Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on How He Changed His Mind about Past Lives, the Importance of Creative Intelligence, Different Types of Narcissism & How to Overcome the Victim Mindset

Unlock the secrets of human potential & self-actualization with Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph. D. (cognitive psychologist, host of the #1 psychology podcast in the world - The Psychology Podcast, author of Rise Above)! Kaufman explains the mysteries of extrasensory perception and how he now believes in past-life regressions. He unravels the complexities of a ADHD diagnosis and how ADHD could be a sign of giftedness not just a disorder. Mayim and Jonathan explore with Kaufman the shocking link between trauma, creativity, and intelligence. Discover how labels like "learning disability" can be shattered to overcome anxiety and depression, how we all might be neurodiverse, and how cognitive distortions can influence your personality and create a victim mindset. Get ready for his game-changing take on reincarnation, creative genius, and the science of narcissism. Plus, we’re back into unpacking more of the chart-topping podcast, The Telepathy Tapes! Mayim breaks down the scientific framework around collective consciousness and the challenges with proving it scientifically. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss! Scott Barry Kaufman's latest book, RISE ABOVE: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737413/rise-above-by-scott-barry-kaufman-phd/ BialikBreakdown.com https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ YouTube.com/mayimbialik https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOocPnDh2YQZZwh86K2OxA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  These prodigies, if you trace someone in their family long enough, someone had that skill, that is a form of past life memory. When a child comes out and they're able to do something with no preparation.

• 0:10Mayim Bialik?

  Like they become a pianist and you're saying somewhere in the family, you think there's a pianist.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Case by case, and you start to find, oh, the great grandfather in Russia had this amazing talent. Isn't that a form of past life memory? It's an intergenerational transmission.

• 0:23Mayim Bialik?

  You're saying that there is something coded in your DNA.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  That was transmitted to them. It's a memory.

• 0:29Mayim Bialik?

  And the question is, if we believe in a collective consciousness, if it's not encoded in your DNA, can you pull someone else's life memory from the collective consciousness?

• 0:39Speaker 00

  When you really look at some of this incredible phenomenon, the more that I can rule out all of these confounds, the more excited I get that there's something mysterious that is even in further need. We should keep our minds open.

• 1:01Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.

• 1:02Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 1:03Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our breakdown.

• 1:05Jonathan Cohen?

  We're going to talk about human potential today. This was a hard episode to summarize in terms of what we're actually going to talk about, but.

• 1:13Mayim Bialik?

  Because we talk about so many things, many of which do relate to potential.

• 1:20Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's explain what we mean by potential. Here's what I mean by it. And now we can also have your explanation because what we learn in this episode is that truth is somewhat subjective and we need explanations on how each of us see reality. For me, potential means what are we capable of? What are our core skills? Meaning, what are our attributes and our abilities? Many people think we have five senses, that our ideas, consciousness is localized in the brain. I do not believe that. Science is exploring these ideas, fundamental to the nature of our consciousness, how we perceive our reality. Physicists understand it one way.

• 2:05Jonathan Cohen?

  Philosophers understand it one way, scientists are skeptical, would you say?

• 2:09Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, and today we're going to be talking to a cognitive psychologist who is willing to talk about human potential in ways that many scientists will not talk about it. We're going to talk kind of all across the spectrum of potential. We're going to talk about personal potential. He has a book, Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, about kind of misunderstood potential of the individual. And we're also going to talk about things that limit us from achieving our full potential, including having access to or even understanding things outside of the realm of the material world.

• 2:41Jonathan Cohen?

  In terms of intellectual potential, we explore and kind of turn on its head the accepted idea of what makes someone intelligent or not. There are different types of intelligence. He explores the idea of creative intelligence and that there are a lot of children who do not fit into the school system, who may be actually the ones who can help push humanity, civilization, society forward because of their creative ability to problem solve and think outside the box. He also talks about cognitive distortions, ways in which that we're thinking that could be limiting our potential.

• 3:21Mayim Bialik?

  There may be ways that you're thinking that you don't even realize are keeping you stuck in all sorts of ruts, with personal relationships, in work, and even in your relationship to something bigger than yourself.

• 3:33Jonathan Cohen?

  We touch on catastrophizing, black and white thinking, shouldisms. The list goes on and we explore them, but they are so prevalent in our thinking that we may not even realize we are doing it. We think that's just the way the world is, and when we learn to start shifting them, identifying and shifting them, we can access so many more opportunities and see creative solutions to our problems that we never realized were there.

• 4:01Mayim Bialik?

  We're also going to talk to Scott about some of the incredible guests that he's had on his podcast, talking about things like, is there a genetic basis for identifications of reincarnation? Is there any sort of way that we can explain and understand a collective consciousness? I love that he really is bringing what a truly open skeptical scientific mind is to these problems that many of us are interested in and really want to believe can be discussed in a legitimate way.

• 4:29Jonathan Cohen?

  At one point, he says, "I now believe in past lives." And when we talk to him about it further, what he describes are children who have inherited memory with savant ability, meaning somewhere in their family lineage was someone that had an extra amazing ability, for example, to play the piano or decipher math problems. And many generations later, this trait resurfaced in this child with no training, showing unbelievable gifted ability.

• 5:03Mayim Bialik?

  And Scott's going to talk about his theory as to how a sort of creative memory can in many cases be called reincarnation or past life understanding. And I just love how he frames it, again, in this scientific lens and makes it really accessible to all of us. Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive psychologist. He's the host of the Psychology Podcast. He's also a professor of psychology at Columbia University. His writing appears in Atlantic, Scientific American, Psychology Today, all sorts of places. He's the author of 11 previous books. Rise Above is the one we're going to talk about today, but also highly recommend Ungifted. And we're going to get into so many interesting arenas of his research, his work, and also

• 5:44Mayim Bialik?

  his personal experience in exploring things outside of traditional scientific models of measurement. Let's welcome to the Breakdown in person Scott Barry Kaufman. Break it down. Scott Barry Kaufman, welcome to the Breakdown.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Oh, it's so good to be here. I'm so glad to hear it.

• 6:00Mayim Bialik?

  You and I have connected through a mutual friend, Sam Harris. And we've had several conversations, but I've been listening to your podcast, the Psychology Podcast, and in particular have been really taken with...

• 6:16Mayim Bialik?

  I don't know, the ability that you have to straddle the worlds of kind of science and wonder.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 6:22Mayim Bialik?

  And I wonder if we can sort of start.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  I love that you put it that way.

• 6:24Mayim Bialik?

  Well, that's kind of what it feels like.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  I feel so seen.

• 6:29Mayim Bialik?

  I wonder if we could start a little bit.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  I'm just a little kid inside.

• 6:34Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I think I'd like for you to sort of take us through a little bit of your story. I really enjoyed, I mean, obviously, Rise Above is fantastic, but I also really enjoyed Ungifted.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  That's my baby, right?

• 6:45Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  It'll always be my baby.

• 6:47Mayim Bialik?

  Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  I put everything I got into that book, and then I realized I was still alive. And I was like, what the hell am I gonna do now the rest of my life? You ever finish a big project where you're just like, you're like, I put it all in. What else do I got?

• 7:04Mayim Bialik?

  Well, tell us your story a little bit. You know, kind of what's most kind of captivating is you had a path that in many ways would have led people to disregard you, not value your intelligence, for you not even to acknowledge your own abilities. Tell us a little bit about your story.

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Sure. I was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder when I was very, very young. It appeared as though I was, let's say, ungifted, a word term I kind of made up, but that's how I was treated. The opposite, whatever the opposite of gifted is. You know, it took me an extra couple milliseconds to process things in real time, so people thought I was really slow. And I was put in special ed. And then in fifth grade, I went to a special school for kids with a learning disability. And my parents couldn't afford it for more than a year, so then I was put back into. I was kept in special education all the way till ninth grade. Now I look back at the IEP reports and things, it says things like, for instance, when they tested me in fifth grade, they said, "He no longer has the auditory processing disability."

• 8:07Speaker 00

  And I could sense that and feel that I was like, why am I still here? I don't feel I have a problem. But it says in the report, "We need to keep him in because now he has a lot of anxiety." And I'm like, you, mother of beepers, what do you think? How do you think I have the anxiety? You're telling me I'm stupid every day. So it's this, I realized this, it's a cycle, it's the self perpetuating cycle. So I was kept there until ninth grade. I remember I was taken out of the history classroom. I was, I was ready for regular, like I wanted to so desperately to show that I was intelligent. But they, they forced me to, to be removed from the history class and take an untimed test in the special education room. And I wasn't having it, I was just like, I was like, I remember saying something like, well, I have the rest of my life to take this test, what's the rush, you know?

• 8:52Speaker 00

  And the, there was a teacher there that day who had never seen me before, sometimes it takes a fresh eye. She, it was a special ed teacher, she said, I'd like to talk to you after class. And she like tilted her head and she's like, what are you still doing here? And I repeated the question in my head and it really went to like, what am I still doing? Cause I really desperately wanted someone in a position of power to question that, you know? For me, it's like I needed it, like something surged through me. And I immediately ran to the payphone and I called my mom, I said, I'm not reporting, I'm breaking out of special ed. And my mom's screaming, she's an overprotective Jewish mother. And she's like, what do you mean, what are they doing to you over there? But I, I said, no, like, and so I became the first person in my, in my school district history to, for the kid himself to break out of special ed.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  There was this moment, like, I also had this profound realization, which the threads are in rise above, which is, no one's coming to save me. Like, I actually, I'm the one that needs to make this decision, you know? Like, I have well-meaning parents, everyone, everyone means well. But no one knew my inner experience, which was that I felt I was capable.

• 9:56Mayim Bialik?

  Jonathan has a, not the same experience, but.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Oh, what's your story like?

• 10:00Jonathan Cohen?

  I, I was diagnosed in the second grade with a generalized learning disability. I struggled to learn to read. I had a fantastic auditory.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  I still have that, the generalized thing, yeah.

• 10:13Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah, I had a fantastic auditory memory. I processed everything through auditory, but when it came to writing, couldn't spell.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 10:20Jonathan Cohen?

  Couldn't really sound things out, had enormous anxiety about reading and catching up in, and also being removed from. Regular classes. I was wasn't regular classes, but then, you know, would get extra help or had to miss gym class. And the social anxiety, where are you going? Why are you leaving class and not in gym class? Which is like the best thing about school in general. It's my favorite. And then leaving early, you know, I would go to a tutor to get special help. And I would leave at two o'clock some days and everyone was like, why? And anything that makes me feel different, I'm like, of course terrified of. And so I fought against the label and I refused help because I didn't wanna be seen as different.

• 11:04Jonathan Cohen?

  And yet I wasn't keeping up with reading. I wasn't getting through any of the books. I would make up books instead of having to read them. Uh, and you know, my mom would help me a lot. That should be an indicator of something.

• 11:17Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, he's a writer.

