Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Happiness Expert Dr. Arthur C. Brooks

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Happiness expert, Harvard Professor & author Arthur Brooks joins Neal Brennan to discuss why happiness is ~50% genetic, why men and women fundamentally need different things from love (adoration vs. admiration), the dark triad/tetrad in dating apps, why “success addiction” ruins marriages, the psychology of comedy, the power of the “Reverse Bucket List,” why you need to be bored, how SSRIs affect creativity, Mass vs. Doomscrolling, why your personality keeps improving with age, and why suffering isn’t the same thing as pain. Arthur Brooks’ new book is called ‘The Meaning of Your Life’: https://www.arthurbrooks.com/the-meaning-of-your-life Subscribe to Arthur Brooks:  ⁨@drarthurbrooks⁩   https://www.Arthurbrooks.com 00:00 Intro 3:21 Is Happiness Genetic? 5:05 Male vs. Female Emotion 10:20 Adoration vs. Admiration: What Men and Women Really need 15:20 The Dark Tetrad: Society’s Most Dangerous People 19:38 Addiction to Being Adored 27:12 Sponsor: Superpower 30:21 Sponsor: BetterHelp 32:36 Sponsor: CookUnity 35:16 Addiction to Adoration 39:58 Building Protocols to Protect Marriage 44:19 The Happiness Scale 56:45 Going to Mass instead of scrolling 59:34 Why You Need to Be Bored 1:00:56 The Pill, SSRIs & Creativity 1:08:22 Happiness & Aging 1:17:13 Sponsor: Ultra Pouches 1:18:57 Sponsor: The Perfect Jean 1:21:15 The Psychology of Comedy 1:23:45 The Reverse Bucket List 1:31:25 Psychedelics & Prayer 1:36:18 Suffering 1:43:50 Love & Marriage Thanks to our sponsors!  Visit https://www.SuperPower.com & use promo code NEAL for $20 off your membership Go to https://www.BetterHelp.com/NEAL for 10% off your first month Visit https://www.CookUnity.com/NEAL & use promo code NEAL for 50% off your order Go to https://www.TakeUltra.com & use promo code NEAL for 15% off your order Visit https://www.ThePerfectJean.NYC/NEAL15 for 15% off plus free shipping. ---------------------------------------------------------- Follow Neal Brennan: https://www.instagram.com/nealbrennan https://twitter.com/nealbrennan https://www.tiktok.com/@mrnealbrennan Watch Neal Brennan: Crazy Good on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81728557 Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ([e-mail]) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is, as I told him, he's one of my algorithmic leading men. You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored. He's up there with Scott Galloway. The wrong decision is bad. No decision is worse. Don't get paralyzed. Sam Harris.

Meditation. Who else on my algorithm? We're all kind of the same guy, you know. Theo Vaughn. I think they should have like, you know, word limits on spouses. He's on my algo. I'll get a lot of NBA stuff. Who's on my...

Oh, Gilbert Arenas is huge. I was manscaping. Cameron is the king of my algorithm. You wouldn't know about nothing about Cameron. It's like if you watch National Geographic and you see the hyenas. He's an author. He's a professor.

He studies happiness, guys. So we... It's all been leading up to this. Finally, some actionable advice instead of this constant fucking complaining that happens on this podcast. He's got a book, the meaning of your life. He's got a podcast called Office Hours.

I just listened to one this afternoon, send it to my wife. And what was the other book that you were recommending? In 2022, I wrote a book called From Strength to Strength. To Strength. From Strength to Strength. He's got that as well. It's Arthur Brooks, guys. I like to bring them in for the intro.

Help me. I underwrite it, and then they... And by the way, you're in my algorithm, too. Thank you. You are. I mean, you show up. And, you know, when people say, I don't know why stuff shows up my algorithm. I don't even like it.

Like, you know, young girls are sure. showing up in your algorithms. It's because you like them. If you don't linger on it, they won't show up in your algorithm. That's correct. Thanks for lingering. Somebody actually one time, this is like four years ago, I was on an elevator and he goes, he looks at me, he goes, you're on my algorithm, huh?

Yeah. And like I was supposed to, yeah, I'm on there. Yeah, that's right. I do. That's me. Yeah, it's me from your algorithm. Okay. Here's what I like about you, Arthur, is that you do give actionable advice. Yeah, it's, it's, and not prescriptive. it's suggestive, right? Stop thinking critically so much about other people.

Get more physical exercise. Rebell against your shame. It's based on studies, right? Yeah, just on the best research. And you know, on neuroscience and behavioral science. And the whole idea is that you can be heavier, but you have to understand, you have to change your habits, and you have to share it with others.

Like anything else. Like if you go to medical school, that would say, watch one, do one, teach one. to become a surgeon. So the whole idea is that you watch people do surgery, you do some surgery, you teach people how to do surgery, and you're a surgeon. And the same thing is true with almost anything.

You want to call it. Is that what they do? That's literally they do. So last year med students are teaching? Not last year med students, but in their residency. They're teaching medical school students. Oh, that's interesting. And that's the algorithm.

If you want to be a really, really great golfer, you should learn about golf. You should golf a lot. And then you should explain golf. Because when you explain it, use your brain in a different. My father was a math professor, and he used to say that the way he really earned math was by deeply understanding it, doing a ton of problems, and most importantly, teaching it to students, and then he truly understood math. Then he was a mathematician. So this is the same thing with happiness. You need to understand the science. You need to commit to certain habits in your life living differently and propulsively, and they need to explain it to other people, which is why I'm a teacher, because I want to be happier.

graph your unhappiness for me. Like what what what what was it? Well I'm naturally an unhappy person. Yeah. And part of that is because about 50% of the of of happiness can be explained genetically. So the difference between people is about 50% a genetic and again that's such a that's such a cause for despair. It could be except that see I knew I know it's like my mom's fault. Yeah. The but but 50% of alcoholism is also genetic but if you know your genetic tendency then you can then you can actually tailor your habits because good habits are more important. So for example, if you know, if you have drunks in your family, you shouldn't drink. And that's the habit. That's what it comes down. Are you a teetotaler? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. And part of the reason is because

when I was in my late 30s, I recognized I was going down the same path with people in my family and it was going to end badly. And so I said, huh, I can turn the genetic tendency to zero with this super esoteric technology called not drinking. Incredible. And that's the whole point with your happiness, Look, if you come from melancholy stock, you've got to be better at the techniques. And so you buy the, just real quick, do you buy the, I'm Irish, so you got out. Yeah. I mean, do you buy the sort of. Brennan's Irish?

Yeah. That's weird. Do you buy the genetic or cultural or racial disposition? Toward alcoholism? No, happiness toward mood. Not, not racial, but because there's no evidence. Well, it's like, I mean, I guess. So there is not.

None. There's not. There's no difference between the two. There are gender differences in half. happiness. And part of that is just because they're hormonal differences between men and women. What you find is that when girls are going into adolescence, their negative affect, which is the predominance of the negative moods, and it tends to stay higher than males for the rest of the lives. They have more intense negative affect than men do. And in heterosexual couples, this is something

that a lot of men, they can't quite figure out. It's like, why do you feel these negative things so intensely? I mean, it's not that big a deal. Yeah, it's my job. Yeah, for every, and part of the reasons because there are gender differences that actually result in happiness differences between men and women. So women are generally happier, but they have more intense negativity than men do. And those are non-trivial differences in the way that we approach the world. I have to, I wind down to this that is really interesting because women are happier. Yeah, they're where they're happier. And they're also unhappy. Unhappier. They're unhappier. So you find, and this really comes down to the intensity of the dominance of an intensity of negative and positive emotionality. So,

Women are more likely to what we call mad scientists where they have really intense positive emotions and really intense negative emotions, much more than men do typically. Is it chemical? Yeah. I mean, it has a lot to do with, you know, hormone balance, et cetera, et cetera. But also that is partly genetic. But we should be very clear not to suggest that at any point. That, if you want to get into a huge fight.

Don't suggest that what's happening is what's happening. That's my new ethos. You can know what's happening, but you cannot in any way suggest. Folks, life advice you can use. Under no circumstances, should you point out the absolutely obvious thing that's happening. You just have to pretend this. You've been married a while, haven't you? It's just a total coincidence.

Hey, man, I've been married 35 years in part by not saying things that I've studied as a scientist at home. I just did it. My girl sent me something, and I'm just like, hey. I'm sorry. And then there was a silence. And it was like, I could leap into this silence and well, this is one of the things. Start throwing haymakers or accusations or hey. Yeah, no. No, no, no. It's a, it's, you know, one of the things that actually creates a lot of friction in a lot of marriages is that men who have naturally more muted affect less intense in the positive and negative. They, they tend to be more prone less toward the expression of the emotions and more towards

solutions. And so one of the biggest mistakes that husbands make is like as soon as they're wife says something rotten that's going out at work. He's okay, here's what you need to do. I say, no, no, that's not what he needs to happen here. She needs to express that because that in and of itself is healing. That's a really important thing that she needs to tell you about it. She doesn't need your explanation for it. And she needs to actually go to the terminus of this expression. She doesn't need you to cut her off

and say, okay, go back to your boss and tell it. No, no, no. Just let her say it. You're the perfect person to ask this question, and I've been wondering and it's not really AIable. What is the evolutionary explanation for that? Because I don't, because I always say to my, to my, to every, I say it on stage,

I say to my girl, I'm like, when were men supposed to be able to get these capabilities to soothe you? Right. It's all new. All this is like 1950. Like, things have just calmed down enough to like, okay, how do you feel? It's this hierarchy

and needs thing like emotion. We were just in the factory for 12 hours. And before that, we were at the farm for 14 hours. Like, when did all this come? And also the expectation, to me, the expectations that women have men are not real, realistic, because they are real, they're not realistic. But when did they develop?

Yeah, so that's a really good question. There's a couple of things going on there. To begin with most evolutionary biology, would suggest that women are or have more intense emotions and and are more in touch with their feelings because they are more relational insofar as they have a higher investment in caregiving and the cohesiveness of the kin-based family unit so it's like it has a lot to do it yes for children so you know it's a when when my I have adult kids and grandkids and and when everybody's around most of them are in the military which I still find shocking two of my three kids are Marines actually yeah

so when when when everybody's around which is on Sundays a lot at our house and there's friction my wife knows. She's intensely aware of the emotional ecosystem that's going on around. She's mad at her a little. Yeah, this isn't right. And they didn't say hello in the right way. The whole thing I'm like, mm-hmm. Men, on the other hand, according to most evolutionary biologists,

and of course, everybody watching us, your results may differ because everybody's different. There's big overlapping distributions between men and women. I'm shaking my head. No, no, no. But men, on the other hand, are less sensitive to that because that's more, I need to actually not be affected very much by my emotions when I'm on the hunt. Yeah.

When I'm actually, and that's the reason they're super focused and they're able to compartmentalize emotionally in a big way. Something's bothering me. I'm able to put it aside so I can go get that gazelle. And a lot of this is actually reflected in the way that men and women, that they relate to each other in interesting ways. One of the things that you find is the main need that, most men have and most women have in their marriage.

