Emily McDonald: Can You Rewire Your Brain?

Trevor and Eugene sit down with neuroscientist and content creator Emily McDonald (aka EmOnTheBrain) to explore how our brains shape the way we think, feel, and behave. From the real limits (and possibilities) of neuroplasticity to the surprisingly persistent pull of old habits, McDonald breaks down what’s actually happening inside our nervous systems. Along the way, the trio dive into Emily’s own neurological journey, how elite athletes train their brains for peak performance, and even the spiritual energy of Sedona — all in an effort to understand how we change, and why our brains don’t always make it easy.

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

• 0:04Trevor Noah?

  My idea is we create old age homes that are kindergartens. Yeah. Because old people.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  They've done that.

• 0:14Trevor Noah?

  Wait, they have?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  So they've done a research.

• 0:15Trevor Noah?

  They stole my idea, come on!

• 0:17Speaker 01

  So if, no, no, so they haven't done this for like as a business, so.

• 0:20Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  No, but there is actually research to show your idea would work. If I'm clear on your idea.

• 0:26Trevor Noah?

  This is why I need you in my life. For my hype. You know how many, what? So his idea is great. You know how many times I say things to people and then they'll be like, I don't know if that, and if I had you around, you could be like, there's research to show. Bam!

• 0:50Trevor Noah?

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• 1:25Trevor Noah?

  This segment is brought to you by Google Pixel. You know what's really frustrating? Knowing the exact information you need is somewhere on your phone, but still ending up wasting your time digging through five different apps just to actually find it. Thankfully, Google Pixel 11 is designed with Gemini intelligence, so it can proactively find the information I need right when I need it. Like my flight info and travel days, or my calendar when Eugene texts me to hang out. Oh, sorry Eugene, I'm booked. Learn more about what Google Pixel 11 can do at googlestore.com. These AI features are available in select countries and languages for users 18 and over, and make sure to check responses.

• 2:10Trevor Noah?

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• 2:17Trevor Noah?

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• 3:02Trevor Noah?

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• 3:30Trevor Noah?

  Well, I'm gonna call you Em on the Brain, but what do your friends call you?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  They call me Em.

• 3:36Trevor Noah?

  They call you Em as well?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Em, yeah.

• 3:38Trevor Noah?

  I like this.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  No, you know, at least you got it right because a lot of people think it's like Iman the Brain. They think my name's Iman. Yeah. It's a common misconception, so... Because it's spelled E-M-O-N-T-H-E, Brain.

• 3:54Trevor Noah?

  I mean, it just seems...

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Logical that it would be Em on the Brain.

• 3:57Trevor Noah?

  Although I can't judge them. If you don't read the person's name under their, like, you know, their tag, what... I guess it's Iman. Iman the Brain.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I prefer Em.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Okay, M.

• 4:16Trevor Noah?

  Oh, but um, this, this is, this is what I like to call a selfish episode. Because I feel like Eugene and I are really just going to ask you to fix our brains for us.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 4:27Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? Because you, you, you're known as, and I've, I've watched your evolution online, which has been really great um to see from afar. It's like, you, you shared your journey um studying, working in and around you. What were you studying at the time?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Um, I was studying drug addiction.

• 4:43Trevor Noah?

  Drug addiction?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 4:44Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Investigating new ways to treat relapse, to prevent drug addiction, or relapse to drug addiction. Yeah.

• 4:49Trevor Noah?

  That's wild.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 4:51Trevor Noah?

  And so, when you were in university, what were, what were you like going into study? Because how did you get into, was it neuroscience? Was it, what was your like, your, your focus and your passion at the time?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Well, initially, I was pre-med.

• 5:04Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Studying biology, absolutely hated it. And so I went up to one of my friends that was in my pre-med org I was in, in college. And I told him I hated it. I was like, what should I do? And he goes, well, why don't you try neuroscience? And I had never even heard of neuroscience at the time. It just sounded cool. So I switched my major to it, immediately fell in love, like aced my first exam. My professor reached out to me. He was like, congrats, you couldn't have done better. And I was like, get me in the research lab. This is so cool. So I started studying learning, memory, the perception of time, all throughout brain development in undergrad. So that's what I was doing, fell in love with research. But I knew, I always kind of knew that I wanted to be more kind of pre-clinical, helping people more directly, like studying, learning and memory is cool.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  But I wanted to be able to like, help people and solve problems that doctors couldn't solve at the time.

• 5:55Trevor Noah?

  Sorry, what does pre-clinical mean?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Like, for example, so pre-clinical research is sort of research that happens before, you know, we take a med, a medication, for example, to clinicians, to use, right? So you're doing sort of research to investigate new ways to treat, for example, relapse or treat depression or anxiety. Or Parkinson's disease and you, uh, so that's kind of like pre-clinical work before it goes. To clinicians, basically. Yeah, and so actually, it's funny that you were kind of talking about nicotine before this, because I used to be addicted to nicotine. And that was sort of why I initially became passionate about studying drug addiction. And I took a class in undergrad about why the current treatments for relapse don't work.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  And they're really just putting, they don't really work because they're just putting Band-Aids on the symptoms of the problem, rather than actually solving the problem. And that's why research is so important, because you can go and investigate what the problem really is. And so immediately, I was like, this is it. This is what I'm meant to do. I meant to go and cure relapse to drug addiction. I'm gonna go get my PhD, and I'm gonna win a Nobel Prize for this. And so, yeah, and so from then, I was like, okay, let me go get my PhD in neuroscience. So that is sort of how I became really passionate about drug addiction research and how I, the path that led me to the PhD. So, yeah, moved to Arizona, started my PhD in neuroscience with a minor in medical pharmacology so that I could study drug addiction. And that's what I was doing for a few years.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  That's really crazy. I mean, did it work for you? Did the research help you?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  She just stopped smoking.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  How do you know?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Because she had to go to university to do it.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  You don't, you don't know? Are you making these assumptions?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  He is making assumptions. And I would say, I would say the research in itself, no, but my knowledge of the brain, absolutely, yes. I taught myself to associate, and it was vaping for me, but I taught my brain to associate it with just the feeling of disgust.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  You rewired your brain?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  So you took a feeling that you didn't have before for something that you liked?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  And then re-coded it?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  And said, this, this is disgusting?

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  The action of it?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  That's exactly what I did.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  Buying it, putting it into my pocket, putting it into my mouth?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  So I would let my-

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Blowing out the smoke?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  I would let myself carry it around still. And I would let myself have the craving. And I would, I would put it in a place where it took me a second so that there was kind of a gap between- The initial craving and the action of actually doing it, because that's what addiction is, right? It becomes like this mindless stimulus-response behavior, where the stimulus is like seeing the vapor, seeing the cigarette, whatever it is, and then immediate response. Or, for example, social media. You see the notification. All of a sudden, you're picking up your phone and you're scrolling, and you don't even know how you got there, right? So it's, I kind of added a little bit of space, where I still would carry it around. I'd put it like, I would drive, and I'd put it underneath the passenger seat in my car. And I would get that craving, and I would like at a red light, you know? It gave me some time to kind of rewire that association. And the brain's an association machine.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  You're in a relationship with everything in your life. So, yeah, I would pick it up, and I'd be like, oh no, this is disgusting. And even if I wanted to still hit it, I would, but then I would make sure to like, pay attention to the feeling of feeling gross that I just did it. And I would sit in that feeling, and really feel the feeling, and make sure my brain was paying attention to it. And over time, yeah. And so even after I quit, I would get that craving still, of course. And then immediately, my brain would remember, oh yeah, no, that's gross. We don't really want that.

• 9:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay, wait, so help us understand, or help me understand really, the process of what's actually happening? Because you're saying this about vaping. You're saying, you know, disgusting. In my head, I'm like, oh, but there's strawberry flavors. I don't even vape, by the way. Never smoked. But in my, I love strawberries. I'm like, that's how they'd get me. But I can, I feel like I can have the same, I have the same story with like ice cream late at night, or, you know, chocolate. And then somebody else might have it with social media, where they go, oh, that's exactly me. Every time I pull it out, I've lost, I've lost two, three hours, four hours, but I didn't actually want to be here.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:56Trevor Noah?

  So, how does that work? First of all, what is happening to the brain? When it's, when you're doing that? When you're doing something you don't necessarily want to do, but you keep finding yourself doing? What is happening to the brain? And then I want to get to how the rewiring actually works.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what's happening is really just maladaptive habit formation. And that just means the formation of bad habits. That's all it is. It's just learning. And I think, you know, in undergrad, I was definitely divinely led on the path toward studying learning and memory first, because then I really understand the process of learning. And that's really all it is, is you've just learned a behavior. Your brain has learned a behavior, and it's learned to automate that behavior, so that it's no longer a conscious act. For example, getting up in the morning and hopefully brushing your teeth is an automated behavior.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  How will they know? They'll never know.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Well, I'm hoping, I'm hoping that that's an automatic.

• 10:52Trevor Noah?

  Wait, but okay, but yeah, but before you move on from that, then why, why is it that good habits are harder to keep like? I know that working out is good for me. I know that going for a walk is good for me. I know that stretching is good for me. I know, I, I know all these things. And then I'll do them and I'll feel good after doing them. But then I don't, I don't find myself craving like a gym session. I don't find myself being like, mm, you know, I'll be nice right now. A little bench press. I know it's midnight, but I can sneak in a little two fifty.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  You see, I like to do that sometimes, but I'll tell you, there's a couple of things there. All right. So if you want to talk about the neuroscience of habit formation, the way that every single habit is formed is it first begins as a dopamine driven activity, right? So when social media first came out, you weren't going on social media out of habit. You went on there because you could connect with your friends. Or you could, you know, see, you could post something or whatever it is, right? You're, you went on there for a, a goal, for a reason. Same thing with ice cream or, you know, vaping, whatever it is. You, you started it because it felt good. That's why you started.

• 12:00Trevor Noah?

  Okay. So feel good is the first thing.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Right. And then that dopamine, so dopamine actually drives learning. It drives neuroplasticity, which is the ability for your brain to rewire. So dopamine drives learning. So, and dopamine does, isn't just released when something great happens. It's also released when something not so great happens. It's more of a, a salience molecule, which means like, look at me. So anything that really like grabbed your attention. That's why you have really strong memories of bad events as well, because they're emotional and they raise dopamine as well, just in a different way. So, yeah, anything that really boosts dopamine, it will drive that learning, right? And so what actually happens is that over time, the dopamine moves from being released when you get the good thing to being released.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Whenever you see sort of a cue or something that represents that good thing, right? So for example, it's super, super easy to just talk about it with, you know, drugs of abuse. But we can talk about ice cream. Initially, you got dopamine from eating ice cream. But over time, you get the dopamine from seeing the ice cream because your brain's anticipating a reward. So your dopamine moves from actually getting the reward to the anticipation of the reward. And that's craving. So that's sort of how habit formation works. And then, once that happens, then you kind of begin this, this, it goes from this goal-directed behavior, right?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And it moves to a stimulus-response behavior or a cue-response, where like before it was like, oh, I want to eat this ice cream because I know that I want to eat this ice cream, it's going to taste good. And now it's like, oh no, I see the ice cream, dopamine is released when I see the carton. And that's going to drive me because dopamine is also a molecule of action to go and eat it. And you're not even, you don't want to, it's just that your dopamine has learned to associate the picture of the ice cream that you're seeing with a reward. And now you're not even deciding it, it's just your brain is driving you to do it.

• 14:01Trevor Noah?

  This is why ads work. Yeah. But, but I guess it also explains to me why ads are more effective when you've actually had the thing. So sometimes I'll watch an ad for, like Taco Bell, for instance, Taco Bell ads come on all the time. It's never, never ever once made me go, I want Taco Bell because I haven't had Taco Bell in my life. I don't. Ever. Maybe I had it once, I think I had it once on the road when I was with Gabriel Iglesias. And then we bought, one of my favorite memories, we were on the road somewhere, ah, where were we? Maybe we were in, we were in El Paso, Texas, or maybe somewhere in that region. And after all, after a comedy show, we'd go and we'd just buy, you know, food, whatever, takeout. And then one day Gabriel and the gang, we're in the, we're in the tour bus. And then he's like,

• 14:46Trevor Noah?

  Uh, he says to me, he's like, yo, yo, um, he's like, do you wanna get some Taco Bell? I was like, I've never had Taco Bell. Everyone in the bus like, you've never had Taco Bell? It was literally like an ad, everyone. You've never had, we gotta get him Taco Bell. The bus driver, boop, boop. Yo, boop, boop. We're on the way to Taco Bell. So now we're driving this giant tour bus like, boop, boop. Taco Bell, here we come. We get there. Now, we wanna go through the drive through, we can't, cuz the bus is too big. So we had to walk through the drive through cuz the Taco Bell itself was closed. So we walk through the drive through. And then they just, like, we ordered for everyone on the bus plus more. Cuz they wanted me to taste everything. And I'll never forget, there's a moment where I'm walking back to the bus.

• 15:29Trevor Noah?

  And I'm carrying two bags, but I mean like, huge, huge, huge, huge bags. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. You know, when like, I'd come back from shop, but with Taco Bell. Guys, I've never felt sexier in my life cuz I love food. I was like, and I'm walking to the bus and Gabriel Iglesias, he's looking at me like from the bus. And he looked, and it was almost like we had the same thought cuz as I got to the bus, he looked at me. And he's like, you've never looked hotter.

• 15:54Trevor Noah?

  And I walked on, but that was the only time I ate it, right? So, and it was like, ah, okay, whatever.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, what did you think?

• 15:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it was meh, was okay, it was whatever. But it didn't, it wasn't something that like, it didn't stay with me. So genuinely, whenever I watch a Taco Bell ad, I don't have a, oh, I should get that now. But Pizza Hut or like a McDonald's or one of... Let them flash a McFlurry on the screen for half a second. Yeah. I will find that machine wherever it is. Yeah. I will turn it on myself. You love ice cream. Hey, my friend. He's the only guy I know who chews ice cream. Yo, bruh, you know me and you love me, you see, you, you see me. You, you see me, Eugene.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Chews ice cream.

• 16:37Trevor Noah?

  He chews it.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Even without the toppings?

• 16:38Trevor Noah?