• 11:18Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah. Come on. And I also went to a specialized school in the fifth grade, actually. Uh, they found a school and like the school, regular school just was fraught with just all the, what do they want from me? How am I gonna do this? Can I do this? Am I smart enough? Should I be in the the special ed class? But like the special ed class had a really wide range of students. Some of them with, you know, very intense developmental delays that you're like, I'm not that. Right, right. You didn't feel a sense of belonging there. Or in the regular. Nowhere. Exactly. So I really felt displaced. And then I went to a school designed for kids with learning disabilities in the fifth grade. Oh, were we at the same school? I was in Toronto, Canada, so so maybe not.

• 12:03Jonathan Cohen?

  And I got in a very small environment with kids who were all dealing with their own challenges. And I just had an amazing teacher who was like, I'm gonna teach you what you need to know. I'm gonna fill in the gaps. And it was really the first time where there wasn't a stigma of not knowing something. Like you didn't have to pretend that, oh, you knew everything and everything was. Like you knew how to do the homework, because I come in and like, let's work together. And I thankfully was there between fifth and eighth grade.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:33Jonathan Cohen?

  And then went back into the mainstream public school system, and that did not go well at all.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:40Jonathan Cohen?

  It coincided for me with a lot of, like, a big family tragedy event, so like, I was emotionally pulled out. But I think there is a huge emotional component to being regulated as a student.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:52Jonathan Cohen?

  And if you're not regulated and you are anxious, or you're uncertain in any way, that has a huge implication to how well you're gonna be able to process information, be able to feel confident, and be able to learn and grow and really fit in.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  For sure. Yeah, well said. Did you have any English teachers who recognized your gift?

• 13:14Jonathan Cohen?

  I did in like, the eighth grade, and, you know, I was, I was learning Hebrew, English, and French in the first grade.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 13:24Jonathan Cohen?

  So, I think there was, it was overwhelming. And Hebrew, which was a very phonetic language, I, I got much more easily. But I think there was an overload, and I was like, fighting back. I remember the first moment of rebellion for me was standing up in French class in the second grade.

• 13:41Speaker 00

  And did you say, "No"?

• 13:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, I used some expletives and I stormed out of the class, because I just, and I remember, I can think back to the level of frustration that that kid was feeling. And I'm like, that isn't the type of pressure that a second grader should have felt.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:56Jonathan Cohen?

  And then I

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Agreed.

• 13:57Jonathan Cohen?

  Actually ran away that night from my house, because I was so terrified that the school was gonna call the house, and how much trouble I was gonna get in. So like, imagine that kid feeling like the only way to escape that level of pressure was to run away. Mindy Alex Breakdown is supported by Article.

• 14:13Mayim Bialik?

  We are so excited about our timber sofa from Article. Are you counting down the minutes till it arrives?

• 14:21Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm counting down the minutes till Archie gets to climb up to tell us if he likes it.

• 14:25Mayim Bialik?

  Also, an Article team member is going to be the one delivering right to the room where we want it and assembling it. Article makes it effortless to create a stylish, long-lasting home at an unbeatable price with curated styles ranging from mid-century, modern, coastal, and Scandi-inspired. This thoughtful design approach makes it incredibly easy to mix and match, helping you create a space that feels cohesive and stylish. Article focuses solely on high-quality, meaningful pieces that will stand the test of time. There's no filler. Every item is chosen for its craftsmanship, design, and lasting value. You can immediately tell the difference in quality when you receive an Article piece. With secure joints and sturdy hardware, you know this piece is going to last. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the US and Canada with options for professional assembly.

• 15:07Mayim Bialik?

  If you have a question or need help with your design choices, they have customer care available seven days a week with knowledgeable support and even free interior design services. With Article's 30-day satisfaction guarantee, you can shop with confidence, knowing you can easily return it. This peace of mind ensures you can invest in your home without hesitation. Article's offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit article.com/miam and the discount will automatically be applied at checkout.

• 15:33Jonathan Cohen?

  That's article.com/miam for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. My MBE Alex Breakdown is supported by Honeylove.

• 15:42Mayim Bialik?

  Have you noticed that most wireless bras just completely miss the mark? I've tried many, and they either stretch as you wear them, the band rolls up, the straps are always slipping, but not a problem anymore because I have the Honeylove X-Balance Bra. It's soft and supportive but without any underwire. It's so comfortable, I don't even feel the need to rip it off the second that I get home. Honeylove is an independent, female-founded brand with products designed by women who actually wear them. They don't just make shapewear and bras either. They have tanks, bodysuits, underwear, all with supportive structure, smoothing fabrics, and premium finishes. Honeylove's got a style for everyone. You can also try their crossover contour bra, which features their best-selling wireless

• 16:26Mayim Bialik?

  crossover bra design, plus built-in molded light foam pads for extra support and a contoured shape. Honeylove's now offering a crossover triple bra bundle, so if you want a refresh on your top drawer, you can get huge savings by buying three at once. Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20% off Honeylove at honeylove.com/breaker. That's honeylove.com/breaker. After you check out, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you.

• 16:54Jonathan Cohen?

  Experience new standards and comfort and support with Honeylove.

• 16:59Mayim Bialik?

  What is it about the way our society is structured to see intelligence? And what we desire as a society in humans? That can be challenging for people who are different?

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Oh, boy. Well, you know, a lot of it has the roots in the IQ test, to be honest. There's this idea that quickness of processing is the measure of intelligence, as opposed to depth of processing, or even, dare I say, creativity of processing. And these are two things I've tried to add on to the intelligence sort of conceptualization, along with unconscious intelligence as well, which we nerded out about. So.

• 17:38Mayim Bialik?

  We'll get to that.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, cool, cool. There's just, there is this idea, there really is the idea that, you know, the extent to which you're kind of, there's this computer processing numbers and outputting things quickly, you know, is the extent to which you're intelligent. And that really does leave out way too many kids, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, one, one is way too many, in my opinion, but it does leave out. I mean, I actually estimate, I put a number to it in my book, Twice Exceptional. I did it in a book for educators. And the idea is that if you look at twice exceptional kids, kids who have a learning disability, but also have a high IQ, so they're both, people estimate about 300,000 kids, but I argue, hold on, we need to go beyond just the IQ as the indicator of intelligence.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  What if you have a learning disability and you have amazing writing ability? So I say if we expand it to that, and I crunch the numbers because I'm nerdy, millions of kids are falling between the cracks, who are twice exceptional, because we have this dichotomous system, that you're either gifted, actually, it's actually a three-part system. You're either learning disabled, gifted, or we don't pay any attention to you. You're in the, you're in mainstream education. And it's not good for anyone.

• 18:50Jonathan Cohen?

  Eric Weinstein talks about how we're basically sectioning off the people who will make the biggest leaps forward in human civilization and progress. Because the people who are gonna think outside of the box and think creatively and don't fit in to the status quo and the assembly line of modern education are really the ones who are gonna break the paradigm and come up with the net new ideas.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I mean, he nails it when he says that, and I would completely agree with that. And the whole idea of like, some people are neurodivergent, and then we have like, the typical people. I'm actually starting to come around, there's no such thing as a typical person. Like, in the abstract, there is statistically, but have you ever met an individual who's typical? And I don't even know what that really means, you know? And I've had some really great discussions with, I wanna give props as well to L. Todd Rose, who, we had a great two-part discussion on my podcast about this, because he wrote a whole book about like, why do we design around the typical, you know, like, when no one is really, you know, typical.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Everyone has, if you go, if you look enough at enough traits, and you start adding up the traits, personality traits, talents, abilities, no one's at the midline on everything. Someone's gonna have an extreme trait somewhere. And to me, that's all neurodivergency is, is like, what's your extreme trait? You know, and how, like, everyone, like, we should ask everyone that, you know, all kids.

• 20:16Mayim Bialik?

  Describe what an extreme trait is.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  Well, above two standard deviations above the mean, I mean, I have a precise statistical definition. You could find, you could find any trait, let's say, agreeableness, okay? Maybe someone's two standard deviations, maybe that's their thing, you know, they're, they jump in all the time, how can I help? How can I help? You know? Okay, that's your neurodivergency. We don't think of that as neurodivergency, but why not? You know, like, you know, why are only certain things neurodivergency, other things aren't?

• 20:43Mayim Bialik?

  Well, that's a good question.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Thank you. Introversion, I have argued that should be 100% part of the neurodivergency spectrum, introversion. It's actually correlated with autism, .80. People don't know that. Yeah, so.

• 20:56Mayim Bialik?

  I sleep with my hands folded in, I didn't know that's a sign of neurodivergency. The internet told me so. I have to sleep like this. So I saw on Instagram, and I actually asked Fred, apparently, like...

• 21:10Mayim Bialik?

  My whole life, I've slept like that. Like, I didn't know, and I didn't know until this Instagram post where this girl was like, trying not to sleep and do the hand thing, and I'm like, why wouldn't you do the hand thing? Or why is my hand thing on Instagram? Apparently, it's a measure, like, it's a thing that a lot of special people do. Can you talk a little bit, you know, if, if every trait, in theory, two standard deviations out, could be neurodivergency? Are we all neurodivergent? What are we talking about when we're talking about neurodivergence?

• 21:41Speaker 00

  I'm starting to actually come around to the fact that we should be identifying everyone's special sauce, you know, whatever it is, you know? Like, like, why only some people have special sauce, others don't, you know? Let's only, you know, isolate the ones that do and give them all the resources. I'm coming around to this idea that there are so many different personalities, there's so many traits, traits, psychological traits, and physical traits, they contribute to sports ability on offer among, in the human genome. There's enough to go around. For, for every, if you go enough, you'll find an extreme trait in anyone, you really will. Tip, but I will say traditionally, neurodivergency has been confined to things like autism, dyslexia,

• 22:25Speaker 00

  ADHD, developmental disorders. And I would actually challenge some of these labels. I wrote an article recently about ADHD, that we should actually view it as an extreme trait, and, and that's it. You know, not as a, like, get rid of that, you know, the D stands for disorder at the end of ADHD, but I think it's a misnomer, so.

• 22:43Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, let's talk about that for a minute. If we got rid of it as a disorder,

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:48Jonathan Cohen?

  would we then either celebrate it, accept it? You know, I, for example, think that I've always been probably on the very ADHD

• 22:58Speaker 00

  You're on the spectrum somewhere.

• 22:59Jonathan Cohen?

  Spectrum somewhere, and as a mime thinks I, go ahead.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  What does a mime think?

• 23:03Jonathan Cohen?

  That face, that face.

• 23:04Mayim Bialik?

  I don't think there should be any question in anyone's mind.

• 23:07Jonathan Cohen?

  Okay, yeah. Earlier on in my life, I had a much harder time, you know, assigning focus when needed.

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:14Jonathan Cohen?

