Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: Making Good On Your Best Intentions & What Your Brain Is Doing Now

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

The Christmas season is full of stories and traditions. This episode begins with some facts about Christmas you may have never heard before. For example, ever wonder why we use the term Noel at Christmas? Did you ever wonder what Christmas decorations are edible? Listen to discover the answers to these questions and get other fascinating Christmas information that will be fun to share. (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/50-things-yule-never-know-653613)  I am sure you have the best of intentions. Yet, intentions are not enough. Very often people fail to follow through and act on their good intentions. Why is that? If you tell yourself you are going to do something, why don’t you just do it? Well, there is a good reason why and here to discuss it is Steve Levinson, clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur and internationally recognized authority on the topic of following through. He is the author of a couple of books including Following Through (https://amzn.to/36rIldU).  Your brain is the control center of your entire body. The brain does so many wonderful things and works in ways you probably don’t realize. Joining me to discuss how your brain functions and ways you can help it function even better is neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She is a professor at Northeastern University, Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Harvard University and author of the book Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (https://amzn.to/2JJecxK). Warming your car up on a cold morning before you drive it seems like a good idea. But is it really? If your car battery dies and needs a jump, how long does it take to fully charge it. Listen as I answer some important questions every car owner needs to know.(https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-you-really-need-to-warm-up-your-car/ ) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! With Shopify, everything you need to customize your business to your needs is already in your hands. Sign up for a FREE trial at https://Shopify.com/sysk ! Constant Wonder is a podcast that will bring more wonder and awe to your day. Listen to Constant Wonder wherever you get your podcasts! https://www.byuradio.org/constantwonder Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls & emails with Online Privacy Protection from Discover? - And it's FREE! Just activate it in the Discover App. See terms & learn more at https://Discover.com/Online You’ve earned your fun time. Go to the App Store or Google play to download Best Fiends for free. Plus, earn even more with $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach level 5!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, some interesting facts about Christmas you probably never knew. Then, why do we begin things with the best of intentions and then fail to follow through? One of the reasons we do such a lousy job as humans is that we adopt too many intentions. We treat our good intentions as if they're a dime a dozen. And if you treat them that way, that's exactly what they're worth.

Also, is it better to warm up your car's engine first on cold winter mornings? And understanding how your brain works and why you need to take such very good care of it. You don't see with your eyes, you see with your brain. You don't feel with your skin, you feel with your brain. You hear with your brain, you smell with your brain. Everything that you experience and every action you take starts in your brain. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic.

Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat.

Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carothers hey there welcome i do love this time of year i guess a lot of people do there is just something magical about the holidays and if you share that feeling about Christmas, you will appreciate knowing that in an upcoming episode, we're going to have a great interview about Christmas traditions and how Christmas has evolved and how it continues to evolve.

I just did the interview and it'll be coming up in an episode very soon. But we can talk a little bit about Christmas now, specifically Christmas cards. The first commercial Christmas cards were commissioned by British civil servant Sir Henry Cole in London in 1843. One of the cards from the very first set of Christmas cards was sold at auction back in 2013 for $6,846. The word Noël is from the French expression Les Bons Nouvelles, or The Good News. Before turkey, the traditional Christmas meal in England was a pig's head and mustard. James Pierpont's 1857 song Jingle Bells was first called One Horse Open Sleigh, and it was actually written for Thanksgiving.

Many parts of the Christmas tree can be eaten. What? Really? With the needles being a good source of vitamin C. The Beatles hold the record for most Christmas number one singles in England, topping the charts in 1963, 1965, and 1967. Electric tree lights were invented by Edward Johnson in the U.S. in 1882. And finally, in several countries, Greece, Italy, Spain, and I believe Germany, workers get a Christmas bonus of one month's salary by law. And that is something you should know.

I suspect there is not a single person listening to this who hasn't started something, or said they are going to start something, or wanted to start something, and never followed through. I know I've done it many times, and I've always wondered why it is. Why do we say we're going to do something, we tell ourselves we're going to do it, but somehow we lose interest, or we can't find the time, or whatever the reason, it never gets done. So how do we conquer that? How do you start something and actually finish what you start? Well, here to explain why we do it and how to fix it is Steve Levinson.