Women fundamentally require adoration, which is to say, which is a sign of commitment. I would fight a tiger for you and only you, baby, with my hands, because you're everything to me. That sense of adoration, why? But that level of aggression that I would have to summon to fight the tiger, I will easily put away when you need soothing. Go ahead. And I'll make you an herbal tea. No, I know. That's what I think. Like, I have to be able to summon that immediately. But if you're going to have the confidence that your partner is going to hang around while you have children and support you and your children, you need that commitment to be demonstrated in particular way.

And adoration is the way that's demonstrated. That's fascinating. Men, in the other hand, need admiration. And the reason is because they need incentive to actually go out and do those particular things that would, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, the, in the, in the, that's fascinating. Liddetic milieu, you know, in the middle place to scene, which is, what they need to hear from their partners is basically this. Wait, women need adoration. And men need admiration.

Okay. That is the biggest... Adore and admire. That is the biggest gazelle anybody's ever dragged into this cave. Neil, you are so big and strong. I mean, that's unbelievable. That's going to feed our family for two weeks. You're an incredible hunter.

That's kind of all we want. That's kind of all we want. It's what it comes down to. Now, the reason people don't understand this, and they're given a lot of bad information and and the reason that a lot of marriages get into trouble is because a she doesn't admire him or at least will will withdraw admiration as a form of a weapon and or he doesn't adore her or acts as if he doesn't adore her as a form of a weapon and that's when you go around and round around he doesn't adore her and she doesn't admire him and down and down and

down it goes so the advice i give guys stop tapping you're requiring my home well i mean marriage is marriage, man. There's nothing new to the sun. And so I'll tell a lot of young guys, you want to stay married? My next book is called Falling in Love. It's staying in Love. So this is really, really on my mind. It's not going to be out for a couple years, but boy, is this on my mind. And the way to stay married for guys is be admirable and adore her no matter what you feel. Because adoration is an act. It's not a feeling. I've learned over the years that the sexually the key is they just want you to be attracted to them. They don't care about technique.

Just like how palpably attracted to you or to them are you? Yeah. The man just be all the shit you're suppressing. Yeah. Put it in there. Yeah. No, 75% of women would prefer to sleep with someone who finds them attractive, but they find unattractive.

75% of men would prefer to sleep with someone that the man finds attractive. even if she doesn't find him attractive. Now, social science once again tells you something you already knew. My favorite one of these is Chris Rock did the joke. 90% of women want to fuck 10% of the guys. He did the joke in 1996. I think the study came out in 2009. Confirming it.

And now the daily study is called dating apps. Yeah. Of that. Because you can actually load 90% of the male, of the female interest into 10% of the chads. who, by the way, are disproportionately likely to display dark triad characteristics, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. That 10% that are getting all the action are disproportionately likely to be predators. And by the way, you say the dark triad like it's a bad thing to me.

Well, here's the thing. Dark triads are unbelievably good at being attractive. They're unbelievably good at being adoring? No, they're terrible partners. What they are. They're good at love bombing, aren't they? They can get the deal, but they can't keep the deal. Right.

They don't want it. Well, yeah, I mean, they will always cheat. They will always betray you. They will always take your money. They will always use you. They're users. And what they're really, really good at is making you think that they're, so there's a neurochemical cascade when you're falling in love with somebody.

There's four steps, neurochemically, in order. And women's brains will be going through them, and they'll be perceiving that that 10% guy, that high status guy is going through them as well. He's pretending because he's good at it. And just the fact that you would pretend to be falling in love with somebody to use them makes you psychopathic. Makes you the kind of person

who's low in empathy, low in remorse, willing to hurt other people and all about yourself, which is that dark triad of... I have a suspicion about dark triad people born out of a lot of experience that they like it. Well, if they like it, if women like it or...

No, no, no. That they like being in the dark triad. Yeah, yeah. So if my father was diagnosed a narcissist, and he, it's the only time he called all of us individually. Really? I called all of us individually to let us know that he was a narcissist. So liking it is a fourth characteristic. It makes it a call the dark tetrad and social science. And that last one is sadism. So in other words, it's all about me. I'm willing to hurt you. I feel no remorse and I enjoy it. That's the dark tetrad. And those are the most dangerous people in our society.

Those are the people who make the most tyrannical politicians. These are the ones who are the most abusive partners. These are the people who, you know, if they don't have sufficient intelligence, they wind up very, very quickly in jail, right? And they're, you know, we'll clean the streets of the ones that are not above average intelligence. But the ones who are above average intelligence can really, really ruin our lives. And they're the ones who tend to be performing the most successfully on dating apps right now. Because women will be very attracted to them.

What of the of the 100 wealthiest people, how many of them do you think are our dark triad or tetrat? It's a good question. So it's a good question. Arthur, let me say if you sometime, they're all good questions. God, sweetheart. Thank you. They're all good.

See, I'm like, I'm like Chad GPT. Neil, that's a very good question that you asked. It's like, would you like to know more about the dark triad? So, and one way to look at this, and some studies have looked at this is, you know, The people that we think naturally would be like Fortune 500 CEOs, they're not. And the reason is because CEOs have to do business again and again and again and again.

Right. And they have to lead. They have to lead large groups of people. So they can't afford to do it. What you'll find is that some of the most visionary entrepreneurs who have FU money in power, they can be an off and are. So they're the ones who start. They get the, they have the idea, they get the first, the first investors. and then all the investors sour on them, kick them out of the company. Doesn't matter because they're so brilliant. Yeah.

Now, they are successful in spite of those characteristics, not because of those characteristics. Oh, that's interesting. Now, politicians can be successful because of those characteristics because they wield a weapon that people on their side like against their enemies. And so you'll find, like, in a highly polarized,

politically polarized and populist environment. Like, we have them both right and left, you're going to tend to see hardcore populist right wing and left-wing politicians coming out of the dark triad. Why? You know, nobody likes bullies. But you don't even like bullies on your side, but you sure like what bullies do to your enemies. And so they will use it. And so what you'll find is that politically, voters will use dark triads and then throw them away.

And that's what ultimately is going to happen in our current environment. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. They're going to go. They like some of it. They like some of it, but it's too. They'll mess up our country in the meantime. Yeah.

And by the way, this is not a part of it. in point. Because when I look at this hardcore right wing, hardcore left wing, you listen to both of them and it's like, this is pathology. Yeah. The thing you said that with entrepreneurs, it's despite of.

Yeah. Because they do even better if they're great people. If they have these unbelievably visionary qualities and they're great people. And so that's what Jim Collins found and good to great and built to last those famous business books. Some of those really, really, really visionary leaders, one of the things that they had in common is what he called level five leadership, intense resolve and deep humility is one of the things that they had.

Now, that doesn't come very often. That's just, you know, those are, you know, intense resolve, an unwavering desire to be as successful as possible. It usually is not accompanied by a lot of humility. Yeah. And so the result is that you're going to tend to get more people who are really at the top of an industry, you know, visionary leaders who are also weird and not good with people and not nice to people, but they're successful in spite of that.

So you don't think it's downstores. from the dark trad. You don't think it's, it's... There are dark trad reasons for that for sure. Like it's, again, this is like a long way to go, but, but come out Bell, who made a, he's a comedian and he made a documentary about Bill Cosby. The, he sort of implied that part of Cosby's drive

to be great was so that he could do this dark stuff. Yeah, no, no, that's possibly the case. But mostly people who achieve this worldly greatness, who are dark triads is because they want to be adored. They have a deep, deep, deep need to be adored. How do you feel about the need to be adored? Because I look at you and... Do you adore me?

Well, you got the guns out. Fairly routinely, right? You're not doing less press. You're not... Now I'm on your email list. He's doing seminars. He's doing... You got a Santa Fe event coming up.

I'm really getting these email. Are you coming? to my marriage retreat? Give me a nice number and there's a very good chance I would show up alone. I'm kidding.

I think you'll meet somebody there. So how do you feel the need to be a door? Because I find that a lot of there's a lot of scholars right now and I know a hungry hippo when I see one. Because I'm a hungry hippo. Hungry, hungry hippos is the name of the game.

From a long long line, I got hungry hippo friends and talk to me. And do you judge yourself for it? Yeah, for sure. Yes. Yeah, so this is the whole concept of the striver and the striver's curse. And this is different. This is not necessarily mean dark triad. No, no, no, no.

You're not dark triads. I'm certainly not a dark triad. But there is a striverly tendency and people who are really, really, really driven. And I've studied that a lot. That's one of the things I'm most interested in is people who are, yeah, right? I'm interested in you. I did. But I did the, I mentioned in three mics.

Like I tried to achieve my way out of depression. I basically just set out to try to achieve a bunch of shit to give myself a surge of good feelings. You tried to earn the love that you sought, which is very common. So that is manifest and people will think of it as workaholism, but workhawolism is a secondary pathology after success addiction, where life feels gray when you're not succeeding. And ordinarily, that's personal. You said.

Gray, gray, because that means a lack of dopamine. You get your dopamine from winning. And here's generally speaking the reason that it works. When your brain is most synaptically plastic is when you're a little kid. And if you're really good at something, get really good grades. You know, you're really good musician. You're really good athlete, whatever it happens to be.

You'll find that you get a lot of approbation and attention and affection from the adults that you care about the most. Only when you do something extraordinary. When you do something better than other people, that has a huge impact on. a little dude or a little girl. It's just a huge impact. These are people who want to become Olympic athletes. They do weird things like, you know, create the Dave Chappelle show. I just pulled that one out of the hat. That's just as an arbitrary example. And that poor guy. And what that does is you conclude that love is earned. What you want is love. We are built to love. Yeah. Love and be love. This is as creatures, that's our rocket fuel. But if you only feel because of the

lessons that you got when you were a little kid, that you were going to get energy and affection and attention from adults who cared about you when you did something, you become kind of a human doing. Not a human, and, you know, it's important because love actually can't be earned. Love is a free gift, for the given. Love is a grace. If somebody, if you surround yourself with people who make you earn their love, like you have a girlfriend who makes you earn her love, you have friends who are sycophantic kissups who make you earn their love, they don't love you. That's actually, actually a test of whether they love you or not, and they don't. Anybody who makes you earn their love can't love you and won't love you. I needed to get away as soon as possible. It's never going to

sound like you have to earn my love. It just sounds like, hey. There's conditions, man. There's conditions. You have conditions. You have conditions on your marriage. Or like, I love when you, I mean, again, it's, it's, all this stuff is subtle because it's like, if your wife goes, I adore you when you bring home a big check. Right. Or if she actually clearly loves you a little. a little bit less when you don't. That's actually the big test. But isn't that common with women? It's like unemployment's one of the number one.

