Speaker 1hello and welcome back to the james kennedy podcast i hope you're all good man what a week i have had since i last spoke to you guys jesus christ i was in london pretty much for most of last week um helping out outside the royal courts of justice doing a bit of presenting and interviewing for the free desange campaign as you'd expect it pissed down pretty much the entire time which makes everything more pleasant but outside of that it was a great turnout man you probably didn't see any of it on the mainstream media because i can't imagine why but maybe they just forgot but um yeah there was fucking loads and loads of people there and there were tons of mainstream media from other countries from australia and around europe and stuff like that tons of media and press there but didn't see any of the people that we recognize such as the bbc or any of those guys maybe they didn't get the memo one of the most historic and significant press trials of our times and uh the news didn't turn up strange i guess they must have had much more important things to be informing you guys about such as i don't know sports or celebrity gossip who knows but loads of people did turn up made a lot of noise and showed a lot of support and solidarity for julian assange and his wife stella who was still fighting this ridiculous inhumane kafka-esque madness that has resulted in a journalist being in belmarsh prison with no charge for several years now with the ever-looming threat of being extradited to the us we live in crazy times but it's always heartening when you attend one of these things because you get to restore your faith in humanity you get to put a bit of fire back in your belly and realize that you're not alone there are loads of people that feel exactly the same way as you do and they're willing to stand up united in the rain on the streets and make some noise for what they believe it's a beautiful thing man there were some amazing speakers there as well i got to interview jeremy corbyn i interviewed the brilliant matt kennard from declassified i interviewed richard medhurst andy feinstein a ton of dudes it was wicked and then after the two days we did the march to downing street where there was more speakers and more rabble rousing and by all accounts from the people who were inside the courts all doesn't seem as if it's going to be a big deal but i think it's going to be a big deal and i think it's going to be a big deal and i think it's going to be a big deal and i think it's going to be a big deal if it is lost yet on this course so there's still a little bit of hope yet that one day if not soon but one day julian assange will walk free as he should do and for anyone that listens to this podcast on youtube because i do put the videos there even though that they're audio only i will actually be doing something different on the youtube channel because we've filmed and broadcasted all of the interviews uh on the stellar assange live stream as they went out but i'm going to be actually uploading them straight to the youtube channel so you can actually see some live video interviews and i'm going to be uploading them straight to the youtube channel so you can out in the rain with my hair all sopping in my face on the youtube channel the youtube channel for the podcast is james kennedy podcast on youtube that's content that's only going to be there on the youtube it's not going to be on spotify apple or any other platform so uh head over there and check it out if you want to see what i go up to and also you know while you're there why not give the channel a subscribe you know why not do that so that was my week last week this week i'm home in the dry and after a few rehearsals with the mighty james kennedy and the underdogs getting ready for our show this weekend i've mostly been talking a super clever and interesting dudes for this podcast to bring to you lucky listeners such as today's guest today we are going to be doing a deep dive into all things brain related we're going to be discussing the brain the mind your thoughts some of the bizarre ways in which your mind and your brain kind of play tricks on themselves and whatever else happens along the way but it's a subject that i'm super fascinated in and i can't wait to pick our guest brains for want of a better phrase he's a fellow welshman calling in live from just down the road in cardiff and he's going to be talking about brain related stuff so i'm going to be talking to him today and he's here today to blow all of our minds on all things brain related i'm talking of course about the awesome dean burnett neuroscientist lecturer best-selling author podcaster and all-round clever funny and brilliant dude dean it's great to have you with us today man thank you so much for doing this how the hell are you doing i mean i can't promise any mind blowing
Speaker 2if anything a neuroscientist we're taught not to do that that's like a counterproductive do not blow destroy dismantle or obliterate brains or minds in any way that's like neuroscience 101 that is yeah but other than that yes i'm looking forward to it okay okay just just to clarify then
Speaker 1dean is not going to blow any brains uh but he is going to fascinate you with his insight and wisdom and all things brain and mind related to keep your integrity of the brain completely attacked absolutely no blowing nobody will not be destroying your brains he will not be providing any subliminal messaging none of that business is all good above board stuff keep expectations
Speaker 2low everyone's happy then no one leaves disappointed
Speaker 1well i want to come on to your new book emotion emotional ignorance but i'd like to save that till later i'd like to do a little bit of groundwork before that just discuss and explore the brain um but i would like to start with emotions if that's cool because um that's not something that we tend to necessarily associate with a direct brain function so it's a big question which i'm i'm sure it's probably going to lead into other areas what are emotions where are emotions and why are emotions um yeah i'm
Speaker 2danced all would be yep keep it uh keep it on the down low should we say um yeah well that's something i uh you know i've like a cropper with this exact question myself very uh very recently because i was um no i agreed to write a book about emotions there was um i've done other books and uh i think because i did a book called the happy brain which is about happiness specifically but in a more scientific way it wasn't so much like what is happiness is well why do these particular things make us happy why do these particular things make us happy why does our brain like this stuff and not that stuff you know and because sometimes it's confusing like people like horror films you know which is meant to scare and frighten and terrify you but they make people happy or sad music you position yourself you know a lot of sad and angry songs people like that but that logically you think that they wouldn't like that because those are quote-unquote negative emotions so that was intriguing to me so i sort of look into that when this whole big journey about it um book came out and it was went well everyone's happy ironically but uh you do the book tours and people kept saying to me why you write about happiness why not a another emotion which um i feel like that was a they meant well but i was like saying why do you write this book why not a different book thanks very much glad you enjoyed um uh but so like then obviously but that kept happening so it is obviously a lot of interest in emotions as a as a thing as a concept so i sort of mentioned my publisher because they asked about my next book and i thought well how about i do a call about emotions and they said yeah that sounds great we shook hands and signed contracts and the problem was that i thought it led to believe at least that the science of emotions the understanding of it was well established because even in the neuroscience world elected people just mentioned emotions as like a and then of course an emotional reaction occurs and but as if it was like you know well we've done all that let's move this now we're talking about the good stuff you know that was like the the basics that are being covered but as i sat down and wrote this book i realized that oh actually it's more of a conspiracy of silence thing like uh the italian neuroscience world is going well we don't really know what they are so let's just it's just not does it not talk about them you know like like an embarrassing cousin you don't know what they do you're just a meatic and hope for the best and yeah so like i realized well i don't think people know about this this is actually really really complex stuff and and it to this day remains that there is no widely agreed on definition of emotions it's not something any particular people or scientists have like you know i'm sad that i'm going to be a scientist i'm not going to be a scientist i'm not going to be a right this emotion is we all we all agree yes let's move on and that's obviously an issue because if you nobody agrees what something is how do you study it you know someone says i'm studying emotions and someone else says no i'm studying it i'm studying this but that's what i think emotion is what i think is this i think you're wrong and x y z and stuff so um yeah it's a you know if you can't just define they describe it uh pin it down within certain parameters like they are this they they do this they act like this or isolate them in the brain these things you can't really do and they are you know although we can see what the effects they have and the basic principles of them that um they seem to be everywhere in the brain like they spread throughout like the veins in marble they just they and they and they and all the day and this is involved too so yeah to say there's which bit of the brain does emotions is it's not how anything works right i mean what that it was a lot easier for me i want to write the book four times and keep changing it so uh uh so yes but that's a very far more complex question than most realize i think yeah because i feel like the way i phrased
Speaker 1the question the way i did where i said that we don't i personally don't consider emotions to be a brain function is that we tend to feel them in our body don't we you know we tend to feel anger in intense muscles we tend to feel love in our stomach in our gut you know we tend to feel fear or anxiety you know as pain so i guess we tend to think of emotions in a physical sense but i guess is that just the way that they manifest themselves so they're born of the brain but uh expressed through the whole the physiological system that they're kind of uh woven into and if so what is the purpose of that is it evolutionary is it a survival mechanism and if so why do we get random malfunctions of that system like you know panic attacks or irrational love yeah no no i think
