Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 108: Charles Raison & Vladimir Maletic, Tackling Depression with a Mind-Body Approach

Episode Date: November 15, 2017

Chuck Raison, a psychiatrist and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, and Vlad Maletic, a clinical professor of neuropsychiatry and behavior science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, wrote a book together called, "The New Mind-Body Science of Depression," in which they offer research on the mind-body connection, such as looking at the immune system, as a way to tackle depression. But their conversation also delves into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of tummo, psychedelics and "dark" retreats. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

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I'm Dan Harris. I love this episode. We get seriously weird and also sciencey, but in an awesome and really accessible way with two scientists. Before we dive into that, though, three pieces of business. The first is that we're trying this experiment where we're setting up a hotline where you can call in and leave me a message. With a question, you can ask anything you want to ask.

I mean, if it's really crazy, we probably won't use it, but just go for it, who knows. And the number for the hotline is 646-883-8326, 646-883-8326. And we'll put this in the show description of the episode description and I'll post it on Twitter so you can find it there too if you don't feel like writing it down right now. Why are we doing this? Because in part, well one we thought it would be cool. Josh, one of the producers of the show, came up with the idea. Two, because it's actually dovetails nicely with this other big project I've been working on, which is this book called Meditation for Figuity Skeptics, which is coming out on December 26th, then we're going to post this podcast in conjunction with that. The idea is it's the time of year when people are setting new years resolutions, and one

of the big ones is meditation, and of course creating a new habit is really hard and So the book is all about how to get you over the hump We we look at all the myths misconceptions and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating and kind of systematically demolish them by the way if you want to pre-order the book you can anyway One last blatantly nakedly self-promotional thing to say, which is that a lot of people have been hitting me on Twitter asking why the 10% happier app is only available on Apple products, but it is now as of today available on Android. So yes, my producers on the other side of this glass clapping.

So go for it. Go check it out and I'm really happy because I think a lot of folks will be able to benefit from it. All right, that's all of all the self-promotional things I wanted to say. But back to today's episode, it's really, really good. I know I say that every week, but this is really, really good. So we got a pair of scientists. The first is Chuck Rayzon, who I met many years ago

when I was doing one of my first stories about meditation. This guy is awesome, he's just funny and smart and he's a psychiatrist and he now is at the University of Wisconsin. He's done a lot of stuff, you'll hear him tick off his resume. But what makes him interesting to me is that he's done a lot of work on this most esoteric meditation practices you can imagine. I guess you could call it sort of the weird stuff. Like the special breathing technique called Tumo

where guys and women I guess too can manipulate their body temperature through this special breathing technique and actually some people have been known to sit outside in the Himalayas in winter with wet towels on their backs and they can drive them through using this meditation practice. He's studied that. He's also studied this thing called the dark retreat, which is where you live without light for several weeks, which has been done by the Tibetans for a long time.

So, he's awesome. And he's just, as I said before, also really funny and very interested in speaking of weird stuff in psychedelics and their impact on the mind. And he's also has a lot to say about depression, as a matter of fact, he'll hear, has a lot to say about this new book. He's written about depression and what meditation can and cannot do for that. And his co-author on that book is a guy named Vladimir Malatek, who is a clinical professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. And he's really awesome too.

Also a meditator has a lot to say about the impact on depression, which is something I have dealt with most of my life. So I haven't keenly interested in that. So a lot of build up there, but I think it's really worth it. Here we go. Chuck and Vlad. Thanks, gentlemen. Nice to see you both. Thank you for the invite.

So let's just do some, let's get some biography out of the way here. Chuck, how did you, well, you know, it's interesting. I met you years ago, and I recall, I could, I could recall incorrectly. You were a little coy about whether you actually meditate. I'm still coy. I'm still coy. I'm still coy. You know, it's an interesting thing, Dan. Yes, but I'm a bad meditator, and I'm an inconstant meditator.

And there's been a couple of times in my life where I did it more consistently that we're really sort of transformative. But you know, I think, and this is what I always say, a lot of the work I've done has not been around mindfulness, but it's been around compassion training with folks down at Emory. And I think I've been more impacted by the content of the meditation, because it's an analytic meditation. So it comes with all the sort of normative stuff. Sorry, unpack that.

What's the difference for difference for the uninitiated between mindfulness meditation and compassion meditation? We can call it analytic, what does that mean? Right, so this is a dilemma that I was talking about this, right? It's really, I mean, a lot of Tibetan Buddhism is sort of this sort of more analytic stuff. So, you know, mindfulness generally is a skill

of sort of observing the contents of one's mind or the environment and not getting sucked in and not getting drifting and stuff like that. Compassion training, all the different compassion meditations start with mindfulness, but then, for instance, the one that was developed at Emory by analytical, so instead of just non-judgmentally watching your thoughts, you actually try to use meditative concentration to evaluate why you have the reactions to things that you do. So there's really an attempt not just to sort of accept what comes up and goes out of your

mind, but to change it. That's the first thing, right? And so, analytic. So for instance, compassion training, the goal of the training is to develop this sort of universal compassion, right? So I mean, if you really, you know, all out, you develop this sort of intense caring for all people, regardless of sort of how you feel about them humanly. And so you have to do that. You have to sort of break down your kind of evolved basic human tendencies to either be overly attracted to something,

or overly, you know, kind of repulsed by something, or this larger tendency, just to ignore stuff that isn't of direct interest to us, direct survival interest. And so instead of just watching your thoughts, the first move, for example, in compassion training, is to try to challenge, well, why do you feel that way? Why do I really like Vlad and why don't I like you? And you really kind of analyze, well, are you so different? So it does a long thing to it, but that's what the analytical part is.

You're actually trying to challenge and change your sort of spontaneous perceptions. So you've been looking at sort of the Tibetan lineage of compassion training. I come out of the old school, TeraVada, I love to of small. Yeah, where you picture people and then send them good vibes. This thing you're talking about and have studied, sounds quite different. Well, yes, it's, there's more sort of intellectual freight along with it. It, the thing that was evolved at Emory really comes out of the Dalama school. You know, and the Dalama, the Gaelic School, they're a bunch of logicians.

