up into six parts, and you've already touched on a few of them. What you give your attention to is very valuable. I wanna go through some of them.

How do desires play into a manifesting plan? We talked about being self-oriented. You have to understand what are the desires that are actually beneficial for you and ultimately beneficial for others because that's how you activate these cognitive brain networks to work their best. So you have to be careful what you're asking for.

I have had these discussions where somebody will say to me, so are you telling me that to manifest, you have to live as a pauper, be poor and forsake everything and help everybody? And that's not what I'm saying at all. The difference is that yes, I live in a very nice house. Yes, I'm very blessed and I have access to things that I'm thankful for.

I have no attachment to them. If they are all gone tomorrow, I will be just fine. This is the difference because if you look at it from the other perspective, people's identities are wrapped up in those things. And if they lose them, they're terrified. Well, that in and of itself is worthy of evaluating why you would pick certain things.

Like, anything that could be taken from you in two seconds, you would think, oh, maybe not the best thing to hang my identity on. It just makes it very fragile. Well, but that's the life of so many people in Western society. But I lost everything. I was liberated.

If everything ends tomorrow, I cannot complain about anything. We are very fortunate to even be sitting here. This all has to do about mindset, because that sets the tone of your life. How do you see the world? How do you see your place in the world? What is your job in the world?

And when you can connect with that and feel this energy that you are of service to people, and you're trying to model yourself on how can I be the best person, we talk about how one person can change somebody's life. If you look at the lens like that, you cannot not be happy. People come up and go, how you doing today? I say, if I wake up in the morning, I'm the happiest person in the world. Yeah. There is an order though, and I think the order is really relevant because I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going like, yeah, yeah, I kind of relate. I got the job

I wanted. We bought the house. We got the boat. Check, check, check. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going like, yeah, yeah, I kind of relate. I got the job I wanted. We bought the house. We got the boat. Check, check, check. And I'm kind of feeling directionless, purposeless, empty. I think it's a pervasive feeling. I would love for you to walk us through Anulah's story as kind of an ordering of events when you think about how you might approach this. This is an interesting young lady. She's from Sri Lanka. She is from an immigrant family. They were probably middle class or maybe above middle class. The dad was a microbiologist, so he was fine, yeah. Well, but then they moved here and he, I think, drove a cab and she worked as a care worker,

but very low pay. So their circumstances were essentially poverty and they looked to the daughter as sort of the savior. She's going to be the successful one. She's going to make things happen. Expressively said to her, you have got to do this. Yes, and so what happens there is now it's not her wish. She is trying to live up to her parents wish to become a doctor. And these cultures are basically two jobs.

You either become a doctor or you become an engineer. She was attached to that. So she was doing an action, which was to become a doctor, but it was not through the mindset of how can I be of service to help people it's I have to do this to make my parents happy and live up to their expectation and justify all this suffering. In an interesting way, it's the same parallel to a gambling addict who the lie is I just have to get to zero. So it's like, I just got to neutralize all this suffering.

Or guilt. It's a lot of guilt. They gave up everything for me. And so she was suffering, but when you suffer, that creates anxiety, it creates pain, it creates fear. And then that's the worst thing you need when you have to take exams or perform. And unfortunately she did not perform and she applied to med school three times. Now, the interesting thing about my first book is that as a result, I get emails

from people like this very frequently. And for whatever reason, what she wrote me struck me because she said, I read your book was very powerful to me. Can you help me? And we ended up having conversations on the phone and talking about how she needs to change how she sees the world, not anxiety about living up to her parents expectations. Do you want to be a doctor? And if you want to be a doctor, that means you're being of service to people, you're caring about people, and that is the most important thing. And when you focus on that and do

these different types of meditative practices, which is fundamentally a significant part of the lessons we're talking about, then it will decrease your anxiety, it will decrease your fear. Well, she had health problems. As a result. Living in the arousal state, the flight or fight, her body was attacking itself. She couldn't possibly have studied for the MCAT or done anything. I think it's an important step one for people who are imagining approaching this. You need to get into the parasympathetic system. That's step one.

But also exactly what you said. What is the point? I think this is a lot of people in college and was sort of me and a lot of classes in college. I just want to get the A and be done with it. But if you think I want to learn this, you're gonna look at it in such a different way. It's not about passing the test, it's about actually understanding something. We've talked about this difference between Monica and I, which is I was out here to be a comedian,

but I was going to UCLA so my mom would pay my rent. I wasn't getting a job. I literally was like, what's interesting? Oh cool, anthropology, this is weird. I have retained almost everything I learned there because I was there to learn. My son goes to a very, very competitive public school in Silicon Valley.

Both of my boys did. But the thing is that these kids are, I don't know if brainwashed is the right word, they're told that their value is them performing. You have to get an A and it becomes a zero sum game. It's I have to win, therefore somebody has to lose. The problem is that you're not accepting a child for who they are. You're translated into your child's mind that their value is in getting an A. And it's a very horrible

pathologic stressful thing because if you don't get that A, then you're worthless. And at my son's school, there are multiple suicides. Yeah, it's a big thing. Yeah, because of this exact same thing. It's not only immigrant parents, it's the subset of parents who also have gone to Harvard and Yale or Stanford. The elite. Yes, and they inculcate that you have to perform because you're from us. We're a family that performs.

Now, there are some people who are up to the challenge, but it also leads to an immense amount of stress. The other thing is, if you look at what's happened in a number of elite colleges and maybe not so elite, is cheating. It's not about integrity and doing the right thing. It's about how do I get an A and what do I have to do to get the A? And if it's you'll do anything, then cheating is just another part. And the horrible thing about that is it's not like, oh, well, I just cheated on this test in middle school. It's I this test in middle school. It's I cheated on a test in middle school.

I figured out what I had to do to take advantage of the situation in high school. Oh, now I'm applying for a job. How can I manipulate that situation or cheat if necessary? And it goes on and on. This doesn't go away when you create these types of habits or ways to see the world. And when you're doing it that way, of course,

it's a very selfish narcissistic behavior. And you are lying to yourself the whole ride. You're're doing it that way, of course, it's a very selfish, narcissistic behavior. And you are lying to yourself the whole ride. You're like, I'm going to cheat in high school to get into college. And then we're there. That was the thing. But then you're there and you find out, oh no, there's a new objective, which is to go to grad school, okay, then I'm going to cheat just to get to there. It just never ends.

And then you're in your job and there's performance ratings and you're going to manipulate that system. Now, the interesting thing is we all lie. All of us lie to ourselves. It's the foundation of intelligence deception. Now, the interesting thing is we all lie. All of us lie to ourselves. It's the foundation of intelligence, deception. Well, yeah, having some degree of self-awareness, you have to be cognizant of the fact that you're painting a picture of how you want

to be perceived, but how you think you are. But I can't tell you the number of situations where I've met extraordinarily wealthy people who have a perception of how great they are. One is they'll sit there and go, well, I'm a philanthropist. Well, you're worth several billion dollars and you gave $5,000.

Or that the nature of their success had to do, and I can't tell you the number of people I've met and I'd love your opinion, where they sit there and say, I made it on my own, nobody helped me. Except my father had this high position and he got me this internship. And through that, I got this.

So having that degree of self-awareness and humility to understand even in my own circumstance, even though I had a challenging background, I was white. Oh yeah, and tall. And good looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I smell great, athletic. In your story, you've credited a bunch of people

having helped you. I feel like you, of all people, could say I did it on my own. And even you are like, no, I didn't. That is looking at this through a lens of truth, hopefully. None of us has gotten anywhere without somebody helping us. Exactly. And if you don't acknowledge that, then you're lying to yourself. We all need other people.

