Happiness Expert Dr. Arthur C. Brooks

My guest today is, as I told him, he's one of my algorithmic leading men. You need to be bored. You will have less meaning and you will be more depressed if you never are bored. He's up there with Scott Galloway. The wrong decision is bad. No decision is worse. Don't get paralyzed. Sam Harris. Meditation. Who else on my algorithm? We're all kind of the same guy, you know. Theo Vaughn. I think they should have like, you know, word limits on spouses. He's on my algo. I'll get a lot of NBA stuff. Who's on my? Oh, Gilbert Arenas is huge. I was manscaping. Cameron is the king of my algorithm. You wouldn't know nothing about Cameron. It's like if you watch National Geographic and you see the hyenas. He's an author. He's a professor. He studies happiness, guys. So it's all been leading up to this. Finally, some actionable advice instead of this constant fucking complaining. That happens on this podcast. He's got a book, The Meaning of Your Life. He's got a podcast called Office Hours. I just listened to one this afternoon, sent it to my wife. And what was the other book that you were recommending? In 2022, I wrote a book called From Strength to Strength. Just From Strength to Strength. He's got that as well. It's Arthur Brooks, guys. I like to bring them in for the intro. Help me. I underwrite it and then they, they. And by the way, you're in my algorithm too. Thank you. You are. I mean, you see, you show up and you know, when people say, I don't know why stuff shows up in my algorithm. I don't even like it. Like, you know, young girls are showing up in your algorithm. It's because you like them. If you don't linger on it, they won't show up in your algorithm. That's correct. Thanks for lingering. Somebody actually one time, this is like four years ago, I was on an elevator and he goes, he looks at me, he goes, you're on my algorithm, huh? Yeah. And like, I was supposed to go, yeah, I'm on there. Yeah, that's right. That's me. Yeah. It's me from your algorithm. Okay. Here's what I like about you, Arthur, is that you do give actionable advice. Yeah, that's yeah. And not prescriptive, it's suggestive, right? Stop thinking critically so much about other people. Get more physical exercise. Rebel against your shame. It's based on studies, right? Based on the best research and you know, on neuroscience and behavioral science. And the whole idea is that you can be heavier, but you have to understand, you have to change your habits and you have to share it with others. It's like anything else. Like if you go to medical school, they always say, watch. Watch one, do one, teach one, to become a surgeon. So the whole idea is that you watch people do surgery, you do some surgery, you teach people how to do surgery, and you're a surgeon. And the same thing is true with almost anything. You want to golf. Is that what they do? That's literally what they do. Do they, so last year med students are teaching? Not last year med students, but in their residency, they're teaching medical school students. Oh, that's interesting. So, and that's the algorithm. If you want to be a really, really great golfer, you should learn about golf. You should golf a lot. And then you should explain golf. Because when you explain it, you use your brain in a different way. My father was a math professor. And he used to say that the way he really learned math was by deeply understanding it, doing a ton of problems, and most importantly, teaching it to students. And then he truly understood math. Then he was a mathematician. So this is the same thing with happiness. You need to understand the science. You need to commit to certain habits in your life, living differently and purposively. And then you need to explain it to other people, which is why I'm a teacher, because I want to be happier. Graph your unhappiness for me. Like what was it? Well, I'm naturally an unhappy person. And part of that is, because about 50% of happiness can be explained genetically. So the difference between people is about 50% a genetic phenomenon. And again, that could be such a cause for despair. It could be, except that. See, I knew I was going to. It's like my mom's fault. Yeah. But 50% of alcoholism is also genetic. But if you know your genetic tendency, then you can actually tailor your habits. Because good habits are more important. So for example, if you have drunks in your family, you shouldn't drink. And that's the habit. That's what it comes down. Are you a teetotaler? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. And part of the reason is because when I was in my late 30s, I recognized I was going down the same path as people in my family, and it was going to end badly. And so I said, huh, I can turn this genetic tendency to zero with this super esoteric technology called not drinking. Incredible. And that's the whole point with your happiness too. Look, if you come from melancholy stock, you got to be better at the techniques. And so. Do you buy the. Just real quick. Do you buy the. I'm Irish, so you got to. Yeah. I mean, do you buy the sort of. You mean Brendan's Irish? Yeah. That's weird. Do you buy the genetic or cultural or racial disposition? Toward alcoholism? No. Happiness toward mood. Not racial, but because there's no evidence that race. Well, it's like, I mean, I guess. So there is none. None. There's not. There's no difference between the two. There are gender differences in happiness. And part of that is just because there are hormonal differences between men and women. What you find is that when girls are going, I mean, into adolescence, their negative affect, which is the predominance of the negative mood, skyrockets. And it tends to stay higher than males for the rest of their lives. They have more intense negative affect than men do. And in heterosexual couples, this is something that a lot of men, they can't quite figure out. It's like, why do you feel these negative things so intensely? I mean, it's not that big a deal. Yeah, it's my job. Yeah. And part of the reason is because there are gender differences that actually result in happiness differences between men and women. So women are generally happier but they have more intense negativity than men do. And those are non-trivial differences in the way that we approach the world. I have to, I wind up explaining this to you. That is really interesting because women are happier. Yeah, the way they're happier. And they're also. Unhappier. They're unhappier. So you find, and this really comes down to the intensity of the dominance of and intensity of negative and positive emotionality. So women are more likely to be what we call mad scientists where they have really intense positive emotions and really intense negative emotions. Much more than men do, typically. Is it chemical? Yeah. I mean, it has a lot to do with, you know, hormone balance, et cetera, et cetera. But also that is partly genetic as well. But we should be very clear not to suggest that at any point. That, if you want to get into a huge fight. Don't suggest that what's happening is what's happening. That's my new ethos. You can know what's happening. Thank you, Neil. But you cannot in any way suggest. Folks, life advice you can use. No circumstances should you point out the absolutely obvious thing that's happening. You just have to pretend that. You've been married a while, haven't you? It's a total coincidence. Hey, man, I've been married 35 years in part by not saying things that I've studied as a scientist at home. I just did it. My girl sent me something and I'm just like, hey, I'm sorry. And then there was a silence. And it was like, I could leap into this silence and. Well, this is one of the. Start throwing haymakers or accusations or hay. Yeah, no. No, no, no. It's a. One of the things that actually creates a lot of friction in a lot of marriages is that men who have naturally more muted affect, less intense in the positive and negative, they tend to be more prone less toward the expression of the emotions and more toward solutions. And so one of the biggest mistakes that husbands make is like as soon as their wife says something rotten that's going on at work, you say, okay, here's what you need to do. I say, no, no, that's not what needs to happen here. She needs to. She needs to express that because that in and of itself is healing. That's a really important thing that she needs to tell you about it. She doesn't need your explanation for it. And she needs to actually go to the terminus of this expression. She doesn't need you to cut her off and say, okay, go back to your boss and tell her. No, no, no. Just let her say it. You're the perfect person to ask this question. And I've been wondering, and it's not really AI-able. What is the evolutionary explanation for that? Because I don't. Because. I always say to my. I say it on stage. I say it to my girl. I'm like, when were men supposed to be able to get these capabilities to soothe you? Right. It's all new. All this is like 1950. Like things have just calmed down enough to like, okay, how do you feel? It's this hierarchy of needs thing. Like emotion. We were just in the factory for 12 hours. And before that, we were at the farm for 14 hours. Like when did. And also the expectation to me, the expectations that women have of men are not real, realistic. And because they are real, they're not realistic. And, but when did they develop? Yeah. So that's a really good question. In the, there's a couple of things going on there. To begin with, most evolutionary biologists would suggest that women are, or have more intense emotions and are more in touch with their feelings because they are more relational insofar as they have a higher investment in caregiving. Right. And the cohesiveness of the kin-based family unit. So it's like for children. Yeah, it's for children. So, you know, it's when my, I have adult kids and grandkids and when everybody's around. Most of them are in the military, which I still find shocking. Two of my three kids are Marines, actually. Yeah. So when everybody's around, which is on Sundays a lot at our house, and there's friction, my wife knows. She's intensely aware of the emotional ecosystem that's going on around. She's mad at her a little. Yeah, this isn't right. And they didn't say hello in the right way. The whole thing, I'm like, Men, on the other hand, according to most evolutionary biologists, and of course, everybody watching us, your results may differ because everybody's different. There's big overlapping distributions between men and women. I'm shaking my head. No, no, no. But men, on the other hand, are less sensitive to that because that's more, I need to actually not be affected very much by my emotions when I'm on the hunt. Yeah. When I'm actually, and that's the reason they're super focused and they're able to compartmentalize emotionally. in a big way. Something's bothering me. I'm able to put it aside so I can go get that gazelle. And a lot of this is actually reflected in the way that men and women, they relate to each other in interesting ways. One of the things that you find is the main need that most men have and most women have in their marriage. Women fundamentally require adoration, which is a sign of commitment. I would fight a tiger for you and only you, baby, with my hands because you're everything to me. That sense of adoration. Why? Because- But that level of aggression that I would have to summon to fight the tiger, I will easily put away when you need soothing. Go ahead. And I'll make you an herbal tea. No, I know. I have to be able to summon that immediately. But if you're going to have the confidence that your partner is going to hang around while you have children and support you and your partner- Yeah. Your children, you need that commitment to be demonstrated in a particular way. And adoration is the way that that's demonstrated. Men on the other hand- That's fascinating. Men on the other hand need admiration. And the reason is because they need incentive to actually go out and do those particular things that would in the troglodytic milieu, in the middle place to scene, which is what they need to hear from their partners is basically this. Women need adoration. And men need- Admiration. Okay. That is the biggest- Adore and admire. That is the biggest gazelle anybody's ever dragged into this cave. Neil, you are so big and strong. I mean, that's unbelievable. That's going to feed our family for two weeks. You're an incredible hunter. That's kind of all we want. It's what it comes down to. Now, the reason people don't understand this and they're given a lot of bad information and the reason that a lot of marriages get into trouble is because A, she doesn't admire him or at least will withdraw admiration as a form of a weapon. And, or he doesn't adore her or acts as if he doesn't adore her as a form of a weapon. And that's when you go around and around and around. He doesn't adore her and she doesn't admire him and down and down and down it goes. So the advice I give guys- Stop tapping. You're requiring my help. Well, I mean, marriage is marriage, man. There's nothing new under the sun. And so I'll tell a lot of young guys, you want to stay married? My next book is called Falling in Love. It's staying in love. So this is really, really on my mind. It's not going to be out for a couple of years, but boy, is this on my mind. And, and the, the way to stay married for guys is be admirable and adore her no matter what you feel. Because adoration is an act. It's not a feeling. I've learned over the years that the, the sexually, the key is they just want you to be attracted to them. They don't care about technique. Just like how palpably attracted to you or to them are you, the art, the man, just be all the shit you're suppressing. Yeah. Put it in there. Yeah. No, 75% of women would prefer to sleep with someone who finds them attractive, but they find unattractive. 