EP #127: The Neuroscience of Morality & Creating High Value Experiences with Dr. Paul Zak, Chief Immersion Officer, Author, and Researcher

[MUSIC] Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stafinopoulos, and this week is dedicated to exploring the science behind creating high-value experiences, and what makes us want to be moral humans. I have the privilege of interviewing the scientists to really pioneer the research around the molecule in our body, and it's responsible for moral behavior. Spoiler alert, it's oxytocin. But you may already know this actually from listening to Dr. Paul's axe Ted Talk about a little over 10 years ago that explores the research in his lab that came to this conclusion that oxytocin is the molecule that's responsible for moral behavior. That's how I first got introduced to Paul's axe years ago from watching this Ted Talk, and it's crazy how now, fast-forward full circle, I have the privilege of having him as a guest on the podcast. And for those who don't know him beyond the Ted Talk, he's a professor of economics, psychology, and management at Claremont Graduate University. He got his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and not only is he a Ted speaker, but he's also an author, and his latest book is called Immersion, the Science of the Extraordinary and the Source of Happiness. And in this book, he identifies the neurologic basis for extraordinary experiences, and uses 50,000 brain measurements to show readers how to create high-impact marketing, entertainment, training, customer experiences, and employee experiences. So he has a really unique perspective looking at the intersection between science, neuroscience, and business, and that's exactly what we got to talk about in this episode today. So as you'll hear in the interview, Paul talks about some of his findings in his book "immersion" and really how we can draw from neuroscience to understand how to create high-value experiences in our lives and in our careers. He also founded a company called "immersion neuroscience," which is a platform that empowers people to measure what the brain values second by second in real time. Anyplace people are doing anything that's interesting to them. In this episode, Paul and I also talk a little bit more about the research that supports his findings on oxytocin as the moral molecule. And we start to explore what it means to lead a moral life, what it means to lead a happy life, how we see happiness and morality intersect. And of course, Paul shares what brings him a bit of endorphins in his daily life. I'm so excited for you all to listen and to learn from Paul. This was such a fun interview to record and a crazy moment for me to have been introduced to his research through my own studies in college and now full circle to get to have him on the podcast. So soak up as much as you can out of this interview. He shares a lot of interesting science, lots to think about when we want to improve our lives and think about how to lead a moral life. And of course, like, rate, and subscribe this podcast on which ever listening platform you prefer. You can also follow everyday endorphins on Instagram at everyday endorphins. You can sign up for our sub-stack, which is the Everyday Endorphins newsletter where I cover episodes, events, and any random thoughts, books, things that I've been consuming that have been shaping my perspective in real time about how to lead a happier and more endorphin-filled life. All right, that's all that I've got for you guys. This has been a lengthy intro. So let's dive into the interview. Hi, Paul. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. It's so great to have you here. Hey Stella, happy to be here with you. You have such an incredible background and something that I want to mention before we dive into the interview is how this is a very full circle moment for me because I remember when I was in college studying basically cognitive science and philosophy. I took this positive psychology course and I remember learning about some of the research that you actually have conducted and that was also like fundamental to the TED Talk that you gave about Oxytocin. So what's crazy is that when we got to connect, I recognized your name and I recognized your TED Talk because I had learned about it in school. So the fact that I get to sit here today with you and have you on my podcast and get to learn more about your research and everything that you have done in your career is really fulfilling to me. So very, very excited to have you on the show. Thank you. Hope you're having flashbacks from college. There's no exam after this conversation. Honestly, thank God. That's the one thing that I don't miss about school. But something that I do really miss is the act of learning without any sort of like outcome that you're looking for. Like I think in a corporate space, you're still learning, but at the end of the day, it all goes towards your performance review. But I just miss, you know, learning for the sake of learning. But glad there's no exam at the end of this interview, although I think a lot of what we're going to talk about today will hopefully refresh a lot of the things that I learned in school around the neuroscience and, you know, the science that talks about how we can build connection genuinely in our lives. So really thrilled to get into all of this. But Paul, let's talk about your background. Can you first share with my listeners a little bit about yourself, you know, how you got into the field of neuroscience and also in public speaking and being an author. You wear so many hats. Yeah, I have three jobs, at least. Yeah. So you may have realized Stella that I'm a Martian. I am trying to figure out what these interesting creatures called humans are doing. And when we run experiments and ask them why they do what they do, they couldn't tell me. And kind of unusual interdisciplinary background. I'm like, I just need to measure their brains and find out what's causing people to do what they do. So I think humans are so variable in the way they go through life that if I look at decision points, that's a great way to understand the variety of the human experience. And if I can match those decision points with what's happening in their brains