Dr. Levinson is a clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur, and he's an internationally recognized authority on the topic of following through. He's written a couple of books, including one called Following Through. Hi Steve, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi Michael, nice to see you. So it clearly is a universal problem. Why is it a problem? Why would I tell myself I'm going to do something and then just not do it? Well, it certainly is a universal problem. My colleague Pete Greider and I, back in the mid-1990s, we went and we talked to people all over the place. Rich people, poor people, successful people, people who are not so successful. And we found that everyone had trouble following through on

their own good intentions. What we discovered, which was not what we expected, is that the problem actually lies with the way the human mind is designed. We are kind of an unusual experiment that Mother Nature decided to conduct where we were given this incredible intelligence that allows us to figure out what's in our best interest to do. Should we go here? Should we go there? Should we make a left turn or right turn, go straight ahead, back up, stay put. We figure out what we should do intelligently. The amazing thing, however, is that Mother Nature, for whatever reason, neglected to connect our intelligence to our behavior. And our behavior remains largely connected to a much more primitive system that actually makes us act most of the time in accord with what we feel

in our gut and not what we intelligently decide. So that's where the problem is. And we've never really quite accepted that. Society has not accepted that. People don't accept that. People still think that they should just be able to figure out what they should do. And if it's a really good idea, if it just seems like a good idea, well, why wouldn't I do that? That they would just go ahead and implement it. And it doesn't work. It's not because the system is very mixed up. The wiring is faulty. So put a face on that. Give me just an example of somebody deciding what they think they should do and then their gut tells them to do something else. Okay, great. Great example is everybody can relate to wanting very badly to eat things that they intelligently decide they shouldn't eat or shouldn't eat as much of. So you can decide if you're a cookie-holic, for example, and you've

decided that because of your weight and because of a health concern, you really shouldn't be eating cookies so much anymore. So you decide at 11 o'clock in the morning that you're just not going to have any cookies today. And then somebody comes along and has these really yummy smelling cookies. They look great. It's exactly what you want. And you just jump all over them. So on the one hand, you make a decision. You intelligently decide where you should go.

And then you just feel in your gut that you want to do something else. And your gut often wins. It often wins it often wins in that example I can imagine though that if somebody brought that plate of cookies by right after I made the decision not to eat them my willpower would keep me from eating them as opposed to if they came eight hours later and sit and after the day is old and I've done a lot of things and my willpower isn't quite what it was I'm much more inclined to eat them

you're you're absolutely right willpower has a very short hair half-life it just it does not last your your intentions are the most powerful at the moment you create them and then they just wane and wane and wane, and they just don't work. The same thing is true, by the way, of inspiration. You know, how many times do people go to listen to an inspirational speaker, and they get all hyped up, excited, oh, I'm going to change this, I'm going to fix that. And I'm going to do this differently. And by, you know, three, four days later, there's not much left. It's just it's all gone. So if intentions aren't enough, if that doesn't do it, then what does? How do you do it the right way? Well, the way to do it is to accept the fact that our behavior is determined largely by how we feel. Again, what's going on in our gut and not by our intelligent decisions.

And to therefore basically trick ourselves into feeling like doing the things that we intelligently decide we should do. Okay, case in point, this was a gentleman like so many of us who decide that it really would make sense to exercise regularly. So he joined a health club, and like so many of us, pretty soon he wasn't going very regularly, and pretty soon he wasn't going at all. So he thought maybe he could join a better health club that had different kind of equipment, different clientele, and that would do it. That didn't do it either. Nothing worked. health reasons, weight reasons. These were good reasons, excellent reasons. But the excellent reasons didn't get him to actually go to the club every day and do what he thought he needed to do in order to stay healthy and stay trim. So he realized that he has to make himself feel, actually feel like he has no choice but to go to the health club. So here's what he did.