So they very much believe that you need to have a clear sort of intellectual understanding of these sort of concepts, like emptiness or non-attachment. And so there's more of that, but it also includes the same thing, right? So at its highest form, it actually includes something called tunglin, which is the sort of exchange of self for others. So exactly what you're talking about, what you visualize somebody, and you imagine giving away

all the good things in your life to them and taking on all of their suffering. That doesn't sound like good. No, it's a it's a it's a really Paradoxical practice and it's hard for people so you know The the the trick is they start with people say they say okay start with somebody you spontaneously care about and you want to see Good things for them right so that's easier right, you know if you if you love a child like you know my sweet little boys There yes, I would I would do that. I'd probably do that spontaneously, right? And then so once you practice that for a while and get a feel for it There, yes, I would do that. I'd probably do that spontaneously, right? And then so once you practice that for a while and get a feel for it, you then move on to the people you're sort of ignoring that don't generate much of a thing for you.

And then finally, you go to the people that, you know, in Buddhist nomenclature would be your enemies, but you know, the people that just you don't like, they're posing you. And that's hard. If you do it seriously, people can really, I mean, I've known people have had panic attacks, tried to do this because it's, if you really get into it and you really think about what that implies, dang, you know, that's way above my pay grade. But I think the thing that has impacted me out of this training, Not being on a pursuit of bootahood is this idea that if you can loosen these sort of evolved overly tight reactions and be sort of more open and recognized that

even people you don't like are humans that are, you know, if you think they're doing things that are counterproductive, they're trying to be happy like you are. And so what you want to try to do and what does practice, I think, offers sort of in the shadows, is a recognition that we have these opportunities to get these win-win scenarios, right? So instead of, you know, if we're trying to do something and I'm conflicting with you, instead of just, you know, I'm gonna, you know, take you apart,

is there some way that we can find the most optimum way where we eat benefit, because especially in the modern world, there's so many variegated opportunities to benefit that I could get 100% and just cause an enemy for life and give myself a heart attack or I can get 55% with you and will both be happy and then there's 55% over here and 55% over there. So really, that's why I try to explain it

to people. You know, that on the human level, it just opens up a sort of openness and freedom that lets you take advantage of this remarkable sort of social connectivity that humans have and then also just the manifold opportunities that exist in the modern world that we so often close ourselves off to because, you know, we're so pissed off at the person that the desk next to us and we get you know and you just miss these opportunities. So that's I think the the but that has really impacted my life. I can see a number of places where it's softened and then you know the other place not to go on to long but the other place that it's helped me is a podcast that though it's designed to go on good all right well they won't go on for a little longer. So the other place that it's helped me is a podcast that does it designed to go on good. All right, well, they won't go on for a little bit longer. So the other place that's really

helped me is in the opposite people that you overly invest in people that you that really grab you, you know, let's say like a love relationship like a romantic love relationship. It's helped a great deal over the years to recognize that there's nothing wrong with idealizing somebody and thinking the sun and the moon rising their eyes and all this sort of stuff, but there's something to be said for recognizing that that's an over-evaluation. Just like if I dislike you too much, that's a breach with reality. In the same way if I over-value somebody, it's also a breach with reality and it's set you up for disappointments if you take it seriously.

And so, and then finally, sometimes I'll do this practice, I'll just walk down the street and try to notice people I'm ignoring. And that's an interesting thing when you do that. So anyway, long answer to a short question, but bad meditator, but I've, I mean, I've been hugely impacted by meditation and by the content of meditation. Bad meditator in the sense, you mean that you're inconsistent or... Correct, okay. Yeah, I'm both inconsistent and bad,

meaning that I don't do it as often as I should, even that I think I should, and then I don't have, I'm not very good at it. Yeah, well I'm always suspicious when somebody says they are good at it. Yeah, and you should be, right? But then sometimes I could be a great master just pulling your chain, right?

Because if I was a meditation master, I'd tell you I was a bad meditator. But in this case, yeah, no, I'm not very good at it. But like I say, I just, you know, when I first discovered it in the 90s, man, it, the realization that all my thoughts were focused on myself. I mean, it doesn't seem very spectacular, but to feel it profoundly and to see it. Man, I mean, I was just coming into early midlife and it was such a showstop for me. That just changed, that's the other sort of, it really changed my perspective on things to realize, wow, I'm just totally living in my own head all the time. That is exactly what happened with me.

Vlad, I promise I'm going to get to you soon. Just now at that, I got him on the hook. I'm gonna keep coming at him. So when you discovered this midlife, you were doing what at the time and then what happened to your life as a consequence of having discovered practice? Well, okay, so I was a psychiatrist and I was a clinical psychiatrist.

I ran the emergency psychiatric room at UCLA. And I was, I'd been kind of, I mean, I'd been kind of this kind of shy nerd as a kid, and I'd sort of blossomed as a Don Wad in my 30s, right? And so I was, you know, I was in LA and I was having a great time and I was dating all these women. And I, it's very much like a Buddhist thing where you kind of go through things. You begin to see the suffering of things that initially looked very good, right? And I'd kind of come to this pass in my life where I,

things that I thought would fulfill me had manifestly failed. And so I sort of hit this point where, again, sort of a good Buddhist practice, I'd seen the world a bit as being on fire, right? And so I was in a personal space where I was craving something past that. And at that moment, I literally was in a personal space where I was craving something past that. And at that moment, I literally was in a bookstore and I picked up a little book on Buddhist meditation.

And I started reading it. You remember what the book was? Oh, yeah. It was a Jetson Pema book. It was a little ditzel one, but it was kind of a compendium of some of her stuff. Because she, man, her articulations of compassion and emptiness are really, really powerful. Man, a woman can write. And I just, I didn't have exposure to it.

I'd read and said stuff to teenagers. But I mean, I cannot believe somebody is saying this. Oh my goodness. And so yeah, it really impacted me. So I started going to meditation centers and then I kind of fell in with the Tibetans. And that was this huge impact on my life. I just crazy thing where I hosted the Dalai Lama sister at this big dinner.

And Tibet and stuff just arose. And so I had these Tibetan monk buddies and they taught me. So anyway, I just kind of, I get this whole different way of looking at the world that, uh, man, it just rocked me, you know, and, and you ended up studying a lot of this. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. One of the things that interests me, it's really stuck with me because I met you when you were at Emory, you're now at the University of Wisconsin.