that I happen inside into what these creatures are doing. So I'm a professor at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California. I run a fairly big behavioral neuroscience lab and four-time tech startup guy. So we have discovered things that I think are useful for the world. And we create companies. My current company is called Immersion Neuroscience. And it's all about creating extraordinary experiences by measuring what your brain loves in real time. Like, who doesn't want to do that? Who doesn't want to have a great experience chatting with you, shopping at the store, watching a movie, you know, one of the things that drives me nuts. So I live in Southern California a couple of, sorry, hours from Hollywood. And for the last 30 years, 80% of Hollywood movies have lost money. And just think about that. Multimillion dollar investments, teams of analysts, directors, producers, smart people. And yet they can't figure out a hit from a miss. That to me just says that we're doing the wrong thing. And I think the wrong thing is we're asking people if you like something. I think it's the wrong question. The question that we want to ask is, does this experience shake up your brain so much that it creates so much value for you that you're like, holy crap, this is the best movie, shopping experience person I've ever been around. And I want to do more of this. Yeah, no, that's very interesting. And especially because you would think that Hollywood film, like movies aren't, haven't lost that much money in the past 30 years. So that's, that's an interesting, you know, fact that you share. But we've spoken a little bit about immersion neuroscience and the company that you have. I want to, before we really dive into that, I want to, you know, go back to the book that you wrote actually, immersion. So can you share a little bit about really the premise of immersion and it talks about, you know, how people crave extraordinary experiences, right? So first of all, like, how do you define that? And why is it that people tend to gravitate towards the extraordinary rather than the ordinary? And then we can tie this into using neuroscience to actually, you know, measure like how people are, you know, perceiving certain experiences are really like creating an environment around themselves where they are making sure that they're, you know, fully taking away everything that they want to out of an experience. So I'm a super boring and practical person, Stella, from a business perspective, I just want to increase customer lifetime value. I want to create super fans that love product service experience. I'm creating for them so much that they come back, they tell their friends. So that's the, that's the business takeaway. From a human perspective, part of the subtitle of my book immersion has happiness as an in it, right? I don't want to go to the DMV and have the most frustrating experience. It's not fun. It's not pleasant. So we found in the sciences that when people have these extraordinary experiences, it's like training your brain to be more present and more emotionally open. So these extraordinary experiences have a high emotional component to them. Emotions are how we establish value in the brain. And so if I create these peak immersion experiences, highly valuable, I'm training myself to be more emotionally open to every kind of experience. And so we have really good evidence that these extraordinary experiences create greater life satisfaction, extend health span, make happier, healthier societies. And so there's this giant win-win-win space, great for the consumer, great for the organization, and great for society. Who cannot be excited about working in this space? I certainly am. So how would we define an experience? extraordinary experience. Like, what are some examples of that? - That's the key. So when we started doing this work, we were funded by the US taxpayers through DARPA and some other US government agencies that tasked us with identifying signals of the brain that in combination would accurately and consistently predict what people would do after a message or an experience. So we were funded to create a neurologic prediction engine in order to train soldiers to use words rather than weapons to persuade both our enemies and our allies to cooperate with the US overseas. Great, we spent many, many years doing that work. And in doing that, we did not want to link experiences to software port because if you ask me how am I looking for a prop, you know, how much I like these mince, well, compared to what? If I'm giving you an objective rating scale, I don't know, I bought them, I must like them, but compared to my kids, compared to my dog, I mean, it's not clear. So people have, again, in Hollywood, if people could tell you on previews of movies, what, you know, the movie was great or not, every movie would be a hit, right? We would never have misses. So people just can't articulate their unconscious emotional states. So as they did this work with government funding, we always gave people an action. So we gave you an experience and we said, and by the way, we'd have done about 10,000 blood draws in the last 20 years, tell us. So we would take blood before and after experience and then say, hey, you're just earning 40 bucks, you could donate this to a charity, you could do it ever. So we gave people options and we just compared an activity for people who responded to this stimulus and those who didn't. And we just went down these systems in the brain so that we identified how the brain values social emotional experiences. So it turns out that if you value that experience highly enough, neurologically, you'll act on it, you'll remember it, you'll share it, right? All the things that that government would like to happen and then started a company six years ago so anybody could do this. So Target can create a better experience for you when you're shopping and paramount pictures can create a more effective movie trailer. So people go see their latest movie. - Yeah, that's really fascinating. And something that came to my mind, which it doesn't directly relate to the business perspective, but when we think about highly valuable experiences in our lives, maybe we deem an experience of something that's valuable, like it's something that we want to have, but it might not actually serve our greater good. Like it might not actually be good for us in the long term. So how would you respond to that if it seems like there's kind of this paradox there too? Like what if we value an experience as something that's really important to us and makes us feel good, but it's not actually something that is sustainable in the long run? - You know, I live three hours from Vegas by car. So gambling would be an example of that. Where people really, I mean, why do you have these giant casinos? 