Speaker 2that's a valid point actually that was one of the first the first ever you know aesthetic emotions in history was back in ancient greece and they you know there was the stoics the school of thought which they basically thought you know they were the ones that were the ones that were the ones that they were the ones that were the ones that were the ones that were the ones that were the ones that nothing that can't be tangibly measured or you know recognized as an actual thing is technically real you know like there's nothing you shouldn't pay attention to things which are purely fantastical or like purely hypothetical but they thought well emotions are real because you say they have these physical we when we're sad we cry liquid comes from out of our eyes and that's that's not what normally happens so let's say when you feel nervous or scared you feel it in your stomach you know you or your butterflies in your stomach and your heart beats faster and your skin goes white when you're afraid and scared and this is obviously a big part of the expression of emotions and there is one school of thought which does argue that emotions actually start in the body, like we experience something and your body has all these reactions physical reactions and your brain says, oh, look at all these physical reactions that means anger, that means fear so like they say it's the brain actually, you know, it's like it's the builder taking the delivery of plans from the architect, so that's what we're going to do is it that's not the main theory about emotions I mean, that does have a lot of limits to it, and like, for example you can experience emotions without any physical things happening to you, I think everyone's experienced this, you walk down the road and suddenly you're hit by a really embarrassing memory, and you go, oh god you just sort of cringe into yourself on the pavement and people just step in over you because you just realised a horrifically embarrassing thing that happened when you were a teenager, but there was no physical thing that happened to make you think of that, you just did, because brains be brainy like that so like obviously there's more to it, but a big part of it is actually we don't just feel emotions, experience them we actually broadcast them, we share them because we're a social species, so when we have these emotional reactions and we sort of display them to others that, in the evolutionary sense, is a really effective and efficient way of communicating with those around you, like if you your eyes go wide and you're scared, they go oh look, that person's scared, oh god, they must be scared of something I'll be scared too, because obviously that way everyone's in a sort of poised state lots of different things about why we cry like the close of chemical differences in emotional tears, which make other people feel certain ways and stuff and it's also a big signaling thing like we think about laughter, laughter is a weird one because we can experience being amused we experience lots of emotions, but they don't often involve this massive involuntary spasm like it's just a whole point of laughter, it's a social thing it bonds us together because when someone laughs, we want to laugh too like, studies suggest that if you're part of a group you're like 30 times more likely to laugh than if you're not and that's just by yourself which is why watching stand-up videos by yourself is always a less rewarding experience it's like, haha, yeah that's funny but when you're part of a big crowd, it's like, ahhh which often isn't that funny, it's just someone like someone comes up and says, hey, who's from Newport? if I'm into it, okay, where are you from? Newport alright, calm down, calm down, what's wrong with you? you know, we have different different emotional experiences in different contexts
Speaker 1maybe that's just people from Newport
Speaker 2that's okay, I mean, Newport's a lovely place to drive through
Speaker 1so it's a social thing then, you think is that where things are leaning at the moment that it's primarily a social thing, it's a communicative thing which is why it expresses itself physically yeah, yeah
Speaker 2I mean, human emotions especially because we are the most social species we're classed as ultra-social I know people might think, well, humans aren't very social we're awful to each other but, yeah, obviously look at any Twitter thread or comments under an article there's always going to be fire and brimstone and horrible people doing horrible stuff but, yeah, that's sort of one thing but, you know, in terms of sheer raw numbers there are like close to 8 billion humans on this planet and we are incredibly tolerant to each other generally you know, human cities can have like 25, 30 million people in them and people just go about their day no other species can do that like, if you put if you've done a gig like, you've got like a thousand people watching you sitting there enjoying just sitting there side by side technically really cramped in and they're having a good time, they're enjoying it if somebody replaced a lot of people with chimps it would be an absolute bloodbath within minutes because they'd be like blood and fur and feces like everywhere I mean, I've done some tough gigs but I was going to say
Speaker 1it sounds like a lot of people it sounds like some gigs I've done in the past yeah
Speaker 2there are some festivals which could have a similar vibe to them but but yeah, like that's just other social species those are our closest relatives emotionally and like, they can't handle being in that sort of group closed thing which we can but you've got to think about how many emotions only exist because of the context of other people right like, of guilt guilt doesn't make any sense unless other people are involved or embarrassment like, one of the examples I've used before is that if you're if you're in your home in the bathroom just want to go for a shower and all your clothes fall off well, that's weird I have to speak to my tailor you know but you just get in the shower then because you're doing anything but if you're in a hotel lobby you're queuing for a train ticket then all your clothes fall off that's horrific that's multiplying and embarrassing
Speaker 3right
Speaker 2because other people are there yeah and sort of like oh my god embarrassment only makes sense if other people are part of the process so yeah a lot of the human emotions are very social just by in terms of their origins even
Speaker 1yeah, that's interesting well, what about anger then because anger is something that can be well, certainly for me anyway I can be angry I can be perfectly angry by myself and anger can also be kind of just held within oneself as well doesn't it it doesn't necessarily have to be communicated you can just be pissed off at nothing all day or maybe I'm just talking about me
Speaker 2anger is a sort of it's a strong response to you know problems and issues and one thing we don't a lot of things anger make us angry you know it threats our autonomy like if we you know because we we want to think we're in control because our brain finds out a lot more relaxingly if you're in control something bad happens you have the option to fix it so anything which makes us lose control makes us angrier it's a problem called reactance like it's that that's what that describes that process where you didn't want to do something until someone told you you couldn't and now you absolutely do want to do it because you were told you can't
Speaker 3right
Speaker 2it's like it happens all the time people complain like oh I can't believe that shop's closing down no do you ever go no too expensive you know but no you can't you want to and that but you know it's seen in unfairness and justice these things are angerous but yeah like these are things which don't need other people although they often do involve other people and if anything when they don't involve other people it makes it worse like you know if you drop your phone and the screen cracks stops working or your printers are obviously a real common cause of anger because they just don't do what you want them to do yes useless yeah that makes it worse because if you're angry at someone else you can at least still have it out with them I'm angry at you because xyz whereas a printer is angry because they sit there not printing and just beeping at you and that's just more infuriating because yeah you have no control you have no autonomy you have no option to event so it sort of builds up emotions negative emotions will you know they're just as important as the positive ones because they're how we process the world our experiences our memories our knowledge they're a big part of who we are but because of the way the brain works the processing of emotions is handled by the same parts which allow you to feel them which generate them right so you know that's why like so they say bottle things up is only ever a short-term solution obviously you don't just fly off the handle if someone says something and pass it which you don't like that's not how social norms work but if you just keep it bottled up forever and ever eventually it'll blow because your brain can't keep all this in forever because these emotions need to go somewhere and anger's a particularly strong one for that because one of the things it does it triggers the motivation centers of our brain at the very most fundamental level we have two types of emotion approach and avoid so you know here's a thing an issue or a situation I can either approach it do something about it or avoid it leave it alone so fear obviously is very keenly very actively triggers the avoid motivation like right that scares me you know why both don't do that leave that alone don't know that anger does the opposite it triggers the approach motivation but often to the point where it's unreasonable so that's where you get people who are extremely angry taking on like you know little guys who are furious taking on guys like five times their size like normally they were like guilty when you're angry exactly it's not even that uncommon is it but when you are
Speaker 1angry enough
Speaker 2like proper Joe Pesci style yes the Joe Pesci style you know just going out stabbing someone to death with a pen because you're furious at them and yeah so like these are the things that happen because anger overrules the avoid system and actually I think it was actually sort of subtly hinted at in Inside Out did you ever see that
Speaker 3no
Speaker 2there's a Pixar film all the different emotions okay the one character anger whenever he's does something controlling the head machine fear tries to stop him and he just like slams his head or punch so that's actually sort of a good indicator of what happens when you're angry right so it overrules the fear reaction so yeah so it gives you like it makes you want to do something that's why like catharsis is important like people do contact sports or play angry video games or write video games it gives you an outlet for these the frustrations often inanimate objects just being inconvenient
Speaker 3right you're right to be angry