Yeah. I mean, when a man loses his job, the likelihood of divorce goes up by 35%. Right. When a wife loses her job, the divorce likelihood goes up by 0% actually. Why? That doesn't mean that women are less virtuous than men. On the contrary, men will withdraw love when women don't earn it largely with fertility cues. So what you find is that the top five cues,

for a romantic relationship different between men and women. For men, they're all fertility cues, and for women, they're all resource cues. And this goes back to evolutionary biology. It's not that, you know, this is some sexism thing. It's not that we're horrible human beings, but we are biological creatures. And so when men, women who don't actually love you will condition their affection on continued resource cues. And men who don't actually love their wives will condition their affection on fertility and

attractiveness cues. Which is why a lot of women get divorced after 40, I would think. Yeah, and it's also one of the reasons that women who are very, very insecure about the relationships are getting a lot of work done and trying to look as young as possible when they're in their 50s and 60s and 70s because they don't know. They don't know. And, you know, that's, it's also, by the way, when their marriage does fall apart, what they're going to want to show is resource cue. I mean, fertility cues no matter how old they are. There's a, by the way, there's an old, I was giving a talk to a bunch of orthodontists. And when I have to...

Stop bragging. Go ahead. And, you know, when you get in front of an industry group, you got to write the opening joke. And it's got to be specific. Steve Martin has the best version of this, by the way. Does he? He's like, well, I heard there's a lot of plumbers here tonight. So anyway, I don't want to pander.

But you know when you're unscrewing and he just goes into all this jar, but it's at an arena. And so it just gets like kind of nothing. And then a huge laugh. It's so fucking fun. Yeah. Yeah. So here's my, here's the joke I wrote for the orthodontists. How do you know 18 months before your wife is going to leave you?

How? She gets braces. Great. So, hey got to circle. Oh, they cracked up, ma'am, because it's true. And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, they live it. Yeah, because basically it's, she's preparing to, to show fertility cues, you know, and that's the reason that, you know, men will start working out more or men will actually start trying to peacock more, or men will, men will get the red sports car because that's peacocking resource

cues when they're actually going through midlife crisis. And one of the big reasons for that is because they're married to somebody, the man or the woman is married to somebody who's conditioning love. And they have grown up as superstrivers. There's hard striving individuals. And so they don't actually recognize that that conditional love is actually not love at all. And they go through life and this is the problem that they actually have. That's why success addiction is such a big problem. The red sports car is for the wife? The red sports car is to actually is to show usually that they're on the market and they want to show resource keys. Oh, got it. Okay. Because I was here it as like, he got this, my husband

got a right he's having a midlife crisis because he's trying to peacock for other people to show he's got resource cues for the first time at age 43 but but is it because his wife is condition her love or there is it possible their love just disintegrated it might have disintegrated yeah he actually is getting ready to go on the market that's the that's the braces for me got it invisiline if i was going to rewrite it invisible line there you go there you're if was did they wasn't an invisible group yeah i can't believe i told it joke you believe it's podcast that blew it you really you really you You didn't go on any comedian's show when you're not a comedian and actually tell jokes. But no, I'm so arrogant.

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Behavioral adjustments, whatever, you know, they'll tell your true biological age. And by the way, you can track all this over time so that you can gamify it. So you go, I'm better than I was last month. I'm down. I need to go back to what I was doing. I'm up. It builds on the last so you can actually see progress year after year. It's fun. And they have an on-demand care team to answer questions as well. instead of waiting to see your doctor or just loading it into one of the chat bots. And you can upload old lab results, which I did. And it's just all your stuff's in one place.

So you can stop just playing defense and start playing offense. You know what I mean? And I will say other test services can charge up to $500,000, sometimes more for similar or less. And they don't. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with. Superpower. For a limited time, our listeners hit $20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. Head over to Superpower.com and use code N-E-A-L for $20 off of your membership.

That's code N-E-A-L. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about Superpower. Do me a favor. If you could, and tell them blocks with Neil Brennan, send you to support the show. Guys, we're building something here. I love you. Guys, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, some people like summer. Favorite season, travel pickups, kids are out of school, adventures and focus. For other people, it's, uh, they don't like having the kids out of school. Some people don't like their kids, is my point.

I got big plants of summer that I'm not talking about, but there's, I got a lot popping. And I will say that summer is my favorite time of year. I like, I like warm weather, even though I'm very pale. I really like warm weather and I like not being stressed out. out from coldness and like tight and it feels like the world doesn't want you. Being outside's good. You know, it's good. Again, pale guy likes it outside. And also you get to just walk by yourself and think about you can be, you can contemplate. Maybe now's the time you take that, you make your move and you start going to take a little therapy this summer. Huh? Here's the thing

about therapy. You will come back from a therapy session with a better understanding. of yourself. I always encourage people who are doing therapy. Tell on yourself. There's no, if you're going to go there to lie, it's pointless. I know a guy who used to go to therapy for three hours because he's like, I'm a comic. I can lie for an hour. So go to therapy. Tell on yourself. You'll get a better sense of what you're like, what your preferences are, what your beliefs are, what makes you feel good, what makes you feel bad, where you want to set boundaries, et cetera. You know, I'm always talking about boundaries. You know, with over 30,000 therapists, Help is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over 6 million people globally.

And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. Better Help Therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the U.S. Here's the call to action. Put on a helmet. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash n-e-a-l. That's b-t-t-t-e-r-h-el.com slash n-a-l. Better help. Go to therapy.

Guys, here's the thing. We all eat, right? You got to eat at least twice a day. Sometimes you eat three, sometimes you eat four, whatever. These delivery services are officially out of hand. It's with the fees and the prices. and you think you're paying one thing and it ends up being like staying at a hotel.

They're like, how about a resort fee? How about filling something awful? Everything's expensive and you know I'm a cheap, cheap skate, what we use called cheap skate. Cook Unity, on the other hand, it's the first chef-led meals delivery service that makes your meals in small batches inside local micro kitchens across the US,

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it's great like they're really good taste what happens when real award winning chefs make fresh small batch meals just for you go to cookunity dot com slash any a l or enter code any a l before checkout to get 50 5.0% off your first order that's 50% off your first order by using code any al or go to cookunity dot com slash any a i'm telling you i wouldn't i when people recommend bad food i get furious and if you're like me i promise you you're gonna you're going to be pleased. So we talked about, it's hard because it's supposed to be about your problems, but we're just going to, we're just going to do, uh, let's do you, man. Well, no, I've done so much. So, well, okay, well, that's what's interesting is the, the signaling resources. Yeah.

And by the way, so you got back to, that is my problem, by the way. I'm a complete striver, and I'm trying to earn everybody's love. When I was a little kid. And you know it and you can't stop. I can. I can control it. I can manage it because with knowledge, practice prayer, actually help. And by teaching it, I can manage these pathologies. I absolutely can. Can you separate your thing about teaching from, because they're one and the same with attention seeking because you're teaching on camera at dental seminars. You're teaching everywhere. So what I'm, can you, I don't want to, I don't think it's worthy of judgment. I don't, when I it's a thing I notice because I'm like this is a guy who knows all the stuff and he's clearly

wants to look good and be together and he's got a necklace and and and that's that's like the new thing yeah like like that's it's a pretty that's like that's it's a blessed version oh all right that's good yeah no I know I'm I know I know um so I just wonder but I don't because I'm the same way and I but I'm trying to get away from the guilty pleasures of It's not even the flesh. It's, you know, it's dope. It's attention, dopamine. It's the attention. That's the flesh. That's the pleasure. That's the hit for you is the adoration. And the pathology comes in when you will actually seek the adoration of strangers over the actual true love of the people who are closest to you. So the truth is you're always going to do that. And it's not a huge problem as long as you know what it is, as long as you don't let it get out of control. And you don't let it crowd out the love that actually will satisfy. Because that, that love won't satisfy any more than meth will satisfy you. The adoration. Yeah, yeah.

Every drug addict in the world deep down thinks, sooner or later, I'm going to have enough drugs. And I'm going to stop when I have enough drugs. You know, every drunk is like, I'll have enough, I'm going to stop when I've had enough to drink. But there isn't enough alcohol in the whole world. There isn't enough meth in the whole world. You have to stop before you're ready because you'll never be ready is what it comes down

to. That's the nature of addiction. And that's how you have to understand there isn't enough adoration in the world. It's like Rain Wilson told us, we pal around, and he talked about when he was doing the office. You know Rain for sure, right? Yeah. He's great. We're both from Seattle. And so we've got this, we have the same childhood. We're about the same age. And he says that when he was doing the office, he was consumed. People were screaming, I love you out of moving cars. But he was consumed about the fact that he never won an Emmy. He was consumed that he didn't get good movie roles because there isn't enough meth in the world.

And that's the addictive drug. And so we have to recognize that it, If you have problems with alcohol and you have problems with drugs, if that relationship with the alcohol and drugs is getting in the way if you're real, no fool-in-love relationships. And the same thing is true with your need to succeed, with your need to be adored by other people. If you are seeking the adoration of other people on social media or on the road or something else,

and you're compromising your relationship with your wife and your kids, that has become an addiction problem. How do you, how, wouldn't you be the last to know? unless you empower other people around you to tell you that. And that's one of the reasons I study it. I study. It's not research, man. It's re, it's me search.

I know. It's so bumper stickery. It's so bumper stickery. So like lefties are always right. Hello. It's me search. It's like, so,

but that's the thing. I mean, it's like if you're doing the work. I know. What I see you, I go, I think he's not, it is the me.

I think you're ignoring some of the me search. Well, of course. Because, you know, you're never, I mean, your fish doesn't know the temperature of the water. But I also surround myself with people who tell me the truth. I mean, I'm married. By the way, every delusional famous person I know thinks that as well. Just FYI, just for the record.

Dude, everyone thinks so bum now. No, everybody's like, no, trust me, I have good people. The biggest bunch of sycophants you've ever seen here. They tell me the truth. No, these they keep me humble. They don't fucking keep you humble at all, you monsters. But I'm talking about my wife, not the people who work with me. your wife's not a monster.

Yeah, but also. And your wife's foreign. She's going to marry you a extra level of honesty. And when I'm, look, I mean, it's a, yeah, I mean, it's a, it is aided greatly in the ability for me to actually go to a public education platform to have a desire to do so. I mean, the number one predictor of success is wanting to succeed, of course. But at the same time, you have to make sure that you've got certain protocols in place so that

doesn't ruin your life. What are they? And has a lot to, well, I'll tell you, actually. I have certain protocols. I don't travel on weekends. Okay. I don't, I'm home on weekends. I don't take.

What time? Friday by? Friday by afternoon. Okay. I don't take dinners in where I live out where I live. So I have dinners at home. I have established it so that my kids and grandkids live around me. So that we can actually see each other every weekend.

I look. Do you move to them? We all move together to the same place. We made a deal. We all move. Who's as I do? Who was, who was it? Who's, who's sponsor?

It's actually, it was my kids who came up. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. So my adult kids, they, where do we want to raise our kids? And we left. I mean, I was, I've been teaching it in Boston for the past seven years. It's actually Cambridge. Is it a camera that's a late.