  I chew it. He just chew. I, I savor it, I... He's like an ice cream sommelier. This guy loves me. This guy knows me. No, but that's what I mean. It's like, so like, the ads have more power over you. When you've actually experienced the thing. Do you get what I'm saying?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Right, right, right. Because your brain has learned that it's rewarding.

• 16:58Trevor Noah?

  Wow. So then it becomes, now it becomes a trigger. That's how it can work on you. It's like, because now you've had it.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:03Trevor Noah?

  When you watch the ad or when you see like the social media thing scroll. I think this, this explains so much.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  What you're saying also explains why going cold turkey on anything never works. Because anything that you love, there's a process to it. Like how we explained you going into the shop, choosing a flavor, paying for that, getting the reward of paying for it. Cause you know, have it now, you put in your pocket. But all of a sudden, if the whole process is cut short, then the reward is not there anymore. Then you start missing the thing more. But I find that when you have the vape inside your car, but you choose not to do it. Then you're slowly taking away the.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that was, I love that you made that point of like feeling stressed too. Because that was another thing and that's why I decided to do it the way that I did. Because when you go cold turkey, it almost, especially when you're addicted to something. You feel this sense of like stress without it and not having it. And stress reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of your brain that allows you to control your impulses.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  So it actually makes you, and that's why, you know, when people quit an addiction or something and all of a sudden they feel stressed. They are more likely to relapse because it, your ability to control your impulses is reduced.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  But here's my thing. Do we quit things that we're addicted to because they're hurting other people? Or do we quit because they're hurting us? Cause initially, everything, there was a dopamine spike. I liked what I was doing. I was having too much of a good time at a strip club. Now I have kids. Now I have to think, do I tip strippers? Or do I pay for school fees? Is it the strippers or is it the kids? That, am I stopping this because I want to stop? Or because they are crying because they are hungry now? Not the strippers, the kids.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:36Trevor Noah?

  These analogies are so crazy.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  So Trevor thinks this is really funny.

• 18:42Trevor Noah?

  Cause he chews ice cream.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  No, no, but I'm sitting here like thinking about this very much from my own perspective and experience. And the way that I decided was it's always about who I'm wanting to become. And it's always about that. And you know, you can never force somebody to quit something they don't want to. Like you have to want to do it. And I think for me, I didn't care to quit vaping. I didn't care how many ads showed me what happens to your lungs. I didn't care about any of that. I was young. I don't care about that. I don't care about my health, like whatever. The, the thing that actually made me care about stopping was understanding that there is a gap currently between who you are now and the version of you who's achieved everything you've ever wanted in life.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  And when you visualize that version of you, when you have, hold that version of you in your mind, like that version of you has different habits than you do right now. And the version of me who's boss, woman, like achieving everything, she doesn't vape. And so I was like, damn, like if I want to become that version of me and achieve everything I want to achieve, then I need to stop doing this because it's creating a gap between where I am now and where I want to go.

• 19:49Trevor Noah?

  So this is, this is, I think, something that attracted a lot of people to your account and to your work online is like, there were a lot of people who would give you information about the brain in a very technical way that helped you understand how your brain works, what your brain does. You know, dopamine and all these phrases, you know, like stimulus and neoprenin, neoprenin. And like all these. Neoplasticity. Plasticity.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Maybe you were trying to say norepinephrine.

• 20:19Trevor Noah?

  That's exactly what I was trying to say. That's exactly, but you knew what I was trying to say. You see, you see, that's, that's exactly what it, cause every time I see that word, I'm just like, amen. Neoprenin.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  I, I knew what you meant.

• 20:30Trevor Noah?

  Thank you very much. Have you ever seen how it's written? No.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Exactly like that.

• 20:35Trevor Noah?

  It is written like that. All right. And then people sort of just, you, you, you think you know. And you're like, oh, the neoprenin and the dopamine and then the serotonin and then the oxytocin. Okay. And then on the other side of like, let's say, the internet slash the world, you have people who are like, visualize and think about what you want in life. And what I, and I think a lot of people would call like woo woo, you know? It'd be like, visualize you, and you're like, alright. And a lot of people love that and swear by it. And then I find these two worlds have often been at odds. So someone who's like, deep in the science goes like, don't listen to that. And someone who's deep in the woo woo goes like, don't listen to the other thing. And then you started showing the connection between the two.

• 21:19Trevor Noah?

  You went like, no, no, no, no, let me explain how a meditation does something to your brain. And let me show you how your brain responds to what you want, to what you think. And let me show you how visualization shifts you and shapes you. How did, how did you start thinking that? Because I'm, I'm assuming you didn't learn that in school.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  No, and I actually get asked all the time, any books you recommend? I'm like, it's very much a connection between two disciplines that I love and that fulfill me. But yeah, I would say in school, when I was getting my first neuroscience degree. Yeah, I have two degrees in neuroscience.

• 21:55Trevor Noah?

  Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, one for you and me each, Eugene, to make up for the degrees we never got.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  He said first?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Thank you, I appreciate that.

• 22:08Trevor Noah?

  I do too.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  So yeah, when I was getting my first degree in neuroscience and studying, especially just the different sensory systems. So for example, your visual system and how your brain constructs everything that you see. Like you're not seeing the world with your eyes. Your eyes are just taking it, taking in light signals. And then those light signals travel through the brain where your thoughts, emotions, memories, your beliefs, who, who you believe you are, all that's incorporated before you, the image is even put together that you see by your brain.

• 22:38Trevor Noah?

  Wait, let's, let's, let's slow that down. Just go back on that because you're gonna say it and then we're gonna act like we completely got it.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:46Trevor Noah?

  Which maybe you did, but wait, wait. Your eyes are not seeing, they're only taking in light.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:53Trevor Noah?

  Okay, and that light is then going into. The brain.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Traveling through the brain, all these different areas.

• 22:59Trevor Noah?

  But it's basically being bent by your memories.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:03Trevor Noah?

  The way you think about the world.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Your current emotions.

• 23:05Trevor Noah?

  Your current emotions.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  You ever heard the saying, seeing the world through rose colored lenses? When you are, when you are in a positive emotional state, your brain actually constructs color as more vivid. So you actually see the world more vividly and more saturated. So literally, the world is more colorful and you actually are seeing the world through rose colored lenses.

• 23:25Trevor Noah?

  That, that means there's almost a scientific backing behind the phrase, woke up on the wrong side of bed.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, your energy state is so important. And then that goes back to exactly what you were asking me about.

• 23:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Is, you know, how did I start to connect spirituality and these woo woo things with neuroscience? And I think, you know, exactly when I was learning about these different systems and vision is just one of them. They all work this way. Like, for example, sound and the way that you hear, like the membrane in your ear is organized by frequency. And if you're on the woo woo side of the world, you, you may have heard before that different frequencies of sound can have different effects on you.

• 24:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, like sound bowls and all of those things.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Solfeggio frequencies, five twenty eight, four thirty two. And both of those have studies showing that they do actually impact the brain in different ways. Um, and binaural beats and things like that. So literally, actually, it all clicked one moment when I was laying in bed one night in my apartment. Um, whenever I was in undergrad and I just was listening to, and I sort of went on this spiritual journey toward the end of my first degree in neuroscience. And I read the book, The Untethered Soul. A few guys have ever heard of that. It's really good. Um, but, and so I, I started meditating and I started, you know, doing like, and I, I was laying in bed, listening to four hundred and thirty two hertz as I was falling asleep. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute. The membrane in the ear is organized by frequency.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  What if this certain frequency of sound is activating my brain in a specific way? And actually changing the way that my state of mind is. And that's why these frequencies of sound work. And I turn over, pick up my phone, Google it. And there are papers showing exactly what just popped into my head. Like, yeah, 432 hertz has been shown to boost alpha wave activity in the brain. Alpha waves are associated with a sense of calm. And so, you know, people on the woo woo side of the world say, oh, it's really good for meditation. Yeah. Or sleep. And then in the science world, it has been shown to help people fall asleep, stay asleep, boost alpha waves in the brain.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And so that was kind of my first moment of, oh, maybe there is some overlap and there are some kind of... Right, right, between the different worlds. Right. And so that kind of just started me on this spiral, this upward spiral of just connecting dots everywhere. And, and yeah, and I think I've just got, and then, you know, moving to Arizona, I was just talking to your team about Arizona. And it's, the desert is a very spiritual place. And moving there while doing my PhD and just really growing in my spirituality, while also, of course, doing a PhD in neuroscience. So really studying neuroscience to like the depths that you could possibly study it. And yeah, I just started connecting all these dots and then also connecting what I was learning with my own experiences as well.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of people ask me, you know, where does this information come from? And most of it, the information I share is from my own lived experience. And then I'm like, huh, I wonder what's happening in my brain right now. And then I think about it, look into it, read some papers. And I'm like, that makes sense. And then I talk about it.

• 26:28Trevor Noah?

  We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. Everybody has that oddly specific thing that they're curious about. Maybe it's restoring old watches. Maybe it's Japanese ceramic making. Maybe it's watching someone explain why one bridge in a remote area of Norway is secretly better than all the other bridges in the world. YouTube always has exactly what you're looking for, even when you didn't know you were looking for it. With YouTube Premium, those deep dives feel even smoother. You get ad-free viewing, but you also get background play when you need your hands free. And you get offline downloads, so you can keep watching wherever you happen to be, even if you happen to be off the grid.

• 27:12Trevor Noah?

  It's everything you already love about YouTube, just somehow even better. Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is Smart Downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, "Ah, I forgot to download anything!" And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, "Download, download, download, download." You're on the plane, "Download, download, download, download." There's no Wi-Fi. "I wish I downloaded." Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are just on the internet. Smart Downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch. So even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear.

• 27:55Trevor Noah?

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• 28:37Trevor Noah?

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• 29:21Trevor Noah?

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• 29:49Trevor Noah?

  I, I, I wonder why,

• 29:54Trevor Noah?

  slash how, we got to a place where we, we got so comfortable dismissing spirituality or the ideas that come with like, you know, connecting to something beyond ourselves. And having that clash with what we think of as like intelligence and knowledge and, do you get what I'm saying?

• 30:15Speaker 03

  I think religion had a big part in that.

• 30:17Trevor Noah?

  What do you mean?

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Because remember that um, once religion became a thing, people had to attribute their knowledge to something.

• 30:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  It could never be, I just know it. You know, we always have, there's always this debate in the spiritual realm of, are you a human having a spiritual experience or are you a spirit having a human experience? And most people feel like when they discover themselves in the middle of their life, whenever it is, they were a human and now they're having a spiritual experience. But I think it's the other way around and obviously literature has proved that and also when they speak to people who know that. So religion always.

• 30:48Trevor Noah?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, so you're saying, because I mean, we can, we can never prove it.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  I'm with you a hundred percent, by the way.

• 30:53Trevor Noah?

  No, but we can never prove it, but I'm, I'm intrigued by what you're saying. You're saying the argument or the discussion is, are we spirits that are experiencing being human?

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 31:03Trevor Noah?

  Or are we humans experiencing being spirits?

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:07Trevor Noah?

  But you can't prove it.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Are we a human having a spiritual experience?

• 31:09Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Or are we a spirit having a human experience?

• 31:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  So the thing is, if you want to prove, well, that's a small part of it and you can correct me if I'm wrong, M, that you are a spirit having a human experience.

• 31:20Trevor Noah?

  Please get our guest name right.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Iman.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Now you're gonna confuse the listeners.

• 31:24Trevor Noah?

  No, no, it's Iman, it's Iman. Yeah, it's Iman, it's Iman.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Before you have language, before you have experience, you always had intuition. So how do you account for that? So before you.

• 31:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, I'm confused.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  You see what I mean?

• 31:37Trevor Noah?

  No, I'm.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  So, so there's something, there's a remembering that's coded in you already. And as you grow older and you get interference of signals of society, the time that you were born in, um, how hard or how easy your life was, all of that gets numbed down and then you start living according to your experiences.

• 31:55Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but this is what I'm trying to, this is the question, this is the question that I have for you though.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Go.

• 32:00Trevor Noah?

  Like, I guess for both of you, I guess in a way.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  We are ready for, there's two degrees between us. Of separation, not, not academic.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  That was a good one.

• 32:13Trevor Noah?

  The, the, the, the, the thing I find interesting is, is, is this, so.

• 32:20Trevor Noah?

  I grew up in a very religious household.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:22Trevor Noah?

  Right? And the thing that I always struggled with and grappled with was how churches and leaders in churches, and even members of churches would treat people using their religion as an excuse.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 32:37Trevor Noah?

  And we see this all over the world, but my personal experience, I oftentimes found myself going, wait, is this, so this is what, this is what a Christian does? I was like, ah, I don't know, man, I don't know, it just, it didn't, it didn't gel for me. And so I think that created a, an, an allergy to all religion in many ways. As I've gotten older, I've, I've found in like a humbling way, I've gone like, oh, there are so many things that religion teaches people, apart from like, you know, dogma.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:10Trevor Noah?

  That now science has sort of come around to. So whether it's like prayer itself, when you think about journaling and the effects of journaling and the processing, and I'd love for you to speak a little bit about this, closing your eyes and thinking about your day before you go to sleep. I I see all these things coming out now where scientists are like, oh, that really helps you go to sleep and it also helps your brain sort of like just switch everything off. You know what I mean? But like, so so something, something like that or or something like fasting, which most religions have. Or all these, you're starting to see more of the tie-ins where science is sort of catching up to old ideas and then old ideas are showing themselves in science.

• 33:52Trevor Noah?

  I like, where do you think the breakdown came between people saying, oh, we shouldn't listen to that? And now we're going, maybe we should listen to some of that?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think honestly, there used to be a lot more overlap.

• 34:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  There used to be a lot more in science and in research in especially like in the nineteen hundreds. There was a lot of research, especially, I mean, even with psychedelics and things like that. And what happened was there were a few scientists that just took it a bit too far. And it got to the point where in the science world, it became, yeah, I kind of started to have this dogma around it and this sort of like association around it and it it became almost disrespected in a way.

• 34:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  And it

• 34:35Trevor Noah?

  Bastardize.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Right, and exactly, especially with something as simple as hypnosis, for example, like there's so much um like judgment and woo woo around it, but there's so much neuroscience around it as well. But because it has this sort of um like, I don't know.

• 34:51Trevor Noah?

