Our Episode

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast
where we discuss science and
science-based tools for everyday life
I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at
Stanford school of medicine today my
guest is Dr Mary Helen immortino yang Dr
imrdino Yang is a professor of Education
Psychology and Neuroscience at the
University of Southern California her
laboratory focuses on emotions and the
role of emotions in learning as well as
how social interactions impact how we
learn today's discussion is one that I
found absolutely fascinating because it
will reveal to you in fact to all of us
how our temperament that is our
emotionality combined with our home
environment and the school environments
that we were raised in shape what we
know about the world and our concepts of
self
in thinking about that we also discuss
the education system and how different
aspects of rules and how we are told to
behave and what actually constitutes
good behavior or bad behavior shape how
we learn information and develop a sense
of meaning in life if any of that sounds
abstract I promise you that today's
discussion is incredibly practical you
will learn for instance how different
styles of learning are going to favor
different people from children into
adulthood and how we ought to think
about learning in terms of our emotional
systems being our guide for what we
learn and the information that we retain
and how we apply that information
throughout life for those of you that
are parents or who are thinking of
becoming parents or who were once
children so I believe that encompasses
everybody out there today's discussion
will arm you with an intellectual
understanding of Psychology and
Neuroscience as it relates to learning
but also practical tools that you can
apply in order to be able to learn more
effectively what I like so much about Dr
emordino Yang's research and the
discussion today is that she frames up
beautifully how those who best learn
from traditional forms of classroom
learning as well as those who learn from
non-traditional forms of learning either
in or out of the classroom can best use
that understanding of Self in order to
learn in the way that is best for them
before we begin I'd like to emphasize
that this podcast is separate from my
teaching and research roles at Stanford
it is however part of my desire and
effort to bring zero cost to Consumer
information about science and science
related tools to the general public in
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huberman at checkout and now for my
discussion with Dr Mary Helen immortino
Yang Dr emordino Yang good to be here
great to have you
I'd like to start off talking about
something that
to me seems a little bit high level but
I think it's the perfect jumping off
point
I've heard you talk before about
inspiration and awe and as somebody
who's interested in the brain and as
somebody who's interested in the role of
emotions and learning and life
experience
inspiration and awe seem to me kind of
rather high level emotional experiences
compared to say fear or happiness
and yet inspiration and awe just seems
so fundamental to how we learn and
navigate life and before we started
recording we were talking about David
Goggins of all people
um and we'll get back to that but
if you could just share with us
what is the role of inspiration and awe
and story in how we learn and experience
life starting at a young age and then
maybe we can transition to older ages
yeah I mean I think what you've noticed
is actually fundamental to the conundrum
of being a human is that our most high
level complex or in-states mind States
are also fundamentally
hooking themselves into the most basic
biological Machinery that literally we
share with alligators that keeps us
alive and that is both the power and the
potential of being a human and the
danger of it so our beliefs are
experiences our interpretations of the
meaning of things which that's where the
story comes in the stories that we
conjure about you know collectively with
other people culturally in spaces inside
our own selves also those stories become
kind of the through line that organizes
the way in which we construct our own
experience Consciousness even I would
say so when we hook into those very
basic Survival Systems by recruiting
them into these narratives about the
nature of reality the power of the
meaning we make what happens is we get
this amazingly both fundamental and high
levels State simultaneously where we
feel expansive we feel uh like it's all
so incredibly beautiful
and we are I would argue actually
ramping into or catching into the very
basic survival mechanisms that make us
conscious that make us alive and and
that's that's in essence the power of
being a human That's The Power of our
intelligence at this late stage in our
evolution
so when I was a kid I loved stories of
all kinds like I think like most kids
yeah I love my Curious George books uh
I'm told I like the Babar books but then
quickly didn't like the Babar books
um I liked the book Where the Red Fern
Grows I liked um books and stories about
it generally was boys for me for
whatever reason uh that had some idea in
mind or some ongoing Challenge and that
played out over time and the character
evolves across the story yeah and of
course many many many excellent stories
have all those features yeah
I can recall specific passages in those
books to this day
that made me feel something in my body
you know a um I actually am very
familiar with the sensation of having
chills go up my spine as opposed to down
my spine early on I realized oh there's
sort of a difference sometimes it
travels up my spine sometimes I still
haven't distinguished what what that
orients me to or away from but but it's
a very
um Salient memory and experience for me
to this day so much so that as I'm
describing the book Where the Red Fern
Grows Right now I can kind of feel it
starting yeah
I've heard you say before and I love
this quote and I want to make sure that
you get attribution for this not me that
we basically have a brain to control our
body
[Music]
what is the the role of the brain in
controlling the body and do you think
that there are an infinite number of
ways in which our brain does that or are
we really talking about a language
between brain and body of you know
tingles on the back of our neck that go
up tingles on the back of our neck that
go down stomach feeling kind of tight
and making us cringe away or kind of
warm and wanting to approach in other
words do you think that the conversation
between the brain and body is primitive
sophisticated how nuanced is it because
language is very nuanced we could
probably come up with 50 words just in
English for the state of being happy
yeah but the feeling of being happy I
experience along a Continuum of a little
bit happy to elated but it's it's kind
of one thing really so if if you would
could you comment on this notion of the
brain being the organ that's responsible
for controlling the body and what that
dialogue is like what the syllables and
consonants of it are like perhaps not at
the level of biology but at the level of
psychology and how we subjectively
experience that sure so the first thing
I'll say is that I learned that idea
from it from working with Antonia
dimasio so uh he was my postdoctoral
mentor and he taught me first that uh
this notion that that it's the feeling
of the body it's it's an organism's
ability to represent or map the state of
the interior and exterior of the body
that becomes the substrate for
Consciousness and for the mind
um so I would just want to give him
credit because I didn't I didn't think
of that first but the work that I've
been doing is an elaboration of that
it's it's basically addressing exactly
the question that you're asking which is
how is it that we construct a narrative
construct a conscious feeling which that
word I take from Antonio and Hannah
right DiMaggio how is it that we
construct a feeling and sort of
prioritize that feeling elaborate that
feeling into something that feels like a
narrative that feels like a belief state
or an emotion state or an experience I
mean that in a very verb-like way and um
and what is the role of embodiment in
that what is the role of the brain and
that
um and and what also is the role of the
culture and the cultural context on
other people in that because what we're
really learning Across The Sciences
right now is just how incredibly social
and interdependent our species is I mean
our biology is inherently a social one
we are directly dependent on other
people for the formulation of our own
sense of self and we interact with one
another and construct and co-construct a
sense of self and a sense of meaning via
those cultural spaces and those sort of
um nuanced ways of accommodating each
other mentally and physically that that
lead to the feeling of us so you know
back to your original question there's a
lot we don't know there
um but I think what's very clear is that
the kind of background sense of the body
the mapping and the regulation of the
body is a basic substrate a kind of of
trampoline for the mind and so we are
managing our survival you know we now
have lots of evidence from across many
kinds of science about the
interdependence of our stress and social
relationships and our immunity and our
right and and our ability to digest food
and and it's even now very clear that
it's not even just us there's a whole
microbiome and all kinds of other
organisms that are assisting Us in that
and that are collaborating with us in
that
um and then the brain is is this is a
specialized organ of the body in fact
it's not a it's not a separate thing
it's it's an outgrowth or an elaboration
of that process it's a specialization of
that process a localization of it
um in a way that provides enough
processing power to be able to really
construct uh all kinds of feelings and
mental States and beliefs and imaginings
you know
um out of out of basically just the
feeling of being here and then the
amazing part is that our brain is also
imposing those back down onto our bodies
so the way in which our body reacts
um and is modulated in response to
mental States is also very real so we
have a kind of like a dynamic uh
conversation happening that's happening
in very raw and and direct ways
neurochemically and others and also in
broader longer term slower fluctuating
patterns around you know other kinds of
hormonal changes and things like that so
along multiple time scales
simultaneously we have a kind of whole
right a humanistic whole of brain and
body and mind that are kind of
co-conjoring one another in real time
and that leads to all kinds of dynamic
possibility spaces for how we are and
how we feel as we grow through time and
I think as humans the legacy of our
intelligence is to tap into those
possibility spaces and start to
construct them into meaningful
meaningful sort of chains of ideas
chains of experiences over time that we
call story and that I think is what you
were tapping into as a little boy you
were hungry for fodder for for a kind of
structure for those feelings that you
could start to help them evolve from one
into the other and chain them together
in ways that produce meaning
yeah I'm fascinated by the idea that
early in life we experience
some interaction with the world it could
be with other people could be with an
object in the world and it makes us feel
something powerful yeah and that lays a
a template for of recognition meaning
that later in life and perhaps
throughout life we're always consciously
your subconsciously going back to trying
to experience that same kind of awe or
inspiration
um because again that the what the
circumstances
almost certainly vary from being a
five-year-old to being an adolescent and
into adulthood
and into the I guess the geriatric years
do they still call it that
um probably I probably used a
politically incorrect term but forgive
me
um 75 to 125.
um
and yet the feeling is the same right
the feeling and so it's as if a word can
mean the same thing but be used 50
different ways maybe 5 000 different
ways to represent in this analogy I'm
saying that the the word is the feeling
and you know and it's used so many
different ways because
um occasionally I'll read a scientific
manuscript that is so cool and it's the
same way that I feel yes when I was nine
years old and I spend all my time in the
pet store looking at Tropical Fish and
tropical birds and thinking oh my God
that freshwater discus fish is the
coolest thing I've ever seen yeah and
again I think I must have a strong
memory for these kinds of things yeah
because I still I feel it right now in
my body so it's as if the the same thing
maps to so many different circumstances
so is what we're learning across the
lifespan a recognition of feelings in
our body as ah this is something I like
because of the way it makes my body feel
or is it cognitive or both from your
answer a moment ago it seems like it's
so interconnected and bi-directional and
fast that it's impossible to really say
that feelings are in the body or in the
brain it's really
um happening simultaneously yeah it's a
dynamic of merchant State let me give
you an example so that I use sometimes
to help myself understand the notion so
I'm
you know my little my little daughter
okay Nora when she was two two in some
months two and four months that she's a
very verbal kid and uh I was sitting in
the kitchen one day drinking a cup of
tea I was sad about something that
happened in my life but I I wasn't
weeping or anything I was just sitting
there I must have looked kind of you
know lost in my own thoughts she's
playing around on the floor she came
over to me
I'll never forget it this tiny little
person she comes over to me and noticed
I wasn't really there with her you know
what I mean and she my arm was hanging
down she picked up my arm and she held
it against her face like that and she
said
I won't say in baby talk because you
won't understand but she said don't
worry Mama I'll take care of you
and I said yeah and I said oh no that's
so that's so sweet sweetie I'll take
care of you too and she said and Mama
I will we love you I really love you and
then she said I mean
I really love y'all um I really love
your arm right
fast forward two years later almost
exactly two years she's four in a couple
months and she was in bed one night
laying in her bed in the dark and I
walked by and I listened at the door to
see if she was sleeping there and I hear
this little whisper comes out and she
says mama
I love you more than I'm glad that
there's daytime
right
what's changed developmentally from her
at age two to her at age four right I
would argue that the physiological
substrate of her attachment to her
mother is probably quite similar she had
this sort of visceral automatic
biological you might say attachment
connection to me emotionally that she
was trying to leverage in the service of
making sense of you know being active in
that world and adapting herself to the
situation helping me in the first case
right
but what's changed remarkably is not the
substrate of that attachment it's her
ability to conceptualize it right when
she's two her love is experienced as
this incredibly
concrete embodied real physical thing
like I love you I mean I really love the
body part I am currently smooshing
against my face right whereas two years
later
she can conceptualize that love in terms
of an idea which is you know wouldn't it
be awful if there was night time all the
time and there was no sunshine and
daylight and I couldn't go out to play
and I couldn't write you're describing
my biggest fear people listening to this
podcast I know that I'm gonna go into
the grave hopefully a long time from now
yeah telling people to get morning
sunlight in their eyes
yeah but please continue yeah no but
that's right so she's thinking about how
much she is grateful for there to be
sunlight and in her little mind she
connected that
to the the feeling of being attached to
me and used one to explain the other
right so that both things now have
meaning and that is the way that is the
way I think that we start to elaborate
these very basic physiological
attachment States aversion States right
motivational states of various sorts
into mental States beliefs poems you
know uh love songs all the things that
she does right even between Age Two and
age four that really are mental
elaborations meaning making of that very
physiologically basic sensation does
that answer your question it answers it
incredibly clearly uh and so much so
that I'd like to continue to build on
that example
um because I think it's very relatable
for people and it's the first time that
I've ever heard the embodiment of
emotions
described in a developmental framework
that truly makes sense okay
um so thank you
so the contact with your arm or your arm
or both uh was the the was the life
example that she was using it as a
two-year-old that maps to an internal
feeling and and we're gonna assume she's
not here we don't have her in a brain
scanner we can't ask her but we're going
to assume that her experience of being
put to bed at night and and feeling so
so much love from and for you
map to her then uh growing understanding
of the the world around her the fact
that there's day and night and sunshine
so as her knowledge base grows she can
add examples to the feeling and I'm
assuming that
um doesn't matter how old she is now but
I'm assuming that as a 14 year old the
knowledge base is going to be different
and is going to map to that feeling
again and again so the question is
is what we are doing across the lifespan
is recognizing
um sort of I don't want to call them
Primitives but
um basic emotional states which are not
infinite but can be along each one along
a Continuum so a little bit of love
completely in love you know along
Continuum and everything in between
um a little angry and annoyed to
completely Furious are we talking about
maybe
um 10 to 30 core emotions that then we
are just simply binning our experiences
into and onto and mapping onto and then
that's our life story and I'm not trying
to oversimplify things but
um
that seems to me like a pretty great way
for a nervous system to navigate a world
that is infinitely complex yeah and has
a lot of surprise both positive and
negative and in which like every
organism our main goal is to survive as
long as possible and not for everybody
but in many cases to try and make more
of ourselves I mean those seem to be the
basic Drive survive and make more of
oneself it seems to be the two basic
functions of everything ideas or more of
your work from more of your art right
exactly
um so is that in
an overly simplistic way to think about
it or does it does it work even if
there's more that needs to be added does
that work as a 20 year old I learned
things in college and I'm like this is
awesome the first time I learned about
the hypothalamus this whole marble size
structure and the fact that different
neurons sitting right next to each other
can put us into a rage where we'll make
us want to mate or we'll make us thirsty
or hungry or tired I was like wow yeah I
mean it just it blew me away it still
blows me away yeah but the feeling is
the same as looking at The discus fish
in the in Monet's Pet Shop on California
Avenue when I'm nine years old so is
that the way to think about it I think
yes I think there is there's an awful
lot of basic physiological mechanisms
that are that become motivational
mechanisms right in in all the senses uh
adaptive mechanisms that we share with
all life forms not even just all animals
but all life forms but they look
different in different life forms for
sure because the Adaptive functions the
time scales and everything are different
