Ever wonder what happens to your brain when you're in the throes of romantic love?

Yeah, you get really stupid and decide to get married.

Yes, you do get really stupid, but the neuroscience translation of real stupid is you get deactivation of the amygdala.

Your fear area is not as active.

Dr.

Wendy Suzuki, welcome to Particles of Thought.

Thank you so much, I'm so happy to be here.

I am happy you're here because I am diagnosed DSM-5 Cluster C, social anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Social anxiety disorder, you?

Oh, absolutely.

Really?

Oh yeah, we'll get to that later, but I gotta talk to you about something.

Okay.

'Cause I hear you talk about good anxiety.

I do.

I do.

In my experience, it's not good.

We're gonna transform that today.

All right, so tell me about good anxiety.

So good anxiety is the idea that anxiety evolved in us to protect us.

That's what happened 2.5 million years ago.

It was there to protect us from being eaten by those lions.

And today the issue is, it is a problem.

High levels of anxiety, that high level of anxiety doesn't help anybody.

And so the idea behind good anxiety is to get back to that core purpose of anxiety, to use it to protect us.

It really— the purpose of anxiety is to be the gap between uncertainty and action.

That is what anxiety is really there to serve you for.

So I heard someone say that had to do with sort of, you know, mental engineering, mind management, that when you're a person who feels anxiety, that in the brain, correct this thing that I read, 'cause I don't know that it's been verified, that the feeling of excitement and the feeling of anxiety are, kind of manifest the same way in the brain.

So just tell yourself you're excited.

That's a real thing?

Yeah, absolutely.

Anxiety is an activation in the brain.

And you could use that activation to focus on how bad you feel.

I'm scared, focus on that scared feeling.

Or you can use that activation for good, to be more productive, to answer all those things that are uncertain in your life.

And so a lot of what I wrote about in my book "Good Anxiety" is about those techniques to harness that activation energy.

So that part is absolutely correct, but how do we harness it to make our lives better?

That is what your anxiety is actually there to help you do.

So do you have an accompanying workbook to your book so that you people can teach?

'Cause you know, that's how a lot of this mental stuff is done now, right?

Through workbooks.

So is there a method to teaching people to harness their anxiety?

Yes, there is.

There's a 3-step method.

The first step is to acknowledge, look, I'm not saying that suddenly it will transform.

Most of our anxiety levels are too high to be really helpful.

So you have to learn how to turn the anxiety down.

And those are science-backed techniques that you could use.

Moving your body, exercise is one.

Breath meditation.

I don't know if you realize how powerful just breathing deeply is because it activates a part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system.

So parasympathetic nervous system is your natural de-stressing nervous system.

I bet you so many people don't even know that everybody has that.

Let me interrupt right now because when you started saying that, I started taking deep breaths, as I bet many listeners did, and I started feeling more relaxed.

Well, that is— so there's a lot of things that happen when your parasympathetic nervous system gets activated.

Your heart rate slows down.

Your respiration naturally slows down.

What happens is blood is shunted from your muscles, because you're often ready to run or fight, that fight or flight response, and it's shunted to your digestive and reproductive organs so that you get ready for those weekend activities, you know, eating brunch and having sex.

So those are the weekend activities.

But that's literally physiologically what happens.

And so I can't say, okay, Hakeem, slow your heart rate down right now.

But I can invite you to breathe in and breathe out slowly.

And just a couple of rounds of that, It shifts the energy even just right there.

That is the power of using this meditation breathwork, the oldest form of meditation ever.

That's what was first used by the oldest monks is breathwork to calm ourselves down.

That is a surefire way to immediately turn the volume down.

So that's step 1.

That's step 1, yeah.

Step 2, so now you're a little bit calm.

Anxiety is never going to go away.

Right.

One thing that's really important to understand is people want to get rid of anxiety.

Wendy, please just get rid of all the anxiety.

But that would be a huge mistake because you know what is eliminated when you eliminate anxiety?

You eliminate motivation, you eliminate attention, and you eliminate new learning.

That is not what you want to eliminate because those things are the things that put you into action and make you adaptive in the first place.

So that is— you don't want to do that.

So you want to turn the volume down on your anxiety so you can still use that activation energy.

And here's step 2.

What is your anxiety telling you about yourself?

And more importantly, what is it telling you about what you hold dear?

Oh, I'm traumatized.

That's what it's telling me.

No, no, no.

Well, yes, okay, but maybe you're traumatized about chaos, okay?

And that actually says that you value calm.

You value calm in your life.

There's always a flip side to these things that anxiety are pointing out.

And I think that is so helpful because it is a beautiful way to remind yourself what you hold dear.

Now, you're never anxious about that Netflix series that you didn't finish watching, right?

You're not anxious about that.

You are anxious about your personal relationships, about your job, about money.

Where's that next paycheck coming in, right?

That, it makes sense because that is about your stability, about your personal relationships, the love in your life.

And thought about that way, it's like, oh, that's a beautiful reminder of what I'm headed towards, what I wanna improve in my life.

And it is a mindset shift.

But it's very, very important to realize that anxiety is there to point out and point you towards those things that you value in your life and in your world.

Man, what a perspective change you just gave me, right?

That's amazing.

So do we get to number 3?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

So step number 3 is my favorite step.

So now you've turned the volume down, you've realized, oh, it's reminding me about something important.

Step 3 is to shift your anxiety into action and make it a superpower.

So, oh, superpower, how could that be?

I'm just trying to track down— No, I get that one.

Yeah, yeah.

No, no, no, I don't get that one for anxiety, I get that one for OCD.

Okay, okay, okay, let me give you the superpower for anxiety.

Yeah.

Two of my favorite examples.

Example 1, did you realize that your anxiety can be a superpower of productivity?

Do you wanna be more productive in your life?

Yes, you do.

Yeah.

Everybody does.

Yeah.

So here's how it works.

A very common form of anxiety is that what-if list.

What if I didn't ask the right question?

What if, you know, I missed the perfect opportunity to say that one thing?

Everybody has those what-if lists.

For me, it comes up right before I'm gonna go to sleep, and I'm looking forward to sleep, and it's gonna come, and bing, all these things that came up.

I'm awake.

Yeah, I'm awake.

So here's what you do.

You take each one of those what-if lists, focused in your anxiety.

Remember, they are pointing you towards things that are important.

They're about your job, about making your job better, about performing better, about being a better person.

And you take action on each and every one of them.

You write a list down and you say, okay, that email didn't work well.

You rewrite that email.

You ask 3 people about that.

You didn't get that point in the conversation.

You study that part of the interview and you say, next time when I see that opening, I'm going to ask that perfect question.

And you just put that in your arsenal, whatever works for whatever you are doing.

It has transformed the way that I use that what-if list.

It was just annoying to me, like it is to so many people.

I started it, I started making it a productivity tool in my life.