  Well, the gimmick as well.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 34:52Trevor Noah?

  And that's Once you're making somebody jump on stage and they say they're a dog, I think it undermines what hypnosis may or may not be. And I'm not saying that thing's not real, by the way.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that that's exactly the analogy that I'm trying to make here is that it kind of, that happened with a lot of the different, you know, research studies that were going on.

• 35:09Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  And it happened in not just hypnosis, but in other areas as well. For example, psychedelics, there used to be a lot more research on it and then scientists took took it too far. And then it became, oh, no, that's wrong. We shouldn't be doing that.

• 35:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  And then we went from a hundred to zero. And then now we're starting to warm back up to it again. And we're slowly introducing it more and more into research and in studies. But also, I think it's still, I think it's still not really, you know. Supported, I mean, whenever I was in the PhD, there's this one research lab that they studied mindfulness and meditation. That lab was not well-funded. That lab did not get a lot of money for research. And I think that still is the case today. So now, while we're seeing more, you know, research on spiritual concepts and spirituality, I think it's still not happening to the extent that it should be.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Um, and, and yeah, I think that that's been my experience. And then even now, when I'm talking about things that I'm talking about online, I'm doing research into really more hardcore scientific concepts like neuroplasticity, the default mode network, the reward system, all of that, and just knowing because I have such a solid foundation of that information. And then I'm, and then I'm learning about, you know, the law of detachment and all these things. And then I'm connecting it to what I already know is true about the brain. So it's not necessarily that there's a specific study that shows, you know, detachment makes your goals come faster. It's more about me knowing that, yeah, when you are

• 36:41Speaker 01

  in desperation and in this neediness, then that's going to boost cortisol. And when you are in a state of fight or flight, you get that deer in headlights tunnel vision where you're actually less open to opportunities and other things coming your way. And your brain is filtering for more of that lack and stress because that's the way the brain works. It filters your reality for whatever it is that you're focused on. So I just know how the brain works. And then I connect it to spiritual kind of concepts and things that I'm learning.

• 37:08Trevor Noah?

  Which are, which are oftentimes easier to understand, I find. That, that's where I find science is often lacking, science and academia. My criticism of it is often the fact that, and maybe not of it,

• 37:20Trevor Noah?

  it does its job. And then I feel like there's, there's not enough, like sort of middlemen who are getting the message out. Yeah, yeah. So then it's just like a study and, and it's abstract. And then it's just left to the, the devices of the world to be like, this is what it actually means. But, but then from the other side, there's very good salesmen.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. People did try. I think, um, I read a lot of books that were written by people who grew up in the sixties and were raised by hippies. Uh, the Gary Zukovs, um, Dr. Wayne Dyer, all of those people who kind of understood that to sell spiritualism.

• 37:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Spiritualism, you're gonna have to be a bit commercial and go around and bring your life experiences. I'm a doctor or was in the army.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 03

  My experiences.

• 38:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  But they knew that they were setting a time bomb that was gonna explode in the future, thirty, forty years down the line. Because people are not ready. And obviously, if you think of, if, if hypnosis was taken for what it is, hypnosis is one stage of past life regression.

• 38:16Trevor Noah?

  Is what?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  Is, is one stage of actually doing past life regression.

• 38:21Trevor Noah?

  I don't even know what that means.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  But when, when, when it goes to a show in Las Vegas and it becomes people barking like dogs.

• 38:26Trevor Noah?

  Wait, but you can't just skip past what you just said. Eugene does this to me all the time and then he just says a thing.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm understanding what she's saying.

• 38:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I'm not. I'm not. And I'm sure there's a lot of people who are not, but that, I, I don't even care about them right now, just me. What did you just say?

• 38:40Speaker 03

  I think.

• 38:40Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Hypnosis is just one part of, of doing a past life regression.

• 38:46Trevor Noah?

  What does that, yes, what does that mean?

• 38:47Speaker 03

  So a lot of people, there's a, there's a doctor, I think you know about Brian Weiss.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  I don't know if I do know.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  He did a lot of work studying, uh, people. He was a professor, a doctor in university.

• 38:57Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  He started having this patient who was struggling with certain issues. And then she, he did hypnosis and then they regress further and further back. And then he realized many, one, one body, many lives was one of his books, if I'm not mistaken. So he found out that a lot of things that people deal with is the body remember, or your mind remembers what happened to you in other lives. So when you go back in other lives, so people who have a fear of, of drowning, an unreasonable fear of drowning.

• 39:25Trevor Noah?

  So.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  They've drowned in another life before. And somehow, there's something that happens that triggers that memory. The smell of water or sea water or salt that triggers that memory. So to cure that fear, you have to past life regress them. They have to go back into a life where something tragic happened.

• 39:43Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  And that thing was associated with it.

• 39:45Trevor Noah?

  So it's funny, uh, half of my brain completely rejects this idea.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:50Trevor Noah?

  Uh, but I mean, you know me, I always tell you these things. Half of my brain goes like, no. The other half of my brain goes, we've had a trauma specialist on the show, studied trauma her whole life.

• 40:04Trevor Noah?

  And she has showed us that there's definitive research that has shown that trauma can be passed down through generations of people who haven't experienced the initial trauma.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:15Trevor Noah?

  So there's half of my brain that goes like, oh, I can understand this being possible, but not in the and that's what I mean by this is what I mean by the woo woo versus not woo. Does that make sense?

• 40:26Speaker 03

  In the world of woo woo, what you've just explained.

• 40:28Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Is the fact that there's soul families.

• 40:30Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, I can, no, but look, look, look, no.

• 40:33Speaker 03

  We remember the pain together.

• 40:34Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but but I get what you're saying, but I but I but you understand what I'm saying. I'm saying like, so sometimes this is this is what I think happens and this is why I mean I enjoy your journey so much is we, I think we all live in a world where we are most comfortable with the reality that we've been brought up in. And with the evidence that we've been taught to accept as being correct.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:59Trevor Noah?

  Right? It is very difficult to shake that and it's very difficult to accept a possibility that something else could be different. But when you move through different worlds, you you realize that it's necessary. So an example for me was um, there were a lot of criticisms levied at African mothers for how they would raise their children.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:20Trevor Noah?

  By like Westerners who'd come in, whether it was colonizers, whether it was, you know, whatever it was before, like they'd go, oh, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. The way African mothers, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. Things they'd complain about them wrapping the baby onto their bodies and like tying them up and they'd be like, no, you should put your baby in a cot and you should leave them this and you should. And then over the years when they started doing studies, there were scientists and there were groups that did studies where they found that having the baby up against the mom was really good for regulating their heartbeat. Changing their respiratory patterns, calming them down.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  Fostering trust.

• 41:58Trevor Noah?

  All of these things.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:59Trevor Noah?

  And then do you, I remember this moment distinct, do you remember when they started launching the things that African moms had had their whole lives? And they started selling them in the Western world and they're like, the new trend, you wrap your baby to your body. And now it was like $200 to buy a thing that an African mom did with a towel. I remember this for me being a moment where I went, oh, wow, yes.

• 42:22Trevor Noah?

  Even I was taught that that thing is like primitive. Mm hmm. Your mom did it, but it was primitive and there's a better way to do it. And then at some point, science or, you know, researchers went, oh, actually, this is a great thing to do. And sort of didn't, didn't levy the credit that way. So I, I'm, I'm open to some of these ideas. I think some of the language throws me, I'm not gonna lie.

• 42:46Trevor Noah?

  Cause some people are more comfortable. Yeah, when you just like past lives, then I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. In my head, I'm hearing a record go.

• 42:53Trevor Noah?

  But when you explain the concepts behind it, I find that maybe I'm not the only person who's a little more open to the possibility of understanding it. It's just when you throw past lives flippantly.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  The terminology is.

• 43:05Trevor Noah?

  It, it really, I'm not gonna lie, it throws me.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, and no, and I think that's, I, I like what you just described also because that's something that I really hold true for my own life is always following your own sense of intuition. And I think that if you're waiting around for a study to show you that something is right or wrong, then you're, you're gonna be waiting forever because science is really slow. But also just because a study shows something too, doesn't mean that it is right or wrong. There are outliers in every single study. And so just because something might work for one person, you could be that one dot on the graph that it doesn't work for.

• 43:39Trevor Noah?

  It could be a flawed study as well.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  And, yeah, and a lot of studies are very biased too. I mean, I used to do them, so I was like, I, I've seen the types of people, you know, and I'm not saying that, you know, there people, people not trying their best, but you know, it's like humans are human and they are gonna make human mistakes. But I think.

• 43:55Trevor Noah?

  What, what, what don't we understand about studies? What like, because you know, as the internet has, has exploded.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:03Trevor Noah?

  As TikTok has become popular, everyone I see on TikTok references a study. And I mean, everyone. And I've seen everyone reference any study to say the thing that they're saying. To justify their. Is correct, but I've seen every, and then I've seen people pull up the same study and go, no, no, no, this is not the study. And then, then someone else says a meta analysis is more correct. So help us understand the study. So for everyone out there, for us as well. When you're conducting a study, help me understand the very basic mechanics of what is actually happening and how that leads to a conclusion that then like CBS This Morning will report and be like, "Coffee makes you live 20 years longer." How do they get there?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  I think those, a lot of the like claims that are made end up being in the discussion, which aren't even necessarily the point of the study. It's more just speculation of how these results can be applied to and extrapolated to other situations in life. But the way that a study begins is by asking a question, right? So we have, we have this background of information. And I studied, you know, in my PhD, a very specific receptor that we thought got leaky when we were relapsing the drugs.

• 45:10Trevor Noah?

  Leaky brain.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the leaky calcium channel. And so.

• 45:14Trevor Noah?

  We know one.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  We're friends with one.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  And.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Shout out to Leaky.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  And yeah, and so you, you have this background of information, right? And you know some things about it from other areas of research. And you're like, okay, it seems well informed. And you don't just make a random, ask a random question, but it seems well informed. And so it's like, okay, now I think based on what I know about this calcium channel, I think it could have something to do with relapse. And then you, you have to basically say a hypothesis, right? Like, I think that if I, for example, block this channel, then these, you know, then relapse behavior, relapse is either gone or it will happen more, right? So you have to decide one way or the other. And then you decide, you design a study that you think will help to answer that question.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  And now the way that that study works and the results of it is you, no matter what results you get, right? You either say that, you either, you, you don't ever say like, oh, I was right or I was wrong. You're basically just testing to see if those, if the results are more, if one thing is more likely to happen than the other. It's all likelihood. It's never, it's never a definitive yes or no. It's, this is definitely, you know, this is more likely to not be the case. Or it more likely is the case that, you know, if I block this channel, then this, these people are no longer going to relapse.

• 46:39Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  And.

• 46:40Trevor Noah?

  But what else is it affecting in their lives, guess, right?

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Well, that's a whole other topic when we talk about pharmacology, which was a whole other kind of path that I went down whenever I.

• 46:49Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Right, so whenever I would also like I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in high school and I was on ADHD medication for a few years. And then I learned about exactly what you're talking about, like what else happens? And how do these drugs actually work? And then I made my own personal decision to transition off of them and go a different journey and then rewire my brain to be able to focus as well. Um, but yeah, and so I think that a lot of times we tend to put these studies or research papers up on pedestals and say, oh, this study shows this. Therefore, this is the way things are. And I don't think that that's the way that it should be done at all. It can be used for information to inform, you know, yourself. But also, like you were saying, meta-analysis where that you take tons of different studies and kind of look at the results from many different ones.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Cause another thing that you'll realize is that if you look up something, you could probably find a study proving that you're right. And it could be, I I could look up, oh, you know, this is bad for your heart. And and I'll find a study proving that. And I could say, oh, actually, I think it's good for your heart. And I could find a study proving that too. And so that's the thing is you can find a study to prove whatever it is that you want. And so I think it it is important to, you know, read a lot and read a lot of different research papers, but also have more of a foundational understanding is at least in my field of neuroscience, like having that foundational understanding of the way that the brain works is really important. And so, yeah, I think that the whole, it is becoming really popular that people are wanting to use a study to improve a point. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that,

• 48:18Speaker 01

  but I do think it's important to recognize that, you know, there are, you could find a study to prove whatever that you want these days.

• 48:25Trevor Noah?

  How did you, how did you apply this in your life? Because I I find the internet slash the world is full of people who are more than willing to dish out advice. And then oftentimes don't seem to apply that advice to themselves. Do you, you know what I mean?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 48:46Trevor Noah?

  And so you get these motivational speakers who, when you meet them in real life, aren't really motivated. Uh, you, you, you have like relationships experts who have terrible relationships themselves. You, you, do you get what I'm saying? And I, and I'm, I'm generalizing, but, but, but you'll often, you'll find these. What I found interesting with you is, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, it feels like you were also running these sort of experiments on yourself.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 49:10Trevor Noah?

  And I watched your life change in real time and over a very long period.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  I noticed that because I went to DM you and I was like, whoa, you DM me like almost two years ago.

• 49:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you were like, you were doing, yeah, two years ago, I asked you to come on the podcast. And there's, but I've watched you go from.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Boy, aren't we glad that was all you did. Because no, those, those, those DMs I say for you, Eugene. Yeah, Eugene, you, you up, you up. I represented you well, hey. You're like, tell me more about this. You're representing your fiance. To come to the show.

• 49:46Trevor Noah?

  So, um, when, when, when, when I looked at your life, I went, it, it, it felt like just by watching you, I saw somebody who was sharing information whilst also applying that information to themselves.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Conducting a real time experiment.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  That is exactly correct.

• 50:05Trevor Noah?

  I'd love to know like, I'd love to know what your journey was like because everything, everything about you changed over time. And over time is the key thing for me, the key phrase here. I didn't witness like a magical transformation, you know, like those, those YouTube, um, uh.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Videos.

• 50:23Trevor Noah?

  Weightlifting, they trick you all the time. Have you seen those ones? They're like, how I lost forty pounds in six weeks. And then they show you a before and after picture. And really all they do in the before picture is they just push their tummy out, but they still have a six pack. And they just maybe drink a lot of water. I don't know. And then they get shredded, but they were shredded.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:41Trevor Noah?

  With you, with all due respect, it didn't seem like you were shredded in your life.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:45Trevor Noah?

