The Ryan Hanley Show - The Physics of Focus: How a Nobel Prize-Losing Astrophysicist Cracked the Code on ADHD Success | Dr Brian Keating

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Join our community of fearless leaders in search of unreasonable outcomes... Want to become a FEARLESS entrepreneur and leader? Go here: https://www.findingpeak.com Watch on YouTube: https://link.ryanhanley.com/youtube Connect with Dr Brian Keating Into the Impossible Vol II: https://amzn.to/41StaXE Losing the Nobel Prize: https://amzn.to/4gpWNWq X: https://x.com/DrBrianKeating Ever wonder why your ADHD brain feels like it's spinning at 10,000 RPMs while the world moves at 10? You're not broken—you're just operating on a different frequency. In this episode, I sit down with physicist Brian Keating, author of "Focus" and the man who almost won a Nobel Prize (and wrote a book about losing it). We dive deep into the science of attention, the physics of focus, and why your hyperactive mind might be your greatest competitive advantage. Brian breaks down his FOCUS framework—Follow One Course Until Successful—and explains how the same principles that govern the universe can help you harness your scattered energy into laser-focused execution. What You'll Learn: Why 99% of the universe is invisible (and what that teaches us about focus) The FOCUS method used by Nobel Prize winners to achieve breakthrough results How to turn ADHD "chaos" into your secret weapon for seeing opportunities others miss The "Dune" principle: How to see the one path through infinite possibilities Why losing can be the best thing that ever happens to your career Sponsors & Recommendations Stop paying $500/month for 8 different marketing tools. Try GoHighLevel's all-in-one platform free for 14 days → https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevel OpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opus Riverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riverside WhisperFlow • Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflow Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Science is what's called an infinite game. There is no winning. I can't win science. You specialize in one field, and it's an incredible competition. But as many of these people say, they basically are relay racers in this infinite chain, this race that goes back to prehistoric times. When the first person came out of a cave and said, what are those dots in the night? What are those things up there? Where do they come from?

Where do I come from? So you're in this race and this relay race, and you get the baton for a very short amount of time. You run your leg, but your job is to pass it on. So be a hero to other people, be in awe of other people that came before you, but realize you're one part in this infinite race against an unbeatable, in Mother Nature's undefeated. Well, dude, we started in the green room talking about how the last time we talked, I think was like 21, 20, it was a It was four or five years ago. Both of us were in very different places. It could even been earlier than that.

I just looked at the episode. I didn't even look at the timestamp. It's so bad. Both of us were in different places, right? And we both kind of grown and have these brands and outlets. Dude, you've just been doing so fun. And it's been so much fun to have, you know, had a chance to get to know you just a little bit, you know, a little bit.

And, you know, in the podcast. And now just to see how far you've taken it, how much you professionalized it. You know, you've turned it into a business as well as everything else. you do and it's just so fun to be able to reconnect. Yeah, likewise, man. I've been following you and you're blowing up like the Big Bang yourself. So it's a pleasure to be back on the show again. We shouldn't wait, you know, for just every presidential election cycle to be together. That's true. That's true. All right. So I would not be doing myself justice if I didn't take this opportunity to ask you just a few of like the nerdy questions that I have because, you know,

I was, my first interaction with your content was when you rewrote the Galileo book or reprinted that book, I heard you on the Alistair show. And I hear this, you know, this was very early in your kind of public persona. And I just thought it was like the coolest fucking thing. I'm like, here's this nerdy dude who's like smart as hell, who's, you know, taking this knowledge, bringing it back into the world, like making it interesting again, talking about it and you and you and James were chopping it up and I was enamored by it and um and that and I've always been uh I was this close to going to school for astronomy this close this close I know that

I did not know that okay so I went and looked at a bunch of schools that had astronomy programs the last of which was Vassar college wow the problem with Vassar was their baseball field didn't have an outfield fence so I did not become an astronomer you want to talk about you want to talk about how trite some of the reasons are in which we choose the careers that we choose. I was this, I, that's what I wanted to go to school for. And I when I look at it's so funny that you say that, because A, Edwin Hubble, who's the famous namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope is the man who a hundred years ago proposed that the universe is expanding and discovered evidence for it.

He was a great athlete, too. He was a runner. And he had kind of this, this real devotion to his father. His father was kind of domineering, like many of our. fathers can be and he was like no my you're going to go to law school whether you like it or not and so he's forced edwin hobble to go to law school and he went in the u.k he went to oxford and when he came back uh he only came back with one noticeable difference which is that he developed a a posh british accent but he told his dad when he came back he said uh father you know i've decided not to do laws

And his father said, what? He's outrage. He said, father, I'd rather be a second-rate astronomer than a first-rate lawyer. So apologies to all your lawyer. My brother's a lawyer. So I like to tease him with that. That's okay. If you choose to be a lawyer, I think you're asking to be made fun of in some regard.

So that's your life choice you made. But it is funny how we make these small. Seemingly large decisions at the time seem small and become a math major, which I can do even less with. So, but okay. So I want to talk, I want to stay away from like aliens and shit. As much as I find that interesting, that's not what I want to ask you about. I was listening to a show the other day and I went back and I tried to figure out who was

this said this, but it was a, we'll call it verified scientist. This guy like was not a armchair, Twitter ex-scientist. He was on, I can't, I can't, oh, Jesus, maybe it was Huberman or something. I can't remember, it doesn't matter. But he threw out this kind of flippant comment or like contextual. comment that that wasn't relevant to what they were talking about and he just like threw this in which is dark matter might not even exist onto and then he just kept going and like in my mind I like went like wait wait a minute I mean I don't know one way or the other but I don't feel

like you can't just throw that out there and then move on so so maybe like maybe just break down for the audience because I find this this idea of dark matter to be very intoxicating as much I only understand half of it. Maybe what the theory is, and is there anything new that has come out to this idea that maybe it doesn't actually exist? Oh, yeah. So it's a great question. And look, dark matter, along with dark energy, make up a tremendous amount of what we know

about the universe, and yet we know almost nothing about these two substances. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the universe, if you thought of the universe that the energy in the universe as being a pie chart. So go to Excel, type in the pie chart, and make it. And the pie chart would have the following. It would have these different components in it would have matter like you and I are made up of, you know, protons, in my case, croutons, you know, baseballs, whatever you want. It has all this matter in it.

And then it has different forms of what's called radiation, which sounds scary. But it's just light or radio waves, Wi-Fi, et cetera. You put down, wrote down how much energy is in the form of light, you know, radiation, hammer rays, x-rays, whatever. And then you wrote down, well, what's in the form of these other two components that we know to exist? But I'll tell you more about them in just a second. You wrote down dark matter and dark energy. So there's like four components on this pie chart.

Matter, radiation, dark matter, or dark energy. And then you said, well, what does the pie chart look like? Well, it would be about 70% dark energy. It would be about 29% dark matter, so to speak. And then it would be 1% everything else. So you and I are kind of the, not even the foam on the latte, Ryan. We're like the cinnamon sprinkled dust. You know, you go to Starbucks.