if you're a tree than if you're a fish
then if you're a slime mold or you're me
right but I think you're right that what
we basically are doing is taking these
very primitive physiological regulatory
capacities that are essentially there to
keep you alive and and that's a very
Dynamic thing to keep you alive you have
to constantly adjust for the the needs
of the internal organism the needs of
the external uh you know the the demands
of the external environment on that
organism and being able to manage in
that space over time is a very complex
Dynamic
um kind of kind of iterative process and
we take those process processes and we
conjure out of them a form of
Consciousness an awareness of those
processes that becomes something that
feels mentally powerful to us and and I
think one of the ways that we can know
that what you're saying is right is that
you know this is just our first
experiment on this but but I think it's
really poignant we we we first started
to study
um the the ways people would react to
social stimuli right to have emotions
like Compassion or or admiration in the
MRI scanner
um by telling people uh stories of true
people situations that invoked these
emotions in all kinds of piloting and
then we ask people how does it make you
feel and then we can see whether they
actually feel that way and then we move
them into the MRI scanner and ask them
again to watch the story and feel it and
what we expected we had some very basic
hypotheses that things like I'm watching
somebody else under physical pain would
activate the same systems in your brain
that allow you to feel physical pain uh
and the same with pleasure around
admiration for skill by watching
somebody do flips on their bike on a
railroad tie or whatever it is right um
or virtue right watching a civil rights
leader or somebody who does something
that's incredibly virtuously powerful
but not physically skilled
um and we had a real surprise in those
findings which I I think really went
against the prevailing notion of how
emotion works and which is still
something which I wrestle with trying to
understand so we hypothesized that
feeling emotions about very physical
direct things and feeling emotions about
you know I'm like drawing them in space
but feeling emotions about a complex
elaborated things like compassion for
someone having lost a spouse or
something where you don't see any real
physical pain but you can imagine how
they're feeling based on your shared
experience of loss right or admiration
for virtue
um that those things would build uh
neurobiologically the way that they
build developmentally the way that they
build evolutionarily
um and we did find that to be the case
and many other groups and experiments
have found that too but what was a real
surprise to us is that emotions based in
pain and emotions based in something
rewarding or pleasurable like virtue
which is really inspiring as people
describe it
were actually recruiting the same brain
systems including the hypothalamus right
and other systems like the anterior
insula which is basically visceral
somatomotor cortex it's cortex that
feels the state of how you're digesting
your lunch whether your heart's pounding
all these kinds of things right what we
found is that these emotions when they
get complex when they're about Stories
the valence is no longer the defining
feature the valence doesn't even matter
that much instead what matters is does
the emotion pertain to a story that is
conjured in our minds or does it mainly
pertain to what you can directly Witness
by looking at the person so they step
off a curb they break their ankle and
you go oh that looks like it really hurt
right versus
they're eating dinner alone in a
restaurant and somebody tells you his
spouse died just a month ago right where
you have to tell yourself an entire
story about how he must be feeling in
that situation as compared to just
looking at him and seeing the ankle and
going ooh you know and it was that leap
which is really uniquely human which is
fully developed really throughout a very
protracted period right little children
do not fully appreciate those kinds of
mental States yet right and in
adolescence kids are all about trying to
conjure and simulate these things and
they do it very you know they overdo it
and they do it in these very sort of
awkward ways that adults recognize as uh
you know uh not likely to correspond
fully to reality right many times
um and then we start to build more and
more facility more and more sort of
wisdom around Conjuring the story that
makes the most direct parsimonious sense
out of the things that you imagine
somebody else may have experienced given
the complexities of the context in which
they find themselves it becomes more and
more Dynamic more and more sort of
inferential and so this also goes back
to what you were saying about
development this is actually how I see
Development Across the lifespan my
little two-year-old loves the arm then
she loves me as much as something else
that she really appreciates like
daylight and then she goes on from there
and when she's 80 God willing someday
right she'll be making a different kind
of story picking out things that matter
in more subtle ways that other people
may not notice because of the historical
context because of her her more lived
experience that she brings to that story
right so the things that become Salient
the things you learn how to notice and
build a story out of are Developmental
and they're learned across time
but the basic fundamental processes
around the emotions are always driving
the need to make the story
and so just to come back answering what
you said before I think we have this
incredibly complex Dynamic set of basic
emotions or whatever you want to call
them physiological states that we share
with other organisms that are basically
action programs that teach you run away
from this right move toward that
um eat this don't eat that right but
those things in humans and to a lesser
degree in other in other animals become
the fodder for not just action programs
in the moment but ideas that transcend
time ideas that become the narratives of
the stuff of beliefs of values of uh of
identities
um those more ethereal you know Essences
of us that are conjured entirely by us
in cultural spaces are fundamentally
grounded into our ability to experience
the world in a real physical embodied
sense but but allow operated far beyond
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I started off studying the visual system
and I don't want this to turn into a
discussion about the visual system but
in the visual system uh we know that
there's a what's called a hierarchical
organization where the eye encodes and
can respond to edges and light versus
dark and red green blue and from that
very basic set of building blocks
there's an elaboration or a build up of
what's really called the iceberg model
that was developed by my scientific
great grandparents David hebronson
weasel who won the Nobel Prize for that
work
where you can look at somebody's face
and recognize it or see a profile moving
at a particular direction and still
recognize that person or
um see a word written and and
conceptualized in your mind's eye what
that word like bird actually looks like
like parakeet blue parakeet in other
words there's a hierarchical buildup and
what you're describing sounds somewhat
similar that there's a hierarchical
organization whereby through development
we we first learned I guess earlier I
called them Primitives but basic
building blocks of you know when someone
steps on my foot it hurts it can hurt a
lot or a little bit depending on who
stepped on my foot
um whether I have a shoe on so you start
learning context but that there's a
build up on top of the basic somatic
experience of different examples that
map to pain including emotional pain and
physical pain because we know those are
interdigitated somewhat
um
and that over time this builds up so
that we have you know countless examples
but you added you said something else
that's that goes beyond the hierarchical
organization that we see in the visual
system which is that when there's a
narrative or a story that we have to add
it changes something about the
representation of emotion I'm I'm so
struck by this by this um comparison
between seeing somebody step off a curb
and break their ankle like even as I'm
describing just like a folding ankle
like ouch yeah that really just look at
what you're doing with your face
right yeah I mean I broke my I've broken
my left foot five times growing up doing
the same Sport and it just I can still
hear and feel the thing going and that
means six months in a cast or whatever
it is
versus a story you know seeing somebody
sitting alone in a cafe writing in their
journal and then you learning that they
just lost their spouse of 75 years right
two fundamentally different visual
images right
the emotion could perhaps be the same
like oh yes that is rough
and yet the need to impose story yes
changes it do I understand that
correctly that there's something not
just more
um developmentally mature about adding
in story and adding context but that
when we have to do that that there's
something that's fundamentally different
about how the emotions are mapped in the
brain it I guess the perhaps the the
answer I'm looking for is what did you
see in brain scanning
experiments where somebody views a
simply a physical break of a somebody's
limb versus somebody has to add story is
there something that um that comes out
in the subtraction of one from the other
that tells us oh there's a whole set of
brain networks that are not just about
saying ouch yes but that have to do with
the the need to conjure up story and
what what are those brain areas and then
perhaps we can we can um digest those a
little bit yes and actually that is
exactly what we found a whole system of
brain areas that that did this which now
many people have described and we're
still trying to understand the full role
of these Network works but you know
these regions together are called in the
literature of the so-called default mode
Network right because they were these
the the co-activation of these
characteristic regions of the brain
which are in the back middle of the head
and some characteristic regions in the
lateral parietal and you know
um you know those were first described
uh in neuroimaging experiments where
people were asked to just rest right
rest and relax don't think about
anything just clear your mind for a few
minutes right this is Marcus rackel and
his colleagues back in 2001
um and then and then contrasting that
with
um uh tasks where people have to do
something very you know attention focus
requiring where you really have to work
hard and think and they found that these
highly metabolic characteristic regions
of the brain were coming online and
activating themselves when the person
was resting
and deactivating and decoupling from one
another not talking back and forth and
exchanging signal very much
um when someone was doing a really
effortful mental task and that was a
real conundrum for a long time and what
we now know is you know when you ask
somebody to think about nothing or rest
you know for a few minutes you're laying
in the skin or thinking I'm thinking
about nothing I'm thinking about nothing
and then you start daydreaming about all
manner of stories you start to imagine
yourself into the future here I am
winning the Olympics Tada you know or
hey it's my Grandma's birthday next week
I wonder if she'd like to go to lunch or
if she'd rather have flowers you know
you're imagining other people's mind
States you're thinking it's like I'm mad
at me at work you know or I wonder if I
should you know change jobs you know
you're thinking about all kinds of
possible spaces that don't actually
physically exist in the real here and
now and and so what we found is that our
findings were I think some of the first
if not the first to
to actively demonstrate
an increase in activation in these
default mode systems not a decoupling of
them but an activation of them when we
ask somebody to do an effortful mental
task
and what was the task asking people how
do you feel
about this
story
which involves a lot of imposing of
cultural and social and contextual
knowledge to be able to appreciate so
the story of the guy sitting in the cafe
writing in his journal uh who lost his
spouse of 75 years you have to know a
lot to be able to appreciate how he must
be feeling how does it make you feel let
me pull up a lot of relevant knowledge
personal experiences and memories and
then hypothesize generate some kind of
narrative some kind of storyline that
would accommodate his situation and
allow me to infer those kinds of stories
which are very different from here's
somebody stepping off the curb wow look
at that ankle right it's very obvious
how you should how that makes the person
feel and how you should feel about that
you don't really need to bring a whole
lot of cultural knowledge about their
you know personal history with their
spouse to be able to understand that's
breaking your ankle hurts right and what
we found is that it was those kinds of
stories where people had to bring a lot
of contextual knowledge to fully
appreciate that activated these default
mode systems the spout the losing of the
smell losing of the spouse so what we
later showed in a series of experiments
um contrasting uh true stories that are
meant to induce admiration for skill
right like something physically skillful
somebody can or cognitively skillful and
memorize a Rubik's Cube and solve it
with your eyes closed right or do flips
on your bicycle and land on a railroad
tie right like these incredibly skillful
things
um as compared to uh uh the same kind of
basic emotion in the sense of feeling
like inspired
um like attracted to it like it's
pleasurable like it's really cool like
you wish you could do that too but now
it's about a state of that person's mind
or quality of character or disposition
of self so talking about the incredibly
Brave of uh actions of Malala in
Pakistan standing up to the past to the
to the Taliban right where it's not
about how well she walks down the street
holding her school book there's nothing
really physically skillful to see there
it's about the conditions under what
she's doing it and what you can infer
about her state of mind and her quality
of character
to be engaging in these actions under
those conditions and those complex kinds
of inferences we found
activate these default mode systems
uniquely and in fact we can in trial by
trial experiments so literally depending
on what you say about a story whether it
inspires you that particular story out
of 50 right in a two-hour interview
beforehand if you are inspired by a
particular story as compared to another
one which may not resonate with you
right
um then when we put you in the MRI
scanner we can predict that you will
actually activate these neural systems
differentially based on your
psychological reaction in the interview
so we can actually show that there are
systematic ways in which these
large-scale networks of the brain so the
way in which the brain's kind of
balancing its activity and its crosstalk
around the different parts that are
contributing different kinds of
processing those Dynamic balances are
are are different when someone is what
we're doing what we're calling now
transcending the situation of that
person right
and starting to learn something bigger
about what it all means or what the
story is or the the broader reason why
this inspires me
um and not just is about her
right so you can look at Malala and you
can say you know oh uh uh I hope she
makes it that's that's that's really
unfair and I and and like right or you
can look at her and say and kids say
this to us and experiments with
teenagers
um but wait a minute and they actually
wait they cover their face they close
their eyes they look away from the from
the Malala video and they look at the
plane ceiling and we can actually get
coders with the volume off to identify
these periods of time and say that when
they come back from that pause their
speech slows their their posture closes
right they put their hands down that
kind of thing they don't gesture right
and when they come back from that they
are talking about two things they're
talking about the broader
inferential narrative around what all
this means wait I didn't know not
everybody in the world doesn't get to go
to you know gets to go to school
you know that's not right right and and
these ethical interpretations that's not
right and the third thing that comes up
is a feeling of self and what it means
for you because you're using your own
self and Consciousness as a kind of
springboard like a trampoline like we
said before to try to appreciate what it
must be like to be her so the next thing
people say to us or kids say to us
especially is it makes me realize that I
go to school all the time and I kind of
take it for granted and maybe I should
work harder to try to do something about
that for other people you know so we
have this incredible Confluence in the
brain and mind this layering of of of of
real physical actions and things that
happen that you can directly observe
with the visual system right in the
world and then you impose upon those a
desire to construct a story or meaning
and you elaborate that meaning and in
doing so you also ramp up the internal
sense of self-aware awareness of me
being me of conscious systems systems
that support Consciousness in the brain
and brain stem very basic things we
share with alligators right that become
that kind of inspired state of you know
like wait it makes me want to do more
for the world or it makes me inspired to
know there are people like her she gives
me hope for Humanity one kid told me
right so we've got this incredible
Dynamic layering of the feeling of the
body the real physical body the
observation and sensation perception of
the world around us in a physical real
or social real sense and then the
elaboration of that into these cultural
narratives that become feeling States
and where valence kinds of disappears
right it doesn't matter so much anymore
whether it's painful or pleasurable it's
more about does it mean something I'm
suffering because it's helping someone
else right and so it becomes something
desirable even though it hurts me right
otherwise none of us would go through
childbirth right and so it's that
meaning process that makes us really
uniquely human and that is the
development of these emotions over time
I think incredible uh if I'm
understanding correctly there's a
feeling state in our body when we
experience or observe somebody in in
their own feeling state or experience it
may be the same as theirs might be
different and frankly as a
neuroscientist I'm going to say we'll
never know exactly that we won't know
Angel and philosophical depression we
won't if I see blue and you see blue is
it the same experience it's probably not
based on so from knowledge of color
vision and the distribution of cones to
explain why I'm saying that the
distribution of cone photo pigments in
your eye and my eye are extremely
different uh to the point where we're
not working with the same palette cool
and I think that makes life interesting
life interesting exactly but assuming
that neither of us is colorblind red is
similar enough to both of us that we
both look at it and say that's red but
one in 80 males is red green colorblind
would look at it and would
um see what you and I call Red and call
it Orange
in any event
when we let's say listen to or watch and
listen to Martin Luther King's classic I
Have a Dream speech
um or when I hear certain music that I
first heard when I was 14.