Yeah. This was, I think 2009, 2010 was a while ago. A while ago. You had studied, um, you had done a bunch of interesting studies about compassion practice and what kind of impact it has on people. You were looking at the impact on children and foster homes. Correct. Teenagers and also, you had done this study where you had people who had done compassion meditation and they wore like little tape recorder. And you found that the people who had, you had a control group and then the people who had done this had done the practice. And those who had done the practice were laughing more, socializing more and using the word eyed less, which I thought was really cool. But you also have studied esoteric practices. Oh, yeah. Something called

TUMO. TUMO. Oh, well, I tried. So what happened, but this is how I became sort of this immune system researcher was, I was at UCLA and this, because of this sort of poof with the meditation, I did, I became good buddies with a guy named Blobsung Robgate, a brilliant, brilliant Tibetan, then a monastic, but a psychologist and a philosopher. And he began to teach me about this stuff.

And I was like, wait, wait, wait, what? You mean these guys, they spend eight hours a day trying to manipulate their body temperature? Because it's in this practice. What they basically try to generate all this body heat. This is tummo. Yeah, they try to generate all this body heat. And we can spend a whole time talking about this,

because it's really interesting. But essentially, they see this link between raising their body temperature and rapidly achieving enlightenment. And they feel that all the tonic practices are based on this. So, the contract is, can you start just to define it? Yeah, these practices, they're practices in the Mahayana Buddhism, the kind of Buddhism of Tibet, that seeks to use bodily energies, evolve bodily energies to transform consciousness into Buddhah head rapidly. So their idea is that if you, if you just do it through the

mind, you know, the mind is so flighty and unreliable that it takes, what do they say, three copas, each copas, you know, the universe gets destroyed and remade endless times within each one. It takes a long time to get there, right? If you can, if you can harness these problematic bodily energies, sexual energies, heat energies, you know, if you can harness them and redirect them, you can literally drive the transformation of consciousness very rapidly within a lifetime, they say.

So that's what Tantra is. It's essentially this idea that the body has these energies that can be misused as we tend to do from their perspective in this realm Or they can be channel and then you can really psychotomic energy man You can build a bomb or you can build a reactor so they want to build a reactor right and I was a the other thing I did as psychiatrist was I was a medical psychiatrist I saw the sick people in the hospital you see a lady inside really been primed to recognize that the body affected how people felt. And so this idea that the body could be a reservoir

of transformation became really central. It's a central piece of a lot of the work I do. And a lot of the non-meditation work is the same idea that bodily processes can signal the brain in ways that can produce these sort of powerful transformative events. And the Tibetan Buddhist had totally tapped into that. There's a huge relationship between how the body manages heat and how the brain manages emotions.

And that's actually what got me started to research. I became hell-bent on studying tummo. And I went to Emory to study tummo because they had this kind of great mind body science and they had my buddy Geshe L song, and they had this Tibetan thing. And we tried and we tried. And we got, this is as far as we got. We got to the abbot of one of the great Tumomana stories came to town.

And he had a thing for Brazilian stake houses. Go figure. So I brought these two robe Buddhist monks into this Brazilian stake house, which was worth it just for itself. The whole place just totally stopped. You know what I mean? They were used to seeing monks in this Brazilian steakhouse, which was worth it just for itself. The whole place just totally stopped. You know, I mean, they were used to seeing monks in the Brazilian land. Yeah, in the Brazilian steakhouse, you know,

and so we made the pitch to this, this, this, this habit. And he didn't say anything. He just looked at me. And then obviously, just in a rough, he said, you know, our great Tumomaster was touring India recently, went down to see the holy sites. And I go, what, what's he talking about? I said, I said, yeah, and he said, you know, and he couldn't practice his tummo

because he was constantly around people. And I said, you know, and he said, but you know, finally, he was able one day to sneak off by himself and he began doing tummo under a tree. And I'm like, okay. And he said, and you know what happened? He said, there was a goat. The goat was curious and the goat wandered over and started watching the tummo master. And I sort of looked at him, he said, and you know what happened? He said, there was a goat. The goat was curious, and the goat wandered over

and started watching the tumor master. And I sort of looked at him, he said, you know what happened with the goat? I said, no, the goat went blind. And I realized I was the goat. And it was the end of my tumor career. And that was the end of my career as a tumor researcher.

So. Yes. But you've then, I'm gonna put a pin in this, because we're back to it, because we're neglecting Vlad Badley here. But you also then mentioned to me the last time I saw you which was much more recently was when the Dalai Lama was last in Wisconsin like year and a half ago You said you were looking at another

Esoteric Tibetan Tantric practice called the dark retreat. Oh, yes, okay. We're gonna get to that. Okay. I haven't I haven't done it yet Okay, yes, all right, but I don't want to be rude. So we just met Vlad So I don't know anything about you. Are you a meditator? Are you into this stuff? Yes. Well, I am into this stuff.

In terms of my personal meditation practice, I would say very rudimentary and very intermittent. The aspect that fascinated me are neurobiological aspects of meditation, especially mindfulness meditation. In terms of the pattern of activity in the brain that occurs in context of mindfulness meditation, it was remarkable how it is almost the exact opposite of what happens in the brains of individuals who are depressed. And that kind of juxtaposition of depression and mindfulness

meditation and potential to reverse the process of depression or at least as it is present in some individuals, also relying on mind body processes was just fascinating. I've had lifelong struggles with depression and I'm an eight or nine year meditator. And I've found, although I don't have any evidence to prove this other than the evidence of my own subjective experience, that it's quite useful for mitigating if not alleviating depression.

So just looking at the pattern of activity that occurs in context of depression, again, this is in some individuals. This is not a universal phenomenon in the depression. There is excessive activation of something that's called default mode network. And it is essentially a self-referential network. It's an area of regions in the brain known as the default mode. There are multiple regions in the brain that are all interconnected.

And these are the regions that fire when we're thinking about ourselves. When we're thinking about ourselves, when we are reminiscing, when oddly enough, when we're composing music, when we are analyzing social information, but in individuals who are depressed, it is active in association with essentially becoming an enclosed unit. In usual circumstances, when there is any kind of negative emotional experience, it activates different brain network, and this is so-called cognitive executive network, and we start problem solving. We start trying to understand what it is that is making us unhappy or sad and how can we change it?