  Um, but also, you know, that came with a hyper-focus on things that I was super interested in and I found that could be a hundred percent my superpower.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 23:23Jonathan Cohen?

  Like, without that, I don't know that I would have been able to accomplish a lot of what I've accomplished.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  But in a classroom setting.

• 23:29Jonathan Cohen?

  Horrible.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  Bingo, bingo, bingo. So that's what I argue. I, like, like, how dare I try to add nuance to this discussion? But, um, I, I hear people describe ADHD as a superpower. I hear people describe ADHD as a disorder. Look, it's neither, it, it can, it can be a disorder and it can be a superpower. Like, why do people have trouble with yes and thinking? You know, it depends on the context. Um, ADHD is, is just, if you just look at what it is, it is a label. There is no thing that exists that is ADHD. Um, it is a label that we humans have created to, for problematic children that, that, that are not behaving. Um, and they can't sit still. They can't sit still. And it also tends to correlate with, you know, to be fair, to adulthood,

• 24:12Speaker 00

  uh, problematic behaviors that are, that are tough for the individual experiencing it because it is frustrating having trouble concentrating.

• 24:20Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and also, I, I just want to say that, like, when I was in school, a million years ago, but not that many years ago.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  I think we're like the same age.

• 24:27Mayim Bialik?

  There is, okay, there was always like one or two kids who, I think by my current thinking, I'd be like, oh, that was a kid that was clearly on the extreme spectrum and had a lot of difficulty. But what, what I hear from my kids who are in school is that most kids are on some medication for ADHD. It's like a medicated classroom.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:47Mayim Bialik?

  From junior high.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  The rates have skyrocketed.

• 24:49Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, so what, i- in that case, while I want to say like, oh, it's a trait, that, there's something going on because a teacher can't teach a, a group of kids where the majority of them are having those problems.

• 25:04Jonathan Cohen?

  Is it a broken system or a broken person?

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Um, what a, what a great question. Am I allowed to say both? And I would never describe it as a broken person.

• 25:16Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  But I do, I would say there are some parts of this, let's start with, so let's go down both avenues. Let's start with the system.

• 25:23Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, just full transparency, I think the system is horribly broken.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Yes, I agree. I would use the word broken for system, I just wouldn't for individual.

• 25:30Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah, no, I totally agree.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, so with the system, what's interesting is a lot of people don't realize the extent to which environmental toxins can actually be causally related to ADHD, lead in the environment. So people, obesity can lead to ADHD looking, appearing symptoms.

• 25:50Jonathan Cohen?

  Also, copious amount of sugar. I was a massive sugar addict.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  Absolutely sugar. There's something about fat, about lipids in the bloodstream. I mean, people are starting to study this in a really, a way that I like, the way they're studying this. Because we're realizing, the more research comes out, suggests it's less and less the mother's fault. You know, it's not that the mother just didn't hold you enough, you know, which is the narrative. That's the predominant narrative in our society right now that I see everywhere on Instagram. I look, it's like, ADHD, it's because of your trauma from your parents. And usually it's the mother that's blamed. And I think that's, I can't tell you how many emails I get from the kindest mothers in the world, who are like, I've done everything right for my child and they still have ADHD. What am I doing wrong? And I think that it is part of it, we need to think of it in a system way.

• 26:34Mayim Bialik?

  In a system that also predicts what pregnancy and labor should look like, does not necessarily support breastfeeding, encourages a ton of interventions that in many cases separate the mother from the child or don't allow hormones to be released to the child. So like, in terms of like what a lot of us think, and also we're told to feed our kids food that is also contributing all these things.

• 26:54Speaker 00

  This is so important.

• 26:55Mayim Bialik?

  So like, even the best mother that we're trying to be is in many cases, you know, shaped by a system that's not supportive.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  That's why, exactly, that's why we'd really need to think about this. Like, I'm kind of fed up with people who feel like they have the easy answer. It is trauma, this nebulous term that just catch all for everything. Actually, some recent research, and when I really looked into it, I was like, there really is something here. Iron deficiency. Kid, get your kids tested for iron deficiency. Like, this is, um, uh, meta-analyses are showing this to be, um, a really big factor in development of ADHD symptoms. So, we just need to look beyond, you know, uh, the environment is just parenting, you know?

• 27:34Mayim Bialik?

  And this is why people report dietary changes actually can make a shift, which we're learning more and more about gut permeability and its connection to cognition and behavior. So, you may be looking at a kid that is having something nutritional going on, something immune going on, and our solution is to medicate it.

• 27:53Speaker 00

  Medicate, shut them up.

• 27:55Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  But also the whole shutting them up thing, like, you're also shutting down a lot of creativity. And so, I do, I do want to acknowledge what you said earlier about like, the, it can be, the superpower part, because it can be a superpower. So, let's talk about the individual. We talked about the system, talked about the individual. It can be. Um, I've, uh, I've done a lot of research on, um, the link between mental illness and creativity. Um, and ADHD is part of it, also, um, being prone to schizophrenia. Um, if you have schizophrenia light, L I T E, so let's say your family member might have full-blown schizophrenia, but you got the watered-down genes, that makes you like 10 times more likely to think, think in a creative way, and to have a rich imagination, without the downside, you know? They don't, we don't need to put you in the mental institution, you know, like, like,

• 28:41Speaker 00

  God forbid, you think of bizarre associations that might end up being world-changing.

• 28:46Mayim Bialik?

  Ah, like, nonlinear thinking in, in certain situations is very not helpful, like, if you're trying to have a conversation in a therapist's office.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true. We're on a podcast.

• 28:56Mayim Bialik?

  But nonlinear thinking in a creative mode, or if you're in a creative role, you can make connections other people don't.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Can I tell you about a little bit the neuroscience of ADHD, if this is interesting at all to you? Uh, I think it is. So, um, there's, there's, uh, one brain network that like educators have tended to obsessively focus on, and that's the executive attention network. To the extent to which a kid is having trouble with their executive attention network, is they tend to, we need to medicate them, shut them up, because they're not focusing on, on you, on the you. It's like, how dare them not focus on our boring lecture, you know? Medicate them.

• 29:27Jonathan Cohen?

  It's very boring.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. The executive attention network is for paying attention to boring things. Let's just say that's what it's for. It's because you got to inhibit and suppress and hold things in working memory.

• 29:36Mayim Bialik?

  Make it sound like it's a bad thing. I love my executive functioning.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, yeah, that's, that's true, too. Like, there are many benefits to being able to have a meditation practice, and that's a whole different topic. That helps you. But there's also another brain network that I think we ignore completely. That's the I call it the imagination brain network. Nerdy scientists call it the default mode brain network. But I've renamed it the imagination network. Because it really has to do with our our at default state. Our mind tends to think about the future and tends to prospect. You know about about our own personal self as well as well as positive constructive daydreaming. Is my my one of my advisors in grad school called it.

• 30:15Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and in depression, the default mode network. It's telling a whole different set of messages.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Different thing. The default network is connected to the is connected to other areas that we don't want it connected to.

• 30:24Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  The anxious areas.

• 30:27Mayim Bialik?

  The perseverative, yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's all about it's all about what are these networks connect? How are they connected? It's not about any one of them is good or bad.

• 30:34Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  But people with ADHD have an overactive default mode. Even I called it by the nerdy name, an overactive imagination network. Which leads me to believe, as I wrote in a Scientific American article, shouldn't we just say that they have? It's overactive imagination disorder? Isn't that really what it is?

• 30:51Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, if you can use that as a way to generate ideas and then have either help or be able to transition the creative and imagination into execution, then that's a fantastic capability, not a disorder.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  I think so, yeah.

• 31:07Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, this goes to my concern about medication.

• 31:10Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. Sorry, it just also goes to my concern. Sorry, I have a different concern.

• 31:14Jonathan Cohen?

  What's your concern?

• 31:15Mayim Bialik?

  So one of the concerns that I have, and this is something that, you know, it's kind of like you can talk to you about everything. Because it all connects.

• 31:23Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Mayim Bialik?

  So one of the things, one of the things that, you know, that that we've noted and noticed is a lot more adults identifying as neurodivergent, or a lot of people receiving adult.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  And teenagers on TikTok.

• 31:36Mayim Bialik?

  And teenagers on TikTok, but it's the adults also watching on TikTok. But in addition. You know, when people have a new awareness of ADHD, it can often be, and I'm just saying from a work environment standpoint, it can be kind of cumbersome in certain cases. If someone sort of declares, I need a tremendous amount of help in moving things forward. Because in a work environment, in many traditional work environments here in a Western culture, we do, we value independence, we value efficiency. And I wonder where some of this also starts dipping into some of the narcissism that we talk about. Because so much of what people report about,

• 32:18Mayim Bialik?

  here's my diagnosis, and here's this, and I want everyone to like be accepting, and we want to be accepting. But when I think about it in terms of how we He's so mad right now.

• 32:28Jonathan Cohen?

  I have so many things to say about this point.

• 32:31Mayim Bialik?

  I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit, because one of my favorite examples of you talking about this is the link between sensory processing sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism. Narcissism, sorry.

• 32:41Jonathan Cohen?

  Point zero correlation.

• 32:42Mayim Bialik?

  Right, the link between sensory processing sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism. So I also wonder if with all of these diagnoses, in particular for savvy, intelligent adults, if it then becomes this sort of rallying point that can spin its own web of everyone needs to accommodate to me. How do we work with that?

• 33:02Jonathan Cohen?

  I think we need to button ADHD and then jump to this. Because you wanted to talk about medication, right? Well, I think I'll hold both things in my mind at the same time. I love that.

• 33:14Jonathan Cohen?

  On the ADHD front, a lot of the proponents of medication are like, they have to fit into the school system, they have to be able to go to school, right? They have to be able to get through the system that exists. We don't have an alternative for most people. So I understand that.

• 33:30Mayim Bialik?

  But we still want them to learn all the things that are going to be helpful to them when they go out into the world. It's not just like, fit into the system, it's like, I want you to be able to

• 33:38Jonathan Cohen?

  We want to educate people. And my point is that the system of education that we have Is doesn't accommodate for different kinds of intelligence and

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 33:48Jonathan Cohen?

  Different like needs that a that a student would have where one student is able to sit down, listen to the lecture, be generally happy in eight hours of class. Someone else may need to not be at their desk, moving around a room, independent, checking in with a teacher, more like in a Montessori style where that's either self-guided or sort of group-guided in small areas and they're never going to succeed being at their desk, sort of not chained to the desk, but that version of it. So, and the other proponent of medication is that, which I can't really speak to, and you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts, is that we're helping them develop executive functioning through the stimulants and that that's going to help shape their brain, especially

• 34:30Jonathan Cohen?

  as they're growing, so that they have better executive functioning as an adult. I didn't have that experience because I never tried medication until my early twenties.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:40Jonathan Cohen?

  When I did try medication, I was like, this is the most intense drug that I think exists.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Adderall?

