The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Connected Species: How the Evolution of the Human Brain Can Save the World by Mark A. Williams

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

The Connected Species: How the Evolution of the Human Brain Can Save the World by Mark A. Williams https://amzn.to/46xf4f5 Human beings have succeeded as the most dominant species on earth in large part due to our need to connect and cooperate. It was our ability to socialize and connect that catapulted our species to phenomenal heights of innovation, through collaboration and specialization. This drive has fine-tuned our unconscious perception of faces, facial expressions, body language, and touch. Our primitive drive to connect changes how we perceive the world and the people around us. We see, hear, empathize with, and understand others differently depending on whether they are a member of our in-group or not. This unconscious drive to connect can draw us together, but it also emphasizes the differences between groups. And it is getting worse, as overcrowding, technology, and the media often focus us on our differences. We become more and more divided into groups as a result. Here, Mark Williams shows us how to recapture the drive for connection in a way that will help us look past our differences and reconnect, even with those whom we perceive to be outside our groups. He starts by discussing the human brain’s specialization for connection and how it evolved, and the fascinating way we automatically process the thoughts and feelings of others. He focuses on how connection works in practice and why it is important for learning, innovating, health and wellbeing. He then explores the negative consequences of our drive for connection and explains how it contributes to racism, sexism, nationalism, and many other social issues of our day, as well as its impact on our individual health and wellbeing. He ends with a positive perspective by examining how we can use our drive for connection to expand our in-group and extend multicultural societies for the good of our planet.

You wanted the best? You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate your support and love ladies and gentlemen boys and girls children of all ages welcome to the giant podcast tent in the sky where we have the most brilliant minds and guests from all over the world from all over the genres and all their latest and hottest books and we have one today we're gonna be talking about the evolution of the human brain. Those of you who need some more evolution. So we're going to have a guest on to talk about how you can elevate your brain function more.

Although some of you may be just kind of stuck. I don't know. I've seen the human race. It needs some help. He's the author of the latest book. Comes out August 15th, 2023. The Connected Species. some help uh he's the author of the latest book comes out august 15th 2023 the connected species how the evolution of the human brain can save the world by mark a williams he joins us on the show today to talk about his latest work and uh maybe you know we can all figure out how to be smarter

as a human race i mean let's not push it but i mean maybe we could try i don't know at least a couple of us can certainly i'm not one to be throwing rocks at the glass house of using your brain. Mark A. Williams, PhD, is a professor of cognitive neuroscience with over 25 years experience conducting behavioral and brain imaging research. He's published more than 70 scientific articles and received numerous high-profile fellowships and grants. He has made many TV and radio appearances to discuss topics including emotions, I have those, technology, I have none of that, education, none of that either, and racism. We don't want that. And even while we can't, and even why we can't tickle ourselves, which is the main reason I actually brought him on. I mean, it's an excellent book, but I really wanted to solve this puzzle.

His research has been featured in outlets globally, including the New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian, and New Scientist. Welcome to the show, Mark. How are you? I'm great, Chris. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Give us a dot com so we can find you on the interwebs. Where do we want people to hunt you down and stalk you on the interwebs so it's uh doctor so dr mark williams dot com nice and easy there you go and let's get something out of the way because i've lost much sleep since reading your bio why can't we tickle ourselves damn it yeah it's a great question um

so the whole system's set up so that we'll detect uh things crawling on us so spiders and stuff so if we're actually tickling trying to tickle ourselves we get feedback from our brain saying it's you dummy it's not something else so you don't have to worry about it so you don't actually get that tickling feeling you've actually got it yeah you've got to get someone else to tickle you i actually when i read that i tried it i'm like can i tickle myself i'm like it doesn't work does it doesn't work wow okay but the but spiders can tickle me well i've i've had that spiders can tickle you especially this summer and spring so welcome the show congratulations on the new book uh give us an overview as to why you wrote this book and uh we're interested in discussing the subject with people yeah Yeah, great, great question.

So I've been meaning to write this for a long time. I actually got asked by a publisher about 10 years ago to write it, and I never got around to it because I was doing too many other things, working, basically. It was actually COVID. During COVID, I got locked down here in Australia, and I decided I needed a little project. So I decided to finally sit down and write the book.

I also saw what was going on during COVID, which, you know, really affected us as a species because of the fact that we're all isolated. And so I decided, you know, it was a really good time to actually get the book written finally. But it's not all about COVID. COVID just was the impetus to actually get it done. You know, most people don't know this, but do you know where COVID came from? No. Vegemite. It originated from Vegemite. Vegemite, really? Yeah. Have you heard that?

I love Vegemite. Vegemite is awesome. Vegemite's great because it's what's missing from beer, right? It's what what we take out of beer so if you have a hangover you eat vegemite you get over the hangover really maybe i should have done that in my drinking days anyway that's a joke people please don't start a whole conspiracy theory about that uh so some somebody right now is listening to the internet going yeah that's true that and flat earth everyone knows the earth is for people uh so. So anyway, let's get to your book and we'll start using our brains here as we're joking around. So tell us about why we are the connected species and the evolution of the brain.

And why the hell aren't people still using it? I don't know. Yeah, so we're the connected species. I call us the connected species because we aren't the strongest animal out there and we don't have the largest brain and we're not the strongest animal out there. But we became the alpha species on planet Earth and we've taken over basically everywhere because of the fact that we're connected, because we actually collaborate with each other. And we're the only species in the world that actually collaborates across groups.