Now, this is an interesting reality, though. The higher you go up on the socioeconomic scale, the interesting thing is these people lose their empathy. And the reason they lose their empathy is for most of us in society, we need to rely on other people to help us. Whatever that is, if you are at this high level, everybody is replaceable. Well, they didn't do what I asked them to do. You're out of here. There's a subset of people who want to be around power and they'll do anything, but the people in power, they will replace you in a heartbeat if you don't go along with them. And this is a very unfortunate thing because again, if they look through the lens of empathy, compassion, you would do all these things because I don't know what you do with a billion

dollars or 5 billion or 10 or a hundred billion. Yet there's so many areas in the world or even in the United States where even a fraction of that amount of money could have a huge, huge impact on another human being's life. That should be the biggest thing on your mind. And this isn't saying you don't have your car or your garage full of cars, you live in the mansion, but comparative to their wealth, that's like a minuscule part. Did you watch the Phil Stutz documentary by chance?

Yeah. Is that Seth Rogen? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. No, Jonah. Jonah is, yeah, yeah, it's very common. I even went along with it for a second. Yeah, yeah, I get completely, and I have to keep remembering in my mind the two of them,

and I don't know why I get confused. But do you remember, and he's drawing all these fun pictures, and one of them is that web of interconnected dependence on one another, and that was a real moment for me because I didn't feel like I was getting the support I wanted.

My thought was, well, I will transcend needing anyone. That'll be the solution as I will be this monolith that creates and provides and does all the stuff. Not recognizing what you're robbing yourself of the human experience and the joy of the interconnected and interdependence. And I had to really go, Oh wow, we strive to rely on other people. That's counterintuitive to my selfish reptilian brain. I think you're right, it's not unnatural

to want to be an obelisk who stands there and is impenetrable. The problem is just as you said, first of all, it's not possible, but second of all, it robs you, and this is also the nature of attachment. I mean, the greatest cause of suffering is attachment and craving. And the problem is there's a subset of people who are so focused on, let's say, becoming the monolith that they forget that getting

there actually that is where all the action happens. Yes. That's where the life experiences. That's where you get wisdom. That's where you get joy. Focus solely on that goal and you get to the goal. There's nobody there with you. It's lonely and it has zero value. And yet we have so many people in business. They'll go, you know, I've worked 30 years to get here and I've had three divorces. My kids hate me.

And yet I live in this 20,000 square foot home. I have all these cars. Giving myself diabetes and a lopsided heart. Yes, yes. Well, and you probably engage in a lot of very negative behaviors. To soothe. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. What is the alphabet of the heart and how does it help guide us? Actually, I talk about that in the first book.

I was talking about getting into Tulane and giving this talk to the incoming medical students, which is the white coat ceremony. They give you a white coat, you take the oath of Hippocrates the weekend before, and then there's an inspirational speaker. And I was that speaker. It was an extraordinary honor to be asked to do that. You know, in medical school, you have to learn all these mnemonics to remember stuff.

So I was saying, can I create a mnemonic that can inspire these students, not only to be good doctors, but good human beings, that is something easy to remember, and that relates to my own personal journey? So I came up with this alphabet of the heart and it's a letter C through L. And actually this is a practice I do

as part of my meditative practice, which I go through. So it's C, compassion for self and others. D, recognizing the dignity of every person. E, practicing equanimity or evenness of temperament. Elaborate on that one. We were talking about this reactivity, as an example in the context of somebody cutting you off. Yeah, road rage.

If you're able to maintain an evenness of temperament, regardless of the circumstances, as an example, let's say you have an attachment to a goal and you don't get that goal, people can be devastated. But if you're able to let go of that and understand. I want to know who gets this ringtone. Cause I've heard a couple of different ringtones and this one's specific. It's my spousal unit. Yeah.

I had a hunch. This one was more relevant than the others. Oh, I didn't put an airplane. My wife is going to go, why didn't you answer the phone? You started that interview an hour and 35 minutes ago. What the fuck are you doing in there? Is it turned into an orgy? Well, you should probably believe that.

Well, when you get rid of the cream top sweatshirt, for sure. You guys are sick bastards. Anyway, where were we at? Equanimity. Oh, equanimity. So the thing is that when you're attached to a goal and you don't attain it,

then that causes suffering and unhappiness. Well, if you understand that you should not have attachment to that, you should enjoy the experience, you should enjoy trying, but the world doesn't end if you don't get that. But people always want to live in that space of, oh, I accomplished this, I'm getting all these accolades, it makes me feel good. Well, we cannot always be in that state. You have to accept that reality. The other side of the coin is just as accomplishment is transitory, or these goals oftentimes, so is disappointment. We're gonna have ups and downs in our lives and nobody wants to be unhappy or have bad things happen to them. That is the nature of life. But if you really

closely examine it, like the other side, accomplishing things, you can't always live there, it's transitory. That is the same way with downtimes. Unfortunately people will translate that the experience they're having is lasting forever, which then leads of course to rumination, depression, and sometimes suicide. But if you look at it from the perspective of it being transitory, you don't get lost there either. You have this evenness of temperament, understanding and appreciating each part, because while the accomplishing part or achieving is wonderful, it doesn't really often give you the sense of purpose or meaning necessarily, especially if it's a focused I want type of thing versus the down times though. If you examine that, where do

you learn your greatest wisdom? Where do you see how resilient you are? Where do you see you have the powers within? And this is when oftentimes you survive a difficult challenge And that's what gives most people an immense amount of knowledge insight So you don't want that not to happen. You don't want it to last forever though So having this sense of evenness of temperament enjoying the good times but not getting lost in them and the same with the down times It's interesting. I have a modern art boot at the end of my pool. It doesn't have a head, it's modern. Yeah, very.

Too modern? Oh my God. Yeah. Scary. It looks nice. But it's also holding a persimmon. The purpose of that is to remind me of two things. One is the tendency for us all to get lost in our head.

So by it not having a head, it sort of forces me to be in my heart. But the other part is to recognize that a persimmon, it's like pain and suffering. It starts out hard and bitter, but if you're patient over time, it becomes soft and sweet. And so that metaphor makes me appreciate even the down times. So equanimity, F is forgiveness.

A thing that's very common is so many of us attach an emotion to either an experience or a negative interaction with the person. And the problem is if you don't let that go, every time you think of that experience or that person, it actually stimulates your sympathetic nervous system and makes you suffer. In AA we say resentments are like drinking poison, hoping your enemy dies. I know those statements from AA. Yeah.

Yeah. By the way, there's been 12 I just silenced myself and didn't say, but yes, it's incredible how littered the big book is with Buddhist stuff. I still have the same sponsor I've had for 28 years. Wow. No kidding. Yeah. Same guy. Do you fear he's going to die and what will happen then?

Thanks for bringing that up. I never thought of that before. Don't worry. There's only a temporary fear. It'll pass just like your good times. In fact, that was a phone call. No. Well, anything is possible, but he's been an incredible blessing for me.

Yeah. Anyway, gee, gratitude. We know from a variety of studies that having a gratitude journal, writing down three things every day that you have gratitude for has a huge positive impact. I think it's important to add to, they can be very inane.

People think they have to list something incredibly profound, but like this is a Stutz encouragement, anything, you're happy there's milk in the fridge. It doesn't have to be profound. It's just the act of putting your thoughts in that part of your brain. I remind myself 50% of the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day. And so everything I feel blessed by. The other is humility. And this in some ways relates to dignity in the sense that recognizing you're no better than any other person.

And unfortunately, as an example, being a neurosurgeon, being at Stanford, that can, for some people, become an ego trip. And I always tell people, I can always tell the good doctors. The good doctors come in and they know the nurse's name. They also honor the people who are sweeping the floors, people who are changing the bedpans and the sheets. The way people treat their assistants in this world. That's exactly right. And even in the operating room, the way I look at it is,

I cannot do my job without these people. They're a critical aspect. And in fact, if something happens in the OR, I always point at myself first. You know, there are people who raise their voice and they'll throw instruments and say, you idiot. If you have not directed the people in the correct way, honored who they are, understand who they are, have painted a picture of

what you want to accomplish, everything is your fault, period. That also humbles you because if you say it's all my fault, I can't scream at people. So I try to look at it that way. And then I is having integrity or values that bound your behavior. Justice, I use that in the sense of our obligation and our particular positions to care for the vulnerable. Then K is kindness. So you don't have to suffer. You simply need to be a human being just to care for another person for no reason.

And all of this is contained by love. Which of those D through L is hardest for you? Be honest, Jim. You bastard. Ah. Ah. Ah. Which one of those do you give yourself a C on?

