The Joe Rogan Experience - #694 - Jane McGonigal

Episode Date: September 8, 2015

Jane McGonigal is a game designer and author who advocates the use of mobile and digital technology to channel positive attitudes and collaboration in a real world context. Her new book SUPERBETTER is available September 15, 2015.

All righty, Jane, what's happening? I'm here. You are here. You made it. I'm excited, too. Thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. So your story is a very fascinating story.

You got a brain injury and you decided to make a game to help your brain recover. Now, what led you to even attempt something like that? I've never heard of anything like that in the past. Well, I had been designing games professionally and researching them for 10 years by the time I hit my head. And it was not my first instinct. Oh, I have a brain injury. Let me make a game. But, you know, about a month into the recovery, I wasn't getting any better.

I was really depressed and anxious. I mean, I was, it was like the lowest point of my life. And I knew from my research that when we play games, you know, we have more optimism, we're more determined, we're better able to ask people for help, right, to team up with us, be your allies. And I just figured, well, this is like the worst I've ever felt in my life. Maybe if I can bring some of that gameful spirit to recovery, I could kind of jumpstart my brain back into healing. So what was the nature of your injury? I mean, it was, it started out as just a normal concussion. And how did you get it? So this is my public service announcement for the episode. I was standing up from underneath an open cabinet, and I'm a runner, so I have really strong legs.

And I was just in a hurry, and I just full force right up into the corner of the cabinet, hit my head. And it was like classic, you know, my husband was joking around, you know, who's the president? And I couldn't remember who the president was. And I was like, oh, shit. Really? After you got hit in the head, you couldn't remember? This is Barack Obama. It was.

And all I could remember was it's not George Bush anymore. But I couldn't remember who it was. Wow. So just standing up and hitting the edge of the cabinet, it was an open cabinet door? It was an open cabinet. So the PSA is, you know, shut cabinet doors. Because apparently, I've now learned after this happened to me that this happens to a lot of people.

And you can get a serious head injury as like a football player by doing this. So, ow. Wow. So just standing up. So you stood up quick. Bam. Whacked your head. Did you go unconscious?

I did not go unconscious. You know, I saw stars and everything. But, you know, a lot of concussions, it takes a few hours. The brain starts to swell. And it's not until later that day that you really start to feel like something's really wrong. So is that what happened to you? Yes. Yeah.

And, you know, it was no internal bleeding or anything. And so, you know, the doctor said, oh, you'll be fine, you'll be fine and give it a week, maybe a couple weeks. I come back after a month. They tell me, oh, you know, some people, if it doesn't heal in the first month, it takes three months. And if it doesn't heal in three months, it might be a year. And if it's not a year, maybe you're stuck like this forever. Were you experiencing the classic symptoms like you couldn't stare at sun, the sunlight would bother your eyes, loud noises. Oh, I mean, all light.

Like if I would try to go into like a Whole Foods, the fluorescent lights would feel like I was like under fire from weapons. I mean, I was in bed basically for three months. Everything, like all stimulus would make me nauseous and migraines and everything. would make me nauseous and migraines and everything. So it started out normal concussion, but then it just kind of unraveled into what they call post-concussion syndrome, which is a thing that I didn't know existed. But a lot of people, the concussions take up to a year to heal. Yeah, they can.

Well, from working for the UFC, I've seen people that neglect those. Yes. And it gets really ugly. Yeah. I've also seen people that were great fighters. There's a guy named TJ Grant who was in line for a UFC title shot, got a concussion, not even from getting kicked or punched. It was from a grappling exchange, just bonked his head on something. I believe it was somebody's knee or someone's hip or something like that. And then was never the same again and has never fought again. And it's been like, I think almost two years. Yeah. And I mean, that's something I've gotten actually pretty active in the research community and trying to share information. So

it turns out like the first week of recovery can really determine if you're going to go into this extended, you know, it's going to take you three months, six months, a year if you're not resting enough in that first week. So the first week it's critical that you just do nothing? I mean, they call it cognitive rest. And basically you want to not do anything that is, cognitive rest and basically you want to not do anything that is that feels difficult for you and so for me I couldn't read I could only watch TV shows I'd already seen before because having to process plot new plot was not was not helpful so I was like re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer

because I've seen them all like a million times and it's it's a and yet you know keep the lights off if they, you know, keep sunglasses on indoors. But the first 48 hours and then after that, the first week, if you can avoid overstressing your brain, you have a much better chance to recover within the one to two week period. That's fascinating. Yeah. And people don't know. People like they tried, I tried to go right back to work. I was in the middle of writing my first book and it was due in a couple months. And I'm like, I can't miss my deadline. I've got to do this. I got to power through. I mean, I can barely I'm like, can't even see the screen.

But you're when you're you know, when you have a concussion, you're not thinking clearly. You are not a rational person. You're just like, I have to do this. I have to try. And other people will look at you and be like, what's wrong with you? And other people will look at you and be like, what's wrong with you? You are, you know, totally out of it. Why are you trying to work? But you're not, you don't have that same kind of rational decision making ability. So sometimes, you know, a friend or, you know, a loved one needs to take you aside and say, I'm not letting you do anything for this first week. You've just got to let your brain heal. And this is, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's relatively new, our understanding of what takes place after a concussion and what you have to do to recover. Yeah, no, there's just last year, there was a big study that came out showing that four months after a concussion, your brain is still different. There's still, it's like a kind of a scarring that happens, like a scab, that certain parts of the brain will still be thickened for months after, even if you think you're feeling fine, which means that you're still vulnerable. You know, if you were to get hit again, it would be more dangerous. And if you're still feeling symptoms after four months, you know, that's why it's like when you, you know, cut yourself open and you get

the scab, you can't be picking at the scab by doing things that are triggering your symptoms. Yeah. Wow. So who was it that told you, you got to settle down? Well, my, you know, my doctor said that. And of course, I'm a, I mean, I'm a science geek. That's I have a PhD. It's like my background. And I was having my husband Google, do Google scholar searches for traumatic brain injury research, because I couldn't use a computer. It's like, you got to figure out, is this normal? I'm like, I started feeling suicidal. That was new for me.

And I'm like literally having him Google suicidal thoughts. Jesus. Concussion. Because I'm like, is this, am I really suicidal? Like, am I rationally thinking I'm never going to be able to work again? My husband's going to have to take care of me. I should just end it, which is what I was, the voices in my head were saying. But it didn't feel, you know, that didn't feel like myself.

And so fortunately, he was finding articles like, wait, one in three people with a concussion have suicidal thoughts. And that is actually a reaction to the neurochemistry. with a concussion have suicidal thoughts and that is actually a reaction to the neurochemistry when you have a concussion you don't have dopamine in the reward pathway reward pathways which means your brain can't anticipate anything good in the future you become like completely unable to imagine that you'll feel better that good things will happen for you and that's just like a perfect neurochemical foundation for suicide. So you were able to remember how you used to think. And so you knew this is not the way I think.

Yeah. I mean, it was, I had, I had like a, I was able to distance myself a little bit from the thoughts where, you know, I would, I would, I, you know, cause I was just at home. I wasn't going anywhere. I would say to my husband, like, I feel like I have this voice that's saying, you know, you should kill yourself. And I would, I would talk about it, because I didn't, it, I mean, I think if you talk about it, it becomes less, you know, this feeling that you have, that you have to really believe, and more like the thing that you can look at and try to figure out. And, and, and so it was like, it just felt so weird to me. Because I'm

like, why? I don't know. I had never, I never had that before. And once I knew that it was a symptom of concussion, rather than, oh, Jane has figured out that her life is terrible. And logically, she wants to kill herself, I was able to live with it. And, you know, the research literature says they go away as the brain heals. So I just thought, okay, you know, it might still, I might still hear that voice for, you know, a few weeks or a few months, but I know that that's a symptom of healing and not how it actually feels. So I'm just going to get on with it. Now, is there medication that you can take while this is going on? Anything that speeds up the healing or anti-inflammation medication? Right. So this is what's so hard about post-concussion syndrome is there's nothing that's been shown to speed it up. I mean, I was

offered really powerful anti-anxiety meds, depression meds. I chose not to take them because I just didn't want to go down that road. I'd never taken them before And and there's no known therapies people have tried to do like oxygen deep oxygen therapy and like hypobaric chambers. Yes. Yeah Yeah, did you try any of that? I did not try that but Actually, this is a sort of very exciting for me. I Because there's no good treatment for this, when my game worked so well for me and other people started using it and it worked well for them, we were able to get a grant from the NIH to test this with young athletes through Ohio State University Medical Research Center, we just released our findings last week that the game that I invented did improve the post-concussion syndromes in 100% of the people who used it compared to only 50%

of people who didn't play. So this is one of, I mean, this is one of the first validated treatments that can, you know, reduce the headaches and the nausea and the confusion and the you know difficulty so how did you get to the point where you wanted to experiment with a game you were you're recovering slowly like i mean how slow is this taking like how many months afterwards were you still kind of well it was 34 days which i will i will never i't, like it was, it's emblazoned into my memory. 34 days after I hit my head that I was, I mean, I was completely desperate. I mean, I literally was saying to myself, I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to turn this into a game because, I mean, I was.

Those two options are so strange. I know, but. You might be the only person in human history that's ever said that. I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to turn this into a game. Yes, yes. Well, you know, so I was in the middle of writing my first book, which was all about the psychology of games. And I just thought to myself, I should, I got to prove it. You know, I'm writing this book saying that playing games makes us happier and stronger and more resilient.

I got to prove this theory. I mean, there's all other kinds of proof in the book, but I'm like, I'm going to live it. And that was just, I just, I didn't know how else to provoke the positive emotions. And when we play games, and there's a whole list of positive emotions that we feel when we play games, like curiosity and excitement and awe and wonder and pride. And it's just like, I got to get some of these emotions because my doctor had said, the more depressed and anxious you are, that can actually slow down the healing process. It is actually detrimental, right? If you, if you fuel, if you can feed the depression, anxiety. Detrimental in terms of measurable effects or detrimental in terms of the way you feel? That from the brain's ability to heal,

the neurochemistry of depression is not conducive to that. So literally being depressed can slow down the physical healing of the brain itself. Yes. And so they're like, you know, so try not to worry. And I'm like, Iesus i know i was like i can't get out of bed my books do i can't write my husband had lost his job a few months earlier and i'm like i may never work again i'm gonna be like a barista now this is like maybe if i can stand you know the light yeah so uh so the 34 days yeah what is the 34 days were when it was

at its worst is that it just i mean it just saying, oh, you'll be fine in a few days. You'll be fine in a few weeks. And then I went and saw my doctor after 30 days. And then the doctor said, oh yeah, by the way, some people don't get better in a month. Those people, it often takes three months. And for people who don't get better in three months, then it often takes a year. And if you're not better in a year, then you might be like this forever. And I was like, oh, my God.

It just, it made me, it kind of freaked me out. So did you experiment with things during this time? Like when you were researching? I mean, the only thing that I really experimented with was trying to eat things with like omegas, omega-3, omega-6, which are supposed to be good for brain healing. And there is some scientific literature on that where, I mean, doctors will say eat walnuts, you know. Walnuts? Yeah, because that's a good, like, it's available. Chew them up real good.

I mean, as opposed to taking a capsule. You can absorb things better from food sometimes. And what is walnut? It's like omega-3, omega-6 fatty acids. Better than fish oil? I'm one of those weird vegans. Oh, how dare you. I know.

What about hemp oil? Does that have a certain amount of it? Yeah, hemp is good. Hemp is really good, too. Yeah, but at the time, I don't know, the only thing I could kind of get it together to do was walnuts Mm-hmm. Okay, so walnuts were it. Yeah, you know Bill Romanowski is What do I with that football well as a football player it was a famous football player and he suffered a lot of concussions and created something called Neuro-1.

And it's a nootropic blend, and he created it to deal with some of the symptoms that he had had or some of the repercussions from all the head trauma that he had. Yeah. So I was wondering if you had ever tried anything along those lines. I have not. I know there are a lot of that sort of nutraceutical, like, interest in experimenting with that. I did not try that. Because of the dopamine, I was wondering, like, serotonin is, like, 5-HTP is really good for rebuilding serotonin or building blocks of serotonin. Yeah. I didn't get it together to try any of that. So you were just really struggling.

I was struggling. I mean, I would, like, I would sit on the bathroom floor and like cry for hours, but quietly. I didn't want my husband to freak out. Oh, nice. Very polite in your depression. It seems counterintuitive to someone who doesn't know anything like me that you're saying that you could only watch like Buffy the Vampire Slayer because you'd already seen it before. But playing a game like isn't part of. Yeah. of stimulating. Actually, I couldn't play video games. I would try to play Peggle.

I was like, Peggle will be easy. It's like a pinball game where you shoot little pinballs around and pop pegs and they play the Hallelujah Chorus every level you complete. So it's like, yay, I'm successful. They're playing a parade for me. I'm like, that'll really help me.

But even that was too stimulating. So I couldn't play video games. So the game I invented was not a video game. I mean, we did eventually make an app and a web version so other people could play. But it was more like just a set of rules that I would follow. You know, like you wouldn't like, oh, how do you play hide and seek? Or how do you play poker? Just like learn the rules and play.