• 34:47Jonathan Cohen?

  It was, it was Ritalin, I tried Ritalin for a little while and I tried Adderall.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:52Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm like, I can sit down for eight hours.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:54Jonathan Cohen?

  And write, but when I go to sleep at night, it's go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, like, it just brought my

• 35:02Speaker 00

  Trade-offs.

• 35:03Jonathan Cohen?

  It brought my system to that level where I'm like, this is not a natural or healthy intervention. And also, what I wonder is if I had been given that as a younger person, what would have happened to that creative imagination that I think is some of my best skillset? Now, this ties into what you were saying about how do people manage both sides? Because I agree totally that we can't have everyone saying, this is my diagnosis and the world should accommodate me. However, when you're building teams and you have some people who are amazing at systems and system execution.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 35:42Jonathan Cohen?

  But they maybe struggle at seeing things that don't yet exist. And someone else who is into creative imagination and someone else who's extremely analytical, who can take that creative imagination and say, here's four problems that we may foresee that we should solve for and then pass it, like, you can build a team of people who have complementary skillsets and like, that's ultimately the best business if you're starting to hire and build an organization.

• 36:07Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, no disagreements, no lies detected.

• 36:10Jonathan Cohen?

  I think the question goes back to myams and then also, you know, buttoning up the what is the trade off, you know, is it that people should look to ADHD medication because there's longer term benefit in the developing structure of the brain and that trade off doesn't sacrifice creativity? I think that's part one and then part two would be more to the

• 36:34Speaker 00

  Accommodation part?

• 36:35Jonathan Cohen?

  The or the diagnosis in later adult life and how do people sort of accept who they are without asking for a blanket

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:44Jonathan Cohen?

  Accommodation that the world's been to them.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  There's a lot there. There's a multi-part question.

• 36:49Mayim Bialik?

  MyMB Alex Breakdown is supported by AG1. Hey, November is a crazy time. It feels like you're sprinting to the finish line. Now more than ever, remembering your healthy habits can feel almost impossible. That's where AG1 earns its spot. Not when life is easy and you've got time for a whole routine, but right now, when everything's full and something's gotta give. One scoop, cold water every morning before anything else. Jonathan and I love how AG1 fits into our routine. I like to put it on a little ice, drink it first thing so it can jumpstart my brain in the morning. One scoop covers what a full stack of separate supplements would. Seventy-five plus ingredients, vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, pre and probiotics, superfoods,

• 37:31Mayim Bialik?

  no cabinet full of bottles, no figuring out what to take when. And it's not just marketing. AG1 Next Gen is backed by four separate gold standard clinical trials, not we did a study, but four independent studies with key nutrient levels improved within three months of consistent use. Plus, there's their new AG1 Pro, same daily drink, now with a performance and recovery layer built in. Five grams of creatitalis, a premium German-made creatine monohydrate, and one of the most studied compounds in sports science, plus CAHMB for muscle protection and zinc carnecine for gut support. Next Gen is the foundation. Pro adds what your body needs to recover. Honestly, Halloween is where I tend to fall off the healthy habit wagon, but AG1 has kept me on track.

• 38:16Mayim Bialik?

  Starting my day with this easy, health-focused task reminds me to continue to make healthy choices the rest of the day. For a limited time, visit drinkag1.com/breakdown and get a free immune support bundle, including omega-3 fish oil and vitamin D3 plus K2 with your first subscription of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/breakdown. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that My Ambiolyx Breakdown sent you.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  I want to just talk about the accommodation thing for an instant, because when I talk in the book about, you know, you shouldn't expect everywhere you go, people to accommodate you. That's different than leading with your strengths and hoping that if you're on a team. It's a different instance than the instance you brought up. Being on a team in a workplace, I mean, I just recently wrote a foreword to a wonderful book, like, The Brain Friendly Workplace, which is all about like people with neurodiverse. You know, we should absolutely be very friendly in the workplace to people with different kinds of minds, you know, and what their greatest strengths are. Specifically, the narcissism thing that comes in is a different beast. It's like something different. You're not leading with your strengths, you're not leading with what can you contribute.

• 39:23Speaker 00

  It's, the focus is entirely on me and everyone around should tiptoe around me and treat me, like, even if I'm an asshole, for instance, people should forgive me immediately because I'm a highly sensitive person.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  And, you know, I went berserk when I saw an interview once with Kanye West where he said, "People, I'm so misunderstood, I'm really just a highly sensitive introvert." And I wrote an article for Scientific American, was very cheeky, titled, it was like, "21 Signs You're Secretly a Narcissist Masquerading as a Highly Sensitive Introvert." And the article was about vulnerable narcissism and how, you know, you can be highly sensitive in different ways. Being highly sensitive to criticism and your ego, like, you could still be an asshole. Like, you can be highly sensitive, you can be a highly sensitive asshole.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Do you know what I mean?

• 40:19Jonathan Cohen?

  Totally.

• 40:19Mayim Bialik?

  Could you put that on a t-shirt?

• 40:21Speaker 00

  I'm a highly sensitive asshole would be a funny t-shirt, actually, just to like, yeah, make fun of myself.

• 40:26Jonathan Cohen?

  Before you keep going, why don't we describe what is a vulnerable narcissist?

• 40:31Speaker 00

  Um, so, um, it's a spectrum. People who score high in vulnerable narcissism, um, like a journal, I'm talking like a journal article over here. Uh, in our study, we found that people who score high in vulnerable narcissism tend to, uh, score higher in, uh, self instability. They, they really are uncertain who they are, and it makes them very insecure. Um, a lot of them, uh, there is a correlation with early childhood abuse. So, uh, you know, these things are complicated, right? We're not, I'm not a big fan of shaming and blaming and being, and saying this like, oh, you're, oh, let's laugh at the vulnerable narcissism. In general, I think that people who develop vulnerable narcissistic traits, it's a compensatory defense mechanism for, um, real pain that they've experienced in their lives.

• 41:11Mayim Bialik?

  What does it look like?

• 41:12Speaker 00

  Um, yep, it looks like, um, uh, uh, constantly having hostility and resentment for people who are more successful than you, feeling as though you're entitled to special privileges because you've suffered. Not because you're better than others, that's grandiose narcissism. See, there's two different types of narcissism with two different forms of entitlement associated with them. Grandiose narcissists are entitled to special privileges because they feel like they were born better than everyone else. Vulnerable narcissists have quite a low self-esteem on average and tend to have an, it's really an uncertain self-esteem. There's actually no such thing as a low self-esteem. We, we find in our studies, no one reports a zero on self-esteem surveys. It's either the middle or high, suggesting

• 41:54Speaker 00

  it's really a low that we, what we've been calling low is really just the participant who doesn't know who, you know, like, how they should view themselves. And so that's really what a low self-esteem is. And they, and people who score high in vulnerable narcissism, um, it's a really defining characteristic is they're very, and they're very sensitive to rejection. Um, there's actually, uh, quite a high correlation with borderline personality disorder, which is interesting, but this is a general personality trait. With vulnerable narcissism, you know, it's interesting, you do get a lot of the splitting, like people are either angels or devils, but like, I mean, I want to have some compassion. They're really, there's a lot of, like, let's pull a little Sharon Salzberg for a second, like, loving kindness meditation on these people.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Because they have a lot of splitting they do with themselves, which is causing them so much unnecessary inhibition of their self-actualization. That's why I wrote Rise Above, to show how we have these characteristics in all of us that is really bringing us down, you know, from our higher nature. And who we could be, to constantly be questioning who you are and just be flipping back and forth between, "Oh, at the root of me, I'm..." A lot of these people, they feel at the root of them, they're broken. That's how they feel.

• 43:02Mayim Bialik?

  But it takes a lot of therapy to get there. These aren't people who walk around being like, "Oh, I'm so hurt." This is people who are usually kind of very externalizing and very, you know, the things that get revealed are typically not what you're encountering on the daily.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Well, that's a, that's a very good point. Vulnerable, well, vulnerable narcissisms correlate with introversion, and more internalizing than externalizing. Whereas grandiose narcissism is related to more externalizing, and virtually no internalizing, by the way. We cannot seem to find anyone who scores extremely high and grandiose narcissism that ever puts the blame on themselves. Like, they're really good at externalizing everything.

• 43:38Mayim Bialik?

  That's like, uh, sorry, I'm thinking of like a pathological liar, like that guy at the bar. That's the kind of narcissist I think of. I wonder if we can talk a little bit about, you know, in, in Rise Above, which, which the, you know, overcome a victim mindset, empower yourself and realize your full potential. There's so much in here that is really helpful in terms of, there are many things that I didn't realize are leaning into victimhood that I do, right?

• 44:09Speaker 00

  That's exactly why I wrote this book, yay!

• 44:10Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, that was really helpful. Explain what cognitive distortions are and how they kind of play into a victim mindset, and then maybe give an example of a couple.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Sure. You know, when you have cognitive distortions, you're not seeing reality clearly. You really are exaggerating things to a degree that is not helpful, productive, and often not accurate.

• 44:29Mayim Bialik?

  And we all do this.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  We all do this. We all can fall prey when something bad happens to us, we think, "Oh, I'm a loser." You know, like, just these thoughts that are so extreme and distorted, like, no one's, the totality of their being is a loser, you know, like... Um, uh, and then cognitive behavioral therapy developed and developed a whole bunch such as um, exa- well, exaggerating, um, seeing things in black and white terms. Like, um, people are either all good or all bad, um, or, um, uh, if I don't get this job, then I will never get a job the rest of my life. Maybe overgeneralizing would be, uh.

• 45:04Mayim Bialik?

  And even if you know that's not true, thinking that thought starts a distortion that basically creates a groove in your brain.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  It totally creates a groove in your brain. Um, and the one that's, that the number one, if we had a, is the gong, you know, boom, what's the number one thing associated with a victim mindset? It is, you ready for it? Um, it is seeing a, a malevolent intent, uh, in neutral stimuli.

• 45:27Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, wow, that's a big one.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  That's the number one that we have found associated, um, and, uh.

• 45:32Mayim Bialik?

  What does that look like?

• 45:33Speaker 00

  So, um, you're, uh, in, in, in a comical example, I like to think, uh, all comedians are vulnerable narcissists. Because when they're up there, uh, like, if an audience member is just, has a neutral expression, they interpret that as they hate me.

• 45:47Mayim Bialik?

  Hmm.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  You know, so that's the most, I, I, I jokingly talk about Rodney Dangerfield, uh, yo, I got no respect, you know?