So, you know, there's bees and stuff that have these amazing communities where they all work together and they have different jobs and all the rest of it. But one beehive won't turn around to another beehive and say, hey, there's some great flowers over there. You should go and use them to make honey. Or we've got extra honey. You want some honey this week? And then you can give us some honey next week or whatever we're the only species that does that and we do that

because we've got this amazing connected brain and our brain is actually growing so big and relative to our bodies growing to to this extent because we needed to connect because we want to connect to activate your brain to get your brain working to exercise your, the best thing you can do is sit down and talk to someone because that activates more of your brain than anything else you do because most of our brain is involved in actually communicating, in actually talking to each other and trying to understand all the nuances of that connection. There you go.

We've had some neuroscience folks on before like yourself, and boy, I learned a lot from them. I'm. And boy, I learned a lot from them. I'm still dumb, but I learned a lot from them. But, you know, it was interesting to me. They talked about how important it is. You know, we had one neuroscience on who talked, one of the problems we have is with these screens and the two-dimensional factors of them.

And we're really not designed or hardwired to deal with that. We're designed to watch someone have a discussion with them see their eyes their their facial expressions and learn to read um and so this is kind of interesting so i mean i know we're tribal kind of like you know your example of the bees but we've learned to kind of reach beyond tribalism and you know like now we have a global sort of food economy you know we've learned to trade off is trade off the right word where we we learn to you know connect and engage and we we see the trade-off of like you know where the bees are like hey fuck those other bees you know we're like hey let's uh those other people we don't really like them much because they're you know they're

not american or something and then uh and then uh you know but we're like hey they got some they got really cool berries over there so we'll work with them because they got berries hey yeah exactly we now we're willing to actually do that and and to collaborate across groups which is why you know like i've got a computer here sitting in front of me and all the bits and pieces from that come from all over the world right yeah and so we're actually willing to do that and you and i are talking across a huge ocean um and willing to do that without any problems at all so our species is able to do that whereas yeah no other species is actually able to do that unfortunately because of the internet we're actually becoming more divided so in the last 10 years we've become more divided than we ever have been and you know because of the fact that we're actually getting separated now rather than

actually coming together and that's what we need to really change and is that because we don't spend more time humanly together i mean we certainly experienced a lot of that over covid and uh certainly you know half my family doesn't talk the other half but i think that's most families at this point yeah most of us have got become really really isolated because of the fact that we spend a lot of time in isolation or isolated from people so we were told we had to socially isolate and our brains of course are adaptive they constantly adapt to your situation they constantly change based on what you're doing so if you're spending time by yourself and not actually with other people it'll adapt to that and it'll think that's actually normal.

And it's not normal. So we need to actually spend time with people because spending time actually sitting down with someone face to face is better for your brain than anything else you can do. It's better than any drug that we've actually got out there in relation to mental health and illness. Yeah. So don't tell the drug companies or I might get something, you know, a bomb involved. Yeah. Yeah, so don't tell the drug companies or I might get something, you know, a bombing bullet in there. Yeah, I mean, that kind of makes sense because we live in a really depressed world in society. Everyone's on antidepressants and whatever.

I mean, I'm on coffee most of the time and caffeine. But, yeah, it's kind of interesting you say that. And it's so important that we do that and maybe that's you know one of the reasonings in your book is we need to value that connection with that we have to our species you know i i before covid i i could go out with my friends i could go out to eat and go out to dinner and and even then it's it's it's harder and harder to find people to hang out with and make friends with, you know, where you're like, hey, do you want to go do this or do that? It's so hard, you know, people just isolate in their little bunker homes at this point.

Yeah, I mean, there's two things working against us. One was the COVID and all of that. And, you know, it's been told that we've got to stay away from people and we shouldn't touch people and people are dirty and all the rest of it and then you've also got on top of that in the last 10 years we've been pushed into isolation through uh the the tech companies who are actually you know using algorithms and they're using ways of actually getting us addicted to the devices so we're all spending time looking at these phones all the time and our brains as i said they constantly adapt to choose it or lose it and we're not using those really important areas of our brains

which connect us and we're using these other ones which are just to stare at a screen and we know that you know our iq for the first time in history has gone down really worldwide so yeah our iq is going down which explains a lot of things, right? We're actually now here in Australia and in the US, kids when they finish school now are a year and a half behind where they were 10 years ago. So kids who are leaving school today in year 12 are actually equivalent of 10 and a half, you know, what they were 10 years ago, which is really sad.

And, again, universities have had to shift their courses as well so that they're easier because the students they're getting aren't as educated as they used to be or aren't as intelligent as they used to be. Just having a smartphone next to you actually decreases your working memory and your intelligence level. Just having a phone that's sitting next to you turned off

because of how addicted we are to these things. So we've really got to have a think about what we're actually doing and start doing more. doing see when social media first came out and twitter and i was huge on social media one of the big uh sort of social media influencer pioneers whatever you want to call it um you know everyone saw it as a kumbaya moment of it connecting the world better and i'm like you know we we kind of became one. And, you know, it helped the Arab Spring overthrow some bad governments. And it seemed to be a great thing against fighting against, you know, racism, hate. You know, it kind of created a global community where it was easier for us as a tribe to go,

hey, we really like those people i mean maybe maybe if there had been that sort of stuff around during hitler or stalin or other uh authoritarians maybe you know things got might got to put down sooner but but the big but here i mean you still see that people like putin and iran and other places can still be repressive regimes. And they just kind of figure out how to master the internet, China as well, and make it so that they couldn't be affected by that. But I initially took it as like, you know, hey, it connects us more. We can understand, you know, I could be friends with people all over the world for the first time in my history.

I could sell and ship stuff and do business all over the world very easily but it does seem to backfire you know i i remember when i first went out to dinner and i saw like a family of four two kids and and two parents and they were sitting there in their booth and every one of them was doing this and i'm like geez that can't be healthy there's they're not even talking to each other. There's family there and kids and they're just, they're just all like zombified. If you look at most people now, they're just walking around and I'm guilty of this too. You know, what's on my phone? I mean, shit, I'll get up, go to my desk, go to the sink to prepare like a protein shake or something for working out and, and I'll have, I'll take my phone with me.