We're like nothing. Literally, we're like 1%. And by the way, most of the matter in the universe, If you took that 1%, now you can chunk it up into other things, right? You can say, how much is the form of hydrogen, how much is in the form of helium, how much is the form of lithium, beryllium, boron, keep going up the periodic table. And you'd get that 90% of that material that's in the form of matter. 90% of that 1% is basically hydrogen, you know, the hydrogen or maybe it's slightly more

hydrogen in the form of matter that we have in molecules. then the rest would be basically almost nothing. So like the 10% of the 1% of the ordinary planets, rock stuff that we have is like stuff related to human beings. Okay. So we're almost not even the, we're like one grain of cinnamon, essentially, on the foam, on top of the latte, you know, sitting there steaming away. So dark matter is the second most abundant source of energy, mass energy in the universe.

And we've known about its existence for 100 years. We've been able to infer the existence of dark matter for almost 100 years, and yet we've never, ever detected it, and it may be impossible to detect it. So this person that you were listening to, by the way, probably, you know, makes the rounds on podcast channels just the same. And I know it's hard to sometimes tell the difference between a legitimate scientist, like I hope you're convinced I am, and someone who's, you know, might be doing stuff for clicks or for intention. I don't know that person. Maybe they are. Maybe they're not legitimate. but there's a lot of pseudoscience and nonsense that goes on on podcast nowadays.

So you just have to consider the source. But it is true that there could be no dark matter, but then you'd have to replace the effects that we know that dark matter manifests as. You'd have to find another mechanism to reproduce those effects. Nobody says that there aren't these properties of the following situation in a galaxy, like the Milky Way galaxy that we live in. There's sort of this known problem that, the stars in the Milky Way galaxy are rotating around the black hole in the center of the galaxy

at an extremely high rate. And it's as if you were swinging, you know, a ball on a string, you know, you're swinging a baseball on a string around your head. It's going so fast you can't account, like, you couldn't account for it by the muscles of the person swinging it. You'd have to find some other, maybe there's some wind that just so happens to be making a tornado like a dust devil or whatever right around the person. But in other words, you'd have to come up with some other explanation besides the most simple explanation or the seemingly obvious explanation that there's dark matter so basically how we know that something is there is because objects are being impacted by a force or you know something of that nature we see the we see the effect

but we're not seeing what's causing the effect and that's where the idea of dark matter dark energy comes from. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. So in a sense, we know that there's gravity, we know there's electricity, magnetism, radiation, light. We know about all these forces of nature. And we know that, I mean, forms of dark matter don't have to be exotic things that we've never encountered before. You know, for example, back in the 17 and 18th centuries, it was known that the planet Uranus, or as some people won't like to call it Uranus. It's more fun that way. I like to, yeah, I like to drop that every now and then, because NASA likes to get a very

close look at Uranus. So they, they were observing it, and they observed back, you know, this 300 years ago, that it was moving in a very strange way. It was moving as if it was being pulled upon by some unknown source of gravitation. They knew about gravity. They knew as its orbit should be if the only other planets in the solar system were Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and they couldn't account for the motion. This is, again, very simple observations to do at the time even.

And that a scientist predicted that actually, no, there is another planet beyond the orbit of Uranus, and we now know that as Neptune, and it was effectively dark matter. It was pulling on having a gravitational force, just like we see with the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Now, we wouldn't say that, you know, Neptune is exotic matter. it was just not illuminated, it doesn't give off its own light. So, too, dark matter, we believe, if it's in the form of particles of an unknown composition, it can't be in the form of protons and neutrons.

Otherwise, it would interact with protons and neutrons, and we would see it by its heat and its light that it would give off. The fact that we don't see it really means it should be called invisible matter, but dark matter kind of stuck, you know, sounds more mysterious. And then certainly dark energy is much more, even more mysterious. We know even less about it. But we have tremendous amount of evidence for both of these terms. So we know the,

we have sort of the situation that Donald Rumsfeld would call known unknowns. We, we know what we don't know, but we don't know exactly what that unknown is composed of. Okay. So now I want to take us slightly into tinfoil hat range. Right. Just ask, watch out. You know, Mike, you're competing with like Rogan and Diary of a CEO.

Yeah, so this is how we've got to bump our wind up. I'm competing with the Sasquatch files, brother. I'm competing with UAP Chronicles. Please don't, don't, don't be afraid to branch out. Yeah, I know. If we want views, we have to go conspiracy theory. So I can put that little backposh, we got to go UFO, UAP, and all the moon landing stuff. I'm going to stay inside dark matter, though, because this is where ultimately the question was going, right?

So the two slit experiment, right, where particles act as if they're being acted upon, but you have to look at, okay, the whole thing. And you can explain that in better detail. you know, I was watching kind of a breakdown of that. Actually, I was watching the Y. Files. I don't know the Y. Files with A.J. Gentile. I don't know if you've seen these. I've heard of it, but yeah. Oh, my God, dude.

Well, he's blown up lately because he was just on Rogan, and then he was on Sean Ryan's show. But before that, he's got this amazing YouTube channel, and you'll appreciate this. I'm going to go contextual just for a second before I ask this question, because you'll appreciate this. So what he does, and this dude is awesome, right? So A.J. Gentile, Y. Files, guys,

if you're listening to this and you're, interested in this shit at all, you will love this. So what he does is the first, uh, like two-thirds to 75% of the show, he tells the conspiracy theory as if it's 100% true. Like, it's written, you know, God came down from the heavens and said there were aliens in, you know, North Montana who, you know, whatever, right? And then he takes the last 25%. He basically debunks as much as he can of it. And he says, you know, here's what's real. Here's what's not. Here's what, you know, could be whatever. It's really cool. Okay. So he was doing this thing on the, double slit experiment and and uh and he he threw out this idea or you know he was talking

about how does that could there are people who hypothesize that that could show multiple dimensions and maybe matter from another dimension is impacting us and so again so taking this to our dark matter is there a chance is there a theory or is it just way off base that this idea that dark matter dark energy could possibly be other dimensions impacting our universe, our solar system. Yeah, no, that's a very plausible scenario. There are several challenges with it, but it is certainly one that is perceived as a potential explanation. I should say the most likely explanation that scientists believe comes down to either changing the composition of matter in the universe to include this type of invisible matter or to include matter that

we already know exists. We already know we have detected dark matter. It's just, it's a very very incomplete form of it. They're called neutrinos. So neutrinos are every bit as real a form of dark matter as protons are ordinary luminous matter, non-dark matter, or visible matter. And now these are mysterious particles that have very, very light weights, masses, very low masses, and they travel at very high velocities, close to the speed of light. But they have exactly those properties. They only interact with nuclear forces, so they don't interact with electrons or light. So you can't see them. But we've detected them for 85 years now or 80 years known about their existence. But the problem is they don't make up, they do make up some of that 20% or whatever

25% of the dark matter slice of that pie that we talked about. But the amount that they make up is only about like a quarter of that amount at most. So they're not sufficient to explain all the dark matter, but they give what's called an existence proof of it. Like, you know, for example, If we knew that there, so the fact that there were dinosaurs actually gives some tiny credibility to La Lachmanus Monster, okay? I'm not saying it's high. Don't take me out. You know, but UCSD, you know, distinguished professor says, Lachnus Monster is plausible, you know, it's all over the New York. It's a headline now.