He made a promise to himself that from now on, he would only own one stick of underarm deodorant, and he would keep that stick of underarm deodorant in his locker at the gym. So he would get up every morning and feel like he always did. Oh, sugar, I don't want to go to the gym. That's the last thing in the world that I want to do. But then he would think, you know what? If I don't go to the gym, I'm going to stink all day. And I don't want that at all. That moved him. That was what I would call a compelling reason. In other words, a reason that actually gets in your gut that you can feel that propelled him to go to the gym. Whereas the good reasons, the logical reasons,

the reasons that made perfectly good sense, which was to stay healthy and stay trim, that didn't work. So he was pushed every day by this fear of stinking to go to the gym. And once he got to the gym, people would say, hey, Joe, good morning. And he would feel so incredibly stupid about just using his deodorant and going home and going back to bed that he stayed and he exercised and eventually developed the habit, the routine, which he had never done before. So relying on the right reasons, they are the right reasons and they're effective in getting you to decide what you should do, but they're often not effective enough to actually get you to do what you've decided to do. To do what you decided to do, you have to create a compelling reason, something that you can feel in your gut.

What about, though, when it's something that is less urgent? Like if you have health problems or you're concerned about your health, at least there's a little bit of that pushing you to even make the decision to put the deodorant in the gym in the first place. But what if it's those, someday I'm going to write a book or someday, you know, I'm really thinking I'm going to build that thing out back. And it's just kind of a very vague, no deadline, nothing really matters if I don't do it. But I'd really like to do it. Great, great, great question. I'll say two things about that. Number one, one of the reasons we do such a lousy job as humans, and again, this is universal. This is all of us, not just some of us, it's all of us. One of the reasons we do so poorly at following through is that we adopt too many intentions. We say, oh, I'm going to do

that. Oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that. Oh, I think I'll do that too. We should be much more careful about the intentions that we adopt because the best way to think about them is that they are equivalent to promises that you would make to someone else and you you're much more careful about the promise most of us at least are much more careful about the promises we make to someone else than we are about the promises we make to ourselves so one of the things that i that i recommend and i i don't just preach it, I practice it, is that I consider an intention to be a solemn promise. And if I think about something like that, oh, yeah, I'd really like to write another book. Maybe I'll start next week. I carefully evaluate that and decide whether is that something that I

really is that a promise that I really can keep? Because if it isn't, I'm not going to do it. I'll consider it just to be a good idea, and I'll put it on the list for some other time to take it off the list and examine it under the light. But if I'm not prepared to keep it as a promise, I'm not prepared to make it, period. So I think if the problem that we often have is that we treat our good intentions as if they're a dime a dozen. And frankly, if you treat them that way, that's exactly what they're worth. So the more, you know, if you think about this, the idea of thinking about an intention, being a promise to yourself and being similar to a promise you would make to someone else. If, if,

if you promised someone else that you were going to do something and then you didn't do it and then you promised them again and you didn't do that either. And you promised them something else. You didn't do that either. Pretty soon you'd have very little credibility and you wouldn't get much from them if you wanted to borrow their lawnmower, for example. But if you do the same to yourself, the same thing happens. You essentially, your intentions lose their clout. They lose their authority. They lose their power to actually have some control over your intentions. So that's the first thing, to be much more careful, much more selective, much more deliberate and explicit about the intentions you adopt. someone else is counting on you. So why don't you involve someone else in the first place in the intentions to yourself and be accountable to somebody else and be much more likely to do it

because somebody else is counting on you? You should. You absolutely should. Many times people will formulate an intention and adopt an intention and kind of keep it secret. They don't want anyone to know. I don't want anyone to know. I don't want anyone to know that I'm working on this book or I'm working on this project or I'm doing this or doing that. They don't want anyone to know. And they're actually diluting the power that they could actually bring on board to help them accomplish what they set out to accomplish. So it does make sense to invite other people to participate in your intentions, as long as those people make you feel accountable. Often, a person that matters the most is a child. If you have children, or you have a niece or a nephew, and you tell them,

hey, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get this done by February 17th. And you ask me about it and I'll show you. That often because people feel, they feel more likely in their gut that they've made a promise to a child than to many other adults who also don't follow through very well and don't care as much. But if someone makes you feel accountable, and again, the key is feel. If someone makes you feel accountable, by all means, you should include them. We are talking about finishing what you start. And my guest is Steve Levinson, a clinical psychologist and author of the book, Following Through. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new

show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today.

Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast.

The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Steve, it's my experience that going to the gym and working out with a trainer, for example, I know many people who do that, and it's not like they don't know how to work the machines. They've been doing it for years. It's that that person is there waiting for them.