Like, oh my God, the distance of 10 feet or 15 20 feet or whatever i really need a phone for that like i'm is it that lonely on that crossing that uh that hurdle yeah it's it's nuts how how addictive we are and there's nothing social about social media it's clever that they call it that but there's nothing social about it's an advertisement right it's a way of advertising what you're doing or what's actually out there or that there are some big protests coming up, which is awesome. And if we call it advertising, then it actually changes. But it is just advertising.

It's not social, right? Social is about actually getting face-to-face with someone and actually spending time with someone. And it is really scary, especially you mentioned families, because we now know that there's this still face effect happening with children now because they're not learning how to use their facial expressions because they're not actually, their carers aren't looking at them when they actually do stuff.

Wow. So there's a still face going on. They just have, like, dead face? They just have, yeah, dead face because of the fact that they never learn. Because as a toddler or as a baby, what we do is we do something cute or funny and then we look up to our carer and they'll be smiling at us. And we know, oh, that's when I do something like this. That's how it happens.

And so I'll do that when I do something funny. Or if I fall over and hurt myself, I look up and my carer is looking concerned. And I know that facial expression goes with that thing. That's what, you know, those things match up. But now, of course, carers are all on their phones like this. So they don't respond to the child. So the child never learns what the different facial expressions mean. So they don't know how to use them.

So they just have a still face. And now we've got, you know, there's all these school programs in schools to teach kids how to use, you they just have a still face and now we've now we've got you know there's all these school programs in schools to teach kids how to use you know what a happy face is what a sad face is what an angry face is which is nuts that we've actually got to teach them these things because they should learn them automatically this is crazy and i mean but we're not going to pick that up looking all the happy faces on instagram because no one's ever sat on instagram everyone's always happy hi Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at

chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me uh training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership management entrepreneur ism uh podcasting corporate stuff uh with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as ceo and be sure to check out chris foss leadership institute.com now back to the show chrisfossleadershipinstitute.com. Now back to the show. Yeah, and you don't actually react to it, right? Because you actually,

they filmed it two weeks ago or a month ago or a week ago, whatever. But that's not a reaction to you. That's nothing that you're actually done that's actually caused that reaction to you. So therefore, you're not learning anything from it. You can't actually learn what happy is unless you're actually doing something positive and then someone smiled at you

wow that's interesting now one thing you talk about too is we see hear and empathize with and understand others uh differently depend upon whether a member of a group or not uh is that you know one thing we we seem to have lost is empathy. Politically, we're at extremes in the country of America. I don't know how things are going in Australia, but I imagine it's not better. I don't know. That's up to you guys. But here in America, we're highly polarized in our political natures.

We seem to be polarized in a lot different things um and and it seems like we don't have a lot of empathy like i'm in the middle as a democrat where i'm fairly moderate and i can see both sides i haven't always been that way but i think social media kind of pushed me that way where i was like you know we kind of have to start figuring out what the other person's point of view is and maybe not so much what what they're trying to achieve that, but what they're really trying to achieve at the core and how we can somehow meet in the middle of that. You know, I mean, some people do have, you know, they have interests of what they're trying to achieve, maybe politically or not politically, but, you know, through through politics through what they feel life should be like um and but sometimes what they're doing is not the way to do it but there's a there's probably a way to bridge that gap and so that's kind of what i've been focusing on lately and

and i think it's interesting you talk about how we don't empathize each other and maybe we don't because we've lost that facial back and forth in that reality yeah we said we don't empathize each other and maybe we don't because we've lost that facial back and forth in that reality yeah so we don't have any of those really good neurotransmitters that need to be released for us actually to connect so to connect to someone if you do it face to face if you actually sit down with someone um the first thing we usually do when we meet someone face to face is we touch each other appropriately of course and and all societies we have some way of actually touching each other and that's you know in stoic societies like here and in the u.s we'll shake hands because that's appropriate in europe they'll kiss each other

on cheeks even the inuits because they're fully clothed um and it's so cold they'll rub noses because the only bit of skin that's actually showing we do that and we do that for a really good reason because we have these c fibers on our skin which are there only for touch that's the only reason they're actually there and when they're activated they release oxytocin which make us more connected to each other so we actually feel as though we're more open to actually talk to someone and become connected with them through touch you don't get that on the internet you can't get that on the internet oxytocin is also um what's released when you have an orgasm. So it's really good neurotransmitter and it's a good thing to actually do, right? So touching someone's really important, which is why

your politicians will go out and shake hands and kiss babies and do all that sort of stuff because oxytocin is released every time. And so therefore, you're more likely to connect to the politician and actually feel as though you trust them better. Yeah yeah and that's why they're out there doing it all the time and doing it you know even during covid i think there was politicians in the u.s out there you know shaking hands and doing all that so that's really important and we don't get that on the internet so we can't connect with people as well on the internet you're also got serotonin which is released because of your body language and because we only see the top half or we're looking at someone else who's actually, you know, doing something, but they're not actually reacting to us.

Again, you need the body language, which we get through the mirror neuron system. And that actually gets us to actually mimic each other. And it gets us to understand how we're feeling. And it gets us to realize that the other person understands how I'm feeling. So therefore, they're actually connecting with it. So we get a better connection there as well. So you're missing all these really good neurotransmitters when you're doing it online rather than doing it face-to-face, which is why it's so much better for us to do it face-to-face and we get a better connection with people. But we're doing it online.