You know that. Now it is. Now it's in the New York Post. Okay, thank you. We're having the California Post here soon, too. So don't take it too seriously. But the fact that there were once dinosaurs and there are still crocodiles. And, like, you could say that that gives some credence, you know, it's not like 0.00, you know, percent probably. It's very low, but it's not zero. So the fact that there are neutrinos gives a lot of credibility, though, on the other hand, that there could be an invisible, massive form of matter that's invisible to telescopes, but otherwise is not invisible to gravitational effects. So then you would say, well, what are some other plausible explanations? So there's something called Occam's Razor, which states a very simple fact that Sherlock Holmes would, you know,

The simplest explanation is typically the correct one. Now, in astrophysics, in cosmology, and quantum physics, there's no such thing as a simple explanation. Everything is hard and it's fun and it's challenging and it's a puzzle and a mystery, and that's why I love it. But it still is the case that there could be another explanation other than, say, neutrinos or something like supermassive neutrinos, self-interacting dark. It could be that we have to change the laws of gravity.

In other words, it could be that there is no new matter, but gravity is wrong once you get to scales of galaxies. See, we don't see dark matter effects in our solar system. As I said, the effect on Uranus was actually the fact of ordinary matter made of protons and neutrons, the planet Neptune. We don't see it on these scales. In fact, we don't even see it in the entirety of our local solar neighborhood. It's only when you get to the scale of our Milky Way galaxy and other galaxies beyond the Milky Way that you can even detect that there is something strange going on with the rate of rotation of galaxies

versus the amount of stars that they seem to have in them, stars made of protons and neutrons. So what we have devised is that there could be, on the other hand, an alternative explanation where you'd have to modify the laws of gravity to explain the peculiar velocity effects of stars at the outskirts of massive galaxies like the Milky Way. So that's another explanation.

Now, you might say, well, that's pretty far-fetched. But that's exactly what happened in 1915 with this guy over here, my friend who is visiting me at all time. Where is this guy? Come on. He's here on here somewhere. I just picked him up today. Well, I've got Albert Einstein somewhere around here.

Where's he hiding? Oh, he's buried under my phone and under my new book into The Impossible. So here's Albert Einstein. So Albert Einstein said the following. He said, actually, we shouldn't think of gravity as this, you know, kind of, force that pulls on things, invisible ropes that are pulling on things, we should think of it as the effect of mass that causes the actual fabric of space and time to warp like a bowling ball and a trampoline. And in that way, he proposed that you actually have to change the laws

of gravity to account for the peculiar properties of the planet Mercury at this time in 1915, Mercury, like Neptune, had this weird behavior. It was orbiting in this strange way. And in fact, the same guy, his name is Laverier, a French astronomer, who proposed the existence of Neptune, i.e. dark matter to explain the peculiar properties of the planet Uranus. The same guy proposed, well, I can do the same thing for Mercury. And he proposed there was a new planet that you couldn't see because it was closer to the sun than Mercury. and it was called Vulcan. And so for many years, astronomers couldn't see it because it was so bright next to the sun,

but they postulated, well, this guy's pretty smart, he must be right. So he said, look for a planet closer to the sun than Mercury, and it was never found. So instead, so dark matter succeeded with the case of Uranus, and it failed in the case of Mercury. And what was needed in Mercury's case was to change the laws of physics. So today, my colleagues work on these problems, and I work on them too. how can you explain it is it a new particle is a new matter like neptune or is it a new law of gravity like einstein postulated and we're trying to find out the answer to those two questions which one is

right okay last last last last science nerd question and i'm we're going to stay in the in the we're going to go uh we don't have to go aliens but i'm very interested in there's been a lot of and it could be disinformation whatever around this gravitational propulsion system that were, you know, obviously, Rogan did a big thing of it, 2017. They had the Tick-Tac thing came out. There's been a lot of these, you know, quote-unquote whistleblowers that somehow still have like, you know, security clearance. So we have to kind of pass through a lot of filters of, you know, this could or could not be true. But I'm assuming that to the extent that you just described the idea that we would have to change our understandings of gravity

in order for this entire concept to be possible, would this potentially be the avenue to understanding that type of technology, if it's even possible, right? This idea of being able to bend gravity to move things and not have the G-force impact humans. I mean, nothing, you know, should be claimed to be impossible. But what we're talking about in that case is, like, called manipulation of space time. And we do know that there are vast disturbances in space and time that are caused by actual forms of matter and energy that we know about,

and these have been tested to exquisite precision, the challenge is that gravity is the weakest of all the forces. So when I talked about dark matter, I didn't tell you that the worst scenario that scientists could find themselves in is if dark matter only interacts gravitationally. In other words, if it's only detectable via the fact that if you have enough of it,

it will change the orbit of stars, for example, then you need a tremendous amount of it, and there's no detection system that we know about that could actually get enough in your laboratory. Think about it. You need something like the mass of the sun or the mass of Neptune, you know, to change the orbit of another planet.

So to have a detection, you would need something planetary size, and these planets are all six to ten times bigger than the Earth. And so you're talking about things that are beyond the realm of science, fiction, but let's just say for the sake of example, some hyper-intelligent alien civilization has a bigger planet so they can fit more stuff on it. Well, then you have this problem that the bigger planet has much higher gravity, and it makes it even less likely that they have

the capability to get off the Earth's surface. You know, the SpaceX starship, it uses like 90% of its energy, its fuel, just to get, just to launch, let alone to traverse the galaxy, which we haven't been able to do. The farthest object mankind has ever sent, and is just is beyond the orbit of Pluto, but it's by light travel time, it's only one light day. So if you shine a laser at it, it would take a light, a day to get to that spacecraft

called Voyager 1. And it was launched when I was a baby 50 years ago. So you talk about like this incomprehensible size of our universe and how paltry a distance we've only been able to explore. And then you think about, well, could there be aliens that are, you know, have all these properties. I liken it sometimes to almost like a religious, you know,

fixation that, yes, Jesus can do anything, you know, or God can do anything is omnipotent, omniscient, et cetera. But then when you start saying that the aliens can manipulate gravity, it's almost giving them godlike powers. Because if they don't have the ability to actually warp, you know, space time themselves, then they have to use the tools that nature or God gave them, which is just the same as we have. So you'd have to have massive black holes. You'd have to have, you know, incredibly sized planets. You'd have to have, you know, the ability to transcend the speed of light.

So these are all things that are literally supernatural. So is it possible? Yes, it can't prove that it's not, you know, that it is impossible. That doesn't make it likely. So these people that postulate these things, they will say that something is possible. Just like I said, yes, you could actually. have explained, you know, Mercury. Imagine like an alien has the same situation

and wanted to trick us and started to play around the orbit of Mercury. It is, you know, humanly possible. If you had some Death Star-like thing, you could actually make a planet the size of Mercury on the opposite side of the sun, so it's always interactive. But is that likely?