Speaker 2at that but you have nothing to be angry at because it's just pure misfortune or pure inanimate objects not doing their job and there's no one to blame for that it's just bad luck but you still feel the emotion it's got to go some way so right
Speaker 1that's where I'm going wrong I need to have an outlet and it's I need to start boxing and kicking the shit out of stuff
Speaker 2yeah I've taken that up it does help to be honest it really does right okay I've got a bag in my office now as well for when you know nice bloody words yeah MS office how dare you again
Speaker 1yeah that's me man and I know that it's stupid because you know there's nothing we could do about that stuff like I get like the traffic is a big one for me I spend a lot of time on the road as I'm sure you do and it just drives me crazy man and you just end up like screaming at the windshield about stuff that you're only winding yourself up you're only like no one else is aware that it's going on uh i know that it's really stupid i'm trying to kind of like remind myself that there are things you could do stuff about and things you can't and if you can't do anything about it then you just try and like let it go but i mean there's a lot of things that we should rightfully be angry about you know what i mean we should be we're right to be angry about what's happening you know the injustices of the world like you know what's happening in the middle east right now or the homeless situation we're right to be angry about those things but there is something we can do about those things at some level you can get involved in something or you can put your energy behind something whereas screaming at the traffic you know is just pointless for everybody involved um so do you think that is the purpose then of anger is that it's a motivating force that you know it can actually fire us into action about doing something about the things that that that are frustrating us or that we find unjust well absolutely i think
Speaker 2that's the evolutionary origin of why anger is like this because it makes us do things you know the old approach right the problem thing means you want to deal with it now obviously there'll be plenty of examples where someone tries to with it and fails um which is obviously not um not ideal uh but at this point because we have advanced to a certain point we've built such a complex world around us anger does cloud your thinking a bit it makes you want to you know do something get sort this problem out um the the risk assessment the caution part of your brain which is important which says like okay if you do this this could happen that's not a good outcome uh do you do you want to risk that or not do you want to do this do you want to do that and anger sort of blurs that it waits too heavily in one direction so whereas like when you're a teenager this is particularly pointed because obviously things are known to be hot-headed or temperamental and passionate about stuff but that's almost like an evolved trait like it's like they're meant to be like that because that means they get stuff done you gotta sort of think of humans evolving in the wild and the savannah just being tried stuff but if you have like sort of like this little cozy community everyone's happy and you're like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna be part of it so like we got our resources we got our people we got our little cozy hut great to stay here forever what's what's the big deal so that quickly leads to stagnation you know one drought one bad season one migration and suddenly everything's wiped out so you get these younger people in their physical prime technically who are just suddenly you know i don't know i don't want to be an authority i want to go and do stuff and they get angry easily makes them sort of expand branch out to say i'm gonna i'm gonna go over there and find some other people and then humans become more diverse more mixed more like we we seek things out and but these are you know there's more to fix to to address to tackle problems it's clearly a strongly evolved trait so we we needed to get to this point right it's just that now uh so it's almost like our brains are victim of its own success and that's we are away and can be away especially now with technology and the phone's internet that there are plenty of things in the world the whole world to be angry about which we could do something about but we're not going to see the results of that anytime soon and one thing operating doesn't like is like effort with no obvious result no calls the good feeling you get from donating money into something is is nice you know yeah that's helpful but if you think about i want to tackle climate change for example i'm going to do my recycling i'm going to drive an electric car i'm not going to take flights i'm going to live sustainably so your your life is different but you don't see the obvious outcome of that because you're not going to be able to do it because you know it'll be tens 20 30 40 60 70 years before improvements are changed because of the way this happens yeah and i think that's probably i think that's also a sort of problem which people don't realize with modern politics as well like as in politicians make a claim now with the election say oh i'll do this and then okay i'll vote for that and the time and the next election comes around and all the stuff they've done wrong or like the the fallout from their bad decisions is too far removed from it like austerity is now one of the last few years kicking our ass whereas at the time people said this is a bad idea but no one noticed the effects because it's such a big turnaround time so you know the whole cause and effect thing i did when this happened there's so much time between those two when it comes to political or major global issues that we don't connect them okay instinctively have to look into it deeply so yeah that's something like an ongoing problem and you know the emotion part of our brain is powerful but it wants quick results it wants instant instant response actions and the world as we've built it doesn't give that so we can be frustrated about other things but longer than we should be that makes a lot of sense and it
Speaker 1kind of leads to something that i wanted to explore with you which is the obviously the big issue of mental health because you know we seem to be going through a mental health epidemic right now and my analysis of it was because our brains are wired and our bodies are evolved to basically survive in a certain set of circumstances now we've been hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years longer than we've been living in a digital dystopia of you know thousand bits of content coming at you every second of the day and bad news from all around the world coming at you and this high speed high pressure life that never stops you know there's no time to think or process anything and we're just not designed for that as far as i can tell so is that why do you think that we're seeing this massive surge in mental health problems you know everywhere we look yeah that
Speaker 2will be a big part of it um i think it's kind of weird to think like our brains are built for it like the smartest parts of our brain are built for it technically because they built this world you know we are this smart because we got this only exists because we we made it so but there's a awful big difference between like the topmost part the most human parts of our brain the neocortex the one which evolved the last like half million years or so and the deeper parts which control all the emotions you know like an instinct and reflexes and deeper processing and they are still a big part of our you know our mental state our existence right and i sort of made the analogy to currently what we've got in our heads it's like trying to install like the latest operating system like a windows 25 or ios whatever it is onto an old laptop which you know it's okay you can handle it you can handle it but it's not it's not built for this you know it's like it's we're not really hot and you know it's like something goes slows down a bit and so it's it is you know you can do it but it's it wasn't expected to do this it wasn't built for this uh because our brains are also fast so we all have we have all these complex modern you know insights and intellectual abilities on you know almost like a steam driven like an instinct and emotion system and that's where the problem lies a lot of the time so yeah you can know you can become aware of a drought in africa leading to starvation i've talked about the 80s and stuff or what's going on in africa you can become aware of you know a drought in africa leading to starvation i've talked about the 80s and stuff or walls going on left right and center but localized in these particular regions which don't ever really affect you unless you count in the economical you know fallout to that right now which are settled in many um but you're aware of it so you can see like these people being you know horrific things happen to them and yeah you know like oh that's terrible i'm going to take some money to that but you emotionally you're just seeing that happen and you're feeling the emotions from it and you can't really you can't stop it unless you shut yourself out of it you still know it's there because you've seen it now and these things are ongoing um but also we can be stressed out by things which happen or could happen our world which are so sort of hypothetical uh you know not even intangible but um uh look like we can be scared of uh climate change for example or economic downturn like i people panic like oh my god i might lose my job if i don't make rent this month or if i don't save up enough money uh to buy a new house from them these are all long-term issues like the idea like you could lose your job for example is something which might never happen you know you just keep working away like your employer isn't that you know isn't that fastidious about what you do it's always going to be back your head thing and but it never really goes away so the stress it causes is triggering the same part of your brain which be which would cause stress over being a tiger or like a predator or you know being in the middle of woods and starving and stuff so that's all it's all the same process so it triggers the same fear response that our ancestors had and they had a wolf nearby and um but when you're in the wild this stress response it's almost always quite short-term yeah it's in our case so either i beat wolf wolf goes away oh i'm dead either way problem solved you know this is actually you know i can stop being scared now but now we've got this ability to sort of think oh what if what if i lose what if the economy doesn't go so well i lose my job but my investments don't pan out there's no end to that if you do lose job which case you're stressed it's always a case of i might lose my job like how do you how do you know you're not going to there's no way to rule that out oh i don't like what it seems like like climate change or what if all these expectations we have what if i'm not married by 35 or if i don't have kids by 40 and then