They're going to have to pay them whether they show up or not. And that person is expecting them to show up. So they show up. Exactly. Exactly. And using that, harnessing that makes very good sense. And it's a key way to make your intentions more effective, to actually take advantage of the fact that you are pushed and pulled by expectations. So that if you know that when people expect you to do something, you're more likely to do it, then you want to actually

deliberately, sometimes creatively, make situations that pull you and push you to do what you intend to do. Well, it makes me think, too, that when people don't do that, when people keep their intentions secret, it makes me wonder if they really are intentions, if they really, really want to do it, or if they just like to say they want to do it. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They're fooling themselves, and in the process, they're diluting the potential effectiveness of their intentions. Absolutely. I mean, if you, here's, let me give you an example of how,

or an illustration, a far out illustration of how people normally don't take their own intentions seriously. If you told me, Michael, that you were going to do something this afternoon, you're going to wash your car. Let's say a stupid example, but it's the best I can come up with. You're going to wash your car because you haven't done it in a long time. It really needs it. If I said to you, Michael, are you really serious about that? You would say, well, yeah, yeah. I said I was going to do it this afternoon. I said, okay, here's the deal. If you don't do it, will you give me your car will you just sign it over give me the deed no i don't care why why you told me you were going to wash your car this afternoon why what why would you why

would you worry about making a promise like that making a deal like that well the end i'll answer the question the answer is because you're giving yourself wiggle room to not do it. And we give ourselves wiggle room all the time. And the wiggle room is what kills us. The wiggle room is what prevents us from actually following through. In an ideal situation, every time we actually adopt an intention, we should be so serious about behaving in accord with it that we'd be more than willing to give up our car, our house, our firstborn child, whatever it is, because that's how serious we should be. And by not being that serious,

surprise, surprise, we often don't follow through. Well, it does seem so human nature to not follow through that it's almost like you know you're not, so you don't expect much. And it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know I really, I mean, I've always thought, you know, I'd really love to have a restaurant. Now, I'm never going to have a restaurant. I wouldn't know the first thing about it. I'm not even inclined to go learn about it. I like the fantasy of it. Or, you know, I think, wouldn't it be cool to have a restaurant? It probably would. I have heard horrible stories about people who own restaurants.

But there's something fine with me about it just sitting there in my head is this little fantasy that, yeah, that'd be fun. Hey, there's nothing wrong with having fantasies like that. Just don't allow it to slip in the category of an intention, something that you've actually literally put on your to-do list that you're not going to do because it's not really a promise. It's not realistic. Here's what I see all the time. When people adopt intentions that they actually are not going to follow through on, and they really know they're not going to follow through on, it's like hauling something behind you in a trail or something very heavy, with, you know, logs or something

terribly heavy, all this stuff that you're not going to do, but it kind of weighs you down because you intend to do it. So you just have to be really careful about what you, what you tell yourself you intend to do. It seems like we have different levels of commitment to our intentions. I mean, for example, Geico is sponsoring this episode of the podcast. And how many times has everybody seen their commercials saying you could save all this money on car insurance if you would take 15 minutes to compare? And you probably see that commercial and you intend to maybe do that. But then you probably have to see the commercial a couple of more times before you actually really intend to do that and actually commit to doing that. And it also seems like we can set ourselves up for success with our intentions. And what I mean by that is, you know, I remember in school that it was always hard to do homework at home.

But if I went to the library where I didn't have the distractions I had at home, it was a lot easier to just sit down and do my homework. So that's what I would be inclined to do. It seems like you can set up the conditions, the time of day, the place, who you're with. All those things can help or hinder your success. So you were being a scientist in your own life, and you had noticed that things work better for you in one setting than in another setting. So you adjusted your behavior accordingly and favored the setting that helped you behave the way you wanted. That's exactly what people should do. Now, everyone is different. And I could imagine someone being a scientist in their own life and discovering exactly the opposite, that despite what seems to make sense and what most people say, geez, I can do my homework better when I have noises, family noises around me and dishes clanging around in the kitchen and people having the TV on.