'Cause people like to basically waste money. I mean, you're gonna lose. The house always lands, right? So you're gonna lose, but people get enjoyment of that. So I think the neuroscience answer is, we have a big prefrontal cortex that allows us to modulate our behaviors most of us. And therefore, if I enjoy gambling and I put a $500 limit for my weekend in Vegas and I burn that $500 and I enjoy it, who's to say? It's better than spending $500 on a fancy meal with three friends or whatever. So again, there's no brainwashing here. There's no, just 'cause I'm measuring how good an activity to quantify using, you know, the common metric across all humans, which is activity in the brain, roughly the same for everybody. So I have a common way to assess whether this experience is good or bad and potentially how to make it better. As long as you can, you're not coerced, you're not, you know, a gun to your head, you have choices, you can say no. Then it's ethical to say, okay, here is an amazing experience that we think you're gonna wanna do over and over and over. You're gonna love it so much. That's gonna make you feel good, it's gonna give you joy and we as an organization will make money doing that. Again, I think there's no problem doing that as long as people can say no, right? And so for individuals who have addiction issues, gambling, drugs, sex, whatever, okay, that's a different story. Those people shouldn't be in that pool and Vegas is very aware of this, right? They have systems to actually get people who appear to be gambling addicts' help, which I think is great. Let me give you more concrete examples. So I had a birthday last week and this week, three of my closest friends took me to dinner and I have a friend, a dear friend named Cameron who loves a certain restaurant, a very high-end restaurant where I live. He probably goes there two or three times a week. He knows the owner, it's a very fancy place and they took me to four people to dinner, probably 250 through 100 bucks. Was it worth it? This guy goes there all the time, he loves it. So he spends five, 600 bucks a week at this restaurant. Is he addicted or does he love it so much that that restaurant has created a super loyal, super fan customer that creates a lot of value for him and creates a lot of value for the organization. Now, he's a psychiatrist, he has money, he's not like he's spending his mortgage rant on going to a fancy dinner, but he enjoys it. I enjoy, I like going with him. So again, I think as long as you can modulate that, then I don't think it's difficult. And we live in the experience economy, right? So as we go from commodities to services to experiences that add value emotionally to us, I give the example early DMV. So I actually, you know, because it's a monopoly and it's government and all that, but I actually went to the DMV a couple of months ago, the best experience ever, Redlands, California DMV, shout out, because I had an appointment, I got there early, they checked me in early, there was no line and I'm like, oh my God, now I love the DMV, you guys are awesome. So I became a little DMV Redlands, California super fan, but isn't that what we all want when we go to any organization? - Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, for me, the New York equivalent is when the subway gets there right on time and there's no delays and you can easily transfer and it's like when things run seamlessly. When we think about creating high value experiences in our lives, are there certain brain hacks or things that we can think about from a neuroscience perspective to set ourselves up to be able to receive more high value experiences in moments? - Another great question, you have such a great background. - Right, so what's the precursor to having a peak immersion moment? One of the key precursors is psychological safety. I have to be comfortable in this environment. If I'm not comfortable, if I'm tired or hungry or have to pee or my feet hurt, I'm burning neurologic bandwidth, thinking about those things, those kind of core principles I need just to kind of feel good about myself. So from an organizational perspective, it means I want that customer and employee, by the way, to feel relaxed here, right? Take a break. So Accenture, a company you may know, has been using our software for the last six years and have found that in corporate training, people can stay immersed for more than 20 minutes without a change. So they had broken down their training. They spent a billion dollars a year on training. You may have had some of it into 20 minute segments. So 20 minutes, let me say no one talks more than 20 minutes and then you do some tablework for 20 minutes and then you do a debrief. And because these intense immersive experiences are metabolically costly, they found that breaks need to be longer. So I think we sort of thought from our years of industrial education in schools that, hey, we've learned to send our robots for eight hours. It doesn't mean that our brains work at that speed. So what we're bringing to the table, the neuroscience brings to the table is, the ability to optimize the experience to get the biggest impact so that, from a training perspective, the ROI, the organization is high. And for the individual, I'm absorbing as much information as I can and as easily as I can. And then I want to keep doing this thing. Like, oh, that training was awesome. They used movies, we did this thing, we had a coloring book and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, what's it like? Some dude who was 95 years old talking to that at me for three hours, nobody wants that or death by PowerPoint. (laughs) - Yeah, that's another connection. We also have Accenture