So that is the simplest.

Take action.

Yeah.

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What you described is not what often happens with people that have anxiety.

What often happens is you go to a doctor and they prescribe you an SSRI, right?

And what that makes me think is, is that, you know, we think of like serotonin or dopamine as being happy chemicals or the lack of them as being unhappy chemicals.

So when anxiety occurs in the brain, is it a particular anxiety chemical or lack of anxiety chemical?

Like what happens physiologically, chemically in the brain, that gives us anxiety?

And is it multiple things that give us anxiety?

Yeah, yeah.

So many things that come in, a text, an email.

No, no, I meant chemically in the brain.

Yes, yes.

Okay.

So, so, but, but those are the external factors that stimulate that in the brain.

So what happens in the brain?

So anxiety launches the fight or flight response, that stress response.

So the major chemical—Is that adrenaline?

Adrenaline and cortisol.

And cortisol.

Cortisol comes in and it is basically activating all those things that get suppressed by the parasympathetic nervous system.

So parasympathetic puts your heart rate down.

Adrenaline and cortisol pump your heart rate up.

Why?

Because you're getting ready to either fight or run away, that ancient fight or flight response.

So your heart rate goes up, your eyes widen up so you can see everything, your breath gets shallow and fast rather than slow and deep.

Back in your brain, the cortisol is the stress hormone and it is basically suppressing activity.

It goes into my favorite brain area called the hippocampus.

Critical for your ability to form and retain new memories.

High levels of cortisol, bad memory.

When you're really too nervous and your anxiety is way too high, when you have to go on stage and give a speech, you forget.

Why?

Because the cortisol is acting on your hippocampus.

So we use these words like cortisol, right?

I think most people are familiar with it.

Yeah.

Where does that chemical come from?

Is there like particular glands or—cells that excrete it?

Absolutely.

Cortisol's excreted by the adrenal gland, and it goes through the body, but it also passes into the brain, and it has many, many receptors throughout the brain.

I mentioned the ones in the hippocampus.

Also, it acts on the prefrontal cortex.

And one of the things that happens when you have high levels of cortisol and high levels of stress is that your emotional part of the brain, the amygdala, gets disconnected from your control part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.

So it's severing those connections.

So your amygdala can run amok in those stressful periods.

And it— I think a lot of people can feel that, you know, in those periods where you're really, really stressed, it's hard to control those emotions.

And you don't have that wherewithal to say, "How come I didn't respond better?'

Well, because higher levels of cortisol are doing that to your brain.

You're reminding me of my PhD defense.

Yes, yes.

I was asked a very simple question.

I was just like, uh.

Well, that is what happens to everybody.

And that's a beautiful example of, you know, you had a lot of activation energy.

You were ready for that, for anything.

But if it goes over the optimum period, the optimum level of cortisol, of adrenaline coursing through your body, then it starts to break down and your memory stops working, your prefrontal cortex, your ability to focus on things stops working very well.

But that same anxiety at its optimum point, was there the best talk you ever gave in your whole life.

We always remember that.

That is what good anxiety is giving to you.

So, so it's just you have to get it away from the other side of that U-shaped curve.

So this brain processes of parts connecting and disconnecting reminds me of something that isn't really anxiety.

Yeah.

But it's a strong emotion.

And that is when people become enraged, right?

So people become so enraged that they'll commit manslaughter, for example.

So is it a similar thing occurring where brain parts get disconnected?

Yes.

I mean, high levels of stress in those, in those periods.

Yeah.

Will, will absolutely cause this disconnection of control from the prefrontal cortex down onto the amygdala.

So absolutely.

Is there something that you can do that when you're not feeling anxious, to make those anxious moments occur less frequently, right?

Like, you know, somehow you could take a medicine and have fewer outbreaks, right?

Or another thing that is related to anxiety is the panic attack.

Which is full of physiological symptoms.

So, you know, are those, is a panic attack essentially the same thing physiologically and neurochemically?

So those are two questions, but please address them as you see.

Okay, so let me start with the anxiety question.

And is there something that you could do to kind of take your medicine, stave off your anxiety attacks?

And I would say yes in the following way.

That I think it's important for each and every one of us to really know what brings us joy, what decreases our anxiety, not in a terrible moment, but makes us laugh.

And so one of the things that I tried to do in my book "Good Anxiety" is the last third of the whole book is a whole toolbox of all the things, science-based things that you can do to turn the volume down in your anxiety.

But these are things that you could practice, you know, in real life.

And both practice them and make sure that they're readily available because they include things like call your funniest friend because laughter is so important.

But then there's a variation of that.

Find the funniest movies that will make you laugh every time.

Have them, you know, right there ready after a meeting.

I've done that.

I've done that.

When I've had some tense times, I'm like, "I need to watch a comedy."

Exactly.

Exactly.

What music puts you in different moods?

That is such a powerful thing.

Ask yourself, if you were gonna give yourself the best day or the best vacation, the best hour that you could give yourself right now, what would you do for yourself?

Beautiful question to ask.

So you know what, I heard an interview not long ago, and the person was talking about how we take in experiences.

And they said that when they interviewed people who say went on vacation or went on whatever, they noticed that the vacation improved you, improved your brain, happiness, whatever, and then it stopped, right?

And they say that if you ask people, oh, what was the best this, the best that, they always start a sentence with, the first time I saw the mountains, the first time I saw— So what is it about those first times that make it kind of dull after a little while?

Well because, this goes back to how our memory system works.

Memory is best for the first and the last things that we experience.

So nostalgia.

Yeah, aha, yeah, the very first time and then the most recent time.

It's called the primacy and the recency effect.

And certainly the primacy effect is also playing a role in another emotion that we haven't talked about, which is awe.

So awe comes with an extraordinary— we just had the space launch, the Artemis.

I mean, that is awe.

All those people going out to Cape Canaveral, they wanted to see fellow humans going, you know, to this place that they will never go probably.

And to be there for that, you know, it is an awe-inspiring event.

And we don't get that very often in our lives.

And part of that is the first.

And I'm sure if they go to five, these rocket launches don't happen all that often anyway, but part of that awe is that first, the first meteor shower, or I remember the first time I saw the Northern Lights.

Same, yeah.

Yeah, in Lapland.

I was at a meeting, science meeting in Lapland.

So extraordinary.

I mean, it was just like nothing I've ever seen.

Same, same.

I was in Alta, Norway, and it was freezing, but I stayed out there.

I stayed out looking at the sky.

I was inside.

I looked at it through the window so I was comfortable, but it was still very, very beautiful.

The first kiss.

That's the one that everyone talks about.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So what is it, the same chemicals that are— it was the same set of chemicals just acting on different parts of the brain that give you happy, awe, nostalgia.

So the primacy is easier to understand, and maybe the same for recency, but our brain is focused on what is new because it's a safety response.