In individuals who have major depressive disorder, access of negative emotional experience does not activate problem solving part of the brain, it activates default mode network and leads to elaboration of this negative experience and a number of associations from the past. We often refer to it as going to our rollodex of misery and we start thinking about all the unhappy events that have occurred in the past and that ends up being an amplifying feedback loop. At the same time, we're closed off to external experience. So we are internally oriented. We're stuck in this loop that perpetuates negative feelings.

On the other hand, individuals who suffer from major depressive disorder who engage in mindfulness meditation seem to be able to get out of the slube. And looking at the neuroimaging studies, what happens. All of the sudden that hot wiring between salient network apart that brings about these negative feelings and default mode network is interrupted. So wait, so we run through the salient network? That's a different network. Salient network is a. So wait, so we run through the salience network? That's a different network.

Salience network is a different network, and that is the network that processes essentially all sensory information. What's coming at me from the world? Coming at you from the world. And then, if there is something important coming at you from the world, sensation becomes translated into emotion. And that emotion in adaptive state will then drive adaptive response. In depression, it drives default mode network. So what happens

in individuals who have major depressive disorder and engage in mindfulness meditation, it interrupts that kind of aberrant maladaptive link. And it's really interesting because looking at what else can disrupt the function of default mode network in those circumstances, interestingly enough, the pattern of brain activity in individuals who are in love also opposes this state that is present in depression. There are Easter.

So if you found love, it's a good, would it be an antidote to depression? You know, it's, and what she's like, yeah. Yeah. If one is in happily in love, I've seen miraculous transformations in my depressed patients. But there are some, of course,

two degree that depends on luck, but walking in the nature doesn't. And there is evidence that individuals who walk through the nature also have an experience, an experience that disrupts the function of default mode network that we are likely to observe in context of major depressive disorder. I mean, it makes sense. I mean, walking in nature can get you out of your own head, being in love can get in the right context,

and get you out of your own room and of spiral, because you're thinking about somebody else. My first meditation can do the same thing. And interestingly enough, something that has been a point of us in research for Chuck, psychedelics can have a very similar effect. And preliminary evidence suggested they actually may have room in our momentary for treatment of major depressive

disorder. That's controversial. I would say the controversy to a degree is associated with certain moral views of psychedelics. But if we look at the context where it has been used for scientific purposes, there's really, I don't know if you would disagree, Chuck. Yeah, no, really not a whole lot of controversy. It's pretty interesting. I mean, so this is the other thing I do, basically. You do a lot of stuff. I do. You know, you know, you know, that will, right? Yeah, you know, yeah, I'm not the anchor of two major network news shows, but yes, I do. So overestimate how much work that is done.

I doubt it. Yeah, no, it's true. In fact, there's some really interesting, yeah, acute psychedelic stuff is, it does share a lot of, I mean, this guy, the folks at Hopkins have shown this, shares a lot of overlap. It does exactly that. It unwires the default mode network and then causes all sorts of kind of wild, crazy connections, which is why people, I think, probably have these unusual experiences. And then it's interesting, though. It rewires it differently when it comes back in. But yeah, there is some pretty interesting evidence that,

and this is much of my research these days, is actually trying to do the types of studies. And this is, I'm only part of a larger group of people working on this, but trying to do studies that would support a new drug indication under very carefully controlled circumstances for psychedelic for depression. You know, I've been interested in trying, so I've definitely have not done psychedelics,

I've done drugs, I've been pretty open about that. I've not done psychedelics, I've done drugs, I've been pretty open about that. I've not done psychedelics and definitely not in the context of a laboratory study, but I've said aloud in front of my wife that I'm interested in because they're studying what psilocybin does for meditators and I have done Johns Hopkins and I will. I want to have them on the podcast. I should. And she gets sort of freaked out and annoyed as does my shrink by the idea that I would do this, a, given my propensity for panic, and b, given my history of drug addiction. What do you think? Ah, well, I can tell you.

I actually know a fair amount about this. There doesn't, so if you look at classic psychedelics, psilocybin LSD, a mescalin, DMT, they don't have an addictive signal in sort of all the animal models we look at. There doesn't seem to be human evidence of their addictiveness. And there's these interesting studies are today. They've done these very, very large population studies, a couple hundred thousand people looking just simply, just asking people, have you ever done any of these drugs

and how depressed you've been in the last month? Have you been suicidal in the last month? And for all the other drugs, it's, you know, if the mid-line is, I never did drugs, for all the other drugs, yeah. If you've been doing them or if you've done them, you're much more likely to be depressed and suicidal. For psychedelics, it's actually protective.

So there's this sort of interesting signal, just from that sort of cross-sectional stuff. But as you know, you mentioned rural and Griffith. So he did a study, and then here in New York, Steve Ross and Tony Bosses and Jeff Gus, and then why you? They're both small studies. They were both done in depressed, anxious, cancer patients. Both studies used a single dose of psilocybin, they used different comparators, but they were randomized and blinded, although

it's hard to blind psilocybin because you know people have unusual experiences. Yeah, yeah, you know, this, but I'll tell you it's interesting, the regulatory, government regulatory folks have kind of seem to be coming around to that that yeah, well, you know, I mean, sue me at what can you do, but, you know, it is there's a comparator. And what's interesting about these studies

is these people get one treatment. And in a Hawkins study, they were depressed. I mean, their entry score would get them into any antidepressant trial. Six months later, no other treatments. 70% of them are in remission. It's really striking. If you talk to, you'd have to ask Steve, but I mean, they've nabbed and found these people

for a couple of years and they saw the same thing at NYU. And man, a huge number of people are doing well. And it's not just still a side, but you know, there's another group that I admire greatly called MAPS, Multidisciplinary associates for psychedelic studies. They actually just got breakthrough therapy from the FDA, which is a big gonsome gila-like green light, to conduct phase three, the kind of studies that would get you a new indication for MDMA, which is ecstasy, for post-traumatic stress disorder. And their data are also very strong. I mean, they have really, really high rates of what appear to be almost cures. I mean, people have their protocols more extensive

than ours. They do three sessions. They do a bunch of psychotherapy. But dang, like a year later, you know, the vast majority of people are, they don't meet criteria for PTSD anymore. They're not taking meds. So, you know, these are small studies. The definitive studies will be done in the next four years by us and by maps and folks. We'll see. You know, there's a thing called the Winners Curse in Science, right? You know, you do small studies, you get these big effect sizes. You take it out for a drive. I mean, this is why pharma crashes very often.