  And then I watched you slowly work towards the thing that you were telling people about. Like, what was, what was the, what were the beginnings of those? What did you start to learn? Like, can you give me examples? What were, what were the moments where you went, oh, wow, this is, this is working on me?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think if you do go back to the beginning, and I leave all my posts up for that exact reason, because I have students now, like clients that I coach, and like, go back to the beginning and watch my own journey through content, because you'll see, like, it's a very accurate representation of my journey in my personal life. But, I mean, I started out with ADHD that was so bad, I would be depressed on days I wouldn't take the stimulants, and I was super dependent on them. Obviously, we already talked about being addicted to nicotine, couldn't focus, easily distracted, super impulsive, very emotional as well, just fight or flight all the time, always stressed, and also health issues, like physical health issues as well. I was in and out of doctor's offices when I was younger, a lot, and doctors told me I had all these different problems, like

• 51:43Speaker 01

  depression, anxiety, all these different things.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  And not just mental health problems, but physical, like hormonal imbalances and things like that. So I think, you know, that is what I, I always just kind of thought that's the way that I was, because that's something that, you know, doctor gives you a diagnosis, like, this is you. This is your brain, this is who you are.

• 52:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Uh, good luck. Like, that's gonna navigate that now for the rest of your life. And I thought that's just the way that it was. Like, oh, I was diagnosed with ADHD, I'm gonna struggle focusing for the rest of my life, and, you know, I'm gonna need these stimulants. And then I think, learning about the brain, as I was studying neuroscience, I started, you know, neuroplasticity, the ability for your brain to rewire and change and adapt, I started to realize that, oh, wait, maybe the brain can change. And I learned about epigenetics as well. I actually TA'd a class in the PhD on neurogenetics, which is, epigenetics is the ability to change the way your DNA is expressed, the genes that are expressed.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  The way your DNA is expressed?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Can you elaborate?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So I have this visual in my mind. I'm like, if I had a little model, I could really show it.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  Did you bring your DNA model, Eugene? Lift it in the car? Ah, always. This guy. Just when we need it.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  I know.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Next time. But basically, the way that you could think about it, right, is like, basically, you have this ball, and then you have like yarn, like around the ball, right? And so it can either be, the yarn can be tightly wound around the ball or loose. And basically, like, how tightly, if it's super tight, and the yarn is your DNA.

• 53:13Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  And so, you know, there are little proteins that come in, and they read your DNA. And then when they read your DNA, they build proteins based off of what it reads, right? If it's super tightly wound, it can't come in and read. And so, no proteins are gonna be expressed or built off that DNA that's tightly wound, because it can't be read.

• 53:31Trevor Noah?

  You're not open minded.

• 53:31Speaker 01

  Right, so, or you can be, you can be openly wound, right? And then the proteins can come in and read your DNA and build proteins, right? And so, that's just one example, you know, it can be tightly, more tightly around, we call it like methylated, phosphorylated, you know.

• 53:46Trevor Noah?

  I like tightly wound.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's all these different.

• 53:49Trevor Noah?

  If they said tightly wound, I would have had, I would have a degree. Methylated, ah, no, guys, you'll find me in the streets.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Methylated, phosphorylated. Yeah.

• 54:01Trevor Noah?

  You don't have to agree, you don't have to go home with this guy.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. But, um, but that's, you know, so, yeah, and so that's kind of what I mean. So, basically, your environment, it basically, it can, it can alter the, how tightly or loosely wound your DNA is.

• 54:18Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  And your environment, and this is like, the way your environment can actually impact which genes are expressed. So, you're not changing your DNA, you have the same DNA. But it's like, which proteins can be made based off of that.

• 54:30Trevor Noah?

  Based off of your, okay.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Right, and that is going to depend on a number of factors, your environment is one of them, your mindset.

• 54:36Trevor Noah?

  If I was to use like a, this is a crazy. I like you more now. Crazy analogy. You're making it make sense.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I like to do.

• 54:41Trevor Noah?

  That's what she does, now you get it. Whoa. Crazy analogy that I would use.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  You should check out my content.

• 54:46Trevor Noah?

  I've never seen your content.

• 54:48Speaker 03

  I've I've literally never seen your content, but now I understand.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  I feel like you would like it, based on what you're talking about.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Yes, you're making it. Sorry to cut you off there. There was this um experiment, but not really an experiment, but people were comparing a generation of people in South Africa that were raised by grandmothers versus those that were raised by

• 55:06Trevor Noah?

  By their parents.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  No, no, no, parents.

• 55:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  And going to a crutch or kindergarten.

• 55:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  And they found that the ones that were raised by grandmothers had more independence, more empathy, and they were they they knew how to clean, to cook, to take care of everyone, and they were more patient. And the ones that went to kindergarten were more structured and institutionalized. And they believed that other things can be done by someone else. But those that were raised by grandmothers found that they also settled very early. They are very big on bonds and having so it was a generational thing for people that grew up in the eighties and the nineties because kindergarten was not a thing. So usually would get shipped off to go live with our parents before we started school.

• 55:46Trevor Noah?

  This is why I want to you you you have once again inspired me to talk about my business that I want to launch, yes.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 55:53Trevor Noah?

  My idea is we create old age homes that are kindergartens.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:00Trevor Noah?

  Cause old people.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  They've done that.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  Wait, they have?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  So they've done a research.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  They stole my idea?

• 56:05Trevor Noah?

  Come on!

• 56:06Speaker 01

  So if, no, no, so they haven't done this for like as a business, so.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Oh, it's okay, my idea is still safe.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  No, but there is actually research to show your idea would work. If I'm clear on your idea.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  This is why I need you in my life. You know how many, well, so his idea is great, my hypothesis is correct.

• 56:20Trevor Noah?

  I say things to people and then they'll be like, I don't know if that and if I had you around, you could be like, there's research to show. Bam! Not you, bam, bam in general, but you with me.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  So they took a bunch of old people and they put them in this house that was decorated like it was the eighties. And like say music, like decorations, all of it. And they actually came out with biomarkers that showed that they had sort of reversed age.

• 56:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:42Trevor Noah?

  I always say like, I always say like, old people, young people make old people younger, just like their vibe.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 56:49Trevor Noah?

  Whenever I see like grandparents and grandchildren together.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:52Trevor Noah?

  And then the the inverse as well, I find like grandparents help young kids grow up with that like. So I've always thought, why do we put old people in an old age? Why do we like send them off to die?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  I completely agree.

• 57:02Trevor Noah?

  Why don't we send them somewhere to live? And then why are we struggling with the kids? We should have told Zoran this, he wants childcare in New York.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Granny's, yeah.

• 57:09Trevor Noah?

  Granny's, yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:10Trevor Noah?

  We could start like a whole thing, granny's dot com. And then it's like a whole vibe.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:14Trevor Noah?

  And then you don't feel like your grandparents are just stranded and they get to see new life growing around them. And then the kids get to.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  But that's why rich people have so many divorces.

• 57:22Trevor Noah?

  I'm gonna give you a percentage, you are here for this and you're gonna be handling our scientific division.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 57:26Trevor Noah?

  Eugenie will be my spokesperson.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Spokesperson?

• 57:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  How about R and D?

• 57:31Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  R and D?

• 57:32Trevor Noah?

  What are you researching? What are you researching?

• 57:35Speaker 02

  I will know that. I thought I was R and D.

• 57:40Trevor Noah?

  Don't go anywhere, because we got more What Now after this.

• 57:45Trevor Noah?

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• 58:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube Premium features is smart downloads. Because how many times have you gone somewhere and realized, ah, I forgot to download anything? And now you're on the way to the airport and you're like, download, download, download, download. You're on the plane, download, download, download, download. There's no wifi. I wish I downloaded. Now, all of those things that you were gonna watch are just on the internet. Smart downloads basically thinks ahead for you. It automatically downloads recommended videos based on what you like to watch. So even when you forget to prepare, YouTube Premium didn't. I love it. It's like packing for a trip and discovering somebody already remembered the thing you always leave at home. It's always the underwear. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Sign up now for your free trial at youtube dot com slash premium.

• 59:15Trevor Noah?

  Terms apply. Cancel anytime.

• 59:18Trevor Noah?

  I think one of the things you realize when you start caring about clothes is that simple doesn't have to mean basic. Because a T-shirt is a T-shirt until you find the right T-shirt. Ooh, then suddenly you're talking about the cut, the fit, the weight, the way it falls on your body. Then you're like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Look at the sleeve. And that's what I've really enjoyed about Quince. One of my favorite things is their Pima Cotton Lux Touch T-shirts. And it's become one of those pieces I keep reaching for. The cotton has this really smooth, premium feel to it. The fit is great and it just lays really nicely. And I think that's what you sometimes take for granted with simple clothes. When they're done really well, they become the foundation of an entire outfit.

• 1:00:03Trevor Noah?

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• 1:01:26Trevor Noah?

  So with your life, so you were talking about all these things and you were telling us how

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:31Trevor Noah?

  you started finding a change in your life and how you applied it.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Way to bring that back.

• 1:01:36Trevor Noah?

  I'm always in, I'm locked in.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I think it kind of began for me with, and my journey of really initially, the first step was understanding the brain. That was the first step. Understanding the neuroscience of reality. We talked a little bit about the visual system, how you hear, and understanding. And honestly, like, the study that kind of changed the game for me whenever I was in undergrad was learning about this kitten experiment. It's a super classic experiment, like 1970. And they took these newborn kittens and they raised them in complete darkness, except for a few hours a day, where they put one group, and they were alone, each of them individually alone, in a cylinder with only vertical black and white stripe lines. And they took different kittens, a different group, and they put them in a cylinder with only horizontal black

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  and white stripe lines. They let their visual cortex develop, and then, once they were fully developed, or close to that, they put them in a normal, everyday environment with everyday objects. And what they found was that the kittens that were only raised to ever see horizontal lines, they didn't respond normally to vertically shaped objects.

• 1:02:40Trevor Noah?

  No way.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Like vertically oriented objects, like they would bump into table legs.

• 1:02:44Trevor Noah?

  No way.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Because they couldn't see them. And so their brain actually, you know, didn't put together that image because it wasn't raised to see that. And so I, and you know, and vice versa with the kittens that were raised to only see vertical lines. They wouldn't jump up on tabletops and perch because they couldn't, they didn't really, like, their brains didn't, you know, respond normally to horizontal objects. So I kind of just was sitting there like, damn, like, if these kittens are only really able to respond in a way that, in an accurate or appropriate way, to things that they grew up seeing, what am I not seeing because of the way I was raised, right? Like, what, like, the jobs, like, money, you know, opportunities, a relationship, relationships especially, like, we grew up seeing certain types of relationships between our parents.

• 1:03:30Trevor Noah?

  Education.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Education, like, what am I missing now that is probably right in front of me, but my brain's not constructing that experience because it isn't programmed for it?

• 1:03:39Trevor Noah?

  It's not so obvious to you.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Right, and so that I think was like the, one of the first realizations I had where I was like, okay, like, you know, what I'm wanting my future to look like, if it's different than what my past has looked like, then I'm gonna have to change my brain so that I can construct that experience.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  It, it shows, sorry, it shows this little gap that has become a huge crevice in society where science has replaced art. Because academia replaced art. Because kids used to, it, art used to be a way to measure who likes what. So now it became a thing of who can count, who can remember the best. Then you get channeled that way, but if you let how to draw and then building blocks, how do you see the world according to your eyes versus we're gonna sit you guys in one room?

• 1:04:26Trevor Noah?

  And show you the world.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  And we're gonna show you to calculate, and whoever remembers to calculate the best, the quickest, yes, is the one that progresses in life.

• 1:04:32Trevor Noah?

  I never thought of art like that, it's beautiful, actually. I genuinely never thought of art like that. It is the perfect Petri dish to see how everyone else sees the world.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  The coloring book and the building blocks.

• 1:04:42Trevor Noah?

  Cause remember how every kid used to, do you remember this? Like, we'd go, you'd go, I don't know if you did this, I used to see other kids coloring books, and I'd be like, why, why did you?

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, why do you use brown?

• 1:04:52Trevor Noah?

  Why, why would you use that color? I was shocked at how we all had the same picture.

• 1:04:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Trevor Noah?

  And everyone chose completely, and they're like, this is how I see the world. I was like, man.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  None of us even see color the same way.

• 1:05:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that one's still.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  Or remember the building blocks, you'd be like, what is that? They'll be like, it's a house. You'd be like, that doesn't look like.

• 1:05:07Speaker 01

  Right, well, that's why I always say, like, we also didn't even come to this planet to live in the same reality or experience the life the same. Like, we didn't come here.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  Getting hot now.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  We didn't come here for that. Like, I actually had a dream about that recently. Because I was sitting here thinking, you know, I literally, a few weeks ago, I had a dream about this, or maybe a couple of months ago, where I was kind of like, how do I not care what other people think? Like, how, like, how do you not care what other people say you should or shouldn't do? And then I literally had this dream about the neuroscience of reality, and how no two people's brains are constructing the same experience, right? Because your brain is what, what's constructing your experience, not your eyes. We are, we've already discussed that. So it's like, okay, no two people are experiencing the same reality, therefore, how can you? Take anybody else's input and apply it to your own life, verbatim, word for word. It doesn't make sense. It's like trying to play Mario Kart with the rules of Call of Duty. You shouldn't do that.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Like, you're playing Call of Duty.

• 1:06:03Trevor Noah?

  Game, I'm just gonna throw that out there. I'll also take shares in this one.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  But it would also make you worse.

• 1:06:07Trevor Noah?

  I'm just gonna throw in before Eugene jumps in. Eugene, you're the spokesperson for this game as well.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  But Riot, like, you'd be really bad at that game. So why are you trying to play your game of life while taking somebody else's rules when they're playing an entirely different game? They don't live in the same video game or experience the same game that you do.

• 1:06:24Trevor Noah?

  This is, wow.

• 1:06:28Trevor Noah?