I was a
particularly interesting for me time in
my life in part because I was 14 and
we'll get back to that it's 14. we're
talking about adolescents right I I'll
just say I'll go on record by saying
that the I think that the music that we
listen to in our adolescents and teen
years
is one of the main ways in which we
come to recognize the extremes of these
feeling State templates that you're
describing I can one of the ways I
prepare for podcasts is
um is to walk and and for my solo
podcast is to walk and go through some
of the narrative my neighbors think I'm
crazy
um but that's okay I think they're crazy
too
um maybe they're both right okay that's
right exactly and um but I I always know
what music to listen to before I do a
solo podcast depending on the state that
I happen to be in driving into the
studio versus the one I need to be in in
order to deliver that particular
material and I know because I it's
almost like knowing what palette of
colors or emotional colors I have in me
at the moment and which ones are going
to be required to deliver that material
um because it's different depending on
the on the topic matter for that episode
what I'm referring to here is is this
idea that
um you know we we come to understand
emotions through our own experience and
how observing other people and listening
to certain music can influence that and
I I realize that some people probably
have more of a buffer between their um
experience of the outside world
so-called like steroception seeing
things outside us
um and their internal landscape
um some people I realize have very
little narrative distancing in fact I
live with someone who has very little
narrative distancing when she watches a
movie if the person gets punched yeah
she Ducks she she flinches
um if it's a happy movie she gets happy
yeah if somebody in a movie is sad she
really feels it and for a while I
thought goodness you know this is like
really seems a little extreme but I've
talked to professionals about this and
it's something called lack of narrative
distancing transportation is another way
to say it yeah being transported by
story right and and I think that it has
its adaptive utility I'm not being
critical I think that's an incredibly
interesting aspect to ourselves some of
us I have a lot more narrative
distancing especially with violence and
I yeah I think that's because I grew up
around a lot more violence than she did
and so I see somebody you know get
beheaded in a film and I and I unless
it's something where I've really been
built into the story of that person and
it was a real world thing that I knew
actually happened then I I just kind of
go okay well it's a movie you know
there's a movie it's not real even if
it's a movie about something that was
real that might be a little bit more of
an emotional impact and of course if
it's a documentary and it's real footage
it's pretty rough yeah but I don't
um I'm not horrified in the in the way
that she's horrified I'm horrified but
not to the same extent
um so obviously that some of us have
more of a buffer than others and you can
see this in a movie or in a classroom
full of kids watching a a speech like
the eye of a Dream speech or hearing the
Rosa Parks story or for instance or
um listening to and watching a David
Goggins social media post which I met
David earlier because your son had a
question for me about David Goggins who
I happened to um have the Good Fortune
of of having met and know a little bit I
don't know him very well but I know
um in from some in-person interactions
and he is every bit as intense and every
bit as serious about his
um ongoing progression as he appears to
be there there's there's no false so
there it is 100 data fact genuine he
does what he claims to do and more yeah
um that we don't hear about
super impressive human being so when we
see something like a David Goggins post
or we watch and listen to the I Have a
Dream speech and we start to feel
something yeah like whoa we're feeling
inspired to use the basic language are
we mapping to some subconscious
awareness of that in ourselves
um meaning are we mapping to some time
when we felt inspired in another
circumstance or are we really
you know is this merely a kind of a
return to a feeling state that we have
to recognize I don't know if experiments
have ever been done on this but is there
any way to to determine whether or not
we can truly have novel emotions past
age 15.
um or are we really just returning for
that matter are we really just doing a
sort of template matching of wow I'm
feeling this again and and this makes me
feel capable like I can go out and run
today even though I was gonna basically
not run today
um or you know it's possible to have a a
fantasy view about how the world could
be in terms of
um equality that um an opportunity and
you know what like I that's
subconsciously is my brain saying yeah I
remember when I was six and and I didn't
know the difference between some people
having an opportunity and other people
not having opportunity
um is that what's happening or do you
think that we are more sophisticated
than that and we are actually really
um uh responding to what we think we're
responding to
okay so wow there's a lot in there
um a couple a couple of things to start
so the the first thing I was thinking
before when you were talking about the
visual system which I think is relevant
now
um is is that as humans the more
developed we get the more experience we
have the more um we've adapted to the
contexts in which we live you know the
real physical context in this case the
visual context included
um but also the cultural values of that
context the things we've noticed other
people notice right how do you learn
when you're living in the jungle that
when you see eyeballs you should you
know go stand next to your mommy right
um so you learn what to notice you learn
what what you need to attend to in the
world and you're so when we are
perceiving things
either very basic things like a visual
scene or hugely complex elaborate things
like uh Martin Luther King's speech we
are as much imposing onto the world our
own expectations of
what is there as we are perceiving
what's actually there right so as we
impose onto the world we bring what you
might call our cultural ways of seeing
and knowing our values and beliefs and
we push them onto the experience of what
we notice so even in very basic ways
things like cultural values uh change
the way in which people observe and
remember scenes right so you know
there's classic work by shinobu kirayama
and other people showing that in Japan
versus in uh in the U.S uh when you show
people a scene of um you know like an
underwater scene with like all the
beautiful things that are underwater
rocks and plants and things and the
little fish swimming by and then one big
fish swimming by right and you ask a
Japanese person uh what's this a picture
of they tend to talk about it's a scene
of rocks and plants and little fish and
then a big fish swims by
um if you ask an American uh Western
educated person what is this picture of
they say oh it's a fish swimming through
a scene right we we tend to notice first
and you can he's shown that this is you
know is very very automatic it's very
low level it's perceptual not just
conceptual and it actually changes what
people actually notice in the scene and
what they remember later and all that
kind of stuff right we learn how to
sort of filter input we're not little
you know uh robots or little uh video
cameras walking around observing the
world and so when we see something as
complex as a social story We impose onto
that all kinds of personal experiences
so you said are we ever able to
experience new emotions after age 15 I
think no but we are very well able to
experience new feelings right which are
the complex elaborations of these
physiological States and the stories we
tell ourselves about the meaning behind
them that is developing all the time and
it's developing through all kinds of
quote-unquote cognitive media we do it
through our science right by being
inspired and interested in something by
being in awe of something we do it
through ART through trying to express an
emotion or a feeling or a value State
through the way in which we portray
something to other people right as
humans we are driven I mean even as cave
people we were driven to say I was here
here's my handprint I'm going to spit it
onto a rock so forevermore anybody else
comes in here is going to see that it
was me who was here and I have a me
right and so what we're really doing is
moving through the world not in this
kind of receptive passive way but we are
actively imposing ourselves onto the
world we're actively bringing our
interpretive power and adapting what we
do next relative to the way in which we
accommodate right Piaget talked about
this 100 years ago accommodate or
assimilate those things into us that we
that that may disagree with our schema
that may uh that may align in accord and
reinforce them so this matters a lot for
the ways that humans experience the
world more broadly because
think about for example
um a terrible topic like genocide or the
Holocaust right how does something like
that happen right how is it that people
who have empathy who who love their
family who love their neighbors can
suddenly turn on each other right what's
happened is they've shifted the way in
which they naritize the context of those
events the way in which they impose
interpretation on somebody else's pain
has been fundamentally shifted from
that's another human suffering too
that's not a human that's a a rat a pig
a bug or whatever it is right and that
dehumanization process allows us to
shift our story set so that we bring
another set of values and beliefs into
the space
um can I just say I'm I'm glad that you
brought up that dark example yeah
because my understanding from my
psychology courses in University where
that as much as we would all like to
think that we are incapable of being the
committers of genocide that there are
studies that were done in the 50s but
then have been repeated over many
decades showing that
um in certain contexts
um essentially everybody and anybody
would respond to an authoritarian figure
and torture somebody else and I'm sure
as people are listening to us this
they're thinking no I would absolutely
not do that but all the data points to
the fact that if the conditions were set
in a particular way
um you and I and everybody else most
certainly would a very eerie idea that
goes back to I think Young's idea that
we have all things inside of us and we
certainly have all the neural circuitry
components inside of us for um rage and
contempt and um and horrible
mistreatment of others as well as all
the good stuff
um but I I'm just glad that you brought
up this example because
um I think that for a lot of people it's
it's inconceivable but I've never heard
it framed the way that you're describing
it which is that if the story becomes
not about the other person's suffering
but primarily about One's Own Story of
suffering and that can suppress or
literally inhibit the neural circuits
that invoke empathy
uh then it makes perfectly good
neurobiological sense as to why that
would at least be possible yeah and of
course I don't think it's a good thing
it's just like many aspects of our
biology and psychology it just happens
to be the way things are
it is and I I think it really I think I
mean I'm the ever The Optimist I'm also
ever the educator right I I you know I'm
a teacher I'm very also very interested
in the ways that we design educational
experiences for young people I think the
only hope we have to protect ourselves
against these possibilities
is to systematically develop
dispositions in ourselves proclivities
within ourselves to question our own
motives and to deconstruct our own
assumptions about situations and to
engage with other people's perspectives
systematically and when we develop those
dispositions
the hope is that we are developing
within ourselves a kind of
um uh a veto system right a system for
checking our own motivations against
other people's experiences of those
motivations and
you know so much of what's leading I
think so now we're going in another
Direction and kind of a political
Direction but so much what's leading us
into these very divisive political types
for example not just and you know the
rise of authoritarianism not just in the
U.S uh or the threat of it not just in
the U.S but around many places in the
world all of which by the way are
Western educated
um uh is that we are taught that to know
something means you own something in
yourself and then you take that with you
and you impose it on the world
forevermore I know how to do algebra two
and I can do it whenever you ask me kind
of thing and that's what a good student
is where when people in learn to engage
with their own knowledge States in in
more Curious open-minded flexible ways
then we dispositionally teach ourselves
to to check our assumptions to rethink
what we think we know and and this is
key developmentally to notice when we
need to do that and when we should just
play ahead and it's totally fine and and
so what we're doing I think right now to
ourselves both in the education system
and in things like social media is we're
reinforcing our own biases by diving
down rabbit holes where you re-hear the
same thing over and over again that
reinforces your own belief systems and
then you come to believe those things
and those put you on a train toward a
particular kind of action or belief
system that never becomes deconstructed
and it's very comfortable and it's easy
to do but the responsibility I think we
have as individuals and as groups as
humans given the amazing intelligence we
have is to rise above that and actually
look back on our own selves reflectively
and deconstruct our preferences
deconstruct our values and our beliefs
and systematically query them
specifically around how they impact or
influence or or or change the situations
of those around us or don't right the
situations and sustainability of the
world that supports us or don't and so
it all comes back to the emotions that
drive our thinking so we have these very
basic primitive physiological states
which vary across individuals the degree
to which they are you know incredibly
powerful easily evoked versus not you
know there's a lot of range in that now
all of that variation makes things
interesting right
um but it's our ability to learn to
experience those
and to know develop wisdom around when
we need to query our own emotions and
deconstruct the narratives that are that
we're using to validate or substantiate
those kinds of emotions
in order to assess whether we actually
are right whether we should continue or
whether we should step back and and and
and and and reframe right and so that
kind of mental flexibility really comes
out of an emotional disposition it is
our ability so it takes it back to what
you're asking at the very beginning it
is our ability to not just drive from
what feels like the bottom up which of
course is always starting in the top
down because you've got some
interpretation of the world that makes
you feel fear and that makes your body
do this that makes you right
um but also to be able to rise above to
transcend
and think about what are the broader
systemic historical uh uh ethical Civic
implications of this narrative I'm
telling myself which feels default like
the truth and how might I deconstruct
those systematically and how might I
invite others to give me their version
of those events and engage with those
systematically in order to be able to
really appreciate the implications of my
beliefs and
so the bottom line is that the emotions
that we're talking about today are
actually the fundamental drivers of all
of our thinking decision-making
relationship building right our
community lives and our personal
well-being all in one mix but that
doesn't kind of excuse us for acting on
their bequest it actually imbues us with
a responsibility to then develop
dispositions to systematically query
those and reframe them when they are not
serving us or the world well
exactly what you said
so much so that you know I I'm a big
believer in following lots of different
types of social media accounts yeah I've
taken some heat here and there yeah
because people automatically assume that
if you follow an account that you
subscribe to that ideology but I follow
many accounts to whom I disagree with
what they say specifically so that I can
learn different perspectives as far as I
know we're the same species me and these
other people yes as far as we are and
sometimes I wonder but um they probably
wonder the same way about me they Wonder
too
um and there's enormous range in in
those uh those accounts that I follow
um and I follow different accounts for
different reasons some for entertainment
some for information some for
challenging myself some for um my desire
to be baffled every now and again but to
always return to this idea that we're
all we are all basically working with
the same building blocks of neurons and
neurochemistry some people's dopamine
which whether or not you're into Bitcoin
or
um traditional currency uh the one true
currency that's Universal is dopamine
everyone's working for dopamine and
exchanging their own dopamine with World