Something new could be dangerous.

So first time I see somebody new, first time I met you in the green room, you know— You were in awe?

I was in awe, yeah.

Ditto, ditto.

It was like, oh my God.

Back at you.

I will never forget that moment.

I'm with Wendy Suzuki.

Her name is poetry, right?

But our brain is focused on those first moments in case they're danger, so they get extra, like, a boost of— that is why we remember it.

And if it has something, like, awe-inspiring, like Northern Lights or a rocket launch, that is where your amygdala kicks in, because those meaningful emotional— it makes you emotional, you know, watching the rocket launch.

And so that emotion.

We also remember the happiest and the saddest moments in our life.

That is the amygdala boost to our memory.

Wow.

So amygdala, let's go back to again.

So I know hippocampus.

Memory, Amygdala.

Emotion?

Yes.

Emotion.

It's been mostly associated with the emotion of fear, but more recent studies have linked it to a wider range of emotions.

My colleague at NYU, Joe Ledoux, really put fear on the map for the amygdala, that this is— everybody has experienced what neuroscientists call fear conditioning.

So fear conditioning is— my example I always use is I lived in Washington, D.C.

when I worked at NIH, and I came home on a Sunday afternoon and turned the corner, and my door was the only one at the end of the corner.

Crowbarred in.

Somebody broke in.

That will create fear.

Yeah.

Worse than that, I walked in, I mean.

No, you didn't.

I did, because I'm like, oh my God, what did they take?

And luckily they had gone already.

You just— so back in the day, you know, when we were more racially separated, Black folks would watch movies and I hear something outside, let me stick my head out the window, right?

And then they're like, a "Black dude wouldn't do that," right?

You just did it.

You're not supposed to walk in the house.

I know, but I— that was my first, you know, break-in.

And so I walked in.

For the entire time that I lived in that place, every time I walked around the corner, I thought about that.

That is fear conditioning.

And it lasts to this day.

I could bring that back, that feeling.

And that happened 30, 32 years ago.

Wow.

Given that you're 35, that is amazing ro remember.

I was two years old when I walked around the corner.

So, but the amygdala has that, those pathways and that mechanism to take the stimulus, that is the crowbarred-in door, and link it with that fear response of that I remember, that I experienced, and bring that back.

Why?

Because it's trying to protect me from never doing the stupid thing that you just pointed out.

Don't walk into that door.

And I won't.

So does that mean that the amygdala is the fear, the hippocampus is the memory?

So somehow they make a link around that particular experience?

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

So the amygdala, I think of the amygdala as kind of... pushing the hippocampus to make that memory last for a very, very long time.

It's actually— I shouldn't say that.

They're different circuits.

Because hippocampal memories are good memories.

I mean, we will probably both remember the Northern Lights, but fear memories are different.

They are stronger.

They are dependent and based in the amygdala because they are part of our safety network.

You do not want to forget, like, never go walk into the apartment with the crowbar in.

And that is a little bit different than, it's okay if we can't remember all the memories around the Northern Lights.

All right, so we're going to play a lightning round here.

Okay.

I'm going to tell you an alleged anxiety hack.

Okay.

You rank that anxiety hack from 0 to 5, with 5 being the best, 0 being no benefit whatsoever.

Yeah.

And then tell me why.

Okay, got it.

All right.

Fidget spinners, or little things you use in your hand to, like, you know, take away your anxiety.

There's the balls, there's the fidget spinners.

Right.

Yeah.

0 to 5.

How effective are they in dealing with anxiety?

That is an interesting question.

And I think it's used in an age group that I'm not as familiar with.

Yeah.

So I'm going to be neutral and say it's a— 3?

Yeah, a 3.

Or 2.5.

I was going to say 2.5.

My bad math.

Yeah.

So I can tell you this.

So it came out in the generation of millennials.

Yeah.

And since they are so anxiety-ridden, I'm giving it a 1.

Okay.

Okay.

A caffeine nap, a short power nap after a coffee, cup of coffee.

Mm.

Yeah.

Naps can be good for anxiety and sleep is critical— used well.

Longer naps, not, not good at all for your overall sleep because what you want to do is build up your sleep pressure over the day so that your maximum sleep pressure is at night and so you have a good, long, uninterrupted night's sleep.

So longer naps will interrupt that sleep pressure, but short ones at a particular moment of particularly in anxiety could be helpful.

So yes, I'm giving that a 3.5.

3.5 only after that?

All right.

The sticky icky icky.

Oh!

Marijuana.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna say 6, but I'll give you, I'll, maybe 60, but yeah.

And you know, people talk about getting paranoid from marijuana.

So, you know, it almost sounds like it depends on the brain, but what would, yeah.

So I have a bias against marijuana because, medical or not... Oh girl, come to my church.

But I grew up in the church of the hippocampus, and the hippocampus.

You win.

You win.

All right.

No, no, no, I think you win, but let's— I will bring up the hippocampus.

The church of the hippocampus, I love it.

I love it.

And marijuana is very bad for memory and the hippocampus.

Clearly.

So, and the hippocampus is so important to keep as healthy as possible for your lifetime.

So because I wrote a whole book book that didn't include marijuana as a hack, there are many, many other hacks for anxiety.

I am going to give that one a 1.

Okay, she finally got one wrong, y'all.

Agree to disagree, Hakeem.

I am not here advocating for marijuana use.

I just want to state that.

All right, um, color theory— the idea that red is agitating, blue is calming.

Oh.

Yeah.

Is that useful?

I don't know if I would give it a high score for, you know, your anxiety, go to the Blue Room.

Right.

I think it could, yeah, I'm a 2.

You're a 2 with that.

Yeah.

Higher than marijuana.

All right, so there's allegedly this works, people, you know, based on the, what do you call the colloquial or the urban legends?

Oh yeah.

The weighted blanket.

Oh.

Yeah.

So it's interesting.

I know that it's been used in autism to help.

That is, you know, Temple Grandin's hugging machine.

Oh, interesting.

Is known to help in autism.

And that's the same kind of thing to have a— For calming?

Yeah, for calming.

Yeah.

I actually don't know the science behind blankets, weighted blankets and anxiety levels.

I do find it calming.

I've used them myself.

Yeah, yeah.

So I can't give you a science response for that.

These are kind of—Give us your swag.

Okay, yeah.

The swag response is, I'll give it a 3.5, my highest so far.

Your highest so far?

Okay, I think I might break the record with this one.

Okay.

Stroking your furry pet, like your dog.

Oh, oh, yeah.

Yeah.

5.

5.

Yeah.

I love it.

I love it.

Yeah, because it's social connection.

It's a kind of social connection.

Oh, you feel it's a connection.

Yeah, absolutely.

Wow.

Yeah.

Okay.

We have strong emotional connections to our pet.

This is true.

Clearly.