So, it could crash. But the preliminary data are pretty interesting. And the fact that the FDA gave them, gave maps, this breakthrough therapy thing, is a pretty powerful testimony that they think that there's something they're worth pursuing because this is a whole new mechanism. One treatment, people feel better, three, four, five, six months later. There's a small study from the Imperial College, folks, Robin Card Harris, and those guys over in London. Small study, treatment resistant depression, same signal though, you know three months later people are

Significantly better so so it's interesting and it definitely seems to have an anti-anxiety effect too now You know the acute experience for people can be extremely anxiety provoking because people often have these sort of emotional Lucinogenic experiences that often take them people report that it's taken them to a place of stuckness in their life, or a place of conflict, or a place of trouble. And it can be very distressing because, you know, these are very powerful real experiences when people are experiencing them. But a lot of times what happens is people, there's something about the experience that it causes them to break through or see some different perspective on it that can often be profoundly liberating for people.

I mean, it's, you know, this is sort of my part of my stock and trade. So I know a lot about this and it's pretty, pretty interesting. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on Page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions.

What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lin spears. When Brittany's fans formed the free Brittany movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lin's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling

parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dysentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. My shrinks argument, and actually he's the muckety mucket NYU. He, his argument, so he knows the guys do the stuff.

His argument was for somebody like you, whose brain chemistry is you know fragile at times And who has panic disorder and has to go on television like probably not good to master your brain chemistry Given that what you have to do the rest of your life and I you know, I mean I there's a certain argument to that I mean you think the he may be on well You know because I want him to be wrong just so yeah rooting against him in this discussion My rule and I you'd probably agree with this flat it in psychiatry in mental health if it ain't broke don't fix it Right that that's because a lot of times If if it gets broken again, it can be harder to fix again, right?

So I mean always I think when if somebody is struggled and they really and it's going well for them, yeah there's there's there's there's there's an argument against not rocking the boat especially you know guys like us that are you know we're on the edge of I mean we're always I suspect all the sure story on the edge of what we can do right I mean we're living these lives that are really demanding if it's, because the thing about the second, you know, so anything, but meditation can do this sometimes too, right? You know, I mean, there's, there are some people that are harmed by meditation.

Yes, we've talked about it on this podcast. You had Willoughby? Yes, Willoughby and Jared, yes. So, you know, I mean, so it's the same thing, right? I mean, psychedelics give people experiences that can shift them around. And so, you know, I wouldn't recommend it for somebody. I wouldn't recommend it for somebody unless they were in a place where they were symptomatic and other things weren't working.

And I can't even really do that because there's no legal way to do it and we're at the beginning of these data. But yeah, I hate to say that, but your psychiatrist is not without his point, although it's a pretty interesting thing. I... You're killing me. Yeah, yeah.

Turn off my phone, we'll talk, you know what I'm saying. Okay, Trevor. I would say that, unfortunately, we are dealing with, if not black, with gray box. So in certain circumstances, there is preliminary evidence that there can be benefit. On the other hand, in circumstances that have not been explored, it is not necessarily that we have a reason to believe that it can be dangerous. It can also be beneficial. I think that the honest answer is we just don't know.

But something that might be appealing in context of major depressive disorder, there are researchers in MDD who are of a view that major depressive disorder may be akin to consequence of emotional learning. That individuals who have a certain kind of neurological predisposition, if they've experienced early life adversity, if they've experienced parental loss, if they've had negative events, that will activate a certain pattern of activity in their brain. With subsequent episodes, the connections in these neural structures that coincide with the experience of the pressed mood and depression becomes carved in deeper and deeper. And we do know based on epidemiological studies that intercurrent stress is an activator

of depression, maybe in the first four or five episodes, beyond that depression becomes self-activated. We really don't need any kind of defined precipitant in order for the oppressive episode to come forth to wash over us. The part that is really intriguing is psychedelics are disruptors of learned patterns. Yeah, that's right.

So there is deep and one time emotional learning. Somebody experiences horrific traumatic event, one time. The pattern of brain activity is altered in enduring way. There is nothing externally that needs to perpetuate it. Of course, if there is repeated trauma, it will, if anything, reinforce that pattern of activity. But what if it could be reversed? What if there can be a chemical event that is so profound that much like experiencing trauma can induce this relatively enduring pattern of activity in the brain associated with the anxiety and over arousal,

what if something can be profoundly effective, chemically induced, that can reverse that pattern with only one administration? So again, there is very fascinating preliminary evidence that the only thing is that this is an unmapped continent. We barely have an idea where the contours of the coastlines lie. We have no idea what's in the middle of the continent. So trying to make some specific predictions, this individual respond this way or that way, I think it is outside of our reach. But at the theoretical level, it's something that is very appealing and very exciting. And this is what so Roland Griffiths call it. I think he's really kind of reverse PTSD, right?

So that's sort of this model because one of the things that's found in every single study is that the intensity of the experience, the acute intensity, especially the sort of, the thing that's been most looked at is mystical type experiences where people have these sort of nondual, you know, they feel it kind of one with the universe, they feel that life is infused with the meaning, they didn't understand, or they're interconnected in ways they didn't realize, or there's a series of those sort of things.