experiences
but this is one of the reasons why I
think it's important to not be siled in
one's thinking or exposure to different
things on social media a somewhat
controversial statement actually because
I think a lot of people assume that if
you follow somebody from a particular
political party then that means that you
vote that political party
Etc
um but that to me always seemed crazy
I'm fortunate to have a good friend who
is on this podcast Rick Rubin who's a
extremely accomplished music producer
and instead produced music from
essentially every genre of music punk
rock which is what our story I got my
start and still love punk rock music so
much but classical and Hip-Hop and
everything in between and Rick is
somebody who forages so broadly and I've
really learned to try and forage broadly
in terms of ideas and ideologies and
it's I think a lot of people are just
scared to be exposed to something that
they hate so much because they don't
like that feeling in their body of of
disagreement
um but yeah dissonance is very uh you
know that kind of cognitive dissonance
we call it is very difficult it takes
work to resolve it yeah I I guess is is
there I like to think there's a way to
step back from that and observe it not
from a disconnected stance but from a
place of curiosity about what's driving
the those mechanisms in people and and
maybe where we need to adjust our
thinking maybe not to adopt their mode
of thinking 100 but maybe you know 10 or
2 I think one of the the reasons things
are so divisive right now is because of
social media and the siloing or of kind
of Orchard very um Divergent
trajectories of people only following
and listening to and obeying certain
kinds of information and other people
the other and I think the pandemic is
the place where all that really clashed
very heavily
um and continues to Clash
in other areas too
um certainly not something that's going
to be solved um inside of this
conversation and yet I do have
um a question that that grows from this
aspect of our discussion which is you
know what do you think can be done at a
concrete level
in terms of Education of younger people
as well as educational people who are
out of high school
and and Beyond to try and adopt these
more um encompassing modes of of
learning and experiencing the world I
mean it's one thing to say you know
expose yourself to lots of different
ideas
um it's another to to understand how to
how to do that in a way that that is um
adaptive and that any ideas you have
um I think what I know I and the
audience would really appreciate and and
feel free to to
um make this an editorial
um or or map back to data I mean
obviously this is your wheelhouse this
is this is your expertise so I'm curious
what what should we do should should I
send my family members who have very
Divergent political beliefs from me um
information
um to the to the contrary they're
thinking or should what do I do and what
do I do for me what should we all be
doing with our 10 year olds and our yeah
and ourselves
well I won't I won't comment on should
you send your family members your
there's other people that do that and
they they do that work and they know how
they're always frustrating each other
over text message it's okay it's okay it
can't get any worse yeah no okay we all
love each other anyway
but one thing I really do think a lot
about in this is
um the way in which we educate our young
people and what do we do with our 10
year olds right and like the first thing
I'll say about your time well I don't
know if you actually have a 10 year old
but is um is is query them about their
beliefs when they follow something when
they think something's impressive or bad
or you know ask them why teach them to
unpack their own beliefs that doesn't
mean that you that you don't still hold
them necessarily it doesn't mean that
you adopt the opposite belief right if I
talk to someone who has a very different
value system than I do and I disagree
with them that's legitimate but two it
also but but in deciding that I disagree
I have sort of Revisited my own belief
and queried it I've I've externalized it
a little bit made that thinking visible
is why we talk about it in education
that's David Perkins at Harvard talks
about it that way you know making your
thinking visible and then examining that
thinking and and so
I think
one really important step that a society
will have to take or we won't make it
and I know that sounds a little
um dramatic but I actually think it's
true sadly uh and I'm starting to think
it's more and more true is that we need
to really get Brave about how we think
about the process of educating our young
people and what it actually means to
expose young people to developmentally
appropriate
age-appropriate
opportunities to grow themselves as
thinkers as individuals and as Civic
agents and community members I I think
that our
Western designed
education system
has in it some very basic beliefs about
what counts as knowing and what is worth
thinking about and knowing about and how
do I know that
how do I test you on that that I think
is deeply they are deeply problematic
and lead us I mean I know this is a
strong statement but they lead us to a
place where we are
we are actively punished not just not
encouraged but I would say actively
discouraged from
really playing with ideas
engaging systematically with our own
beliefs deconstructing those beliefs and
engaging with complex perspectives on
topics and ideas that is just not what
school is about
and it needs to be we need to shift so
right now the way in which we think
about
school is about is basically judged by
quote unquote learning outcomes right
what have you learned and how do we know
that we make you demonstrate it by
yourself under time pressure in a
particular setting right or you're going
to come back and I'm going to give you a
question and you're going to give me the
answer I had in mind and if you do that
in time then I'll say you learned it and
now we're done check right
as compared to
a system and there are Educational
Systems like this this is not
um there are people for example the
performance uh assessment Consortium in
New York City is a Consortium of public
schools some of which do this
extraordinarily well they have a a
dispensation from the New York state
government uh not to give the Regents
exam as their graduation requirements
um and their um and and their their
benchmarks of learning but instead to
have alternative ways of assessing kids
where kids work for months to years
depending on the project on these
in-depth intellectual multi-disciplinary
projects where they explore a topic and
they engage with their own process of
learning about that topic and they bring
in teachers and Community experts and
other people and they present their work
and then they query the work and they
talk about their own learning process
and what could happen next and what
decisions they made and all these kinds
of things exactly you have to invent not
just the work but the question
look at the world and notice what it is
we're not understanding that we would
benefit from understanding and find a
way to to isolate and systematically
query that why don't we build education
systems from preschool all the way up
that in that engage people
systematically in that kind of
intellectual curiosity we don't do that
so we we know that little kids education
preschool education if you don't have
the water table in the sand table and
the cool stuff and the choices and the
ways to engage with each other and you
know I mean all the stuff being really
age appropriate for three-year-olds to
touch and smoosh and you know try to
taste and whatever else they're going to
be a mess on the floor they're just not
going to come they're going to refuse to
come to school right and they're going
to be laying in the in the doorway
throwing temper tantrums right but as so
we know how to do little kid education
well it doesn't mean we always do it but
we know that they need to be intrigued
they need to be invited to think and
they bring their Natural Curiosity and
then you expand the range of ways they
can leverage that Curiosity to discover
new things they hadn't known to think
about before right
then we get to the standard
quote-unquote educational system and we
somehow think that that natural human
proclivity to engage curiously and
meaningfully with deep thinking about
ideas and the world
is is like inefficient and inappropriate
and frightening and we teach kids no no
no no no turn that off it's it's it's
dangerous if you do it it's considered
insubordinate right and what we want to
instead to do is just let me give you
what I've already figured out for you
I'm going to give it to you and you are
going to give it back to me so it seems
to me that in the way that things
actually happen in school what is
created is
kind of desire for the kid to be a
computer not a human and they do have a
dopamine system however and so what
becomes the the buzz the emotional Buzz
is performance yes if it becomes a buzz
at all so for the kids that don't get
that buzz from performance or they don't
or they don't intrinsically love the
math or the English or the books that
they're being presented with or or
whatever the subject happens to be
um or maybe they only like one or two
things then they emotionally dissociate
from the rest of the material I'm
actually describing a bit of myself in
high school I I was not I barely
finished high school
um I dropped out of sixth grade for a
few months yeah didn't work for me yeah
you know I eventually got back to it and
and as I imagine you did too um so we
ended up as academics but um I think
what you're describing is so key
um and I never thought about it from the
perspective of oh yeah as young kids
like we're given all the things that are
going to drive our sensory World
um in the appropriate ways top watch and
sound and um
we're trying to build meaning in our
mind and that we get to um as students
young very Young Learners impose some of
our own
um intrinsic motivation to do certain
things and not others and that that
isn't supported as we're adults I'd like
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what you're describing is so vital what
age do you think this um Cliffs off so
you okay so in preschool kids are
allowed to do this in kindergarten
they're allowed to do a first grade
they're allowed to do it in most schools
but at what point do is the expectation
imposed on kids to become little rote
um um learning computer machines and to
get their dopamine from
um performance rather from intrinsic
pleasure in what they're learning
thinking about you and also how do we
address this issue that there are
certain basic skills that not everyone
is going to perform well at and so for
the kid that says I don't like math well
you still have to learn it you need to
appreciate it how do you so how do you
conjure up in a a joy or an appreciation
in that kid I mean it seems like a hard
thing I mean I eventually set myself
along a academic trajectory
um to that worked out
um but that was initially just out of
pure fear because my life was was really
bad I made circumstances and myself made
it bad and I was rescuing myself from
basically becoming more of a loser so I
was like okay school's the thing and I
just school and that was that was the
turn hard right into into academics for
me but what do you do for the person who
is like really doesn't like math because
they're struggling with it or doesn't
like biology or psychology I mean how do
we how do we evoke a at least an
appreciation for that
um it sounds like the emotion system is
the key system to leverage in order to
learn and and so could you talk about
the relationship between emotion and
learning yeah because I realize this is
really the the center of what you do so
I mean you could say it this way right
so whatever you're having emotion about
is what you're thinking about
right and whatever you're thinking about
you could hope to learn about remember
something from right understand
differently so the key question for
educators is what everybody's always
having some kind of emotions all the
time if those are dead right or
unconscious what are people's emotions
about in this space
if the emotions because whatever those
emotions about that is what you're
learning about so if the emotions are
about the outcomes did I get it right am
I going to flonk and I can make plus I'm
so smart I'm so stupid well any one of
those right if those are the main
drivers then that is what you're
learning about
if the emotions are about the actual
ideas in play the math the physics the
why does the ball roll down the ramp
wait a minute that's the same as why the
moon goes around you know what I mean
like there are right when the emotions
are about ideas then what you're
engaging with is learning about ideas
and so what I would argue is that in
setting up the kind of accountability
system we have we have taught people
that their emotion should be about these
high-stakes accountability measures
which means that's what we're learning
how to think about perform perform not
how to think about the ideas not the
intrinsic power of using math to
understand the world in a different way
so how do you engage kids right you
engage kids by setting out Rich problem
spaces that but in problems that invite
them to try to engage with something
that piques your curiosity that's
meaningful to them or have them bring in
well the kid who really hates it like
what is it that you do find interesting
kid right start there
start there and start using your your
academic skills in a way that will give
you power to do what it is you're
interested in doing that's the way in
use your writing use your math use your
persuasive argument skills use your
filmmaking skills whatever it is to tell
the story of something that you find
deeply meaningfully powerful to
understand and all of a sudden you need
the math kids actually say things like
like there's this lovely
um there's this lovely uh long quote
from a from a Sudanese immigrant kid in
one of these New York schools uh with
the performance assessments
um uh in a in an article I wrote with a
colleague named Doug connect
um the article is called building
meaning builds teens brains you can find
it in educational leadership there's a
big long quote from this kid at the end
and he's basically explaining what math
class meant to him which he had never
passed a math class before and he says
he got this problem called walking to
the door which is basically Zeno's
Paradox right you get halfway to the
door halfway to the door halfway there
do you ever get to the door why or why
not right and they spent months learning
the math that would help them get at
that problem and he talks about how I
had a problem he says and I had to learn
fractions I had to in order to be able
to solve the problem I had and as I
engaged with fractions and that problem
I got fascinated he says by finite and
infinite and these ideas were driving my
need to learn to do fractions right so
we've got the cart before the horse I'm
not saying you don't have to learn math
or you don't have to learn to read or
write or or do all these other kinds of
skills but we make those which is in the
horse's cart you know what's in the cart
we call that the the metric of the
education system and the aim of it when
in fact it's the quality of the horse
can that horse pull the thing right
that's the development of the person and
what they put in their cart then serves
that development it's the toolkit of
ways of knowing and understanding that
come with you as you move into the world
but this this takes real real
developmental skill on the part of
Educators right who are not supported or
or or resourced or trained to think
about development in these ways I mean
so you asked when does this fall off it
really depends on what school system you
are and what demographic you are when it
falls off but for almost everybody
except for the privileged few uh who are
in very Progressive alternative schools
it falls off by adolescence which is
when school gets serious and it's also
ironically when developmentally kids are
developing the neural capacity and the
psychosocial capacity and the drive to
infer complex narrative meaning from the
things they are doing you know these
aren't just my shoes these are a
statement about you know what I believe
about sustainability and about sports
and about adults and Counter Culture
right and as we grow into a space where
we're driven to try to you know
Challenge and think about big meanings
and engage with perspectives and
emotions and social issues and Broad
important existential questions be they
in physics or be they in art or be they
in the social Civic domain right
what do we do
we double down on controlling the input
and the output transactional mechanisms
that count as quote-unquote academic
rigor and achievement right we start to
ask kids you know what's the name of the
the servant who shows up in the scene
and and Great Expectations right is it
Molly or is it Maria right and it's you
know like who the heck knows and that is
not the point of reading Great
Expectations right we take away because
we're afraid as Educators as Society
we've got this narrative around
young peoples and particular but