I think Kevin's humility. Yeah. Yeah, that's a hard one. I've been blessed on some level to have done some things that people compliment me on, but I have to remind myself, yes, that's wonderful, but the talents that I have did not magically come because of me.

They're a product of a whole variety of circumstances. And this is what's sad is people are being honored for things they did nothing to get. And even people who've done certain types of accomplishments, let's say athletes, I appreciate that, but that doesn't also make you more important than anybody else. Do you know Robert Sapolsky?

Yeah. We just had him on recently. Oh, you know, I have a podcast called Into the Magic Shop. Oh, I didn't know that. Well, why the hell not? I know, I did a lot of research. I didn't stumble upon that. Anyway, he and I were talking about free will and one of the arguments of course is that we didn't choose what we got.

And so why are we bragging or thinking we're particularly... Or being judgmental. Behave's my favorite book ever, but the new one pisses me off to no end. But why? That tenet is so real. To make it binary, there's no free will or there is free will. I think it's maybe a spectrum of free will

and maybe it's down to 8%. I do not believe the future is predictable even if we know the placement of every atom in the universe. If we did, it is, but we don't, so we can't. But I get where you're coming from. There's divergence. There's a lot of principles that interfere. He's a fucking beast though.

He is brilliant, Ed. We had a very wonderful conversation. Okay, so this is interesting. Do you find that humility is hardest when you're intimidated? So Sapolsky's a triggering person to me. Like I read Behave and I go, how did this man become the premier expert on baboon societies? And he's not an anthropologist. He spent 33 years.

Yes. And he is the number one expert on this. And that's not even his field. The intellect is enormous. And so when I sit with him, it brings up insecurities of me. The dyslexic kid's going to be talking to him. There's all this stuff. And then what seems like an easy antidote is now to bolster myself with all these other terrible qualities I have that I would elevate.

Well no, I can because of X, Y, and Z. Like do you find that certain situations make humility harder to achieve because you feel fearful or threatened? Now this may sound strange to you. I just don't care because I have been blessed by having experiences with some of the major spiritual religious leaders, political leaders, having experiences with some of the major spiritual

religious leaders, political leaders, the John Hams of the world. Are we calling him a spiritual leader? Maybe we shouldn't go back. He was phenomenal in season five of Fargo, but I don't know if I'm going to bring my existential crises to him. But my point is they're just human beings and having spent time with many of the religious and spiritual leaders, people like worship these people. What the?

They're human beings and frankly, being in the inner circle, if you will, on some level, they're just as fucked up as all of us. So somehow attributing like there's something special here. Yes, they may be special in this realm. Well, listen, this is coming full circle to attribution error, which is by practicing never feeling superior to anyone else and recognizing everyone's intrinsic value, you're weirdly affording him to have that view of you. You're reaping one of the benefits of your practice because you're going, well, I'm not

talking to the guy with an eighth grade education feeling superior because I refuse to let myself do that. So I'm not even open to the notion that Sapolsky is going to be talking to me going, what a dumb motherfucker, why did I come down here? Kind of comes full circle to being in traffic and if I cut people off, I'm going to have to have the worst interpretation of being cut off. And the thing is, I have this unique experience of being able to converse with anybody and we're all the same and I don't get lost. Now, I will use that knife for dickheads, somebody who comes up to you and starts trying to tell you how important they are or Jack around.

I mean, I can be a real dickhead. You can be a cervic. Well, most neurosurgeons have the ability to be complete fucking assholes. We've interviewed a lot of surgeons and there is a fucking type. Yes. The difference I have, and this may be self-serving, is that I did not decide to be a neurosurgeon until late. I was going to be a family doctor and the reason I was going to be

a family doctor is I had this naive notion that I would do pediatrics, deliver babies, take care of older people, but the only place you can do that because you're held to the standard of the specialist in whatever community you're in, well you can't possibly know as much as somebody fully trained, board certified in something. And so I realized that the only place I could actually do that was like in rural Alaska. And I did not want to go to rural Alaska. Although it was a great TV show. Exactly. Yes.

But the other thing was that I actually met some neurosurgeons in the army, actually, when I was doing my internship, who so inspired me, because I was going to actually do general surgery, become a plastic surgeon, and then do cranial facial surgery on children to reconstruct their faces, and that's really what I wanted to do, but after 10 years of training,

my wife informed me that she was fucking tired. Sure, since a long time. Of you becoming more and more specialized and going nowhere. Yeah, exactly. I had done neurosurgery, and I said, well, I'll just be a neurosurgeon. I'll stop there. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and was very good at it.

And so I have no regrets whatsoever. And in fact, I ended up doing craniofacial surgery with a plastic surgeon, but my path wasn't to be a surgeon. So I would like to believe that I didn't become that person, but I will assure you there is at least a few people who will say, Jim Doty's an asshole. Sure. You haven't lived if there isn't a handful of folks that hate you. But I'm with you. I agree based on this. I mean, we've done six and a half years of this, and we have people like you multiple times a week. It's crazy. But my takeaway is never,

oh my God, we're so stupid or we're not worthy. It's, oh, everyone is special and everyone is not special. Everyone is the same. Yeah, the aphorism is you are unique and special just like everyone else. If you look at the world through that lens, it always keeps you humble and it makes you understand everyone is special. And if you treat people that way,

again, one of the big things in my life that I learned, when I changed the energy that I put out to people, because I used to be very critical because of my own insecurities, and I would be judgmental, when I changed how I looked at the world and had a sense of openness, caring, and understanding that everyone's suffering, actually it changed how people interacted with me. And what people don't appreciate is that we have a certain vibrational energy. And of course, that also heads off some people in the woo-woo side of the house, but we do. And our hearts actually put out energy about five or six feet outside of our

bodies and it can be responded to by other people. How you carry yourself, how you look at the world affects other people around you. Yeah, and create your own ecosystem kind of. Yes. Well, Dr. James Doty, this has been a real pleasure. I hope everyone checks out Mind Magic, how the neuroscience of manifestation can change your life, and I definitely understand why Jon Hamm is a huge fan. I will say I just want to thank you personally because as I already said, self-proclaimed

skeptic, I'm enjoying so much people connecting these things that are kind of old and robust and true. I'm newly into Buddhism, but it's shocking just since I've been reading about it, how much of it surfaces in all these other conversations. We're talking to a memory expert, we're talking about the context that you're in will affect how you retrieve your memories, it'll alter your memories, right?

And this is all Buddhism. There is no consciousness. There is consciousness arising out of a given context, which is ever changing. And so I'm really delighted when people like you are linking the science to it. I think it just will help get people over the hurdle, myself included. And it's very comforting to know like, no, no, no, we're looking at the brain and an fMRI and this is happening. This isn't woo-woo. Well, and this is the challenge as people attach woo-woo in pseudoscience. So they'll

say a statement that in part is true, and then they'll add all this baggage to it, and then they'll push that out there. My belief is if we can honestly lay it out there as it is, and also how to get rid of the woo-woo stuff, make you understand how it works best. And I think in terms of manifestation, it's really important because this book is really about the power of your mind to change your life. And there is no other magic beyond that. Your mind has immense power. You just have to understand how it works and you can actually manifest an incredible amount of things. Now that being said, I don't wanna sit there

and imply that, well, if you do this, everything you want will come true. There are some forces either systemically in our society that may prevent things. There may be other competing interests. You may not have clarity about what it is you really want. I think that's a big one, by the way. I have friends who are like, I want a family.

I'm like, do you? Because everything you're doing is kind of contrary to that goal. This gets back to what are you manifesting today? And if you look at their path and they've never looked at it, they don't understand what it is that's driving them. Because making a statement like that

typically is in response to if you're with somebody who has a family and they're happy and they go, oh, well, I sort of want that, but they don't really want that. They want something else. Now, most people, frankly, want the easy way out. The brain is lazy. Well, let's call it efficient. It wants to expend the least amount of energy possible. That typically is repeating the same habits you've done. So you have to put the work in it. Even though the first sentence says the universe doesn't give a fuck about you,

I would also say God only helps those who help themselves. You have to show up. You have to do the practice. You have to show up, you have to do the practice, you have to be motivated, and you have to understand the power. And I think though one of the other things just to throw out there is you don't need to read this book and go, oh, I'm gonna do this tomorrow. It's gonna happen. I'm gonna get everything I want. The best way is to start with baby steps. Do a few exercises that show you the power you have to change your habits, which is what we're talking about. How do you create a habit? If you do these baby steps and you do a few things, go, oh, okay, I get it.