But to the degree that that happens pretty nicely, in alcohol abuse, smoking, depression, anxiety, the more that happens, the more the more relieved of their symptoms people are six months later, one month later. So there's something there's this repeated signal between the phenomenology of the acute event and the long-term outcome. Now that doesn't mean it's the conscious experience. Conscious experience could be driven by brain changes and it's just along for the ride, or it could be that there's some kind of re-inferent phenomenon that we don't fully understand with the conscious experiences and feeding back into the brain, but there's pretty nice evidence that it is this. There's something about having a certain type of intense, time limited experience

that sets up some kind of long-term change. And nobody knows what the long-term change is. The most people have looked at now is a day or two afterwards. And whether it's epiphenomenon over rewiring, or is it the nature of the experience, or that is very hard to understand. And are those even questions that have a meaning, It's really hard, you know, where consciousness starts and the wiring ends. But anyway, so the point is, yeah, there's something,

you know, humans evolved to have this, if you're a skeptic and a downer, this sort of unreasonable sense often that life has a meaning, life has a purpose, that things are interconnected, that the fact that the lion just ate the gazelle doesn't mean that it's just a bloody mess, you know. And people can have experiences where they tap into this sense that there's some deeper unity and meaning. It can happen on natural, you know. But this is a classic example of these ancient practices where people discovered a long time ago that it can also be sort of supercharged, you know, the disease substances

that induce these types of non-dual experiences that can be very powerful for people. And you might imagine, you know, I mean, they build social cohesion and groups where if you feel like, you know, you're interconnected with people. And so there are probably evolutionary reasons why, you know, that thing evolved in humans and in humans discover that it can be, you know, that you can pull a thing off a branch, chew on it, and, you know, pretty soon you're, you know, you you can pull a thing off a branch, chew on it, and pretty soon you're having a kind of a powerful spiritual experience. So it does seem to be something about that, whether it's a marker of the wiring that's

being activated or whether the wiring being activated produces some kind of conscious experience that then is causative in some way we don't understand, but the data are pretty strong. So it's a totally different way of thinking about treating depression. It's not an anti-depressant. That's not what it is. It's a, people say often it's like a year of therapy in five hours. That's probably a better way to think about it.

When it works, that's what it seems to be. Use the phrase unmapped continent. I fear this is, I'm calling myself out as a terrible podcast hope, but I host, but I fear that you may be an unmapped continent to our listeners, because I haven't yet gotten you to just give us the basics of your biography. I just got back from two weeks in Russia. Is your accent Russian? It is Slavic, but not Russian. So I grew up in Belgrade, which used to be Yugoslavian. And after completion of medical school, I became interested in neurosciences

and then spend a few years for a year studying clinical psychology and they did postgraduate studies in neurobiology. With this idea of, well, understanding some of the links that Chuck is also interested in, and that is the link between consciousness and emotion and the neurological underpinning that that has been my passion for the last several decades. And how did you get interested in meditation and how does that fit into your original? So, you know, meditation, frankly enough, was not something that was a trigger

something that was a trigger to explore these relationships. I was in my initial experience with meditation was in context of Eastern martial arts. So I was involved in Ikea for eight years. And it is something that was both the beginning and end of all our training sessions. And it was more kind of an empty mind meditation. So that is the time when it was probably the most consistent and clearly associated with the changes both in mindset

but also a very keen physical experience that accompanied that type of meditation. So unfortunately, although my colleague who led these practices said, you know, this is the experience and practice that is most necessary at times when you have the least time to do it. So it is when you are distressed when you feel overwhelmed. That is when you should find time to revisit meditation. Unfortunately, I can't say, I've learned many good things from him, but this is not the one that I could practically apply as often as I should probably ought to have in my later life.

So what do you do now? So now I'm a clinical professor of psychiatry with USC School of Medicine and I teach medical students and residents about neurobiology of major psychiatric conditions. And what is this, you guys just put out this rather thick book, which is what is that? True, except for rather, right? It's very thick.

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, Everything that's very thick. It's very thick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, so it's called the new mind body science of depression. And it's basic. So Vlad's being modest. He's one of the countries, real leading educators of mental health clinicians around the neurobiology of all sorts of stuff.

I mean, he's famous in those circles, profoundly famous. And so he and I have worked together for a decade, doing a lot of, you know, wandering the world, teaching doctors and, you know, nurses and stuff about, about middle illness and about the neurobiology and the biology that underpin them. And so we were in Columbia, we were in Columbus Circle and a colleague, Socrates and the right-in-the-ding book. It was like midnight. We were laying there at the fountain. The colleague had a good sense to exit the project when he saw how difficult it was going to be. But Vlad and I stuck with it. And we said, you know, let's, we wander the world talking about all this stuff, this sort of integrated view of what depression is as a

mind-body disorder. Let's foolishly, let's write a book. And so we started writing a book, we had a lot to say, and it took us five years. And, you know, yeah, it's write a book. And so we started writing a book. We had a lot to say, and it took us five years. And, you know, yeah, it's like 700 pages. But basically, it's this sort of compendium of various views on depression, like what causes it from a evolutionary perspective, from a more pragmatic stress, genetics, and then what's its underlying neurobiology

and how does it interrelate with, you know, the immune system and inflammatory systems and systems in the body and then a bunch that Vlad's done brilliantly on the brain. And then we try to do some case studies to show how it applies. But so basically it's an attempt to provide a synthesis of where we think the field is now

in terms of understanding what depression is. But Vlad, what would the evolutionary case for depression be? I mean, sounds like if, what depression is? Vlad, what would the evolutionary case for depression be? I mean, sounds like, like if I was on the savanna, I'd be dead early because I'm mopey and not moving fast. And, you know, that is where we started. We started with a question like that because if depression, indeed, reduced reproductive fitness, evolution would have eliminated depression long time ago.

Yet it not only has persisted, but one can argue that its prevalence is actually increasing with every decade. And genetic risk factor for depression have increased in the last 10,000 years, like the short, low, low, low, low, low. So that was a fundamental question that we try to answer. How come? Few things that we came to conclude, number one, major depressive disorder as a single biological entity based on all the neuroimaging studies, based on all genetic studies, based on the studies

of biochemistry and biomarker does not exist. So major depressive disorder is a single biological entity with almost complete certainty we can say. We do not exist. So we're dealing with multitude of different conditions that have similar enough appearance that they can be assumed under the same descriptive umbrella, but we're not dealing with a single condition. So that is really important. So there is no pathophysiology of depression. There is a pathophysiology of depressions, and what we try to find are some common denominators. What all these depressions have in common. Some of the things that, and a lot of it has to do with Chuck's work, that we have come to conclude, is that depression is definitely not only a brain disease, that it is definitely a mind-body disease, and it is a condition where the communication

between brain and body is disrupted in a relatively enduring way. And it's not unidirectional. There are people who have depression, who will have increased activity of hypotelamic pituitary adrenal axis, and therefore will have very high levels of stress hormones. There are people who are depressed, who have low levels of stress hormones. There are people who are depressed, who will have high serotonin levels in their brain. There are people who are depressed, who have low serotonin levels in their brain. Same is true for Norrapin effort. In other words, whichever biomarker, at least most of the ones that we have looked into, and even in terms of the pattern of the brain activity, there is no universal finding. We can find opposite findings in individuals who have major depressive disorder.