But you've also got the other side of it, which is you've got algorithms running in the background on social media, which is separating a huge amount of research showing that if you don't have those algorithms running in the background and you don't emphasize the particular people who are who are who are writing well, then you actually get more cohesion between groups. So groups will actually talk to each other. You get Democrats and Republicans in different groups on the Internet. I'll get closer to each other in what they're talking about. Really? You don't have those algorithms. Yeah, there's lots of lovely research showing it. But of course, they won't get rid of those algorithms, because they keep people in the groups, they isolate people, and they say, hey, you're part of this group, you're not part of that group. So therefore, you know, you really want to start, you know, interacting with this group and saying nasty things about this group, which will give you more likes on this group. So if we got rid of those algorithms,

we'd actually get closer together rather than further apart. That's true. And they are designed to separate us. They're designed to target rage and anger and extreme emotions. You know, Bob is saying this about Doug and, you know, you're, oh, we better go to offend Doug and damn that Bob. And, you know, it really has made a lot of issues. Is there any way the way our brains are formed? Because I think, you know, this seems to be the thing.

These two-dimensional, you know, flat screens don't talk to us like human faces as you said um is there any way that social media and and you know this online stuff can ever really help us be better or smarter is it are we just in continual decline until we start talking to each other face to face yeah so there's a couple of really easy things we could do if we're actually willing to to put these educational these these tech companies on notice. If we got rid of the algorithms, actually told them they weren't allowed to use those algorithms, you actually had to just get information that you actually wanted, right?

Even if you Google, it's based on an algorithm, which decides what you're going to see based on your previous searches and who you're connected with and all the rest of it. So if we said, get rid of the algorithms, you've got to get rid of the algorithms, you can't use them, then we actually would. and it's crazy because back when TV first came out we actually had subliminal priming so companies started using subliminal priming soon as the government realized they were doing

that they said no no no that's not appropriate you can't use that because that's manipulating behavior get rid of it right and that happened within about three months of it actually being used on tv yet these algorithms that they're using now are far worse than subliminal priming in changing our behavior and changing what we're thinking but they're not actually getting rid of them so governments could easily legislate just to say you're not allowed to use those algorithms in the background it's just got to be based on what people actually want to see and hear and do and so that'd be a really easy way. The other way would just be to get rid of all the notifications. If you got rid of the likes and the comments and all those sorts of things,

then you wouldn't have that drive to be more nasty to the next person because someone else is nastier than you and got more likes. So if you got rid of the likes, again, you would improve the social media and the internet overall, virtually overnight you know you maybe you maybe realize something because one of the things i i talk about a lot is victimhood competition or society and how we move from a very logical reasoning society to an emotional victimhood uh mentality and the one thing i i just had an epiphany on is one of the things

that developed that is those likes because you know if you if you can't get because you see it everywhere in media now every lead story is bob is a victim of blah blah blah you're like really does bob have any fucking self-accountability like maybe bob just made some really stupid decisions and should just take ownership of it you know we used to live in a meritocracy where you know and then somehow we ended up with uh with this participation trophy generation um where you can't hurt anybody's feels with reality um and now i realize one of the things that people are done is that uh victim competition is is basically um it's not only it's it's basically clickbait that's the word i'm looking for uh and click clickbait for likes because

everyone maybe rushes to a victim when someone's being like i'm a victim you know it's kind of like if somebody you know is drowning in the water you you know everybody runs to them oh we should help the the poor person in the water you know that's probably our natural proclamation or whatever i can't say it right i i flunk second grade um but i don. But what do you think about my little theory there? Yeah, I like it. I mean, there's a victimhood thing, which gets lots of likes, so it's great clickbait for the social media and all of the media things.

And then there's the other one, which is get people angry about stuff, get people scared about stuff. It's either scared or angry about things. So you're either these poor victims who we're gonna all click like for which is always funny because it's like these persons have this awful thing and everyone's liking it and it's like well you shouldn't really be liking it right because something awful's happening but yeah yeah somebody who goes through tragedy and if they're on the other political tribe or something you're like uh you know screw you you know someone dies and

and instead of being having some reverence of some and some couth or some some empathy you go i could it's good that your team's losing that way and you're like really it seems uh yeah and also we're we're we're more removed from it as well, right? Because it's on the internet, it feels as though it's not actually real. And so we also perceive things on the internet as not as real as things that we actually experience in real life. And we don't get any feedback from it. So, you know, if you turn around and said someone, you know, I don't care that your son died of cancer or whatever, then, you know, if you're face-to-face,

the person would react to that, right? And you'd actually then feel bad about saying that because this person would get upset in front of you. Whereas if it's on the internet, you don't get any of that feedback. So you can say whatever you like and you're not going to actually get a reaction to it. Holy shit, you just gave me another epiphany

of why people can talk so shitty to each other. I mean, I'm in gaming, the gaming community, and there's a bit of thing that men do why people can talk so shitty to each other. I mean, you know, I'm in gaming, the gaming community. And, you know, there's a bit of thing that men do where we test each other before we're going into battle by, you know, giving each other shit as it were. Or I can't remember what the term is for it. But basically, we test each other's moxie and backbone. And so we tend to hazeze each other i think that's

what i'm looking for a bit um because we know that when we go into battle we don't want the we don't want the guy to run away when we're trying to kill the dinosaur or whatever the hell you know that's caveman it all comes back to caveman crap um and so you give me epiphany to realize why people can be so ugly to each other on the internet. Um, and so trolling and they don't, you know, because, you know, some of the things that people have said to me, uh, on the internet, they wouldn't dare say face to face. I'm a six foot tall man with broad shoulders and muscles and, and I always look like a resting bitch face. So, uh, you, You say something mean to me. People move out of my way when I move through things.