all my lifelong goals are out the window well that's these are all hypothetical situations which stress you out based on social expectations and norms which you don't agree you wouldn't normally subscribe to and it brings so adept at finding things to worry about something something called counterfactual thinking where we worry about things that not only don't happen they didn't happen and cannot happen and we worry about them anyway like if you went across the road and there was a car coming you didn't see it it just misses you so you'll be stressed about that for days because what if it hit me yeah but it didn't that did not happen the past is the past you can't go back and then run in front of the carpet slower and have it hit you yeah but that's like your brain's going oh that was a close call we need to dwell on this so you never do it again so you know that was a that was a bad call so remember this remember this learn from this i'm not going to let it go until you promise me you'll be right right so so it does like it weighs on you so there's so much stuff called the threat detection network which anything we sense which could potentially be a hazard or danger to us it's sort of like latched onto our internal system right that's keep an eye on that you know you have a low level stress response just make sure you don't forget it and chronic stress is like the achilles heel of the brain for that seems to be the independent cause of a lot of mental health issues particularly the main ones like depression anxiety like this constant low level stress which our brains didn't evolve to deal with because we thought stress is stress is like the first part of the fight or flight response but that's meant to be fight or flight you know something happens to get to make it go away so low level constant stress isn't something our brains are meant to be dealing with and that's like the trigger for a lot of mental health problems so no it's obviously more complex than that but that's the general running theme of a lot of it yeah that makes
Speaker 1a lot of sense and it's it's it's funny isn't it it's like we've got the best computer in the world in our inside our heads but there are these surprising kind of blind spots within it like the fact that it can't understand the difference between there's a wolf in front of you and something you just imagined in your head you know i mean you'd think a computer as powerful as the human brain would be able to understand the difference in that the fact that it can't and that and that the stress response and everything um is the same for both of those things the hypothetical and the very real threat is um i find that fascinating and it feels like quite a shocking design flaw doesn't it it does yeah i mean that's um that was a focus of my
Speaker 2first book you know just call it idiot brain because the reason i sort of got into it uh the whole writing about it uh was because i don't know how many years and have been for 20 years and some four other um but i was just interested in the brain generally because i'm from like the south wales valleys and not a lot of scientists there and again this isn't insulting the intelligence of my my peers my my king my folk um you know it just wasn't the done thing um and but i was so different to my my friends and family and because i was wondering why why am i this oddity you know this world which is mostly focused on rugby and other things all that sort so um you know i just sort of became interested in my own quirks and thinking what's something about my brain which is different and then i thought you know what it is about brains and the sort of snowball from there um but when you start doing neuroscience if you're a big fan of the brain you slowly but surely realize all right it's not perfect it's not done it's not like doing it's not to this because the the mainstream sort of portrayal of the brain i've always had issue with not that it's sort of you know necessarily wrong but it's very very um overly positive you know it's like almost a hagiography people say like human brain the most amazing thing you've ever encountered most complex object in the known universe you can do this signal that it's all wow whiz bang golly wow uh but the flaws are always ignored or overlooked and i do think that's unhealthy because if you keep getting told your brain is brilliant and magic and amazing and then it starts going wrong you have like a mental health problem that feels like something even more deeply flawed with you whereas it's actually you know it's actually a huge hodgepodge of countless different evolved systems over millions of millions of years which don't get on or work against each other or you know you know just do things in a roundabout way and i think that's more impressive the fact that it is this big glorious mess that we've sort of ended up with and we've achieved so much with it and it's got all these flaws but we sold on anyway and i think that's a more inspiring a more healthy outlook and that's my first book about that like yeah i think the brain is great it's not here's why but you know it's great that we've got all this and we still you know sold it on we still push ahead and i think that's a more um you know more upbeat message a more healthy one so i try to push that where i can yeah i love that
Speaker 1i love that and it's and it's true i guess and there's nothing wrong with that it's a bit like loving someone despite their flaws isn't it you know when you look at the wonders of the world that we've created with this thing it's insane when you think about it yeah that's like
Speaker 2the analogy i use like when you start studying neuroscience as a fan of the brain it's like moving in with someone you love you know you still you still love them obviously you don't like you think this is great you know we spend all our time together and then slowly but surely you start to realize okay they're not they're not perfect then you know they have issues in the bathroom for 45 minutes again in the morning that's that's that's that's a long time you know fine then it's like oh look at the toilet seats up again they keep doing that snort it's it's it's charming it's charming you get the point thinking i'm not going to kill them but i think about it often which is one of those sort of relationships the effects are still there but the the reality is also you know coming more manifest and that's again for a long time that's probably healthy if you keep deluding yourself that it's all fine and perfect and then yeah yeah but it's not because it won't be because that's not how life works but it's not because it's not how life works but it's not because it's not how life works and yeah it's something you're far more ready for it you're far more like you know
Speaker 1away well from what i understand and i correct me if i've got this completely ass backwards um brains have this amazing ability to um constantly evolve and upgrade themselves and to lay new pathways within the brain and to kind of get rid of old ones this thing called neuroplasticity is that a thing or is that something which i've either completely misunderstood or is being missold to us by the happiness industry because there is such a thing i think you know the idea that you can change your thinking patterns and then the old negative um thought patterns to use that as an example will kind of fade away because your brain no longer needs them and you can relay new positive pathways by by changing your thinking process just to use that as an example is is neuroplasticity a thing or have i either got it wrong or is it not what
Speaker 2they're saying that it is no i mean i wouldn't say that neuroplasticity is a thing it's probably the thing it is like the brains it's what the brain essentially is for what it does that's why it is what it is and can do what it can do because i think there was this idea for a long time that once you're an adult your brain's like set it's in place and um like you're running off if you install programs and that's it that's your life then enjoy yourself but yeah no i think obviously it's more plastic when you're younger when you're still developing because you're having to know um the analogy i have is like when you're young like uh you know especially a child if you're like all the materials are being delivered you know if you look at the brain as being like a house like uh all the materials be delivered you know the plans have been thrown up people have been saying i should go here i should go there and like later childhood to teenage years that's like the um you know construction has started scaffolding is up foundations are going in and like last minute changes are happening and when you've hit out adulthood the house is built um so like you've got the walls you've got the foundation you've got the the allocated space that's sort of what you've got for now like you can't really expand beyond that uh but you can furniture's in that's
Speaker 1what it looks like
Speaker 2yeah that's it yeah that's you but you can remodel you can take a wall out you can put a wall in you can add an extension you can i don't know add a roof take windows out you can put things here and there you can install solar panels so you've got still got a lot of flexibility just not as much as you did right yeah right um so that's sort of plasticity we still have it just takes a while i think that's what people sort of don't appreciate that uh you know we obviously have you know constantly changing brain stuff because i guess memories are forward every new memory is new kind of thing and i think that's what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to do is i'm trying to do is i'm connections being formed between neurons through synapses which is great you know that's a that's a fundamental part of our brain the brain is always changing the only unchanging brain is a dead one and that's um that's no good to anyone a static brain is not a brain at all really that's not something we can do anything with so neuroclasticity is a huge part of it and yes we can uh rewire uh change and adapt our modes of thinking that's all a point of uh therapy cognitive behavioral therapy like it's sort of it's empty saying you think this way this is your pathway that your thoughts take a to b to c to d um that's what you've built up all the time that's what your brain's learned to do it's not a healthy route you know it's it's it's a through a bad neighborhood there was a route through like a a bad road which is wrecking your car so what we need to do is to work out a different path so we rather than go from a to b to c to d we go from a to e to j to l loop back round to e you know that's sort of right right it's the same route it might take longer it might take a while to figure it out but it is um it's a safer one it's a healthier one to go down it's not doing the damage of the other the other route and yeah so it works it out it's like trying to find a map okay so if i keep thinking like this what if i think like this instead and and sometimes it's like that can become