Dr. Immordino-Yang: How Emotions & Social Factors Impact Learning | Huberman Lab Podcast

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

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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