everyone's propensity to build and
construct
meaning in these spaces and self in
these spaces that agency frightens us
because we're worried they're going to
take risks they're going to do something
stupid they're going to they're going to
fall off the track they're gonna not
make it in the traditional system
and in trying to protect them and shield
them from their own Curiosities their
own dispositions for meaning making we I
would argue actually stunt their ability
to grow themselves to the point where we
have mental health crises literally
crises in in mental health right now in
adolescence across demographic groups
especially bad in young girls as I
understand yes that's right but but
after that in everybody and it's worse
than girls yes we don't fully understand
why that is
um uh got some you know suggestions uh
you know what we're really doing is
actually
producing people who are gutted of their
own inner drive to become
someone who thinks powerfully in the
space of the world we are frightened to
let our young people have that power
which is the role of adults is to wrap
around young people and help them learn
to to be reflective to be systematic to
be rigorous with themselves as they
develop the capacities and dispositions
to deconstruct their own beliefs to
deconstruct their own aims and goals and
the ways they understand the world and
to rebuild them iteratively over and
over in this in this sort of
intellectually humble curious way where
we're constantly querying ourselves
constantly querying other people where
we're willing to sit with uncertainty in
complex problem spaces and think through
the possibilities rather than settle
quickly onto one solution what does
school expect you to do settle
immediately onto one solution which by
the way is the solution I already had in
mind when I gave you the question right
right as compared to
sitting with young people and allowing
them this in safe and appropriate ways
the space in which to actually grapple
with complex powerful questions when
kids develop the proclivities to do that
they learn how to manage those very
human capacities that we've been talking
about the whole time that can lead to
you know terrible evil as well as
amazing virtuousness they learn to
appreciate and manage those capacities
within their own selves I think so much
of what we see in terms of these you
know quote unquote Failure to Launch
examples are are because I know some of
these the children of friends
um really really smart kids that didn't
map well to the system
and therefore are not doing well really
struggling and um clearly have the
intellectual power it just wasn't served
up to them and uh School wasn't served
up to them in a way that worked yeah
that says as much about the system as it
does about the kid right yeah I I teach
a course at um Stanford to the medical
students that every first year medical
student takes about Neuroscience it's
team taught it's a phenomenal course
um because of the the range of expertise
uh in the teaching
um that comes through and one thing I've
noticed
um is that the they're all phenomenal
teachers
um but the best instructors
um do two things simultaneously when
they teach first of all they come to the
table with Incredible expertise
obviously we understand what you're
trying to get at if you want people to
engage with ideas yeah they are true
luminaries in their respective Fields
addiction pain memory uh every system of
the of the the body and brain that
relates to the nervous system is taught
in this course but that I've noticed
every once in a while that um there's a
subset of them that as they teach from
that position of expertise not only are
they clear not only are they engaging
not only are there slides
um sparse enough to understand but Rich
enough to include all the relevant
detail but they also flip back and forth
in from the position of expert to the
position of novice learning it for the
first time that's almost that
intellectual curiosity that they're
keeping a lot they have this disposition
we're talking about cultivating sorry to
cut you off no please do um as academics
we're familiar with that right interrupt
interrupting in the landscape of
academics interrupting me is is a sign
of Interest I think Carol I think Carol
dweck was the one who told me that she
okay she's right and she's right yeah
she's right um the great Carol dweck
yeah and so
um but I've seen this especially so you
know there are some topics that um you
know I like to think that I'm I might do
this reflexively for because like for
instance I started off in neural
development and I adore the topic so I
can't teach neural development without
being completely
blown away in the positive sense of how
a brain develops yeah I've still never
talked about this I've done a podcast on
it um because it tends to require
visuals
um and we don't use those in the because
the podcast guys most people listen to
the podcast but maybe I'll do something
just for YouTube at some point but that
I think it's this the same experience
occurs when I see somebody
um like uh Dr Sean Mackey who runs our
our pain clinic at Stanford teach about
pain and the systems of the body that
relate to pain and emotion and how to
cure certain forms of pain Etc treat
pain it's like he's he's clearly the
world expert but the way he describes a
system you can tell he's he's learning
it again for the first time in parallels
all of that and I feel like that ignites
the emotional systems of the learner's
brain in such a powerful way
um that is distinct from just hearing an
expert talk about something he's not
relaying he's not a squirrel with nuts
and giving all the nuts to the kids he's
inventing the knowledge in front of them
right that's a great way to put it um as
usual
um others are more succinct in
collecting my ideas than and expressing
them than I am
um so I think that's a that's a powerful
thing I went to a high school that's uh
has a kind of a split reputation it's
known as being one of the best public
high schools in the country it's also
the high school that at least for a
while had one of the highest suicide
rates in the country it's written up in
various uh newspapers and and so on
um and so much so that nowadays they
forbid the kids there from meeting uh
more than an hour before school to
practice for the standardized test by
the way when I was at school the only
thing that school represented for me in
high school was something that came
between breakfast and skateboarding and
a lot and frankly I wasn't in school a
lot and I don't recommend that kids go
to school stay in school I I missed a
lot of school I had a lot of them did
all kinds of weird things there's a lot
of making up to do in college
um as a consequence so stay in school
get the basics um but this is actually
where I'd like to go you have a very
interesting trajectory yeah you're our
University Professor you
um study emotion and learning and many
other things across cultures and
um adolescence and and so many other
important topics but um you are not a
story of of like growing up in an
academic family you grew up on a farm
um sort of gentleman's Farm my dad was a
surgeon but we had animals in a farm and
tried my parents tried to have us you
know growing the things we ate you've
had a number of different experiences
that we were talking about before we
started recording but but one of the
things that you mentioned was getting
involved in education
um where you were exposed to students of
who had very different backgrounds than
you
um maybe you could just talk a little
bit about
um sort of the nodes of your experience
so you grew up on this farm and then
maybe just hit some of the other nodes
and and then let's let's take a foray
into when you first got exposed to
educating others yeah um and because I
think that's an important backdrop for
what uh what we've been talking about
here and service is a jumping off point
for where I'd like to go next I'll just
jump in I mean it's always hard to talk
about yourself I don't know what's
interesting and what's not you know to
me it's just me I I think what's
interesting is knowing you know where
you where you've been and the things
that that marked that mapped back to
your emotional uh uh networks in a way
that for you feel like like that
mattered in terms of what you're doing
now as a little kid I remember
even as a little kid not liking school I
was a very good kid I was a very
well-behaved kid I went to a decent
public school
um but just the whole idea of it I just
always felt like I had two left feet it
never felt like it was really me there I
was always trying to escape a little bit
you know what I mean and thinking about
when I first started educating others
and like my first memory of educating
others like specifically that comes to
mind is I was six and I went on a little
vacation in the summer to stay with my
cousins in Petoskey Michigan which is a
place on Lake Michigan where there are
these
um Stones where there's my understanding
from when I was six is that there are
these like 200 million year old
fossilized worms in these stones and you
can see them when you look at there's
like little worms and you can see them
yeah so I just was fascinated by these
stones that these are actual fossilized
200 million year old worms and I don't
know if that number is correct that's
what I remember from age six so some
paleontologists out there can correct me
but I looked at these stones and I went
to the little local exhibit they had at
the library or whatever and I learned
about these stones and I brought some
back and somehow somebody thought to ask
me to teach my second grade class when I
started school about these stones and I
just remember I don't know how I got
asked to do this but I remember standing
in front of my class
and talking about these stones and just
looking around the room and suddenly
noticing you know that feeling when
you're lecturing and you think oh my God
they're fascinated by what I'm saying
like every kid is looking at me and like
holy crap you know like and I was so I'm
like all right I'll keep going I'll tell
you some more about these stones and I
passed them around whatever and it must
have been okay because I was then asked
to give that talk all the way up to the
fifth graders who were way older than me
and you're a professor I was already
fascinated by the natural world and able
to like make meaning out of something in
a way that inspired other people if I
can be so blunt doesn't say that and yet
I was constantly in trouble at school
for not having my homework like I was
just I you know the feeling of release
on the Friday afternoon and the feeling
of dread on Sunday evening is hard to
like describe you know and I went to a
reasonably well-resourced school you
know
um anyway fast forward
up to when I was older I mean I I was
just always fascinated by and I think
someone this comes from my mom too
um trying to you know speak different
languages engage with people who are
different than myself just have
conversations so from the time I was old
enough to barely qualify to do these
programs my parents had the the
resources luckily to be able to let me
to do these things but I you know I went
off to France and stayed on a farm there
for a summer and went to uh you know
Ireland I went to Russia by the time I
was 18 I was working with these little
kids off the street in in camping with
them in southern Siberia and all these
kinds of things when I was as cold as
they say inside it was gloomy and rainy
and muddy and cold yes uh yeah Siberia
always sounds so Bleak my parents
threatened many times to send me there
oh no yeah no that's a real threat I
mean it's beautiful in many ways but um
yeah that was sad it was a sad sad story
um anyway
um you know I think what I I was trying
to do was actually
learn by doing by being by engaging with
other people who knew things I didn't
learning how to you know build things I
was always really interested in
wordworking and boat building I went to
Kenya and spent eight months there as an
undergraduate right documenting this
traditional bowel Construction in a
northern coast of Canada
which are sailboats
um sailboat construction where they have
no electricity and everything Cabinetry
yeah Cabinetry you know what I mean you
can actually build Furniture so when
people say they built furniture but they
basically assembled a Kia Furniture
cabinets and and built-in bookshelves
and Furniture whatever some of my
friends have pieces I made for them I
didn't mean anything for myself so I
don't have anything
um but um yeah I mean I think I was
really torn between trying to build
things and Learn by engaging with other
people and in these different cultural
spaces you know being a woman in a
cabinet in a cabinet shop in Connecticut
is is really not a cultural space that I
had grown up in and then go you know
what I mean and yet Right Moving myself
and changing myself to adapt to these
different situations somehow felt like
learning to me I think
um and I ended up in a strange situation
where I cut my hand uh opening a window
at a job site and I needed to I was on
workers comp and I had to take um some
time to let it heal and I couldn't run
Machinery so I had to figure out what to
do with myself I was 23 years old and I
was not going to go back to my parents
for more money right so I thought I have
to support myself so I um I thought okay
I I went to college at a you know a high
level Ivy League school and I I I
majored in French because
I I could that's basically why I was
like I don't know I better finish I
better not flunk I can do French I know
I know I speak French fluently I'll do a
French literature manager and done with
it quickly then I'm like what am I going
to do with myself I never thought I
could be a scientist but I loved science
so I just went around taking like a year
of every science I took a year of
astronomy and a year of biology and a
year of physics and a year of um you
know human anthropology
paleoanthropology like all these things
psychology and realized holy crap like
this is super interesting you can study
how babies think and and the natural
world
and then also uh be be bringing sort of
a scientific lens to bear that helps you
understand things in a new way so so
here I was as a 23 year old with a cut
hand and I thought what am I going to do
with myself I convinced the
Massachusetts Board of Education that I
you know uh had the background knowledge
to be able to uh to to teach some you
know sections of AP biology and physics
that they had in their high school so
when I got to
um uh you know I finally got an
interview with this you know Public
School District in South Boston where
they were desperate for a teacher like
I'm noticing in the Boston Globe or two
weeks into the school year and you still
don't have a teacher you know what I
mean why don't you take me and uh you
know managed to convince the
Massachusetts Board of Education uh to
give me provisional teacher
certification based on the coursework
I'd done and how well I did in that
coursework because I did you know I was
really super motivated I did extremely
well and all that
um and when I got there uh they
basically said when I showed up for the
interview you know
um another the high school teacher wants
to take those AP classes can you just
teach full-time seventh grade so I was
like okay so I uh I I you know had my
full contingent of 130 kids right
seventh graders coming through my
classroom
and uh the middle school had just been
shut down because there wasn't
sufficient funding in the town for it so
they had taken the middle school kids
and pushed them into the high school
space uh what that basically meant is I
suddenly found myself in a fully
equipped high school classroom with
microscopes and all kinds of scientific
equipment that would be used to teach
later courses with my seventh graders
and it also happened that the
Massachusetts Board of Education had
changed the um the uh the requirements
for for the way they organized science
instruction and curriculum from you know
seventh grade life science 8th grade
physical science whatever it was you
know different Sciences each year they
wanted an integrated interdisciplinary
science all the way across and of course
that was very difficult for the
traditional science teachers to do
because they've been teaching only
biology or only earth science or only
physical science
um for their whole career and they
didn't know how to teach the other
subjects and here comes me with like one
intensive year of study in each of these
domain means I was perfectly situated to
like try to pull it together so some of
the high school teachers helped me thank
you to them
um and I built out a new curriculum for
seventh grade for that District around
this interdisciplinary approach to
science
um together with other teachers it was
very Hands-On very and it was very much
like a web of Concepts you know we'd
study nuclear fission and atoms and
reactions and then the Sun and astronomy
and the solar system and then and then
how the the energy is being you know
shined over onto the onto the planets
and then the Earth and then these
organisms called plants are actually
using those photons to do something
chemical let's talk about photosynthesis
and where right and then we can talk