75% of men would prefer to sleep with someone that they, that the man finds attractive, even if she doesn't find him attractive. Now that's not social science. Once again, tells you something you already know. My favorite one of these is Chris Rock did the joke. 90% of women want to fuck 10% of the guys. He did the joke in 1996. Yeah. I think the study came out in 2009 and now confirming it. And now the daily study is called dating apps. Yeah. Of that, because you can actually load 90% of the, of the male or the female interest into 10% of the chads who, by the way, are disproportionately likely to display dark triad characteristics, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. That 10% that are getting all the action are most are, are disproportionately likely to be predators. And by the way, you say the dark triad, like it's a bad thing. Well, here's the thing. Dark triads are unbelievably good at being attractive. They're unbelievably good. Are they good at being adoring? No, they're terrible partners. What they are, they're good at love bombing. They can get the deal, but they can't keep the deal. Right. They don't want it. Well, yeah. I mean, and they, they will always cheat. They will always betray you. They will always take your money. They will always use you. And what they're really, really good at is, is making you think that they're, so there's a neurochemical cascade when you're falling in love with somebody. There's four steps neurochemically in order and, and women's brains will be going through them and they'll be perceiving that that 10% guy, that high status guy is going through them as well. He's pretending because he's good at it. And just the fact that you would pretend to be falling in love with somebody to use them makes you psychopathic, makes you the kind of person who's low in empathy, low in remorse. Yeah. Willing to hurt other people and all about yourself, which is that dark triad of. Do you, I have a suspicion about dark triad people born out of a lot of experience, uh, that they like it. Well, if they like it, if women like it. No, no, no. That they like being in the dark triad. Yeah. So if my father was diagnosed as a narcissist and he, it's the only time he called all of us individually, 10 kids, called all of us individually to let us know that, that he was a narcissist. So liking it is a fourth characteristic. It makes it called the dark tetrad and social science. And that last one is sadism. So in other words, it's all about me. I'm willing to hurt you. I feel no remorse and I enjoy it. That's the dark tetrad. And those are the most dangerous people in our society. Those are, those are the people who make the most tyrannical politicians. These are the ones who are the most abusive partners. These are the people who, you know, if they don't have sufficient intelligence, they wind up very, very quickly in jail. Right. And that, you know, we'll clean the streets of the ones that are not above average. But the ones who are above average intelligence can really, really ruin our lives. And they're the ones who tend to be performing the most, the most successfully on dating apps right now, because women will be very attracted to them. What of the, of the a hundred wealthiest people, how many of them do you think are, are dark triad or tetrad? It's a good question. So the, it's a, it's a good question. So Arthur, let me save you some time. They're all good questions. God, sweetheart. Thank you. They're all good. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like Chad. GPT. Neil, that's a very good question that you asked. It's like, would you like to know more about the dark triad? So it's, and, and one way to look at this, and some studies have looked at this is, you know, the people that we think naturally would be like fortune 500 CEOs. They're not. And the reason is because CEOs have to do business again and again and again and again. Right. And they have to lead. They have to lead large groups of people. And so they can't afford to do it. What you'll find is that some of the most visionary entrepreneurs who have FU, money and power, they can be, and often are. So they're the ones who start, they get the, they have the idea. They get the first, the first, uh, investors and then they, all the investors sour on them, kick them out of the company. Doesn't matter because they're so brilliant. Yeah. Now they are successful in spite of those characteristics, not because of those characteristics. Now politicians can be successful because of those characteristics, because they wield a weapon that people on their side, like a, against their enemies. And so you'll find like the, like in a highly polarized, uh, politically polarized and, and populist environment, like we have on both right and left, you're going to tend to see hardcore populist, right-wing and left-wing politicians coming out of the dark triad. Why? You know, nobody likes bullies, no, but they don't, you don't even like bullies on your side, but you sure like what bullies do to your enemies. And so they will use it. So what you'll find is that politically voters will use dark triads and then throw them away. And that's what ultimately is going to happen in our current environment. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. They're going to go, they like some of it. They like some of it, but it's too, I don't mess up our country in the meantime. And by the way, this is not a partisan point. No. When I look at this right, hardcore, right-wing, hardcore, left-wing, you listen to both of them. And it's like, this is, this is pathology. Yeah. Here. The thing you said, the, that with entrepreneurs, it's, it's despite of. Yeah. So do you think. Because they do even better if they're great people, if they have these unbelievably visually visionary qualities and they're great people. And so that's what Jim Collins found and good to great and built to last those famous business books. Some of those really, really, really visionary leaders. One of the things that they had in common is what he called level five leadership, intense resolve, and deep humility is one of the things that they had that doesn't come very often. That's just, you know, those are, you know, intense resolve and unwavering desire to be as successful as possible. It usually is not accompanied by a lot of humility. Yeah. And so the result is that you're, you're going to tend to get more people. Who are really at the top of an industry, you know, visionary leaders who are also weird and not good with people and not nice to people, but they're successful in spite of that. So you don't think it's downstream from the dark trad. You don't think it's, it's. There are dark trad reasons for that for sure. Like it's again, this is like a long way to go, but, but come out bell who made it, he's a comedian and he made a documentary about bill Cosby, the, he sort of implied that part of Cosby's drive to be great was so that he could do this dark stuff. Yeah, no, no, that's, that's possibly the case, but mostly people who achieve this worldly greatness who are dark triads is because they want to be adored. They have a deep, deep, deep need to be adored. How do you feel about the need to be adored? Because I look at you and you, well, you got your arm, you got the guns out fairly routinely, right? You, you're, you're not. Doing less press, you're not at, I'm now I'm on your email list. He's doing seminars. He's doing the, you got a Santa Fe event. event coming up um i'm really getting these emails are you coming to my marriage retreat i it give me a give me a give me a nice number and i there's a there's a very good chance i could would show up um alone i'm kidding um you'll meet somebody um so how do you feel about the need to be a door because i find that a lot of there's a lot of scholars right now and i and i know i know a hungry hippo when i see one because i'm a hungry hippo hungry hungry hippos is the name of the game from a long i got hungry hippo friends and talk to me and do you judge yourself for it yeah i'm sure yes yeah so this is the whole concept of the striver and the striver's curse and and this is different this does not necessarily mean dark triad it's not you're not dark triads i'm certainly not a dark triad but but there is a striverly tendency and people who are really really really driven and i've studied that a lot that's one of the things i'm most interested in and i'm really interested in and i'm really interested in and i'm really interested in is people who are yeah right i'm interested in you i did but i did the i i mentioned in three mics like i tried to achieve my way out of depression i basically just set out to try to achieve a bunch of shit to give myself a surge of of of good feelings you tried to earn the the the love that you sought which is very common so that that is is manifest and people will think of it as workaholism but workaholism is a secondary pathology after success addiction life feels gray when you're not succeeding and ordinarily that's personally you said gray gray because that means a lack of dopamine you get your dopamine from winning and and here's generally speaking the reason that it works when you're when your brain is most synaptically plastic is when you're a little kid and if you're really good at something get really good grades you know you're really good musician you're really good athlete whatever it happens to be you'll find that you get a lot of approbation and attention and affection from the adults that you care about the most only when you do something extraordinary when you do something extraordinary you get a lot of attention and attention from the adults that you care about the most only when you do something better than other people that has a huge impact on a little dude or a little girl it's just a huge impact these are people who want to become olympic athletes so they they you know do weird things like you know create the dave chapelle show i just pulled that one out of the hat that's just as an arbitrary example and that poor guy and and what that does is you conclude that love is earned that love is or what you want is love we are built to love yeah love and be loved that's this is as but if you only feel because of the lessons that you got when you're a little kid that you were going to get energy and affection and attention from adults who cared about you when you did something you become kind of a human doing not a human and you know that's important because love actually can't be earned love is a free gift for the given love is a grace if somebody if you're if you surround yourself with people who make you earn their love like you have a girlfriend who makes you earn her love you have friends who are sycophantic kiss-ups who make you earn their love they don't love you that's actually a test of whether they love you or not and they don't anybody who makes you earn their love can't love you and won't love you i needed to get away as soon as possible it's never going to sound like you have to earn my love it just sounds like hey there's conditions man there's conditions you have conditions on your marriage you have or like i love when you i mean again it's it's all this stuff is subtle because it's like if your wife goes i adore you when you bring home a big check right or if she actually clearly loves you a little bit less when you don't that's actually a big test but isn't that common with women is like unemployment's the one of the number one yeah i mean when a man loses his job the likelihood of divorce goes up by 35 right when a wife loses her job the divorce likelihood goes up by zero percent actually why that doesn't mean that women are less virtuous than men on the contrary men will withdraw love when women don't earn it largely with fertility cues so what you find is that the top five cues for a romantic relationship differ between men and women for for men they're all fertility cues and for women they're all resource cues and this goes back to evolutionary biology it's not that you know this is some sexism thing it's not that we're horrible human beings but we are biological creatures and so when men women who don't actually love you will condition their affection on continued resource cues and men who don't actually love their wives will condition their affection on fertility and attractiveness which is why a lot of women get divorced after 40 i would think yeah and it's also one of the reasons that women who are very very insecure about their relationships are getting a lot of work done and trying to look as young as possible when they're in their 50s and 60s and 70s because they don't know they don't know and and you know that's it's also by the way when their marriage does fall apart what they're going to want to show is resource cue i mean fertility cues no matter how old they are there's a by the way there's an old i was giving a talk to a bunch of orthodontists and when i have to stop bragging go ahead and you know you know when you get in front of an industry group you got to write their opening joke and it's got to be specific steve martin has the best version of this by the way does he he's like well i heard there's a lot of um plumbers here tonight so anyway i don't want to pander but you know when you're unscrewing and he just goes into all this jar but it's at an arena and so it just gets like kind of nothing and then a huge laugh it's so fucking fun yeah yeah so so here's my here's the joke i wrote for the orthodontists how do you know 18 months before your wife is going to leave you how she gets braces great so did it work oh they cracked up ma'am because it's true and it's it's it's it's they live it yeah because basically it's she's preparing to show fertility cues you know and that's the reason that you know men will start working out more or men will actually start trying to peacock more or men will men will get the red sports car because that's peacocking resource cues when they're actually going through a midlife crisis and one of the big reasons for that is because they're married to somebody the man or the woman is married to somebody and they're married to somebody who's conditioning love and they have grown up as super strivers there's hard striving individuals and so they don't actually recognize that that conditional love is actually not love at all and they go through life and this is the problem that they actually have that's why success addiction is such a big the red sports cars for the wife the red sports car is to actually is is to show usually that they're on the market and they want to show oh got it okay because i was here it is like they want it like he got uh this