• 45:53Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Um, but in the everyday individual and every, and most people, um, it is, um, you know, you smile at someone on the street, um, they don't smile back, you take it personally. You know, you're like, Michael Jordan everywhere, you go, that was personal. You know, like, from the, from the documentary, he's like everything. So, um, um, so you just, when the reality of the matter, like, you know, is that person is not, I mean, that, that person doesn't know you. The person not thinking about you, that person is thinking about the million things they have to do their day, you know? Um, and then just more egregious and, and more controversially, I admit it. Um, uh, seeing malevolent intent, um, through the lens of only one thing, like, like everyone's racist, right? Like, so therefore if you.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  Have a belief, your prism of the world is every, all white people are racist. Then every white person who has a neutral response to you, like, why don't they like me? They must be racist, you know? So, and I understand it's a sensitive topic and I want to be sensitive to it.

• 46:49Mayim Bialik?

  No, but it's a good example. Yeah, it's a very good example. Um, one of my favorite cognitive distortions that I like is jumping to conclusions.

• 46:57Speaker 00

  A big one.

• 46:58Mayim Bialik?

  Can you talk about?

• 46:59Speaker 00

  You like, that's your favorite. You have a favorite cognitive distortion?

• 47:02Mayim Bialik?

  Um, can you talk a little bit about, you know, how that looks sort of and how that can be so damaging?

• 47:08Speaker 00

  Isn't that, I think that's quite related to the ones we're just, we're just talking about. Um, where you think you have understood and concluded what's really going on here. When it's, when there's a lot more complexity to what's really going on there. Or what's really going on there is not personal. Um, so a lot of people will jump to the conclusion that, that everything is personal. You know, um, you know, you're at the Starbucks, um, you're, you're in line and there's a big line. It's not moving fast enough. The world's conspiring against you. Well, you've jumped to that conclusion.

• 47:38Mayim Bialik?

  And even if it's not that specific thought, that burning feeling you feel that is the opposite of patience. The opposite of loving kindness, the opposite of all those things.

• 47:49Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 47:49Mayim Bialik?

  Like we sometimes, when I learned about cognitive distortions, I don't know how you feel about cognitive distortions. I didn't realize I was doing them.

• 47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, one of you is a favorite one.

• 47:57Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I, I didn't realize I was doing them. I just spend a lot of time, the way that I think of it, I spend a lot of time in my head. And I spend a lot of time in your head, like whoever you are. Meaning I'm always reading into, what are they thinking? What can I do to change them? Did I upset them? Are they happy? So if I'm spending all of that time, what it actually means is that the entire world is then filtered through this lens. That's not really true. Do you have a favorite one? Do you want to look at the list?

• 48:25Speaker 00

  I have a few.

• 48:25Mayim Bialik?

  I'm gonna read you the list.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Uh, I have a few that I like.

• 48:28Mayim Bialik?

  He likes when I read to him.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  I do like that, actually. The saying though, like the Starbucks example is like, that reminds me of the saying of you're in traffic. And you're like, oh, this traffic is getting in my way, not realizing you are the traffic. So true.

• 48:42Jonathan Cohen?

  And the black and white thinking was an interesting one for me. I used to see just two things and I'd be like, "Well, I can either do this or that." And, and understanding that there are, most things have some sort of middle, which is interesting for me because I love-

• 48:57Mayim Bialik?

  You're also a catastrophizer, though. "I can either take this job or I'm living under the bridge on the freeway because I didn't take the job." Like, he's very like, that's how black and white- And catastrophizing.

• 49:08Jonathan Cohen?

  I, I definitely worked on my catastrophization. That, for me, totally came from, I can see the roots. Both, my dad is an amazing risk analyzer.

• 49:18Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:19Jonathan Cohen?

  We used to consider him-

• 49:20Speaker 00

  What's his job?

• 49:21Jonathan Cohen?

  He was, he was the managing director of an accounting firm analyzing risk. So-

• 49:28Mayim Bialik?

  But that is his lens.

• 49:29Jonathan Cohen?

  That's his lens. It's like, "What are all the things that could possibly go wrong? Let's mitigate against that and make our decision." We used to call him head of catastrophe prevention.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Oh, my gosh. Can I, can I just say this? You see, you see this all the time in academia, where if you only have a hammer, you see a nail everywhere. Everyone at these meetings, these fact- Everyone is seeing the world through their own sort of scholarly research thing. So if you're like, if you're the, um, critical gender theory person, you literally, you're the person at the meeting where every single comment you interpret as, "Well, that was sexist. Well, that was, you know, you need to, you need to, let me educate you on the literature you need to read."

• 50:02Mayim Bialik?

  But that's how we operate in the world.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. What, what do you mean? Tell me what you mean.

• 50:06Mayim Bialik?

  Like, we're all, we all have specializations and we will see the world through the lens of our specialization, whether it's trauma, racism-

• 50:14Speaker 00

  I agree. I don't mean to just pick on the gendered, uh, critical theorist. That's not, that's the example that was most prominent in my head at that moment. But, but you can go down the line. So I was also gonna make a joke, like, if you're the history person who, who your specialization is 17th century Buddhist oppression, you know, you will see every, in, in the, in the meeting, you know. So I, I don't mean to pick on anyone in particular.

• 50:35Mayim Bialik?

  No, but that makes sense.

• 50:36Speaker 00

  But yeah, it, it, but we do. And to be able to be mindful of that is just world-changing because it helps you, um, increase your connections to others in such a profound way. Um, well, said, said the other way, it really divides us when we only view things through our own lens.

• 50:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Learning what the cognitive distortion might be and not to remove it because I still believe that understanding and analyzing risk is extremely beneficial to not end up with in a bad situation.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  That's right, that's right. It can be very helpful.

• 51:05Jonathan Cohen?

  But not to only rely on it, to be able to pull back and I think, you know, all the experts that we've spoken to is they say that it's not necessarily not utilizing any of these but being have having the flexibility to move out of them and apply other ways of thinking as well.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 51:21Jonathan Cohen?

  So for from a creative standpoint, when people give me two different options, I usually want to merger. I usually want some sort of hybrid. I'm like, let's take this and that and like, let's build a new version. And so in one area, I feel like I'm able to do it a lot and so trying to learn that. What were some of the others?

• 51:40Mayim Bialik?

  Um, let's see. Okay, well, we talked about black white thinking. We talked about catastrophizing, minimizing, personalizing, false sense of hopelessness. I like that one, too. Shoulding, shoulding.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:52Mayim Bialik?

  Entitlement, jumping to conclusion, overgeneral, mind reading. I like that one.

• 51:55Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's pause on shoulding for a second.

• 51:57Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Jonathan Cohen?

  Because a lot of...

• 51:59Speaker 00

  Big one.

• 52:01Jonathan Cohen?

  It's a big one because it perpetuates others.

• 52:04Speaker 00

  Albert, you know Albert Ellis, rational motive therapy? He said, "Stop sugar baiting all over yourself."

• 52:09Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  That's his expression he used. He thought he was being clever.

• 52:12Jonathan Cohen?

  But that has such a deep string when you start to pull on it because you're like, "I should be at this meeting on time and yet I'm stuck in traffic." But if you accept that I've done everything possible to be on time, maybe things are okay, even if I absolutely believe I'm going to lose this job because I'm not at this interview on time, that could be catastrophic. But unless you can look back and be like, "Oh, I really..." No, you're shaking your head.

• 52:40Mayim Bialik?

  No, I think...

• 52:41Jonathan Cohen?

  Now I'm mind reading.

• 52:43Mayim Bialik?

  No, I think for for shoulding, I I think of it more of like, I should have had more success by this time in my life. I should have accomplished this, or he should have gotten sober, or she should have this. It's a lot more, it's it's, I don't know, I think of it as general too.

• 52:59Speaker 00

  Well, both both end, both end, and I also think we live in a in an interesting time. Um, where we get so mad, like, we we're kind of signaling to others, you should think just like me. And that's, I'm adding a third, the third thing here. Uh, and it it it's it's really tearing our country apart, you know, because it's like, um, you know, you should have my political belief, you know, and if you don't, go fuck off, you know, like, and, uh, so we're shooting each other, you know, like, um, we're we're shaming and shooting each other. In addition to shooting ourselves, which is inhibiting our self-actualization, there's so much shooting going around.

• 53:36Jonathan Cohen?

  I'll give an example of something that I think works on a micro level, but maybe not as much on a macro level. It was, uh, having a positive, assuming a positive intent for someone.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I love that.

• 53:48Jonathan Cohen?

  And I, I think I've told this story before, but I had a a boss who, as I was an apartment manager, and I had a a boss who came in and he just had a positive intent of every single one of the tenants. You're like, this tenant trashed their apartment, well, maybe it was, and at that time, I was under a lot of stress and my immediate assumption was really like, no, this person has bad intent, or they're taking advantage. And and I saw how stressful that was on me, and I saw how his gracious intent often led to more information that I didn't have at the time. And seeing that, him apply that, I was like really profoundly changed by it.

• 54:28Jonathan Cohen?

  On a macro level, I think it's harder because you're like, oh, this person is, you know, or I'm in a business deal and they're offering something well below what I want, like, it's hard to have that type of same positive intent instead of setting a boundary.

• 54:44Mayim Bialik?

  Can you talk a little bit about the cognitive distortion of outsourcing happiness? Can you describe what that is?

• 54:50Speaker 00

  Are you a philosopher?

• 54:51Jonathan Cohen?

  I don't know. I don't think so.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  I feel like I'm getting a little bit of like a philosophy vibe from him. Do you know what I mean?

• 54:57Mayim Bialik?

  We think it's generational. I think there's something in his lineage, but...

• 55:01Jonathan Cohen?

  It's the many men with long beards in my family.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  I don't know what it is, but anyway.

• 55:06Mayim Bialik?

  Can you talk about outsourcing happiness? What does that look like practically?

• 55:10Speaker 00

  I'll be happy when?

• 55:11Mayim Bialik?

  Exactly. Or this relationship will make me happy and therefore I'm miserable without it.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  Gosh, we do that so often. I mean, I do that all the time, you know, like, until there's perfect... Until I get moved to New York and there's perfect tranquility and I'm settled in my job and I find my wife, you know, and then I have the... Then I'll be happy, you know? We don't allow ourselves happiness right here, right now, you know? And the sad thing that's heartbreaking is that we actually can't allow ourselves happiness right here, right now. We don't need that cognitive distortion. We can throw that in the rubbish bin, you know? But we hold on to it so much in this false sense that, you know, that we're going to outsource our happiness to external factors.

• 55:55Mayim Bialik?

  Or external people.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  Or external people. People, yes, yes.

• 55:59Mayim Bialik?

  One of the really incredible things about sort of your body of work and your research is you're able to sort of, you know, you're able to sort of tackle all of these things and be open to thinking about what superpowers can look like outside of the realms of kind of the materialist world. We were actually...

• 56:19Speaker 00

  Oh, good. We're gonna go there.

• 56:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, we were connected through a mutual friend, Sam Harris, because I wanted to talk to Sam about the telepathy tapes and he didn't want to talk to me about it, which is his prerogative, but he said, "You should talk to Scott Barry Kaufman." And so we were connected and I started listening to your podcast and we started having some conversations. One of our interests in the telepathy tapes and in various conversations we've had over the many, many episodes, hundreds of episodes that we've done, is we believe that there is something true about things that previously have been dismissed as something for hippies or mystics or, you know? And we wonder if you can sort of speak to what about...