And then you do more. And it's like learning how to run a marathon. You don't run a marathon by running a marathon. You run a marathon by getting up at six and walking around the block at first. I just love how perfectly infused the entire book is with all of the science that's happening. It's like we get into any one of these six things. It's immediately accompanied by what's happening in your brain and what system is enacted.

It's very, very concrete and very well-rooted. Well, and I think the other part that's nice, at least for me, is to connect it with stories of people. And you mentioned a new love, but there's actually a story about Jim Carrey in there and others, because these are things that so many of us face until we understand that we somehow think it's about us and then we realize it's really not about us it's about how can we

be of service then the light goes on and go oh wow here are all the positive things I can get while still getting what it is that I really need and most people if you ask them deeply they want a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives in this period of time, which is very short that we're on this planet. Back to AA, service just relieves you yourself. And wow, the result of that's actually pleasant, counterintuitive. Well, and just as a final point, not to forget that every one of us every day

has the ability to improve the life of at least one other person. Yeah, that's a great way to end it. Jim, thank you so much. This has been a blast. Again, everyone check out Mind Magic. I hope we get to talk to you again. You will. Okay.

We won't cancel on you last minute next time. I don't believe you sons of bitches. Fool me once, shame on you. Yes. All right, be well. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes. I want to be a baby panda, just for one day.

They're like, have a built-in airbag or something. Yeah, they're jelly. They do not care. They're so stupid. And I don't know, it's funny, the animals never been more linked to anything to me than them and China. Right. And I can't help but watch them and then also pair that up

with my global stereotype of the Chinese, which is like very hardworking. Right. And on it. Yeah. And then their kind of spirit animal or their signature animal is this lazy goofball that's like falling out of trees and stuff.

It's really funny. I guess it's mixed messies. It'd be like somehow if Sweden's national animal was a miniature something. Sure, a mouse. Yeah, it's like, oh, these people are known for being inordinately tall. And then they have like a miniature gorilla or something.

That's fun, yeah, a pygmy. Do you think about the Chinese of it when you're looking at the pandas? Like, you know they're in China. I know they're in China, I guess. But mainly the only reason I notice is often the accounts are. Written in Mandarin or.

Right, they're not English. So I guess it reminds me of that. Oh, speaking of which, similar, you know the auto suggestions that it sends to you. Which by the way, I'm in favor of, I don't know if people like that or don't like that. I sometimes don't like it, sometimes do. It's pretty spot on for me.

On Instagram. Yeah, but of course what's clear is I'm definitely changing the algorithm because I send you those panda ones and then now it's just like every time I sign up, there's more and more panda. My feed's gonna be entirely pandas, which I don't, I like them but I don't want that either.

Why? So happy. Well, it's because it would take the place of some of the other stuff and here we go. So I also get a lot of motorcycle videos. Sure. And I get a lot of these. That's mixed messes. You have a lot of pandas, baby pandas.

Pandas and motorcycles in the occasional bar fight. I like those too. But so among the motorcycle stuff is like the stuff I'm accustomed to like motorcycle racing, dirt bikes, well, but then there's also all these videos that are like basically bicycles with engines on them and guys racing them and it's all Indian. Oh, do you think it's because they know you went to India? So now they know you're kind of interested in India? Well, certainly it's building on the motorcycle interest, but yeah, maybe it cross pollinated

with my recent interest in India. But again, very unique to the region. All these regions have a kind of signature motorsportsy thing. Really? They do. Like say the whole Middle East area is mostly these like really totally dorky, pedestrian looking tiny SUVs or like utility pickup trucks.

Okay. But they have put like 2000 horsepower turbo motors in them to climb sand dunes. They're so specific. Like you don't see these anywhere else in the world. And they're everywhere. And then also big in the Middle East is like drifting these super boring looking passenger cars

with guys hanging out of the window. That's very unique to the region. Last one in that region is driving the Jeeps on two wheels is a big thing over there. They'll be on the highway, they're on two wheels. The guys that are better at it, they'll have guys. This is true. One of the videos, it's a Jeep driving on two wheels.

That means the front wheels are up? No, front right wheel and rear right wheel on its side. Oh. Right, not doing a wheelie or driving on the front wheels, but driving completely, like Duke's a hazard, sideways. So the car's leaning like this, right? And then guys in the passenger window and passenger rear, windows down, come out of the Jeep,

take the tires off of the tires that are in the air, trade them, put them back on, and then it drives. And this is all done on a public road, it's not closed. So they're running and? No, they're hanging up the window, so the jeep is tilted up on its side. But is it driving?

Yes, it's flying down the highway. So they're hanging up the window of the passenger seat, leaning over, unbolting the wheels, taking them off, trading them, putting them back on, and then they come back in the window and then the guy driving puts it back on four wheels. This is very dangerous. On a public road. Wow.

Yeah, you're only gonna see that in the Middle East. Cool. Scandinavia has a thing, I know we've run its course, it's the last one I'll tell you about. What is it? Their unique thing is they love these crazy hill climbs, but like the hills are impossibly steep. It's always the sides of a quarry,

like a rock quarry that's been dug out. And they have these four wheel drive Jeeps again, with these like monstrous nitro fucking supercharged 2000 horsepower motors. And they're at the bottom of the quarry and then they just fucking floor and they just scream up the top and they're almost like straight up and down

and getting to the lip of it. And then you're only seeing that in Scandinavia. I kind of like the regional. Yeah, that's fun. It is. Unique. Well, cause people have to play in their environments. Are you letting your beard grow out?

Yeah, I'm surprised you noticed. Yeah, I haven't shaved since I went to Austin for no particular reason. Yeah, better or worse, to be honest. No, no, I don't think better or worse. It's not better or worse, it's just different. I can tell. Yeah, you know, it's think better or worse. It's not better or worse. It's just different. But it's just, I can tell. Yeah, you know, it's because I haven't had a haircut

in a while either. So when I let my hair grow longer, I tend to let my beard grow longer as well. Interesting. Like proportionally, I feel like it's. So are you gonna grow out your hair? I have no clue what I'm doing with my hair. I just simply haven't got it cut.

Okay. What I like about it is way more gray comes out and it kind of is back to my punk rock roots where it's like I'd have some of my hair dyed, but my body's just doing it for me now. Well, I got kind of nervous when you walked up because I saw your beard, but I didn't notice your beard on whenever I saw you last,

which was probably like Thursday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it grew a lot this weekend. Maybe. And I knew you were dealing with a sick kid, so I thought maybe you were sick and the beard had to do with you being sick. And like was protecting me, like grew faster to insulate me.

Or like you were so sick, your body was like making hair. My nails grew out really long. Now one thing I, it's been a while since I did let my beard get a little longer and what I'm pretty certain of, I'd have to go back and look at pictures, it seems to have de-grayed a bit. Really?

Which I know is not possible, but do you remember? It's possible. Cause it's certainly gray, but I feel like it used to be gray or when I grew it out, which I don't know how that could have possibly happened. Maybe my hair is just gobbling up all the gray ingredient and now, I don't know. I mean, I think, isn't it like it's dead now,

so it's gonna be gray. It's growing. I know, I don't understand gray hair. Yeah, I don't either. Because it's supposed to be dead, but then yeah, it does. No, it just loses its pigment. But I think it's also dead. That's why some of them are like curly and wonky and spry.

On this topic, are you ladies envious at all that like we have so much to play with just to keep things novel? Like I can just decide, yeah, I'm gonna change the total look of my face over the next month and a half and grow this preposterous. No, because I think we have that with makeup.