my husband got a red he's having a midlife crisis because he's trying to peacock for other people to show he's got resource cues for the first time at age 40 but but is it because his wife is conditioned her love or their is it possible their love just disintegrated it might have disintegrated yeah he actually is getting ready to go on the market that's the that's the braces for me got it is the invisible if i was going to rewrite it invisalign there you go there you go if you're it was did they wasn't an invisalign group yeah i can't believe i told a joke on a comedian's podcast i blew it you really you shouldn't go on a comedian show when you're not a comedian and actually tell jokes but now i'm so arrogant i'll happily do neuroscience ali wong once referred to invisalign as tooth jail which i still think about all the time nice alan wong's favorite endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house guys talked about it before i'm going to talk about it again because i'm still i'm still working with it superpower i as a vegan i have i've had to get you know blood work because it's why not make it more inconvenient to be vegan to do the right thing and so i've been doing blood work and uh maybe sometimes i'll take a supplement or a little some sort of thingy and you got to get blood work done right i'm also old enough where i'm just like it's smart to get blood work basically there's also a rich person thing called a concierge service where they'll you go and it's like you can get all your stuff looked at and but they ended up just sending you like a list and you and then it's some things are destructive but that's where superpower comes in here's what they're doing superpowers getting into they're in the game and they send a licensed professional to your house or you can go to visit a nearby lab uh it's one simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers which is made way more than what you usually get and it unlocks a real understanding of your body their app includes detailed information on your heart liver thyroid hormones metabolism vitamin mineral levels environmental toxins from disease prevention to treating that annoying brain fog or simply optimizing your gym game superpower is the most comprehensive and advanced system out there so you actually know 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which i did and uh and all it's just all your all your stuff's in one place so you can stop just playing defense and start playing offense you know what i mean and i will say other test services can charge up to 500 a thousand dollars sometimes more for similar or less and uh they don't make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower for a limited time our listeners hit 20 off to unlock their new health intelligence head over to superpower.com and use code neal for 20 off of your membership that's code neal and after you sign up they'll ask you how you heard about superpower do me a favor if you could and tell them blocks with neil brennan to support the show guys we're building something here i love you guys this episode is sponsored by better help people you know some people like summer favorite season travel pickups kids are out of school adventures in focus for other people it's uh they don't like having the kids out of school some people don't like their kids is my point i got big plans this summer that i'm not talking about but there's i got a lot popping and i will say that i summer is my favorite time of year i like i like warm weather um even though i'm very pale i really like warm weather and i like not being stressed out from coldness and like tight and it feels like the world doesn't want you be an outsider outside's good you know it's good again pale guy likes it outside and also you get to just walk by yourself and think about you can be you can contemplate maybe now's the time you you take that you make your move and you start going to take a little therapy this summer huh here's the thing about therapy you will come back from a therapy session with a better understanding of yourself i always encourage people who are doing therapy to tell on yourself there's no if you're gonna go there to lie it's pointless i know a guy who used to go to therapy for three hours because he's like i'm a comic i can lie for an hour so go to therapy tell on yourself you'll get a better sense of what you're like what your preferences are what your beliefs are what makes you feel good what makes you feel bad where you want to set boundaries etc you know i'm always talking about boundaries you know with over 30 000 therapists better help is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over six people globally and it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of five for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews better help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the u.s here's the call to action put on a helmet you don't have to say yes to everything this summer find support in therapy sign up and get 10 off at betterhelp.com slash n-e-a-l that's b-e-t-t-e-r-h-e-l-p dot com slash n-e-a-l better help go to therapy guys here's the thing we all eat right you gotta eat at least twice a day sometimes you eat three sometimes you eat four whatever these delivery services are out officially out of hand it's with the with fees and the prices and you're like you you think you're paying one thing and it ends up being like staying at a hotel they're like where are you how about a resort fee how about filling something awful everything's expensive and you know i'm a cheap cheapskate what we use called cheapskate cook unity on the other hand it's the first chef led meals delivery service that makes your meals in small batches inside local micro kitchens across the u.s not factories so every dish arrives with the kind of freshness you get at the restaurant itself meals from michelin star chefs james beard winners and food network stars go to cookunity.com slash n-e-a-l or use code n-e-a-l before checkout for 50 off five zero percent off your first week huge huge here's what i ordered i ordered a tofu i ordered a lasagna i ordered a curry i there's here cut to it well i i it was all great i heard some some i believe i ordered a burrito really good basically the way it works is there's a bunch of chefs they make uh finite about amount of recipes and meals and you can order by diet gluten-free pescatarian you can specify spicy not spicy regional not regional bread no bread like it's the amount of specificity is kind of staggering they have like hundreds of things and then they send it to you once a week in a like a bag like one of those freezer bag thingies it's still fresh it's not frozen it's just in one of those bags with like the ice thing on the sides to keep it cool and uh put in your fridge and then when you want it everything that i've made so far is uh heat up for two to two to four minutes three to five minutes and it's like legitimately good to the point where i i like i love it's great like they're really good taste what happens when real award-winning chefs make fresh small batch meals just for you go to cookunity.com enter code neal before checkout to get 50 50 off your first order that's 50 off your first order by using code neal or go to cookunity.com slash neal i'm telling you i wouldn't i when people recommend bad food i get furious and if you're like me i promise you you're gonna you're gonna be pleased so we talked about it's hard because it's supposed to be about your problems but this is we're just gonna we're just gonna do uh let's do you man well no i've done so much so well okay well that's what's interesting is the the signaling resources yeah and then by the way so you got back to that is my problem by the way i'm a complete striver and i'm trying to earn everybody's love when i was a little kid and you know it and you can't stop i can i can control it i can manage it because with knowledge practice prayer actually help and by teaching it i can make my i can manage these pathologies i absolutely can can you separate your thing about teaching from because they're one in the same with attention seeking because you're teaching yeah on camera at dental seminars they're teaching everywhere so what i'm can you i don't want to i don't think it's worthy of judgment i don't when i it's a thing i notice because i'm like this is a guy who's knows all the stuff and he's clearly wants to look good and be together and he's got a necklace and and because that's that's like the new thing yeah like that's a pretty that's like that's the blessed version oh all right that's good yeah i'm a catholic yeah no i know i'm i know um so i just wonder but i don't because i'm the same way and i but i'm trying to get away from the guilty pleasures of it's not even the flesh it's it's you know it's dope it's attention dopamine it's the attention because that's that's the flesh that's the pleasure that's the hit for you is is the adoration and and the pathology comes in when you will actually seek the adoration of strangers over the actual true love of the people who are closest to you so so the truth is you're always going to do that and it's not a huge problem as long as you know what it is as long as you don't let it get out of control and you don't let it crowd out the love that actually will satisfy because that love won't satisfy any more than meth will satisfy you the the adoration yeah every drug addict in the world deep down thinks sooner or later i'm going to have enough drugs and i'm going to stop when i have enough drugs you know every drunk is like i'll have enough i'm going to stop when i've had enough to drink but there isn't enough alcohol in the whole world there isn't enough meth in the whole world you have to stop before you're ready because you'll never be ready is what it comes down to that's the nature of addiction and that's how you have to understand there isn't enough adoration in the world it's like rain wilson tells we pal around and and he talked about when he was doing the office you know rain for sure right yeah he's great um we're both from seattle and so we've got this we have the same childhood we're about the same age and he says that when he was doing the office he he was consumed i mean people were screaming i love you out of moving cars and but he was consumed about the fact that he never won an emmy he was consumed that he didn't get good movie yes because there isn't enough meth in the world yeah and that's the addictive drug and so you have to recognize that if you have a you have problems with alcohol and you have problems with drugs if that relationship with the alcohol and drugs is getting in the way of your your real no fool in love relationships and the same thing is true with your your need to succeed with your need to be adored by other people if you are seeking the adoration of other people on social media or on the road or something else and you're compromising your relationship with your wife and your kids that has become an addiction problem how do you how wouldn't you be the last to know unless you empower other people around you to tell you that and that's one of the reasons i study it i study it's not research man it's re it's me search i know it's so it's so bumper sticker so that bumper sticker i know so like lefties are always right hello it's me search just like so but that's the thing i mean it's like if if you're doing the work i know what i when i see you i go i think he's not it is the me i think you're ignoring some of the me search well of course because you know you're never i mean you're you're the fish know the temperature of the water but i also surround myself with people who tell me the truth i mean i'm married by the way every delusional famous person i know thinks that as well just f1 just just for the record dude everyone is so bummed now someone's Everybody's like, no, trust me, I have good people. The biggest bunch of sycophants you've ever seen in your life. They tell me the truth. No, they keep me humble. They don't fucking keep you humble at all, you monster. But I'm talking about my wife, not the people who work with me. Your wife's not a monster. Yeah. And your wife's foreign, so she's going to use an extra level of honesty. And when I'm, look, I mean, it's a, yeah, I mean, it's a, it has aided greatly in the ability for me to actually go to a public education platform to have a desire to do so. I mean, the number one predictor of success is wanting to succeed, of course. But at the same time, you have to make sure that you've got certain protocols in place so that it doesn't ruin your life. What are they? And it has a lot to, well, I'll tell you, actually, I have certain protocols. I don't travel on weekends. Okay. I don't, I'm home on weekends. I don't take- What time? Friday by- Friday by afternoon. Okay. I don't take dinners in where I live, out where I live. So I have dinners at home. I have established it so that my kids and grandkids live around me. So that we can actually see each other every weekend. I look- Do you move to them? We all move together to the same place. We made a deal. We all move. Who sponsored it? It's actually, it was my kids who came up with it. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. So my adult kids, they, where do we want to raise our kids? And we left. I mean, I was, I've been teaching at Boston for the past seven years. It's actually Cambridge. It's in Cambridge. It's a little, sorry. But I moved away and had to commute for the past seven years because we did that. But that was a very, very conscious decision. And I had one family- As a professor, would he have to be there twice a semester? It's a little bit more than that. Come on, man. Come on. I mean, it's not like I'm going up there every single week. It's true. But it was a sacrifice insofar as that I had to move away from my community, et cetera. But it was totally worth it because I knew that it's very easy for me to, the easiest thing that could be for me to do, would be to take 250 dates a year on the road talking about this stuff. Speaking dates, yeah. Yeah. And it's a lot of money. Yep. And it's super fun. And people are clapping. Yep. And do as much media as I possibly can and be gone a lot on weekends. Now, actually, my wife and I were taking gigs together because she's doing it on public speaking. And so we're about to do this retreat together in Santa Fe. Santa Fe. We're going to Barcelona on tour together. Then we're going to Brazil. Do you say Barthelona? Barthelona. Actually, she's from Barcelona, from Barthelona. But she's Catalan. Okay. Which is different. They're the ones who say, do they say Barthelona? They say Barcelona. Barcelona. And then the Spaniards say Barthelona. Got it. Yeah, anyway. So that's where we got married. So, you know, we've got these protocols in place and it's not perfect. And sometimes she's, I take a beat down, you know. She's like, dude, read your books. This isn't going well. We need to tune this back up. It's time to get this back in order. We had a big come to Jesus about that last month. Brutal. You know. What's funny is I could have told you that was coming. Yeah. I know. Based on my algorithm. Like, literally, just like, oh, this dude's, he's not living up to his, like. I know. And the problem is that she's on Instagram. So I'll be showing up at her algorithm. Yeah, that's. I need to block her. You've gone too far. Okay. But this is a good point. And, you know, this goes back to when I was a kid. I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player. And you were very good, right? I played, I mean, I was a pro by the time I was 19 and spent my entire 20s playing in symphony. Orchestras and chamber music and as a soloist all around the United States and Europe, which is to say I made kind of a living. But it's prestigious and it does, it is, not about money. It's like. It was good. It was good. Hard gigs to get. There were a lot of people who were better than me. Oh, there were. Okay. There were a lot of people better than me. And I wanted to be the best. And one of the reasons I left is I couldn't be, which is a bad reason. I should have been in music because I loved music. But no, I was in music because I wanted to be a great musician, which is a pretty poor motive. I'm in social science now because I actually. I'm super interested in this. I'm, I lay awake at night thinking about the research on this. It's so interesting. Yeah. And I get to actually talk to a lot of people about it and it, and it can help them in their lives. So that's a more than an added bonus. I've heard you speak of two things that I've, uh, that I think are really, really, really helpful. Congratulations. You've actually helped somebody. That's great. Uh, one person doesn't happen often. Um, the working against yourself, meaning knowing. What you're like, right. Knowing you're depressed. You, I think on Rhonda Patrick's podcast, you talked about all the things you do because you know, you're predisposed to negativity and melancholia. Tell people what they are. Cause it's, I never heard someone say it. I was like, Oh, cause I have things that I've been doing blocking this and putting that over here. Like, so tell people. So, okay. So positive and negative affect are different. Happiness and unhappiness. Are not opposites. They're different challenges. So I have a series of tests that I give my students that I give the people I work with to find out what's their bigger challenge. Some people are, I went on the website was filling it out. I need a promo code cause I'm very cheap. I'll give you a promo code. Yeah. Um, Arthur Brooks.com are the books that honestly it's fucking good. It's, it's, it's cool. It's called the happiness scale and you can actually find out whether your bigger challenge is positive or negative affect for me. I'm at the 90th percentile. And positive affect, but I'm at the 90th percentile in negative affect as well. Like a woman. I'm like a super bad scientist woman. I am. I'm a really, really high effect person, but what that means is I need protocols not to raise my happiness, but to rather to manage my unhappiness. And so a lot of people will ask me, for example, how important is it to exercise for your happiness? It's not, it's important for managing your unhappiness. I can tell something about people who are in the gym every day. If you're in the gym every day, it's like, I'm a gym rat. I'm a gym rat. It's because you have naturally high negative affect. And you're just, you figured out that you feel crummy when you don't do that. If you have low negative affect because you're a cheerleader, like, cause that's the kind of person that you are, or, or, or you're a judge, which is a low affect profile. You just feel your, your emotions less intensely than other people. You're going to struggle to stay in the gym and your doctor is going to be like, come on, man, 150 minutes of high intensity exercise a week, please. And, and, and look after four, you're going to get sarcopenia. You need to actually start getting under the bar. You're such a drag. My wife hates going to the gym. She hates it. She's like naturally gifted athletically, but she hates it because she has low negative affect. She has nothing to treat. She doesn't feel better when she exercises. What happens? Cause it's, it's like not a runner's high. No, no. What actually happens is you're mostly you're, you're managing your stress hormones is what it comes down to. You will, you will spike your cortisol when you're actually doing that, but you're managing your stress hormones in a very big way. How, how are you spiking your cortisol? Well, because you actually, your, your stress hormones go up when you're doing it. You're doing intense exercise because the stress hormones get it out of your system. Not really. But what happens is that it not clear exactly if it gets it out of the system or not, but what happens is that when you go back to your equilibrium, when you're in, in, in homeostasis, that your stress hormones will not remain naturally high. As a result of that, you find that you're less stressed out when you exercise more. So you exercise a lot, right? Yes. My brother calls it running the Brennan out of them. Yeah. Running the Brennan. That's that's. You know, you're Irishman. Yeah. You have naturally high negative effect. Like there's a melancholy in that. And then you've noticed that if you run, especially if you run early in the morning, and especially if you get up before dawn and you see the sun come up while you're running, you're going to feel less bad, not better, less bad. And so for me, all of my protocols that I put together, part of them, I was just doing naturally, you know, so I'd like, it's like I'm 62 years old. Nobody cares if I got biceps. The point is that I care that I don't feel crummy. And so once I realized that I had adopted certain protocols that have a scientific basis to them for feeling less bad, I was then able to actually do the research and put it into a multi-part protocol that I follow assiduously almost every day. And it's been pretty miraculous actually. Pretty miraculous. But it's one of those things that's managing negative. So it's a bit like. I'm managing negative. It's a bit of a, it's a, it's unfalsified. You know what I mean? It's less bad. It's a double negative. But it's really, it's an important thing to do because we do all kinds of things to lower negatives in our lives. I think mostly people want to up the positive. I know. Like that's the, that's the American thing. They think they want to up the positive, but I take these tests, I expose people to these tests because I say, look, you're not going to, if you have naturally high positive affect, you're not going to get happier if you, you know, have a lower commute. All commuting does is, is, is raises your unhappiness. And so that's to have. Say that one more time. So. So a lot of people say, I will be happier if I have a shorter commute. Yeah. No, you won't. You'll be less unhappy if you have a short commute because their commute is a source of irritation. A source is a source of aggravation. And so there's all kinds of things that people get wrong in their marriages. For example, they need to lower the unhappiness of their marriage, not raise the happiness of their marriage. You need to solve a problem with the problems of the problem, but you don't have the problems. You don't have lack of interest in your needs to raise the happiness. You need to know what to diagnose and what to do on the basis of understanding what part of the limbic system you're working in. By the way, the test is $10 just to give you a sense of how fucking cheap I am. 15. It's up to 15 a month for me. So just to give you a sense, this is how cheap I am. It means the world to me and I still won't spend money. Yeah. I'll give you. And I got the money. BetterHelp.com promo code Neil. You know I make money. Is that one of your sponsors? Of course. Are they standing by right now? Yes. Yes. Because they have over 100 licensed therapists. 100,000. They're weeping at this point. their homes yeah okay so you do yeah you work out and but that's not all you do no no no i get it first this really starts for me based on the research and you know you never want to make the perfect the enemy of the good because everybody's circumstances differ you know some people have little kids and they can't do this and so you just have to adapt it as best you can yeah like don't feel awful if you know and on the contrary i couldn't do it and super strivers they gotta do everything exactly right and so you know but i get up before dawn because the brahma muhurta and ancient indian wisdom always talks about the optimization of the brain but neuroscience modern neuroscience really shows that your brain works better you're less negative you're more creative you're you know you're better functioning in the default mode network and your brain etc if you get up before dawn and so i get it's got to be before it's before the sun comes up there's something about experiencing the sun coming up or being up when the sun comes up um so i get up at 4 30 it just depends on jet lag because depends on what time zone i'm in but if i'm on the east coast it's 4 30 in the morning and then i have a gym in my house or i only stay in hotels that have gyms and i'm in the gym at 4 45 i do that for an hour then i get cleaned up and i go to mass every day so i'm a catholic and and again this is not dogmatic about catholicism just the catholicism is like starbucks it's a highly uniform high quality product that's ubiquitous it's just and and i'm a catholic i gotta i gotta say i grew up catholic and altar boy whole thing we want you back you want to talk about you know the thing about starbucks is it's consistent yeah anytime i go to church i'm like man this guy's a bad i know i know i know like those sermons it's like dog and dude you're an expert as a comic i know as a comedian are you a comedian or a comic comedian yeah so a comedian it depends on well i mean you talk to comedians you know i do you know i lecture for a living comedians have taught me the most yeah about how to be a good lecturer yeah about how to captivate directly yes or or like they pulled you or they yeah i mean one of the best lessons i ever got and had to give a speech i got from jerry seinfeld what he said well he's he came he i was giving a speech at um the aspen ideas festival and it's a big big crowd and i like looking at the back and the crowd kind of wasn't doing my talking like that guy looks like jerry sein it was jerry seinfeld he comes up afterward and i had i had told hey he's great he's awesome there's the best he's super great and he's super nice very normal and um i i had told every six to eight minutes i stop because these are the chunks of attention that generally speaking work for people you got to let people off the bike if you're doing serious science you got to let them off the bike and take a rest and the way that you do that is with a pretext the pretext is oh oh i just read the study i got to tell you about it it's not related but i got to tell you about it that's a pretext or i want to tell you the next hunk no no no no just as a break 45 second break that's not related not related before and then it's like it's like the amuse bouche yep right or or you tell a joke or you tell a story it's got to be one of those three things in my business right and so during this talk in my six to eight minute break between the modules i told a story about because i was talking about parenting in that particular the science of parenting and i said you know there's a big generational difference when i was a kid you know it was in the 70s and i grew up in a very sort of downscale neighborhood in seattle and and ted bundy had been marauding through my neighborhood right and and i had a paper route and i had a paper route and i had a paper route at 4 30 in the morning and my mother was worried about serial killers out and about and so she said to my dad i think little arthur because i was 11 should give up his paper at 4 30 in the morning because of all these serial killers and my dad who really had my interest at heart and my dad had a phd in biostatistics he stuck up for my interest by making this argument i've seen the data and arthur is not in the core demographic of a serial killer right and and it kind of was like that they were kind of like oh my god i'm not going to do this i'm going to do this i'm going to do this that joke could kill i that's the first thing i thought i'm telling that wrong uh-huh i'm telling it wrong yeah he said there's too many words yeah and leave out ted bundy because people are seeing ted bundy's face who is an actual serial killer who killed a bunch of women that's not funny you ruined you stepped on your joke by personalizing the joke you ruined your joke by personalizing the joke agree no i think ted bundy's the punchline i think ted bundy is i think you say there was there was some the 70s are a lot of serial killers yeah and da da da da and my dad stuck up for me and uh and two months later um ted bundy was arrested 10 miles away from my house he's crushed so i that's god forbid jerry um but uh the whole point is that i was doing it wrong and i learned how do i learn i learned from the the people who are doing the same thing and making it look fresh yeah so when i watch you for example you're making it it's it's like you're you're doing it for the first time even though you're doing it for the 400th time so the timing is impeccable but it's sort