We, but I moved away and was, had to commute for the past seven years because we, we did that. But that was a very, very conscious decision. And I had one family. As a professor, would you have to be there twice a semester? It's a little bit more than that. that. Come on, man. I mean, it's not like I'm going up there every single week. It's true. But it was a sacrifice insofar as that I had to move away from my community, et cetera. But it was totally worth it because I knew that it's very easy for me to, the easiest thing that could

be for me to do would be to take 250 dates a year on the road talking about this. Yeah. And it's a lot of money. And it's super fun and people clapping. And do as much media as I possibly can and be gone a lot on weekends. Now, actually, my wife and I were taking gigs together because she's doing on a public speaking. And so we're about to do this retreat together in Santa Fe. We're going to Barcelona on tour together. Then we're going to Brazil. Do you say Bartholona? Barcelona. Actually, she's from Barcelona, from Barcelona, but she's Catalan. Okay. Which is different. They're the ones who say. Do they say Barcelona?

And then the Spaniards say Barcelona. Got it. Yeah, anyway. So that's where we got married. So, you know, we've got these protocols in place and it's not perfect. And sometimes she's, take a beat down you know she's like dude read your books this isn't going well we need to tune this back up it's time to get this back in order we had a big come to jesus about that last month brutal you know what's funny is i could have told you that was coming yeah just based on my algorithm like literally just like oh this dude's he's not living up to his like i know it's and the problem is that she's on instagram so i'll be showing up at her algorithm yeah that's that's i need to block her. You've gone too far.

Okay. But this is a good point. And this goes back to when I was a kid. I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player. But you were very good, right? I played, I mean, I was a pro by the time I was 19 and spent my entire 20s playing in symphony orchestras and chamber music and as a soloist all around United States and Europe, which is to say, I made kind of a living. But it's prestigious and it does, it is, it is, not about money.

It's like, they're hard gigs to get, right? lot of people who were better than me. Oh, there were. There were a lot of people better than me. And, and I wanted to be the best. And one of the reasons I left is that I couldn't be, which is a bad reason. I should have been in music because I loved music. But no, I was in music because I wanted to be a great musician, which is a pretty poor motive. I'm in social science now because I actually I'm super interested in this. I lay awake and night thinking about the research on this. It's so interesting. And I get to actually talk to a lot of people about it and it can help them in their lives. So that's a more than an added bonus.

I've heard you speak of two things that I think are really, really, really helpful. Congratulations. You've actually helped somebody. That's great. One person. Doesn't happen often. The working against yourself, meaning knowing what you're like, knowing you're depressed. You, I think on Rhonda Patrick's podcast, you talked about all the things you do because you know you're predisposed to negativity.

Right. and melancholia tell people what they are because it's i never heard someone say it i was like oh because i have things that i've been doing right blocking this and putting that over here like so tell people so okay so positive and negative affect are different happiness and unhappiness are not opposites they're different challenges so i have a series of tests that i give my students that i give the people i work with to find out what's their bigger challenge some people are by the way i went on the website was filling it out, I need a promo code because I'm very cheap. I'll give you a promo code. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Arthurbrooks.com. Honestly, it's fucking good. It's cool. It's called the

happiness scale and you can actually find out whether your bigger challenge is positive or negative affect. For me, I'm at the 90th percentile in positive affect, but I'm at the 90th percentile in negative affect as well. Like a woman. I'm like a super mad scientist woman. Actually, I am. I'm a really, really high-effective person. But what that means is I need protocols not to raise my happiness, but to rather to manage my unhappiness. And so a lot of people will ask me, for example, how important is it to exercise for your happiness? It's not. It's important for managing your unhappiness. I can tell something about people who are in the gym every day. If you're in the gym every day, it's like, I'm a gym rat. That's because you have naturally high negative

affect. And you're just, you've figured out that you feel crummy when you don't do that. If you have low negative affect because you're a cheerleader, like, because that's the kind of person or you're a judge, which is a low affect profile, you just feel your emotions less intensely than other people, you're going to struggle to stay in the gym. And your doctor is going to be like, come on, man, 150 minutes of high intensity exercise a week, please. And look, after four, you're going to get sarcopenia. You need to actually start getting under the bar.

And it's just such a drag. My wife hates going to the gym. She hates it. She's like naturally gifted athletically, but she hates it because she has low negative affect. She has nothing to treat. She doesn't feel better when she exercise. What happens? Because it's like not a runner's high.

No, no. What actually happens is mostly you're managing your stress hormones is what it comes down to. You will spike your cortisol when you're actually doing that, but you're managing your stress hormones in a very big way. How are you spiking your cortisol? Well, because you actually, your stress hormones go up when you're doing intense exercise. Because the stress hormones. You might get it out of your system? Not really, but what happens is that it, not clear exactly if it gets it out of the system or not.

But what happens is that when you go back to your equilibrium, when you're in homeostasis, that your stress hormones will not remain naturally high as a result of that. You find that you're less stressed out when you exercise more. So you exercise a lot, right? Yes. My brother calls it running the Brennan out of them. Yeah, running the Brennan. That's, that's, and you're, you know, you're Irishman.

Yeah. You have naturally high negative effect. Like there's a melancholy in that. And then you've noticed that if you run, especially if you run early in the morning, and especially if you get up before dawn and you see the sun come up while you're running, you're going to feel less bad. Not better, less bad. And so for me, all of my protocols that I put together, part of them I was just doing naturally.

You know, so it's like, I'm 62 years old. Nobody cares if I got biceps. The point is that I care that I don't feel crummy. And so once I realized that I had adopted certain protocols that have a scientific basis to them for feeling less bad, I was then able to actually do the research and put it into a multi-part protocol that I follow assiduously almost every day. And it's been pretty miraculous, actually. Pretty miraculous. But it's one of those things that's managing negative.

So it's a bit of a it's a it's unfalsified. You know what I mean? It's less bad. It's a double negative. Yeah, yeah, there you go. But it's really, it's an important thing to do because we do all kinds of things to lower negatives in our lives. I think mostly people want to up the positive. I know.

Like that's the American thing. They think they want to up the positive. But I take these tests. I expose people to these tests because I say, look, you're not going to fee, if you have naturally high positive affect, you're not going to get happier if you, you know, have a lower commute. All commuting does is raises your unhappiness. And so that's to have a more time. So, for example, a lot of people. say, I will be happier if I have a shorter commute.

Yeah. No, you won't. You'll be less unhappy if you have a short commute because a commute is a source of irritation. A source is a source of aggravation. And so there's all kinds of things that people get wrong in their marriages, for example. They need to lower the unhappiness of their marriage, not raise the happiness of their marriage. You need to solve a problem with the problems of the problem, but you don't have the problems.

You need to have a lack of interest in your need to raise the happiness. You need to know what to diagnose and what to do on the basis of understanding what part the limbic system you're working in. By the way, the test is $10, just to give you a sense of how fucking cheap I am. 15. 15. Come on. For me.

So just to give you a sense, this is how cheap I am. It means the world to me, and I still won't. Yeah, I'll give you. And I got the money. Promo, BetterHelp.com promo code, Neil. You know I make money. Is that one of your sponsors? Of course.

Are they standing by right now? Yes. Yes, they have over 100. a licensed therapist, 100,000. They're weeping in their homes. Yeah, then then they, okay, so you do, you work out and but that's not all you do. No, no, no, I get it first.

This really starts for me based on the research. And you know, you never wanna make the perfect, the enemy the good because everybody's circumstances differ. You know, some people have little kids and they can't do this. And so you just have to adapt it as best you can. Yeah, like don't feel awful if you're like. No, and on the contrary.

I couldn't do it at the sun. And super strivers, they gotta do everything. I know exactly right. And so, you know, But I get up before dawn because the Brahma Mahurta, an ancient Indian wisdom, always talks about the optimization of the brain. But neuroscience, modern neuroscience really shows that your brain works better. You're less negative.

You're more creative. You're better functioning of the default mode network and your brain, et cetera, if you get up before dawn. And so I get up. It's got to be before. It's before the sun comes up. There's something about experiencing the sun coming up or being up when the sun comes up. So I get up a 430. this depends on jet lag

because it depends on what time's on it. But if I'm on the East Coast it's 4.30 in the morning and then I have a gym in my house or I only stay in hotels that have gyms and I'm in the gym of 445. I do that for an hour then I get cleaned up and I go to Mass every day. So I'm a Catholic and again this is not dogmatic about Catholicism. Just the Catholicism

is like Starbucks. It's a highly uniform high quality product that's ubiquitous. It's just and I'm a Catholic. I got to say, I grew up Catholic and altar to the whole thing. We want you back. You want to talk about, you know, the thing about Starbucks is it's consistent. Yeah. Anytime I go to church, I'm like, man, this guy's a bad stuff.

I know, I know, I know. Like those sermons, it's like, dog. And dude, you're an expert. As a comic. I know. As a comedian. Are you a comedian or a comic? Comedy.

Yeah. So a comedian. I mean, it depends on. Well, I mean, you talk to comedians. You know, I do a lecture for a living. Comedians have taught me the most. about how to be a good lecturer. Yeah.

About how to captainate. Yes. Or like they pulled you or they, yeah. I mean, one of the best lessons I ever got and how to give a speech I got from Jerry Seinfeld. What do you said? Well, he came, he, I was giving a speech at the Aspen Ideas Festival. And there's a big, big crowd. And I look at the back and the crowd, I'm kind of, well, I'm doing my talking.

I'm like, that guy looks like Jerry Seinfeld. It was Jerry Seinfeld. He comes up afterward. And I had told, hey, he's great. He's awesome. He's the best. He's super great. And he's super nice.

Very normal. And I had told, every six to eight minutes, I stop because these are the chunks of attention that generally speaking work for people. You've got to let people off the bike. If you're doing serious science, you've got to let them off the bike and take a rest. And the way that you do that is with a pretext. The pretext is, oh, oh, oh, I just read the study. I've got to tell you about it.

It's not related, but I've got to tell you about it. That's a pretext. Or I want to tell you about it. For the next hunk? No, no, no, no. No, just has a break, 45-second point. break. That's not related to the hunt before or the hunt after. And then it's like it's like the amuse bouch. Yep. Right. Or you tell a joke or you tell a story. It's got to be one of those

three things in my business. Yeah. And so during this talk in my six to eight minute break between the modules, I told this story about because I was talking about parenting in that particular, the science of parenting. And I said, you know, there's a big generational difference. When I was a kid, you know, it was in the 70s and I grew up in a very sort of downscale neighborhood in Seattle. and Ted Bundy had been marauding through my neighborhood, right? And I had a paper route at 4.30 in the morning. And my mother was worried about serial killers out and about. And so she said to my dad, I think little Arthur, because I was 11, should give up his paper

out of 4.30 in the morning because of all these serial killers. And my dad, who really had my interest at heart and my dad had a PhD in biostatistics, he stuck up for my interest by making this argument. I've seen the data and Arthur is not in the core demographic of a serial killer right and it kind of was like that

they were kind of like huh no that's fine I laugh more that than the other one yeah I'm still zero than the dental one I'm still zero for two anyway so

so Jerry comes up afterward and he says that joke could kill I that's the first thing I thought I'm telling that wrong uh huh I'm telling it wrong

yeah he says there's too many words yeah and leave out Ted Bundy because people are seeing Ted Bundy's face who was an actual serial killer who killed a bunch of women. That's not funny. You stepped on your joke by personalizing the joke.