So I just started making up rules for myself about doing things that you would do in a video game, like collecting power-ups or spotting, like making a list of the bad guys and all the ways, like where they would show up and what my strategies were for fighting them and coming up with a quest list. So like what's something I can do in the next 24 hours to feel better, like something concrete that I can accomplish. And so just starting to approach my recovery with these really concrete, gameful strategies. And really, you know, the first thing I did was I adopted this secret identity, like my avatar. I was going to have an avatar in my recovery. And that was Jane, the concussion slayer, because I'm like, oh, I'm going to be like Buffy. And Buffy did not choose to be the slayer, right? They just told her, you're the slayer. You have to save the world. And I'm like,

I did not choose to hit my head. So I'm going to be like her and just rise to the heroic occasion and kind of try to tap into my sense of determination and being a badass. And so what did you do like after you took on this persona or adopted the idea of this avatar? Like, what did you do? Like, what were your power ups? Like, who are the bad guys? Yeah. And bad guys were anything that would trigger my symptoms. So, you know, bright lights, a crowded space, you know, conversation, I mean, everything. But the thing with with bad guys, and like, you know, in a video game, like, oh, there's, there's a monster, you don't run away, you got to figure out how you're gonna tackle it or get past it. So and the same is true with recovery from any kind of injury or illness. You have to keep testing the limits, right? Because otherwise

you wind up never getting better. You're kind of convinced that you're just flat on your back forever. And this is sort of an aside, but as I was doing all the research for this new book, I found out that the number one predictor of disability after a back injury is avoiding things that make your back hurt early on during recovery. So you would think like, oh, you have to, you know, don't do anything that will make your back worse. But the longer you keep that mindset, that's the number one predictor of who becomes chronically disabled, you're not able to work or their life is affected in a major way. And it's not the severity of the injury. It's not the severity of the pain.

And so with all kinds of injury and illness now, because you get stuck in that pattern. You never really. So you get stuck thinking yourself is injured. Yes. Yeah. And so, you know, it's like, but with all these things, it's a careful balance. So you have to recognize that the bad guys are bad. I can't go out and be in a crowded space for three hours.

I can't go to like a Lady Gaga concert, which I really wanted to do. I'm like, you're not going to do that. I said that it's kind of like, I'm like the next time she comes through, that'll be like one of my epic wins when I can go see her. But like you can do little things to test. Let me go into the Whole Foods and see how many minutes I can make it before the symptoms come back. So you're kind of like testing. Oh, today it was 30 seconds. I got to leave. Maybe next week it'll be five minutes. And then you kind of start to get your life back because you don't want to get on that course towards seeing yourself as kind of chronically disabled. So that's, you know, you come up with these ways to battle the bad guys, you know, every day. And in the version that we tested with the NIH, that's the game is activate three power ups a day. So for me, that might have been eating walnuts or like cuddling my dog because that made me feel like safe and happy. So anything that provokes a positive emotion, if you're depressed,

you have to really find what are the things that can get through that depression and still make you feel good. So, you know, I'd cuddle my dog, I'd eat walnuts. Do you do three of those a day, one bad guy battle a day where you really test the limits to see if you're getting better, and one quest a day, which is the smallest possible thing you can do that will kind of move you in the direction of your goal or recovery or just feel like something productive that you want to do. So I remember one time I my quest, I decided to bake cookies for the baristas at the coffee place down the stairs. I'm like, I felt like I couldn't do anything for myself. So I'm like, I'm going to bake cookies for someone else today. So I'm like, I'm going to bake cookies for someone else today. And as a result, randomly, I wound up getting free coffee for a year because they were like, I could not believe somebody came like down with this giant plate of like cookies fresh out of the oven. But I did not did not expect that. But that was just like, you know, find one thing I can do today that will have a positive impact. And that's, that's the sort of, there's other stuff, you know, in the game, but that's

sort of the main, you're, you're basically using game, game models to kind of structure your life, to make sure that you're staying engaged, not hiding, you know, actually making progress to getting better. This sounds really difficult, like, like more difficult than I think most people would ever imagine recovering from a concussion would be. I think most people would think that, I don't want to say most people, let me just say what I would think. I haven't had a concussion, I don't think, since I was probably 20. And I would think that what it would be like would be like, oh, my head feels like shit. Let me just lie down here. I'll put ice on my head.

I'll watch TV or something. I'll just go to, I'll take a lot of naps. Right. Like you think it'll feel like a hangover or something. The problem is that your thinking becomes muddled too. So it's not just that you have these physical symptoms. You're not able to think clearly. You're not thinking like yourself.

And that can really lead to a lot of confusion bad decisions you know people they try to hide the severity of the symptoms because they think that it will you know other people will judge them or they're like there's a lot of it's that's very common I've now learned with concussions people hide the severity of symptoms because it's like you're not thinking clearly and you think it's important that other people not really see. But I've become this weird spokesperson slash guru for concussions because of my TED talk about it. So every day, literally, I hear on Facebook or Twitter from someone who's just been concussed. And they're like, what do I do?

Facebook or Twitter from someone who's like just been concussed. And they're like, what do I do? And I actually, I mean, I, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm your ally. And I'm like, always, you know, sending direct messages to like random people I don't know, checking in on them to see if they're doing the right thing, because it's not even like if your friends and family will not understand, they will think, oh, you'll be out on the couch for three days, and they expect you to be back to normal. And they don't understand why three months, four months later, you're still struggling. It's not I mean, it has not been discussed enough, although I think that's changing now. People, especially with so many soldiers coming back with long term symptoms of the concussions. of the concussions.

Now, the other thing that's confusing to me with this is that in the beginning, the first stage of your concussion, it's critical that you do nothing. Right. But then after a while you're like pushing it. Like how, how much time can I spend in whole foods before I freak out? Right.

Yeah. Like many people would think that that's sort of counterintuitive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the beginning is when the brain needs the most resources, right?

In the very early stages? Yeah. How many days? So depending on the studies you read, it'll say between 48 hours to one week is the most crucial stage where you want the most cognitive rest and you want to avoid basically just exhausting the brain because blood, anything you do that's cognitively demanding, it directs blood flow to different regions of the brain. You don't want your brain spending time trying to figure out your email instead of, you know, because there's only so much blood to flow around, and you don't want it to be spent. And trying to do an email will require so much more effort from you than it normally would, so it's a sort of like vicious cycle. Now, eventually, the brain kind of gets into this sort of, I don't know, stasis,

where it's like, okay, now we're working, or you've got kind of your thickened up lesions that's going to take, you know, four months to kind of dissolve and be back to normal. So you can test and you can stay engaged. And not being engaged will fuel depression and anxiety. So partly it's like you're trying to balance the mental health with the cognitive health. I mean, you can't, if you were to do cognitive rest for a month, if you like being in solitary confinement, and we know that that has really bad mental health effects. Right. So you're kind of figuring this out as you go along. There's really

not a roadmap that's set out. No one's ever done this before and you just sort of take your game designing skills and apply what you know about the positive effects of games and you experiment on yourself like a guinea pig yeah i was were you worried you might be fucking your brain out or yeah i'm like what could be worse than what was already happening? And I mean, like literally within 48 hours, that fog, that like super black, you know, you want to die fog was gone. And it was it. None of the symptoms didn't go away. I mean, it was as concussed as I was.

But that that feeling of hopelessness really went away. Because of the fun of the game? So this is why I wrote the book. Because I didn't really understand why it worked. I knew it worked for me. And then I put the rules online. And people started writing me from all over the world that they were using it. And not just for concussions.

I mean, people were writing for, you know, I have cancer. I just had knee surgery. Someone who was just diagnosed with ALS starts playing it. And it seems to be extraordinarily effective at treating depression, anxiety, and also making people feel just stronger, just like better versions of themselves. And I did not understand it. And I say this all the time to people because there can be a lot of skepticism that a game can be helpful during a really serious challenge in your life. It sounds like trivial. It sounds stupid. So I freely acknowledge I didn't understand why it worked. It seemed kind of

absurd to me for people with much more serious problems than I had to. So that's why I wrote the book. It's why I started doing, you know, our clinical trial and the studies we've been doing for the last few years to try to understand because I didn't, all I knew was that it seemed to be having all these positive effects. And that, that was, it was, I mean, even to a game designer like myself who believes in the power of games, I was really taken off guard. So how did you structure it? Like, did you first start off just coming up with things like power pills or walnuts and bad guys or depression? And how did you, like, put this whole thing together? Yeah, I mean, I just started making YouTube videos, which is really funny.

You can go back and look at, like, the first YouTube videos of me. It's like, I don't, I think it's called, like, Why I'm Making a Game for My Concussion or something like that. The first YouTube video you made, were you still suffering? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, how many months was it into? This is, like, I think on day 34. This is, like, the day I'm, like, I'm making a game.

I'm going to make a YouTube video explaining the game. What's it like to you when you watch that video now? Oh, it's crazy because I can't... You can see I can't think of words. Can we play it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What would it be under? Why I'm making a game,

concussion, something like that. Jamie will find it. Yeah, because it's like you can see I can't I mean you see how fast I talk I'm like talking really slow goes this five years ago yeah and how long do you think it was before you felt like 100% you again I mean so I'm like 99% right now maybe yeah I mean they're still not 100% no there's yeah there's still some things like certain lights I can't be around well like it's it creates. It's like it feels like I'm having five years later. Yeah

Let's let's play this real quick video to explain a new project. Create some volume, Gemma. The project is a game to help me with the recovery process that I'm dealing with after I hit my head and got a concussion. And that was about five weeks ago, and the recovery has been very slow and hard so it's getting to the point where I feel like I need a game to help me get through it. I was doing some research today about post concussion syndrome which is what I definitely have. What's all that weird artifacts in the sound? That's where you have trouble concentrating, trouble...

Oh, I mean, I'm probably just sitting there with my laptop in my lap. Serious planning, mental problem solving. That would give me a concussion. In particular, I'm having a very hard time... I was not a pro. I'm also sleeping, and I get dizzy a lot. I get headaches and nauseous, that kind of thing. Well, you can really see clearly you're moving way, way slower.

You're talking way slower. You can see you're struggling there. Yeah, yeah. Unless you're on meth right now. You're not on meth, right? I am a naturally very energetic person. It's fascinating to me that you're not 100% still. Yeah.

I mean, you know, and I'm not sure entirely why. I was knocked out once when I was younger, like knocked out for like five minutes. What happened? I fell off a sliding board. What's a sliding board? Like a Philadelphia thing. I don't know. Like a slide, like at the playgrounds that you go down

Oh, I think in Philly we called it sliding boards And I fell right off the side and hit my head on a cement block. Oh Yeah, that's really young. That was my first concussion. So that's probably what's going on too is Repeated concussion right now. No, what's interesting is I was so young I did not I was like I don't know if it's like four or something. I actually didn't know that I'd had a concussion. Right. No, no. What's interesting is I was so young. I did not. I was like, I don't know if it was like four or something. I actually didn't know that I'd had a concussion. I thought this was my first concussion in 2009. And the doctor's like, oh, have you had a concussion before? No. Because obviously everyone knows now if you have more than one, it can start to, the healing will take longer. I didn't know until like a month into my injury, I'm talking to my

parents and they mentioned, well, you know, the last time you had a concussion, you were feeling better much faster. And I'm like, what? What? What last time? Oh, you remember when you fell off the sliding board when you were, you know, who remembers anything when they're four. I know. My five year old doesn't remember anything when she was four. You know, when you broke your collarbone.

I'm like, oh, I do remember like wearing a sling for a collarbone, but I didn't know that I had a concussion. Yeah. So even though you were four and then the next one you were an adult, it still counts. Maybe. I mean, it's – people like – science does not quite understand how this works yet. People like science does not quite understand how this works yet. Like if the cumulative knocks have to be all within the same few years or if it can stretch out over a lifetime. I try not to think about it too much because I'm like, you know, God, if it happens again, then I'm really, you know. But I'm actually I like walk around like this.

Covering your head? If I'm like at a, you know, like a concert or like in a club or something. Do you want to wear a helmet if you go to a concert? I literally, if I'm at a nightclub or something, I want to wear a helmet. I'm wondering if I can bring that back. I just dated a girl that used to go to mosh pits. She was crazy. And she got headbutted by a dude once.

She came over to my apartment after she had been moshing. And she was holding her head. And I'm like, what are you doing? Aww. I think she went to see some crazy fucking band. I'm trying to remember. Is there a band called The Creeps? Yeah.

It was? Yeah. It was in Boston in, like, 88, 89. So we should be wearing helmets. You definitely don't get headbutted in a mosh pit. Yeah. But I think, like, there's certain assholes like drunken dummies when you go out to places. You know.

No, and I'm short. So I'm always worried about the elbows. Someone's like reaching for something. Yeah, like some big dude will just, I mean, even like on planes when people are taking down their luggage. Oh, yeah. I like cower by the windows. Cower by the window seats. Smart.

Yeah. That's the recognition of vulnerability is an issue with people that get hurt because then all of a sudden you realize you can get hurt. And sometimes you just walk on eggshells all the time. It reduces the quality of your life. Yes, exactly. And that's, I mean, that's sort of, that gets to that idea of, you know, spotting the bad guys, things that could hurt you. And then you decide kind of how, how comfortable you are. You can't just run away. You can't just hide. You have to kind of push your comfort limits a little bit.

But I'm not going to go skiing. I'm done with that. You just don't ski? Not going to ski. Yeah. Wow. I did like certain, there's certain things now that I feel like it's not worth the risk to me a third

You know, I can only imagine I would just start skiing at 45 my first time skiing I fucking wiped out hard last year. That's fine. Just didn't hit my head and I'm pretty good at falling I know how to fall. Yeah, I Tumbled and rolled with it, but I was like, dude, I was going fast when I wiped. Oh, yeah There's a video that's online today that is retweeted earlier today this fucking kid is in colorado and he's on a skateboard and he's going 70 miles an hour down a hill and uh you just watch it and like every part of my body's like tingling with fear. You know, that anticipation of an injury. You tweeted that.

Didn't you tweet the rooftop or like the guy in Russia who goes hangs up? So that's, you know, I'm really interested in like neuro hacks, how you can do little things to like, you know, change like how your brain is working right now. And that video, it seemed to me, would be really good for people to get a little bit of adrenaline going. If you're like on your couch and you're like having a hard time getting yourself out of bed. Oh, my God. He's going 70 miles an hour down this crazy hill. With horrible music playing.

I mean, it looks like a video game, right? I mean, it's just crazy that this kid is doing this. Because you can't stop. I mean, actually, he's really good. So there's a point where he turns the skateboard sideways to slow it down. Like at the very end. And there's a couple little wiggles there where it looks like he's about to go down. And if he goes down, dude, you're breaking everything.