the dominant way of thinking and therapy doesn't finish you know it's it's worked it's it's you are you never use the word keyword for mental health stuff you know you you can cope now you've managed it you've managed it you've managed you've adapted uh whereas sometimes it can be a lot more assisted like addiction is obviously one which very hard to get rid of that because it happens at such a fundamental level like the deep buried reward pathways in your brain have changed they've reached out to connect to your thinking centers and those you know very rarely just go away um they could become less powerful but they're still there they could be easily reactivated by you know that's why an addiction often requires constant vigilance you don't sort of just ignore it because i'm fine i'm cured i can just have a drink again you know that that part of your brain which led to addiction is still there it's just dormant right you know it'll take you to be very easy to trigger this and um uh so things like that so like people have depressive spells like those depressive links in the brain uh not being used right now but stress can happen they can become more forceful then you fall back into it and um you know it's that's why mental health is like an audience a journey rather than here's the full stop it's like you're right now we're going this way okay let's take this route let's use this car let's use this these supplies and medication is often a mental medication psychiatric medication is you know often it's usually a way of making the brain a bit more flexible sort of changing the balances changing the levels which mean okay this particular sequence of thoughts we which keep us in this negative state uh now a bit more give a bit more flexibility a bit more adaptability that's why i'm a lot of work in the psychedelics recently i went to a big conference and stuff and they are you know looks like the next big thing in mental health medication because they do sort of almost have like a snow globe effect in your brain it's not like just shake it up because like that's why that's where you have these weird trips because like all the barriers in your brain they're just temporarily shut down but that break doesn't make your brain more flexible more there's a lot more plasticity in it so and if you can combine that with some therapy then you can form these new pathways quicker and easier than you would with just pure therapy alone so i combined sounds more fun as well yeah it was it was i did partake in some i was gonna say so you did yeah it was very effective well well i say it was effective the problem i had was i don't know what ketamine therapy is like and i didn't know so that's a problem solved i guess i don't want to sort of until anyone's proper problems but that was that was my whole point so i guess that was an easy one
Speaker 1to fix that's really interesting and that makes a lot of sense as well actually when you think about it i mean it's i have noticed that there does seem to be a growing interest from the scientific community in psychedelics i'm seeing a lot more stuff now like studies with very positive results you know showing the uh the positive effects that psychedelics can have and it's great because for far too long psychedelics have been kind of in the stewardship of like the hippie cliche haven't they you know the kind of acid trip expand your mind bro and all that sort of stuff but it seems as if there is actually now a growing kind of scientific interest in the efficacy of psychedelics and it does seem to be some truth to what the hippies were saying as much as i hate to
Speaker 2admit that yeah i mean the uh i think the scientific community wasn't uh they technically weren't the ones who were opposed to them like they were they've been kind of keen to keep researching these things for many years it was more of a political pressure which stopped them doing it because of course yeah it's just really bad timing so the associated psychedelics and the you know the counterculture the hippie movement was obviously going to put it at very very deep odds with the nixon administration who brought in the um you know the war on drugs and stuff and that was um and the uh the reagan stuff like that that was very much um you know that was a big blow for psychedelic progress and research and they were obviously there were people who were eating them with respect they just over the time as well like some stanford professors just giving them up to students going yay okay maybe maybe don't do that that's not that's not ideal i mean i'm sure i'm sure they got good reviews in their student feedback but a lot of flowers done on them but i can't just maybe hand it to me but uh that gave a bit of a bit of a sour taste in the mouth but um obviously south wales was the world's biggest producer of lsd for quite a while wasn't it uh really yeah yeah operation jenny it's a musical about it i think um oh wow it's a it's a like mid wales which was just churning out like half world's lsd because that's it it's like so remote but um yeah it's a really fun story that's obviously they wanted to do this big bust so a lot of undercover cops and stuff moved into the area uh so like we had they had the dealers or the producers sort of being in the sky local community and the cops and all the local people going well they're clearly the drug ones yeah yeah yeah it's mid wales everyone knows everyone else like so so these are cops so are you a cop or what shut up it's a very a very well shot story apparently so yeah so wow that's fascinating we're already going to dig ourselves up sometimes i mean like is it we i know yeah yeah yeah all the world's coal after the lsd what a strange track record for a nation i know that's bloody amazing
Speaker 1bloody hell well i did a fair amount of that when i was um in my early 20s you know on the uh yeah by uh thanks to the um the aforementioned welsh countryside um i just want to pick my own you know and uh had a great time but that was um yeah many many years ago and i haven't really had the guts to to open up that pandora's box again i don't know if my brain i don't know i don't know what would come out now at this age with everything i've been through since you know but at the time wonderful wonderful experiences on
Speaker 2psychedelics they're a lot more friendly than people realize i think this whole sort of deep genius powers thing is um it's more of a political ideological image that was generated to deter people but of course there is actually a bit of a friction right now because i was in america and like they are really into there's so many people invested in making psychedelics the next century legalized cannabis like because it'll be worth trillions if it does take off but they won't want to do so lots of financial interests like economic interest and capitalist interest in making these psychedelics more available but they're sort of brushed up against the scientific community or like going whoa whoa whoa guys you know these these things could be great for everyone you know but they're not toys they're not like chewy sweets these things are incredibly powerful substances you don't just give them out like you know like vitamins these are you know you need real supervision i mean basically like obviously matthew perry passed away and it was said to be because of ketamine and so what i said he was taking ketamine therapy because he's always struggled with his mental health and addiction issues he's taking ketamine therapy but um i think the news sort of did i think cynically underhandedly conflate the two as in he was taking ketamine therapy and he passed away from ketamine related uh in misadventure whatever it's called but his last therapy was like two weeks earlier and he clearly found obtained some ketamine himself that was because obviously he knows that world i mean it's middle of hollywood i'm sure there's plenty of people who had it um and took it by himself in his hot tub which is apparently one of the most common causes of death when it comes to ketamine use because it's it's a dissociative it completely shuts down your body and if you're in water that's it's one of the things like but he said of course yeah but then you don't think it when it's just a recreational drug it's not uh yeah something you do but it's these are the things people don't take into account when they give it'd be great if like these psychedelics were available to people who needed them and were you know effective treatments but just give them out all the sundry you're asking for a lot of trouble there because they get again they're not toys they're not yeah they're not like it's not like a cigarette these things have a hell of a powerful punch to them and oh yeah i could
Speaker 1i could make you do some very unwise stuff oh i can imagine yeah i can imagine i mean they are very very powerful i remember just lying on my friend's couch looking at the ceiling looking at the artex just laughing my ass off at the clouds moving you know just and the walls changing color and what i what i found fascinating about it was that it's not like a trippy kind of um synthetic reality it's a real reality so i could be talking to you as i am now and the wall behind you could change from red to yellow and it would it would look yellow it was almost as if my senses and my brain believed that to be a kind of a reality and i was like oh my god i'm going to die completely different color and it made everything made perfect sense it's a very strange thing for me at that young age it kind of made me realize the um the fiction of of what we perceive as being reality i mean if that reality can completely change within the space of an hour or two and i'm seeing colors that weren't there and things moving that aren't moving and stuff then what does that say about the reliability of our senses we've just bought into one version of reality which in actual fact is just a projection from inside our mind yeah i mean i think that's a