Oh, yeah. Like we can play with our face a lot. I mean, men can too, of course, but women can make all kinds of different looks with makeup. Yeah, I guess maybe. I feel like you guys are actually more limited. All you have is that beard.

He has the hair. Yeah. Do I want hair on my head or hair on my face as well? Also, I'm timing this completely wrong as I usually do. This is always, I don't know why I do this, but I generally have short hair when it's cold and then I'll tend to grow my hair out my beard out when it's hot and it's backwards.

But here I am inclined to let everything grow for a while and it's getting warmer and warmer and I don't know why that's my instinct. I think long hair for summer is nice. Oh, okay, great. I think sometimes women like having long hair for summer. That's a huge general statement. Well, he said sometimes.

My girls both just got their hair cut off. Well, I don't know about the younger Jen. Yeah, we can't speak on that. I can't speak on that. But my Jen, mainly me and Callie. You like it long in the winter or in the summer? I always like it long, my hair's long. But Callie would often grow her hair out for the summer.

So that like- For a bathing suit look? It's kind of like mermaidy look. Oh, sure, sure. It's gotta be linked to a bathing suit somehow, right? Yeah, like maybe it's like it covers your boobs. Oh, okay. Oh, so she's not wearing a top. If you don't wear a top,

if you decide to take your top off. Not wearing a top. Yeah, yeah. If you wanna sunbathe, but cover up your nipples. But can women really make that much of a change? Like if you go like- It takes a minute. Right, like if you go, I'm gonna grow my hair long for the summer,

it's probably only gonna be 5% longer. Whereas for me, like my hair is currently twice as long as it was a month ago, proportionally, because it was so short. But Callie's gonna go from like 11 inches of hair to 12 inches of hair for the summer is interesting. No, no, no, she, because Callie has had a lot of hair looks in her life.

She's kind of more like you, I guess. Which we, remember we said that. And you're, it's getting, I guess proven over and over. I'm gonna let you prove it though. She's, yeah, she's played with a lot of looks. What I pointed out for the listener was. I was on here. Oh, it was.

But do it again. Oh, just, I think it's interesting that people pair up in a, I think a mutually beneficial way, which is you're very risk adverse. And Callie, at least from my understanding of her, she trends high on the risk. She's like, she's a little more risky than you. She's more risky than me.

So she probably pulls you along into some places and then you've probably tempered her riskiness. Nah? I don't think. Okay. Well, at any rate, all I observed is that I feel like Callie and I in some way fulfill the same role in your life.

You were saying that Erin and I and Charlie were similar. Three of your close friends were similar. And then you said, and it kind of makes sense because maybe Callie and I are similar. And I pushed back, but I guess we're finding. The more you think about it. I guess we're finding a couple more crossovers, one being the hair. But she, you know, when I had my astrology reading,

my astrologer said, it's good for me to be around water signs, and she's a water sign. Oh, okay, okay. Because it's very different for me. While we're on the topic of Callie, I have had such a arms distance connection to her just through you. Yeah.

And so I know very little about her, but what's fun about being on this connections thread. Yeah, you get to see her. I get to see her more and when I'm seeing, and I'm sure you've observed this with Erin and I, which is like, oh, we have a similar sense of humor. And so what I'm learning is that Kelly's really quite clever. So clever.

Yes, and I didn't know that. I haven't interacted with her enough, but like when she- My best friend wouldn't be anything but. Great. Right, but really, she's my Erin. I know, so am I. So my best of all time is gonna be cool. Well, I knew she was cool.

That's obvious just from looking at her. And I knew she had an aesthetic. If you go to her Instagram page, it's very beautiful. What I didn't know is that she's very funny, clever. So the one that really got me the other day was when she said that she felt like we were communicating with. Oh, you liked that.

I loved that. Did you see, I had a follow-up that was like, or maybe it's a dead relative. Like she was saying that she thought that there was a pattern being placed in connections that was someone communicating with us from outer space. Right. And that's such a unique, abstract, funny thought

that I really liked. She is, she's not very, this is the first time I'm having this revelation. I don't think Callie is a people pleaser. Right, or even an approval junkie. Exactly, I don't think she needs it. Right, that's what I'm saying. There's an economy to when she is witty.

So she's not someone going for a joke all the time. There's no neediness to her, which is very appealing. I feel that about Aaron. Totally. Like when the time's right, he lets it rip, but there's no neediness. Anywho, it's been fun. Now, what do you think about me and her?

What have you seen? Well, once I saw this side of her, I'm like, oh, I get it. I bet their text chains to each other are fantastic. Do you think it's similar or do you? Yeah, you're both very, very clever, mildly sarcastic. Yeah. I, like you say with Nate and probably with Erin, I have no sense of competition with Callie.

Right. At all. Yeah. So, but you know, there are people in my life with varying degrees of that. Cause that's very human. But yeah, there's none with her. It's a very safe relationship.

I get it. It's also a little bit what Phineas was saying, which is when you truly love somebody, you're genuinely happy to see them get approval and be shined on her. I know, but I think that's a little basic, like I think you can really love someone and it's still be, there can be triggers.

And it's not normally about the other person, it's just you, right? It's about whatever you're going through. Yeah, but I would argue maybe those triggers and those character defects that are preventing you from rooting for the person would be a good measure of how much you actually love them. Well, I think-

It would say that to me that your baggage is standing in the way of you actually loving them truly. I guess so. I think though, I think you can be 100% rooting for someone and want only the best for them and get jealous. Like I think that's very human. And I don't think there's actually a problem with that. As long as you're not like, I don't want it for them.

I don't want it. It's just things can bring up for you like, I want that. I mean, I've experienced it on my side and I've been on the other side of that. And I think it's fine. I understand if there's jealousy that comes into play. As long as they're not like upset by my success, I understand if it's like triggering something in them that they don't have and want.

You know what I mean? I know what you mean. I'm not sure that I agree with you, if it's like triggering something in them that they don't have and want. Yeah. Know what I mean? I know what you mean. I'm not sure that I agree with you, but I do know what you mean. Interesting. I think it's funny because I know you think you and Erin have the, I mean, you obviously have a cohesive sense

of humor, like you balance, you like. We get into a rhythm with one another and we build on each other and we have the exact same very specific thing that we love to build on. That you like and enjoy. Yes, now like, yes, if you meet Aaron at a bar and you meet me at a bar, and the kind of ways he'll be funny in the kind of way,

probably independently are different. But when we're together, they kind of fuse in this, it becomes a third sense of humor that he and I own collectively. Totally. I think that's common in friendships. Yeah, yeah. It's always when he's here that I'm reminded

how much I enjoy that silly zone he and I live in. Yeah, so fun. It's so fun. I'm in a good spell right now. I just hiked with David Walton. Oh, nice. He's another person who I just have this like deep, when I'm with him, it's just this feeling of joy.

Oh, that's nice. And in symmetry between whatever we're just, it's a very easy balance between the two of us. That's great. Yeah, but also a rough weekend. Yeah, very sick child. That's sad. We had but also a rough weekend. Yeah, very sick child. That's sad. Made a sick kid too.

What's that? Calvin was sick too. Really? Yep. So Friday night, first Lincoln came in and she had a nightmare. So Kristen went and laid with her in the middle bedroom and then Delta came in.

She was crying and she's super sick. So she laid down next to me and she started snoring. You can't even be called a snore. This is what it sounded like. Oh God. Ew, oh. Like did you think she was dying? I was worried.

It sounded like she had sleep apnea. Cause her nose was just 100% clogged. She couldn't breathe through it, but she was trying to breathe through it. So then she was breathing through her mouth. So just insane amount of noise coming off next to me. And so I put on my noise canceling headphones and I'm trying to sleep next to her.

And it's still- Your safety blanket. Yeah, it sounds like there's a grizzly bear mauling a deer next to me. And then every 20 minutes she starts crying in her sleep because her throat is sore from breathing through her mouth. So then she's just crying but she's still asleep. So she cry for 20 minutes and then.