about chemical reactions and breaking
down sugars and molecules right so we
built this whole web-like curriculum
that I was trying to help the kids
appreciate the sort of dynamic
complexity of the natural world and some
of my professors from Cornell also sent
me uh materials and all kinds of cool
stuff from the Cornell Museum that that
they didn't really need and then I gave
it back when I was done right with all
these instructions what all this stuff
is on hominid Evolution and Ashley and
hand axes and all kinds of stuff so I
built out a curriculum around all this
stuff and I realized for the first time
that I was in this amazingly fascinating
space because it just so happened that
the school I was working in was one of
the most diverse culturally in the
nation at that time I think we had
something like 81 languages spoken out
of 1100 kids wow that's a lot of first
languages and kids were arriving from
all over the world this was right after
the Rwandan Genocide so kids were coming
in from East Africa there were refugees
from uh Kosovo and Eastern Europe there
were kids coming in from Jamaica there
were kids coming and from Haiti there
were kids from Malaysia and uh Myanmar
like there were uh there were kids
Landing in that class like deer and
headlights from very very uh broad
ranges of cultural backgrounds and
they're Landing in my science class and
what I quickly realized is they were
using these scientific ways of exploring
the world and thinking about questions
and and trying to make sense of what
they had witnessed
to try to understand their own sort of
selves their own origin story their own
place in the world why different people
in this class looked and eat differently
than me dressed differently than me like
how is it that you look like that and I
look like this and there was all this a
crazy you know adolescent uh turmoil
layered into this space where kids were
grabbing on to the scientific ways of
knowing as a handle to try to make sense
of who they are and those kids started
asking questions of me I'll never forget
this one girl
a black girl raised her hand and all the
other kids are looking at her like yeah
yeah ask it ask it right
um and like you know she was being brave
like she talked about it before school
like I can't say that no I can't I say
it say it and she said Miss immortino
why is it that when we're studying
hominid Evolution and you show us these
in this Nova episode with early hominids
in Africa why do they always show those
creatures looking like they have dark
skin why do they always look like black
people
and I was like well because they're on
the equator and you need that level of
melanin in your skin to be able to adapt
and live without getting skin cancer in
that space right and it opened up this
amazing class discussion that actually
went on for months like it evolved into
a whole curriculum that was biology it
was culture it was sociality where we
started to really unpack
the ways that we as humans are natural
beings in the world and the ways in
which our cultural experiences our
extensions of our natural ways of
adapting and that had me hooked I
realized then that I could bring
science right the science of adolescent
development and of learning and of
emotion and of culture
to this very pressing real world problem
of how do we help our kids actually
figure out who they are invent
themselves in this incredi crazy
Multicultural space and become Scholars
and intellectuals who engage systematic
with the ideas along the way and so I I
took those ideas and I started going to
night school at Harvard Extension school
to study cognitive neuroscience and to
study uh language and cognition and you
know all these kinds of topics and and
quickly realized like I really needed
this developmental perspective infused
right I wanted to understand not just
how these things works but how they got
that way and so I took that back to grad
school at Harvard and began to study
um
uh you know social and cultural and
emotional and cognitive development in
kids and and quickly they are also kind
of hit a wall where I was I went back to
the school district in which I worked
and I went back to the teachers who were
my colleagues and I I worked with them
and I observed their classes and I
interviewed their students and we did
all kinds of work around how kids were
building scientific Concepts in ways
that reflected their cultural Concepts
and ways of approaching the world and I
I quickly realized you know it seems to
me that kids are doing all this meaning
making and we as adults are doing all
this uh all this supportive you know
meaning making we're also engaging and
growing and learning in ways that
reflect not just you know knowledge bits
like little computers but also that
reflect the biological substrate on
which the learning and the thinking are
happening and I wanted very much to
understand how we could use and leverage
developmental biology as a kind of a
constraint
to from which to appreciate the kinds of
theoretical frames we were inventing in
the in the real world sort of
anthropological educational space the
developmental psychological space how
could these two systems you know act as
a Venn diagram and how could the inner
section between them the places where
the theorizing about the natural
behaviors and the way kids were making
meaning and learning and describing
their knowledge and engaging with each
other on the one hand and the ways in
which the brain and the biology are
engaging in or supporting those
processes on the other hand the places
where those two circles would overlap it
seemed to me that was where we could
most uh directly Target to start to
deeply understand the nature of our
developmental psychobiological growth
themselves and so I set out to try to
study about
um the ways in which culture and
sociality shape the brain uh and
Physiology and and survival mechanisms
and development and at that time which
wasn't even that long ago you know it's
like two decades ago quickly realized
um very very little was known you know
about the way in which emotions Beyond
things like fear you know flash a snake
in your face and your amygdala lights up
right like I was thinking of something a
little more nuanced you know what I mean
like what I'm seeing happening in
science class among a kid from Kosovo
and a kid from Rwanda as they're trying
to figure out why they understand how
they look different right those deeply
emotional
conversations they're having but they're
not so cut and dry as the things we had
been studying and so that's what really
drove me to try to start to understand
in an integrated way the way in which
our our biological
development and our psychological
development are actually sort of two
sides of who we are and of how we're
organizing ourselves to build capacity
mental capacity as well as sort of
physical health and capacity over over
the course of Our Lives as we're
engaging with living
incredible
um story and foray into what sounds to
me like really
um your ability to
identify how the universals Among Us
like the universal biological features
the universal psychological
features
can really strongly inform
specifically what's happening now in a
classroom interaction in the mind of an
of a of you or somebody else or of any
of us but to approach it from the other
direction in other words to take what's
happening now and say why is What's
Happening Now happening yeah as opposed
to just saying what is actually
happening underneath the surface right
of the behavior right as opposed to
saying okay this is uh this is the
psychology of character structure this
is the biology of the hypothalamus but
rather say you know is anyone else
really um shocked about the school
shooting in Nashville and go through the
the feeling of shock and and go from
there to the biology as a route of
learning again and of course I don't
want to take away anything from the the
real world
um seriousness of that yeah but but it
sounds to me like you you saw that
there's there's a different portal
through which to teach and understand
experience and that we are all but
especially Young people are really tied
to our emotional states as the as the
main filters which we like that just
like that and therefore make decisions
and move through life I mean I think
it's so key that early on I mean if we
like a teacher oftentimes we like the
subject
if we
um
happen to fall in love with you know
figure 4B in a paper great but that's
not as that's not how I went through
graduate school I just was blown away by
the fact that sperm meets egg you get a
bunch of cell duplications and then and
then you get a brain and then you get a
brain how does that happen I was just
like that's crazy amazing and I was
blessed with a graduate advisor who
literally told me this is how it works
in my lab is what she said uh she said
um
we have everything you need here I'll
help you if you need help but basically
you're gonna mess around with stuff
you're not going to burn down the lab
you're not going to kill yourself with
any of the poisonous stuff
um but then you're gonna like mess some
stuff up and and do some stuff and
you're gonna figure some stuff out this
is literally the description and and I
liked her lab because I had green
countertops and she had pictures of
interesting animals on the wall and then
she said and I'm gonna have two kids
while you're in graduate school so I'm
not gonna be around very much you're
gonna have to figure it out on your own
and I said well can I play the music I
want she said sure and I said can I put
tin foil on the Windows because I don't
want to be bothered and she said sure
and I was like okay this is the place
for me in other words she gave me a a
room to explore and of course she gave
me a lot of guidance along the way she
was an amazing amazing garage advisor
extremely blessed but
it sounds to me like that that
identifying what's the what's really
going on now is key and that the other
thing that's key is in openness to ideas
I mean earlier you talked about
um kind of the let's just let's just
admit where we're at right now we're
gonna we're in a culture War right now
we're in a weird space right now it's
very divisive
um and one of the major problems is that
we can't really talk about things I mean
I think
um fear of getting canceled fear of
um exploring ideas is real it's very
real not just for academics it's just
real people are so it's important to be
sensitive to the experiences of others
absolutely but if we can't actually
explore ideas and feel like we can walk
out of the room safely then we can't
really explore ideas and so um I think
right now it's not just social media I
think it's the fear of offending anybody
um and and probably the fear of of
voicing how upset certain people are
about their experiences or the
experiences of others whatever it is I I
don't see a landscape right now where
there is true open exploration of ideas
anywhere yeah
anywhere at least in this country
so
um what do we do if there if the two if
at least two of the requirements are
um you know an emotional gripping of of
something around the learning
um plus an openness to thinking about
things that maybe we don't feel right to
us as a way to learn how to think
something I think we both agree if I may
that is really critical
um and that the world will be a far
better place if people could do that
um and how do we navigate this landscape
I mean is what has to come first a
demonstration of the value of openness
of ideas and here I I'll just State my
stance I I feel like any idea should be
open to at least discussion any idea
but then it needs to be systematically
dissected with some rigor so that people
can't just assume any idea is true
yeah because just because it's true for
them
um and this I actually learned from my
graduate advisor you know she used to
say you know tolerance has to go both
ways like when it comes to thinking
about ideas and criticizing it can't
just be I'm right there wrong or I don't
tolerate that it has to be
tolerance for all ideas and then you
arrive at hopefully eventually core
truths or at least core trajectories I
mean what do you think
um could support this how early should
this start I mean should kids in
elementary school be discussing
um the current landscape of politics and
what they see from a place of like we
talk about safe spaces but is a safe
space one in which no one gets offended
wears a safe space one in which any idea
can be discussed I think that's never
really been defined for me yeah
oh that's a really fraught issue I mean
first let me go back to something you
said which I would have said it
differently so you said our emotions are
uh a filter right and they do act like a
filter but I actually don't think
emotions are really filter like
so much as they are the drives that are
undergirding the impetus to think right
they're pushing us to think about
particular things and I think I mean as
a scientist my disposition is always
that
to understand something is good
and the more
complexly
the more thoroughly you can interrogate
and understand something
the better
so there's nothing
I'm afraid of knowing
right and what you're really talking
about there is the fear of knowing we
why are people so afraid
to engage with
each other basically because
it's deeply threatening
to
reveal things about your own experience
that are not going to land in a in us in
a space where we can kind of
collectively engage with them as
legitimate experience that's the I sort
of the opposite of canceling people
right it's the opposite of dismissing
people it's actually developing
spaces of trust where we can engage with
ideas and and and take them from
ourselves right so that we're they don't
they're no longer personal value
judgments they become cultural memes or
or or or or or
models or schemas that we can we can
dissect together that we can engage with
together and construct understanding
around right and and I don't really
understand my own position unless I also
understand
your opposition to my position even if I
still disagree with you I think there
are really important conversations going
on right now I'll take it back to the
education system because that's that's
what I know it most about there are
really important conversations going
around on right now around reframing
the experience and outcomes and aims of
schooling around Civic discourse and
reasoning so there's just a major report
that was produced by the National
Academy of education and uh another
academies collaborating with it for
example around this topic and helping us
to move as a society toward a space
where we learn to
um kind of lay ideas out and develop
skills for reasoning around those ideas
including bringing ethical experiential
emotional cultural values to Bear but
then being willing to deconstruct and
engage with those ideas whether they're
the ones that are commensurate and fluid
with our experience or that appear to be
um conflicting or disfluent with our
experience we need to develop a a spaces
for young people especially but for
everyone in in to engage with the
deconstruction of our own assumptions
like I said before and to engage with
the with the deconstruction of others
assumptions and to try to reconcile the
building blocks and that's where we can
build some common ground but we can also
disagree we but we don't really
understand our own position unless we
appreciate someone else's disagreement
with our position unless we can actually
articulate and appreciate appreciate how
it is that person's opinion is opposed
to mine I don't really understand mine
it's such a key point one of the reasons
why I do read all the comments uh on
podcasts on YouTube it takes me some
time but I do it or on social media is
that
um oftentimes I'll get a comment or a
criticism that makes it very clear that
I wasn't clear about something other
times I'll get a commentary criticism
that makes it clear that my and the
other person fundamentally disagree
about something both of which are great
and for a scientist is a delight so keep
it coming
um and of course when people agree and
um they agree and make it clear that
they agree from a stance of
understanding that of course is also
gratifying
um so it's exactly what you're saying
and it's one of one of the upsides I
think of social media which is that
unless people block their comment
section
and I do occasionally block people if
they're being offensive to other people
yeah yeah
alienating people that's not inviting
people into a conversation that's not
constructive I actually have a rule um
which is I call it classroom rules I've
never announced it but I I allow for
classroom rules you can swear but you
can't swear at people yeah that's what I
was taught in graduate school
it's where weekends we're at people it's
also also our rule at home although we
try not to swear it so you can swear but
swearing at people is not not okay yeah
um and that you know a certain
decorum of you know is required in order
to have open discourse
um so that works for me I think that um
it's been a while since I've been in
school but I work at a school and I
think that the the ability to
um not just reinforce but challenge
one's own stances which sometimes leads
to reinforcing our own stances it may if
there will man that's legitimate I mean