• 57:06Mayim Bialik?

  Understanding intelligence and understanding those who are twice gifted. What insight does that give you into understanding people who might have special needs that we can't yet explain?

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't go to the supernatural level as my default, but I keep an open mind. You know, I'm an open skeptic. Where my mind goes is just to how incredible are the human genome is. And how much we don't know about epigenetics and how much we don't know about genetic transmission. Just what is encoded, you know, what are these proteins code for, you know, like?

• 57:43Speaker 00

  And, and I, and I, you know, before I got into, and now I'm obsessed with this mind reading stuff. But before that, I was obsessed with, well, how are these people, these kids able, like prodigies? Able to kind of sit down a piano and just kind of get the rule structure of piano. But you know, the rule structure of piano, it has been operated on enough during the course of human evolution. That, that it is reasonable that it would be somewhere in our genes, you know, some of these things. We don't ask like, we don't say, oh, it must be supernatural that I learned all these words that I learned from the ages of two to five. Which we did automatically. We do so many things that we, if we really, we're like the fish in water. You know, we're like, because we're swimming in the water, we don't realize that there's water.

• 58:25Speaker 00

  But there's so many miraculous, miraculous things that we have evolved learning systems. And I'm really interested in the interaction between generalized learning systems, like implicit learning systems. And evolutionarily evolved implicit domain learning systems. So basically what I mean by that is mouthful, but saying our genes really prepared us through the course of evolution. To tune our attention to certain regularities in the environment that were very regular across the course of human history. Now, some of these individuals, the most exceptional, there's always a great disability concomitant with it. Either it's acquired, so they get hit on the head and then all of a sudden they can be Mozart. Or it is developmental.

• 59:08Speaker 00

  But there's, there's no case where it's, there's not a concomitant severe disability.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  Or trauma. Or tra- great point, great point. Um, where you, um, and it's usually, the, the trauma or the disability is usually a verbal one. Hmm. And the Can you say more? The ability is usually a non-verbal one. So you don't see prodigies in creative writing, really, really. Um, you know, you don't see pro- in verbal sort of creative domains. You see it most prominently in art, music. Now we can add telepathy to the list. I was gonna say, well, spirituality. Spirituality, we're adding spiritual, the spiritually gifted child. We can, we can really try to figure that out. But, um, it, that's still, uh, I think a non-verbal thing. Whatever's going on there is something non-verbal. It's a picking up. It's, it's a receiving, it's a receiving of something. Um, at the very least, right?

• 1:00:00Speaker 00

  So I, I, you know, my investigation, which started on gifted, it with, um, with, with prodigies and, um, and, and, um, savants, savants, Dowd Treffert's work is incredible. He spent his whole career studying these savants. Um, there's something about the non-verbal, um, that gets unleashed when it's not dominated by language as much.

• 1:00:22Jonathan Cohen?

  So you said two things that I wanna better understand.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Language is a part of this, I just wanted to, yeah.

• 1:00:27Jonathan Cohen?

  One of them was that it potentially is coded in our genes.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Well, everything's encoded in genes. Well, what is coded is an intention to certain regularities that most of us are not, uh, programmed to be attuned to. But some people are, I think, right out of the get-go, programmed to be attuned to the pattern, the statistical pattern structure of X.

• 1:00:49Jonathan Cohen?

  So it's an attu- yes, it's an attunement, but the other sort of word that I'm sort of caught on that you were talking about was that they receive something. So

• 1:00:58Speaker 00

  Statistical probabilities, maybe.

• 1:01:00Jonathan Cohen?

  So it's statistical probabilities, but where are they? I think is the question.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Where are the prob- oh, right, right.

• 1:01:06Jonathan Cohen?

  Right, so.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Well, with music, clear feedback, with art, I mean, with those things, obvious, there's clear feedback you're getting. You know, when you sit down and you can figure out the probabilities if your if your system's attuned to it. But you're talking about telepathy. Do you want to double?

• 1:01:19Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, I'm talking about telepathy, but I'm also talking about even creative imagination. You know, people who, like, when we were talking about creative imagination, I'm like, well, where is that? It's not localized.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  Imagination brain network.

• 1:01:31Jonathan Cohen?

  It's, it is the imagination brain network. However, is it internal or is it non-local? And the imagine, and the system of the brain is actually accessing information all around us. Recently, in our episode with Deepak Chopra, he's, you know, talking about how the universe is creative of these ones and zeros that we are simply making sense of and pulling external information. So the, by attunement and by the ability to form statistical probability in music. Well, then you could say maybe that's somewhat internal, but are they accessing something outside? But when you talk about creative imagination and we're talking about intuitive abilities or the ability to have precognitive experience.

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I hear you, man, and there's something really profound here. There's something to the demonic, the Greeks, you know, this guiding force that that we have seen all throughout the human history, that creative people, really creative people often say, it does not feel like it's coming from me, right? And so, like, we need to take that seriously. And I have taken that very seriously in my whole career, even linking it to mental illness. I, you know, I think there's an interesting link there when the brain is altered in an altered state of consciousness where you don't feel like you're having agency over the ideas. There's something really profound there as well. So I think I'm taking what you're saying very seriously because there is, you know, Anika Harris, you know, studies the form of consciousness. She believes that there it's universal, right?

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  And so there are scientific approaches emerging that give some sort of mechanistic account to, perhaps there is, we have been thinking about consciousness wrong, you know, and perhaps there is a universal consciousness that, you know, Carl Jung talked a lot about that, right? Let's give Carl, let's give him a little bit of credit, you know, that we're just kind of have the antenna, you know, that's tapping into it. There, there, it could be, I mean, it could be that plants are tapping into, that everything is tapping into it. There's biolog, that has any sort of life, you know, associated with it. I'm open to that idea. Some people aren't. I'm not going to mention names, but there are some friends of mine

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  who are very prominent consciousness researchers at NYU, who they will just dismiss it, just, don't even, let's not even talk about it, you know? But I think there's enough accumulating evidence to suggest that we should keep our minds open to that as the way this is working. Now, does it mean, as it's depicted in the telepathy tapes, that these autistic savants are accessing a plane, you know, they're going to some, that to me is a little farfetched. To be honest, that's a little farfetched.

• 1:04:08Mayim Bialik?

  The only way that one could frame that there is a place called the Hill, for example, as the telepathy tapes talks about, that all these kids are going the same place, the only way that we could kind of understand a scientific framework around that is if there were a collective consciousness that in some way we cannot yet measure, we cannot yet isolate, and for those of us who want to measure and isolate things, that's a limitation, but the idea would be that there's a certain group of people who have an ability to drop in, because it's almost always like a meditative state, a trance state, some sort of theta

• 1:04:45Mayim Bialik?

  state, or a nonverbal state, and they are able to access a metaphysical location in which their consciousness is entangled, and they are linked. You do have to set aside a lot of the problems of facilitated communication.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  I wanted to bring that up.

• 1:05:05Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, you have to set aside, and I don't think we, you and I, feel comfortable just setting those aside and being like, it doesn't matter.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  There are just so many confounds that have not been ruled out properly yet.

• 1:05:14Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  And that's the problem. I had this conversation with someone the other day. They said, Scott, you're never going to prove that this realm exists, because, oh, it was Michael Shermer yesterday, Michael Shermer, Mr. He's head of Skeptic magazine, so he's on brand, he's on brand. We got into a whole discussion about this on his podcast yesterday. He's like, Scott, you're never going, if there does exist this realm of, that's not open to evidence, well, you're never going to discover it. And I said, well, you know, well, here's the way I think about it, because I'm such a curious person. Even if that may very well be true, the more that I can rule out all of these confounds.

• 1:05:49Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  The more excited I get that there's something mysterious that is even in further need. See, that's the way I think. Do you know what I mean? Is like, I'm not trying to prove. Anything. I'm trying to see what could be most probable. And if we, so like Simon Baron Cohen and I had a conversation about designing studies on this. We're like, let's try this confound this. It's never been done where they've had the complete separation.

• 1:06:13Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  So let's do that. Let's, if we can do, put six of these things in and the child is still saying five, seven, nine. I'll be like, okay, that's pretty darn cool. Do you know what? That's pretty cool.

• 1:06:24Mayim Bialik?

  Well, here's, there, there's two issues that I think are outstanding in any conversation about this. And one of the things that is outstanding is the general acknowledgement that observation of something changes it. And that's, that's a beautiful limitation and it's, it is, it is going to make analysis difficult. So that's for me, that's the first challenge. Observation is difficult. And if we are dealing with not just a subset, we're dealing with a subset of a subset of a subset of individuals. And what, what proof likes, what science likes is regularity.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:03Mayim Bialik?

  We like to live right in the middle of that bell curve. And that is what our scientific measurement is calibrated to. So that is not to say that you cannot study this subset of the subset of the subset. However, the techniques that we have, that we currently have, and the conscious awareness of how to even approach things is limited. Because we are not used to thinking in that realm. And that's why people like Sam Harris or any of these people are like, we won't even talk about it. Because the only methods of analysis are designed for regularity, reproducibility, separating the individuals from the people that they claim to be telepathic with, which is exactly the only way that in many cases they are telepathic.

• 1:07:48Mayim Bialik?

  Because there is an emotional connection. So we're trying to kind of apply like an ice cream scoop to a piece of bacon. It doesn't go together.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  I think that I'm, I'm even more optimistic though, that, that if supernatural exists, that we can capture it scientifically.

• 1:08:02Mayim Bialik?

  This is why I love the conversations that you have on your podcast. This is why I love.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  You was my past lives one by any chance?

• 1:08:08Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, of course I did.

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  Cause that one was so cool.

• 1:08:09Mayim Bialik?

  That one was insane.

• 1:08:10Speaker 00

  I'm a believer now.

• 1:08:11Mayim Bialik?

  Right. Well, but, but the reason that it's compelling is.

• 1:08:16Mayim Bialik?

  There are scientists and you know, I'm not a practicing scientist, but there are people like me and like you who are actual scientists practicing.

• 1:08:24Jonathan Cohen?

  You're an actual scientist.

• 1:08:25Mayim Bialik?

  No, but, but there are people who are willing to say, we may not be able to design an experiment where we have 50 people and we isolate them from the person and see if they can read minds. That's not what this experiment is going to look like, but if you look at it, I'm picturing like a, picturing like a pom pom. If the truth is in the middle of the pom pom, you've got all this other stuff that you have to get through to try and get to it. So if we can start shaving off parts of this outside so that we can say, okay, it's not this. Or this is a confounding factor, or if we really want to test it, we've got to do this. Or I'm going to be actually an open skeptic and say, how do I shave off the parts so that I can even get an indication of getting closer to the middle? That's what a scientific approach to this needs to look like.