And so sometimes it's, that's the most available social bond that we have, and that is definitely common.

All right, so I'm going to give this last one.

It's not in my notes, but it's something I do all the time.

Yeah.

I love to make a fire and just sit there staring at the fire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

It's almost magical, right?

Seeing the flames.

Yes.

So is that a 4, 5, 4.5?

I'll give it a 5 too.

Oh, yes.

The stuff I love.

I'll be stroking my little doggie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In front of the fire.

So you mentioned this impact on the brain from exercise.

Yes.

And there's something I used to experience in my youth.

So I was in the military.

I was I was in the Navy and I ended up in this training program that was run by the Marines.

And we did everything Marine Corps style.

And there was a big difference in how you exercise in the Marines versus the Navy.

And what happens is sometimes we would be getting punished and they would wake us up at an ungodly early hour, 4:30 AM, and we're about to run, you know, more miles than you want to.

And every one of us was just like, had a bad attitude about it at the beginning.

Yeah.

But then at the end, we all had the same response.

Yeah.

This feels amazing.

Yeah.

Right.

After, you know, you get your second wind.

Right.

What happened in our brains?

The anticipation and then the aftermath.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You experienced the bubble bath.

The bubble bath?

The bubble bath of neurochemicals in your brain with a long run, whether it starts at 4:30, or a more godly hour, you, with that run, aerobic exercise is really upping the dopamine, the serotonin, the noradrenaline, is keeping it up in your brain for that entire time.

Not to mention the noradrenaline and the adrenaline because you need, you know, all that body power, that sugar for all of your muscles.

So that is why, you know, athletes have that great attitude and they have that motivation, that is exactly what's happening.

So outside of the chemicals, it occurs to me that, you know, when you exercise, it ramps up your heart rate.

Yes.

So is there some brain benefit just to— and you're taking deeper breaths.

Yes, absolutely.

So is there a brain benefit just to pumping more blood through your brain?

Yeah, yeah.

That has been a question that people have asked.

But not answered particularly well for a very, very long time.

So there is exercise.

It sounds like one thing because it's one word, but so many physiological things are changing.

And you can say, you're a good scientist, let's break that down.

What is that one thing?

And it— that's hard to do, to just get the heart rate pumping, somebody just stand— sitting right there.

I could tell you the other thing that is a great motivator that starts out just like your story, it's like, "Oh God, I don't want to do this," is hot-cold contrast showers first thing in the morning.

Oh yeah, I've heard of that, but I can't bring myself to do it, the cold part.

Yeah, well, if you do, you're going to have that same response that you did with running because that is one of the best, together with exercise, in fact I do them both together, to get yourself ready and pumped up for the day.

Regular hot shower, but then push on the cold at the end.

And okay, it's so painful the first time you do it, but I am to the point where sometimes I forget and I go back in the shower to give myself that cold because I like that feeling now.

And the cold baths, if you go to— I just got back from a trip to Japan where I went to these different onsens, which are the Japanese hot springs.

Yeah, the ones with the monkeys in it?

No, I didn't go to the monkey one, and I don't want to go into the bath with the monkeys, but I went to the human ones and have natural hot springs, but they often have a cold plunge there too.

Nobody ever did it.

I felt very proud.

I am the only one going in the cold plunge because it makes the hot feel so much better.

And it is— what it does is it's stimulating adrenaline being released in a very natural way.

And that is giving you energy and upping your mood.

So that is your— your task.

I'm going to do it because I'm trusting you.

Okay.

And so just one direction.

So if I take my hot shower, just turn on cold at the end?

Do I have to go back and forth?

No, I like— I mean, there's lots of ways to do it, but start with hot, regular, your regular shower, and then pump up the cold at the end.

I'm going to do it.

So how many times do I have to do it to say I have a good enough statistical sample so that I know that, you know, because if I do it the first time, I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I know that's not a good experiment.

So should I do it a minimum of how many times?

5 times.

5 times.

Yeah, do it 5 times.

I'm going to do it.

See, see.

You're going to get my word.

Okay.

Okay, good.

Yeah, I'm giving you my word.

So, you yourself practice what you preach.

So you did begin with exercise.

Yes.

So I'm guessing that means that previously you were not.

Oh, yes, I was not.

I was not.

I did something called trying to get tenure at a research institution.

I've heard of that.

Yeah, it's hard.

Yeah, it's hard.

And my strategy wasn't optimal.

I said, "Okay, I'm just gonna work all the time.

That's the only way to do it.

I'm gonna go from my apartment to my lab, gonna get takeout, gonna eat it, and then go back to lab.

And I'm gonna do that for 6, 7 years, and we'll see how it goes.

Well, you know, I tried it and found myself without any friends, and I was living in New York City.

I love Broadway.

Yeah.

Not— I hadn't been to Broadway for a long time.

I had great, you know, a relationship with the people in the lab, my students and my postdocs, but that's not friends.

That's a lab.

That's a professional setting.

And also not feeling, not feeling active because all I did was walk from work to home.

And I gave myself a vacation, so that was a good thing.

And so I went river rafting in Peru.

So it's like, oh, yeah.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

So, um, I happened to be on the trip— I went by myself because I had no friends.

So me all by myself goes on, on the river rafting trip to give myself a vacation.

And, um, I happen to be on with a whole bunch of triathletes, really, really fit people.

They were great, really friendly.

But I remember, um, we would stop at a, um, at a site.

It was usually an Inca-like, like village site, and we'd have to unload hundreds of pounds of equipment from the rafts onto the site.

So we'd form a fire line and we'd have to sit there and try.

I had no upper body strength.

And so I remember all the other people like help— pretending to help me, you know, to make it look like I was helping, but they were actually doing it all.

So I was like, okay, I'm never— You got a participation trophy.

I did.

I got a participation trophy.

And but, you know, I was out there, I was working out and I was in the sunshine.

That's so helpful for a week.

And I got back to New York and I'm like, I'm never going to feel like the weakest person on a trip ever again.

And I walked to the gym and I'm like, I signed up for the gym, the closest gym to my apartment, and I started going and it stuck.

And boy, immediately that mood boost.

I felt the bubble bath.

I didn't know what it was called yet, but it was the bubble bath.

And I think everybody in the lab noticed, like, "Ooh, Wendy's in a better mood."

She has a pep in her step!

But a year and a half later, you know, I had become a real gym rat.

And I found myself in front of my computer doing what I did a lot, writing an NIH grant.

Oh, so stress— Talk about stress and talk about anxiety.

So stressful.

I hate it.

Oh, so, so horrible.

Tell me about it.

I know.

Yes.

And but I had this thought that went through my brain that had never gone through my brain before.

This was, you know, 6 years in, 7 years in.

The thought was, gee, that session of writing went pretty well.

I'm like, "Oh, where did that come from?

"I've never felt that before.