of funny to you because it looks like it just occurred to you and that's technique and timing yeah and that's super important in my line of work too yeah i learn a lot more from comedians than i learned i gave sam harrison note when i saw his show did you yeah he did he it was a it was a note that somebody had given me which is he had he i won't say what it was but but it was but yeah like there's a lot to be learned from from the the i don't know how we got on this we're talking about your oh the how crappy most priests are at public speaking one of the main they are and part of it is just because they're not very well trained in homiletics at catholic seminaries but i which is a mistake it's a mistake it is a mistake part of it so many people need to come back and they're repelled by the lack of technique and because it's boring yeah and a lot of priests what they believe not entirely without basis is their job is to administer the sacraments but that's not the only thing they're supposed to do i would argue that's probably the least important one well it's really important that somebody minister the sacraments if you're no no i'm not saying don't do it i'm just saying like you gotta it's gotta be attractive i mean we gotta it's just you gotta be attractive so anyway yeah we but we need you go to you're not gonna you're not i'm i'm i believe in god that's as far as i'm going okay we're um it's a good start like i say i'm like rob low with the nfl hat on i just believe in god generally but not a specific denomination do you believe in up to one gun uh what do you mean oh i don't believe in i don't actually i don't believe that god is a thing that's the other that's my other issue all right the it's not a it's not a it's not a yeah it's not a there's it's not i haven't anthropomorphized god is every place it's a central creation force as far as oh yeah that is very spinoza great yeah um no one's ever heard of them um the uh okay so you so then so you go to comedian you go to um uh you go to the gym yeah then you go to mass clean up which sounds gross when you say then i go to mass something about it's gross take a shower then you go to mass with my wife when i'm fulfill what it that what that does is it actually centers psychologically and spiritually it centers me psychologically and spiritually there's no i've not spent i've spent virtually no time on the devices still at this point but there's actually the devices your phone your phone okay my phone on that i mean occasionally um i'll look at it when i first wake up to make sure nothing's on fire and then a couple of days a week i'll listen to something that i'm trying to learn but it's not just to anesthetize at the gym yeah at the gym um but i try not to use it but there's zero desire to do that and actually that's met that it works the same way as meditation so neurophysiologically it works the same way as meditation do you so it's a sacred reading or meditation or you know mindfulness or yoga or zen practice or going to mass it fulfills all fulfilling the same thing yeah what's the data on audio you lifting and listen listen listen to a podcast yeah blocks neil brennan with yes or the brooks and exercising so what it suggests is that a lot of people use it because it makes it easier for them to pass the time and the most important is that you're doing the exercise for a certain amount of time physiologically and also emotionally for you to lower your negative affect for sure the problem is you miss a key thing so most people will say you know i have my best ideas in the shower the reason is because your phone's not in there and your and your default mode network is stimulated and you're not in there and you're not in there and you're not in there a set of structures in your brain required for mind wandering, flights of fancy, thoughts about the meaning of life. All that stuff actually occurs when these structures are illuminated. You can do that while you're in the gym. You will find, for example, you say, if you have an intention, I have a creative problem. I'm trying to write a column or I'm stuck on a chapter of a book or I don't know. Do you still write at the Atlantic? I write for the free press now. Got it. And so I moved at the beginning of the year. I write the same column called the pursuit of happiness. You run 60 Minutes? Yeah, I'm the new executive producer of 60 Minutes. Want to come on? It's not far. You're in the pipeline. Pretty far. Pretty far. So I keep checking my messages. I was like, so far, nobody's asking. You never know. Yeah, yeah. So when I'm stuck on a creative problem, the best thing I can possibly do is to work out without any inputs. Just a workout. I will solve the problem. So if I go for a walk. Walk without headphones too. That'll do it. Cardio, high intensity cardio will do that too. But even weightlifting, if I'm not using earbuds, I'm not going to be able to do it. I'm just like, I got this thing. I'm probably going to come to the solution. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to have been an adult before the internet. Oh, the before times? Yeah. And to have like had good ideas and you go, I don't, maybe I don't get that. Yeah. You know? Yeah, no, no, for sure. And that's actually a big creative block for a lot of young people who don't know how to be non-stimulated. They've actually eradicated boredom, which is an incredibly neuro and dangerous neurophysiological thing to do. You need boredom. Yeah. It's a very bad thing to be systematically never bored. You're, you're effectively shoving yourself into the left hemisphere of your brain systematically, which is about analysis and linear thinking and information, how to and what, and you're being bored is shoving yourself into the left brain. You're vacating the right hemisphere. This is based on the work of Ian McGilchrist, who talks about hemispheric lateralization. The right side of your brain is the why side, the mystery and the meaning side. You will literally not be able to assess questions of the meaning of your life. If you're never bored, that's a problem. And the fact is, you know, people always are, why are young people so depressed and anxious? Why are people under 30, especially women so depressed and anxious? Oh, it's a big mystery. It must be because baby boomers have driven up the price of apartments or, or because of income inequality. It's nonsense. Yeah. You know, it's nonsense. That's ridiculous. The reason is because we've broken our brains through the inappropriate use of technology. That's it. Endless summer escapes start here. Travel the worlds of Netflix. IRL, inspired by fan favorites like Stranger Things and Squid Game. Brave the upside down, face off with the front man. Play leveled up arcade games, shop exclusive merch, and enjoy themed food and drinks. Beat the heat. Play, eat, and shop on repeat at Netflix House at Galleria Dallas. Bring your crew and save. Get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house. How do you feel about the pill? I wasn't. Have you read? The Louise Perry book? Uh, yeah, but the birth control pill. And part of it is sort of the social consequences of the sexual revolution. There's a lot of Louise Perry stuff. I'm more interested in the effect of hormonal birth control on how it affects attraction and relationships between men and women. And there's some very provocative, provocative studies that show, for example, that women who go on hormonal birth control in adolescence and don't go off until after they're married are spontaneously not attracted to the men that they're married to. And they go off for the first, it changes your, yeah, because you're attracted to different men. If you don't ovulate, you're attracted to a certain kind of male during ovulation and during periods of non-ovulation. And that makes perfect sense for childbearing, you know, to get pregnant or to have a nurturer or whatever it happens to be. What is the, what are they, what are they suppressing? Are they suppressing more alpha male? Yeah. So if you, when you're not ovulating, you're. A fake term alpha male, but. Yeah, yeah. When you're, when you're more attractive, women, on average, once again, people's, people's results vary. Arthur, as a guy who's made a lot of money on stereotypes, shut your mouth. Dude. Yeah, but it's good. Listen, it made you a lot of money. It ends my career. Whatever you, this is, that's the land acknowledgement of sociology. This is, this is not for everybody. Most people. Overlapping distributions of male. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bell curve, et cetera, et cetera. So, so what you'll find, what are we talking about here? We're talking about the pill. The pill and what women are attracted to. And pretty interesting stuff. Well, in studies, they, when you're, when women are not ovulating, they're, they're, they're more interested in men who are less prototypically hyper-masculine when they are ovulating to men who are more prototypically masculine. And so what'll happen is they start ovulating for the first time in years and years and years and years. They'll find they're attracted, they're married to somebody to whom they're not as attracted as they thought they were. Yeah. It's a disconcerting thing when you want to get pregnant for the first time, three or four years into your marriage. Yeah. It's what, and, and again, this shouldn't be shocking to anybody. If you mess with your hormones. There's going to be a price, you know, there, and, and again, there are all kinds of good reasons to mess with your hormones. I mean, hormone replacement for post-menopausal women can be a miracle for a lot of people. Hormone replacement therapy for some men can really change the quality of life in a very positive way. But the truth is there's no lack of secondary consequences. Well, yeah, it's the Thomas Sowell quote. There's no, no free lunch. There's no solutions. There's only trade-offs. Exactly right. Which is like, nailed it. Yeah. All right. So you do all these things. You go to the gym, go to. Go to the church. You go to, you shower. You. I shower every day. It's part of my protocol. You try to work your, you try not to get on your phone. Yeah. And it's, it's, you're playing defense against yourself. I'm playing, playing defense, defense against my natural melancholy, against my natural melancholy, which, you know, gets in the way of my life. What do you, wait, well, it's, isn't it making your life better? Or the melancholy's getting in the way? Well, yeah, I mean, and the truth is melancholics. It's funny because there's a, I'm, I'm a mad scientist, which means high negative affect. High negative affect is actually implicated for a lot of people in ruminative sadness. And there's very provocative research about what ruminative sadness looks like physiologically that's involved. You're like, you're looking at it. Rumination per se, many, everything in neuroscience is contested because it's such a new field. I wanted to mention that. The reputation crisis, they, they, a lot of these studies that you go, oh, when you stand like Superman. And you get confident they can't replicate the study, meaning they, it worked once. But so, so I try to stay away from any research that hasn't been replicated. If it's too new, I don't generally write about it. I don't generally talk about it in my column or write about it in my research because I want it to be, I want it to be replicable, but still everything's legitimately contested, especially neuroscience. Cause it's a new field. 30 years ago, almost no universities had neuroscience departments and now they all do because this is the black box. This is the thing that we really all want to. Understand, but it's still a black box that said rumination, which it involves according to really pretty good and provocative research, a part of the ring called a ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, VLPFC for short. And it's not just about ruminative sadness, which is probably evolved so that you can solve problems and don't make the same mistake twice. Like, uh, yeah, I made a mistake. I'm so stupid. Or you make it over and over and over. Yeah. Yeah. Or you can get into a maladapted cycle, which is why when you, when you, when you, when you raise serotonin in the synapse, it lowers activity, ruminative activity in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex. Here's the unintended second, if you raise, if you raise serotonin, so if you take a serotonin, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, Prozac, what it does is it reads, it leaves more serotonin in the synapse of the brain. And that's correlated with less activity in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex. According to these, a lot of these studies, I haven't seen it because I haven't done it. I haven't done fMRI studies on this myself. I've just seen it in the research. Now that's great because you're going to be less maladapted and you're, and you're ruminative sadness. I'm so stupid. Nobody loves me, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is there's other kinds of rumination that it also appears to eradicate. For example, when you're falling in love, you're ruminating on the other person. This is why a lot of people on, on, on mood, on mood adapters on who are taking mood drugs, psychiatric drugs for, for, for depression. It's hard to fall in love. I don't know why. I don't know why I can't fall in love. And that's because they can't ruminate on the other person. People will often say when I'm taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, I feel less creative. Why? Because creativity is rumination. You know, when you're preparing one of your Netflix specials and you're ruminating, you're using that part of your brain. I wrote Chappelle show on Zoloft. Did you? Good. Yeah. Imagine how good it would have been if you weren't on Zoloft. Oh man, Arthur. That thing would have been so much better. You might have also been, you know, suicide risk and it's, it's not consistent. I've written good, great stuff on Zoloft and not, and this is again, none of this is an argument to not take your meds. Yeah. What this suggests is that these are, these are marginal effects that people actually will experience. But there, once again, there's no free lunch is what it comes down to. I stopped ruminating from psychedelics. I believe. It really helped your brain, huh? Yeah. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. But the, the, I stopped ruminating. So I, I ruminate so little now. It's like, I don't have a personality. So is it hurt your creativity? I don't know. I, all I know is I used to, I, I, my entire personality was a rumination. The whole thing was a rumination. It might, I don't know, I still write jokes. So it's like. You do write jokes. But the whole thing, the whole thing was a rumination, my whole, and I'm, it's, it's fascinating that it's gone. Right. And, and I wonder like, I wonder. There's another explanation too, by the way. Go. Age. Okay. So what you find is that. Neuroticism. No, cause that's what I was telling Dan Harris who says hello. I didn't. Oh yeah. He's awesome. He's the most soulful atheist I've ever met. I didn't, we didn't even get that far. I think that guy's fantastic. He is great. And, uh, but I said eight, I think some of this stuff just dissolves. Yeah. Yeah. So neuroticism dramatically declined. So there's four, there's five aspects of personality. Yeah. There's openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And they all change as you get older, mostly for the better. It's one of the reasons that people tend to have better, better. What goes up? What goes down? So openness to experience goes up and then goes down. And so in your mid fifties, you're almost at the age where you're going to say. That's where that you get, you get real racist in your fifties. Where you're less likely to want to ride a scooter, right? That's one. Yeah. that'll stay kind of where it is. people are just naturally open to experience but almost everybody has a decline in their openness to experience i yeah so you have you have more neophobia and less neophilia right is what it comes down to so that's one and that's neither good but i i i'm joking about the racism thing but i think there's something to it i don't want to i don't want to hear your new pull it newfangled political opinions no i'm not but i'm saying like old people get i also think it's physical in that like you can fall yeah and break your hip and you're done yeah yeah yeah you're you're not gonna bungee jump when you're 70 if the if you have bad osteoporosis yes because you're not stupid okay so so for sure but that was neither positive nor negative that's that's that's value free in its way because it doesn't really correlate very well with happiness and you know different strokes extroversion has two parts to it it's assertiveness and gregariousness assertiveness is you know i i ordered mashed potatoes and you brought me french fries i want mashed potatoes you're way more likely to be assertive as you get older that checks your way less likely to be gregarious which is party totally tonight totally right and so the gregariousness goes down the assertiveness goes up right interesting as you get older so that's how extroversion extroversion changes it doesn't it doesn't rise agreeableness goes up in almost everybody does it make can i ask on uh gregariousness are old people not what you know there's like it doesn't that fly in the face of like there's a loneliness epidemic and then there's a loneliness epidemic and then there's a loneliness epidemic and then there's a loneliness epidemic and then there's a loneliness epidemic meaning yeah if old people like meaning yeah if old people like they don't want a social yeah well i mean of course when your they don't want a social yeah well i mean of course when your gregariousness goes down if you actually gregariousness goes down if you actually don't have people around you then you're going to get don't have people around you then you're going to get lonely if you've got what will happen is that lonely if you've got what will happen is that people who have a good family life will just like people who have a good family life will just like lock into their families as they get older what lock into their families as they get older what about the grandpa who's just on in the other room about the grandpa who's just on in the other room yeah that's not great that's what is that is that yeah well part of it is just well they have horrible people right they have horrible person their personalities are from another time yeah for sure and they don't get the new sound we're all that's i mean he will become less gregarious and he's just less like gregarious people actually want to have a conversation about something they've never talked about with somebody they didn't know that's what they want to do that's a pretty rare thing isn't it statistically pretty rare is that a small well that's if you're really really extroverted but gregariousness is always zero to one thing it just means more or less of course that more or less right and if you're that more or less right and if you're naturally introverted when you get older you're going to naturally introverted when you get older you're going to more likely to be shut in because you more likely to be shut in because you naturally have low gregariousness and it goes down you're naturally have low gregariousness and it goes down you're not going to want to meet anybody not going to want to meet anybody yeah become agoraphobic actually hopefully yeah become agoraphobic actually hopefully oh um so okay so agreeableness goes up because oh um so okay so agreeableness goes up because people as they get older figure out that it's people as they get older figure out that it's never worth being disagreeable it's just not never worth being disagreeable it's just not worth it the cost benefit calculations just worth it the cost benefit calculations just don't work out when you're a kid you're like don't work out when you're a kid you're like totally i'll scream because they cut my the totally i'll scream because they cut my the cut the crust off my pb and j doesn't go up cut the crust off my pb and j doesn't go up didn't you say it goes up agreeableness goes up didn't you say it goes up agreeableness goes up not disagreeableness agreeableness goes up oh so not disagreeableness agreeableness goes up oh so you stop complaining about your mashed potatoes you stop complaining about your mashed potatoes well no you'll be assertive but you're okay i'm well no you'll be assertive but you're okay i'm getting confused you won't be a dick about it getting confused you won't be a dick about it okay you'll be like no no i look i uh and you'll embarrassed your kids you'll be like excuse me excuse me excuse me i know you know yeah i ordered the mashed potatoes and you brought me french fries and the kids are like dad yeah right yeah that's agreeable assertiveness and there's more of that as you get older now some people are naturally so disagreeable they get more agreeable and they still suck right because all of these things are these things are gradations from your natural habitat from your natural personalities these are directional these are deltas right conscientious it almost always goes up it almost always goes up people become more conscientious as they get older they're more likely to to they're they're less flaky they're more likely to comply with their promises they're more likely to live up to their word you know if they say they're less likely but you know that's a slight contradiction from gregariousness right if their gregariousness is going down well they're not making promises they don't keep they're not going to say yeah i'll come next weekend to that party and they're not they won't commit to much but what they commit old people are fundamentally measurably more conscientious than young people if you're already conscientious at 30 you're going to be so awesome at 80 you're going to be so conscientious people just want to be around you because they can count on you yeah you say i'm going to do this thing you're going to do that thing your word truly is your bond yeah and it's more so as you get older and the best one of all is the neuroticism because it falls you'll find people who have borderline personality disorder that doesn't completely resolve but they're completely they're non-functional at 35 they're very functional at 55 that you'll see people generally speaking neuroticism is a freudian concept that largely refers to depression and anxiety so the mood disorders of depression anxiety bipolar perhaps but mostly it's you know these common things that a lot of people suffer from you're almost certainly going to be less anxious and almost certainly going to be less depressed it doesn't mean you're not going to be not depressed it just means less is are these uh hormonal is it testosterone is it estrogen is it is it we don't know we don't know okay because i'm because i i mean there's lots of kind of the best it's the most effective thing that's ever happened like like i don't know because i can't i'm not like well now i'm taking this and i got this it's just like i don't things just don't really upset me anymore yeah it's so good getting older it's so good getting i mean it's just like life is fundamentally better now what you find is that general happiness declines through your 30s and 40s and it tends to bottom out in your early 50s and then most people who don't have badly untreated mood disorders or substance abuse problems they they increase a ton in their 50s and 60s it's too higher than it ever was it's too as high as it was when you were a kid is when you when you're a kid then the population breaks up into two groups half and half half keep getting happier until almost the very end and the other half after about 70 start back down again and what's that look like that looks like people who don't know how to retire and interestingly you'd think it's the people who had the best lives would have the greatest likelihood in their working lives would have the greatest likelihood of being happier after 70 they're not so that's that that's a real winner's curse problem if the more success that you had in your working life the more likely you are to start down in your happiness after 70 because the party's over and people don't know how to people who've had a lot of professional success really really struggle that's kind of the that's the the the darwin effect or darwin peaked and he couldn't make any more progress and he was super depressed because even though everybody was still telling him he was a great scientist he was he felt like he was a charlatan and so i wound up having to help a lot that's why i wrote that book from strength to strength in 2022 was to figure out how to help people actually move on with their lives so they wouldn't get stuck and wouldn't be depressed so there's um carol and charles holahan who are social psychologists university texas and people they do work on the burden of high achievement people who are identified as super high achievers before the age of 20 are more likely than average to be disappointed by their lives when they're 80 not because they sucked but because it's really really hard to live up to your own expectations and sooner or later somebody's going to take the punch bowl away you're going to miss a step and you're going to feel crummy about it so you got to take measures if you're a high achiever you to make sure that as you get older and your personality is getting better now you're in your glory you're years old you're going to get like another 15 20 years where your happiness is going to rise and rise and rise but you have to take measures now to make 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neal15 for 15 off the perfect jean go on go on get you some you have another thing that i've that i've incorporated i hope you don't mind you help somebody again good um i don't mind at all you won't pay 15 bucks but still i'm on sam harris's college plan i get no laughs from you nothing you give me crumbs neil i know i'm i'm awful well here's the thing about comedians no no i've got the data on comedians yeah we don't laugh we just got two things joy from being funny or finding things funny or fundamentally different because they happen in different parts of the brain this is you know this is you will i actually forgot about this i did an mri study one time eight years ago where they would put up a new yorker cartoon without a caption right and they would say don't think of a caption and then they would go okay now i'm not thinking of a caption i'm not thinking of a caption i'm not thinking of it okay now you can think of a caption to see which part of my brain was activated and they said i my brain couldn't not yeah it was just like no i can't not think of a cap you can't not think of a caption yeah because you're super trained in that way you're super yeah and most and civilians can cannot think of a caption yeah civilians could be thinking about you know what am i gonna have for lunch stupid or something their wife like these non-comedians think about their family losers yeah um okay that's exactly right no the neuroscience of comedy is really interesting yeah it's like why the part of the brain that gets flicked by a joke like when you tell a joke which doesn't bring you happiness but brings somebody else happiness the reason is because it's not surprising you but it is surprising yes and that's a little part of the brain called the parahippocampal gyrus and then when you flick it not too much don't talk about mom dying if she died last week right not too little because this is a dad joke right and it'll groan if you flick it just right because i've given you dad jokes apparently this is the reason that no you've not even like it so you flick it and then people laugh involuntarily that's what it comes down to i mean dumb like it's a peter mcgraw has a theory called benign violation yeah that's his theory and that's the parahippocampal gyrus tweak is what a parahippocampal gyrus what i thought of was that um key and peel sketch where they do the black college football names these are 12 washing beard jones college cgief carter university of northern arizona parahippocampal gyrus university of texas and austin yes and parahippocampal would have been a good one um i'm always thinking if i had a if i had a punk band to be called parahippocampal yeah there you go limbic system um nice uh okay this the other thing that