Oh, yeah. You're going 70 miles an hour i mean he is flying i mean there's no way i mean they're not faking this unless this is some sort of advanced cgi i was gonna say i mean it almost could be a video game like watch when he reaches his hands down he has some kind of crazy gloves on and when he reaches his hands down there's certain parts in the video where he's touching the sparks. Look at the sparks. See the sparks. Look at that. Jesus fucking Christ I can't he almost fell I mean he's getting like really close to falling like there's a couple times there where there's like this intense wiggle and he's talking himself Like a speed skater faster

crazy fucker like what is wrong with kids i mean i get it this is an adrenaline rush but when you see this knowing what you suffered from standing up under a cabinet yeah i mean does this freak you out does he have a helmet on is that a hat it's a helmet it's a helmet holy moly i mean what was that hell i'm gonna do wow a little i get like look at this look at that that kid is crazy that's how he slowed down so now he's he's down to a reasonable pace but when you see him he'll do it again to slow it down he grabs the board and look at this that is nuts when you figure out how many hours of I mean because he's like a virtuoso at this so this is like thousands and thousands of hours yeah he's put

the 10,000 hours in yeah yeah but good lord when you see something like that knowing what you went through like anything like when you see like dirt bike riders doing I actually have a really, I stopped watching professional football. Um, after I used to, you know, I mean, go 49ers, but, uh, I can't, I can't watch football anymore. Like I just, I mean, I can, but, uh, I don't enjoy it in the same way because I, I just feel, I feel bad for the players. And when I see, when I see like a really hard hit, I just feel bad for the players. And when I see like a really hard hit, I just feel bad. I think that's something a lot of people are struggling with these days, with all these, you know, the real sports story that they did on traumatic brain injury and the issues that people are having and all the stuff I've seen from fighters over the years

has definitely affected my enjoyment. What's this? Retiring after a concussion. Next hit to my head could possibly kill me. I mean, this is a thing now, right? People are, yeah, they're retiring one, two years into their career. Yeah, well, there's more of that now than ever before because guys are realizing, first of all, at the end of their career, they're most likely going to be debilitated.

I mean, almost all of the players that take a lot of hits suffer from serious injuries for the rest of their lives. And so when you're young and you're looking at your future, you're going, look, I could put all my energy into this and be a mess. Or I could say, you know what? I'm still young. I'm 23. I could do anything I want. Like, look, I've been in the NFL. I've experienced it. Let me just get the fuck out of here. Go try something else. It makes you worry that the future of the sport is going, there's going to be a big socioeconomic divide where the only people who, who really want to play and are

willing to take that risk are people who feel like they have nothing to lose. You know, um, there's that. And there's the people that want to watch it like we've experienced that with the UFC too. There's a There's a bunch of people that want to watch the the head injuries that just they don't know what they're seeing yet they don't understand like when you You watch somebody get KO'd like really badly when you see someone get head kicked and dropped in their head or something like that you you just see excitement you see like oh that guy just beat that guy yeah yeah no I know and it's uh yeah I can't watch I can't watch fights either for the same reason and I have friends who are so into it and you know you just because I mean, so I love games. I understand a good game. A good sport is a good game. And you admire people's ability to be so good at this,

you know, this thing that we've created to test human potential. But, you know, if I've sort of started drifting to sports where there's fewer concussions, although, you know, like I'm a big tennis fan, and one of the big stars just got a concussion this weekend at the U.S. Open. Wow. So she slipped in, like, the locker room after doing, like, the ice bath after a really tough night.

Oh, no. And it's interesting. They showed her coming to the courts to see if she could practice with her sunglasses on the hoodie pulled up. And she just has that that look that like now I saw her. I was like, oh, my God. I mean, she's like right in the that zone of where she thinks she's going to play because she's not thinking clearly. But you can see her. I mean, she's like a shell of herself. So when you see something like that, do you want to reach out to her? Oh, yeah. No, I know. And people have been tweeting at her to be like, you have to get

super better, you know, to just finish the clinical trial. She's like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'll be better, but what is super better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I do. I do. I do want to reach out because I know how hard it was and how so few people, I mean, just the general public conversation about this has not caught up to kind of the reality of what people experience. Well, those ice baths, that's one of the problems with that form of cold therapy is that you get out and your legs are like rubber. Yes. Everything's not working so good. That's why you can't do that stuff and then work out right like there's some forms of cold therapy that you can do you can work out

after it but not those ice baths i know i have done i run marathons so i have done some ice bath and i've yeah have you ever done the whole body cryotherapy where you step in the chamber and you go to 250 degrees below zero for three minutes yeah Yeah, it's awesome. Is it really? Oh, it's the best. Is there like a mind-body element? Like do you kind of is there like a mental state that is changed? Oh, yeah. Well your brain produces something called neoprenephrine Oh, yeah, cold shock proteins and all these different things happen when you hit minus 150 degrees below zero Yeah There's also the something that someone just invented. One of the reasons I brought this up, something called a cryo helmet, like you put it on over your head.

It's like a gel pack thing. It's almost like a hoodie and you put it on and it's like they really recommend it for people that have had head injuries. That's really interesting. I have not. Massive reduction in swelling. Right. I mean, I could see that if you're trying to treat the inflammation. Yeah, because it's like a whole thing. Like a frozen helmet. You know, like those little gel packs? No, yeah, yeah, of course. It's like one of those, but it's a helmet. Yeah. I don't know. You might, of course, I'm going to start doing. There it is right there. That's it.

Yeah. No, you got to pull up like Google Scholar though, for me. I want to see like, is there any literature on this yet? Because I'm, so I'm like- Don't pull it up. Don't pull it up. I'm fairly conservative with telling other people what to do. Like, for myself, you know, it's like, oh, I'll make a game. But for telling other people what to do, I'm like, wait until there's a peer-reviewed paper. Yeah, for sure. But fighters, you know, Bas Rutten, who's a former UFC heavyweight champion, great fighter, was talking about that.

It's important when guys get hit to ice their head after it's over. And his rationale was like, look, if you hurt your knee, what's the first thing they do? They put ice on it. Why don't they put ice on your head? And I was like, that actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I know. It's really interesting. I was just reading about, you know, you probably know this.

They say like five minutes after you stop breathing, supposedly you have like brain cell death. Have you heard? Like if somebody's drowned and you can't get them breathing again in five minutes, then supposedly it's too late. And they're now finding that if you cool down the body and the brain, that they can come back. You can be not breathing, not, you know, heart beating for more than five minutes now if you get the body temperature slow enough pack them with ice that's what they're doing now they're starting to do that it's like a first uh frankenstein shit i know and i was like i was just telling my husband i'm like we need to we need to read this literature so because i want to know if i'm supposed to do

this or wait till like the emt shows like if happens, should I start packing ice or yeah, I'm not sure. I'm actually sure of the practical implications of this. Yeah. As you get older, you realize more and more how damn vulnerable people are. Yes. So physically vulnerable. Yes. Well, this is really interesting because, you know, I, in doing what I do, I have confronted a lot of skepticism and I would even say I mean people who are really quite sarcastic really hear about this oh I'm gonna adopt a secret identity and it's gonna make me not depressed you know usually it's people not suffering from depression who say this because if

you're really suffering from something debilitating like depression you will try anything so people who are pretty happy and healthy and they'll they'll say this sounds ridiculous but but you're talking about bloggers, right? Yes. Well, yeah. And the New Yorker just ran a big, like giant piece, uh, about, about super better. Um, uh, sort of, you know, it was both positive, but also like still, this sounds kind of ridiculous. Well, it does sound ridiculous, but, but then like still this sounds kind of ridiculous. Well, it does sound ridiculous. But it still can work and sound ridiculous. Exactly.

And that's why it's like when you realize how vulnerable people are and how much is out of our control, I mean, those are the people who are the first in line to try this and who benefit the most. So we had half a million people play an electronic version, like logging their power-ups and their bad guys in Quest so that I could get data on it and see what are the most effective power-ups? Like how often do you have to, you know, check in to get better? And we found that people with the most painful and difficult situations were the ones that were benefiting the most. It's like sort of the more you realize how vulnerable you are, the more open you are, and the more this kind of concrete,

purposeful, positive action can actually make a big difference. That makes sense. I mean, once you feel the vulnerability, it becomes real. Whereas when you look at someone who has a broken leg, and you go, oh, I can intellectually understand that that person broke their leg, but I don't know what it feels like. Right. You know, if you've never broken your leg, you don't know that feeling. You're like, oh, fuck, I can't even stand on this stupid thing. Is that that feeling? We're like, OK, now what?

What do I have to do? What do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do. And then the reality changes and the reality of you having that head trauma and trying to figure out like, there's gotta be a way to get out of this swamp, this mental swamp that I'm stuck in. Uh, let's fucking make a game. Like, let's do like, you're just, I mean, it makes sense to me. It's a person who's been through a bunch of surgeries and injuries and stuff, it totally makes sense to me. Because there's a reality that every time I've really badly injured myself, like when I needed knee surgery or something, there's like just an acceptance.

Just go, let's just go do it. Let's go do it. Because now this thing's broken. And until that happens, there's a bunch of people tell you, well, why don't you try rehabbing it? Why don't you try doing this? And it's like, no, it's's like I don't think you get it. No. And a lot of times you'll have an injury and you won't know if it will get better. What if you'll be able to get back to what you were doing before, which is actually where the name super better comes from, because I wasn't sure I would ever have the same cognitive capabilities I had.

And at that time I was, you know, I was, you know, I just gotten my PhD, I was doing research, I was, you know, I was used to being able to have an intellectual profession. And so I, everyone's like, get better soon. And I'm like, well, what does that mean? That means get back to who you were before this happened. And I didn't know if I would ever be able to do any of that again. So I thought, well, I'm not going to get better. I'm going to get super better. I'll just be different. I'll be like this new super version of myself, like Spider-Man. You know, he got bit by the radioactive spider and this concussion is my radioactive spider. And I don't know who I'm going to be, but it'll be someone different. And instead of just trying to, you know, because

anytime you have an injury or an illness, you don't know who you're going to be at the end of it. It might be back to normal. It might be different. And you want it to be the best different that it could be. Yeah, there's been many stories of people that have gotten knocked on the head and all of a sudden had musical talent or mathematical talent. Were you hoping that that was going to? I had the weirdest experience. So I'm a very introverted person by nature.

You know, like if my phone rings, I won't answer it. Like even if you're my friend or like you're my mom, like, oh, it's too much social interaction. Like I get anxiety. I can't answer it. So that's been like my whole life. But what we know about like the difference between introverts and extroverts is introverts tend to stimulate themselves with internal thinking. They're always they're always thinking and they don't need other people to kind of get them excited. Extroverts respond much more positively to external stimulation. It's like it's like they're just primed. If they see someone smiling at them, it's like a cocaine hit, you know.

So when I had the injury, I couldn't think to myself anymore. I couldn't, like, entertain myself with my own thoughts. And I became, like, this super extroverted person. And I started, like, calling everybody in my phone, like, contact lists, which people I would never, I mean, I wouldn't even pick up the phone. And I'm like, please talk to me because I couldn't, I couldn't literally could not be an introvert anymore. But that only lasted for like a couple months. And then when I started to get better, I went back to being introverted. And I still today, I, I try to keep some of that because I actually discovered, wait, I really think it's nice to talk to people. It's not actually a burden, you know.

But that's so that was that was that was one of the sort of super better, you know, changes for me as I realized. And, you know, we know from psychological literature, extroverts really are happier. They live longer. They're psychologically healthier. It is if you can convince yourself to be social, it's really good for you. But introverts just don't have a different brain chemistry, so their brain's telling them, ugh, people, scary, like, you know, too much stimulation. Yeah. Well, that's one of the weirdest things about online interaction,

is that it's kind of a combination of both introvert behavior and extrovert behavior, because even though you are interacting with people you're not seeing them no it's controlled and that it's it's the face-to-face can be really daunting yeah yeah like you'd like just the energy so it is yeah I mean it's not it's not the same thing as being I mean just cuz you're introvert doesn't mean you're, I don't know, like socially unable. Like, you know, you're not a misfit. Well, obviously, you're very capable of keeping a regular conversation going.

Yes. I mean, you could say you're an introvert, but you're easily, you know, you're easy. You're like, you're just talking. No problems. You're not. I've had some introverts on this podcast before. It's obvious. They're like, everything's an effort Yeah, yeah, it's probably more of an effort for me than it looks

Hmm, but I think it's more of an effort for everybody than it looks maybe that's a good point. Yeah, I think that one of the issues with online interaction is that you don't see the people and you don't you know You just it's just like my intention is it's kind of ambiguous, you know, like you write something or you put something out there and it's, it's not completely clear. Like if you say something, I get the tone. I can tell if you're being sarcastic and I, if, if someone, if you say something mean to me, like we have to look at each other, I'm like, fucking really? Yeah. And there's this weird thing to it. Whereas if you do that online, there's like none of that. Yeah.

I think that there's something very strange that's going on in our culture right now with so many people spending a giant amount of their time only interacting with people through text. Absolutely. Well, that's one of the areas of research that I was diving into. So, you know, because I don't just research brain injury stuff. I typically research video games and how they change how we feel and think and act in the rest of our lives. What did you get your PhD in? The field is called performance studies. So I was just basically studying how people perform in video games and as a result of video games, sort of collaboration skills, their sort of psychological performance, things like that at UC Berkeley was where I studied.

And so one of the things that we know that's happening in video games is that there's a really big difference between playing a video game in the same room with somebody and playing online. So like if we're playing Call of Duty and I'm trying to kill you, if we're playing in the same room, we actually undergo really great, it's kind of, they call it synchronization. So our heart rates will sync up, our breathing rates sync up. We get a kind of mirror neuroning process going on where it's like blood flow is mirroring where it's flowing. The patterns of activation are mirroring each other. And all of that's associated with more compassion, more empathy. We like each other more. We trust each other more.