You better be taller than me or more muscly than me. Even then, I kind of have an attitude in life that, yeah. People just look at me and they go, you shouldn't screw with that guy. That's one of those guys. He's like a rattlesnake. You don't mess with him because he will bite. And I do. And I have to have rabies shots routinely, according to the judges that prosecute my biting people.

Anyway, I'm just kidding, people. We don't do that. Don't bite people. That's not a thing. But no, you give me an epiphany on that. I love it. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, there's a lot of people out there that normally wouldn't stand up for themselves, or not even stand up for themselves, but wouldn't say any of these things normally face-to-face. But they'll say some pretty lousy things on the internet, because they can get away with it. And, you know, teenagers are learning that this is okay to actually do this, because this is what teens do all the time now. And it's just crazy, because what's going to happen when these teens are actually adults um and they're actually out there you know in the real

world and they think that this is okay to do these behaviors because we need to learn how to actually do all this stuff right yes our brains have evolved to enable us to do this but unless we learn how to do this we will never be able to actually do it. And you look at all the 21st century skills, they're all based around emotional intelligence, empathy, leadership, being able to collaborate, being able to work in teams and so on. And teams aren't learning any of those abilities that we're actually going to need these teams to actually have, you know, when they actually get out there into the workforce because they spend

all their time on devices where you can't actually learn. The more time you spend on a device, the more likely you are to have ADHD, to have autism, to have mental health issues like depression and anxiety, and the less likely you are to be able to actually communicate with people and have emotional intelligence, which is really nuts. So we need to get teams and we need to get ourselves out actually spending more time with each other so that we can actually develop these abilities and so we can maintain these abilities so we can actually thrive into the future

rather than going backwards, which is what's happening at the moment, both from an evolutionary point of view, but also from, you know, a business point of view. Productivity is worse than it's ever been. Productivity has gone dramatically down over the last 10 years because of the fact that we're all on the internet all the time, you know, we've got to rethink all of this stuff. Yeah. I can imagine.

I have this image in my head right now of people at a business meeting, you know, where they, they're discussing some sort of business topic and everyone's just kind of trolling each other face to face back and forth because that's what they learned as kids. And the thing, you know, I, I, I remember one time I had a guy who was just constantly shit talking me on twitter and i and i and so i had an aside with him i said hey man like what's the deal like no matter what i say it's just you're just always the troller and i i mean i could i don't know i could

i could give you i don't know the secret's life or something really beautiful and you just still trash it no matter what. I mean, no matter what I do, you're just the antithesis of it. Like, if I told you that your mom was awesome, you'd be like, no, she's not. Whatever it is, the argument, you will do that. And I said, why do you do this? He goes, this is what Twitter is for, is to troll.

I'm like, no, it's not. I don't know where you picked that up but it's not it's actually something that technically in my fantasy of early social media was supposed to connect us better uh but it's not and i had a discussion with myself like why use it this way you know there are better ways to use this that are more constructive than just sitting around and doing this in your mother's basement all day long and uh you know one of the things that's really you know been an issue over these last few years especially the last 10 uh 10 20 years is the rise of racism again and you know i see it a lot in gaming a lot of these young kids they're you know using the n-word

uh racist tropes and things like that we saw saw a certain president over here tap into that trope, tropism and racism. And we just saw this huge resurgence, even to the point of up to January 6th, where we saw the Confederate flag in our goddamn Capitol. And I'm like, we haven't resolved the Civil War from 150 years ago, whatever. And this resurgence of it.

And we're just like, everyone's like, where is racism coming from? How come we're clawing back to something we thought we'd started working on since the 60s? But now I see that that's one of the problems that we have, what we talked about here, is people are willing to say stuff that they wouldn't say face-to-face i mean i i've heard people say stuff on comms that on gaming comms and i'm like you wouldn't say that certain neighborhoods are face-to-face with certain people but you're willing to say yeah because you're getting your action you're see you've hurt someone's feelings or you're going to see that they're going to get very angry and might uh might uh you know use you for a punching bag appropriately so i don't know we shouldn't be doing violence but that's a joke people um any of your thoughts on that yeah no you're completely right it's it

is this separation and we've also got the problem that because our which i talk a lot about in the book our face template and our brain is is adaptive it's constantly adapting to the situation that we're in and so if you're constantly in your bedroom by yourself and there's no one around then you can do whatever you bloody well like right and we used to be able to do whatever we're like in our bedrooms um appropriately and no one else would be affected by it but now we can do a lot of stuff in our bedrooms by ourselves with our phones, which is affecting a lot of people all around the world because we're now connected via these phones.

But we're not getting that feedback that's telling us, hey, this is inappropriate. But also our face template is designed because it's really quite a nifty thing. It's an average of all the faces we see. And so if you only see, say, white Caucasians all the time, then your average is white Caucasian, and therefore anything that deviates significantly from that, your fight-or-flight response is set off for.