Or is it likely, more likely, that these people are having hallucinations or lying, are being sigh up by the U.S. government who's admitted to doing it, or, you know, is the U.S. government only, you know, no other nations really claim that they're doing this that are transparent and accountable to the extent that you think the U.S. is. You know, 90% of the sightings, of the claims come from the United States,

and 90% of those come from near military bases or nuclear weapons or power sites. So at some level, you have to ask Occam's Razor question. you know, which is the simplest explanation, and then take it from there. So the leap from, you know, what we see to what's claimed to be seen to what's known is an enormous chasm. And the last thing I'll say is that we're often, you know, I'm often accused of being a gigkeeper or being a wet blanket or whatever, but you have to realize that comes with the tampering of my hopes that I actually want it to be the case.

you know, if there's life elsewhere in the solar system or in the universe or, you know, maybe there are other universes. You know, I study some wacko stuff too, but the difference is I guard against my desire innately to confirm the hypothesis that I want to be true. Whereas these other people, their first inclination is to go to the most, you know, kind of outlandish hypothesis and then claim cover-ups, conspiracy, and gatekeeping. Yeah. So I want to transition into, I think this is a perfect point because I love the way.

that you've finished that, you know, and I said, I think before we went live, that one of the things, I've always been a fan, you know, even before you were ever on the show, I was a fan, I was a fan from the first time I heard you on James' show, because of, I think there are very few people in your field who are able to play with the tin foil had ideas without, like, admonishing or demeaning the person who's throwing the idea out there, but then, but still, you're still willing to play with it right but then but you know always back here's where we actually are in in what we have today and what really is working and what would have to be true for this and i and i think that that you know i i've always appreciated that because you know and what i'll do sometimes

uh with your work and guys just so you know you know i'll have links to to everything um that brian does i'll have i've linked to all this stuff the books highly i'll go watch with one of these crazy shows right because it's like it's like it's like watching you know it's like watching uh you know a sitcom or something and they'll be talking about all this crazy shit and then i'll go to your ex and i'll like search your ex to see if you've like commented on that topic to be like okay now i kind of know like what reality is like as of this moment you know again always anything's possible your show into the impossible right so we're we're we're seeking truth but um i think it's good to have a measured approach because you can oh my gosh you can absolutely get lost in

this shit and there is nothing worse than someone i i believe like one of the most annoying personalities is someone who does not understand that 98% of the conspiracy theories are complete nonsense. Like, it's fun to play with them. But if you're actually believing all these things, you're having a hard time. But you've been able to take this, what these topics that are, I mean, we just talked about some stuff that I'm assuming the majority of our audience may not even heard 90% of what you ever said before, right?

But it's so incredibly interesting and you've turned it into not just a brand, but a business. You've been able to commercialize this in a way that is educational, that's inspiring, that brings all different types of thought in. You've had, you've had tit for tats with different, with different scientific leaders back and forth, you got, you have legit haters, like, you know, you're in the game. So what has that been like coming out of academia? Obviously, you've been in front of crowds, you've taught, so it's not like speaking in

front of people is something you've never done before, but really coming out into the public with these ideas, sharing them and turning it into a brain and a business. What has that been like for you? Yeah. Well, I mean, I have to say that my first point of contact with everything you're saying is out of a sense of simple decency and morality and obligations. I think, you know, once I heard a statement that it was great that we had, you know, the Statue of Liberty and the Bill of Rights in America, but we should have a Statue of Responsibility and the Bill of Responsibility. In other words, we focus so much on what we're entitled to, what we deserve, whether because we're smart or good-looking. or, you know, or both in both of our cases, right? But if we had this ability as if it's given to us preordained as an entitlement, and I've never felt that way. I feel like I'm so privileged to be a scientist.

I work at a public university in the state of California, UC San Diego. I went to public schools my whole life. And, you know, so I believe that the public is my boss. I believe that, you know, you pay your taxes, hopefully everybody out there. and if you don't, I don't want to know about it right now, but we'll expect a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. But the fact that you guys pay your taxes, and some of that, not much, you know, especially in the state of California, you know, I'm a public employee, you know, it's not a huge amount,

but we do get paid, and we get paid to do what we would do for free. The dirty little secret of scientists, whenever they whine, I always say, well, why don't you get a real job, you know, jokingly. I mean, I do feel like I have a real job. I've taught, you know, 20 people to get PhD. I've taught two, three thousand undergraduate students. I've written 800 letters of recommendation to get jobs for my students. But the bottom line is that we are paid to do something most of us would do for free.

And because of that, it's like if somebody pays you to be an ice cream taster or to play professional baseball or whatever, right, you have an obligation to give back to the people that pay your salary. Fans, the organization, or in my case, the taxpayer. So for me, I see the obligation to my boss. Imagine you worked at Dairy Queen, right, Ryan? And working at Dairy Queen and your boss comes in and says, well, what are you up to, Ryan?

And you're like, well, you can't understand what I'm doing here, you know, boss. I'm so advanced. I'm so erudite. I'm so just like, just such a genius. And that's the attitude of most scientists. And I understand it because we want to work on stuff that's incredibly cutting edge, you know, rather than, you know, if you're an English professor, you don't want to teach the alphabet, right?

You want to teach, like, great literature. And so, too, with science, like, I don't want to teach, like, you know, one plus one equals two or one times one equals two, as Terrence Howard and I have been beefing about for a year now. Dynamite drop in there. Dynamo. So, I'd rather, you know, do cutting-edge physics like I'm doing. But we do have an obligation to explain what we do in the simplest possible terms, but no simpler.

We shouldn't dumb it down. I hate that term when people say, oh, you're great at dumbing it. That means that you're dumb. No, you're not dumb. You're just an expert in some other field that I'm not an expert in. So am I dumb? No. It's just I haven't dedicated the time, effort, and skills that you have.

So my basic point is I believe that the university and professors in general kind of have this arrogance, which is, you know, you could say it's partially deserved. But the best people, the people that I feel blessed to have, you know, as colleagues and as guest on my podcast and in this new book are people that see as an obligation to give back to the public. And that's what I love to do. And it's a challenge. You know, when I ask people to do it or they'll either say one of two things like, oh, that's really easy. Like, I could do what Neil deGrasse Tyson does. Like, he's not even a real scientist. No, you couldn't. No, you couldn't. I've been on his podcast twice. He's been on mine two or three times. There's no way.

Even I could do what he does. Now, I do other things that he doesn't do. And that's okay. Or my colleagues will say that a real scientist doesn't do that. A real scientist doesn't dumb things down or popularize it and write books and do podcast and go on. But that's also nonsense because a real scientist has to be able to give back to the public who pay his or her salary or else, guess what, you're not going to have a salary anymore and you're going to be unemployed doing what you love doing, but not getting compensated for it. What has been the general feedback that you've gotten from your colleagues as you've gone into this space?

Because I have to imagine, you know, when you step out into the public eye, you're under even more scrutiny than you would be if you're just. I don't want to say just because I know if you're if you're trying to publish peer reviewed articles, etc. There's a lot of scrutiny that goes in there too. But like as you expand these thoughts into the world of X and Facebook and Instagram and now every armchair, you know, astrophysicists who, you know, watched one YouTube video and now understands what dark matter is, right, has an opinion on your take. Like, like, how do you navigate that? Like, how do you stay grounded in the work that you're doing when someone is calling something out or positioning an argument against you in which you just intrinsically know is either false or

or not based in real fact or they can't back it up? Like, how do you stay committed to that mission despite that? Well, first of all, I try to assume. that everybody, you know, is a human being, not just some avatar with a, you know, made-up name. But I only have that kind of blissful naivete until they give me a reason not to respect them and believe what they're saying and believe that they're a good faith actor. Unfortunately, that happens way more times than I get, you know, positive commentary, you know, that we can engage. Oops, hold on one second. that we can engage and be respectful and treat each other as colleagues.