Even if the game is violent, even if we're competing, all of this happens. And it happens because, you know, when you're playing a game with or against someone, you have to try to get in their brain. Like, what are they going to do next? What's their next move? And so your brain starts to mirror what you think they're doing. So it's this really intense mind-body mirroring that goes on. What triggers the mirroring? The observance of the character on the screen? Well, no.

Because it only works if you're in the same physical space with them. But you're still looking at a screen. Yeah. Well, you're trying to think, what are they doing? And there is just something about if you're that you may think you're looking at the screen, but there's also just a general awareness. Like when you're sitting next to someone, you're aware of sort of what's going on and the and cues that you're picking up body language cues and if you like turn to look at them you'll even just in a split second you'll get the sort of facial expression cue um and that doesn't happen in online games

um so what it's been measured oh yeah yeah yeah so what we've seen is if you take the same game and play it you know against somebody in room, you wind up with these positive impacts like, you know, more compassion, more empathy. You like each other more. If you play the same game online, you're not able to see their facial expression. You're not able to get the same syncing phenomenon. You actually dehumanize the opponent. Your testosterone goes up. You feel less empathy towards them. And so it's one of the reasons why in the book I talk about how,

you know, unless you're actively trying to change your personality to be more aggressive, and you want to, I don't know, for some reason you feel like you want to be kind of more of a, have this aggressive, hostile personality uh you should not spend more than half your time trying to beat strangers online because of the because it's just not half your time is a lot of time half your half your gaming time oh okay jesus christ what are you recommending 24 hours in a day you should never spend more than 12 hours killing strangers online. And actually it's 21 hours a week is where you start to see the benefits of games reduce and negative impacts increase. So there's another public service announcement.

What if you, have you done it in layers where, you know, like I used to do land parties with my friends. We used to play Quake land parties. Yeah, of course. And it's really fun, you know, there's a lot of camaraderie and stuff. But if you put a barrier up,aderie and stuff yeah but if you put a barrier up yeah but they're in the same room or if they're in a room that's right next door but you know they're there and maybe you can hear their voice or if you shut that door

you can't hear their voice have you changed have they seen like what what if the mirroring is consistent yeah um the studies that i've seen show that you have to be in physical proximity. So if there was a barrier and we were unable, I was unable to look over and get those cues from your body language or from your facial expression that it would not happen. What if it was like a cubicle thing and I could just like reach up?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you probably would. I like this idea of the staging. The thing I'm really curious about is with Twitch and now YouTube gaming, is if you can watch somebody playing and now you're seeing their face while they're playing a game. Studies have shown that watching someone play a game that you know how to play will trigger the same mirror neurons because your brain can kind of emulate. If you're playing a game, I don't know how to play.

I don't know the controls. I don't know the goals. My brain will just be like, I don't know. But if I know how to play a game, like, oh, I know what she's trying to do. I know what a strategy is. Like Pac-Man or something like that. Yeah, whatever it is. Where everybody knows what to do.

Get away from the ghosts. Yeah, yeah. So one thing I'm interested in is if I can see someone's face, you know, while they're playing the game and they're playing a game I know, could you get some of the benefits? But it would only be unidirectional because if you're, like, live streaming your gameplay, you can't see me. Of course.

But it would be interesting because we know that if you get this mirror neuron effect, it makes people want to help each other more, like each other more. I'm, like, thinking, like, being a powerful, you a powerful Twitch streamer or YouTube game streamer could make you really cultivate a large community of people who really want to help you. It seems like if I were building an empire of a new kind of community, I feel like that would be what I would be building because it would be a really tight bond. That's fascinating. This Twitch thing has caught a lot of people by surprise. Yeah. Because I think no one would have ever thought that it would be so popular to watch someone

play video games. Right. And the mirror neuron thing helps explain it because it's not like watching TV where it's just passive. If you know how to play the game, your brain starts working to sort of process it and anticipate, you know, what they're going to do next, trying to figure out what decision they'll make or where they'll go. And so you're actually getting a lot of the same stimulation as if you were playing the game yourself. And that's the thing people don't understand. We see this with musicians too.

If you know how to play a musical instrument and you watch somebody playing that same musical instrument, your brain starts to, you know, activate as if you were playing it yourself, which is why it can be more interesting for someone who knows how to play the piano to watch someone else play the piano or listen to someone else play the piano versus somebody who doesn't know. It totally makes sense. When I used to play Quake, we used to watch these things. They call them demos. And what it was was a game that they would record. And so you'd see it through a player's eyes. So you get to see how good a player moves.

And then it would make you play better. You would play better after you saw that. Absolutely. Yeah, they were really popular. Like demos were super popular. You would download them and you would play them in game like in your game Yeah, do you remember that? Well, that's the case with athletics to a lot of people tell me that when they watch like a really good basketball player play that

It makes them play better basketball. Yeah, I know it's the case with pool I play pool and when I watch really good players play, I can kind of emulate what they do but I feel like it's not just like copying but I kind of tune in to how they're doing it. Because your brain is practicing it. I find that after a grand

slam in tennis, because I'll watch the only reason why I'm not watching tennis right now is because we're here doing this. Oh, is there something going on? Oh, yeah, the U.S. Open. My favorite player is playing, like, literally right now. Who's your favorite player? Joe Willisanga, who I named my puppy after.

I have a dog named Songa. He's playing right now to get to the semis. But no spoilers because I'm recording it. But I know that, so I'll go, like, two weeks watching hours and hours of tennis a day. Then I go to play tennis, and I'm better. I'm absolutely, so I'll go like two weeks watching hours and hours of tennis a day. Then I go to play tennis and I'm better. I'm absolutely, I, I see the ball better. I get to it better. Um, I mean, absolutely.

Because my brain has spent two weeks mirroring everything I see. But if you don't know how to play, if you've never played, your body won't do it. So you have to have, you have to have a model for, for this to work. Totally makes sense. Yeah, because something like tennis, I maybe played once in my whole life when I was in my early 20s. So you wouldn't get as much benefit. No, I wouldn't get anything because I'm not going to play again, I don't think. I've just done enough time in the day.

But I totally understand that. That totally makes sense. I think that probably is the case with pretty much everything that people do. It's one of the reasons why a sense of community amongst people that are all involved in the same sort of endeavor is so important because you kind of push each other and inspire each other. And also you kind of feed off of each other. Maybe one, like if we were all comedians, maybe you would have like a certain kind of style that I don't have. And I would see your style and go, Oh, Jane's got this crazy thing she's doing. Oh, that's kind of cool. And then like, maybe I would do something that you didn't do. And you're like, maybe I need to

like be more this or more and sort of tune into how people are doing to the point where a lot of comics when they're around each other, it becomes an issue sometimes because they kind of mimic each other's personas or or even just a cadence yeah thank you start picking up well there's a guy named David tell it's like one of the funniest guys ever and he's got a way of talking that's really fun and when he talks like there's so many young guys yeah that come up that start talking like Dave Attell and it's like it became an issue where there was like all these little like Patrice on O'Neill used to call them Attell babies.

There was all these Attell babies that were running around. But really, they're just young comics that admire his sort of, and they're trying to do it too. And they're like super inspired because they're young and they're just trying to make it. And then they're seeing this guy who's just, you know, like a fantastic comedian. And then they don't even realize it, but're just adopting it yeah no that makes perfect sense i mean you just uh it becomes a template yeah nobody exists in a vacuum right i mean everybody sort of there's everyone influences everyone around them to a certain extent we all want to believe that we're some rogue independent operator that exists out in the fringe of society and lives in a fucking wooden house in the woods somewhere.

That sounds nice. It sounds nice, but it's a creation of fiction. Oh, yeah. No, and it's funny. Someone I admire, Clive Thompson, he writes a lot about technology for like Wired and New York Times. And he had a book out recently about, you know, is technology changing our brain? And the opening chapter says, you know, is technology changing our brain? And the opening chapter says, you know, newsflash, everything

changes your brain. The sentence you just read, it changed your brain. So, I mean, on one hand, it's sort of silly to look at research that says, oh, games change your brain like this or, you know, music changes your brain like that. Because everything you do, everything you're exposed to changes your brain.

You're making a memory or you're sort of activating a pattern. So, I mean, like even this conversation, you know. Yes. Congratulations. Like you have changed my brain today. Yes. But this is just something to think about. Like it's a lot of responsibility in how we interact with each other.

It is. And, well, that's one of the weirdest things about doing a podcast is how many people will tell me after they listen to the podcast For 500 episodes dude you changed my life But it really are changing each other's lives I mean the podcast has changed my life just being able to talk to all these different people That's why it's important not to have dipshits in your life Because if you're around people that are just constantly fucking up and constantly making the same mistakes over and over again like that pattern affects you too yes that pattern will creep into your mind yes well they say you know

it's it's it's really good to surround yourself with people who inspire you because they they talk about having a cognitive model for behavior change like if you're trying to get better in some way uh if you can visualize, if you know somebody who's already done it or doing positive things in their lives, it requires less energy for your brain to imagine yourself doing it. Like if you're not surrounded by anybody who's trying to get healthier or trying to get fit or whatever it is, it's literally harder to imagine. And so it's more exhausting for you to try to imagine yourself

getting better. Whereas if you're surrounded by people who are doing it, it becomes familiar to your brain. There's all sorts of examples that your brain can call on. It literally takes less energy for you to imagine yourself actually doing it. And weirdly, they found at Stanford University using like avatars. If you can see an avatar that is designed to look like you, like doing the sort of things you want to do, like, you know, being really physically fit, like working out in the game world. If you just watch an avatar custom designed to look like you doing that, it lowers the cognitive threshold for you to do it. And then you will do more in real life, you'll, you know, you will will work out more you'll spend more time committed to

those goals just by having watched the sort of mirror version of yourself having done it that's fascinating that that's fascinating because that seems to open up a whole new realm of possibility for people creating virtual realities yeah like virtual realities where you're what like one of the big things that they say it's an important for progress in sports And and in pretty much anything is visualization visualize yourself doing things. It's a big thing with martial arts They take a lot of fighters. They they talk them through their scenarios They will sit down and they'll close their eyes and meditate and visualize Themselves getting out of bad situations visualize themselves, and do it over and over and over again

to the point where it becomes like a part of this is your reality. Your reality is you win. It seems like if you could watch a video of you doing all those things, an artificially created you. Yep, absolutely. Jumping higher than you've ever jumped before. Yeah. Scoring in tennis or playing.

So it's like, there's a little bit of nuance to it that's really interesting. So, for example, if you are like walking on a treadmill while you're watching a custom avatar of yourself and the avatar starts running faster and is getting fitter, you will run faster, you will work harder. If you are engaged in an activity, it can really get you moving. So it would be good to tie it to when you're actually working out. It might not last for, you know, I watched this movie today and a week later I'm still feeling more powerful. You kind of want to do it in the moment. The one study at Stanford found for 24 hours they were more physically active, like taking stairs or doing more push-ups or whatever.

But I do like the idea of using it purposely like that. The one thing they know is like for positive visualization, I don't know if you've seen, there's been new research coming out that you have to visualize the effortful action and not the outcome. Like if you're visualizing getting, you know, lifted up on people's shoulders, like I'm the champion, that actually seems to sometimes have a counterproductive effect because your brain can imagine it so vividly, you kind of feel like you've already had that payoff and you put in less effort. There have been studies for a few years that show this. But if you're visualizing the effortful activity that it takes to get there, you're picturing, you know, here's what I have to do on game day,

and you're thinking about the things that require effort on your part, techniques or, you know, the actions you're thinking about the things that require effort on your part, techniques or, you know, the actions you're going to take, that is helpful. So you just don't want to think about, you know, I can't wait till they, you know, call me up and say that I won, whatever. You have, you can't think about just, you have to be visualizing the things that are going to require effort and energy on your part. That's the, your part. That seems to be the most helpful. It's so fascinating because just that statement right there, that seems to be the most helpful. There's so much weirdness in all this.

It's like magic. Like what the fuck is going on? With the visualization process, what's the mechanism? Like what is it? Inspiration? I mean, how much of inspiration, how much is inspiration a factor in success? I would say probably gigantic, right? So is that all it is? I mean, there's, there's so many different avenues. I am, I focus on self-efficacy as what you're trying to increase, uh, as opposed to inspiration.

So self-efficacy is when you feel like you have the skills and abilities and resources you need to achieve your goal. And it's different from self-esteem. Self-esteem is like, oh, I'm a good person. You know, I sort of like myself. Self-efficacy is very specific. Like if I have self-efficacy about running a marathon, it means that I have done at least a few 20-mile runs. I know how hard

it's going to be. I've got my resource. I know how to fuel during the run. I know how much sodium I have to take at different points. I know what the course looks like, so I've got a mental plan. Having that sense of reasonable optimism and focusing on visualizing what you'll do successfully that's focused on your own skills and abilities, that in all of the scientific literature is linked to better outcomes. Whereas if you're imagining things that are outside of your control, it just doesn't, because how is, it might inspire you, and maybe you'll, you know, get out of bed and put more of an effort as you, you know, picture something good happening to you. But the, the mental model that seems to be most powerful is when you're focusing on things that you have direct control over, if that makes sense. Yeah. Self-efficacy. How much of all that is just a little like what you're we're talking about is just focus

is just thinking about what you're doing and the more you think about what you're doing and the more energy you put towards what you're doing makes you better and how much of this is just i mean is it possible that all these ideas of just visualization is what you're doing is really just focusing more and loving more what you're doing i think that could be a big part of it. I mean that the focus attention You're you're able to perform better you learn faster. I think part of it is also Something to do with the dopamine system You know in video games

So if some so I've talked to lots of neuroscientists for this book, and a lot of them will say if you want to increase someone's self-efficacy, you have them play a video game. Because in a video game, you're constantly required to take action and then wait to see, you know, I try to fire my weapon. I wait to see if I shot successfully. I try to orient around an obstacle. I'm going to get information. if I shot successfully, I try to orient around an obstacle, I'm going to see, I'm going to get information. Every time that your brain expects information about your performance, it gives you a little dopamine release. Dopamine feels good, so you get excited. But increased dopamine also

allows you to pay closer attention and to learn faster, right? So anytime you're trying something where you're constantly taking actions, getting feedback, and you have to kind of learn and improve, you'll get all this dopamine going. And that is associated with the ability to build self-efficacy. So I think that there is a, I mean, I think there's a neurochemical process that's underlying this. It's not just, I mean, it's not just a matter of what you think. It's also about changing what is going on in your brain so that the brain is primed to learn faster, to improve. cool applications for video games, because if you can get a cancer patient who feels really powerless and overwhelmed to play a video game about chemotherapy, and it starts building self-advocacy and getting all the dopamine going, there was a clinical trial that showed that kids

who played a video game about cancer were, for two to three months later, missing fewer doses of their medicine, taking more antibiotics. They were more engaged, which leads to more cases of cancer going into remission. Right. But isn't that just more focus? It's just focusing and thinking. I mean, it's using it as a mechanism to focus and think about your illness, focus and think about your recovery. It's focused with the dopamine hit and the increased dopamine is going to, it changes. So what's, well, now we'll get really deep here.