  There's two thoughts that I have when you're saying this. The first one is, and I'm sorry to do this to you, Eugene, but I think of. You've done worse. I think of why VAR is so interesting in football, in soccer. So VAR, Video Assistant Referee, is a, they had it in American sports for a long time. I don't know why it took so long to get to soccer, but they'll, they'll pause the game at a crucial moment when there's like a big foul or a goal that was scored or not scored. Point is, people don't agree on what happened. And then they'll start replaying what happened from multiple different angles. And it's sort of what you're saying. I've watched myself, my friends, the commentators, and everyone who's observing this

• 1:07:12Trevor Noah?

  start to realize that their reality is changing depending on the perspective that they're. So they'll go, that's definitely a foul. And they'll show you another angle and you'll be like, it still looks like a foul. And they'll show you another angle and you're like, did he touch him? Yeah. And then the final angle, you're like, no, he didn't, he didn't touch him. And what you're just saying is sort of that, is like, we're living in this world where we're all watching from our own camera angle. And then we're going, why don't you think it's a foul? Yeah. Why don't you think it's a foul? How can you say it's a foul? And it's this word. And then the second thought I was having, just based around this, is I go. You know, you're talking about a world where we're all not designed to have the same experience.

• 1:07:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Trevor Noah?

  But doesn't, doesn't that mean there's a huge swath of society that is always pushed to the fringes unless they are part of the monolithic experience? Does, as somebody who was diagnosed with ADHD, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, right? I, I've often felt like having ADHD, there's nothing wrong with it, but you're in the wrong society and world right now. Because a lot of what the world is, is designed not for you with ADHD. You really are.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  You're playing the wrong video game.

• 1:08:21Trevor Noah?

  No, you really are, yeah. Because I, I, I spoke to, um, I spoke to one, um, one therapist who was talking about how, and these are like hypotheses, but they said people with ADHD were probably really beneficial to a tribe and a society when you would go out like hunting together.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:39Trevor Noah?

  Because some people really just need to focus on picking the berries and some people need to be like, what's that? What's that? Do you guys hear that?

• 1:08:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:46Trevor Noah?

  What's that? You guys hear that? But you can't all be going, what's that, what's that? Because then no one's going to focus on the berries.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:08:51Trevor Noah?

  And you can't all be focused on the berries because then no one's going like, yo, guys, did you hear that? What was that? What was that? Pattern recognition.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  So willing to go explore and be curious.

• 1:08:58Trevor Noah?

  Exactly. And so you need all of these different minds.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:02Trevor Noah?

  Doing and thinking different things so that we can all function together. But to sort of what you're saying with arts, equity, like the, and what you're saying now, aren't we creating a world where we're compressing everyone into one? We're going like, you all have to do this, all have to go to school at this time, all have to learn these subjects, all have to sit in an office, all have, all, all.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  We're trying to.

• 1:09:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  And that creates a lot of resistance.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  Yes. Yes, I've, I've had this conversation with teachers at my daughter's school since she started high school. And all of it was if, if she really applied herself to the math and the science. And I used to say to them, just relax, school fees will be paid, she will pass. You won't have to deal with her for long.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Just relax.

• 1:09:42Speaker 03

  And then the conversation I'd have with her every time was, I don't want great grades. I want you to have the best time possible during this five years of high school, but just pass so I don't have to pay for it again. So that was the conversation for the longest time. And funny enough, I saw a TikTok of someone just the other day who posted all of their high school achievements.

• 1:10:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Their badges, their certificates. And they go, in the real world, these count for nothing. It's like you have Monopoly money in the real world. So you've missed out on an entire five years of experiencing

• 1:10:13Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  your growth and your fundamentals, or how you would have been forming as a, as a young adult, trying to achieve and impress people you'll never see again.

• 1:10:20Trevor Noah?

  Well, it's funny you say that. I think people would, are and would be shocked at how many of the biggest, most successful icons that they look up to

• 1:10:30Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:31Trevor Noah?

  never finished school.

• 1:10:33Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:33Trevor Noah?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:34Trevor Noah?

  So they'll be like, oh, yeah, Mark Zuckerberg, you know how big he is. And you're like, he didn't finish. Then like, what do you mean? He went to, yeah, he went to the university and then he didn't finish. He left to do this thing that we call Facebook.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:45Trevor Noah?

  What, what do you mean? Countless names where they go, they, they went to the university and then they dropped out and they started a business and they, and they left. No, but to your point.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:10:53Trevor Noah?

  But, but we think that the one thing leads to the other. So we're living in this world where one thing leads to another. You're living in this world where one thing leads to another. What was the first breakthrough? I'd love to know, even like on the ADHD side, cause what you're saying to me sounds like a magic trick.

• 1:11:11Trevor Noah?

  Your brain can't focus, you, you, you, you know, you're, you're stuck in loops.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  And now I'm in this place where I literally, I'm writing a book right now and I can go and sit for seven hours and focus without anything at all.

• 1:11:21Trevor Noah?

  Let's walk through that. How do you get there? How, how on earth did you, what was, what was the first step?

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  So, like you said, it's been a journey over time.

• 1:11:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Like, that's the way that neuroplasticity works. It's repetition over time. And so the beautiful thing about the brain is that it, it can change and it does change. And so, you know, I think a lot of people now, it's not that they can't focus. It's that they have super well-practiced distraction.

• 1:11:46Trevor Noah?

  Ooh.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  And you get, you get really good.

• 1:11:49Speaker 03

  A high-definition LED television set.

• 1:11:52Trevor Noah?

  You can't just move on from that.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Yo.

• 1:11:54Trevor Noah?

  Say, say that again, please. Mic drop moment.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  So a lot of people think that they can't focus or they're bad at focus. But really what it is, is that they have super well-practiced distraction.

• 1:12:05Trevor Noah?

  Um, um, um.

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Remember I told you yesterday? I said, if I didn't go fetch those sneakers at that time, it would have ruined my day.

• 1:12:11Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but now, okay, now, now, I know we're gonna go on a tangent here, but I want you to help Eugene on this.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Only now we're going on a tangent.

• 1:12:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I'm saying I'm acknowledging the tangent.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:12:20Trevor Noah?

  For this specific moment, because this is about you now, only as Eugene. How, how would you have helped Eugene with this? So Eugene, help, tell the story.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  I've helped Eugene.

• 1:12:29Trevor Noah?

  And then, no, no, no, I want you, let's, let's, here's an actual brain.

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Trevor Noah?

  Walk us through the story, what happened?

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  So I ordered these sneakers online.

• 1:12:36Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  And then they arrived, but I didn't think, I didn't, I didn't count for how far they were. In my head, I was like, it's six and a half kilometers, I can probably make it, but we had this as well to do. So I spent an hour thinking, if I go there, then I'll save myself all the grief of thinking about going there while I'm doing this.

• 1:12:52Trevor Noah?

  But so basically, but also you're leaving out the, the most important thing you told me, which was.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  We're leaving out a lot of details here.

• 1:12:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, details Eugene.

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:58Trevor Noah?

  Tell me. Okay.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Because how much time did we have?

• 1:13:00Trevor Noah?

  I'm gonna tell you, no, I'm gonna tell you the story. I'm gonna tell you the story, this is what happened to Eugene.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  Are you here to convict me?

• 1:13:05Trevor Noah?

  No, no.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  I'm like, for all I know, it's 10 minutes before you gotta be here and you're talking about traveling all the way to Brooklyn.

• 1:13:11Trevor Noah?

  So let me explain, let me explain what happened here. It was Brooklyn.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  As we were talking about it before we started.

• 1:13:16Trevor Noah?

  So let me explain.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  That's how much on his mind this event is.

• 1:13:19Trevor Noah?

  So I'll explain what happened, because my friend told it to me. So what happened was Eugene ordered sneakers. The only location that would have the sneakers was in Brooklyn. Eugene was in Manhattan. Eugene looked up where the store is, he was like, oh, I gotta get this, it's near the Barclay Center. Google Maps told him how long it could take to get there. Eugene was like, I think I can do this. Now, the time was gonna be like super tight, but he's like, I can do it, I get there. And then I spend like 26 minutes getting there, and then I'll spend two minutes buying the shoes, because how long does it take to buy shoes?

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  You already ordered them.

• 1:13:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you just gotta pick them up. And then I got, gotta get back in the car, and then I come back to Manhattan, and then I've, I've got the thing. Now, I was like, but Eugene, wouldn't, isn't that gonna be stressful? Then Eugene said, no, if I didn't go pick up the shoes. I would have been more stressed about the shoes the whole day. So when we were recording an episode of the podcast, I'd be like, I can't, I can't even think about anything, Trevor, because all I'm thinking about is those shoes. And while I'm talking to the guest, I'd be like, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes. What time did the shoe place close?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Did you end up getting them?

• 1:14:22Trevor Noah?

  No, then he, so he went and he got the shoes first, right? No, he made it.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:27Trevor Noah?

  But it was a stress. So now I would like you to explain.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  I swapped one stress for another.

• 1:14:31Trevor Noah?

  For, from a brain perspective.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  No relief whatsoever. I swapped one?

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  I'm like.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  I was like, go to war or stay married. War.

• 1:14:47Trevor Noah?

  So, so.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  So, so it was one stress for another because you sat there overthinking for a period of time. And then you were, you had less time to go and actually do it. And were you, were you stressed on your journey?

• 1:14:58Trevor Noah?

  And he was stressed about getting to the podcast now.

• 1:15:00Speaker 03

  Just on my journey going there, it was just coming back. But in my head, I was like, that stress compared to the stress of the whole entire day.

• 1:15:08Trevor Noah?

  Of not having the shoes.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  Because when would you have been able to get them if you didn't go right before?

• 1:15:12Speaker 03

  You see?

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Well, I'm asking you.

• 1:15:13Trevor Noah?

  No, any other day.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Any other day.

• 1:15:16Trevor Noah?

  Any other day is the answer. And by the way, I'm not judging you.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  No, a hundred percent.

• 1:15:19Trevor Noah?

  I too have, you know, I didn't even once, even.

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  Never, you never did.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Well, what were you guys doing before this? Because you were late today.

• 1:15:26Trevor Noah?

  So this, this was, this was all on me.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Choosing ice cream.

• 1:15:30Trevor Noah?

  This is not him.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  Tell the story.

• 1:15:31Trevor Noah?

  This is not him at all. This is not him at all.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  You are a therapist now.

• 1:15:34Trevor Noah?

  This is not him at all.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  Oh, well, my point is though, like.

• 1:15:39Trevor Noah?

  I'm just gonna tell you.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  I have.

• 1:15:43Trevor Noah?

  I'm just gonna tell you.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:44Trevor Noah?

  I'm just gonna tell you.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  He said it was technical difficulty.

• 1:15:47Trevor Noah?

  Let me, let me, so let me tell you. No, but I wouldn't throw you under the bus. I would never do that to you.

• 1:15:56Speaker 03

  Why are you this person? Go ahead.

• 1:15:58Trevor Noah?

  So.

• 1:16:00Trevor Noah?

  There's a, there's a, a technical, there's a part of the podcast that I specifically like to be a part of. Like it comes to like, you know, when we're working with the transcriptions of the podcast, what's happening with like the, the titles on YouTube, like I, I like to be involved. Yeah, many of the geeky parts, right? So what I'll often do is I sit there with my laptop or my iPad and I go through the thing and I do it, then I do it. Long story short, the program that I use didn't want to work for the episode that we were doing because we had multiple Africans on the same episode. Now, I'm not blaming the racism of technology in this. I'm just explaining to you what happened, but it could not, for the life of it, discern between the Africans. Sometimes it couldn't even say what language they were speaking. They were speaking English, by the way.

• 1:16:44Trevor Noah?

  Now, in, in the program's defense, in the program's defense, one of our friends says like wak instead of work. And he says like swat fish, but that's Joe. But that's Joe and in his head, he sounds like Hugh Grant. You'll understand this when you listen to the episode. All of this will make sense. All of this will, I'm also not blaming Joe for, for how Joe is. But because we needed that and the whole process relies on me doing that part. Then I was like, we need it, we need it, we need it. Then I'm like, ah, like I'm like a hacker, like, ah, give me ten, I gotta get in 10 minutes. I gotta get, give me five more minutes, I got. And, and so, and so that's the thing. But I want you to first fix the shoes thing.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Well, it's the same thing though, right? So you, I, I have a thing.

• 1:17:28Trevor Noah?

  How did you fix it?

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  I don't really like.

• 1:17:30Trevor Noah?

  Let's hear what it is first.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my thing is I don't like to rush. I don't like to rush because when you're, when you put, when you rush, you're in fight or flight and then that boosts cortisol. And that actually makes you dumber. So if you're sitting there right before this episode and you're trying to figure it all out and all of a sudden you're stressed about figuring it out, that actually makes you less able to figure it out because you're turning down activity in your prefrontal cortex and raising activity in your amygdala. Now you're in fight or flight, scanning for threats and you're not really in a position mentally to figure it out. That's why when you're in a rush, you spill your drink or you forget your keys, you drop things, right? You're not working at optimal performance.

• 1:18:04Trevor Noah?

  Can I throw some, can I throw something at you? That's so good. That might, it's based on what you told me about the kittens though. Only because you told me the kitten story. What if I grew up in a life that was so stressed and so high paced? That that's actually when I'm the most relaxed. Because I'm, I've lived in horizontal lines for so long.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  It's sort of like matching.

• 1:18:22Trevor Noah?

  So I'm like the op, what if I'm the opposite? Like I can, I become smarter, I can move better. Like I don't spill my drink, I don't bump into anything.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  You perform well under pressure.

• 1:18:31Trevor Noah?

  I don't miss a plane, I don't, like you've seen me in an airport.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  You thrive in that.

• 1:18:35Trevor Noah?

  Let me tell you something. He's made us thrive like crazy. If shit is going down and you need to rush.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  It's you, you're the guy.

• 1:18:41Trevor Noah?

  You call this guy here. Nothing will get forgotten, nothing will. Do you know when I've forgotten things? Is when I had copious amounts of time. And I mean, copious amounts of time. I was going to a friend's wedding recently.

• 1:18:59Trevor Noah?

  And when I tell you I had time.

• 1:19:02Trevor Noah?

  Pack the suitcase two days before, I was like, you know what? You. Let's not rush. Two days before. Imagine, you know me, my friend. That sounds like suicide. Exactly. Not you're gonna not come back ever. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna pack this, I wanna be so, because I didn't wanna rush. I'm gonna pack the suitcase, I'm gonna prepare everything, put the shoes in, put the tuxedo, the thing, you name it. I was like, I got this. I'm gonna be so, because I don't want anything to go wrong. I was like, you know what? Okay. Not that things go wrong, I was like, I don't want anything to go wrong. Let me try this thing. So let me do this thing.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  But you're focused on things going wrong when you're thinking about how you don't want things to go wrong.