too and the connection between your company and partnering with Accenture as well. You know, I've developed personal interest in this idea of psychological safety in the workplace. And I can say, from my own experience, when you do feel a sense of psychological safety on your team in the work environment, it creates a space that it feels safe to vocalize your opinions, to express what's on your mind, to share an idea that maybe you have some doubts or your hesitant to bring to the table. And when you feel like you can trust your colleagues through having an environment that breeds psychological safety, I think it actually enables you to do better work because it fosters more cohesion in the team. So there's a lot of interesting research in organizational behavior around psychological safety and when it comes to leadership development and building great teams, et cetera. So I love that you brought that up too 'cause it's something I'm personally really passionate about and I've also seen in my own team and the culture at Accenture at large, like really does. Let me know hold itself to that standard of creating a psychologically safe environment. So I'm really glad that you brought that up. I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about the TED Talk that you gave on trust being very tied to morality and certain molecules, spoiler, oxytocin, (laughs) is deemed as the moral molecule. So I'm gonna flip it back to you, Paul. And I wanna hear first, if you can lay out some of the research that your lab did to come to this conclusion around oxytocin and the relationship between oxytocin, trust, morality, building connection, I mean, there's so much that we can unpack here. - Yeah, it was kind of amazing that some weirdo like me could actually discover something new about the brain after all this time. So neuroscience, for listeners, it's still a wide open field. There's so much we don't know. And one of the things that we didn't know at the time when our still figuring out now is why people are ever nice to each other, which sounds like world's stupidest question. We understand aggression, we understand selfishness, those are actually fairly easy to study in the lab. What's hard to understand is good behavior. Why would I help someone when no one's looking? Why do I expand any resources? Why would I stop and help a guy having a medical emergency? Take my time, risk getting whatever weird germs over me or body fluids. We've done a bunch of times. Why do we have all these good behaviors? And the trivial answer is, we're social creatures, we like other humans, but the question I tried to ask in early 2000s was, is there a mechanism that tells me why we can be so warm, so wonderful, so caring one day and the next day be absolutely horrendous and awful and aggressive and evil? Where's the mechanism? If I know the mechanism and the brain, then I can ask what promotes or inhibits it? So in doing this work, people have just not asked this question very well. Again, either it was a general question, well, people like to be nice or something. And so, yeah, in the animal they're sure they had looked at this neurochemical oxytocin that in animals seems to be a core signal that another member of your species is safer familiar. And I thought, well, cooperative behaviors require that you at least feel like this person is safe to be around, trust them, have a sense of their, I don't know, not up to no good. And so in animals, you have to drill into the brain to sample spinal fluid. And I don't know what tonne about the humans as a Martian, but I'm thinking drilling into people's skulls is not going to work. But it turns out this is one of the very unusual chemicals, neurochemicals made in the brain that's released in the brain and in the blood. And so there's a very short half life. So we developed a protocol, which we could do very rapid blood draws and keep those blood products cold because oxytocin degrades pretty rapidly. So we developed a way to actually measure their brains really, so oxytocin. And then the question is, well, what behavior do we want to look at? And so I had done work in the late 90s showing that interpersonal trust was among the strongest predictors of whether countries would be richer poor. So high-trust countries grow fast, they've been rich for a long time, the Denmark's Norway's, the US is kind of in the middle. And then you have these low-trust countries, I don't know, Guatemala's and the Argentina's and then they just can't grow at all. So because there's just so much friction between the humans. And so we looked at interpersonal trust. We looked at people sharing money with strangers via computer and showed that the more money someone volitionally sent you saying, I trust you. And I'm going to send you that money because it's going to grow. And I hope you send some back to me that not only did oxytocin respond to the jury of trust shown, but it predicted how much money people would return to a stranger. Even though they didn't have to return anything. So in short, I think oxytocin is the biological basis for the golden rule. You're nice to me. I have this neurochemical response and that motivates me to be nice to you. So why would we have this mechanism? Because humans don't thrive alone, right? We only survive around other humans. Hermits are very rare and they're also weirdos. And so if we're embedded in community, investing in being a fair dealer, being trustworthy, you know, keeps us embedded in community. I'm not going to hang around people who are not trustworthy, who take advantage of me, right? So lastly, how does this relate to morality? So for me, morality is those positive social behaviors. So those are pro social behaviors, helping behaviors. Anti social behaviors are selfish behaviors. I'm taking, I'm aggressive. Pro social behaviors are helping behaviors. So we looked at a whole variety of these. And we found that oxytocin was associated with almost all of these helping others, charitable donations, on and on and on. And what oxytocin does is increase our empathy, towards others. So my brain makes oxytocin. And if I'm empathic and I would do something to hurt you, I would feel that pain. And so oxytocin functions as what I've called a moral molecule. It says, oh, I'm connected