Speaker 2because ultimately the whole the whole existence is boils down or the whole existence boils down to like tiny impulses being transmitted along our brain cells that's actually our whole reality is that there's nothing else that's our absolute baseline because obviously everything that happens to us is in some level neural impulses because that's how our brain works which does lead to a lot of sort of interesting things like um you know like schizophrenic hallucinations like audio hallucinations people hear voices uh what that's believed to be like the because we often like think to ourselves and we have a sort of internal monologue and you know our brains recognize okay this is internal so i don't hear that it's external it's all being processed in the language area and things like schizophrenia that sort of breaks down that ability to tell between the two right so brain doesn't recognize that this activity is from an internal source and rather external and so you start hearing it so it goes okay so that's there's language there i guess there must be someone talking and then you hear in this internal monologue coupled with the negative emotions because of all the internal turmoil it becomes quite negative so you have this constant hallucination that someone's telling you bad things because obviously that your brain's lost the ability to separate to keep the dividers between right internal and external stuff and a lot of things can be explained like that i mean a lot of work with you on parasocial relationships and that don't people which is where you become deeply emotionally invested in someone and they don't know you exist obviously you've got a podcast you know you're you've got fans and stuff these people who are invested in you and you have nothing against them you just haven't met them you don't know them you don't know who they are what they do it's not two ways it's a totally one-way relationship but they are they're all in you know these people are very invested especially with someone like you know taylor swift or every huge names like that who have these massive you know fan bases oh yeah people have to worship them but when you think about it too your actual friends your you know your real life relationships most of those are based on your internal representation of that person right like you don't spend all day every day with your friends you met them you know them you've got they say this they think less they say they talk like this these are my memories of them and they're your friend because your brain has this like representational friend in your brain and now we've created a world where you can learn all about someone to create that without ever meeting them you can follow their youtube channels you can follow their posts their tiktoks and read about them and magazines so you've got all this information like i know this person they're they're this i know where they're born i know they're married to you know they like you know they dislike you know they sound like i know where they were last week because of the festival they were at so i can create this representation just like a regular friend that i'm deeply motivated it's like a relationship they don't know me they've never met yeah it's a parasocial relationship it's totally one way but um yeah we have that power now which is uh odd
Speaker 1oh it's crazy and i suppose it's just one of the yeah the the other ways in which we're living in it in an environment where we're living in a in an environment where we're living in a environment now which is completely at odds with the one that our brain spent so long developing to surviving you know um social media is a crazy one i think it's amazing in many ways and the gifts of the internet are wonderful in so many ways but there's also um as with everything and you've sort of alluded to this on your previous point we need to manage it a little bit it's not just like hey you know just taking a lot of psychedelic drugs you know these things need to be done and managed in in a very specific way and i think it's the same with social media because it with social media is one that needs to be managed i think where you have a cut off time or and also an understanding of the fact that it's not fucking real as well you know what i mean there's a real world out there just because your friends are all crushing it on instagram doesn't mean you know that uh you're the only you're the only loser doesn't got their life in order you know no that's
Speaker 2actually a really valid point what i've raised a few times in that um we've heard of doom scrolling and like i try to call it the phrase glam scrolling or like the emotional which is you know you've got a beautiful person beautiful person beautiful life beautiful person wonderful person successful because that sort of gives you the idea that you are these this is how other people's lives are we know they're not obviously someone an influence to instagram is to polish nine ways from sunday like it's all yeah it's completely stylized completely you know artificial in that respect i mean they're probably a beautiful person to look at and i don't really know them but they are like doing it all these images are completely tailor-made to look like that but obviously you've got to be able to do that and i think that's a really good point and i think you don't see their flaws you never see their flaws but you do see your own yes so in your head your brains go in okay so that's how people are they have these wonderful lives wonderful existences here's mine they're like the pants on the side and the dusty carpet i haven't moved yet to the dishes in the sink and yeah and you see it on reflection i go like you see your bad side you see like your blemishes and stuff like oh everyone else is beautiful i'm not i guess i'm awful and then that impacts your mental health and one of the things i've sort of raised about with social things like facebook twitter whatever you want to whichever one you're into it's um one of the biggest data i think is that the fact now whatever ridiculous idea you have you will find someone who agrees with you and that isn't healthy i think that's when you know in the past when you people like people always have wild theories and ideas and suggestions about how the world works or should work and it's social feedback which allows these ideas to flourish or not because we are again we are social species we're not social species we're not social species we're not social species and other people as always have always been our main source of information even today like we can have reams and reams of peer-reviewed expert analysis and papers saying this is the thing that is happening this is how it works and one person goes ah yes but you know friend of mine works for the fbi and he said no it was oh you know so suddenly because like because you've got that's a person yeah we are built to connect to people that's why these influencers and tiktoks and stuff they are the ones that sort of like have as much of a big impact to see them they are relaying an emotional impact and a message to you as opposed to dry text and stuff like that so and so like imagine like in the 80s when they know saturday made to the pub you just go yeah you know what i am i think the world's actually flat like ah flat earth day you're like you used to be mocked for the next two two years all right trev yeah yeah okay here comes your bloody boy i don't want to say that again and then you sort of learn yeah yeah right right say that that's clearly not an accepted theory but now right i think it's flat it's all me too yeah see see exactly yeah yeah and then obviously these people agree with me and i say this outside people mock me okay so your brain goes well these ones make me feel good those make me feel bad so these are the ones i should stick to and then so if you know it becomes a self-sustaining thing this is your worldview and people end up with these wild ideas of how the world should and does work based on their own interactions because nobody knows what's going on and i'm like are you sure you're not an idiot you know i mean are you sure you're not sort of totally talking on your ass and that's barking that's a healthy thing to have like someone can tell you you're right oh that's stupid yeah people don't like that you know they sort of you can't it was my opinion yes it's your opinion and it's wrong clearly okay that's a great
Speaker 1point that's a great point yeah yeah i mean we live in strange times man i mean and it's only going to get stranger i guess you know i mean but the ai is coming i think we've got a content tsunami coming our way that i just don't i don't know if we're prepared to handle it i mean if we if our brain's struggling now to make sense of these things then um jesus i don't know what it's
Speaker 2going to be like in 10 or 20 years you know yeah no totally but the thing is it's interesting i mean i've heard a lot of it but also it's part of the familiar cycle you know new technologies on the way and there's a lot of doom saying about it um you know i think people thought like once we have airplanes oh it's going to be planes everyone's backyard we're going to be it's going to be awful and stuff so there's always going to be some measure of middle ground and i think the the ar thing is becoming worrying people but it comes to replacing people with music and stories and art creations i don't think that's as big a risk as people think it is i mean the general mass blue stuff yeah that's something you don't need quality for but good stories like good music emotionally relevant stuff it's i think that's still something machines are not going to get because of we we have this ability like ai art we've all seen it also has this similar sort of glossiness to it this artifice which yeah you know don't relate it like that's that looks wrong it looks off it looks you know there's something about it which is like because you know we you know machines know that they're very redacted like these are the features of art therefore i'm going to replicate these in this way it doesn't work but as if someone like um you know we see those people who can make photorealistic paintings or like just a pencil or like a ballpoint pen it looks glorious looks wonderful and it doesn't bother us in the same way because something about the human brain is like so it's so adept at recognizing faces and nuance and emotional relevant stuff that we can recreate it and machines struggle with that i mean the example i like to use is even like on the train station platform and you know it's late it's delayed because it always is i mean that's just how this country works at the moment and then you get the you know bingo passengers on platform four and sorry to report that the 1745 train to london badgerton is delayed yeah approximately 17 minutes i am very sorry for the delay to this train like but but i know you're not sorry you're a recorded voice you're not here you don't have any yeah you have no investment in me in my situation so you're lying to me and people don't like that people really don't like that that sort of portrayal and nuance so that sort of subtle offness that no you're a machine don't don't lie to me and then you're a machine and you're a machine and you're a machine and you're a machine people don't like to be having interactive machines when they're trying to trying to be emotional it's it's a bigger deal than the thing that a lot of companies realize that's
Speaker 1interesting yeah well i am one of those um doomsayers obviously i think it's because my industry is one that i'm precious about and um and i guess we could see that the grubby tentacles of ai work in their way into our world you know as we sort of speak and i i wanted to ask you about music actually because um music has fairly from my understanding an interesting effect on the brain doesn't it the listening to it and also the performing of it um especially for um younger children if they learn an instrument i think it's because it exercises certain um parts of the brain simultaneously that they don't get elsewhere is there any merit to that what is what effect does music have on the brain as a listener whether they're adult or young and the playing of an instrument is what's what's behind that