• 1:19:38Trevor Noah?

  This is why you're around, this is great by the way. So I was like, you know what? You know what? He manifested calamity. So I was like, let me, let me just do this. Packed everything, got the wedding, you know, on, you name it. The night before, I'm hanging up all my clothes, putting everything up.

• 1:19:57Trevor Noah?

  I had jackets, I had shirts, I had no bottoms.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  You didn't pack any bottoms.

• 1:20:06Trevor Noah?

  So you, you know.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  You got all the way there and you didn't pack any bottoms.

• 1:20:09Trevor Noah?

  So because the pants went off for tailoring separately.

• 1:20:12Speaker 03

  Things are making sense now.

• 1:20:12Trevor Noah?

  The pants went off for tailoring. They came in a different bag and I put the bags and I was so comfortable and calm when I was doing the thing. But when I normally pack. I fly in and I sing a song and I'm like flying through it. I'm like shoes got your socks and then your socks.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Well, you're like an athlete.

• 1:20:32Trevor Noah?

  And the way you're, and the way you're shooting in your shirt.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  That's actually the song he sings.

• 1:20:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, every time. I've never left anything behind. I've never been a person who's like, oh, I didn't bring my toothbrush. No. I'll nail it. So I, and I mean this honestly.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's a completely different situation though.

• 1:20:47Trevor Noah?

  Have like the opposite brain of.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Yes, you could, but also what you're describing is completely different. What you're describing is why athletes are way better at shooting free throws when they're not thinking about it versus whenever they're thinking about it and they have time that they miss, right? Because you have it saved in muscle memory and you're trying to introduce conscious thought into something that you shouldn't.

• 1:21:05Trevor Noah?

  I'm a packing athlete. You heard it here first.

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  There's this famous.

• 1:21:09Trevor Noah?

  Don't come here with no casual packing.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:21:13Trevor Noah?

  I'm a packing athlete.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  But you did that. You did that. You came through with some casual packing and that's what you did.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  You know, I'm so grateful for your presence here for so many reasons.

• 1:21:21Trevor Noah?

  Before you go on this, I want you to now go with Eugene's one. Cause I've experienced, by the way, no.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  We diagnosed Trevor and now we need to diagnose.

• 1:21:28Trevor Noah?

  Eugene's one. So I want you to talk us through, because I, I think a lot of people will relate to this. Help us understand Eugene's thing and how would you have coached him?

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Did we finish Eugene's situation?

• 1:21:37Trevor Noah?

  No, because yes, because he had the shoes he was five, but then as he said, he introduced, he swapped one stress for another.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  What was the other stress? So the one stress was.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  The other stress would be, I'd be sitting here and then when the guest is talking, I'd be thinking, you know, this thirty minutes.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  That's exactly how long it takes to get to Brooklyn.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  But what was the stress that you swapped it for? What ended up being the stress?

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  Oh, the stress was I was gonna make it on time. The driver is driving too slow. Why is the school bus in front of us? Why is the traffic?

• 1:22:03Trevor Noah?

  There's always a school bus when you're late.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  How long did you wait to make that decision to send it?

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  Almost an hour.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I think, you know, I was saying this before we started recording, that I don't negotiate with myself. And so

• 1:22:20Trevor Noah?

  You don't? What does that mean?

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  I don't, like, for example, you're sitting there going back and forth, like, do I want to go get a

• 1:22:25Trevor Noah?

  I do that.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  I, I just make a decision. I don't like to waste time.

• 1:22:28Trevor Noah?

  And, and, but why? What is, what is the thinking behind this?

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  I think it's exactly what happened to Eugene, right? So he wasted an hour just going back and forth and then that, he had doubled the amount of stress because not only was he overthinking a situation, then he was also stressed about having less time to do it.

• 1:22:44Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  So, again, it's kind of similar to where I was thinking, where I have this thought process of what, who do, like, when I visualize my best favorite self, who, what, who are they? What are their habits like? What is their mindset like? What are their beliefs like? In this situation, it's like, okay, when I visualize myself tomorrow or myself later today, like, or my best favorite self, what, what, what does she do? Like, how does she act? She doesn't sit here going back and forth, should I go get it, should I not? It's my podcast. If I want to go get shoes, I'm gonna go get shoes. And if I'm gonna be 10, 15 minutes late, I'm gonna be 10, 15 minutes late. And I'm not really gonna, I'm not really gonna stress about it. And that's why I said, like, I don't like to rush. Like, if I'm gonna be, that doesn't mean that I give myself ample time all the time.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  I don't always have ample time. And sometimes I am five minutes late. I'm kind of chronically five minutes late to everything. I wasn't today, but I am.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  But that's because I wasn't alone, right? So, um, he's on time. And so, and so, yeah, I think when I think about that, if I were in your shoes, and I'm like, this is something that I want.

• 1:23:49Trevor Noah?

  Nice shoes, by the way.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  From the beginning, you had ample time. If you didn't waste an hour thinking, you could have gone there and back and not been stressed at all. If it's something that you want to do, that's gonna make you happier, and that joy, joy is the best performance enhancing drug ever. So if I'm gonna go get these shoes and make myself, I'm wearing my boots. You guys both said you like my boots.

• 1:24:06Trevor Noah?

  We both said we liked your boots. They are dope boots.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  And, and when you are feeling like your best self, then you actually perform better, right? Joy enhances your performance.

• 1:24:14Trevor Noah?

  And I knew, Em, that those shoes would do that for me.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:24:17Trevor Noah?

  We had two back to backs. You came, you came in with swag, I won't lie. I knew. You, you just had like a vibe about you. What you just said, you, you see now, coming back to So if you just hear it on the woo woo side of things, people go like visualize your best self, think about who you wanna be. And then I've seen a lot of people, and I've probably been one of them at some point, who goes, ah, come on, you just visualize your best self. And if you could, then you would. And then

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  You're teaching your brain how to act in situations in life. That's why identity shifting is so powerful.

• 1:24:47Trevor Noah?

  So I read, I read a paper that was written about athletes the other day. And this was an interesting, I'm not even sure that it was a study per se, but it was a really interesting um article that I read. And it talked about the difference between like elite athletes and just athletes who are good by the fact that they are athletes, right? And it said, the difference between the athletes wasn't necessarily the fact that one group was nervous and the other group wasn't nervous in a high stress situation. The difference was the one group who were the elite athletes were able to visualize themselves overcoming the obstacle that they knew was incoming.

• 1:25:31Trevor Noah?

  And the other group could only focus on the obstacle itself.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:25:35Trevor Noah?

  And so you watch, you know, LeBron James, you watch a, you know, an Erling Haaland, you watch a, you know, whoever it is, you know, Saquon Barkley, Eugene Fine. But like, you watch any of these, these people, you know, whoever it is, and you go, wait, how, how are they doing that in those moments? And it seems like what you're just saying, they are able to visualize themselves doing the thing that they haven't done yet. And then that, what we'd say magically or scientifically, means that they're more able to realize it. Help me understand that part.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  It trains the premotor area of the brain. So your problem yesterday was that you were focused on the problem and not how the best version of you moves through situations. And so there's, I actually just filmed my own podcast episode on this and it's like three of my favorite different types of visualizations.

• 1:26:28Trevor Noah?

  But what's the podcast called, by the way?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Planet M.

• 1:26:30Trevor Noah?

  Planet M. I love it.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Welcome to my world. And so, um, and so the, the one type of visualization I talked about though was Sort of like resilience training.

• 1:26:42Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Visualization. And this is exactly what we're talking about. So and it's what athletes use. NASA, like astronauts at NASA use this. And it's basically the process of visualizing yourself on the path toward achieving or doing whatever it is. But kind of facing challenges as the best version of you. And so you start out in this visualization, sort of just identifying who that is. And then you can bring up a chat, like, for example, you could do this. Bring up the challenge from yesterday. Start your visualization with your favorite version of you, the best version of you. And then bring up the situation that happened yesterday. And then you watch as that version of you moves through that situation. And you can do this for so many different things. You can use this as confidence training.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  If there are things that, if like, as a creator for a while, like, certain comments would get to me. Visualizing my best self, reading those comments and how she would react to them, trained my brain to react in a way that is aligned with who I'm wanting to become.

• 1:27:39Trevor Noah?

  You're becoming your own role model, essentially.

• 1:27:41Speaker 03

  It's because I have this theory that in a meditative state, when you are doing a mantra, you're basically doing a simulation of something that will happen in the future. So when you face that situation, like the athletes in high stressful, they've already done this before.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  They've already faced it, you know, like, a challenge is only difficult when it's like, not only difficult, but it's a lot harder the first time you do it.

• 1:28:00Trevor Noah?

  Yep, right.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  And then the second time, third time, fourth time you face it, it's not even a challenge anymore. It's just like, oh, yeah, this is just one of those obstacles you just gotta go through. And if that's what happens when you visualize your best self going through it. And also, you're sort of preparing yourself for it and how you want to act. If you don't do that, then you are just putting yourself in a position to allow your default mode or your subconscious to react to a situation. But when you take the time to visualize and kind of practice the way that you would would want to react.

• 1:28:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Then you're gonna react in that in real life in a way that you actually feel proud of, rather than.

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  It's like pilots in simulator jets, right?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:37Speaker 03

  You don't have to crash the real plane. In a relaxed state, you're flying, using all the gizmos, all the buttons.

• 1:28:43Trevor Noah?

  You've simulated a crash.

• 1:28:44Speaker 03

  You've simulated the crash.

• 1:28:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you've simulated a nose dive.

• 1:28:46Speaker 03

  So your best version of yourself.

• 1:28:47Trevor Noah?

  You've simulated.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Right, so do it.

• 1:28:49Trevor Noah?

  So what is that? Help me understand what that's actually doing in your brain now. Like, is it, is it, because you spoke earlier about like tunnel vision, for instance. So help me understand what some of these things are causing in us as people that we don't realize our brains are doing to us.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

  Please splice that with the concept of time as well.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Well, the concept-

• 1:29:08Speaker 03

  Added in there.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  We won't interrupt you for a long time now.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Alright, um, so I mean, there are many different points here. So when we are kind of practicing, what we're doing really is just practicing, right? We're practicing facing challenges. We're just like an athlete. We're practicing, you know, what happens if somebody runs up on us and we have the ball? What are we gonna do? We're just practicing that. And so the same way that you wanna practice free throws, you wanna practice facing challenges. And so you're just, you're just activating those pathways in your brain. Like if I'm visualizing my best self, reading those comments, I'm just practicing and training my brain to react in a way that I would want to react. So you're just activating those pathways. Like, the way that visualization works is a lot of the time, especially when it's highly

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  vivid and you're using imagery and context, your environment, the emotional state, your brain doesn't necessarily differentiate between what you're seeing, like, through our eyes, and what we're imagining in our head. And if you think about, like what I talked about, how your brain constructs everything you see, it's no different, because your eyes don't see it anyway. Your brain's constructing everything you see. So what's the difference between your eyes being closed or open? It's the same. You're seeing it in your head. And it's being constructed by your brain, either way. And so what's happening, for example, especially with kind of motor activities, like in athletes, they're really training the pre-motor area of the brain. And the motor area is what sends the signals, right? So the motor area is what tells my hand to pick up this cup and take a drink.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  The pre-motor area is what plans the movement. And so what you're doing when you visualize this is you are training your brain to plan the reaction, plan the movement better. So that way, when you actually are facing the situation in real life, your brain already knows the plan. But what happens when you are in it in real life and you haven't done this, and you haven't ever thought about it, then there's no plan and your brain is gonna go based off of an old version of you, a past version of you, especially if it's a stressful situation and you're in fight or flight, then you're kind of-

• 1:31:12Speaker 03

  The body freezes.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Right, and what's gonna happen is it's really just your subconscious sort of programming from the past that's doing the reacting, that's doing the responding. It's not, it's not a conscious response or a plan. It is just sort of you reacting in real time based on old programming that you may or may not want to be, you know, directing your behaviors.

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  And so- I mean, the perception of time thing here, I don't know necessarily how that's gonna fit into the story. You'll make it work. But, I mean, actually, I could, I could. So, I mean, conscious awareness and having this plan does dilate time. And so, when you are present, you have more time to respond versus, and also, right, if you've practiced the, if you've practiced the situation, if you've been here before, whether it's in real life or in your imagination, then you're not gonna have the same stress response that you would if you practiced it and you've been here before, right? Then you're, you're gonna feel more present, more calm. When you're feeling present and or calm, then time dilates.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  You have more time to respond, rather than being like, oh, my God, I have, you know, just reacting, then you're, you're gonna be able to sit back and respond in a way. And observe yourself. Right, that feels more conscious. And so, and then to bring in sort of the tunnel vision piece that you asked about. If you are in your situation, where the shoe situation, and you are stressed and you're limited on time, and you're like, I don't know what to do, and you're in this fight, flight, freeze, my brain's not really thinking super straight clearly. What you get is tunnel vision, because stress, if you think about the saying deer in headlights, they're in fight or flight.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Deer in headlights, they're frozen. They're, they have extreme tunnel vision. They can't, they're, they're, they're not looking around at the possibilities of what's going on. They're looking at the other deer going. They're, they're, they can only see the problems right in front of them, right? That's what happens when you're stressed, when your nervous system goes into fight or flight. You are that deer in headlights. You can only see the problem. You're not putting your brain in a position to scan for all the different, you're not thinking logically and solution-based and open to different possibilities or other ways of thinking. That's not, that's not the state that your nervous system is in. Your nervous system is in a state of, this is this situation at hand, this is the problem, we need to think about this problem, this problem alone. And we don't know what to do, but your brain's not. We don't have the program.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  Your brain's not in the position to even think about other, other avenues or what to do, other paths. It's, it's not even in the position. And so, that's when you're in the situation you're in, where you sit there for an hour, debating and negotiating with yourself, and you're not ever coming to a real solution. It's because, and, but, and maybe the way that you wanna go about this next time is to stop for five minutes and take some deep breaths, calm your nervous system, and then you would have been able to make a really educated decision based on your position. You know, when you think of the deer in the headlights thing.