Maybe I'm just having a good day."

But when I thought about it, it's like, you know, the writing has become better.

The only thing I changed in my life was the exercise, regular exercise.

Regular.

Well define regular.

It was, you know, I'd love to go— I went 3 times a week and then I got personal training.

I signed up for personal training too, which I loved, so much fun.

So I really went all in, and I was in the best shape of my life at that moment.

I've continued it, but it's, you know, it's different when you have a personal trainer.

I know, yeah.

And so I'm like, wait a second, my memory's better, my focus is better.

I'm studying memory in my own lab.

What's happening here?

And that's when I went back to look at the story of what we knew about the effects of exercise on brain function.

So you noticed it in yourself first, and then you turned to the literature to see if there's some scientific basis.

I did.

Yeah, it's not just my— it's not just me imagining it.

It's not just me imagining it.

And in many different ways, it was kind of like, well, like, of course I know some of these studies.

Yes, yes, this is familiar.

It was like coming home again because it turns out that my very first science experience as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley was in the lab of a professor who defined and discovered brain plasticity.

No way.

Yes.

Her name was Marian Diamond.

She was the very first female to ever get a PhD in neuroanatomy at UC Berkeley ever.

Wow.

This was probably in the 1950s.

1960, she and her colleagues made the discovery that if you raise rats in what they called an enriched environment, which for her was— I like to call it the Disney World of rat cages.

So you create this rat cage with lots of toys and lots of other rats to play with, and you change out the toys.

It's like a Disneyland for the rats.

And you let them live there and compare the brains of those rats to rats that were raised in your typical shoebox of an environment.

Small space, no toys, maybe one other rat, and, you know, they all got food and water.

You have a control group of wild rats?

No, not yet.

They tried to do that, but the wild rats rats got so wild they couldn't catch them anymore.

That's a true story.

Look that up.

But their control was the impoverished environment, so kind of typical rat environment and the Disney World of rat cages.

And so they found after 3 months, if you look at the brains of those rats, the outer covering of the brain, the cortex, actually got thicker in the rats raised in Disney World.

And so 3 months, compare that to their lifespan.

A year.

Oh, okay, so about a quarter of their lifespan.

Yeah, yeah, it was a good amount of time.

And so that was the first discovery, that the adult mammalian brain could change in response to the environment.

And that will literally make new brain cells pop up and get integrated into your memory circuits.

Wow.

Wow.

So that is positive brain plasticity.

That was going to be my next question is, could you, you know, you describe your hippocampus shrinking.

Is it possible to make it expand?

Yes.

And then there's two other activities that, you know, that seem to me to be similar to exercise.

Yeah?

One is getting some sunshine.

Uh-huh.

A second is meditation.

Yes.

Yes.

Absolutely.

So do they— So meditation, we know more about.

Meditation definitely has positive effects on brain, just your anxiety levels, brain health, mental health, I should say.

That's what the term that I was trying to think of.

And is there some known mechanism by which that occurs in the brain?

Is it particular bath of chemicals or is mysterious?

So here's the thing.

It's easy to study exercise in rats.

Rats don't meditate.

As far as we know.

As far as we know.

People have been trying to look at this, but it's hard.

They do—You guys ever get them high?

Because, you know— I don't, but yes, I hear that.

I hear that that does happen.

Because I hear that sometimes people get into this thoughtful state, you know, if I listen to Joe Rogan.

Give them some ayahuasca or something.

Well, you know, to be truthful, there are paradigms where you raise rats in a relaxed environment with good lighting and, you know, soothing sounds and things.

So they're trying, but frankly, we've come much farther with simple exercise.

So much is known about the cellular, the molecular, the hormonal effects of physical activity.

But we can still study meditation in people, and yes, it does.

Monks, for example.

We have a wonderful collaborator in the Dalai Lama who's always been fascinated in neuroscience, not meditation.

He's also been fascinated with meditation, but in neuroscience.

And so he's collaborated with famous neuroscientist Richie Davidson to do many studies.

And we know that there are physiological differences in monks that have over 10,000 hours of meditation under their belt.

And there are physical differences too.

Area 10 of the brain, right kind of behind the forehead is enhanced in these monks.

And that makes sense because the practice of meditation is really a practice of focusing and shifting your attention at will.

And that is dependent on the prefrontal cortex.

So that anatomical change makes absolute sense.

This conversation is turning out to be way more fascinating than I anticipated.

Like, holy cow.

But it's just that whole idea of of the formative environment.

The whole back to nature versus nurture thing.

It's both, and it is powerful and it's positive and negative.

And that is the agency that you talked about.

That is the learning from this conversation.

You and I have agency to choose how we give our brains either the Disney World of environments or the shoebox of environments.

Wow.

Wow.

And what if you do both like I did?

Like, I'm going— Then you get the benefits of both.

You get what it feels like in that impoverished area.

You get that empathy.

Yeah, exactly.

And you get that struggle to say, you know, and that realization, "this is not good.

This is not what is helping."

And you have this contrast now.

You get to talk to so many interesting people and such a very different— and all the perspective that you bring is a unique perspective.

Right.

Wow.

Yeah.

I love talking about the brain.

Yes.

This is so awesome.

When you talk about exercise.

Yeah.

A lot of people have incredibly, incredibly busy lives.

Yes.

And so one of the things that I did when I was in that phase of I'm going to work all the time.

Yeah.

Right.

Is I'm taking the stairs.

Yeah.

Yeah, good.

Because I know I felt like every day I don't take the stairs, I gain 5 pounds.

And to this day, I'm convinced I'm going pro in the NBA.

Okay, okay.

I'm 59 years old, but I'm just like, damn it, I'm going to go pro and I'm going to be the MVP and win the championship.

But how do you fit exercise?

How does a person who has a busy life, and some people, you walk into a cubicle and sit down, for 8 hours, right?

How do you— Well, first thing, cubicle people, that's hard to say, cubicle people, stand up.

Stand up.

Even standing for— it's actually, I've gone through periods of using my standing desk and sometimes I don't use it.

When I start, it's like, oh my God, my legs are tired after a few hours of standing.

That is one thing that anybody in that situation can do.

Taking the stairs, you know, the most common question I get asked when I give my exercise talks is, "What is the least amount of exercise that I can do, you know, to get some of those benefits?"

The minimum viable amount... Exactly, exactly.

And the answer is 10 minutes of walking will significantly lower your feelings of anxiety and depression.

That is powerful.

10 minutes of walking, anybody, even in a car society, you are walking 10 minutes and it is that plus agency.

You know this, use it strategically now, not just, oh, I have to do this, but, but oh, I have a thing where I want to, I want to feel good when I get there.

I'm going to add a 10-minute walk or walk up the stairs or walk around the building before I go up the stairs to do that, because that is what it's doing.

You are changing your brain chemistry with that walk up the stairs.