Speaker 2yeah well the playing is itself a good skill to have especially if you adapt at it because back to neuroplasticity it's a skill okay it's a sort of it's a mechanical skill you have to play something which you wouldn't otherwise do if you weren't a musician it's like um you know an expert piano player the emoticortex the part of the brain which is responsible for like fine finger movements is usually much bigger than the average person because they do that a lot you know i type a lot but it's a set keyboard i'm just doing words whereas to play music and sort of keep my hands round and press the keys in the right zone so it was such precision and such dexterity your brain goes okay that's oh that's something i need to do is it okay well i better build up the resources for that and your brain goes okay so finger movements is important so let's make that bigger let's make that bigger and um if you're a singer like you know your vocal skills become more and more adept because your brain's so voice is important okay let's shunt more resources to the voice and take away from less important stuff you know like skills or whatever whatever you're not into you know something so no it does it does really affect you in that and obviously it makes your you know you're not in a position where you're not in a position where you're not in a position where you're not in a position where you're not in a position where you're not in a position where your perception of sound and harmony and rhythm is advanced and things like that so So, but the listening to it, it affects you in multiple ways, from very basic to very complex. So the basic level, like your rhythm and beats and stuff, they sort of inspire us. They sort of have this sort of like resonant connection to the basic part of our, some people argue it might be a heartbeat thing. You know, if you're sort of listening to your own heartbeat and it's going faster, so you feel like, oh, that's a fast heartbeat. So that must mean adrenaline is required. And then you become more motivated and things like that. And also the emotional content of music will impact on your emotional senses. If music can sound sad or can sound angry. And this lets you experience it yourself. You know, if you listen to angry music, like if you're into heavy metal, you experience that anger. So a safe setting. I'm just general angry. I don't have anything to be angry about. I'm just feeling the anger because this music is pumping it out to me. And there's a lot of evidence we see that people who are into heavy metal are the least angry people overall. Because their brains have a lot more exercise when it comes to being angry. So when anger happens to them, they go, oh, okay. I know how to deal with anger. Yep. No, like process it like this. Okay. Yeah. Fine. Fine. Okay. So let's all carve that everyone knows. So their brains are adept at it. It's like a workout, you know. And same as sad music. Sad music is very therapeutic because it helps you process sadness, which we all have in some shape or form. And that, you know, so that's why people like you are sad. Listen to sad music and then feel better. The brains channel these emotions. Like I said, when you process emotions, you need to be able to feel them too. So it allows you to feel these things in safe, controlled ways, which is great, you know, but also has, you know, makes you sad for a bit. You know, people don't like that necessarily, but it does, you know, it's beneficial. And then above that, we have like sort of the, we recognize the complexity of music, you know, the nuance, the details, the intricate structure, rhythms and patterns. Humans love finding patterns. And the more complex, the better. So music ticks that box as well. And, you know, if you are a music aficionado, you can appreciate the skill, the achievement, the real sophistication of advanced music. Like some people love like free jazz or complex concertos. People prefer like pop, which is quite simple and straightforward. And both are correct. Both are valid in their assessments. But the more into it, the more aware of the music you are, the more you can appreciate the nuances, the complexities of the more rich stuff, the more engaging stuff. So, yeah, so there's loads of different ways in which music can affect you. It does. And it does all the time. So it's like a rich experience for your basic brain. And that's why it's such a popular format, I believe.
Speaker 1Oh, well, I'm glad to hear it, man. You know, that's another brownie point for us musicians, before the robots come and stamp us out of existence. Well, I'm conscious at a time because I did promise that we can keep you too long. And I know you've got shit loads to do. But there's an element that I wanted to ask you about, which I haven't yet, which is the unconscious brain. I find that fascinating that I can drive to Cardiff and not remember how the hell I got there. And for many other things, my organs, my heart's beating. These are all being managed by, as far as I understand, the unconscious brain. How the hell does that work? How is the brain able to drive me to Cardiff whilst I'm listening to a podcast or talking on the phone completely unaware that I'm actually doing this thing? How the hell does that happen?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think a lot of the time you are aware of it. It's just like you don't remember it because when it comes to what we remember, what we consciously remember, it usually works that the more emotionally stimulating stuff is what we remember the most. Ideally, we wouldn't have more say in what we remember because that means you wouldn't have to revise exams so much because you need this information to pass this test. But it's boring information. Well, you've got to keep reading it again and again and again so it just beds in by false. Whereas, like I said, the embarrassing memories just stick with you forever because they were emotionally powerful. So if you have been to Cardiff like 20 times in a month, it's the same thing over and over again. So your brain keeps going, oh, well, this keeps happening. I'm just, nothing to worry about here. So I'm just going to shunt this into the buffer and I'll focus on more important stuff. So it can just become very unmemorable because they're all just the same over and over again and nothing of interest happens. They are routine. Routines become hard to remember because they're routine. Your brain goes, well, it just happens the same every time. I don't need to dedicate resources to this. I can focus on other things. Because I think people have this idea that the brain is like half and half, half conscious, half unconscious. And it's not. It's more like the conscious brain is like the pilot and the unconscious is the plane. So it's sort of one bright spark steering this massive vehicle of unthinking but powerful. And complex stuff. Because the conscious process is conscious thinking is really impressive, but it's really demanding for the brain. The frontal lobes, they take up a lot of energy, a lot of complex, a lot of complexity. And it's kind of, it's not like a long-winded process. You have to go through all the different neurons involved. There's reactions, emotional reactions are quite fast because they're simple. Like a bang, bang, you know, sort of, when you touch a hot pan on the stove, you flinch. You don't think, hmm, I wonder, I'm experiencing a noxious stimulation. I perhaps should remove my hand or perhaps I should ponder this some more, like at which point your hand's on fire. That's no good. So you have to just... Yeah, so like the more and more you do something, the more your brain can feel safe and just shunted it into the unconscious. It's like when you first learn to drive, that first time up yourself is terrifying. Like you're just hyper-aware of everything around you because there's no instructor anymore. There's no one's got any more pedals. You've got like a one-ton, it's all on you. You're like, ah! You just drive the shops, you're just like a nervous wreck. But then over time, you become second nature. You will just drive like two hours and just not even think about it because you've done it before. Like, so once the conscious mind has gone, okay, I've done this. I know how to do this. This is established. Okay, you guys take it. You guys in the back deal with this. I'm going to... Because I need it for unexpected stuff, novel stuff. That's what our consciousness tends to focus on because that's what it's for. You know, it's like, to deal with the unexpected, the unknown. And therefore, yeah. So that's why we don't tend to remember stuff which we do know because we know it. It's like, I don't have to dedicate anything to that. That's well established. So let's look elsewhere for my stimulation.
Speaker 1Well, what happened with me when I had my PTSD was I had things like that were automatic, like driving, suddenly became things that I was consciously aware of. So I had driving anxiety for a few months because I was driving and I was aware of absolutely everything. The light coming through the trees, that guy over there, there's someone on the bridge up there. And am I too close to the car in front? Am I not going fast enough? Am I going too slow? Can I drive? Jesus, I don't know how to drive. And I was hyper aware of every micro kind of activity around me. Did I lean slightly to the left? I know shit. Does that mean, you know, why did I do that? Is my balance wrong? And it was almost like my conscious mind had gotten in the way of what was normally an unconscious automatic activity. It's what was happening there.
Speaker 2So obviously when you have PTSD, you've experienced something so powerful that your brain can't process it. It's like it's got so much emotion attached to it, so much negative emotion, so much fear and anger or whatever the actual experience was. It's like, you know, the normal processes whereby you sort of file that away in your memory and integrate it into your vital system. It's just too much. Your brain just can't do it. It's too much there. And it sort of leaks out and spills out. It's like putting a hot coal in a filing cabinet full of papers. You know, it's like, it's smoldering. It makes everything around it worse and charred and stuff. And, you know, it puts your fight or flight system on high alert. It's like a terribly bad thing happened. I haven't processed it, so I'm still waiting for threats, waiting for dangers. And that part of your brain is like, oh, just constantly on. Like the amygdala is firing all cylinders. Right. And that's just like, they'll just be constantly there. It's almost like driving the high beams on. You know, you don't need them, but they're on. Right. And other people are like, I'm blinded. And like, it's draining your battery and stuff. So that part of your brain is active. So it's just looking for things. And even if they're not technically there, it's jumping on, jumping to shadows.