to you unconsciously, neurochemically. I wouldn't want to do something to hurt you because that would make me feel bad. And if people have gone through life by time, you're, I don't know, 20 or 25, you've had enough feedback from the other humans. If I'm in the playground and I punch some kid and he starts crying, I'm like, oh, I don't feel good anymore. If I'm a healthy, psychologically healthy human, we're tuning our brains to what's the appropriate social behavior. So that's why I call oxytocin the moral molecules is key factor that motivates us to treat others with care, with empathy and take care of them. And there is an anti golden rule molecule as well, which seems to be testosterone. So you want to play back with me? I will play worse. You want to steal my children? To nap them, I'm going to murder you. I'm sorry. I can't let you steal my children. So that's very interesting. You bring up testosterone. I'll ask a question about that a bit later, but I want to go back to this tie between oxytocin and empathy. So it seems like when oxytocin is produced in the brain and in the body, it actually enables us to be more empathetic, right? And is it the empathy? That's what fosters that connection, like that sense of humanity, feeling connected to other people? Is it like feeling that sense of empathy towards someone else that makes you want to continue to do pro-social behavior? It appears to be, right? That seems to be the mechanism. So I'm only slowing down my answer a teeny bit because that really kicks in when I see someone who needs help. So if you're in the grocery store and you're doing fine, I don't, again, the brain's very scarce with resources. I don't want to create the, spend the energy synthesizing or releasing oxytocin if you're just fine. It's when I see a person in the grocery store who falls down because they're having a heart attack or having a seizure where then I go, "Oh, this person needs my help. I'm going to kick in. I feel bad for him or her and then I'm going to assess my surroundings and then you know, make a decision on if I can help or not." So this is counter to a lot of biology, which is interesting. So there's something about what you call Hamilton's rule, which is the degree to which you should risk your life to help somebody else. It's a function of how many shared genes you have. Well, it's crap. I've saved like three kids from drowning because I like pools, I guess. And I don't know how many genes they share with me. I just saw kid the bomb, the pool, I dove in there and pulled them out. Now, was there much risk to my life? No, I'm a good swimmer. You know, I didn't pull them out of, I don't know, something that would kill me. But the brain just hasn't worked that way. We don't do this calculation. Now, again, if I saw that child in a, I don't know, some situation that I would be very dangerous in my life, my brain would certainly do a cost benefit calculation there. But we share 99% of our genes with everybody. So anyway, I think Hamilton's rule is kind of bogus because it's not the way the brain works in acute situations. It's not to say I'm going to not put more energy. If the plane's going down Stella and you and my daughter are saying next to me, I'm going to get my daughter out first and then I'm going to get you out. If I have a choice, but under pressure, I'm just going to help people. That's what we see all the time. But also just this idea of helping other people. It also helps ourselves too. There's something that I feel like is released inside of us. When we do something good for someone else, in a way, it kind of feeds the self too. And it may be considered selfish to an extent. But I think the motivation behind wanting to help someone else is as long as that's pure and really doing something without expecting anything in return, that might be the key actually to then feel the effects of the love that's brought back to you. And oxytocin, we also think of as kind of the love molecule. So it's interesting that we're speaking about it in the context of morality and building connection. Because love, I think, probably is like the overarching umbrella to that too. For sure, Stella, best podcast ever. Literally, we published a paper six months ago showing that people through their life history who have volunteered time, money, goods to help others who have a history of helping behaviors, released more oxytocin when we give them a stimulus. They're more immediately helpful. And they have greater satisfaction with life. So here's the interesting paradox. Even if you are the most selfish person on the planet and you want to live a longer, healthier life, you have to be of service to others. So it's virtuous people, people who are helping others who are embedded in rich communities that allow you to live a fuller and healthier life. So this is so interesting. And so yeah, oxytocin is that connection, love molecule. I'm in 62, Stella. So I know hard to believe. But you know, I have guy friends that I've had or so close that they're like brothers that I had this dinner. And I'm like, I love you guys. Like I'm happy to tell you like whatever you ever ask me to do, I will do it 100% of time. So it's great to have these dear, dear people outside your family who you truly love. Like I can count on these four or five guys. I can call them three the morning and say, I need you at my house now, I'm having a crisis and they will show up. Like who has that? Right? We have a couple of those people in your life and you're in great shape. So let me tell you the personal story. If I can, I'm a big intro, Stella. I'm super introverted. I can spend 12 hours in a lab, be totally happy, processed blood products and not talk to anybody. But as I did this work, I realized that the value of social connection was very high in terms of health and happiness. So I began investing in these relationships again in the family fine, but outside the family. And what I found was that I had so many more of these amazing friends who I spent time. I did activities with that we built this rich social network with. And again, I can count on those people. Not only do they give me emotional support from having a bad day and call them up, but we do fun things together. We help each other out. And so anyway, when