Not to mention probably helping your other systems, your heart.

Exactly.

Yeah, longevity, and, and, um, yes, your cardiovascular system.

So one thing that happens when you do run is you get this runner's high, and, you know, when you, you get a pump when you exercise.

Yeah.

And especially when you're first starting out.

Yes.

So how do you, you know, there's a reward that is almost tangible because of that obvious change of feeling that you have.

But I imagine as you do it more, sort of like playing an instrument, the better you get, the the more you have to practice to maintain being that good.

And so is it psychologically that you have to exercise more and more in order to reap the same benefits?

Does it— is it diminishing returns?

Yeah, that's a good question.

In fact, there are not good studies to know long-term, you know, how to do that.

There are correlational studies showing that people that do it for longer periods of time have better benefits than if you did it for a shorter period of time.

But the positive flip side of that is that whenever you start, that is good.

You always get that benefit.

Yes.

Always good to start.

But you bring up a great question, which is motivation.

How do you get that motivation up?

The bubble bath is happening, whether you're sick of doing your stupid workout that, you know, that you do.

And here you just have to be creative.

I, I recommend ChatGPT.

Ask ChatGPT, what are 5 new ways?

So here's the things that I like, and it's actually good at stuff like that.

I encourage you to think about, you know, are you a solo person?

Do you like to invite friends?

Make it a party kind of situation.

Right.

Invite your friends.

When you got a workout buddy, that makes it so much easier.

It makes it so much— Yes.

Right.

So find yourself a situation like that.

And also, don't think that you have to dress up in your spandex to, to work out.

You know, go to Costco and go a couple of rounds around the huge warehouse.

Don't eat too many samples though.

I was gonna say, I was gonna say that could be— I know, it's a little two-edged sword, right?

But walk with your dog.

Yeah, right, right.

Walk with friends, go to a museum, walk around the museum.

So many opportunities to both get more steps in, but do it in a way that is not like, oh, I hate going to the same thing.

So a lot of your work focuses on this idea of connection.

Yeah.

So are we talking like social media connections?

No, we're going deeper than that because evolutionarily humans evolved to not be individualistic New Yorkers like some of us, but we evolved to live and work in tribes with each other in connection with each other, which is why there's so many brain areas focused on facial recognition, social connection.

It is essential biologically for us being human to connect.

One of the things you just mentioned about this evolution of facial recognition reminds me of something else I just learned.

Yeah.

Was, it was a question, is like, why did humans evolve the whites to our eye and a pupil?

Whereas most of the animals have a dark eye, so you can't really see exactly where they're looking.

But for some reason there's a— that eye contact thing, or maybe with the baby or something.

Right, right, yeah.

That's interesting.

Yeah, so, so important for us as a species, so that's point number 1.

Point number 2 is, you know, some of my favorite neuroscience studies are those studies that were done when you find couples that are in the throes of romantic love.

Ever wonder what happens to your brain when you're in the throes of romantic love?

Yeah, you get really stupid and decide to get married.

Yes, you do get really stupid, but the neuroscience translation of real stupid is you get deactivation of the amygdala, your fear area.

Yeah, your fear area is not as active, which is why some of us might have made not the best decisions when we were in the throes of those romantic areas, but also reward areas light up.

Ventral striatum really, really lights up.

And that is a clear pattern that you see in all people.

And it's different from whether somebody in the throes of deep romantic love sees a picture of their beloved versus a niece.

Somebody that they love.

Yeah.

I was gonna ask because you have like your friends you love, you have romantic love, you have your family, both your parents, your children.

Right, right.

Does the brain behave similarly across these different types of love?

It's interesting.

It looks like there's an evolution.

There is this, you know, crazy pattern that happens when you're in the throes of deep romantic love, including the deactivation of the amygdala that makes you fearless and, you know, everything is lovely and there's nothing wrong with the future or the future is bright.

But then you could ask what happens in the brain after a long-term relationship develops, right?

And that comes to be more the pattern of— that there are reward areas as well, but more the pattern of deep family love, like love of a child.

That connection changes, which probably is good.

You don't want to be in the throes of deep romantic love for the whole of your lifetime.

You'd be like, you're exhausted, you know?

I need a little rest here.

So there is an evolution there, but, but you see it in the brain circuits of these connections that are so important to us.

So there's a joke that people say where I come from, which is that, you know, couples evolve to sort of look like each other.

Yes.

Right.

And then I learned that there is this thing known as mirror neurons.

So is there some something about love and mirror neurons that make us converge to mirror each other when we're in— deep friendship or romantic love?

Yes, I mean, I think you can take on the components of the environment that you're already in.

And you know, spend a lot of time with each other, you not only know that person, but there are things that you adopt.

Some things you'll never adopt, you know, everybody knows couples that will always be unique in some areas.

But yes, I'm sure that part of the mirror neuron circuit is associated with that, along with just familiarity.

Right, right.

And I think another thing that I see is cultural differences.

So you have societies like ours where you have high divorce rates.

Yes.

Then you have other societies where you have divorce rates that are almost zero, right?

And if you study the brains of the people from these different cultures, going in before these relationships and, you know, after long-term in relationships.

Yeah.

Do you anticipate that you would see any differences due to this different expectation?

Yeah.

So is it being like conditioned in your brain for long-term commitment through the social process somehow?

That's such an interesting question.

And that social, you know, post-divorce, post— or being a unit for so long, does that create different brains?

Yeah, yeah.

I absolutely think that— I mean, I don't, I have no evidence for this, but society's expectations for, this is not necessarily deep romantic love that you have to find your soul, you know, soul partner for the rest of your life.

But this is a relationship that is happening and you are forming a unit that— and society says this unit will last for the rest of your life.

And if you have that idea going forward and that this person doesn't have to be your everything and your soulmate, —then those are different expectations than the typical romantic Hollywood-infused, you know, soulmate culture that we are in.

This sounds like it's hitting upon that plasticity.

Yes, it is.

It is.

That plasticity and expectation that ritual and that what society conditions us all to expect and believe.

So when you do create a meaningful connection, what changes occur in the brain?

Yeah, so one of my— I think my most popular lecture at New York University for my brain and behavior class— Is it recorded?

Is it on YouTube?

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is on YouTube.

Okay, yeah, it's called The Neurobiology of Love.

And so what we know about love comes from animal studies, and people don't realize that they've studied this.

Did you know that there's a a tiny little rat-like creature called a prairie vole that lives in Montana that form lifelong pair bonds.

Lifelong.

No, I didn't know that.

Okay, so, and the best thing is that there are prairie voles that form lifelong pair bonds and montane voles that are just like prairie voles but slightly different species that are promiscuous.

And they are like, leave me alone, let's have sex and then I don't wanna see you again.

But let's focus on the prairie voles.

Prairie voles live in multigenerational family units out in the prairies, and here's how a pair bond forms.