It sounds like a mess. It is a mess. That is the most succinct way of defining neurobiological research into major depressive disorder. It sounds like a mess. It is a mess. That is the most succinct way of defining neurological research into major depressive disorder. It is a mess. And what we try to do is at least not make it less messy because that would be inappropriate, but rather to try to systematize that mess and provide all arguments and counterarguments at a different view of looking at depression. And the suggestion is that these pathophysiological mechanisms that are involved in depression would probably not persist

if they did not have another side. And the flip side of all these pathophysiological mechanisms is that they are highly adaptive. The problem with depression is that these mechanisms that on their own in certain circumstances are adaptive lose their adaptive capacity, either in terms that they are overly pronounced, that they occur in appropriate times, that they occur in appropriate times, that they occur in an appropriate context,

or that they last much more than they should. In other words, if we are in some threatening or dangerous situation, it is absolutely appropriate to have increased cortisol in our blood. It is absolutely appropriate that sympathetic system becomes activated so that we can redistribute our blood in preparation for phyto-flight response. It is absolutely appropriate to activate our immune system, because if we sustain bodily injury, we will be at a preemptive strike, we will be already ready to fight infection. So all those are adaptive mechanisms. The problem is that in depression, although at a lower level, they are enduring. And when they endure,

they can be very much damaging and pathological processes that cannot only cause alteration in how we experience depression psychologically at the cognitive and emotional level. They can actually be associated with disruption in bodily processes that contribute to individual score depressed having higher likelihood of developing diabetes, higher likelihood of having abnormalities in their cholesterol, having cardiovascular disease, even cancer. So that is the aspect that I think would you agree with that? Absolutely. And I think one of the other arguments we make in the book is that some of the adaptive

value of depression may have evolved, not so much help us deal with other people, but to deal with immune, I call, you know, the world of the microbes, right? So it, because it turns out that although not all depression is related to like overactivity of the immune system, people with depression is a group tend to have that. And we've written about this a lot. And it's in the book that it may be that one of the reasons that depression risk genes are persisted is because, although they make you depressed, that in fact, the pattern of activation, of chemical activation in the body that occurs with depression helps you fight depression, helps you fight infection.

So for instance, if you make a list of all the symptoms that happen to you when you're sick and make a list of all the symptoms that happen to you when you're depressed, it turns out that there's almost complete overlap and some really weird ones. So for instance, you know, when you're really sick, you tend to get a fever, right? So many studies have shown that medically healthy people with depression have an elevated body temperature. You treat the body temperature drops. I feel when I've gotten depressed in the past, especially when I didn't know I was depressed,

I thought I was sick. Yeah, exactly. And the reason you did is because depression, we think, I think that although not all depression is associated with increased inflammation, I think depression evolved out of sickness. And that it primarily evolved as strategy for coping with the microbial world, not the human world. And that what happens with depression is that in circumstances, and it is what Vlad alluded to, that in circumstances where your risk of death

from infection gets increased, you're not sick yet, but you, because the brain and the body are these bi-directionally wired, you begin to activate all these same things. Your body temperature goes up, your cytokine to go up here. You begin to get the same kind of changes in your liver that you get when you're infected.

It's sort of like, you know, if you're in a situation, you know, across typical human groups, across human evolution, if the stressors that still make us depressed today operate in that world, your risk of infectious death goes up enough that the ability to activate these pathways becomes adaptive. There's a cost, but it becomes adaptive. And even depressive symptoms, which share a lot of overlap with sickness can be valuable, right? So you lay down, you conserve energy.

I mean, this is a complex thing, but I mean, there's tons of pages on this in the book about all the ways in which that explains, you know. So for instance, if you make a list of the genes that have been most often associated with depression, almost to a single one, they also protect you against some illness or other. Whatever form of the genes associated with depression, that's the form of the gene that in environments where there's still a high infectious burden, if you've got that gene you're more likely to live. It's really interesting. There's a whole literature

on this. So this has been an argument of the book is that one of the arguments is that is that we can or just as we need to expand depression beyond the brain, we need to actually expand it beyond the body and we need to expand it beyond the human realm. We think about depression mostly being related to, you know, our interaction with other people, but there's a secret quiet level here where the world of the bugs turns out to be. Like the stuff in our gut, the microbiome. Yeah, the microbiome. So there's two immune aspects to depression in the modern world. One is we think this ancient association where depression evolved as an adaptive survival strategy. Some folks went down and tested these ideas of ours in Bolivia a couple of years ago and looked at people. They weren't other gatherers, but they're way out in a jungle.

They get depressed, they get their symptoms look the same as us, they get depressed over some of the same stuff. Just like here, depression is associated with this increased inflammation. It's remarkable. And so it's not just that the modern world has caused this sort of discombobulation of the immune system and depression, but we have altered our relationship with the microbial world so incredibly in the modern world. The good part is we're not, you know, until, you know, 1950 percent of people born were dead by the age of 15 from infection. Thank God that

that, you know, knock on wood is not going on now. But we kind of tossed the baby out with the bath water and we've so disrupted our relationship with the microbes within and without us that it's really played havoc with our immune systems because what happened was because all these bugs were always around and because most of them didn't kill you, you had to tolerate them and over time, it looks like the immune systems like the economy likes to outsource things to cheaper places. So if the immune system needs to learn what to tolerate and what to attack, instead of having to learn it all in its own over time, if the bugs had to be tolerated were always there, they become the teachers of tolerance.

And so you get this interactive effect, especially early in life, between the microbial environment and the human. And then you totally disrupt the microbial environment. And in the last 60, 70 years, the rates of every allergy asthma autoimmune condition have gone up thousands of percent. It's epidemic of immune dysregulation. One of the ways to get depressed is to have a dysregulated immune system.