I turned 50, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I had four surprise birthday parties. Not because that's so wonderful because I had invested in relationships. Right? And so that I think is really important, that we invest in relationships because that helps us thrive. Absolutely. I could not agree more. The one question that I ask everyone on the podcast, which I will ask you at the end of this interview is what is something that brings you endorphins and truly the common denominator across all of the responses, mostly, has to do with something related to connection and connection to others because that really does bring us joy. When we're able to foster strong connections with people, I think that is one of the strongest predictors to our well-being and our life satisfaction. And I've noticed, even for myself, when I feel really supported by my friends and I invest in new relationships and I just feel very secure in my relationships and my life, I feel good about myself. But sometimes it's actually really hard to show up for others when you're not showing up for yourself, when you're not feeling well. So we're talking about these virtuous behaviors as something that's really critical to boosting our overall well-being and our longevity. But sometimes it's actually hard to show up. So taking a step back, what can we do to give ourselves more oxytocin and give ourselves more joy and love and compassion? I think the self-care is critical. So this is, put your mask on first before you can help somebody else. So if you are not physically, emotionally, spiritually healthy, then you can't really be of service to others. You can't actually help others when they need it. And so I think part of that is spending the time reflecting, "Who am I? What am I doing on the planet?" So that's why I included that word "spiritual" and I don't mean that in a religious sense. It just means, besides working family, what gives you energy? What activity do you do that makes you feel like you're an important part of the planet? And that could be, for me, I do a lot of hiking. I have a big dog on the weekends. And so when you go grind out these hill climbs and my German Shepherd runs on runs and chases rabbits and coyotes and sometimes we fall down and get dirty or go into a stream. And it's just like, it's my time for myself where I'm not talking to anybody. I'm not listening to a book because they're like wild animals and sometimes crazy people. And you know, you have to really be present. So the first is to be present. So one of the things that I stole from somebody, but I'm going to use without attribution, which is remember to listen with your eyes. It just breaks my heart when I go to dinner and I see a couple and they're both on their phones where they're then talking to each other or they'll talk, but they're still looking at their phones like, look at me, give me the gift of being present. And to do that, I have to be present with myself, right? If I have to be distracted at all times and can't sit with myself, so meditation's great, walks are great, whatever practice that is that lets you be in touch with who you are and what you're doing. I think it's super important. Yeah, I could not agree more. Something that I actually, one of my goals for this year is to spend less time on my phone, which I just feel like the world works against me because of course I have to be on my phone for work or meeting up with friends or it's just we're all addicted to our phones for better or for worse. And so I decided, let me just buy an alarm clock. So I got the hatch alarm clock, which also like wakes you up to really nice sounds, feels like your nature, mimics natural light waking you up, which is great because my apartment does not get a lot of natural sunlight, unfortunately. It's been wonderful using this alarm clock because I intentionally do not check my phone first thing in the morning and now it's become a game where I see, well, how long can I go without checking my phone? So it's really like the small habits I think that you can incorporate into your day that will make you feel just like 10% better and those accumulately and they add up over time and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, I feel good. I feel like I have a positive demeanor and I actually want to do some pro social behavior. Like I want to give back to other people. I want to invest in this relationship. So again, everything that you're saying from meditation to being out in nature to creating like an inner calmness so you can be present with yourself, I think is the prerequisite to then be able to give back to other people. I want to go back to the point that you mentioned around testosterone being kind of the opposite of oxytocin. So this might be a big question and maybe for a part two podcast. But when we think about falling in love, like in romantic love with someone, there's testosterone on the male side, like, and then there's oxytocin on the female side, but they're canceling each other out. So biologically, from a neuroscience perspective, what's actually happening in the brain when people fall in love or there's the pursuit because it seems like everything that oxytocin wants to do testosterone is like, no, we're going to silence that. So there's no male, female hormone battle. So women produced testosterone as well and testosterone and women end in menisocer with libido. And so women have it too and you need it and it's just a drive and motivation. As you have correctly said though, testosterone will block the release of oxytocin and having said that in every experiment we have run to induce the brain to release oxytocin and women release more than men. I mean, 20 years, never been a case where we didn't see that on average. And of course, a big distribution around that. So what is going on? So from the male perspective, that testosterone tries to libido, a big demand to reproduce or have sex from the male side. From the female side, there's a big metabolic cost to having sex without a sort of commitment. Again, historically, we have the pale way of birth control. I understand all that. But metabolically, if you're going to have intercourse with this man, then you could get pregnant. Or you bear a big metabolic cost, so