• 1:34:04Trevor Noah?

  Just when, yeah, the way you break it down, I go.

• 1:34:08Trevor Noah?

  The deer is never in that position when it's being chased by a predator. Never. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. There's no deer that's like, oh, a wolf. No, it runs. It immediately to your point, because it has so much time to learn from the time it was like a calf. And all the way through, it's sort of simulated and it's learned and it's practiced and it's learned and it's practiced.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  It's programmed.

• 1:34:29Trevor Noah?

  But the car is a new thing in its world for the most part. So it's just like, wait, what is, it's a new idea that it has never simulated. That's, when you put it that way. It's amazing. I would love for you, no, you know, I remember one of your. Hundred percent. I remember one of your, one of your videos that, that, that really, really touched me was when you were talking about how the brain, the mind, and these learnings apply to love and how we process relationships. And I remember this, you know, at the time I was, I was reading a lot about attachment theory.

• 1:35:03Trevor Noah?

  I was listening to people's stories, even in therapy, I was talking about like, how do I process what a relationship could or could not be based on the relationships I've seen or have not seen? What are the triggers that I think of that another person wouldn't? And what are the things I'm missing that another person wouldn't? And then you, you shared like a beautiful story of your journey with love, talking about this, seeing what we couldn't see before. Or learning to not see what we didn't need to see before. Walk, walk me through this and, and, and help me understand how you got to the beautiful place that you're in now.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, if I'm understanding your, I'm, I don't, if I'm understanding your question.

• 1:35:44Trevor Noah?

  Well, I remember, cause you had this video and I mean, this was like years ago, I think, but you, you were talking about

• 1:35:51Trevor Noah?

  the brain and people saying, for instance, oh, I'm lonely. There's no one out there. You never meet anyone. You don't see anyone and no one sees me and blah, blah, and. And then you shared your own personal story. I remember at the time, talking about how you changed something. And I'm, I'm forgetting the exact details, but you, you worked on changing something about how you were perceiving your world. And it opened up opportunities for love to come into your life. But you were like, the world didn't change. It's just how you were perceiving and presenting in the world. Can you explain that?

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I understand now. So it's not necessarily about relationships alone. This is just about life in general and it all goes back to the kittens, right?

• 1:36:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  The kitten couldn't see the table leg or respond to a table leg normally because it had only ever seen horizontal lines. Now, I grew up not necessarily seeing a relationship, like what a healthy, you know, romantic relationship looked like. And I, um, I, I didn't like, so my brain didn't know how to filter for that, right? My brain didn't know and still is learning how to, you know, filter for that and feel safe in that as well, right? Because you just got done saying that you feel safe. What you described really is like, does my brain have this opposite? What you're describing is your brain feels safe in those chaotic environments.

• 1:37:14Trevor Noah?

  Familiar.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37:15Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  And so your brain like, and so I, you, I had to teach my brain, right? Like what to even look for, like what does that look like? Like what does a healthy, loving relationship look like? And, and can, and also feel safe in that. And that started with myself, like having that relationship with myself.

• 1:37:33Trevor Noah?

  In what way?

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  Um, sort of treating myself like I was my dream.

• 1:37:39Trevor Noah?

  Partner.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  Partner.

• 1:37:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  Like I would walk around calling myself babe and like, oh, like, oh, no prob. Like literally, I remember sitting down and maybe the video you're talking about is I remember sitting down to record a video and I was like, oh, like you need some better lighting, honey. And like, and I, and I remember think getting up and I'm like, wow, like I really talked to myself, like how I would want my dream partner to talk to myself. And it really just boils down to treating myself how I would want to be treated, right? And so, and, and having that like dream relationship, like, do I want to be taken out on dates? Am I taking myself out on dates? Do I feel safe in that? Or am I going to reject that because my nervous system doesn't feel safe in that? Because it doesn't ever experience that.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Your nervous system feels safest with whatever it's experiencing, whether it's what you want or not.

• 1:38:26Trevor Noah?

  Simulation.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Whether it's what you want or not, right? So you can sit around all day asking for certain things. But if you've never experienced them, then your brain is not going to experience those things as feeling safe. It's going to feel unpredictable and unpredictability feels unsafe to the brain. So you've got to make what you want predictable, right? By showing it more of that or normalizing what you want. And there's so many different ways to do that, like visualization. But also, for example, when I was wanting to buy a house, like, let me go drive through this one neighborhood in the mountains in Arizona with all these beautiful homes to show my brain this, to normalize it, right? So so many different ways. And then the other piece that you were kind of getting at as well was, yeah, the, the, I used to say this all the time. Oh, dating sucks in my city.

• 1:39:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  Everybody says that. And I've lived in many different cities. We went, we were, I was talking for probably 30 minutes before you guys got here about all the different places I've lived. And I would say it everywhere I lived. Oh, whether it was in the small town where I did the PhD or whether it was the big city when I lived in Miami, you know? No matter where it was, oh, dating sucks in my city or whatever. And I hear people say that all the time. And you're, that's sort of a belief, right? It is an instruction to your brain. Your brain filters your reality or remember, it constructs everything that you see based on your beliefs.

• 1:39:45Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  Based on what you know or think to be true. And so if you, the person, your dream person could be right in front of you, but you won't see them because you don't believe that dating is good in your city. You think it sucks in your city. And so this guy could

• 1:40:02Trevor Noah?

  You've made up your mind.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  This guy, right? And so this guy could come right up to you and offer to buy you a coffee at the coffee shop.

• 1:40:07Trevor Noah?

  Says who? You've always got a chance with me, you team.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  And, and, but, but also like taking the stress thing into account as well, right? Like especially add stress on top of that. If you're, if you're in fight or flight or stressed and you walk around throughout your day stressed out, then again, your brain's not going to be filtering for the dream partner or the job. And I've had people, someone came to one of my master classes once and he said he had been looking for a job for two years. And within two weeks after the class, he got his dream job and nothing changed in his world. Like nothing changed in the physical world. What changed was in him, his beliefs.

• 1:40:41Trevor Noah?

  It's not magic.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:40:43Trevor Noah?

  It is.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  It is magic.

• 1:40:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I mean, it's not

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  I do believe in magic.

• 1:40:46Trevor Noah?

  No, but

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  I do believe in magic.

• 1:40:47Trevor Noah?

  But this is, this is what I mean by it's, it's not magic. We get you. Is. It's not, it's not something that's inexplainable is what I mean.

• 1:40:55Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  I do, I do wanna pause though and say that there are things that are unexplainable.

• 1:41:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  And I believe in that as well. So I mean, that's a whole other conversation. And I do believe in things that are unexplainable. Like, science is a lens through which you can look at life.

• 1:41:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  It's not the only lens through which you should look at life. And if you're only looking at life through one or two lenses, then you're missing out on a ton. So I, but I do appreciate when you can explain these sorts of things with neuroscience, because yeah, it makes it feel like real and super understandable and also actionable, right? Because it, it goes from life feeling random to all of a sudden, oh, wait, now I can have control over this situation. I'm not seeing the relationship that I want. I'm not getting the job that I want. Oh, maybe my, maybe, it's there. It is there. Like, it's there. The money, the job opportunities.

• 1:41:41Speaker 03

  It's all there.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  The world is so abundant with so many different things, but you have to believe that. And you have to move through life with that belief and knowing. Otherwise, you're gonna turn down opportunities, or you might just not even see them. You won't even apply for the job because you won't think that you'll get it, right? It's just, there's so many different ways that your brain will hold you back.

• 1:42:01Speaker 03

  What you're saying is so key because I was actually telling him, and I said, I wanna show him my diary from about six years ago. This was the hardest time of my life. And I started reading these books and I got into it. I started listening to these podcasts. And what I started making a choice of was simulation or assimilating. So if I had assimilated, I would just carry on with people around me and what they do. In that case, it would have been comedy. But in my simulation, in my mind, in my meditation, I knew what I wanted to do and I knew where I wanted to do it. So I started to write it down. But the next step from writing it down was to visualize, have visual references of it. So I started having screensavers of the city that I wanted to do this thing at on my phone. Then the next step was, I would say, I want to be paid in this currency.

• 1:42:47Speaker 03

  Then I would start saying that over and over again. And remember, I could assimilate or I could be in the simulation. And slowly, the simulation started feeling normal and normal and normal. Then I realized, if I want to hear this being said, I must say it to myself. Then I would take everything that I wrote down and I would say it in the mirror. Then I was like, yeah, I can hear it. The vibration thing that you said makes sense. I could hear it, I could hear, I could hear it. The more I said it, when I sleep, I'll dream about it and it was that, it took five years. The five years, the opportunity happened in exactly the same place, in exactly the same way, in exactly the same currency that I'd written down. And I'd written down dates on the, on the diary, and I think I've told you about this before.

• 1:43:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, you did.

• 1:43:24Speaker 03

  And I even, so eh, in the same year, I'd done a, a reading with a medium, who said exactly the same things that I'd written down as my thoughts and as my visualization. And when I asked her, she said, remember that as a medium, I'm not saying anything that's not in your reality. I'm just basically reminding you and giving you cues and clues of what to follow and what parts. But it seems like if you've written it down already, you remember it quite well. And what you're saying makes sense because when you try to explain to someone, and that's where I find with people who are gifted, who are talented, naturally talented at something, trying to explain their success, I often think you're cheating someone who's facing the same conundrum of the real experience, work hard, do this, do that.

• 1:44:07Speaker 03

  No, it's sometimes just thinking about the thing that you wanna do, and actually thinking and thinking and thinking and visualizing it. And those small neurological pathways start becoming little footpaths, and then they become little two lanes, then all of a sudden they become freeways, and you become a master at weaving your wand and creating your reality. And that's what I think is missing.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, and don't get me wrong, I'm all for working hard, I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't work hard. But I think you, when you have the mindset piece and then, and you wire your brain to align with what you're working hard for, that's when you become unstoppable, and that's when it's inevitable and it's gonna happen no matter what, right? But if you're working so hard and your brain isn't wired in alignment with what you're working hard for, then you're just, you're, you're gonna just, you're beating a brick wall. It's when, when you, that's when you start to face all this resistance and, I mean, there's so much research that shows, you know, like mindset and belief in yourself is a bigger predictor of success than talent or intelligence. Like, but yeah, and it's, it's, it's so important, like, I, and I've been asked many times, like, when, what was the thing that you think really shifted

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  your life and when did you start to really, like, feel different and do different and be different? And it was when I had this crazy, I mean, I had a crazy D M T experience, but I, it really opened me up to the spiritual world, but also, like, to start believing in myself. And when I started believing in myself, Everything changed. I I became unstoppable. And it didn't matter what happened, right? Because the tests are gonna come, the trials, the tribulations, the challenges, the things are gonna happen. But when you have that belief in yourself, it's like you keep going and you keep and belief in yourself improves your performance.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  It it it's a biological advantage to believe in yourself.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  Uh uh my D M T experience was ayahuasca. What was yours?

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  D M T.

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you took it orally. How did you do it?

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  Uh, out of a crack pipe.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  It it found me.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  I can tell you something. I didn't think we'd have crack. Twice in the history of this podcast, way more crack than I thought would be on this podcast. I'm not gonna lie. If you ask me about my journal some years ago, I can safely say I did not write that. You know, judging of our races. People would just like throw. Somebody would expect ayahuasca from you. And crack from. Crack pipe from Trevor. I got crack from you. You cheat. I said it first.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  It found me.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  You got me, you got me.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  It found me.

• 1:46:26Speaker 02

  You already threw meth my way. I've got, I only, I can only have one. Okay, okay, I'll take crack. You take the crack pipe. Can you take ayahuasca?

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  Okay, perfect.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, no, it definitely found me. I didn't go seeking it, but it changed my life. And it really taught me, it changed my meditative, my meditation practice forever. Like I, to this day, I have this lightning bolt that strikes through me and my whole body's vibrating. And I'm divinely guided and protected and charged up and electrocuted by the divine. So, I mean, it changed my life, but also going into the P H D, this happened right before I like went into the P H D. And I just went and with this like such a, such a deep trust and surrender to the flow of life. And I had trust and surrender written on sticky notes like all over my apartment when I first got there.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  What does that do for you, by the way?

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  To surrender?

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  No, no, when you, when you write, because I've seen you talk about that, what what is that doing to to the brain or to our minds?

• 1:47:24Trevor Noah?

  When we like write something and put it everywhere and just constantly see it.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Um, well, so writing it down activates the path, those paths, similar to affirmations.

• 1:47:33Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  So just the act of writing down an affirmation actually has been shown to activate reward pathways in the brain, which boosts dopamine. So it makes you feel good in the moment, but also it just sort of, I mean, it serves as a visual cue and reminder every time you look at it, which activates that pathway in your brain every time you look at it. And then that pathway becomes through Hebb's law, neurons that fire together, wire together, the more often that you activate the pathway, the stronger it becomes. And then it can become your dominant way of thinking, feeling and acting. Right. It becomes your default mode.

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  Which explains calligraphy and rock art throughout the ancient times, right? If it's written down and it's there and it's beautiful, you're meditating while writing. So it means you believe in it.

• 1:48:15Trevor Noah?

  It goes into the.

• 1:48:17Speaker 01

  I'm a big fan of handwriting, especially affirmations of like, for, for example, I do this identity shifting visualization. I like to write down who I saw by hand. It actually and it, it improves your ability to remember whatever it is versus typing. Our brain didn't evolve to type.

• 1:48:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:34Speaker 03

  That has nothing to do with. This motion versus.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I also just see like, especially journaling by hand. I, I notice patterns in my thinking and I get ideas for content and stuff like that way more than if I'm typing.

• 1:48:46Trevor Noah?

  Let's talk a little bit about psychedelics in general. Over the past, let's say, five years and maybe a decade, I've, I've noticed science slowly opening up and being allowed to open up to like in its defense, you know, because the US government changes and you see these things changing around the world. But we've seen a shift now in how people treat even the conversation around psychedelics, where once it was considered, you know, like this hippie thing that'll just destroy your life, et cetera, et cetera. Now we've seen, you know, the government doing tests around like MDMA therapy and what it could do for veterans and looking at psychedelics and how terminal cancer patients completely subvert

• 1:49:30Trevor Noah?

  how they feel about the possibility of dying when they've now consumed psilocybin or people on DMT, ayahuasca, et cetera. What do you think or what have you seen that has sort of like opened up a different area of how we see the brain and the mind because of psychedelics? Like, because I'm, the research now is still like young in a weird way, even though we've had it for long and then we have some old stuff that's applying to now.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  Because in the very beginning, it was cocaine that was the cure-all for everything.