Every time that you consider a goal, your brain stops and says, is it worth it? Because your brain's trying to conserve your body's energy and your cognitive energy. And we'll say, if I do this goal, do I really want it? Am I going to put the energy to do it? And what researchers have found is the more dopamine you have in your reward pathways, the more you focus on the positive outcome and the less you think about the effort required. So if I give you a bunch of dopamine hits, you're going to be thinking about, I might be cured someday. I don't care how many side effects there are to this medicine. I'm swallowing this pill, you know, and I'm going to do it because you're focused on the positive outcome, not all of the other things that stress you out about it or make you, you know, the nausea and the energy that it takes. And this is true if you're doing push-ups, you know, like do I really feel like doing 100 push-ups right now?

And this is true if you're doing push-ups, you know, like, do I really feel like doing 100 push-ups right now? If you have more dopamine going, you're going to be more likely to say, this is important to me, it's important to my training. And if you are low dopamine, which is when you're clinically depressed, you have really low dopamine. So everything seems too hard. Oh, why am I going to bother getting out of bed? There's, like, the effort required seems so much more important than the goal. So there is a neurological underpinning to self-efficacy is sort of this combination of really wanting to achieve your goal and having that increased attention so you learn faster. So there's, but you have to, it's, I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not just a matter of saying I'm going to pay attention now.

You have to be priming your brain to increase the dopamine in your reward pathways. Right. But the dopamine hit, what is the mechanism that creates the dopamine hit? Is it just simply loving what you're doing and being enthusiastic about it? No, no, no. Is it goals? It's goals. It's anticipation.

Well, specifically, it's anticipation of feedback. So the fastest way, if you wanted to increase your dopamine right now, I would say make a prediction about something that's going to happen today. It could be anything like I could, I predict that Sango will win today in four sets, whatever it is, you make a prediction about something. Every time you make a prediction, your brain's like, Oh, I might be right, I'm gonna and and that'll feel good. And if I'm not right, I'll learn something. Why did he lose in five sets or whatever. So I make a better prediction next time. That gives you a dopamine. So in a video game, when you fire your weapon, you have predicted that it's going to successfully shoot that guy over there. And you're waiting to see on the screen, did I miss or did I hit? That's why you

get a dopamine hit. So every time you make a prediction, your brain gears up to either celebrate that you were right. Yay, success. Or I got to learn so that I can do better the next time. That's why I think, you know, I have friends. I have one friend in particular that didn't grow up with any healthy sense of competition. And he's actually talked about that. Like, if there's one thing that he could go back and do again, like, he thinks his parents didn't really instill any sense of competition in him. And he's one of those guys, if he's playing a game and it's not going his way, he'll pull

the plug. He'll flip the board over. He's that guy. Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, you know what's going on in the brain. So this is, you have this reaction. But to him, losing is just devastating and games are

only if you can win right well and it's probably what's going on it's his brain is saying you know it's starting to realize no amount of effort is going to turn this around and so he just walks away there's well not only that there's no there's no history of figuring things out and getting better right everybody who has ever started anything and gotten really good at it knows there's no history of figuring things out and getting better. Right. Everybody who has ever started anything and gotten really good at it knows that in the beginning you suck. And that's some, it's kind of exciting.

Yeah. Like, um, you, you pick something up, say, uh, tennis, you know,

like if I started to playing tennis today, I don't know how to play tennis. I would suck. And it would be exciting cause I would get my ass kicked and I'd be like, okay, I have to figure this fucking thing out. Like what makes that ball spin like that? How's that guy whack that ball? Oh, I see. He's no, he knows he's number crunching. He's like data. He knows he's got, he's chunking information. He knows that if I move left, the ball's going to go there and he's going to go here and, oh, okay. And I don't have that. So. And that experience

of getting better. I mean, that's the basis for self-efficacy. So it's like, sometimes people ask me, like parents will say, what kids should my, what games should my kids be playing for learning experience? But I say every game is designed to be a learning experience because you're supposed to be bad. And that's why games feel so good. Every time you play a new game, you're figuring it out, you're learning how it works, you're getting better. That experience of constantly getting better and proving to yourself, I can figure something out, I can improve, I can master something, that's one of the reasons.

There's a fundamental reason why people like playing games and why they don't play the same game forever. I mean, sometimes you do if the game that you can never master like chess or something, you know, but most people will really get into a game for a while and then feel like they have stopped improving. And so the brain gets, you know, wants to keep learning, wants to keep getting better. The dopamine hits are only going to come if you aren't sure how To be successful right so you have to play a new game That's why we don't play tic-tac-toe as adults right no no dopamine hits with tic-tac-toe because you know exactly what's gonna happen yeah Bullshit game I keep trying to tell my five-year-old

We're gonna it's gonna be a draw every time kid this is bullshit But there's there's a lead ism attached to chess where chess is the only game that's considered draw every time, kid. This is bullshit. There's an elitism attached to chess, where chess is the only game that's considered a worthwhile pursuit. I know. It's terrible. What is that? Because parents will tell kids that are playing video games that they're wasting their time.

I know. But if you came home and your kid was playing chess silently with his friend, and they're just looking at the... You'd be like, oh, my kid is up to a good thing. Oh, sure. I mean, first, because Einstein played chess, so of course. Well, I think that's part of it. Although, you know, it's really interesting if you read letters that he used to write.

Fucking hated chess. But he wrote to people that he was worried that he was addicted to it. He talked a lot about how he had this game addiction, which is fascinating when you think about today, how many people worried about about I'm addicted to World of Warcraft or whatever game. So even Einstein worried about being addicted to his favorite game. It is real.

Game addiction is absolutely real. It is. It is real. It is absolutely real. And there are techniques for breaking that pattern, by the way. Do you want a quick technique for how to break? Sure. Okay.

There's a whole chapter in the Super Better book about game addiction and how to stop it, how to reverse it, and what tends to lead people into it. I wish my friend Duncan was here right now. He's the biggest addict I know when it comes to video games. It makes me feel normal the biggest predictor for who will become addicted to games and feel like it kind of gets out of control, spirals out of

control, is if they're playing for escapist purposes to try to block other feelings like I have all these problems, I'm going to play the game instead I'm feeling anxious, I'm going to play the game instead, so the way you reverse it is you you have to i mean i talk about as playing to get better you are instead of playing to avoid something you focus on what you're doing that is making you better even if it's just to start getting better at this game then you focus on

you know i'm playing with you know my friends It's like improving my relationships or I'm focusing on strategy or building my teamwork skills or whatever it is. You start to think about other goals outside the game that the game is connected to because the biological process of addiction is the narrowing of goals that the brain responds to. This is true for drug addiction. I mean, all forms of addiction, pornography. Narrowing of goals that the brain responds to. Right. So, you know, I said you get this dopamine hit when you anticipate something good. In addiction, the brain starts to believe that the only source of the next dopamine hit is the thing you're addicted to. And you can't imagine other things that are going to make you feel that good or feel that excited. And there's this great new book called The Biology of Desire that lays, the neuroscientist kind of lays out all the new thinking on addiction. And the way that you break, one of the ways you break

out of cycle for any addiction is to start priming the brain to anticipate success or pleasure from other things so you have to talk about like widening the scope of what is going to provide that dopamine hit so in gameplay you have to stop you have to stop thinking about the game as the only source of that good feeling. So you have to start thinking about other goals that you have besides just the sort of sense of relief that the game is going to provide. That's something that they tell addicts, drug addicts, use channel that addiction into something else. So that's essentially what they're saying. They're saying what you need to do is find something else, but that's positive that you can get addicted to.

So you're seeking out that weird chemical reaction in the mind when you're stimulated by something else. So instead of chasing crack, you'll chase exercise. Yes, but what we're seeing with games is because games aren't inherently dangerous, you don't have to quit playing games. And in fact, it can be dangerous to just go cold turkey on games because it's like taking someone off an antidepressant without tapering them because games have such a powerful

impact on our happiness. You know how many kids are going to listen to this and go, Mom, it's dangerous for me to quit this game. Listen to Jane. There are like, I mean, there are cases of kids who have killed themselves when their parents turn off the game. Those kids would have killed themselves over anything. I think it is likely related to, it's the same thing when you take someone off an antidepressant

and the brain is no longer having that, it's like you lose your ability ability to imagine is the term positive is the term addiction like is that a flawed term like because it seems like it's so limiting and and so narrow in its scope we think of addiction we think of oh he's on the heroin yeah you know like you just automatically think but really what is it that your brain has locked into these pathways of achieving desirable effects? Absolutely. And that's, there's a lot. I've done some work with some rehabilitation centers, recovery centers for addiction where they're starting to be more aware of this, the new sense of what addiction is. But if people are interested, the book that just came out this year about that, The Biology of Desire, does a really good job

of explaining it because it's, I mean, it's a pretty provocative argument. It says that addiction is not a disease. It's, it's a fun, it's the brain is functioning absolutely perfectly. It's just focusing on, it's like hyper-focusing on one goal. But if you had that same brain chemistry about running a startup company, I mean, Mark Zuckerberg was addicted to his startup in the same way that someone can get addicted to a video game or addicted to a substance. You get hyper-focused on one goal. It's your only source of pleasure and anticipation of these positive

feelings. So it's the brain is working properly. It's not broken. It's not it's not a disease in that sense. It's that it has just gotten stuck. It's got stuck on something that's nonproductive. Yeah, that is maybe ultimately not good for you physically or not good for your the life that you're trying to lead. Good for your career, good for your the life that you're trying to leave good for your career good for your family life or i had a buddy that was addicted to um one of those role-playing games trying to i guess it was everquest and uh he he had this really profound statement we were at the comedy store once he was one of the managers and uh he said i am so good at making money in my online life and so bad at it in my real life yeah yeah and like he was like he was sitting there like a broken man and i'm like how often do you play he's like eight hours nine ten hours a day every day yeah i go every day and he

goes yeah i um i can't not play it and then that's when he said that like um it was like this rare break from the game on during his free time he wasn't working and he came down to the comedy store to hang out and he's pasty white pale like almost gray skinned yeah yeah because he was just like just drained malnourished sitting in front of a monitor all the time clicking and moving and clicking yeah and so it's like the intervention for that you know if you were to sort of follow the guidelines uh of of how you get people to sort of focus on other goals is you would just start by asking him well why are you good at making money in this game what what what does it take in terms of skill or you know commitment or research what are you what are you doing and? And start to think about strengths and abilities.

And then when you are thinking about yourself and what you're good at and what you're capable of, it kind of takes you out of you own it. It's not the game, right? The game isn't making you successful or happy. It's your own skills and abilities. And that seems to be if you look at the scientific literature, just talking about what you own and what what is a result of your skills and abilities, that that helps you broaden that. So you realize you can apply that elsewhere. There might be other venues. It's not the game that's giving this to me. This is something that I own. Right. That's so hard to intellectualize, though, when you're in the grips of addiction. I know. It's like questions in my book

that literally you can ask someone or you can ask yourself. So you don't have to intellectualize it. I mean, just do the... So there are a hundred quests in the book. You just do what I tell you to do. They're all designed like little game missions. Because it is hard to

change your mindset. I mean, it's definitely hard. But what we know from studies of all kinds of mindset interventions is that once you do it, it sticks. So unlike a lot of forms of therapy or medication, you have to take this pill for the rest of your life. You have to be in therapy for years. If you can do a mindset intervention, it's done. Benefits are there. It's locked in. do a mindset intervention, it's done. Benefits are there, it's locked in, and you can have a five-minute mindset intervention instead of taking a prescription for the rest of your life. What I've found to mitigate my addiction problems or my addictive tendencies is just do a bunch of different things. I have a bunch of different activities that I do, and the reason why I do them, so many different things, is to keep from locking on one. Exactly. So you've like intuitively figured that out already. Well,

I figured it out from trial and error over a long life of addiction. I grew up being addicted to a bunch of different things. At first it was art and then it became martial arts. And then as I got older, it became standup comedy and it became a pool. I had a real problem with pool to a point where my manager thought it was ruining my career. Oh, my gosh. I was playing eight, ten hours a day. I was playing in tournaments. All I wanted to do was play pool. I would go do my comedy sets, and then I'd go play pool until 3, 4 o'clock in the morning.

And then I would get up in the morning and go work out. I'd go do my comedy and do the same thing every night. But all I was thinking about was the game. go do my comedy and do the same thing every night. But all I was thinking about was the game. I was thinking about knocking the balls into the whole, like the dopamine effect or whatever it is of winning or of being successful,

of running out the table, of having the ball do what you want it to do. And because it's so difficult, the reward is so much, like anything that's really, like if you play a game, it's really easy. When you win, it doesn't mean anything. But when you play a game it's really easy when you win it doesn't mean anything but when you play a game that's really hard to do that reward is so

fucking exciting yeah but this is interesting because like you become a more interesting person as a result of having all the things that you do like you're like this really I mean it's like unusual that you have all of these things instead of, you know, being hyper focused on one aspect. So it's probably I mean, it seems like a good strategy. I'm just a broad spectrum junkie. That's it. It's just a bunch of things. That might be that could be like a recipe for a good life, though.