And you see rates of depression increasing. Just as places clean up and become Western in their lifestyle, people stop dying of infection, but they get this immediate rise in every type of autoimmune and allergic condition, and you see a rise in depression. Interesting. Yeah. The last question on this, there's been a lot of churn of late in the media, a little bit of a

back lash against the hype over mindfulness, you know, that some people saying, if I'm scientists recently wrote it, including Willoughby, the aforementioned Willoughby Britain, who is a previous guest on this podcast, wrote an article saying that some of the science, our into mindfulness is not as good as it should be. And we don't even define mindfulness well enough and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But this all just leads to a question for you.

I've always been of the, I've always had the understanding that while the science around meditation is in its early stages, one of the areas where it's strongest is as it pertains to depression and anxiety. And what's your view? Does depression and anxiety, does mindfulness meditation help really

with depression and anxiety? In my experience it does, and one can read a literature from two perspectives. One can read a literature that is based on well-designed and executed studies. And it so happens that the better and the more specific design of the study, the more consistency there is in positive results. On the other hand, whenever something becomes very popular, there is all kind of secondary research that takes place.

And there's an attempt to commercialize it. And all of a sudden, mindfulness is now being used not only for depression and anxiety, where we have relatively robust evidence. Then it became used for dealing with stress. It became used for dealing with streped sleep disturbances for dealing with chronic pain and so forth. So some of these derivatives are maybe I'm not saying invalid, but not on as solid scientific ground. So I would say that around. So I would say that although there are suspect quality research publications out there, I would not necessarily throw a blanket and say the entire scientific evaluation of mindfulness meditation is invalid or we should give up on it or it is an artifact.

I would not agree with that kind of conclusion. You guys have been great. Final question, just for you, because I said we would talk about it. The dark retreat. Yeah, that's right. What is the dark retreat? Well, I didn't know about it either until I was down at MD Anderson. So the dark retreat is... MD Anderson and Houston.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My buddy Alejandra down there, it's a nigma practice for the Tibetan officials in the crowd mostly. So what they do is they put themselves in total darkness, 25 hours a day. For how long? 49 days. Well, what? Well, 49 days is the maximum length of time you can stay in the barto.

The intermediate stays between birth and death and Tibetan Buddhism. So, you know, after you die, you shed your body, become this sort of mind-streamed spirity thing that races around and freaks out. And every seven days, if you haven't reincarnated, you die again in the barto and you're reborn. You do that seven times and then you're done for it. You're heading somewhere up down sideways, but so there's a tie in there with the Bardo state. 49 days total darkness, people slide, they've got a whole, they've got a place to call a rott over, they do this, I guess. I haven't seen it, but by description, they slide the food under the door, you don't get any light, right? And so of course, what happens? You have to do 49 days, or can you do like a three day?

Well, you know, I think that if we should, you know, I still want to do this. Yeah, I want to do this. We're working on a new book that this would really, if you want to come join us, this would really be a deal. Can we shoot it? I mean, it's hard.

I think we could probably shoot it. Okay. So anyway, I don't have to do it for 49 days. No, I don't think they'd let you do it for me. Because what happens is people start hallucinating like mad. And so from a Buddhist perspective, the point is not to listen to the hallucinations as sort of messages from God, but to recognize that your mind is creating a whole entire world. And that when you come out of the dark retreat, you've now got solid evidence that what looks

solid. Now, you saw the same thing. You know, two days in and you're talking to your dead grandma and you realize, oh my God, my mind creates the world. So especially certain schools of Buddhism that are more in that direction. This is very powerful. It's like, you know, you think these things are solid. No, they're not. You just, you know, so that's the point is to learn to see the arising of appearances and learn not to cling to them and realize that they are in fact products of your mind that are insubstantial.

So it's really interesting because of course in the psychedelic world people would be looking for meaning in what arose because it's another way to induce those states but from boot perspective it's about recognizing the insubstantiality of the ego and yeah so I mean it's really fascinating and that's the extent of my experience But we sort of have this open invitation, you know And I've kind of been putting them off because I just been so swamped and stuff. I'm coming with you. All right seriously All right, I'll tell my co-author that we're back and yeah, no, I'm bringing some cameras. We're gonna let's do this thing Okay, I

So I just finished writing a book that's coming out at New Year's So I just finished writing a book that's coming out at New Year's, which is like an introduction to meditation for fields called meditation for Fijitiesceptics. But I'm such a glutton for punishment. I actually just started working on the book after that. And it's about sort of I'm trying to do for compassion practices, what has already been done for mindfulness, which is create some hype and excitement around it. I'm looking for great stories in the compassion world around compassion practice. Well, who should I be talking to? I would talk to, well, okay. So, what are the great stories? Well, yeah, I mean, yeah,

we do have some really interesting stories. We have some really interesting stories from that when we did the foster kid study down in the depths of Atlanta. I mean, there were some really touching stories. Are they are those foster kids still being taught these practices? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Emory quiet modest guy. Yes, the universe. I'd start with him runs the universe well runs that universe man um and then of course the folks at heart the folks at Stanford um and of course Jimpa and Jim Puzz the former yeah guests on this podcast. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I know you know him I'm very impressed with what's going on at Emory. They they're doing some really interesting stuff

They got this international thing where they're they're bringing compassion into K through 12. We're doing an interesting study where we're actually now, I'm working with the chaplains at Emory and we are teaching them compassion training and looking to see does that change? Patient outcomes because these guys at Emory, they see 100,000 patients a year and so we get this whole group of hospital chaplains and there half of them are getting compassion training, half aren't, we're looking to see, can you, these guys sort of the storm troopers of compassion in the hospital,

can we really maximize their capacity to go in and do that? So there's some really interesting stuff going on down there. And there's some great stories from the chaplains about really sick people in the hospital and them help using some of these sort of low-jone practices to realign how they feel about their situation. Awesome. Yep. Thank you.

You guys are both fantastic. This is great. Thank you. It's a really, really fun. Okay, so that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. Please take a minute to leave us a rating and a review. And if you want to suggest topics or guests for the show, just hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Special thanks to Lauren Efron, Josh Cohan, and the rest of the team here at ABC who helped

make this thing possible. And remember, we're now on Tune-in. You can hear our new episodes there five days early on Fridays from the end of this year. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next week. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music.

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