women are just going to be more careful than men, almost always. Obviously, there's some exceptions. What happens in men is very interesting. So when a man is in a committed relationship, his testosterone falls. And therefore, his ability to release oxytocin increases. When a man has children, his testosterone falls further as a ability to care for a nurture release oxytocin, those children goes up. And I don't have scientific evidence for this, but in my personal experience, if you have girls, children at home, and you pick out little frilly dresses every day, you become a girly man. And you're just a lovely, nurturing person in your family. Now for the man listening, of course, I'm making a joke. Even as you get, as far as you get men get over 30, their testosterone starts to fall. So we see most crime committed by males between 15 and 25. To testosterone poison, testosterone makes you impulsive, risk-taking, overconfident. Any guy listening will agree as a teenager that was all of us. And that's why women avoid us when we're young because we're just too preconceived. And so, as you older, better able to form relationships, more mature relationships, more giving relationships, being more concerned about your partner, and get, for same-sex relationships, very similar things are happening as well, but I'm just going to leave that off for now. Okay, so for the man listening, there is a high octane version of testosterone with a long name, dihydrotistosterone. That's like super gas. So even if you're testosterone, even if you're 40 or 50 or 60, and your testosterone levels are lower, this high octane version can be turned on very quickly, we have shown. And it's the kind of reactive testosterone. So again, you challenge me physically. You want to hurt me or my family? I'm going to get in there, like really? Seriously? You want to fight with me? Sure, let's bring it on, man. I'm ready to do it. So, again, different personalities. I'm a big guy. I'm work-houred. I've been in a lot of fights. So it doesn't really bother me. And you want to fight with me? Sure. Even though my absolute level testosterone may be lower than a guy who's 25, I still have a lot of dihydrotistosterone. So don't despair listening to males who are over 40. Very interesting, just the clash between oxytocin and testosterone. And yes, maybe my question was a little misguided. Of course, women also have testosterone. Men have oxytocin. But I guess on average, yes, men have more testosterone. Women produce more oxytocin. I think ten times more testosterone. A lot more. So it's interesting because when we think about just coming into a relationship with someone, there are maybe some physiological battles that we have to overcome in order to create and foster a healthy relationship. Maybe the ways in which men versus women express love and receive it are different. Depending on the hormones that they're releasing. For sure. And the host of neurochemicals that associated with attachment. So again, dopamine is part of this, we call the wanting system of the brain. So even nabin married for almost 30 years. But a cute girl walks by and she's scared. I get a dopamine response. I'm going to orient to her. Now I'm not going to talk to her. I'm not going to whatever. But that's a primal response that most men are going to have. So again, I'm not going to be a jerk. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to augle this girl. That's a valuable resource that I should be aware of. Just like I'm hungry and I smell a good meal. I'm going to orient to that. Like, oh my gosh, this restaurant smells so good. This is like the subway shop that pumps out the smell of the baking bread. You're like, oh, baking bread. Who doesn't want to have freshly baked bread? So all those are just core drives in the human species. And again, big prefrontal cortex. I can suppress that. If I'm married, then trying to get with this woman is going to be quite costly and such a pain in the ass. So we'll going back to evolutionary times from a biological perspective. Of course, all of that makes sense. And it's just very fascinating to think about how the findings that you've shared in your TED Talk and that we're speaking about today, just around how oxytocin is related to empathy and trust and morality and how it also is very cyclical. And when we think about our mental health and our well-being, just the importance of learning how to show up for yourself. So that you can show up for others. Then in turn comes back to you. It's just, it's all very interconnected and I think really important to, again, just like bring our attention back towards and also see how it can permeate into our romantic lives as well. And we think about love more broadly. So hopefully for those who are listening, there's something really actionable that you can take away from what we're talking about right now or something that maybe sparks an idea in your mind or something that you want to learn more about or just think more critically about in your life. And everything that we've been speaking towards, honestly, I think is really related to happiness and finding joy in life. And everyday endorphins is super focused, obviously, on happiness and seeking meaning and joy in life. And I know endorphins are technically like the pain killer molecule. So serotonin is probably more so dubbed as like the happiness hormone than endorphins, but I'll claim endorphins for the purposes of this podcast. So Paul, first, you know, how do you define happiness? What does happiness mean to you? What does it mean to lead a happy life? So neurologically, happiness appears to be associated with kind of two core neurochemicals, dopamine and oxytocin. So these peak release of these neurochemicals give this sense of kind of euphoria and value emotional value. It manifests as smiles, as relaxation, as as a sense of energy, right? Dopine in particular is a rousal chemical. So you're just excited, right? And that's really wonderful. Secondarily, then you get that endorphin response, which is that calming, like what a great experience this is, right? How wonderful it is to be here to experience this. And so it turns out that we like to be around not only people who are virtuous and trustworthy, but also happy people. But as you