I have to assume that in high schools
they still do debates and things of that
sort I mean uh do they allow that I mean
Could you um throw kids in a class and
say let's debate um something really
controversial and then but you have to
debate it from the other side I mean
just as a experiment of forcing the
brain to
um try to be effective uh for sake of
winning but from the other perspective
um uh or stance it seems like a great
exercise if I if I were a high school
teacher that's the first thing I do we
pick the most controversial topic and
then I picked I'd ask people to divide
along that topic and then I'd swap them
into the other one and have them argue
from the other one stance yeah learning
to appreciate perspectives is very is
very and we'd use 14 ounce clothes no
I'm kidding it wouldn't be physical it
would be purely intellectual yeah yeah I
mean let's take can we take it back to
the brain for a moment to the
conversation that we were having earlier
right so we were talking about
that in our experiments and now in whole
you know whole bodies of neuroscientific
knowledge
we know that there is this very
interesting neurobiological sort of
processing difference between
emotions and the thoughts that are part
of those emotions that are you know the
result of those emotions that are also
incipitating those emotions right like
that whole process when it pertains to
uh the direct actions observable
characteristics behaviors you know uh of
another person or situation that you can
actually directly pretty much directly
and learn or infer
as compared to when you have to bring a
whole lot of conceptual content
knowledge to Bear experiential knowledge
uh simulation capacity to Bear to be
able to fully appreciate the nature of a
situation and we talked about how that
second kind of processing that I called
Transcendent is is in essence about
um distancing yourself from the
immediate physical
you know situation the observable
perceivable situation in a direct sense
and instead constructing a narrative in
your mind that's built from that but
that then brings to Bear all these other
kinds of of
um information that allow you to
elaborate this into a narrative that
takes on emotional meaning and and
psychological power as a narrative it
becomes part of identity beliefs all
that kind of stuff and we talked about
that kind of thinking being associated
with the so-called default mode which is
deactivated systematically
and decoupled from itself right the
different regions aren't talking to each
other to each other when you are in the
world acting doing a task paying
attention inferring the direct things
that you need to notice around you you
know you're in the middle of playing a
soccer game the ball's coming at your
head that's not a time to stop and Muse
about you know Title IX and girls access
to sports right you're gonna you're
gonna trip and fall or you're gonna miss
your shot at the goal or are you going
to hit get hit with the ball right so we
need to sort of manage that space in
order to have these conversations and I
I think what's important here is to
remember that the default mode Network
that is the substrate that's that is
playing out your own sense of self and
inner Consciousness and self-awareness
and is also the basis on which we
construct these broader inferential
narratives that are the elaborative
stuff of stories and beliefs
are fundamentally incompatible the
activation of those systems is
fundamentally incompatible with uh
needing to be vigilant into the
immediate physical or social situation
around you so if you feel physically
emotionally culturally socially unsafe
and you feel that you're you need to
watch your back either literally or
metaphorically as you're thinking about
things
neurobiologically that situation is in
conducive it is not conducive to being
able to actually conjure an alternative
perspective in which you construct a
meaningful narrative with alternate
ethical implications with alternate
prospective possible future outcomes
with alternate views of the historical
precedent or context being able to sort
of mentally time travel into the space
of those ideas
is only really possible when people feel
safe to think together so is it it
sounds like it's anti-creative yes
creativity is also associated with the
activations of these networks yeah
causally so in some recent work I had
the Good Fortune of having dinner last
year with um somebody I won't reveal who
it is but he he runs a major so uh
social media platform
and he told me that in Japan
it's common for people to have
two or three or even as many as seven
different social media handles yeah
um and that they do this in order to
embody different versions of themselves
safely yeah so these are not troll
accounts these are not the accounts and
by the way I see you troll accounts that
say whatever and then you go to their
accounts as some private account where
they hide rather these are
individuals who have multiple accounts
um in one account they might be a bit
aggressive maybe even a bully online
dare I say in another account they might
be very fawning and um show up as the
person that everyone knows them to be in
the real world in another account they
might be a university professor and
another they're an athlete and it's
fabricated in the sense that the the
posts that they put up often don't
accurately represent who they are in the
real world yeah but it's accurate in the
sense that it represents the different
dimensions of their Persona that are
driving their real world decision making
at some level it's kind of like pretend
play for little kids it's pretend play
but it's it's not pretend because it's
in cyberspace
um I'll just go back to Rick Rubin who
um in addition to being this incredible
music producers is a enormous fan of
professional wrestling for many years
and I've asked him you know from a
perplexians like why professional
wrestling is it the athleticism he says
it's the only thing that's real because
everyone agrees it's not real and so
these are characters right so you're
you're agreeing for it to not be real
and yet it allows these characters to
fully embody these different personas
and and I had the experience um years
ago I was at Cold Spring Harbor
laboratory summer camp for scientists
where I attended and taught and I was in
a cab driving out to Cold Spring Harbor
from the train station so I lost it and
I got into a discussion with the cab
driver and he said Okay you're from
California he said a New York accent I
won't try and imitate you said you're
from California and he said you know
your governor who at the time was
Schwarzenegger he said he's great and I
and I said tell me more I I happened to
like Schwarzenegger for a number of
reasons he actually signed my PhD
because he was
[Music]
yes and and he said well because if
terrorists show up in California he's
gonna
go out there with a machine gun and take
them down so in his adult life the
Terminator he's the Terminator he's the
Terminator and I realized in that moment
this was a was a smart guy this cab
driver a smart guy that that it wasn't a
lack of narrative distancing no he had
conflated the actor with the roles he
played yeah and I realized in that
moment that this was not a reflection of
him being
unintelligent it was a reflection of the
fact that the brain often collapses
identities absolutely of others and
makes these I think it's just an
official sufficient it's an efficient
way to to parse the world yeah we decide
and then that's that kind of this person
and we put them over there on a shelf
right yeah so so to return to the
discussion that that we're having I I
think that the ability to embody
different aspects of self but also the
ability to transiently embody the
personas of other people and to do that
in a way that allows for really thorough
exploration of idea space yeah I feel
like can only be a good thing yeah
provided it doesn't get physically
violent or something
um but that to me seems like the exact
opposite of what's happening now which
is that
um people are siloing off into their
camps where specific language and
specific ideas are accepted and others
are not I mean it's it's it's
so interesting and perplexing and
disturbing to me that the way that
certain things that have nothing to do
with politics get lumped with one group
or the other you know that um it's so
crazy to me on the one hand and um and
yet I I think what you're describing
seems to me the route out of all of this
I really mean that I feel like you the
the education system starting Young And
getting people emotionally engaged
learning what they like what they don't
like but then also teaching them about
their emotional systems and how it helps
them parse the world is really the
solution so that when we're upset we can
realize like yeah I'm upset it makes
sense why I'm upset but let me explore
it from the other side it also makes
sense why they're upset and that seems
to be what humans have done somewhat
throughout history never perfectly well
but it seems like it ought to be
possible I mean the forebrain is there
for a reason
so could you
um in
in wanting to go back to a little bit of
the biology and the research what have
you seen in terms of cross-cultural
consistency yeah about the role of
emotions in it in our ability to parse
and learn and
um
because obviously we're not going to
solve these problems today but although
I think you've shine light on some some
potential Solutions I mean what do we
know for sure about human beings and
their capacity to do what you're
describing to to Really
um learn differently uh it worked in the
classroom where you were teaching but
how could each and every one of us do
this I mean how would we approach this I
guess I want to take this to the
Practical
um what can we do when we read a
newspaper article what can we do when we
we're on social media what can we do uh
when our kid is like refusing to do
something
um because they simply don't like it or
that the teacher they don't like the
teacher are are there paths through that
that you've identified or that you can
sense work
I can get funny examples of my own kids
when they didn't like things at school
right this isn't licensed yeah what
tools do you use licensed to not well
yeah so so my my son when he was in
third grade he was he was very upset
about
the behavior chart that his teacher had
at school right so he had a he had a
behavior chart they had a behavior
Charter back the room that the principal
didn't agree with this but that teacher
was there for a year and okay so there's
this behavior chart and you have green
you start on green with your little clip
and then there's yellow and then there's
red which is like call your parents
which I I never understood why they
don't put call your parents on the green
but anyway right so you know you start
on the green and then you get you get
down to the yellow and they get around
to red and you know there's Ted's little
friend is always getting on the red by 9
A.M it's like can we just get it over
with you know and and he tried to talk
with his teacher about why this behavior
chart made him so uncomfortable because
and she couldn't she could not
understand his perspective because she
kept saying but you're always on green
you're always doing what you're supposed
to be doing and you're respectful and
you're well behaved so why is it a
problem and what he was trying to say
was that
somehow it just made him uncomfortable
to have that there so he was constantly
bothering me with this I finally told
him I was trying to work one day and he
was home from school because I would let
him work from home some days because we
needed to to kind of buffer a little bit
and uh you know he'd bring all his work
home and he'd do it himself I'd be
working he'd be working right it's fine
he had all kinds of projects going on
you know
and this is a kid who does a little Side
Story there's a kid who went to first
grade and about two weeks into first
grade good first grade class he he was
crying on a Sunday night to me like I
can't go to school I don't want to go to
school I'm like well what's you know
what's wrong I'm thinking he's getting
bullets and he's talking he's like I
don't know he finally looks at me and he
goes I have so much work to do how do
you expect me to get my work done if I'm
sitting in school all day
I can relate right I can relate can you
relate because you're actually a
motivated right we take kids motivations
and the things they're interested in and
we sideline them and try to structure
them into something so back there are
Legos yeah oh he was he was way into
building armor at that time he would
yeah I know we're probably terrible
parents but we gave him some safety
glasses and we taught him how to use it
and we explained how Metals sharp and we
gave him some shoes that is super cool
and some tin snips and he made a whole
set of armor in the backyard at you know
in second grade anyway it took him
months and months I mean it chained mail
the whole bit he was super into amazing
you know anyway and he made airplane he
did all kinds of things
um but so here's this kid and he's
bugging me about his teacher in this
paper Trend I said Ted go write a letter
to your teacher if it bothers you that
much you go write a letter about why it
bothers you right because in doing so
he's first of all helping to solve the
problem secondly he was he was
formulating his understanding of what
this behavior chart is and why
specifically it bothers him and in so
doing it helps him not be so bothered by
it right so that's an example of
something you could do right so he wrote
this letter to his teacher which ended
up being published in the National
Academy of Science engineering and
Matt's book how people learn volume two
because I was on the committee of people
that wrote it and we needed an example
of kids making sense out of motivational
things and actually took his name and
the teacher's name off and put the
letter in the book it basically is a
little kid saying listen teacher when
you put up this behavior chart he called
it a bad behavior chart which it wasn't
it was just a behavior chart but he
interprets it as bad behavior when you
put that up it's as if your you're
daring me to do something bad you're
you're basically he doesn't say it like
this he says you're basically making me
uncomfortable because you are laying out
a perspective on me a possibility space
for me that you're now bringing into the
conversation that I could be like that
and let's see if you're going to be oh
not today oh we're still on green right
and so where does this go it goes back
to the idea that kids are and all of us
are
interpreting the interactions and the
structures around us not only for what
they are but for what they represent as
somebody else's
interpretation of what we are or are not
capable of and
he saw that behavior chart as a marker
that his teacher assumed that all kids
in that class are capable of being badly
behaved and that their main aim of being
in school is to be well behaved right
and so he writes all about saying saying
dear teacher every day I come to school
every single day and every single day is
new that's what he says and I could
learn something new
except then I see dot dot dot the bad
behavior chart right he's saying school
is supposed to be about learning and and
US engaging and you're making it about
something so low level and basic as are
you going to behave yourself today we're
we are insulting him by the way we frame
the context so take it back to the
bigger issues of Civic discourse and all
these things I think so much of the way
that we're organizing our lives our
social relationships our community our
Civic structures right now
is mirroring that teacher's behavior
chart right she take the chart down I
don't no I don't think so and and what
and I asked because I'm not sure that it
matters I think what probably matters is
that he had the chance to voice he
voices his understanding yeah his
understanding of the chart yeah that's
right and now you know anybody can read
his understanding of the story because
in like uh you know the most you widely
read textbook on learning right
um and motivation
I mean
first is that we're structuring the way
we structure our environment can
unwittingly
impose
our mental models of other people's
possibility spaces onto them and people
find that inherently abhorrent right so
think about how we're doing that in many
contexts not simply in schools
um and then the second thing is from the
kids perspective
deconstructing exactly why and something
bothers you by understanding how it is
that you are interpreting that thing
then opens you up
to be able to manage those spaces in a
new way and to engage in them in a new
way so if we take the conversation back
to the idea of Civic discourse of Civic
reasoning of engaging with with any idea
right there are ideas that are deeply
problematic there are ideas that are
deeply hurtful that have long histories
of trauma associated with them of long
histories of power dynamics uh and
oppression associated with them the way
in which I think we deconstruct those
ideas is going to be critical to how
those ideas live on implicitly in our
social relationships and our society if
we cancel them if we negate them and
pretend they don't exist all we're doing