that you've espoused that i think is really valuable uh the the uh reverse bucket list yeah yeah yeah tell the tell the kids what that is arthur brooks on twitter january 10th 2025 i used to have a bucket list now i have a reverse bucket list this is where i take my worldly cravings desires and ambitions these dumb trivial desires i write them down on my birthday and i cross them out not because i'm not going to get them but because i want to manage those cravings and desires when i write them down i acknowledge that i have the desire when i cross them out i acknowledge that i will not be attached to this goal strivers this is what strivers need so i've incorporated it yeah it's working for you yeah but between that and the and the uh the low neuroticism and rumination i'm i'm sitting alone i'm basically a shut-in i have no personality i have no interest i have no so you think and part of the reason is because you defined your personality on the basis of your pathology which is a lot what a lot of people do a lot of people actually do that they'll find they think their personality is they'll define their personality with respect to the things that are wrong and and you have to read understand who you are as a person you're actually an incredibly interesting person you're not you're not less you're messed you're less messed up on the contract no i actually don't think i am i'm i'm joking that i know i'm not but i find it is interesting i know because i'm more like wow this is interesting yeah yeah for sure for sure and and a lot of people are very uncomfortable they're very uncomfortable with their level of comfort it's also disconcerting yeah i'll say that you're when you're changing for sure when your personality is changing um people when their personality changes in midlife will find they can't sign their names on checks in a way that convinces their bank oh that's so weird isn't it i i that's funny i signed something there is that thing now where you can do it with your finger yeah and it always take me a few tries because i'm like no that's not me that's not it it's just i don't want that on the on the record i know i know i know so the the reverse bucket list is the idea that you know we want to motivate ourselves by experiencing by simulating a little bit of the of the achievements of meeting the desires that we have deep in our hearts for the worldly rewards in our lives so i want to see this person i want to experience that i want to bungee jump off the mekong delta i want to meet the president of the united states i want to make my first billion whatever happens to be whatever your thing is right and we get a ferrari or something like that and then you think about it and you what you're doing is you're eliciting a little bit of the dopamine which is anticipation of reward and that's supposed to program into you it's supposed to kind of manifest in the universe which is really you're anticipating the real the reward the reward you're anticipating a little bit of the reward getting a taste if i do this i'm going to feel yeah and i got a little taste of that and then you're what you're trying to do with that bucket list is say okay i got that taste and now i want the real thing and it'll set you in search of it and it will by the way it really will motivate you but it won't make you unconsciously yeah yeah because all manifestation is is changing your own directionality all it is is changing your behavior so you believe in manifestation in a in a way well no but there is a neuroscientific base oh yeah yeah it's very clear in the research that manifestation which some goofy thing about the the universe changing you want to make a billion dollars teach a manifestation class based on neuroscience only on tick tock you're gonna have to change your phone number you're gonna be so rich i'm not i'm not doing that but the problem with that is it doesn't raise your happiness and the reason is because you're also programming into your brain the satisfaction will come when you have more and that gets back to the old booze problem look i'm finally back to the old booze problem i'm back to the old booze problem look i'm finally going to be satisfied i'm finally going to have enough sexual partners i'm finally going to have enough you know rounds at the blackjack table i'm finally going to have enough time on you know looking at instagram reels you're not you're not because that's not how the brain works the brain is completely insatiable for that so what you're suggesting to yourself is that satisfaction comes from having more real satisfaction comes from not from feeding your animal impulses mother nature is lying to you because you're you need to make that mistake to stay in the hunt so your ancestors the ancient brennans believe that they could finally have enough if they actually did more more more more more and that's what kept them in the hunt and that's why you're alive today but that didn't make them happy because mother nature doesn't care it's so funny because it's all based on no refrigeration like it's so like guys we have to update this we have to but and so here's here's the updating mechanism you can choose not the animal impulse that's incorrect but the moral aspiration that you desire the great human prefrontal cortex this meaty bulb of tissue in the front of your head 30 of your brain by weight your dog doesn't have it your dog only has animal impulses you have the choice of moral aspirations in which you stand up to your animal impulses and you do it all the time you're married a long time you've got that one but yeah i know what you mean but you're you go on tour and you know you could do all kinds of misbehavior according to your animal impulses yeah and and you don't because you don't want to do that because you've chosen to forego immediate immediate gratification for long-term outcomes that you find are morally superior and more satisfying for the end for your life and what you're basically saying is this I don't need to increase my halves. I need to decrease my wants. Your satisfaction is your halves divided by your wants. That's a better model for long-term satisfaction. And if you increase the numerator, have more, have more, have more, have more, it's very evanescent. That's the hedonic treadmill. If you decrease the denominator, it's mathematically as well as psychologically more enduring. And the reverse bucket list is lowering your wants. How do you quiet the voice that says like, you're lazy? Yeah. You're never going to quiet that voice. What you have to do is stand up to that voice. Let it yell, man. Bring it on. I can stand up to that. That's what it comes down to. And everybody thinks that we need to quiet a voice that's bothering us. No, we need to bear up against the voice that's bothering us. It's the same thing. If you have back pain, don't try to get rid of your back pain. Learn to live with your back pain. Manage it, but learn to live with it. If you're sad, don't try to eradicate your sadness. It exists for a reason. Learn about what it is, observe it, manage it, and live with it. That's the important way to actually get through life. And the same thing is true with these obtrusive, intrusive messages about who we are as people. They say, oh yeah, that's my little friend, little Neil. Yeah. Rodney Dangerfield of all people did a joke about this before he was a black guy. He had a joke about like, might wake up the pressures, pressure, the heaviness is waiting for me. Nice to have this. Sometimes I haven't talked to it. I say, hi, having it. I'm sure he was depressed. He was absolutely. And you know, my, my, my life, I'm sure yours too, is one disappointment after another, not about the things that other people are doing. On the contrary, people thrill me with their brilliance and their bravery and their moral uprightness and their kindness every single day. It's me. I'm a disappointment. Person. I say no one's disappointed me or lied to me more than I have. Totally, totally. But I have to recognize that that's a voice inside my head that says, maybe if you work a little harder, somebody will love you. You didn't earn it. Go earn it. Go earn it, buddy. That's the little voice that says that, that actually starts from where we, what we talk about. Are you living this? That's the thing is I, I. That Neil, that's why I'm going to mass every day. That's the reason that I'm praying my rosary with my wife every day. For. Help me fucking do this. Help me understand what is the nature of this and what is the truth. I want the truth. I don't mind the fact that I'm imperfect because we all are, but I do not want to be guided in my life by the lies and imperfection. I want the truth, notwithstanding what's actually going inside my head. How much of it is, do you pray for acceptance of this, of this nonsense that we all have in our head? Of course. Of just like, of course. Anytime I've done psychedelics, I, I'll go like, please help me hold onto this. Yeah. So here's the thing. And here's, here's the beautiful thing about psychedelics. We need to do psychedelics, by the way. Yeah. And here's the. You need me at church. Just to make a deal, man. Let's talk turkey. So what people who use psychedelics or people who are really religious or people who are serious meditators, what they have in common is that they recognize at the end of the day that life has suffering in it. But suffering is not the same thing as pain. Pain is a normal phenomenon that happens to you because you're alive. It's sensory or it's affective. Sensory pain has to do with nerve endings and inflammation. Affective pain is where the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex of your brain says, you don't like that. And that can come from somebody rejecting you just as much as it can come from touching a hot stove. Those two parts go together. They can be separated. But the whole point is that those parts of pain have kept you alive. Pain is your friend. Pain is your friend. Because it's a signal. That's something you need to pay attention to. Suffering isn't the same thing as pain. Suffering equals your pain multiplied by your resistance to your pain. And that's what you learn, which a lot of people tell me they learn because I've never taken psychedelics, when they take psychedelics. And that's what I learned through my religion. And that's what I learned working with the Tibetan Buddhists, which I've done over the past 13 years. Well, that's what I was going to say. It's like significantly more Buddhist than Catholic. Well, except that the Christian faith, worships a man who didn't resist his pain. And so, therefore, was in bliss and union with God. His pain was enormous. His suffering was lower by the end because his resistance went away. I think he was high on self-satisfaction. They don't know what they're. Forgive them. These animals don't even know what they're doing. Was that a thunderclap in the background for when Neil just said that? No, it wasn't. But the whole point is that we need to learn. Guy had a superiority complex and I'm sick of it. He needs his crosses. He needs his logo everywhere. Go ahead. Feeling nervous. This is even worse than talking about gender differences. Instant cancellation. So, most people don't need better technique at lowering pain. They need to learn to lower the resistance to pain. So, even when pain is inevitably high, suffering isn't. My mother-in-law. My mother-in-law, when she was dying, I was very close to my mother. I was closer to her than I was to my own mother. She lived her whole life. I'm sure your mom loved that. Go ahead. She died young. My mother-in-law died in 93. And so, I knew her a lot better too. And I've been living off and on in Barcelona for the past 35 years. And so, this is. And she was 93 years old and she had been bedridden for a bunch of years. And she was super happy, even though she was in constant physical pain, because she was non-resistant to it. She understood the nature of actually what it meant. And again, I mean, there are times. There are times when you need to lower the pain. I mean, there are times when things actually hurt and you should take an analgesic. Take some Tylenol. Don't be an idiot. I got it. Or if somebody's hurting you, then get away from the person who's hurting you. Abuse is no good. But there are times when you can't. There are times when life just dishes it out. And under those circumstances, you have to have the wherewithal. You have to have the inner strength, the inner equanimity to be able to say, okay, non-resistance, non-resistance. And that's when you said, I need to embrace this thing. Because you were in a state of profound non-resistance. You wanted to understand exactly what it meant because you could. Because your pain was high and you wanted to hold it and understand it because your resistance was low. And so, therefore, your suffering was not unbearable in this moment. Yeah. And then where does that become masochism? Well, that can become masochism when you actually want the pain. Because, by the way, that church you go to is full of masochists. Dude, try it again. You got to come back. Come back to it with an open-minded heart. I just don't. It's like Irish. Like, I know it. I know you've suffered. No, no. I'm not even saying, like, suffered. I'm just saying the martyrdom is the, you know, the. Yeah. Who doesn't feel a religion with no martyrs? But part of it is also finding your way to an adult understanding of a very, very complex phenomenon, like any faith. Mm-hmm. As opposed to the third-grade version that was ingrained. It was ingrained into us that it doesn't make sense. This is one of the reasons that people in their 40s and 50s are more likely to be more religious than people in their 20s and 30s. Because you get to the point where you're your age or 10 years old or my age, and you're like, yeah, well, nothing makes sense. Right. It's like. Why not get something from it? Newsflash. Nothing makes sense. Why not get invited to the after party? Life is messed up. It's all nonsense. I mean, this book of Job in the Bible is all about, like, I did everything right, and you made me suffer. Why? And God's answer to Job in the whirlwind, he gets to talk. Like, Job puts God in the dock. Chapter 38 of Job is like, you killed all my livestock, and I was your