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And I think that even if there's certain metaphysical things exist, like even if, even if our consciousness, if it turns out that our consciousness is not confined to our brains, that's what we're talking about here. If that's true, I think that there's some interesting things we'd pick up on. So I think that if there are two people who both are thinking of the same thing, we know that certain brain areas are more likely to be active when we're thinking of language or not, but they're both thinking of this. Let's say there's two people that the, the claim is they're both tapping into the same universal consciousness. Well, I would expect both of them at the same time without communicating would show a very similar area of activation while they are both imagining the very same thing.

• 1:09:48Mayim Bialik?

  Limbic resonance.

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:09:49Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, limbic resonance is a thing. Deepak Chopra talked about it. In a description of mirror neurons and a description of limbic system, if I feel for you.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 1:09:57Mayim Bialik?

  And you know that I feel for you, then we are in some sort of resonance.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  I'm giving that to, he is, he is correct about that. I've just, I've heard, I've just heard some things he said that I'm like, let me do some more testing on that. That's all.

• 1:10:09Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 1:10:10Jonathan Cohen?

  He does claim to be the first person to prove telepathy that he says.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  I see him in the background of the telepathy tape videos.

• 1:10:16Mayim Bialik?

  No, there's a video he published years ago where he had one of these kids who was mind reading and he said it was absolutely.

• 1:10:23Jonathan Cohen?

  And they put them in separate rooms and his mother was reading and the child was saying what the mother was reading.

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  Separate rooms?

• 1:10:29Mayim Bialik?

  Separate rooms.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  Why can't we scientifically replicate that though?

• 1:10:35Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  I'm skeptical.

• 1:10:37Jonathan Cohen?

  Scientifically, well, I think, sure, of course. And it could be that this person had a great ability. The question would be not why we can't scientifically replicate this with other people, but going back to that same, same, um, mother and son.

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. And I also just getting into magic and getting into mentalism, which I have. Um, I realized the extent to which people recreate, um, a story in their head of what happened. Um, cause it's what they want to believe that is not actually what happens when he played the tape act. Because I've, I've really gotten into mentalism, a big part of it is, you know, I think, well, what experience do I want to leave this person? When they tell their friend, this is what happened. He pulled, you know, for instance, I, um, one of these podcasts, I went to their party and I did this thing. And then, um, on the podcast, they were raving about what I did. And they're like, you're not going to believe what Scott Berkoffman did. Okay. Literally, there was a person there and he, he just asked someone, he said, what is your, what is your favorite movie? And the guy said his favorite movie. And he literally just took his wallet out and he pulled out a movie ticket for the movie. Okay. Just right then and there, like, there's no explanation for that.

• 1:11:36Mayim Bialik?

  And that's a, and that's a recounting.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  It's a recounting.

• 1:11:38Mayim Bialik?

  That's not what happened, though.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Well, it is, it is, it is exactly what I wanted him to tell that story in his own head in how he reconstructs it. Okay. That's exactly, like, that's, that was my aim was for that, how, that's how I wanted him to perceive it.

• 1:11:52Mayim Bialik?

  Will you tell us how you do that?

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  No, of course not. But I, I wanted him to perceive it that way.

• 1:11:57Jonathan Cohen?

  I want to get to something that you said, which is you now believe in past lives.

• 1:12:01Speaker 00

  So there's something that, that I've been banging, so I've, to my, to my credit, uh, ever since I started studying prodigies, I've been banging the drum. There's like, there's something here where these prodigies are, I really believe, if you go, if you trace someone in their family long enough, someone had that skill, right? So I always thought there was something, that's a form of past life memory. That is a form of past life memory. When a child comes out and they're able to do something, um, with no preparation or practice.

• 1:12:29Mayim Bialik?

  Like they become a pianist and you're saying somewhere in the family, you think there's a pianist.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  So there is, I looked into this and you start to go walk case by case and you start to find, oh, the great grandfather in Russia had this amazing talent. You know, and, and so then let's just generalize from that principle. Okay, so i- isn't that a form of past life memory? Like, what, what else is it? If it's, if that's not a past life.

• 1:12:48Mayim Bialik?

  Well, what you're saying.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Oh, not, not past life, right. You, you could say it's a, it's an intergenerational transmission.

• 1:12:53Mayim Bialik?

  No, but you're, you're saying that there is something coded in your DNA.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  That, that was transmitted to them.

• 1:12:58Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:12:59Speaker 00

  That's a memory. And I know how controversial that sounds.

• 1:13:02Mayim Bialik?

  And in this case, it's a creative memory.

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  It's a creative memory. And I, and, and it's like, it's a certain set of genes as well that makes you more likely to be able to soak up knowledge and things.

• 1:13:09Mayim Bialik?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  But I do think the memory thing, we can't rule it out. You know, the extent to which maybe certain memories are encoded in our genes. And, and again, this could get into, someone might sound, make things so woo-woo.

• 1:13:20Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:13:20Speaker 00

  But I don't think it's, it is that woo-woo when you really look at some of this incredible phenomenon, you know?

• 1:13:26Mayim Bialik?

  You had Jim Tucker on your podcast, and, um, we hope to have him on one day. But, um, but the conversation that you had was regarding children who have very, very elaborate.

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  Vivid memories.

• 1:13:37Mayim Bialik?

  Vivid, and not just sort of factual memories, but emotional memories, and in many cases, kind of somatic memories of being someone else. In many cases, they're pulling out facts. The, the very famous case was the kid who had all these details about a pilot. I think he was a World War II pilot. Um, and he described his own death, which was accurate to the way this pilot died. And it wasn't general information. It was very, very astonishingly specific information that, to our knowledge, was not available on the internet.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  Well, I, I mean, I read the journal articles, and I, and I want to say this to all my scientist friends out there. If you're a good scientist and you read those journal articles, you have to agree. There is something that is not fishy going, there's something real going on. You have to. If you, if you, if you have scientific integrity, that's my challenge. If you have scientific integrity, you can't come away reading how meticulous he documented this stuff and how rigorous he was about it. He's real, like, using the scientific method. Um, you, you can't just, just fluff it off.

• 1:14:36Mayim Bialik?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  And so that does, that does bother me when people, when scientists fluff off things without even reading the journal article. Like, read the journal article, and then can we talk about it, you know?

• 1:14:44Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and so what Jim Tucker talks about is, he believes that there is something. And the conversation you had was regarding, is there something encoded in DNA?

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:14:53Mayim Bialik?

  That's being passed on? And the question is, if we believe in a collective consciousness.

• 1:14:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:14:57Mayim Bialik?

  If it's not encoded in your DNA, can you pull someone else's life memory from the collective consciousness into your own?

• 1:15:05Speaker 00

  I literally sit up and I'm trying to think of different hypotheses for what could be going on. You know, how can there be certain accidental commingling

• 1:15:15Speaker 00

  of things that wasn't supposed to happen? You know, most of us, it doesn't happen, right? These are a minority of cases. But I like to think of all the weird quirks of things that can hap- You know, there are also so many weird special abilities. And by the way, there could be a whole like doc Netflix series on just all the weird like the person with three eyes. Yeah, like they're all, they're, they're-

• 1:15:36Mayim Bialik?

  Three eyes?

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, they exist.

• 1:15:37Mayim Bialik?

  Where's the third one?

• 1:15:40Mayim Bialik?

  No.

• 1:15:40Speaker 00

  I don't know what it is, but some people's developmental, just the way they development, all sorts of things can, can go awry from the plan. You know, and things can get commingled, things can, the genes can, you know, I mean, I've seen things, women with three breasts, right? I mean, these things, I mean, I haven't seen it.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  I did it a woman once, no, but I know, no, no. But I, I've heard of these cases, they exist, they exist.

• 1:16:03Jonathan Cohen?

  Scott, before our time runs out with you, you said there's more and more evidence of consciousness being non-local. What other evidence have you come across that makes you more curious than skeptical?

• 1:16:16Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny, I heard myself say evidence. And I would say there are more, let me frame it a little bit differently. There are more like not crazy people who are coming up with theories of how it's possible. And I think that's the closest I can get to this.

• 1:16:30Jonathan Cohen?

  Fair.

• 1:16:31Speaker 00

  There are some, and some of them are philosophers, you know, who, who are writing about this.

• 1:16:35Mayim Bialik?

  Physicists have no problem with this. Physicists, quantum mechanics people, they're like, yeah, we to- of course, this is exactly what like Plank described, this is what like Heisenberg knew, like, so physicists have no problem. Philosophers are dipping into it.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  Philosophers are dipping into it and, and some, and some cognitive scientists just arguing, you know, that there is this pan- Uh, psychism, you know, that uh, um, it doesn't uh, need to be explained by the supernatural level, but actually is linked to physics. You know, some of them are linking it to physics principles and um, the improbability of us, of consciousness existing in the first place, you know, and, and trying to kind of use logic and philosophical tools versus scientific tools to explain some of this. Philip Goff is a, is a big one, by the way. G O F F, Philip Goff.

• 1:17:25Jonathan Cohen?

  Philip Goff.

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  He just wrote the, the meaning of existence. He might be a fun person to talk to because he, um, he has a scientific case for God.

• 1:17:32Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:17:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he was on my podcast, so you can listen to that if you want.

• 1:17:35Jonathan Cohen?

  So one of the most simple examples that Rick Rubin talks about is the idea that ideas have their moment and that most artists are actually just using antennae to capture data from this collective consciousness and that, you know, the, the example he gives is like ideas springing up in different parts of the world before there was a-

• 1:17:56Mayim Bialik?

  Thomas, Thomas Kuhn said the same thing about scientific uh, shifts.

• 1:17:59Jonathan Cohen?

  Breakthroughs.

• 1:18:00Mayim Bialik?

  They're, they're gonna happen. It's just who's the person that's literally gonna seize on it or receive it.

• 1:18:05Jonathan Cohen?

  And I don't have the list of the ideas that circulated in different parts of the world simultaneously, but there is that list where it feels like evolution or human consciousness or human progress is evolving at a certain rate and these breakthroughs are gonna happen and, and you sort of are not necessarily local to an individual to bring them to the world instead of, you know, capturing them in some way.

• 1:18:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. There's also if there's something, an idea in the air, someone's gonna find it, uh, multiple, there'll be multiples. Uh, Dean Simonton has found that to be the case through scientific revolutions. Usually there's about five or six people who simultaneously seize upon it because it's in the air.

• 1:18:41Jonathan Cohen?

  Doesn't that push us into this notion?

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  It, it, yeah, if there's a, if there's a, a really important scientific discovery to be made, um, yeah. People from very different perspectives tend to seize upon it.

• 1:18:52Mayim Bialik?

  Something happened yesterday before we let you go.

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:55Mayim Bialik?