For whatever reason, I seem to do better there. Then by all means, that's what you should do. It does seem that good intentions, when we set goals and we have good intentions, there's this tendency, maybe it's me, but there seems to be a tendency to think that this is going to be easier than it really is. And then as soon as it turns out to be a lot harder than it really, than you thought it was going to be, it's easier to say, well, I can't do this. Yep. And you're getting right to the, right to the crux of thex of the matter. We believe that intentions, I'll use a terrible analogy. We think intentions are like an electronic device that we buy that includes batteries. And it doesn't.

If you don't put the batteries in, put your own batteries in, it isn't going to work. It doesn't matter how well designed it is. It needs batteries and it doesn't come with them. It doesn't matter how well designed it is. It needs batteries and it doesn't come with them. You're going to have to add them. Intentions, all they are is a decision. It's a decision about what would be good to do, what would be wise for you to do, what would be the best thing for you to do with your time and energy and so forth, but it does not come with batteries. It does not come with the motivation, the feeling in your gut that has to power your behavior to actually make good on that intention. So often we think that we're done.

When we decided we had an inspiration, we figured out that, oh, yes, I should do this. That's it. It doesn't even seem that hard. And we think it's done. We think that then we're going to do it. We're not going to do it because we didn't add the batteries. The batteries are creating. It's creating the energy, the feeling in your gut that makes you actually feel like it's necessary to do what you've decided to do. Well, how often have we heard other people say, and how often have we said, well, I had the best of intentions.

This was done with the best of intentions. But as we've discovered in the last several minutes here, intentions by themselves are not enough. Steve Levinson has been my guest. He's a clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur, and author of the book, Following Through. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Hey, thanks for coming on, Steve. Thank you, Michael. It's been great. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. we have a, but am I wrong? Which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our

listener poll results from, but am I wrong? And finally wrap up your week with fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to don't blame me, but am I wrong on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes every Monday, Tuesday, brain, and it does a lot of things. Many of the things it does, you're not even aware of. And understanding how it works is not only interesting, it can help you optimize how your brain performs. Here to explain this is neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She's a professor at Northeastern University.

She's the chief science officer for the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior at Harvard. And she's author of the book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. Hi, Lisa. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me on your show. So when we're born, do we all pretty much start out with a clean slate? Do we all start with more or less the same brain and then it's life and experiences that change it?

Or are our brains all very different right from the start? Or how do things get going? We all start out with generally the same brain plan, but the devil is in the details. So infant brains are like not miniature adult brains. They're brains that are born under construction and they get their wiring instructions from the world around them. So your brain when you were born was not complete and it wired itself to the specifics of your body and the specifics of your physical surroundings

and also to the social surroundings, the way that other people took care of you, spoke to you, sung to you, what foods they fed you, and so on. What is the brain supposedly doing? It seems like, from what we hear, that pretty much the brain is the control center. It does everything. It's involved in everything we do. So it seems like it's pretty busy and it has a lot of responsibility. There are many ways to answer that question. Your brain is always busy and it's always working from the moment that you draw your first breath until the moment that you draw your last. Even when you're sleeping,

your brain is very busy. Brains do many things, right? You think, you feel, you see things, you hear things, but it turns out that your brain's most important job is controlling the systems of your body to keep you alive and well. And so thinking and feeling and seeing and hearing are all in the service of your brain's main mission, which is to control your body. That's its most important job. That's not how we experience things, but that's actually the way the wiring looks. And are there things that people do or can do that make that functioning better, more efficient, or how does what we do affect how it works? And so the way that I like to describe it to people, of course, there's a very technical term for this. It's called allostasis.

But the idea is that your brain is running a budget for your body. And your brain isn't budgeting money, it's budgeting these resources. Because you've got, you know, billions and billions and billions of cells that all need resources. Every time you learn something new, every time you move your body, your brain is expending resources. Every time you sleep or eat something healthful or maybe even give or receive a hug from a close friend, you are either literally or metaphorically making deposits into your body budget. So your brain is running a budget for your body, and it's attempting to anticipate the spending and make sure that the resources are there when that spending is going to occur.

And so anything that you can do that will keep your body budget solvent, for example, if you know you're going to have a big outlay of expenditure, you're going to exercise, it makes sense to drink enough water and eat something, usually a carbohydrate before you exercise. So the resources will be there when you need them. And in general, I would say to keep your body budget solvent and keep everything humming along healthfully, there are a couple of things that most people can do, which sound really boring. When I talk about this, I think, oh, I sound like a mother.