know, when you're just personal life, people who are cranky aggressive neurotic, they're just not very nice to be around because they're just complaining unhappy people. So unfortunately, you know, a lot of those traits are genetic. They're very hard to change, right? Like neuroticism. If you're a neurotic person, you know, get some therapy, some counseling, some coaching, and you can try to be less neurotic, but it's kind of built in. So the extent that we are experiencing peak immersion moments, and we add in a social layer, we have other people with us, that happiness is much higher. So going on a helicopter ride at sunset by yourself, super fun over the ocean, going with your two best friends or your romantic partner way better, right? So again, for listeners, you know, think about happiness, the brain really acclimating to what is used to. So flowers and Valentine's Day, nice, unexpected flowers, better actually, right? So now you're right up, where I go, oh, you thought of me, you were driving home, you, you saw and got flowers. Oh my gosh, you're the best person ever. Go skydiving, go take a roller coaster, whatever it is, mix it up. Travel is a great way to have new experiences of someone you care about, and then build up that happiness by adding that social layer. Travel is interesting. I actually just recorded a podcast on the endorphins and the joys of traveling and how that can really boost your your well-being and the ways that travel gives you experiences that you can't find just like in your in your day to day life, like those experiences are inherent to traveling. And it's something that I think can open up your perspective. So could not agree more. And especially when you're doing all these things with someone else, it amplifies the joy that comes from that experience that amplifies your happiness. And you know, I'll leave you with this question, Paul, that I sprinkled in a bit earlier, but what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day. I have the best job ever. I have amazing friends, you know, a wonderful family. But the other day, I'm going to answer it by telling a short story. My daughter who was, I don't know, 18 said, who's your best friend? Well, when your older is kind of weird because you have a group of good friends, but you know, best is sort of an odd thing. It really depends on the definition of best. And I've said, if I think of the companion I spend the most time with, it's my dog. So my dog is, as my kids say, overattached to me, he's lying down here. He is kind of my best friend and vice versa. And we've got into the most crazy trouble together. We've had just the most crazy times. I bought him a truck so we can go out and have fun. This is how stupid he must are. So I want to say what gives me great endorphins is my wonderful German shepherd buddy. I love that. And I've also heard a similar response to a lot of people share how their pets like are their endorphin boosters and going for walks with their dog or cuddling with their dog. I wish I had a dog actually. That's like the one thing I'm still annoyed with my parents about that we never got one when I was growing up. But I can imagine like the bond that one shares with their pet is incredible. When you raise them from a little puppy and you feed them and you body train them, you know, their other hand, you know, all this attachment was nice about this attachment system. Oxytocin immersion is that it's very blunt. It'll attach to a dog. If you have to put a dog down Stella, it is the worst like you are going to cry if you have to any time with that dog. You know, it's terrible. But we cry at movies. We can have these peak happiness moments lots of places. And again, adding a social layers great. But it's a very this attachment love connection system is very blunt. So we can find it lots of places. And I think that's a really empowering message to leave, you know, my listeners with you can find that in a variety of places. And I think it's important to remember that maybe when times are a bit more difficult or it's harder to see and to remember that you can access those those feelings when you're not feeling so great. Right. So I think it's important to just kind of come back to that as well and recognize that you can seek out those peak immersive happy high value experiences in your life. Thanks to a lot of the work that you've done and other researchers. There's so much science that can explain and digestibly share, you know, the mechanisms by which humans are able to access those experiences. So may offer two suggestions real quick. One is we have an app that will measure your neurologic immersion and help you find those peak immersion experiences. It's free. You can get it from the app store. Go to besttuesday.com download the app. It's called Tuesday. And you can measure your own neurologic value of the experiences you're having. Look at my data right now. Super high 78 big smile. I'm getting a lot of value. My back grows my psychological safety. I'm pretty relaxed. And so if you can link that to your calendar, you can find out how to cure your life for better happiness. So that's my goal in life. The second is because of connection Stella, I try to end every conversation with a single sentence, which I will share with you, which is I want to be of service to you in the future. So thank you for the gift of being on with you. Please call on me when I could be of service and we thrilled to help you. Thank you so much, Paul. That was lovely and everyone I all link the information to your app into some of your research and your TED talks as well in the notes. So for those listening, definitely go check that out and stay connected with with Paul. You can find him on LinkedIn, right? And his website. So, you know, definitely reach out a few of any questions and just wanted to thank you again. This was so fantastic getting you to come on to the podcast and sharing this conversation. Thank you. It was so fun. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard, make sure to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events, and all things related to mental health, well-being, and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading Endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time.