So a juvenile female prairie vole is walking down the path, and suddenly she smells the intoxicating odor of the urine of a male who is not in her family unit, and she recognizes that immediately.

And she is interested.

Nothing— none of this dance, I don't want to dance with you.

Yes, I want to dance with you is what she's thinking.

Well, if that depositor of that urine is around, they mate for 40 hours.

And yeah, the last time I told this to students, they said, how long do prairie voles live?

And I said, I think, I don't know, a year and a half.

Turns out they live like less than a year.

So 40 hours is a huge proportion of their lives.

Yeah.

They mate for 40 hours, a Disney heart comes above them, and they form a lifelong pair bond, and then they form a new family unit.

So neuroscientists, smart neuroscientists, observe this and say, I want to know what's happening in their brain.

What's changing?

What is responsible?

Why does the female have this response, and why does the male have this response?

Turns out the female, during the 40 hours of mating, releases an enormous amount of a hormone called oxytocin.

They must have the release of oxytocin.

Without the oxytocin release, no pair bond.

It was like, thank you for that 40 hours, but I'm gone.

I'm done.

But with oxytocin, that is what connects the female to the male.

So were they able to manipulate it such that they couldn't create the oxytocin?

Well so you put —an inhibitor.

Yeah, exactly—anti-oxitocin in the brain of the females.

And then same 40 hours but no pair bond.

So oxytocin, does it work in the male?

No, it doesn't.

It's vasopressin, another hormone.

Well, it turns out that these hormones are still in place in the montane voles.

They have oxytocin, vasopressin receptors, but they're in different places.

In the brain.

In the brain.

And they have very different responses.

They do mate, but they just come together for that one mating.

They have the babies.

And also the female montane voles have a very short time of taking care of the young.

That's like, you know, you can walk, okay, kick you out of the nest and you're done.

And they're off mating with whoever they want to mate with.

Whereas the prairie voles keep the— both the males and the females take care of the babies.

They become like the nuclear family unit of all the Disney movies.

And so you ask, what is the love potion number 9 for humans?

Well, the answer is it doesn't quite work that way because we don't form lifelong pair bonds, unfortunately, in humans.

But we form bonds.

Yes, we do sometimes.

Sometimes.

The key word is sometimes, right?

That's— everybody is funny.

Everybody wants to say, "Yes, we do."

You've watched too many Disney movies, Hakeem.

We do not.

We do not.

Depends on the culture.

That's right.

Let's go back to oxytocin for just a second because oxytocin, while it's not love potion number 9, in both men and women, it has been associated with more affiliative behavior.

And to this day, you can buy nose sprays of oxytocin.

No way.

Yeah.

Don't buy it.

Don't buy it.

It doesn't work.

I'm not advertising at all.

Before we have this dance.

Yeah, yeah.

A little oxytocin for you?

Exactly.

So you mentioned that it's where the oxytocin occurs in the brain in these mice that determine, perhaps, the behavior.

So do we know where oxytocin behaves in the human brain?

And has anyone done experiments where they're like, let's try this part of the brain?

Yeah, yeah.

So we have beautiful studies in rodents that allow us to add or subtract oxytocin receptors in, you know, genetically modified mice to see where the most powerful locations for those oxytocin receptors are.

To enhance that social response of oxytocin.

The challenge is— so all of this is very useful for modeling and identifying oxytocin and kind of focusing our attention there.

But the truth is that human oxytocin receptors are in very, very different locations than in mice, and it's much more complicated in people.

So oxytocin is part of the story and that has become part of the narrative that neuroscientists are looking for.

But it is— it was such a beautiful story in these prairie voles that put oxytocin and vasopressin and social connection on the map in a way that could be studied in a beautiful animal model system.

And it just relates back to the whole story that in humans, while oxytocin is not the only, you know, love potion neurochemical, it is so important for our biology, our well-being.

It is one of the things that relates to our longevity.

It makes us happy in our lives.

And in this age where we have a loneliness epidemic, where people are having a hard time not just asking each other to dance, but just, you know, interacting in real— at all.

It is so important to get that word out and to, people that run social girls and boys clubs, adult clubs to get together.

We need you more than ever to get that back, that biological necessity back in our society.

So there's another element of, you know, cultural difference that I noticed.

Yeah.

That kind of hints at what you were talking about, how in our early environment we had so much connection.

Yeah.

And that is, you know, in the rural world that I lived in, and as I've gone around the world, I find it common, is the, the act of greeting.

So for example, in backwoods Mississippi where I'm from, if two cars pass on the road, yeah, you wave at each other, right?

Or, you know, sometimes people would be walk— working in their garden, you know, weeding or whatever, out in the front yard.

If a car passes by, everybody stops and turns and waves to the car.

You have no idea who it is.

And I had students in South Africa, you know, that I was talking to.

Yeah.

And they were telling me how, like, yes sir, you know, at home, you know, we all speak to each other, but I come here to the University of Cape Town and I walk down the hallway and I look someone in the eye and I speak and they don't respond, and I feel like a fool, right?

You know, students have said that to me.

Yeah.

And so I wonder about when we talk about connection.

Yeah.

This— the, the passing connections, right?

Looking a person in the eye and just saying hello.

Do those experiences shape the brain differently?

Yes, I think, I think the data show that it needs to be a little bit more than just passing hello, that, that, you know, few words spoken.

I think about a barista at Starbucks, you know, you go to the Starbucks everyday and you have a little conversation with that same person.

You get to know that person.

Those kinds of relationships lead to, you know, the happiest lives.

The more relationships like that, including, of course, the deep friendship that you had for a long time.

You don't have to have exchanged Christmas presents and birthday presents for all of your life, but having those relationships that you are comfortable and both of you exchange in that way, that is what all the studies, including the longest running one from Harvard, shows is related to your happiest and your longest life.

So, you know, there's another thing that happened to me personally that has to do with expectation, right?

So again, you know, tough youth.

And so my anticipation of a person when I meet them is I don't know what's going to happen here.

So I'm kind of on guard.

But then I become this public figure that people recognize.

And the consequence of that for me, and I've spoken about this on the show before, is that now I expect people to be positive when they meet me, especially if they recognize me, right?

I don't have that fear in me anymore.

And I feel like my whole being has— it's like I've taken off this weight that I've been— that I was carrying.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

Is that a real thing, or am I just imagining that?

No, absolutely.

I mean, uh, you have just described two different states of of mental being, one that is more anxiety-filled, that you're anticipating bad, possibly really bad interactions.

And the other one is that you're looking forward to who's the next person that's going to recognize me and ask me some question about me and what I'm talking about.

Right, about the universe.

Yeah, about the universe.

But is there a permanent change that's happened in my brain?

Has my brain plasticity said, bro, you're cool.

It's okay.

You're safe.