Do you agree? No. I think Ted Bundy's the punchline. I think Ted Bundy is, I think you say there was some, the 70s are a lot of serial killers. Yeah. And didda-da-da-da-da. And my dad stuck up for me. And two months later, Ted Bundy was arrested 10 miles away from my house.

house. So that's God forbid, Jerry. But the whole point is that I was doing it wrong. And I learned, how do I learn? I learned from the people who were doing the same thing and making it look fresh. Yeah. So when I watch you, for example, you're making it, it's like you're doing it for the first time, even though you're doing it for the 400 time.

So the timing is impeccable, but it's sort of funny to you because it looks like it just occurred to you and that's technique and timing. Yeah. And that's super important in my line of work too. I learn a lot more from comedians than I learned. I gave Sam Harrison note when I saw his show. Did you? Yeah. He did he, he, it was a, it was a note that somebody had given me, which is he had, he, I won't say what it was, but, but it was, but yeah, like there's a lot to be learned from,

from the, the, I don't know how we got on this. We're talking about your, oh, the, how crappy most priests are at public speaking one of their main there are and part of it is just because they're not very well trained in homiletics at Catholic seminaries. Which is a mistake? It's a mistake. It is a mistake. Part of it is because so many people need to come back and they're repelled by the lack of technique and because it's boring.

Yeah. A lot of priests, what they believe, not entirely without basis, is their job is to administer the sacraments. But that's not the only thing they're supposed to do. I would argue that's probably the least important one. Well, it's really important to somebody minister to the sacraments. No, no, I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying, like, give me a ball.

It's got to be attractive. I mean, we got to, it's just you've got to be attractive. So, anyway, yeah, but we need you back. So you go to, you're not going, you're not, I'm, I believe in God. That's as far as I'm going. Okay, we're, that's a good start. Like I say, I'm like Roblo with the NFL hat on. I just believe in God generally, but not a specific denomination.

Do you believe an up to one gun? What do you mean? Oh, I don't believe in. I don't believe in. I don't believe in. believe that God is a thing. That's my other issue. All right.

The, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not a place. It's a central creation force as far as. Oh yeah, that is very spinosa. Great. Yeah. No one's ever heard of them. The, uh, okay.

So you, so then, so you go to, you go to, um, uh, uh, you go to, um, uh, you go to the gym yeah then you go to mass clean up which sounds gross when you say then I go to mass something about it's gross take a shower then you go to mass I go to mass with my wife when I'm home what does the uh mass fulfill what it that what that does is it actually centers psychologically and spiritually it centers me psychologically and spiritually there's no I've not spent I've spent virtually no time on the devices still at this point but there's actually the devices your phone your okay my phone I mean occasionally I'll look at it when I first wake up

to make sure nothing's on fire and then a couple of days a week I'll listen to something that I'm trying to learn but it's not just to anesthetize myself at the gym but I try not to use it but there's zero desire to do that and actually that's it works the same way as meditation

so neurophysiologically it works the same way as meditation do you what's the day reading or meditation or you know mindfulness or yoga or a zen practice or going to mass it fulfills the same thing yeah what's the data on audio lifting and listen listen listen to a podcast yeah blocks Neil Brennan with the Brooks and exercising so what it suggests is that a lot of people use it because it makes it easier for them to pass the time and the most important is that you're doing the exercise for a certain amount of time physiologically and also emotionally for you to lower your negative affect for sure. The problem is you miss a key thing.

So most people will say, you know, I have my best ideas in the shower. The reason is because your phone's not in there. And your default mode network is stimulated. A set of structures in your brain required for mind wandering, flights of fancy, thoughts about the meaning of life. All that stuff actually occurs when these structures are illuminated. You can do that while you're in the gym. You will find, for example, you say if you have an intention, I have a created problem.

I'm trying to write a column or I'm stuck on a chapter of a book or I don't know. Do you still write at the Atlantic? I write for the free press now. Got it. And so I moved at the beginning of the year. I write the same column called the Presuit of Happiness. You run 60 minutes? Yeah, I'm the new.

You're now in charge of 60 minutes. Want to come on? It's not far. You're in the pipeline. Pretty far. Pretty far. So I keep checking my message. I was like, so far, nobody's asking you.

You never know. Yeah, yeah. So when I'm stuck on a creative problem, the best thing I can possibly do is to work out without any inputs. Just a workout. I will solve the problem. So if I go for a walk without headphones too,

that'll do it. Cardio, high intensity cardio will do that too. But even weightlifting, if I'm not using earbuds, I'm just like, I got this thing. I'm probably going to come to the solution. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to have been an adult

before the internet. Oh, the before times? Yeah. Yeah. And to have like had good ideas and you go, I don't, maybe I don't get that. Yeah. You know? Yeah, no, no, for sure.

And that's actually a big creative block for a lot of young people who don't know how to be non-stimulated. They've actually eradicated boredom, which is an incredibly neuro and dangerous neurophysiological thing to do. You lead to be bored. Yeah, it's a very bad thing to be systematically never bored. You're effectively shoving yourself into the left hemisphere of your brain, systematically, which is about analysis and linear thinking and information, how to and what. Being bored is shoving yourself in the left right? You're vacating the right hemisphere. This is based on the work of Ian McGilchrist, who talks about hemispheric lateralization.

The right side of your brain is the why side, the mystery and the meaning side. You will literally not be able to assess questions of the meaning of your life if you're never bored. That's a problem. And the fact is, you know, people, all of saying, why are young people so depressed than anxious? Why are people under 30, especially women, so depressed than anxious? Oh, it's a big mystery. It must be because baby boomers have driven up the price of apartments or because of income and a quality. It's nonsense. Yeah. You know, it's nonsense. That's ridiculous. The reason is because we've broken our brains through the inappropriate use of technology. That's it. How do you feel about the pill? I wasn't, have you read the Louise Perry book? Yeah, but the birth control pill. And part of it

is sort of the social consequences of the sexual revolution. There's a lot of Louise Perry. stuff. I'm more interested in the effect of hormonal birth control on how it affects attraction and relationships between men and women. And there's some very provocative, provocative studies that show, for example, that women who go on hormonal birth control in adolescence and don't go off until after they're married are spontaneously not attracted to the men that they're married to and they go off for the first time. It changes your taste. Yeah, because you're attracted to different men. If you don't ovulate, you're attracted to a certain kind of male during ovulation and during periods of non-ovulation.

And that makes perfect sense for childbearing. You know, to get pregnant or to have a nurturer or whatever it happens to be. What are they, what are they suppressing? Are they suppressing more alpha male? Yeah. So if you, when you're not ovulating, you're a fake term alpha male, but you're more when you're more attractive, women of an average. Once again, people's, people's results vary.

Arthur, Neil's like, no. As a guy who's made a lot of money on stereotypes, shut your mouth. I was like, dude, yeah, this is good. Listen, it made you a lot of money. It ends my career. So I was like, whatever, you, this is, that's the land acknowledgement of sociology. This is, this is not for everybody, most people. Overlapping distributions of male.

Yeah, yeah, the bell curve, et cetera, et cetera. So, so what you find, what we're talking about. We're talking about the pill. What, so these pretty interesting studies, they, when you're, when women are ovulating, they're more interested in men who are less prototypically hypermasculine. When they are ovulating to men who are more prototypically masculine. And so what will happen is they start ovulating for the first time in years and years and years and years. They'll find they're married to somebody to whom they're not as attracted as they thought they were.

It's a disconcerting thing when you want to get pregnant for the first time three or four years into your marriage. Yeah. And again, this shouldn't be shocking to anybody. If you mess with your hormones, there's going to be a price. Yeah. You know, and again, there are all kinds of good reasons to mess with your hormones. I mean, hormone replacement for postmenopause of women can be a miracle for a lot of people. Hormone replacement therapy for some men can really change their quality of life in a very positive way.

But the truth is there's no lack of secondary consequences. Well, yeah, it's the Thomas Old quote. There's no. No free lunch. There's no solutions. There's only trade-ups. Exactly right. Which is like, nailed it.

Yeah. All right. So you do all these things. You go to the gym, go to the church. You go to, you shower. I shower every day. You have, you have a protocol. You try to work.

You try not to get on your phone. Yeah. And it's, it's, you're playing defense against yourself. I'm playing defense against my natural melancholy, against my natural melancholy, which, you know, gets in the way of my life. What do you, wait, well, it's, isn't it making your life better? Are the melancholys getting into it? Well, I mean, and the truth is, melancholics, it's funny, because there's,

I'm a mad scientist, which means high negative affect. High negative affect is actually implicated for a lot of people in ruminative sadness. And there's very provocative research about what ruminative sadness looks like physiologically that's involved. You're looking at it. Rumination per se, everything in neuroscience is contested because it's such a new field. I wanted to mention that. The reputation crisis, a lot of these studies that you go, oh, when you stand like Superman, you get confident. They can't replicate the study, meaning it worked once, but so.

So I try to stay away from any research that hasn't been replicated. If it's too new, I don't generally write about it. I don't generally talk about it in my column or write about it by research because I wanted to be replicable. But still, everything's legitimately contested, especially neuroscience because it's a new field. 30 years ago, almost no universities had neuroscience departments. And now they all do because this is the black box. This is the thing that we really all want to understand. Yeah. But it's still a black box. That said, rumination, which involves, according to really pretty good and provocative research, a part of the ring called a ventralateral prefrontal cortex, VLPFC for short. And it's not just about ruminative sadness, which is probably evolved so that you can solve problems and don't make the same mistake twice. Like, uh, yeah, I made a mistake. I'm so stupid. Or you make it over and over and over. Yeah, yeah. Or you can get into a maladapted cycle, which is why when you, you,

When you raise serotonin in the synapse, it lowers activity, ruminative activity in the ventralateral prefrontal cortex. Here's the unintended secondary. If you raise... If you raise serotonin. So if you take a serotonin, a selective serotonin re-uptic inhibitor, Prozac. What it does is it leaves more serotonin in the synapse of the brain. And that's correlated with less activity in the ventralateral prefrontal cortex, according to these, a lot of these studies. I haven't seen it because I haven't done fMRI studies on this myself.

I've just seen it in the research. Now, that's great because you're going to be less maladapted in your ruminative sadness. I'm so stupid, nobody loves me, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is there's other kinds of rumination that it also appears to eradicate. For example, when you're falling in love, you're ruminating on the other person. This is why a lot of people on mood adapters, on who are taking mood drugs, psychiatric drugs, for depression. They say it's harder to fall in love.

I don't know why. I don't know why I can't fall in love. And that's because they can't ruminate on the other person. People will often say when I'm taking a selective seroton or reuptic inhibitor, I feel less creative. Why?

Because creativity is rumination. You know when you're preparing one of your Netflix specials and you're ruv-vru-v-v-v-v-v-v-r. You're ruminating. You're using that part of your brain. I wrote Chappelle Show on Zoloft. Did you?