  So you know, sometimes you'll be like thinking of someone and then they text you?

• 1:18:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Mayim Bialik?

  Like whatever happens.

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  That happens.

• 1:18:59Mayim Bialik?

  It happened three times to me yesterday. Three. That's a lot in one day. And I had had a very rough night's sleep. I actually wasn't feeling good. And I was kind of wondering like, so it happened once and I was like, oh, that's kind of thing. And then a couple hours later, it happened again. And I was like, oh, and I'm like, how many times in one day am I gonna type, I was just thinking about you and then you texted, right? And one of them was my son who wasn't feeling well. And I was kind of thinking like- If like, how far out on this, on this like, spectrum of thinking do I wanna go, right? I was just, it was like, three in one day and I'm thinking, am I supposed to do something else? Like, try and meditate in a different way? Is there other information in the air that I'm supposed to gather today?

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  So, maybe we shouldn't, we should just start here, not end here on this statement, but I think the universe has a purpose. I agree with Philip Goff on this. The universe has a purpose, and I think that unfortunately, and as much as I hope we discover that in my lifetime, it's probably gonna take many more lifetimes before, but there will become a day. This is my prediction, if you're, if you're listening back on this, a thousand years from now. Someday, I think humans will figure, figure out that a lot, that a lot of things did have a lot more meaning. And we're, you know, I get in a lot of fights with Sam Harris about whether or not we have free will or not, but, and please don't tell him I said this, but I'm starting to come around to his perspective. I mean, we've had some heated, on my podcast, we did a two-part, we heated debate about this,

• 1:20:26Speaker 00

  but I'm starting to come around to the idea that there are, you know, there's every, there's so much predetermined that we don't realize. You know, right when we were born, there was so much predetermined there, and we're watching this beautiful thing unfolding, thinking that we are the one creating it, you know? And a lot of the things that, and this is relating to what you said, because there are a lot of things that if you just view it in a Buddhist way, and you just, you start to realize that things do come at you that were meant for you. Things go away that weren't meant to you. You can try to hold on to them as much as you can, but they just weren't meant, like, you have friends that come and go, and you're, that are seasonal friends. And then you have friends that, like, my friend Elliot will always be my friend, you know, there's no, that, and I don't think all that is just chance, you know?

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  You know, whatever configuration of things, like, things are attracting and are like, connecting as they were meant to be. And we can fight it, because we say, "Oh, well, I'm jealous of this podcaster, why can't I be like this podcaster?" Or you can accept your fate, which I think is a much more healthier way of living your life.

• 1:21:29Mayim Bialik?

  When you think about your own personal story to kind of wrap that up and you think about all the challenges you had and, you know, being placed in special ed when that clearly wasn't the place for you and it may be helpful for some other kids. When you think about your own personal journey, how do you kind of tie that into we're here, like, everything's supposed to happen the way it needs to?

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  Well, I have always felt it was my fate to do these books, to do, you talk about creativity, demonic, when I was writing Transcend, I don't remember who wrote that book. Like, I don't, I mean, I said, I wrote, I sat down and I wrote that book, but I don't, I don't remember thinking about what I was gonna write. I don't, I, I mean, I can't explain it. I mean, when I sat down, I wrote that, like, today I'm gonna write chapter connection. You know, by the end of a couple of weeks, the connection chapter was written. I don't remember thinking, oh, let me plan out how I'm gonna write that. I, I would sit down and write, the need for connection, but, so, I don't know, I've always felt that my life story, it's, it's all part of this thread that's unfolding, it's still unfolding, but now it's unfolded enough where I can kind of start to see the pattern.

• 1:22:28Speaker 00

  Cause enough years have gone by, I'm an old man now, you know? I'm an old man now, you know? Rise Above was the inevitable, I almost had no other choice but for everything, every choice to lead up to Rise Above. Because Rise Above is the natural progression, once you get out of the way, intelligence, creativity, then you start to have, then you have the aha moment, oh, actually, it's really about, you know, realizing no one's coming to save you. Yeah, you need, you need, yeah, do you know, am I making sense?

• 1:22:54Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, no, it makes total sense.

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  Everything was in the inevitable result that you always see at the end of your life.

• 1:23:01Mayim Bialik?

  We really, I mean, we appreciate that so much, and I think it's such a great, it's such a great tie-in to also say, the universe has a purpose for me, and if I get stuck in a place where I don't believe that, like, these are the kinds of tools that I need to come out of it. I mean, that's what I got out of the book, so, thank you so much, it's such a pleasure to have you here.

• 1:23:21Speaker 00

  I feel seen today.

• 1:23:22Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, great.

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  Thank you so much.

• 1:23:24Mayim Bialik?

  We're so glad.

• 1:23:25Speaker 00

  Both of you are so, so smart.

• 1:23:26Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you.

• 1:23:29Mayim Bialik?

  One thing we didn't get to talk to Scott about is, we'll link to his website below, which has a ton of interesting information. It links to his podcast. Also, he writes for The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Scientific American. He does a ton for them. So he has some really interesting articles about personality, about being a late bloomer, about how to maximize your potential. But he also has a series of tests, which you and I actually took. We took the self-actualization test. There are many different ones on the website. We took the characteristics of self-actualization scale test. It looks

• 1:24:09Mayim Bialik?

  at appreciation, acceptance, authenticity, equanimity, purpose, truth-seeking, humanitarianism, peak experiences, moral intuition, and creative spirit. And what this test produces is it shows you your three kind of strengths, and it shows you the strengths that you have based on the questions that you answer. So I thought it would be fun for us to go over them.

• 1:24:31Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's do it.

• 1:24:32Mayim Bialik?

  So I offered to take the test for Jonathan, because I think I understand Jonathan better than Jonathan understands Jonathan, but that's not fair.

• 1:24:39Jonathan Cohen?

  You love to answer questions for other people.

• 1:24:42Mayim Bialik?

  But I did help you in that, when you got stuck, I knew that was a neutral, like a number three.

• 1:24:47Jonathan Cohen?

  There was a couple of questions.

• 1:24:48Mayim Bialik?

  There was a couple where I was like, no, I get what they're asking, and I'm going to help you. But no, it was definitely, we each took it. So what I thought was interesting, we got totally different strengths. It gives you your top three strengths. It also gives you the other rankings of your others. But my top three results for my characteristics of self-actualization.

• 1:25:07Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's hear them.

• 1:25:08Mayim Bialik?

  Authenticity.

• 1:25:09Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, you're so authentic.

• 1:25:11Mayim Bialik?

  Well, I want to be authentic. It doesn't mean that I am. It means that it's an important value to me. Purpose.

• 1:25:17Jonathan Cohen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:19Mayim Bialik?

  Like wanting to have a sense of purpose. And humanitarianism.

• 1:25:23Jonathan Cohen?

  What people don't know about you is that you actually love purpose, meaning not only just like a larger macro purpose, but like when you show up at someone's house, you're like, "Let me organize your cupboards."

• 1:25:35Mayim Bialik?

  I like to be of-

• 1:25:36Jonathan Cohen?

  "Can I file your papers for you?"

• 1:25:38Mayim Bialik?

  I like to feel that I have purpose.

• 1:25:40Jonathan Cohen?

  Yes.

• 1:25:40Mayim Bialik?

  And in some cases, it might be insecurity, but it's not that I want praise.

• 1:25:46Jonathan Cohen?

  No, no.

• 1:25:46Mayim Bialik?

  It's that wanting to feel a purpose is important.

• 1:25:48Jonathan Cohen?

  You want to feel useful.

• 1:25:49Mayim Bialik?

  And humanitarianism, that makes sense to me because I do have a very strong sense of wanting to do good. It doesn't mean that you are these things. It means these are the values and the characteristics that are important to you.

• 1:25:58Jonathan Cohen?

  Let's talk about me.

• 1:25:59Mayim Bialik?

  Let's talk about Jonathan.

• 1:26:03Mayim Bialik?

  Equanimity.

• 1:26:05Jonathan Cohen?

  I had to look up what that was and what that actually meant.

• 1:26:07Mayim Bialik?

  What did you find? Tell the class.

• 1:26:08Jonathan Cohen?

  I don't remember, actually. I have to look up-

• 1:26:10Mayim Bialik?

  Tell us what equanimity is.

• 1:26:12Jonathan Cohen?

  Mental calmness, composure, evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations. I don't like an emergency unless it's an emergency, and even then, I don't like it.

• 1:26:23Mayim Bialik?

  So it's funny because these were, um, some of these questions were, were interesting to me because you answered in, in the way that you'd like to handle things, but I find that sometimes even little things can make you very upset, like sometimes disproportionately. And, and I mean like, like sometimes you feel nervous or anxious about something that feels maybe, to use the language of Scott, like maybe you're generalizing or catastrophizing, but it's not a goal of yours, which is why equanimity is one of your highest. It's something you're aspiring to, if I don't believe you're there yet at all.

• 1:26:54Jonathan Cohen?

  I'll say this. I was dealing with our internet provider, and that was very frustrating to me. But in general, uh, even when things like get thrown off the rail, I don't, I don't think I am, uh, a very reactive person, but maybe that's just my experience of myself.

• 1:27:12Mayim Bialik?

  Well, equanimity is important to you. That is true. Creative spirit, that feels right on. And these were, I think, all equally the same level. So for my authenticity, purpose, and humanitarianism, equanimity, creative spirit, that really tracks. And truth seeking, that came up high for you.

• 1:27:29Jonathan Cohen?

  I don't like any BS. And I think it's more about like, what is a generalized truth? Meaning-

• 1:27:37Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:27:37Jonathan Cohen?

  Where are we getting information?

• 1:27:39Mayim Bialik?

  Because sometimes with specific truths, it can be a little fuzzy.

• 1:27:42Jonathan Cohen?

  Specific truth is, has a lot of context.

• 1:27:46Mayim Bialik?

  I think one of the questions was like, what, you know, I try and stay close to your reality. You're like, what is reality?

• 1:27:53Jonathan Cohen?

  That is true. Reality is very subjective. Every guest we talk about explains that we make up a lot of how we see the world, and that's why it needs context, because you have to explain how you're coming to said reality, which is also about truth. If truth is presented in one fashion, some people will be like, this is what it is. It's like those internet memes. It's Yanni or Clancy or Lancy, where people hear things totally differently.

• 1:28:23Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yeah. Yanni, I'm like the chalice?

• 1:28:27Jonathan Cohen?

  It's the, it's the internet meme where a sound plays and people hear it totally differently.

• 1:28:32Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it's like the blue and black, white and gold dress issue.

• 1:28:37Jonathan Cohen?

  Truth is subjective. That's why we have to find it.

• 1:28:40Mayim Bialik?

  The other tests that you can take, there's a human potential index, a light versus dark side of the force test, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, there's a selfishness and altruism scale. So anyway, head over to scottbarrykaufman.com for sure, and we'll link to that below. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.