So when that happens, I'll continue indefinitely. However, if you disrespect me, just like if you disrespect me in my face, like, you know, I can take care of myself. You would never say that to me in my face, you know, be insulting like that, or we will have a problem. And I'm, you know, I'm not a traditional academic in that sense. Like, I don't back down from those things. I train and I do all sorts of things.

But in my case, I'll treat you with the respect that you don't deserve at first, you know, because you might just be this keyboard warrior out there, but only up until you kind of, you know, abuse that trust. And so a lot of times, you know, I regret it because I am, you know, relatively friendly. On the other hand, sometimes I've come to change my mind about certain topics that I've been very entrenched in. I'll give you an example. Like recently, there have been cutbacks due to the Trump administration sort of segregating grants that were earmarked to universities like Harvard, Colombia, UCLA, and others, that it permitted the existence of these truly anti-Semitic protests and encampments, you know, all in the name of, you know, Palestinian, you know, kind of, you know, representation or, you know, grievances and boycotts. And some of them are very violent. We had a violent one here at UC San Diego that only lasted for four or five days. And Harvard and Columbia had months or, you know, UCLA had five-week-long encampment, I believe it was.

And one of my colleagues, a math professor at UCLA, wrote this article and posted online. He's one of the smartest human – he might be the smartest person on Earth, you know, present company excluded. Terry Tao won the Fields Medal, which is like the Nobel Prize of Math, even though it's actually harder to win. in some ways. But, and he wrote this article that Trump, I'm an award-winning mathematician, and Trump canceled my funding. And so, you know, I went back and forth. I was like, well, he didn't mention the fact that, you know, Jews were not allowed to go on certain parts of his, I mean, just imagine, like, being at, you know, Rutgers or wherever, Vassar, you know, where you didn't go. And you can't go there, Ryan, because they just don't like you. They don't

like white people, let's say. I mean, this has happened literally, or they don't like Jews or they don't like blacks, I mean, or gays or trans. They would be booted off campus in a millisecond. If it was any other group, and I felt like he's not paying attention. He didn't even mention the fact that the UCLA grant was not restricted by Trump punitively because they don't like this mathematician. They did it because UCLA permitted and encouraged in some sense this encampment to go on for weeks. And it was very dangerous, hostile, and unpleasant, and had no place in academia. I actually testified in Congress last summer about my experiences here, and it was a violation of my civil rights and other people's civil rights. But anyway, so when I had this, you know,

I had to debate with some people online, like, well, are they really canceling his funding? Like, does he deserve it? You know, how does this, you know, because he was working at a place that was discriminatory and hostile. So I actually did change my mind in some sense that, like, could it be done differently? Could it be done in a more, you know, and I'm like very supportive of what Trump has done, you know, for the campus climate and culture and standing up against anti-Semitism on any kind of discrimination. So I was very supportive of that, but it caused me to kind of reevaluate, you know, do I really have a true commitment to it or, and also help educate him. I met with him on campus, on his campus last month, last week, rather, and we had a great discussion.

I don't think he was aware of how his Jewish colleagues felt. So it was a positive thing. And so this is the kind of thing that can only happen thanks to the internet, but because the internet has every, you know, every vice vector and valor known to humanity, sometimes it's not worth it. And sometimes I regret it. And I'm trying to minimize the amount of regret time I spend on all these platforms. In general, I'm trying to reduce how much I spend rather than increase it. But it is addictive, as you know, and it is something that has to be constantly monitored. Yeah. So I have a couple thoughts there. I'm going to go backwards. My first thought is I'm constantly torn on screen time because I think there are times when like so so your your feed, your social media feed is a

direct reflection on what you give your attention to. So one of the first things I do with anyone that I'm that I'm coaching in whatever capacity it is whether a sales professional or a leader is I literally have them if it's a Zoom call open up their Instagram and scroll their Instagram feed for me in the video. And I'm and we get to see. firsthand what you give your attention to right now because you know i get how to coach baseball because my kid plays baseball uh i don't think all kinds of baseball stuff i get buffalo bills stuff and i get leadership and motivational shit and and crazy ads as for grinders yep grinder and tinder and all the inders that you know come with being a single well i guess i'm i guess if if i'm technically

not single today so sorry ladies um wow oh wait wait wait wait It's new. It's a new thing. But as of, you know, right now, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're, I can't say that I'm single today. But so those ads are getting wasted on me, Instagram. So I know you're listening, so you can stop showing them. But my point is, like, if I'm, if I take five minutes and I sit down and I get a new drill to do with my kids at baseball practice, I get two cool motivational things getting hyped up

and feeling good. And I get a new conspiracy theory on aliens. that like to harvest eyelashes in North Jersey. Is that really time wasted? I don't know, right? I mean, again, if I do that for two hours, maybe, but if I come out of it feeling positive with a new drill and some cool small talk conversation

around aliens and stuff, you know, I think that's time I'll spend. So I think we have to be very careful with that because I think there's a balance and I don't like when people are just, and I don't think this is what you're saying, but I hear this advice a lot. Just less. I don't think just less. It's more like what you're actually focusing.

Okay. But I want to go into the other issue for a second, not the details. I completely agree with your opinion, 100%. And taking out, we need to remove in this particular conversation, your feelings on what is physically happening in Israel and Gaza today with what you were discussing, which is what was in reality happening on our college campuses,

et cetera, and taking that stand. Okay. So you have this public platform. You have a voice now where people, people listen to what you're saying and look to you, myself included, for, hey, how does how does he feel about this particular topic? You know, it may not always be this one, but a topic if I hear you talk about it, I trust that you are, I trust that you have, you've earned the

right in my mind that when you say something, I believe you've thought about it, right? Okay. So I want to talk about the changing your mind piece because this is something that I feel like is one of the most missed skills of our thought leaders in general as a very broad stroke term, right? It's this once I say a thing, I am like locked into this as my identity and I cannot change it. And I see this in the archaeology community right now, right? Like if you follow anything that's going on, like Graham Hancock is like kick the fucking

hornet's nest and, you know, and now you have these people. And again, this is a trite example, but you have these entrenched sides who refuse to even acknowledge that there could possibly be any other option than the option that we've been taught. And you honestly, when you take in the data, when you actually do the research,

which this ancient civilization is actually probably one of the most interested in in terms of potential tinfoil hatchet. But I'm like, you can't deny that we don't know everything, right? You just, you can't. You're seeing things. Everything's getting old.

Okay. So, but these people, many of them, refuse to change their stance or even acknowledge that there could be another option. So I'm interested in how you approach changing your mind, how when you are sharing with your audience, hey, I had this take for a while. I have now done X amount of research, come across X resources, talk to whoever. And I now, I'm now considering that this actual, this, I could have been wrong on this and this could be. How do you approach that in a way that feels like you can get that message across and convey it and have people trust and respect that

versus what I think happens sometimes is you just get pounced on for oh, you're a flip flopper or oh, why didn't you know that from the beginning or, you know, because I think that's what everyone's worried about is they're so worried about losing that credibility if they change their mind. So being that you're willing to do that,

I'm very interested in how you do that and maybe when you've seen that be successful for you and maybe some of the things that you would sidestep if you were telling someone else how to do it? Yeah, so there's a lot there. I would say the most kind of archetypal or stereotypical in a good way reactions of a scientist is surprise.