So it actually sets off that fight-or-flight response. And the faces that you see more are the ones that it's going to be biased towards that you won't set off a fight-or-flight flight response and those that you don't see very often so the most racist country in the world according to the un is japan because they only see japanese faces and they only see japanese faces in the media so if they see anything other than japanese face that sets off this fight or flight response which makes them respond negatively to that person so we've got to and if you look at most i i've done a couple of experiments where i've just looked at all the social media posts that people are

receiving and usually it's of the same race as you people that you actually see on the internet end up in the same faces or the same race as you because of the the algorithms that are running in the background and so therefore most of what we're seeing is just our race. And so if we see another race, it's an automatic response that, you know, our heart starts beating, we feel anxious, we feel nervous, we feel angry because of this really primitive drive to be careful of things that aren't part of our own group. And so you've also got that working against you. So not only have you got this, you know, we're isolated

and we're not getting feedback, which is really important, we've also got face templates which are becoming more narrow because of the fact that we're only seeing the same faces all the time. And so that emergency, that mechanism, which is sort of like a fire alarm, is being set off whenever we see a face which is not within that group that we're seeing all the time. Wow, that explains so much uh you know we had eddie glad junior on the on that show for his book begin again about james baldwin and one of the things we talked about was the problem with

racism in america and race relations is for so many, we've been segmented by redlining, you know, banks, redlining real estate, you know, only giving loans to in certain areas, even the freeways, our communities are, are, uh, segment us. Um, you know, it used to be, we had, you know, this ugliness of, of, of a segregated society where we had, you know, certain bathrooms and fountains, but we got rid of that, but we still have, you know, through redlining and different social structures and different things, even, you know, what school boards, you know, that was a thing with the Supreme Court, with redistricting and so, but, you know we we tend to live in communities that look like us

and we don't understand each other very well you know and uh and that explains why that's still a problem for us in america but even more so probably on on the internet because you know it's easier for us to stay in communities of of of uh of, uh, not having a lot of friends, um, in, in other different races. And so, yeah, when we see them, then we have that natural reaction. You know, we have a party here in America that's very, that's very, it's exhibiting a lot of explicit racism in what it does, which, and it's, it's usually based on a lot of tropes, but it is what it is and what it's attempting to do.

And for the most part, it, you know, there know there's a lot of uh they have this thing called uh what is it white uh alien or white uh where they're basically worried about um you know other other races taking predominance here in america in their population and also in their voting bloc and then making the decisions uh it's a loss of white power basically um and so that's a big concern for them but yeah i can see that i can see the relativity of that as to how we how we do things one thing i did back when um trump became president and i found out that white nationalism was behind it and white nationalism just rebranded kkk i was like holy shit um and i started learning all the tropes that that they used and everything and i said do i need to make sure i clean house

like i i don't i don't think i'm racist i tried i just trying to i try to not grab one of these tropes but i saw some of the white nationalist tropes that were out there like you know the word uh well nationalism you know and and different hoodwink, you know, wink and nod sort of words that they would use. Like, what was the one word that was really big? Our culture. Our heritage. And I always thought, you know, culture, heritage, okay, American culture. But no, their wink and nod to heritage and the word culture is different, like our culture, not your culture, buddy.

And so I started doing the thing you talked about where I started walking around and trying to decide what's trying to listen to my brain, what I was doing when I saw faces and people. So when I go to the store, I'd be like, okay, I see this guy, whoever he is. It could be a guy that looks like me dressed in a Harley Davidson outfit. I'd be like, this guy's gone to prison probably. Probably carries a load of weapon. Has some issues. Probably a large prison thing. I don't know.

And then I'd be like, wait, you don't know that about the Harley Davidson guy? You have no idea what his back. He might be just a nice guy like you who's just old and fat and you know he likes ryan harley's and maybe he wears a harley davidson jacket and leather because it looks cool you know you don't know anything about this man at all and so i started walking around the store and doing that sort of exercise with myself and started to really listen to conversations and the bullshit i was making up in my head about the fight or flight sort of stuff and going hey man you, you're going to knock

all this shit off. You don't know people. So maybe more of us need to do that. I don't know. Yeah, no, absolutely. We all need to be doing that much more often. We need to be looking at and viewing and hanging out with people who are different races and different

socioeconomic status and all the rest of it so that we're actually broadening this face template and broadening our understanding of who's actually out there and all these these templates that we have in our brain and all these things that automatically set off these things because it is just an autopilot that actually happens right it automatically happens but you can retune your fire alarm so that doesn't go off all the time it actually just goes off when there is actually an emergency or there is something that you actually need to

respond to because let's play I mean we're safer today than we've ever been in the past right this is actually less murders and there's less you know violence and there's less all of this and so we need to realize that and be much more controlled about it and we do that by yeah just hanging out with people who are from different races or different backgrounds and so on because everyone's got you know interesting things to say right you know you know you make a good point that you know we live in the safest world that possible it's still like i don't know about other countries as much as mine because i mean amer America is the greatest country in the world, right?

Anyway, I'm just kidding, people. I'm not. Anyway, we just lost the world in the audience. So the thing here in America, the point I'm trying to make, folks, is that we've had some interesting things happen where, you know, recently we had a guy who is an African-American gentleman. He goes up and he knocks on a door. He's at the wrong house by accident and he gets shot. And, you know, clearly someone in that position went into fight or flight mode because they're not used to seeing a black person at her door. And they immediately thought of all the horrific things and evil things that someone could be doing that they attribute to that race because they've, I don't know,

maybe they've been sitting on social media too long watching videos or something, or maybe they grew up in a racist environment, who knows, but they're steeped in that. And so when they see it, they're acting in a fight or flight. We saw that several years ago with three people who chased down a black gentleman who was jogging through a neighborhood. He was just about for a jog, and they went and attacked him and killed him. And now they're appropriately serving time. I constantly wonder why that thing happens, because you're like, Jesus Christ, man, it's 2023. How are we still acting this way? But now you really explained this to why that fight or flight is

really kicking into people yeah and it's been shown i mean there's been some beautiful data studies done over in the u.s where they've shown that you know white people when they see um just a black face versus a white face um then they're more likely to detect a gun if it's a black face versus a white face. And these are normal people who don't think they're racist and most of them are college students because that's what psychologists usually study, right? And so these are well-educated psychology students and if they see a black face and then they see a gun they're much quicker to react to it than they are if they see a white face and then a gun. And a lot of other experiments like that which you know is nuts right wow and you just explained

our whole police problem over here too as well i mean because you know we we you know everyone's like why are black people getting killed by police more than white people you just nail it right there on the head and it may be that you know police officers uh i mean there's a whole police problem that we have in this country uh there's good police officers um and then there's bad and i you know we've had issues with racist police officers but and we've also had targeting and high crime areas that are sometimes developed by what i talked about by neighborhoods that have been created and and of, lack of jobs, lack of opportunities and lack of education and in certain areas that contribute to it.