Good. Imagine how good it would have been if you were on Zoloft. I know. Oh, man. Arthur. thing would have been so much better. You might have also been, you know, suicide risk.

Yeah. And it's not consistent. I've written great stuff on Zoloft and not. And this is, again, none of this is an argument to not take your meds. Yeah. What this suggests is that these are marginal effects that people actually will experience. But there, once again, there's no free lunch is what it comes down. I stopped ruminating from psychedelics, I believe.

It really helped your brain, huh? It's unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. But the, I stop ruminating. So, I ruminate so little now. It's like I don't have a personality. So is it hurt your creativity? I don't know.

All I know is I used to, my entire personality was a rumination. The whole thing was a rumination. It might, I don't know. I still write jokes. So it's like. You do write jokes. I hear new stuff. The whole thing, the whole thing was a rumination.

My whole, and it's fascinating that it's gone. Right. And I wonder like, I wonder. There's another explanation too, by the way. Go. Age. Okay. So what you find is.

Neuroticism. Neuroticism. I was telling Dan Harris who says hello. Oh, yeah, he's awesome. He's the whole soulful atheist I've ever met. I didn't, we didn't even get that. I think that guy's fantastic. He is great.

And, but I said, I think some of this stuff just dissolves. Yeah, yeah. So neuroticism, dramatic. So there's four, there's five aspects of personality. There's openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And they all change as you get older, mostly for the better. It's one of the reasons that people tend to have better, better. What goes up, what goes down? So openness to experience goes up and then goes down. And so in your mid-50s, you're almost at the age. So that's where you get real racist in your 50s?

where you're less likely to want to write a scooter. Right? That's wonderful. Yeah. And that'll stay kind of where it is. Some people are just naturally open to experience, but almost everybody has a decline in their openness to experience. Yeah.

So you have more neophobia and less neophilia, right? It's what it comes down to. So that's one, and that's neither good. But I'm joking about the racism thing, but I think there's something to it. I don't want to hear your new fangled political opinions. No, no, I'm not, but I'm saying like old people get, I also think it's physical in that like you can fall.

Yeah. And break your hip and you're done. Yeah, yeah. You're not going to bungee jump when you're 70th if you have bad osteoporosis. Yes. Because you're not stupid. Okay. So for sure.

But that was neither positive or negative. That's value free in its way because it doesn't really correlate very well with happiness and, you know, different strokes. Extroversion has two parts to it. It's assertiveness and gregariousness. assertiveness as you know I ordered mashed potatoes

and you brought me french fries I want mashed potatoes you're way more likely to be assertive as you get older your way less likely to be gregarious

which is party tonight totally right and so the gregariousness goes down the assertiveness goes up right as you get older

so that's how extroversion extraversion changes it doesn't it doesn't rise agreeableness goes up in almost everybody

does it make Can I ask on gregariousness? Are old people not, you know, there's like, doesn't that fly in the face of like there's a loneliness epidemic? Meaning if old people like, they don't want a social. Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, when your gregariousness goes down, if you actually don't have people around you, then you're going to get lonely.

If you've got your, what will happen is that people who have a good family life will just like lock into their families as they get older. What about the grandpa who's just in the other room? Yeah. That's not great. But what is that? Is that? Well, part of it is just Well, they have horrible person.

Right, they have horrible persons. Their personalities are from another time. Yeah, for sure. And they don't get the new sound world. That's his, I mean, he will become less gregarious. And he's just less light. Gragiarious people actually want to have a conversation about something they've never talked about

with somebody they didn't know. That's what they want to do. That's a pretty rare thing. I know. Well, I mean, statistically pretty rare. Is that a small group? Well, that's if you're really extroverted. but gregariousness is always zero to one thing.

It just means more or less of that. More or less, right? And if you're naturally introverted, when you get older, you're going to be more likely to be shut it. Because if you naturally have low gregariousness and it goes down, you're not going to want to meet anybody. You become agoraphobic, actually. Hopefully.

So, okay, so agreeableness goes up because people, as they get older, figure out that is never worth being disagreeable. It's just not worth it. The cost-benefit calculations just don't work out. When you're a kid, you're like, totally all scream because they cut my, the crusts off my PV and J. doesn't it go up?

Didn't you say it goes up? Agreeableness goes up. Not disagreeableness. Not disagreeableness. Oh, so you stop complaining about your mashed potatoes. Well, no, you'll be assertive, but you won't be a jerk. I'm getting confused. You won't be a dick about it.

Okay. You'll be like, no, no, I look, and you'll embarrass your kids. You'll be like, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. I know. I ordered the mashed potatoes and you brought me French fries and the kids are like, dad. Yeah. Right. That's agreeable assertiveness.

And there's more of that as you get older. Now, some people are naturally so disagreeable. They get more agreeable and they still suck. Right? Because all of these things are gradations from your natural habitat, from your natural personalities. These are just, these are directional. These are deltas.

Right. Conscientiousness almost always goes up. It almost always goes up. People become more conscientious as, they get older. They're more likely to, to, they're less flaky. They're more likely to comply with their promises. They're more likely to live up to their word. You know, if they say, they're less likely. But you know, that's a slight contradiction from gregariousness. Right? If their gregariousness is going down. Well, they're not making promises they don't keep. They're not going to say, yeah, I'll come next week into that party and they're not going to. They won't commit to much, but what they

they commit to, they'll be for. They're way. That's good. Old people are fundamentally, measurably more conscientious than young people. If you're already conscientious at 30, you're going to be so awesome at 80. You're going to be so conscientious. People who just want to be around you because they can count on you. If you say, I'm going to do this thing, you're going to do that thing. Your word truly is your bond. Yeah. And it's more so as you get older. And the best one of all is the neuroticism because it falls. You'll find people who have borderline personality disorder that doesn't completely resolve, but they're completely, they're non-functional at 35 and they're very functional at 55 that you'll see. People generally speaking, neuroticism is a Freudian concept that largely refers to depression and anxiety.

So the mood disorders of depression and anxiety, bipolar, perhaps. But mostly it's, you know, these common things that a lot of people suffer from. You're almost certainly going to be less anxious and almost certainly going to be less depressed. It doesn't mean you're not going to be not depressed. It just means less. Is, are these hormonal? Is it testosterone? Is it estrogen? Is it, Is it? We don't know. We don't know. Okay, because I'm, because I, I mean, there's lots of hypopheies.

It's kind of the best. It's the most effective thing that's ever happened. Like, like, I don't, because I can't. I'm not like, well, now I'm taking this and I got this. It's just like, I don't, things just don't really upset me anymore. Yeah, yeah. It's so good getting older. It's so good getting.

I mean, it's just like, life is fundamentally better. Now, what you find, interestingly, is the general happiness declines through your 30s and 40s. and it tends to bottom out in your early 50s. And then most people who don't have badly untreated mood disorders or substance abuse problems, they increase a ton in their 50s and 60s. Too higher than it ever was? It's too as high as it was when you're a kid.

It's when you're a kid. Then the population breaks up into two groups. Half and half. Half keep getting happier until almost the very end. And the other half after about 70 start back down again. And what's that look like? That looks like people who don't know how to retire. And interestingly, you'd think it's the people who had the best lives would have the greatest

likelihood in their working lives. They have the greatest likelihood of being happier after 70. They're not. So that's a real winner's curse problem. If the more success that you had in your working life, the more likely you are to start down in your happiness after 70 because the party's over. And people don't know how to. People who have had a lot of professional success really, really struggle.

That's kind of the, that's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the so I wound up having to help, that's why I wrote that book from strength to strength in 2022 was to figure out how to help people actually move on with their lives. So they wouldn't get stuck and wouldn't be depressed. So there's, um, Carol and Charles Hollahan, who are social Technical University of Texas at Austin, married couple. They do work on the burden of high achievement. People who are identified as super high achievers before the age of 20 are more likely than average to be disappointed by their lives when they're 80. Not because they sucked, but because it's really, really hard to live up to your own expectations. And sooner or later, somebody's going to take the

punch bowl away. You're going to miss a step and you're going to feel crummy about it. So you've got to take measures if you're a high achiever, you, to make sure that as you get older and your person, personality is getting better, that now you're in your glory. You're a few years old. You're going to get like another 15, 20 years where your happiness is going to rise and rise and rise. But you have to take measures now to make sure it doesn't start back down again. Excellent. Guys, you know I used to smoke cigarettes.

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I mean, what are my biggest issues with genes? I would say my biggest issue is they are too hard and they just don't fit right. They're for somebody else, somebody else's body. And then you go like, well, what's wrong with my body? And then you spin out. Yeah, you got to pull them up. It feels like you're wearing a diaper. It looks like you're wearing a diaper.

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I'm on Sam Harris's college plan. I get no laughs from you. You've got to be crumbs, Neil. I know. I'm awful. Well, here's the thing about comedians. No, no, no. I've got the data on comedians. Yeah, yeah. We don't laugh. We just got that.

There's two things. Joy from being funny or finding things. or fundamentally different because they happen in different parts of the brain. This is the psychology. You will, I actually forgot about this. I did an MRI study one time eight years ago where they would put up

a New Yorker cartoon without a caption. Right. And they would say, don't think of a caption. And then they would go, okay, now you can think of a caption to see which part of my brain was activated. And they said my brain couldn't not. It was just like, no, I can't not. think of a caption. You can't not think of a caption.

Yeah. Not even like... Yeah. Yeah. And civilians can not think of a caption. Yeah. Civilians could be thinking about, you know, what am I to have for lunch? Stupid stuff. Their wife. Like these non-commediate to think about their family losers. Yeah. Okay. That's exactly right. No, the neuroscience of comedy is really interesting. Yeah. It's like why

the part of the brain that gets flicked by a joke, like when you tell a joke, which doesn't bring you happiness, but brings somebody else happiness. The reason is because it's not surprising you, but it is surprising. Yes. And that's a little part of the brain called the parahippocampal gyrus. And then when you flick it, not too much. Don't talk about mom dying if she died last week, right? Not too little, because this is a dad joke. Right. And it'll groan. If you flick it just right. Because I've given you dad jokes, apparently. No. Not even that good. So you flick it and then people laugh involuntarily. That's what it comes down to. I mean, dumb, like...

It's a Peter McGraw has a theory called benign violation. Yeah. That's his theory of dumb. And that's the parahippocampal gyrus tweak is what it... Parahippocampal gyrus, what I thought of was that key and peal sketch where they do the black college football names. These are 12 washing beard. Jones College. Shakira Kwan, TGIEF Carter, University of Northern Arizona.