It's not eureka. You know, I found what I wanted to find. It's like, wow, that's weird. And that wasn't supposed to be there. Scientists are very good at detecting flaws. I have a saying that flaws lead to new law. Like the fact that the orbit of Uranus did not match what was predicted by the laws of Newtonian gravity led to the discovery of a whole new planet. So it was a flaw in our understanding or in the data that led to a new law.

Similarly, the flaws in Mercury's orbit led to the revolution of general relativity. So I'd like to look for a few things. I'd like to look for what's called epistemic humility. Like, am I saying I know the answers? I've interviewed, you know, as I said, 22 Nobel Prizes, Field Medalist, you know, just the top people. And I've interviewed, and only a couple of them are really arrogant. We'll describe why that is later and why that's necessary at some level, but can be dangerous and too large an amount. But then I've interviewed other people that aren't, you know, that are just normal scientists or thought leaders or whatever.

And guess what? Some of them are, you know, are arrogant, you know, you know what's. And some of them are, you know, very humble. but the people I resonate most with are the people that are humble. If you have somebody who's just got one message and never changes and cannot be ever tolerate even dissent and tries to shut it down, then I don't have so much respect for you. Whereas if you're willing ironically to say I'm wrong

or I know I could be wrong or admit the possibility about something, especially when it's not even in your field of expertise, then I have more respect for you, even though, you know, naively a kid might. like a child might say, well, why do you respect someone who admits they don't know something? That's a childlike way of looking at wisdom, right? So I'll give you an example, Sam Harris. So I had Sam Harris on.

And by the way, Ryan, you're, you know, this incredibly accomplished podcaster. When you're on a podcast, forget about me, I'm not looking for compliments or anything. But when you're on a podcast live, like we're talking live right now, it's actually happening, how do you know if you're doing a good job or a bad job? Do you have any cues? I'm curious as a podcaster myself. I have some cues, but how do you know that you're doing a good job? It's a good podcast, or if you're just kind of,

or if you or the guest is not bringing the heat. So I don't have a, my best, I watch your energy. So I'm watching your body language at all times. So the audience knows, and if you see, if you're watching in the YouTube video, I don't look directly into the camera. And the reason I don't look directly into the camera is I'm not the one that I want you to focus on.

I want the audience to focus on you, the guest. And so what I do is I look at you and your body language the entire time. And I can tell based on the way your shoulders move, your facial expressions, your head, are you energized? Are you engaged? Are you thinking through? Are you excited for the next fucking question I'm going to ask?

Or are you like just, all right, just let's get through this. Like, here's my talking points. Here's my book. Yeah, here's what it is, blah, blah. Or I've been asked this question 10,000 times. I really don't want to ask it again. You know, so, so and I've tried to set my show up in a way to disrupt that. Like I don't

have you do the 20 cent tour on your history to start the show because my thought is if someone really wants to know I'm bringing you on because I believe that you're an expert and if you listen to my show hopefully you trust me that this guy or gal whoever has value to you as an audience member and that's why they're here I don't need to have you waste the first 10 minutes of the show telling me everything you did in your past that's that's how I try to get people off and get them going but so that's what I do I purposely don't look into the camera I watch you your body language and then I adjust my tone, my cadence, and what I do to how I see you responding.

I also am a terrible question answer, asker, as you can tell, because I have these huge diatribes in between questions in which everyone who listens to the show, whether it positively or negatively gives me shit about. So that's just the way it is. Well, that's because, you know, you like me are, you know, probably microdosing autism at some level or ADD. Well, let me give you, let me give you my real-time feedback because I think it's good. A, well, first of all, I like your, your tips. And I won't use the one about not looking, simply because I spend a lot of money on a teleprompter that allows me to see from Elgado, not sponsored. But I can see you, and I can also see, you know, like the chat is there. It's really

good for Zoom calls, coaching calls. So I would recommend you get these 200 bucks on Amazon. They're great, great to have Elgado Promptor Pro. And you just plug it in. I've got my camera is a nice camera behind there. So I can look at you. I could read stuff. Like right now, you know, I put some notes like, I want to talk about the acronym, focus. What does that say? So I got that there. So I can look at you and people, you know, humans are mammals and mammals, you know, are both predators and prey in the past, right?

So we're kind of always looking at our eyes. Our eyes are unique in that we have, you know, amongst most species, don't have the white part that we have, but mammals do. So the white part is really strong cue that where your attention is devoted. So humans don't trust people as much when they're not looking at each other. another kind of instantiation of that is the joke that how do you know a scientist is outgoing he looks at your shoes when he talks to you right okay so so like attention but the way that I do it is when I am talking to a guest let's say I'm talking to a big shot like Sam Harris so

setting up a Sam Harris involved like two producers his assistant whatever and they said well he's got one hour okay so he got one hour on this day and so we did the podcast and then two hours go by three hours go by at that point i know he's deeply engaged um and it's going to be it's a good interview for him because nobody would say like if i have an out i said ryan i got to go in 32 minutes um and and then 32 minutes comes up and i'm like well i actually didn't have to go i'm actually saying i'm a liar right i'm admitting that i'm not i wasn't honest about which is ironic for sam because he has a book about lying and how you should never do it and but but he has many many flaws as as we can get into some other time but but so we had this great conversation and and we're

talk and it goes the other way is like when you hear somebody say like oh i've never thought of that before and they're or that's a really good question and they're actually kind of stumped a little bit like you know i've never been asked you know about like you know the business side of my podcast like that's just not something that comes up mostly because i'm an astrophysicist cosmologist author you know and so forth so i'm not asked about my youtube empire you know i'm not like that that level of greatness but um but those are cues that i use to kind of yeah lean into like the fact that I'm doing a good job in real time, and it's obvious sometimes when people aren't really good, but sometimes it's hard to tell.

Like, if I'm looking down, I might just be just like you, Ryan, or I might be really introverted or body dysmorphic or something like. I might just not be – so that's why I would caution you against the, like, not looking or just judging the body language rather than, like, what other real-time feedback? Because we all think we're great, you know, kind of raconteurs and question askers, et cetera. So anyway, those are my humble tips. No, I think that's great. And actually, I'll tell you, I'm in the process.

I'm going to look into this. I'm in the process of getting the setup so I can look through. I don't have it. That's why I do the don't look at them thing today. Because what I found is if, like, I use the camera right above the screen, it looks weird. So I was like, so I'm in, I am actually what a version of what you described, I'm in the process of getting because I agree with that. But I think I love your point about listening to the feedback and,

And that idea of like, I'm always trying to find, it's one of the reasons I don't do a ton of prep. I do enough prep to understand what the person is trying to go. But basically, you know, and how I describe it to people is like, I'm starting here and I want to end here. And what happens in here? I have no friggin clue what happens in the middle. And the reason is because what if, like if I'm pre-planned, right,

and I'm just question, question, question, okay. But what if I ask you a question, and man, I just see the fire in your eye. You're like that, for whatever reason, that topic's got you jacked up today. You just read a report or one of your students just came up and asked you this question that kind of stumped you a little.