I mean, if you can't get work to people, I mean, this has been shown anywhere in the world, take any neighborhood, if they can't get jobs, if they can't get stuff to do and there aren't opportunities there for people to do something constructive, well, then maybe folks are not going to be as, as, as I don't know what you want to call it. Good. But when you're dealing with a certain group of people all the time and you're

seeing them doing bad things, I imagine it can like, like I can never be a police officer because you deal with some of the, you deal with some of the most, you deal with people doing the worst crimes at all times and i imagine you eventually get skewed by thinking well everybody's this way so if you pull a gentleman over who's just i don't know speeding you're probably going to react in such a way as you see them more as a as a as a as a target or a mark than you would as a as a fellow

human being you know you you all sorts of weird stuff i mean we saw the overreaction with george floyd i mean the guy the guy was suspected suspected i don't think it was even proven of me passing a 20 counterfeit bill and somehow he ends up murdered with someone on his neck and we see a visual lynching in America. And it was horrific. And you're like, why are we overreacting to these situations? And I think you've nailed the head on a lot of why this is going on. And it probably doesn't help to be on social media all the time either. Yeah, I mean, that's going to make it worse as well. But also with police officers, because again,

our brains are constantly adapting to our environment and police officers, as you said, are constantly surrounded by criminals, right? That's what they're surrounded by. So therefore their brains are adapting to that. That's what they're getting used to. And so therefore they're going to assume that everybody's a criminal

and so therefore they're going to react in that way. And so we need to reprogram that as well as the fact that most of the people you know that they're arresting might be from a certain you know race or a certain genre or whatever and so therefore they'll come across somebody who's completely innocent and they'll react in the same way as they did to the other person which we need to reprogram as well yeah and our crime rates are skewed too because i think it's been proven in this country by studies that white people get off more and get more lower time

or they get more probation. There's less conviction rates. And then also police often make the decision of a judge and jury at a traffic stop. And so there will be more leniency. I think this has all been proven um and probably a lot of it comes down to that sort of racial bias and tendencies and facial stuff so uh really good stuff on neurology uh neurology i flunk second grade neurology here i'll let you just say neurology on the brain let's talk to the brain there you go on the brain so uh so basically if i want to raise my iq i need to spend more time face to face with people

yeah our brains are a use it or lose it so you either you either exercise or you don't exercise it and if you're actually spending time face to face with someone it is better for your brain than anything else you can do it'll activate more of your brain than anything else you can do so yeah you know and it's not a hard thing to do right you just catch up with someone for a coffee or a beer and sit down with them and talk to them and it's the best thing you can do for your brain to keep it healthy than anything else all of these apps that are on the phones and all the rest of it complete waste of time just to have a chat with someone,

go for a walk with someone, you know, go for a beer with someone, have a coffee with someone. Best thing you can do for your brain, absolutely, both mental health-wise and physically as well. We now know that lonely people die 10 to 15 years earlier than people who aren't lonely, who have actually people that they can actually communicate with. We know that lonely people are more likely to have cardiovascular issues.

They're more likely to have dementia. They're more likely to have Parkinson's disease. They're more likely to have other mental illnesses as well. So we need to be spending more time with people. But you don't get the same neurotransmitters and you don't get the same response if you're online. So you've actually got to do it face to face. There you go.

And, you know. What about even here? Like, I can see your face. You can see mine. Is that okay? So with this, what we're getting, we're getting the dopamine release. So we're getting that really good hit of dopamine. But that's what makes us addicted to stuff.

But we don't get the serotonin because we can't touch each other. So normally, you know, if we met, yeah, we'd shake hands and we'd actually do, yeah, or touch each other on the elbow or whatever or if we're in Europe, we'd kiss each other on the cheeks and whatever. That's going to release the oxytocin, which is going to get us more connected to each other, makes us feel more familiar. We'd also be mimicking each other's body language, but I can't see what you're doing below, you know, about here, yeah?

And so my mirror neuron system would be reacting to your movements because our mirror system actually activates the motor system um so that i'm mimicking what you're doing in my brain so that i understand what you're doing so when you smile i you know say muscles slightly activating my face so that i feel happy so therefore i know that you're happy which is why how you're feeling is contagious, right? So if I'm sitting with you, I'll start sitting in the same way. I was presenting at a school just recently. It was all year 12 students,

and there was a whole bunch of boys in the front, and I was talking about this, and it was really cool because they're all sitting exactly the same way. I'm sure you've seen this, right? All teenagers, they all sit in the same, you know, have the same way of sitting. And different groups of teenagers will sit differently because they'll all mimic each other.

And this happened and they all started moving to get out of their position. And within five minutes, they're all back to the same position because they're all part of the same group, right? And so they're all actually trying to look like each other. And so all that stuff we don't get. And all releases serotonin which we don't get again when we're online so it's an imbalance of neurotransmitters when we're online which is why we feel shit afterwards right you actually you get a bit of a high when you're talking to

someone online or when you're doing your stuff online and then you go offline and you you get this crash the same as any other addiction yeah and so you then you feel shit and and then you go offline and you get this crash, the same as any other addiction, yeah? And so then you feel shit and then you want to do it again because you want to get that little high again. Whereas if you actually spend time with someone face-to-face, it's much more sustaining. It's like having a home-cooked meal, you know? I compare it to home-cooked meal versus going out for McDonald's, right?