Speaker 1Yeah, right.
Speaker 2So things which are, which were neutral before, now aren't, because everything's happening through the lens of this trauma. This trauma thing which happened. Right. So trauma's still there. Trauma there. Trauma there. Trauma there. Trauma there. Trauma there. It's like a background noise of trauma. And then everything becomes scarier, anxious, and it's nice to use it because that part of your brain is just, same thing happens. It's a generalized anxiety disorder. It's like that part of your brain is overactive. So everything becomes scarier, like everything's stressful. Right. You don't even know why. It's just like, that stresses me out. Why? I don't know. It just does. Because that part of your brain's thinking, right, everything's stressful. Stress, stress, stress. And your brain's trying to make sense of it. It's going, right, I've got stress here. Something must be causing it. It's that guy. No, it's that bush. No, it's that bin. No, it's the eagle. Blue skies. So it's just very, trying to find an answer to the stress and it's not getting one because there isn't one. It's all in the past.
Speaker 1Well, that resonates perfectly with my experience, man. So that makes a lot of sense. As we sort of come towards the end, then, what can we do to maintain a healthy, well-functioning brain? Are there exercises we can do? Are there things we can take? Are there things we should try and avoid? What is the best way to look after this amazing computer that we got inside our noggin?
Speaker 2Well, generally, people say, you know, the excite in and of itself is always a good idea because your brain is still an organ at the end of the day. You know, it's not only fat shame and there's loads of valid reasons why people can't exercise, but if you can, it's a good idea to do it because, you know, the biological system system sustains your brain and if it's in real it's more it's more tippy-top then your brain gets more stuff the more resources to do stuff with so no general exercise and you said for that sense of achievement you feel like you've made some progress so that's good in and of itself um i guess like because i've been dealing with emotions lately in the subject of things and i think it's it's important like a bottle things up you know if you don't there's this modern idea that you have to always be happy otherwise something's wrong and that isn't right you know it's the whole toxic positivity movement which i have expressed my uh dislike for many times this idea like live laugh love just always be happy always be happy that's all i need to do that's not how we work that's not no the negative emotions they're important they're vital for a healthy brain so if something bad happens it's okay to feel bad about it it's okay to feel sad or angry or afraid as a result of it you know nothing's nothing wrong with you if you are having a negative emotion you're not having a negative emotion you're not having a negative reaction to a negative experience that's what should be happening this idea that you know well no no just you know look on the bright side always find the positives just tell yourself it's it's all a learning experience if that helps fair enough but don't then say like don't use it as a sort of like a means to shut down uh any sort of negative experience right it's all you know like you know the only disability is a positive attitude no that's not that's not how it works i'm sorry a negative attitude so you can have a positive one therefore you're fine you don't need anything else and and i do find a lot of that is quite cynical and sort of you know mendacious because what it does do this idea of you know positive attitude and like always strive forward is it puts the owns on the person so if you are struggling if you are going through a hard time and someone says you know well why don't you try not being sad why don't you try cheering up it's all on you this is all your responsibility right and no that's not true like the people need support people need help i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know better society would be better for everyone like mental health and poverty and destitution are heavily intertwined uh so this whole movement of let's not focus on money let's not focus on well-being which means like people in the nhs company they're always giving these um resilience workshops like it's making more resilience to stress it's all right but then people seem to take that as now we you're resilient so now we can give you all the stress we can we can hump any sort of massive workload on your shoulders because we've taught you to be resilient it's like a blank check for more work and that's not really how any of us operate so yeah so don't deny your negative feelings so feel you they are valid they are right and you should be expressing them shutting them down is is one of the more healthy options we can that people are encouraged to do these days brilliant well i guess
Speaker 1that's a perfect place to lift off and let you get on with the rest of your day um before we do that can we let the people know what you've got coming up because you've got a massive body of work now i'll put some links to your website and your socials in the show notes so that people can go and have a delve into everything that you've done so far and i'll see you in the next one um obviously we need to plug the the latest book as well emotional ignorance but what do you got
Speaker 2coming up what you're working on currently um i'm trying to definitely finish my next book which should be out in september i think um yeah i tend to churn them out when i can because people still care what i think about stuff and i'm trying to plug this book i'll be popping around left right and center if i can um yeah i'm looking to segue into more video-based stuff and that's you're gonna do you're gonna do visual stuff so all right fine uh yeah so i'm just gonna keep an eye on the website i'll be putting more stuff up there as when i can and uh we'll go from
Speaker 1there so i'll be around i'll be around well i mean there's a load of stuff on the website at deanburnett.com there's uh you've got videos on there already you've got a bunch of um there's links to your amazing books as well which include the happy brain the idiot brain psychological and of course the latest one emotional ignorance the backstory to that book as well was something that i wanted to get into if you wanted to go over it in the description box and i'll see you in the again which i'm sure you probably don't um obviously i'm more conscious of keeping you um you know to on schedule today because i know you're busy but yeah i mean you can hear that in dean's previous interviews as well where you talk about the the personal journey that led to the creation of that book which is uh which is very interesting what you went through to create that book and also the research and everything in the book and the the insights and everything that you discovered through that journey as well are fascinating so i would urge everybody to check out dean's latest emotional ignorance before he rattles out the next one in a few months time and head over to deanburner.com thanks man cheers oh thank you man thank you so much for you know giving your time so generously and you know giving us an insight into the fascinating world that you work within and as we said at the start you know we made it to the end and no brains have been blown or damaged in the making of this podcast but dean burnett thank you so much for your time man we'll let you head off and it's been absolutely brilliant to speak with you i wish you nothing but the best and best wishes with the book i can't wait to read it man there we go ladies and gentlemen mr dean burner what an absolute pleasure to be here with you and i'll see you in the next one man like my my mind has been blown by that conversation so much awesome information in there i definitely need to go back and re-listen to that one because uh we covered a lot of ground there man i'm just looking at the notes that i've been scribbling along as uh you know dean was rattling off all that fucking awesome knowledge there we've got emotions and neuroplasticity evolution you know the brain's flaws mental health psychedelics schizophrenia social media ai the interesting effects of music on the brain trauma happiness the unconscious brain that's a lot of stuff man i think if ever there was a concise one hour 101 on the workings of the brain i think i think we just did it more specifically dean just did it i just pressed record as i said if you want to find out more about the brilliant work of mr dean burnett please go to deanburnett.com i will put a link in the show notes there are videos there there's a blog there's a link to his amazing podcast why does this thing exist which is hilarious um and links to all of his books as well including the happy brain the idiot brain psychological and his latest one emotional intelligence and there will be another one coming soon by the sound of it so you better get reading man massive thanks to our guest this week mr dean burnett for being such a legend i hope you enjoyed the conversation whilst i got you please subscribe to the goddamn podcast most of you still haven't done it yet come on it's not a lot to ask man get clicking and if you haven't yet subscribed to the mailing list please subscribe at jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe so that i can actually communicate with some of you people and let you know when i got new shit happening because i'm going to be doing a lot of stuff and i'm going to be doing the social media algorithms are just absolutely ridiculous these days social media has become a joke anything posted on any social media platform is reaching less than like 0.1 percent of its followership now so you guys are missing out and it's really frustrating for the content providers so join the mailing list it's totally free you won't get spammed and i can keep you up to date with all the cool stuff that you're missing out on so that's jameskennedystuff.com slash tribe get over there whack your email address in and we can hang out in there in our own little community outside of uh zucker dick's fucking monopoly i'll be back next week with another brilliant guest in the meantime have an awesome week and i will see you next time cheers guys
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