Now you're pissed, you're trying to figure it out. You're talking to me, but at the, you know, some portion of your brain is, and that's what you really want to talk about. Well, shit, I want to hear about that. I don't care what we came here to talk about. I want to know what you're fired up about. So, you know, I'm always trying to figure out,

like, what is this particular person fired up? about today what are they interested in and one of the reasons i wanted to know about the and i i've also done this enough times like i'm at like a thousand interviews wow not on this particular podcast that's a story for another day uh i have a former podcast story that would make you sick oh man i was i was 11th in the world at one point in podcast in 2014 i have a screenshot at my let's two ahead of me gary v's two behind me and i'm number 11 in the entire world not just us i'm doing We're doing the show is doing very well in the U.S. Thank you for everyone that listens.

I love you so much. Thank you. Come back, subscribe, tell your friends. Subscribe to Brian's show. But at this point in 2014, 53,000 downloads a month was number 11 in the world. And then I got a job that paid me more than I had ever made in my life, more than four times what my parents had ever made in a single year combined.

And I took that job. And three months in, they told me I had to shut the podcast down. And I did, like an idiot. My point in saying all that is where I wanted to go was I wanted to know the nerdy shit, but then I wanted to transition in your business because I was interested, but ultimately I wanted to get to your book. And to me, the easiest transition from the nerdy physics shit to the book was through your business of coming out.

Because where I really wanted to go with questions about the book, my leading question to your current book was you wrote losing the Nobel Prize, right? All about losing Nobel Prize. I can't imagine that there has been another human who's lost the Nobel Prize who then decided I'm going to go tell the world about I lost the Nobel. I mean, I just think one, it speaks to your character. Two, I think it to me, it's just incredibly interesting that you would take that on, right? There's a lot of ways that you could go with that. And you decided to say, hey, like, here's what we did amazing.

Here's what we would have done. Here's where I think maybe we could have got more. Like, it's awesome. I mean, it's phenomenal. And now you've turned that into a brand inside of your larger brand, right? And now we're talking about focus. And this idea that just has captured me about your book and where I want to finish our time together today is in particular the section around the physics, like this physics of focus. Like, because for me being, you know, I've been diagnosed ADHD.

I got another diagnosis that was hyperactive bipolar. basically the doctor said there are portions of your brain spinning at 10,000 rotations a second and there are portions of your brain spinning at 10 rotations a second and you know take some adderol and you'll feel better

right so like um you know it was essentially what they said I've toyed with the adderall I don't particularly like it I've had to find other ways to because I think you lose your creativity as much as just so you know guys it works really really well um especially if you snorted it no I don't recommend that um but uh but um

but I have found I've lost I when I would try to use that as a tool I lost my creativity which I didn't like so I'm I'm would love for you to dive in why focus like why focus as a topic in general what is it about that and and let's like what are the physics of focus like how does this how do we because to me and it's the last contextual thing I'll say but my brain is like firing on all cylinders right now I have this saying that I tell people all the time what you focus on is who you become. It's a derivative, I'm sure, of way smarter people who have said very similar things. But I firmly believe that. I believe that focus is the success or the key to all success that we want and everything in our relationships and how we parent

and how we interact with friends and the work we do, et cetera, et cetera, focus. The ability to turn it on when necessary and to extend it as far as you can. So I hadn't even considered that there could be physics of focus. So I don't know if we're talking actual particles in some regard but like dive into this for me because oh yeah this is a good question this is a question i have not been asked yeah um even by eminent you know podcasters like james all toucher yesterday uh so also by the way i i cut out of getting my tattoo done to come over to do this so i went to my i saw you look at my thing so guys if you're not on the youtube channel i've cellophane on my arm so from 830 to noon i was getting a tattoo done then i came over to do the podcast and i'm going to

drive back over and get the second half of the tattooed on after the show. And it says no regerts. That's amazing, Ryan. Thank you. I've been, you know, I've had people like, you know, hang up on other people. I've had Nobel Prize winners, you know, cancel other appointments to be on a podcast with me. I've never had someone interrupt a tattoo to do a podcast. Thank you, my brother.

Okay, so listen, focus to me is an acronym. That stands for the following. It stands for, it's like MAGA, okay? Why is MAGA so resonant? Why does it mean so much good and bad, right? I mean, there's no such thing as bad public, so I don't know your audience. Are they right? Are they left? I don't really care. The point is MAGA is a brilliant marketing gimmick, right? It stands for make, America, America, great again, great. And then, looking forward, verb, make, do something. Don't just be idle. America. America is a concept. It's a place. It stirs emotions of patriotism. Great. Again, throwback. And then looking forward again, it's going to happen again. It's inevitable. So I followed that kind of like. at least, you know, in terms of marketing, focus to me as an acronym, follow one course until successful. Okay, so follow. To be a follower, you need to have also be a leader, right? You go to

Jacco Willings, you know, pages like leader and follower, okay? So follow. You need to have some perspective that you are not the only, you know, the thing on God's green earth. You are, you are one of many. You're going to take a path, one path. So ADHD people, and I know many of them science. They're some of the most successful people I know in science on the internet. One, their problem is shiny object syndrome. They follow many courses. Some of them are very successful. I have no doubt you could have gotten the tattoo right now. You could have your artist there, inking you up, and you could be, you know, probably it might give you some weird, you know, I don't know, kind of bizarre, fetishistic thrill, right? Like, you're getting,

you're doing your two favorite, two of your favorite things, right? You're talking to me and you're getting a tat. Okay. One, one, not many, not multitask. I know you can multitask, but we all think we're better at multitasking than we actually is. All the research proves that. I quote it in the book. Until, oh, sorry, course. Course is a pathway. It's a trajectory. If you set out to go to the moon and you didn't have any idea which way you're going to go, people say, oh, shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll be among the stars. That's horrible advice. The stars are vast, cold, deadly, and rapaciously violent. You don't want to be in the stars. You'll be dead in just a minutes if you go out and to enter it. No, you need a course that gets you to the moon.

So you can be nice and safer. So you need a course. A course is a set of one zero dimensional points that lead along a pathway. Like you said before, you like to look at all explore different things. That's great, but you have to choose at least one thing. We're not going to talk about like how I am as a dad or, you know, what my wife thinks about, you know, the, the anniversary card I got her. You know, so you're going to focus on one course until inevitable. It's going to happen, Ryan, you're going to achieve success. Success is the goal, but you have to be ruthlessly, you know, voraciously protective of your one global researchers is your time and your attention. The laureates that I talk about. So what is the Nobel Prize is like the highest level of

accolade in the world? These are people that are way beyond intelligent. They kind of enter a new atmosphere, new realm. Some of them are like Olympic athletes, literally. some of them are brilliant in many other fields, whether it's from the Nobel Peace Prize, people that I interviewed, Nobel Prize in Economics, to the Physics Prize and Chemistry. These people have this incredible depth. They don't have, they have breath, maybe sometimes,

but they succeeded despite their breath because of their depth. They followed in almost every case an intentional choice to cut out distractions and go deep on one thing. And I like the magnifying glass. We both did it. deny that you did it. You took a magnifying glass out there in Jersey. You shined it on

on some ants, okay? And you wanted to see what happened. Let's say they didn't die. Okay. They lived. The ants lived. Or an army man. Did you ever do that with your army man? I did that with my... I did it with all kinds of shit. Okay. Well, let's not get into like the federal crimes you committed as a kid. But the ADD on ADHD, look, there are people in here. I undoubtedly know are on the spectrum. They're very deep on it in some cases. But they all had these tools. And the tools are the superstructure, what James Clear would call the habits, the atomic habits. Literally, they're atomic scientists. They're building up from small things because you're going to fall to the level of your habits, basically. You're going to relax

that. So what do they do? They do the following. They do time boxing. Neeraal wrote one of the blurbs in addition to Ali Abdal and Cal Newport and Sahil Bloom. So I got all these blurbs from the productivity expert. This is a productivity book, whether you're a science, or whether you're a lawyer or whether you're a car salesman. I don't care what you are because these tools will be useful, especially to people with ADHD, because they give you a framework that the greatest minds in human history, the people that far exceed the Oscars or the Olympics or even the World Series or whatever, these people have done almost the impossible.