And I am a mother, but now I'm speaking to you as a neuroscientist. To keep your body budget functioning well, get enough sleep. That's probably the most important thing that you can do. Eat healthily. Make sure you drink enough water. Make sure you exercise on a regular basis. These all sound really mundane, but actually, chronic withdrawals from your body budget without replenishing, without making investments, puts your body budget into the red and means that you're running a deficit. or desires interaction with other brains that if left to itself in isolation, because when you see people who don't have interaction with other people, things can go very wrong. Well, I think the way to think about it is, I think you're right,

and I think the way to think about it, it's not that the brain desires anything. It's that we evolved as a social species. We make deposits and withdrawals into each other's body budgets. So your brain did not evolve to manage your body budget by yourself. And neither did mine. And neither did any, neither did any other humans. You know, some of us are more social, some of us are less social, but everybody needs somebody. So the way that I like to say it is when you have relationships with people and people pass away or you break up with someone, you know, you feel like you're going to die, but you don't. You feel like you've lost a part of yourself because you have you know you've lost someone who has helped to keep your body budget solvent and you you don't die from a breakup but you certainly will die sooner if you are alone for a long period of time we are the caretakers of

our own nervous systems but we're the caretakers of other people's nervous systems to a much greater extent, I think, than people realize. And that leaves us with a dilemma, I think, in our culture, which is that we prize individual rights and freedoms very strongly, but we also have these interdependent nervous systems, which not because we're snowflakes, but because we're human. We evolved that way. And that's a real important aspect of our health. Is it safe to say that if you take care of your body, you do all the things that we hear about diet and sleep and exercise, that by doing that, you're also taking care of your brain? Absolutely.

I mean, it's a totally boring thing to say, but yes, absolutely. There's absolutely no question. But there's nothing beyond that specifically that you can do, like crossword puzzles or whatever, that even makes your brain better. Those kinds of interventions don't really make you smarter, make your cognitive function improve? Yes, I think there are some things that you can do, but I think they're not crossword puzzles or Sudoku or whatever. Those aren't really going to necessarily do anything for you.

You know, your brain is kind of a use it or lose it organ. So if you want to keep your brain healthy, you know, get enough sleep, eat healthfully, exercise, really important to exercise. I mean, just from an anatomical standpoint, when you look at the anatomy of the brain, it's really clear to see why that would be the case. So you need to exercise. But I would also say, learning new things is a really good investment for brain health. And when I say learning new things, I mean, learning to the point where it feels kind of hard. So you know how I don't know about you when you exercise.

But when I exercise, I always get to a certain point where I think, oh God, like I just, it's really uncomfortable and I really want to be done. And the real temptation is to stop. But I think that's the point at which real changes is starting to happen, not just in your muscles, but actually in your brain. I wrote a piece about this in the New York Times a number of years ago. I think it's actually my top piece, the piece that was read the most. I think it was downloaded like a million and a half times or something like that. The evidence suggests that working hard until it feels really hard and then replenished. And so that could be learning to skate or learning piano or learning a new language or learning to paint or, you know, learning any kind of skill that requires practice.

And what's going to happen, of course, is that over time, it'll get easier and easier and easier for you because your brain is learning and it's optimizing. And so when you get really good at it, that's really great. And then it's time to move on to something new. That's why interval training in the gym works really, really well because as soon as you get good at something, you're like onto something new and then it's hard again. So you're saying that when you learn something new, you're challenging the brain,

even when you're learning something physical like ice skating or something mental like a new language. That learning process is what challenges the brain and keeps it young. Yeah, the two most expensive things your brain can do are move your body and learn. So learning is a way to keep your brain really healthy. And not just so. So a simple crossword puzzle isn't going to do it. But, you know, learning something that will require your sustained attention, require you to remember things, even to the point when it feels, you know, sometimes learning is a little unpleasant. It's a little hard. But that's the time to really stick with it and really push, because that in the end is going to as long as you replenish and you sleep enough and so on, you're as long as you make deposits into your body budget as you're doing this, that's going to keep your brain working well is offered to people in their 50s, 60s, 70s as they're seeing decline. Is there any reason to think that helps?