You go out for McDonald's, really easy. You can do it really quickly. You get a hit of dopamine or you get the sugar and then you crash afterwards. Whereas if you actually do face-to-face, it's like having a home-cooked meal. It takes a little bit more time, but it's much more nutritious

and it's actually healthier long-term and you feel better for much longer when you actually do that. So that's why we need to do it face-to-face rather than online. You'll have to fly over here and I'll take you surfing. Okay.

All right. Yeah. As long as we can stay away from the chlamydia koala bears and koala bears, yeah. And I'm not eating Vegemite anymore. I tried that. And the drop bears. You've heard of the drop bears, right? The drop bears? What?

The drop bears, yeah. We always warn the tourists about the drop bears. If you're walking under a tree, they'll drop on you and scratch the hell out of you. The koalas? No, no. about the drop bears. If you're walking under a tree, they'll drop on you and scratch the hell out of you. The koalas? No, no, they're drop bears. They're called drop bears. They're an Australian native.

Are they a spider? We like to look it up. No, they're big. I'm afraid to look it up. They're so big, and they'll drop on you. They're an evolutionary thing that died out a couple of million years ago, but we still talk about them. Oh, okay.

So they're not there anymore. Okay. No, we just get tourists with it. I'm scared to Google anything about Australian animals that can kill me. I don't know how the human race even survives over there. I've seen the spiders and all the crazy stuff you have. I just figure you're all like crocodile Dundee walk around giant knives to defend yourselves all the time from all the mammals.

And then, and then, I don't know the guys in men at work and, or ACDC. Anyway, I love that Ben's. I'm just kidding. People don't,

I don't want to lose the five people like men at work. Uh, right now people are going men at work. What is he referencing? What is he born in the 80s or something? Anyway, I know we're long here, but one thing I want to squeeze in here really quick to ask you,

because we're not spending each other's times and faces, we don't learn when people are lying to us as much. So maybe that's the reason the proliferation of one of our presidents recently who lied like 10 trillion times during a five-year period and lies to us constantly and people believe it. Maybe that's one of the de-evolution of our species.

And we just we don't believe when people are fucking lying and playing games and scamming us anymore so much. Yeah. And there's so many scams now. Right. And so many scams out there. So many people getting ripped off these days because of the fact that we don't see that anymore because we don't learn how to do it again all of our brains so we don't get much genetic material from our parents is you know over the last 30 years or whatever there's been this big push on oh how much of the genes actually affect us and da da da but it's actually

very very little most of it's learned the vast majority of it's learned right our genes just set up this template and then we've got to learn how to do all these things and we don't learn how to actually communicate with people how to collaborate with people how to who's good and who's bad and who's been an arsehole to you and who's not and who's been sarcastic and who's not been sarcastic and all these things these kids are going to grow up and have no idea who to trust and who not to trust and it'll be the ones that actually learn those things that'll thrive and there's lots of evidence that that's going to happen. And there's lots of people talking about it.

And then there's going to be this huge swath of people, kids who are going to grow up into adults who aren't going to be able to work out who's lying, who's not lying, who they can trust, who they can't trust, how to collaborate with people, how to empathize with people, how to have friends and all this sort of thing. And even things like dementia are getting, we're getting oily onset dementia much, much earlier and it's much more prevalent than it's ever been before because we're not learning all these abilities and so therefore our brains aren't developing in the way they should do and so therefore they don't have the capacity to actually keep us alive for longer.

So we need to be, you know, we need to shift. We're at a crossroads and we need to actually make a decision and say we don't want tech companies making billions of dollars out of our attention at our time. We want to actually change this, and we want to spend more time with each other. And even then, people lying online. Like recently there was this thing with the liver king,

and you can tell that he uses steroids. Anybody who knows how people use steroids and what they look like when it does to their body and makes their organs distended and they look like a horse uh they're clearly doing horse steroids uh but you know he fooled like so many people i don't know how uh that he wasn't taking steroids you know he's what they call a natty a natural a natural bodybuilder um we see that with all sorts of influencers online where people lie and have this secret life going on and people believe it

and they're like oh our lives are perfect and we're a society that never frowns or has hard times and then you wake up you find they got a pile of bodies in their basement they're not really who they say they are there's a big thing in this world now called catfishing too and now we have now we have these filters you know i don't

know if you've seen them on like tinder and stuff where you know you can put a filter on your face and you look like a victoria's secret model and uh that's crazy and and you know unless you're really good like me with photoshop being a photographer and and being able to see the nuances of a face um you know people buy it and you know they're sending their money and love to somebody who's you know and they've had these women that have gone on and goes here's what i look like and their face might have some pimples or some blemishes or maybe not be you know exactly what you picture victoria's secret um and then they'll be like here's me with the filter and you're like holy shit what a difference and meanwhile you're listening that person going oh they must be trustworthy and believable and they're beautiful

and they seem to have the essence of innocence and really they don't because there's a filter on there there you go anyway uh mark this has been wonderful and very insightful people should definitely read your book and we should understand more about it. I'm all for regulating social media. So there you go. Thank you for coming on, Mark. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on, Chris.

It's been great. There you go. And order up the book, folks. Oh, let's get your plugs in really quick. Any.coms you want people to check you out at? Just the drmarkwilliams.com. Everything's on there, so it's easy for everybody to check it all out.

There you go. Order the book wherever fine books are sold. You can still get it on advance. August 15th 2023, The Connected Species How the Evolution of the Human Brain Can Save the World. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com FortressCrisfoss, youtube.com

FortressCrisfoss, linkedin.com FortressCrisfpFoss, LinkedIn.com, FortressCrispFoss, and be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time. And that should have us out.