I mean, this is kind of kind of interested in that idea now. Like what you should that should should be like a thing. Broad spectrum junkie. I mean, it works right now, but it could go off the rails. Yeah. Well, you got to keep you got to keep you got to keep that circle wide. Yeah. I've gone off the rails several times in my life.

But it's just like even I like with running. I definitely use running for my mental health. And if I get an injury, that is really hard for me. I have to replace it with something or else, you know, you go into a depression. It's a big thing with jujitsu guys. It's very difficult for them to take the time off before they go back and train again once they get injured. And I have a couple of chronic injuries that I have because one particular of a back injury that was a bulging disc that I just would, I would ignore.

Right. I would, I would, I would hurt it pretty bad. And then two weeks later I'd be sparring again. Yeah. Because I just needed that rush until it got pretty chronic. And then I had to take a long stretch off and really let it heal up. But it gave me that perspective. It feels like, I mean, just hearing you say that makes me think really how important it

is for people to understand like how this system works so that you can say, look, my brain's telling me to go back and work out now, even though my doctor said, don't do it. And I can Google and it says stay off it for six weeks. And to understand your brain is telling you that because it wants a dopamine hit. If you really want to rehabilitate properly, you need to start doing other things that produce dopamine hits. And that's, I mean, fantasy sports, for example. Do get really into that for the season that you're taking off. Because that's, you're making predictions. So that's really.

That's not going to work. It wouldn't work for you? No chance. Works for a lot of people. Play poker then. I need to be active. Yeah. Physically active. Yeah. There has to be actual physical movement involved. Nervousness

is a big part of my adrenaline junkie thing. It's actual nerves. It's like playing poker is, it was never exciting to me. Even if like people are gambling for a lot of money, whereas playing pool is extremely exciting because there's the execution, the physical execution of things. So you're going into flow state. Yeah. That's what that is, right? It's too much. Well, I think my brain was wired with martial arts and competing, which is extremely exciting, but dangerous and thrilling. And the thrills are so high. Like the thrills of competing are just beyond anything that you can ever get from something that's non-physical non-threatening It's it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical health consequences, right?

So there's all sorts of craziness involved in it and the intensity and the focus that you need So you understand that guy on the skateboard really well then actually. Oh, yeah, too. Well, that's what's scary about it to me That could have fucking easily been me when i was 17 or 18 years old i i understand all that shit that's why one of the things that freaks me out most about those people that are tightrope walking and doing all the jumping those squirrel suits where they jump off of cliffs and fly around oh yeah yeah that doesn't always freaks me out is that i get it. Yeah, that's what freaks me out Yeah race car driving all that shit is like I understand what this guy's doing He's feeding that monster in his brain that needs to be shocked and scared and thrilled and what's next and ah, you know It's where you feel alive and yeah, not just feel alive but hyper alive. Yeah. Yeah hyper alive

I'm very hot it's funny because you were asking about focus earlier. And obviously when you go into that intense state where there's high stakes, high risk, your attention is so super focused. Time slows down and you're able to see more and process more. So that could be part of, I mean, you're interested in focus because that's a part of that experience, that high, which you don't get. I mean, there's lots of highs where you're not going to have a heightened focus and attention. There's that and there's the state of peace that's achieved when you've overcome almost insurmountable obstacles and fear and nervousness. and nervousness, everything else, like whatever weird problems that you might be dealing with with your personal life, they seem so inconsequential. Like when I would have like relationship problems or girls dating, some craziness about to break up, I would go spar and I would be like, who gives a fuck?

You know, and you know, I remember one time having this conversation with this girl. I was dating. It was, like, so dramatic and nonsense. I'm like, so then I guess we're breaking up? I mean, like, what? What are we going to do? Like, fuck, I can't do this. Like, either we like each other or we don't like each other.

Either we're going to hang out and have fun or we're not going to hang out anymore. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like, oh, you're so cold. You're so – This sounds like my early 20s. I remember that you fucking you really you gain perspective instead of wallowing around in this because i think there's an addictive aspect of relationships too oh yeah breakup makeup thing of the the highs and the lows of like there are some people that are addicted to arguing in

relationships oh sure falling in love is an addiction. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's literally the same process. It's the narrowing of attention on one thing. Only that person gets you that excited, gets you that engaged. With a bunch of biological tricks engaged, too, because your body's trying to get you to breed. Yeah. And what's really, then you get the really problematic relationships when that happens for one person and not the other.

And that's why you get, you know. Oh, stalkers. Yeah. the really problematic relationships when that happens for one person and not the other and that's why you get stalkers yeah well you get like but it's like it's why it's why somebody seems you don't understand even if you're dating and you kind of like that person but they're already they're down the road they're physically like they are they're they're in love they are addicted and then your behavior might seem totally crazy to me because i'm not there yet and even though i liked you because you're further along in that process and that sort of narrowing of attention, I freak out. Maybe if I had waited a few more weeks, I might have been far enough along that it actually doesn't scare me off.

People who fall in love at different rates, it's not necessarily that you're a crazy person and I'm a normal person and therefore I shouldn't date you. It's just you're further. The biochemical processes look a little faster for you. I think like there are couples who break up too soon because one of them came kind of cut further along in the addiction process than the other. What a weird way to look at it. But yeah, I mean, and also it's like the same exact person. You could meet them six months later and they're perfect. Right.

Yes. Or you meet them right now. Because maybe they have enough going on in their life that they fall in love slower. Sure. Right. Because you'll fall in love faster if there's nothing else getting you excited in your day. Right. It's also that term fall in love.

Like what exactly is going on there? Like what does that mean? Right. You know, you're just syncing up whatever personality aspects that you have, holes and square pegs and round holes and everyone's trying to figure out where everything fits in. And then there's also a weird thing where we've all had friends that alter who they are when they start dating someone. It's very strange to see too.

You know, like they'll stop talking to some of their friends or they change their behavior pretty radically. And you're like, Whoa, what's going on? You're like fitting into this mold that the other person requires. Like one person is either more dominant or you're both like super fucking codependent. So you need each other all the time. Like I have a friend, this motherfucker can't go anywhere without his girlfriend. He doesn't do anything without her. I mean, invite him over for a podcast, boom, brings his girlfriend.

You know, come on over for the game. Oh, she's here too. Great. You know, like, he doesn't go to the movies, doesn't do anything. And is he happy like that? He's a fucking mess. He's a mess. But the two of them are a mess together in this, like like inescapable pair. Gotcha.

Gotcha. But maybe they're happy. Messy happy. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know either. Well, it's what is happiness.

That's strange. I mean, it's like they're not depressed. They're not jumping off bridges. Yeah. You know, they're bolting. They're not shooting heroin. Good. This all sounds good.

Yeah. You know, they're bolting, they're not shooting heroin. Good. This all sounds good. Yeah. Like what, what is it that makes people addicted to each other? Cause they most certainly get addicted to each other. Yeah. Like the feeling when someone breaks up with you, when you can't believe they're gone. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like that is like a, like someone's stolen something from you.

Like they've stolen your happiness by taking off and just simply leaving you alone. Yep. Yep. Like you, they, they just simply leaving you alone. Yep. Yep. Like you, they, they are a part of you. Like your whole, your, your, your whole is missing a slice. Yeah. Like the whole of you. I know that.

I mean, it's all the metaphors that people use. It really does feel that way. Well, but isn't that a biological trick just to get us to breed? Like you stick around long enough to make a baby and then, you know, fall in love with the baby so that you raise it. So that baby can go and have a baby. And the sense of community that you have all sort of is addictive and it keeps you together, which ensures survival. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's why cooperation feels good.

It's why kindness feels good. I mean, it's so tricky. It is. And it's like, I don't know. You can. I mean, I'm a very practical person. I mean, I think I try to help people feels good. I mean, it's so tricky. It is. And it's like, I don't know, you can. I mean, I'm a very practical person. I mean, I think I try to help people feel good. I want to feel good.

You know, cooperation and kindness, you know, those things help society and help evolution. And like, we're stronger together. Yeah. And it feels good. Like, that's that's practical. And I don't mind that, you know, evolution is kind of tricking me. I mean, I have two babies. I have a seven-month-old twin daughters.

Oh, wow. And, you know, if this is a trick of biology, how I feel about them, I'm totally cool with that because it feels good. Yeah. That's biology's trick. To me, it tells me it feels good. I like it. Thank you, biology, for giving me these feelings I never had before.

Yeah, I mean, you can kind of intellectualize it down to the point where it's no longer enjoyable. Because, like, isn't life itself a trick in a sense? Because it's really temporary. No matter what, you can accumulate all the Audis and beautiful houses and boats you want. But at the end of the day, it's over. You know, like, the sun rises and the sun sets. And you've got a certain end of the day, it's over. You know, like the sun rises and the sun sets, and you've got a certain amount of time, and that's it. So you can intellectualize that to the point where you're like,

what's the fucking point? I'm just going to end it now. And some people do do that. They almost get to this thing where they can't be in the moment because they don't know how long the moment lasts, and the anticipation of the moment ending is just too freaky. So they're like, fuck this fuck this i'm out it's sort of the same thing as my friend who can't play the video game if he's going to lose and he pulls the plug i mean really there's a lot of a lot of the same sort of qualities and characteristics of that kind of thinking there's over intellectualizing

or over analyzing to the point where you can't even enjoy what it is. I feel like I really want to work on this friend of yours, like video game therapy to like, well, it sounds like an interesting project. He's a egomaniac. You don't want to do it. Too much problems. I like,

but I like, I like the idea of like, how would you help somebody who can't lose? Like who's a, who's a bad loser. You should be so happy that you're trying to help them. Cause that means you're talking about him. It's like,

you're focusing on him. There's a lot of but no i mean he's alive he lives in america he's not in ethiopia living in a grass house you know it's like he's lucky as fuck yeah you got to think i i it's at a certain point in time that there's there's there's levels to happiness and harmony, the harmony that you achieve with the environment that you find yourself in. And the more chaos that you create and the more problems that you create just to solve those problems, that energy keeps you from doing something else. And that energy is going to block you from the other pursuits. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. else and that energy is going to block you from the other pursuits yeah absolutely yeah i mean you need to take committed action towards positive things and in a sense the entirety of your life is a game of course yes it is i have a i have a kind of funny story about that um you know i did

the colbert rapport a few years ago. And when you did that... Does he break character? So, well, he comes... Not... No. Well, not exactly. So he comes into the dressing room beforehand. And they don't do a pre-show interview because they want you to be kind of off guard and

off balance. And he comes in and he says, you know, have you seen the show? Okay, I'm going to be in character. And I'm going to be really stupid and stubborn. And your job is to disabuse me of my stupid and stubborn ideas. And they said, now, let me ask you a question. Is, you know, is life a game? And I was like, is this, is he like, is he practicing, you know, is this like, am I repracticing some kind of witty rapport for the show or whatever?

So I'm like, I'm trying to go into that mode. And'm like well you know yes of course it is and he's like if life is a game we spend all our time playing it why are we so bad at it and i'm like i'm like totally thrown off like is he being like phil i don't like anyway it turned out he was actually being quite philosophical and he's like he had all of these you know sort of thoughts about you know i mean he started mentioning philosophy books he'd read and everything and I'm sure he is. that question and try to come up with a better answer for him someday. Well, it's a complicated game and there's no instruction book. That's why we're so bad at it. I mean, it's not everybody's bad at it. You can run into people, you go, wow, this person is a really cool game going on. Yeah.

You know, but it is just a game. Yeah. And essentially what the problem is that there's loaded words like the word addiction is a loaded word. It's a loaded term. I think the word addiction is a loaded word. It's a loaded term. I think the word game is a loaded term too. It's a complicated series of events that you're trying to manage. And you're trying to manage risk and reward and benefit and the positive and negative

aspects of behavior. Essentially, it's exactly the same as a game. They're completely indistinguishable. One of them is just open-ended, and there's no clear pathway. It's a game that literally, you're standing in the middle of the universe. Bam. And especially in 2015, if you have the means, you can get on a plane and go to another part of the game. You know, you could just hop on a plane and, you know, we were talking before this podcast started about the Radiolab podcast that's out today about that guy who was on my podcast, Corey Knowlton, who shot that rhino.

Like, that's a guy who took the game and decided to go to a fucking place he totally doesn't belong or is never, you know, never, he's not born there or whatever. Shouldn't say doesn't belong, but a completely different area of the game and he's doing something over there. And everybody over in this part of the game is like, what the fuck are you doing over there? Like some guy who gets on a boat and decides to sail across the world. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

What are you doing? Well, he decided that he's going to go to a different part of the board and he's going to get in a boat and he's going gonna drink rainwater and try to catch fish and travel across the fucking ocean this is interesting people are playing different kinds of games so like the guy wants to kill a rhino that's a combat game and the person wants to sail around in the boat is doing exploration it's an adventure game and other people are doing the you know collection game requiring resources I think the rhino guys doing a collection game to well

yeah weird way he's collecting bodies yes yeah you know yeah and I think the the guy who's on the boat is doing the collection game too because he's collecting accolades you know I made it across the ocean right across it yeah yeah the real way to do is go across the ocean. Oh, right. Well, he's an achiever. Like, if you make it across, yeah, the real way to do it is go across the ocean. Don't tell anybody. Right. Where have you been for the last six months? You know, just chilling, trying to find myself.

Meanwhile, you're on a boat. When I started training for a marathon, I was like, I'm not telling anybody. Because I wanted to, like, just. Be internal. Yeah. I wanted to be from. Well, you know, because it's like this weird bias some people have about runners that like they brag about it a lot or like they do it to like show off.