And is there any reason to think that if you did this stuff in your 20s, that you wouldn't have a problem in your 60s, 70s and 80s? The evidence shows really clearly that if you start to exercise and sleep healthfully and learn new skills as an elderly person, it will help. It will help keep your brain healthier for longer. If you start in your middle age, it will help more. If you start when you're in your 20s, right? So the longer, the further back you go and you start having healthful habits, the longer disease and heart disease and diabetes, you know, illnesses that we think of as occurring, you know, in middle age or maybe later in life, those seeds are planted really, really, really early, like in childhood. And so, for example, there's very good evidence, very robust evidence to show that if you experienced prolonged adversity as a child,

that you lived in poverty, that you were neglected, that you lived in an abusive household, there's a much higher increase in likelihood that you will develop illness as an adult. So I think the important message is start today. If you're not, if you, you know, not everybody can control everything in their lives. Some people are more fortunate than others, but everybody can control something. And so healthful habits, as boring as it sounds to say, healthful habits are really good for brain health. And that's true for everyone, including, you know, little kids. It does seem that the brain is extremely busy doing a lot of things. And I imagine a lot of these things are going on in the background that we don't actually consciously experience.

Can you just pick one and talk about it? Everything, every experience you have, every action you take, comes from your brain predicting what's going to happen next. So to us, it feels as if we see things, and then we react to them, or we hear them, and we react to them, that our brains are basically off until they're stimulated by the world by something we see or hear, and then we react to them or we hear them and we react to them that our brains are basically off until they're stimulated by the world by something we see or hear and then we react that is not at all how the brain is wired or how the brain works in fact your brain is basically always talking to itself making predictions about what's going to happen next. So if we stopped time, your brain would be representing what's going on around you in the world

and what's going on inside your own body. And it would be predicting what's gonna happen next. Based on your past experience, what will you see next? What will you hear next? What will you feel next? What will you do in the next moment? That's pretty surprising, I think. But you know what's interesting is as you say that, that feels right to me, that that is what I'm doing. Because I must be predicting what's

going to happen next, because when something happens that seems somewhat unpredictable, I react to that like, well, I wasn't expecting that. Well, if I'm not expecting that, then I must have been expecting something else. Exactly. Exactly. And we don't go, we don't walk around being surprised all the time. And that's because our brains do a pretty decent job. If you have a neurotypical brain, your brain does a pretty decent job of predicting what's going to happen next. It's using past way to do that is to change what you're doing and you're experiencing right now. You know, if you want to change who you are, you can't reach back into your past and change it. You can try.

I mean, that's really what psychotherapy is for. But the best way to change really is to change what you're doing now. Cultivate new experiences. Try new things. These are all expensive things to do. As long as you take care of your body budget, you will reap the benefits because your brain will predict differently in the future. And this prediction is happening really automatically.

It's not like you have to stop and switch gears, which is really hard to do in the moment. You're just seeding your brain to predict differently. So in a sense, we're all cultivating continuously a past that is used for predicting the future and actually creating the actions and experiences of your future self. Well, as you said, everything begins and ends with the brain. We see with our brain, we smell with our brain, we touch with our brain. It's really all about the brain. And it's really interesting to hear how it works and what we can do to optimize it. My guest has been Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She's a professor at Northeastern University.

And the name of her book is Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. There's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Lisa. My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Anyone who grew up with cold winter weather knows about letting a car's engine warm up before you drive it. Well, that might have been good advice for yesteryear's cars, but it is just not necessary today. Modern engines warm up more quickly when they're driven, not idling in the driveway. And the sooner they warm up, the sooner they reach maximum efficiency and deliver the best fuel economy and performance.

But if you are driving a cold car, don't rev the engine high over the first few miles while it's warming up. Here's another myth. After you jumpstart your car battery, it will soon get back to full charge. The reality is it could take hours of driving to restore a battery's full charge, especially in the winter. That's because power accessories, such as heated seats, draw so much electricity that in some cars the alternator has little left over to recharge the battery. A load test at a service station can determine whether the battery can still hold a charge. If so, maybe a few hours on a battery charger might be needed to revive the battery to its full potential.

And that is something you should know. You know what would be really great for a Christmas gift would be if you brought me a new listener by telling someone you know to give the podcast a listen and see what they think. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers

at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.

It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic

brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.