And then so it was, I mean, I felt like I had been captured by the Taliban and this was one of these ways that they sleep deprive you to make you crazy and give up secrets. Like it felt more than, it felt like calculated and yeah, it felt like torture. It felt like a- It does feel, okay, when snoring,

when you're in that zone and someone is snoring- Say an errand snoring in the motor home. Yeah, it feels aggressive. It feels hostile. It feels pointed and on purpose and they're doing it to you. Yes, but then you add in the crying, which is of course I love her and I'm not gonna be able to just like

listen to her whimper and cry. So it's like, it was this great back and forth between like wanting to put a pillow over her face and murder her because the noise was so loud and then this crying and tenderness where I wanted to nurture her, mixed with her what we call star fishing,

which all night long she throws her body around, spins around in the bed. So it was like there was a physical assault, it was so much going on. So of course I woke up Saturday and I was like, I'm not sure we got anything done last night, restoratively. And then Lincoln went to the cute, first of all, this is so cute, went with pals to Malibu to the beach.

Oh my God. That is so adult. It was like a kid, one of the kids' birthdays parties. So he had like, he had a little volleyball, then it turned into they played football and she rode with a friend and her mom. She did, she got picked up. She got picked up, which is rare.

So she had like a whole excursion, it felt very Malibu Barbie, like she was going out to the beach. It was a terrible day too, it was like 60 degrees and cloudy. It was yucky on Saturday. She got an ocean anyways, God bless her. But so she was gone the whole day,

so then it was just dealt in, she was in just the foulest mood, and she was insistent on going to the park, and she wanted to go to a very specific park. Even though she was sick? Exactly, and you're like, this is not a, you don't wanna be at a park, like let's get you in front of the TV and have you pass out.

But we went to the park, on the way there we watched a semi smash a car. Oh my God. Yes, it was the craziest fucking thing. It was all I could do to not get involved. This dude, you know on Los Feliz Boulevard, right at the 101, that intersection with Riverside. This semi was in the very far right lane,

and then as it's coming through the intersection, it starts trying to merge over into the other lane, and then I look, I'm like, why's this guy gotta get in that other lane? Now all the traffic's backed up, and then I'm like, oh, this motherfucker's gonna try to make a left turn across four lanes from the right lane because he got off at the wrong exit,

and I'm basically, I'm like on it, because I'm in the left turn lane. I'm even thinking about going directly in front of him so he can't do this, but then it would have pinched traffic even worse, and I'm like, not your job to be the sheriff. Very hard for me not to get involved. And sure enough, he just goes, I'm waving to him,

dude, you can't go, there's cars all next to the, just fucking goes plows through a car in the intersection. Yes. And then takes down off down Riverside. What? Yes, I watched the car spin and I think, well, they're definitely gonna follow the semi and get its license plate number.

They then went in the opposite direction and blasted out of there with a totaled car. So I'm like, what did we just see? Is that person not have a license? Are they in a stolen car? Did they not have insurance? What the fuck? And these two were made in heaven.

This guy just drove over a car with a semi and they ran. So it was a weird omen to go right before you get to the park, get to the park. She didn't wanna be there. We had set up all the bullshit. She looks at the thing for five minutes. She's like, I wanna go home after we leave. Oh my God.

It was just one of those days. Yeah, sure. But highlight, we then that night went to see, well, Friday night we saw Bill Burr at the Hollywood Bowl because it's Netflix is a joke weekend. Oh, nice. And Kristen's doing a show for Netflix.

So we had access to all these tickets. So we went to Bill Burr Friday night and then Saturday we went and saw Shane Gillis at The Greek. Wow. And I gotta say, might be the best standup show I've ever seen. It was unreal, I know. That's convenient all the time.

Well, no, that's Richard Pryor. So it was great, you loved it. And Letterman, and who else did we say? Bill Murray, Jerry Seibow. At any rate, it was incredible. Great. It was so good. I can't believe how good. He is just, and you know what it is,

talking with Dave on the walk today, because Dave's starting to do standup, 75% of it is how comfortable is that human being standing in front of all the people on stage? It's so infectious. Like when they have that complete calmness and steadiness and confidence, like that does so much of the lifting.

And I gotta say, I don't know if I've ever seen someone just so comfortable sitting there telling stories on stage. It was just wonderful. Yeah, it was really fun. Your weekend, go. On Friday, we did drive by Bob's big boy and Bob was gone. What do you mean?

You know, the big Bob. The big big boy. Yeah, the big boy. The big boy in his overalls. Is his name Bob? No, Bob is the franchisee. Oh, I thought his name was Bob. It's big boy.

Big boy is the restaurant change like McDonald's, but in Michigan, most of them are owned by Elias Brothers. So it would say Elias Brothers, big boy. Here it's Bob's, Bob's big boy. They varied state to state. I'm bummed. Isn't that wild? I thought his name was Bob.

No, he's big boy. I thought he was Bob big boy. Then it should be big boy Bob. No. Like if there was a Big Boy. God, I just. Then it should be Big Boy Bob. No. Like if there was a big boy named Bob, that's worth earmarked that. Okay. Yeah, I think it would be Big Boy Bob,

but it's Bob's Big Boy, Bob's McDonald's. Fuck. So, but the actual statue. Like I never even knew it. The statue was down though, you said? Yeah. They retired him, apparently. What do you mean?

Oh, was he problematic? The new mascot, a little blonde girl named Dolly. No! Guys, how the fuck you gonna rename big boy Dolly? Wait, wait, are you serious? The iconic big boy mascot is getting the boot after almost 90 years. No!

What a dumb fucking decision. Still be named big boy, but a new mascot will be introduced. It'll be named big boy, but there'll be a little girl. Name Dolly. What? Who on earth greenlit this idea? Also why?

I mean, oh my God. They're like, we gotta keep up with the times. But then why wouldn't they change the name? To Little Dollies. Yeah. Wait, we thought this was some sort of prank. Well, the Big Boy statue has been stolen multiple times. It is a common prank. Yeah, we thought it was has been stolen multiple times. It is a common prank.

Yeah, we thought it was Burbank High. We blamed it on Burbank High. That would make sense. Fuck, wait till I tell everyone this. Were the old cars still there? Yeah. Okay. Not everything is crumbled. What are they thinking?

You can't have a restaurant named Big Boy and then switch to a girl. To a little dolly. What the? Are they trying to keep up with something? It sounds like they are, but they're not doing a good job in general because then you should just change the whole thing.

Scrap everything. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay, well, I don't wanna get too hung up on that. I, I'm shocked. Tessci hasn't been canceled for bad behavior. Well. Is Dolly Bob's wife like. Well there is cartoons.

There's like a whole cartoon series with Big Boy in it. Like on the mats, when you did it at Big Boys, they had cartoons and known characters. She clearly was probably one of the characters in the Big Boy comic strip. So then what are they doing? Guys, this is insane. I think they're just desperate. I guess I feel sad that they're getting desperate.

No, the iconic Big Boys, oh, this was 2020. Yeah, that's when most of this was happening. That's what you're seeing? Yeah. And they just now got around to it four years later. Yeah, that doesn what most of this has had. That's what you're seeing? Yeah. They just now got around to it four years later. Yeah, that doesn't make sense, because it says, Bob's big boy recently announced a new mascot,

a more obscure character from the nearly century old diner's history to help launch a new item, the blonde ponytail Dolly, who made her first appearance in Bob's big boy canon via the restaurant chain's comic books, is now the face of the brand in a limited run fried chicken sandwich, but not everywhere.

It says the Downey location staying the course with Big Boy. I don't think this is why Bob's Big Boy was missing. I think this was a misread. We got quick to conclude. We're quick to jumping to conclusions. That was scary though. Okay. All right, anywho.

Big Boys. Okay. At right, anywho. Big boys. Okay. At the Shane Gillis concert, first arriving, walking through a big crowd of people, and a big dude is with a gal, and he comes up to me, and he's big, intimidating looking, and he steps right into my face, and he goes, you eat ass?

What? Yes. No. Yes. And my first thought was like, this dude wants to get down right now. Like he's coming right at me. And I'm looking at him, but then he has half a smile on his face. And I realized, oh my God, he's talking about chips.