Do you know who says that? People who wish they were running. I really believe that. Because if you run, like I have my friend Cameron, Cameron Haynes, he's run two ultra marathons and he'll, you know, post about it on his Instagram or he'll show you his time or something like that. He's an athlete and he's sponsored by a bunch of companies. And part of his gig is that he inspires people. And he really feels good about that.

It's a genuine thing that he does. Takes people running up these mountains. But you'll see these people that bitch about it. These guys run 100 miles in 24 hours. If that's not impressive, then you need to go look in the mirror and find out what the fuck actually impresses you Yeah, you post a picture of your breakfast. You can't get mad about yeah I mean it's like what why do people get upset that you say you're gonna run a marathon And why would anybody get upset it's hard to run a marathon? Why would anybody get upset? It's hard to run a marathon.

You're going to run for three and a half, four hours, whatever the hell your time is. That's a fucking long time. It's hard for me to do 20 minutes on the elliptical machine and not get bored. I could keep going for a lot longer. But at 20 minutes, I'm like, fuck, am I done? Jesus Christ, get this over with. When someone says they ran a marathon, you start to question your own resolve.

Yes. Which is like one of the reasons why they do it. You're showing your score. Yeah. You're showing your game score and people are getting pissed. Yeah, too high score. Fucking showing her high score, bitch.

Although sometimes, sometimes I will post a terrible run because I like, you don't want to be too inspiring that people feel like they can't do it. Like fuck those people. I'll do a slow run so that people will see like, hey, if you're not tricking you into doing shitty scores, they're tricking you. That's true. Yeah.

Well, there's definitely that. There's a lot of people who when someone will accomplish something I will I'm fascinated by watching the observers and one of the Instagram observers are the most fascinating because whenever I go to someone's page Someone's done something cool like you know my friend Cameron running a hundred miles I'll look at the the negative comments and I go to their Instagram page and they're almost always blocked It's always always private, like locked. Like you have to be one of their accepted friends in order to comment on their pictures. Interesting.

Because they're hiding. Right. Because they're not putting themselves out there. Right. They're not showing their life. Which means they don't understand the vulnerability involved. Like if you had the experience of having other people write on your stuff the same way that you were doing on someone else you might not be doing that well they're playing the low they're playing tic-tac-toe right where someone else is out

there playing chess yeah that's got to be like the new like zing like man you're playing tic-tac-toe yeah that's like tic-tac-toe playing motherfucker. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of what it is. If life is this really super complex, open-ended game where essentially if you live in a free culture like we do, you know, we're not living in North Korea where you're assigned a job and if you don't cry when something happens, you know, you go to jail, your game is essentially open-ended. Yeah. It's not. That's one of the reasons why when people get out of jail,

they find themselves, like institutionalized is the word, but they find themselves so trapped in the game of jail that that's how their brain is wired. It's really extremely difficult for them to deal with the open-ended game of life. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even for, you see it with, when someone graduates college,

kids who have been from the top colleges who have been taught to play the game of achieving and achieving in this really rigid structure. And then they get out into the world and nobody's telling them here. Here are the things you have to do to be considered a good student or be successful. And then they just lose it. Too much. Yeah, because they don't they are not they have not been directing their own game. Right? It's like you, if you, if you haven't been designing the game, now you have to suddenly

acquire that skill for yourself. It's also one of the problems that some people have with career academics, people that never participated in the real world. They went from college to teaching college, and then they also require these rigid standards of behavior and thinking. I know, I heard your show about that, about the Atlantic article. Fascinating. Yeah, that is.

Well, it's interesting because I've been so steeped in psychology literature, and a lot of the folks who play super better are traumatized and they've been through PTSD. And it is absolutely true that avoiding triggers prolongs the problem. I mean, I can look at the scientific literature and say trigger warnings are actually not going to help. They're going to make you weaker over time. It's like we were talking about, you know, oh, I'm so scared of the bad guy. I have to avoid

everything that is a trigger. We know that that's not true. So when I, you know, when I hear about that, I, you know, I wish, and I try to talk to people, you know, I tweet, when that article came out, I tweeted about, and I have a lot of people who follow me who are, you know, have PTSD and they're very conflicted about whether they're supposed to avoid triggers and they like trigger warnings because they think it's going to keep them safe. But for everything we know is that you need to get better at controlling your reaction to the trigger. Avoiding it doesn't help. So I can see why that's so frustrating to people. Well, one of the most frustrating aspects of that article in particular was that what's going on in colleges today is it's a control issue.

Yeah. It's their controlling behavior in such an extreme way that they want to penalize people for microaggressions. Right. Which is like you say something and I go, all right. Which is just a part of a fucking human interaction. Like if I say something to you and you give me a sarcastic response, I have to decide, you know what? I don't enjoy communicating with her because she she makes me feel bad. Or I have to say maybe I'm fucking douchey and maybe people react to me in a negative way.

And I should think about not what I want to say or how I want to say things, but rather how people might view what I'm saying and how they take it in. And maybe I'm just an ineffective communicator. And maybe what's going on here is just, you know, there's like two people playing soccer. Okay, they're both trying to hit the ball and they collide into each other. Whose fault is it? It's just non-smooth movement. And that sort of interaction that you would get when you're trying to hit a soccer ball, it's very similar to the interaction that you have when two people are communicating with each other.

Yeah, yeah. The colliding people, one person is not necessarily totally responsible for that collision. They're both sort of responsible for it. And there's a whole dance going on with poor decision making in the moment and lack of experience and collisions and lack of an understanding of the consequences of those collisions. All that is a part of going to college. Yes. All that is a part of growing up. And when you have people that are shielding you from microaggressions, all that shit is just a part of being a human and dealing with your hormones and emotions.

And you're separated from your family for the first time. And now you're in Michigan and some fucking crazy university. And you got some fat, stupid teacher that's never even existed outside the real world. And they're dictating your behavior patterns and telling you you're not allowed to use male and female pronouns anymore. I like the teachers. I mean, you know know i have a lot of friends who are who are you know they teach a university so as do i i will remove the fat stupid well i'm just apart let's let's say skinny smart brilliant or whatever but it's like i'm

fat stupid i don't even mean like physically what i mean mean is just like this, this bloated sort of lazy entity that is creating this environment where you're, you're establishing this artificial realm. My guess is looking at what's going on. This is not coming from instructors or faculty, but this is coming from the students. Some of the students. Some of it. This is a phenomenon. I mean, it certainly was. I mean, this is definitely a younger phenomenon. This isn't like something like deeply entrenched. People who came up, I mean, my professors are totally weird, like friends who are professors, are totally weirded out by it. Don't know how to handle it.

They're not creating that culture. I mean, it's definitely something coming from the students who have been raised in this culture of, you know, I mean, it's that it's a very protective culture and you don't, nobody should have their feelings heard and everybody, you know, nobody should experience failure or rejection. I mean, I feel like it's more from that culture than from anything related to like contemporary academia or the faculty. Well, that's a weird thing because isn't contemporary academia overwhelmingly liberal and progressive? I mean, I think so.

Right. I think on the political spectrum, yeah. When you have something that's moving in one very particular direction, oftentimes people will try to outdo themselves or push that themselves. But the faculty are not in control. I mean, this is, I think the reason why a student culture would have so much impact on this is because universities are now like business models and the customer is always right. I mean, that's not, the professor is not the one who is going to, the professor is more often than not resist.

It's really more at the level of the business side of the college that is trying to make, you know, this a good customer experience for the student. I mean, I think that is more of the divide. I don't think the political affiliations of faculty is not, I mean, none of that is really what's going on. It's really more about the students pay so much money for college now and they expect lots of perks and they expect – they're paying for a certain experience. I think that is really where you're seeing a lot of the friction come because this particular younger generation is seems to be if you look at, you know, what a lot of the experts are saying.

They want they don't want the things that feel painful or feel like failure or feeling stress. Why are they pointing out all these flaws in all these other people's behavior to control them? And flaws in the way people express themselves. Flaws. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, part of it is obviously things need to change, right? Right. Like what needs to change? Well, I'm like, for instance, I'm a woman.

I play games. If I log into an online video game, I don't want to be called a cunt Every time I log in to play does that happen a lot? Yeah of course and do you think that happens a lot because what we talked about earlier where there's the Interaction of just dealing in text is very strange and the interaction without people being right there with each other Yes, I mean absolutely Seems totally unnatural right? Yes. Yes and people I mean, I don't like totally unnatural, right? Yes. Yes. And people, I mean, I don't, that doesn't happen to me in real life. Right.

That's what I was going to ask. Like how many people in real life say those things to you? Nobody. Nobody. Like how bizarre, right? Yeah. All of a sudden you enter into this world. So isn't that a function almost of the world itself being completely unnatural more so

than the people being any different in that world? I'm not sure. But I mean, so all of that is to say there are things that people say and do in everyday life that are legitimately offensive sure and uh i mean i don't use the terminology microaggressions i don't use that the trigger warning terminology so i think we're like in this period where on one hand things do need to change in some ways you know you have nobel laureate scientists giving speeches where they say that it's he doesn't like to have women in the lab because either they fall in love with you or you fall in love with them and then you can't work

together i mean when some when a nobel laureate says that to a conference of you know young scientists that that's not helpful i don't think but i wouldn't that's not you know, young scientists, that's not helpful, I don't think. Right. Do you know that that was taken out of context? Do you know the full extent of his phrase? It was a joke, and he was also talking about his wife, because he met his wife in the lab, and he was also making himself to be a fool. Well, that's good to know.

It was very self-deprecating. Do you know the extent of that? I did read some sort of reassessment of that. Yeah, Dawkins printed a full version of what he said, and it's very different. And also, everyone was laughing. I read the full version, yeah. So this is actually a perfect example. So if he was joking, right?

So his intentions are totally good. Is it possible that it's like so this is actually a perfect example, because so if he was joking, right, so his intentions are totally good. Is it possible that it's still not helpful to make that that kind of a statement? That's I think that's what people are talking about. Right. When if if on one hand, there's a lot of interest in trying to increase the number of women in science and technology. there's a lot of interest in trying to increase the number of women in science and technology. Is it possible that somebody would hear that and still be kind of demotivated by it or kind of have that sink in? So I think people are, when we're discussing these things, you don't have to police other people's language. But I still think it's useful to say that might not be helpful. Yeah, there's an article in the leaked transcript. I still think it's useful to say that might not be helpful. Yeah.

There's an article in the leaked transcript, the leaked transcript. What happened was the people that saw it thought it like, at least some of them thought it was funny. And, but there were aspects of what he said that were probably clumbency or clunky or, you know,

he was trying to be funny and he's really just sort of an odd guy who's a scientist yeah, and People decided that this is an awesome target like let's go after it right and should make an example Which happens on the on I mean the whole? People get shamed on the internet now. That's that's what happens I mean my you know I don't have any expertise in this area, so it's probably not, you know, worth me abiding about it. This is an official quote. He says, it's strange that such a chauvinist monster like me has been asked to speak to women scientists.

Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. His trouble with girls. Three things happen when they're in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you. And when you criticize them, they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls now seriously i'm impressed with the economic development of um one second this is fucked up here of uh it was it was him joking yeah but he's definitely he's joking playing on stereotypes that girls cry and girls can't handle criticism. I mean, I'm just saying it's yeah, is I I'm not gonna say that it's I think it's totally fine to say, hey, when you say these things, it might result in some girl thinking, wait, maybe I'm not going to be a good scientist because people say that girls aren't good in the lab or whatever. It's just, I wouldn't say it. That's, I wouldn't say it. And I try to be, I try to be, you know, even when we say things like about people who play games a lot, you know, they're wasting their lives.

You know, why don't you go out and do something real? I don't think that's useful to say either. I think that that's actually can be really damaging to people's self-identity I think any time you generalize you know men do this and women do that and girls aren't good at being in the lab

and it's damaging and I think now he understands that a joke like that as innocent as he might have intended it to be when you're reading it in a text form especially and you're taking some of it out of intended it to be when you're reading it in a text form, especially when you're taking some of it out of context.

It can be offensive. It can be hurtful for someone who's considering, like how many girls were reading that, that were considering a possible career in science, when I don't have to deal with fucking people like this. Like I don't want to, I'm not going to cry in your lab, asshole. I just want to do work. I want to be a scientist.

Yeah. So we don't need to like'm not going to cry in your lab, asshole. I just want to do work. I want to be a scientist. Yeah. So we don't need to, like, police people to have this conversation of, you know. So that's sort of exposed in some ways. It exposes prevalent attitudes that this guy who is this esteemed Nobel winning scientist has this attitude? You know that he thinks it's funny to joke around about it Like even if he's not a sexist or a bad guy him making this joke about himself being some chauvinist monster Yeah, and it's because one of the things is because his wife is a prominent feminist And so he jokes around about him being a chauvinist monster. Yeah. Yeah, you know well that makes sense

Yeah, I mean that's it's all out of context and it's all also you're dealing with a guy who's whose real focus is his research not social interaction he's not like a nuanced speaker he's not a guy who is a carefully considered speaker who gets on stage and thinks about everything and the impact of all. I mean, like we were talking about like the awkward interaction that people might have in college. Well, this guy's awkward interaction is him being forced to write a speech. Like if he did this a bunch of times, he'd probably get really way better at it. And if you sat down with him alone and you guys were just talking over a glass of wine,

maybe you'd understand how his brain works better. Yeah. Maybe I would as well. Which would have been more useful. I mean, if something offends you, it's more useful to have a conversation about it than to just start, you know. Yeah, but it's fun to blog and shit all over this guy. I know.

This guy, he's old and he's white. He's famous. Well, somebody will write a book about the neurochemistry of outrage soon because it's its own high. It's recreational. Recreational outrage is without a doubt a real thing right now. And I think that that's what's going on in colleges and that people are finding. When you're in college, it's like when you were talking about the addiction that people have to video games. And one of the things that sort of stimulates that addiction is if you're trying to avoid things in your regular life

well if you are in college the the overwhelming anxiety of being a young person who has gone from being living with their parents going to high school now you're in college and you're just a couple years away from the cliff of real world like you're fucking sliding towards it you're trying to define it and redefine it and change it and establish yourself. And then along the way comes things that you can be angry at.