You know, permanent is, yeah, it's permanent if it lasts— Oh, if it's plastic, it can't be permanent.

Exactly, exactly.

But you clearly— it sounds like it has infused your real-world living enough that you recognize that you don't have that anymore and you are— you have— you're in a different state.

So that's great.

That is, that means it's real.

It released some anxiety from my world.

Yes, it did.

So here's another thought.

You know, there's different types of connections, right?

So pillow talk, for example, that intimacy that you have.

And I think in those moments, you know, you feel really safe, right?

Or, you know, if you have a hobby with someone, like, you know, the guys I played basketball with for a long time, we remain buddies.

Then the cats that I trauma bonded with in the military, right?

We maintain connections, not quite as strong, but we still remain connected.

So is there a sort of scaling factor to connections where some are more impactful or, you know, do they just all serve a different purpose and you need the range?

I think you absolutely need the range.

We all, you know, I think that's really, really helpful.

I did this exercise with a death doula.

At a conference that I went to, and she asked a really powerful question, which was, um, who do you want to be at your last party and why?

Wow.

And what music do you want and why?

And everybody started crying as they're writing their list down.

But, but it really makes you think about who are those people that, that, you know, I really want in those intimate moments of friendship and fellowship with fellow— your fellow humans.

And we don't think about those things nearly enough.

And then sometimes it's too late.

And so I really appreciated that workshop that I went to because it really made me think hard about and appreciate people in my life.

So it seems like though there's a tension between having too little connections and too many connections, right?

So if you have a lot of connections, you get a lot of text messages, you have your social media DMs, and it can lead to being overwhelmed.

So is that now, you know, are we overconnected now?

So I think it's easier to become overconnected and to turn everything on all the time.

But I think it's now important to be intentional about what kind of connection that you are bringing into your life.

How much time are you giving to the social media versus kind of connection, the DMs versus real connection and having a real conversation with somebody?

And it takes time.

Oh God, I have to— yeah, first I have to get you to answer my DM so that we could find a time.

But if the goal is always, "I want to spend this much time face-to-face," that is the better goal.

And I think going back to the better evolutionarily defined way to get that biological need that we all have for connection.

Wendy, I'm feeling connected to you right now.

Oh, I'm feeling connected to you as well.

So how do you foster connection generally?

I have come to, as you were saying, like I'm walking down the street and there are people that I don't know who they are.

They clearly know who I am.

And I'm like, hey, how you doing?

So good to see you.

And so I've adopted that, but I have a very special way that I wanted to try and foster more connection with my 10,000 undergraduates in the College of Arts and Science.

So I see them when I first started as dean, I see them to welcome them when they first get there as first-year students, and then I say goodbye to them at graduation.

And it's like, what happened?

There's a long time.

I want them to know who I am.

And so I came up with the official greeting of the College of Arts and Science.

And so I said, okay, freshmen, when you see me walking down Broadway, you come up to me and you say, Dean Suzuki, you have a beautiful brain.

And then I will say back to you, oh my God, you have a beautiful brain too.

Wow.

And so now in the East Village, I'm having dinner and students will come up to me.

Still!

You have a beautiful brain.

No, it is.

And I didn't realize that when I created that, that it would be the best mental health mood boost for me personally.

There's nothing more joyous than a student coming up to you and saying, you have a beautiful brain.

Oh my God.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that one worked great.

I welcome anybody that they want to use that in your life.

So you've connected connection to longevity.

Mm-hmm.

Alright, I want the data.

Yeah, yeah.

How do you know that this is a causal element and not just a correlation?

It's, you know, this is work done by the longest running study of human well-being ever.

Started at Harvard in the 1920s.

Famously, JFK, when he was a freshman at Harvard, was one of the first participants in the study.

No way, wow.

Yes, he was.

And now my colleague Robert Waldinger, who's a psychiatrist at Harvard, is running this study.

And so they've studied— That's a long study.

It is a long study.

And now they've done generations of families from that group.

And they've also not just done the men that were at Harvard.

Right.

Yes.

We're in Boston.

It's just right down the street.

It's now not just the Harvard students, but in the Boston neighborhood, so a wide demographic.

They've expanded it, as they should.

And so what comes out of those studies is that what is best— it is correlation— what is best correlated with happiest people is not your money.

It is the number of strong social connections that you have over your lifetime.

This goes back to our biological, you know, directive.

This is not an extra thing that you should add in if you feel like it.

This is a biological necessity.

We evolved to have these social connections, and this study just shows that in spades, that the happiest people in all of these generations are the people that have the strongest social network.

Okay, so let me just flip that a little bit.

Yeah.

Because, you know, when I hear these studies, for long before I met you, I often hear that word about happy and happiness.

Yeah.

As if that's the goal.

Yeah.

And so I value, you know, as a scientist, I question everything.

Yeah, yeah.

And I started thinking like, you know, for me, is that the goal?

Is that where it's at?

Right?

Yeah.

And what I found was I was like, you know, some of the best times in my life were not when I was necessarily happiest, but when I was drug, you know, taken through it, like those long runs I was telling you about, right?

And then I come out the other side of it.

And I said maybe that feeling is more like fulfillment, right?

When life teaches me what I'm made of.

But then also another one is service.

You know, I spent a lot of my adulthood, you know, in service, right?

For my nation, I worked in Africa for a long time to help people.

To improve their lives through education and science.

And, you know, I go to the communities where they lack a history of educational attainment at the graduate level to help those people.

And that gives me so much, like, meaning and fulfillment and, you know, that feeling of being useful.

And also that feeling of overcoming self, right?

Those feelings for me— you know, I love to laugh, I love to make others laugh, I love to have a good time, but there's something about those feelings that just seem like they really make life worth living for me.

Yeah, you know, I think those are also really important elements in the life.

I'm just reporting the findings from these studies, and they have looked at all of these other things.

What is that one thing that is best associated with the happiest people in these 90— and you know, it's not, uh, It's not generational.

And I don't think— And they control for other factors, it's a well-defined study.

Yes, they do.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Wealth and social status and age.

You know, maybe you get more connected with people when you're older, you miss them more when you're older.

No, it's throughout the lifetime.

They are monitoring these people throughout their lives.

And it's true, you know, as somebody who— well, it's true for me.

As somebody who's gone through periods of more isolation and loneliness because I thought I had to work really hard and that was the only way to just put my head down and do it all alone versus being much more intentional, even before I knew the findings of those studies, like, I was drawn to that, just like I was drawn to go into that church to be part of that community.

It was intrinsic for me.

And I am much happier than— I was getting a lot done in those times, and it contributed to my, you know, trajectory, certainly.

But you were miserable.

Yeah, but I was miserable.

I really was.

And, and so that is, I know, an N of 1, but, but that is why I, I, I accept the, the findings from these studies.

I get that.

I promote them, yeah.

Yeah.