• 1:49:59Trevor Noah?

  Wait, really?

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  Yes. That's why I was trying to say earlier, you know, we think, we view this as a new mode of, you know, investigation, but it's not at all. Like psychedelics were popular way back in the day, drugs were popular way back in the day. Yeah, yeah, whenever I, we, whenever I was in the PhD and studying drug addiction, like I learned about how all these, you know, came to be and there was this book.

• 1:50:20Trevor Noah?

  Well, sorry, before I forget, there's something I want to ask you about that, though. How do, how do we define an addiction? I think a lot of people struggle with this. I, I might be one of them, but I, I know a lot of people will go, I'm not addicted. You know, like sometimes people go, I'm not addicted to my phone. I, I just, I just, I, I just use it and I, I like keeping up to date with stuff and, but I'm not addicted. And someone else will be like, oh, no, I'm not addicted to that. I'm not addicted to this, I'm not. How do, how do we actually define addiction?

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, there is a whole DSM five criteria and, you know, but I think when you think about just behaviorally, it's tolerance and dependence and withdrawal.

• 1:50:56Trevor Noah?

  Tolerance and dependence and withdrawal.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, and withdrawal kind of can go in with tolerance and dependence, but when, I mean, really like in, in the science world, we don't even really use addiction. We use like, you know, dependence.

• 1:51:07Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  And, or substance abuse. And really what you, what I look at, and when people ask me that I, that I work with, right? Because there are people that, you know, smoke weed or different things and then, should I stop? How do I know? And really it's, it's tolerance and dependence. Do you, do you have the ability to stop? Like, do, is that a conscious choice? If you were to, would you feel bad? That's dependence and tolerance, right?

• 1:51:31Trevor Noah?

  What happens when people say, I can stop anytime I want to, I just don't want to?

• 1:51:37Trevor Noah?

  Because you hear people say that. And I know you're genuinely.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:40Trevor Noah?

  And then I don't know. Denial. Yeah, but I don't.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  It's denial. It's denial. And I think, again, you can't, you can't stop unless you want to. And that's kind of what I was saying earlier. You cannot convince somebody to stop a behavior if they don't want to stop the behavior. And so that's, I mean, obviously, we know from objectively outside looking in, okay, you're probably dependent on this thing. If you don't want to stop, then you're dependent on it. Um, and if it's going to make you feel emotionally, you know, worse, and you feel worse if you don't use it or do the thing, like, for example, the phone, if you want a day without it, would you feel a raise in anxiety levels? And there's been studies on that, and that's shown that people do feel an increase in anxiety without the phone. I personally feel a decrease. I don't like, I love not being around my phone.

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, if you are gonna, like we were saying earlier with the nicotine, if you're gonna quit cold turkey, does that increase your anxiety levels? Well, that's dependence. And also tolerances, do you need it more and more and more over time?

• 1:52:39Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Um, and so that's another way of knowing, you know, am I becoming dependent on this drug? Um, am I becoming addicted to it?

• 1:52:46Trevor Noah?

  Can you be addicted to good things?

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:52:48Trevor Noah?

  Like working out?

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  You can be addicted to anything that, all drugs of abuse boost dopamine in the reward centers of the brain. Every single one. And so if you, anything that is, anything that boosts dopamine in the reward centers can technically be addictive, right?

• 1:53:02Trevor Noah?

  Okay, got it.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Especially if you have an addictive personality. Um, and I think, yeah, there are things that, you know, you can become addicted to that. I, like personally, for me, I love the grind. Like, I love the feeling of sitting down and being at, like, working for, like, seven hours straight. Like, I, it feels so good to me. I love it. And, you know, being in college, I, and recently was writing my book, I kind of forgot, like, damn, this makes me feel really good. It's sort of addicting. Um, and it, you know, I have this mindset of like, I, I really am my own biggest cheerleader because. Every time I get up to go to the bathroom or get some water, I'm like, you're doing such a great job. And like, you got this. And I get so much dopamine from that. And then also that pride in yourself, whenever you, after you've done it, it's like, that feeling is addicting. So absolutely, like, you can be addicted to good things, for sure.

• 1:53:47Trevor Noah?

  So now, so sorry, going back, because you were going down the path, you were talking about the work that we've done in and around, understanding the brain and how psychedelics and all of these things affect them. You're talking about in addiction, et cetera, et cetera. So going back down that pathway, what do we, what are we starting to understand that we've maybe forgotten? Or what are we picking up on in the fields of neuroscience? And psychedelics and how they can help people and how they can maybe not help people? Or what does it even like, help us understand about the brain itself?

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think one of the coolest things that it's taught us about the brain is about quieting the default mode network of the brain. You know about that? Okay. Yeah, I think that what we've found through psychedelic research, especially psilocybin, LSD, and also meditation quiets the default mode network as well, so does hypnosis. But what we've found is that when you can quiet the default mode network, you actually can, you can alter your sense, your self-concept, your sense of self, habits. You can alter, you know, past memories and/or trauma. You can, you can really alter things in a way that we haven't really had the ability to before.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  And that, and you, you come out of that experience, a different person is the point. And when you, when you alter your self-concept, like, if you go on YouTube and you look up, oh, quantum leaping. Every single hypnosis for quantum leaping is all about just altering your self-concept. Like, that's really what it's about. When you alter your self-concept, you alter the story that your default mode hat, network has saved as who you are.

• 1:55:22Trevor Noah?

  I'm a shy person.

• 1:55:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:23Trevor Noah?

  I'm a messy person.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  And when you alter your self-concept and who you are, that story of who you are, then, well, your default mode network is not only responsible for who you are, but also your default mode of thinking, feeling, behaving, your decision-making, all of it. So when you alter your self-concept, now your default mode of thinking. Thinking, feeling and behaving is different. And so it changes you forever, rather than just over time, working on reducing your stress. Or no, when you change who you think you are and who you know you are, the person that you are, then it changes, it changes everything.

• 1:55:58Trevor Noah?

  So essentially, it's almost like.

• 1:55:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:59Trevor Noah?

  Oof, these are just external tools. And as you said, meditation or internal tools. But fundamentally, what it's able to do is change which lines your perceptive to as your kitten. You're like shifting, you're like, I'm a horizontal kitten, or I was a vertical kitten my whole life. And it's like, oh, no, no, no. Now you can, you can work on changing that. And you're like, no, I'm, I'm not a horizontal kitten anymore.

• 1:56:23Speaker 03

  But I think Wayne Dyer said it nicely when he says, change the way you see things and the things you see will change.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  I love Wayne Dyer.

• 1:56:30Speaker 03

  He's, he was, he was incredible. And it's, it's how Oprah changed her life, right? And changed the course of her show. When she started giving things away and making people feel good and recognizing people who are working hard was because she was affected by the book. She read, she had read the book and she thought it's not about salaciousness and gossip and about conflict.

• 1:56:48Trevor Noah?

  And it's not about tabloid. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:49Speaker 03

  The show could be about giving and sharing. And she started reading these books and the book club, introducing people to these concepts. And then they started seeping into the Carrie Zukhovs and them, into the zeitgeist of what America started being about when they thought of a talk show, right?

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  Right. And these drugs, of course, they also boost a lot of neuroplasticity as well. They, and, and that helps to change the brain long term too. So it's kind of a combination of a lot of things happening all at once, which is why these drugs can make such huge differences in people's lives very quickly.

• 1:57:18Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  And we do, we can do those things, you know, over time. But also, you know, these drugs, they alter people's state of consciousness. They, they, they allow you to look at the world in a way that you've never seen the world before. And when you do that, you, there's no going back from that experience, right?

• 1:57:35Speaker 03

  I can't see it.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  You, you can't unsee it. I remember the first time I ever looked at the moon and saw like, you know, we, when you look at the moon and it's like a waxing crescent or something, you see a crescent moon. And I remember the first time I looked at the moon on psilocybin and saw the entire moon, but just that the sun was coming from over here, only lighting up that little bit. And I was like, oh, wow. And I saw it in a way that I can never unsee ever again. And it's, it's the way that it actually is. And I think, you know, and this is my personal kind of a, a opinion or a theory on this, but it, like we've talked about, the brain constructs everything that we see. It constructs our entire experience. And so these mind altering drugs, they constru- they, they kind of get, get, allow you to see those different, like

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  what you were saying in the video, in the replay.

• 1:58:22Trevor Noah?

  Different, different replays.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  They allow you to see the different replays from all these different angles, right? And have this all of a sudden, brand new perception on life. And you don't come out of that, like, you don't come out of that the same. You come out of that viewing the world completely different.

• 1:58:35Trevor Noah?

  I've always, you know, it's funny. I've always thought, sorry, I was, I was gonna, I've always thought that's why alcohol is legal. And like, all these psychedelics have always been pushed to the fringes of illegality. Because alcohol, from what I've experienced and what I've seen, is something that sort of like dulls your senses in that way.

• 1:58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a depressant.

• 1:58:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. And it's, it's a perfect tool to keep people living in a system that has you suppressed and oppressed in a certain way. And then psychedelics, I don't know if you ever read, this thing, it really blew my mind, was um, in and around, like the whole free love movement and you know, Vietnam and that whole time. One of the biggest things that scared the US government at that, I think it was Nixon, I stand to be correct, I'm always bad with the presidents, but I think it was his administration. One of the things they, they talked about internally was they said, these drugs are undermining the very, the very principle that America's built on. And that is people aiming upwards to be like manager, manager's manager, district manager. Because people were just like, no,

• 1:59:40Trevor Noah?

  do you need a ride? Jump in. Do you need some food? Come on, let's go. Hey, come hang out with us. People just walking around, like free love movement. Yeah, but, but it now became, they're like, we need to shut this down.

• 1:59:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:59:50Trevor Noah?

  Because it goes against. The structure that we're building, which is get as much as you can from as many people as you can and just fight to stay there in your own little world. We we can't allow that. But alcohol ironically does the opposite. If you go to a job that you hate and you hate your world and you hate your thing, you have alcohol.

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  Makes you feel better about it.

• 2:00:09Trevor Noah?

  It makes you forget about it even more than that. And it just it just numbs you.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  Makes you feel less about it.

• 2:00:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, makes you feel less about it. And then you go do it again. And then you go do it again. And then you go do it again. But if you took psilocybin or if your manager took psilocybin or what, there's a good chance they might just be like, hey, I don't know, take Friday off. Who who cares about Friday? Did you do the work? But I'm a trial lawyer.

• 2:00:30Trevor Noah?

  But that's what the judge, imagine the judge.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  Or you might just be like, hey, you know, who even needs this defense? Like, um, like.

• 2:00:36Trevor Noah?

  The judge, yeah, a person might be like, actually, aren't we already in prison? I'll go in. It's fine. You know, but and I say this. So accurate. Yeah, you're right. No, no, no, you're absolutely right. It makes sense.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  It's joking, but at the same time, yeah. I mean, I've had experiences where I'm like, you know, maybe I should just live in this, you know, national forest that I'm in right now. This would be awesome and never talk to anybody and not have a phone. Like, that would be great.

• 2:00:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  And it really has you wanting that.

• 2:01:00Trevor Noah?

  That's what that's what I meant about like the further the further we get in disconnect. Em, we could talk to you forever. And I mean, that's why you wrote a book. That's why you have your podcast. That's why you have all these things. If if you were to leave us with one, I mean, you've left us with so much there. But if you were to leave us with like one, just like one idea or one concept in terms of starting, you know, people talk about journaling, people talk about meditation, people talk about people. But what would you say was just like, just the the first catalyst that you would say to somebody, hey, just just do this and do it repeatedly? And it might not change everything, but I think that this is like the the first step that you might want to take to just start changing how you see the world and yourself in it.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say the first step, and we touched on this a little, is starting with your. Internal sort of conversation and like how you think about yourself and about the world and just kind of rewiring that. That's where I started. I would get up every single morning and I would go on a walk and I would listen to affirmations on YouTube. I actually still have that playlist of affirmations on YouTube completely available to everybody. So if you want to go and listen to it, go for it. But I start rewiring the way that you think and that will change everything. Like when you change the way you think, we talked about you change the way you look at things. The things that you look at change and the first step in changing the way that you see the world

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  is changing the way that you see yourself and changing the way that and we talked about this with relationships too, like everything changes when you change how you treat yourself and you will no longer settle for anything less than you deserve. And you'll believe in yourself, which is extremely powerful. So I would say that really is the first step is working on your own self-concept and how you talk to yourself. And that's the best place to start because even if your external reality doesn't change, which I think it will, your internal reality definitely will and you'll start to feel better. And at the end of the day, what's the point of doing any of this work of rewiring your brain? If you don't feel better, like that's, that's the point of all, that's the whole point is to feel better. Like we get so caught up in manifesting this or manifesting that or this achievement.

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  But life, the majority of our life is the time between the achievements. It's the journey. It's the, if it was about the destination, it'd be called death. It's about the moments between the achievements. And so how can we make those moments more enjoyable? And it really just comes down to how you treat yourself, how you talk to yourself. That'll change every, it does change everything when you change the way that you talk to yourself and treat yourself. So I would start there.

• 2:03:36Trevor Noah?

  You've changed everything. Thank you for joining us.

• 2:03:39Speaker 01

  Thank you guys for having me.

• 2:03:40Trevor Noah?

  Genuinely, amazing. Did I not tell you this would be one of your favorites? Did I? I wrote that down in your journal, buddy.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  Are we gonna be friends now, Eugene?

• 2:03:51Speaker 03

  No, I'm for real. Thank you so much.

• 2:03:52Trevor Noah?

  And you're amazing. Thank you for your generosity.

• 2:03:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you guys for having me. This has been awesome.

• 2:03:56Speaker 03

  Thanks, y'all.

• 2:03:58Trevor Noah?

  You never lied, eh?

• 2:04:02Trevor Noah?

  What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jess Hackel. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random other stuff by Ryan Parduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.