You eat ass, everyone eats ass. Everyone does not eat everyone's ass. He's, he is quoting jokes to me. Ha ha ha ha. But it, it was a crazy four seconds where I'm like, a stranger's stepping up to me and it's go time right now. Didn't bump into him, didn't whatever. And then I was like, oh my God, yes, of course I eat ass.

Fist bump, everyone's happy, we walk away. But it was, I kind of got, I created my own problem here. If you had punched him. I literally thought that, like what if I just panicked and fucking cold cocked him and then he's on the ground and then it hit me, he loved chips? I would have been like completely devastated. Yeah, this is a good lesson.

Oh my God, Kristen watched the whole thing happen. Oh. Wow. You eat ass, stranger right in your face, big guy. That's crazy. Okay, well this is for James. This is for James. Yes, and.

Our neurosurgeon, neuroscience professor. Compassion. Compassion. Yes. Manifesting. Okay, so he said that BTS, the band. The Korean band. Made a song based on his book.

Oh yes, yes, yes. Magic Shop. So I have it. Oh, you have a taste of it. Well, make sure you hold up to the mouth of the singers on screen. I know you're hesitating I'm telling you the truth

I'm afraid to come back alone How does Doty know this is about his song? It says magic, it's called magic. Well Coldplay's got a song called magic too. I heard I do believe in Galaxy. Is there a little bit of English in there too? Okay. All right. That sounded good. I can see why they're a hit. Yeah.

It's very catchy. They're a big deal. Okay, so then he said. Another thing he said. He also said, well, I looked up the average pay of a neurosurgeon. Okay. It's by state.

It's highly regional, isn't it? Yeah, so it says in California, it says annual salary, top earners is 394,761, seems a little lower than I thought. Me too, I think of a neurosurgeon as making millions a year. Yeah, or at least. Every time I look these up, they're very confusing.

I feel like because it's an average, somehow I just don't know. Because you listen to like Dr. Death. Oh, oh. Wait, on salary.com, it says the average neurosurgeon salary in LA is 754,000. That sounds a lot more. Because I remember leaving high school

and learning that the highest paid career at that moment was an anesthesiologist that was 700 grand, and that was in 93. Right, also I think that was not real. And also I know these doctors around LA, they live in 12 million dollar houses. Exactly. They're clearly making millions a year.

Yeah, they are. I sure wish Doty would have told us exactly what he made. Yeah, he didn't, he just He just said he's doing fine. In this episode, he brings up equanimity. Yes. And equanimity is one of my favorite words. Talk about it more, because I just recently looked it up.

Yeah. I had it wrong kinda. Oh, you did? I thought of it more as equality. Oh, yeah, no. But it's not, it's an emotional state. Mm-hmm. It is. Like ease.

Contentment. Peace. I first learned about it though because Dave Chappelle had a special called equanimity and the bird revelation. Oh. Yeah. That's where you fell in love with it as a work?

That's when I first found it and then I liked it and I looked it up and then I forgot what it meant and I looked it up again and I forgot what it meant and I looked it up again and I forgot what it meant and I looked it up again and then I committed it to memory. That's what they say. If you wanna own a word, forget it three times. They do say that.

That's the popular saying. Today on Connections we both made. A blunder. Same blunder. It was the same blunder? There's no way for me to know if it's the same blunder but it's the same. Color. Yeah, all green's the same. Color.

Yeah, all green and one purple. Oh. So I bet it was the same. Yeah, it was like maybe handful through one of those. Yeah, handful, I've never heard handful used in the way they were. Oh, really? I have.

There's such a handful. Oh, yeah, yeah, I have. You're right. Thanks for correcting me. Why not? Why not? Why not? Oh, should we yeah, I have. You're right. Thanks for correcting me. Why not? Why not? Why not? Oh, should we admit what we thought?

Oh. I mean, it's very gross. It's so gross. It's so gross. And it's not true. I don't know. It's not, but let's say. Okay, three of the 12 words, one was ace.

Yeah, that one's a stretch. Arm, chair, expert. That's the abbreviation. I know, but not very many people are thinking about it like that, but okay, okay. Ace. Yeah. Expert. Dax.

Dax and soulmate. Dax was not one, but yeah. It wasn't. Soulmate, expert, and ace. And then I thought, could she be, but listen, I wouldn't have ever had this crazy thought if we hadn't just talked about her for a very long time. Yeah.

And I run into people often that we talk about, it generally gets to them. That's what I'm very careful about. It can get to people, yes. How we talk to them about anyone because it can get to them. So when I saw that I thought, well, we just really did an hour on Why Not,

is it possible she's winking back? Right, okay, so I side texted you in the morning and I said, expert and soulmate are on. You missed Ace, that's what was crazy to me. Well I saw it but that to me felt like a stretch. A lot of people call it ACE. Rob, don't you associate ACE with our show? Yeah.

I see it in the comments a lot. You do? People call it ACE, yeah. I like AE better. I generally say AE as well, if I'm too lazy to say it. Right. I say AE, like all the AE shows are on these days. Yeah.

But ACE is really, really common. Okay, okay, okay. And it's the most accurate. Well, actually it's not. It's when people have armchairs, two words. Which we don't. It's inaccurate, but that's fine. I also saw it, but I thought that's narcissistic to look at that and think it's connected.

It's problematic. I owned it, and then I put it on the chain. I hadn't read yours. That's what I wanna say. That's what I wanna say. So I sent to you, oh wow, Solmate and Expert are on today's connections. And I thought that was just gonna be

like a fun little sidebar for us. Great. Then you on the chain, you bring it to the chain, and then I was like, oh no. Well, hold on a second though, so you know what happened for me is, I do connections before I look at my texts. I don't look at texts, period, I don't open it up.

I get on, I finish journaling, I go straight to the toilet and open up connections. Or if I have to post, I post, then I open up connections. The end of connections, I look at my texts, and then I look at my email, that's the order. So what I first did I post, then I open up connections. The end of connections, I look at my texts. And then I look at my email, that's the order. So what I first did is connections, and then I immediately send my results. So now I'm sending a text to everybody.

I still haven't looked at my text. And then I write, and I own it. I say at the risk of sounding really narcissistic, I feel like Wynah winked at us today. I was relieved to say Max said he thought it immediately. I was so nervous about what any of them were gonna say. I knew you would be. And Max did then a nice thing and said.

I don't think that's Max's personality. No, he can. I'm feeling bad for me. No, for me. Why would he feel bad for you? I'm the one who said it. But it's about both of us. So he probably- Well, I was the only one that was being a narcissist.

I know, but- So if he was relieving my narcissism. But he couldn't be like, no, it includes both of us. It's a nice thing. I think, look. Listen, I acknowledge that it was- I know, I know. But also I think, and see now, Wina,

if you were intending to wink at us and have fun, now you've fucked up my whole life, because now I sound like a complete narcissist. Monica thinks I embarrassed both of us in the chain. So do better, like hit it right on the nose next time, please. That's how I felt. I was like, you know what?

Should we even give her the words right now? The implant? No, but I thought. Dyslexic? I thought if. Cheerleading. If cherry was on there, it would have been a bullseye, it would have been a duh.

A duh, duh, duh. Even if the words didn't go together, in fact, they probably shouldn't go together, right? No, they wouldn't go together. We don't deserve that, I wanna be clear. We don't deserve to be a category, I don't think that at all. Yes, I agree, but it's just, it's like.

Wink, wink. Yeah. Wina plays too. I don't, I just think Cherry would have been more. Yeah. And Dax and Monica would have been pretty clear. No, you can't put that on there. That won't work for anything.

No, Monica could, because if it was Monica. Friends. No. Well, yeah, that could work. But it would be Monica, then it would be wedding, then it would be saturate, and then it would be sunshine. It would be beginning with days of the week.

Which she did do that once. So M-O-N for Monica would be Monday. Yeah, but she didn't do Monica that day. Do Monica, so here's what you need to do. Dyslexia, Monica. Aerie. What if she does Narcissist? She can, if that's.