Well, you will point your fucking fury that are really unmeasured or unbalanced fury at those things where it doesn't necessarily make sense, but it makes sense to you because what you're really doing is you're avoiding the angst of social anxiety,

of sexual rejection and all the all the shit that makes a person feel weird things and you channel that towards microaggressions or you channel that towards someone you know deciding to address you with a male or a female pronoun you know there's like there's a lot of weirdness to being a person. But you know, the last thing I want to say about this is, part of it is I think people are just trying to make new rules for the game. Right? And when you're trying to change the rules of a game,

that is really upsetting if you're in the middle of the game. You play in a game and someone's like, wait, totally, you can't do that now. It's he and she. We've always been he and she. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, you're playing soccer. You can't kick the ball anymore with your feet. And you're in the middle of the game.

Right, right, right. But it doesn't mean, as a game designer would say, it doesn't mean that there isn't a better game that actually could have different rules. But it's really upsetting to be in the middle of a game and have somebody say, wait, those aren't the rules. So, you know, maybe we should, maybe we should, I don't know, I don't know how to do it better because I mean, look, I'm a progressive person

and I'm glad that things are changing in society in lots of ways, you know, that I'm excited about. Like what makes you happy? Like what do you think is good about the changes in society in a progressive way? Well, I'm really glad that we have marriage equality now. I'm really excited about that. I'm glad that, I mean, paternity and maternity leave, you know, becoming more people having longer maternity leave and the same length paternity leave for dads as a new parent.

I'm really excited to see companies doing that. And I like I like, you know, I like that we're starting to talk about income inequality. I mean, optimistic that there will be changes in that direction. And I think that I think the lives matter it's hugely important movement i think so i think there's a lot of conversations going on right now where people are angry or have struggled or feel like they've been playing a rigged game and uh so it's not it's not going to be pleasant and not all the tactics are going to be effective or good either. But the general attitude is definitely moving in a more progressive direction. I think so. And even as somebody who has been, you know, I've had Twitter,

you know, hordes yelling at me because they thought that I was breaking one of the new rules of how we're supposed to. Like what did people yell at you over? So my one of the big instances I had was about my recommendations for playing Tetris after a trauma. So there have been multiple randomized control studies now out of Oxford University showing that if you play Tetris within 24 hours of a traumatic event, it will reduce the flashbacks you have, the severity of flashbacks and other PTSD symptoms because it occupies your brain and prevents your brain from kind of locking in an obsessive compulsive way on the trauma. Right. So this is I think this is incredibly important advice that everyone should know, kind of like stop, drop and roll.

You know, if you catch on fire, you know what to do. Everybody should have Tetris on their phone and have it available to them. If because I know having suffered flashbacks from my own head injury how i mean i would have nightmares and be of which i was hitting my head and i would feel it as if for real and i'd wake up and i'd be convinced that i had hit my head in the middle of the night um and was going to have this experience all over again um just nightmares constantly so i know how bad it can be i want people to do it when i started tweeting about it People I got told that there needed to be like trigger warnings on my tweets because I was mentioning PTSD and I might make somebody think about like a trauma that they'd experienced and

Well, they're trying to change the game. Yeah, so it's like I understand I don't you know, I've been on the other side of it where people have said that I'm doing it wrong But at the same time I recognize there are people who are suffering or angry or they have been at a disadvantage because of the way the game is rigged. And so I'm OK with this. They're being like we're all going to be uncomfortable for a while as these things change. And that's, you know. That's, you know. So you're uncomfortable with being unjustly accused of being insensitive when you're bringing out the scientific research that shows that a game can help you with trauma.

Yeah. I mean, I think. You're fine with that. I'm going to keep doing it, you know. But I understand that the people who say it are hurting. The people who are telling me that I'm triggering them. But that's so irrational. I think that all irrational behavior like that should either be ignored or shit on. I really do.

I just think it's dangerous. I think it's dangerous when it gets pointed out. You're pointing out the scientific aspects of a very specific activity that's very good for trauma. And they're saying that you shouldn't talk about this. I know. That's nonsense. That's why I still talk about it. Right.

But I don't have to get into a fight with them about that., you certainly don't. You should ignore them or shit on them. If you, depending on how you feel. But I think that there's, there's definitely, uh, I like how we're defining life as like a giant game or is equal to a giant game. Cause I think that that's what's going on also with the reaction, the negative reaction to progressive thinking now. I was tweeting something about this woman in Kentucky that was trying to stop people from getting gay marriage licenses. And I really, I took a few days where I wasn't paying attention to Twitter that much. And I didn't know that there was this giant movement supporting this woman. I didn't know that there was this giant movement supporting this woman.

And I went to Mike Huckabee's fucking Twitter page and saw that this crazy old asshole was like saying that there's a war against Christians and that like hashtag religious liberty. And so I was like, that doesn't have religious liberty doesn't mean you enforce your religion on other people. That's so crazy. Yeah. And there was so much blowback. I got so many people tweeting at me, angrily tweeting at me for saying, and I tweeted something about Ted Cruz, about how ridiculous his views are on gay marriage

and that he's probably gay. And I'm like, if you listen to the way that guy talks, he's super feminine. How many times do we have to see this? Where these men, because I have a bit that I used to do in my act, there's two types of people that hate gay marriage. It's either you're really dumb or you're secretly worried that dicks are delicious. Those are the people.

And this guy is like, there's something going on here. Why does he care so much about two people that are in love, but watching the people that are angry that the game is being redefined. And there was all this Christian stuff that was attached to it like but guess what I guess what else it says not to do in a Bible it says not to get divorced like this lady the same lady has been divorced three times she's on her fourth marriage yeah guess what else it says you're not supposed to have tattoos okay those people are tattooed with religious symbols on them you got a cross on your arm and you tattooed it she fucking you gotta read the whole book.

This is crazy. Like the things that they choose and what it is, is they're trying to define the world that they're playing in. They're trying to define the game. And I think it's important because even though I might disagree, I mean, I vehemently disagree with people whose perspectives seem to be fueled by hate. But I think it's important to still try to have the empathy or the mental insight to understand why does this make them feel so bad? I think what you just said, the feeling that you thought you understood the rules. I mean, religion is a set of rules. You thought you understood it. You're playing the game right.

You're doing it right. thought you understood it you're you're playing the game right you're doing it right um and it is it is psychologically distressing to have somebody else tell you we're playing a different game yeah you know your game sucks um and you're not gonna be able to play it anymore uh i i try to understand where those feelings are coming from because if you're going to change people's minds, you know, you have to, I think you have to acknowledge that they are in a real, they are really in distress about this.

You know, they're not doing this just to be jerks. I mean, this change is painful to them. But why are they in distress about something that doesn't directly affect them? That's where it gets weird. But it's because of what you just said because it is because it feels, they have committed to a framework,

a set of rules, and once you're in it, you're in it. And when you're playing a game, you always try to stop the cheaters and you protect the boundaries of the game. That's the mindset you get into. And they think they're just doing what comes after it. This is a country that was established by Christian values. Yes.

The fucking game's locked. Yes. Okay, you can't change the rules. That's it. It really does seem like we've kind of touched on something here. Yeah. This has been a really good one for me. The overall looking at the whole existence as

instead of defining it by the word game, but looking at it with almost the same sort of attitude or approach that you would look at a game, is very beneficial. Good. It's worked for me. Your eyes got big like saucers. You did it.

You did it. You scored. You made it happen yeah i think um also um like the the the ebb and flow of culture like the things that seem to definitely even even though i resist like this nonsense about microaggressions and trigger warnings and stuff like that i'm very happy that things are moving in the direction of acceptance yeah very happy that you know like you can be whatever the fuck you want. You decide you're a woman today.

Go ahead. As long as you don't hurt anybody. Who cares? This guy wants to wear dresses and he wants you to call him Jane now. Fine. Okay. You know, these two guys want to get married to each other. Terrific.

You know, these two people want to stop wearing makeup and they want to, what do you give a shit? Who cares? Who cares? Or they want to dye their hair blue. That's fine too. Like eventually we'll all figure out that we are all just unique individuals that are a part of this gigantic super organism and the most conducive way or the most harmonic way, harmonious way for us to interact with each other is to fuck with each other's path the least. Whatever path you're on your way in your game, as long as it doesn't like negatively affect people, as long as you're not a destroyer, you're not out there.

Your path is to burn down other people's houses. Your path is to steal. Your path is to hurt people. As long as that's not going on, why care? to hurt people. As long as that's not going on, why care? And then ultimately, once that is established, I think then we will focus on, okay, well, what are our real issues? Our real issues aren't gay people getting married to each other. Our real issues are the people that actually are burning houses down, the people that are stealing. These are the real issues that people have, people that are not microaggressions, but actual aggressions, people that are actually committing crimes against each other, people that, and why are they doing that? Well, what is wrong

with their game? What happened to them? Like what, what series of events have placed them in this sort of position? Yeah. Yeah. Because it's not, I mean, people don't get into that in a vacuum. No. I think that's also something you realize once you have children like you have now. And as a father, one of the things that's changed radically in my life is seeing people now. Like when I meet people, I see them as babies that have grown up. Like I don't see them as being in a static state, you know?

And it's, it's very strange. Like even assholes that I meet, I'd look at them and even go, that guy's a fucking asshole. I think of them as like what happened to that person. Well, you know, that's like, I practice Zen Buddhism. And that's like one of the big Buddhist meditations is to picture people as babies.

Like when you feel hate for somebody, try to visualize them all the way down to their little baby self and picture what they look like as a baby. And to think about who they were when they were that baby before all of life happened to them to make them into somebody that has now triggered these feelings of anger. But it's also in the womb. feelings of anger. But it's also in the womb. You know, I was talking to Michael Irvin, who's a famous pro football player, who's talking to me about kids that grow up in horrible environments, dangerous, volatile environments, where the mother has all this cortisol in her brain while the child's in the womb.

And the kid literally grows up, like, with a short temper. They literally, they're developed out of the womb, like constantly worried about stress and danger. Yeah. Hyper vigilant. Yeah. All of that. I've had feral cats.

I had a cat that was feral that I raised and he was fucking terrified of everything from the time he was a baby. And I locked myself in a room with him when he was a kitten because it was the only way to like bond with him. I stayed with him for like, I just put a bunch of books in the room and cat food and a litter box I'm like you and me dude, we're hanging out and when I come near him and he'd be like He'd just jump on the walls and like you've never seen anything like a feral kitten I mean he was really little too. Just a couple months old and

When I would get to him and pick him up, he would start purring Like finally somebody loves me Like But then when you put him down... Like, the same cat would just be... Because his brain was programmed from the time he was a little baby. And there was not a lot he could do. I couldn't say, that cat's an asshole.

Well, no, that fucking cat was born under an apartment building, you know? And his mom was, like, running away from traffic and trying to eat rats or whatever the fuck they could kill yeah well I think this is one of the reasons why game thinking is so powerful because you just zoom out and see the bigger structure that it's it's there's always a bigger game and more pieces of play and you're getting other people's you know strategies or actions

are or you know or the rules you know and being able to zoom out and see that makes you feel, I think, well, you have more perspective, more wisdom, and maybe more compassion for other people. That's also why people like to, rightly so, criticize very narrow-minded, small-town thinking. Yeah. Small little environments, insulated environments that are very, you know, very critic criticizing or very, you know, just, just have their, their way set and they don't have a wide variety of experiences they can draw upon or they don't have a broad nuanced view of the board that they're playing on. Yeah. So this is like, this is giving me a lot of, a lot of food for thought about,

I mean, the links between social change and gameful thinking. There's something there. Yeah, there's something there. I think also as time is going on, and this is one thing, the positive aspects of social media and of the internet itself is that we're getting more and more information instead of just accepting these preconceived notions that we have about different groups of people. Now we're being exposed to so much data. It's just inadvertently or inarguably changing the way we view those groups and that you're forced to like when you see like this Black Lives Matter thing, you see all these peaceful protests where these people are talking eloquently and speaking and showing video after video of police brutality.

And then I've had, I had a cop on, Michael Wood, who was a Baltimore, retired Baltimore police officer that talked about, very openly talked about the institutionalized racism and about how they had found papers from the 1970s that were describing how to behave in certain environments that were exactly the same as what's going on now. It's like, this is a fucking system. Yes, it's a system. And I don't think that attitude existed just a few years ago. I think people are looking at all that data now and it's slowly coming around.

And even the hardliners are dropping. You know, if they were at a 10, now they're at an 8 or a 7. Well, fucking kids, you need to go to school or something. You know, it's like everyone is sort of slowly recognizing the pieces that are in play. It's a lot more complicated than we want to, you know, just narrowly sort of define them in these these really simplistic terms where it's not simple. There's a series of interactions that are going on all over the globe. Human beings are trying to find their way. And they're also realizing somewhere along the line that their parents weren't these all-knowing creatures.

Neither were their parents. Neither were President Roosevelt or fucking Abe Lincoln. They were all people that were trying to find their way as well. And this is a group effort. It's a group effort that's still going on. And it's not even remotely done. It's not even close. Yeah.

So it's okay. So instead of seeing the bigger picture, we will see the bigger game and that will guide us. Yes. Bring it all right back to super better. All right. You got to get out of here.

You got to catch a flight. So thank you very much. I'll put your video up on Twitter and we'll put the link to your book, which is available right now, right? Well, it drops next Tuesday, but you can buy it now. Oh, you can buy it now, but you can get it next Tuesday. Alright, well thank you so much.

Really, really appreciate it. What's your Twitter address again? It's Avant Game. A-V-A-N-T-G-A-M-E. You can just search for my name, Jane Games. It'll come up. All right, beautiful. Thank you so much.

Awesome time.