Parahippocampal Jirus, University of Texas and Austin. Yes. And Parahipagia. It would have been a good one. I'm always thinking If I had a punk band It'd be called Para Albucafrey Yeah, there you go

Limbic system Oh, nice Okay, this, the other thing that you've espoused That I think is really valuable The The reverse bucket list Yeah, yeah Tell the kids what that is

Arthur Brooks on Twitter January 10th, 2025 I used to have a bucket list Now I have a reverse bucket list This is where I take my worldly cravings, desires and ambitions these dumb, trivial desires. I write them down on my birthday,

and I cross them out. Not because I'm not going to get them, but because I want to manage those cravings and desires. When I write them down, I acknowledge that I have the desire. When I cross them out, I acknowledge that I will not be attached to this goal. Strivers, this is what strivers need. So I've incorporated it legitimately. It's working for you?

Yeah, but between that and the low neuroticism and rumination, I'm sitting alone. I'm basically a shut-in. I have no personality. have no interest. I have no interest. So you think. And part of the reason is because you defined your personality on the basis of your pathology, which is what a lot of a lot of people do. A lot of people actually do that. They'll find, they think their personality is, they'll define their personality with respect to the things that are wrong. And you have to read, understand who you are as a person.

You're actually an incredibly interesting person. You're not, you're not less interesting because you're messed, you're less messed up on the contrary. No, I actually don't think I am. I'm joking that I know. But I find it is interesting. I'm more like, wow, this is interesting. Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. And a lot of people are very uncomfortable. They're very uncomfortable with their level of comfort. It's also

disconcerting. I'll say that. When you're changing, for sure, when your personality is changing. People, when their personality changes in midlife, will find that they can't sign their names on checks in a way that convinces their bank. That's so weird, isn't it? That's funny. I signed something.

There is that thing now where you can do it with your finger. Yeah. And it always take me a few tries. I'm like, that's not me. That's not me. It's just I don't want that on the record. I know, I know, I know. So the reverse bucket list is the idea that, you know, we want to motivate ourselves

by experiencing, by simulating a little bit of the achievements of meeting the desires that we have deep in our hearts for the worldly rewards in our lives. So I want to see this person. I want to experience that. a bungee jump off the Mekong Delta. I want to meet the President of the United States. I want to make my first billion, whatever happens to be, whatever your thing is, right? And we get a Ferrari and something like that. And then you think about it. And what you're doing is you're eliciting a little bit of the dopamine, which is the anticipation of reward. And that's supposed to program

into you. It's supposed to kind of manifest in the universe, which is really trying to. You're anticipating the reward. The reward. You're anticipating a little bit of the reward, getting a taste of a reward. If I do this, I'm going to feel. Yeah. And I got to little taste of that and then what you're trying to do with that bucket list is say okay i got that taste and now i want the real thing and it'll set you in search of it and it will by the way it really will motivate you but it won't unconsciously yeah yeah because all manifestation is is changing your own directionality all it is changing your behavior so you believe in manifestation in a in a way there is a neuroscientific basis oh yeah yeah it's very clear in the research that manifestation

which some goofy thing about the the universe changing you want to make a billion dollars teach a manifestation class based on neuroscience only on TikTok, you're going to have to change your phone number. You're going to be so rich. I'm not doing that. But the problem with that is it doesn't raise your happiness. And the reason is because you are also programming into your brain, that satisfaction will come when you have more. And that gets back to the old booze problem. Look, I'm finally going to be satisfied. I'm finally going to have enough sexual partners. I'm finally going to have enough, you know, rounds at the blackjack table. I'm finally going to have enough time on, you know, looking at Instagram reels. You're not, you're not, because that's not how

the brain works. The brain is completely insatiable for that. So what you're suggesting to yourself is that satisfaction comes from having more. Real satisfaction comes from, not from feeding your animal impulses. Mother Nature's lying to you because you're, you need to make that mistake to stay in the hunt. So your ancestors, the ancient Brennan's, believe that they could finally have enough if they actually did more, more, more, more, more. And that's what kept them in the hunt and that's why you're alive today. But that didn't make them happy because Mother Nature doesn't care. It's so funny because it's all based on no refrigeration.

I know. It's so like, guys, we have to update this. We have to. And so here's the updating mechanism. You can choose not the animal impulse that's incorrect, but the moral aspiration that you desire. The great human prefrontal cortex. this meaty bulb of tissue in the front of your head, 30% of your brain by way, your dog doesn't have it. Your dog only has animal impulses.

You have the choice of moral aspirations in which you stand up to your animal impulses, and you do it all the time. You're married a long time. But yeah, I know what you mean. But you're, you go on tour and, you know, you could do all kinds of misbehavior according to your animal impulses. Yeah, yeah. And you don't because you don't want to do that because you've chosen to forego immediate, immediate gratification for a long-term out. that you find are morally superior and more satisfying for your life. And what you're basically saying is this,

I don't need to increase my halves. I need to decrease my wants. Your satisfaction is your halves divided by your wants. That's a better model for long-term satisfaction. And if you increase the numerator, have more, have more, have more, have more, have more, it's very evanescent. That's the hedonic treadmill. Yeah.

If you decrease the denominator, it's mathematically as well as psychologically, more enduring. And the reverse bucket list is lowering your wants. How do you quiet the voice that says like you're lazy? Yeah. You're never going to quiet that voice. What you have to do is stand up to that voice. Let it yell, man. Bring it on. I can stand up to that. That's what it comes down to. And everybody thinks that we need to quiet a voice that's bothering us. No, we need to bear up against the voice that's bothering us. You know, it's the same thing. If you have back pain, Don't try to get rid of your back pain. Learn to live with your back pain.

Manage it, but learn to live with it. If you're sad, don't try to eradicate your sadness. It exists for a reason. Learn about what it is. Observe it. Manage it and live with it. That's the important way to actually get through life. And the same thing is true with these obtrusive, intrusive messages about who we are as people.

They say, oh, yeah, that's my little friend, little Neil. Yeah. There's a Rodney Dangerfield, of all people, did a joke about this. before he was like a no respect guy he'd a joke about like my wake up the precious pressure the heaviness is waiting for me nice to happiness sometimes I haven't talked to it I say hi having it I'm sure he was depressed he was absolutely clear I'm sure he was depressed and you know my my my life I'm sure yours too is one disappointment after another not about the things that other people are doing on the contrary people thrill me with their brilliance and their bravery and their

moral uprightness and their kindness every single day. It's me. I'm a disappointing person to me. I say no one's disappointed me or lied to me more than I have. Totally, totally. But I have to recognize that that's a voice inside my head that says, maybe if you work a little harder, somebody will love you. You didn't earn it. Go earn it. Go earn it, buddy. That's the little voice that says that, that actually starts from where we, what we talked about. Are you living this? That's the thing is I, I, that, Neil, that's what I'm going. to mass every day. That's the reason that I pray my rosary with my wife every day. For help me fucking do this. Help me understand what is the nature of this and what is the truth. I want the

truth. I don't mind the fact that I'm imperfect because we all are. But I do not want to be guided in my life by the lies and imperfection. I want the truth notwithstanding what's actually going inside my head. How much of it is do you pray? for acceptance of this of this nonsense that we all have in our head of just like please like of course i anytime i've done psychedelics i i'll go like please help me hold on to this yeah so here's the thing and here's here's the beautiful thing about we need you with psychedelics by the land yeah and here's the church just to make a deal man let's talk turkey so what people who use psychedelics or people who are really religious or people who are serious meditators what they haven't

is that they recognize at the end of the day that life has suffering in it. But suffering is not the same thing as pain. Pain is a normal phenomenon that happens to you because you're alive. It's sensory or it's affective. Sensory pain has to do with nerve endings and inflammation. Affective pain is where the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex

of your brain says, you don't like that. And that can come from somebody rejecting you just as much as it can come from touching a hot stove. Those two parts go together, they can be separated. But the whole point is that those parts of pain have kept you alive. Pain is your friend because it's a signal. That's something you need to pay attention to.

Suffering isn't the same thing as pain. Suffering equals your pain multiplied by your resistance to your pain. And that's what you learn, which a lot of people tell me they learn, because I've never taken psychedelics when they take psychedelics. And that's what I learned through my religion. And that's what I learned working with the Tibetan Buddhists, which I was going to say. It's like significantly more Buddhist than Catholic. Well, except that the Christian faith worships a man who didn't resist his pain. And so therefore,

was in bliss in union with God. His pain was enormous. His suffering was lower by the end because his resistance went away. I think he was high on self-satisfaction. They don't know what they're. Forgive them. These animals don't even know what there's doing. For when Neil just said that. These animals don't even, oh, these low people. But the whole point is we need to learn. I'm sick of it.

He needs his crosses. He needs his logo everywhere. Go ahead. Feeling nervous here. This is even worse than talking about gender differences, you know. Instant cancellation. So we, most people don't need better technique at lowering pay. They need to lower their, they need to learn to lower the resistance to pain.

So even when pain is inevitably high, suffering isn't. My mother-in-law, when she was dying, I was very close to my mother. I was closer to her than I was to my own mother. She lived her whole life. Sure your mom loved that. Go ahead. She died young. My mother-in-law did the 93. And so I knew her a lot better too.

And you know, I've been living off and on in Barcelona for the past 35 years. And so this is, and she was 93 years old and she'd been bedridden for a bunch of years. And she was super happy, even though she was in constant. and physical pain because she was non-resistant to it. She understood the nature of actually what it meant. And again, I mean, there are times when you need to lower the pain. I mean, there are times when things actually hurt and you should take an analgesic. Take some Tylenol.

Don't be an idiot. I got it. Or if somebody's hurting you, then get away from the person who's hurting you. Abuse is no good. But there are times when you can't. There are times when life just dishes it out. And under those circumstances, you have to have the wherewithal. You have to have the inner strength, the inner equine,

to be able to say, okay, non-resistance, non-resistance. And that's when you said, I need to embrace this thing because you were in a state of profound non-resistance. You wanted to understand exactly what it meant because you could, because your pain was high and you wanted to hold it and understand it because your resistance was low and so, therefore your suffering was not unbearable in this moment. Yeah. And then where does that become massacism?

Well, that can become masochism when you actually walk. Because, by the way, that church you go to is full of massacus. Dude, try it again. You got to come back. Come back with an open-minded part. I just don't. It's like Irish. Like, I know it.

I know you've suffered. I know you've suffered. No, no, I'm not even saying it like severed. I'm just saying the martyrdom is the, you know, the, Buddha doesn't see all the religion with no martyrs. Yeah, no. But part of it is also is finding your way toward. adult understanding of a very, very complex phenomenon like any faith, as opposed to the third grade version that was ingrained into us that doesn't make sense. This is one of the reasons

that people in their 40s and 50s are more likely to be more religious than people in the 20s and 30s because you get to the point where your age or 10 years old or my age, you're like, yeah, well, nothing makes sense. Right. Why not get something from it? News flash. When I get invited to the after party, it's all nonsense. I mean, this book of Job in the Bible is all about, like, I did everything right and you made me suffer. Why? And God's answer to Job in the whirlwind, he gets to talk. Like Job puts God in the dock in chapter 38 of Joe. He was like, you killed all my livestock. And I was your boy. I did everything. And you're throwing dice with Satan. Yeah. And you say that, you know, you're going to do all these terrible things to me and I'm going to keep

with the faith. It's like, that's not right. And God said, he says, tell me why. And God says this. He says, well, you know, sure. Of course I'll tell you why. You're so smart. I'll tell you exactly why you suffered. As soon as you tell me why I put the stars in the sky, you're so smart, you must know. The truth is, it's a mystery. This is a mystery. And you're comfortable with that mystery when you have the open aperture of the psychedelic experience. The mystery is like, yeah, yeah, I am open to this mystery. Whereas most of the time, we're like, no, it doesn't make sense. I don't like it. My psychedelic experience is more, it's so much. I'm telling you, I haven't done it. So, yeah, no, My psychological experience is you're not off.