She should. Yeah, but what I think was a sweet wink has now ruined my reputation. M-R-U-H-A-H. No, it was fine. I just was also like, why couldn't that just be a sidebar between me and you because then it's not risking narcissism

or arrogance if it's just between us. But when you bring it to the world, then it is. But this is the thing, and this is where we differ. I'm not terribly ashamed of my thoughts or what. Like I don't think I need to hide that. Yeah, that's fair. Like that's the truth of what I thought. And if you think I'm a bad person or narcissist because of it, I need to hide that. Like that's the truth of what I thought. And if you think I'm a bad person or narcissist

because of it, I can live with that. Like I'd rather just share my real thoughts with this group I like sharing my thoughts with on the puzzle that day. Yeah, I get that. And I'll take the risk, I guess. But regardless, she needs to be a little clearer so that, because this has happened a couple of times at least with other podcasts,

we've had like back and forths. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's possible. That's why I sent it to you. I was saying, hey, this is interesting, but I wouldn't have said that to them. Right. But you're dealing with much more 20 year friendship

constraints than I am, because this is an old friendship circle. I think you're probably more mindful of never seeming like you've gotten too big for your britches. That might be true. Because it would tinker with an existing dynamic. That's probably true.

I think I'm a really good participant. You are, you are. I'm trying to make everyone shine, and when it's my day to shine, I'm gonna let it shine on me. When Wina winks. We don't know it. I also was good to include them because it's true.

What we were talking about Wina involved them. It does involve them. So if it was a wink, they had some ownership over it. Truthfully. I agree. So I wanted them to share on that. Like guys, I think we may have wine. It was definitely like, guys, we may have wine as a ear.

Guys, us. I know. I agree. I don't think you did anything wrong or I don't think you did a bad job. I just didn't understand it, because we're different. And we're different in a way that I'm not above the thought.

And that's what I'm saying. I had the same thought. That's why I shared it with you. But I am picking and choosing when to share those thoughts and when not to. And I do think you're right. I probably, maybe the old existing friendship dynamic, but also just in general,

I think I'm a little more in my head about humility. In general. So that you'll get, cause you'll get excluded. Yeah, it's old. It's like old stuff. I don't want to tall poppy, I guess. Yeah, tall poppy.

And I'm already the tallest in that group. So it's like, I can't even be small poppy. You are, but it's close. Ah! Don't even suggest it. Okay, I won't suggest it. Cause I'll be over there in the next five. I think you're the same,

you guys are the same height. What I thought you were gonna say, I think you're the second tallest. Well, you might be. Listen, I'm the first to say Max has better thighs than me. Should I ask Cali how tall he is? So it's not like I'm not giving it up where it deserves to be given up,

but Max is not taller than me. Okay, I'm just gonna, oh, I forgot, I turned my phone off. Do you want me to hit the chain? Can you send to the connections chain, Max how tall are you? Right, right, right, right. Hi guys, we're having a bit of a debate. No, I don't need to say all that.

That's triggering, that's me tall popping. I'm just gonna say. Hey, Max or Callie, come a how tall is Max? Question mark. Okay, TBD, but I'm pretty sure. My first question if I were Max or Callie is why? Well, of course. Yeah, we'll see. We'll tell them after.

Anywho, so how did we get on? Okay, so why not, if you wanna do six, two, that's also. That won't work either, Monica. I feel like I need to explain how the game works. I'm doing pretty good for someone who doesn't understand the game. Six, two, five feet and a half inch. A Virgo, Capricorn.

Oh yeah, Pisces. Who's Pisces? Callie. Okay, this is not gonna work. And by the way, they're not on Armchair Expert. I'm sorry, but they didn't. Oh God! It's not a nod to our chain.

It's a nod to the show. Why can't it be a nod to the chain? Oh fuck. Netflix, then it's law firm, Max's law firm. This is nuts. That would be great. Ace, Netflix, Shapiro, and whatever. Hoffman, Shapiro, Galaxy, and Suns.

Maybe we do, okay, we're getting really off. Okay, anyway. Everyone's not listening. Yeah, they stopped listening. Anywho, humility, humility, ding, ding, ding, James. Humility. We talk about it. Okay, yeah, we're not ding James. Humility. We talk about it. Okay, yeah.

We're not displaying a lot of it. Well, I like to keep my arrogance to. Confined. Yeah, confined. Oil subsidies. Every year oil, gas, and coal companies harvest billions of dollars in federal subsidies. And Walmart, giant retailer has received

more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from state and local governments across the country. I think he was also adding into that that they're supplementing their employees life through Medicare and food stamps and stuff. I think he was saying that a lot of the employees are also on government assistance

because they don't make enough money. So he sees that as a subsidy as well. Yeah, he's basically saying these companies that make so much money, their workers aren't getting paid enough. And then the government has to step in. Yes. Okay.

He said that heart puts out energy five to six feet outside your body. And there is a Psychology Today article that says the heart's energy is said to reach about three feet outside the physical body. And there is a Psychology Today article that says the heart's energy is said to reach about three feet outside the physical body. Okay. Oh, what'd they say? Six feet.

This is a lie. It's not, it's not. This is shameful. They're claiming he's six, four. I think he is. And then Max wrote and a half. Ha ha ha. No.

Dax, I... I don't think that's. Okay, we'll see. I'm sorry. I'm never gonna,ax, I... I don't think that's... Okay, we'll see. I'm sorry. I'm never gonna... Well, and what I know now is I'm never gonna see him again intentionally. So I can live in my fantasy.

I will say... Why not if you wanna put second tallest as... I wanna be clear about this. I actually, I don't give a fuck who's taller than me or not. I really don't. I know you should. But I really remember when I meet people that are taller than me,

because I rarely meet people that are taller than me. That's just a matter of fact. It's very rare that I'm talking to someone looking up at them. I just was with Walton, Walton's taller than me. And it's very memorable. He's just not, he's not that much. He's just a tiny bit.

So to you, you were probably like, we're at the same height. To be honest, we only hung out in a field. And maybe I was- Ask him his shoe size. I may have been standing a little uphill cause it was uneven like field. So maybe it's on me. Maybe I was just like, he was in a little bit of a depression and I was standing up on a little bit

of a taller bit of a depression and I was standing up on a little bit of a taller bit of grass soil. Yeah, well, Callie's taller than me and you're taller than me and Max is taller than me and Ronnie's taller. You would never remember that someone's taller than you because just everyone's taller than you. But I bet you remember people who are shorter than you.

Does that stick out? Okay, yes, but actually if someone's exactly my height, I also think they're shorter than me because I'm so used to everyone being taller than me. Right, so if you're just even looking level, it feels tall. Weird, well, why don't we clear that? Yeah.

That was a good fact to clear up. I'm just gonna write to them that didn't go my way. Okay, well, I think that's gonna be it. That's gonna cover everything? Oh, you know what I really liked? What? And I guess this is a ding ding ding to your story about the semi and you not getting involved.

He says, between stimulus and response, there's a pause and within that pause lies your freedom. And the goal is to extend that pause. And I really liked that. It's really good. It's really good. It's funny, because when that semi thing happened, it really shook Kristen up. She's like, I really didn't like that

because it was loud and it was scary. Scary, yeah. And I was just really conscious of the fact of how different our perspectives in life and the roles we've assigned ourselves. So she very much saw herself as someone that could get run over by a semi. And I very much am like, there's a man acting out of control. It's my job to stop it.

It's so weird, it's the same event. Yeah, of course. And we're having way different, like, there's a man acting out of control. It's my job to stop it. It's so weird, it's the same event. Yeah, of course. And we're having way different, like, person. What did Delta, how did she feel about it? She was in a fucking cold coma. She was like, what happened? She made us explain it like 20 times and we were annoyed because we were already annoyed

and everyone was at wits end. Oh boy. It was a harbinger of bad things. Yeah, I, that's like one time outside of all time, this guy had like this crazy road rage and he got out of his car and he bad-membered. I remember this, yeah. And it really scared me so much for,

like I'm still scared of it. Right. Yeah, and I had a different frustration with it. I was like, I fucking blew it. I could have stopped that. I was supposed to stop that. I saw that coming. It was my job to stop that.

I bet Max probably feels that way because he's so tall. Shut up. Shut your mouth. Oh my God. Oh boy. All right, well that's it. Love you.

Love you.