is burying them in a place where they
can't be deconstructed and only by
actually taking them apart and
appreciating the pain the the
relationship structures the limitation
the resource allocations the inequities
that are implicit in those Concepts only
by deconstructing and deeply
understanding those
can we rebuild them in a different way
so it's very difficult because on the
one hand
we have a space created for ourselves
right now in society that is deeply
unsafe for many people and when you're
in an unsafe space you are not in a
space that is conducive to constructing
and deconstructing meaning using those
default mode systems and other systems
just to be crass about the brain right
and kind of oversimplify it that are the
substrate of autobiographical self of
possibility spaces of ethics of deep uh
moral and ethical emotions so on the one
hand we have a space that is deeply
unsafe for individuals to think together
and genuinely so there are real
implications for people to reveal
certain kinds of identities to engage
with certain kinds of ideas in
culturally uh culturally
um
formulated spaces right that we've
constructed together
and the irony is that we can only fix
that and create a different way of
interacting with one another by actually
boldly going in there together so it's a
very nuanced line where we need to
develop skills and this is where I think
and many people think now that schools
should be focused across disciplinary
domains whether it's Math Science Social
Studies history art the Arts right
Sports should be focused on helping
young people and teachers
develop capacities and dispositions for
deconstructing and constructing again
safe uh safe cultural spaces to think
together about
you know interpretations about
narratives about stories about
assumptions about ideas because as we
engage in those thoughts together we
call that Civic discourse right we learn
kind of rules for not triggering and
sensibilities for not endangering
another person's ability to engage on
equal footing with us because if we
trigger those unsafe right dangerous
places for people they can't
neurobiologically then engage with us
deeply around sharing their perspective
and deconstructing hours together to
build something where we have a shared
understanding in the middle we have to
trust one another and Trust trusting one
another really means we have to have a
space established in which we can
feel
safe to deconstruct our own beliefs and
to allow others to do the same and to
assure them that we can engage with
those beliefs no matter what they are
and then
actually
exteriorize them and evaluate them
together and think about them around
core values we probably both hold like
well-being like sustainability of
society and of cultures and of groups
right these things are core everyone
wants to be well everyone wants to have
a sustainable life and a Life future and
a cultural set of values and so when we
all appreciate that we're bringing those
things to the table but then are
systematic about constructing a space
for civic discourse in which we are
supporting one another and
deconstructing our own beliefs rather
than each other's bullies right then we
are at a space where we can start to
construct some kind of understanding
some kind of nuanced more
um uh adaptive more pro-social and the
true sense way of engaging with one
another with not necessarily a way of
agreeing with one another but way of
engaging and constructing and
deconstructing meaning together so that
we can be adaptive so that we can build
a society where everyone can flourish so
that we can build a society where
everyone can belong and can uh can
actually have the resources they need I
would argue as long as free speech is
not possible for everybody yeah that
nobody yes that's right then nobody is
safe nobody's safe and that there's an
illusion of safety around the idea that
um people who
um who have voice uh are going to get
what they want simply because they are
the ones who are allowed to talk and
other people aren't yeah I mean I think
he said it perfectly when he said that
anytime ideas get buried there's no way
they can be solved yeah we know this
from the scientific literature for
instance the results within social
science and biological science that are
deeply troubling yeah um you know I can
think of experiments that were done uh
in the realm of neurosurgery on humans
in the 1960s people stimulating
different brain areas and seeing Rage or
seeing very politically controversial
ideas emerge from the person's mouth in
real time as a function of stimulating
that brain area and then you say well
did they really believe that and they
just never were saying it and the person
doesn't even recall that happening
during the surgery or I mean this idea
that Jung had that we have all things
inside of us yeah I think can be seen as
a very dangerous notion and territory
that we have all these Shadows but the
the I'm also an optimist and I feel that
the the optimistic view of it is that by
knowing that we have all things inside
of us potentially and by
embracing that fact that we can manage
that to steal what you just said we can
manage that and that we can function so
much better when we see something in the
world that we think that's not me I'm
not that and I hate that when if we
understand that that also lives inside
of us but that we just don't realize it
uh and I realize some people hear this
and they'll go that's not true you know
I have my stances and I disagree with
other things I would say absolutely yes
but the difference between
one person's stance and another person's
stance is could be purely developmental
wiring it could be
um it could be a difference of having
read different childhood books and
oriented towards one book versus another
I mean I don't I think that we are very
similar at the level of core wiring and
core algorithms that we run but somehow
these days we have the perception that
we've diverged so much I think the only
thing that's really missing is what
you're describing is is a place where
any and all ideas can be explored freely
not to establish consensus or validity
of certain kinds of ideas but to
actually exteriorize them and and
deconstruct them for what they actually
are absolutely
um thank you for working through that
that space because it's a tricky one
it's very it's very fresh yeah it's very
fraught
um but so so very important I have a
question that's very basic yeah
um but I've never gotten a good answer
on um I was raised thinking that mirror
neurons were a real thing that there are
these neurons that exist in the in the
brains of Us and other Old World
primates
um like macaque monkeys
um but especially in humans the the
so-called mirror neurons that are
activated when we see somebody
experience something and it evokes a
sort of empathic understanding
um in US I've also seen some reviews
written recently in some popular press
saying that mirror neurons are perhaps
not playing the the critical role that
we thought they were
um what's the story on mirror neurons
um and uh we're not going after
anybody's work in particular I just want
to know whether or not there's real
validity to this notion of mirror
neurons
I'm not an expert on it but I can tell
you what I know about it and the way
that um I think about it so I mean I
think it's pretty clear now that there
are no such things as mirror neurons
like some special kind of cell type
that's in the brain that they've not
been found they were predicted but they
were not found
um but something else was also predicted
back in the late 1980s
um uh by Antonio DiMaggio
um where he talked about the brain
um in terms of being organized in terms
of what he called convergent and
Divergent zones so he talked about
um the brain being organized as networks
converging and then diverging again back
out so you have places where processing
is kind of coming together and then then
what happens in there then determines
how things get spread back out and
you've got these sort of Loops happening
in the brain and and his his thinking on
that was very much
um commensurate with others thinking
about the notion of uh of goal directed
action and perception so if you think
back to developmental Scholars who had
knew nothing about the brain very much
like Jean Piaget right back in the early
uh 20 20th century
um where he was observing young children
and noticing that they were interacting
with the world
and they expected certain things and
they were he thought imposing theories
or schemas onto the world and then and
then accommodating was the word he used
uh the world with their actions what it
didn't act the way they expected and
then assimilating that back right to
change what they expected next time so
that he had this model that he built
from from systematically observing
children uh three in particular right
um where he what he realized is that
kids are not just flailing around sort
of discovering things haphazardly
they're imposing a certain logic onto
the world and then they're
systematically testing that logic so
their hypothesis basically yes right
they they're expecting things and then
when the world does what they want that
reinforces and when it does something
different that's surprising and then
they have to accommodate and make sense
and then they have to expect differently
in the future
so what does this have to do with mirror
and irons I think when you bring these
different ideas together that the
psychological observational ideas and
then the neurobiological ideas
um what we basically have and I I wrote
about this a little bit in like I think
2008 I have a paper called something
like the smoke around mirror neurons and
I forget the second half of the title
but it has the word goals and and uh and
directed actions and things right
um the idea I think is is it's not that
there are special neurons that are
firing when we see another person do the
thing right that but that we are it goes
back to the notion of us imposing our
expectations onto the world you have to
share and understand intuitively the
goal of the other one's action in order
to activate these mirror regions right
um uh where and what are those mural
regions they are basically regions that
are deeply interconnected with each
other right they're thoroughly
interconnected with each other in terms
of white matter fiber tracts and they
are regions involved in
um Acts
uh planning you know goal-oriented
actions and
perceiving the outcomes of those actions
so it's a kind of a loop between acting
and perceiving and acting and perceiving
and and I argued at the time right that
goals are emergent like high-level goals
are emergent from the dynamic feedback
loops of acting and perceiving right so
I was really taking a very piagetian
view but imposing that on the
Neuroscience so I think you take what
I'm saying together with like a
piagetian constructivist view there are
many other constructivist
neuroscientists all a constructive
psychologists also and and then also the
neural data what we see is that we don't
have these special neurons built into
our head what we have is a natural
proclivity and I don't know where that
comes from right but we have a natural
proclivity to try to appreciate another
person's actions feelings
experiences
by leveraging our own similar actions
feelings experience variances and so
when we can share goals or experiences
that becomes more facile right and
that's been shown over and over in these
mirror type papers right and when you uh
distance yourself from those goals and
actions or don't have an intuitive sense
of them then you don't get these
mirroring activations you don't get
these kind of ramped up
um uh sharing of of of of of goals right
or of of experience so I think it really
comes back to
the way the nervous system is wired to
be inherently social we are cultural
Learners we are situated in Social
spaces from the moment we're conceived
and certainly from the moment we're born
and that social space observing others
interacting with others co-regulating
each other's physiology each other's
attention each other's um emotion right
as we do those things we accommodate to
each other and we wire ourselves to
expect certain kinds of feelings and
then to recognize those same things in
other people and so as we share
constructed experience together we start
to appreciate the sameness right the the
parallels between other peoples and our
own emotions thoughts goals and
and we can also uh dehumanize them you
know make the other the other person not
share our thoughts emotions goals and
then we are capable of all kinds of
horrible things we've talked about
before right
um where you're where you've actually
distanced yourself
so what's the scope on mirror neurons I
don't think mirror neurons exist I think
that's the consensus but our propensity
to engage with other people by
simulating on the substrate of our own
self and then inferring the goals and
the feelings and the outcomes and the
experiences of those experiences that
we've simulated that's what is very
essential to being a human but keeping
in mind that there's also this layer of
learned lived cultural developed
expectations we impose onto the world
and we not filter but we
um we steer our attention we steer our
perception to accommodate to align with
our expectations so it's never just the
reality of what the person experienced
or what happened it's always our
perception of that reality as we
expected it to happen so there's this
very Dynamic cultural co-construction
happening that is um that is messy that
is iterative that you can learn learn to
do in different ways in different
contexts and and that's kind of how I
understand this notion of mirroring
before we conclude I do want to answer
your son's question oh so so prior to
recording
um there was a text message that came we
don't have to read it verbatim but the
text message um
uh Mary Ellen's son uh is uh late
teenage years and he's been doing uh
deliberate cold exposure cold showers on
on a daily basis and reported that he's
not get it he hasn't had any colds since
starting this this is actually a pretty
common experience because the pulse and
adrenaline that is inevitable with a
uncomfortably cold but safe
in the morning does a whole bunch of
exercises to get warm and then jumps in
a freezing cold shower amazing um that
Spike of adrenaline we know is
neuroprotective if it's a short-lived
spike in Adrenaline you know what
chronically no you don't want chronic
stress that's not good that's not good
we know that from the beautiful worker
Bruce McEwen and Bob sapolsky and others
yeah so
um but then he asked
um should he get sick
should he continue the cold showers and
and the answer is no I think that um
then it would be hot showers and hot
baths and sauna type stuff is probably
better but not so hot that it's
stressful yeah you really want to reduce
stress on a on an ill system yeah so um
he sounds uh for many reasons like a
remarkable young man as as is your
daughter it sounds like a remarkable and
listen and you're remarkable and I I
really mean that I feel like we could go
on forever exploring these ideas I I
absolutely uh would love to have you
back for another discussion or or many
um about your research
I want to thank you for taking the time
of your research schedule your teaching
schedule to come educate us today these
ideas are so vitally important and and
you provide so many real world examples
in fact it's one of the things that I
love so much about your work is that
it's really nested in real world
applications thank you and your thoughts
and perspectives on the education and
how it could be better at the level of
educating kids at home teaching
ourselves teachers and the education
system I I hope will ring far and wide
um because they they really can be
implemented we're not talking about the
need to purchase a bunch of stuff no we
need to start with a different
disposition we need to start with a
different goal yeah the goal of
Education needs to not learning is not
the goal it's not the outcome it needs
to be the development of the person
right how is a person changing
themselves
Having learned this and then you design
the learning opportunities to change who
people are capable of becoming right so
the learning is there but it's not the
end point it's just the means to
something else which we haven't been
attending to enough and that's the
development of the person who they
become Having learned that
beautifully but
um well thank you so much for your time
thank you so much for the work you do
and I can't wait to have another
discussion with you about the emerging
research great I'll be back thank you
thank you for joining me today for my
discussion about emotions social
interactions and learning with Dr Mary
Helen immordino Yang I hope you found
the conversation to be as informative
and enriching as I did if you'd like to
learn more about Dr amordino Yang's
research please find the link to her
laboratory website in the show note
captions in addition Dr emeraldino Yang
authored an incredible book called
emotions learning in the brain it's a
book designed for the general public
it's incredibly informative and has a
lot of practical tools as well we've
provided a link to that book in the show
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[Music]