It's just more awareness. Yeah. And it's like not even really like, uh, captureable and narrative. It's not like, oh, and then this happens. It's not, there's no parables. There's no.

As an observer, it's easy. Yeah, no. Again, that's my, my issue with whatever. I'm not, I'm not mad at, I'm really not mad at any religion because I think it's all the same thing. I think it's regional. I think it's, I think it's. But we're all dealing with.

a lot of pain. We're all dealing with a lot of pain. And a lot of that, the things that we can change, we should change. But the divine will in every religion is the whole idea of not just giving in to the divine will, but embracing the divine will. Thy will be done, not mine. And almost every religion, that's lowering resistance such that you can actually bear up under the suffering, or the suffering itself that still exists is a profound source of meaning. What do you tell yourself in moments of suffering? In moments of suffering, ordinarily, I have to diagnose whether or not I'm resisting. The first thing I ask is, okay, what are you resisting? See, here's the thing.

Superstrivers, your audience, people who really want to make out, taking a big, big, big bite out of life, they have this superstitious belief, generally speaking, that if I worry about things that I can't actually change, I'll somehow change. If I worry enough, if I'm anxious enough, I'll be able to change the gears in the universe. If I'm concerned enough about this thing that I actually can't change, and they feel irresponsible, almost bereft, if they're not giving enough mental energy to it. And that's just another form of resistance.

I do that all the time. And that's what... You're looking... One of the things I regret most is worry. Yeah, for sure. You don't, for sure. Change anything. And so that's one of the things that I do.

So when I'm actually suffering a lot, I say, okay, probably there's... I know there's a source of pain, but what I need to examine is my resistance to that pain. What am I doing with respect to my resistance? to that pain. And that's where the expertise actually comes in. That's really very interesting. That's why I've written about different ways to alleviate anxiety, not by eradicating the anxiety, but understanding the biological basis of it, being able to change how you deal with it by lowering

your resistance in very, very organic and natural ways. And that's the first thing that I do when my suffering is high. I just stare right at my resistance. What am I doing wrong here? So you don't, you're more, you just turn from the pain to the resistance? Well, sometimes, I sometimes do take Advil. Well, yeah, but you know what I mean. Like the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not, you don't worry about the actual problem. You worry about your interpretation of it. Yeah. I mean, I do try to solve the problem when I can. And when I can't, I try to stop resisting. Don't solve. I see, not my problem. Do not solve your wife's problem. Well, in a way, see, that's funny, because that's, your marriage is a problem you can't solve because your marriage is a complex,

right hemispheric problem. That's so fucking funny. A marriage is a problem you cannot. You can't solve. You can only live with it and understand. By the way, that's why you love your marriage, because you can't solve it like you can fix your car. That's the difference between...

It's a detente. You'll never solve your cat. You could solve a mechanical cat, but a mechanical cat won't satisfy you like a real cat. My wife loves cats. Does she? Yeah. Yeah.

The reason she loves cats is because they don't have solution, because they're alive, because they satisfy something in the right hemisphere of her brain. And you could give her a mechanical cat, and she wouldn't like it. And that's what a lot of the modern world is doing. It's giving us a bunch of mechanical cats when we want real cats. It's giving us solutions, AI, the Internet, Googledable questions. And what we really want is to live with and sit with the things that we can't solve.

We can only love. My wife had questions. I know we've got to wrap up. Arthur says that love requires will. not just feeling. Yeah. But we built an entire therapeutic culture around emotional authenticity

as the arbiter of relational validity. Yeah. If it feels wrong, it is wrong. How do you argue against that to someone or people who've been doing it for 20 years?

They were lied to. You're not your feelings. You're a person with feelings. And the truth is your feelings are liars, liars, liars. Sometimes they're not lying, but they lie a lot. Why?

because they send an alarm up. Assume that they're lying. Yeah, I mean, you should at least be open to the idea that they're lying. You should always be very suspicious of your feelings. Your feelings will tell you that if that person leaves you, you're going to die

and you're never going to find happiness ever again. That's a straight-up lie. The reason for that is because that part of the limbic system of your brain makes you very averse to being abandoned. You have to be averse to being abandoned. Otherwise, you'd be friendless, divorced and fired within a week because you'd say everything that you think. It's a self-defense

mechanism is that belief that you're actually going to die if that person leaves you. That lie actually keeps you alive. But that lie is also holding you back. And that's the kind of skepticism that you actually need. It's, that's a, I mean, there's a, there's billions of people that would fight you on that. I know. My feelings are not. I know. I think that people think their feelings are like, missives from God. They're the most authentic. They're the most, real thing. They're not. That's the limbic system of your brain produces the emotions in your head, which are a physiological phenomenon that's telling you that there's a threat or an opportunity that you have perceived at the very, very primal level, that you've perceived through the most reptilian

parts of your brain in the back of your head. They send signals saying threat or opportunity. These are translated into emotions that are positive or negative, saying approach or avoid. That's what it is. That's what you're. your emotions are. They're very important pieces of information, but don't take them, you shouldn't take them more seriously than you do CNN. They might be right. They might be wrong. Yeah, but it's, it's, but people use them for, for, for, they misuse their emotions. For, for selfish reasons. People also trust the news. Ooh, I got political. Oops. Everybody knows you're Republican. I'm not a Republican. I'm not, I'm not an independent since I was a lad.

That's, uh, that's a podcast for Republican. Independent. That's a, that's a, That's in Hollywood, the same a libertarian. Oh, let's, I guess you are. That's right. Sure you are, Vince Vaugh. You're Reaganite. Yeah. What's the most important thing your happiness research tells us about romantic love that the self-help industry is actively suppressing?

Probably similar to the other answer, but. Yeah. So that's a good one because we're about to do this big marriage retreat. There's a lot that actually goes into it. that men and women want the same thing, that men and women actually want the same thing. That's the lie that men want the same thing. That more and more and more people are actually telling you.

And that's a big, that's a myth propagated by, you know, women thinking that men are just fundamentally masculine women and men thinking that women, you know, they just want lots and lots and lots of sex, but they're repressed. And that they're just feminine men. And men and women are, one of the most beautiful things in life is that we're different. Yeah. Not that we're secretly the same.

Gary Shandling one time said, they're not just different. They're the opposite sex. Yeah. It's not just different. No, the opposite of what you are. Yeah. And that's a beautiful thing because we want to be completed, not copied. You should want to be completed.

And you can only be completed by people who are not you. You can't be completed by something that you already have. Do you think people know the ways in which they want to be completed? No. And that's one of the things that you learn through the voyage, the journey, the adventure. The unsolvable problem. Yeah. Marriage.

Most relationship of advice is essentially conflict resolution jargon. Yeah. But you seem to be saying something more radical that the goal isn't a relationship where you fight better. It's a relationship organized around something beyond the two of you. Yeah. I believe that you should want your marriage to be an intent of the divine. That's not just getting to the line of scrimmage. You know, and so a lot of, very few people actually go to marriage counselors and say,

this marriage is great. We just want it to be more than great. They say, we have a problem. I mean, you don't go to your cardiologist and say that, all ticker is doing great. Yeah. You say, I think I have a problem. You do if you're very rich. But yeah, you're very rich.

I go to the Mayo Clinic for a month over. But that's not typically what we do. We think of the entire therapeutic industrial complex as being remediation. And that's the wrong way to think about that. That's the wrong way to think about the relationship. There are a lot of couples who are just fine, but it can be great. So, you know, protocols, eye contact, tons and tons and tons of eye contact will get you down the field, having more fun, praying together or reading together.

I've heard you say praying together. Or reading together. Are you dividing and conquering what you're praying for? Like, hey, you pray for? No, no, it's basically, it sort of depends on what tradition you come from. Right. So people meditate together. People will actually pray the rosary together like my wife and I do.

People read to each other does much the same thing. And then touching, touching, touching, touching, even when you don't want to be touching, men need that more than women do and they don't know it. Women need more eye contact, and men don't know that either. They'll forget to look at their spouse in the eyes. Eyes, eyes, eye contact, eye contact, eye contact. And that women have three times as much oxytocin,

blood circulating oxytocin as men do, which means they need more sources of oxytocin. and a lot of it comes from eye contact with somebody that you actually love. The best way that men can make their a good marriage great is every time you talk to her, you're staring at her in the eyes.

Not a creepy way. It's going to freak her out at first. She's going to be like, I don't know why, but I just feel like we're so much closer. You fool. But there's a whole bunch of things that you can actually do

that are like free, man. Yeah. They're not $100 an hour. You know, that's not that there's anything wrong with a great therapist either. But the whole point is, think about it as a way to think about it as the gym, not as physical therapy.

Think about all the things that you do to actually get stronger and healthy and feeling better. Yeah. And preventative and or just like, you know, you're going to get the guns out. If you are, if you are like my wife couldn't kill us. So that it think about your, if you can, if you're at all religious, think about your marriage as a connection to God. And then the reason that that's really important is because when you don't love her, you're denying her God's love. and vice versa, and then the stakes are higher, and more beautiful and just more wonderful.

I don't think I have any further questions. You rest your case? I rest your case. Your Honor, the prosecution arrest. It was great, man. I really appreciate the good show. It's a good show. You're doing a good job.

This isn't even really the format, but we did it for you. I appreciate the stuff that you can do. Like have things that I've heard and going like, okay, I'll try it. Yeah. So it's your helping. Thank you. So you are too.

You make me laugh a lot. Get your plumage out. Your, you're, you're, I hope that I hope you feel full because it, it's helpful. Thank you. I love it. I contact. I love it. I like, they're like staring at her when you're talking about it.

You're like, why are you looking at me? I got. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then as long as when you're, when you're sitting together on the couch watching TV, she should always have her hand on you. I agree with. I think I'm like, people think I'm too.

touch you. Yeah. People think I'm too touch you. She needs to touch you. Unbidden, non-sexual touch. Can I grab her? I mean, is it like, you can, except that it's just like, I want you, say to her, I want you to touch me more. I want you to touch me more. When we're walking, I want you to take my hat. When we're sitting on the, on the couch, I want you to touch, I want you to have your hand on my arm or on my hand or on my leg. I want you to be touching me. I need you to touch me more. Arthur Brooks.com. It's $15. It's fine. You got it. The website itself is free, by the way. Most of the internet. Yeah, yeah. Tons of resources on there. Lots of tests to take that are free and all kinds of cool stuff.

Arthur Brooks. Thanks, Ben. Thank you. Appreciate it.