boy. I did everything right. And you're throwing dice with Satan? Yeah. And you say that, you know, you're going to do all these terrible things to me, and I'm going to keep up the faith. It's like, that's not right. And God said, he says, tell me why. And God says this. He says, well, you know, sure. Of course I'll tell you why. You're so smart. I'll tell you exactly why you suffered. As soon as you tell me why I put the stars in the sky. You're so smart, you must know. The truth is, it's a mystery. This is a mystery. You're comfortable with that mystery when you have the open aperture of the psychedelic experience. The mystery is like, yeah, yeah. I am open to this mystery. Whereas most of the time, we're like, no, it doesn't make sense. I don't like it. My psychedelic experience is more, it's so much. I'm telling you, I haven't done it. Yeah, no, my psychedelic experience is, you're not off. It's just more awareness. Yeah. And it's like, not even really like. Capturable and narrative. It's not like, oh, and then this happened. It's not, there's no parables. There's no, as an observer. It's, yeah, no, I, again, that's my, my issue with whatever. I'm not, I'm not mad at, I'm really not mad at any religion. Cause I think it's all the same thing. I think it's regional. I think it's, I think it's, but we're all dealing with a lot of pain. We're all dealing with a lot of pain and a lot of that, the things that we can change, we should change. But the divine will in every religion is the whole idea of not just giving in to the divine will, but embracing the divine will thy will be done. Not mine and almost every religion that's lowering resistance such that you can actually bear up under the suffering and where the suffering itself that it still exists is a profound source of meaning. How, what do you tell yourself in moments of suffering? Uh, in moments of suffering, ordinarily I have to diagnose whether or not I am, I'm resisting. The first thing I ask is, okay, what are you resisting? See, here's the thing, super strivers, your audience, people who are really want to make out, taking a big, big, big bite out of life, they have this superstitious belief generally. speaking that if i worry about things that i can't actually change i'll somehow change if i worry enough if i'm anxious enough i'll be able to change the gears in the universe if i'm concerned enough about this thing that i actually can't change and they feel irresponsible almost bereft if they're not giving enough mental energy to it and that's just another form of resistance i do that all the time and that's what you're looking the the one of the things i regret most is worry yeah for sure you don't for sure change i know anything and so that's one of the things that i do so when i'm actually suffering a lot i say okay probably there's i know there's a source of pain but what i need to examine is my resistance to that pain what am i doing with respect to my resistance to that pain and that's where the expertise actually comes in that's really very interesting that's why i've written about different ways to alleviate anxiety not by eradicating the anxiety but understanding the biological basis of it being able to change how you deal with it by lowering your resistance in very very organic and natural ways and that's the first thing that i do that's the first thing that i do is i take my suffering as high as i just i i stare right at my resistance okay what am i doing wrong here so you don't you're more you you just turn from the pain to the resistance well sometimes i sometimes do take advil well yeah but you know what i mean like like the yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but i'm not you don't worry about the actual problem you worry about your interpretation of it yeah i mean i do try to solve the problem when i can and when i can't i try to stop resisting don't solve them that's not my problem do not solve your wife's in a way see that's funny because that's uh your marriage is a problem you can't solve because your marriage is a complex right hemispheric problem that's so fucking funny that a marriage you can't solve problem you can't you can't solve you can only live with it and understand by the way that's why you love your marriage because you can't solve it like you can fix your car that's the difference between it's a detente you'll never solve your cat you could solve a mechanical cat a mechanical cat won't satisfy you like a real cat my wife loves cats does she yeah yeah the reason she loves cats is because they don't have solution because they're alive because they satisfy something in the right hemisphere of her brain and you could give her a mechanical cat and she wouldn't like it and that's what a lot of the modern world is doing it's giving us a bunch of mechanical cats when we want real cats it's giving us solutions ai the internet googleable questions and what we really want is to live with and sit with the things that we can't solve we can only love endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house my wife had questions i know we got to wrap up you uh arthur says that um love requires will not just feeling yeah but we built an entire therapeutic culture around emotional authenticity as the arbiter of relational validity yeah if it feels wrong it is wrong how do you argue against that to someone or people who've been doing it for 20 years never lied to you you're not your feelings you're a person with feelings and and the truth is your feelings are liars liars liars sometimes they're not lying but they lie a lot why because they send an alarm up assume that they're lying yeah i mean you should you should at least be open to the idea that they're lying you should always be very suspicious of your feelings your feelings will tell you that if that person leaves you you're gonna die and you're never gonna find happiness ever again that's a straight-up lie the reason for that is because the that's the reason why i'm not going to lie because i'm not going to lie because i'm not going to lie that part of your limbic system of your brain makes you very averse to be being abandoned you have to be averse to being abandoned otherwise you'd be friendless divorced and fired within a week because you'd say everything that you think it's a self-defense mechanism is that belief that you're actually going to die if that person leaves you that lie actually keeps you alive but that lie is also holding you back and that's the kind of skepticism that you actually need it's that's a i mean there's a there's billions of people that would fight you on that i know my feelings are not i know i think that people think their feelings are like the most authentic from god they're the most real thing they're not that's the limbic system of your brain produces the emotions in your head which are a physiological phenomenon that's telling you that there's a threat or an opportunity that you have perceived at the at the very very present moment in your life and that's the kind of skepticism that you primal level with you know that you've perceived through the the the the most reptilian parts of your brain in the back of your head they send signals saying threat or opportunity these are translated into emotions that are positive or negative saying approach or avoid that's what it is that's what your emotions are they're very important pieces of information but don't take them you shouldn't take them more seriously than you do cnn they might be right they might be wrong yeah but it's it's but people use them for for advantage they misuse their emotions for for selfish reasons people also trust the news oh like a political oops everybody knows you're republican i'm not a republican i'm an independent since i was a lad that's uh that's a podcast for republican independent that's uh i'm that's in hollywood the samuel libertarian oh let's sure you are vince vaughn you're you're regonite yeah um uh what's the most important thing your happiness research tells us about romantic love that the self-help industry is actively suppressing probably similar to the other answer but yeah so that's a good one because we're about to do this big marriage retreat there's a lot that actually goes into it um that men and women want the same thing that men and women actually want the same thing that's the lie that more and more and more people are actually telling you and that's a big that's a that's a myth propagated by you know women think that men are just fundamentally masculine women and men thinking that women you know they just want lots and lots and lots of sex but they're repressed and that they're just feminine men and men and women are one of the most beautiful things in life is that we're different yeah not that we're secretly the same gary shanling one time said they're not just different they're the opposite sex yeah it's not just different there's no the opposite yeah of what you are yeah and that's a beautiful thing because we want to be completed not copied you should want to be completed and you can only be completed by people who are not you you can't be completed by something that you already have do you think people know the ways in which they want to be completed no and that's one of the things that you learn through the voyage the the journey the adventure the unsolvable problem yeah marriage most relationship is by of advice is essentially conflict resolution jargon yeah but you seem to be saying something more radical that the goal isn't a a relationship where you fight better it's a relationship organized around something beyond the two of you yeah i believe that we you should want your your marriage to be an intended to the divine that's not just getting to the line of scrimmage you know and so a lot of very few people actually go to marriage counselors and say this marriage is great we just want it to be more than great they say we have a problem i mean you don't go to a cardiologist and say that old ticker is doing great yeah you say i think i have a problem you do if you're very rich but you're very rich go to the mayo clinic for once over but but that's not typically what we what we do we think of we think of uh the entire therapeutic industrial complex as being remediation and that's the wrong way to think about that that's the wrong way to think about the relationship there are a lot of couples who are just fine but it can be great so you know protocols eye contact tons and tons and tons of eye contact will get you down this down the field having more fun praying and and and and together or reading together i've heard you say praying or reading are you are you compare are you dividing and conquering what you're praying for like hey you pray for uh no no it's just it's basically well it sort of depends on what tradition you come from right so people meditate together people actually pray the rosary together like my wife and i do people read to each other does much the same thing and then touching touching touching touching even when you don't want to be touching men need that more than women do and they don't know it women need more eye contact and men don't need more eye contact and then touching touching touching even when you don't want to be touching eyes eyes eye contact eye contact eye contact and that women have three times as much oxytocin blood circulating oxytocin as men do which means they need more sources of oxytocin a lot of it comes from eye contact with somebody that you actually love the best way that men can make their a good marriage great is every time you talk to her you're staring her in the eyes not in a creepy way it looks kind of freak her out at first but she's gonna be like i don't know why but i just feel like we're so much closer you fool there's a whole bunch of things that you can actually do to make a good marriage great is to make a good marriage great is to make a good man yeah they're not a hundred dollars an hour you know that's not that there's anything wrong with a great therapist either but the whole point is think about it as a way to think about it as the gym not as physical therapy think about all the things that you do to actually get stronger feeling better yeah and preventative too well preventative and or just like you know and then if you're guns out if you are if you are like my wife couldn't care less so that it think about your if you can if you're at all religious think about your marriage as a connection to god and then the reason that that's really important is because when you don't love her you're denying her god's love and vice versa and then the stakes are higher and more beautiful and just more wonderful um i don't think i have any further questions you rest your case i rest your case your honor um the the the the prosecution rest uh it was great man i really appreciate the um it's a good show you're doing a good job uh this isn't even really the format but but we we did it for you um the the i i appreciate the the stuff that you can do i like have things that i've heard yeah and going like okay i'll try it yeah um so it's you're helping thank you so you are too you make me laugh a lot get your plumage out you're you're you're i hope that i hope you feel full because it it's helpful thank you i love icon it's like thank you yeah you start you're like staring at her when you're like why are you looking at me i kind of right yeah and then as long as when you're when you're sitting together on the couch watching tv she should always have her hand on you i agree with i think i'm like people think i'm too touchy yeah people think she needs to touch you she needs to touch you unbidden non-sexual touch sexual can i grab her i mean you can except that it's just like i want you so i'd say to her i want you to touch me more i want you to touch me when we're walking i want you to take my hand when we're sitting on the on the couch i want you to touch i want you to have your hand on my arm or on my hand or on my leg i want you to be touching me i need you to touch me more arthurbrooks.com it's fifteen dollars you the website itself is free by the way like most of the internet yeah yeah yeah um tons of resources on there lots of lots of tests to take that are free and all kinds of cool stuff arthur brooks thanks man thank you appreciate it you