And they lean into their schedules, their boxing of their time, and even things that that you wouldn't think would allow you to concentrate your attention. And that's like working with other people. Some people that takes energy and drains them, other people extroverted, they like it. But you need to have some amount of it, some amount of collaborative nature because no one gets a Nobel Prize alone. No one person wins the World Series. Yes, you can win Olympics or an Oscar or whatever. But those aren't really the kind of legacy for the ages.

Like I don't know, you know, half the people that have won a single gold medal in the 1996 Olympics. Games in Atlanta. I don't know. I can't remember a single one. But I know every single Nobel Prize winner in this field. Don't chase the shiny objects. You can't start a fire. You can't melt the Armyman or that fire ant that's coming after. You can't do it unless you use the magnifying glass pointed in exactly the right way to choose your lane. And this is something James Altucher disagreed with me about. But he kind of, you know, we went back and forth. I think he convinced me a little bit that sometimes you do want to go into a different lane. But focus on what you're trying to do because you don't have enough time to even master your own

discipline, let alone be a master of every single discipline. So the last thing is about, you know, the book is a guidebook to reclaim your attention so that you can do the greatest good for people around you, your family, and accumulate the influence and the power and the responsibility that you have and that you're capable of. Yeah, I love that. I want to hit you with one thought as we close here, our time together. You know, I've been, a big advocate for people with ADHD and neurodiversity in general ever since I got diagnosed because for so long it was used against me right you're too much you move too fast you make decisions too quick okay and I and I've always said hey this this

harnessed properly and I love the focus framework harness properly is a superpower absolutely and people said will describe that to me and I and I didn't always have a great way to describe it. I would say things like, you know, because, because one of the things about people, particularly with, with hyperactivity as a neurodiversity, they don't see chaos. Chaos doesn't bother them. Like when the world is the most chaotic, they oftentimes can be the most common composed. It's a very weird thing. And you don't even, you often don't understand it. And I didn't have a good way of describing it until I saw the movie Dune 2, because I had forgotten this part in the book. But Paul Atreides takes the poison, right? And he's sitting there and he has this vision

and he's speaking to his mother. And he says, our enemies are all around us. And there's infinite paths where we fail. But there's one path that I can see that takes us to the promised land. And to me, those who harness the ability to to focus, they see and follow the one path. Because when you have the million paths, right, when you are going in all these different directions, you don't know which one ends up in failure or in destruction.

But when you can stay focused and you can stay consistent and believe in the view and, you know, your until part, right? The commitment to until, you can see that path through destruction to the other side. I said, that's what it's, that's the good version. The bad version is I'm thinking about aliens and superpowers and dark matter and math and, you know, what question I'm going to add next and what I want to have for lunch.

And, you know, I mean, that's the other side of it. But, you know, I was like that, but the ability to turn that on. And I think this is the other thing that I say to people. And this is why I'm so excited about your book and why I want to get it in the hands as many of my audience members as I possibly can. Guys all have links, scroll down, whether you're listening on YouTube or, or watching on YouTube, listening wherever you are,

just scroll down. I've links to all Brian's stuff. Is that if you can turn this power on, regardless of your neurodiversity or not, it is an unlock to basically anything that you want in your life. That's right. It doesn't mean you can have everything, but anything, if you can unlock this.

And you need, and this is what I tell people, you can't do this by accident. It takes an intentional framework, whether it's the focus framework that you're teaching or some other framework that someone has, whatever it is, right? You need that structure or you will not be able to get there. That's right. All these people, you know, we have a tendency to hero worship as human beings.

It's a natural kind of, you know, tribal thing that probably goes back to, you know, cavemen origins. And so the thing to think about, as I always say to, I talk to a group of high school kids a week or two ago. And I was like, you know, people worship different things in different fields, right? I mean, a podcaster might worship, you know, Joe Rogan or Ryan Hanley, you know, they might worship, you know, a sports hero, you know, and Mani Machado here in San Diego. But the fact is that these people are ordinary people at heart. No one's a, you know, a Nobel Prize winning, you know, World Series champion and also, you know, has a Pinterest, thriving Pinterest and, you know, whatever Etsy influencer, you know, status. Okay, you have to choose. And it's inevitably you're going to choose, but you should choose.

It shouldn't be the universe choosing for you or worse, randomly just like how you got into things. So the point is in science, it's unlike, you know, kind of a business, right? If Apple, you know, doesn't sell you an iPhone, then you're probably going to get one from, you know, Samsung or, you know, get an Android phone, right? It's a zero-sum game. But science is what's called an infinite game. So there is no winning, I can't win science.

You know, even if you win the Nobel Prize, like nobody cares on, you know, Jupiter. If there are people there, like you won the Nobel Prize. Because you didn't win it. You just specialize in one field and it's an incredible competition. But, you know, as many of these people say, you know, they basically are relay racers in this infinite chain, this race that goes back to prehistoric times. When the first person came out of a cave and said, what are those dots in the night? What are those things up there? Where do they come from?

Where do I come from? So you're in this race and this really race and you get the baton for a very short amount of time. You know, from after college and graduate school in my case, up until retirement in a decade or so for me. So you run your leg, but your job is to pass it on. So be a hero to other people, be in awe of other people that came before you, but realize you're one part in this infinite race against an unbeatable, in Mother Nature's undefeated. We're never going to know everything. so that can be applied in any field as long as you don't go out of your lane and try to do

everything to all people at all times but you know in the book i also talk about you can't be immune to your own needs and i give like tips and you know drinking alcohol and coffee and sleep and all these practical things you never hear about when you're a student you never learn about it like when you went to college and and you say you're profiting you don't know you don't have any idea what do what do they do like what's their job who pays them I'm like, how do they, what are they doing their off time? Like, but I want to demystify it for anyone who is in college or going to college and is interested in science, you know, we're at the threshold of this incredible new

error of discoveries and things like AI and quantum computing and all the rest. We're at this amazing time, take advantage of it, but, you know, do what your best to concentrate on what you uniquely can bring to the table. Dude, love you, huge fan. Appreciate the hell out of you in your time. I know you're a busy guy. It means a lot to me. Guys, like I said, I'll have links to everything Brian's doing, including the book.

I highly recommend the book and go down the chain, right? So hit the Amazon, you know, most likely it'll be like people that bought this one also bought volume one, also bought, you know, buy them all, get all the books. Go down the chain, yeah, go right down. You need to get one of those box sets like they have for Game of Thrones, you know what I mean, where you get all the Keating books in one one box set. Or this other Ryan Holiday, the other Ryan H. That's right.

Well, man, hey, I wish you nothing but the best And I look forward to next time we get to chat This is great. Thanks, brother. Congrats on your success too, my friend. Appreciate you.